Alternate Reality

WISE set to search for universe's hidden 'dark' objects

2009-12-14T10:09:00.003-07:00

NASA is scheduled to launch its WISE space observatory Monday. It will map the whole sky in infrared wavelengths, potentially revealing objects many telescopes can't see.

Does Death Exist? New Theory Says 'No'

2009-12-10T08:04:00.004-07:00

Robert Lanza, M.D.Scientist; author, "Biocentrism"

[snip]

According to Biocentrism, space and time are not the hard objects we think. Wave your hand through the air - if you take everything away, what's left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. You can't see anything through the bone that surrounds your brain. Everything you see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together.

Death does not exist in a timeless, spaceless world. In the end, even Einstein admitted, "Now Besso" (an old friend) "has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us...know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." Immortality doesn't mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether.

More here

My first

2009-12-07T10:41:00.002-07:00

*Click on picture to see full sized*

This is a 100X of my first little plant. I grew her in the yard and pulled her a little early. She didn't have a strong odor and the smoke didn't have a strong taste but it was pretty good and long lasting buzz. She was less than 3' tall but I yielded over an ounce.

I didn't expect much but she was better than I thought she would be.

Took the picture with "Eyeclops BioniCam"

http://www.eyeclops.com/

Large Hadron Collider: Final Synchronization Test A Success

2008-08-27T10:52:00.002-06:00

ScienceDaily (Aug. 26, 2008) — CERN has announced the success of the second and final test of the Large Hadron Collider’s beam synchronization systems. The test will allow the LHC operations team to inject the first beam into the LHC.

Friday evening (August 22, 2008), a single bunch of a few particles travelled down the transfer line from the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) accelerator to the LHC. After a period of optimization, one bunch was kicked up from the transfer line into the LHC beam pipe and steered counter-clockwise about 3 kilometres around the LHC.

“Thanks to a fantastic team, both the clock-wise and counter-clockwise tests went without a hitch. We look forward to a resounding success when we make our first attempt to send a beam all the way around the LHC,” said Lyn Evans, LHC Project Leader.

Both the counter-clockwise and clockwise tests are part of the preparations to ready the LHC, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, for the eventual acceleration and collision of two beams at an energy of 5 TeV per beam. This unprecedented event is foreseen to take place by end 2008.

Upcoming events marking LHC start-up

10 September: The first attempt to circulate a beam in the LHC will be made on 10 September at the injection energy of 450 GeV (0.45 TeV). This historical event will be webcast through http://webcast.cern.ch/, and distributed through the Eurovision network. See http://www.cern.ch/lhc-first-beam for further details.

3 October: CERN will host the LHC Grid Fest, a celebration of the LHC Computing Grid, a global computing grid designed to handle 15 million gigabytes of LHC-related data every year. The day will feature presentations, demonstrations, tours of the CERN Computer Centre and more. See http://www.cern.ch/lcg/lhcgridfest for more details.

21 October: CERN will host the Official Inauguration of the LHC with representatives of CERN member and observer States.
Adapted from materials provided by CERN.

What benefits soldiers will benefit all of us

2008-05-11T12:37:00.004-06:00

BY MITCH ALBOM • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • May 11, 2008

It was my uncle, your grandfather, his best friend. It was your dad or his neighbor or his brother-in-law. They were soldiers in World War II, and when they finished serving their country, they came home to a grateful embrace -- not just words, but action.

There was something called the GI Bill, passed in 1944, and it quite literally changed the face of America. It paid for returning soldiers to study at trade schools, colleges, universities -- even medical and law schools.

Paid in full.

Nearly 8 million soldiers had participated by the time the original bill expired in 1956. Men who otherwise might never have gotten a higher education did so -- and improved the lives of their families as a result. It was a seeding of American society, a leg up for those who stood up. It made sense. It was humane.

Today, a new bill is being proposed, one that would essentially do for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan what we did for those in World War II. A new, expanded GI Bill. It has bipartisan support from senators and congressmen.

But not from the White House.

The same White House that features a president and vice president who never saw combat, the same White House that throws around the phrase "support our troops" to serve its purposes, thinks this bill is too expensive.

It costs $2 billion to $4 billion a year.

Too expensive?

A voice for the veterans

"That's what we're spending in a few days in Iraq," said Patrick Campbell, who served in Baghdad, saw several of his fellow soldiers killed and is now legislative director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "This is a travesty. If we don't invest in this, instead of having the next Greatest Generation, we're going to have a generation of veterans who came home and just got lost in the system."

It seems so obvious that you are dumbfounded anyone could oppose it. First of all, investing in higher education only benefits America with more skilled labor, more wage-earners, more jobs and a higher tax base.

Secondly, the help is needed. Returning soldiers often have families and responsibilities that make it hard to siphon funds for college.

Thirdly, it's the least we can do.

We all want to stand up for our troops. What better way than to say, "If you do this for your country, your country will do this for you"?

Trying to keep enlistments high

The resistance to the bill -- which was supposed to be voted on last week but was delayed to this week -- is not only its cost. The White House and some military brass say it provides too much incentive to leave the service.

That is selfish and naive. You don't keep a soldier working by keeping him uneducated. It's "service to the county" -- not to the military complex. Besides, the incentive of knowing you could have your education paid for should provide a huge boost in sign-ups, which we all know have been a problem.

The current GI Bill is terribly antiquated. The amounts don't match what it really costs to attend college. "The sad thing is most people who are serving the military don't know it," Campbell said. "When they get out ... they say, 'I thought that was gonna be enough ...'

"That's why veterans are twice as likely to go to community college than their peers, because that's all they afford."

Shameful. Even this new bill isn't enough. It only would cover the cost of the highest tuition at a state school. To me, if someone risks his or her neck for this country, the best schools -- private or public, including graduate school -- should be free. After all, we give grants and scholarships to kids who sacrifice far less.

"I had people tell me today this generation is not like the WW II Greatest Generation," Campbell said. "They don't deserve the same benefits. I had to be very careful not to jump out of my seat and say, 'How dare you?'

"This generation might not have served in the same battlefield, but we're fighting for the same beliefs and causes. We're putting our lives on the line."

Amen. The Bush administration should be ashamed for opposing this. Forget bumper stickers or mantras on talk radio. You want to prove you support the troops? Tell your lawmakers to invest our tax dollars not just in steel and metal, but in human potential.

Contact MITCH ALBOM at 313-223-4581 or malbom@freepress.com.

Catch "The Mitch Albom Show" 5-7 p.m. weekdays on WJR-AM (760).

Click here if you would like to comment on Mitch Albom's columns.

Italian researchers claim they are first to have found dark matter

2008-04-23T21:12:00.002-06:00

Ian Sample The Guardian,

Scientists hunting an invisible form of matter that pervades the universe and holds galaxies together claim to have found it underneath a mountain in Italy.

The discovery, at a laboratory built deep into the Gran Sasso mountain in Abruzzo, could end a 70-year race to find the elusive "dark matter" that physicists believe accounts for 90% of the mass of the universe. Its existence was first postulated in 1933 by a Swiss astronomer who observed that distant galaxies must be held together by a huge gravitational pull caused by some apparently invisible form of matter. It gained the name "dark matter" because it does not shine or reflect light.

Researchers led by Dr Rita Bernabei at the University of Rome claim that a giant detector inside the mountain laboratory has picked up signs of dark matter. The signal suggests that it could be made of theoretical particles known as axions. The discovery was announced at a physics conference in Venice. The experiment was designed to detect dark matter in space as Earth flies through it.

Scientists are unlikely to take this single result as hard proof. Many say the discovery will have to be replicated by groups around the world before they can be sure they have finally shed light on dark matter. Earlier this year British researchers became the latest to join the hunt, using a laboratory deep inside an old salt mine in Yorkshire. The labs are built underground to shield them from other particles that could smother dark matter signals.

"We are pretty sure now that this is not a statistical fluke," said astrophysicist Frank Halzen, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who heard Bernabei's talk at the conference. "We should pay attention to this. We should not just ignore it," he told New Scientist.

Grandpa Abe McCain 2008 - The Onion Belt

2008-04-21T05:57:00.002-06:00

Click HERE if video doesn't work

At the Heart of All Matter

2008-04-12T10:31:00.002-06:00

The hunt for the God particle

By Joel Achenbach
Photograph by Peter Ginter

If you were to dig a hole 300 feet straight down from the center of the charming French village of Crozet, you'd pop into a setting that calls to mind the subterranean lair of one of those James Bond villains. A garishly lit tunnel ten feet in diameter curves away into the distance, interrupted every few miles by lofty chambers crammed with heavy steel structures, cables, pipes, wires, magnets, tubes, shafts, catwalks, and enigmatic gizmos.

This technological netherworld is one very big scientific instrument, specifically, a particle accelerator-an atomic peashooter more powerful than any ever built. It's called the Large Hadron Collider, and its purpose is simple but ambitious: to crack the code of the physical world; to figure out what the universe is made of; in other words, to get to the very bottom of things.

Starting sometime in the coming months, two beams of particles will race in opposite directions around the tunnel, which forms an underground ring 17 miles in circumference. The particles will be guided by more than a thousand cylindrical, supercooled magnets, linked like sausages. At four locations the beams will converge, sending the particles crashing into each other at nearly the speed of light. If all goes right, matter will be transformed by the violent collisions into wads of energy, which will in turn condense back into various intriguing types of particles, some of them never seen before. That's the essence of experimental particle physics: You smash stuff together and see what other stuff comes out.

Continue

How Aztecs Did the Math

2008-04-06T08:10:00.002-06:00

By Constance Holden
ScienceNOW Daily News
3 April 2008

The Aztecs, who ruled central Mexico for several hundred years before the Spanish arrived in 1519, left the most extensive mathematical writings of any pre-Columbian people. Two manuscripts in particular have intrigued scholars because they portray land holdings in the Valley of Mexico along with their measurements, using the Aztec numbering system, for purposes of taxation. Now a geographer and a mathematician have zeroed in on just what methods Aztec surveyors used to measure the surface of a field in one of these documents, the Codex Vergara.

Scientists long ago deciphered the Aztec number system, a vigesimal system (using 20 as its base) as opposed to our decimal system. In Aztec arithmetic, a dot equals 1, a bar represents 5, and there are other symbols for 20 and various multiples thereof. The Codex Vergara, painted about 1540, contains schematic drawings and measurements of individual fields. Previous research on it has revealed an understanding of multiplication and division as well as certain principles of geometry.

Now, Barbara Williams of the University of Wisconsin-Rock County in Janesville, with Maria del Carmen Jorge y Jorge of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, has analyzed the Codex Vergara to discover just how Aztec surveyors estimated land area in parcels that were often irregularly shaped. The analysis reveals a "very practical kind of arithmetic and record keeping," says Michael Smith, an archaeologist at Arizona State University, Tempe.

In a paper published in tomorrow's issue of Science (4 April, p. 72) the authors show that Aztec surveyors probably used several types of algorithms to calculate area. Some parcels involved simply multiplying length by width. But in other, irregular four-sided lots, they had to come up with different approaches, such as multiplying the average of two opposite sides by an adjacent side.

Furthermore, when a measurement did not match a precise number of "land rods"--their standard unit of linear measurement, which corresponded to about 2.5 meters--the Aztecs added symbols, such as an arrow, a heart, a hand, or a bone, to indicate remaining length that was less than one rod. Working back from the recorded land areas, the authors determined that these corresponded to different fractions of a land rod.

Although the Aztecs are the only early Americans to have left these kinds of technical documents, it's reasonable to assume that other groups such as the numerically sophisticated Maya used similar systems, Smith says. "There's a view that ancient peoples were obsessed with religion and that science and knowledge were all directed at religious ends," he adds. But the paper shows that the Aztecs apparently liked to get their measurements right--and certainly when it came to taxation.

President Bush Booed At Baseball Game 2008

2008-03-31T15:15:00.001-06:00

Jay Jay French and Friends - I Want Barack

2008-03-25T20:23:00.001-06:00

Merci McCain

2008-03-23T17:48:00.000-06:00

Remembering Sir Arthur C. Clarke, 1917-2008

2008-03-23T15:44:00.001-06:00

Graham Collins reflects on meeting the famous author in New York City

By Graham P. Collins

He wore pajamas and a bathrobe, and a swollen bare foot was propped up on an ottoman. That was the figure cut by the revered science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke the one time that I, along with a few other Scientific American editors, met him. It was October 1999, and he was in New York City for a few days while on an extremely rare trip outside of his adopted home country, Sri Lanka, for medical reasons.

He had invited us to come over for a chat at his hotel, which happened to be the historic Hotel Chelsea, where he had stayed in the mid-1960s while working on his best known work, 2001: A Space Odyssey. (In the 1993 edition of the book, he wrote of "months of brainstorming with [director] Stanley [Kubrick]—followed by (fairly) lonely hours in Room 1008... where most of the novel was written.")

