Creepy Disclosures Weblog

Web notables, scary news and hypochondria.

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Gene Blocker Turns Monkeys Into Workaholics - Study
Wed Aug 11, 2004
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Procrastinating monkeys were turned into workaholics using a gene treatment to block a key brain compound, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.
Blocking cells from receiving dopamine made the monkeys work harder at a task -- and they were better at it, too, the U.S. government researchers found.
Dr. Barry Richmond and colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health used a new genetic technique to block the D2 gene.
"The gene makes a receptor for a key brain messenger chemical, dopamine," Richmond said in a statement. Dopamine is a message carrying chemical associated with rewards, movement and a variety of other important functions.
"The gene knockdown triggered a remarkable transformation in the simian work ethic. Like many of us, monkeys normally slack off initially in working toward a distant goal," he added.
For their study, Richmond and colleague used seven rhesus monkeys. They had to push a lever in response to visual cues on a projection screen, and got a drop of water as a reward.
"They work more efficiently -- make fewer errors -- as they get closer to being rewarded. But without the dopamine receptor, they consistently stayed on-task and made few errors, because they could no longer learn to use visual cues to predict how their work was going to get them a reward."
Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (news - web sites), Richmond and colleagues said they were trying to figure out how D2 is involved in a type of learning.
Humans and monkeys both use this learning, which involves looking at how much work there is, visually, and deciding how long it will take to complete it.
Monkeys and humans both tend to wait until the last possible minute to finish up the work, and become very adept at estimating how long they have.
Molecular geneticist Edward Ginns created a DNA antisense agent that tricked brain cells into turning off their D2 receptors -- which are molecular doorways used by dopamine to get into cells.
Antisense involves making a kind of mirror image molecule that looks like a strand of DNA and works to block a gene's action.
Although some employers might take a distinct interest in the work, the NIMH team said they are hoping to understand mental illness.
"In this case, it's worth noting that the ability to associate work with reward is disturbed in mental disorders, including schizophrenia, mood disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder, so our finding of the pivotal role played by this gene and circuit may be of clinical interest," Richmond said.
"For example, people who are depressed often feel nothing is worth the work. People with obsessive-compulsive disorder work incessantly; even when they get rewarded they feel they must repeat the task. In mania, people will work feverishly for rewards that aren't worth the trouble to most of us."

Despite two terror tapes, no alert issued on Vegas
WASHINGTON (AP) — A year after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Justice Department obtained video surveillance tapes suggesting terrorists were targeting Las Vegas casinos but authorities never alerted the public as they discussed whether a warning might hurt tourism or increase the casinos' legal liability, internal memos show.
The mayor of Las Vegas said Monday he was never told about the tapes uncovered in Detroit and Spain in 2002, and had been assured by the FBI there were no credible threats against his city. "If I were told, I would certainly tell the public," Mayor Oscar Goodman said. (Related video: Vegas never told of tapes)
But memos and e-mails between federal prosecutors, obtained by The Associated Press, say Las Vegas authorities were alerted to some of the footage by Aug. 30, 2002. Later, numerous local law enforcement officials were invited by a senior FBI agent to view the footage, but most spurned the invitation, the memos say.
One document quotes a federal prosecutor in Las Vegas as saying the mayor was concerned about the "deleterious effect on the Las Vegas tourism industry" if the Detroit evidence became public. Another memo states the casinos didn't want to see the footage for fear it would make them more likely to be held liable in civil court if an attack occurred.
One of the tapes, found in Spain, shows al-Qaeda's European operatives casing Las Vegas casinos in 1997, engaging in casual conversation that included an apparent reference to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the Sept. 11, 2001, mastermind. The tape was sent to al-Qaeda's leadership to help in the selection of targets, documents show.
The documents state the two tapes include footage of the MGM Grand, Excalibur and New, New York casinos — three hotels within a short distance of each other on the Las Vegas strip with a combined total of 11,000 rooms.
"The information, unfortunately, was not taken as seriously as we believed it to have been," Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino told AP in an interview, recounting how only two local police officers took up the FBI agent's offer to see the tape.
"The reason that he (the FBI agent) was given for the low turnout was because of liability. That if they heard this information they would have to act on it. It was extraordinarily unacceptable and absolutely outrageous," Convertino said.
The prosecutor said he later asked a Las Vegas police officer, who had seen the tape and flown to Detroit to help, why more wasn't done. "This officer told me that the amount of money that travels through Las Vegas on a daily, weekly and monthly basis — if something doesn't go boom, nothing is going to be done," he said.
Convertino led the successful prosecution of the Detroit terror cell but has since been removed from the case amid an investigation into whether the prosecution team withheld certain evidence from defense lawyers. Convertino alleges the probe is retaliation for his recent cooperation with Congress.
Justice Department officials declined comment Monday, citing a gag order imposed by the judge in the Detroit case.
Goodman, the mayor, said he didn't learn about either tape until an AP story on Sunday. Clark County Undersheriff Doug Gillespie said he first learned about the Detroit footage during the Detroit trial in spring 2003 and found out about the Spanish tape afterward, but he confirmed two of his detectives had met with the FBI.
"They're saying we didn't do our job, and it is to the contrary. They had the information. They chose not to give it to us," Gillespie said of federal authorities.
FBI Special Agent Dave Nanz in Las Vegas said he could not speak about the specifics of the Detroit case but that "any credible information that we obtain from any source suggesting any terror threat to Las Vegas, we share with local law enforcement and security chiefs in the casinos."
Las Vegas has been considered a terror target since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks when it was determined that Mohammed Atta and his hijackers made trips there before their suicide attacks. But the extent of video surveillance hasn't received attention.
The owner of the Excalibur, one of the casinos in the videos, said Monday he had never been told. "You're giving me information I've never heard," said Glenn Schaeffer, president and chief financial officer of Mandalay Resort Group.
Yvette Monet, a spokeswoman for the MGM, declined to say if casino officials were invited to see the tape, simply stating, "We have always cooperated with state, local and federal authorities in dealing with these matters and we continue to do so today."
Homeland Security officials said Monday there is no imminent threat known to Las Vegas, although it remains a suspected target. They said the 2002 episode showed the need for the instant local alert system the department created last year.
Knowledge of the tapes reached the highest levels of Justice. The department's terrorism chief, Barry Sabin, referenced the casino footage in a memo to the FBI.
In late summer 2002, FBI agents discovered the casino footage when they belatedly decoded a European surveillance tape found a year earlier in the Detroit terror cell's apartment. A few weeks later, a Justice expert provided prosecutors similar surveillance that Spanish authorities had recovered from an al-Qaeda cell in Madrid.
When FBI supervisory agent Paul George flew to Las Vegas to show the Detroit tape, "the FBI, casino representatives, Clark County Sheriff's Department and the JTTF (joint terrorism task force) declined to attend," Assistant U.S. Attorney Keith Corbett wrote.
"No one showed up except for two Metro officers," Corbett added. "Indeed, the casinos informed Agent George that they did not want to show up because of concerns about liability."
In a series of e-mails, Convertino pleaded with Assistant U.S. Attorney Sharon Lever in Las Vegas to take the video footage seriously, even though local officials were cool to it. He noted two experts had concluded the tape matched other al-Qaeda surveillance.
"While I understand your previously stated concerns that the mayor of Las Vegas, the local sheriff and others believe our indictment may temporarily have a deleterious effect on the Las Vegas tourism industry, it is unconscionable that any reasonable person would assert that anyone here possessed a cavalier attitude toward the tape," Convertino wrote.
Prosecutors were allowed in spring 2003 to show the Detroit tape to jurors, but were kept by their superiors from introducing the Spanish tape.
Both tapes showed the three same hotels. The Excalibur, in fact, "was both shot inside and out, daytime and nighttime," according to one Justice document.
The Detroit tape had struck Justice's terror experts because it switched back and forth from scenes of Las Vegas to pre-Sept. 11 scenes of New York that included the World Trade Center and a hotel across from the twin towers.
A Justice expert wrote that both tapes followed the al-Qaeda training manual because "surveillance is inserted into seemingly innocent tourist videos" to disguise it.
A cooperating prosecution witness in Detroit told authorities that one member of the alleged terror cell described Las Vegas as the "City of Satan" and boasted "the brothers are going to destroy it."
Documents provided to U.S. authorities from Spain say the tape found in Madrid was taken by an al-Qaeda operative in August 1997 and later sent via courier to al-Qaeda's leaders in Afghanistan.
"This is the city of Las Vegas famous by the games and what else?" one of the Spanish operatives asks in a Spanish transcript of the tape.
"Gambling," another responded.
Later in the same conversation, one of the operatives states: "Look at the limousines. ... They are waiting for us to rent one of them. ... Let's go to the hotel since we finished filming the casinos and we made $100,000 tonight."

U.S. rapped for blowing spy's cover
BY CORKY SIEMASZKO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Mohammad Kahn
A captured Al Qaeda computer whiz was E-mailing his comrades as part of a sting operation to nab other top terrorists when U.S. officials blew his cover, sources said yesterday.
Within hours of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan's name being publicized Monday, British police launched lightning raids that netted a dozen suspected Al Qaeda terrorists, including one who was nabbed after a high-speed car chase.
Among those taken into custody was Abu Eisa Al Hindi, whose scouting of the New York Stock Exchange, the Citigroup Center and other financial sites for possible attacks prompted the latest orange alert terror warnings.
Now British and Pakistani intelligence officials are furious with the Americans for unmasking their super spy - apparently to justify the orange alert - and for naming the other captured terrorist suspects.
Pakistani Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat expressed dismay the trap they had hoped would lead to the capture of other top Al Qaeda leaders, possibly even Osama Bin Laden, was sprung too soon.
"The network is still not finished," Hayyat said. It "remains a potent threat to Pakistan, and to civilized humanity."
"It makes our job harder," a British security source said. British officials denied press reports yesterday that several suspects were able to escape the net.
The series of events that led to the capture of Khan and other key operatives began June 10 with a botched hit on a Pakistani general in Karachi that left 10 bystanders dead. Police tracked down the stolen getaway van and the owner gave them a description of the thieves.
Two days later, the Pakistanis raided a militant hideout along the Pakistani-Afghan border and nabbed nine people, including alleged ringleader Atta-ur Rahman and a young Pakistani named Shahzad Bajwa.
Rahman and Bajwa quickly pointed the police one rung up the Al Qaeda ladder to Abu Musab Al Baluchi, also known as Masrab Aruchi. Baluchi, a nephew of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, was nabbed that same day in Karachi.
On July 13, the Pakistanis nabbed Khan and seized his computers, which revealed that Al Qaeda was operating worldwide and had planned other Sept. 11-style attacks.
"His arrest was kept secret and he was made to remain in touch with his contacts," a Pakistani government official told The Times of London. "During his detention, he regularly communicated through E-mail with the Al Qaeda operatives in Britain and other countries. That helped us to identify them."
With Khan's help, the CIA and Pakistani intelligence officers were able to track down Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian wanted for the deadly 1998 East African embassy bombings.
Information from Khan and Ghailani's computers also was passed to the Brits, who laid traps for the Al Qaeda suspects in their midst.
The traps were abruptly sprung Monday, when Khan's name appeared in print.

Terrorist Warnings Another Ploy To Steal Election
By Jason Leopold
Assistant Editor
Online Journal
8-6-4
It's official. I'm a conspiracy theorist.
I'm probably one of thousands - maybe tens of thousands - who believe George W. Bush will do anything to retain control of the White House. It's not safe to have a healthy dose of skepticism like this these days. But this has to be said. I don't believe the country is going to be attacked by al-Qaeda anytime soon. I don't care how specific the so-called threat is. I don't care how many targets have been identified. I don't care how solid this new information is. I don't buy any of it. What I do believe is whenever Bush's approval ratings start slipping, the administration issues a terrorist warning saying an attack is imminent. Coincidence? I don't think so.
Consider the evidence.
This past Memorial Day weekend right through mid-June, Bush's approval ratings yo-yoed due to bad news coming out of the war in Iraq. By mid-June, 51 percent of Americans disapproved of the way Bush was handling the war in Iraq, up about four points from May, according to polling results from Zogby, Gallup and Pew.
Bush was taking a beating in the press in May and June because of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the high number of military casualties the U.S. suffered in Iraq. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, on May 26, Attorney General John Ashcroft held a press conference warning the public that al-Qaeda "wants to hit America hard." Ashcroft didn't release specific information because he didn't have any. He said that somewhere in this country seven al-Qaeda operatives were planning an attack. That's hardly information that warrants a press conference. His announcement didn't even elevate a change in the color-coded terrorist alert system. In fact, it was all a smokescreen to change the news cycle. It worked. Bush's numbers went back up soon after Ashcroft's press conference.
However, the Wall Street Journal reported a couple of days later that the Department of Homeland Security found that Ashcroft's dire warnings of an attack on American soil "had been known for some time" and "was not new or specific enough to merit an announcement or other action."
Ashcroft cried wolf on a half-dozen other occasions too; last July 4, last Christmas and right before the Super Bowl, to name a few. Those alleged terrorist threats identified banks, shopping malls, power plants and stadiums, obvious targets for a militant group that wants to rack up a high number of casualties.
So when Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge announced Sunday that terrorists want to blow up the New York Stock Exchange and the Citicorp building in Manhattan's financial district, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC, and the Prudential Building in Newark, NJ, the threat seemed more real, more imminent, because, for the first time, we got specific information. But as far as I'm concerned, the Bush administration picked those targets out of a hat. The only way this administration can rebuild its credibility is if one of those targets is blown up or an attack is thwarted.
Why? It just so happens that every single terrorist warning was issued whenever Bush's approval ratings lagged and when bad news was coming out of the war in Iraq, such as the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction, the huge financial cost of the war and a shortage of troops. Need evidence? Check pollingreport.com and then check the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department web sites and you'll see how the terrorist warnings were issued at the same time Bush started to fall behind in the polls.
The Australian newspaper, The Age, ran a Reuters story that quoted unnamed senior U.S. officials as saying that the constant flow of terrorist warnings since March 2003 "may also just be a ploy to shore up the president's [sic] job approval ratings or divert attention from the increasingly unpopular Iraq campaign."
A few weeks before the Democratic National Convention, The New Republic ran a story alleging that senior Pakistani intelligence officials were pressured by members of the Bush administration to make arrests of so-called high valued terrorists during the Democratic National Convention, in an attempt to boost Bush's standing in the polls during a time when John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, would have likely received a bounce in percentage points for his campaign.
The July 7 article, "July Surprise," said a Pakistani official was told by a White House aide "that it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT [high value targets] were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July.' - the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston."
That event actually occurred on July 29 when Reuters reported that an unidentified U.S. official confirmed that Pakistan arrested "a senior al Qaeda member wanted by the United States in connection with the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa" all of which lends credibility to the fact that the White House will do whatever it has to do to make sure Bush is elected.
Here's more proof. Last week, at the end of the Democratic National Convention a Newsweek poll showed Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry leading Bush in the polls 52 percent to 44 percent. Less than three days later, Ridge, Bush's Homeland Security chief, announces that al-Qaeda wants to blow up targets in New York, New Jersey and Washington, DC. The jury's still out on whether the latest terrorist alert will put Bush ahead of Kerry in the race for the White House.
Bush has said on numerous occasions that America is safer since the overthrow of Iraq's former dictator Saddam Hussein. But on Monday, Bush told reporters "America is in danger." Last Friday, while campaigning in Missouri and other battleground states Bush said, "America has turned a corner." Talk about flip-flopping.
- Jason Leopold is the former Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires where he spent two years covering the energy crisis and the Enron bankruptcy. He just finished writing a book about the crisis, due out in December through Rowman & Littlefield.

Millions in U.S. Face Mega-Wave from Island Collapse
Mon Aug 9, 2004
LONDON (Reuters) - The bad news is tens of millions of people along the eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada may drown if the slow slippage of a volcano off north Africa becomes a cataclysmic collapse.
But the good news is the world is not likely to be destroyed by an asteroid any time soon.
Scientist Bill McGuire told a news conference on natural disasters on Monday that some time in the next few thousand years the western flank of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Canary Island of La Palma will collapse, sending walls of water 100 meters high racing across the Atlantic.
A chunk of the volcano the size of a small island began to slide into the ocean in 1949. There is almost no monitoring of the volcano, giving virtually no chance of any advance warning of another eruption which could trigger the catastrophe.
"The U.S. government must be aware of the threat. I am sure they are not taking it seriously," McGuire of the Benfield Grieg Hazard Research Center told reporters. "They certainly should be worried, as should the island states of the Caribbean."
He said the giant tidal wave or Tsunami triggered by such a collapse would hit the other islands of the Spanish-owned Canaries within an hour and reach the north African coast within two hours.
Between seven and 10 hours later, waves still several tens of meters tall and traveling at the speed of a jet plane would be swamping the Caribbean and crashing into the eastern seaboards of South and North America.
McGuire urged the governments of Spain and the United States to fund monitoring of the volcanically active La Palma -- a project he said could be achieved relatively cheaply.
He said the slow collapse -- started by an eruption in 1949 -- would almost certainly be turned catastrophic by another eruption of the volcano which erupts every 25 to 200 years.
The last eruption was in 1971, and prior to 1949, the previous eruption was in 1712.
"A future president of the United States must make a call on what to do when La Palma collapses," he said.
On a brighter note, scientist Benny Peiser of John Moores University in Liverpool told the same news conference that the threat of a cataclysmic strike on the earth by a large asteroid was fading rapidly as money was pumped into finding them.
Within 10 to 30 years, all the near-earth asteroids will have been charted. Scientists believe they can find a way to steer an asteroid out of the way of the earth, as long as they have enough warning it is coming.
That leaves the field clear for Hollywood to move on to volcanic eruptions and tsunami for the next generation of apocalyptic movies.

REPUBLICANS PLAN PUSH FOR ELIMINATION OF IRS
8/2/04
**Exclusive**
A domestic centerpiece of the Bush/GOP agenda for a second Bush term is getting rid of the Internal Revenue Service, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
The Speaker of the House will push for replacing the nation's current tax system with a national sales tax or a value added tax, Hill sources tell DRUDGE.
"People ask me if I’m really calling for the elimination of the IRS, and I say I think that’s a great thing to do for future generations of Americans," Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert explains in his new book, to be released on Wednesday.
"Pushing reform legislation will be difficult. Change of any sort seldom comes easy. But these changes are critical to our economic vitality and our economic security abroad," Hastert declares in SPEAKER: LESSONS FROM FORTY YEARS IN COACHING AND POLITICS.
"“If you own property, stock, or, say, one hundred acres of farmland and tax time is approaching, you don’t want to make a mistake, so you’re almost obliged to go to a certified public accountant, tax preparer, or tax attorney to help you file a correct return. That costs a lot of money. Now multiply the amount you have to pay by the total number of people who are in the same boat. You can’t. No one can because precise numbers don’t exist. But we can stipulate that we’re talking about a huge amount. Now consider that a flat tax, national sales tax, or VAT would not only eliminate the need to do this, it could also eliminate the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) itself and make the process of paying taxes much easier."
"By adopting a VAT, sales tax, or some other alternative, we could begin to change productivity. If you can do that, you can change gross national product and start growing the economy. You could double the economy over the next fifteen years. All of a sudden, the problem of what future generations owe in Social Security and Medicare won’t be so daunting anymore. The answer is to grow the economy, and the key to doing that is making sure we have a tax system that attracts capital and builds incentives to keep it here instead of forcing it out to other nations."

Sources: Al Qaeda Plotting to Attack New York City Corporations
N E W Y O R K, July 31, 2004 — ABC News has learned that federal and New York City officials have received credible intelligence that al Qaeda has been plotting to carry out suicide attacks on corporations based in the city.
Sources at several law enforcement agencies tell ABC News that an "overseas source" has provided the information about the threat to New York and that it is more significant than the usual "chatter" intercepted from likely terrorists that has prompted warnings in the past.
Officials from dozens of local and federal agencies met into the night Friday and again this morning.
"Intelligence reporting indicates that al Qaeda continues to target for attack commercial and financial institutions, as well as international organizations, inside the United States," the New York City Police Department said in a statement released today on the "ongoing al Qaeda threat."
"The NYPD recommends that corporate and institutional security directors review their protection of HVAC systems, parking installations, and security in general," the statement added. "The alert level for New York City remains unchanged at 'orange' or 'high.'"
Border Worries
Intelligence sources say al Qaeda plans to move non-Arab terrorists across the border with Mexico.
Authorities already have in custody a woman of Pakistani-origin arrested after crossing into Texas. She carried a South African passport with several of the pages torn out, $7,000 in cash and an airplane ticket to New York.
New York is already on heightened alert for the Republican National Convention, which meets at Madison Square Garden in a month and will bring scores of high government officials to town.
The sources tell ABC News that Wall Street firms may be among the targeted U.S. corporations based in New York City. Which corporations or how many may be targeted has not been revealed.
Suicide Truck Bombings
Particularly disturbing to authorities were the intelligence reports that the attack may involve one or more suicide truck bombings, a tactic never seen in the United States, but one widely used by terrorists elsewhere.
"I think they want to try and shake our psyche again," says Jerry Hauer, an ABC News consultant and former director of New York City's Office of Emergency Management. "And I think the easy types of attacks right now are car bombs, truck bombs."
Law enforcement officials acknowledge such bombs are extremely difficult to prevent.
As to the timing of any planned attack, sources say it could take place between now and Election Day in November.
As the government tries to verify the reports of the threat, there are no plans to raise the national threat level, a senior Bush administration official tells ABC News.

Alaska Volcano Stirs From 12-Year Slumber
7/29/04
ANCHORAGE (AP) - Mount Spurr is showing some life these days, 12 years after the volcano last erupted. The Alaska Volcano Observatory this week raised its official level of concern to yellow, signifying an eruption is possible in the next few weeks.
A swarm of tiny earthquakes has been rumbling beneath the mountain across Cook Inlet 80 miles west of Anchorage.
The series of earthquakes don't necessarily presage an eruption of Spurr, according to scientists. The volcano was last significantly active in 1992 and, in an August explosion that year, spread a thin layer of ash over Anchorage.
"The most likely scenario," geophysicist John Power said, "is that the earthquakes will die off."
Eruptions, however, most often follow just such a pattern of quakes, said Power, who works for the U.S. Geological Survey, one of three federal and state partners in the Anchorage-based observatory.
The current activity is different from the swarm that preceded the 1992 eruptions, according to the observatory. The earthquakes then occurred deep below Crater Peak, one of two main vents.
The mountain's recent activity began slowly in February and intensified on July 4. An average of 20 quakes are now occurring every day, a rate higher than at any time since 1992. The temblors occur as deep as four miles below the surface.
Eleven sensors at locations on Mount Spurr pick up the smallest earth shudders, Power said. The largest recent quake, at 8 p.m. July 12, measured only 1.4 in magnitude.
The quakes are the only confirmed volcanic activity at Spurr so far, indicative of the movement deep below the mountain of magma, or molten rock and gases, that is beginning to seek an outlet, according to Power. If the magma should rise farther up long vents toward the surface, observers might detect heating, ground swelling and fumaroles at the top, he said.
Scientists received a pilot's report on July 11 of a sulfur smell and steam coming from the volcano, but the sighting could not be confirmed, partly because of cloud cover, Power said.
Mount Spurr is one of more than 40 active Alaska volcanoes along an arc of mountains and islands from the Tordrillo Mountains south and west to the far Aleutians.

Greenland ice-melt 'speeding up'
By David Shukman
BBC environment and science correspondent in Greenland
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/europe/3922579.stm
2004/07/28
First you hear a savage cracking sound, next the rolling crash of thunder.
Then as the icebergs rip away from the margin of the ice-sheet they plunge into the grey waters of the Atlantic with a roar that echoes around the mountains.
Nothing prepares you for the sheer scale and drama of events in this forbidding terrain and all the signs are that the changes at work here are gathering pace.
The only way to reach the ice-sheet is by helicopter - a spectacular flight through remote fjords and the jagged blue-white rubble of the ice.
We travelled with Danish scientist Carl Boggild of GEUS, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.
For the past few years he has been managing a network of 10 automatic monitoring stations and his first results are alarming - the edges of the ice-sheet are melting up to 10 times more rapidly than earlier research had indicated.
Cracks and crevasses
In 2001 NASA scientists published a major study based on observations by satellite and aircraft.
It concluded that the margins of the Greenland ice-sheet were dropping in height at a rate of roughly one metre a year.
Now, amid some of the most hostile conditions anywhere on the planet, Carl Boggild and his team have recorded falls as dramatic as 10 metres a year - in places the ice is dropping at a rate of one metre a month.
The glacier we visited - the Sermilik glacier in southern Greenland - is so volatile that one automatic monitoring station was lost into a yawning crevasse.
Between a maintenance visit in May and our visit this month, new cracks had opened up in the icy surface and we had to help shift one of the devices to a safer position.
Engravings from the late 19th Century show how the glacier once reached far into the ocean and satellite pictures highlight how the retreat has accelerated - the glacier dropping an astounding 150 metres in the last 15 years.
The latest data shows the melting picking up even more speed.
Heating up?
A vicious wind whipping across 2,000 kilometres of solid ice - the length of the Greenland ice-sheet - chilled us as we filmed.
But the feeling of cold was ironic - it is the rise in air temperatures recorded here that is at least partly responsible for the sudden acceleration of the melting.
Dr Boggild and his colleagues, studying the physics of how the air and ice relate, conclude that as much as 55% of the melting is attributable to warming in the air.
He is cautious to avoid blaming climate change too readily: "Maybe if we look back after 50 years and see how temperatures have risen, then we can call it climate change."
Sea level rise
Dr Boggild is all too aware of how easily he could be accused of jumping onto a climate change bandwagon.
But he is adamant that the results he has gathered so far are reliable.
"We can say for certain that the rate of melting has increased and we can say for certain that the height of the ice-sheet is falling, even allowing for increased ice-flow.
"There is no doubt that something very major is happening here."
As we speak, he checks the instruments on the automatic station. A large range of data is collected and transmitted via satellite to Copenhagen every six hours.
For the first time, scientists should have a long-term, on-the-ground view of the changes taking place here.
Just before we leave, there is another roar as more icebergs crash into the ocean
Many more icebergs falling into the sea will cause two things to happen - the sea-level will rise and the injection of freshwater could disrupt the ocean currents, including the Gulf Stream.
What happens in this remote barren land has the potential to affect us all.

Disaster at sea: global warming hits UK birds
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=546138
30 July 2004
Hundreds of thousands of Scottish seabirds have failed to breed this summer in a wildlife catastrophe which is being linked by scientists directly to global warming.
The massive unprecedented collapse of nesting attempts by several seabird species in Orkney and Shetland is likely to prove the first major impact of climate change on Britain.
In what could be a sub-plot from the recent disaster movie, The Day After Tomorrow, a rise in sea temperature is believed to have led to the mysterious disappearance of a key part of the marine food chain - the sandeel, the small fish whose great teeming shoals have hitherto sustained larger fish, marine mammals and seabirds in their millions.
In Orkney and Shetland, the sandeel stocks have been shrinking for several years, and this summer they have disappeared: the result for seabirds has been mass starvation. The figures for breeding failure, for Shetland in particular, almost defy belief.
More than 172,000 breeding pairs of guillemots were recorded in the islands in the last national census, Seabird 2000, whose results were published this year; this summer the birds have produced almost no young, according to Peter Ellis, Shetland area manager for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).
Martin Heubeck of Aberdeen University, who has monitored Shetland seabirds for 30 years, said: "The breeding failure of the guillemots is unprecedented in Europe." More than 6,800 pairs of great skuas were recorded in Shetland in the same census; this year they have produced a handful of chicks - perhaps fewer than 10 - while the arctic skuas (1,120 pairs in the census) have failed to produce any surviving young.
The 24,000 pairs of arctic terns, and the 16,700 pairs of Shetland kittiwakes - small gulls - have "probably suffered complete failure", said Mr Ellis.
In Orkney the picture is very similar, although detailed figures are not yet available. "It looks very bad," said the RSPB's warden on Orkney mainland, Andy Knight. "Very few of the birds have raised any chicks at all."
The counting and monitoring is still going on and the figures are by no means complete: it is likely that puffins, for example, will also have suffered massive breeding failure but because they nest deep in burrows, this is not immediately obvious.
But the astonishing scale of what has taken place is already clear - and the link to climate change is being openly made by scientists. It is believed that the microscopic plankton on which tiny sandeel larvae feed are moving northwards as the sea water warms, leaving the baby fish with nothing to feed on.
This is being seen in the North Sea in particular, where the water temperature has risen by 2C in the past 20 years, and where the whole ecosystem is thought to be undergoing a "regime shift", or a fundamental alteration in the interaction of its component species. "Think of the North Sea as an engine, and plankton as the fuel driving it," said Euan Dunn of the RSPB, one of the world's leading experts on the interaction of fish and seabirds. "The fuel mix has changed so radically in the past 20 years, as a result of climate change, that the whole engine is now spluttering and starting to malfunction. All of the animals in the food web above the plankton, first the sandeels, then the larger fish like cod, and ultimately the seabirds, are starting to be affected."
Research last year clearly showed that the higher the temperature, the less sandeels could maintain their population level, said Dr Dunn. "The young sandeels are simply not surviving."
Although over-fishing of sandeels has caused breeding failures in the past, the present situation could not be blamed on fishing, he said. The Shetland sandeel fishery was catching so few fish that it was closed as a precautionary measure earlier this year. "Climate change is a far more likely explanation."
The spectacular seabird populations of the Northern Isles have a double importance. They are of great value scientifically, holding, for example, the world's biggest populations of great skuas. And they are of enormous value to Orkney and Shetland tourism, being the principal draw for many visitors. The national and international significance of what has happened is only just beginning to dawn on the wider political and scientific community, but some leading figures are already taking it on board.
"This is an incredible event," said Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth. "The catastrophe [of these] seabirds is just a foretaste of what lies ahead.
"It shows that climate change is happening now, [with] devastating consequences here in Britain, and it shows that reducing the pollution causing changes to the earth's climate should now be the global number one political priority."

Bush Promises Regime In Iran If Re-Elected
The Sunday Herald - UK
http://www.sundayherald.com/43461
7-19-4
President George Bush has promised that if re-elected in November he will make regime change in Iran his new target.
Bush named Iran as part of the Axis of Evil along with North Korea and Iraq almost three years ago. A US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that military action would not be overt in changing Iran, but rather that the US would work to stir revolts in the country and hope to topple the current conservative religious leadership.
The official said: "If George Bush is re-elected there will be much more intervention in the internal affairs of Iran."
The Iranian government announced this weekend that it had successfully eradicated all al-Qaeda cells operating in the country, but the statement comes as leaked reports from the US September 11 Commission show definite links between Iran and the September 11 terrorists.
The final report from the cross-party inquiry, which is examining the origins of the September 11 attacks, is believed to contain concrete evidence of contacts between al-Qaeda and Iran.
Time magazine reports that at least eight of the hijackers, who lived in the US for months before the attacks, passed through Iran between October 2000 and February 2001 apparently with help from the Iranian authorities.
Known al-Qaeda members also seem to have been allowed to cross in and out of Iran freely across the Afghan border, with Iranian border guards being told not to stamp the passports of al-Qaeda operatives, harass them or hinder their ability to travel freely.
The report is thought to hint that Iranian officials were ordered to assist al-Qaeda operatives with any travel needs.
The September 11 Commission report will, however, stop short of stating that Iran was aware of the plans for the September 11 attacks.
Tehran has always officially denied helping members of al-Qaeda escape from Afghan istan in 2001 when the Taliban regime fell.
State television in Iran yesterday showed the country's intelligence minister announcing the capture of a number of al-Qaeda supporters.
Ali Yunesi said: "Iran's intelligence apparatus has identified and arrested small Iranian deviate branches of the al-Qaeda group." There was no clarification on how many people had been arrested or charged.
Yunesi warned that Iran would take a tough line against militants using Iran as a base. "Those who seek to misuse the safe situation in Iran will face serious consequences," he said.
The Iranian government says it has arrested and repatriated hundreds of al-Qaeda suspects in the past two years in a display of willingness to bring terrorism in the Middle East under control.
A suspected Saudi al-Qaeda militant, Khaled al-Harbi, who appeared in a videotape with Osama bin Laden, gave himself up in Iran last week, and was flown back to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
On Friday US officials said the next stage of the September 11 Commission's report would be available this week.
There was embarrassment for the Bush administration last week when it emerged a tight deadline was being pushed for the capture of Osama bin Laden to generate headlines during the Democratic Convention when presidential rival John Kerry will be grabbing the limelight.
Pakistani security forces have apparently been given deadlines to capture bin Laden that are before the US general election in November, according to US sources.

NGOs Claim Israeli Agent Barkan In North Korea
Monday, 19 July 2004, 3:23 pm
Scoop
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0407/S00141.htm
Zev Barkan the suspected Israeli Mossad agent on the run from New Zealand Police has been sighted in North Korea, according to an Asian-based NGO closely linked to New Zealand intelligence networks.
Information provided to Scoop states Zev William Barkan turned up in Pyongyang as an Israeli security adviser in April, within weeks of fleeing from New Zealand prior to a suspected Israeli spy ring being sprung for attempting to illegally acquire a New Zealand passport.
Zev William Barkan (37), possibly a false name, also answers to the name Jay, was staying at a flat in Sandringham, Auckland City. New Zealand authorities believe he has left New Zealand. Zev Barkan remains wanted by New Zealand Police for allegedly attempting to illegally obtain a New Zealand passport. Barkan is a short, solid built, Caucasian male, has thick black hair, an American accent, said he was from Washington DC, worked for a windows and doors company, and was in New Zealand to do a sailing course. Barkan was last known to be in New Zealand March 3 to 20.
This weekend, international Non-Government-Organisations, including Global Protect All Children, have gathered for a conference in Tokyo Japan to discuss a crisis involving North Korean refugees.
Information was released at the conference suggesting Israeli agents, including Barkan, had entered into North Korea under the guise of security consultants to help North Korea build a "security wall" to keep its people in.
Overnight (New Zealand time), in an address to the conference, a senior NGO chief executive with Global-Protect All Children said: " Barkan is there (In Pyongyang) negotiating details of an extensive contract for design and technical equipment to support (a security wall) project, including- but by no means limited to - Israeli produced motion sensors and night vision equipment."
In discussions with Scoop, the chief executive said: "Barkan flew from Beijing to Pyongyang at the end of April. He was allegedly travelling on a Canadian passport issued in the name of Kevin Hunter, which had been reported stolen at the Canadian Consulate in the Southern Chinese city of Guangzhou in mid April."
It is believed North Korean and Israeli experts are conducting a "feasibility study" on the construction of a security fence along the 1500 KM North Korea China border. Brussels based NGO contacts attached to Human Rights Without Frontiers tipped off other NGOs to the North Korean plans.
Scoop contacts with intelligence connections in Asia, said Barkan was also connected to an Israeli security company operating out of Thailand.
On Thursday July 15, two Israeli men suspected of being involved in an Israeli intelligence passport acquiring scam were sentenced to six months imprisonment respectively in the Auckland High Court.
Uriel Zoshe Kelman and Eli Cara had earlier pleaded guilty to charges of attempting to illegally gain a New Zealand passport.
New Zealand High Court Judge, Justice Judith Potter, said: "It's difficult to see why anyone would want a false New Zealand passport unless it was intended to be used in a way ancillary to some other offending." She said: "That offending is likely to be serious or perhaps very serious."
Cara and Kelman, were also ordered to pay a combined NZ $100,000 to a cerebral palsy charity.
The two men were suspected of being aligned to a Mossad ring seeking to illegally obtain a New Zealand passport for a third man, know as Zev Barkan. Barkan had fled the country prior to a police sting in March that ended in the arrest of Kelman and Cara as they tried to collect a passport in the name of a wheelchair-bound cerebral palsy victim.
After the sentencing, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said there were very strong reasons to believe that the two Israelis convicted on charges relating to a fraudulent attempt to obtain a New Zealand passport were acting on behalf of Israel’s intelligence services.
"Israel is a country with which New Zealand has long had friendly relations. The New Zealand government views the act carried out by the Israeli intelligence agents as not only utterly unacceptable but also a breach of New Zealand sovereignty and international law. The Israeli agents attempted to demean the integrity of the New Zealand passport system and could have created considerable difficulties for New Zealanders presenting their passports overseas in future," Helen Clark said.
She added: "New Zealand condemns without reservation these actions by agencies of the Israel government. The Israel government was asked for an explanation and an apology three months ago. Neither has been received."
As a result, New Zealand moved to sever ties with Israel.
The move included:
• New Zealand suspending high-level visits from and to Israel;
• Any approach by Israel for its head of state, President Katsov, to visit New Zealand in August, in association with a proposed visit to Australia, to be declined;
• Israelis visiting New Zealand in any official government capacity will be required to apply for visas;
• Foreign Ministry consultations with Israel, due later this year, will be suspended;
• Approval for appointment of the new Israeli ambassador will be delayed and accreditation visits to Israel suspended meantime;
• Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials, and Ministers, will observe strict constraints on contact with Israel's honorary consuls.
"As will be apparent from these steps, the breach of New Zealand laws and sovereignty by agents of the Israeli government has seriously strained our relationship with Israel,” Helen Clark said.
Police found that Kelman, Cara and another two individuals had been operating in Auckland since November 2003. Cara had traveled in and out of New Zealand 24 times since October 2000.

