Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#26
  • BLOG INDEX FOR JUNE 6th 2002
  • REPORT: 9/11 TERRORISTS FIRST PLOTTED SMALLER ACT. Hijacker Wanted US Loan to Buy Cropduster
  • Vigilant New York Transit Cops prevented October 2001 terrorist attack on Holland Tunnel. Arrested suspects on FBI's 200 most-wanted list.
  • Why do scientists think a tsunami is a hazard for the North Carolina coast?
  • Suspected Sept. 11 Mastermind Studied Engineering at North Carolina University
  • India plans war within two weeks (UKtelegraph-06/06/2002)
  • Many Pakistanis not really sure what 'nuclear war' means.
  • Report: Al Qaeda Tells U.S. to Get Ready for Another Attack that "will not be less than what has come"
  • Egypt warned U.S. of attack week before 911, Mubarak says-Egyptian agent was inside al-Qaida, said plans were brewing
  • The Death Of Dr. Wiley -The one person who was in a position to know about the origin of the anthrax sent through the U.S. Postal Service met with a very suspicious demise just a month after the attacks first began. (Counterpunch)
  • An attacker ambushed Memphis Medical Examiner Dr. O. C. Smith Saturday night, wrapped him from head to toe in barbed wire and strapped a bobby-trapped bomb to his body.
  • Startled UK Marines Hassled By Gay Afghans
  • Two killed as skydiver smashes through UK glider
  • Gold/Stock Market Manipulation - Plunge Protection Team At Work?
  • UK's Turner prize shocks with porn/toilet artists
  • TAMERS OF HURRICANES: Russia's HAARP and "chemtrails" experiments
  • Suburban New Yorkers living near the Indian Point nuclear power plant are getting potassium iodide pills to protect them against the possible release of radioactive fallout.
  • Israel: Technical Snafu Foiled Mega Cyanide Terror Strike
  • "It's the Settlements, Stupid.":A plea from Jacob Bleistein to the American Jewish community
  • Israel Plans 66-Mile 'Obstacle' Against Terror
  • Toddler Rescued From Bank Vault
  • THE NEW WORLD DISORDER: Bilderberg group meeting near D.C. -Powerful Secretive organization holds powwow in Virginia
  • GM potatoes deter one pest but attract another :Repel the aphids and you attract the leafhoppers
  • Sex and the 'Racist' City?
  • Ebola-type Disease kills 3 on Afghan Border
  • Virus of deadly disease spreads in Iran
  • Mysterious School Rash theory: It was all in their minds
  • Mold Contamination A Growing Problem For School Buildings-Kids Getting Sick From School
  • Bioterror Plans Approved for 24 States, Two Cities
  • 22 Cases in Rockland, NY E. Coli Outbreak-Jun 6, 2002
  • Did a catatrosphic drop in the Solar wind cause the death of the dinosaurs?
  • UPDATE:3-D MAP OF THE EARTH CREATED 120 MILLION YEARS AGO. (Pravda.ru)
  • A View from Russia: Popularization of Science as a Tool against Antiscience (SkepticalInquirer)
  • Arsenal fan Osama bin Laden tried to kill the 1998 US World Cup team. (Pravda)
  • Pravda - bin Laden Almost Got A Most Dangerous Weapon-Thallium-sufficient to poison water system of Moscow
  • ATMs that can sense what mood you are in (ABCNEWS via Fark)
  • Egyptian Shopkeepers Knew Of Planned 911 Attacks Last August (NewsMax.com)

     

  • Why do scientists think a tsunami is a hazard for the North Carolina coast?
    The original article in the May 2000 issue of the journal Geology, by Dr. Neal Driscoll (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute) and others, can be viewed as a .pdf file on the Geological Society's website. The graphics in the .pdf file are far superior to those published in the newspapers: these images from the offshore show two very large underwater landslides originating at the edge of the continental shelf. One slide is off Baltimore and one, known as the Albemarle-Currituck slide, is off of northeastern North Carolina.. Driscoll and his co-authors estimate 150 cubic kilometers of material moved during this slide. That’s 33 cubic miles of material.
    A closer look at the images shows cracks appearing in the edge of the continental shelf, just north of the Albemarle-Currituck slide. Similar cracks appear at the heads of landslides, slope failures and avalanches on dry land. These cracks may herald the onset of another huge slide, which could trigger a tsunami. Figure 3 in the article shows that the material on the outside of the cracks has moved slightly down and towards the shelf edge.
    When did the Albemarle-Currituck slide take place?
    This slide took place in the Late Pleistocene. Newspaper accounts give the age of the Albemarle-Currituck slide as about 18,000 years ago. Such slides are rare events on the Atlantic Coast. At present, no Pleistocene tsunami deposits are recognized in the North Carolina Coastal Plain.
    What would happen if the slide took place?
    For comparison, Driscoll and colleagues discuss the 1959 Grand Banks earthquake and landslide, which is estimated to have moved 185 cubic kilometers of material. This event caused estimated waves of 4-12 meters (13-39 feet) in height in southern Newfoundland.
    One problem: the direction of the highest waves can’t be predicted in advance. Computer models show that the maximum wave height is produced in the direction of the slide, and in the direction directly opposite the slide. Coastal northeastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia are roughly opposite the slide.
    Driscoll and colleagues also offer another reference for comparison: The size of the tsunami wave would be equal to the storm surge of a category 3 or category 4 hurricane (Saffir-Simpson scale). However, there is one very important difference: We usually have several days warning before a hurricane strikes.
    What's the probability of an underwater landslide off the Atlantic Coast?
    Authors of the recent Geology article end with this summation:
    "A large submarine landslide, however, is a rare event on human timescales. Despite the fact that we know the location of the potential slide very well, we do not yet know if and when slope failure is likely to occur. Given the risk to the coastal community, it seems wise to invest effort to determine whether en echelon cracks along the Virginia-North Carolina continental shelf edge are fossil features or are active and likely to produce a potentially disastrous, large submarine slide in the near future."
    In short, we know where it might happen, but more data is needed to tell if it’s happening any time soon. It is prudent to look into the matter further. Media accounts report that the authors are doing that research right now.
    What do I do if a tsunami strikes?
    The University of Washington maintains the Tsunami! website. This includes good general information including What to do in a Tsunami.
    You can also check out the tsunami mitigation plan presented to the U.S. Senate in 1995. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, Washington
    What could a tsunami do to coastal areas?
    First, keep in mind that a tsunami is a rare occurrence on the Atlantic Coast. However, the prospect of a tsunami hitting an unprepared coastal community is horrific enough to justify further investigation.
    http://www.naturalsciences.org/funstuff/faqs/tsunami.html#chance


  • Suspected Sept. 11 Mastermind Studied Engineering at North Carolina University
    Jun 6, 2002
    WASHINGTON (AP) — The man suspected of masterminding the Sept. 11 terror attacks is believed to have once attended college in North Carolina and, in 1999, visited the German city where chief hijacker Mohammed Atta lived, U.S. officials said Thursday.
    Officials suspect Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a Kuwaiti-born lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, met with Atta or members of his cell in Hamburg, but they have not received direct evidence of any contacts between them, one U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
    Since Sept. 11, evidence has mounted that Mohammed was chief among the bin Laden lieutenants organizing the attacks, counterterrorism officials said. He provided some of the money used in the attacks, and Abu Zubaydah — another of the alleged organizers now in U.S. custody — has identified Mohammed as the organizer, they said.
    Mohammed is believed to have attended Chowan College in northeastern North Carolina before transferring to another U.S. university, where he obtained an engineering degree, a second U.S. official said Thursday, declining to provide further details.
    A spokeswoman at Chowan said a Khaled Al-Shaikh Mohammad attended the school in spring 1984, when it was a two-year institution.
    Mohammed — who is 37, according to Interpol — would have been of college age in the mid-1980s.
    Spokeswoman Melanie Edwards declined to provide further information about the student, including whether he transferred to another school in the state.
    Chowan College, which became a four-year college in 1992, is in Murfreesboro, N.C., near the Virginia border and about 100 miles northeast of Raleigh.
    Spokesmen at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro and UNC-Charlotte said they had no records of a student by that name — or any of the aliases listed for Mohammed on the FBI's Web site — attending in the 1980s.
    Officials at North Carolina State University in Raleigh were unable to say immediately Thursday whether they had had a student by any of those names.
    U.S. counterterrorism officials believe Mohammed went to Afghanistan to join the mujahedeen fighters opposing the Soviet occupation in the late 1980s. He now has Pakistani citizenship, according to Kuwaiti officials and Interpol.
    The independent Al-Qabas newspaper in Kuwait reported that Mohammed worked for Abdul-Rab Rasool Sayyaf, an anti-American Afghan warlord who goes by ``Professor.'' During the war against the Soviets and the Najibullah government, Sayyaf was chief of the Ittehad-e-Islami group, which had the largest number of Arab fighters in its ranks.
    Interpol describes Mohammed as 5-foot-5, weighing 160 pounds, sometimes wearing beard and glasses.
    Mohammed surfaced again the mid-1990s, as an associate — and possibly a relative — of Ramzi Yousef, working with him on the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot and a 1995 plan to bomb or hijack trans-Pacific airliners heading for the United States, according to U.S. officials.
    Mohammed has been charged for his role in the 1995 airline plot, and remains one of the FBI's most-wanted terrorists. The U.S. government is offering a reward of up to $25 million for information leading to his capture — the same reward offered for bin Laden.
    He has not been charged for the Sept. 11 attacks.
    He is believed to be in Afghanistan or nearby. Officials say he remains in bin Laden's inner circle and continues to plot terrorist attacks.
    Bin Laden lieutenants Tawfiq Attash Khallad and finance chief Shaikh Saiid al-Sharif have also been linked to the hijackers.
    http://1010wins.com/worldnation/StoryFolder/story_436315243_html

  • India plans war within two weeks (UKtelegraph)
    (Filed: 06/06/2002)
    India's military is seeking final authorisation to invade the Pakistani side of divided Kashmir in the middle of this month to destroy the camps of Islamic militants.
    An activist of the All-India Anti-terrorist Front brandishes his rifle as he denounces Pakistan
    The planned campaign would be similar to the American attack in Afghanistan, in which air strikes would be followed by ground assaults by special forces transported by helicopter, military sources said yesterday.
    Smart bombs and other advanced ordnance are reported to have been loaded on to French-made Mirage 2000H and Russian-built MiG-27 aircraft at bases in northern and western India.
    As Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, strengthened his warning to Britons to leave the region, military planners in Delhi expressed confidence that a war would not boil over into a nuclear exchange.
    A senior Indian official accused Britain, America and other western countries of "adding their weight to Pakistan's nuclear blackmail" by telling their citizens to leave.
    "This is jumping the gun," he said. "Our intention is not to have an all-out war. It would be a limited action."
    Most senior Indian officers expect that the conflict would last about a week before pressure from America and other powers forced a ceasefire.
    One officer said he believed there was only the "slimmest chance" of nuclear weapons being used. "We will call Pakistan's nuclear bluff," he said. It [the nuclear factor] cannot deter us any more."
    The Indians want to move before the arrival of heavy monsoon rains at the beginning of July make military operations impossible.
    The tension was underlined by the Foreign Office's second warning to Britons to leave the region.
    Last week Mr Straw said they should "consider" leaving. Yesterday he said they "should" do so amid evidence that the first advice had been widely ignored. Officials say there are some 20,000 Britons in India, but unofficial estimates are much higher.
    As America issued equally robust advice to its 60,000 citizens, a senior Indian planning officer said that Washington and London knew that action was imminent.
    "The US-led move out of Delhi indicates that Washington has been informed of India's intentions of hitting Pakistan and is taking them seriously," he said.
    Japan's foreign minister, Yoriko Kawaguchi, cancelled a trip to the region hours after speaking to Mr Straw. Tokyo refused to give a reason, saying only that "there were various considerations".
    India's plan of attack is to seize and hold tracts of Pakistani Kashmir, providing the government with a much-needed military triumph and the military with improved defensive positions against Islamic militants.
    Officers indicated that the air force was poised to execute a strategy developed over several years to strike at 50 to 75 militant bases and a handful of other targets in Kashmir.
    The Indians would then send troops across the high mountain passes in helicopters. Planners expect major casualties as the helicopters cross four lines of Pakistani air defences equipped with advanced radar.
    Targets will include a bridge across the Karakoram highway connecting China to the region and at least three others linking Pakistani Kashmir to the rest of the country.
    Their destruction would prevent China from replenishing its ally Pakistan's weaponry. It would also cut off supply routes from Pakistan to front-line units.
    India's broad strategy is to execute air strikes that will induce Pakistan into extending the conflict by opening a wider front.
    President Bush telephoned both leaders to urge calm and the crisis dominated talks in London between Tony Blair and Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence secretary, who is on his way to India and Pakistan.
    The two countries have massed more than a million men on their border since the crisis began with an attack by militants on the Indian parliament in December.
    Relations worsened after another attack last month in which 22 wives and children of Indian army personnel were killed. In the latest diplomatic rebuff, Pakistan rejected an Indian offer to establish a joint border monitoring force to help halt incursions by Islamic militants into Indian-controlled Kashmir.
    India's military believes that it now has political backing for war. An officer said the beleaguered ruling coalition was "fully aware" that backing down at this juncture would mean political suicide.
    The Indian armed forces have been losing men for 13 years in fighting in Kashmir. By attacking soon, an officer said, they planned to set back Pakistan's military capability by at least 30 years, pushing it into the military "dark ages". India has assured Washington that its forces would give the American bases at Jacobabad, Pasni and Dalbandin close to the Afghan border a wide berth.
    An army officer said: "Casualties in men and machines in such an operation will be high and the military has firmly told the politicians to prepare the nation for losses and delayed results, as fighting will be fierce."
    Pakistan has concentrated the majority of its forces in Kashmir and would unleash its Scud-like Chinese M 9 and M 11 ballistic missiles.