Clarke gently berated us for not taking cold fusion seriously enough. Most researchers had dismissed it a decade earlier, but he still believed that a revolutionary discovery could come from the experiments of the smattering of remaining devotees.

He may have even repeated the first of "Clarke’s Laws": "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." For physicists and mathematicians, "elderly" means over 30. (His two other famous laws were that discovering the limits of the possible requires venturing a bit into the impossible, and that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.)

When Clarke was not yet elderly, 27 in fact, he wrote an article in the magazine Wireless World describing how a satellite in an equatorial orbit with a radius of 42,000 kilometers (26,000 miles) would remain over the same location of the earth, and how three spaced around the orbit could relay radio signals to anywhere on the globe. The concept was not new with Clarke, but he popularized the idea. Nearly two decades later, the first such geostationary communications satellite was launched (it relayed television signals of the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo to the U.S.) at the same time Clarke was at work on 2001 at the Hotel Chelsea.

Clarke suffered from post-polio syndrome and reportedly had trouble breathing before his death at 90 on Tuesday. During his lifetime, he wrote or co-wrote scores of books, both fiction and nonfiction, and won numerous awards. Spacecraft have been named in honor of his work, and entities including an asteroid, an orbit, a species of dinosaur and several awards have been named after him. Many scientists, astronauts and writers have credited him with inspiring them to take up their own careers.

His impact, you might say, was indistinguishable from magic.

Kiss the Ring (via C&L)

2008-03-16T18:37:00.000-06:00

Information May Leak from Black Holes at Dial-Up Speeds

2008-03-16T17:51:00.003-06:00

Why a leaky black hole is more like a mirror ball from hell
By JR Minkel

BLACK HOLE MIRROR: Researchers have assumed that if information could emerge from a black hole, it would take eons to do so. However, a new study finds that the turnaround in an older black hole could be more like a few seconds, which would make it more like an information mirror.

NEW ORLEANS—A new study hints that black holes might not be as good at keeping secrets as researchers have long thought. A pair of physicists has reexamined the time it would take for information (think: your iPhone's memory) to potentially escape from inside a black hole.

They find that the 1s and 0s of your address book could be recovered as quickly as 1,000 bits per second—far faster than previously expected. "The black hole really behaves like an information mirror," says physicist John Preskill of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

The finding, presented here at a meeting of the American Physical Society, marks the latest attempt to come to grips with the fate of information that has crossed the black hole event horizon, a boundary beyond which even light cannot escape. There is no doubt, of course, that the ultradense singularity at the heart of a black hole would vaporize an iPhone. The question is whether there is any imaginable way to piece together its original state.

Physicist Stephen Hawking first broached the subject in the 1970s. He postulated that black holes would gradually evaporate by radiating particles (now called Hawking radiation) that had bubbled up from the vacuum around the event horizon. The radiation would be so scrambled, he argued, that when the black hole disappeared after many trillions of years, all the information about its contents would be lost. Other researchers insisted that the data might be imprinted on Hawking's particles, and even Hawking has changed his mind.

As in previous work, Preskill and physicist Patrick Hayden of McGill University in Montreal imagined two citizens of a hyperadvanced civilization, Alice and Bob. Alice wants to destroy some bits (technically, quantum bits that are 0 and 1 simultaneously) by throwing them into a black hole. Bob aims to recover them by gathering all the Hawking radiation from the black hole. Prior research had shown that if Alice dropped her bits into a relatively young black hole, Bob would have to collect the Hawking radiation for half the life of the black hole before being able to decode a single one of Alice's bits.

In the new study, Alice holds onto her bits until after the black hole has reached the halfway mark. Before her data dump, Bob managed to prepare some bits of his own that he entangled with Alice's, meaning they were linked instantaneously across any distance. Preskill reports that Bob could reconstruct Alice's bits by mixing the next few bits of Hawking radiation following the data dump with what he'd already collected, along with his own bits. "It might be a very difficult quantum computation to do the decoding," he says, but Bob would need only about 10 percent more Hawking particles than the number of bits that Alice had thrown in. A black hole the size of the sun would emit up to 1,000 Hawking particles per second, Hayden says.

The catch is that Alice's dumped bits would have to rapidly mix with the rest of the black hole, spreading their entanglement to the outgoing Hawking radiation that Bob collects. Current theories cannot predict the speed at which entanglement would spread across a black hole. Still, researchers are impressed by the novel application of quantum information theory. "I didn't think there was much else you could say about black holes without a quantum theory of gravity," says researcher Fotini Markopoulou of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario.

The effect comes perilously close to contradicting known rules of physics. After reconstructing Alice's bits, Bob could throw his copy into the black hole, where the two copies might run into one another. Such a meeting would violate the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics because it would allow measurements of both the position and momentum of the identical quantum state. But the few-second delay between when Alice and Bob can dump their respective bits is just long enough, Preskill says, for her bits to be destroyed by the singularity.

Such a narrow escape appeals to Stanford University physicist Leonard Susskind, who explains that if Bob had to wait for half the lifetime of a black hole to extract his first bit, quantum mechanics would be safe by a curiously wide margin, in his view. "I like the idea," he says, "that the most dangerous experiment you can think of is right on the edge."

Entangled-Light Pair Stored in Atomic Memory

2008-03-11T18:04:00.002-06:00

Fledgling step toward quantum telecommunications relays
By JR Minkel

SPLIT PERSONALITY: In a new experiment, researchers stored entangled states of light in a cloud of ultracold cesium atoms.

A new experiment bridges the old quantum trick of entanglement—the strange faster-than-light communication between particles—with the much newer technique of halting light dead in its tracks. Researchers report in Nature that they have successfully sent a pair of entangled states of light into separate corners of an ultracold atomic cloud, stored them there briefly, and then sent them back on their separate ways without completely destroying the quantum link in the process.

Although the distance of just one millimeter between the two storage points was tiny, the group says the demonstration opens the door for entangling two distinct atomic clouds and using quantum teleportation to flash the quantum state of a particle from one of the clouds to the other. In principle, such clouds could be strung together for thousands of miles, making a quantum telecommunications grid capable of sending potentially unbreakable coded messages from coast to coast.

The stopped light trick was first demonstrated in 2001 by Harvard University physicist Lene Hau and her research group. To achieve it, researchers fired a pulse of light into a cloud of atoms chilled to near absolute zero (which is –459.67 degrees Fahrenheit, or –273.15 degrees Celsius) and illuminated it with a continuous beam of laser light called the control beam. The pulse slowed dramatically inside the cloud and, when the control beam was switched off, froze as a quantum state of the atoms. When the beam was switched back on, the light pulse reformed and continued on its merry way.

In the new experiment, physicists led by H. Jeff Kimble at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena used a semireflective surface called a beam splitter to cleave a single photon into a type of entangled pair. By toggling the control beam, they stored the two states one millimeter apart in a cesium cloud that was chilled to a temperature of 125 millionths of a kelvin above absolute zero (0 kelvin). When they converted the pair back into light, 20 percent of their original entanglement remained.

The method's efficiency is still low, but it improves on prior attempts to store entanglement that sometimes severed the quantum link, which would hamper attempts to design larger quantum communication networks outside of the lab, says study author Kyung Soo Choi, a physics PhD candidate at Caltech. "If we can generate entanglement every time we push a button, we can scale entanglement" to larger scales.

Whether that will ever happen is unclear, Harvard's Hau wrote in an accompanying editorial. But she added that a century after quantum mechanics was born, "the possibilities it offers continue to boggle our minds."

Oklahoma State Rep. Goes On Anti-Gay Tirade

2008-03-09T13:40:00.002-06:00

Mother of god, this is horrible. We nominate to the patheon of homo hate Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern (sallykern@okhouse.gov). She didn't know that she was being recorded in a meeting, so we get the a nice insight about what she thinks of her gay and lesbian constituents. Perhaps she doesn't think she has any.

About 30 seconds into this homobigoted, fact-free, BS screed, Rep. Kern actually says how she doesn't hate gays (of course not!), then proceeds to continue on her tirade of filth.

The 'laptop of mass destruction'

2008-03-03T06:50:00.003-07:00

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The George W Bush administration has long pushed the "laptop documents" - 1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop - as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon. Now charges based on those documents pose the only remaining obstacles to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declaring that Iran has resolved all unanswered questions about its nuclear program.

But those documents have also been regarded with great suspicion by US and foreign analysts. German officials identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e-Khalq (MEK), which along with its political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organization.

There are some indications, moreover, that the MEK obtained the documents not from an Iranian source but from Israel's Mossad.

In its latest report on Iran, circulated on February 22, the IAEA, under strong pressure from the Bush administration, included descriptions of plans for a facility to produce "green salt", technical specifications for high explosives testing and the schematic layout of a missile re-entry vehicle that appears capable of holding a nuclear weapon. Iran has been asked to provide full explanations for these alleged activities.

Tehran has denounced the documents on which the charges are based as fabrications provided by the MEK, and has demanded copies of the documents to analyze, but the United States has refused to do so.

The Iranian assertion is supported by statements by German officials. A few days after then-secretary of state Colin Powell announced the laptop documents, Karsten Voight, the coordinator for German-American relations in the German Foreign Ministry, was reported by the Wall Street Journal on November 22, 2004, as saying that the information had been provided by "an Iranian dissident group".

A German official familiar with the issue confirmed to this writer that the NCRI had been the source of the laptop documents. "I can assure you that the documents came from the Iranian resistance organization," the source said.

The Germans have been deeply involved in intelligence collection and analysis regarding the Iranian nuclear program. According to a story by Washington Post reporter Dafna Linzer soon after the laptop documents were first mentioned publicly by Powell in late 2004, US officials said they had been stolen from an Iranian whom German intelligence had been trying to recruit, and had been given to intelligence officials of an unnamed country in Turkey.

The German account of the origins of the laptop documents contradicts the insistence by unnamed US intelligence officials who insisted to journalists William J Broad and David Sanger in November 2005 that the laptop documents did not come from any Iranian resistance groups.

Despite the fact that it was listed as a terrorist organization, the MEK was a favorite of neo-conservatives in the Pentagon, who were proposing in 2003-2004 to use it as part of a policy to destabilize Iran. The United States is known to have used intelligence from the MEK on Iranian military questions for years. It was considered a credible source of intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program after 2002, mainly because of its identification of the facility in Natanz as a nuclear site.

The German source said he did not know whether the documents were authentic or not. However, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)analysts, and European and IAEA officials who were given access to the laptop documents in 2005, were very skeptical about their authenticity.

The Guardian's Julian Borger last February quoted an IAEA official as saying there is "doubt over the provenance of the computer".

A senior European diplomat who had examined the documents was quoted by the New York Times in November 2005 as saying, "I can fabricate that data. It looks beautiful, but is open to doubt."

Scott Ritter, the former US military intelligence officer who was chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, noted in an interview that the CIA has the capability to check the authenticity of laptop documents through forensic tests that would reveal when different versions of different documents were created.

The fact that the agency could not rule out the possibility of fabrication, according to Ritter, indicates that it had either chosen not to do such tests or that the tests had revealed fraud.

Despite its having been credited with the Natanz intelligence coup in 2002, the overall record of the MEK on the Iranian nuclear program has been very poor. The CIA continued to submit intelligence from the Iranian group about alleged Iranian nuclear weapons-related work to the IAEA over the next five years, without identifying the source.

But that intelligence turned out to be unreliable. A senior IAEA official told the Los Angeles Times in February 2007 that, since 2002, "pretty much all the intelligence that has come to us has proved to be wrong".

Former State Department deputy intelligence director for the Near East and South Asia Wayne White doubts that the MEK has actually had the contacts within the Iranian bureaucracy and scientific community necessary to come up with intelligence such as Natanz and the laptop documents. "I find it very hard to believe that supporters of the MEK haven't been thoroughly rooted out of the Iranian bureaucracy," says White. "I think they are without key sources in the Iranian government."

In her February 2006 report on the laptop documents, the Post's Linzer said CIA analysts had originally speculated that a "third country, such as Israel, had fabricated the evidence". They eventually "discounted that theory", she wrote, without explaining why.

Since 2002, new information has emerged indicating that the MEK did not obtain the 2002 data on Natanz itself but received it from the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Yossi Melman and Meier Javadanfar, who co-authored a book on the Iranian nuclear program last year, write that they were told by "very senior Israeli Intelligence officials" in late 2006 that Israeli intelligence had known about Natanz for a full year before the Iranian group's press conference. They explained that they had chosen not to reveal it to the public "because of safety concerns for the sources that provided the information".

Shahriar Ahy, an adviser to monarchist leader Reza Pahlavi, told journalist Connie Bruck that the detailed information on Natanz had not come from the MEK but from "a friendly government, and it had come to more than one opposition group, not only the Mujahideen".