Second Editor Killed In 10 Days As Fear Grips Moscow
The Independent - UK
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=542365
7-19-4
MOSCOW -- Russia's jittery foreign press corps was plunged into mourning yesterday for the second time in as many weeks after another foreign journalist was murdered in Moscow.
The killing of Paila Peloyan, the Armenian editor of the Russian-language monthly, Armenian Lane, comes barely a week after Paul Klebnikov, the US editor of the Russian version of Forbes magazine, was gunned down in cold blood. Nobody has been arrested for his murder.
Mr Peloyan's body was found dumped by the side of the city's outer ring road or MKAD far from the city centre on Saturday morning.
He had multiple stab wounds in the chest and had been savagely beaten; his skull was cracked and his face covered in blood and bruises.
Information about his last movements is sketchy, though he is known to have died between two and three o'clock on Saturday morning and his body lay undiscovered for at least four hours.
Investigators say they have crawled over the crime scene in order to try to find out what happened and prosecutors have opened a criminal case into the killing.
They are not ruling out the possibility that Mr Peloyan was murdered because of his professional activity.
In contrast to the late Mr Klebnikov, however, Mr Peloyan's work appears relatively uncontroversial. While the dead American journalist made waves by publicising the names of Russia's wealthiest people and delving into their often insalubrious financial affairs, Mr Peloyan's magazine was an arts publication.
Moscow's Armenian diaspora, Armenian Lanecarried features about literature, the arts and history and included prose and poetry from Armenian writers. Nobody was answering the phones at the magazine's Moscow office yesterday.
That Mr Peloyan's murder comes so soon after that of Mr Klebnikov is likely to unsettle foreign and Russian journalists alike. Mr Klebnikov was killed in a drive-by shooting by at least two gunmen and died in a hail of bullets just yards from his office. His murder had all the hallmarks of a contract killing.
An online news site, the Russia Journal, spoke yesterday of "an undeclared war against media representatives" and claimed that Russian and foreign journalists had become an endangered species in Moscow.
It said: "These two senseless killings have once again put the issue of journalists' safety in Russia back on the agenda and raised well-founded concerns among representatives of the fourth estate.
"This is not because killing journalists is a rarity in Moscow or in Russia at large but two murders of journalists in less than 10 days in a city that is not at war is something unusual, even by Russian standards." The Russian media itself made far less of Mr Peloyan's murder, possibly because as an Armenian hailing from a part of the former Soviet Union once ruled by the Russians, he would not be considered a bona fide foreigner like Mr Klebnikov.
It is estimated that two million Armenians live in Russia and the two countries have a close relationship going back hundreds of years. Officials at the Armenian embassy in Moscow said that they were profoundly shocked by Mr Peloyan's murder. "Naturally we learnt of this information with great regret," Armen Gevondyan, the embassy press secretary, told Interfax news agency.
"We are taking all the measures we can together with Russia's law enforcement authorities to ascertain the circumstances of Mr Peloyan's death." Mr Peloyan is the 16th journalist to be murdered in Russia since 2000 when Vladimir Putin assumed the presidency. The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists says the country is one of the deadliest places to be a reporter. It addressed an open letter to Mr Putin after Mr Klebnikov's killing, complaining about "the climate of lawlessness and impunity".
"Cases [of journalists being killed] have not been properly investigated or prosecuted, a testament to the ongoing lawlessness in Russia and your failure to reform the country's weak and politicised criminal justice system," it said.
JOURNALISTS MURDERED IN RUSSIA
Paul Klebnikov, editor of 'Forbes' magazine (Russian edition)
Age: 41
Died: 9 July 2004
Gunned down from passing car while leaving office in Moscow. Had exposed workings of the country's shadowy billionaires
Aleksei Sidorov, editor-in-chief of 'Tolyatinskoye Obozreniye'
Age: 31
Died: 9 October 2003
Stabbed several times in the chest by unidentified assailant outside home. Newspaper known for investigative reporting on organised crime, government corruption and shady corporate deals
Valery Ivanov, editor-in-chief of 'Tolyatinskoye Obozreniye'
Age: 32
Died: 29 April 2002
Shot eight times in head at point-blank range by assassin using a pistol with a silencer. Murdered in Togliatti after paper exposed controversial business deals linked to organised crime and government corruption
Natalya Skryl, business reporter, 'Nashe Vremya'
Age: 29
Died: 9 March 2002
The reporter was repeatedly struck on the head while returning home in Rostov-on-Don late at night. She was investigating a struggle for the control of Tagmet, a local metallurgical plant. Just before her death, Ms Skryl told colleagues that she had obtained sensitive information about the story and was planning to publish it
Eduard Markevich, editor and publisher of 'Novy Reft'
Age: 29
Died: 18 September 2001
Shot in the back. The paper, in the Sverdlovsk region, often criticised local officials. Mr Markevich received threatening calls before the fatal attack
Igor Domnikov, reporter and special projects editor of 'Novaya Gazeta'
Age: 42
Died: 16 July 2000
Died in Moscow two months after being attacked by an unidentified assailant and left lying in pool of blood in the entryway of his apartment building. His colleagues and police were initially certain the attack was related to his professional activity or that of the newspaper. It was also believed for a while that the assailant mistook Mr Domnikov for a Novaya Gazeta investigative reporter, Oleg Sultanov, who lived in the same building. Mr Sultanov claimed to have received threats from the Federal Security Service for reporting on corruption in the Russian oil industry
Natalya Skryl, business reporter, 'Nashe Vremya'
Age: 29
Died: 9 March 2002
The reporter was repeatedly struck on the head while returning home in Rostov-on-Don late at night. She was investigating a struggle for the control of Tagmet, a local metallurgical plant. Just before her death, Ms Skryl told colleagues that she had obtained sensitive information about the story and was planning to publish it
Eduard Markevich, editor and publisher of 'Novy Reft'
Age: 29
Died: 18 September 2001
Shot in the back. The paper, in the Sverdlovsk region, often criticised local officials. Mr Markevich received threatening calls before the fatal attack
Igor Domnikov, reporter and special projects editor of
'Novaya Gazeta'
Age: 42
Died: 16 July 2000
Died in Moscow two months after being attacked by an unidentified assailant and left lying in pool of blood in the entryway of his apartment building. His colleagues and police were initially certain the attack was related to his professional activity or that of the newspaper. It was also believed for a while that the assailant mistook Mr Domnikov for a Novaya Gazeta investigative reporter, Oleg Sultanov, who lived in the same building. Mr Sultanov claimed to have received threats from the Federal Security Service for reporting on corruption in the Russian oil industry
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=542365

Another Bird Mystery
By Michael Goodspeed
Thunderbolts.info
7-20-4
First, we heard of the 30,000 pelicans mysteriously vanishing from a North Dakota wildlife refuge.
Then, there was the story of pelicans in Arizona "dive-bombing" head first into asphalt, supposedly mistaking the "shimmering" heat-effected roads for water.
In the last several days, two new stories have emerged which suggest that some unexplained phenomena is profoundly effecting the "sensors" of birds.
In Point Roberts, WA, an enitre heron colony has simply "vanished into thin air." Herons are enormous birds, and are easy to spot from the air. But a team of biologists that checked in on the colony a few weeks earlier and found that the birds were healthy and thriving, reported last week that the herons, and even their nests, have simply "vanished."
According to Ann Eissinger, the foremost expert on the Point Roberts heron colony, "There were at least a hundred active pairs with young. We don't know what happened to them. The birds just disappeared," she said.
As reported by the Northwest Cable News Network's Gary Chittim, "And while biologists try to figure out where the birds went, the bigger, more serious question is: Why did they leave?" (Source: http://www.nwcn.com/sharedcontent/northwest/e
nvironment/stories/NW_071404ENBheronsKC.2fb56145c.html
As if all that is not enough...we now have another disturbing development involving pelicans.
According to a new report on Reuters, California's endangered brown pelicans are "mysteriously starving to death during a bumper year for anchovies, their preferred prey....Hundreds of the ungainly sea birds appear to have flown off course in search of food...with young pelicans turning up in Arizona deserts...." (Source: http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=sci
enceNews&storyID=5710549§ion=news)
Why are these pelicans flying off course?
What caused the healthy, thriving heron colony to "mysteriously vanish?" And what of the 30,000 pelicans who abandoned their nests and eggs and simply disappeared without a trace?
Are these animals being effected by electromagnetic influences that scientists do not fully understand? We have the recent report from the NY Times of the "collapse" of the earth's magnetic field. Some are even speculating that we are undergoing a "reversal" of the magnetic field, which obviously would profoundly effect migratory animals.
These four bird mysteries which have manifested in a span of WEEKS count as extraordinary evidence that something is happening electromagnetically on our planet. Does the scientific Establishment have any answers for these anomalies...or are we simply going to be left with more questions?

1,500 Of 2,000 Homing Pigeons Lost During Race
7-23-4
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - Organizers of a race for homing pigeons were still scratching their heads in wonder Thursday after about 1,500 of the birds, famous for their ability to find their way home, went missing during the contest.
Of the 2,000 pigeons let loose last week, only about 500 have returned to their lofts after the 150-kilometer (93 mile) flight between the cities of Ljungby and Malmoe in southern Sweden, said Lars-Aake Nilsson of the Malmoe Homing Pigeon Club.
"The weather was perfect - no rain, no thunder and no strong winds," he said.
In past races, the birds, all of which sport electronic identification tags around their feet, made the journey in about two hours.
But at Sunday's race, something went wrong.
"I have worked with pigeons since 1960 and have never experienced anything like this," Nilsson said, adding that the birds might have been thrown off course by subtle changes in the earth's magnetic field.
The pigeons have a natural homing instinct and are believed to navigate by the sun and the magnetic waves of the earth, Nilsson said.
"And even though some are lost to hawks or hazards like power lines along the way, many more should have made it back home. It's a mystery," he added.
He said there have been no reported sightings of the missing birds anywhere in southern Sweden. He declined to say how much the birds were worth.
"It's not so much the economic value as it is a loss to the sport," Nilsson said. "It takes about two years to breed a racing pigeon."

1,000 Loose Chickens Create Highway Chaos
7/24/04
LONDON (AP) - A busy highway near Oxford in central England was closed in both directions Friday when around 1,000 chickens escaped from a truck that collided with four other vehicles, injuring four people.
``They were all over the carriageway,'' said a spokesman for Thames Valley Police.
The birds' escape could be short-lived: Thousands of shooting enthusiasts, game keepers and falconers are in the area for a game fair organized by the Country Land and Business Association.
``We are going to ask (them) if there are any wagons or nets that we can use to get the chickens together,'' said the police spokesman, who spoke with customary anonymity.

EXCERPT from conspiracy-mongering RENSE.com
Magnetic Pole Shift May Be Underway
I've lived in this same home since 1982. This is approximately 350 miles north-west of NYC. Whenever I've randomly checked it before, the north pole has always read in the same location on a compass. Today I checked it and It appears to have shifted sometime in the past year or so.
It has moved about 5 degrees eastward. I'm located out in the country as shown in the attached satellite photo. There aren't any towers, buildings, steel or anything new in the home to cause this change. Although the annotated picture doesn't have a calibrated scale, the measured shift is 5 degrees east. This shift appears to be outside the normal magnetic deviation one might expect over a geologically short period of time, such as 6 months.
A friend of mine with a combination GPS and compass receiver did a measurement from his home near Columbia, SC today. He too, observed a shift of 5 degrees east. He is a former airforce officer and pilot, and tells me this is an unusual deviation over a short time period. He said his last check on this was about 6 months ago. Columbia is approximately 600 miles almost exactly due south of here.

Wacky Summer Weather
17-Jul-2004
http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=3955
Extreme weather continues to strike without warning around the world and global warming is front page news in many countries. In the U.S., we have to rely on our local weather reports, and have no way of knowing that our bizarre, unseasonable weather is being repeated around the globe. There are major floods in areas around the world and Europe, which had a killing heat wave last summer, now has winter in July.
Edmunton Alberta Click to Enlarge
Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Taiwan, southern China, India, the city of Edmonton in Alberta, Canada, Japan and New Jersey have all experienced extraordinary flooding within the past two weeks. Last week Edmonton, Alberta, experienced a "once in 200 years" storm with 45 inches of rain and hail that buried parts of the city under tons of ice.
July 13 was an ominous day for flooding: a ferocious thunderstorm similar in violence to the Edmonton storm swept across Shanghai, killing seven and sinking a cargo ship. In Southeast Asia, the worst monsoon flooding in memory has killed thousands and left over five million people homeless across India, Bangladesh and Nepal. A typhoon has killed at least 50 people in the Philippines and Taiwan, and left a quarter of a million homeless.
Also on the 13th, there was a 17-inch downpour in northwestern Japan, killing at least five people. Again, the rains were sudden and intense, and the sudden flooding overcame people in low-lying areas, in areas that had never experienced these kinds of floods before. On the same day, more that a foot of rain fell in a few hours in New Jersey. The flooding was so fast that, as in Edmonton, people had to flee their cars to escape rising water. The flood zone extended into Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Meanwhile, Europeans from Oslo to Budapest are having snowball fights in July. Europeans feared a repeat of last year's killer heat wave, and southern Europe has indeed experienced some intense heat. But most Europeans have had temperatures that are about half what they were last year. Read the CNN Report.
In the U.K., people are turning on their central heating. Elliot Frisby, of the VisitBritain tourism board, says, "We don't sell Britain as a sun, sea and sand destination."
Swedish ice cream maker Ingemar Folkeson is laying off workers. Danish ice cream maker Lars Fenner says sales are "10 to 15% below normal."
In Vienna, Hubert Pichler, who works in an outdoor amusement park, says, "I already made 10% less business in May and in June I was down almost 30%. We've only had three days of real summer this year..."
15,000 people died in France in last year's heat wave, so the government spent $82 million to install air conditioners in retirement homes, but most of them haven't even been turned on yet.
North Atlantic Water Temperature
Surface water temperatures abnormally low for season.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gulf Stream Flow
Gulf Stream appears to have dropped south as of June, 2004
http://www.unknowncountry.com/edge/quickwatch/
Superstorm QuickWatch Monitor

Wacky Weather on the Sun
17-Jul-2004
http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=3954
One reason for the wild summer weather around the globe could be that the sun is experiencing it as well. July of 2004 has seen some unusual solar weather. The sunspot count as of July 17 was 142. A few days ago, sunspot 649, larger than Jupiter emitted an X-3 class solar flare and sent a coronal mass ejection toward earth.
Scientists are unsure about the precise dynamics of how solar activity affects earth weather, but CMEs are believed to heat the atmosphere, and there is some evidence that they can caused localized surface heating as well, and may even be implicated in wildfires.
The sun is now more active than it has been for hundreds of years. For example, last October, three giant sunspots appeared that emitted powerful CMEs toward earth. In California, smoke from wildfires dimmed the sun enough for people to look straight at it, revealing huge blotches on the sun’s surface. One of them, "sunspot 486," was the biggest in 13 years. It has been speculated that the worldwide upsurge in wildfires that took place in October and November in the US, Siberia, Europe and Africa might have been due in part to solar effects.
On November 4th, sunspot 486 unleashed an X28 flare—the most powerful ever recorded. NASA's David Hathaway says, "In 1989 a flare about half that strong caused a widespread power blackout in Quebec." Solar protons penetrated Earth's upper atmosphere, exposing astronauts and some air travelers to radiation doses equal to a medical chest X-ray. Radio communications were disrupted and auroras appeared in places where they'd never been seen before. Since this happened at the point in the 11-year solar cycle when activity usually declines, scientists are asking themselves if something has changed on the sun.
"Nothing's wrong," says Hathaway. "These latest sunspots were whoppers, but sunspot counts averaged over many weeks are still declining as predicted. We're still on course for a solar minimum in 2006. There's a curious tendency for the biggest flares to occur after solar maximum—on the downslope toward solar minimum. This has happened during two of the last three solar cycles."

UK Government Admits Hutton Cover-Up
The Independent - UK
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=541887
7-17-4
Downing Street admitted yesterday that MI6 embarked on an unprecedented cover-up after it withdrew intelligence supporting the Government's dossier on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction because it was unreliable.
In an astonishing admission after the disclosure of the cover-up in yesterday's Independent, Tony Blair's official spokesman said MI6 decided not to tell the Hutton inquiry - set up to investigate the death of the government scientist David Kelly - that crucial intelligence on Saddam's chemical and biological weapons was unsound. The security services, he said, felt it was "too sensitive'' to be made public. The head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, also decided not to tell Mr Blair. The Prime Minister's spokesman said Mr Blair only became aware of the withdrawal of the intelligence as a result of the inquiry by Lord Butler of Brockwell, which was delivered three days ago.
Senior sources close to last year's Hutton inquiry said they were unaware that crucial intelligence had been withdrawn, and had this been known, a number of government witnesses would have faced questions about the matter. The sources insisted that the fact that intelligence had been withdrawn by MI6 was not revealed to Lord Hutton either orally or in written evidence.
After the death of Dr Kelly, Mr Blair asked Lord Hutton to conduct an inquiry. Mr Blair's official spokesman said on 21 July last year: "The important point is that we have said that he will have whatever papers and people he needs."
The inquiry began on 11 August. Giving evidence, the Prime Minister, Sir Richard Dearlove and John Scarlett, the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, all failed to mention the withdrawal of intelligence. All three insisted that intelligence from agents in Iraq was believed to be reliable.
Downing Street insisted yesterday that the first time Mr Blair knew about the discredited intelligence was in the Butler report. And the reason Mr Scarlett had not mentioned it, when giving evidence two months after MI6 had withdrawn the intelligence, was that "the validation process was still ongoing".
Senior MPs said Downing Street's comments had all the hallmarks of a damage limitation exercise. Had Mr Blair known, he would face fresh allegations of misleading Parliament on Tuesday when he opens a debate on the Butler report.
Downing Street gave three reasons for not telling the Hutton inquiry: it was not relevant to the investigation into Dr Kelly's death; it was only one element in the chemical and biological weapons "picture"; and, because validation of the intelligence and its source was continuing, it was too sensitive to make public. "Lord Hutton was not misled. He saw everything that was relevant to his picture," said Mr Blair's spokesman.
Two parliamentary committees were also kept in the dark and last night there was a backlash as MPs claimed they had been misled. The Prime Minister's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) will meet next week to decide whether to hold a fresh inquiry into the disclosures in the Butler report.
A senior member of the ISC said: "We were not told about this. We were shown some of the evidence. I think it is a real issue of concern that the SIS [Intelligence and Security Committee] have done this without telling us." Lord King, a former chairman of the ISC, said: "It was for Lord Hutton to decide whether it was not relevant. "
The intelligence services also failed to tell the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, which investigated the death of DrKelly, that it had "withdrawn'' the crucial intelligence.
The decision to withdraw the intelligence was taken in July, last year, the same month that Mr Blair was forced to call the Hutton inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr Kelly, who was named as the source for reports that the dossier had been "sexed up'' by Downing Street.
Exactly a year ago, Dr Kelly went for his fateful walk in the woods. Mr Blair is finding it impossible to draw a line under the events that his death set in train.

Terror in the Skies, Again?
By Annie Jacobsen
A WWS Exclusive Article
http://www.womenswallstreet.com/WWS/article_landing.aspx?titleid=1&articleid=711
Note from the E-ditors: You are about to read an account of what happened during a domestic flight that one of our writers, Annie Jacobsen, took from Detroit to Los Angeles. The WWS Editorial Team debated long and hard about how to handle this information and ultimately we decided it was something that should be shared. What does it have to do with finances? Nothing, and everything. Here is Annie's story.
On June 29, 2004, at 12:28 p.m., I flew on Northwest Airlines flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles with my husband and our young son. Also on our flight were 14 Middle Eastern men between the ages of approximately 20 and 50 years old. What I experienced during that flight has caused me to question whether the United States of America can realistically uphold the civil liberties of every individual, even non-citizens, and protect its citizens from terrorist threats.
On that Tuesday, our journey began uneventfully. Starting out that morning in Providence, Rhode Island, we went through security screening, flew to Detroit, and passed the time waiting for our connecting flight to Los Angeles by shopping at the airport stores and eating lunch at an airport diner. With no second security check required in Detroit we headed to our gate and waited for the pre-boarding announcement. Standing near us, also waiting to pre-board, was a group of six Middle Eastern men. They were carrying blue passports with Arabic writing. Two men wore tracksuits with Arabic writing across the back. Two carried musical instrument cases - thin, flat, 18 long. One wore a yellow T-shirt and held a McDonald's bag. And the sixth man had a bad leg -- he wore an orthopedic shoe and limped. When the pre-boarding announcement was made, we handed our tickets to the Northwest Airlines agent, and walked down the jetway with the group of men directly behind us.
My four-year-old son was determined to wheel his carry-on bag himself, so I turned to the men behind me and said, You go ahead, this could be awhile. No, you go ahead, one of the men replied. He smiled pleasantly and extended his arm for me to pass. He was young, maybe late 20's and had a goatee. I thanked him and we boarded the plan.
Once on the plane, we took our seats in coach (seats 17A, 17B and 17C). The man with the yellow shirt and the McDonald's bag sat across the aisle from us (in seat 17E). The pleasant man with the goatee sat a few rows back and across the aisle from us (in seat 21E). The rest of the men were seated throughout the plane, and several made their way to the back.
As we sat waiting for the plane to finish boarding, we noticed another large group of Middle Eastern men boarding. The first man wore a dark suit and sunglasses. He sat in first class in seat 1A, the seat second-closet to the cockpit door. The other seven men walked into the coach cabin. As aware Americans, my husband and I exchanged glances, and then continued to get comfortable. I noticed some of the other passengers paying attention to the situation as well. As boarding continued, we watched as, one by one, most of the Middle Eastern men made eye contact with each other. They continued to look at each other and nod, as if they were all in agreement about something. I could tell that my husband was beginning to feel anxious.
The take-off was uneventful. But once we were in the air and the seatbelt sign was turned off, the unusual activity began. The man in the yellow T-shirt got out of his seat and went to the lavatory at the front of coach -- taking his full McDonald's bag with him. When he came out of the lavatory he still had the McDonald's bag, but it was now almost empty. He walked down the aisle to the back of the plane, still holding the bag. When he passed two of the men sitting mid-cabin, he gave a thumbs-up sign. When he returned to his seat, he no longer had the McDonald's bag.
Then another man from the group stood up and took something from his carry-on in the overhead bin. It was about a foot long and was rolled in cloth. He headed toward the back of the cabin with the object. Five minutes later, several more of the Middle Eastern men began using the forward lavatory consecutively. In the back, several of the men stood up and used the back lavatory consecutively as well.
For the next hour, the men congregated in groups of two and three at the back of the plane for varying periods of time. Meanwhile, in the first class cabin, just a foot or so from the cockpit door, the man with the dark suit - still wearing sunglasses - was also standing. Not one of the flight crew members suggested that any of these men take their seats.
Watching all of this, my husband was now beyond anxious. I decided to try to reassure my husband (and maybe myself) by walking to the back bathroom. I knew the goateed-man I had exchanged friendly words with as we boarded the plane was seated only a few rows back, so I thought I would say hello to the man to get some reassurance that everything was fine. As I stood up and turned around, I glanced in his direction and we made eye contact. I threw out my friendliest remember-me-we-had-a-nice-exchange-just-a-short-time-ago smile. The man did not smile back. His face did not move. In fact, the cold, defiant look he gave me sent shivers down my spine.
When I returned to my seat I was unable to assure my husband that all was well. My husband immediately walked to the first class section to talk with the flight attendant. I might be overreacting, but I've been watching some really suspicious things... Before he could finish his statement, the flight attendant pulled him into the galley. In a quiet voice she explained that they were all concerned about what was going on. The captain was aware. The flight attendants were passing notes to each other. She said that there were people on board higher up than you and me watching the men. My husband returned to his seat and relayed this information to me. He was feeling slightly better. I was feeling much worse. We were now two hours into a four-in-a-half hour flight.
Approximately 10 minutes later, that same flight attendant came by with the drinks cart. She leaned over and quietly told my husband there were federal air marshals sitting all around us. She asked him not to tell anyone and explained that she could be in trouble for giving out that information. She then continued serving drinks.
About 20 minutes later the same flight attendant returned. Leaning over and whispering, she asked my husband to write a description of the yellow-shirted man sitting across from us. She explained it would look too suspicious if she wrote the information. She asked my husband to slip the note to her when he was done.
After seeing 14 Middle Eastern men board separately (six together, eight individually) and then act as a group, watching their unusual glances, observing their bizarre bathroom activities, watching them congregate in small groups, knowing that the flight attendants and the pilots were seriously concerned, and now knowing that federal air marshals were on board, I was officially terrified.. Before I'm labeled a racial profiler or -- worse yet -- a racist, let me add this. A month ago I traveled to India to research a magazine article I was writing. My husband and I flew on a jumbo jet carrying more than 300 Hindu and Muslim men and women on board. We traveled throughout the country and stayed in a Muslim village 10 miles outside Pakistan. I never once felt fearful. I never once felt unsafe. I never once had the feeling that anyone wanted to hurt me. This time was different.
Finally, the captain announced that the plane was cleared for landing. It had been four hours since we left Detroit. The fasten seat belt light came on and I could see downtown Los Angeles. The flight attendants made one final sweep of the cabin and strapped themselves in for landing. I began to relax. Home was in sight.
Suddenly, seven of the men stood up -- in unison -- and walked to the front and back lavatories. One by one, they went into the two lavatories, each spending about four minutes inside. Right in front of us, two men stood up against the emergency exit door, waiting for the lavatory to become available. The men spoke in Arabic among themselves and to the man in the yellow shirt sitting nearby. One of the men took his camera into the lavatory. Another took his cell phone. Again, no one approached the men. Not one of the flight attendants asked them to sit down. I watched as the man in the yellow shirt, still in his seat, reached inside his shirt and pulled out a small red book. He read a few pages, then put the book back inside his shirt. He pulled the book out again, read a page or two more, and put it back. He continued to do this several more times.
I looked around to see if any other passengers were watching. I immediately spotted a distraught couple seated two rows back. The woman was crying into the man's shoulder. He was holding her hand. I heard him say to her, You've got to calm down. Behind them sat the once pleasant-smiling, goatee-wearing man.
I grabbed my son, I held my husband's hand and, despite the fact that I am not a particularly religious person, I prayed. The last man came out of the bathroom, and as he passed the man in the yellow shirt he ran his forefinger across his neck and mouthed the word No.
The plane landed. My husband and I gathered our bags and quickly, very quickly, walked up the jetway. As we exited the jetway and entered the airport, we saw many, many men in dark suits. A few yards further out into the terminal, LAPD agents ran past us, heading for the gate. I have since learned that the representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), the Federal Air Marshals (FAM), and the Transportation Security Association (TSA) met our plane as it landed. Several men -- who I presume were the federal air marshals on board -- hurried off the plane and directed the 14 men over to the side.
Knowing what we knew, and seeing what we'd seen, my husband and I decided to talk to the authorities. For several hours my husband and I were interrogated by the FBI. We gave sworn statement after sworn statement. We wrote down every detail of our account. The interrogators seemed especially interested in the McDonald's bag, so we repeated in detail what we knew about the McDonald's bag. A law enforcement official stood near us, holding 14 Syrian passports in his hand. We answered more questions. And finally we went home.
Home Sweet Home
The next day, I began searching online for news about the incident. There was nothing. I asked a friend who is a local news correspondent if there were any arrests at LAX that day. There weren't. I called Northwest Airlines' customer service. They said write a letter. I wrote a letter, then followed up with a call to their public relations department. They said they were aware of the situation (sorry that happened!) but legally they have 30 days to reply.
I shared my story with a few colleagues. One mentioned she'd been on a flight with a group of foreign men who were acting strangely -- they turned out to be diamond traders. Another had heard a story on National Public Radio (NPR) shortly after 9/11 about a group of Arab musicians who were having a hard time traveling on airplanes throughout the U.S. and couldn't get seats together. I took note of these two stories and continued my research. Here are excerpts from an article written by Jason Burke, Chief Reporter, and published in The Observer (a British newspaper based in London) on February 8, 2004:
Terrorist bid to build bombs in mid-flight: Intelligence reveals dry runs of new threat to blow up airliners
Islamic militants have conducted dry runs of a devastating new style of bombing on aircraft flying to Europe, intelligence sources believe.
The tactics, which aim to evade aviation security systems by placing only components of explosive devices on passenger jets, allowing militants to assemble them in the air, have been tried out on planes flying between the Middle East, North Africa and Western Europe, security sources say.
...The... Transportation Security Administration issued an urgent memo detailing new threats to aviation and warning that terrorists in teams of five might be planning suicide missions to hijack commercial airliners, possibly using common items...such as cameras, modified as weapons.
...Components of IEDs [improvised explosive devices]can be smuggled on to an aircraft, concealed in either clothing or personal carry-on items... and assembled on board. In many cases of suspicious passenger activity, incidents have taken place in the aircraft's forward lavatory.
So here's my question: Since the FBI issued a warning to the airline industry to be wary of groups of five men on a plane who might be trying to build bombs in the bathroom, shouldn't a group of 14 Middle Eastern men be screened before boarding a flight?
Apparently not. Due to our rules against discrimination, it can't be done. During the 9/11 hearings last April, 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman stated that ...it was the policy (before 9/11) and I believe remains the policy today to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that's discriminatory.
So even if Northwest Airlines searched two of the men on board my Northwest flight, they couldn't search the other 12 because they would have already filled a government-imposed quota.
I continued my research by reading an article entitled Arab Hijackers Now Eligible For Pre-Boarding from Ann Coulter (www.anncoulter.com):
On September 21, as the remains of thousands of Americans lay smoldering at Ground Zero, [Secretary of Transportation Norman] Mineta fired off a letter to all U.S. airlines forbidding them from implementing the one security measure that could have prevented 9/11: subjecting Middle Eastern passengers to an added degree of pre-flight scrutiny. He sternly reminded the airlines that it was illegal to discriminate against passengers based on their race, color, national or ethnic origin or religion.
Coulter also writes that a few months later, at Mr. Mineta's behest, the Department of Transportation (DOT) filed complaints against United Airlines and American Airlines (who, combined, had lost 8 pilots, 25 flight attendants and 213 passengers on 9/11 - not counting the 19 Arab hijackers). In November 2003, United Airlines settled their case with the DOT for $1.5 million. In March 2004, American Airlines settled their case with the DOT for $1.5 million. The DOT also charged Continental Airlines with discriminating against passengers who appeared to be Arab, Middle Eastern or Muslim. Continental Airlines settled their complaint with the DOT in April of 2004 for $.5 million.
From what I witnessed, Northwest Airlines doesn't have to worry about Norman Mineta filing a complaint against them for discriminatory, secondary screening of Arab men. No one checked the passports of the Syrian men. No one inspected the contents of the two instrument cases or the McDonald's bag. And no one checked the limping man's orthopedic shoe. In fact, according to the TSA regulations, passengers wearing an orthopedic shoe won't be asked to take it off. As their site states, Advise the screener if you're wearing orthopedic shoes...screeners should not be asking you to remove your orthopedic shoes at any time during the screening process.
I placed a call to the TSA and talked to Joe Dove, a Customer Service Supervisor. I told him how we'd eaten with metal utensils moments in an airport diner before boarding the flight and how no one checked our luggage or the instrument cases being carried by the Middle Eastern men. Dove's response was, Restaurants in secured areas -- that's an ongoing problem. We get that complaint often. TSA gets that complaint all the time and they haven't worked that out with the FAA. They're aware of it. You've got a good question. There may not be a reasonable answer at this time, I'm not going to BS you.
At the Detroit airport no one checked our IDs. No one checked the folds in my newspaper or the contents of my son's backpack. No one asked us what we'd done during our layover, if we bought anything, or if anyone gave us anything while we were in the airport. We were asked all of these questions (and many others ) three weeks earlier when we'd traveled in Europe -- where passengers with airport layovers are rigorously questioned and screened before boarding any and every flight. In Detroit no one checked who we were or what we carried on board a 757 jet liner bound for American's largest metropolis.
Two days after my experience on Northwest Airlines flight #327 came this notice from SBS TV, The World News, July 1, 2004:
The U.S. Transportation and Security Administration has issued a new directive which demands pilots make a pre-flight announcement banning passengers from congregating in aisles and outside the plane's toilets. The directive also orders flight attendants to check the toilets every two hours for suspicious packages.
Through a series of events, The Washington Post heard about my story. I talked briefly about my experience with a representative from the newspaper. Within a few hours I received a call from Dave Adams, the Federal Air Marshal Services (FAM) Head of Public Affairs. Adams told me what he knew:
There were 14 Syrians on NWA flight #327. They were questioned at length by FAM, the FBI and the TSA upon landing in Los Angeles. The 14 Syrians had been hired as musicians to play at a casino in the desert. Adams said they were scrubbed. None had arrest records (in America, I presume), none showed up on the FBI's no fly list or the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists List. The men checked out and they were let go. According to Adams, the 14 men traveled on Northwest Airlines flight #327 using one-way tickets. Two days later they were scheduled to fly back on jetBlue from Long Beach, California to New York -- also using one-way tickets.
I asked Adams why, based on the FBI's credible information that terrorists may try to assemble bombs on planes, the air marshals or the flight attendants didn't do anything about the bizarre behavior and frequent trips to the lavatory. Our FAM agents have to have an event to arrest somebody. Our agents aren't going to deploy until there is an actual event, Adams explained. He said he could not speak for the policies of Northwest Airlines.
So the question is... Do I think these men were musicians? I'll let you decide. But I wonder, if 19 terrorists can learn to fly airplanes into buildings, couldn't 14 terrorists learn to play instruments?

U.S. duck population drops by 11 percent
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The duck population in the United States and Canada dropped 11 percent from a year ago as drought dried up breeding grounds, said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Canadian Wildlife Service Monday.
This year's duck population of 32.2 million birds was 11 percent less than the 36.2 million birds tallied a year ago.
While more rain has fallen since duck populations were measured in May, a shortage of winter precipitation and limited runoff into ponds and basins dried up areas commonly used for breeding.
"This is a definite plus for the fall flight but, unfortunately, not as beneficial for ducks as moisture that arrives earlier in the year," said Bruce Batt, chief biologist with Ducks Unlimited.
The survey found breeding had dropped by 7 percent in Montana and the western Dakotas while breeding rose 3 percent in the eastern Dakotas.
In most parts of Canada, breeding populations dropped between 4 percent and 9 percent. In northern Manitoba, western Ontario and northern Saskatchewan, duck populations were up 15 percent while in southern Saskatchewan they plunged 38 percent.

Pelicans Crash Instead Of Splash
The Telegraph - UK
7-14-4
LOS ANGELES -- Pelicans are crash-landing on to pavements and roads in Arizona after mistaking the shimmer of sun-baked surfaces for stretches of water.
More than 30 brown pelicans have injured themselves landing on mirages in the past two weeks, according to wildlife officials.
With temperatures around 110F (43C), the birds have been treated for dehydration and emaciation as well as for injuries suffered during landing.
Experts believe the birds are heading inland to hunt for fish because of food shortages along the west coast caused by hot weather drying out waterways.
"They try to splash down but it's asphalt and it's bam!" a spokesman for the Arizona Game and Fish Department said.
The department has set up a telephone hotline for people who come across the injured birds.
"We're seeing broken wings and other injuries in brown pelicans," the spokesman said.
"We want to make sure people know what to do if they encounter one of the injured birds."
The brown pelican has been on the endangered species list since 1972. While some migrate to Arizona during the monsoon season each year, the number arriving this month is unusually high.

Tanzania Probes 10,000 Flamingo Deaths
BBC News
7-18-4
Tanzanian wildlife authorities are investigating the deaths of some 10,000 flamingos over the past month at the Lake Manyara National Park.
Preliminary tests have shown the birds might have died from toxins in algae, the park's chief warden Betty Loibooki told AFP news agency.
Samples have been sent to Germany for further analysis.
Lake Manyara in north-eastern Tanzania is home to over 300 bird species with more than three million flamingos.
Tourist attraction
"So far it has not yet been established what is exactly causing the deaths; scientists are on the ground to find out," Tanzania National Parks' James Lembeli told BBC News Online.
"The deaths started in mid-June until last week. There have been no more deaths since then," he said.
Two species of flamingos inhabit Lake Manyara - the lesser flamingo, which eats algae, and the greater flamingo, which mainly eats insects.
According to Mr Lembeli it is the lesser flamingos that have been dying over the last month.
Flamingos are an important tourist attraction in Tanzania, second only to lions in popularity.
© BBC MMIV http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3896907.stm

Where are the pelicans?
Monday, Jul 12, 2004
Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge, N.D. — The air here this time of year usually is filled with the grunts and squawks of thousands of white pelicans and their chicks. The giant birds have made the refuge their home for at least 100 years.
Now their nesting grounds are quiet. The pelicans are gone — and no one knows why.
Everybody, from biologists to bartenders, has a theory.
“Those wildlife agents scared them away,” said Jake Bohl, a blacksmith in Woodworth, a town of about 80 people 25 kilometres northeast of Chase Lake. “That's my explanation.”
The refuge – almost 18 square kilometres -- in central North Dakota had been known as the home of the largest nesting colony of white pelicans in North America. The nearly 28,000 birds that showed up to nest here in early April took off in late May and early June, leaving their chicks and eggs behind.
Paul Guthmiller, an 85-year-old farmer, said he has seen pelicans in the area since he was a child. He figures heavy rains and cool temperatures in late May drove the birds away.
“I think there is too much water for them because of too much rain,” Mr. Guthmiller said.
Normally, the pelicans stay at the refuge through September, raising their young and feasting on crawfish, small fish and salamanders from small ponds known as “prairie potholes.” The area is filled with the stench of droppings from the thousands of birds and their chicks.
Now, sweet-smelling wildflowers have taken hold in the guano-rich soil.
Wildlife officials have considered diseases, food supply, water quality, weather, predators and other factors, but have found no satisfactory explanation for the exodus, said Mick Erickson, the Chase Lake refuge manager.
“Right now, everybody has an opinion,” Mr. Erickson said. “But honestly, there isn't any explanation. This is the first time it's happened.”
The white pelican is one of the largest birds in North America, measuring six feet from bill to tail. They weigh up to nine kilograms and have a wingspan of three metres. While awkward on land, white pelicans are acrobats in the air.
Pelicans have been monitored at Chase Lake since 1905, when the birds numbered about 50. President Theodore Roosevelt designated the site as a bird refuge in 1908, when many of the birds were being killed for their feathers and for target practice.
Samples from about two dozen dead pelicans from the reserve and from other parts of the Upper Midwest are being tested at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis.
“There has been no consistent finding as to cause of death,” said Kathryn Converse, wildlife disease specialist with the centre.
Researchers had found botulism in two of the dead pelicans from the reserve, Converse said. None of the pelicans had tested positive for West Nile or other viruses, she said.
Mr. Erickson said officials initially blamed a coyote that had a den about a kilometre from the nesting grounds, and killed it. But the exodus continued.
“It's weird,” he said. “We feel helpless because we don't know what else to look at.”
Wildlife officials have been doing annual aerial surveys of the pelicans since 1972. The number of pelicans had tripled at the refuge in the past 30 years. A record 35,466 breeding pelicans and 17,733 nests were tallied in 2000 at Chase Lake, Mr. Erickson said.
This year, there have been reports of extraordinary pelican sightings in Illinois, Wisconsin, Montana, Nebraska and Michigan. But the numbers reported throughout the Upper Midwest do not add up to the nearly 28,000 recorded at the refuge in May, before the exodus, Mr. Erickson said.
A couple of hundred “loafers” – pelicans not yet of breeding age – remain at prairie potholes in the Chase Lake area, Mr. Erickson said.
He is betting the big birds will return to Chase Lake next year.
“For whatever reason, they picked Chase Lake to nest for hundreds and maybe thousands of years,” he said. “I'm pretty confident they'll come back.”
If the birds do return, Mr. Erickson said, access for birdwatchers will be limited during nesting.
The pelicans may be making some kind of a natural correction, said Ken Torkelson, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Bismarck.
“They've been relying on Chase Lake a long time, and maybe they felt it could no longer support the species so they picked up and moved some place that could,” he said.

Climate warning from the deep
BBC News Online science staff
2004/07/12
Strange things are happening in the North Sea. Cod stocks are slumping faster than over-fishing can account for, and Mediterranean species like red mullet are migrating north.
Several sea birds are also in trouble. Kittiwake numbers are falling fast and guillemots are struggling to breed.
And, earlier this summer, hundreds of fulmar (a relative of the albatross) corpses washed up on the Norfolk coast, having apparently starved to death.
Scientists suspect these events are linked and they are trying to work out how.
Nothing is certain yet, but some believe a dramatic change in North Sea plankton is responsible. And, what is more, they blame global warming.
Global changes
Plankton are microscopic free-floating marine organisms. Globally they are of vital importance.
Phyto-plankton (tiny plants) are behind 50% of the Earth's photosynthesis. And, along with zoo-plankton (tiny animals), they form the base of the whole ocean food web.
But, over the last 20 years, these little organisms have been undergoing a radical shake-up in the North Sea.
Everybody working in the North Sea is seeing big changes
Sarah Wanless, Nerc Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
Broadly speaking, as global temperatures rise, cold water species are moving out and warm water species are moving in.
"The North Sea was a cold temperate ecosystem in the 1980s, but since the 1990s it has changed into a warm temperate ecosystem," explained Martin Edwards, of the Sir Alistair Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science (SAHFOS), Plymouth, UK.
"So all the cold water species of plankton have moved much further north, and they are being replaced by more sub-tropical species."
The decline of a particular species of phyto-plankton, which blooms in early spring, is key to changes further up the food chain.
Many small animals feed on this spring bloom - and even time their own emergence to match it. Now it is going, they are dying.
Dr Edwards said: "The spring bloom is declining, and the cold water zoo-plankton that feed on the spring bloom are declining as well - and so are the fish larvae that feed on the zoo-plankton."
And so - presumably - are other fish that feed on those larvae and the birds that feed on the fish.
Over the edge
Martin Edwards and bird expert Sarah Wanless, from Nerc Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, have got together to try to pinpoint how this is happening.
"We have already shown that kittiwakes are declining and declining quite rapidly - but at the moment we don't know the mechanisms," said Dr Wanless.
"And that is why we are joining up the bird work with the plankton work, so we can see how these links actually operate.
"What Martin Edwards and his colleagues are showing is that there is a profound difference in the plankton in the North Sea, and we are seeing a decline in the sand eels that many birds feed on."
She continued: "We speculate these are climate driven changes, which are working their way right through the food chain. And we are seeing signals emerging from the birds.
"In some cases we are finding a whole lot of adult birds dead and in other cases that the birds are abandoning their chicks."
And there might be worse to come. Because sea birds are generally long lived, changes happen rather slowly. So what we are seeing now could be, some fear, the tip of the iceberg.
"Some species might decline to the extent where they are no longer present," said Dr Wanless. "And kittiwakes might well be one of the first to disappear."
Emerging picture
Amazingly the role of plankton, and how they are affected by climate, has not been extensively studied in the past.
"Work on plankton is hugely important," said Dr Chris Reid, the Director of SAHFOS.
"The world's oceans make up more than 70% of the world's surface and 50% of the primary production in the world comes from phyto-plankton, but as yet we have very little idea about how this changes regionally or with time."
Now, the story behind some of the North Sea mysteries is beginning to unfold.
Dr Wanless said: "Everybody working in the North Sea is seeing big changes, but what we need to do now is get everybody together, to try to piece the whole jigsaw together."

Sharon: French Jews 'must move to Israel'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3904943.stm
18 July, 2004
France has seen a spate of attacks against Jewish targets
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has urged all French Jews to move to Israel immediately to escape anti-Semitism.
He told a meeting of the American Jewish Association in Jerusalem that Jews around the world should relocate to Israel as early as possible.
But for those living in France, he added, moving was a "must" because of rising violence against Jews there.
France's foreign ministry said it had asked Israel for an explanation of the "unacceptable comments".
French Jewish leaders, interviewed on France-2 Television, said Mr Sharon's remarks were unhelpful.
"These comments do not bring calm, peace and serenity that we all need," said Patrick Gaubert, of the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (Licra). "I think Mr Sharon would have done better tonight to have kept quiet."
"It's not up to him to decide for us," said Theo Klein, honorary president of Crif, which represents French Jewish organisations.
Trend
France has suffered a wave of anti-Semitic attacks coinciding with renewed fighting in the Middle East.
"We see the spread of the wildest anti-Semitism" in France, Mr Sharon said.
The latest French government figures show 510 anti-Jewish acts or threats in the first six months of 2004 - compared to 593 for all of last year.
In recent years there have been bomb attacks against a number of synagogues and Jewish schools in France.
Jewish tombs have also been desecrated.
Mr Sharon acknowledged that the Paris government had made efforts to tackle the problem.
He added that France faced a new kind of anti-Semitism based on anti-Israeli feelings and propaganda.
He pointed out that France had a large Muslim community estimated at less than 10% of population, or about five million.
Mr Sharon said his advice to French Jews was that moving to Israel was "a must and they have to move immediately".
The BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris says this is not the first time that Mr Sharon has spoken about the need for French Jews to leave for Israel, but rarely has he been so blunt.
"We have immediately made contact with Israeli authorities to ask them for explanations about these unacceptable statements," said French foreign ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous.
Our correspondent says there is irritation in France at the idea that life for Jews there is becoming dangerous - especially as the government has made every effort to show that anti-Jewish acts will be severely punished.
A week ago President Jacques Chirac rushed to condemn an apparently anti-Semitic attack on a Paris train that turned out to be a hoax.
Our correspondent adds that his haste only aggravated passions among many in the Muslim community who feel they are the instant scapegoats.