  • Many Pakistanis not really sure what 'nuclear war' means.
    Ordinary Pakistanis shrug off nuclear war
    ISLAMABAD: The phrase “nuclear war” is enough to make any Westerner shudder, but ordinary Pakistanis are not afraid because they don’t understand what it means, according to experts here.
    “The people are not afraid because of simple ignorance of what nuclear war means,” said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a renowned nuclear expert from Islamabad’s Quaid-e-Azam University.
    “They know it’s a big bomb but they don’t seem to realise how big a bomb it is or what its after-effects are.
    His comments were made as an anxious world prays some of its most influential diplomats will be able to pull nuclear-armed India and Pakistan back from the brink of a brewing war.
    Thousands of foreign workers, embassy staff and UN families have pulled out of the two countries as the threat grows of all-out conflict over the disputed territory of Kashmir.
    But Pakistanis on the street, armed with a strong Muslim faith, traditional fatalism and fierce nationalism, are carrying on very much as usual. –– AFP

  • Report: Al Qaeda Tells U.S. to Get Ready for Another Attack that "will not be less than what has come"
    June 02, 2002
    CAIRO (Reuters) - The pan-Arab daily al-Hayat published Sunday what it said was a statement from an al Qaeda spokesman warning the United States to get ready for another attack.
    "What is coming to the Americans will not, by the will of God, be less than what has come," the newspaper quoted al Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman bu Ghaith as saying in a statement.
    "So beware, America. Get ready. Get prepared. Put on the safety belt," he said in a statement al-Hayat said was published on the www.alneda.com Web site.
    The Web site, which has in the past regularly carried news on Afghanistan and statements it said came from Taliban leaders, could not be accessed immediately by Reuters.
    The site published a statement in April it said was from Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
    Bu Ghaith, a Kuwaiti-born cleric who emerged as an al Qaeda spokesman after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, said al Qaeda would continue to hit Americans, Jews and their targets, either "individuals or institutions."
    He cited what he described as America's anti-Muslim policies in countries such as Somalia, Sudan, Indonesia and the Philippines as a reason for targeting the United States. He also complained Israel had acted against the Palestinians for 50 years with "American blessing."
    Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network are blamed for masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks that killed 3,000 people.
    U.S.-led coalition forces are hunting for the remnants of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, after launching an offensive in October that ousted the Taliban from power.
     
  • Egypt warned U.S. of attack week before 911, Mubarak says-Egyptian agent was inside al-Qaida, said plans were brewing
    New York Times News Service
    CAIRO, Egypt — Egyptian intelligence warned American officials about a week before Sept. 11 that Osama bin Laden's network was in the advance stages of executing a significant operation against an American target, President Hosni Mubarak said in an interview on Sunday.
    Using a secret agent they had recruited who was in close contact with the bin Laden organization, Mubarak said, his intelligence chiefs tried unsuccessfully to halt the operation.
    Mubarak said his intelligence officials had no indication what the target would be and had no idea of the magnitude of the coming attack.
    "We didn't know that such a thing could take place," he said, referring to the Sept. 11 attacks. "We thought it was an embassy, an airplane, something, the usual thing."
    But, he added, to discover after the event that the terrorists were going to take airplanes and destroy buildings, "that is unbelievable."
    Still, Mubarak's disclosure represents the first time a foreign leader has said that an intelligence service had penetrated bin Laden's network, al-Qaida, to the extent that discussions about specific operations — and whether they could be halted or postponed — were under way.
    Mubarak did not say whether he knew how American counterterrorism officials had reacted to the Egyptian warning, which a senior U.S. intelligence official denied was received. But Mubarak said he believed that security at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo was tightened in early September as a result of the warning.
    "We informed them about everything," he said, referring to American intelligence officials.
    As the United States conducted a series of closed door hearings in Washington, a CIA official said in the latest revelation that both the CIA and FBI knew as early as January 2000 that one of the eventual Sept. 11 hijackers would be attending a meeting of suspected al-Qaida members.
    Word that the agencies had reason to be suspicious of Khalid Almihdhar emerged as the Senate and House intelligence committees vowed to dig into what went wrong before the terrorist attacks.
    President Bush was meeting with employees at the super-secret National Security Agency in Ft. Meade, Md., on the day the joint committee was to open a series of closed door hearings.
    "We will certainly be able to improve the capabilities that we have to focus more on the threats that actually exist," Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday on NBC's "Today. "That's going to happen, but Americans are always going to have to have a little vigilance."
    Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said one purpose of the hearings is to ensure that federal law enforcement agencies don't react the wrong way, deciding to spy more on Americans.
    "I think we have to be smarter, more clever and protect the people in a way that also protects civil liberties and the Constitution," Pelosi said Tuesday on CNN.
    Meeting in soundproofed, secure rooms at the Capitol, lawmakers will take stock of an intelligence community that overlooked clues and didn't always share information it had about the hijackers. The closed door hearings begin Tuesday before going public June 25.
    The intense scrutiny has led to fingerpointing between the CIA and FBI.
    Over the weekend, government sources said the CIA had important information in early 2000 about two of the future hijackers, Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, both of whom attended a mid-January 2000 meeting in Malaysia.
    Responding to the disclosure, a CIA official, speaking Monday on condition of anonymity, disputed reports that the agency had kept that information from the FBI. The CIA official said two FBI officials were briefed on Almihdhar.
    Neither agency gave the information enough significance to alert authorities to watch for Almihdhar or Alhazmi at U.S. points of entry until three weeks before the attacks, when the CIA, alerted to a large al-Qaida operation in the offing, added the two men to a watch list that INS and State officials use. By this time, however, they were already in the country.
    Almihdhar, in fact, already had been in and out of the United States several times. The U.S. government had given him a multiple entry visa enabling him the freedom to come and go as he pleased. Both hijackers were aboard American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon.
    FBI officials declined comment Monday night, saying Director Robert Mueller was not interested in engaging in fingerpointing.
    Mubarak cited the warning as evidence that Egypt has become an increasingly valuable intelligence partner to the United States in the war against terrorism, especially since Sept. 11. It seemed possible he was seeking to burnish Egypt's credentials, which have been questioned in Congress, in advance of his visit to Washington this week.
    "Maybe some congressmen were thinking, 'What is Egypt doing?"' for the United States, he said. "There are so many things we cannot say. Mainly intelligence information. We did a lot, but sometimes you have to do it quietly."
    A White House spokesman declined to comment on Mubarak's remarks. The senior U.S. intelligence official, however, said the CIA had not received any warnings from Egypt about a possible attack in the days before Sept. 11.
    "The Egyptians gave us some threat information, earlier in 2001, of possible attacks against U.S. or Egyptian interests," the official said. "There was nothing about hijackings, nothing about an attack inside the U.S. It did not come in the days before 9/11."
    Mubarak's statements come as indications grow that American officials were slow to interpret emerging signs of a Qaida plot well before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
    Last week, Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the FBI, acknowledged lapses in his agency. And on Sunday, government officials disclosed that the CIA had learned about a Sept. 11 hijacker's connections to al Qaida many months before the attacks.
    By Mubarak's recollection, Egyptian intelligence officials informed American intelligence officers sometime between March and May of 2001 of Egypt's penetration of the bin Laden organization through the agent. While he referred in the interview broadly to "American intelligence," U.S. officials say the intelligence relationship between Egypt and the United States is handled through the CIA station chief at the embassy in Cairo.
    The agent established such close contact with bin Laden's organization that Egyptian officials tried to use the agent's influence to stop the attack.
    "We knew that something was going to happen," Mubarak said. "We had good contact" with shadowy figures who had information about the the bin Laden group's activities. "We started to use them, to tell them, 'You can stop this,"' using any pretext, the president added, to try "to give ourselves time to realize what may take place."
    The Egyptian president said his intelligence chiefs believed, based on the agent's information, that "something is going to happen in the U.S." or "to the United States, maybe inside the U.S., maybe in an airplane, maybe in embassies" outside the United States. "We couldn't know, we tried to know where, but this information" never reached them.
    "I think this man, this agent, phoned the group of bin Laden, I don't remember who it was," Mubarak said. The agent was told, "No, no, no, it's difficult to stop it."
    By this time, the president added, "It was one week before" Sept. 11, "because the wheels were going on, we couldn't stop it — one week or four days, a very short time."
    At a minimum, Mubarak's account adds detail and drama to a list of warnings about potential terrorist attacks that American intelligence agencies fielded in the days, weeks and months before Sept. 11.
    On Monday, an Egyptian official, commenting on warnings about the Sept. 11 attacks, said, "There were indications that something was being prepared."
    "There was information about some people planning an operation in the United States, against the United States, but you could not pinpoint where, how, when," the official said.
    The official noted that there had been extensive cooperation between the two countries' intelligence services after the attacks, with the Egyptians helping even in such seemingly mundane matters as sorting out the welter of Arab names used by the hijackers. He declined to be more specific about further cooperation.
    For years, Egypt's security services, like Jordan's and Saudi Arabia's, have closely cooperated with the CIA on security issues. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Anwar Sadat, who was then the Egyptian president, opened the country's warehouses of Soviet-made weapons to the Carter administration to equip mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan.
    After Sadat was assassinated in 1981, Mubarak continued the close cooperation. Through the 1980s, the CIA also worked closely with Egypt to thwart Libyan military pressure on Sudan. Counterterrorist cooperation has been a longstanding feature of the secret cooperation.
    More recently, in late September 2001, Mubarak said, Egyptian intelligence services had told the United States of a plot by bin Laden associates to kill President Bush and other leaders who met in July in Genoa.
    In describing the intelligence activities, Mubarak assumed some risk himself. Islamic fundamentalists tried to assassinate him several years ago, and the killers of his predecessor were Muslim extremists.
    Egypt's top intelligence officer, Omar Suleiman, has become one of Mubarak's indispensable envoys, traveling to Washington this month to gather political intelligence on what Bush wanted to discuss with Mubarak during his visit and conferring with CIA officials about how to overhaul the security services of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat. Suleiman also traveled to the occupied West Bank last week to get a progress report on how Arafat was implementing those reforms.
    Western officials here say that Egyptian intelligence officers have penetrated most of the Islamic fundamentalist groups that operate here.
    Still, the Egyptian leader expressed strong concern that a rising tide of anti-Americanism and the unresolved Palestinian crisis will lead to an escalation of terrorism in the region and around the world.
    "I am afraid of what's happening in the Middle East for the future," he said. "the seriousness of the situation" may "generate new kinds of terrorism against all of us, against the U.S., against Egypt, against Jordan."
    Both the CIA and FBI knew as early as January 2000 that one of the eventual Sept. 11 hijackers would be attending a meeting of suspected al-Qaida members, a CIA official said in the latest revelation amid growing evidence of intelligence failures.
    Word that the agencies had reason to be suspicious of Khalid Almihdhar emerged as the Senate and House intelligence committees vowed to dig into what went wrong before the terrorist attacks.
    "We will certainly be able to improve the capabilities that we have to focus more on the threats that actually exist," Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday on NBC's "Today.
    "That's going to happen, but Americans are always going to have to have a little vigilance," he said.
    "It's uncomfortable to know that we are the target and that people want to hurt us just because of who we are. But, in fact, they do so even though the national government and local and state governments will do their best to put up the best possible defenses and the best warnings we can," Goss said. "American citizens need to know what's going on in this world of terrorism so they can take individual steps and make individual decisions about their own lives."