Bruck wrote in the New Yorker on March, 16, 2006, that when he was asked if the "friendly government" was Israel, Ahy smiled and said, "The friendly government did not want to be the source of it, publicly. If the friendly government gives it to the US publicly, then it would be received differently. Better to come from an opposition group."

Israel has maintained a relationship with the MEK since the late 1990s, according to Bruck, including assistance to the organization in beaming broadcasts by the NCRI from Paris into Iran. An Israeli diplomat confirmed that Israel had found the MEK "useful", Bruck reported, but the official declined to elaborate.

Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.

The Coldest Place in the Universe

2008-02-27T22:24:00.001-07:00

Physicists in Massachusetts come to grips with the lowest possible temperature: absolute zero

By Tom Shachtman
Smithsonian magazine, January 2008

Where's the coldest spot in the universe? Not on the moon, where the temperature plunges to a mere minus 378 Fahrenheit. Not even in deepest outer space, which has an estimated background temperature of about minus 455°F. As far as scientists can tell, the lowest temperatures ever attained were recently observed right here on earth.

The record-breaking lows were among the latest feats of ultracold physics, the laboratory study of matter at temperatures so mind-bogglingly frigid that atoms and even light itself behave in highly unusual ways. Electrical resistance in some elements disappears below about minus 440°F, a phenomenon called superconductivity. At even lower temperatures, some liquefied gases become "superfluids" capable of oozing through walls solid enough to hold any other sort of liquid; they even seem to defy gravity as they creep up, over and out of their containers.

Physicists acknowledge they can never reach the coldest conceivable temperature, known as absolute zero and long ago calculated to be minus 459.67°F. To physicists, temperature is a measure of how fast atoms are moving, a reflection of their energy—and absolute zero is the point at which there is absolutely no heat energy remaining to be extracted from a substance.

But a few physicists are intent on getting as close as possible to that theoretical limit, and it was to get a better view of that most rarefied of competitions that I visited Wolfgang Ketterle's lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. It currently holds the record—at least according to Guinness World Records 2008—for lowest temperature: 810 trillionths of a degree F above absolute zero. Ketterle and his colleagues accomplished that feat in 2003 while working with a cloud—about a thousandth of an inch across—of sodium molecules trapped in place by magnets.

I ask Ketterle to show me the spot where they'd set the record. We put on goggles to protect ourselves from being blinded by infrared light from the laser beams that are used to slow down and thereby cool fast-moving atomic particles. We cross the hall from his sunny office into a dark room with an interconnected jumble of wires, small mirrors, vacuum tubes, laser sources and high-powered computer equipment. "Right here," he says, his voice rising with excitement as he points to a black box that has an aluminum-foil-wrapped tube leading into it. "This is where we made the coldest temperature."

Ketterle's achievement came out of his pursuit of an entirely new form of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). The condensates are not standard gases, liquids or even solids. They form when a cloud of atoms—sometimes millions or more—all enter the same quantum state and behave as one. Albert Einstein and the Indian physicist Satyendra Bose predicted in 1925 that scientists could generate such matter by subjecting atoms to temperatures approaching absolute zero. Seventy years later, Ketterle, working at M.I.T., and almost simultaneously, Carl Wieman, working at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Eric Cornell of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder created the first Bose-Einstein condensates. The three promptly won a Nobel Prize. Ketterle's team is using BECs to study basic properties of matter, such as compressibility, and better understand weird low-temperature phenomena such as superfluidity. Ultimately, Ketterle, like many physicists, hopes to discover new forms of matter that could act as superconductors at room temperature, which would revolutionize how humans use energy. For most Nobel Prize winners, the honor caps a long career. But for Ketterle, who was 44 years old when he was awarded his, the creation of BECs opened a new field that he and his colleagues will be exploring for decades.

Another contender for the coldest spot is across Cambridge, in Lene Vestergaard Hau's lab at Harvard. Her personal best is a few millionths of a degree F above absolute zero, close to Ketterle's, which she, too, reached while creating BECs. "We make BECs every day now," she says as we go down a stairwell to a lab packed with equipment. A billiards-table-size platform at the center of the room looks like a maze constructed of tiny oval mirrors and pencil-lead-thin laser beams. Harnessing BECs, Hau and her co-workers have done something that might seem impossible: they have slowed light to a virtual standstill.

The speed of light, as we've all heard, is a constant: 186,171 miles per second in a vacuum. But it is different in the real world, outside a vacuum; for instance, light not only bends but also slows ever so slightly when it passes through glass or water. Still, that's nothing compared with what happens when Hau shines a laser beam of light into a BEC: it's like hurling a baseball into a pillow. "First, we got the speed down to that of a bicycle," Hau says. "Now it's at a crawl, and we can actually stop it—keep light bottled up entirely inside the BEC, look at it, play with it and then release it when we're ready."

She is able to manipulate light this way because the density and the temperature of the BEC slows pulses of light down. (She recently took the experiments a step further, stopping a pulse in one BEC, converting it into electrical energy, transferring it to another BEC, then releasing it and sending it on its way again.) Hau uses BECs to discover more about the nature of light and how to use "slow light"—that is, light trapped in BECs—to improve the processing speed of computers and provide new ways to store information.

Not all ultracold research is performed using BECs. In Finland, for instance, physicist Juha Tuoriniemi magnetically manipulates the cores of rhodium atoms to reach temperatures of 180 trillionths of a degree F above absolute zero. (The Guinness record notwithstanding, many experts credit Tuoriniemi with achieving even lower temperatures than Ketterle, but that depends on whether you're measuring a group of atoms, such as a BEC, or only parts of atoms, such as the nuclei.)

It might seem that absolute zero is worth trying to attain, but Ketterle says he knows better. "We're not trying," he says. "Where we are is cold enough for our experiments." It's simply not worth the trouble—not to mention, according to physicists' understanding of heat and the laws of thermodynamics, impossible. "To suck out all the energy, every last bit of it, and achieve zero energy and absolute zero—that would take the age of the universe to accomplish."

Tom Shachtman is the author of Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold, the basis for a future PBS "Nova" documentary.

Automated Killer Robots ‘Threat to Humanity’: Expert

2008-02-27T14:48:00.001-07:00

Increasingly autonomous, gun-totting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP.

“They pose a threat to humanity,” said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey ahead of a keynote address Wednesday before Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.

Intelligent machines deployed on battlefields around the world — from mobile grenade launchers to rocket-firing drones — can already identify and lock onto targets without human help.

There are more than 4,000 US military robots on the ground in Iraq, as well as unmanned aircraft that have clocked hundreds of thousands of flight hours.

The first three armed combat robots fitted with large-caliber machine guns deployed to Iraq last summer, manufactured by US arms maker Foster-Miller, proved so successful that 80 more are on order, said Sharkey.

But up to now, a human hand has always been required to push the button or pull the trigger.

It we are not careful, he said, that could change.

Military leaders “are quite clear that they want autonomous robots as soon as possible, because they are more cost-effective and give a risk-free war,” he said.

Several countries, led by the United States, have already invested heavily in robot warriors developed for use on the battlefield.

South Korea and Israel both deploy armed robot border guards, while China, India, Russia and Britain have all increased the use of military robots.

Washington plans to spend four billion dollars by 2010 on unmanned technology systems, with total spending expected rise to 24 billion, according to the Department of Defense’s Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032, released in December.

James Canton, an expert on technology innovation and CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, predicts that deployment within a decade of detachments that will include 150 soldiers and 2,000 robots.

The use of such devices by terrorists should be a serious concern, said Sharkey.

Captured robots would not be difficult to reverse engineer, and could easily replace suicide bombers as the weapon-of-choice. “I don’t know why that has not happened already,” he said.

But even more worrisome, he continued, is the subtle progression from the semi-autonomous military robots deployed today to fully independent killing machines.

“I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination terrifies me,” Sharkey said.

Ronald Arkin of Georgia Institute of Technology, who has worked closely with the US military on robotics, agrees that the shift towards autonomy will be gradual.

But he is not convinced that robots don’t have a place on the front line.

“Robotics systems may have the potential to out-perform humans from a perspective of the laws of war and the rules of engagement,” he told a conference on technology in warfare at Stanford University last month.

The sensors of intelligent machines, he argued, may ultimately be better equipped to understand an environment and to process information. “And there are no emotions that can cloud judgement, such as anger,” he added.

Nor is there any inherent right to self-defence.

For now, however, there remain several barriers to the creation and deployment of Terminator-like killing machines.

Some are technical. Teaching a computer-driven machine — even an intelligent one — how to distinguish between civilians and combatants, or how to gauge a proportional response as mandated by the Geneva Conventions, is simply beyond the reach of artificial intelligence today.

But even if technical barriers are overcome, the prospect of armies increasingly dependent on remotely-controlled or autonomous robots raises a host of ethical issues that have barely been addressed.

Arkin points out that the US Department of Defense’s 230 billion dollar Future Combat Systems programme — the largest military contract in US history — provides for three classes of aerial and three land-based robotics systems.

“But nowhere is there any consideration of the ethical implications of the weaponisation of these systems,” he said.

For Sharkey, the best solution may be an outright ban on autonomous weapons systems. “We have to say where we want to draw the line and what we want to do — and then get an international agreement,” he said.

© 2008 Agence France Presse

Racist Attacks on Obama Growing More Heated

2008-02-22T09:31:00.003-07:00

Posted By Mark Potok On February 20, 2008

With the selection of Barack Obama as the first black Democratic nominee for president seeming more possible by the day, racists and white supremacists are posting increasingly ugly and even threatening remarks on the Internet.

[1] “OBAMA WILL DIE, KKK FOREVER,” concludes a [2] Feb. 15 post by “Rodney” to a blog run by a person identified only as Strider333. Above that signoff, Rodney wrote: “The KKK or someone WILL assassinate Obama! If we get a NIGGER President all you NIGGER’s [sic] will think you’ve won and that the WHITE people will have to bow to you[.] FUCK THAT.”

On traditional white supremacist and neo-Nazi sites (for instance, [3] here and [4] here), there are lengthy discussion threads about what would happen if Obama were elected president. Dozens of those posts are derogatory and employ all kinds of racist slurs. Others speculate that such an Obama victory would kick off a race war between whites and blacks. And some even raise the possibility that he could be assassinated. But talk like that is rare and extremely careful — probable evidence that the “white nationalists” who inhabit these sites are deeply concerned that their comments are being monitored by law enforcement for any criminal threat relating to the presidential race. In fact, Obama reportedly received federal Secret Service protection unusually early in the campaign season because of concerns about a racially motivated attack.

The most heated anti-Obama talk appears to be on Internet sites that allow people to post messages anonymously. One such site, JD Underground, is a list ostensibly devoted to lawyers, although further details were not available. It has carried a particularly venomous thread, entitled [5] “Nigger President,” that has stretched from January into this month.

“I’m hoping someone will do his public duty of putting a bullet through Obama’s head,” said a poster identified as “Kill Da Nigga.” Another poster suggests “bring[ing] back lynchings” and concludes with a warning: “LOOK OUT NIGGER. THE KLAN IS GETTING BIGGER!!!!!!” And a third, using the screen name “amerikkkan,” says only, “The deep south is making plans.”

*****

Law enforcement should be on the hatemongers like a ton of bricks - instead the Secret Service is relaxing security at Obama events because too many people are showing up?

German Treasure Hunters Claim to Have Found Amber Room

2008-02-19T10:47:00.002-07:00

By David Crossland

Has the Amber Room, the 18th-century chamber decoration the Nazis stole from the Soviet Union in World War II, finally been found? German treasure hunters say they may have solved the decades-old mystery.

Treasure hunters in Germany claim they have found hidden gold in an underground cavern that they are almost certain contains the Amber Room treasure, believed by some to have been stashed away by the Nazis in a secret mission in the dying days of World War II.

The discovery of an estimated two tonnes of gold was made at the weekend when electromagnetic pulse measurements located the man-made cavern 20 meters underground near the village of Deutschneudorf on Germany's border with the Czech Republic.

The team, which used heavy digging equipment, hasn't been inside the room but analysis of the electromagnetic test has led it to believe that the cavern contains gold.

"I'm well over 90 percent sure we have found the Amber Room," the mayor of Deutschneudorf, Heinz-Peter Haustein, who led the search, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "The chamber is likely to be part of a labyrinth of storage rooms that the Nazis built here. I knew it was in this area. I just never knew exactly where."

Haustein, 53, is a member of Germany's federal parliament for the opposition liberal Free Democrats and has been searching for the Amber Room in the Ore Mountain region of eastern Germany for a decade.

"A friend told me before he died that the Nazis sent truckloads and trainloads of valuables to this area throughout the spring of 1945," he said. The excavation site is next to a long-abandoned railway station.

He said the coordinates for the chamber had come from fellow treasure hunter Christian Hanisch, who had found them when he was going through the documents of his father, a Luftwaffe signaller, after he died in October.