U.K. Report: Zarqawi Set Up Sleeper Cells
07/15/04
LONDON (AP) - Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi set up ``sleeper cells'' in Baghdad before the Iraq war to attack American forces occupying the country, according to a British intelligence report.
The report, dated March 2003 and released as part of an overall review of British intelligence, forecast the string of Zarqawi's attacks against American targets during the past year ``using car bombs and other weapons.'' It said he was setting up groups of fighters to be activated at a later time, known in the intelligence field as ``sleeper cells.''
Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed vindication Wednesday after a committee led by Lord Butler released its report that concluded British intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was flawed, but said the government had not deliberately deceived anyone as it built a case for toppling Saddam Hussein.
While Butler's report faulted British intelligence for having few reliable sources and not properly analyzing information, it did credit the spies with foreseeing the al-Zarqawi strikes on coalition forces.
By the time of the U.S.-led invasion in March of last year, the report said, Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee indicated:
``Reporting since (February) suggests that senior al-Qaida associate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has established sleeper cells in Baghdad, to be activated during a U.S. occupation of the city.''
The reported added: ``These cells apparently intend to attack U.S. targets using car bombs and other weapons. (It is also possible that they have received CB materials from terrorists in the KAZ),'' referring to chemical and biological materials and the Kurdish Autonomous Zone. ``Al-Qaida-associated terrorists continued to arrive in Baghdad in early March.''
Ousted President Saddam Hussein didn't have any control over the Kurdish zone in northern Iraq. And British analysts believed there was no active cooperation between Saddam and al-Qaida, Butler's report said.
In October 2002, the a British intelligence report said: ``Although Saddam's attitude to al-Qaida has not always been consistent, he has generally rejected suggestions of cooperation. Intelligence nonetheless indicates that ... meetings have taken place between senior Iraqi representatives and senior al-Qaida operatives.
The Butler report also said there was no evidence to back up suggestions Iraq may have trained some al-Qaida terrorists since 1998.
``Al-Qaida has shown interest in gaining chemical and biological (CB) expertise from Iraq, but we do not know whether any such training was provided,'' the report said. ``We have no intelligence of current cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaida and do not believe that al-Qaida plans to conduct terrorist attacks under Iraqi direction.''
Much of Butler's report concentrated on a dossier published by Blair's government in September 2002, which laid out a case that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, and plans to use them; and that Iraq was seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
On Wednesday, Blair acknowledged Butler's conclusion that Iraq did not have significant - if any - stocks of chemical or biological weapons ready for deployment, or plans for using them.
But he said the report confirmed his government had acted in good faith.
``No one lied. No one made up the intelligence,'' Blair told the House of Commons.
``Everyone genuinely tried to do their best in good faith for the country in circumstances of acute difficulty. That issue of good faith should now be at an end.''
However, Conservative Party leader Michael Howard accused Blair of taking patchy intelligence on Iraqi WMD and hardening it into fact.
``I hope we will not face in this country another war in the foreseeable future. But if we did and you identified the threat, would the country believe you?'' Howard said.
Public faith in Blair and his governing Labour Party were being tested in two special elections Thursday prompted by the death of one Labour lawmaker and the resignation of another.
Both are normally considered ``safe'' seats for Labour, which won both by landslides in 2001 and holds 159 more seats than the combined opposition in the House of Commons. Labour and the Conservatives, who also backed the war, have campaigned on domestic issues such as crime, education and health care.
The Liberal Democrats, the only major party to oppose the Iraq invasion, have run on a strong anti-war platform in the Leicester South and Birmingham Hodge Hill districts, which both have large Muslim populations.
Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy said Wednesday he doubted the House of Commons would have backed the war if it had ``known then what it knows today about the state of Saddam Hussein's weapons.''
Robin Cook, who resigned from Blair's Cabinet in protest against the war, said the Butler report should rule out another ``pre-emptive'' war.
``The pre-emptive strike against a threat that may exist in the future requires very good intelligence and what we now know is that you never get intelligence that reliable,'' Cook said in a British Broadcasting Corp. radio interview Thursday.

Don Quixote to ride again on cosmic rescue mission
07/16/04
LONDON (Reuters) - Mythical Spanish knight Don Quixote, famed for charging at windmills he mistakes for enemies, is to ride again -- this time in space -- on a cosmic mission to save the world.
The European Space Agency has given high priority to a Spanish project that aims to attack an approaching asteroid to see whether spacecraft can deflect a body that may in future be on a collision course with Earth.
Two craft will set out -- one named after the valiant knight of Cervantes' classic tale, the other after his long-suffering servant, Sancho Panza.
Spacecraft Sancho will circle the chosen asteroid while the other -- aping its literary namesake -- smashes headlong into the target.
The orbiting Sancho and Earth-based telescopes will watch closely to see what, if any, effect the impact has on the speed and direction of the asteroid.
At the same time Sancho, being in orbit around the asteroid, will be able to detect fragments thrown from it by the impact and get a glimpse of its internal structure.
"It will tell us how the target responds to an impact," said Alan Harris, Chairman of the Near-Earth Object Mission Advisory Panel.
"If you think about the chain of events between detecting a hazardous object and doing something about it, there is one area in which we have no experience at all and that is in directly interacting with an asteroid, trying to alter its orbit."
Astronomers are aware of the devastating effect an asteroid impact had on the world's dinosaurs 65 million years ago and have so far found more than 1,000 large space objects that might one day collide with the Earth.
Although there is no suggestion that a kamikaze-style spacecraft impact on an asteroid would destroy the threat, it may generate the relatively small amount of energy scientists think would be enough to nudge it off course.
If all goes to plan, the Quixote mission could launch between 2010 and 2015, the space agency said.

Will Compasses Point South?
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
New York Times
July 13, 2004
The collapse of the Earth's magnetic field, which both guards the planet and guides many of its creatures, appears to have started in earnest about 150 years ago. The field's strength has waned 10 to 15 percent, and the deterioration has accelerated of late, increasing debate over whether it portends a reversal of the lines of magnetic force that normally envelop the Earth.
During a reversal, the main field weakens, almost vanishes, then reappears with opposite polarity. Afterward, compass needles that normally point north would point south, and during the thousands of years of transition, much in the heavens and Earth would go askew.
A reversal could knock out power grids, hurt astronauts and satellites, widen atmospheric ozone holes, send polar auroras flashing to the equator and confuse birds, fish and migratory animals that rely on the steadiness of the magnetic field as a navigation aid. But experts said the repercussions would fall short of catastrophic, despite a few proclamations of doom and sketchy evidence of past links between field reversals and species extinctions.
Although a total flip may be hundreds or thousands of years away, the rapid decline in magnetic strength is already damaging satellites.
Last month, the European Space Agency approved the world's largest effort at tracking the field's shifts. A trio of new satellites, called Swarm, are to monitor the collapsing field with far greater precision than before and help scientists forecast its prospective state.
"We want to get some idea of how this would evolve in the near future, just like people trying to predict the weather," said Dr. Gauthier Hulot, a French geophysicist working on the satellite plan. "I'm personally quite convinced we should be able to work out the first predictions by the end of the mission."
The discipline is one of a number - like high-energy physics and aspects of space science - where Europeans have recently come from behind to seize the initiative, dismaying some American experts.
No matter what the new findings, the public has no reason to panic, scientists say. Even if a flip is imminent, it might take 2,000 years to mature. The last one took place 780,000 years ago, when Homo erectus was still learning how to make stone tools.
Some experts suggest a reversal is overdue. "The fact that it's dropping so rapidly gives you pause," said Dr. John A. Tarduno, a professor of geophysics at the University of Rochester. "It looks like things we see in computer models of a reversal."
In an interview, Dr. Tarduno put the odds of an impending flip at more likely than not, adding that some of his colleagues were placing informal bets on the possibility but realized they would probably be long gone by the time the picture clarified.
Deep inside the Earth, the magnetic field arises as the fluid core oozes with hot currents of molten iron and this mechanical energy gets converted into electromagnetism. It is known as the geodynamo. In a car's generator, the same principle turns mechanical energy into electricity.
No one knows precisely why the field periodically reverses, but scientists say the responsibility probably lies with changes in the turbulent flows of molten iron, which they envision as similar to the churning gases that make up the clouds of Jupiter.
In theory, a reversal could have major effects because over the ages many aspects of nature and society have come to rely on the field's steadiness.
When baby loggerhead turtles embark on an 8,000-mile trek around the Atlantic, they use invisible magnetic clues to check their bearings. So do salmon and whales, honeybees and homing pigeons, frogs and Zambian mole rats, scientists have found.
On a planetary scale, the magnetic field helps shield the Earth from solar winds and storms of deadly particles. Its so-called magnetosphere extends out 37,000 miles from Earth's sunlit side and much farther behind the planet, forming a cometlike tail.
Among other things, the field's collapse, scientists say, could let in bursts of radiation, causing a variety of disruptions.
Dr. Charles H. Jackman, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., has worked with European colleagues on a computer model that mimics the repercussions. A weak field, they reported in December, could let solar storms pummel the atmosphere with enough radiation to destroy significant amounts of the ozone that protects the Earth from harmful ultraviolet light.
Ultraviolet radiation, the short, invisible rays from the sun, can harm some life forms, depress crop yields and raise cancer rates, causing skin cancer and cataracts in humans. Dr. Jackman said that the ozone damage from any one solar storm could heal naturally in two to three years but that the protective layer would stay vulnerable to new bursts of radiation as long as the Earth's magnetic field remained weak.
"It would be significant" in terms of planetary repercussions, he said in an interview, "but not catastrophic." High levels of ultraviolet radiation would spread down from polar regions as far south as Florida.
Like many of the Earth's invisible rhythms, the field reversals are typically slow, taking anywhere from 5,000 to 7,000 years to complete.
Strong evidence of their reality first emerged in the 1950's and 1960's when scientists towing magnetic sensors behind ships found that the rocky seabed exhibited odd stripes of magnetization.
It turned out that continuous flows of seabed lava became alternately magnetized over the ages as the polarities of the Earth's field switched one way, then the other. The seabed acted like a huge tape recorder, and the same proved true of the layered deposits of old volcanoes on land.
How did the rocky memories form? Molten lava proved to hold tiny mineral grains that acted like innumerable compasses, or miniature magnets, freely aligning themselves with the contemporary field. But as the lava cooled, the tiny compasses froze in place, immobile even if the field shifted. Experts called it paleomagnetism and found that the tiny compasses were often made of magnetite, a naturally magnetic mineral.
Paleomagnetic studies showed that the Earth's field reversed every half million years or so, but in a fairly random way and with early patterns more chaotic. During the age of dinosaurs, for instance, no flips occurred for roughly 35 million years.
As scientists began to understand the importance of reversals in the planet's history, they examined the fossil record for evidence of damage to life. In 1971, Dr. James D. Hays of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University noted a strong correlation between recent flips and species extinctions of tiny marine creatures known as radiolarians. "The evidence," he wrote in The Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, "is strongly suggestive that magnetic reversals either directly or indirectly exert a selective force."
But no consensus ever formed on how the flips might have doomed some creatures and spared others, and some experts faulted the correlations as statistically insignificant.
Meanwhile, starting in the late 1970's, scientists began to find wide evidence that many animals relied on the Earth's magnetic field for navigation. Dr. Joseph L. Kirschvink of the California Institute of Technology discovered such reliance in bees, pigeons, bacteria, salmon, whales and newts, among other animals. The magnetic sense, he found, usually relies on tiny crystals of magnetite - the same mineral that gets immobilized in cooling lava.
Investigators looking into the origin of the reversals got new clues in 1995 when scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of California at Los Angeles succeeded in making the first computer simulation of the geodynamo in action, including field reversals.
Dr. Gary A. Glatzmaier, who was one of the Los Alamos scientists, said it showed that the Earth's solid inner core resisted the flipping because the field there could not change as rapidly as it did in the fluid outer core. "The reversal starts with a small region that gets larger," he said in an interview. "Most of the time they die away, but other times they continue to grow." To date, the simulations of millions of years have produced more than a dozen flips.
The current collapse drew wide scientific attention on April 11, 2002, when Nature, the British journal, published a major paper that detailed its growing weakness. Dr. Hulot and colleagues at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, where he works, as well as the Danish Space Research Institute, called the large drop remarkable.
They found it by comparing readings made in 1979 and 1980 by the American Magsat satellite with measurements by the Danish Oersted satellite, launched in 1999 and still operating. In particular, Dr. Hulot and his team discovered a north polar region and a spot below South Africa where the magnetism is growing extremely weak.
The finding drew wide attention because the magnetic anomalies seemed consistent with what the computer simulations identified as the possible beginnings of a flip.
"We postulate," Dr. Hulot and his co-authors wrote, that the new evidence reflects how "the geodynamo operates before reversing."
In an interview, he said that the field's southern spot was 30 percent weaker than elsewhere and that some satellites passing over it had already suffered electronic malfunctions when highly charged particles from the sun were able to penetrate the weakened magnetic shield.
In March 2003, "The Core," a Hollywood film, gave a wildly exaggerated portrayal of what would happen if the field vanished. People with pacemakers fall dead. Pigeons fly into people and windows. And the planet, a scientist warns, will fry in a year.
Dr. Tarduno said that practical effects on things like satellites and the ozone layer would be the same no matter whether the field reversed or simply weakened and bounced back. A major collapse of the Earth's magnetic shield, he added, could let speeding particles penetrate deeper into the atmosphere to widely knock out power grids, as solar storms do occasionally.
The consensus among biologists seems to be that the reversals are slow enough, and the Earth's creatures resilient enough, that most would learn to adapt. They note the lack of correlations in the fossil record between flips and mass extinctions.
Dr. Kenneth J. Lohmann, a biologist at the University of North Carolina who has pioneered magnetic navigation studies in loggerhead turtles, said if the field became weak enough "there would be problems for the turtles." His research suggests they use it not only for a general sense of direction but as a precise map of their location.
To better understand the current collapse, the European Space Agency plans to launch three satellites in 2009. The spacecraft, flying in polar orbits a few hundred miles up, are to map its intricacies until perhaps 2015.
Dr. Hulot said scientists would combine the satellite data with computer simulations to make not only distant forecasts but possible warnings of current hazards. Among the possible solutions would be to increase satellite shielding.
"It will be interesting to see what's going to happen in that South Atlantic anomaly," he said. "If you want to keep satellites flying, you want to know if the situation is going to deteriorate."

Key Revisions Were Made to CIA Iraq Document
Sun Jul 11, 2004
WASHINGTON — In a classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared before the Iraq war, the CIA hedged its judgments about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, pointing up the limits of its knowledge.
But in the unclassified version of the NIE — the so-called white paper cited by the Bush administration in making its case for war — those carefully qualified conclusions were turned into blunt assertions of fact, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on prewar intelligence.
The repeated elimination of qualifying language and dissenting assessments of some of the government's most knowledgeable experts gave the public an inaccurate impression of what the U.S. intelligence community believed about the threat Hussein posed to the United States, the committee said.
Dedicating a section of its 511-page report to discrepancies between the two versions of the crucial October 2002 NIE, the panel laid out numerous instances in which the unclassified version omitted key dissenting opinions about Iraqi weapons capabilities, overstated U.S. knowledge about Iraq's alleged stockpiles of weapons and, in one case, inserted threatening language into the public document that was not contained in the classified version.
"The intelligence community's elimination of the caveats from the unclassified white paper misrepresented their judgments to the public, which did not have access to the classified National Intelligence Estimate containing the more carefully worded assessments," the Senate panel's report concluded.
"The fact that the NIE changed so dramatically from its classified to its unclassified form and broke all in one direction, toward a more dangerous scenario … I think was highly significant," the committee's vice chairman, Sen. John D. "Jay" Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), said Friday.
NIEs commonly take months to prepare, but the Iraq report and its unclassified version were compiled in a matter of weeks, the panel said.
As the Bush administration ratcheted up its case for war in September 2002, senators on the Intelligence Committee wrote to the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, requesting an NIE about Iraq's weapons programs and any connections to Al Qaeda. With Congress set to vote on the war resolution the next month, intelligence officials rushed to produce the estimate.
But the Senate committee's sharpest criticism of the unclassified document focused not on changes made in haste but on the systematic alteration of the classified version.
For example, the panel cited changes made in the section of the NIE dealing with chemical weapons:
"Although we have little specific information on Iraq's CW stockpile," the classified NIE read, "Saddam Hussein probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons" of such poisons.
In the unclassified version of the report, the phrase "although we have little specific information" was deleted. Instead, the public report said, "Saddam probably has stocked a few hundred metric tons of CW agents."
The Senate report also noted one instance in which a dissenting view was left out of the unclassified version.
In that example, the classified NIE stated that Iraq was developing unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, "probably intended to deliver biological warfare agents."
But in a footnote, the U.S. Air Force's director for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance said he did not agree.
By eliminating that footnote from the unclassified version, the panel said, the public NIE "is missing the fact that [the] … agency with primary responsibility for technological analysis on UAV programs did not agree with the assessment."
During a nationally televised speech in October 2002, President Bush cited the threat of Iraqi drone aircraft being used for terrorist attacks against the United States. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also discussed the UAVs in his speech to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003.
The committee's report describes not just sins of omission, but of addition.
The classified NIE stated, for instance, that "Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating BW [biological weapons] agents and is capable of quickly producing … a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers and covert operatives."
In the unclassified version, the words "potentially against the U.S. homeland" are inserted at the end of the statement.
During a briefing before the report was released, one committee aide said the Senate panel had asked Tenet and Stu Cohen — who, as acting chairman of the National Intelligence Council, oversaw production of the NIE — who was responsible for inserting those words into the unclassified document.
"They did not know and could not explain," said the aide, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A similar degree of mystery surrounds the larger question of exactly how the classified NIE morphed into its unclassified version.
According to the committee report, the intelligence community began preparing an unclassified white paper on Iraq's banned weapons in May 2002, at the request of the National Security Council.
Months later, as the administration began to make its public case for war, Congress requested an official NIE. Officials at the National Intelligence Council decided to merge the white paper with declassified elements of the NIE to produce the official unclassified version.
Yet committee staffers said Friday that, after a year of investigating, they were still trying to get to the bottom of how the key differences between the classified and unclassified versions came about.
One such difference, the committee reported, is that the classified version presented intelligence findings as assessments — usually beginning with the words "we assess that" — whereas the white paper omitted those words and stated the assessments as facts.
"We assess that Baghdad has begun renewed production of mustard, sarin, GF [cyclosarin] and VX," the classified NIE read, according to the Senate report.
The unclassified white paper read, "Baghdad has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard, sarin, cyclosarin and VX."
According to the intelligence committee report, staffers asked intelligence officials why words like "we judge" and "we assess" were removed during the declassification process.
They were told that, because officials believed the white paper would be made public as representing the view of the entire U.S. government, not simply an intelligence community product, it was more appropriate to take references to "we" out of the document. This was done, committee staffers were told, "purely for stylistic reasons."

John Kerry has Jewish roots -- who knew?
PETER EPHROSS
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK -- First it was then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Next it was Gen. Wesley Clark, the supreme allied commander of NATO during the war in Kosovo.
Now it's Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry whose Jewish roots are being reported.
Kerry? The Massachusetts senator, the quintessential WASP-y looking politician with an Irish-sounding name?
Yup.
Two of Kerry's grandparents were Jewish, it turns out.
Kerry, who is a practicing Catholic, said he has known for 15 years that his paternal grandmother was Jewish, but had unsuccessfully searched for news of his paternal grandfather's roots.
However, a genealogist hired by the Boston Globe found that Kerry's grandfather was born to a Jewish family in a small town in the Czech Republic.
"This is incredible stuff," Kerry told the Globe. "I think it is more than interesting. It is a revelation."
The records show that his grandfather, Frederick Kerry, was born as Fritz Kohn. He changed his name to Kerry in 1902, immigrated to the United States in 1905 -- and committed suicide in a Boston hotel in 1921.
Frederick Kerry's story highlights the Jewish experience of earlier generations, Brandeis University professor Jonathan Sarna said.
"What we are realizing is how significant was the trend toward conversion and abandonment of Judaism, for the sake of upward mobility, in an earlier era of America," said Sarna, the Braun professor of American Jewish history at
the school in Waltham, Mass. "Given the quite significant anti-Semitism of the early 20th century and the evident obstacles that stood in the path to success, people simply changed their names and sloughed off their Judaism."
But that path wasn't always successful, Sarna said.
Kerry's grandfather's suicide apparently stemmed from financial troubles. But one could wonder if, by changing his name and identity, the man had cut himself off from any sense of community, Sarna said.
The Kerry story also might hold lessons for the present and future makeup of American Jewry, Sarna said. According to current statistics, millions of Americans like Kerry may have Jewish roots but don't consider themselves Jewish.
Of course, several people contact the American Jewish Historical Society every year asking for help in their search for Jewish roots.
The e-mails usually run along the lines of, "My name is Kelly Smith, but my grandmother's name was Sara Goldstein," said Michael Feldberg, the executive director of the historical society, which is based in New York.
Kerry said he had asked cousins and searched on the Internet, but had found only bits of information on his family history.
The news does not appear to have major political ramifications.
There was an initial hubbub when Albright, secretary of state in the Clinton administration, learned in 1997 that three of her four grandparents were Jewish.
The next time she was in Prague, Albright visited the Pinkas Synagogue, where the names of her paternal grandparents are inscribed on a wall among thousands of Czech Jews who died in the Holocaust.
Observers say the revelation about Kerry is unlikely to affect the 2004 presidential race.
"There's no question there's a lot of pride in a Jewish candidate and pride in family Jewish connections, but the American Jewish community is fairly mature in its political behavior," said Ira Forman, the executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council.
As far as non-Jews go, "had it come out in 1953 instead of 2003, it would have been fatal to his presidential ambitions," Feldberg said, but not in today's world.
Kerry's revelation adds another Jewish flavor to the 2004 race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), who declared last month that he will seek the nomination, is an observant Jew.
Another contender, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, is married to a Jewish woman and is raising his children as Jews.
JTA correspondent Matthew E. Berger in Washington contributed to this report.
For more JTA stories, go to http://www.jta.org

Sunspots reaching 1,000-year high
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/3869753.stm
Published: 2004/07/06
A new analysis shows that the Sun is more active now than it has been at anytime in the previous 1,000 years.
Scientists based at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich used ice cores from Greenland to construct a picture of our star's activity in the past.
They say that over the last century the number of sunspots rose at the same time that the Earth's climate became steadily warmer.
This trend is being amplified by gases from fossil fuel burning, they argue.
'Little Ice Age'
Sunspots have been monitored on the Sun since 1610, shortly after the invention of the telescope. They provide the longest-running direct measurement of our star's activity.
The variation in sunspot numbers has revealed the Sun's 11-year cycle of activity as well as other, longer-term changes.
In particular, it has been noted that between about 1645 and 1715, few sunspots were seen on the Sun's surface.
This period is called the Maunder Minimum after the English astronomer who studied it.
It coincided with a spell of prolonged cold weather often referred to as the "Little Ice Age". Solar scientists strongly suspect there is a link between the two events - but the exact mechanism remains elusive.
Over the past few thousand years there is evidence of earlier Maunder-like coolings in the Earth's climate - indicated by tree-ring measurements that show slow growth due to prolonged cold.
In an attempt to determine what happened to sunspots during these other cold periods, Dr Sami Solanki and colleagues have looked at concentrations of a form, or isotope, of beryllium in ice cores from Greenland.
The isotope is created by cosmic rays - high-energy particles from the depths of the galaxy.
The flux of cosmic rays reaching the Earth's surface is modulated by the strength of the solar wind, the charged particles that stream away from the Sun's surface.
And since the strength of the solar wind varies over the sunspot cycle, the amount of beryllium in the ice at a time in the past can therefore be used to infer the state of the Sun and, roughly, the number of sunspots.
Latest warming
Dr Solanki is presenting a paper on the reconstruction of past solar activity at Cool Stars, Stellar Systems And The Sun, a conference in Hamburg, Germany.
He says that the reconstruction shows the Maunder Minimum and the other minima that are known in the past thousand years.
But the most striking feature, he says, is that looking at the past 1,150 years the Sun has never been as active as it has been during the past 60 years.
Over the past few hundred years, there has been a steady increase in the numbers of sunspots, a trend that has accelerated in the past century, just at the time when the Earth has been getting warmer.
The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer.
Over the past 20 years, however, the number of sunspots has remained roughly constant, yet the average temperature of the Earth has continued to increase.
This is put down to a human-produced greenhouse effect caused by the combustion of fossil fuels.
This latest analysis shows that the Sun has had a considerable indirect influence on the global climate in the past, causing the Earth to warm or chill, and that mankind is amplifying the Sun's latest attempt to warm the Earth.

Bush To Screen Everyone For 'Mental Illness'
All 'Disruptive' Children To Be Forcibly Medicated?
By Jeanne Lenzer
British Medical Journal
6-19-4
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/328/7454/1458
NEW YORK -- A sweeping mental health initiative will be unveiled by President George W Bush in July. The plan promises to integrate mentally ill patients fully into the community by providing "services in the community, rather than institutions," according to a March 2004 progress report entitled New Freedom Initiative (www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/newfreedom/toc-2004.html). While some praise the plan's goals, others say it protects the profits of drug companies at the expense of the public.
Bush established the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in April 2002 to conduct a "comprehensive study of the United States mental health service delivery system." The commission issued its recommendations in July 2003. Bush instructed more than 25 federal agencies to develop an implementation plan based on those recommendations.
The president's commission found that "despite their prevalence, mental disorders often go undiagnosed" and recommended comprehensive mental health screening for "consumers of all ages," including preschool children. According to the commission, "Each year, young children are expelled from preschools and childcare facilities for severely disruptive behaviours and emotional disorders." Schools, wrote the commission, are in a "key position" to screen the 52 million students and 6 million adults who work at the schools.
The commission also recommended "Linkage [of screening] with treatment and supports" including "state-of-the-art treatments" using "specific medications for specific conditions." The commission commended the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP) as a "model" medication treatment plan that "illustrates an evidence-based practice that results in better consumer outcomes."
Dr Darrel Regier, director of research at the American Psychiatric Association (APA), lauded the president's initiative and the Texas project model saying, "What's nice about TMAP is that this is a logical plan based on efficacy data from clinical trials."
He said the association has called for increased funding for implementation of the overall plan.
But the Texas project, which promotes the use of newer, more expensive antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs, sparked off controversy when Allen Jones, an employee of the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General, revealed that key officials with influence over the medication plan in his state received money and perks from drug companies with a stake in the medication algorithm (15 May, p1153). He was sacked this week for speaking to the BMJ and the New York Times.
The Texas project started in 1995 as an alliance of individuals from the pharmaceutical industry, the University of Texas, and the mental health and corrections systems of Texas. The project was funded by a Robert Wood Johnson grant - and by several drug companies.
Mr Jones told the BMJ that the same "political/pharmaceutical alliance" that generated the Texas project was behind the recommendations of the New Freedom Commission, which, according to his whistleblower report, were "poised to consolidate the TMAP effort into a comprehensive national policy to treat mental illness with expensive, patented medications of questionable benefit and deadly side effects, and to force private insurers to pick up more of the tab" (http://psychrights.org/Drugs/AllenJonesTMAPJanuary20.pdf).
Larry D Sasich, research associate with Public Citizen in Washington, DC, told the BMJ that studies in both the United States and Great Britain suggest that "using the older drugs first makes sense. There's nothing in the labeling of the newer atypical antipsychotic drugs that suggests they are superior in efficacy to haloperidol [an older "typical" antipsychotic]. There has to be an enormous amount of unnecessary expenditures for the newer drugs."
Olanzapine (trade name Zyprexa), one of the atypical antipsychotic drugs recommended as a first line drug in the Texas algorithm, grossed $4.28bn (£2.35bn; Euro3.56bn) worldwide in 2003 and is Eli Lilly's top selling drug. A 2003 New York Times article by Gardiner Harris reported that 70% of olanzapine sales are paid for by government agencies, such as Medicare and Medicaid.
Eli Lilly, manufacturer of olanzapine, has multiple ties to the Bush administration. George Bush Sr was a member of Lilly's board of directors and Bush Jr appointed Lilly's chief executive officer, Sidney Taurel, to a seat on the Homeland Security Council. Lilly made $1.6m in political contributions in 2000ó82% of which went to Bush and the Republican Party.
Jones points out that the companies that helped to start up the Texas project have been, and still are, big contributors to the election funds of George W Bush. In addition, some members of the New Freedom Commission have served on advisory boards for these same companies, while others have direct ties to the Texas Medication Algorithm Project.
Bush was the governor of Texas during the development of the Texas project, and, during his 2000 presidential campaign, he boasted of his support for the project and the fact that the legislation he passed expanded Medicaid coverage of psychotropic drugs.
Bush is the clear front runner when it comes to drug company contributions. According to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), manufacturers of drugs and health products have contributed $764 274 to the 2004 Bush campaign through their political action committees and employeesófar outstripping the $149 400 given to his chief rival, John Kerry, by 26 April.
Drug companies have fared exceedingly well under the Bush administration, according to the centre's spokesperson, Steven Weiss.
The commission's recommendation for increased screening has also been questioned. Robert Whitaker, journalist and author of Mad in America, says that while increased screening "may seem defensible," it could also be seen as "fishing for customers," and that exorbitant spending on new drugs "robs from other forms of care such as job training and shelter programmes."
But Dr Graham Emslie, who helped develop the Texas project, defends screening: "There are good data showing that if you identify kids at an earlier age who are aggressive, you can intervene... and change their trajectory."

9-11 plan took twisted path
Infighting, improvisation marked scheme hatched in '99
By Douglas Jehl and David Johnston
The New York Times
Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - WASHINGTON -- In early 1999, Osama bin Laden summoned Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to his well-guarded compound in Kandahar, Afghanistan, to confide to the lieutenant that his long-discussed proposal to use aircraft as terror weapons against the United States had the full support of al-Qaida.
That meeting, described for the first time by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, set in motion an extraordinary series of events. But the path from Kandahar to the World Trade Center was anything but a straight line.
Described in vivid detail by two captured al-Qaida operatives who helped plan the attacks, the plot was more troubled and improvisational than had been previously understood.
As late as August 2001, one commission report says, Mohammed fretted about infighting between Mohammed Atta, the mission leader, and a Lebanese pilot, Ziad Jarrah. With his frosted hair and his fondness for Beirut nightclubs, Jarrah seemed so close to choosing a girlfriend over al-Qaida that the plotters scrambled to line up a replacement pilot. But in the end, Jarrah was at the controls of United Flight 93 when it crashed in Pennsylvania.
Of the four al-Qaida operatives first assigned to the plot in 1999, only two ended up among the final 19 hijackers who carried out the attacks. Both of them -- Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi -- washed out as student pilots, and were relegated to lesser roles. To take their place as pilots, Mohammed turned to other recruits spotted at the camps in Afghanistan.
Atta, the Egyptian pilot who was at the center of the core group, did not join the team until after the plot was well under way. The lineup of hijackers was changing throughout the two years of preparations. Meanwhile, an impatient bin Laden began pressing for an attack as early as 2000, even if it meant using untrained pilots to crash into the ground instead of into buildings.
At the start, though, bin Laden and Mohammed envisioned attacks even more audacious than the one that was ultimately carried out, the report said.
Mohammed, the American-educated Kuwaiti from Pakistan who emerges in the commission's account as a main partner of bin Laden's, at one point planned an attack involving 10 planes. Mohammed wanted to hijack the last plane himself, then kill every man on board and land to deliver an anti-American diatribe.
Another version, scrapped in 2000, envisioned near-simultaneous attacks involving aircraft in Southeast Asia and the United States. Still another, discarded only in the summer of 2001, conceived of a second wave of strikes, following those in Washington and New York, that would target skyscrapers in California and Washington state.
The date of the attacks was not settled until mid-August, the report says, and even in the final days, Atta and Ramzi Binalshibh, another top al-Qaida lieutenant, had not decided whether the fourth plane, the one piloted by Jarrah, should aim at the Capitol or the White House.
"In the end," the report said, "the plot proved sufficiently flexible to adapt and evolve as challenges arose."
Bin Laden listened, but did not commit himself. It was the spring of 1996 when Mohammed described his idea of using airplanes for a terror attack in the United States. He sketched out an aerial suicide plot that seemed to come straight from a 1995 plan by Mohammed and others in Manila, Philippines, to blow up 12 U.S. commercial jets over the Pacific Ocean.
Three years later, at their meeting in Kandahar, bin Laden said the plan had al-Qaida's full support. Mohammed and bin Laden chose an initial list of targets. Bin Laden wanted to hit the White House and the Pentagon. Mohammed wanted to strike the World Trade Center. To that list they added the U.S. Capitol, one commission report said.
Bin Laden quickly supplied Mohammed with four recruits to carry out the scheme, drawing from the thousands of young men who trained in his camps a few especially ardent followers whom bin Laden had singled out for martyrdom missions.
The four men were Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar, Walid Muhammad Salih bin Attash, known as Khallad, and Abu Bara al Taizi. Only Al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar stayed with the suicide attacks to the end.
Intensive training began in the fall of 1999. The recruits took part in an elite course at the Mes Aynak camp in Afghanistan. Mohammed, who had attended college in North Carolina, taught the men English phrases, showed them how to read a telephone book, make flight reservations, use the Internet and encode communications. They played flight simulator games and sifted through airline schedules to determine which flights would be in the air at the same time.
At first, Mohammed ordered Khallad and al Taizi to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to study airport security and conduct surveillance of U.S. airlines in preparation for a smaller version of the Manila plot. But bin Laden canceled the Southeast Asia plan. Khallad and al Taizi dropped out; instead, Khallad became the mastermind of the October 2000 attack in Yemen on the Navy destroyer Cole. Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were the first hijackers to enter the United States, arriving Jan. 15. 2000.
Separately, in 1999, four other young extremists were making their way from Hamburg, Germany, where they met, to the Afghan camps, as an alternative to an earlier plan to fight against the Russians in Chechnya. The four, Atta, Jarrah, Binalshibh, and Marwan al-Shehhi, seemed ideal for bin Laden: They were Western-educated and held extreme anti-American views. All except Binalshibh would die in the attacks.
In Afghanistan, Atta quickly achieved high status, pledging "bayat" or allegiance to bin Laden, who made him the operation's leader. The two men discussed targets for the attack. One commission report, based on the interrogation of Binalshibh, said the two men identified "the World Trade Center, which represented the U.S. economy; the Pentagon, a symbol of the U.S. military; and the U.S. Capitol, the perceived source of U.S. policy in support of Israel."
By March 2000, the four new al-Qaida recruits were back in Germany researching flight schools. But after learning that pilot training was cheaper and easier in the United States, Atta, al-Shehhi and Jarrah left for the United States. Binalshibh, a Yemeni who tried but failed to enter the country, stayed behind as a link between Mohammed and Atta.
By the fall of 2000, the recruits were training at different aviation schools around the country. But al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, the first two hijackers to enter the country, proved to be poor pilots.
Al-Qaida proved adaptable. In place of the two men, bin Laden's scouts recommended Hani Hanjour, who had studied in the United States and had taken flight training in Arizona. He was chosen for the plot in 2000 after he arrived at the Faruq camp in Afghanistan. That December, Hanjour flew to California to join the plot.
With his arrival, the pilots who seized the four planes used in the attack were all in the United States.
As 2001 dawned, all was not well among the pilots.
Jarrah was headed abroad, on the second and third of what would be five foreign trips in 10 months, to see his girlfriend in Germany and his family in Lebanon. Atta and al-Shehhi also left the United States around the New Year, but it was Jarrah, from a wealthy Lebanese family, who seemed to be having second thoughts about the plot.
The report describes Jarrah as a young man who had "studied at private, Christian schools" in Lebanon and "knew the best nightclubs and discos in Beirut, and partied with fellow students in Germany, even drinking beer -- a clear taboo for any religious Muslim." He was very different from the more pious Atta and other pilots, the report says, and during his months of flight training in the United States, he lived separately from and felt isolated by them.
By late July, when Jarrah headed to Germany again, on a one-way ticket purchased by his girlfriend, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, Mohammed and Binalshibh discussed the possibility of replacing him with another man, Zacarias Moussaoui. Only after an emotional conversation in Germany in early August, in which Binalshibh encouraged him "to see the plan through," did Jarrah return to the United States and the al-Qaida team.
In fits and starts, the final lineup for the attacks began taking shape. At one time or another, at least nine candidate hijackers, all Saudis, had been dropped from the plan, the report says. But by late April, the 15 recruits who would serve in supporting roles in the hijackings had begun arriving in the United States. Most of the men were short in stature, slender in build, and between 20 and 28 years old. They would serve as the "muscle," to subdue the crew and passengers as the others flew the planes.
Still, bin Laden was impatient. As early as 2000, just as the pilots were beginning to arrive in the United States, he had been pressing Mohammed to carry out the attacks, to protest harsh treatment by Israel of the Palestinians. It would be sufficient, the al-Qaida leader told Mohammed, if the planes were just crashed into the ground.
At least twice in 2001, bin Laden encouraged attacks as early as May, but Mohammed deflected those requests, the report says, saying the hijackers needed more time to prepare. Sometime in the summer, Mohammed himself quietly set aside his vision of a "second wave" of attacks, in California and Washington state, that would follow those in the East; he was too busy preparing for the main onslaught.
At a meeting in Spain in mid-July, Atta told Binalshibh that he would need an additional six weeks to carry out those strikes, the report said. Not until mid-August did Atta settle on the Sept. 11 date.
Since 1999, when bin Laden gave the go-ahead to the plot, the target list had been whittled down, albeit after much debate. From Boston, two hijacked planes would strike the World Trade Center, a target long favored by Mohammed. From Dulles airport outside Washington, a third plane would hit the Pentagon, a favorite of bin Laden's.
But what of the Capitol and the White House? Both had been on the preliminary list, and bin Laden preferred the White House, a message conveyed to Atta. But the chief hijacker resisted; in the center of Washington, the White House might be difficult to strike; he wanted to hold the Capitol in reserve.
The fourth aircraft, hijacked after takeoff from Newark, N.J., was headed toward Washington when it was forced down by passengers into the Pennsylvania field. "As late as Sept. 9, two days before the attacks," one commission report says, "the conspirators may still have been uncertain about which Washington target they would strike."
In Afghanistan, some of bin Laden's most senior advisers were anxious, the report says. They were concerned that the attack could provoke an armed American response and would also anger Taliban leaders and the Pakistani government, whose good graces had permitted al-Qaida to use Afghanistan as a refuge. But in a dispute over whether to go forward, bin Laden prevailed.
"In his thinking," the report says, "the more al-Qaida did, the more support it would gain."

AP Meteor Crash Report Was a Hoax
By Joe Strupp
Published: June 03, 2004 12:20 PM EST
NEW YORK Associated Press editors were forced to retract an earlier report that a meteorite might have hit near Olympia, Wash., this morning after discovering that a source, one Bradley Hammermaster, claiming to be an astronomy professor, had perpetrated a hoax.
"An early report that a meteor might have hit turned out to be false," said AP spokesman Jack Stokes. "It looks like a version (of the story) was killed because it talked about a meteorite hitting." He said AP was reviewing how the error occurred.
The original story, which AP released at 7:03 a.m. EST, stated that someone identified as Bradley Hammermaster, and purported to be a University of Washington astronomy instructor, had told KIRO Radio in Seattle that a piece of meteor "about the size of a small car" had hit just before 3 a.m. PST.
The radio station also quoted the man as saying "a team was being assembled to head for the area where the object was believed to have hit near the tiny southwestern Washington community of Chehalis."
This version was picked up by dozens of news sites, most of which later deleted the Hammermaster references.
The bogus report followed genuine reports of bright lights being seen along a 60-mile stretch of the Puget Sound, which National Weather Service and U.S. Coast Guard officials were investigating as either a streaking meteor or other outer space activity, AP reported.
An AP advisory sent out at about 7:23 a.m. EST stated, "The AP story Meteorite-Washington ... has been eliminated. The identity of the source of the story cannot be confirmed."
Later versions of the AP story revealed the hoax.
"An early report that a meteor might have hit near Chehalis, about 90 miles south of the city, turned out to be false, a University of Washington scientist who specializes in meteorites said," AP reported. "A man who identified himself as University of Washington astronomy professor Bradley Hammermaster told KIRO Radio a team was being assembled to head for an area where the meteor was believed to have hit, but that call appeared to be a hoax, Smith said."
The story added, "No one by the name of Hammermaster is known to the astronomy department, and the description given by the caller to the station of the object -- an automobile-sized piece of a small car from a piece of the larger Trilene meteor -- was clearly bogus."