  • The Death Of Dr. Wiley -The one person who was in a position to know about the origin of the anthrax sent through the U.S. Postal Service met with a very suspicious demise just a month after the attacks first began. (Counterpunch)

  • An attacker ambushed Memphis Medical Examiner Dr. O. C. Smith Saturday night, wrapped him from head to toe in barbed wire and strapped a bobby-trapped bomb to his body.

  • Startled UK Marines Hassled By Gay Afghans
    TheScotsman.net (5-24-02)
    6-4-2
    British marines returning from an operation deep in the Afghan mountains spoke last night of an alarming new threat - being propositioned by swarms of gay local farmers.
    An Arbroath marine, James Fletcher, said: "They were more terrifying than the al-Qaeda. One bloke who had painted toenails was offering to paint ours. They go about hand in hand, mincing around the village."
    While the marines failed to find any al-Qaeda during the seven-day Operation Condor, they were propositioned by dozens of men in villages the troops were ordered to search.
    "We were pretty shocked," Marine Fletcher said. "We discovered from the Afghan soldiers we had with us that a lot of men in this country have the same philosophy as ancient Greeks: a woman for babies, a man for pleasure,."
    Originally, the marines had sent patrols into several villages in the mountains near the town of Khost, hoping to catch up with al-Qaeda suspects who last week fought a four-hour gun battle with soldiers of the Australian SAS. The hardened troops, their faces covered in camouflage cream and weight down with weapons, radios and ammunition, were confronted with Afghans wanting to stroke their hair.
    "It was hell," said Corporal Paul Richard, 20. "Every village we went into we got a group of men wearing make-up coming up, stroking our hair and cheeks and making kissing noises."
    At one stage, troops were invited into a house and asked to dance. Citing the need to keep momentum in their search and destroy mission, the marines made their excuses and left. "They put some music on and ask us to dance. I told them where to go," said Cpl Richard. "Some of the guys turned tail and fled. It was hideous."
    The Afghan hill tribes live in some of the most isolated communities in the country. "I think a lot of the problem is that they don,t have the women around a lot," said another marine, Vaz Pickles. "We only saw about two women in the whole six days. It was all very disconcerting."
    A second problem the British found came minutes after the first helicopter touched down at one of the hilltop firebases, when local farmers appeared demanding compensation for goats they claimed had been blown off the mountains by the rotor blades. "Every time we landed a Chinook near a village, we got some irate bloke running up to us saying his goat has just got blown off the mountain ridge by the helicopter - and then he demanded a hundred dollars compensation," said Major Phil Joyce, commander of Whisky Company, one of four companies deployed.
    As patrols moved away from the landing zones, the locals began pestering Afghan troops attached to the marines with ever more outrageous compensation demands - topping off at a demand from one village elder for $500 (£300) for damage to a tree by the downdraft from helicopters.
    But the marines were under orders to win the "hearts and minds" of local farmers in what is one of the few remaining Taleban bastions. "I managed to barter him down to two marine pens, a pencil and a rubber," Major Joyce said. "He went away quite happy ."
    http://www.news.scotsman.com/print.cfm?id=561752002&referringtemplate=http%3


  • Two killed as skydiver smashes through UK glider
    LONDON, June 1 (Reuters) - Two people were killed in a freak air collision over central England on Saturday, when a skydiver smashed through the wing of a glider sending it crashing to earth, police and investigators said.
    "A freefall parachutist crashed into a glider, ripping its wing off and there were two fatalities," a spokesman for the Air Accident Investigation Board told Reuters.
    The collision at over 2,000 feet (610 metres) occurred on a sunny afternoon at the Hinton-in-the-Hedges private airfield in Northamptonshire, he said.
    Northamptonshire police said the one man glider had come down in a field alongside the airstrip and a police helicopter was currently scouring the surrounding area for any wreckage which might give clues as to how the accident occurred.
    Despite being considered a dangerous sport, skydiving has a relatively good safety record.

  • Gold/Stock Market Manipulation - Plunge Protection Team At Work?

  • UK's Turner prize shocks with porn/toilet artists
    LONDON, May 30 (Reuters) - Pickled sheep, elephant dung and now an artist who records pornography readings -- The Turner Prize ran true to form on Thursday as one of the art world's most controversial prizes.
    Critics condemn the annual prize as an ongoing national joke and the 2002 nominees should add fuel to the flames.
    Not least British artist Fiona Banner who graphically narrated the plot of porn movie "Arsewoman in Wonderland" for one of her latest exhibitions.
    Among photographer Catherine Yass's most noted works are picture studies of toilets and hospital corridors.
    Keith Tyson fed data into a computer which then instructed him to paint 366 breadboards and cast a Kentucky Fried Chicken menu in lead.
    Liam Gillick won fame with his outdoor sculpture court at Tate Britain, the London gallery which attracts up to 70,000 spectators every year to its Turner prize exhibition.
    The artists short-listed on Thursday will put selected works on display in October and the prize will be presented on December 8.
    The 20,000 pound ($29,320) prize grabs headlines every year -- but art buffs say it is for all the wrong reasons.
    Pop superstar Madonna swore live on television last year when presenting the prize to conceptual artist Martin Creed who won with his controversial creation of a bare room with a light that switches on and off.
    Tracey Emin was catapulted to fame on the 1999 shortlist with her unmade bed surrounded by soiled underpants, condoms and champagne corks.
    In 1998, avant-garde artist Chris Ofili won with a Virgin Mary made from elephant dung which sparked outrage when shown in New York.
    In 1995, Damien Hirst won with a sheep pickled in formaldehyde. Artist Tony Kaye once tried to submit a homeless steel worker as his entry for the competition.
    And the Turner has a tongue-in-cheek 20,000 pound rival this year -- The Barbie Prize for four to 11-year-old artists.
    The judges for the award are being lead by Ivan Massow, the former chairman of Britain's Institute of Contemporary Arts who resigned after saying British conceptual art was "pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat." He said schools deserved to have access to large prizes but also admitted he was trying to "make mischief" for the Turner.
     

  • TAMERS OF HURRICANES: Russia's HAARP and "chemtrails" experiments
    2002-05-13
    Russian scientists have approached to unriddling the nature of such mysterious atmosphere phenomena as hurricanes, tornadoes, and typhoons. It could sound strangely, though science does not know much about them. For the time being, it is only known that hurricanes’ “parents” are air masses going up from terrestrial surface, which become very powerful, when some factors coincide, in the atmosphere’s border level (at a height of 300 m). Namely at the height of 300 m, according to some meteorologist scientists, the solution of many earth catastrophes’ reasons lies. Therefore, Russian scientists seem to have good chances to tame hurricanes.
    Attacking a thunder storm
    At a distance of 106 km from Moscow, in the city of Obninsk, on the territory of Taifun (Typhoon) scientific and production association, there is a unique, 312 m high engineering construction. This technically complicated high-rise construction is literally full of equipment. Today, this mast is eyes, ears, and hands of Russian meteorologists. From the tower, they receive information about chemical and radioactive pollution of air, about winds’ speed and direction, about atmospheric pressure, and relative air moisture. All the data arrive in the measuring centre at the foot of the mast, where they are being overworked. Namely thanks to the Obninsk meteorological mast, a series of natural and man-caused catastrophes were modulated. For example, a unique calculation system for radioactive pollution of some territory in case of nuclear accident was created. Though, this system allows to calculate the exact scale of the pollution, in contrast to that calculations made after Chernobyl tragedy, when people were simply resettled at a distance of 30 km from the epicentre.
    The secret mast was build in 1958, with then-only purpose: to control the atomic power station built four years earlier, the first one in the world. The creators of the station wanted to know the quantity of radioactive aerosols penetrating into the atmosphere. Therefore, a new scientific direction appeared – nuclear meteorology. Apropos, the height of the Obninsk mast was calculated in a simple way: it must have been higher than the atomic power station’s smoke-stack. At that time, it was a fantastic project. Today, one hardly knows that instead of the 300-m-high mast, a similar, though 1000-m-high construction should have been built on the border between Kaluga and Bryansk regions. Though, even the Soviet power, which liked great projects and huge things, could not afford it to it. As a result, the Obninsk meteorological mast appeared, the highest in Europe. Apropos, it still belongs to the highest construction in the world - after CN Tower in Toronto (553 m), Ostankino TV tower (540 m), TV towers in Beijing (405 m), Berlin (365 m), and Tokyo (333 m).
    Today, the Obninsk mast lost its “nuclear” purpose. Now, its purpose is to study tornadoes and hurricanes. Obninsk scientists state that solution of these phenomena’s nature is not far off, as well as founding methods of fight with them.
    The reason of hurricanes and tornadoes’ destructive power was almost found out, when the scientists tried to suppress cumulus nimbi. It was proved that germs of atmospheric catastrophes – ascending air flows – could be dissipated with special reagents, while spreading them from aircraft. A dangerous mass ascending to the air could be easily localized at the early stage, though at a height of 8,000 m the hurricane could not be averted. Therefore, the main task is to track the dangerous ascending flow. According to the scientists, to realize this task, four points must be found where the powerful air flows are born, meteorological monitoring in the centres of hurricanes’ origin must be arranged and scientific methods of local forecast composed. The mast in Obninsk is an ideal ordnance yard for working out unique technologies. Apropos, so far, there is no effective way in the world to tame hurricanes, tornadoes, and typhoons. Only last year, an American technological company declared creation of a miracle powder to fight with tornado. Thanks to its structure, the substance is said to be capable to absorb 2,000 times more moisture than the powder’s weight. The moisture is being crystallized and turned into small pieces of ice, which fall on earth without injuring either people, or environment. Though, this is as for fighting with elements, and what about averting cataclysms?
    Taifun scientific and production association’s director general, Alexei Orlyansky told about the association’s latest experiments in the field. For example, in the association, there is a frame with aerosol chamber with a volume of 3,200 cubic metres, where different geophysical processes are being modulated. In the system consisting of two articulated pressure chambers, clouds and fogs are being created, with which Obninsk scientists try to fight, because that natural phenomena are still the main obstacle in work of air and water transport. One more direction of the research is an attempt to fight with frost, including creation of artificial fogs. Already in the nearest future, experiments like that will be carried out in several conservatories of Moscow region. One more task Obninsk scientists try to accomplish is disseminating of hail clouds. Now, Alazan anti-hail missiles belonging to a new generation are being tested. The project is secret because the creation is highly effective and more profitable than similar creation of foreign production. It is known that to disseminate a huge hail cloud, at the maximum 8 missiles of the kind are necessary, while each costs about 200 dollars. The territory around the mast is surrounded with a fence with barbed wire, though the high secrecy of the object is over. Earlier, the mast was guarded by a dozen of armed soldiers, while now only two women watch on the check points.
    At first, you get to the measuring centre. Rows of automatic recorders attached to the cables and sensors are established on the mast. Here, there is also the control panels of the person on duty, who receives fresh information about meteorological conditions. Totally, seven people work in the station. One of them is Alexandr Balash, laboratory assistant, who perfectly knows the mast.
    To reach the 300-m height, one should use a small lift. Sometimes, when the lift does not work, the workers of the station climb on foot, using a vertical ladder, which takes at least an hour. However the lowering is two times faster.
    Though, while expecting visitors, the workers manage to keep the lift in operative condition. The lift cabin is a literally historical place which remembers USSR marshal Georgy Zhukov, first cosmonaut Yury Gagarin, and famous football-player Lev Yashin. Once, however, the lift stopped and could not move further, while transporting US visitors. While they are said to have been deeply impressed with the lowering.
    To reach the top of the mast by the lift, it takes 8 minutes. Somewhere on the fifth level (at a height of 125 m), the visitors get their ears blocked and head spinning. The last metres are especially difficult for the lift, though for all that it stops against the sign of the 11th level – 300 m. One who comes out to the outer ground could feel the mast rocking and wants to snatch at something. Here, the speed of wind is about 15 minutes a second. According to Alexandr Balash, in thunder storm, it is really beautiful here.
    On special outrigger beams, there are locators with meteorological sensors and a satellite disk antenna to transmit the data.
    Within its almost 50-year history, the mast has never been restored, however it is time to do it. Engineering services which control the mast’s condition recommend to the meteorologists to start replacement of bracing wires. Though, to carry out this work, about 1 million dollars are necessary, so already now, a special fund is being created in Obninsk to gather money for reconstruction of the unique meteorological mast. The scientists who understand that such a sum hardly could gathered so soon hope only for the system’s great margin of safety: “It could properly work for at least 20 years.”