"There was a note written next to the coordinates that the site contained Nazi party gold in 12-kilo bars. If the gold is there, the Amber Room will be too," said Haustein. He said he had dug in exactly the same spot a year ago but had not conducted any electromagnetic tests that time.

Haustein said it would probably take him until Easter to get into the chamber because it may contain booby traps and has to be secured by explosives experts and engineers.

"This has got too risky for us to do it alone. There could be mines down there." He said the regional authorities had agreed to help with the excavation.

The Amber Room, made of amber panels backed with gold leaf, was created by German and Russian craftsmen in the early 18th century and given by Prussia's King Friedrich Wilhelm I to his Russian ally Czar Peter the Great in 1716.

In October 1941, four months after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, they disassembled it from the Catherine Palace near what was then Leningrad and brought it to East Prussia, to Königsberg -- now the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Part of it was exhibited in Königsberg Castle during the war. It disappeared in 1945.

There have been hundreds of theories about its fate. Some historians claim it was destroyed in bombing raids on Königsberg, others that it was lost at sea.

Over the years, various searches have failed to uncover it. Haustein said he had received many leads over the years that the Amber Room was hidden in crates along with a trove of other treasures somewhere in the network of copper, tin and silver mines of the Ore Mountains along what is now the German-Czech border.

He has spent tens of thousands of euros of his own money on the hunt.

"If we find the treasure it will probably be declared the property of the Federal Republic of Germany as legal successor to the Third Reich," said Haustein.

"It would be good if the state could hand it over to the Russians without preconditions and if the Russians could then hand over the art they looted from Germany. That would be a sign of national reconciliation. That's my goal."

Haustein he had received hundreds of emails in recent days since the find had become public, including some from Chile, Argentina and Bolivia, where many Nazis fled after the war.

One email he received on Tuesday contained a claim far-fetched enough to be amusing. "It said that the Nazis burnt a doppelgänger of Hitler outside the Berlin bunker and that the body of the real Hitler was buried with the Amber Room," Haustein says. "So who knows what else we may find?"

What Do We Stand For?

2008-02-18T21:09:00.002-07:00

By Paul Craig Roberts

18/02/08 "ICH" --- - Americans traditionally thought of their country as a "city upon a hill," a "light unto the world." Today only the deluded think that. Polls show that the rest of the world regards the U.S. and Israel as the two greatest threats to peace.

This is not surprising. In the words of Arthur Silber:

"The Bush administration has announced to the world, and to all Americans, that this is what the United States now stands for: a vicious determination to dominate the world, criminal, genocidal wars of aggression, torture, and an increasingly brutal and brutalizing authoritarian state at home. That is what we stand for."

Addressing his fellow Americans, Silber asks the paramount question: "why do you support" these horrors?

His question goes to the heart of the matter. Do we Americans have any honor, any humanity, any integrity, any awareness of the crimes our government is committing in our name? Do we have a moral conscience?

How can a moral conscience be reconciled with our continuing to tolerate our government which has invaded two countries on the basis of lies and deception, destroyed their civilian infrastructures and murdered hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children?

The killing and occupation continue even though we now know that the invasions were based on lies and fabricated "evidence." The entire world knows this. Yet Americans continue to act as if the gratuitous invasions, the gratuitous killing, and the gratuitous destruction are justified. There is no end of it in sight.

If Americans have any honor, how can they betray their Founding Fathers, who gave them liberty, by tolerating a government that claims immunity to law and the Constitution and is erecting a police state in their midst?

Answers to these questions vary. Some reply that a fearful and deceived American public seeks safety from terrorists in government power.

Others answer that a majority of Americans finally understand the evil that Bush has set loose and tried to stop him by voting out the Republicans in November 2006 and putting the Democrats in control of Congress – all to no effect – and are now demoralized as neither party gives a hoot for public opinion or has a moral conscience.

The people ask over and over, "What can we do?"

Very little when the institutions put in place to protect the people from tyranny fail. In the U.S., the institutions have failed across the board.

The freedom and independence of the watchdog press was destroyed by the media concentration that was permitted by the Clinton administration and Congress. Americans who rely on traditional print and TV media simply have no idea what is afoot.

Political competition failed when the opposition party became a "me-too" party. The Democrats even confirmed as attorney general Michael Mukasey, an authoritarian who refuses to condemn torture and whose rulings as a federal judge undermined habeas corpus. Such a person is now the highest law enforcement officer in the United States.

The judicial system failed when federal judges ruled that "state secrets" and "national security" are more important than government accountability and the rule of law.

The separation of powers failed when Congress acquiesced to the executive branch's claims of primary power and independence from statutory law and the Constitution.

It failed again when the Democrats refused to impeach Bush and Cheney, the two greatest criminals in American political history.

Without the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, America can never recover. The precedents for unaccountable government established by the Bush administration are too great, their damage too lasting.

Without impeachment, America will continue to sink into dictatorship in which criticism of the government and appeals to the Constitution are criminalized. We are closer to executive rule than many people know.

Silber reminds us that America once had leaders, such as Speaker of the House Thomas B. Reed and Sen. Robert M. LaFollette Sr., who valued the principles upon which America was based more than they valued their political careers. Perhaps Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich are of this ilk, but America has fallen so low that people who stand on principle today are marginalized. They cannot become speaker of the House or a leader in the Senate.

Today Congress is almost as superfluous as the Roman Senate under the caesars. On Feb. 13 the U.S. Senate barely passed a bill banning torture, and the White House promptly announced that President Bush would veto it. Torture is now the American way. The U.S. Senate was only able to muster 51 votes against torture, an indication that almost a majority of U.S. senators support torture.

Bush says that his administration does not torture. So why veto a bill prohibiting torture? Bush seems proud to present America to the world as a torturer.

After years of lying to Americans and the rest of the world that Guantanamo prison contained 774 of "the world's most dangerous terrorists," the Bush regime is bringing six of its victims to trial. The vast majority of the 774 detainees have been quietly released. The U.S. government stole years of life from hundreds of ordinary people who had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and were captured by warlords and sold to the stupid Americans as "terrorists." Needing terrorists to keep the farce going, the U.S. government dropped leaflets in Afghanistan offering $25,000 a head for "terrorists." Kidnappings ensued until the U.S. government had purchased enough "terrorists" to validate the "terrorist threat."

The six that the U.S. is bringing to "trial" include two child soldiers for the Taliban and a car-pool driver who allegedly drove bin Laden.

The Taliban did not attack the U.S. The child soldiers were fighting in an Afghan civil war. The U.S. attacked the Taliban. How does that make Taliban soldiers terrorists who should be locked up and abused in Gitmo and brought before a kangaroo military tribunal? If a terrorist hires a driver or a taxi, does that make the driver a terrorist? What about the pilots of the airliners who brought the alleged 9/11 terrorists to the U.S.? Are they guilty, too?

The Gitmo trials are show trials. Their only purpose is to create the precedent that the executive branch can ignore the U.S. court system and try people in the same manner that innocent people were tried in Stalinist Russia and Gestapo Germany. If the Bush regime had any real evidence against the Gitmo detainees, it would have no need for its kangaroo military tribunal.

If any more proof is needed that Bush has no case against any of the Gitmo detainees, the following AP report, Feb. 14, 2008, should suffice: "The Bush administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to limit judges' authority to scrutinize evidence against detainees at Guantanamo Bay."

The reason Bush doesn't want judges to see the evidence is that there is no evidence except a few confessions obtained by torture. In the American system of justice, confession obtained by torture is self-incrimination and is impermissible evidence under the U.S. Constitution.

Andy Worthington's book, The Guantanamo Files, and his online articles make it perfectly clear that the "dangerous terrorists" claim of the Bush administration is just another hoax perpetrated on the inattentive American public.

Recently the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity issued a report that documents the fact that Bush administration officials made 935 false statements about Iraq to the American people in order to deceive them into going along with Bush's invasion. In recent testimony before Congress, Bush's secretary of state and former national security adviser, Condi Rice, was asked by Rep. Robert Wexler about the 56 false statements she made.

Rice replied: "[I] take my integrity very seriously, and I did not at any time make a statement that I knew to be false." Rice blamed "the intelligence assessments" which "were wrong."

Another Rice lie, like those mushroom clouds that were going to go up over American cities if we didn't invade Iraq. The weapon inspectors told the Bush administration that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, as Scott Ritter has reminded us over and over. Every knowledgeable person in the country knew there were no weapons. As the leaked Downing Street memo confirms, the head of British intelligence told the UK cabinet that the Bush administration had already decided to invade Iraq and was making up the intelligence to justify the invasion.

But let's assume that Rice was fooled by faulty intelligence. If she had any integrity she would have resigned. In the days when American government officials had integrity, they would have resigned in shame from such a disastrous war and terrible destruction based on their mistake. But Condi Rice, like all the Bush (and Clinton) operatives, is too full of American self-righteousness and ambition to have any remorse about her mistake. Condi can still look herself in the mirror despite one million Iraqis dying from her mistake and several million more being homeless refugees, just as Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, can still look herself in the mirror despite sharing responsibility for 500,000 dead Iraqi children.

There is no one in the Bush administration with enough integrity to resign. It is a government devoid of truth, morality, decency, and honor. The Bush administration is a blight upon America and upon the world.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand.

Kosovo to declare independence ‘within hours’

2008-02-16T16:15:00.002-07:00

KOSOVO was braced for a showdown with its former Serbian masters in Belgrade this weekend after Hashim Thaci, prime minister of the breakaway province, announced yesterday that it would declare independence “in the coming hours”.

Sources within the Serbian government gave warning that they would begin implementing an “action plan” against Kosovo as soon as it seceded.

Serbia is expected to impose an economic blockade on Kosovo, whose population is overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian, and to take diplomatic action against countries, including Britain, that recognise the new state of 2m people. There were fears in Pristina, the Kosovan capital, that Serbia might even pull the plug on electricity and water supplies.

Last week President Vladi-mir Putin of Russia, a close ally of Serbia, condemned the breakaway as “illegal, ill-conceived and immoral”.

Thaci, 39, warned against a hostile response from Belgrade. “Anything they do will come back to them like a boomerang,” he said.

In the cafes of Pristina, however, the talk was of independence parties rather than sanctions. A huge firework display was planned and the city’s main street was lined with posters thanking Britain and America for their support.

Thousands of people were expected to gather in Pristina for an open-air concert and a local bakery was providing a 1½ton Kosovo-shaped cake, complete with peace doves that would fly out when it was cut.

For many the celebrations will be tinged with sadness as they remember relatives killed or missing since a Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanian rebels triggered an all-out war in 1998. In Racak, south of Pristina, the deaths of 45 civilians at the hands of Serbian paramilitaries in 1999 convinced the West to intervene.

Afet Billali, 34, a former commander in the Kosovo Liberation Army, said: “I will think of my brother and friends who died. But I’ll turn this sadness into pride at their sacrifice for the sake of Kosovo’s freedom.”

In Mitrovica, celebrations will be confined to the south of the river. To the north are Koso-var Serbs who have said they will set up a parallel parliament. For them Kosovo will always be part of Serbia.

The independence declaration will begin the transfer of responsibility for law and order from the United Nations mission to a new European Union mission. Up to 600 members of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards are on standby to fly to Kosovo as part of the Nato Response Force if violence flares.

The plight of journalists in 98 countries reviewed

2008-02-13T09:31:00.004-07:00

00. Annual Report 2008 13.02.2008
The plight of journalists in 98 countries reviewed

2008 Annual Report
PDF, 3.3 Mo

Reporters Without Borders today accused public officials around the world of “impotence, cowardice and duplicity” in defending freedom of expression.

“The spinelessness of some Western countries and major international bodies is harming press freedom,” secretary-general Robert Ménard said in the organisation’s annual press freedom report, out today (13 February) and available at www.rsf.org. “The lack of determination by democratic countries in defending the values they supposedly stand for is alarming.”

He charged that the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva had caved in to pressure from countries such as Iran and Uzbekistan and expressed concern at the softness of the European Union towards dictators who did not flinch at the threat of European sanctions.

The report’s introduction listed problems expected in the coming year, especially physical attacks on journalists during key elections in Pakistan (18 February), Russia (2 March), Iran (14 March) and Zimbabwe (29 March).

The worldwide press freedom organisation voiced concern about the safety of journalists covering fighting in Sri Lanka, the Palestinian Territories, Somalia, Niger, Chad and especially Iraq, where it said “journalists continue to be buried almost every week.”

It also protested against censorship of new media (mobile phones transmitting photos and film and video-sharing and social networking websites) and highlighted media repression in China in the run-up to the Olympic Games there this summer.

“Nobody apart from the International Olympic Committee seems to believe the government will make a significant human rights concession before the Games start," it said. “Every time a journalist or blogger is released, another goes into prison. (...) China’s dissidents will probably be having a hard time this summer.”

The report includes surveys of press freedom in every region of the world over the past year and chapters on 98 countries, including European Union members and the United States.