'Drunk' American Blabs To Chalabi?
NEW YORK, June 2, 2004
(CBS) FBI counter-intelligence agents are focusing on the highest levels of the Pentagon in their search for who told former Iraqi ally Ahmad Chalabi one of the nation's best kept secrets -- only to see Chalabi turn right around and share it with Iranian intelligence agents, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart.
Several news organizations, including CBS, The New York Times and Los Angeles Times learned of the alleged betrayal weeks ago. But the agencies agreed to withhold reporting it until now because of U.S. attempts to shore up the intelligence losses.
Chalabi was once held in high enough esteem to sit behind first lady Laura Bush during the state of the union address. He is alleged to have met in Baghdad with a top Iranian agent and disclosed to him that the U.S. had cracked Iran's secret codes and was eavesdropping on all Iranian intelligence messages.
Chalabi told the Iranians he learned about the code intercepts from an American who was "drunk" when he told him. What followed was a frantic exchange of messages between the Baghdad Iranian agent and his headquarters in Tehran all of which were intercepted and decoded by U.S. agents back here.
That led to a raid last month on Chalabi's Baghdad headquarters and an end to his hopes of joining in the new leadership coalition in post-war Iraq.
Today Chalabi denied the leaks, calling the accusations "false" and "stupid."
Chalabi has always had a history of mixed reviews from U.S. officials. The CIA blames him for some of the bad intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. However, the Pentagon has credited Chalabi with information that led to a quick victory over Saddam Hussein.
"We are getting some extremely valuable information from a whole range of Iraqi groups, including Mr. Chalabi's," said Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.
The Pentagon says no one there has been officially questioned as yet. Other officials, however, hint the leak investigation is making good progress.
On Tuesday, CBS News reported that Chalabi recently told an Iranian intelligence official that the U.S. had cracked the codes, allowing the U.S. to read communications on everything from Iran's sponsorship of terrorists to its covert operations inside Iraq.
Chalabi has denied passing any classified information to Iran, and Chalabi supporters have asserted that the CIA is out to destroy the former exile.
In Najaf, Iraq, Chalabi said Wednesday it was "false" and "stupid" to assert he had tipped Iran to the code break.
"Where would I get this from?" he asked. "I have no such information. How would I know anything about that? That's stupid from every aspect."
Chalabli was once touted as a strong candidate to lead postwar Iraq by some White House and Pentagon officials, but he has suffered a rapid fall from the grace, in no small measure because the U.S. learned he was giving secret information to Iran.
On May 20, Iraqi police backed by American soldiers raided Chalabi's Baghdad home and offices. Chalabi is a controversial figure who provided the Bush administration with prewar intelligence on supposed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- including the now-discredited information about mobile weapons labs.
After the raid on his home and offices, 60 Minutes Correspondent Lesley Stahl reported that the U.S. had evidence Chalabi has been passing highly classified U.S. intelligence to Iran.
The New York Times, citing U.S. intelligence officials, said the U.S. learned of Chalabi's activities when an Iranian intelligence agent in Baghdad sent a coded message to Tehran reporting that Chalabi had told him the U.S. had broken the codes.
According to the message, which was read by the U.S., Chalabi claimed to have gotten the information from an unnamed American who was drunk, the Times said.
Chalabi is still active and visible on the scene in Iraq where he is a member of the Iraqi Governing Council.
Over the Memorial Day weekend, Chalabi was reportedly involved in negotiations to maintain a faltering ceasefire in the city of Kufa between U.S. military and radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

KILLER RASH BREAKS OUT IN NYC
http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/24879.htm
THE SUPERBUG: One new case a week of MRSA is being detected in some New York City clinics.
May 30, 2004
A vicious skin infection resistant to all but the most powerful antibiotics has jumped out of New York City hospitals and onto the streets.
The "superbug," as health officials refer to it, can cause anything from reddening of the skin, to abscesses, tissue loss, amputation or even death in severe cases, doctors said.
For decades confined to hospitals, where it preyed on patients and built up immunity to antibiotics, the bug - known officially as Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus or MRSA - has also grown in strength.
"Usually with infections you need a break in the skin to pass it," said Dr. Howard Grossman, who has a private practice in Chelsea.
"Not with this. It gets through unbroken skin with casual contact."
The city Department of Health first detected the infections outside hospitals early last year, according to health officials.
Doctors at some clinics, such as the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in Chelsea, are seeing one new case a week, compared with one every two months when the infection first cropped up last year.
"This is something we should be concerned about," said Dr. Dawn Harbatkin, the center's medical director.
Dr. Brian Saltzman of Beth Israel, who has just completed a study of the spread of MRSA outside hospitals, said, "We are seeing very impressive, very large, very difficult-to-treat skin abscesses."
The Department of Health is tracking the outbreak here but declined to provide the number of cases it has found.
Last month, Steven, who asked that his last name not be published, developed what he thought was a pimple on his leg, but it soon grew painful and larger.
Doctors lanced the boil that formed and began antibiotics, but the infection failed to respond and starting growing toward Steven's groin.
"The fact it wasn't responding [to drugs] and it was moving up that way was terrifying," he said. "It was eating up tissue."
After a lengthy hospital stay and five antibiotics - some administered intravenously and one, Zyvox, administered orally at $100 per tablet - the infection started to abate.
Doctors told Steven they believed he contracted it at the gym. Keith, who lives in West New York, N.J., has been battling MRSA for months, with the infection cropping up on his legs, then his face, then back on his legs. The doctor treating him says the infection has "colonized" inside him. He believes Keith contracted it from a friend.
In New York City hospitals, about 50 percent of infections are now resistant to some kind of antibiotic, as opposed to 10 percent a decade ago, according to several local infectious-disease specialists.
According to an Institute of Medicine report last year, 80,000 people die each year in the United States from hospital-acquired infections.
The city is not aware of anyone dying of MRSA acquired outside hospitals.
There are now three antibiotics left that can attack MRSA: vancomysin, daptomycin and linezolid. But those antibiotics are beginning to lose their potency against the bug.

Is NHS Losing The War Against Superbugs?
The Observer - UK
6-6-4
For years it has been the silent killer lurking in hospital wards, but it can no longer be ignored - new figures show that cases of the MRSA superbug have rocketed by 600 per cent in less than a decade.
Even doctors are running scared of the deadly bug which is immune to many antibiotics and poses a particular threat to the young and the old.
An Observer investigation has learnt of paediatricians advising parents to take sick children home from hospital - rather than keeping them in overnight for observation - to reduce the risk of catching the bug. There is also evidence that some NHS doctors are now paying to have their own routine operations performed in private hospitals, where the risk of infection is reduced.
Health officials are battling to reassure the public that the bug, full name methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, can be controlled.
The case of actress Leslie Ash who was left temporarily paralysed by a bug that displays a number of properties similar to MRSA, has added to the sense of panic. Now experts are warning that the true scale of the MRSA threat, which last year contributed to the deaths of more than 800 people in the UK and caused hundreds of people to undergo amputations and fall seriously ill, is only starting to become apparent. In the United States, experts have recently identified new strains of MRSA which appear to thrive outside hospital conditions.
'While it would be wrong to present these latest findings as a shock-horror scenario, it is fair to say there are now some nasty strains out there that are not appearing in hospitals. They seem to spread much more readily than their predecessors,' warned Professor Barry Cookson, director of the Laboratory of Healthcare Associated Infection at the Health Protection Agency.
MRSA is usually carried on the skin or in mucus and is only dangerous when it breaks through the skin, often via a surgical wound, which is why it is dangerous in hospitals, especially those that perform high levels of surgery among vulnerable patients. A recent survey showed North Middlesex Hospital, which has large paediatrics and accident and emergency departments, had the highest MRSA infection rates in the country.
But the new so-called 'community' strain MRSA, which is spreading outside confined areas and causes boils and sepsis - a form of blood poisoning which can result in paralysis and death - suggests MRSA is becoming more virulent. Worse, it is also becoming more difficult to predict.
'We are going to have to watch this space when it comes to the new generations of the bug. I always say never try to predict Staphylococcus. It will always prove you wrong,' Cookson said.
And then there is the nightmare scenario. Scientists in the US have detected a fledgling bug called VRSA, or vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, so called because it cannot be treated by vancomycin, the 'ultimate' antibiotic which doctors prescribe when all others have failed.
Fears that it is only a matter of months before what is described as 'the mother of all superbugs' appears here were raised recently after an influential medical journal noted that a patient had contracted a hybrid of VRSA and MRSA. The revelation has prompted concerns that soon there will be no drugs capable of treating the new breed of superbugs.
It is a frightening prospect for the government, which has been attacked for masking the true scale of the problem. The Department of Health has made it mandatory for trusts to record MRSA rates. Even so, privately health officials still fear the current figures represent only a fraction of the bug's true infection rate.
Some experts say that to appreciate the true scale of the threat, the UK should draw comparisons with the US where more than two million people out of a population of 290 million are affected by the bug each year. Similar figures extrapolated for the UK suggest that more than 400,000 people are affected by MRSA and that the bug plays a role in the death of some 18,000 patients every year.
Currently most death certificates fail to record whether MRSA played a part. The government has now charged the Health Protection Agency with developing a new way of auditing MRSA-associated deaths by 2005.
In addition, electronic death certificates are to be introduced which can record multiple factors that contributed to death.
But these measures will do little to alleviate public anxiety and, in the long run-up to an election, MRSA has become an issue. Rival parties point out that, after Greece, Britain tops the European rankings when it comes to superbug infection rates in hospitals.
The Conservatives draw on statistics showing that MRSA is not nearly as prevalent in private hospitals as in those in the NHS, suggesting patients are getting a poor deal from the public sector.
In a report released today, the Liberal Democrats accuse the government of 'utter and extreme complacency' in tackling the issue. They say there were 7,300 reported cases of MRSA last year, compared with 1,000 in 1996.
'People go into hospital to get better. But they are getting sicker because of staff shortages and because infection control is not a high enough priority,' said Paul Burstow, the Lib Dem health spokesman.
The new report notes that hospitals scored themselves only six out of 10 when it comes to implementing infection control standards. 'This report proves the lack of real progess being made in making our hospital wards cleaner and safer. It is a black mark against the government's record on NHS hygiene,' Burstow said.
The government argues it is doing more to combat MRSA than ever before. 'There is no complacency about the issue - tackling hospital superbugs is one of my top priorities,' the Health Secretary, John Reid, said.
But, in a sign the government is now nervous about the issue, it will dispatch the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, on a fact-finding mission this week to the Netherlands, where MRSA rates are a fraction of those in the UK.
A key challenge for the government is to change people's attitudes. Only a couple of decades ago health experts maintained that hospital environments had little impact on infection rates. But now a number of studies suggest elementary hygiene practices, such as washing hands and keeping MRSA-infected patients isolated from others, has a dramatic impact on reducing the rates.
A recent study at St Thomas's hospital in London found traces of MRSA on everything from TV remote controls to door handles, undermining widely held views that the bug cannot survive in the open for more than a few hours. After specialist cleaning, only 1 per cent of swabs taken from wards which had housed MRSA patients contained the bug.
But educating health staff and buying new hygiene products is expensive, not to mention complicated for the hospitals involved. 'There are an awful lot of snake oil salesmen out there who claim to have invented all sorts of ways for killing the MRSA bug. There's an awful lot of bullshit around,' said one NHS hygiene expert.
Last month, the government announced a £68 million hospital clean-up programme and issued a new cleaning manual to all NHS staff. Supplies of alcohol handrub have increased by 35 per cent. But many staff appear reluctant to heed warnings. The National Patient Safety Agency published a report two months ago that found only 40 per cent of necessary hand-hygiene procedures were being carried out in NHS hospitals.
Keeping patients with MRSA in isolation is not easy either. The Lib Dem report points out that there are now 3,000 fewer hospital beds since Labour came to power and that most NHS trusts cannot afford to separate MRSA-infected patients from others.
Health experts agree that doing nothing is no longer an option. Infectious diseases cost the NHS £1 billion a year and claim 5,000 lives. These figures are expected to rise as new strains of superbug cross the Atlantic, bringing not just death and disease but another serious problem. This month's edition of the US journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology warns that MRSA 'causes increased length of hospitalisation, increased morbidity, increased mortality and increased costs. In addition, these pathogens cause large numbers of lawsuits, driving up insurance and healthcare costs.'
As one NHS hygiene expert puts it: 'If a mounting death toll doesn't prompt the government to act on MRSA, a tidal wave of lawsuits just might.'

Police find explosives in bags
From correspondents in Bratislava, Slovakia
May 28, 2004
POLICE found two plastic bags with explosives in downtown Bratislava today, a day ahead of a NATO meeting that will gather hundreds of lawmakers from North American and Europe.
Police acting on tips found the bags under a trash can, Interior Ministry spokesman Boris Azaltovic said.
The explosives in one bag were of Czechoslovak origin, while the other contained plastic explosives likely made in former Yugoslavia.
The bags, which also contained charges to ignite the explosives, were found on a downtown street near the venue of the NATO meeting, Azaltovic said.
The plastic explosives would not have been able to explode, Azaltovic said, but he refused to specify whether the 500-gram of Czechoslovak explosives in the other bag could have caused a blast.
He also refused to say whether the find could be linked to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly meeting, but added that police have the security situation under control.
About 1000 police officers will be patrolling Bratislava starting tomorrow when the five-day NATO meeting starts. Another 3000 officers could be called in if needed, Azaltovic said.
Some 300 legislators from North America and Europe are to take part in the NATO meeting, which will focus on issues such as post-conflict reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the war against terrorism.
Slovakia joined NATO earlier this year along with six other countries.
The Associated Press

Baby fawn rescued from Sandy River's swift currents
http://www.katu.com/news/story.asp?ID=67561
May 21, 2004
PORTLAND, ORE. - After a Good Samaritan found a fawn that was only a few hours old, stranded on an island in the Sandy River, they brought it to to Dove Lewis Emergency Animal Hospital.
Experts believe she was swept away by a swift current and ended up on a barren, rock island in the river.
The fawn's umbilical cord was still attached. While experts believe the fawn's mother is dead, they warn it is better to leave wild animals alone.
"In most instances you want to leave the animal because the mother is close by out there looking for food or leaving the fawn or animal alone so they don't have their scent nearby for predators," said Ron Morgan from Dove Lewis Emergency Animal Hospital.
The fawn will remain at Dove Lewis until Saturday morning then it will go to the American Wildlife Foundation for rehabilitation.
They will determine if it can be released back into the wild.

Bush White House checked with rapture Christians before latest Israel move
The Jesus Landing Pad
by Rick Perlstein
Villagevoice.com
May 18th, 2004 10:00 AM
It was an e-mail we weren't meant to see. Not for our eyes were the notes that showed White House staffers taking two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists, where they passed off bogus social science on gay marriage as if it were holy writ and issued fiery warnings that "the Presidents [sic] Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level"—this to a group whose representative in Israel believed herself to have been attacked by witchcraft unleashed by proximity to a volume of Harry Potter. Most of all, apparently, we're not supposed to know the National Security Council's top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios.
But now we know.
"Everything that you're discussing is information you're not supposed to have," barked Pentecostal minister Robert G. Upton when asked about the off-the-record briefing his delegation received on March 25. Details of that meeting appear in a confidential memo signed by Upton and obtained by the Voice.
The e-mailed meeting summary reveals NSC Near East and North African Affairs director Elliott Abrams sitting down with the Apostolic Congress and massaging their theological concerns. Claiming to be "the Christian Voice in the Nation's Capital," the members vociferously oppose the idea of a Palestinian state. They fear an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza might enable just that, and they object on the grounds that all of Old Testament Israel belongs to the Jews. Until Israel is intact and Solomon's temple rebuilt, they believe, Christ won't come back to earth.
Abrams attempted to assuage their concerns by stating that "the Gaza Strip had no significant Biblical influence such as Joseph's tomb or Rachel's tomb and therefore is a piece of land that can be sacrificed for the cause of peace."
Three weeks after the confab, President George W. Bush reversed long-standing U.S. policy, endorsing Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank in exchange for Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip.
In an interview with the Voice, Upton denied having written the document, though it was sent out from an e-mail account of one of his staffers and bears the organization's seal, which is nearly identical to the Great Seal of the United States. Its idiosyncratic grammar and punctuation tics also closely match those of texts on the Apostolic Congress's website, and Upton verified key details it recounted, including the number of participants in the meeting ("45 ministers including wives") and its conclusion "with a heart-moving send-off of the President in his Presidential helicopter."
Upton refused to confirm further details.
Affiliated with the United Pentecostal Church, the Apostolic Congress is part of an important and disciplined political constituency courted by recent Republican administrations. As a subset of the broader Christian Zionist movement, it has a lengthy history of opposition to any proposal that will not result in what it calls a "one-state solution" in Israel.
The White House's association with the congress, which has just posted a new staffer in Israel who may be running afoul of Israel's strict anti-missionary laws, also raises diplomatic concerns.
The staffer, Kim Hadassah Johnson, wrote in a report obtained by the Voice, "We are establishing the Meet the Need Fund in Israel—'MNFI.' . . . The fund will be an Interest Free Loan Fund that will enable us to loan funds to new believers (others upon application) who need assistance. They will have the opportunity to repay the loan (although it will not be mandatory)." When that language was read to Moshe Fox, minister for public and interreligious affairs at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, he responded, "It sounds against the law which prohibits any kind of money or material [inducement] to make people convert to another religion. That's what it sounds like." (Fox's judgment was e-mailed to Johnson, who did not return a request for comment.)
The Apostolic Congress dates its origins to 1981, when, according to its website, "Brother Stan Wachtstetter was able to open the door to Apostolic Christians into the White House." Apostolics, a sect of Pentecostals, claim legitimacy as the heirs of the original church because they, as the 12 apostles supposedly did, baptize converts in the name of Jesus, not in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Ronald Reagan bore theological affinities with such Christians because of his belief that the world would end in a fiery Armageddon. Reagan himself referenced this belief explicitly a half-dozen times during his presidency.
While the language of apocalyptic Christianity is absent from George W. Bush's speeches, he has proven eager to work with apocalyptics—a point of pride for Upton. "We're in constant contact with the White House," he boasts. "I'm briefed at least once a week via telephone briefings. . . . I was there about two weeks ago . . . At that time we met with the president."
Last spring, after President Bush announced his Road Map plan for peace in the Middle East, the Apostolic Congress co-sponsored an effort with the Jewish group Americans for a Safe Israel that placed billboards in 23 cities with a quotation from Genesis ("Unto thy offspring will I give this land") and the message, "Pray that President Bush Honors God's Covenant with Israel. Call the White House with this message." It then provided the White House phone number and the Apostolic Congress's Web address.
In the interview with the Voice, Pastor Upton claimed personal responsibility for directing 50,000 postcards to the White House opposing the Road Map, which aims to create a Palestinian state. "I'm in total disagreement with any form of Palestinian state," Upton said. "Within a two-week period, getting 50,000 postcards saying the exact same thing from places all over the country, that resonated with the White House. That really caused [President Bush] to backpedal on the Road Map."
When I sought to confirm Upton's account of the meeting with the White House, I was directed to National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones, whose initial response upon being read a list of the names of White House staffers present was a curt, "You know half the people you just mentioned are Jewish?"
When asked for comment on top White House staffers meeting with representatives of an organization that may be breaking Israeli law, Jones responded, "Why would the White House comment on that?"
When asked whose job it is in the administration to study the Bible to discern what parts of Israel were or weren't acceptable sacrifices for peace, Jones said that his previous statements had been off-the-record.
When Pastor Upton was asked to explain why the group's website describes the Apostolic Congress as "the Christian Voice in the nation's capital," instead of simply a Christian voice in the nation's capital, he responded, "There has been a real lack of leadership in having someone emerge as a Christian voice, someone who doesn't speak for the right, someone who doesn't speak for the left, but someone who speaks for the people, and someone who speaks from a theocratical perspective."
When his words were repeated back to him to make sure he had said a "theocratical" perspective, not a "theological" perspective, he said, "Exactly. Exactly. We want to know what God would have us say or what God would have us do in every issue."
The Middle East was not the only issue discussed at the March 25 meeting. James Wilkinson, deputy national security advisor for communications, spoke first and is characterized as stating that the 9-11 Commission "is portraying those who have given their all to protect this nation as 'weak on terrorism,' " that "99 percent of all the men and women protecting us in this fight against terrorism are career citizens," and offered the example of Frances Town-send, deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, "who sacrificed Christmas to do a 'security video' conference."
Tim Goeglein, deputy director of public liaison and the White House's point man with evangelical Christians, moderated, and he also spoke on the issue of same-sex marriage. According to the memo, he asked the rhetorical questions: "What will happen to our country if that actually happens? What do those pushing such hope to gain?" His answer: "They want to change America." How so? He quoted the research of Hoover Institute senior fellow Stanley Kurtz, who holds that since gay marriage was legalized in Scandinavia, marriage itself has virtually ceased to exist. (In fact, since Sweden instituted a registered-partnership law for same-sex couples in the mid '90s, there has been no overall change in the marriage and divorce rates there.)
It is Matt Schlapp, White House political director and Karl Rove's chief lieutenant, who was paraphrased as stating "that the Presidents Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level."
Also present at the meeting was Kristen Silverberg, deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy. (None of the participants responded to interview requests.)
The meeting was closed by Goeglein, who was asked, "What can we do to assist in this fight for these issues and our nations [sic] foundation and values?" and who reportedly responded, "Pray, pray, pray, pray."
The Apostolic Congress's representative in Israel, Kim Johnson, is ethnically Jewish, keeps kosher, and holds herself to the sumptuary standards of Orthodox Jewish women, so as to better blend in to her surroundings.
In one letter home obtained by the Voice she notes that many of the Apostolic Christians she works with in Israel are Filipino women "married to Jewish men—who on occasion accompany their wives to meetings. We are planning to start a fellowship with this select group where we can meet for dinners and get to know one another. Please Pray for the timing and formation of such." Elsewhere she talks of a discussion with someone "on the pitfalls and aggravations of Christians who missionize Jews." She works often among the Jewish poor—the kind of people who might be interested in interest-free loans—and is thrilled to "meet the outcasts of this Land—how wonderful because they are in the in-casts for His Kingdom."
An ecstatic figure who from her own reports appears to operate at the edge of sanity ("Two of the three nights in my apartment I have been attacked by a hair raising spirit of fear," she writes, noting the sublet contained a Harry Potter book; "at this time I am associating it with witchcraft"), Johnson has also met with Knesset member Gila Gamliel. (Gamliel did not respond to interview requests.) She also boasted of an imminent meeting with a "Knesset leader."
"At this point and for all future mails it is important for me to note that this country has very stiff anti-missionary laws," she warns the followers back home. [D]iscretion is required in all mails. This is particularly important to understand when people write mails or ask about organization efforts regarding such."
Her boss, Pastor Upton, displays a photograph on the Apostolic Congress website of a meeting between himself and Beny Elon, Prime Minister Sharon's tourism minister, famous in Israel for his advocacy of the expulsion of Palestinians from Israeli-controlled lands.
His spokesman in the U.S., Ronn Torassian, affirmed that "Minister Elon knows Mr. Upton well," but when asked whether he is aware that Mr. Upton's staffer may be breaking Israel's anti-missionary laws, snapped: "It's not something he's interested in discussing with The Village Voice."
In addition to its work in Israel, the Apostolic Congress is part of the increasingly Christian public face of pro-Israel activities in the United States. Don Wagner, author of the book Anxious for Armageddon, has been studying Christian Zionism for 15 years, and believes that the current hard-line pro-Israel movement in the U.S. is "predominantly gentile." Often, devotees work in concert with Jewish groups like Americans for a Safe Israel, or AFSI, which set up a mostly Christian Committee for a One-State Solution as the sponsor of last year's billboard campaign. The committee's board included, in addition to Upton, such evangelical luminaries as Gary Bauer and E.E. "Ed" McAteer of the Religious Roundtable.
AFSI's executive director, Helen Freedman, confirms the increasingly Christian cast of her coalition. "We have many good Jews, of course," she says, "but they're in the minority." She adds, "The liberal Jew is unable to believe the Arab when he says his goal is to Islamize the West. . . . But I believe it. And evangelical Christians believe it."
Of Jews who might otherwise support her group's view of Jews' divine right to Israel, she laments, "They're embarrassed about quoting the Bible, about referring to the Covenant, about talking about the Promised Land."
Pastor Upton is not embarrassed, and Helen Freedman is proud of her association with him. She is wistful when asked if she, like Upton, has been able to finagle a meeting with the president. "Pastor Upton is the head of a whole Apostolic Congress," she laments. "It's a nationwide group of evangelicals."
Upton has something Freedman covets: a voting bloc.
She laughs off concerns that, for Christian Zionists, actual Jews living in Israel serve as mere props for their end-time scenario: "We have a different conception of what [the end of the world] will be like . . . Whoever is right will rejoice, and whoever was wrong will say, 'Whoops!' "
She's not worried, either, about evangelical anti-Semitism: "I don't think it exists," she says. She does say, however, that it would concern her if she learned the Apostolic Congress had a representative in Israel trying to win converts: "If we discovered that people were trying to convert Jews to Christianity, we would be very upset."
Kim Johnson doesn't call it converting Jews to Christianity. She calls it "Circumcision of the Heart"—a spiritual circumcision Jews must undergo because, she writes in paraphrase of Jeremiah, chapter 9, "God will destroy all the uncircumcised nations along with the House of Israel, because the House of Israel is uncircumcised in the heart . . . [I]t is through the Gospel . . . that men's hearts are circumcised."
Apostolics believe that only 144,000 Jews who have not, prior to the Second Coming of Christ, acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah will be saved in the end times. Though even for those who do not believe in this literal interpretation of the Bible—or for anyone who lives in Israel, or who cares about Israel, or whose security might be affected by a widespread conflagration in the Middle East, which is everyone—the scriptural prophecies of the Christian Zionists should be the least of their worries.
Instead, we should be worried about self-fulfilling prophecies. "Biblically," stated one South Carolina minister in support of the anti-Road Map billboard campaign, "there's always going to be a war."
Don Wagner, an evangelical, worries that in the Republican Party, people who believe this "are dominating the discourse now, in an election year." He calls the attempt to yoke Scripture to current events "a modern heresy, with cultish proportions.
"I mean, it's appalling," he rails on. "And it also shows how marginalized mainstream Christian thinking, and the majority of evangelical thought, have become."
It demonstrates, he says, "the absolute convergence of the neoconservatives with the Christian Zionists and the pro-Israel lobby, driving U.S. Mideast policy."
The problem is not that George W. Bush is discussing policy with people who press right-wing solutions to achieve peace in the Middle East, or with devout Christians. It is that he is discussing policy with Christians who might not care about peace at all—at least until the rapture.
The Jewish pro-Israel lobby, in the interests of peace for those living in the present, might want to consider a disengagement.

Solar wind to shield Earth during pole flip
15 May 04
New Scientist
Hollywood now has one less disaster scenario to worry about. The Earth, it seems, will be safe when its magnetic field falters during the next reversal of its magnetic poles.
A new model of the way the Earth interacts with the solar wind indicates that a replacement field will form in the upper atmosphere during the switch.
Scientists had previously thought that the planet would be left without a protective shield to stop lethal radiation from space reaching the surface.
The strength of the Earth's magnetic field is known to drop during "magnetic reversals", when the north and south poles swap places. Records of the field direction, frozen into sediments laid down on the seabed, show that the magnetic field has reversed hundreds of times in the past 400 million years.
In normal circumstances, the magnetic field protects the Earth's surface from dangerous high-energy particles, including particles from the sun and cosmic rays from deep space.
But as the field switches polarity, it can drop to below 10 per cent of its normal strength for thousands of years. Such a weakened field would allow lethal radiation to reach the Earth's surface, with potentially disastrous consequences for the atmosphere, the climate and particularly for life.
Opportune moment
In a paper to be published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, Guido Birk and Harald Lesch of the University of Munich, Germany, and Christian Konz of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching report an investigation of exactly what happens when the field is drastically reduced or vanishes altogether.
Their simulations show that the solar wind - the million-kilometre-an-hour stream of hydrogen and helium nuclei from the sun - wraps itself around the Earth in a way that induces a magnetic field in the ionosphere as strong as the original field.
"We were quite surprised about its effectiveness," Lesch says.
The news comes at an opportune moment. The Earth's magnetic field is showing worrying signs that it is about to reverse again. Not only has the magnetic north pole wandered by 1100 kilometres in the past 200 years, but its strength is dropping at a rate of 5 per cent a century.
"This is the fastest decrease since the last reversal 730,000 years ago," Lesch says.

Globe Grows Darker as Sunshine Diminishes 10% to 37%
May 13, 2004
NYTIMES
In the second half of the 20th century, the world became, quite literally, a darker place.
Defying expectation and easy explanation, hundreds of instruments around the world recorded a drop in sunshine reaching the surface of Earth, as much as 10 percent from the late 1950's to the early 90's, or 2 percent to 3 percent a decade. In some regions like Asia, the United States and Europe, the drop was even steeper. In Hong Kong, sunlight decreased 37 percent.
No one is predicting that it may soon be night all day, and some scientists theorize that the skies have brightened in the last decade as the suspected cause of global dimming, air pollution, clears up in many parts of the world.
Yet the dimming trend — noticed by a handful of scientists 20 years ago but dismissed then as unbelievable — is attracting wide attention. Research on dimming and its implications for weather, water supplies and agriculture will be presented next week in Montreal at a joint meeting of American and Canadian geological groups.
"There could be a big gorilla sitting on the dining table, and we didn't know about it," said Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a professor of climate and atmospheric sciences at the University of California, San Diego. "There are many, many issues that it raises."
Dr. James E. Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, said that scientists had long known that pollution particles reflected some sunlight, but that they were now realizing the magnitude of the effect.
"It's occurred over a long time period," Dr. Hansen said. "So it's not something that, perhaps, jumps out at you as a person in the street. But it's a large effect."
Satellite measurements show that the sun remains as bright as ever, but that less and less sunlight has been making it through the atmosphere to the ground.
Pollution dims sunlight in two ways, scientists theorize. Some light bounces off soot particles in the air and goes back into outer space. The pollution also causes more water droplets to condense out of air, leading to thicker, darker clouds, which also block more light. For that reason, the dimming appears to be more pronounced on cloudy days than sunny ones. Some less polluted regions have had little or no dimming.
The dynamics of global dimming are not completely understood. Antarctica, which would be expected to have clean air, has also dimmed.
"In general, we don't really understand this thing that's going on," said Dr. Shabtai Cohen, a scientist in the Israeli Agriculture Ministry who has studied dimming for a decade. "And we don't have the whole story."
The measuring instrument, a radiometer, is simple, a black plate under a glass dome. Like asphalt in summer, the black plate turns hot as it absorbs the sun's energy. Its temperature tells the amount of sunlight that has shone on it.
Since the 50's, hundreds of radiometers have been installed from the Arctic to Antarctica, dutifully recording sunshine. In the mid-80's, Dr. Atsumu Ohmura of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich sifted through the data to compare levels in different regions. "Suddenly," Dr. Ohmura said, "I realized it's not easy to do that, because the radiation was changing over time."
He recalled his reaction, saying, "I thought it is rather unbelievable."
After an analysis, he was convinced that the figures were reliable and presented his findings at a scientific conference.
Asked about his colleagues' reaction, Dr. Ohmura said: "There's no reaction. Very disappointing."
At that time, Dr. Gerald Stanhill of the Israeli Agriculture Ministry noticed similar darkening in Israel.
"I really didn't believe it," Dr. Stanhill said. "I thought there was some error in the apparatus."
Dr. Stanhill, now retired and living in New York, also looked around and found dimming elsewhere. In the 90's, he wrote papers describing the phenomenon, also largely ignored. In 2001, Drs. Stanhill and Cohen estimated that the worldwide dimming averaged 2.7 percent a decade.
Not every scientist is convinced that the dimming has been that pronounced. Although radiometers are simple, they do require periodic calibration and care. Dirt on the dome blocks light, leading to erroneous indications. Also, all radiometers have been on land, leaving three-fourths of the earth to supposition.
"I see some datasets that are consistent and some that aren't," Dr. Ellsworth G. Dutton, who heads surface-radiation monitoring at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said. "Certainly, the magnitude of the phenomenon is in considerable question."
Dr. Beate G. Liepert, a research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, has analyzed similar information and arrives at a smaller estimate of the dimming than Drs. Stanhill and Cohen. Dr. Liepert puts it at 4 percent from 1961 to 1990, or 1.3 percent a decade. "It's a little bit the way you do the statistics," she said.
A major set of measurements from the Indian Ocean in 1999 showed that air pollution did block significant sunlight. Following plumes of soot and other pollution, scientists measured sunlight under the plumes that was 10 percent less bright than in clear air.
"I thought I was too old to be surprised by anything," said Dr. Ramanathan, who was co-chief scientist of the projects.
Dr. Ohmura said he hoped to finish his analysis of the numbers since 1990 by late next month or early July.
"I have a very strong feeling that probably solar radiation is increasing during the last 14 years," he said. He based his hunch, he said, on a reduction in cloud cover and faster melting rates in glaciers.
But clearer, sunnier days could mean bad news for global warming. Instead of cloudiness slowing rising temperatures, sunshine would be expected to accelerate the warming.

Iraq's bin Laden? Zarqawi's rise
CIA says the Jordanian-born terrorist leader is the person shown killing a US civilian on video.
Christian Science Monitor
May 14, 2004
WASHINGTON – A one-legged poison expert from Jordan could be the brutal new star of Islamic terrorism.
The man in question - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - isn't yet the equal of Osama bin Laden, say experts. But he may be fast gaining influence and importance in the loosely organized world of Islamic militants by orchestrating attacks aimed at the US presence in Iraq.
Intelligence officials now say that Mr. Zarqawi was indeed the lead perpetrator of the murder of American businessman Nicholas Berg.
"After the intelligence agency conducted a technical analysis of the video posted on the Internet on May 11, we have determined - with high probability - that the speaker on the tape is that of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, and that he is the person shown decapitating American Nicholas Berg," says a CIA official.
Zarqawi has also claimed responsibility for bomb attacks on the UN headquarters in Baghdad and an Italian police station in Nasiriyah, among others.
If nothing else, his rise to prominence shows how a new generation of terrorist leaders may be stepping in to replace those eliminated by US efforts.
"He has a long reach ... I'm sure [Zarqawi] has supporters scattered around the globe who would support his efforts if need be," says a US government official.
Establishing responsibility for terrorist attacks is an extraordinarily difficult intelligence task. Many times masterminds prefer to stay in the shadows, for obvious reasons. Groups or individuals sometimes claim credit for things they didn't do, in an attempt to puff their reputations and gain money and recruits.
Importance exaggerated?
Some experts believe the US may be exaggerating Zarqawi's role in Iraq in an attempt to more closely link the US presence there with a war on terrorism.
That said, Zarqawi, or someone purporting to be him, has issued a series of audio and video tapes in recent months that claim responsibility for a wide range of horrific actions.
In one 33-minute tape he called on Sunni Muslims to "burn the earth" under Americans' feet. In others he boasted that he was behind some of the worst bombings in Iraq since the US took control of the country last year.
On Tuesday, an Islamic website released a video it said showed Zarqawi personally killing Mr. Berg, a young Pennsylvanian who had traveled to Iraq in search of work constructing communications towers.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's real name is Ahmad Fadil al-Khalaylah. He takes his nom de guerre from the Jordanian town of Zarqa, where Palestinian terrorists blew up three hijacked airliners in 1970 in a pioneering act of anti-Western violence.
Zarqawi first appeared on the radar screens of Western intelligence agencies in 1999, when Jordanian authorities tied him to an aborted plot to blow up a tourist hotel in Amman during millenium celebrations.
Zarqawi, the son of wealthy Jordanian landowner, escaped to Afghanistan. There he ran an Al Qaeda training camp that specialized in chemical and biological agents, according to US intelligence.
Wounded in the leg during a bombing raid in the Afghan war in 2001, he ended up in Iraq, where doctors reportedly fitted him with a prosthetic limb.
US intelligence subsequently tracked him around the Middle East. Among known contacts is a meeting with Hizbullah leaders in south Lebanon in August 2002.
In October 2002, two gunmen assassinated US diplomat Lawrence Foley in Jordan. Caught, the gunmen fingered Zarqawi as the mastermind of the plot. For this, last month he was sentenced to death in absentia in Jordan.
The Al Tawhid network
Zarqawi's decentralized network is known as Al Tawhid. In the past, one of his main avowed goals has been to topple the Jordanian royal family.
That probably remains one of his aims, say terrorist experts. But they add that he seems to have expanded his operations with the advent of the US war on terror.
"Zarqawi is building a state-of-the-art operational and support network beyond the Middle East into Europe and North America," says Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert based in Singapore, and author of "Inside Al Qaeda. "He works with about a dozen other Islamist groups ... Al Ansar Al Islami [and] Al Qaeda among them."
But Zarqawi is both an ally and competitor of these groups, according to the testimony of a captured follower. He vies with the better-known network of Osama bin Laden for contributions from the faithful, credit for attacks, and even for prized terrorist recruits.
With the advent of the US wars in the region, he appears to have shifted his aims and moved his base of operations inside Iraq itself.
No. 1 in Iraq
In terms of terror prominence, Zarqawi "would be No. 1 in Iraq, but Osama bin Laden is still No. 1 overall," says a US government official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
In recognition of the danger he poses, the US has promised a reward of at least $5 million for information leading to Zarqawi's death or capture.
Not everyone in the intelligence community, however, agrees that Zarqawi is behind the beheading of Berg.
"We don't think he is behind this decapitation," says a European intelligence official. "He is more sophisticated than that."
In fact, the intelligence official from that country, a partner with the US in the war on terror, refers to Zarqawi as a "gentleman terrorist" because of his predilection for the use of poisons over more brutal methods.

Al-Qaeda chemical attack in Jordan could have killed 80,000
April 27, 2004
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040426/1/3jseu.html
Jordan foiled an Al-Qaeda chemical bomb plot against the intelligence services HQ using trucks packed with 20 tons of explosives that could have killed as many as 80,000 people, security officials said Monday.
Members of the network, who were arrested or killed, also planned attacks on the prime minister's office and the US embassy in Amman, the officials said on state television but without giving details on those targets.
Several suspects, including Jordanian ringleader Azmi al-Jayussi who was recruited in Iraq, were shown shown on television which aired their confessions.
Jordan's King Abdullah II said on April 13 that the security services had dismantled a "terror network", thwarting plans by the group to commit "a crime never before seen in the kingdom" which would have killed thousands.
The television showed jerry cans said to contain chemicals, which officials did not name, and trucks "that the terrorists planned to load with 20 tons of chemical explosives in a suicide attack against the General Intelligence Department".
"This operation, which would have been the largest in the history of the kingdom in terms of its volume and number of victims, would have killed 80,000 Jordanian citizens," the report said.
Six members of the network were arrested and four others killed in a series of raids, the last of which took place April 20, security officials said.
"Terrorist Ahmad Fadel al-Khalayleh, nicknamed Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, a prominent Qaeda leader, masterminded these operations," one security official said.
Zarqawi, a fugitive Islamist sentenced to death here earlier this month for the October 2002 killing of a US diplomat, "decided that the first target shall be the General Intelligence Department" and recruited the operatives.
"Jayussi started to plan for the operation in Iraq where he had moved to from Afghanistan," the official said.
"He received direct orders from his leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi (to whom) Jayussi had pledged allegiance and absolute obedience since he met him in Al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan," he added.
In a taped testimony, Jayussi gave an account of his first encounter with Zarqawi in Herat, Afghanistan, and later in Iraq, and told of how he was trained by his mentor on the use of "explosives and strong poisons".
Jayussi, wearing a blue shirt, appeared calm. His face was swollen, his thinning hair unkempt and he was unshaven. The index finger of his left hand was mutilated and he had a bloodied scratch on the other hand.
He said he met Zarqawi again in Iraq and was introduced to another of his Jordanian followers, Muwafaq Adwan, who was killed in a shootout with police in Amman on April 20.
"Abu Mussab ordered me to go to Jordan with Muwafaq. Our mission was to instigate military work in Jordan," he added.
In Jordan he was aided by several Syrians sent by Zarqawi, including Haitham Omar Ibrahim who "arranged safe houses" for the pair, who then began to work to collect information on the targets and chemicals for the attacks.
"We managed to buy large quantities ... We collected around 20 tons of chemicals, enough to carry out all the operations in Jordan," Jayussi said, adding that he then started to build the bombs.
A member of the network also testified that Jayussi told him "the aim was to strike Jordan and the Hashemites (its ruling family), a war against crusaders and infidels".
Jayussi detailed the plans of the operation, which included moving six vehicles loaded with explosives to an area of west Amman "six or seven minutes" away from the intelligence headquarters.
"Each car would have two or three men. A Caprice, with RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) for those who will be hitting the barriers and killing the guards, would lead," he said.
"After this the large MAN (truck) would smash into the gates, drive up to the central part of the department where it would explode," he said, adding that the truck was fitted with reinforced fenders.
The television ran a computer simulation of the attack.
An expert cited in the programme said that the 20 tonnes of explosives would have caused "two explosions: a traditional one and a chemical in an area of two square kilometers (close to one square mile)".
"The chemical explosion would lead to the emission of poisonous chemical gasses which would cause physical deformities and direct injuries to the lungs and eyesight.
"Outside this circle, the human loss would amount to around 80,000 people dead and 160,000 injured," according to one of the experts.
Jayussi said he received 170,000 dollars from Zarqawi in instalments sent through messengers, mostly from Syria.
An 18-year-old Syrian, Anas Sheikh Amin, said in the report that he was trained in Afghanistan and told to go to Jordan to work under Jayussi.
Another arrested suspect, Ahmed Samir, testified he was trained in Iraq by a Zarqawi aide and that he worked on explosives for two months in a factory in Ramtha, near the Jordanian-Syrian border.