  • Suburban New Yorkers living near the Indian Point nuclear power plant are getting potassium iodide pills to protect them against the possible release of radioactive fallout.
    CNSNews.com
    June 6, 2002
    Suburban New Yorkers living near the Indian Point nuclear power plant are getting potassium iodide pills to protect them against the possible release of radioactive fallout.
    Given growing fears that terrorists will attack nuclear plants, Westchester County officials said they would start distributing the pills at schools beginning Saturday.
    The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is providing the pills, which protect people against thyroid cancer by preventing the body from absorbing radioactive material.
    The Indian Point plant is located north of New York City.

  • Israel: Technical Snafu Foiled Mega Cyanide Terror Strike
    Jun 5, 2002
    (WINS)-JERUSALEM (AP) -- On the eve of Wednesday's suicide attack on a bus, the Israeli military chief of intelligence disclosed an earlier bomber tried but failed to use deadly cyanide gas in an attack on a hotel.
    Israeli security experts also said Palestinian militants were trying to escalate the number of casualties resulting from their attacks by working on a mega terror assault.
    The failed attempt to use cyanide gas was allegedly part of the March 27 bombing of the Park Hotel in coastal Netanya. The attack killed 29 Israelis and triggered Israel's six-week military offensive against Palestinian militants in the West Bank.
    Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi on Tuesday briefed a parliamentary committee about the attempt, army spokesman Brig. Gen. Ron Kitrey confirmed Wednesday.
    Zeevi said a technical mishap prevented the release of the cyanide gas. The daily Maariv, which reported the Zeevi comments, did not say what prevented the cyanide release.
    Maariv quoted Zeevi as saying -- and Kitrey confirmed the assessment -- that Palestinian militants were trying hard to carry out a so-called mega attack, with scores of casualties.
    Zeev Schiff, a military commentator for the Haaretz daily, also said Palestinian militants groups were constantly attempting to launch such attacks, "if they only get a chance."
    Schiff suggested that continued coordination with Arab regimes in Iran, Syria or Iraq could help militant groups in their attempts.
    Last month, militants detonated a bomb under a tank truck as it was refueling at Israel's largest fuel depot in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. The explosion burned the truck's cabin, but did not spread to other vehicles or the huge fuel containers, and the fire was extinguished.
    Also, Israeli officials said recently they succeeded in thwarting plans to park an explosives-laden truck under twin high-rise buildings in Tel Aviv.
    Biological warfare expert Danny Shoham of Bar-Ilan University said cyanide gas can be fatal in an enclosed space, such as the dining hall where the Netanya attack took place.
    In Wednesday's attack, an Islamic suicide bomber drove a car packed with explosives alongside an Israeli bus and then ignited a huge fireball that flipped the bus over twice. Sixteen passengers -- 13 of them soldiers -- were killed and dozens wounded.

  • Toddler Rescued From Bank Vault
    Jun 5, 2002
    WILLIAMSBURG, Pa. (AP) -- A toddler playing hide-and-seek became locked in a bank vault and spent nearly seven hours trapped inside while rescue workers pumped in oxygen and sang to him, officials said.
    The boy, 18-month-old Matthew Mingle, was fed juice through a tube snaked through a hole until a locksmith from Canterbury, Ohio, arrived after 12:30 a.m. Wednesday.
    The little boy was in the Hollidaysburg Trust Co. bank with his mother, an employee, and was playing hide-and-seek when the vault closed around 6 p.m. Tuesday.
    The vault is on a timed release and cannot be opened with the usual combination and keys after business hours, bank official Stephen Martz said. A video camera let rescue workers watch the boy while he was trapped, he said.
    Firefighters sang songs to keep the toddler calm, and he eventually fell asleep, Blair County 911 supervisor Tim Crabtree said.
    He was taken to Altoona Hospital and then released to his family. Williamsburg is about 90 miles east of Pittsburgh.

  • THE NEW WORLD DISORDER: Bilderberg group meeting near D.C. -Powerful Secretive organization holds powwow in Virginia
    June 1, 2002
    (Source:Right-wing Judaeo-Christian Fundamentalists WorldNetDaily.com)
    The secretive Bilderberg group is holding its annual meeting this weekend in a luxury hotel outside Washington, D.C.
    In the words of Bilderberg.org, a website dedicated to disclosing information about the organization, "120 or so of the most influential men in Europe and North America" currently are holed up in the Westfields Marriott Hotel in Chantilly, Va. Many view the organization as the world's "power elite," part of a movement to replace national sovereignty with global governance.
    Since 1953, the Bilderberg group has convened government, business, academic and journalistic representatives from the U.S., Canada and Europe. The locations and agendas of the conferences are closely guarded secrets.
    A BBC World Service radio report earlier this week emphasized the mysterious nature of the group.
    "This weekend, in a luxury hotel outside Washington, D.C.," said the announcer, "Europe's secret rulers are meeting their American counterparts – or that's what some people believe. Today is the start of the annual gathering of the Bilderberg group. Never heard of it? That's the whole point. It's officially described as a private gathering, but with a guest list including the heads of European and American corporations, political leaders and a few intellectuals, it's one of the most influential organizations on the planet."
    BBC reporter Bill Hayton called the hotel looking for information about the conference. His conversation was broadcast on his report.
    "Executive Office"
    "My name is Bill Hayton from BBC World Service. I just wanted to check, there's some kind of big event happening at your hotel this weekend. Could you tell me what it is?"
    "There's a couple of weddings ..."
    "But there's also a big conference going on as well."
    "Not that I'm aware of."
    "There's nothing being organized by the Bilderberg group then?"
    "I'm sorry. Who?"
    "The Bilderberg group."
    "I don't even know who they are."
    The radio report continued by listing several people who were to have attended last year's conference: the chairmen of ABB, France Telecom, ENI and Deutsche Bank, plus several European commissioners, central bankers, newspaper editors, the secretary-general of NATO and the queens of Spain and the Netherlands.
    British journalist Jon Ronson, who is the author of a book on Bilderberg, was quoted in the BBC report.
    "I'm a sort of semi-conspiracy theorist when it comes to Bilderberg," he said, "because I think they wouldn't go to that much trouble of having this incredibly expensive international conference every year and they'd go to all this trouble to keep themselves out of the press and be really secret and invite the world's most powerful people if it was just a chat and a game of golf, which is basically what they say it is. So I do think they have some impact on world affairs, but I don't think they have as much of an impact."
    Said Tony Gosling in a statement on the Bilderberg.org website, "Security is very tight (at the hotel) with FBI Secret Service and White House security staff, all paid from taxpayers' money, on duty around the perimeter of this so-called 'private' meeting. This year, for the first time, all security have coded symbols on their lapels to distinguish who they work for."
    "Hotel staff are always sworn to secrecy at these events, but some still feel the world has a right to know what is going on behind the cordon. They risk their jobs, and possibly more, by telling those outside who is inside the hotel and what they're talking about," Gosling said.
    According to the website, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will attend the conference today and is expected to give a presentation to the "power brokers" in attendance.
    Global banker David Rockefeller has been spotted by hotel staff, claims the website, as have Henry Kissinger and several others.
       
     

     

  • Israel Plans 66-Mile 'Obstacle' Against Terror
    CNSNews.com
    Thursday, June 6, 2002
    JERUSALEM – A year from now, after Israel finishes the construction of a 66-mile-long "obstacle" against terrorism, it will have a better chance of preventing terror attacks such as the suicide car bombing Wednesday that killed at least 16 Israelis, said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesman.
    The barrier, described in some reports as a "fence," will separate highly populated Palestinian areas from Israel's major population centers along the Mediterranean coast, where the country is barely nine miles wide in some places.
    It will stand opposite Israeli cities such as Netanya, Hadera and Afula, which have been hard hit by numerous suicide bombings and other terror attacks. Those cities face Palestinian cities, including Kalkilya, Tulkarem and Jenin.
    According to Sharon spokesman Dr. Ra'anan Gissin, most Palestinian attacks are stopped before they happen through intelligence warnings, but this barrier will serve as a backup measure to prevent other would-be bombers from getting through.
    Calling it a "warning system" that includes several different kinds of obstacles, Gissin said it would "eliminate the ease with which [terrorists] penetrate [Israel] today."
    "It will reduce dramatically the number of possible infiltrations," said Gissin in a telephone interview.
    On Wednesday, a suicide bomber driving a stolen Israeli car packed with explosives infiltrated Israel, drove up next to an Israeli commuter bus and detonated his deadly charge.
    Although Gissin admitted that a barrier might not have prevented Wednesday's attack on the bus, he said it would make it "more difficult to cross by foot and by vehicle."
    The project, which will cost some 300 million shekels ($62 million), will take about a year to complete the first phase. It will be paid for through the defense budget by making cuts elsewhere, he said.
    Ministry of Defense spokeswoman Rachel Naidek Ashkenazi said that the "obstacle" was not under construction yet but was in the final planning stages.
    "The program will start to be realized in a month," Ashkenazi said.
    Barricades, large coiled barbed wire fences and other obstructions that have already been put in place are part of an earlier protection plan, she said. The new "obstacle" will establish a buffer zone between Israel and the PA, she added.
    The "obstacle" will consist of a fence, patrol road, and barriers in some places to prevent vehicles from crossing. It will also include an observation system, Ashkenazi said. In certain places, walls may also be erected, she said.
    No Border, Just Security
    Israeli critics of the barricade say it will create a de facto border of a future Palestinian state, leaving Israeli settlers in the West Bank on the other side. But Gissin said Israeli troops intended to patrol both sides of the fence.
    "The fence is only a security fence, not a demarcation of the border," Gissin said. Israel has no reason to withdraw its troops from near the Palestinian areas because Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat is not fighting terror or dismantling terrorist organizations, he added.
    As for the settlements, Gissin said, they are not being neglected. "They have a different security system." Jerusalem, too, will have a separate security system set up, he said.
    Ezra Rosenfeld, foreign press spokesman for the YESHA Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza, said that the fence has been "misinterpreted as a political line," which it is not.
    While it may stop suicide bombers, he said, it probably won't stop terrorism.
    "There is no doubt that it will help somewhat in terms of suicide bombers," Rosenfeld said. "But it is a simplistic solution. [The terrorists] will change tactics and start using missiles instead of suicide bombers."
    According to recent reports, some Palestinians claim that Israel is quietly confiscating land along the currently invisible border to build the fence or establish a buffer zone between Israel and the PA areas.
    Gissin said Israel had taken no land without offering compensation. The army spokesman was not available for comment.
    Israel captured the West Bank, including Jerusalem's Old City, from Jordan in the Six-Day War, which started 35 years ago this week.
    The West Bank (so-called by Jordan) was to have been part of a Palestinian state, according to a 1947 U.N. resolution dividing British Mandatory Palestine into two states: one Jewish and one Arab.
    While Israel accepted the partition plan, the surrounding Arab states rejected it and attacked the fledgling Jewish state in 1948 when British troops pulled out.
    At the end of Israel's war of independence, Israel had acquired more territory than it was originally allotted, and Jordan was in command of the West Bank, Egypt the Gaza Strip and Syria the Golan Heights.
    In 1967, in a pre-emptive air strike, Israel took out nearly the entire Egyptian air force before it ever got off the ground. According to some historians, Israel sent word to Jordan that it would not be harmed if it did not attack first, but Jordan opted to enter the fray.
    After six days, Israel had captured the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and West Bank including eastern Jerusalem and the Old City, lands that Jewish people consider to be their eternal, biblical inheritance.
    Now the Palestinians want all of the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including eastern Jerusalem, for a future state.