A press conference to introduce the report will be held in Washington on 13 February in the presence of journalists from Iraq, China, Eritrea and Pakistan. Another will be held in Berlin with Russian and Zimbabwean journalists.

Reporters Without Borders defends imprisoned journalists and press freedom throughout the world. It has nine national sections (Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland). It has representatives in Bangkok, London, New York, Tokyo and Washington. And it has more than 120 correspondents worldwide.

High-tech giants seeking massive tax break

2008-02-12T09:59:00.000-07:00

Eastern Washington server farms could get $1 billion state exemption

By CHRIS McGANN
P-I CAPITOL CORRESPONDENT

OLYMPIA -- Microsoft and a handful of other tech giants are quietly securing a state tax break that could be worth more than $1 billion through legislation forged amid corporate threats and an interstate bidding war for computer server farms that have become the backbone of the Internet.

With its low-cost land and abundant clean power, Eastern Washington has the basic attributes to support the huge data centers companies such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are building for their online services.

But the companies say they need more tax breaks from the state to continue building.

"States such as Iowa and others have come on board with very attractive tax incentive packages to get data centers to locate in their communities," said DeLee Shoemaker, Microsoft's state government affairs director. "These other states that are in tough economic times and are looking to attract new business and new investments ... Washington state is no longer competitive for this type of business."

Microsoft and Yahoo already have server farms in Eastern Washington and had planned to build more. But when the state Department of Revenue recently determined that the server farms aren't eligible for an existing tax exemption for rural manufacturers, both companies halted new construction and began pushing for a new tax break.

Eager to shore up the flagging economy, lawmakers led by Gov. Chris Gregoire have taken up the issue. The server farms generate many temporary construction jobs and a small number of full-time positions. They also reduce the tax burden on local communities by expanding the property tax base.

Gregoire requested an exemption in Senate Bill 6666, which would eliminate half the state sales tax on replacement equipment for the mammoth computer server farms in Eastern Washington.

But even if her proposal passes, it might not be enough.

The proposed legislation "is a good starting point," Shoemaker said. "It's not us wanting more; it's us saying we have to make a business decision."

That's a story state governments have been hearing far too often, said Michael Mazerov of the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

"Companies are getting very sophisticated and aggressive at playing the states off each other and of course when the economy is turning down like it is now, they are even more successful at it because policymakers are very anxious to stimulate economic development," he said.

Is it worth it?

But Mazerov says there's a trade-off.

"That revenue could be used to improve education and make other investments that also have major economic development benefits."

Mazerov said in some ways, Washington could be a smart place to locate a server farm, even without a tax break.

"Washington has huge natural advantage, in terms of clean electricity, which is what these companies are looking for," he said. "The question with any tax incentive is: Are you rewarding companies for investments that they are going to be making anyway?"

The proposed exemption is moving forward with little public attention because it's structured in a way that shifts its fiscal impact two years into the future. With a line-item cost in this year's budget at zero, it stands outside much of the give-and-take that comes with balancing the state budget.

Faced with declines in projected revenues, Gregoire has told lawmakers that this year's budget must be frugal. She describes the tax exemption measure in two lines of her 38-page Budget and Policy Highlights manual as a "tax incentive for businesses to expand ... (no fiscal impact this biennium)."

Cost versus jobs

But in the next biennium, the incentive is worth $32 million, and $43 million in the next, according to Department of Revenue estimates. If viewed in the same 24-year time frame that generated the $3.2 billion cost estimate attached to Boeing's 2003 aerospace exemption, the new high-tech tax break could easily be worth more than $1 billion, according to Department of Revenue estimates.

Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairwoman Margarita Prentice, D-Renton, said the bill's price tag "gives one pause," but she'll support it because of what it represents for Eastern Washington.

"It is an opportunity to bring some really good jobs, jobs that pay well and an educated population that will be there permanently," she said, noting that the influx would be beneficial to rural schools and businesses.

"Jobs come a lot easier in Western Washington," Prentice said. "I'm really convinced we will be able to provide some of the same quality jobs to Eastern Washington."

E-mailing, blogging and downloading require massive computer banks or servers to store, move and process the information that most Internet users take for granted. Server farms are huge buildings full of computers that get so hot, companies spend as much to power the air conditioning as they do the computer processing. Access to cheap power alone can save companies millions each year.

During the first four-month construction phase, a data center employs about 600 construction workers. The next phase employs 500 workers.

Once the building is completed, the buildings employ 20 to 30 full-time workers.

Asked if the legislation was a gift to a huge corporate interest, Prentice said: "We gave another corporation (Boeing) a tax break," adding that other states are vying for the server farms.

"Those jobs are going to go somewhere -- better they should come to us," she said. Sen. Eric Oemig, D-Kirkland, isn't so sure.

Oemig said it doesn't make sense to cut taxes for an industry that is a drain on state resources. Server farms require a massive amount of constant electricity.

"You really have to look at the economic cost of (new industry) coming in," he said. "Maybe one thing they do is chop down a lot of trees, or create a lot of pollution or use up a lot of electricity."

Washington provides incentives for business even without more tax breaks.

"Right now we attract business because we have an excellent business climate," Oemig said. "Part of doing business in the state is paying rent. These server farms kind of want to come in here and have a reduced rent and I fail to see what the extraordinary value is that they are creating for Washington state that we should discount their rent."

Yahoo co-founder David Filo made his company's case for the tax break in a letter to Prentice.

He said the company has greatly expanded its presence in Washington, notably with a 115,000-square-foot software development facility in Bellevue and the construction of two "megadata" centers in Eastern Washington, but has halted new construction because of the Department of Revenue ruling.

"An unexpected requirement to pay sales tax will destroy the competitive advantage that led Yahoo to select Quincy as the location for our latest facility, and in fact swings the decision strongly in favor of freezing construction in Washington, and building instead in Oregon (which has no sales tax), as some of our competitors are already doing," he said.

Staying competitive

Gregoire sees the tax break as part of the cost of expanding top-tier tech companies in Washington, said her legislative liaison, Marty Brown.

"Proponents say that if we keep the server farms here, we will probably grow our base business in the state, too, because we will be closer to the server farms," he said. "Yahoo and Google may say we'll keep growing in Washington state because we've already done that in other state's where we've got server farms."

Brown said the tax exemptions are not just gifts to big-money business interests.

"They are going to do this someplace," he said. "It's sort of the industrial incentives similar to what folks did in the '70s to get industries to their state. It's what legislatures do."

The fact that Microsoft and the other companies with server farms are paying property taxes is a big selling point for them in the rural counties where they are located. Because of the high value they add to the taxing districts, the property tax burden is shifted away from individual payers and onto the megacompanies, proponents say.

Microsoft representative Shoemaker said the company has lobbied for a 100 percent sales tax exemption.

"Part of the reason why Washington state isn't suffering like many of the other states in this country is because the state has been smart enough to make these investments to diversify the economy," she said.

BY THE NUMBERS

0 Line-item cost in this year's budget for a sales-tax exemption for computer server farms.

$32 million Cost of the tax break in the 2009-2011 biennium.

$43 million Cost of the tax break in the 2011-2013 biennium.

$1 billion Cost of the tax break when viewed in the same 24-year time frame that generated the $3.2 billion cost estimate of Boeing's 2003 aerospace exemption.

P-I reporter Chris McGann can be reached at 360-943-3990 or chrismcgann@seattlepi.com.

Ron Paul Likely to Drop Out of '08 Race, Will Not Run as Third Party Candidate

2008-02-09T09:20:00.000-07:00

Another sad day. Pretty soon we'll only have McCain.

In an email to supporters last night, the New York Times notes Rep. Ron Paul conceded that his chance to win the Republican presidential nomination are "nearly zero."

But despite raising tens of millions of dollars, Paul "clearly stated that he will not run as a third-party candidate. Right now, his priorities are serving the residents in his Texas congressional district and winning re-election."

******

There is nothing wrong with the movement, people getting together. They have some interesting ideas out of the conventional mainstream - I think they picked the wrong guy. It will be interesting if the movement holds together.

It will be sad if the movement just dies - that'd mean it was all about Ron Paul and not about the principles, values and the rest.

I never supported him but if I had I'd be pissed. He knew all about the racists crap published in his newsletters and that was why he was so surprised at the support he gained from so many people that decided to believe in him.

I can get with some libertarian ideas and ideals (not all). One has to be cautious because libertarianism attracts some of the "beyond the fringe" like the KKK, white-power, gun nuts and surprisingly quite a few xenophobes.

Now the Paulites really need to take stock. Are they just Paulites or are they really patriots and do they support the GOP?

"A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. "
~ H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

Toxic Government Report Uncovered

2008-02-08T15:08:00.000-07:00

by Caitlin G. Johnson

NEW YORK - A much-delayed U.S. government report has been obtained by journalists, raising allegations that officials may be suppressing politically inconvenient data that, if released, could help protect the health of millions living in the Great Lakes region of the country.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study of environmental and health data in eight Great Lakes states was scheduled for publication in July 2007 but it has not yet been made public.

The Center for Public Integrity, a public interest investigative journalism organization, has obtained copies of the report and is raising questions about why despite several years of study and peer review, it was suddenly pulled back for revision — and why its lead author, Christopher De Rosa, was removed from the position he held since 1992.

The study, “Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern,” was developed by the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) at the request of the International Joint Commission, an independent U.S-Canadian organization that monitors and advises both governments on the use and quality of boundary waters.

It brings together two sets of data: environmental data on known “areas of concern” — including superfund sites and hazardous waste dumps — and separate health data collected by county or, in some cases, smaller geographical regions.

The findings pointed to elevated rates of lung, colon, and breast cancer; low birth weight; and infant mortality in several of the geographical areas of concern.

The report does not claim to identify cause and effect. Instead, it outlines areas for further study and data collection on the link between pollution and health.

“Let’s say we have a superfund site and we also find elevated risk of leukemia in the county — is that related? We don’t know, but people living in the area can logically argue that we ought to find out,” Dr. Peter Orris, a professor at the University of Illinois School of Public Health and one of the peer reviewers of the study, told OneWorld.

Orris is among several of the study’s peer reviewers who, along with the International Joint Committee in a December letter to the CDC, have called for the report’s publication.

“When you release these [environmental and health] databases together in a way that lets communities look at them, it raises questions that help define the environmental research agenda,” Oriss said.

CDC spokesperson Bernadette Burden told OneWorld that the report was held back because internal and external reviewers — including the Environmental Protection Agency and several state health departments — identified “numerous discrepancies and deficiencies” and determined a rigorous review was needed.

Burden cited several examples, including the fact that the county-level health data “reflected people’s illnesses from 1988 to 1997, while much of the environmental data used in the report came from the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory dated 2001 and the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination system with 2004 data.”

CDC did not clarify why these issues were not identified until July 2007 despite several years of review. A new director of CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health and ATSDR, Howard Frumkin, was appointed in July 2007, shortly before the report was due to be released.

Compounding the concerns surrounding the report are recent revelations that CDC failed to address toxins in FEMA trailers provided after Hurricane Katrina. CBS News broke the story after it obtained documents sent from Christopher De Rosa to his superiors at CDC warning that the trailers might be unsafe.

De Rosa also oversaw the Great Lakes report.

De Rosa, who served as director of the Division of Toxicology since 1992, was removed from this position and named special assistant in Frumkin’s office — a position that appears to carry “no real responsibilities” according to a Feb. 2008 letter from members of the Congressional Committee on Science and Technologies to CDC director Julie Gerberding. The letter called the move an apparent retaliation.

Toxins and Health Concerns Along the Great Lakes

In 1998, Canada’s federal health department produced reports on the overall health of people living in 17 areas of concern in Ontario, documenting elevated hospitalizations for certain diseases and higher rates of cancer and birth defects.

In 2001, the International Joint Commission requested that the United States prepare a similar report.

However, only two Great Lakes states, New York and Illinois, collect the type of data necessary to examine the link between health and environmental toxins, according to David Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and Environment at the University of New York at Albany School of Public Health and another of the study’s peer reviewers.

Carpenter said he hoped the release of the CDC study would raise awareness of the data gaps and inform future research. “In my judgment, it’s the best that could be done with the information available,” he said.

In two separate reviews, he recommended the study’s publication.

“I just don’t know why it hasn’t been [published],” he said.

As many as 9 million people — including residents of Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee — may be at risk from exposure to pollutants including pesticides, dioxin, PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls), and mercury, according to Sheila Kaplan, an investigative journalist who covered the story for the Center for Public Integrity.

Kaplan has read all three drafts of the study, from 2004 to 2007.

“It’s important for this work to be followed up on,” she told OneWorld. “What I hope from this report is that communities will say, ‘We deserve to know this information and whether exposure to these chemicals and metals is killing us.’ More work needs to be done.”

A Deliberate Suppression?