American Beheaded
Marc Perkel Rantz Blog
-"Marc Perkel is the most dangerous mind on the internet."
May 13, 2004
It's the same chair !!!! OMFG !!
http://marc.perkel.com/archives/000233.html
An American was beheaded today in retaliation for Bush's failed policy of torturing prisoners. I call it Bush's policy because as soon as 9-11 happened Bush started talking about when torture can be used and tried to distinguish various of war so as to justify torture. Then Bush had secret prisons set up like the one in Cuba so as to keep away anyone who would supervise them. So - when torture is exposed - are we really surprised?
Getting back on subject - seeing the pictures of the video supposedly of terrorists executing an American - the terrorists seem to be taller - stockier - and fatter that most Islamist terrorists are. It looks to me like these could be Americans posing as Islamic terrorists to create an event to justify our use of torture.
Furthermore - if you look at the video you can see that Nick Berg is wearing an orange prison jump suit. When you look at the Iraqi POW abuse pictures one of them - the one with prisoners tied and laying on the floor - shows the same type of orange prison jumpsuit. The man is executed in a concrete building with yellow walls and floresent lighting - the same yellow walls and lighting as the abuse pictures. Am I crazy? Or - was this man executed at Abu Ghraib prison.
Also - these guys are wearing bullet proof jackets. That's very American. And - when they yelled before they cut the head off - they sounded like Americans yelling at a football game.
According to CNN the voices don't match al-Zarqawi. From CNN:
The Web site said the killing had been carried out by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of an Islamist terrorist group that has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks on coalition forces in Iraq.
The voice on the tape could not be verified as that of al-Zarqawi. CNN staffers familiar with al-Zarqawi's voice said the voice on the tape did not sound like him.
Torture and execution benifit both Osama bin Laden and Bush. The greater the hate the better Bush and the terrorist do. Considering that Americans ordered the execution of survivors of an Afgan Massacure of 3000 POWs it is not outside what Bush would do to cover up this scandal. And - like I said - these terrorists look a little too big and too fat to be Islamist terrorists.

Nick Berg Conspiracy Theories Abound
May 13, 2004
http://www.angryfinger.org/archives/000232.html
Update: I sent an e-mail to Zeyad at Healing Iraq, Zeyad lives in Iraq and I wanted to get his opinion on the "gold ring" issue. Here is what he said:
Islam does not specifically forbid that men wear gold, in fact the Quran and the Hadith have encouraged men to 'adorn' and 'embellish' themselves (dying hair, perfume, etc.) . Muhammed is known to have been very fussy about his appearance (he had scores of wives), but the practice of wearing gold ornaments is discouraged by Muslim clerics, "Gold is the ornament of women". Socially it is not acceptable in the Arab world for men to wear gold, although this has changed lately and many young men do (engagement and wedding rings are mostly gold).
Update: I was reading this article on ABC.com when I read this.
One of the clues the FBI and CIA is studying is the large gold ring Zarqawi is wearing on his right hand, giving off a glare several times during the six-minute tape. [link]
That struck me as odd. First of all, I haven't seen the video, I've just seen certain parts of it and screencaps. I would have sworn there was a gold ring on his left hand. Perhaps I'm wrong. Either way, a "large gold ring" doesn't seem like something a Muslim man would normally wear. Here's what I found.
"I saw Allah’s Messenger holding silk in his right hand and gold in his left. Then he said, these two are forbidden for the males of my Ummah." (Bukhari)
Abdullah bin Abbas said that Allah’s Messenger (SAW) saw a gold ring on the hand of someone, so he took it from his hand and threw it away saying:
"Some among you would take a live coal of fire and put it in their hand." The Prophet (SAW) then left and the man was told to take the ring and benefit from it. He said, "I would not take something Allah’s Messenger has thrown away." (Muslim and an-Nasaa’ee)
So it is permissible for men to wear silver rings and for women to wear silver and gold rings, but with the condition that it does not resemble a wedding ring nor is it worn in conjunction with any ceremony such as the one previously discussed.
While I'm still working on putting together as much of Nick Berg's timeline in Iraq that I can, I have been coming across quite a few other interesting articles.
I got these questions via Buzzflash, the answers are mine:
Did the guy in the video have a prosthetic device? LONDON Abu Mussab Zarqawi's disfigured body shows the hard reality of his life. A scar runs along the left side of his face, possibly the product of an accident with improvised explosives. He wears a prosthetic leg, fitted in Baghdad last spring where he received treatment for injuries caused by an American bomb in Afghanistan. [link]
Note the white hands wielding the knife. I have watched that part of the video, although I haven't brought myself to watch the entire video yet and it's a hard call on the hands being "white" but.. "Three green dots are tattooed on the back of his [Zarqawi's] left hand, documents show, but their significance is unknown" [link]. I didn't see those tattoos either.
Note the military stance of the hooded captors in the video...it's Parade Rest. Maybe it's just me, but it kind of looks like they're just standing there. Doesn't really look like Parade Rest to me.
Note the body language... the beefy size of the captors... not middle-eastern. Who are the guys in the video? That's another tough one, it's not like these guys are fat or anything, but I can see where if you were trying to compare them to the stereotypical Middle Eastern look you could possibly make an argument that they don't exactly fit into that mold.
CNN transcript via Corrente:
O'BRIEN: Interesting. All right, now one final thought here. You did a very careful translation of your own, of the statement. And in it, you see no reference to al Qaeda. And yet the official U.S. government translation does. Explain how that happened.
NASR: Oh, I find it very interesting, because out of the blue, there is a mention of al Qaeda on the U.S. government translation. It says: "Does al Qaeda need any further excuses?" Any speaker of the Arabic language is going to notice a difference between the word al Qaeda, which means "the base," and al qaed, which means "the one sitting, doing nothing."
My translation says: "Is there any excuse for the one who sits down and does nothing?" Basically they're telling people, you have no excuse for not doing anything, for not acting and defending Islam and so forth. Whereas the U.S. government translation has this factual error, I'm sure it's an honest mistake, but basically it sort of adds al Qaeda to the statement, which is not on the statement.
Wait, wait for it.
NASR: Yes, and if you listen to these voices that we're hearing on Arab networks, Iraqis are condemning this execution. And they're saying these are foreigners. These are not Iraqis. They do not represent us and so forth.
Now, of course, the original claim was that Zarqawi is the actual man who performed this execution. Our experts listened to the accent, as you said, and they determined the accent is not Jordanian...
O'BRIEN: He is a Jordanian who is working supposedly, allegedly, at the behest of al Qaeda in Iraq. So go ahead.
NASR: Right, he is very close to bin Laden, and works, you're right, as an agent of al Qaeda in Iraq. Now, the accent is not Jordanian so that takes the Jordanian element out of the story immediately.
All this put together, leaves a lot of questions to be answered. Cheif among them are why is the Bush administration rushing to pin this on Zarqawi? Could it be so they can still claim that al Qaeda is operating in Iraq?

Nick Berg - 911 -OKC Bombing Connection
5-15-4
(via Rense.com)
CNN - MICHALE BERG, NICK BERG'S FATHER STATED NICK ATTENDED FLIGHT SCHOOL IN OKLAHOMA AND MEET ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI AND LET HIM USE HIS (BERG) COMPUTER AND HIS PASSWORD.
Berg's encounter with 'terrorist' revealed
WEST CHESTER, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- When Nicholas Berg took an Oklahoma bus to a remote college campus a few years ago, the American recently beheaded by ... Government sources told CNN that the encounter involved an acquaintance of Zacarias Moussaoui -- the only person publicly charged in the United States in connection with the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/Northeast/05/13/berg.encounter/
WEST CHESTER, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- When Nicholas Berg took an Oklahoma bus to a remote college campus a few years ago, the American recently beheaded by terrorists allowed a man with terrorist connections to use his laptop computer, according to his father.
Michael Berg said the FBI investigated the matter more than a year ago. He stressed that his son was in no way connected to the terrorists who captured and killed him.
Government sources told CNN that the encounter involved an acquaintance of Zacarias Moussaoui -- the only person publicly charged in the United States in connection with the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
According to Berg, his son was taking a course a few years ago at a remote campus of the University of Oklahoma near an airport. He described how on one particular day, his son met "some terrorist people -- who no one knew were terrorists at the time."
At one point during the bus ride, Berg said, the man sitting next to his son asked if he could use Nick's laptop computer.
"It turned out this guy was a terrorist and that he, you know, used my son's e-mail, amongst many other people's e-mail who he did the same thing to," Berg said.
Government sources said Berg gave the man his password, which was later used by Moussaoui, the sources said.
The sources said the man who used Berg's e-mail knew Moussaoui, now awaiting trial on federal charges that could bring a death sentence. But the sources would not disclose details of how the men were connected.
Moussaoui, 36, was arrested in August 2001 after he aroused suspicion at a Minnesota flight school when he arrived for 747 simulator training without holding a pilot's license. A French national of Moroccan descent, Moussaoui has admitted in open court that he belonged to al Qaeda, the radical Islamic group behind the September 11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.
But Moussaoui has fiercely denied being involved in the September 11 plot, and the prosecutors' theory of his role has shifted from being a possible 20th hijacker that day to possibly piloting a fifth hijacked jetliner targeting the White House.
Berg said his son cooperated fully with an FBI investigation into the matter.
"He was happy to cooperate, and that was never an issue," he said. He emphasized that the individual was not a friend of his son's or even an acquaintance -- "just a guy sitting next to him on the bus."
"Whoever was next to my son was treated with great respect and friendship. Like I said, he knew no dangers from people. The FBI were satisfied with that."
CNN Justice correspondent Kelli Arena contributed to this report.
[SNIP} The Terror Watch A chronology of events leading up to 9/11 by Jim Crogan
* 1999: Ihab Mahammed Ali, an al Qaeda member arrested in Orlando, Florida, and later named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa, is called before a grand jury. He denies participation in bin Laden's network and is charged with perjury. The FBI learns that Ali had obtained flight training at the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma. Ali became al Qaeda's first pilot. Accused September 11 terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui also took flight lessons at the Airman school.
FULL STORY: http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/27/news-crogan.php
BOTH BERG AND MOUSSAOUI ATTENDED AIRMAN FLIGHT SCHOOL: The Airman Flight School is centrally located in Norman, Oklahoma, and only minutes away from Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City. Norman is the home to the University of Oklahoma; its residents enjoy all the conveniences of a major metropolitan area. Norman averages more than 300 days of VFR weather per year, for year-round flight training. On IFR days, students in advanced courses continue training on instruments. http://www.airmanflightschool.com/#lodge

Two Israeli men arrested after high-speed chase in Tennessee
Sunday, May 9, 2004
The Associated Press
ERWIN, Tenn. (AP) - Two Israeli men who led the Unicoi County sheriff on a high-speed chase in a rented moving truck were placed under arrest and are being investigated by the FBI, local officials said.
Shmuel Dahan and Almaliach Naor, both from Israel, were being held without bond Sunday afternoon at the Unicoi County Jail. The truck, rented from a Ryder office in Mars Hills, N.C., was being held in the county garage pending an FBI investigation, officials said.
Dahan is charged with reckless driving, littering, false identification and evading arrest, while Naor faces charges of false identification and evading arrest, an officer with the Unicoi County Sheriff's Department who would not give his name said Sunday.
An investigation by the FBI is ongoing and more charges are possible, he said. A woman who answered the phone at the FBI's Knoxville office said there was no one available to answer questions about the arrest.
The incident began late Saturday afternoon when Sheriff Kent Harris noticed a rental truck traveling at a high speed along former U.S. Highway 23, a lightly-traveled highway near the North Carolina state line.
"I was really concerned because the driver would not stop after I flashed my headlights for nearly three miles," Harris said. "He was weaving back and forth and I was wondering what a large (rental truck) was doing on the two-lane highway late Saturday afternoon instead of the faster I-26 Interstate."
Harris said he saw the men throw something from the truck while they were being pursued. Officers scouring the area later found a vial containing an unknown substance along the roadway, he said.
Once the men were apprehended, officers also found a "Learn to Fly" brochure in the truck, leading Harris and others to express concern about security at the Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Erwin.
"I got a sick feeling when I saw it," Harris said.
Dahan also gave authorities a fake Florida driver's license issues in Plantation, Fla., he said, while Naor produced a fake identification card.
Harris subsequently contacted the FBI, the federal Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms and other local authorities to look into the situation.
"We're not overreacting," Harris said. "We have a responsibility to protect the citizens of Unicoi County and that's what I'm going to do at any cost. I'd rather overreact, if that's what you call it, than be sorry later."

Rental Truck Israeli Is Top Likud Official's Son
By Daniel Hopsicker
MadCowMorningnews.com
5-13-4
The leader of the two Israelis arrested after leading police on a high speed chase in a moving van last Saturday in rural Tennessee is the son of the spokesman for the Likud Party of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the MadCowMorningNews has learned.
The arrested Israeli 'mover,' Shmuel Dahan, 23, is himself a former spokesman, for the National Union of Israeli Students which represents the country's 150,000 university students.
News that one of the two Israeli 'movers' belonged to that country's political elite might have proven useful in the criminal investigation underway in rural North Carolina and Tennessee, where the two men led authorities on a high-speed chase in a rented moving van last weekend.
However, the investigation was halted Wednesday, after the men were released from Unicol County Jail to the custody of federal officials from the INS, where they face only a deportation hearing.
"They're taking it out of my jurisdiction,' stated Sheriff Kent Harris, who apprehended the men last Saturday after a high speed chase on a little-used state highway.
'We may never know what they were doing.'
"They're our Israeli movers now"
Local law enforcement officials in Tennessee expressed dismay at losing custody until it had been established what two Israelis were doing attempting to elude police on a back road near the North Carolina border so far off the beaten track that the only local attractions within 25 miles are the Rural Life Museum, the Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre, and the birthplace of Zebulon Baird Vance, a Civil War officer and governor of North Carolina, but not exactly a 'Historical Hottie.' Folks were puzzled.
Federal officials offered little guidance. A spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement told a local reporter they couldn't comment on the case while the men were in the custody of local authorities, and was unavailable afterwards. Charges against the two included reckless driving, littering, false identification and evading arrest. The Sheriff said the FBI had even ordered him to hold the duo without bond.
But now the only one doing any talking was the Israeli Deputy Consul General, who, in a bit of fancy footwork until his boys were 'safely out of Dodge,' told reporters the men had been 'overwhelmed by the process.'
"If they did something that was wrong, out of parameters of the law,' stated Israeli Deputy Consul General Aviv Ezra in Atlanta, 'they have to pay the punishment."
Presumably he meant flying home in coach.
Israelis' Right here in River City'
Clearly the leader of the two Israelis while in custody, Dahan was called 'the spokesman for the National Union of Israeli Students, which represents most of the country's 150,000 university students,' in the January 12, 2001 Jerusalem Post.
This gibes with early press reports after the men's arrest in Tennessee, in which the Israeli deputy consul stated Dahan had recently graduated from college.
Dahan, like many Israeli students, is a reservist. He is quoted in the Jerusalem Post speaking for student reservists after Israeli students marched around the Defense Ministry compound in Tel Aviv in protest of an increase in the number of days required on reserve duty.
With an articulateness that would be the envy of most furniture movers, Dahan said, 'They want to be paid for each day of duty, instead of only after a second or third consecutive day in the reserves.'
"Fiddler on the Roof" meets "Gomer Pyle"
While the Israelis were gone from his jail, for Sheriff Kent Harris, the mystery remains... Although the two men had denied throwing a bottle of suspicious liquid from their vehicle during the chase, for example, Sheriff Harris said witnesses saw the men throw a bottle out the window during the pursuit. "I called the witnesses back in and both told me the same thing," Harris said. "The bottle was spinning in the road after the pursuit came by."
After a witness gave the bottle to authorities, Harris sent it for testing. Tests showed a chemical mix that turned out not to be explosive. "It's very dangerous to drink it, but other than that, there's nothing harmful," Harris said.
So why had the men lied'
But the biggest mystery surrounded the reason for the men's presence in the area in the first place. William B. Lawson, one of the lawyers appointed to represent the Israeli men, said they rented a truck and were hauling furniture when they accidentally got off the interstate and got lost.
But this is unlikely, since local law enforcement officials had already stated that the men rented a storage locker nearby, in Mars Hill.
"Even if you're trying to get lost," explained Sheriff Harris, "Mars Hill is a hard place to get to."
Indeed, Mars Hills, North Carolina, appears at first glance to be as remote a location as can be found in the Northern Hemisphere. Any further off the beaten track and they'd be getting yesterday's CNN Headline News.
One can only speculate on what business compelled two young Israeli men to visit the regions' rural splendor...
Because they just can't get enough NASCAR in Tel Aviv'
Jonathon Pollard & Bin Laden's "Spiritual Mentor"
This remote region of North Carolina does have one big Israeli connection, however. We discovered that convicted Israeli spy Jonathon Pollard is imprisoned in the area, at the Federal Correctional Institute in Butner, North Carolina.
Strangely, the same Deputy Consul General from the Israeli Consulate in Atlanta that smoothed the release of the two latest Israeli movers to run afoul of the law, Aviv Ezra, 'is a lifeline' to Pollard, according to a report at www.johnathonpollard.org, visits him regularly in prison, and acts as his interlocutor with visitors from the outside.
This is no doubt just sheer coincidence.
However the next sentence from the story on Pollard's website mentioning Avri Ezra indicates to the conspiracy-minded (although certainly not to us) that perhaps something else is going on'
Israeli Deputy Consul Ezra himself may be a spook. At least he seems to know a lot of them'
Ezra's training for this sensitive task (hanging out with Pollard) was gained while working at the Israeli Embassy in Cairo," states the convicted Israeli spy's website, "where he also served as the contact person to Azzam Azzam."
Azzam Azzam is an Israeli spy.
Don't deport the 'NASCAR' Israelis!
Azzam had been imprisoned for more than seven years in Cairo, we learned from news reports, until his release by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek.
Israeli Deputy Consul Aviv Ezra, the 'NASCAR Israelis' friend and protector, can thus be said to be'and fairly'a 'spy handler.'
Confusingly, Azzam is also referred to in published reports as 'Bin Laden's spiritual mentor.'
Welcome to the Hall of Mirrors.
Still, this news puts a slightly different spin on what has otherwise become just the latest episode of 'Israeli Movers Doing Inexplicable Things Before Being Deported.'
But not to the stolid campaigners at the FBI.
FBI agents searched the two men's storage facility by late Monday night, The Asheville Citizen-Times reported, but found no evidence of anything suspicious.
What is suspicious is the unbelievable story the two men told investigators... that they were just on their way to West Virginia to deliver furniture.
Right.
"Israelis delivering furniture in West Virginia" doesn't exactly have what used to be called the ring of truth, does it.
It has been a day of strange omens in the news.
Mexican air force pilots filming UFOs. Israeli soldiers scouring Gaza for body parts of fallen soldiers. And now this...
Following their arrest last Saturday afternoon, the local sheriff said he had 'had a sick feeling' when he found a 'Learn to Fly' brochure in the Israelis moving van, especially since the county they were in was home to the nation's only Nuclear Fuel Services plant.
It wasn't a 'learn to fly in Florida' brochure," the Israeli Deputy Consul cheerfully assured everyone. It had been just a 'learn to fly in Florida' business card.
Tonight, the local Sheriff could be forgiven for feeling just a little sore at the Feds stepping in and screwing his case.
The man does not get all that many 'at bats.'
Last year in Mars Hill, according to 2001 crime statistics, the latest available, there were no murders, no rapes, no robberies, and one assault.
'This is still a very suspicious case,' Sheriff Harris said last Sunday, stubbornly reiterating the same comment he'd made a day earlier.
Four days later, nothing has changed.

Republican Campaigner Courting Jewish Vote
By Matthew E. Berger
Cleveland Jewish News
5-14-4
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Michael Lebovitz's wife, Lauren, watched the evening news from her home in Chattanooga, Tenn., and suddenly her husband's new volunteer work made sense.
On the screen was President Bush changing the landscape of U.S.-Israeli relations, endorsing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and enunciating American support for some Israeli claims in the West Bank.
"My wife looked at me and said, 'That's why you're doing this,'" Michael Lebovitz said. "And that's exactly right."
Lebovitz, 40, has become the key conduit between Bush's re-election campaign and the American Jewish community, which is a key constituency for the Republicans in several vital states, including Florida.
Driving him, he says, is a feeling that the Jewish community should show gratitude for President Bush's Israel policy by helping him win another four years in the White House.
"I have a very strong conviction that our community has a responsibility to thank this president for how he has supported us," Lebovitz said in an interview in a colorless conference room in the campaign's northern Virginia offices.
Lebovitz travels to Washington about every other week, coordinating outreach to Jewish communities across the country. The rest of the time, he works out of his home and office.
He recently worked to find Jewish leaders in Michigan who could help campaign staffers there galvanize Jewish outreach. He also has been making similar connections in other states, and nationally.
A real estate developer, Lebovitz has taken on the campaign task without pay, and tries to downplay his role as a mediator between the Jewish world and the Bush campaign.
"I'm not the head of anything," he said. "I'm not in charge of anything."
In fact, he has no official title at the campaign; his business card reads only "Jewish Outreach."
The story of how Michael Lebovitz became Bush's go-to guy for the Jews starts, he says, at the Shabbat dinner table, where the third-generation Chattanooga resident saw his father engage in Jewish activism, rising to become vice chairman of the United Jewish Appeal.
"That part is definitely hereditary," he said. But Lebovitz combined his family's interest in the Jewish world with his own interest in politics.
Lebovitz was a Republican from the beginning, said Fred Zimmerman, president-elect of the Nashville Jewish Federation, who participated in the B'nai B'rith Youth Organization with Lebovitz when they were in high school.
"He was the first person I ever heard predict the great Jewish migration to the Republican Party," Zimmerman recalled.
In college at the University of Texas, Lebovitz volunteered at the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas. In 1996, when he served as a delegate at the convention, Lebovitz formed a friendship with his state's new Republican senator, Bill Frist.
A year later, Lebovitz and his wife took Frist to Israel on a trip sponsored by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Lebovitz has been an active donor in political circles. According to the Federal Elections Commission, he has given $55,500 to political candidates and committees since 1997, including $2,000 to Frist, $3,000 to President Bush and $6,000 to his local congressman, Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.).
He also has been active in Jewish circles, serving on AIPAC's executive committee and as national vice chairman of the United Jewish Communities umbrella organization of Jewish federations.
"He has a good feel for how his age peers will react to issues and challenges," said Stephen Hoffman, UJC's chief executive officer. Lebovitz serves as chairman of one of UJC's pillars, helping craft strategies for campaign and fundraising efforts to UJC federations.
Still, many seemed surprised when Lebovitz was chosen to head up Bush's Jewish outreach, having assumed that someone with a longer list of contacts and experience in Washington would get the job. Rumors have spread throughout Washington that Lebovitz was placed in the position to appease AIPAC or Frist.
But as Lebovitz and his supporters tell it, it was his quiet discussions with Bush campaign officials about the opportunities for gaining ground in the Jewish community, mixed with the logistical ability to take on the job as a volunteer, that won him the role.
Jeff Ballabon, a Bush fundraiser in New York's Orthodox community, calls Lebovitz an "incredible mensch."
"Whatever people said at the beginning because they didn't know him, what has emerged over the last year is that he is dedicated to the set of goals and priorities," Ballabon said.
Lebovitz's goal for the next six months is to improve on the 19 percent of the Jewish vote Bush received in 2000. In 1980, Ronald Reagan received the largest percentage of Jewish votes for a Republican, winning 39 percent against President Jimmy Carter.
As part of the campaign's outreach, Vice President Dick Cheney is expected to speak Friday to a Jewish audience in West Palm Beach, Fla.
"There is an opportunity in the Jewish community for more votes than last time," Lebovitz said. "There's not a number out there we have to reach."
The opportunity stems from Bush's outspoken support for Israel, Lebovitz says. Even before Bush's support last month for the Gaza withdrawal plan, many American Jews were touting Bush's defiant stances against terrorism and his designation of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat as persona non grata at the White House.
Even Sharon has called Bush the best American president Israel has ever seen.
Lebovitz feels that may be enough to turn the tide in the traditionally Democratic voting bloc by convincing Jews that it's not about the candidate who agrees with them on most issues, but rather on the issues that matter most.
"You have to decide what's most important to you, and as an American Jew, Israel right now is the most important thing to me," he said. "This is a man who, from the day he came into office, has changed policy."
The Bush campaign is focused on increasing its numbers in several key states, most importantly Florida, where Bush won by a very small margin in 2000, and where the Jewish community makes up almost four percent of the population.
But he also is spending time courting Jews in New York, who he says have a lot of connection to Florida Jews, and in California, where Arnold Schwarzenegger's gubernatorial victory last year shook up the state's political landscape.
"The Jewish community is very mobile; we have friends and relatives all over," he said. "There is no part of the community that we are not contacting, that we are writing off."
Copyright 2004 Cleveland Jewish News http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/articles/2004/05/13/news/world/plink0512.txt

The Israeli Torture Template
Rape, Feces And Urine-Dipped Cloth Sacks
By Wayne Madsen
CounterPunch.org
5-12-4
With mounting evidence that a shadowy group of former Israeli Defense Force and General Security Service (Shin Bet) Arabic-speaking interrogators were hired by the Pentagon under a classified "carve out" sub-contract to brutally interrogate Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, one only needs to examine the record of abuse of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israel to understand what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld meant, when referring to new, yet to be released photos and videos, he said, "if these images are released to the public, obviously its going to make matters worse."
According to a political appointee within the Bush administration and U.S. intelligence sources, the interrogators at Abu Ghraib included a number of Arabic-speaking Israelis who also helped U.S. interrogators develop the "R2I" (Resistance to Interrogation) techniques. Many of the torture methods were developed by the Israelis over many years of interrogating Arab prisoners on the occupied West Bank and in Israel itself.
Clues about worse photos and videos of abuse may be found in Israeli files about similar abuse of Palestinian and other Arab prisoners. In March 2000, a lawyer for a Lebanese prisoner kidnapped in 1994 by the Israelis in Lebanon claimed that his client had been subjected to torture, including rape. The type of compensation offered by Rumsfeld in his testimony has its roots in cases of Israeli torture of Arabs. In the case of the Lebanese man, said to have been raped by his Israeli captors, his lawyer demanded compensation of $1.47 million. The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel documented the types of torture meted out on Arab prisoners. Many of the tactics coincide with those contained in the Taguba report: beatings and prolonged periods handcuffed to furniture. In an article in the December 1998 issue of The Progressive, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb reported on the treatment given to a 23-year old Palestinian held on "administrative detention." The prisoner was "cuffed behin
d a chair 17 hours a day for 120 days . . . [he] had his head covered with a sack, which was often dipped in urine or feces. Guards played loud music right next to his ears and frequently taunted him with threats of physical and sexual violence." If additional photos and videos document such practices, the Bush administration and the American people have, indeed, "seen nothing yet."
Although it is still largely undocumented if any of the contractor named in the report of General Antonio Taguba were associated with the Israeli military or intelligence services, it is noteworthy that one, John Israel, who was identified in the report as being employed by both CACI International of Arlington, Virginia, and Titan, Inc., of San Diego, may not have even been a U.S. citizen. The Taguba report states that Israel did not have a security clearance, a requirement for employment as an interrogator for CACI. According to CACI's web site, "a Top Secret Clearance (TS) that is current and US citizenship" are required for CACI interrogators working in Iraq. In addition, CACI requires that its interrogators "have at least two years experience as a military policeman or similar type of law enforcement/intelligence agency whereby the individual utilized interviewing techniques."
Speculation that "John Israel" may be an intelligence cover name has fueled speculation whether this individual could have been one of a number of Israeli interrogators hired under a classified contract. Because U.S. citizenship and documentation thereof are requirements for a U.S. security clearance, Israeli citizens would not be permitted to hold a Top Secret clearance. However, dual U.S.-Israeli citizens could have satisfied Pentagon requirements that interrogators hold U.S. citizenship and a Top Secret clearance. Although the Taguba report refers twice to Israel as an employee of Titan, the company claims he is one of their sub-contractors. CACI stated that one of the men listed in the report "is not and never has been a CACI employee" without providing more detail. A U.S. intelligence source revealed that in the world of intelligence "carve out" subcontracts such confusion is often the case with "plausible deniability" being a foremost concern.
In fact, the Taguba report does reference the presence of non-U.S. and non-Iraqi interrogators at Abu Ghraib. The report states, "In general, US civilian contract personnel (Titan Corporation, CACI, etc), third country nationals, and local contractors do not appear to be properly supervised within the detention facility at Abu Ghraib."
The Pentagon is clearly concerned about the outing of the Taguba report and its references to CACI, Titan, and third country nationals, which could permanently damage U.S. relations with Arab and Islamic nations. The Pentagon's angst may explain why the Taguba report is classified Secret No Foreign Dissemination.
The leak of the Taguba report was so radioactive, Daniel R. Dunn, the Information Assurance Officer for Douglas Feith's Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Policy (Policy Automation Services Security Team), sent a May 6, 2004, For Official Use Only Urgent E-mail to Pentagon staffers stating, "THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS REPORT IS CLASSIFIED; DO NOT GO TO FOX NEWS TO READ OR OBTAIN A COPY." Considering Feith's close ties to the Israelis, such a reaction by his top computer security officer, a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP), is understandable, although considering the fact that CISSPs are to act on behalf of the public good, it is also regrettable..
The reference to "third country nationals" in a report that restricts its dissemination to U.S. coalition partners (Great Britain, Poland, Italy, etc.) is another indication of the possible involvement of Israelis in the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners. Knowledge that the U.S. may have been using Israeli interrogators could have severely fractured the Bush administration's tenuous "coalition of the willing' in Iraq. General Taguba's findings were transmitted to the Coalition Forces Land Component Command on March 9, 2004, just six days before the Spanish general election, one that the opposition anti-Iraq war Socialists won. The Spanish ultimately withdrew their forces from Iraq.
During his testimony before the Senate Armed Service Committee, Rumsfeld was pressed upon by Senator John McCain about the role of the private contractors in the interrogations and abuse. McCain asked Rumsfeld four pertinent questions, ". . . who was in charge? What agency or private contractor was in charge of the interrogations? Did they have authority over the guards? And what were the instructions that they gave to the guards?"
When Rumsfeld had problems answering McCain's question, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, the Deputy Commander of the U.S. Central Command, said there were 37 contract interrogators used in Abu Ghraib. The two named contractors, CACI and Titan, have close ties to the Israeli military and technology communities. Last January 14, after Provost Marshal General of the Army, Major General Donald Ryder, had already uncovered abuse at Abu Ghraib, CACI's President and CEO, Dr. J.P. (Jack) London was receiving the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah's Albert Einstein Technology award at the Jerusalem City Hall, with right-wing Likud politician Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski in attendance. Oddly, CACI waited until February 2 to publicly announce the award in a press release. CACI has also received grants from U.S.-Israeli bi-national foundations.
Titan also has had close connections to Israeli interests. After his stint as CIA Director, James Woolsey served as a Titan director. Woolsey is an architect of America's Iraq policy and the chief proponent of and lobbyist for Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. An adviser to the neo-conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs, Project for the New American Century, Center for Security Policy, Freedom House, and Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, Woolsey is close to Stephen Cambone, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, a key person in the chain of command who would have not only known about the torture tactics used by U.S. and Israeli interrogators in Iraq but who would have also approved them. Cambone was associated with the Project for the New American Century and is viewed as a member of Rumsfeld's neo-conservative "cabal" within the Pentagon.
www.counterpunch.com

How The Story Of Abuse Unfolded
Torture Began Long Before The Images Which Outraged The World Appeared
The Observer - UK
5-9-4
There are two versions of what Specialist Sabrina Harman, a US military police officer, was doing with a camera in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. According to her mother, the former assistant manager of Papa John's pizza restaurant in north Virginia was collecting evidence of improper treatment in the jail.
Robin Harman told yesterday's Washington Post that when her daughter told her what she was doing during her two weeks' leave at home last November, she told her to stop. 'We got into an argument about it at 4 am. Sabrina said she had to prove this. I told her to bring the pictures home, hide them and stay out of it.' It is not an explanation accepted by military investigators probing Harman's role in the abuse at Abu Ghraib.
Neither is it an explanation seemingly borne out by the digital photographs seized from Harman's laptop. Among the hundreds of pictures found is one taken before her unit got to Abu Ghraib last October - a gruesome trophy photograph showing Harman crouching by a decaying corpse giving the camera a thumbs-up and a grin.
Her explanation is also in contradiction with the charges she faces. For it is Harman who has emerged as a central figure in the abuse allegations at Abu Ghraib - a figure involved in some of the most shocking pictures to emerge from the prison.
Harman was one of two soldiers who posed for the now infamous photograph of the pyramid of naked Iraqis in the jail. She is charged with photographing and videotaping detainees ordered to strip and masturbate. And it is Harman who stands accused of attaching wires to a hooded prisoner - stood on a box - and telling him he would be electrocuted if he fell off.
Even Harman's witness statement to investigators fails to stand up the claim by her family and lawyer that she was one of the good guys amid the bad. She makes clear that she was a participant in institutionalised torture.
'The person who brought them in would set the standards on whether or not to "be nice",' said Harman. 'If the prisoner was co-operating, then he was able to keep his jumpsuit, mattress, and was allowed cigarettes on request or even hot food. But if the prisoner didn't give what they wanted, it was all taken away until [military intelligence] decided. Sleep, food, clothes, mattresses, cigarettes were all privileges and were granted with information received.'
The statement confirms what the International Committee for the Red Cross had been saying for months. In visits to Iraq's US-administered prison, it has been documenting abuse that was not the 'exception' but was close to the norm - abuse that was 'tantamount' to a policy of torture, and tolerated by coalition forces.
According to Harman, prisoners were stripped, searched and then 'made to stand or kneel for hours'. At other times they were forced to stand on boxes or hold boxes or to exercise ceaselessly. And what has become increasingly clear in the past few days, in interviews with returning special forces soldiers from Iraq, was that the techniques employed at Abu Ghraib were not simply for the cruel entertainment of military policemen and private contractors running the prison, but an even crueller application of abusive interrogation techniques taught to both US and British special forces.
What has also become clear is that concern over what was happening to Iraqi detainees had been circulating for months, both within the coalition and within the Red Cross and human rights' organisations monitoring Iraq.
Suddenly an administration that seemed immune to bad news from Iraq has been forced on the defensive as the images of Harman and her colleagues cheerfully abusing prisoners in their charge have emerged as a metaphor for the coalition's failures in Iraq.
That it has been a catastrophe for US foreign policy is asserted by usually robust senior Pentagon officials who claim privately that Iraq policy is now '97 per cent disaster' and the war is no longer being planned but crisis-managed from day-to-day. And catastrophe was the word used by the beleaguered Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during his humiliating appearance before Congress.
The Red Cross investigates
Last summer - a few days before the Red Cross evacuated its staff from Baghdad - Nada Doumani, the Lebanese spokeswoman for the ICRC's delegation to Iraq, was sitting in her sandbagged office complaining of the huge difficulties in tracking detainees within the US-administered prison system in Iraq.
Already, as is now clear, her officials were privately concerned over what they were hearing was happening inside the prisons that they were visiting.
These days Doumani and the Iraq delegation is based in neighbouring Jordan, the security situation meaning it still too dangerous for the ICRC to have a permanent, large-scale presence in Iraq. And with the leaking of her organisation's damning confidential report into the conditions of detainees, she can say a little more.
It is a report that paints the most damning picture of conditions in US-run facilities, and that challenges the assertions of the White House and Pentagon that the torture cases in Abu Ghraib were 'exceptional'.
According to other Red Cross officials, concern had been mounting throughout the year over persistent allegations of abuse. 'Between 31 March and 24 October we made 29 separate visits,' says Doumani. These culminated in a visit to Abu Ghraib in October, during which the most egregious abuses were uncovered.
'Right after that visit we gave a findings presentation to the director of the prison, [Brigadier-General] Janis Karpinski.' said Doumani. That critical presentation was followed by the production of a working paper for discussion, also to Karpinski.
At the same time, Red Cross officials were also concerned about allegations of alleged beatings meted out to Iraqis by British soldiers in their sector which was also raised with senior British officers at around the same time - in October and November.
As conversations continued between Red Cross officials and officers on the ground, a damning summary report on treatment of detainees was forwarded by the Iraq delegation to the organisation's headquarters in Geneva.
By New Year it had landed on the desk of the Red Cross's president, Jakob Kellenberger. A former Swiss diplomat, largely to European missions, it would present of the greatest challenges of his career.
For Kellenberger and other senior officials in Geneva, that summary report confirmed worrying reports that were coming from across the US-administered prison system set up to deal with suspects detained in the war in terror. From Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay to Iraq and to friendly third-party countries with poor human rights records which were willing to open up their facilities to the US, a picture was emerging of routine and arbitrary ill treatment. Of men picked up, sometimes on the smallest pretext, disappearing into a chilling closed world.
Determined to raise the organisation's concerns, Kellenberger had scheduled a trip to Washington to talk to the most senior US officials in the Bush administration.
On 13 and 14 January he attended a series of meetings in Washington. In two days he would meet US Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. In each meeting, say Red Cross sources, Kellenberger would deliver the same message: his organisation's belief that coalition soldiers were torturing and mistreating Iraqi detainees.
Within hours that message would be on the desks of Donald Rumsfeld and the most senior officers in the US military. But if Rumsfeld is to be believed, even as a discreet inquiry was launched into the allegations, none of the President's most senior officials thought to tell George Bush.
But Kellenberger was not alone in being concerned. According to the timeline leaked by investigators to the US media, army investigators had also been tipped about the abuses and, after months of inaction, were taking the issue seriously.
Joseph Darby, a 24-year-old reservist at Abu Ghraib, had plucked up his courage and slipped an anonymous note underneath the door of one of his superior officers. It described brutal incidents of abuse of Iraqi prisoners and the existence of graphic photographs taken by Darby's own colleagues.
That move triggered the crisis which has emerged from the brutal hallways of Abu Ghraib to echo through Washington's corridors of power. Darby eventually turned over a computer disk of pictures to a sergeant in his unit on 13 January. A few hours later, army investigators seized other computers and disks from members of the unit. By 14 January - according to this version of events - General John Abizaid was on the phone to Rumsfeld, as Kellenberger was also raising his concern.
On 16 January, the US army curtly announced it had ordered an investigation into abuses at the prison - a five-sentence press release said that an inquiry into 'reported' incidents of detainee abuse had begun. It did not even name the prison.
Washington in crisis
When Rumsfeld, Bush's acerbic, 73-year-old Secretary of Defence, entered the Oval Office for a scheduled meeting on a spring morning last Wednesday, his mind was on a request to Congress for an extra $25 billion to help fund the war in Iraq.
Instead, he found that Bush had other matters to deal with. What followed was an astonishing dressing-down by Bush of one of his closest advisers and personal friends in the presence of Vice-President Dick Cheney.
Bush was deeply upset at the storm of bad publicity swirling out from the Abu Ghraib scandal. If the story that has been carefully leaked from the White House is true, the first time the President saw the pictures that have dominated the world's media was when they were broadcast on CBS's Sixty Minutes news show.
According to that account, Bush was also unaware of a detailed secret military report into the Abu Ghraib abuses that had also leaked to the press, and the Red Cross's devastating presentation.
'I should have known about the pictures and the report,' Bush said. Rumsfeld agreed that what had happened was 'not satisfactory'.
But if Rumsfeld thought that was the end of it, he was dead wrong. At least three senior White House officials, with the President's authority, then leaked the scolding to the media. Karl Rove, Bush's political guru, took the lead in spinning the story. Rove had been furious to see Bush 'blindsided' due to Rumsfeld's failure to alert the White House to the crisis.
As he scanned Thursday's morning headlines, Rumsfeld knew his future was on the line. One defence official last week went so far as to say that Rumsfeld was 'white as a sheet' that day.
But by then the White House was in full crisis mode. Shortly after the Wednesday morning meeting with Rumsfeld, crews from two Arab networks arrived and began setting up equipment in the Map Room. Bush had scooped a hole in his busy schedule to speak directly to the Arab world.
The interviews began at 10 am, each lasting 10 minutes. Several senior aides had advised Bush to apologise, as Rice had done the day before. But when the interviews ended, stunned officials were still left waiting for the magic 'I'm sorry'. Onlookers from the State Department were horrified. They had included a strong recommendation Bush apologise for the Abu Ghraib abuses in a so-called 'talking points' memo to the President.
Perhaps Bush felt an apology was not yet necessary. But as the day wore on and the scandal continued to swirl around the world, advisers kept pressing him to change his mind. He was initially reluctant, believing enough had been done. It was a position that was not to last.
Inside Abu 'Grope'
>From the outside all you can see of the prison at Abu Ghraib is a series of squat watchtowers along the road atop a long wall and a tangle of barbed wire that funnels visitors towards the gate of Saddam's most notorious prison. Beyond the wall, it is subdivided into smaller 'camps', including Camp Ganci (with five divisions according to the seriousness of the crime); Camp Vigilant for high-security detainees split into 'black, grey, and white lists;' a Medical Wing, and another camp for those 'serving time'.
Rumours of brutality had been circulating for most of last year. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had both raised concerns about Abu Ghraib and other prisons. Among Iraqis, the rumours of sexual abuse found greater credence than with the international media, and among US soldiers the prison was even dubbed 'Abu Grope'.
Among those waiting outside yesterday for news from inside was Zacaria Falah, from the northern city of Mosul, who himself spent 70 days in Abu Ghraib this year. His older brother is still imprisoned. Both were accused of helping 'the resistance' - a charge they deny.
Falah tells a similar story to many detainees. He was taken from his home, which was ransacked during the raid, in the middle of the night and transported to a base in Mosul known as 'Camp Disco' to Iraqis because of the habit of the guards of putting on loud music and making the detainees 'dance' for hours on end. >From there he was taken to Abu Ghraib, where he was housed in a tent, sleeping on the floor with 34 other men.
But last January few were listening to those like Falah. The story, on a low simmer, needed graphic pictures to boil over - pictures that would detonate a political crisis when they emerged.
Instead, the hundreds of photos, CD discs and videotapes seized from the military police in Abu Ghraib after Darby's complaint were locked in a safe in Baghdad belonging to the army's Criminal Investigation Division. Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, the US military spokesman in Iraq, called the Pentagon. He reportedly called the evidence 'damaging and horrific'. Secretly, Major-General Antonio Taguba was appointed to investigate the problem.
Official silence in the Pentagon was still the pattern. Although top officials, including Rumsfeld and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, were kept abreast of the probe, it was in the form of conversations, not a passing on of the detailed reports or photographs. Taguba's report wrapped up in March and six soldiers were charged.
But while many officials would have hoped a line had been drawn under the issue, the story was far from over. By the second week of April it began to leak.
That was when CBS reporters rang the Pentagon revealing they had the pictures and planned to broadcast them. The Pentagon launched an effort to keep the story off the airwaves. Myers called CBS and persuaded staff at Sixty Minutes to hold off on the broadcast. He argued the pictures would be so damaging to US forces in Iraq that deaths could directly result, especially with some US hostages still in Iraqi hands.
In the meantime Pentagon planners drafted an 11-page media response to the story, including some three dozen expected questions and prepared answers. The plan was to focus on Darby's role as an honest whistleblower and the army's swift - if largely secret - investigation.
But as the week has worn on, the Pentagon's strategy to concentrate the story on a few 'bad apples' - including Sabrina Harman - has begun to seriously unravel, not only because of Harman's own evidence but because of the leaked Red Cross report and evidence of returning special forces soldiers to the UK.
According to one officer recently returned from Iraq, sexual humiliation of prisoners in Abu Ghraib was not an invention of 'maverick guards' but part of a system of degradation developed for use by British and US troops called R2I - resistance to interrogation - which uses sexual jibes and stripping prisoners to prolong 'the shock of capture' when detainees are at their most vulnerable.
In an interview with the Guardian yesterday, the officer said: 'It was clear from discussions with US private contractors in Iraq that prison guards were using R2I techniques, but they didn't know what they were doing.'
What has also emerged is the role that US military intelligence officers - and private intelligence contractors - have played in directing the abuse with most of the reservists involved alleging that they thought their duty was to 'soften up' the prisoners for questioning.
Indeed, Taguba's leaked confidential report identifies at least three contractors as being potentially to blame for the problems - contractors who are neither subject to Iraqi law, military discipline or the Geneva Conventions. Yet even as the scandal has boiled over, according to at least one of the companies named in Taguba's report, CACI International, the Pentagon has yet to contact it.
The British connection
By this weekend the disturbing ramifications of what went on in Abu Ghraib had spread to America's closest ally in Iraq - Britain. The Observer has established it was not only US military intelligence, CIA and private contractors who conducted interrogations with prisoners softened up by Harman and her colleagues, it was British officials as well.
Sources in London have disclosed that not only were three military intelligence officers based at Abu Ghraib since January as, unbeknown to them, the crisis was unfolding in Washington, but MI6 officers had been visiting the prison on a regular basis to carry out their own interrogations.
On top of concerns over British mistreatment of Iraqi detainees in the Red Cross report, on top of allegations of abuse by the Queen's Lancashire Regiment in the Daily Mirror, allegations that British officers were in Abu Ghraib, and were unaware of the abuse, has deepened the sense of crisis in London as well as Washington.
As the allegations of abuse continue to build up, UK officials both in London and Baghdad have been at pains to try to distance themselves from what some in the US military have been up to, describing stand-up rows between civilian officials and the US military officers over the treatment of detainees.
It is a tension described to The Observer by Rahman al-Dulaimy, 39, who was arrested in June last year and held in different detention centres for four months. Dulaimy, a former Baath party official whose brothers were in Saddam's secret police, contrasts his treatment by US and British soldiers.
'The soldiers took me to their base at the civil defence headquarters in the al-Shaab district of Baghdad. They kept me alone in a room with my hands zip-tied behind my back for two days, feeding me only one spoonful of army rations a day and giving me a total of two glasses of water. During these two days some interrogators beat me frequently, flung me around, pried off one of my toenails and stood on my back.'
He went down to al-Basra, to Um Qassr, to al-Nasariya, then finally to Basra. 'In Basra I was put in a warehouse under the guard of British soldiers. They treated me well, with dignity and asked many questions, but not in a violent way. The food was much better there - three meals each day and good Iraqi food - and when I felt ill they took me to hospital.
'The prison was more clean and tidy too, and for that I don't want to criticise or accuse the people in Basra. I made a kind of friendship with one of the [British] soldiers who used to listen to me and help me. I got blankets and slept and sat with no problems. People did not bother us and were good to us.
'There were a few Americans there and they did not mix with the British but lived in an isolated area close to the camps and relations were not good. The Americans accused the British of being too soft with prisoners.'
Yet for all of Dulaimy's flattering comparisons between the British and US, it is also clear from the Red Cross's report that, while treatment by British soldiers is not of the order of the organised abuse in some US facilities, the British army has no reason to be complacent amid repeated reports of beatings.
'We know that bad things have gone on,' said one official. 'But we believe it is of a different order. We know a few people may have stepped over the line and they will be dealt with appropriately.'
Rumsfeld at bay
But the question that remains is what is appropriate for the official who has presided over the whole sorry mess - Rumsfeld. On Friday, almost five months after he was first told of the scandal, he appeared before Congress to tell them what he knew, his second career-threatening interview in a week.
'I offer my deepest apology,' he said of the soldiers' behaviour: 'It was un-American.'
In more than six hours of testimony Rumsfeld was contrite and apologetic, while still defending his corner. One after another Rumsfeld, Myers and two other senior Pentagon aides expressed their sorrow for what had happened.
But if the administration was uniform in expressing regret, behind the scenes it is a different scene. Though many do not expect Rumsfeld to resign, his future is uncertain. Even Republican congressmen are furious that he did not inform them of the pictures of the abuse. But sacrificing Rumsfeld is likely to be seen as too high a political price to pay in an election year.
With Rumsfeld warning, however, that the 'worst images' are yet to come, and respect for the US across the world at an all-time low, many are happy to bet he will not make it to the elections in November.
How the story of abuse unfolded
1 May 2003 - President George Bush declares end to major combat.
30 June - US Army Reserve Brig Gen Janis Karpinski named commander of all military prisons in Iraq.
13 October-6 November - Maj Gen Donald Ryder, the US army's provost marshal general, visits Iraq to review prison operations. He noticed 'tension' between US military police and intelligence interrogators.
October-November - The abuse documented in the pictures from Abu Ghraib takes place.
13 January 2004 - Whistleblower Joseph Darby informs his superiors of an abuse problem and of the existence of pictures. Rumsfeld is told within days and informs Bush.
16 January - US Central Command announces that prison abuses are being investigated.
17 January - Karpinski told of serious deficiencies in her command and a lack of leadership. Karpinski is later suspended from duty.
31 January - Maj Gen Antonio M Taguba is named chief investigator on abuse probe.
January-February - Bush becomes aware of charges of abuse in Iraqi prisons.
3 March - Taguba presents findings of abuse.
13 March - Six soldiers charged with counts ranging from conspiracy to indecent acts.
April - CBS journalists contact Pentagon about pictures. General Richard Myers persuades CBS to delay its broadcast.
28 April - CBS's 60 Minutes broadcasts pictures.
1 May - Six more US soldiers are reprimanded. Daily Mirror releases photos of Iraqi prisoners. Members of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment are allegedly involved.
2 May - Doubts raised over authenticity of Mirror photos.
3 May - A third British soldier says he saw members of the regiment beating prisoners.
4 May - Army claims Mirror images are fake.
5 May - High court case announced into claims that British soldiers acted unlawfully by killing six innocent Iraqis in Basra over the past year.
6 May - British soldier gives new details of abuse of jailed Iraqis: prisoners were said to have been beaten by UK servicemen until their faces were 'like haggises'.
7 May - Rumsfeld apologises to Congress and warns that others photos and videos still exist.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1212589,00.html