  • GM potatoes deter one pest but attract another :Repel the aphids and you attract the leafhoppers
    01 June 02
    New Scientist
    An attempt to make potato plants resistant to sap-sucking insects has highlighted the unpredictability of genetic engineering. The modified plants unexpectedly turned out to be vulnerable to other kinds of insect pests, demonstrating how important it is to assess each transgenic crop individually.
    Repel the aphids and you attract the leafhoppers
    Crops such as maize and cotton have already been made resistant to chewing insects by adding a gene for the bacterial toxin Bt. But Bt does not deter sap-suckers like aphids, so genetic engineers are looking at other natural substances to keep insects at bay, such as the lectin proteins found in many plants and seeds.
    Lectins have a controversial history. It was lectin-transformed potatoes created by Arpad Pusztai that set off a storm in Britain about the safety of GM food. Now Nick Birch's team at the Scottish Crop Research Institute near Dundee has found that potato plants transformed with lectin genes have lower levels of bitter-tasting chemicals called glycoalkaloids that make plants unpalatable to many mammals and insects.
    Glycoalkaloid levels in the leaves of the lectin-transformed potatoes dropped by up to 44 per cent. This seems to be due to the genetic engineering technique itself, because introducing another type of gene, for another potential insect deterrent called cowpea trypsin inhibitor, also caused glycoalkaloid levels in the plants to drop by 70 per cent.
    The team warns that plants with lower glycoalkaloid levels could be more vulnerable to a range of insect pests, including the potato leafhopper. And reduced levels of the glycoalkaloid alpha-chaconine actually stimulates the potato aphid to feed.
    The results are surprising, says Angelika Hilbeck, an ecologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich who studies the risks posed by GM crops. "We need to learn a lot more about the unintended side effects of the various transformation techniques."
    While the potatoes were only experimental varieties, unexpected side effects have also turned up in commercial GM crops. The stems of a herbicide-resistant soya bean created by Monsanto were found to crack open in hot climates, for instance (New Scientist, 20 November 1999, p 25).
    Unintended effects also occur in traditional breeding programmes, points out Howard Davies of the Scottish Crop Research Institute. But he says new techniques should help us to get a grip on the problem.
    "Technologies are now being developed to measure several hundreds, if not thousands, of metabolites in plants using metabolic profiling procedures," he says. These approaches, along with techniques that can profile thousands of genes or proteins simultaneously, should help reveal any possible unintended effects caused by genetic transformation, he says.
    Journal reference: Annals of Applied Biology (vol 140, p 143)
     

  • Sex and the 'Racist' City?
    June 15, 2002
    (right-wing newsmax.com)
    If "Sex and the City" star Cynthia Nixon has her way, perhaps the hit HBO series chronicling the libidinous adventures of four bed-hopping babes on the make in New York will be re-titled for the new season "Sex and the Racist City."
    At least that's the term Nixon used to describe the Big Apple Tuesday night, during an interview with WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg.
    While arguing that city officials were too stingy with taxpayer education bucks for public schools, Nixon insisted the reason was that Gotham's classrooms are largely non-white.
    "Thirty years ago, in 1970, when 40 percent of the kids in public school were white, we spent basically the same" as suburban school districts per capita, she contended. "Now that less than 15 percent of the kids in the school system are white, we're spending dramatically lower."
    "Are you accusing the city of deliberate racism?" Malzberg asked.
    "Absolutely," the "Sex" star shot back. "I'm accusing the city and I'm accusing the state."
    Speaking of discrimination, the last time we checked, all four of the main characters on Ms. Nixon's hit show were also white. But who's counting.

     
     