Canadian biologist Michael Gilbertson, a third peer reviewer, said on the record with the Center for Public Integrity that he felt the findings were being suppressed because they were “inconvenient.”

Peter Orris raised concern that the publication may have been halted based on orders outside the CDC.

“I have an overall concern with respect to the culture of this administration, which permeates all levels of the scientific wing of the government,” Orris told OneWorld. “The administration has regularly cut funds so that they don’t find statistics that could be potentially politically embarrassing — for instance, the sampling of toxins in fish in the Great Lakes has been cut way back.”

“If the messenger doesn’t come with the message, no one knows it’s there,” he added.

According to Burden, the CDC plans to release the report after the review is completed, in “weeks rather than months.” She could not comment about Christopher De Rosa or other personnel matters.

Poisoned dumplings kill $500m merger

2008-02-07T21:04:00.000-07:00

BEIJING - A shipment of poisoned Chinese-made pork dumplings - bite-sized, meat-filled snacks known as gyoza in Japan - has dished up one of the most far-reaching culinary quandaries of recent times, with a US$500 million corporate merger between Nissin Food Products Co and Japan Tobacco among the victims.

The dumpling disaster, which set off a health panic among Japanese consumers, has also taken a bite out of bilateral business, refocused concerns about China's food-safety standards and upset the historically fragile China-Japan trade dynamic.

To date, local media have reported several thousands of people visiting Japanese hospitals with stomach complaints, including a 10-year-old girl in a serious condition. Ten victims of dumpling-induced illness were confirmed by Thursday. Japanese police are investigating allegations of a link between the dumplings, imported from China by Japan Tobacco, and the illnesses.

The dumplings originated from Tianyang Food Plant, located in Shijiazhuang city, southwest of Beijing. Tianyang is a unit of state-owned Hebei Food Import & Export Group, an exporter of frozen and processed meats and freeze-dried vegetables.

In response to the spate of illnesses, Japan's Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said on February 1 that the food scare could damage Japan-China ties. Japanese corporations Maruha, Ajinomoto and Japan Tobacco recalled products supplied by Tianyang last week.

Exacerbating the dumpling "disaster" are swirling allegations about China's sub-standard hygiene practices, specifically related to two Chinese businesses charged in recent days by a US federal grand jury in connection with imported pet food ingredients that may have killed thousands of cats and dogs last year.

Tensions simmered further when Japan's Health Minister Yoichi Masuzoe told media on February 6 that the dumplings had been deliberately contaminated with pesticide and that police are treating it as attempted murder. Subsequent tests revealed that two toxic pesticides - dichlorvos and methamidophos - were found in the dumplings' dough and fillings.

Later, the public admission from Wei Chuanzhong, Chinese vice minister of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, that "a small group that does not wish for the development of Sino-Japanese friendship may have taken extreme measures", set off allegations of conspiracy from netizens and columnists in both countries.

Even so, a joint inspection team has now called the likelihood of the pesticides being added at the Tianynag factory "extremely small", describing the factory as "clean and well-managed" and adding that it is not clear whether the pesticides were added in China or after they were imported to Japan.

So, with Tokyo and Beijing calling for calm and promising increased cooperation in the ongoing inquiry, economic analysts are discussing the scare in terms of corporate finance rather than food safety.

On the sidelines of the dumpling crisis, Nissin Food dropped its plan to merge with Japan Tobacco, citing concerns about the cigarette makers' ties to the contaminated Chinese products.

Japan Tobacco, the world's third-largest cigarette maker, missed out on a chance to sell 49% of its subsidiary Katokichi Co to instant-noodle maker Nissin Food in exchange for combining their frozen-food units, acccording to statements from the three companies released to the Tokyo Stock Exchange on February 6.

"The retreat from the merger is a blow to Japan Tobacco's plan to expand food sales and reduce its reliance on revenue from cigarettes in Japan, where the percentage of men that smoke has fallen by half during the past 40 years," according to Bloomberg news service.

Nissin Food president Koki Ando told reporters that the company wanted a controlling stake in Katokichi but disagreed with Japan Tobacco on the food safety issue. Ando went on to say that the entire food industry has been affected by the "scandal" and had led to apprehension among consumers.

"The dissolution of the food units' merger is disappointing news for both Nissin and Japan Tobacco,'' Yasuhiro Matsumoto, an analyst at Shinsei Securities Co in Tokyo, told Bloomberg. "The merger would have been a win-win proposition for both.''

Industry reports said that Tokyo-based Japan Tobacco, the maker of Camel cigarettes, agreed to buy frozen-food maker Katokichi for 109 billion yen ($1 billion) in November. Annual frozen-food revenue at Katokichi, which in 2006 sold 196 billion yen of noodles, dumplings and other products, were expected to rise to about 260 billion yen when combined with the units from Japan Tobacco and Osaka-based Nissin.

The cigarette maker will keep its frozen food business, Japan Tobacco president Hiroshi Kimura said at a briefing, adding he has no plans to resign. He also warned that the dumpling affair will have an even wider impact.

"It's highly negative event for Japan Tobacco as their corporate governance and risk management will be called into question,'' said Junko Miyakawa, a senior analyst at Shinsei Securities Co, told Bloomberg. "The revenue of food companies will fall. The fallout will not end within two or three months.''

(Asia Pulse, with additional reporting by Asia Times Online.)

(emphasis mine)

CIA admits waterboarding inmates

2008-02-06T18:28:00.000-07:00

The CIA has for the first time publicly admitted using the controversial method of "waterboarding" on terror suspects.

CIA head Michael Hayden told Congress it had only been used on three people, and not for the past five years.

He said the technique had been used on high-profile al-Qaeda detainees including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Waterboarding, condemned as torture by rights groups and many governments, is an interrogation method that puts the the detainee in fear of drowning.

Mr Hayden was speaking as National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell presented his annual threat assessment.

We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time
Michael Hayden
CIA director

Congress has been debating banning the use of waterboarding by the CIA.

President Bush has threatened to veto such a bill.

Kuwaiti-born Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is accused of masterminding the 11 September attacks on the United States.

The two other men Mr Hayden said the CIA had also used waterboarding against are also top al-Qaeda suspects, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, both from Saudi Arabia.

Catastrophe fears

He told Congress: "We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time.

"There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about al-Qaeda and its workings.

"Those two realities have changed."

In his report, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell focussed attention on al-Qaeda and its leadership based in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"Al-Qaeda remains the pre-eminent threat against the United States, both here at home and abroad," he said.

His report said al-Qaeda enjoyed many of the same benefits from its bases in the border areas as it had when it was in Afghanistan proper, and was able to:

use the region as a staging area for attacks outside
maintain a group of skilled operators able to direct operations around the world
pass on morale-boosting messages from Saudi-born al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri
improve its ability to attack the US itself.

Despite this, Mr McConnell praised the Pakistani authorities, saying they had done more to "neutralise" terrorists than any of the US's other partners - despite more than 860 members of their security forces being killed by bombs in 2007.

And although al-Qaeda had suffered some reverses, he said, it remained active and dangerous in Iraq, in North Africa, in the Arabian peninsula, Lebanon, East Africa, Pakistan and South-East Asia.

Other worries outlined by Mr McConnell included:

Russia, China and oil producers using their wealth to advance political goals
nuclear proliferation, especially Iran and North Korea
computer system vulnerabilities.

"The threats we face are global, complex and dangerous," he wrote.

"We must have the tools to enable the detection and disruption of terrorist plots and other threats."

********

Waterboarding is torture and torture is an international crime.

Bush Gives Himself a Line-Item Veto

2008-02-04T20:41:00.000-07:00

On January 29, Bush issued Executive Order 13457, “Protecting American Taxpayers From Government Spending on Wasteful Earmarks”.

The executive order follows through on the threat the President made during his State of the Union address this week to sharply curtail the ability of Members of Congress, through the use of earmarks in committee report language, to designate funds in appropriations legislation for specific projects or organizations, most often in their district or state.

[…]

Specifically, the Executive Order:

Directs every Federal Agency to ensure that laws passed by Congress in the future do not spend money on an earmarked project based on language in a Committee report or any other communication from Members of Congress or other persons acting on their behalf.

In effect, the Executive Order declares the Bush has the power to reject against any part of the budget passed by Congress that Bush doesn’t like: a de facto line-item veto. Never mind that the Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that the Constitution does not permit the president to decide, item by item, which parts of the budget to accept or reject. If Bush doesn’t have the power of line-item veto before he signs the budget bill, he doesn’t have it afterward, either.

The flagrant violation of the Constitution isn’t the only offensive thing about this Executive Order.

Bush didn’t act against earmarks until the Democrats gained control of Congress and the number and cost of earmarks decreased:

The use of earmarks grew exponentially during President Bush’s years in the White House when the Republican Party controlled Congress. According to the watchdog group Citizen’s Against Government Waste, in 2001 there were 6,333 earmarks totaling $18.5 billion in the federal budget. By 2005, that number had ballooned to $27.3 billion for 13,997 projects. In 2007, the first year the Democrats controlled Congress, the numbers dropped dramatically to $13.2 billion for 2,658 earmarks

The Executive Order doesn’t go into effect until Fiscal Year 2009 (beginning October 1, 2008). By the time it has any effect (if enforced), Bush will be out of the White House. Bush just gave himself the power to decide how the next Administration spends the taxpayers’ money.

The first thing the next President needs to do after taking the oath of office is issue an Executive Order declaring all of George W. Bush’s Executive Orders rescinded, effective immediately.

The world's rubbish dump: a garbage tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan

2008-02-04T19:37:00.000-07:00

By Kathy Marks, Asia-Pacific Correspondent, and Daniel Howden
Tuesday, 5 February 2008

The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world's largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.

Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" or "trash vortex", believes that about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region. Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Mr Moore founded, said yesterday: "The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States."

Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer and leading authority on flotsam, has tracked the build-up of plastics in the seas for more than 15 years and compares the trash vortex to a living entity: "It moves around like a big animal without a leash." When that animal comes close to land, as it does at the Hawaiian archipelago, the results are dramatic. "The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic," he added.

The "soup" is actually two linked areas, either side of the islands of Hawaii, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches. About one-fifth of the junk – which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bags – is thrown off ships or oil platforms. The rest comes from land.

Mr Moore, a former sailor, came across the sea of waste by chance in 1997, while taking a short cut home from a Los Angeles to Hawaii yacht race. He had steered his craft into the "North Pacific gyre" – a vortex where the ocean circulates slowly because of little wind and extreme high pressure systems. Usually sailors avoid it.

He was astonished to find himself surrounded by rubbish, day after day, thousands of miles from land. "Every time I came on deck, there was trash floating by," he said in an interview. "How could we have fouled such a huge area? How could this go on for a week?"

Mr Moore, the heir to a family fortune from the oil industry, subsequently sold his business interests and became an environmental activist. He warned yesterday that unless consumers cut back on their use of disposable plastics, the plastic stew would double in size over the next decade.

Professor David Karl, an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii, said more research was needed to establish the size and nature of the plastic soup but that there was "no reason to doubt" Algalita's findings.

"After all, the plastic trash is going somewhere and it is about time we get a full accounting of the distribution of plastic in the marine ecosystem and especially its fate and impact on marine ecosystems."

Professor Karl is co-ordinating an expedition with Algalita in search of the garbage patch later this year and believes the expanse of junk actually represents a new habitat. Historically, rubbish that ends up in oceanic gyres has biodegraded. But modern plastics are so durable that objects half-a-century old have been found in the north Pacific dump. "Every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere," said Tony Andrady, a chemist with the US-based Research Triangle Institute.

Mr Moore said that because the sea of rubbish is translucent and lies just below the water's surface, it is not detectable in satellite photographs. "You only see it from the bows of ships," he said.

According to the UN Environment Programme, plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals. Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds, which mistake them for food.

Plastic is believed to constitute 90 per cent of all rubbish floating in the oceans. The UN Environment Programme estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic,

Dr Eriksen said the slowly rotating mass of rubbish-laden water poses a risk to human health, too. Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, or nurdles – the raw materials for the plastic industry – are lost or spilled every year, working their way into the sea. These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain. "What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It's that simple," said Dr Eriksen.

A Strike in the Dark

2008-02-04T13:46:00.000-07:00

Israel and the U.S. have avoided comment on press reports about a nuclear facility

What did Israel bomb in Syria?
by Seymour M. Hersh

Sometime after midnight on September 6, 2007, at least four low-flying Israeli Air Force fighters crossed into Syrian airspace and carried out a secret bombing mission on the banks of the Euphrates River, about ninety miles north of the Iraq border. The seemingly unprovoked bombing, which came after months of heightened tension between Israel and Syria over military exercises and troop buildups by both sides along the Golan Heights, was, by almost any definition, an act of war. But in the immediate aftermath nothing was heard from the government of Israel. In contrast, in 1981, when the Israeli Air Force destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, near Baghdad, the Israeli government was triumphant, releasing reconnaissance photographs of the strike and permitting the pilots to be widely interviewed.