Empty New York Suitcases Spur Terror 'Dry Run' Fears
May 2nd, 2004
The New York Post
Police fear five empty suitcases left at Penn Station, New York FBI headquarters and other security hot spots in early April were a test by terrorists bent on a Madrid-type attack on commuter rails, The Post has learned.
A confidential Metropolitan Transit Authority police bulletin, titled "Possible Surveillance Testing Tactics," reveals K-9 cops are on edge over a "suspicious packages pattern" they encountered between the last week of March and the first week of April.
"During the past week and a half, the K-9 Unit has responded to approximately five calls for unattended/suspicious packages which they cleared," the confidential bulletin stated.
"However, uniquely, all cases involved empty suitcases.
"These cases appear to be unusual because in most cases of an unattended bag/package there is something in the container, whether personal belongings, clothes or other items."
At Penn Station, a beat-up suitcase was found in the main waiting room at 9:40 a.m. on April 1, sources said.
The bulletin, sent to New York State Police and Westchester County cops on April 5, asked them to report "any similar cases" to the MTA's counterterrorism task force.
"We were called to an unattended bag at Penn Station, the area was cordoned off and a bomb-sniffing dog was brought to scene," MTA spokesman Tom Kelly said. "No explosives were detected. This was an unusual event because the bag was empty."
Another empty suitcase turned up at 26 Federal Plaza, sources said. Officials have not ruled out the chance the bags were left by pranksters or derelicts.
MTA cops and state troopers ride commuter trains in and out of the city and are expected to step up security aboard commuter trains headed into Penn Station during the Republican National Convention this summer, NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly said last week.
An army of up to 3,000 police with bomb-sniffing dogs from various agencies will sweep the nearly 3,000 subway and commuter trains that enter Penn Station each day, Kelly said.
Rather than stop trains at checkpoints, cops will seek unaccounted-for baggage on rolling Metro-North and LIRR trains and on platforms, while heavily armed NYPD Hercules units will turn up at stations unannounced.

Congress Calls For Wiping Out Iran's Nuke Facilities
By Gary Fitleberg
5-9-4
http://www.truthnews.net/world/2004050032.htm
The House of Representatives on overwhelmingly passed a resolution which "expresses the concern of Congress over Iran's development of the means to produce nuclear weapons" and "calls upon all State Parties to the Treaty on the Non Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), including the United States, to use all appropriate means to deter, dissuade and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons."
The legislation, originally introduced by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) and Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Il), passed by a margin of 376-3, with 14 members voting "present."
Speaking on the floor of the house, Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN) said the bill "enumerates a series of steps that should be undertaken to, number one, hold the Iranian regime accountable for its nuclear program; and, two, establish a clear precedent that such proliferation efforts, efforts which clearly threaten international peace and security, will not be tolerated."
Rep. Lantos (D-CA) added, "A nuclear Iran threatens us all. Driven by its extremist ideology, it might attack and surely could blackmail our friends in the region. Iran's nuclearization would spell the end of the nuclear nonproliferation regime. We must not let that happen."
Gary Fitleberg is a Political Analyst specializing in International Relations with emphasis on Middle East affairs.

TOWARD THE PETRO-APOCALYPSE
Yves Cochet
Le Monde (Paris)
March 31, 2004
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3232,36-359335,0.html
In a few years, the global production of conventional oil will fall, while the global demand continues to rise. The resulting shock of this structural oil famine is inevitable, so great are the dependency of our economies on cheap oil and, related to the first, our inability to wean ourselves from this dependency in a short period of time.
We can hope to soften the shock, but only if its imminence immediately becomes the unique reference point for a general mobilization of our societies, with, as a consequence, drastic consequences in every sector. The alternative is chaos. This prospect is based on the work of the American geologist King Hubbert, who predicted in 1956 the peak in US domestic production of oil in 1970. This occurred exactly as predicted.
Transposing Hubbert's approach today to other countries has given similar predictive results: at present, the production of every giant oilfield -- and only the giant ones matter -- is in decline, except in the "black triangle" of Iraq-Iran-Saudi Arabia.
The Hubbert's peak of the oil-producing Middle East should be reached around 2010, depending on the more or less rapid recovery of full Iraqi production and the growth rate of demand in China.
The sectors most affected by the steady rise in the price of crude oil will be, first, aviation and intensive agriculture, since the price of jet fuel for one, and of nitrogenous fertilizer as well as diesel fuel for the other, are directly linked to the price of crude oil.
This will occur unless stabilizing policies are used -- for a time and in some other sectors -- to lower taxes on oil as prices rise. But afterwards ground transport, tourism, the petrochemical industry, and the automotive industry will feel the depressive effects of a reduction in the quantity of oil (depletion). To what extent will this situation lead to a general recession? No one knows, but the blindness of politicians and the usual panicked overreaction of markets allows us to fear the worst.
This unavoidable prophecy is being universally ignored, denied, or underestimated. Rare are those who realize exactly how close and how great is its advent. Michael Meacher, formerly UK minister of the environment (1997-2003), wrote recently in the Financial Times that unless there is a general awakening and decisions at the planetary scale to bring radical change in the domain of energy, "civilization will confront the most acute and no doubt most violent upheaval in recent history."
If, in spite of everything, we want to maintain a bit of humanity in life on Earth in the 2010s, we ought, as the geologist Colin Campbell has suggested, to call on the United Nations to agree immediately on the following: to guarantee that poor countries will still be able to import a little oil; to forbid oil profiteering; to encourage saving energy; to promote renewable sources of energy. In order to attain these objectives, this universal agreement should impose the following measures: every State must regulate oil imports and exports; no oil-exporting country may produce more oil than its annual depletion, scientifically calculated, allows; every State must reduce its oil imports to an agreed-upon global depletion rate.
This necessary priority granted to physical econometrics will not suit economists and politicians, especially in America. No government of the United States has ever accepted questioning the American way of life. Since the first oil shock of 1973-1974, every American military intervention can be analyzed in the light of the fear of running short of cheap oil. It was, moreover, the American production peak in 1970 that enabled OPEC to seize the occasion and cause the first shock, which coincided with the Yom Kippur War. Countries in the West then attempted to regain control and conjure away the specter of shortage, less through energy sobriety than by means of opening oilfields in Alaska and the North Sea. In 1979, the Iranian revolution and the second oil shock once again allowed OPEC to regain preeminence, as Western economies paid dearly for their thirst for oil through the recession of subsequent years.
At the beginning of the 1980s, the financing and arming of Saddam Hussein to fight Iran was part of the American reconquest of the price and flow of oil, as was the cooperation obtained from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia to increase crude oil exports to the West. That allowed the oil price crash of 1986, a return of Western growth through unlimited oil abundance, the extension of the thirst for energy up to the Iraq wars (1991, 2003) no matter how many died from them (100,000? 300,000?), no matter how much they cost ($100 billion? $300 billion?), by no matter what means (annual Dept. of Defense budget: $400 billion).
During these same last fifteen years, the multiple conflicts in the Balkans had their source and their resolution in the American desire to keep Russia away from the oil transport routes from the Black Sea and the Caspian to the ports on the Adriatic, by way of Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Albania. Oil geopolitics authorizes any pact with Islamist devils, from central Asia to Bosnia, and all the cynical connivances with terrorists, right up to Tony Blair's recent trip to Libya to allow Shell to bring its volume of reserves in return for several hundred million dollars.
The present American Greater Middle East Initiative is dressed up in humanitarian and democratic considerations, but it is nothing but an attempt to get control once and for all of every source of oil in the region.
More than thirty years of worrying about oil has not opened the eyes of American and European leaders concerning the energy crisis that is looming just before us. Despite what René Dumont and the ecologists were saying from the 1974 presidential campaign on, the governments of industrialized countries have continued and continue to believe in almost inexhaustible cheap oil -- to the detriment of the climate and human health, both perturbed by greenhouse gas emissions -- instead of organizing a reduction in their economies' reliance on hydrocarbons.
However, the oil shock that promises to strike before the end of the decade is not like the ones that preceded it. What is at stake this time is not geopolitical, but geological. In 1973 and 1979, the shortage had a political origin in OPEC's decision. Then the supply was restored.
Today, it is the wells themselves that are declining. Even if the United States succeeded in imposing its hegemony on all the oilfields in the world (outside of Russia), their army and their technology will not be able to prevail against the coming depletion of conventional oil. In any case, there is not enough time to replace a fluid so cheap to produce, so rich in energy, so easy to use, store, and transport, with so many uses (domestic, industrial, fuel, raw material...), in order to reinvest $100 billion in another source of abundance that doesn't exist.
Natural gas? It does not have the just-named qualities of oil and will reach its global production peak in around 2020 -- about ten years after the other peak. The only viable path is immediate oil sobriety organized through an international agreement along the lines I have sketched out above, authorizing a prompt weaning from our addiction to black gold.
Without waiting for this delicate international agreement, our new regional elected officials and our soon-to-be-elected European representatives should set for themselves as a top priority the local realization of these objectives by organizing, on their own territory, an oil shrinkage. Otherwise, rationing will come from the market through the coming rise in oil prices, and then be propagated by inflation, with the shock reaching every sector. Since the price will soon reach $100 a barrel, this will no longer be a simple oil shock -- it will be the end of the world as we know it.
____
--Yves Cochet (Green) represents Paris in the National Assembly, and is former land and environment minister (ministre du territoire et de l'environnement).

Global warming could soon make Antarctica the only place to live, says chief British scientist
02.05.2004
UKINDEPENDENT
Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the British government's chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, said last week.
He said that the Earth was entering the "first hot period" since 60 million years ago, when there was no ice on the planet and "the rest of the globe could not sustain human life".
The shock warning -- one of the starkest yet delivered by a top scientist or senior government figure -- comes as British ministers are deciding whether to weaken measures next week to cut the pollution that causes climate change.
That is despite Tony Blair last week describing the situation as "very, very critical indeed".
The Prime Minister - who was launching a new alliance of governments, businesses and pressure groups to tackle global warming - added that he could not think of "any bigger long-term question facing the world community". Yet the Government is considering relaxing limits on emissions by industry under an EU scheme on Tuesday.
Sir David says that there is "plenty of evidence" to back up his warning. Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere -- the main "green-house gas" causing climate change -- were already 50 per cent higher than at any time in the last 420,000 years. The last time they were at this level -- 379 parts per million and rising -- was 60 million years ago during a rapid period of global warming in the Palaeocene epoch, he said. Levels soared to 1,000 parts per million, causing a massive reduction of life on earth.
"No ice was left on earth. Antarctica was the best place for mammals to live, and the rest of the world would not sustain human life," he said.
Sir David warned that if the world did not curb its burning of fossil fuels "we will reach that level by the end of the century".
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RAF C-130 In Near-Miss With British Nuke Plant
BNFL Admits Nuclear Power Station 'Near-Miss'
By Stephen Meredith
NewsAndStar.co.uk
http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/viewarticle.asp?id=95544
5-5-4
Sellafield's owner British Nuclear Fuels has admitted that a Hercules military aircraft came within a few hundred feet of its vulnerable power plant near Annan and not at the West Cumbrian site as previously thought.
In December, the large RAF transport plane breached the no-fly zone around the aging Chapelcross nuclear power station - just 15 miles north of Carlisle - but the incident has only just been confirmed. An investigation is still being carried out.
In March, the Sunday Express claimed a "world exclusive" for its report under the headline: "A second from nuclear disaster".
It claimed a jet came within 100ft of crashing into a cooling tower at Calder Hall, Sellafield's defunct nuclear power station.
But now the revelation about the Chapelcross incident seems to have cleared up the mystery which surrounded the Sunday Express report, which was categorically denied by BNFL and the Government. It appears the report simply confused the location of the incident, mistaking Chapelcross for Calder Hall. A BNFL spokesman confirmed that an incident had taken place at Chapelcross.
Following the September 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, the Government doubled the restricted air space around nuclear installations to a radius of 2.3 miles.
Since then, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has investigated 32 complaints that restricted areas have been infringed. They insist there was never any danger of a crash.
But Welsh Labour MP Llew Smith, who has been researching nuclear near misses, said: "The consequences should a crash occur, would be an unimaginable catastrophe."
The MoD also disclosed that the no-fly zones over three other nuclear plants in the UK had been breached five times in the past three years.

A setback for Sharon’s Gaza gamble
May 4th 2004
From The Economist Global Agenda
Ariel Sharon’s Likud party has voted to reject his plan to pull Israeli troops and settlers out of Gaza. But the prime minister will still try to push it through the cabinet and parliament—if he can survive the political turmoil that is likely in the vote's wake
ARIEL SHARON is smarting from a humiliating rejection by his own Likud party. On Sunday May 2nd, Likud’s 193,000 registered members voted down the Israeli prime minister’s controversial plan to dismantle Jewish settlements and withdraw unilaterally from the Gaza strip, with 59.5% of those who cast ballots saying “no”. In calling the vote, Mr Sharon had taken a big gamble. That it has not paid off is a serious setback for his policy of disengagement from the Palestinians. It also threatens to plunge Israeli politics into turmoil.
Only last month, during a visit by Mr Sharon to Washington, DC, President George Bush gave his support for the Gaza pull-out plan, and for accompanying plans to pull Jewish settlers out of most of the West Bank, calling them “historic” and “courageous”. A withdrawal from Gaza is also backed by a majority of Israelis. But many right-wing Israeli politicians charge that uprooting 7,500 settlers and withdrawing the Israeli army from nearly all of the Gaza strip would simply reward terror and show Israel to be capitulating under fire. Hardliners are shocked by what they see as hypocrisy on Mr Sharon’s part. After all, they point out, until recently he argued consistently that the best response to attacks by Palestinian militants was to build more settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, not to dismantle them.
Mr Sharon said he respected the result of Sunday’s vote, which he received with “sorrow”, but that he was not ready to drop the disengagement proposal. He now plans to put it to his cabinet and the Israeli parliament, though he has said it will be modified first. On Tuesday, he met other cabinet ministers to discuss how the plan might be watered down. That could make it more palatable to opponents but it would also upset the plan's supporters in parliament, such as the main opposition Labour Party. On Tuesday, Shimon Peres, Labour's leader, urged the prime minister not to change the plan.
After the Likud vote, the White House reiterated its support for the plan, saying it hoped it could be adopted “in some form”. But the Bush administration's backing for Mr Sharon has angered many, at home as well as abroad: this week, some 50 retired American diplomats wrote to Mr Bush, criticising his Middle East policy for losing the United States “credibility, prestige and friends”. Mr Bush has also been attacked for failing to give adequate backing to the “road map” plan for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. On Tuesday, the so-called Quartet behind the plan—America, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations—met to discuss ways to revive it.
Marshalling the opposition
Mr Sharon must now be wondering why he held the Likud vote when there was no need to—he could have gone straight to the cabinet and the parliament for approval. Opponents of the Gaza pull-out were highly effective in marshalling support in the days before the vote. The isolation of Sharon supporters in the field contrasted starkly with the phalanx of settler and ultra-nationalist volunteers, from within and beyond Likud, who launched a massive and highly emotional campaign. Israel’s towns and villages were plastered with posters declaring settlement withdrawal to be no less than “treachery”. Harassment of Sharon supporters at many polling stations did not help the “yes” camp either. The killing by Palestinian gunmen of a pregnant Gaza settler and her four young daughters, during voting on Sunday, was also thought to have bolstered opposition to the pull-out plan. Partly in response to this, Israeli forces fired on armed Palestinians in a town in Gaza on Tuesday, and tore down four buildings near a Jewish settlement, claiming they had been used as a base from which to launch rocket and mortar attacks.
In the run-up to the vote, Mr Sharon’s aides had hinted that he might resign if he lost. Those who said this was a bluff have been proved right. Resignation is out of the question, the prime minister’s people now say. But the vote has ushered in a period of political uncertainty. An early election is possible, as is a nationwide referendum on the pull-out plan (though this would require a change in the law). Some analysts think the Likud-led coalition government may even split apart.
The vote on Sunday could also have a big impact on the future of Likud itself. The party is now officially at odds with Mr Sharon, who was instrumental in its creation in the 1970s. It is also at odds with the electorate as a whole, which is increasingly desperate to see an end to the violent stalemate with the Palestinians. Some analysts have suggested that the Likud members’ rejection of the disengagement plan could mark the beginning of the party’s marginalisation. It could also encourage Mr Sharon’s antagonists within Likud, particularly Binyamin Netanyahu, the finance minister and a former prime minister, to try to unseat their leader.
Certainly, Mr Sharon will have to be especially deft in manoeuvring his way out of his tactical error in calling for the vote. And he will have to do this while wrestling with other problems, such as a corruption scandal that may yet lead to bribery charges being brought against him. However, fans of the rumbustious Israeli leader are at pains to point out that throughout a chequered military and political career, Mr Sharon has been at his best in adversity, responding vigorously whenever apparently cornered. For the umpteenth time, he is bracing for a fight.

Eli Lilly, Zyprexa & The Bush Family
The Diseasing Of Our Malaise
By Bruce Levine
5-8-4
More than one journalist has uncovered corrupt connections between the Bush Family, psychiatry, and Eli Lilly & Company, the giant pharmaceutical corporation. While previous Lillygates have been more colorful, Lilly's soaking state Medicaid programs with Zyprexa-its blockbuster, antipsychotic drug-may pack the greatest financial wallop. Worldwide in 2003, Zyprexa grossed $4.28 billion, accounting for slightly more than one-third of Lilly's total sales. In the United States in 2003, Zyprexa grossed $2.63 billion, 70 percent of that attributable to government agencies, mostly Medicaid.
Historically, the exposure of any single Lilly machination-though sometimes disrupting it-has not weakened the Bush-psychiatry-Lilly relationship. In the last decade, some of the more widely reported Eli Lilly intrigues include:
a. Influencing the Homeland Security Act to protect itself from lawsuits
b. Accessing confidential patient records for a Prozac sample mailing
c. Rigging the Wesbecker Prozac-violence trial
A sample of those who have been on the Eli Lilly payroll includes:
a. Former President George Herbert Walker Bush (one-time member of the Eli Lilly board of directors)
b. Former CEO of Enron, Ken Lay (one-time member of the Eli Lilly board of directors)
c. George W. Bush's former director of Management and Budget, Mitch Daniels (a former Eli Lilly vice president)
d. George W. Bush's Homeland Security Advisory Council member, Sidney Taurel (current CEO of Eli Lilly)
e. The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (a recipient of Eli Lilly funding)
In 2002, British and Japanese regulatory agencies warned that Zyprexa may be linked to diabetes, but even after the FDA issued a similar warning in 2003, Lilly's Zyprexa train was not derailed, as Zyprexa posted a 16 percent gain over 2002. The growth of Zyprexa has become especially vital to Lilly because Prozac-Lilly's best-known product, which once annually grossed over $2 billion-having lost its patent protection, continues its rapid decline, down to $645.1 million in 2003.
At the same time regulatory agencies were warning of Zyprexa's possible linkage to diabetes, Lilly's second most lucrative product line was its diabetes treatment drugs (including Actos, Humulin, and Humalog), which collectively grossed $2.51 billion in 2003. Lilly's profits on diabetes drugs and the possible linkage between diabetes and Zyprexa is not, however, the most recent Lillygate that Gardiner Harris broke about Zyprexa in the New York Times on December 18, 2003.
Zyprexa costs approximately twice as much as similar drugs and Harris reported that state Medicaid programs-going in the red in part because of Zyprexa- are attempting to exclude it in favor of similar, less expensive drugs. Harris focused on the Kentucky Medicaid program, which had a $230 million deficit in 2002, with Zyprexa being its single largest drug expense at $36 million. When Kentucky's Medicaid program attempted to exclude it from its list of preferred medications, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) fought back. The nonprofit NAMI-ostensibly a consumer organization-bused protesters to hearings, placed full-page ads in newspapers, and sent faxes to state officials. What NAMI did not say at the time was that the buses, ads, and faxes were paid for by Eli Lilly.
Ken Silverstein, in Mother Jones in 1999, reported that NAMI took $11.7 million from drug companies over a three and a half year period from 1996 through 1999, with the largest donor being Eli Lilly, which provided $2.87 million. Eli Lilly's funding also included loaning NAMI a Lilly executive, who worked at NAMI headquarters, but whose salary was paid for by Lilly. Though NAMI's linkage to Lilly is a scandal to psychiatric survivors-whose journal MindFreedom published copies of Big Pharma checks to NAMI-the story didn't have the widespread shock value that would elevate it to Lillygate status.
In 2002, Eli Lilly flexed its muscles at the highest level of the U.S. government in an audacious Lillygate. The event was the signing of the Homeland Security Act, praised by President George W. Bush as a "heroic action" that demonstrated "the resolve of this great nation to defend our freedom, our security and our way of life." Soon after the Act was signed, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert discovered what had been slipped into the Act at the last minute and on November 25, 2002, he wrote, "Buried in this massive bill, snuck into it in the dark of night by persons unknown.was a provision that-incredibly-will protect Eli Lilly and a few other big pharmaceutical outfits from lawsuits by parents who believe their children were harmed by thimerosal."
Thimerosal is a preservative that contains mercury and is used by Eli Lilly and others in vaccines. In 1999 the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Public Health Service urged vaccine makers to stop using mercury-based preservatives. In 2001 the Institute of Medicine concluded that the link between autism and thimerosal was "biologically plausible." By 2002, thim- erosol lawsuits against Eli Lilly were progressing through the courts. The punch line of this Lillygate is that, in June 2002, President George W. Bush had appointed Eli Lilly's CEO, Sidney Taurel, to a seat on his Homeland Security Advisory Council. Ultimately, even some Republican senators became embarrassed by this Lillygate and, by early 2003, moderate Republicans and Democrats agreed to repeal this particular provision in the Homeland Security Act.
In early 2003, "60 Minutes II" aired a segment on Lillygate and Prozac. With Prozac's patent having run out, Eli Lilly began marketing a new drug, Prozac Weekly. Lilly sales representatives in Florida gained access to "confidential" patient information records and, unsolicited, mailed out free samples of Prozac Weekly. How did Eli Lilly get its hands on these medical records? Regulations proposed under Clinton and later implemented under Bush contained a provision that gave health-care providers the right to sell a person's confidential medical information to marketing firms and drug companies. Despite many protests against this proposal, President Bush told Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson to allow the new rules to go into effect.
Perhaps the most cinematic of all Lillygates culminated in 1997. The story began in 1989 when Joseph Wesbecker-one month after he began taking Prozac-opened fire with his AK-47 at his former place of employment, killing 8 and wounding 12 before taking his own life. British journalist John Cornwell covered the Louisville, Kentucky trial for the London Sunday Times Magazine, ultimately writing a book about it. Cornwell's The Power to Harm (1996) is not only about a disgruntled employee becoming violent after taking Prozac, but is also about Eli Lilly's power to corrupt the judicial system.
Victims of Joseph Wesbecker sued Eli Lilly, claiming that Prozac had pushed Wesbecker over the edge. The trial took place in 1994, but received scant attention as the public was transfixed by the O.J. Simpson spectacle. While Eli Lilly had been settling many Prozac violence cases behind closed doors (more than 150 Prozac lawsuits had been filed by the end of 1994), it was looking for a showcase trial that it could win. Although a 1991 FDA "blue ribbon panel" investigating the association between Prozac and violence had voted not to require Prozac to have a violence warning label, by 1994 word was getting around that five of the nine FDA panel doctors had ties to Big Pharma-two of them serving as lead investigators for Lilly-funded Prozac studies. Thus, with the FDA panel now known to be tainted, Lilly believed that Wesbecker's history was such that Prozac would not be seen as the cause of his mayhem.
A crucial component of the victims' attorneys' strategy was for the jury to hear about Eli Lilly's history of reckless disregard. Victims' attorneys especially wanted the jury to hear about Lilly's anti- inflammatory drug Oraflex, introduced in 1982 but taken off the market three months later. A U.S. Justice Department investigation linked Oraflex to the deaths of more than 100 patients and concluded that Lilly had misled the FDA. Lilly was charged with 25 counts related to mislabeling side effects and pled guilty-but in 1985, the Reagan-Bush Justice Department saw fit to fine them a mere $25,000.
In the Wesbecker trial, Lilly attorneys argued that the Oraflex information would be prejudicial and Judge John Potter initially agreed that the jury shouldn't hear it. However, when Lilly attorneys used witnesses to make a case for Eli Lilly's superb system of collecting and analyzing side effects, Judge Potter said that Lilly had opened the door to evidence to the contrary and ruled that the Oraflex information would now be permitted. To Judge Potter's amazement, victims' attorneys never presented the Oraflex evidence and Eli Lilly won the case. Later, it was discovered that-in a manipulation Cornwell described as "unprecedented in any Western court"-Eli Lilly cut a secret deal with victims' attorneys to pay them and their clients not to introduce the Oraflex evidence. However, Judge Potter smelled a rat and fought for an investigation. In 1997, Eli Lilly quietly agreed to the verdict being changed from a Lilly victory to "dismissed as settled."
Looking back further to 1992, Alexander Cockburn, in both the Nation and the New Statesman, was one of the first to connect the dots between the Bush family and Eli Lilly. After George Herbert Walker Bush left his CIA director post in 1977 and before becoming vice president under Ronald Reagan in 1980, he was on Eli Lilly's board of directors. As vice president, Bush failed to disclose his Lilly stock and lobbied hard on behalf of Big Pharma-especially Eli Lilly. For example, Bush sought special tax breaks from the IRS for Lilly and other pharmaceutical corporations that were manufacturing in Puerto Rico.
Cockburn also reported on Mitch Daniels, then a vice president at Eli Lilly, who in 1991 co-chaired a fundraiser that collected $600,000 for the Bush-Quayle campaign. This is the same Mitch Daniels who in 2001 became George W. Bush's Director of Management and Budget. In June 2003, soon after Daniels departed from that job, he ran for governor of Indiana (home to Eli Lilly headquarters). In a piece in the Washington Post called "Delusional on the Deficit," Senator Ernest Hollings wrote, "When Daniels left two weeks ago to run for governor of Indiana, he told the Post that the government is 'fiscally in fine shape.' Good grief! During his 29-month tenure, he turned a so-called $5.6 trillion, 10-year budget surplus into a $4 trillion deficit-a mere $10 trillion downswing in just two years. If this is good fiscal policy, thank heavens Daniels is gone."
There is one Eli Lilly piece of history so bizarre that if told to many psychiatrists, one just might get diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic and medicated with Zyprexa. Former State Department officer John Marks in The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control, The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (1979)-along with the Washington Post (1985) and the New York Times (1988)-reported an amazing story about the CIA and psychiatry. A lead player was psychiatrist D. Ewen Cameron, president of the American Psychiatric Association in 1953. Cameron was curious to discover more powerful ways to break down patient resistance. Using electroshock, LSD, and sensory deprivation, he was able to produce severe delirium. Patients often lost their sense of identity, forgetting their own names and even how to eat. The CIA, eager to learn more about Cameron's brainwashing techniques, funded him under a project code-named MKULTRA. According to Marks, Cameron was part of a small army of the CIA's LSD-experimenting psychiatrists. Where did the CIA get its LSD? Marks reports that the CIA had been previously supplied by the Swiss pharmaceutical corporation Sandoz, but was uncomfortable relying on a foreign company and so, in 1953, the CIA asked Eli Lilly to make them up a batch of LSD, which Lilly subsequently donated to the CIA.
The most important story about Eli Lilly is that Lilly's two current blockbuster psychiatric drugs-Zyprexa and Prozac-are, in scientific terms, of little value. It is also about how Lilly and the rest of Big Pharma have corrupted psychiatry, resulting in the increasing medicalization of unhappiness. This diseasing of our malaise has diverted us from examining the social sources for our unhappiness-and implementing societal solutions.
Much of the scientific community now acknowledges that the advantage of Prozac and Prozac-like drugs over a sugar-pill placebo is slight-or as Prevention and Treatment in 2002 defined it, "clinically negligible." When Prozac is compared to an active placebo (one with side effects), then Prozac is shown to have, in scientific terms, zero value. Moreover, many doctors and researchers now warn us about the dangers of Prozac. Psychiatrist Joseph Glenmullen's Prozac Backlash (2000) documented "neurological disorders including disfiguring facial and whole body tics indicating potential brain damage...agitation, muscle spasms, and parkinsonism," and he stated that debilitating withdrawal occurs in 50 percent of patients who abruptly come off Prozac and Prozac-like drugs.
Just as Prozac and other SSRI drugs are no longer seen by many scientists as an improvement in safety and effectiveness over the previous class of antidepressants, psychiatry's highly touted Zyprexa (and other "atypical antipsychotics") turns out to be no great advance over the older problematic anti-ps ychotics such as Haldol. Journalist Robert Whitaker, in Mad in America (2002), details how Eli Lilly's Zyprexa research was biased against the inexpensive Haldol and how claims of improved safety of Zyprexa are difficult to justify. Whitaker reports that in drug trials used by FDA reviewers, 22 percent of Zyprexa patients had "serious" adverse effects as compared to 18 percent of the Haldol patients.
The United States and other nations that have bought psychiatry's and Big Pharma's explanations and treatments turn out to have worse results with those diagnosed as psychotic than those nations who are less enthusiastic about drugs and who care more about community. In 1992, the World Health Organization (WHO), in a repeat of earlier findings, found that so-called underdeveloped nations, which emphasize community support rather than medications, have better results with those diagnosed as psychotic than nations, which stress drug treatments. In nations such as the United States, where 61 percent of those diagnosed as psychotic were maintained on antipsychotic medications, only 37 percent had full remission. While in India, Nigeria, and Colombia, where only 16 percent of patients diagnosed as psychotic were maintained on antipsychotic medications, approximately 63 percent of patients had full remission.
While scientists are not certain about the reasons for these WHO findings, two possible explanations are: (1) psychiatric drugs, even for the most disturbed among us, are not the greatest long-term solution; (2) community support, crucial to our mental health, does not lend itself to commercialization. Thus, in areas such as mental health, radically commercialized societies such as the United States are backward societies.
Though some mental health professionals insist that atypical antipsychotics such as Zyprexa are a great advance, I've met few Zyprexa users who agree. A few years ago, a well-read man with a professorial manner in his early 60s, diagnosed by several other doctors as paranoid schizophrenic, came to see me. He had, at various times, taken several types of antipsychotic drugs and told me, laughing loudly between each sentence, "I'm crazy on drugs and crazy off drugs. Haldol helped me sleep and Zyprexa helped me sleep, but I hated the Haldol and when I was on Zyprexa, I couldn't take a shit for three weeks. Now I don't take any drugs and I can't sleep and I am a big pain-in-the ass, but I can remember better what I read." A few weeks later he told me, "It's all friendly fascism. Yes, friendly fascism. Was it you who told me-or was it I who told you-that fascism is about the complete integration of industry and government under a centralized authority? Friendly fascism, right? I suppose I say 'friendly fascism' too much, but you're not Ashcroft and neither am I, right? Don't you agree that it's all friendly fascism?" Then he flashed a giant smile and said one more time, "Friendly fascism, right, Bruce?"
Bruce E. Levine, PhD, is a psychologist and author of Commonsense Rebellion: Taking Back Your Life from Drugs, Shrinks, Corporations and a World Gone Crazy (New York-London: Continuum, 2003).