  • "It's the Settlements, Stupid.":A plea from Jacob Bleistein to the American Jewish community
    May 05, 2002
    (via nilemedia.com)
    Dear Friends:
    I am sending the following message to some of my Jewish friends. It really is very important and it concerns the safety and security of America as well as that of Israel.
    A MESSAGE TO MY FELLOW AMERICAN JEWS
    We American Jews are in grave danger of being the willing, even enthusiastic participants in the most serious cultural tragedy since Kosovo. How sad it was that only when Sharon turned to his most violent and brutal tactics to date that American Jews turned out 100,000 strong to wildly, enthusiastically cheer him on. When hard-line hawk Paul Wolfowitz dared to mention the "suffering of the Palestinians" the crowd shouted him down and would not allow him to continue.
    WE MUST DECIDE
    As American Jews, we hold the balance of power. Our influence over American foreign policy is unprecedented. America is the world's only superpower. Our influence on Israeli policy is also exceptional, but in the past we have never done anything except blindly "rubberstamp" what Israel's leader have told us was "good for Israel."
    We have never had a leader like Ariel Sharon before. To follow him blindly is a deal with the devil.
    We must decide ourselves what is best for Israel.
    We must decide: are we on the side of freedom, equality and justice or are we on the side of brutal oppression - a tactic that almost never works in the long run.
    THE DEFENSE OF ISRAEL
    The defense of Israel has long been the most emotional issue for Jews everywhere. It leads to a visceral response that can sometimes overwhelm logical thought. We are told again and again that the battle against the Palestinians is a fight for "very existence of Israel."
    I support Israel as strongly and unflaggingly as any Jew anywhere but we have to be more calmly realistic on this issue. Not to do so will certainly have long-term negative consequence for the state of Israel.
    Israel has, according to Jane's Defense Monthly, the second best equipped and the best trained military in the world. We have the unfailing support of the world's only superpower - America. The Arab nations no longer have the backing of the Soviet Union. We have never lost a war.
    In the recent Nuclear Posture Statement from the Defense Dept. the US even pledged to use nuclear weapons to defend Israel from attack.
    Is Israel as a nation at serious risk of extinction? Not really, let's not demean our position and damage our credibility by exaggerating.
    Are we fighting for the very existence of Israel? No, we are fighting for control of the West Bank.
    More specifically, we are fighting for right of a small group of politically powerful religious hardliners to live in subsidized housing on the West Bank.
    "The Zionist movement has been hijacked by the far right religious fundamentalists who prey on the fact that American Jews can be reliably counted on to defend ANYTHING Israel does." Rafael M. Goldman. In effect, the Jabotinsky wing of Zionism has triumphed.
    To phrase it as a bumper sticker: "It's the Settlements, Stupid."
    The current intifada is directly connected to the failure of the Oslo peace process to halt the dramatic increase in the number of settlements and settlers. Since Oslo, the Jewish population on the West Bank has DOUBLED.
    REASONS?
    Why are certain Israelis so obsessed with living on the West Bank? I have my own theories, but you form your own opinion.
    What is crucial now is "How many Jews must die to protect the right of a few religious fundamentalists to live on the West Bank?"
    How many Arabs must die for that right? Are we as a people willing to commit cultural genocide to ensure the future existence of some apartment buildings on remote hilltops? More pointedly, as Sharon's brutal policies push the Arabs to every greater depths of desperation - how many Americans must die in the inevitable wave of terrorist attacks inside the U.S.?
    A CHIP
    Thousands of years of persecution have given us a bit of a chip on our shoulder. We have lived in so many places where we are unwanted that there is a deep cultural attitude to prove that "Jews have the right to live anywhere they want." I agree with that sentiment, but let us not allow that attitude to make us do something we will deeply regret in 10 or 20 years.
    How many lives must be lost for those few apartment buildings on the West Bank? More importantly, to what extent are we willing to sacrifice any remaining moral capital we have; how much are we willing to accept a dramatic rise in Anti-Semitism (not the hooligans on the street - I'm talking about ordinary middle-class people everywhere); to what extent are we willing to have more and more of the world begin to think that the Israelis are not necessarily always the "good guys?"
    To what extent are we willing to give up the idea that Israel is a true democracy?
    To what extent are we as a people of morality and justice willing to impose a racist apartheid on an unwilling native population - just because we are more powerful and carry a bigger stick?
    For thousands of years we Jews have been the People of The Book, are we prepared to be known as the People of The Bulldozer?
    All for a few apartment buildings on the West Bank?
    Are we as a people willing to rewrite Jefferson: "All men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; chief among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Except Palestinians."
    THE UNPLEASANT SIDE OF ZIONISM
    "We shall try to break the will of the [Arab] population and spirit them across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country .... expropriation and the removal of the Arabs must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." -- Theodore Herzl - founder of the Zionist movement (from Rafael Patai, Ed. The Complete Diaries of Theodore Herzl, Vol I)
    Herzl was for the removal of all Arabs by economic means; Jabotinsky favored violence to clear the Arab population from Palestine. The Jabotinskites are in the ascendancy and they hold our cultural reputation in their hands.
    MASSACRE, SCHMASSACRE
    We're going to spend weeks now playing the body count game.
    Was Jenin a massacre? Are 30 people dead or 200? How many are civilians? Did they bulldoze houses with people in them? Did they give a warning before they bulldozed a house?
    This will consume the world for weeks, perhaps months.
    IT IS irrelevant.
    Here is the real tragedy of Sharon's invasion, and also the genius of what he did.
    It is barely mentioned in the last paragraph of a story on page 18 of the L.A. Times (and on NPR) and yet it is perhaps the thing may possibly seal the fate of the Palestinians as a nation forever - one of those tiny details of history that can ultimately change the fate of nations. The real tragedy is one small detail of the IDF's destructive actions in Ramallah.
    The truly sad part of the invasion is not how many bodies there are.
    The true atrocity is that the IDF systematically destroyed the offices, computers, hard drives, records and files of the Public Works Ministry, the Education Ministry, the Civil Office, the Transportation Ministry, the Water Works and many other civil administration facilities of the Palestinian Authority.
    They ripped up streets to deliberately make them impassable to traffic. They bulldozed schools. They bulldozed hundreds of homes. They damaged or destroyed water supply systems. They have blown up police stations and assassinated police officers. In short, they deliberately and methodically destroyed the ability of the Palestinian people to govern themselves.
    Why?
    The bulldozer has become the weapon of choice for Israel. It is fast becoming the symbol of modern Israel. How sad - the bulldozer is an implement of the destruction of property; of destroying the past; of obliterating by brute force what men and women have built with their own hands. Ironically, for decades Ariel Sharon's nickname in the Israeli press has been "The Bulldozer."
    THE REAL TRAGEDY
    But here is the thing that makes me truly sad and possibly is the last straw in the end of the Palestinian people as a national entity. (Hey, I dislike Palestinian terrorists as much as anyone. I'm not defending THEM. I am defending the Jewish cultural treasure of a tradition of justice, fairness and morality.)
    The IDF entered the Civil Court Building in Ramallah and stole ALL of the deeds of land ownership for the entire West Bank.
    Why?
    Now, no Palestinian can EVER prove that he "owns" a piece of land in the West Bank.
    ERASING HISTORY
    It is an historical tidbit, but a central system of recording land sales is one of the cornerstones of modern civilization. It is one of the things brought us out of the Middle Ages; back then people just fought battles over land boundaries. Owner held documents can be forged - the records at the county courthouse are the lifeblood of the history of a land, of the ability of civil society to function without bloodshed.
    Suppose the policy of "transfer" is carried out as is now being widely discussed in Israel. (Transfer is the forcible mass deportation of the Arabs from Israel and the Occupied Territories.)
    One proposal to make Transfer more palatable is that the Arabs will be "compensated" (even the late Rehavam Ze'evi of the Moledet party, which strongly advocates Transfer, conceded that compensation would be necessary.) But of course, "No officially recorded deed - no compensation."
    (Just in this week's news, Sharon appointed to his cabinet a former general who strongly advocates the immediate forcible expulsion of all Arabs from the Occupied Territories and from Israel proper. This from the nation we so frequently cite as "the only democracy in the Middle East." If transfer happens, and many respected commentators believe it will be attempted, the shame of it will reflect on all Jews everywhere.) According to a recent poll (reported in the LA Times by Mary Curtius and in the New Yorker Magazine) 60% of the people of Israel now support the mass transfer of Palestinians out of Israel and the West Bank. Many commentators believe that it is Sharon's plan to initially transfer them all to the Gaza Strip - a recreation of the Warsaw Ghetto. History has an annoying habit of repeating itself.
    Stealing the land deeds is the most insidious, evil and craftily despicable thing Sharon has done in a very long time. There can be no justification that this is done for "the security of Israel." I have not heard even a trumped-up excuse for why the civil, school and transportation ministry records, computers, offices and facilities were destroyed.
    HISTORY ACCORDING TO ARIEL SHARON
    There is a precedent for Sharon's eradication of public records as a form of cultural annihilation
    "The 'exhilarating' possibilities of a land without Arabs, and the transfer of Arab farms, houses, and wealth into Jewish hands, set, as Morris reminds us, in the context of war and massive immigration, quickly overwhelmed the reservations expressed by minority factions about the morality of expelling Palestinian Arabs and destroying their villages." (Josef Heydemann, Jewish writer and commentator writing about the 1948 war.)
    "We not only eradicated Arab place names [in Israel]," notes former Jerusalem deputy mayor Meron Benvenisti, "we actually destroyed the places as well. The Israeli erasure of Palestinian history was consciously as complete as possible."
    As Benveniste notes:
    "I was aware for quite some time that the Palestinian Research Institute in Beirut was compiling files on each Palestinian village in Israel. Since the beginning of the [Lebanon] war I wondered about the fate of those files. I was fairly sure tht General [Ariel] Sharon and General Eitan would search them out, seize them, and destroy them in order to complete the eradicatio of the memory of Arab Palestine. This what eventually happened when the Israeli Army entered West Beirut. The records have disappeared into the night and fog."
    ERASING WITH THE BULLDOZER
    On the same note, 6,000 Palestinian homes have been bulldozed or dynamited since 1987. Probably close to 1,000 in the past few months. Estimates since 1948 run as high as 300,000 homes bulldozed or dynamited.
    The demolition of homes has always been a part of Sharon's plans - ever since Qibya.
    "They can ignore our guns and bombs, but when we start destroying their homes, that will get their attention. In Arabic, the worst curse you can call upon someone is to say 'May your home be destroyed." Ariel Sharon in an address to the Knesset, August 1976.
    No matter how much you may hate Palestinians as a race, I ask you, is this a moral and just way for us to act? Do we want to be "The People of the Bulldozer?"
    As Robert Scheer noted in his Op Ed piece in the Times last week, any Jew who criticizes Israel concerning even the smallest policy disagreement is quickly labeled a "self-loathing Jew," (the Jewish equivalent of an "anti-Semite.") In all frankness, for me personally, the lessons of morality and justice I learned at Hebrew school and at my father's knee outweigh the chance I may be labeled "disloyal."
    How often in history, in books, in movies or in our own lives is it the lone Jew in the crowd who stands up at a meeting and has the courage to speak out in defense of the moral, the just and the fair course of action?
    Why is it that we utterly lose that ability when it comes to anything at all connected with Israel? Many respected Israeli political commentators and historians readily acknowledge that the "destruction of Israel" has been a myth since the early 1950's. It is a myth that has been used to keep American Jews under tight control. We are free thinkers on most issues, why not this one?
    ETHNIC CLEANSING
    "Ethnic cleansing is the first step towards genocide." Eli Weisel
    One of the greatest barriers to peace in the Middle East is the lack of historical perspective by U.S. citizens. Only when Americans consider all sides of the problem and think critically about it can we (the world's only superpower) arrive at the decision to bring about a lasting peace. No enduring peace is ever going to be based on half-truths and deceptions. We have a long history of facing up to reality and dealing with it to achieve a successful resolution to a problem. Now should be no different.
    We are never going to get anywhere by sticking our heads in the sand and ignoring reality. One tragic fallout of the current Sharon policies is that they are calling increased attention to Israel's history and the work of the revisionist historians at Israeli universities.
    DON'T ATTEMPT A COVERUP
    We can no longer ignore that violence is part of the history of Israel. If we have learned nothing else in the last 20 years it is that to deny facts will only lead to embarrassment and being discredited as honest and honorable men and women. As a public relations consultant, I constantly advise my clients don't attempt a cover-up! I do so now, also.
    Zionists and Jewish freedom fighters recognized from the very beginning that it would ultimately be a demographic war. Herzl advocated economic means to eliminate the Arab population in Palestine; Jabotinsky supported violence to clear the land of Arabs. Obviously these two wings of Zionism are still at odds - although the Jabotinskites are clearly in the ascendancy.
    "We must do everything to insure they never return. The old will die and the young will forget. We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters." (David Ben-Gurion - First Prime Minister of Israel. 1949).
    "There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries, not one village, not one tribe should be left" (Joseph Weitz, one of the founders of Israel, 1940)
    THE IRGUN
    The Irgun was specifically a terror group which acted against the British and also against Arab natives. One of their favorite targets was bus-stops in Arab towns. Their biggest operation was the King David Hotel - 92 dead, mostly British and Arab civilians. In all, the Irgun committed some 1,000 acts of terrorism against civilians. The death toll of British and Palestinians was approximately 5,500. Menachim Begin was the leader of the Irgun.
    DEIR YASSIN
    Together with the Stern Gang (Lehi), the Irgun attacked the village of Deir Yassin in 1948. Reports of deaths vary from 150 to 252. Deir Yassin had a non-combatant agreement with local Jewish leaders - it was a peaceful village, but it overlooked a key road that the freedom fighters needed. Irgun and the Stern Gang combined and the decision at the planning meeting was:
    "The majority," Irgun officer Ben-Zion Cohen recorded, "was for liquidation of all the men in the village and any other force that opposed us, whether it be old people, women, or children."
    "We had prisoners and before the retreat we decided to liquidate them," Irgun officer Yehoshua Gorodenchik recorded. "We also liquidated the [Arab] wounded."
    They slaughtered over a hundred prisoners who had surrendered, mostly women, children and old men. They raped the women as a form of cultural revenge [just as the Serbs did in Kosovo]. Both male and female corpses were subject to sexual mutilation. [Ironically, the frenzy of killing the wounded, rape and mutilation was set off by the killing of a beloved commander. How closely this echoes the situation in Jenin, where the killing of a reserve Major and later his platoon set off the frenzy of bulldozing homes.]
    Joseph Weitz, the first President of Israel, said "Without Deir Yassin, there would be no Israel." What he meant was that Deir Yassin and similar terrorist attacks on Arabs were one of the primary reasons 750,000 of them became refugees in 1948. A demographic war - you see.
    TERROR 101
    Now what about Ariel Sharon and Unit 101?
    In retaliation for the murder of a single Jewish woman in 1952 Sharon led his battalion strength Unit 101 in a raid on the village of Qibya, which was chosen only because it was close. His snipers lined the outside of the village to prevent anyone from escaping and his engineers set explosive charges on each house in the village, as the families cowered inside.
    72 people died. The official Israeli death count is 68. Sharon also uses that number in his autobiography.
    The point of the story is that Sharon was an official terrorist for the Israeli army. His task as a commander was to frighten and terrorize the civilian Arabs, primarily to motivate them to leave - to become "refugees." Once the village had been reduced to rubble, he also dynamited the school, the mosque and most importantly, the water supply, to ensure that no Arabs could ever live there again.
    The demographic war continues. Why are the Israeli's so fanatical about settlements on the West Bank? Religious reasons? Certainly not. Very few of the places they live have religious significance; actually Hebron is the only one.
    THE BIG IDEA
    Sharon invented the idea of the settlements. There was universal international protest when they started building them (The actual policy started in 1979 - there were virtually no settlements before that). Even the US still recognizes that they are illegal.
    It is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention to move your own population into occupied areas; as it is to confiscate the property of civilians fleeing combat. These tenets of international law apply even if you accept Israel's assertion that the West Bank belongs to them because they "conquered it." Didn't Hussein "conquer" Kuwait? Milosovich "conquered" Kosovo.
    Sharon said the idea is to get "facts on the ground." In other words, once there are people living there, it is really, really difficult to get them out - no matter how illegal they are. It's a demographic war.
    Why has Israel NOT annexed the West Bank? They annexed the Golan Heights and huge areas around Jerusalem. Why not the West Bank?
    Demographics. Annexing the West Bank would make the Palestinians very nearly a majority in Israel. Israel would be forced to admit they are not a true democracy - that they have first class citizens (Jews) and second-class citizens (Arabs).
    The purpose of the settlements is to build a Jewish majority on the West Bank - once they have that, they will annex.
    Home demolitions are also a part of the demographic war. Since 1987, 6,000 Palestinian homes have been destroyed. The total increased by well over 1,000 just this month. What would you do if someone came with a bulldozer and destroyed your home? Would you be angry? For poor Palestinians, the home often represents the bulk or even all of the family's assets. They are nearly always the abode of the entire extended family.
    A demographic war. It has been since the beginning. A war on the indigenous people because they are a different race - a racist war.
    By the way, let's stop hypocritically calling them settlements. For the sake of clarity, let's call them what they are: colonies.
    Peace is not only possible, it is simple.
    End the occupation. End the settlements. Let the Palestinians build a future for themselves. There will be peace.
    This is the real way for Israel to have an enduring peace and security and safety for it's citizens.
    PEACE MEANS PEACE - NOT STEALING MORE LAND.
    Before we can understand the conflict, we have to see both sides. As I said, the first step is to end the coverup and own up to our own history. To try to continue to hide the history of Jewish violence and terrorism can only lead to embarrasment and loss of credibility.
    Consider these quotes from Zionist leaders:
    "We shall try to break the will of the [Arab] population and spirit them across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country .... expropriation and the removal of the Arabs must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." -- Theodore Herzl - founder of Zionist movement (from Rafael Patai, Ed. The Complete Diaries of Theodore Herzl, Vol I)
    "They can ignore our guns and bombs, but when we start destroying their homes, that will get their attention. In Arabic, the worst curse you can call upon someone is to say 'May your home be destroyed." Ariel Sharon in an address to the Knesset, August 1976. (6,000 homes destroyed since 1987)
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    If you do nothing else, PLEASE go see this information at this website: www.gush-shalom.org/media/barak_eng.swf
    and
    www.gush-shalom.org (click on "English.")
    Please, please read the article by Uri Averny.
    PLANS FOR THE PALESTINIANS
    www.mediamonitors.net/tanya8.html
    www.mediamonitors.net/justin4.html
    www.oranzof.tripod.com
    TERRORISM - The other side
    www.ummah.net/unity/palestine/massacres.htm
    Salon Magazine.
    www.salonmag.com/news/feature/2000/10/17/sharon/index1.html
    GUSH EMUNIM
    www.hebron.com/israel-honors-serial-murderer-111597.html
    (Baruch Goldstein - this one written by one of the Jewish settlers in Kiryat Arba - well worth reading, a very thoughtful analysis of the situation.)
    DEIR YASIN
    www.jerusalemites.org/yassin4.html
    www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m2082/2_63/72435149/print.jhtml
    (A scholarly article on the subject of the 1948 massacre at the Arab village).
    HOME DEMOLITIONS
    Amnesty International. Annual Report, 2001.
    www.amnesty-usa.org/
    One last thing: rent the movie "Battle of Algiers."
    Thanks for reading,
    Jacob Bleistein
    It is THE settlements. It shows the awfulness of "Proportional Representation". Let's never forget PR got Hitler elected. That any Israeli Govts survival depends upon appeasing the desires and aims of the most extremist religious nutters (many of whom as part of their credos don't even believe in the existense of Israel!) is totally self-defeating. That these religious nutters in order to help secure their own short-term survival align themselves with the psycho American religious right (who believe in the destruction of Israel to bring about the rapture nonsense) is even more perverse. Why should these west-bank settler nutters dictate the security of Israel/Palestine and the wider world conflicts whose flames this insanity fans? Certainly it shows that if democratically elected goverments ever come to pass in the other middle-eastern states that they shoud be strongly encouraged to adopt the first-past-the-post method of majority rule. PR may work fine for the homogenous swedes but it's exceptionally destructive in the real world. Can you imagine the US allowing members of congress whose aims were the destruction of the nation? Lets forget about letting the IRA into British parliament.
     

  • Ebola-type Disease Reported on Afghan Border
    June 6, 2002
    KABUL, Afghanistan -- International medical officials are investigating an apparent outbreak of hemorrhagic fever that has killed three people in a hospital just across the Afghan border in Iran, the World Health Organization said Thursday.
    Two other people are being treated for what is believed to be Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, WHO spokeswoman Laurie Hieber-Girardt said at a U.N. briefing.
    All the victims are Afghans from the Saranj district of Nimroz province, Hieber-Girardt said. They were being treated in a hospital just across the border in Iran and had been put in isolation to prevent others, especially hospital workers, from being exposed.
    "We are taking appropriate control measures to contain the disease," she said. Results of blood samples sent to France will be available Friday, and a WHO emergency medical team was on standby to travel to the area and set up a quarantine if the diagnosis was confirmed -- something Hieber-Girardt called "likely."
    That variety of hemorrhagic fever has a mortality rate of at least 30 percent, even with treatment, Hieber-Girardt said.
    "It is of great concern," she said.
    WHO learned of the outbreak Tuesday from doctors with Medicins Sans Frontiers, or Doctors Without Borders, a nongovernmental medical organization. The cases occurred up to 10 days ago, Hieber-Girardt said.
    "That's how information travels," she said.
    Last month, Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency said the same variety of hemorrhagic fever had killed 20 people since last year and infected 30 percent of that country's cattle.
    The virus causing Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever -- which is found in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe -- is transmitted by ticks, which thrive on sheep and cattle. Infected people can transmit the virus by blood, saliva or droplets from sneezing.
    The disease causes a sharp drop in platelets, which allow the blood to clot. Without rapid antiviral drug treatment and platelet replacements, victims can bleed to death.