Within hours of the attack, Syria denounced Israel for invading its airspace, but its public statements were incomplete and contradictory—thus adding to the mystery. A Syrian military spokesman said only that Israeli planes had dropped some munitions in an unpopulated area after being challenged by Syrian air defenses, “which forced them to flee.” Four days later, Walid Moallem, the Syrian foreign minister, said during a state visit to Turkey that the Israeli aircraft had used live ammunition in the attack, but insisted that there were no casualties or property damage. It was not until October 1st that Syrian President Bashar Assad, in an interview with the BBC, acknowledged that the Israeli warplanes had hit their target, which he described as an “unused military building.” Assad added that Syria reserved the right to retaliate, but his comments were muted.

Despite official silence in Tel Aviv (and in Washington), in the days after the bombing the American and European media were flooded with reports, primarily based on information from anonymous government sources, claiming that Israel had destroyed a nascent nuclear reactor that was secretly being assembled in Syria, with the help of North Korea. Beginning construction of a nuclear reactor in secret would be a violation of Syria’s obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and could potentially yield material for a nuclear weapon.

The evidence was circumstantial but seemingly damning. The first reports of Syrian and North Korean nuclear coöperation came on September 12th in the Times and elsewhere. By the end of October, the various media accounts generally agreed on four points: the Israeli intelligence community had learned of a North Korean connection to a construction site in an agricultural area in eastern Syria; three days before the bombing, a “North Korean ship,” identified as the Al Hamed, had arrived at the Syrian port of Tartus, on the Mediterranean; satellite imagery strongly suggested that the building under construction was designed to hold a nuclear reactor when completed; as such, Syria had crossed what the Israelis regarded as the “red line” on the path to building a bomb, and had to be stopped. There were also reports—by ABC News and others—that some of the Israeli intelligence had been shared in advance with the United States, which had raised no objection to the bombing.

The Israeli government still declined to make any statement about the incident. Military censorship on dispatches about the raid was imposed for several weeks, and the Israeli press resorted to recycling the disclosures in the foreign press. In the first days after the attack, there had been many critical stories in the Israeli press speculating about the bombing, and the possibility that it could lead to a conflict with Syria. Larry Derfner, a columnist writing in the Jerusalem Post, described the raid as “the sort of thing that starts wars.” But, once reports about the nuclear issue and other details circulated, the domestic criticism subsided.

At a news conference on September 20th, President George W. Bush was asked about the incident four times but said, “I’m not going to comment on the matter.” The lack of official statements became part of the story. “The silence from all parties has been deafening,” David Ignatius wrote in the Washington Post, “but the message to Iran”—which the Administration had long suspected of pursuing a nuclear weapon—“is clear: America and Israel can identify nuclear targets and penetrate air defenses to destroy them.”

It was evident that officials in Israel and the United States, although unwilling to be quoted, were eager for the news media to write about the bombing. Early on, a former officer in the Israel Defense Forces with close contacts in Israeli intelligence approached me, with a version of the standard story, including colorful but, as it turned out, unconfirmable details: Israeli intelligence tracking the ship from the moment it left a North Korean port; Syrian soldiers wearing protective gear as they off-loaded the cargo; Israeli intelligence monitoring trucks from the docks to the target site. On October 3rd, the London Spectator, citing much of the same information, published an overheated account of the September 6th raid, claiming that it “may have saved the world from a devastating threat,” and that “a very senior British ministerial source” had warned, “If people had known how close we came to World War Three that day there’d have been mass panic.”

However, in three months of reporting for this article, I was repeatedly told by current and former intelligence, diplomatic, and congressional officials that they were not aware of any solid evidence of ongoing nuclear-weapons programs in Syria. It is possible that Israel conveyed intelligence directly to senior members of the Bush Administration, without it being vetted by intelligence agencies. (This process, known as “stovepiping,” overwhelmed U.S. intelligence before the war in Iraq.) But Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations group responsible for monitoring compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, said, “Our experts who have carefully analyzed the satellite imagery say it is unlikely that this building was a nuclear facility.”

Joseph Cirincione, the director for nuclear policy at the Center for American Progress, a Washington, D.C., think tank, told me, “Syria does not have the technical, industrial, or financial ability to support a nuclear-weapons program. I’ve been following this issue for fifteen years, and every once in a while a suspicion arises and we investigate and there’s nothing. There was and is no nuclear-weapons threat from Syria. This is all political.” Cirincione castigated the press corps for its handling of the story. “I think some of our best journalists were used,” he said.

A similar message emerged at briefings given to select members of Congress within weeks of the attack. The briefings, conducted by intelligence agencies, focussed on what Washington knew about the September 6th raid. One concern was whether North Korea had done anything that might cause the U.S. to back away from ongoing six-nation talks about its nuclear program. A legislator who took part in one such briefing said afterward, according to a member of his staff, that he had heard nothing that caused him “to have any doubts” about the North Korean negotiations—“nothing that should cause a pause.” The legislator’s conclusion, the staff member said, was “There’s nothing that proves any perfidy involving the North Koreans.”

Morton Abramowitz, a former Assistant Secretary of State for intelligence and research, told me that he was astonished by the lack of response. “Anytime you bomb another state, that’s a big deal,” he said. “But where’s the outcry, particularly from the concerned states and the U.N.? Something’s amiss.”

Israel could, of course, have damning evidence that it refuses to disclose. But there are serious and unexamined contradictions in the various published accounts of the September 6th bombing.

The main piece of evidence to emerge publicly that Syria was building a reactor arrived on October 23rd, when David Albright, of the Institute for Science and International Security, a highly respected nonprofit research group, released a satellite image of the target. The photograph had been taken by a commercial satellite company, DigitalGlobe, of Longmont, Colorado, on August 10th, four weeks before the bombing, and showed a square building and a nearby water-pumping station. In an analysis released at the same time, Albright, a physicist who served as a weapons inspector in Iraq, concluded that the building, as viewed from space, had roughly the same length and width as a reactor building at Yongbyon, North Korea’s main nuclear facility. “The tall building in the image may house a reactor under construction and the pump station along the river may have been intended to supply cooling water to the reactor,” Albright said. He concluded his analysis by posing a series of rhetorical questions that assumed that the target was a nuclear facility: How far along was the reactor construction project when it was bombed? What was the extent of nuclear assistance from North Korea? Which reactor components did Syria obtain from North Korea or elsewhere, and where are they now?

He was later quoted in the Washington Post saying, “I’m pretty convinced that Syria was trying to build a nuclear reactor.”

When I asked Albright how he had pinpointed the target, he told me that he and a colleague, Paul Brannan, “did a lot of hard work”—culling press reports and poring over DigitalGlobe imagery—“before coming up with the site.” Albright then shared his findings with Robin Wright and other journalists at the Post, who, after checking with Administration officials, told him that the building was, indeed, the one targeted by the Israelis. “We did not release the information until we got direct confirmation from the Washington Post,” he told me. The Post’s sources in the Administration, he understood, had access to far more detailed images obtained by U.S. intelligence satellites. The Post ran a story, without printing the imagery, on October 19th, reporting that “U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the aftermath of the attack” had concluded that the site had the “signature,” or characteristics, of a reactor “similar in structure to North Korea’s facilities”—a conclusion with which Albright then agreed. In other words, the Albright and the Post reports, which appeared to independently reinforce each other, stemmed in part from the same sources.

Albright told me that before going public he had met privately with Israeli officials. “I wanted to be sure in my own mind that the Israelis thought it was a reactor, and I was,” he said. “They never explicitly said it was nuclear, but they ruled out the possibility that it was a missile, chemical-warfare, or radar site. By a process of elimination, I was left with nuclear.”

Two days after his first report, Albright released a satellite image of the bombed site, taken by DigitalGlobe on October 24th, seven weeks after the bombing. The new image showed that the target area had been levelled and the ground scraped. Albright said that it hinted of a coverup—cleansing the bombing site could make it difficult for weapons inspectors to determine its precise nature. “It looks like Syria is trying to hide something and destroy the evidence of some activity,” he told the Times. “But it won’t work. Syria has got to answer questions about what it was doing.” This assessment was widely shared in the press. (In mid-January, the Times reported that recent imagery from DigitalGlobe showed that a storage facility, or something similar, had been constructed, in an obvious rush, at the bombing site.)

Proliferation experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency and others in the arms-control community disputed Albright’s interpretation of the images. “People here were baffled by this, and thought that Albright had stuck his neck out,” a diplomat in Vienna, where the I.A.E.A. is headquartered, told me. “The I.A.E.A. has been consistently telling journalists that it is skeptical about the Syrian nuclear story, but the reporters are so convinced.”

A second diplomat in Vienna acidly commented on the images: “A square building is a square building.” The diplomat, who is familiar with the use of satellite imagery for nuclear verification, added that the I.A.E.A. “does not have enough information to conclude anything about the exact nature of the facility. They see a building with some geometry near a river that could be identified as nuclear-related. But they cannot credibly conclude that is so. As far as information coming from open sources beyond imagery, it’s a struggle to extract information from all of the noise that comes from political agendas.”

Much of what one would expect to see around a secret nuclear site was lacking at the target, a former State Department intelligence expert who now deals with proliferation issues for the Congress said. “There is no security around the building,” he said. “No barracks for the Army or the workers. No associated complex.” Jeffrey Lewis, who heads the non-proliferation program at the New America Foundation, a think tank in Washington, told me that, even if the width and the length of the building were similar to the Korean site, its height was simply not sufficient to contain a Yongbyon-size reactor and also have enough room to extract the control rods, an essential step in the operation of the reactor; nor was there evidence in the published imagery of major underground construction. “All you could see was a box,” Lewis said. “You couldn’t see enough to know how big it will be or what it will do. It’s just a box.”

A former senior U.S. intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, said, “We don’t have any proof of a reactor—no signals intelligence, no human intelligence, no satellite intelligence.” Some well-informed defense consultants and former intelligence officials asked why, if there was compelling evidence of nuclear cheating involving North Korea, a member of the President’s axis of evil, and Syria, which the U.S. considers a state sponsor of terrorism, the Bush Administration would not insist on making it public.

When I went to Israel in late December, the government was still maintaining secrecy about the raid, but some current and former officials and military officers were willing to speak without attribution. Most were adamant that Israel’s intelligence had been accurate. “Don’t you write that there was nothing there!” a senior Israeli official, who is in a position to know the details of the raid on Syria, said, shaking a finger at me. “The thing in Syria was real.”

Retired Brigadier General Shlomo Brom, who served as deputy national-security adviser under Prime Minister Ehud Barak, told me that Israel wouldn’t have acted if it hadn’t been convinced that there was a threat. “It may have been a perception of a conviction, but there was something there,” Brom said. “It was the beginning of a nuclear project.” However, by the date of our talk, Brom told me, “The question of whether it was there or not is not that relevant anymore.”

Albright, when I spoke to him in December, was far more circumspect than he had been in October. “We never said ‘we know’ it was a reactor, based on the image,” Albright said. “We wanted to make sure that the image was consistent with a reactor, and, from my point of view, it was. But that doesn’t confirm it’s a reactor.”

The journey of the Al Hamed, a small coastal trader, became a centerpiece in accounts of the September 6th bombing. On September 15th, the Washington Post reported that “a prominent U.S. expert on the Middle East” said that the attack “appears to have been linked to the arrival . . . of a ship carrying material from North Korea labeled as cement.” The article went on to cite the expert’s belief that “the emerging consensus in Israel was that it delivered nuclear equipment.” Other press reports identified the Al Hamed as a “suspicious North Korean” ship.

But there is evidence that the Al Hamed could not have been carrying sensitive cargo—or any cargo—from North Korea. International shipping is carefully monitored by Lloyd’s Marine Intelligence Unit, which relies on a network of agents as well as on port logs and other records. In addition, most merchant ships are now required to operate a transponder device called an A.I.S., for automatic identification system. This device, which was on board the Al Hamed, works in a manner similar to a transponder on a commercial aircraft—beaming a constant, very high-frequency position report. (The U.S. Navy monitors international sea traffic with the aid of dedicated satellites, at a secret facility in suburban Washington.)

According to Marine Intelligence Unit records, the Al Hamed, which was built in 1965, had been operating for years in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea, with no indication of any recent visits to North Korea. The records show that the Al Hamed arrived at Tartus on September 3rd—the ship’s fifth visit to Syria in five months. (It was one of eight ships that arrived that day; although it is possible that one of the others was carrying illicit materials, only the Al Hamed has been named in the media.) The ship’s registry was constantly changing. The Al Hamed flew the South Korean flag before switching to North Korea in November of 2005, and then to Comoros. (Ships often fly flags of convenience, registering with different countries, in many cases to avoid taxes or onerous regulations.) At the time of the bombing, according to Lloyd’s, it was flying a Comoran flag and was owned by four Syrian nationals. In earlier years, under other owners, the ship seems to have operated under Russian, Estonian, Turkish, and Honduran flags. Lloyd’s records show that the ship had apparently not passed through the Suez Canal—the main route from the Mediterranean to the Far East—since at least 1998.