Vegas has new crime element: Israeli mob
Columnist Jeff German
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/commentary/2004/apr/30/516782598.html
April 30, 2004
WITH ITS FREE flow of cash and high-stakes gambling, Las Vegas has always been an attractive target of opportunity for organized crime.
For years the traditional La Cosa Nostra dominated street rackets here and even managed to gain hidden interests in casinos on the Strip. We were considered an "open city" for more than two dozen of the nation's Mafia families.
Today Las Vegas still is considered fertile ground for organized crime, but as the mob's influence has waned because of stepped-up pressure from law enforcement authorities, other criminal groups have risen to prominence on the streets.
In recent months authorities have discovered that Israeli organized crime syndicates have set their sights on Las Vegas. One ranking crime figure was overheard a year ago by lawmen on court-approved wiretaps describing Las Vegas as "wide open" territory.
"They're really trying to rear their ugly head in Las Vegas," says Sheriff Bill Young, who has detectives assigned to a joint federal drug task force investigating the Israeli crime connection here.
The Israeli syndicates are involved in traditional rackets, such as loan sharking, extortion, money laundering, prostitution and illegal gambling.
And they're just as violent as the Mafia. Two of the biggest families, one based in Jerusalem and the other in Tel Aviv, currently are involved in a bloody war over control of street rackets in Israel.
But unlike the Mafia, the Israeli crime groups are far more sophisticated and have far-reaching international tentacles. Key members of the groups have homes in multiple countries and make most of their money importing cocaine and the club drug Ecstasy (MDMA) from Europe into the United States. Las Vegas has been the site of some Ecstasy deals, drug task force affidavits revealed.
The booming Strip nightclub scene in Las Vegas, where Ecstasy is popular, has become not only a favored playground for the rising stars of the Israeli crime families, but also an ideal climate to conduct their illicit business.
Drug Enforcement Administration agents, who have taken the lead in gaining a handle on the Israeli mob's growing influence here, say crime family members have cultivated ties with local casinos, members of the legal community and Israeli-born business people, some of whom are being shaken down for money in protection rackets.
"In my opinion, law enforcement still doesn't have a full understanding of the presence of Israeli organized crime figures here," one member of the federal drug task force says.
But the increased scrutiny -- which has taken agents around the world and prompted unprecedented cooperation with the Israeli National Police -- has begun to bear fruit.
On April 6, following an investigation that began in Las Vegas, a federal indictment quietly was unsealed in Los Angeles charging several suspected Israeli crime figures who have ties here with conspiracy, extortion and money laundering. These figures, agents allege, are members of the Jerusalem crime family known as the "Jerusalem Network."
The indictment received no publicity in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, but it clearly has significance in the ongoing local efforts to keep tabs on the Israeli mob.
The biggest fish named in the indictment is Gabriel Ben Harosh, the reputed 39-year-old jet-setting No. 2 man in the Jerusalem Network, which authorities believe is run by Itzhak Abergil, who recently was ordered to leave Israel amid the rising mob bloodshed.
Ben Harosh, who is represented by Las Vegas lawyer David Chesnoff, was taken into custody in Toronto and is awaiting extradition.
Though investigators describe Ben Harosh in sworn affidavits as a "high-ranking member of an Israeli organized crime syndicate," Chesnoff says his Moroccan-born client is a legitimate businessman.
"He's a multimillionaire who owns one of the biggest construction companies in Israel," Chesnoff says, adding that this client is looking forward to fighting the charges against him.
Another key defendant in the case is Hai Waknine, 32, a suspected crime family associate who has a beach front home in Los Angeles. DEA agents believe Waknine collects debts and launders money for Ben Harosh.
Over the past 14 months local agents secretly have watched Waknine and his entourage of bodyguards and associates live in the fast lane during numerous trips to Las Vegas. Waknine is regarded as a high roller at several casinos, including the Venetian, Paris and the Palms.
On one trip in 2003, drug task force affidavits say, a member of Waknine's entourage was arrested by Metro Police on drug charges at the Palms after a prostitute Waknine reportedly brought with him from Los Angeles had overdosed and was rushed by ambulance to the hospital. Police seized a container filled with liquid GHB, a date rape drug, from the associate during the incident. Chesnoff defended him on the charges.
After the prostitute recovered, DEA agents learned through wiretaps that Waknine had instructed her to take a large sum of cash to Ben Harosh in Spain.
One of the more intriguing defendants in the Los Angeles case is Sasson Barashy, a 47-year-old alleged Jerusalem Network member who is now in custody in Israel, where he has a lengthy rap sheet.
The Los Angeles investigation took off after local DEA agents discovered in January 2003 that Barashy was living at a home in Summerlin with his wife. At the time he was a fugitive from Israel in a well-publicized criminal case involving a $60 million bank embezzlement and extortion plot allegedly pulled off by the Jerusalem Network.
Telephone calls coming in and out of the Summerlin home were secretly monitored by agents, who found that Barashy was in steady contact with a who's who of suspected Israeli crime figures, including Ben Harosh and Waknine.
Calls were made to associates in Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Miami. There were plenty of international calls as well. In one two-month stretch, according to drug task force affidavits, more than 350 calls were made to associates in Israel, Morocco and Spain.
In the ensuing months, through wiretaps and physical surveillance, agents stayed hot on the trail of the activities of the group, documenting, among other things, efforts to extort cash from a luxury car dealer in Beverly Hills, launder money through lawyers in Miami and set up drug deals in various parts of the world.
Through it all members of the group were not afraid to maintain a high profile in Las Vegas. In April 2003, for example, Barashy and Waknine hosted a lavish Passover seder, live band and all, at Bally's.
Their days of celebrating may be over for now.
But with so much "open territory" for the taking, the odds are that other family members will be more than willing to keep the party going.

Underground blast 'may have eradicated dinosaurs'
Ananova
5/8/04
Dinosaurs may have been wiped out by a mighty underground explosion with the energy of seven million atom bombs.
A team of scientists claims the Earth-shaking blast, called a Verneshot, is the best explanation for the death of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Most experts believe the extinction was caused by a huge asteroid or comet that smashed into the Earth off the coast of Mexico. Others have blamed a mega-volcanic episode, called a continental flood basalt, which resulted in numerous vents pouring poisonous gas into the atmosphere.
According to the new theory, a Verneshot could explain the effects of both and also provide the answer to a long-standing mystery.
Mass extinctions always seem to coincide with both continental flood basalts and meteorite impacts, even though the odds against this happening are huge. In the past 400 million years there have been four major mass extinctions, including the one which killed off the dinosaurs.
But the German scientists behind the Verneshot theory point out that the chances of all of them coinciding with an impact and a continental flood basalt is one in 3,500.
The name Verneshot comes from Jules Verne's book From the Earth to the Moon in which a huge cannon shoots astronauts into space. The theory suggests what might happen if a mantle plume, a stream of lava welling up from deep within the Earth, builds up beneath a thick chunk of immovable continent called a craton.
If the craton started splitting or "rifting", which could occur every 100 million years, the release of pressure would produce a catastrophic gas explosion. Gases would surge up and burst out at the surface, poisoning the atmosphere and causing severe environmental stress around the world.
The blast would trigger a magnitude 11 earthquake, bigger than any quake ever recorded - but with the main event yet to come. Immediately after the explosion, pressure would plummet in the pipe that carried the gases, causing it to cave in from the bottom upwards.
The scientists claim the idea can account for all the impact signatures associated with mass extinctions.

Yellowstone Park unlikely to blow up anytime soon: No signs of cataclysmic eruption
April 28, 2004By MIKE STARK
Of The Gazette Staff
Here's a reason to breathe easier: Civilization probably won't be crippled anytime soon by a pulverizing volcanic eruption at Yellowstone National Park.
New research indicates there is probably not a huge pot of magma brewing beneath Yellowstone that's building up to a superviolent eruption thousands of times more powerful than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
"If something like that was cooking up right now we'd see the evidence, and we don't," said Drew Coleman, an assistant geology professor at the University of North Carolina.
Coleman is one of three scientists who authored two recent studies aimed at changing the way we think about volcanoes - especially how often the "big ones" erupt.
Earth has seen staggering volcanic eruptions. The last was about 75,000 years ago when an eruption at the Toba volcano in Indonesia may have come close to wiping out all primates, including humans, university officials said.
Yellowstone, the largest known center of active volcanism on the planet, has had its share. Massive eruptions 2 million, 1.3 million and 630,000 years ago were 2,500, 280 and 1,000 times larger, respectively, than Mount St. Helens.
The latest major eruption formed the famous Yellowstone Caldera than encircles Old Faithful, Canyon, Grant Village and portions of Yellowstone Lake.
"It's not hyperbole to say that the biggest eruptions could bring an end to civilization," said Allen F. Glazner, a geology professor at UNC. "Our new work casts doubt on the assumption that gigantic eruptions should be relatively common."
To reach that conclusion, Coleman, Glazner and the University of Utah's John Bartley examined long-extinct volcanoes in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains.
In particular, they studied bodies of magma that have cooled underground, called plutons, which are the main building blocks of the Earth's crust. They also examined seismic waves produced during earthquakes and measured magma cooling.
According to traditional geologic theories, they should have found big blobs of magma beneath the surface that formed in less than 1 million years - a relatively short period of time on a geologic scale. The huge stores of magma, which is underground molten rock, were thought to be lurking beneath active volcanoes and feeding large-scale eruptions.
Instead, they found that it takes much longer for those plutons to form, up to 10 million years, and that it happens in small fits and starts, not with a big blob of magma rising up.
That means that the giant eruptions fueled by large volumes of magma are less likely to happen, the researchers concluded.
"We conclude that volcanoes are more prone to chugging along, producing many small - though still dangerous - eruptions such as the 1980 eruption at Mount St. Helens, rather than huge civilization-destroying eruptions," Coleman said.
Although the research focused on the Sierra Nevada, Coleman said the results apply to places like Yellowstone.
The findings, which have already drawn praise from some and will likely spur controversy, appear in the April issue of GSA Today and the May issue of Geology.
The research comes amid international debate over the existence of mantle plumes, the columns of hot rocks that were typically thought to rise from deep within the Earth, giving life to volcanoes in Yellowstone, Hawaii, Iceland and elsewhere.
Recent research by the U.S. Geological Survey and others suggests there may not be a deep plume beneath Yellowstone. Instead, a shallow skin of magma beneath the ground may fuel the area's vast geothermal system.
Events at the park, including the discovery of a bulge at the bottom of Yellowstone Lake and briefly higher temperatures at Norris Geyser Basin, have ignited Internet chatter over the possibility of a "supervolcanic" eruption at Yellowstone.
Like other geologists who have weighed in, UNC's Coleman said that prospect seems unlikely for a long time to come.
"Of the seismic evidence under Yellowstone that I'm familiar with, there's no big volume of magma waiting to blow," he said.

When The Explosives Were Placed: WTC South Tower Upper Floors Closed on 9/8 & 9/9
San Francisco Indymedia | April 23 2004
Many people have theorized the World Trade Center was wired with explosives, causing the unprecedented collapse following the impacts of two jumbo jets. In fact, NYC firefighters remarked that day that it seemed like bombs were going off in the buildings, just prior to the tower's collapse. One glaring question remains unanswered: exactly how and when could such a monumental undertaking be accomplished. Read on for the answer...
Feedback from the Progressive Review's Undernews for April 22, 2004.
WE RECEIVED THE FOLLOWING from someone who worked for Fiduciary Trust on the 90th, 94-97th floors of the South Tower:
"On the weekend of 9/8,9/9 there was a 'power down' condition in WTC tower 2, the south tower. This power down condition meant there was no electrical supply for approx 36 hrs from floor 50 up. I am aware of this situation since I work in IT and had to work with many others that weekend to ensure that all systems were cleanly shutdown beforehand ... and then brought back up afterwards. The reason given by the WTC for the power down was that cabling in the tower was being upgraded ...
"Of course without power there were no security cameras, no security locks on doors and many, many 'engineers' coming in and out of the tower. I was at home on the morning of 9/11 on the shore of Jersey City, right opposite the Towers, and watching events unfold I was convinced immediately that something was happening related to the weekend work."

PAPER: Suicide bombers targeted Manchester United match...
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2004180985,00.html
A SUICIDE bomb plot to kill thousands of soccer fans at Saturday’s Manchester United-Liverpool match was dramatically foiled yesterday.
Armed cops seized ten terror suspects in dawn raids.
Intelligence chiefs believe al-Qaeda fanatics planned to blow themselves up amid 67,000 unsuspecting supporters. A source said: “The target was Old Trafford.”
The Islamic fanatics planned to sit all around the ground to cause maximum carnage.
They had already bought the tickets for various positions in the stadium, cops revealed last night.
But armed cops foiled the horrific plot - which could have killed thousands watching Manchester United’s home game against Liverpool on Saturday - in a series of dawn raids yesterday.
Ten people were arrested after a massive surveillance operation involving British anti-terror units and American authorities.
A police source said: “The plot involved several individual bombers in separate parts of the stadium.
“If successful, any such attack would have caused absolute carnage. Thousands of people could have been killed.”
The planned attack would have had an instant global impact as the game is being televised worldwide.
More than 400 police swooped yesterday after a “major terrorist figure” under surveillance moved to Manchester. Police and intelligence organisations believe he came to direct the massacre, which would have been the first al-Qaeda-style outrage in Britain.
Nine men and one woman were arrested — all Iraqi Kurds or from North Africa.
Special Branch and the security services had been monitoring their movements and eavesdropping on mobile phone calls for months.
The operation also involved the US National Security Agency and GCHQ, the Government’s intelligence listening post.
Seven of the suspects were held in Manchester and one each in South Yorkshire, Staffordshire and the West Midlands.
It is believed all have links to extremist Islamic organisations. They were being quizzed at separate police stations around North West England last night.
But it was unclear whether any explosives or weapons had been recovered.
Bombers planning the Old Trafford massacre would have run the risk of being searched going into the ground before the 3pm kick-off.
Manchester United said away fans and those sitting in the higher tiers were frisked.
The identities and details of the suspects remained top secret last night — even to many of those involved in the operation.
One of the raids was at a flat above Dolphins takeaway in Upper Brook Street, near Manchester University. The area has a large ethnic community with many properties converted into bedsits.
Irfaan Arif, who lives in a nearby flat, said: “I was woken at 4am, looked out of the window and saw a lot of armed police. There was loads of banging and shouting.”
The three-storey Dolphins building was cordoned off along with next-door properties housing AK Computers and Funky Fones.
Forensic experts in protective clothing moved in after the initial search teams.
A police spokesman confirmed: “A number of search warrants were executed under the Terrorism Act 2000. Ten people have been arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorism.
“We appreciate the public interest in this but are unable to provide more specific details at this stage.”
Greater Manchester’s Assistant Chief Constable Dave Whatton said: “It was an anti-terrorism operation that has been going on for some time and it will continue in the future.
“This is the first action that the public have become aware of as it is overt. It is set against the background of an increased threat level across the country.
“The addresses raided will continue to be searched for some time. It is a complex inquiry.”
And he appealed: “Because of the national heightened threat levels we would still ask people to be vigilant and report any suspicious activity to police.”
Sheikh Mohammed bal Qadri, deputy director of a mosque in Upper Brook Street, said he did not believe any of his members were among those being held.
He added: “Since September 11 we have been very vigilant, as mosques should be.
“If I see a person who is new, I ask him why he is here and what he is doing and ask these kind of questions.
“We are against these evil acts. In the religion of Islam we have tolerance.” The raids follow revelations last week that police in Manchester had raised their terror alert level.
More than 50 officers were moved from regular duties to work on a task force committed to combating terrorism.
Police have also conducted detailed surveys of land around Manchester Airport to identify sites which could be used to launch missiles attacks on aircraft.
Manchester Central MP Tony Lloyd said yesterday: “Clearly this is one of the most difficult levels of policing. But when police get the information to act successfully the whole of the British public will applaud their actions.”

Experts divided over UK poison bomb claim
07 April 04
NewScientist.com
The reported foiling of a "dirty bomb" plot by UK intelligence agencies has left experts divided over the likelihood that the chemical cited, osmium tetroxide, would be a weapon of choice for terrorists.
The alleged plot to attack the UK, revealed by unnamed sources, is said to have been discovered after the interception of emails and phone calls referring to osmium tetroxide by UK agencies working with the US National Security Agency.
While the content of those communications has not been made public, the suggestion is that adding the toxic chemical to a conventional explosive device would increase the harm it caused on detonation by poisoning people in the vicinity.
"But the question really is 'what happens if it is used in a bomb?'," says Alastair Hay, an environmental toxicologist and a chemical weapons expert at Leeds University, UK.
Blast ventilation
Hay told New Scientist that osmium tetroxide is poisonous enough to kill in high doses, but suggests that much of the highly reactive compound might be destroyed in any blast. Furthermore, the force of a blast might ventilate a target area like a shopping centre, so the toxic fumes would disperse.
"There is no doubt that it is toxic," agrees Andrea Sella, an inorganic chemist at University College London. "But I think that going for fertiliser and nails seems more straightforward and is less likely not to work out," he told The Guardian newspaper.
Hay and Sella also believe osmium tetroxide is too costly to be an obvious choice for terrorists. "Because of its expense I've wondered why someone would chose something like this for a bomb. Osmium is in the same sort of category as platinum, it is a rare metal," says Hay. Websites quote prices between $40 and $180 per gram.
Another factor arguing against the likelihood of osmium tetroxide being used is that it has an acrid odour, which would alert victims to its presence. However, it can only be detected by smell at concentrations above 2 parts per million, while the safety limit for laboratory use is just 0.002 ppm.
Choking and burning
Osmium tetroxide (OsO4) is toxic to people because it reacts with tissue, explains John Henry, a poisons and toxicity expert at Imperial College, University of London.
"Therefore it will produce coughing, choking, dizziness and tightness in the chest," he told New Scientist. "It will stain and burn the skin and also stain and burn the [eyes] - it can destroy the cornea."
Although it is a solid at room temperature, it can easily sublime into a toxic vapour and is only handled by laboratory researchers in fume cupboards. They use it as a powerful oxidising agent and to stain samples in some types of microscopy.
Henry thinks the reported interest of terrorist suspects in the compound is a serious concern. "I think it's a more toxic substance than sarin," he says. Sarin gas attack was used by a Japanese doomsday cult to kill 12 people and hospitalise 5000 others on the Tokyo subway in 1995.
"If you can find a means of dispersing osmium tetroxide, it could really do a lot of damage," he warns.
The UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which supplies signals intelligence to other departments, declined to comment.

Slowdown In Ocean Currents May Bring Ice Age To Britain
Science Editor
The Telegraph - UK
4-16-4
A crucial "cog" in the circulation of the North Atlantic is slowing down, which could signal a major upheaval in the climate of Britain, according to a study published today.
The report in Science comes as Hollywood prepares to release a film on the same theme, The Day After Tomorrow, in which snowstorms batter New Delhi and tornadoes strike Los Angeles after global warming disrupts ocean circulation patterns.
It seems logical that a gradual build-up of greenhouse gases will lead to an equally gradual change in climate. But this has been overturned by evidence found in ice and sediments which reveal that the global climate can lurch from warm to cold in a few decades when ocean circulation patterns change.
Water, even when moving sluggishly, carries significant heat and the tightly-linked Arctic and North Atlantic regions play a key role in the delicately balanced global ocean circulation system that warms the UK with the Gulf Stream. Disrupt it, and the UK could suffer drastic and unpredictable changes in temperature and rainfall, even an ice age, within a timescale ranging from a decade to a century.
Today in Science, a team reports that satellite measurements of sea surface height show there has been a slowdown in the anticlockwise circulation of surface water just below the Arctic Circle in the North Atlantic over the past decade.
Whether this slowdown is a consequence of basic global warming or part of a mid-term climate cycle it is too early to know, said Prof Peter Rhines of the University of Washington, Seattle.
Nor is it clear whether the slowdown will mean major changes in Atlantic circulation.
The 1990s was one of the most active periods of climate change during the past century in northern latitudes.
"The question is, how much 're-plumbing' of the ocean circulation is required to push the coupled atmosphere-ocean system over a threshold?" said Prof Rhines.

UCLA Geophysicist Warns 6.4 Quake To Hit LA By Sept 5
SpaceDaily.com
4-16-4
(AFP) -- A US geophysicist has set the scientific world ablaze by claiming to have cracked a holy grail: accurate earthquake prediction, and warning that a big one will hit southern California by Sept 5.
Russian-born University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) professor Vladimir Keilis-Borok says he can foresee major quakes by tracking minor temblors and historical patterns in seismic hotspots that could indicate more violent shaking is on the way.
And he has made a chilling prediction that a quake measuring at least 6.4 magnitude on the Richter scale will hit a 31,200-square-kilometre area of southern California by September 5.
The team at UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics accurately predicted a 6.5-magnitude quake in central California last December as well as an 8.1-magnitude temblor that struck the Japanese island of Hokkaido in September.
"Earthquake prediction is called the Holy Grail of earthquake science, and has been considered impossible by many scientists," said Keilis-Borok, 82.
"It is not impossible.
"We have made a major breakthrough, discovering the possibility of making predictions months ahead of time, instead of years, as in previously known methods."
If accurate, the prediction method would be critical in an area like California, which is criss-crossed by fault lines that have spawned devastating quakes over the years including ones which ravaged San Francisco in 1989 and Los Angeles in 1994.
That has given credence to his research, which was endorsed by a state panel, the California Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council, earlier this month.
"Even two years back it was practically a dirty word to say earthquake prediction," said Nancy Sauer, an organiser of the annual conference of the Seismological Society of America which began yesterday in Palm Springs.
The UCLA team - made up of US, Japanese, Canadian, European and Russian experts in pattern recognition, geodynamics, seismology, chaos theory, statistical physics and public safety - says it has developed algorithms to detect earthquake patterns.
The experts predicted in June an earthquake measuring 6.4 or higher would strike within nine months in a 496-kilometre region of central California, including San Simeon, where a 6.5-magnitude temblor struck December 22, killing two people.
In July, they said they predicted a magnitude 7.0 or higher quake in a region that included Hokkaido by December 28. The September 25 quake fell within that period.
Now they predict a major quake will hit an area that stretches across desert regions to the east of Los Angeles, home to around nine million people, including the Mojave desert and the resort town of Palm Springs, which lies near the notorious San Andreas fault.
That is where experts began gathering for the Seismological Society of America conference that looks sure to be dominated by passionate discussion of Keilis-Borok's prediction method.
"There is something going on," Sauer told the Desert Sun newspaper in Palm Springs. "People are at least willing to entertain the idea. It is not seen so much as junk science now."
Another seismic expert, University of Oregon professor Ray Weldon, was scheduled to present findings to the conference that appear to support Keilis-Borok's research by saying the San Andreas fault is about to enter a new and violent period of shaking.
The data, according to the Desert Sun, was gathered over 18 years around the famed fault, showing it is under high levels of stress.
"You could consider that support (for Keilis-Borok's research)," Weldon was quoted as saying. "But I dont lend any insight or support to a window of time."
But researchers still point to the fact that the science of earthquake prediction has been notoriously inaccurate and the geographic area targeted by the UCLA team for an imminent quake is very large.
"It is not specific," said Susan Hough, a seismologist for the US Geological Survey based in Pasadena, near Los Angeles. "They've made three predictions and two of them have been borne out."
Keilis-Borok himself acknowledged the caution expressed by some of his colleagues. "Application of non-linear dynamics and chaos theory is often counter-intuitive, so acceptance by some research teams will take time."
But if his latest prediction that the earth will move in the area around Los Angeles within the next five months proves accurate, his research could end up saving lives and transforming seismology.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/tectonics-04d.html

The Rothschild story: A golden era ends for a secretive dynasty
This week NM Rothschild & Sons pulled out of trading in gold, the commodity that made their name in banking
By Paul Vallely
UKIndependent
16 April 2004
The news that the bankers Rothschild are to withdraw from the gold market, in which they have been a major player for two centuries, has been hailed as the end of an era.
In one sense, of course, it is. This was the company that smuggled gold coins across the English Channel to finance the Duke of Wellington's advance through France to his final triumph at Waterloo over Napoleon (who, it turned out, had also borrowed money from the Rothschilds).
But in another way it marks out the continuation of an even older tradition - the ability of the family which has founded one of the world's largest private banking dynasties to sustain their secretive fortune, which industry insiders count not in billions but in trillions, and keep it within the family.
Secrecy has been a hallmark of the Rothschilds from the outset. Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the son of an itinerant money lender and goldsmith who settled in the Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1744, specialised not just in clever accounting practices but also kept secret books and subterranean vaults which he ensured were never the privy of auditor, lawyer or taxman.
As the paterfamilias became more successful he despatched four of his five sons to different European capitals to take advantage of the rise of capitalism and the growth of international trade. Nathan he sent to London, James to Paris, Saloman to Vienna, and Carl to Naples, keeping the eldest, Amschel, at home with him in Prussia. Of these the two most important proved to be London and Paris, where the two main branches of the family developed a friendly rivalry, with the English branch developing the edge in business and the French in philanthropy, the arts and winemaking. But then in 1996 Amschel Rothschild, a 41-year-old man who had lived in the flamboyant style of many of his ancestors, hanged himself in a Paris hotel room. He was the Rothschild who had been groomed to take over as head of the English arm of the dynasty.
So when the bank's chairman Sir Evelyn de Rothschild retired earlier this year the succession passed to the French side of the family. Baron David de Rothschild, who had been running the family's Paris-based bank, inherited.
None of the Rothschild enterprises have been banks in the sense as understood by the man or woman in the street. What Mayer Rothschild founded in the 1760s was a business which grew from the humble beginning of selling rare coins to becoming the prime moneylender to greedy and spendthrift governments across Europe. One German contemporary quipped that Mayer was "the pride of Israel ... before whose money box kings and emperors humbly bow". And the novelist Thackeray said of Nathan that he was "not king of the Jews, but the Jew of the kings". The brothers financed both sides in the Napoleonic wars and in the Austro-Prussian war too.
It has long been supposed that Nathan increased the family fortune 20-fold by speculating on the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The Rothschilds had a network of agents throughout Europe who, using fast boats, coded letters and carrier pigeons, got information to the family ahead of official sources. Victor Rothschild, third baron and former chairman of the London bank, N M Rothschild, always maintained that Nathan had made a killing by encouraging rumours that Wellington had lost when he knew he had won, though the historian Niall Ferguson in his magisterial history of the family recently disputed that.
Certainly, for all the family motto of Concordia, Integritas, Industria (Unity, Integrity, Industry), Nathan's ability to depress stock prices by using the network of agents to spread rumours, true or false, and then buy the stock up after people panicked, was legendary.
More significant, however, was that in the process the Rothschilds created the world of banking as we know it today. Nathan operated principally as an underwriter and speculator in the early 19th-century bond market. He and his brothers invented, or at any rate popularised, the government bond, which allowed investors, big and small, to buy bits of the debts of sovereign states by purchasing fixed-interest bearer bonds.
Governments liked this because they could use them to raise colossal sums of money. Investors liked them because they could be traded - at prices that fluctuated in relation to the performance of the issuing government - and shrewd investors could make big sums. It brought investment in railways, the industrial revolution and ventures like the Suez Canal. The Rothschilds got a cut of everything.
It was a new kind of power. "I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply," Nathan said. The family developed a lack of awe for the powerful and important. A pompous aristocrat one day called on Nathan who was head down at his desk. Without looking up, the banker said: "Take a chair." His caller, affronted, said: "You are speaking to the Prince of Thurn and Taxis." To which Rothschild replied: "Take two chairs." At one point he even rescued the Bank of England after a run on gold caused the collapse of 145 banks. In 1885 he was given the hereditary title of Baron Rothschild.
Many of the distinct characteristics of the family can be traced back to the will of the founder Mayer Rothschild. It stipulated that no public inventory should be made of his estate; that key positions in the House of Rothschild were to be held by family members; that the eldest son should inherit unless the rest agreed otherwise; that the family was to intermarry with first and second cousins to keep the fortune together; that anyone disputing these terms would be struck from the will. And that all this should apply in perpetuity.
In part this was about preserving not just their Jewish identity but a self-conscious position as role models for their poorer co-religionists. The Rothschilds expended much effort and money pressing for Jewish emancipation and equality across the continent.
Their Jewish solidarity was not heterogeneous. In 1938 Nathan's great-great-grandson, Victor, shocked an audience by saying that in spite of "the slow murder of 600,000 people" on the continent "we probably all agree that there is something unsatisfactory in refugees encroaching on the privacy of our country, even for relatively short periods of time." And the family split over the question of the dream of a Jewish homeland, with some members supporting the first Zionist settlement in Palestine and the Balfour declaration and others opposing it on the grounds that it would encourage anti-Semites to question the existing national identities of assimilated Jews around the rest of the world. None of which has allayed the wild fears of anti-Semites who throughout the 20th century branded the Rothschilds as part of a Jewish plot to take over the world.
The world has changed around the Rothschilds. At one point Nathan Rothschild was the richest man in Britain and probably in the world. In today's terms he was wealthier than Bill Gates. But they never gained the foothold in America they needed. The world became corporate. Private banking got left behind.
Still, the family has moved down only from fabulously rich to enormously wealthy. And they adjusted to the times. They made billions in the 1980s from Margaret Thatcher's privatisations of state-owned industries on which they advised. In France after their bank was nationalised by the Socialist president Francois Mitterrand they slowly built a new business which, under Baron David de Rothschild, has risen to the top ranks of the merger and acquisition league tables. They have pulled out of retail fund management - into which they went with much fanfare only three years back - and now they are pulling out of oil and gold in favour of the higher-margin areas of private banking and wealth management.
Do not spend too many tears. In 1997 the family's Swiss holding company increased its profits by 66 per cent. The firm is not called Rothschild Continuation for nothing.
Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1743-1812), Founder of the family business
Mayer, orphaned at the age of 12, was forced to make his own living with the help of the good name of his father in Frankfurt. He carved out a self-taught career as a dealer in coins and medals, branching out into state loans and trade in general commodities. He established the family name by placing a Roman eagle on a red shield (Rothschild in German) over the door of his counting house.
Mayer established one of the Rothschild firm's principles: to settle for less profit to ensure long-term business ties. A brisk market in English textiles prompted him to send one of five sons, Nathan, to England.
Jacob, 4th Baron Rothschild (b. 1936), Head of the English side of the family
Chairman of NM Rothschild before resigning in 1980 to run Rothschild Investment Trust. He chaired the National Heritage Memorial Fund, handing out £1.2bn of lottery grants. He restored Waddesdon Manor, right, the family pile, and chairs Yad Hanadiv, the family foundation in Israel, which donated the Knesset and Supreme Court to the state
David de Rothschild (b. 1942), Head of the French family
The head of the French family, David de Rothschild has escaped two catastrophes in France: he was born in New York after the Luftwaffe seized the family home in Paris and his mother fled from Nazi Europe; and, in 1981, President Mitterrand nationalised the French financial empire, Banque Rothschild. David and his cousins started afresh with PO Gestion, renamed PO Banque and thenRothschild & Cie Banque.
Seven Generations and two Centuries of Banking
1760s The orphaned Mayer Amschel Rothschild starts a coins and medals business in Frankfurt
1789 Mayer appointed an agent to William IX of Hanau
1798 Mayer's son Nathan leaves Frankfurt to become a textile and general merchant in Manchester
1812 Nathan's brother James establishes a banking house in Paris
1815 The English branch of the Rothschilds supply gold to the Duke of Wellington's campaign at Waterloo
1820 Nathan's brother settles in Vienna; his brother Carl starts a business in Naples
1836 Nathan dies
1840 NM Rothschild and Sons becomes one of the Bank of England's bullion brokers
1850s Great houses are built. Bordeaux vineyards of Mouton and Lafite are acquired
1875 Lionel de Rothschild raises finance for British stake in the Suez Canal
1887 Rothschilds funds the creation of the diamond dealers De Beers
1901 With no male heirs, the Frankfurt dynasty comes to an end
1919 NM Rothschild & Sons chair new daily fixing of the gold price
1926 The company finances the spread of the London Underground
1929 Beginning of difficult years for family. Wall Street crash; rise of Nazi Europe
1960s Rothschilds look to US; start of Rothschild Inc
1981 France nationalises the highly successful Paris House but the family refuses defeat and starts new business.
1985 Rothschilds advises on British Gas privatisation
2004 An international banking dynasty, Rothschild have 40 countries worldwide

Hand Scanning New Method of Identification at Busch Gardens
Saturday, Apr. 3, 2004
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (AP) - Hand scanning has taken the place of photo identification for season-pass holders at Busch Gardens and Water Country USA.
The new system will allow pass holders to enter the park more quickly, prevent fraud and eliminate the need to wait in line to get photo IDs taken, said Doug Stagner, Busch Gardens' vice president of operations.
"We're trying to streamline the process," Stagner said. "We need some way to match the person to the pass and this is a new, quicker way to do it."
More than 1,000 people have been scanned using the new "hand geometry" system, Stagner said.
The process, called biometrics, uses electronic devices to verify identity by recognizing unique characteristics such as fingerprints, hands, and the iris of the eye. The technology is used widely in verification systems at airports and security-sensitive facilities.
At airports, biometric systems are typically linked to a national database, which has enabled airlines to do background checks, but critics have raised privacy concerns.
The park's HandEScan device measures the top of a person's hand, taking in finger height, knuckle shape and distance between the hand's joints. It takes two separate images and then combines the photos to create a 3-D image, according to officials. The information is stored in an internal system and then matched to each person's season-pass bar code upon entry to the park, Stagner said.
"There's really no privacy issue," he said. "It's not fingerprinting. This is just for our internal use, matching the person to the pass."
But not everyone is convinced.
Rebecca Ouellette, who has been a season-pass holder at Busch Gardens since she was 12, is skeptical. "It's hard to believe that this isn't like fingerprinting," said the 27-year old Williamsburg resident. "I wouldn't want my fingerprints in a big Busch Gardens file."

UK firm tried HIV drug on orphans
GlaxoSmithKline embroiled in scandal in which babies and children were allegedly used as 'laboratory animals'
Antony Barnett in New York
Sunday April 4, 2004
The Observer
Orphans and babies as young as three months old have been used as guinea pigs in potentially dangerous medical experiments sponsored by pharmaceutical companies, an Observer investigation has revealed.
British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline is embroiled in the scandal. The firm sponsored experiments on the children from Incarnation Children's Centre, a New York care home that specialises in treating HIV sufferers and is run by Catholic charities.
The children had either been infected with HIV or born to HIV-positive mothers. Their parents were dead, untraceable or deemed unfit to look after them.
According to documents obtained by The Observer, Glaxo has sponsored at least four medical trials since 1995 using Hispanic and black children at Incarnation. The documents give details of all clinical trials in the US and reveal the experiments sponsored by Glaxo were designed to test the 'safety and tolerance' of Aids medications, some of which have potentially dangerous side effects. Glaxo manufactures a number of drugs designed to treat HIV, including AZT.
Normally trials on children would require parental consent but, as the infants are in care, New York's authorities hold that role.
The city health department has launched an investigation into claims that more than 100 children at Incarnation were used in 36 experiments - at least four co-sponsored by Glaxo. Some of these trials were designed to test the 'toxicity' of Aids medications. One involved giving children as young as four a high-dosage cocktail of seven drugs at one time. Another looked at the reaction in six-month-old babies to a double dose of measles vaccine.
Most experiments were funded by federal agencies like the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Until now Glaxo's role had not emerged.
In 1997 an experiment co-sponsored by Glaxo used children from Incarnation to 'obtain tolerance, safety and pharmacokinetic' data for Herpes drugs. In a more recent experiment, the children were used to test AZT. A third experiment sponsored by Glaxo and US drug firm Pfizer investigated the 'long-term safety' of anti-bacterial drugs on three-month-old babies.
The medical establishment has defended the trials arguing they enabled these children to obtain state-of-the-art therapy they would otherwise not have received for potentially fatal illnesses.
However, health campaigners argue there is a difference between providing the latest drugs and experimentation. They claim many of the experiments were 'phase 1 trials' - among the most risky - and that HIV tests for babies were not a reliable indicator of actual infection and therefore toxic drugs could have been given to healthy infants. HIV drugs are similar to those used in chemotherapy and can have serious side-effects.
Vera Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, said the children had been treated like 'laboratory animals'.
'These are some of the most vulnerable individuals in the country and there appears to be a policy of giving drug firms access to them,' she said. 'Throughout the history of medical research we have seen prisoners abused, the mentally ill abused and now poor kids in a care home.'
Sharav has urged the US Food and Drug Administration to investigate and has demanded full disclosure of all adverse effects suffered by the children, including deaths. Brooklyn Democrat councillor Bill de Blasio is also demanding that New York's Administration for Children's Services, which approved the trials, reveal who gave consent and on what grounds.
Glaxo has confirmed it provided funds for some of the experiments but denied any improper action. A spokeswoman said: 'These studies were implemented by the US Aids Clinical Trial Group, a clinical research network paid for by the National Institutes of Health. Glaxo's involvement in such studies would have been to provide study drugs or funding but we would have no interactions with the patients.
'Generally speaking, clinical research is carefully regulated in the US and it would be the responsibility of the appropriate authorities to ensure all subjects in a clinical trial provided appropriate, informed consent to conform with all local laws and regulations regarding legal authority in the case of minors.'
The Incarnation trials were run by Columbia University Medical Centre doctors. Columbia spokeswoman Annie Bayne said there had been no clinical trials at Incarnation since 2000 and that consent for the children was provided by the Administration for Children's Services, which uses a panel of doctors and lawyers to determine whether the benefits of a trial for each child outweighs the risks. 'There are many safeguards in the system. HIV is eventually a fatal disease, but drug therapy has lengthened life significantly,' said Bayne.
A spokesman for Incarnation said: 'The purpose of the trials was to test the efficacy of HIV medication ... These trials were based on scientific evidence of their potential value in the treatment of HIV-infected children.'

Search to Find Dangerous Asteroids Nearly Complete
April 7 2004
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - They are out there, ready to smack into the Earth and wipe out human civilization, but astronomers said on Wednesday they are well on their way to finding every asteroid that poses a threat.
The next task will be to look for smaller objects that might just destroy, say, a city, the experts told the U.S. Senate's Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space.
In an update on the Near Earth Object Observation Program, experts told the Senate subcommittee that they are on schedule to finding everything bigger than 1 kilometer (0.62 mile) in diameter that might approach the planet.
"The survey officially started in 1998 and to date more than 700 objects of an estimated population of about 1,100 have been discovered, so the effort is now believed to be over 70 percent complete and well on the way to meeting its objective by 2008," NASA's Lindley Johnson told the hearing.
There have been a few scares.
Last September, scientists spotted asteroid "2003 QQ47" and first measurements suggested it could hit the Earth on March 21, 2014, with an explosion the size of 20 million Hiroshima atomic bombs. But the forecast was revised: It won't hit, after all.
Objects certainly have hit the planet. An asteroid, or several asteroids, are believed to have kicked up so much dust and set off so much volcanic activity 65 million years ago that the resulting climate change wiped out the dinosaurs.
But scientists believe an event of that size would only occur about every 700,000 years on average.
A smaller asteroid is believed to have leveled 400 square miles of Siberian forest in 1908.
"Although the probability of the Earth being hit by a large object in this century is low, the effects of an impact are so catastrophic that it is essential to prepare a defense against such an occurrence," Michael Griffin, head of the Space Department at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, told the hearing.
But when? "At the current state of knowledge it is about as likely to happen next week as in a randomly selected week a thousand years from now," said Johnson.
If an asteroid was confirmed to be on a catastrophic collision course with Earth, the experts said it would take about 30 years to get ready to do anything about it.
"The Space Shuttle's main engines and the fuel contained in the large external tank could successfully deflect a 1 kilometer object if it were applied about 20 years in advance," of a projected collision, Griffin said.
Using a nuclear bomb might make matters worse because the pieces of the blown-up asteroid would stay in the same orbit and eventually come back together again.
The next task will be to find smaller objects that may not destroy the Earth but could do considerable damage if they hit, the scientists said.
A single satellite orbiting the Sun just inside the Earth's orbit could find 90 percent of all near-Earth objects 100 meters (330 feet) or more in diameter within 10 years, Griffin said. It would cost about $300 million and could be ready within five years, Griffin said.