  • Virus of deadly disease spreads in Iran
    Fri May 24,11:21 AM ET
    TEHRAN, Iran - A deadly virus has infected 30 percent of Iran's cattle stock and killed 20 people since last year, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported Friday.
    Mohammad Mehdi Gouya, the head of the Disease Management Center of the Health Ministry, was quoted as saying that the 20 people who died were among more than 140 people diagnosed carrying Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever.
    Health officials have warned that a new outbreak was possible with hot weather coinciding with the return of Muslim pilgrims from the annual Hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
    Relatives of pilgrims slaughter cattle and distribute meat among neighbors, IRNA said. Health officials say spilled blood from slaughtered cattle can cause infections.
    Crimean-Congo fever was first identified in the northeastern Khorassan province in 1978 after entering Iran through imported cattle from eastern states, it said. The fever broke out in Pakistan and Afghanistan (news - web sites) — Iran's eastern neighbors — earlier this year. Doctors said three people died then.
    The virus causing Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever — which is found in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe — is transmitted by ticks, which thrive on sheep and cattle. Infected people can transmit the virus by blood, saliva or droplets from sneezing.
    The disease causes a sharp drop in platelets, which allow the blood to clot. Without rapid antiviral drug treatment and platelet replacements, victims can bleed to death.

  • Mysterious School Rash theory: It was all in their minds
    South Dennis school officials might never know what caused the outbreak of mysterious itches.
    (capecodonline.com)
    SOUTH DENNIS - A few months ago, students were roaming the halls at Nathaniel Wixon Middle School scratching, afflicted with a red, bumpy rash.
    The same rash seemed to be spreading through schools across the country. Then, as suddenly as it appeared, the mysterious outbreak was over.
    What was it all about?
    The experts, so far, have been unable to determine the cause of rashes that showed up in schools in Indiana, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Massachusetts. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which is collecting information about the rashes from health agencies in 20 states, is not alarmed by the lack of explanation.
    Rhonda Smith, a CDC spokeswoman, said public attention was so fixated on the "mystery rash" that people began to believe it was sweeping the nation.
    In fact, she said, a series of unrelated, different rashes were appearing in schools, and each outbreak may have had its own cause. But for the most part, the center has been unable to determine what triggered the rashes.
    Now the New York Times Sunday Magazine has published an article called "Hysteria Hysteria," which explores the "unmentionable diagnosis" that the rash was psychogenic. Margaret Talbot, the story's author, points out that children had no other symptoms except the itching. They didn't pass the rash on to siblings or parents; and most of the victims were girls.
    "I'm not sure to this day what caused the rash," Tony Pierantozzi, Dennis-Yarmouth school superintendent, said yesterday.
    Outbreak lasted 10 days
    At Wixon, the outbreak lasted about 10 days and ended abruptly after the school stopped automatically sending students with the rash home.
    On March 21, three students reported a red, itchy rash. By the next day, 48 students showed similar signs. By the following week, more than a hundred students were either absent or leaving school with a rash. The school was closed for a day.
    Meanwhile, environmental specialists had checked the air quality and bacteria levels. They looked for any new type of food, cleaning product, fertilizer or unknown hazard in the science lab. They could find no scientific or environmental reason for the rash, and still the number of students calling in sick continued to rise.
    So Pierantozzi met with the school principal and decided that only children with a rash covering a large part of their body would be sent home. For other students, with a small rash or scratch marks, the school auditorium was made available. The school also began treating students with ice rather than calamine lotion, according to Pierantozzi.
    Suddenly, almost no students were reporting a rash.
    "Frankly, it could just be coincidence - maybe it had just run its course. It's unfortunate that it occurred at our school. But I am relieved it wasn't a more serious health issue," he said.
    Not seen as hysteria
    It is difficult for Patricia Fitzsimmons, principal at Wixon, to envision the rash as an anxiety response created in the minds of all those students. "We thought it was typically middle school to think if your friend has it you should have it too. But I don't think we ever thought it was psychosomatic," she said.
    "I don't think we saw it as hysteria. The kids were very calm," she said.
    And what about the girls getting so many more cases?
    "I think girls at this age do react differently than boys. It is obvious," Fitzsimmons said. "A boy might sit there and not even notice. A girl is more likely to say they have something."
    Leona McFarland, the school nurse, did note something odd. "The first day the rash showed up," she said. "A group of girls came in with it on their left arm. All of them had it on their left arm. I've never seen anything like it."
    The idea that the rash was at least partly psychogenic doesn't seem far off to Marina Brock, senior environmental specialist for the Barnstable County Health and Environmental Department. She led a thorough investigation of the school after the rash appeared. "There was nothing consistent that would indicate any infectious or environmental contaminant," she said.
    "To me, and this is my opinion, there was an element of hysteria or something psychosomatic happening there," she said. "Not to say some of the kids didn't have legitimate rashes. I am sure there were legitimate rashes in the midst but I'm not sure most of them were legitimate."
    Some suspect the milk
    David Clark, a 13-year-old student who got the rash, said his friends are still trying to figure out what caused it. "At first, I thought it was the milk. That made sense because my friend drank a lot of milk and he got the rash really bad. I only drank a little milk and I only got a little rash," he said.
    Then some students started taking advantage of the health crisis, he said. "Some kids were faking it and rubbing their skin really hard. It was a fill-in nurse and she didn't know a lot. The nurse fell for it sometime."
    Clark's friends aren't talking about the rash much anymore, although it did come up at the lunch table last week. "My friend still thinks it's the milk," he said.

  • Mold Contamination A Growing Problem For School Buildings-Kids Getting Sick From School
    June 5, 2002
    (CBS) At McKinley Elementary School in Fairfield, Conn., school's out -- not just for summer, but maybe for good, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Axelrod.
    When a number of teachers and kids reported a rash of unexplained symptoms, local allergist Dr. John Santilli, put two and two together. He had testing done for mold in the school.
    "They found the typical indoor molds aspergillus, penicillium. But what they found that was significant was stachibotrys," said Santilli. "Once we started getting the testing results back it became obvious that McKinley was not a problem, but a huge problem."
    Santilli estimates some 40 to 60 students and staff got sick from the mold. Two cases were serious enough to require hospitalization.
    According to town selectmen Ken Flatto, the problem started with some late summer flooding.
    "When I went in to clean out materials in a closet, the materials had black mold all over them," said Joellen Lawson.
    That cleanup took the 23-year teaching veteran out of the classroom and into the hospital, under the care of Santilli.
    "He said my symptoms -- the respiratory symptoms, the neurological, the sensory disturbances that I have been suffering for years were totally consistent with exposure to high levels of mold," she said.
    Santilli says he has a dozen kids and teachers homebound. "I won't let them go back to school."
    Stories like Lawson's become even more alarming when one realizes some 14 million American children attend schools with poor environmental conditions. In the last decade the rate of allergic disease -- like asthma -- has doubled in the nation's classrooms. Many say that's also the place to look for the cause.
    In Portland, Ore., parents started asking questions when students and teachers at Whitaker Middle School started complaining of fatigue, head aches and flu-like symptoms.
    Said teacher Janis Ingersole, "I felt like something was standing on my chest. My skin was crawling. I had hives and my face was puffed up like a pink."
    When the school was tested, what was first thought to be radon turned out to be mold. Leaks from an old, poorly maintained, drainage system caused flooding. The flooding spawned mold.
    "How many more teachers have to get sick before people realize this is a serious public issue?" asks Lawson. She is now pushing Connecticut legislators to enact new air quality standards in state classrooms.
    "Children should not have to attend school where they are going to acquire a life-long illness."
    Joellen Lawson is making the dangers of mold her last lesson -- now that it's left her unable to teach anything else.

  • Did a catatrosphic drop in the Solar wind cause the death of the dinosaurs?
    (spacedaily.com)
    Bonn - June 4, 2002
    A shower of matter from space millions of years ago could have led to drastic changes in the Earth's climate, followed by the extinction of life on a massive scale, which also killed off the dinosaurs. This at least is a theory put forward by scientists from the University of Bonn.
    Normally, the solar wind acts as a shield against showers of cosmic particles, which prevents too many energy-rich particles from raining down on our atmosphere. Since 1997 scientists from Bonn, funded by the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft or DFG), have been examining how and why this gigantic shield works.
    They were the undisputed masters of a whole geological era until they suddenly disappeared 65 million years ago. "Perhaps Earth just became too damp and too cold for dinosaurs at that time," Professor Hans Jörg Fahr from the Bonn Institute of Astrophysics and Extraterrestrial Research surmises. The reason for the sudden change in climate could have been excessive pressure on our cosmic umbrella.
    The solar system does not stand still, in fact it orbits the centre of the Milky Way once every 250 million years. In the process it also passes through dense clouds of interstellar matter, which causes problems for the solar wind and thus for the Earth.
    Whereas the solar wind normally protects the Earth from a hail of interstellar particles like a huge bullet-proof vest, there are then suddenly up to a hundred times more particles raining down into the earth's atmosphere at enormous speeds.
    On impact they smash the air molecules into electrically charged fragments. These function as condensation nuclei on which droplets of water form. "The result is dense cloud cover with greater precipitation and sinking temperatures," says Professor Fahr, who bases his remarks on research worldwide.
    Prof. Fahr and his colleagues Dr. Horst Fichtner and Dr. Klaus Scherer have shown that every 60 million years on average the solar system passes through dense clouds of matter, which could trigger off this sort of climate shock. Prof. Fahr adds: "At roughly these intervals many species suddenly became extinct."
    Research by other teams which have examined the link between cloud cover and solar activity has shown that cosmic factors could have had a dramatic impact on our climate on several occasions in the past.
    "The less solar activity there is and therefore the less protection there is from the solar wind, the more cosmic particles reach the earth, and the more clouds form on earth," is how Prof. Fahr sums up the process.
    Experts call the electrically charged particles which our sun emits "solar wind". They race through our solar system at a velocity of up to 800 kilometres per second, with a range extending a hundred times as far as the distance between the Earth and the sun.
    "Every eleven years the sun's activity and therefore the solar wind reaches a maximum. At these times, for example, there is an increase in the frequency of the colourful auroras, when particles of the solar wind are captured by the Earth's magnetic field and are then catapulted into the upper atmosphere, where they make the oxygen glow," Dr. Michael Bird from the Institute of Radio Astronomy explains.
    During particularly active phases, e.g. during big solar eruptions, the shower of particles can even interfere with short-wave reception, disrupt orbiting satellites or even "switch off" whole power stations.
    "In Bonn we are especially interested in how the solar wind reaches its high velocities," Dr. Bird explains. "These cannot be explained solely by the enormous heat in the sun's atmosphere."
    There seems, in other words, to be another source of energy which catapults the particles into space. The hot favourites for Bonn's astrophysicists are exotic waves of magnetic fields in the corona, the "sun's atmosphere" which are amplified while they are expanding and then give the particles the necessary momentum. "We are tracking these waves by using radio astronomy," the US physicist adds.
    Incidentally, cosmic weather might also be a decisive factor in the speed of evolution. The cosmic rays from which we are protected by the solar wind are so full of energy that they can change the DNA of living beings.
    If the solar wind's shield effect is too weak, i.e. the Earth's protective mantle is thin, within a short space of time this results in more mutations, which are the driving force of the evolution of life.