Behind the Scenes of the Iraq War: The Age-Old Israeli Plan to Divide Iraq
04/17/2003
HarunYahya.com
The plan for the Iraq war, which has erupted in the face of opposition from the entire world, was drawn up at least 3 decades ago, by Israeli strategists
In its attempt to realize its strategy of destabilizing or dividing the Middle Eastern Arab states, Israel has Egypt, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia on its list of subsequent targets.
As these lines are being written, the United States of America has begun striking at Iraq. Despite the fact that most countries of the world, and even the majority of the USA's allies, opposed it, the US administration was determined for the strike to go ahead. When we look behind the scenes of this insistence, it seems that Israel and its powerful lobby in the US, have the greatest share in the make-up.
In fact, Israel's policy aimed at the fragmentation of Iraq has lengthy historical roots-
The Age-Old Israeli Plan to Divide Iraq
An ambitious report entitled "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," which appeared in the World Zionist Organization's periodical Kivunim in February 1982 disclosed a strategy aimed at making the whole of the Middle East a kind of "living space" for Israel. The report, drawn up by Oded Yinon, an Israeli journalist and formerly attached to the Foreign Ministry of Israel, set out the scenario of the "division of Iraq" in these terms:
Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria- Iraq is, once again, no different in essence from its neighbors, although its majority is Shi'ite and the ruling minority Sunni. Sixty-five percent of the population has no say in politics, in which an elite of 20 percent holds the power. In addition there is a large Kurdish minority in the north, and if it weren't for the strength of the ruling regime, the army and the oil revenues, Iraq's future state would be no different than that of Lebanon in the past- In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. 1)
This was not the only announcement of the Israeli plan to atomize Middle East, including Iraq. As Israel Shahak, the notable Israeli scholar known for his dedication to a peaceful solution in the Middle East, explained that Yinon was just echoing the views of Israeli hawks:
The idea that all the Arab states should be broken down, by Israel, into small units, occurs again and again in Israeli strategic thinking. For example, Ze'ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha'aretz (and probably the most knowledgeable in Israel, on this topic) writes about the "best" that can happen for Israeli interests in Iraq: "The dissolution of Iraq into a Shi'ite state, a Sunni state and the separation of the Kurdish part" (Ha'aretz 6/2/1982). Actually, this aspect of the plan is very old. 2)
Thus, the plan was a serious one and this has been confirmed by the age-old Israeli support to non-Arab or non-Muslim minorities in the Muslim Arab states. The rebellious Kurds of northern Iraq was one of these strategic allies of Israel. During their revolt against the Baghdad regime, 1961-75, they have been financially and militarily supported by Israel. Israelis would love to see them carve up the northern part of Iraq, no matter how bloody and devastating such a civil war would be. However, the revolt failed in 1975, after loosing the support of its major patron, the Shah.
Fifteen years later, a new opportunity arose for Israel, an opportunity from the ambitions of the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein.
Israel's Role in the Gulf War
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, after his bloody war against Iran in the 80's, invaded Kuwait in a sudden attack on August 1, 1990, giving rise to an international crisis. Israel headed the list of those forces that encouraged that crisis. Israel was the fiercest supporter of the attitude adopted by the United States in the wake of the invasion of Kuwait. The Israelis even regarded the United States as moderate, and wanted a harsher policy. To such an extent in fact that the President of Israel Chaim Herzog recommended that the American use nuclear weapons. On the other hand, the Israeli lobby in the United States was working to bring about a wide-ranging attack on Iraq.
This whole situation encouraged the idea in the United States that the attack against Iraq under consideration was actually planned in Israel's interests. Pat Buchanan summarized this idea in the words "There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East - the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States."
Israelis had also initiated a serious propaganda campaign on the issue. Since this campaign was largely waged in secret, Mossad also entered the equation. Rogue Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky provides important information on this subject. According to Ostrovsky, Israel had wanted to wage war with the United States against Saddam long before the Gulf crisis. So much so in fact, that Israel began to implement the plan immediately after the Iran-Iraq war. Ostrovsky reports that Mossad's Psychological Warfare department (LAP - LohAma Psychologist) set about an effective pro-war campaign using misinformation techniques. 3)
A Mossad Agent Describes the Gulf War
Ostrovsky describes how Mossad used agents or sympathizers in various parts of the world in this campaign. Among the tools employed in the campaign were the horrible massacres done by missiles launched against civilian targets in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. As Ostrovsky makes clear, Mossad's later use of these missiles as a propaganda tool was quite peculiar, since those missiles had actually been directed towards their targets by Mossad, with the help of information from US satellites. Having supported Saddam throughout his war with Iran, Israel was now disclosing his crimes. Ostrovsky writes:
The Mossad leaders know that if they could make Saddam appear bad enough and a threat to the Gulf oil supply, of which he'd been the protector up to that point, then the United States and its allies would not let him get away with anything, but would take measures that would all but eliminate his army and his weapons potential, especially if they were led to believe that this might just be their last chance before he went nuclear. 4)
The Israelis were so determined on this matter, and with regard to the United States, that on August 4, 1990, Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy issued a diplomatically worded threat to William Brown, the American ambassador to Israel, stating that Israel "expects the U.S. will fulfill all of the goals it set for itself at the beginning of the gulf crisis," in other words that it attack Iraq. According to Levy, if the United States failed to do so, Israel would act unilaterally. 5)
It would be of enormous benefit to Israel to have the United States engage in the war and for Israel to remain entirely uninvolved: and that is indeed what happened.
Israel Forces the USA to War
However, the Israelis were actively involved in the United States' war plans. Some US staff officers involved in planning Operation Desert Storm received fine tactical advice from the Israelis that "the best way of wounding Saddam was to strike at his family."
The Mossad-inspired propaganda campaign reported by Ostrovsky set up the necessary public backing for the Gulf War. It was again Mossad local assistants who lit the touchpaper for the war. The Hill and Knowlton lobbying firm, run by Tom Lantos of the Israeli lobby, prepared a dramatic scenario to convince members of Congress on the subject of war against Saddam. Turan Yavuz, a noted Turkish journalist, describes the incident:
October 9, 1990. The Hill and Knowlton lobbying firm organizes a sitting in Congress on the subject of "Iraq's Barbarities." A number of "eye witnesses" brought to the session by the lobbying firm maintain that Iraqi troops killed new-born babies in the hospital wards. One "eye witness" describes the savagery in enormous detail, saying that Iraqi soldiers killed 300 new-born babies in one hospital alone. This information deeply disturbs the members of Congress. This works to President Bush's advantage. However, it later emerges that the eye witness brought by Hill and Knowlton to Congress is in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington. Nevertheless, the daughter's account is sufficient for members of Congress to give Saddam the nickname "Hitler". 6)
This leads to just one conclusion: that Israel played an important role in the United States' to wage its first war on Iraq. The second one is not much different.
The Pretext of "War Against Terrorism"
Contrary to popular belief, the plan to attack Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime by force was prepared and placed on Washington's agenda long before the genesis of the "war against terrorism," which emerged in the wake of September 11. The first indication of this plan emerged in 1997. A group of pro-Israeli hawkish strategists in Washington D.C. began to put forward the scenario of the invasion of Iraq by manipulating the "neo-con" think-tank, called PNAC (Project for The New American Century). The most notable names in the PNAC were those of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, who as defense secretary and vice-president would be the most influential figures in the George W. Bush administration.
An article titled "Invading Iraq Not a New Idea for Bush Clique: 4 Years Before 9/11 Plan Was Set" written by William Brunch and published in the Philadelphia Daily News, sets out the following facts:
But in reality, Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and a small band of conservative ideologues had begun making the case for an American invasion of Iraq as early as 1997 - nearly four years before the Sept. 11 attacks and three years before President Bush took office.
An obscure, ominous-sounding right-wing policy group called Project for the New American Century, or PNAC - affiliated with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld's top deputy Paul Wolfowitz and Bush's brother Jeb - even urged then-President Clinton to invade Iraq back in January 1998. 7)
Is Oil the Real Objective?
Why were the PNAC members so determined to attack Iraq? The same article continues:
While oil is a backdrop to PNAC's policy pronouncements on Iraq, it doesn't seem to be the driving force. [Ian] Lustick, [a University of Pennsylvania political science professor and Middle East expert,] while a critic of the Bush policy, says oil is viewed by the war's proponents primarily as a way to pay for the costly military operation.
"I'm from Texas, and every oil man that I know is against military action in Iraq," said PNAC's Schmitt. "The oil market doesn't need disruption."
Lustick believes that a more powerful hidden motivator may be Israel. He said Bush administration hawks believe that a show of force in Iraq would somehow convince Palestinians to accept a peace plan on terms favorable to Israel- 8)
This, therefore, is the principal motivation behind the plan to attack Iraq: to serve Israel's Middle East strategy.
This fact has also been identified by other Middle East experts. Cengiz ?andar, a Turkish Middle East expert, for instance, describes the real power behind the plan to attack Iraq thus:
... Who is directing the attack on Iraq? Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice. These are the "senior level" backers of the attack. Yet the rest of the iceberg is even richer and more interesting. There are a number of "lobbies."
Heading these lobbies are the Jewish Institute for Security Affairs team, pro-Likud and Israeli-right and known for their close relations with US arms manufacturers. These have close relations with the "arms lobby," Lockheed, Northrop, General Dynamics and Israeli military industries ... JINSA's fundamental principle is this: America's and Israel's security are inseparable. In other words, they are the same thing.
JINSA's objective is not solely the overthrow of the Saddam regime in Iraq: it also supports the overthrow of the Saudi Arabian, Syrian, Egyptian and Iranian regimes with a logic of "total war," and the subsequent importation of "democracy." ... In other words, a number of American Jews on the same wavelength as the most extreme factions in Israel at the moment comprise the hawks in Washington. 9)
The Israeli Strategy for The Muslim Middle East
In short, there are those in Washington who are encouraging a war aimed first at Iraq and then at Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran and Egypt. The most distinguishing feature of these is that they are lined up alongside, and even equivalent to, the "Israeli lobby."
No matter how much they speak of "American interests," these people are actually supporting Israeli interests. A strategy of waging war against the whole of the Middle East and turning all the peoples of the region against it cannot be to the United States' advantage. The adoption of such a strategy can only be possible if the United States is bound to Israel, by means of the Israeli lobby, which is profoundly influential in this country's foreign policy.
It is for these reasons that behind the strategy which began to be set in motion after September 11 and is aimed at re-arranging the entire Islamic world, lies Israel's strategy for dominating the Middle East. Ever since its foundation, Israel has aimed at restructuring the Middle East, making it manageable and secure to itself. The search for security is of course a legitimate one, but the way that Israel chose to achieve this end is wrong: From the beginning, Israel decided to establish security behind an "iron wall" that would separate itself from the Arabs, and most important of all, protect the lands that Israel occupied through methods of invasion, colonization and depopulation. This strategy of reaping the wind had its consequence as a century of constant clash between Israelis and Arabs. Had Israel chosen a peaceful path to secure its existence, by building good relations with its Arab neighbors and refraining from aggression, Jews and Muslims could peacefully co-exist in the Middle East, as they have done before for centuries.
However, the radical Zionist ideology still denies any chance to peace and relentlessly tries to transform the whole Middle East to create a "living space" for Israel. It has been using its influence in the United States for that purpose in recent years, and to a large extent directs Washington's Middle East policy. The post-September 11 climate gave Israel the opportunity it had been seeking. Pro-Israeli ideologues who for years had been propounding the falsehood that Islam itself - not some militant radicals who use Islam as a shelter - posed a threat to the West and the United States, and who encouraged the mistaken concept of a "clash of civilizations," have been trying to incite the United States against the Islamic world in the wake of September 11. As early as 1995, Israel Shahak of the Jerusalem Hebrew University wrote former Israeli Prime Minister Rabin's obsession with "the idea of an Israeli-led anti-Islamic crusade". Nahum Barnea, a commentator from the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, stated that same year that Israel was making progress "[to] become the Western vanguard in the war against the Islamic enemy." 10)
All that has happened in the years which have followed is that Israeli hawks have made their intentions even clearer. The political climate in the wake of September 11 prepared the ground for this intention to be made a reality.
The Only Way to World Peace: An Islamic Union
The situation may be summarized as follows: Israel's aim is to reshape the Middle East in line with its own strategic interests. In order to do this, it needs a "world power." That power is the United States; and Israeli hawks, thanks to their influence there, are trying to wage a militant American strategy against the Islamic world. Although Israel is a small state with a population of only 4.5 million, the plans drawn up by Israeli strategists and their counterparts in the West are directing the world affairs.
What needs to be done in the face of this?
1) "Counter lobby activities" need to be adopted in the face of the Israeli lobby's influence in the United States in order to develop dialogue between the United States and the Islamic world and to invite it to seek peaceful solutions to Iraq and similar problems. A wide section of the United States wishes to see their country adopt a fairer Middle East policy. Many statesmen, strategists, journalists and intellectuals have expressed this, and a "peace of civilizations" movement must be carried forward in cooperation with them. The approach inviting the US administration to peaceful solutions must be carried forward at governmental and civil society organization level.
2) A reconciliation between Israel and the Muslim Middle East must be sought. There are many "peaceniks", i.e. pro-peace Israelis, too. Many Israeli statesmen, religious leader, opinion leaders and many Jews from all around the world are urging the Israeli state to refrain from its brutal occupation and accept a just peace to live along with their Arab neighbors. Cooperation with them, especially on the inter-faith level, should be initiated and encouraged. One thing should never be forgotten: The rise of radicalism, enmity and violence is bad for all parties.
3) Alongside all this, a deeper rooted solution lies in a project which can resolve all the problems between the Islamic world and the West and deal with the fragmentation, suffering and poverty in the Islamic world and totally alter it: An Islamic Union. Recent developments have shown that the whole world, not just Islamic regions, stands in need of an "Islamic Union." This Union should heal the radical elements in the Islamic World, and establish good relations between Muslim countries and the West, especially the United States.
This Union, can find a solution to the mother of all problems: The Arab-Israeli conflict. With Israel retreating to its pre-67 borders and Arabs recognizing its right to exist, there can be real peace in the Middle East. And Jews and Muslims - both Children of Abraham and believers in one true God - may peacefully co-exist in the Holy Land, as they have done during the past centuries. Then, Israel would need no strategy to destabilize or divide the Arab States. And it will not have to face the results of occupation in forms of terrorism and constant fear of annihilation. Then, both the Israeli and Iraqi (and Palestinian) children may grow up in peace and security. That is a Middle East that any sane person should work to see.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
1- (ed.) Israel Shahak, The Zionist Plan for the Middle East; from Oded Yinon's "A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties" Published by the Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc. Belmont, Massachusetts, 1982 Special Document No. 1 (ISBN 0-937694-56-8); 2- (ed.) Israel Shahak, The Zionist Plan for the Middle East;
3- Victor Ostrovsky, The Other Side of Deception, pp. 252-254.
4- Victor Ostrovsky, The Other Side of Deception, p. 254
5- Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison, p. 356.
6- Turan Yavuz, ABD'nin K?rt Kart? (The US' Kurdish Card), p. 307
7- William Bunch, Philadelphia Daily News, Jan. 27, 2003
8- William Bunch, "Invading Iraq not a new idea for Bush clique" Philadelphia Daily News, Jan. 27, 2003
9- Cengiz ?andar, "Iraq and the 'Friends of Turkey' American Hawks", Yeni ?afak, September 3, 2002.
10- Israel Shahak, "Downturn in Rabin's Popularity Has Several Causes", Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 1995.
Harun Yahua
The author, who writes under the pen-name Harun Yahya, has published many books on political, faith-related and scientific issues. Harun Yahya is well known as an author who has written very important works disclosing the imposture of evolutionists, the invalidity of their claims and the dark liaisons between Darwinism and bloody ideologies. Some of the books of the author have been translated into many languages. Harun Yahya's books appeal to all people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, regardless of their age, race and nationality, as they center around one goal: to open the readers' mind by presenting the sign's of God's eternal existence to them.

Terrorist's Name On Manifest Raises Questions About Saudi Flights After 9/11
List and testimony indicates FBI may have allowed alleged hijacker's kin to leave U.S. with son of Saudi defense minister without questioning them.
by Tom Flocco
WASHINGTON - April 4, 2004
TomFlocco.com
A copy of a previously unpublished manifest, obtained late Thursday night and dated September 15, 2001, provides evidence of a private Boeing-727 Saudi flight from Lexington, Kentucky to London. But the names on the manifest raise serious questions about FBI policies and procedures related to witness identification, criminal investigations and obstruction of justice.
Ahmad A. M. Alhazmi, 20, (Saudi passport no. B805019) is listed on the manifest with Prince Sultan bin Fahad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, 19, (Saudi passport no. 406 A), son of Saudi defense minister Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz.
The name Alhazmi and its ties to laundered Riggs Bank cashiers checks may become a subject of interest when National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice testifies later this week--especially since young Ahmad Alhazmi has the same last name as Nawaf Alhazmi, one of the terrorists identified as an alleged hijacker of American Airlines flight 77.
The White House had originally asserted that flights evacuating Saudis from the United States after 9/11 never existed, but author Craig Unger--who has written a book about clandestine Bush-Saudi relationships--obtained flight manifest lists which were drawn up by the Saudi embassy.
Besides the Alhazmi list, three other manifests confirm a total of four separate Saudi flights leaving the United States on September 15, 16, 22 and 24, 2001, after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Unger, author of "House of Bush / House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties," has now posted all four manifests online. (http://www.houseofbush.com/files.php)
Alhazmi's associates received continued payments of $3,500. per month from Princess Haifa Al-Faisal, wife of Saudi Crown Prince Bandar bin Sultan who is Ambassador to the United States, according to sources familiar with the financial evidence. (Newsweek, 11-22-2002)
Both Saudis visited President Bush's Texas ranch in late August, 2002--before this news broke--but Americans will never hear Mr. Bush publicly discuss the contents of their conversations, or Bandar and Haifa's signed checks made out to terrorist associates through his uncle's Riggs Bank. 9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean negotiated away the important opportunity for personal, public presidential testimony under oath in exchange for Condoleezza Rice's public testimony.
Interestingly, Kean stumbled slightly this morning when Meet the Press host Tim Russert asked him why Bush and Vice-President Cheney were testifying together, and why former President Clinton and Vice-President Gore were not being offered the same opportunity.
Bush and Cheney will not be under oath, allowing joint corroboration of each other's testimony on-the-spot regarding their actions during the key two hour time-line of the actual attacks--thus avoiding possible future perjury charges and/or impeachment proceedings.
Favorable testimony deals notwithstanding, internet controversy continues to rage because the Commission conducts 90 % of its investigation in secret, failing to hear public testimony from boarding gate personnel, cleanup and catering crews with less security scrutiny, air traffic controllers, military pilots in the air on 9/11 and their ordinance crews, Securities & Exchange commissioners who ordered the still-secret "control list" of pre-attack insider trades, and Lockheed-Martin officials who hold the air-traffic system contract--for an explanation as to whether the integrity and control of the doomed jets could have been compromised in any manner.
Instead, Americans have been forced to accept the politically expedient desire to conclude well before November's election--stampeding the most important investigation since Watergate--to avoid electoral ramifications at the expense of truth, accountability and justice.
Relative of alleged hijacker permitted to leave country without questioning?
During last week's hearing testimony, 9-11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer asked Richard Clarke, former Bush Administration National Coordinator for Counterterrorism for the National Security Council (NSC), "Who gave the final approval for the bin Laden family to leave the country without being interviewed?"
Clarke answered that it could have been the "Inter-Agency Crisis Management Group, but most likely it was the White House Chief of Staff's office or the State Department." [according to this writer's notes / Commission transcripts for March 23 - 24, 2004 should be available soon at http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/index.htm ]
When Roemer asked "why the Saudis were allowed to leave the country, who was on the planes, how many, and why the decision was made," Clarke said the government "feared for their lives...some of them were bin Laden family members, and the Saudi embassy requested their evacuation."
During testimony Clarke told Roemer "I refused to approve the [Saudi] request. I passed it on to [FBI Asst. Director] Dale Watson and the flight was approved....I don't think they were ever interviewed in this country." Only transcripts and/or video would negate Clarke's assertion.
Clarke only mentioned one flight. And it is not known whether the counter-terrorism chief was kept in the dark about the other flights, as Roemer did not mention the now-public manifests. The commission has not revealed publicly whether it knows about Ahmad Alhazmi and Prince Sultan bin Fahad, fueling speculation that an investigation of the young Alhazmi may have been suppressed by the FBI or commission executive director Philip Zelikow who controls the inner-workings of the panel's probe.
Publication of the manifests raises important questions whether Kean's panel ever asked the FBI to produce interview notes or video tape, indicating that absent Watson's public testimony, the White House will never have to reveal potential evidence as to the possibility that the young Alhazmi may be alleged hijacker Nawaf Alhazmi's brother or cousin. If this is so, more questions arise as to why Alhazmi was traveling with the son of the Saudi Minister of Defense and what Alhazmi knew about the attacks.
Dale Watson, who Clarke intimated as the sponsor of the FBI-approved flights and the decision not to interview bin Laden family members and other Saudi royals or citizens, was the former FBI Executive Asst. Director for Counter-Terrorism and Counter-Intelligence.
Watson led controversial investigations of the first World Trade Center attack, Oklahoma City bombing, East Africa Embassy bombings, Khobar Towers bombings, USS Cole bombing, the September 11 attacks and the anthrax attacks, before retiring to assume a position with Booz Allen Hamilton.
The 'non-existent' flight through closed U.S. air space
There are indications that young Ahmad Alhazmi, along with Saudi prince Sultan bin Fahad, and one other young man on the Lexington to London evacuation flight, were among a select few to fly on September 13, 2001, two days after the attacks, when all planes over U.S. air space were grounded--save a few emergency medical and body-part transplant flights, one of which was forced to use a helicopter to comply with the flight ban.
Since the Lexington-London manifest lists a total of only four men of the same reasonably close age range, there is a 3 out of 4 possibility that a man with the same name as one of the alleged hijackers flew with a Saudi royal from Tampa to Lexington, Kentucky over closed U.S. air space two days after the attacks.
The special Saudi flight has been termed the "phantom flight from Florida," since Atlanta Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Chris White said "It's not in our logs...it didn't occur." But the Tampa Tribune's multiple sources indicate that very high strings were pulled, raising more questions about the identities of the young Alhazmi and Prince.
Private investigator and former Tampa police department homicide and internal affairs officer Dan Grossi said he was told that clearance for the flight came from the White House. This may confirm Richard Clarke's recent testimony that "most likely it was the White House Chief of Staff's office" who gave the order.
Grossi said the prince's family [Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz] pulled a favor from former President Bush--the only indication that it was Bush 41 who first contacted Bush 43 to get the three men out of Florida. All this, according to the Tampa Tribune.
Tampa University (TU) spokesman George Donaldson refused to offer details but Grossi's fellow bodyguard for the young men, Manuel Perez--a former 29-year FBI counter-terrorism official and bomb technician, said the men arrived in Tampa three weeks earlier to receive tutoring in English. This, according to the Tribune's Kathy Steele--the one who broke this neglected piece of important evidence, adding that one of the three men Grossi was contacted to protect was the son of a Saudi army commander.
Jim Harf, director of TU's international programs, confirmed that one of the three men was the son of Saudi defense minister Prince Sultan [Abdullah bin Abdulaziz], and Lexington police Lt. Mark Barnard confirmed a Saudi relative had asked for help in getting protection for the men in Tampa. Tampa police records list Sultan bin Fahad [bin Abdulaziz] as the one requesting the security detail.
Grossi and Perez said they saw "several private 747s parked on the tarmac with foreign flags on the tails and Arabic lettering on the sides," helping to confirm the authenticity of the Saudi embassy manifests. This, at a time when all U.S. air space was locked down by the United States military under federal orders.
The learjet carrying the three young men to Lexington, Kentucky took off from a private Raytheon Corporation hanger. Raytheon is tangled throughout the events surrounding the attacks, not the least of which is the strange death of a Saudi test pilot and two Raytheon test pilots at the Pensacola Naval Air Station.
Interestingly, reporter Dan Hopsicker says the learjet was owned by multimillionaire businessman Wallace J. Hilliard of Naples, Florida, who Hopsicker says owned Huffman Aviation at the Venice Airport since its purchase in 1999--just before State Department officials began to use America's visa program as a tool to allow squadrons of young Arabs into the U.S. to take flying lessons at Huffman. ( Terror Flight School Owner's Plane Seized for Heroin Trafficking and Spooks and Saudi's in Florida - http://www.madcowprod.com/ )
"Wally Hilliard owns the only charter Lear service in Southwest Florida," said a Hopsicker source. "If a Lear was flying that day, it would have been his," raising even more questions.
Curiously, in July, 2000, one of Hilliard's jets was seized by federal agents with more than 30 pounds of heroin onboard at the Orlando Executive Airport. This, at a time when Florida governor Jeb Bush honored Hilliard's operation--Florida Air, Sunrise Airlines and Discover Air--with personal visits and posed for photos with what Hopsicker called the "Discover Air family."
Questions can be raised about Hilliard's operation, which supported a special presidential favor for a Saudi defense minister's son, a Saudi army commander's son, and also their friend--who may have been the relative of an alleged hijacker. Anyone who followed the Afghanistan war knows that the chief product for export by Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization was heroin--another source of funds to support terrorism in America.
Hopsicker said local police collected all the hijacker flight training files from Hilliard's Huffman Aviation School the day after the attacks--detailing information that would have confirmed or denied the flight capabilities of the hijackers and sources of their funding support.
Just five days before the attacks on September 7, Governor Bush signed executive order No. 01-261, declaring the authority "to order members of the Florida National Guard into active service...to support law enforcement and emergency management in the the event of civil disturbances or natural disasters..."
Curiously, according to one local law enforcement official, “The FBI took all our files, everything.” Then he added, “they loaded two Ryder trucks right outside that (police station) window, then drove them right onto a [Florida National Guard] C130 military cargo plane at Sarasota airport which flew out with [Governor] Jeb Bush aboard.”
No one knows where the President's brother went with the FBI officials and the hijacker flight training evidence, fueling speculation that both Congress and the 9-11 Commission are hiding something by refusing to call the Florida governor to testify publicly about why he activated the National Guard and what happened to the terrorist's records--documents that should be considered crucial evidence.
Journalist Catherine Arnie posed some interesting questions that the 9-11 Commission should be asking Condoleezza Rice this Thursday: How could our governement have authorized a flight out of the country before they even knew who the perpetrators of the attacks were? Why did the families of the young men "perceive a threat" when it wasn't yet clear on the 13th of September exactly WHO had attacked America or where they were from? (http://www.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=14289)
Arnie said according to a transcript on the State Department website of a statement given by a "senior government official," on September 13 at 5:22 pm, it had not yet been announced that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks when protection was requested for the three young men by Bush 41 and Bush 43.
Hijacked bank
Questions also remain regarding the web of money transfers from Princess Haifa, Prince Bandar and the daughter of late King Faisal, some of which reached Nawaf Alhazmi and fellow terrorist Khalid Almihdar.
Princess Haifa's bank account--the source of the funds which ultimately supported the alleged hijackers--was with Riggs Bank where Jonathan J. Bush, the brother of former President George H. W. Bush and uncle of President George W. Bush, is CEO, President and Director of Riggs' investment management subsidiary.
Cashiers checks were sent to Majeda Ibrahin Dweikat, who signed them over to her friend Manal Ahmed Bagader, wife of Omar al-Bayoumi who met and befriended Alhazmi and Almihdar when they arrived in the U.S.
After Al Bayoumi fled the U.S. to England in July, 2001--two months before the attacks, Princess Haifa's Riggs Bank checks were then sent to Osama Basnan, who with his wife Majeda Dweikat, were both later to be found in the U.S. illegally as a result of poor or suspicious State Department visa supervision.
Former FBI linguist Sibel Edmonds said she found evidence of espionage in both the State Department and the FBI in pre-9/11 translations of intelligence intercepts--which also warned about planes used as weapons well before the attacks.
A federal law enforcement source said Basnan was a known "al-Qaeda sympathizer" who "celebrated the heroes of September 11" at a party after the attacks and openly talked about "what a wonderful, glorious day it had been," according to Newsweek.
Al Bayoumi and Basnan both befriended Alhazmi and fellow Saudi hijacker Khalid Almihdar after they arrived in San Diego, according to the sources; and the Riggs checks from Prince Bandar's wife helped the terroists pay rent and living expences in the months just prior to the attacks, according to reports. Newsweek said Al Bayoumi helped them obtain social security cards and helped them arrange for flying lessons in Florida--indicating dramatic evidence of the state of congressional internal security oversight.
Basnan was convicted of visa fraud and deported to Saudi Arabia on November 17, 2002. His wife Majida Ibrahim--who had also laundered checks from Riggs Bank--was deported the same day to her native Jordan for visa violations. (Washington Post, 9-24, 2002) Reasons were not given why the White House allowed the high profile suspects to leave the country on charges much less important than being implicated as an accessory to mass murder.
All this, at a time when the White House was receiving "frantic" threat warnings about "planes used as weapons" that would "set your hair on fire," according to Commissioner Jamie Gorelick and other panel members.
Gorelick is a partner in Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering--the law firm defending Prince Mohammed al Faisal against 9-11 families in their $1 trillion suit accusing wealthy Saudis of transferring millions to Islamic charities to finance al Qaeda terrorism in America. 9/11 Commission chief counsel Daniel Marcus is a former member of the firm, adding an additional representative of Wilmer-Cutler's interests regarding the outcome of the panel's investigation.
Friends in high places
Six months before his deportation, Osama Basnan traveled to Houston to meet a prominent Saudi prince involved in intelligence matters at the same time that Crown Prince Abdullah came to visit President George W. Bush at his Crawford, Texas ranch in April, 2002, according to reports. Questions remain whether Basnan personally associated with Prince Abdullah or the defense minister's host, George W. Bush.
The 9-11 Commission has publicly declined to address Saudi links to terrorist finance. Victim family concerns about major panel conflicts of interest and credibility issues notwithstanding, a recent uptick in media reporting and public interest indicates Americans may be wondering whether the White House is hiding something about its Saudi relationships.
Houston's Baker & Botts, the family law firm of Bush 41 Secretary of State James Baker that is defending Saudi Arabia's defense minister, Crown Prince Abdullah, against the 9-11 families regarding the financing of terrorism in America, produced "stacks of affidavits and copies of canceled checks," admitting that for 16 years Abdullah has been funding Islamic charity organizations raided after the attacks by federal agents and anti-terrorism investigators.
9/11 Commission Chairman, current member of the board of directors and shareholder of Amerada-Hess oil company, Thomas Kean--with fellow directors and officers, maintained a Caspian Sea basin joint venture business relationship with terrorism-linked Delta Oil company for 15 months after the September 11 attacks. This, before Hess terminated the deal 21 days before President Bush appointed Kean to his position as chairman of the terrorism investigation.
Delta Oil is backed financially by Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz, who is Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law and a former financial benefactor of one of President George W. Bush's early oil company ventures. Washington law firm Ropes & Grey is receiving the hefty fees for defending Khalid bin Mahfouz--accused of funneling millions into Islamic charities to support terrorism--against the 9-11 families' suit.
On the advice of White House lawyers, President Bush has refused to declassify a 28-page section of a congressional report investigating the September 11 terrorist attacks, citing "national security concerns" and that it would "reveal sensitive intelligence sources and methods."
According to the Los Angeles Times (8-2-2003), sources familiar with Bush's classified section of the document, said it describes "very direct, very specific links" between Saudi officials, two of them San Diego-based [alleged] hijackers and other potential co-conspirators "that cannot be passed off as rogue, isolated or coincidental." Another official said "It's really damning. What it says is that not only Saudi entities or nationals are implicated in 9-11, but the [Saudi] government."
Several U.S. officials confirmed that President Bush's classified sections of the report provide detailed additional allegations about Omar Al Bayoumi and Osama Basnan, two Saudi men, and their suspicious activities in the United States, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Importantly, the Commission has not disclosed whether it is hearing private testimony regarding the money laundering machinations linking Washington's Riggs Bank to the hijackers--evidence government sources also say is contained in the 28-pages classified by White House lawyers.
Given the implications of the evidence in its totality, any judicial, legislative or investigative forum in the United States could be hard-pressed to disclose thus far hidden U.S. connections to Saudi-linked terrorism--especially credible evidence of financial facilitation of terrorism within U.S. borders. Hence the current state of congressional oversight.
That is, unless America's legal or legislative branches wish to strain to the possible breaking point the very constitutional threads binding the country together--even as the executive branch strives mightily to place the protection of national secrecy ahead of securing national security. Hence the current state of the 9-11 Commission's credibility in the face of sweetheart presidential testimony deals.

Pet spider kills its owner
4/4/4
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2004092008,00.html
A MAN who lived in his own “zoo” of lizards and insects was fatally bitten by a pet black widow spider - then eaten by the other creepy-crawlies.
Police broke in to Mark Voegel’s apartment to find spider Bettina along with 200 others, several snakes, a gecko lizard called Helmut and several thousand termites had gorged on his body.
Neighbours alerted police after becoming alarmed by the stink.
And horrified officers were met by a nightmare scene.
A police spokesman said: “It was like a horror movie. His corpse was over the sofa.
“Giant webs draped him, spiders were all over him. They were coming out of his nose and his mouth.
“There was everything there one could imagine in the world of reptiles.
“Larger pieces of flesh torn off by the lizards were scooped up and taken back to the webs of tarantulas and other bird-eating spiders.”
Loner Voegel, 30, never invited people back to his “jungle” home, a small apartment in the German city of Dortmund.
Police described it as a cross between a botanical garden and the butterfly breeding ground in the serial killer movie The Silence Of The Lambs.
One tarantula had built a nest the size of a swallow’s in a corner of the ceiling.
Voegel also had a boa constrictor and several poisonous frogs from South America.
Spider expert and animal cruelty officer Gabi Bayer said he kept creatures “that should never be allowed in a private home”.
She said: “He had spiders so aggressive they are the equivalent of a pit-bull in the animal world.”
The reptiles were allowed to roam free in the flat.
The heating elements on two tanks containing spiders and their termite snacks had exploded and dislodged the metal tops allowing them to escape.
Voegel is thought to have been dead for between seven and 14 days.
A post-mortem will be carried out in the next few days. But authorities believe Bettina alone was responsible for Voegel’s death.

Bird Beak Deformities Concern Scientists ABout Possible Implications To Humans
AP
Scientists don't know what's causing deformed beaks in Alaskan birds.
JUNEAU, Alaska (April 6) - A bird beak deformity first recorded among black-capped chickadees near Anchorage has been increasingly seen in crows in Southeast Alaska, broadening an already mysterious phenomenon.
Black-capped chickadees, Northwestern crows and 27 other species of birds in Alaska have been reported with beaks up to three times their normal length. The deformity often strikes mature birds and reduces their ability to feed and preen effectively. In many birds, the deformity leads to death.
"We don't know what's causing the problem," said Colleen Handel, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Science Center in Anchorage. She's been studying the beak deformities for five years.
Though the phenomenon was first noticed in black-capped chickadees in the early 1990s, a deformed raven, a deformed Steller's jay and several deformed crows have been reported in Southeast Alaska since 1997. Southeast sightings have increased this year, biologists told the Juneau Empire.
The center has received 1,600 reports of deformed black-capped chickadees beaks in Alaska and 200 reports of other kinds of birds in Alaska, compared with only 12 reports of beak deformities of black-capped chickadees in the rest of North America. Handel had no total for other deformed birds elsewhere in North America but said nowhere is there a concentration as in Alaska.
Those deformities could have been caused by genetic mutations. Damaged DNA could be implicated in the abnormal growth, Handel said, but no one knows what might be causing damage to the DNA.
"With such a broad geographic range, you look for something that could be occurring over a broad area, and that immediately calls to mind something like contaminants or a disease organism that could be affecting a large area," Handel said.
Tests on affected birds have shown no specific parasite or disease, and only low levels of contaminants.
Besides caring for the health of Alaska's wildlife, there are concerns about possible implications to humans, Handel said.
"In the back of my mind I always wonder what else might be affected, depending on what's causing it," Handel said. "... If there's something happening to those species, it's certainly something that raises an alarm for all of us."

Found - The 911'Stand Down Order'?
From Jerry Russell
[email protected]
Rense.com
3-30-4
Jim Hoffman has discovered a document which I believe may be very important to the 911 skeptic movement. This document superseded earlier DOD procedures for dealing with hijacked aircraft, and it requires that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is personally responsible for issuing intercept orders. Commanders in the field are stripped of all authority to act. This amazing order came from S.A. Fry (Vice Admiral, US Navy and Director, Joint Staff) so it appears to me that responsibility for the US armed forces "Failure to Respond" rests directly with Fry for issuing this instruction, as well as with Donald Rumsfeld for failing to execute his responsibility to issue orders in a timely fashion.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction CJCSI 3610.01A (dated 1 June 2001) was issued for the purpose of providing "guidance to the Deputy Director for Operations (DDO), National Military Command Center (NMCC), and operational commanders in the event of an aircraft piracy (hijacking) or request for destruction of derelict airborne objects." This new instruction superseded CJCSI 3610.01 of 31 July 1997.
This CJCSI states that "In the event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be notified by the most expeditious means by the FAA. The NMCC will, with the exception of immediate responses as authorized by reference d, forward requests for DOD assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval."
Reference D refers to Department of Defense Directive 3025.15 (Feb. 18, 1997) which allows for commanders in the field to provide assistance to save lives in an emergency situation -- BUT any requests involving "potentially lethal support" (including "combat and tactical vehicles, vessels or aircraft; or ammunition") must still be approved by the Secretary of Defense. So again, the ability to respond to a hijacking in any meaningful fashion, is stripped from the commanders in the field.
While none of this relieves the Bush Administration from ultimate responsibility from 911, nevertheless there is the possibility that this discovery could somewhat diffuse the power of our movement's message about the "Stand Down", since it is now clear that it was implemented through a routine administrative memo.
If this comes up as an issue at the Washington 911 cover-up commission, it would be interesting if Fry could testify as to the reasoning behind making it bureaucratically impossible for the DOD to respond to hijackings in a timely fashion.
The relevant documents are on the Web at:
http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/analysis/norad/docs/intercept_proc.pdf
http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/d302515_021897/d302515p.pdf

The Cosmic Timebomb
The Independent - UK
3-30-4
The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was thrown to Earth in a moment of 'planetary madness'. And scientists can now predict when the heavens will go haywire again.
There's something badly wrong with the pendulum clock in the corner of the room. Normally, it ticks rhythmically, its bob swinging back and forth with hypnotic regularity. Over time, however, the size of the swing gradually gets larger, the ticks louder and louder. And, very occasionally - in fact, so occasionally that nobody has yet ever observed it - the clock goes stark-staring mad, ticking completely erratically as the pendulum bob swings first to one side, then twice or three times as far to the other side.
Surely, there is no clock that behaves like this? According to a team of geophysicists and mathematicians, there is: the clock in the sky. "For tens of millions of years, the planets circle the Sun with the predictability of clockwork," says Michael Ghil of the Ecole Normale SupÈrieure in Paris and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). "Then, without the slightest warning, everything goes utterly haywire."
The heavens are generally considered to be a paragon of predictability so this is a radical stuff. But it is only the beginning. Ghil and his colleagues, Ferenc Varadi and Bruce Runnegar at UCLA, believe the last time the solar system went insane was roughly 65 million years ago. "It seems too much of a coincidence," says Ghil. "We think it may have been connected with the extinction of the dinosaurs."
The kind of planetary madness Ghil and his colleagues are talking about goes by the name of "chaos". Chaos is defined as erratic motion with no sign of any regularity. Loosely speaking, chaotic systems are infinitely sensitive to initial conditions, like a hurricane in the Caribbean that was triggered by the flutter of a butterfly's wings in distant Hawaii.
In the solar system, the most important drivers of chaos are Jupiter and Saturn because they are the most massive of the planets. In their investigation of planetary chaos, it is therefore these two planets that Ghil and his colleagues have focused their attention on. The Jupiter-Saturn system is actually not inherently chaotic. However, it is known to skate close to the edge of chaos. The possibility therefore exists that, occasionally, something might cause it to teeter over the edge into planetary insanity.
Ghil and his colleagues considered the possibility that the "something" might be fluctuations in the pressure exerted on Saturn by sunlight and the wind of subatomic particles blowing from the Sun. Over tens of millions of years, their combined buffeting could have a significant effect on Saturn's orbit. The researchers guessed that solar variability might change the planet's "semi-major axis" - a measure of the length of its elliptical path round the Sun - by as much as 0.1 per cent. "We think this is perfectly plausible," says Ghil.
To see what changing Saturn's semi-major axis did to the Jupiter-Saturn system, Ghil and his colleagues used a "digital orrery". This is a purpose-built computer rigged to simulate the motion of the planets under their mutual gravity. The researchers also incorporated a novel feature of the behaviour of Jupiter and Saturn.
Jupiter orbits the Sun "about" five times for every two times Saturn goes round. If the ratio of the orbital periods was precisely 5:2, the combined effect of the gravity of two massive planets on other bodies in the solar system would be greatest every 10 years - that is, when the two planets are on the same side of the Sun and pulling together. But, because this 5:2 "resonance" is not exact, the planets are in perfect alignment on the same side of the Sun only every 1,000 to 2,000 years. "What this means is that the effect of Jupiter and Saturn on the other bodies in the solar system rises to a crescendo every 1,000-odd years," says Ghil.
Until now, researchers who have used computers to simulate the long-term future of the solar system have assumed that this effect is of no consequence, guessing that over long periods of time its effect "averages out". "We had a hunch, however, that this wasn't true," says Ghil. Using their digital orrery and taking this effect into account, Ghil and his colleagues discovered that as the semi-major axis of Saturn's orbit changes, the Jupiter-Saturn system drifts back and forth between motion which is regular and motion which is totally chaotic. "The system trips over into chaos every few tens of millions of years," says Ghil.
The team's most remarkable discovery, however, is that in a wide range of simulations in which the semi-major axis of Saturn is allowed to vary, a burst of chaos arises around 65 million years before the present. "The timing coincides strikingly with the Cretaceous-Tertiary [geological] boundary which marks the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs," says Ghil.
As yet, says Ghil, it is impossible to tell how long the burst of chaos persisted. Nevertheless, it is possible to investigate the effect it would have had on other bodies in the solar system - specifically, asteroids. The asteroids are thought to be the left-over rubble of a planet which was prevented from congealing out of the "proto-planetary nebula" by the disruptive effect of Jupiter. Vast numbers of asteroids - ranging in size from pebbles to rocky bodies 1,000 kilometres across - circle the Sun between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars.
Ghil and his colleagues simulated the effect on the asteroids of a burst of chaos in the Jupiter-Saturn system. They found a wealth of effects. "The most important are abrupt changes in the semi-major axis of asteroid orbits," he says. "These would lead eventually to complete ejection of bodies from the asteroid belt." Some of these could easily end on a collision course with Earth.
The sequence of events revealed by the simulations is complex. Some asteroids suffer small jumps in the size of their semi-major axis, others large jumps. Some move to smaller orbits, some to longer orbits. "A population of asteroids can drift back and forth through a succession of different orbits," says Ghil.
Crucially, bodies whose elliptical orbits become ever more elongated eventually come under the influence of the gravity of other planets and are tugged free of the asteroid belt. "They get catapulted out of the asteroid belt, some into orbits which cross the Earth's orbit," says Ghil. This is precisely what Ghil and his colleagues think might have happened 65 million years ago. "A burst of chaos in the Jupiter-Saturn system caused a flurry of Earth-crossing asteroids," says Ghil. "Among them was one which struck the Earth off the coast of Central America, providing the killer blow which finished off the dinosaurs."
If Ghil and his colleagues are right, the demise of the dinosaurs cannot be attributed to an entirely random event. As the dinosaurs grazed unawares, the great clock of the solar system went temporarily out of kilter. The dinosaurs may have been victims of an event hardwired into the dynamics of the solar system. "And they may not have been the only victims," says Ghil.
The team's simulations reveal that another burst of planetary chaos occurred about 250 million years ago. This seems to correspond precisely with another major mass extinction at the Permian-Triassic boundary. "As yet, however, we aren't totally confident about this," says Ghil.
The new paradigm which seems to be emerging is of a solar system which evolves quietly for tens of millions of years but which goes through occasional periods of madness. And what has happened in the past will happen again. The simulations show another burst of chaos is due in the future. "I wouldn't lose sleep over it," says Ghil. "The due date is AD30 million, so there's plenty of time to evacuate the Earth!"
- Marcus Chown is author of 'The Universe Next Door'
© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=506699

See also:
NASA Resoundingly Confirms MAJOR
Prediction of Hoagland Mars Tidal Model:
Rover Sits on the Shore of
"an ancient, salty sea ..."
http://www.enterprisemission.com/tide.htm

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