  • UPDATE:3-D MAP OF THE EARTH CREATED 120 MILLION YEARS AGO.
    2002-06-03
    ON-LINE PRESS CONFERENCE WITH ALEXANDER CHUVYROV
    June 6, at 4:00 p.m (Moscow Time) PRAVDA.Ru will hold an on-line press conference with Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Science Alexander CHUVYROV. The professor of Bashkir State University found indisputable evidence of the existence of an ancient, highly developed civilization in the Urals. His find is a huge slab, whose age is supposed to be about 120 million years.
    "Our research topic is about the possible migration of ancient Chinese to the territory of modern Russia: Siberia and Urals. We have discovered letters on the rocks made in ancient Chinese about 3000 years ago. During our research in the Ufa archives, we discovered notes from the end of 18th century about 200 unusual ancient stone plates. Our idea was that these plates are somehow connected to Chinese migrants.
    Thus we were looking for an ancient civilization, but much closer to ourselves. We were expecting to see nothing more than hieroglyphs or pictures with a running mammoth and deer typical for that period. There were six expeditions organized, and in 28 July 1999, at 1.06 meters underground, we found the plate now called “Dashkin kamen” (“kamen” is stone in Russian). It has a significant size: about 1.5 meters in height, more than 1 meter wide, and 16 cm thick. It weights more than 1 ton. In the scientists’ opinion, it is a relief, a 3-D map.
    We were absolutely happy; we thought we found a product made more 2000 years ago. The plate itself is artificial. It was produced from a special cement of three layers, and the third layer is a white-colored porcelain. It should be noticed that the relief on this plate was not cut manually with some ancient stonecutter. It is evident that some mechanical work was done.
    There is a region from Ufa up to the town of Salavat represented on the plate. Ufa's hills are very familiar from one side. From the other side there are some changes. Firstly, we were surprised by the Ufa canyon: the break in the earth’s crust from the present Ufa to the present Sterlitomak city. There was a river in it 2-3 kilometers deep and 3-4 kilometers wide. Nevertheless, this break is one of the principal points of our theory. We conducted geological research and found it’s track in the place where it should be theoretically. Tectonic plates from the East crushed it for about 10-15 kilometers to the West. We assume that, now, the Urshak River is in the place of this former canyon.
    There are not only rivers, but two systems of channels up to 500 meters wide and a total length of 12,000 kilometers. The whole hydro system includes 12 dams 300-500 meters wide, 10 kilometers long, and 2-3 kilometers deep. They made it possible to turn water from any side into any channel. About 1000 trillion cubic meters of soil were moved to create this."

  • A View from Russia: Popularization of Science as a Tool against Antiscience (SkepticalInquirer)
    Boris Shmakin
    (SkepticalInquirer)
    July 1996
    In Russia, as well as in many other countries of the world, many parapsychologists, astrologers, so-called nontraditional medical doctors (mainly charlatans), specialists on UFOs, etc., are involved in pseudoscientific "investigations.' Very often they use radio, television, and newspapers to publish articles on various topics of pseudoscience. Why is such activity still not unmasked?
    There are at least three reasons:
    The leaders of mass media organizations are not educated enough to recognize and expose pseudoscientific "theories.' They don't ask advice of real scientists, probably in order to conceal their naivete; and scientists themselves are, as a rule, not sufficiently active in the struggle against antiscience.
    Real scientists understand the limitations of general knowledge. They sincerely acknowledge that many puzzles of nature are not yet understood. Parascientists, on the contrary, are confident in their "achievements'; they pretend to be more certain.
    In the 1930s and 1940s some attempts were made in the former Soviet Union to end investigations in such important fields as genetics and cybernetics. After such oppression was disclosed and lifted, biologists and physicists -- along with pseudobiologists and pseudophysicists -- felt freedom. The latter demanded respect for their "new ideas' and they portrayed themselves as fighters for truth.
    When real scientists are active, they can expose pseudoscience. A well-known scandal happened in 1991, when physicists of the USSR Academy of Sciences demanded that government cease to support charlatans working on "microlepton fields' (distant biological influence of army and civil inhabitants with "torsion radiation'). About $500 million had been spent on such "investigations.' Fortunately, the Supreme Soviet Committee stopped this waste of money. The Academic Department of General Physics and Astronomy at a special session on July 9, 1991, characterized this case as "organized activity of pseudoscience with specific features of large-scale bluff.'
    In the 1990s the government of the Ukraine allocated much money to a man named Bovbalan for realization of his ideas to move clouds and cyclones, to cause rains in drought areas, and so on. This episode became known to the public only a year ago.
    Even in the circles close to the president of the Russian Federation there are "believers' in miracles. The newspaper Moscow News (weekly, Nos. 29 and 30, 1995) published a story about General George Rogozin, who is the deputy chief of the Presidential Security Service. His hobby is studying occultism, telepathy, astrology, etc. As the newspaper stated, Rogozin prepares the astrological "forecasts' for the leaders of the country.
    We should not be astonished when in a Russian television program astrology was characterized as an "applied science'; and when we regularly watch on television such "specialists' on astrology as former doctor of sciences in chemistry V. Velichko or former physicist Tamara Globa.
    I am a member of the International Academy of Information, which has headquarters in Moscow. There are many divisions organized by scientific specialization or by regions of activity (as our Irkutsk Division, for instance). The leadership and divisions of the academy have taken much positive action. But recently I was shocked to learn that one more division was named: the "Division of UFOlogy and Bioenergoinformatics'! Isn't that a shame for the scientific community? We are trying to overrule this disgraceful decision, but it is difficult to find the source of such a mistake.
    One more shameful situation happened in the Russian Parliament. Members invited a "soothsayer'--Raisa Soumerina--to talk to them. She tried to determine who in the government is "constantly erring,' who is "stamping his feet,' etc. And the members of the Parliament were listening to this delirium! Professor of physics E. P. Kruglyakov, the corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, called this case a symbol of "degradation of authorities' (Nauka v Sibiri, weekly, Nos. 47 and 48, 1995).
    There are a few ways to struggle against pseudoscience. One is to check publications and television programs prepared by astrologers, parapsychologists, etc. in order to find their mistakes and to disclose false "facts' and bogus "theories.' This is being done by the NLO (UFO) Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences and by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal in the United States and elsewhere. But we are never sure that the results will be as widely available to the public, radio listeners, and television watchers as are false claims. In every case scientists can be labeled "oppressive' or "fighters against new ideas.'
    Another way is the popularization of real science, its laws, and its achievements. Everywhere we can use the possibilities to teach: in schools, universities, in television and radio programs. But maybe the best way of popularization is to publish books and articles in popular journals.
    Such publications should not only be correct and understandable; they must be very interesting, written by scientific authors skillful in popularization.
    In Russia we had examples of good, popular books on mathematics, physics, biology, and geology (including mineralogy and geochemistry). Repeatedly reprinted, these books attracted the attention of adults and teenagers for decades. One of the most popular books amongst teenagers -- my contemporaries -- in the 1940s was the collection of romantic short stories by the well-known Russian mineralogist and geochemist A. E. Fersman, named Reminiscences about Stone. There are twenty-five stories, from three to nine pages each, connected with the brightest memories of the author's life.
    "Saami's Blood' described the legend about the origin of the rare mineral eudialyte, red in color, in the Lovozero Mountains of the Kola Peninsula. "Testa Nera' (from the Italian for "black head') was a folk story telling why crystals of polychromatic tourmaline on Elba Island have black tops. "Blue Stone of Pamirs' was about the deposits of lapis lazuli in one of the mountain creeks with an appropriate name, Lajvar-Dara (Lazurite Creek).
    "Proceeding to Sulfur' documented the story of the discovery of rich deposits in the center of the Kara-Kum Desert.
    "The Kiss' was about the unexpected gratitude of a Mongolian guide who had to be threatened to show the way.
    In the final chapter, the author calls upon young people to explore vast territories of Siberia, to discover ores and waters under their feet, and to invent new methods of metal extraction. He cited the words of the great Russian scientist of the eighteenth century, Michael Lomonosov: "Metals and minerals will not come to the yards themselves, they demand eyes and hands to be found.'
    Hundreds and thousands of youngsters became students in geology and geography departments of universities after reading this book and many other books written by Fersman and his colleagues, for example, geologists V. A. Obruchev and I. A. Efremov. I will cite just one sentence from Obruchev's popular book Foundations of Geology: "What does a stream whisper running along a ravine?'
    These authors wrote their books (sometimes science fiction, such as Plutonia by Obruchev and Andromeda Nebula by Efremov) to show not only interesting facts and fantastic landscapes, but also principles of nature and specific features of life in expeditions. They tried to attract readers' attention to many puzzles of science, and to the excitement and happiness of divining them.
    To my regret I cannot think of any members of the Russian Academy of Sciences of recent years who have written books for a wide circle of readers. It means that scientists do not consider the popularization of science to be one of their important functions.
    One of the results is that, in many popular Russian journals such as Nauka i Zhizn (Science and Life), there are some poor scientific stories and even pages of parascientific attempts "to explain' something not understandable. In the bookstores, really scientific books are sinking in the seas of books with pretentious titles, such as Everything about Life, Secrets of Health, Stars Recommend, etc.
    Let us stop being passive in situations when we have to act! Let us demand that mass media companies consult with real scientists when they publish or show something connected with science and nature. Let us write popular books and articles in order to demonstrate real scientific achievements and to make the truth stronger and more evident.
    About the Author
    Boris Shmakin teaches in universities and works in geochemistry and mineralogy of endogenous processes in the Vinogradov Institute of Geochemistry, Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 4019, Irkutsk, 664033, Russia.

  • 22 Cases in Rockland, NY E. Coli Outbreak-Jun 6, 2002
    Jun 6, 2002
    POMONA, N.Y. (AP) -- An outbreak of E. coli poisoning in Rockland County has spread to 22 people, making it the largest in New York since two people died in 1999.
    County Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Joan Facelle said four cases had been confirmed since Monday but there are no fatalities and no large-scale contamination of food or water.
    Of the earlier cases, four Rockland children remain hospitalized with the disease but are in stable condition, the commissioner said.
    Though all but two of the victims are from Monsey, Facelle said officials are no longer confident they will be able to trace the outbreak to a single source because they have found no obvious link between the victims. That could mean it was passed gradually from person to person rather than all at once from bad food or water.
    In 1999, well water contaminated by cow manure killed two people and sickened more than 1,000 at the Washington County Fair.

  • Bioterror Plans Approved for 24 States, Two Cities
    Jun 6, 2002
    NEW YORK (AP) -- Bioterrorism preparedness plans submitted by 24 states and two cities have been approved by the federal government, allowing the release of millions of dollars in funding for public health programs, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced Thursday.
    Thompson announced in January that more than $1 billion in grants was available to state and local governments, which were required to write preparation plans to be approved by his Office of Public Health Preparedness.
    The first 20 percent of the state and local preparation money was awarded before the plans were submitted. Those whose plans have received the nod are being awarded the remaining 80 percent of the funds allotted to them, Thompson said during a news conference at a Manhattan hospital.
    "The department has spent the past month reviewing them," Thompson said. "We've offered some suggestions, we made some changes, we have rejected a couple, but overall, they were great plans."
    Thompson said the $1 billion in grants is the largest one-time investment in the nation's public health systems. States were asked to issue progress reports by Oct. 1.
    States are expected to spend their money to build lab capacity; link more health departments to the national Health Alert Network, which provides warnings about disease outbreaks; add epidemiologists to state staffs and develop education and training programs for doctors, nurses, local public health officials and the public.
    HHS officials reviewed the plans, approving 24 states plus New York City and Chicago. Los Angeles and an additional 24 states are receiving some money, but their full amounts will be awarded "following further plan development," according to HHS.
    Washington, D.C., Montana and Utah are "receiving extensions for further work on their plans," according to HHS.
    Thompson announced the grants and presented checks to Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, calling the state and city "national leaders on the public health and emergency preparedness front."
    New York City receives $20.9 million in grants for its bioterrorism preparedness plans. It already received $5.2 million in January when Thompson announced the grants. The state gets $27.1 million on top of its initial $6.7 million.
    Pataki said the state plan includes bioterror response information cards that will be distributed to physicians throughout New York. The cards help doctors learn how to identify symptoms of illnesses ranging from anthrax to the plague.
    "We will do everything in our power, first to prevent any such attacks from occurring or being successful here in New York, but we will also be ready with the finest educated and prepared response team in the event of bioterrorism or any other threat," Pataki said.
    In a letter to the city health department, Jerome Hauer, director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness, commended New York City on "what you have accomplished over the very short period of time you had to pull these plans together."
    The letter lists several priorities the city still needs to consider since "the risk of a bioterrorist attack is recognized now to be significant and pressing," it said.
    One priority should be the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile, according to the letter. The city needs to have detailed plans for accessing the stockpile in case of a bioterrorist act.
    The letter also said hospitals should have plans in place to accommodate a sudden surge of hundreds of ill people.
    City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said later that the letter was referring to things that all states and cities should emphasize in their plans. He said the city's plan deals with preparing hospitals, monitoring diseases, strengthening laboratories, improving communications with the public and training medical personnel.
    "We're far along on some of them; on other ones, with this support we'll be able to move further," Frieden said.


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