Among the groups that keep track of international shipping is Greenpeace. Martini Gotjé, who monitors illegal fishing for the organization and was among the first to raise questions about the Al Hamed, told me, “I’ve been at sea for forty-one years, and I can tell you, as a captain, that the Al Hamed was nothing—in rotten shape. You wouldn’t be able to load heavy cargo on it, as the floorboards wouldn’t be that strong.”

If the Israelis’ target in Syria was not a nuclear site, why didn’t the Syrians respond more forcefully? Syria complained at the United Nations but did little to press the issue. And, if the site wasn’t a partially built reactor, what was it?

During two trips to Damascus after the Israeli raid, I interviewed many senior government and intelligence officials. None of President Assad’s close advisers told me the same story, though some of the stories were more revealing—and more plausible—than others. In general, Syrian officials seemed more eager to analyze Israel’s motives than to discuss what had been attacked. “I hesitate to answer any journalist’s questions about it,” Faruq al-Shara, the Syrian Vice-President, told me. “Israel bombed to restore its credibility, and their objective is for us to keep talking about it. And by answering your questions I serve their objective. Why should I volunteer to do that?” Shara denied that his nation has a nuclear-weapons program. “The volume of articles about the bombing is incredible, and it’s not important that it’s a lie,” he said.

One top foreign-ministry official in Damascus told me that the target “was an old military building that had been abandoned by the Syrian military” years ago. But a senior Syrian intelligence general gave me a different account. “What they targeted was a building used for fertilizer and water pumps,” he said—part of a government effort to revitalize farming. “There is a large city”— Dayr az Zawr—“fifty kilometres away. Why would Syria put nuclear material near a city?” I interviewed the intelligence general again on my second visit to Damascus, and he reiterated that the targeted building was “at no time a military facility.” As to why Syria had not had a more aggressive response, if the target was so benign, the general said, “It was not fear—that’s all I’ll say.” As I left, I asked the general why Syria had not invited representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the bombing site and declare that no nuclear activity was taking place there. “They did not ask to come,” he said, and “Syria had no reason to ask them to come.”

An I.A.E.A. official dismissed that assertion when we spoke in Vienna a few days later. “The I.A.E.A. asked the Syrians to allow the agency to visit the site to verify its nature,” the I.A.E.A. official said. “Syria’s reply was that it was a military, not a nuclear, installation, and there would be no reason for the I.A.E.A. to go there. It would be in their and everyone’s interest to have the I.A.E.A. visit the site. If it was nuclear, it would leave fingerprints.”

In a subsequent interview, Imad Moustapha, the Syrian Ambassador to Washington, defended Syria’s decision not to invite the I.A.E.A. inspectors. “We will not get into the game of inviting foreign experts to visit every site that Israel claims is a nuclear facility,” Moustapha told me. “If we bring them in and they say there is nothing there, then Israel will say it made a mistake and bomb another site two weeks later. And if we then don’t let the I.A.E.A. in, Israel will say, ‘You see?’ This is nonsense. Why should we have to do this?”

Even if the site was not a nuclear installation, it is possible that the Syrians feared that an I.A.E.A. inquiry would uncover the presence of North Koreans there. In Syria, I was able to get some confirmation that North Koreans were at the target. A senior officer in Damascus with firsthand knowledge of the incident agreed to see me alone, at his home; my other interviews in Damascus took place in government offices. According to his account, North Koreans were present at the site, but only as paid construction workers. The senior officer said that the targeted building, when completed, would most likely have been used as a chemical-warfare facility. (Syria is not a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention and has been believed, for decades, to have a substantial chemical-weapons arsenal.)

The building contract with North Korea was a routine business deal, the senior officer said—from design to construction. (North Korea may, of course, have sent skilled technicians capable of doing less routine work.) Syria and North Korea have a long-standing partnership on military matters. “The contract between Syria and North Korea was old, from 2002, and it was running late,” the senior officer told me. “It was initially to be finished in 2005, and the Israelis might have expected it was further along.”

The North Korean laborers had been coming and going for “maybe six months” before the September bombing, the senior officer said, and his government concluded that the Israelis had picked up North Korean telephone chatter at the site. (This fit the timeline that Israeli officials had given me.) “The Israelis may have their own spies and watched the laborers being driven to the area,” the senior officer said. “The Koreans were not there at night, but slept in their quarters and were driven to the site in the morning. The building was in an isolated area, and the Israelis may have concluded that even if there was a slight chance”—of it being a nuclear facility—“we’ll take that risk.”

On the days before the bombing, the Koreans had been working on the second floor, and were using a tarp on top of the building to shield the site from rain and sun. “It was just the North Korean way of working,” the Syrian senior officer said, adding that the possibility that the Israelis could not see what was underneath the tarp might have added to their determination.

The attack was especially dramatic, the Syrian senior officer said, because the Israelis used bright magnesium illumination flares to light up the target before the bombing. Night suddenly turned into day, he told me. “When the people in the area saw the lights and the bombing, they thought there would be a commando raid,” the senior officer said. The building was destroyed, and his government eventually concluded that there were no Israeli ground forces in the area. But if Israelis had been on the ground seeking contaminated soil samples, the senior officer said, “they found only cement.”

A senior Syrian official confirmed that a group of North Koreans had been at work at the site, but he denied that the structure was related to chemical warfare. Syria had concluded, he said, that chemical warfare had little deterrent value against Israel, given its nuclear capability. The facility that was attacked, the official said, was to be one of a string of missile-manufacturing plants scattered throughout Syria—“all low tech. Not strategic.” (North Korea has been a major exporter of missile technology and expertise to Syria for decades.) He added, “We’ve gone asymmetrical, and have been improving our capability to build low-tech missiles that will enable us to inflict as much damage as possible without confronting the Israeli Army. We now can hit all of Israel, and not just the north.”

Whatever was under construction, with North Korean help, it apparently had little to do with agriculture—or with nuclear reactors—but much to do with Syria’s defense posture, and its military relationship with North Korea. And that, perhaps, was enough to silence the Syrian government after the September 6th bombing.

It is unclear to what extent the Bush Administration was involved in the Israeli attack. The most detailed report of coöperation was made in mid-October by ABC News. Citing a senior U.S. official, the network reported that Israel had shared intelligence with the United States and received satellite help and targeting information in response. At one point, it was reported, the Bush Administration considered attacking Syria itself, but rejected that option. The implication was that the Israeli intelligence about the nuclear threat had been vetted by the U.S., and had been found to be convincing.

Yet officials I spoke to in Israel heatedly denied the notion that they had extensive help from Washington in planning the attack. When I told the senior Israeli official that I found little support in Washington for Israel’s claim that it had bombed a nuclear facility in Syria, he responded with an expletive, and then said, angrily, “Nobody helped us. We did it on our own.” He added, “What I’m saying is that nobody discovered it for us.” (The White House declined to comment on this story.)

There is evidence to support this view. The satellite operated by DigitalGlobe, the Colorado firm that supplied Albright’s images, is for hire; anyone can order the satellite to photograph specific coördinates, a process that can cost anywhere from several hundred to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The company displays the results of these requests on its Web page, but not the identity of the customer. On five occasions between August 5th and August 27th of last year—before the Israeli bombing—DigitalGlobe was paid to take a tight image of the targeted building in Syria.

Clearly, whoever ordered the images likely had some involvement in plans for the attack. DigitalGlobe does about sixty per cent of its business with the U.S. government, but those contracts are for unclassified work, such as mapping. The government’s own military and intelligence satellite system, with an unmatched ability to achieve what analysts call “highly granular images,” could have supplied superior versions of the target sites. Israel has at least two military satellite systems, but, according to Allen Thomson, a former C.I.A. analyst, DigitalGlobe’s satellite has advantages for reconnaissance, making Israel a logical customer. (“Customer anonymity is crucial to us,” Chuck Herring, a spokesman for DigitalGlobe, said. “I don’t know who placed the order and couldn’t disclose it if I did.”) It is also possible that Israel or the United States ordered the imagery in order to have something unclassified to pass to the press if needed. If the Bush Administration had been aggressively coöperating with Israel before the attack, why would Israel have to turn to a commercial firm?

Last fall, aerospace industry and military sources told Aviation Week & Space Technology, an authoritative trade journal, that the United States had provided Israel with advice about “potential target vulnerabilities” before the September 6th attack, and monitored the radar as the mission took place. The magazine reported that the Israeli fighters, prior to bombing the target on the Euphrates, struck a Syrian radar facility near the Turkish border, knocking the radar out of commission and permitting them to complete their mission without interference.

The former U.S. senior intelligence official told me that, as he understood it, America’s involvement in the Israeli raid dated back months earlier, and was linked to the Administration’s planning for a possible air war against Iran. Last summer, the Defense Intelligence Agency came to believe that Syria was installing a new Russian-supplied radar-and-air-defense system that was similar to the radar complexes in Iran. Entering Syrian airspace would trigger those defenses and expose them to Israeli and American exploitation, yielding valuable information about their capabilities. Vice-President Dick Cheney supported the idea of overflights, the former senior intelligence official said, because “it would stick it to Syria and show that we’re serious about Iran.” (The Vice-President’s office declined to comment.) The former senior intelligence official said that Israeli military jets have flown over Syria repeatedly, without retaliation from Syria. At the time, the former senior intelligence official said, the focus was on radar and air defenses, and not on any real or suspected nuclear facility. Israel’s claims about the target, which emerged later, caught many in the military and intelligence community—if not in the White House—by surprise.
The senior Israeli official, asked whether the attack was rooted in his country’s interest in Syria’s radar installations, told me, “Bullshit.” Whatever the Administration’s initial agenda, Israel seems to have been after something more.

The story of the Israeli bombing of Syria, with its mixture of satellite intelligence, intercepts, newspaper leaks, and shared assumptions, reminded some American diplomats and intelligence officials of an incident, ten years ago, involving North Korea. In mid-1998, American reconnaissance satellites photographed imagery of a major underground construction project at Kumchang-ri, twenty-five miles northwest of Yongbyon. “We were briefed that, without a doubt, this was a nuclear-related facility, and there was signals intelligence linking the construction brigade at Kumchang-ri to the nuclear complex at Yongbyon,” the former State Department intelligence expert recalled.

Charles Kartman, who was President Bill Clinton’s special envoy for peace talks with Korea, told me that the intelligence was considered a slam dunk by analysts in the Defense Intelligence Agency, even though other agencies disagreed. “We had a debate going on inside the community, but the D.I.A. unilaterally took it to Capitol Hill,” Kartman said, forcing the issue and leading to a front-page Times story.

After months of negotiations, Kartman recalled, the North Koreans agreed, under diplomatic pressure, to grant access to Kumchang-ri. In return, they received aid, including assistance with a new potato-production program. Inspectors found little besides a series of empty tunnels. Robert Carlin, an expert on North Korea who retired in 2005 after serving more than thirty years with the C.I.A. and the State Department’s intelligence bureau, told me that the Kumchang-ri incident highlighted “an endemic weakness” in the American intelligence community. “People think they know the ending and then they go back and find the evidence that fits their story,” he said. “And then you get groupthink—and people reinforce each other.”

It seems that, as with Kumchang-ri, there was a genuine, if not unanimous, belief by Israeli intelligence that the Syrians were constructing something that could have serious national-security consequences. But why would the Israelis take the risk of provoking a military response, and perhaps a war, if there was, as it seems, no smoking gun? Mohamed ElBaradei, expressing his frustration, said, “If a country has any information about a nuclear activity in another country, it should inform the I.A.E.A.—not bomb first and ask questions later.”

One answer, suggested by David Albright, is that Israel did not trust the international arms-control community. “I can understand the Israeli point of view, given the history with Iran and Algeria,” Albright said. “Both nations had nuclear-weapons programs and, after being caught cheating, declared their reactors to be civil reactors, for peacetime use. The international groups, like the U.N. and the I.A.E.A, never shut them down.” Also, Israel may have calculated that risk of a counterattack was low: President Assad would undoubtedly conclude that the attack had the support of the Bush Administration and, therefore, that any response by Syria would also engage the U.S. (My conversations with officials in Syria bore out this assumption.)

In Tel Aviv, the senior Israeli official pointedly told me, “Syria still thinks Hezbollah won the war in Lebanon”—referring to the summer, 2006, fight between Israel and the Shiite organization headed by Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. “Nasrallah knows how much that war cost—one-third of his fighters were killed, infrastructure was bombed, and ninety-five per cent of his strategic weapons were wiped out,” the Israeli official said. “But Assad has a Nasrallah complex and thinks Hezbollah won. And, ‘If he did it, I can do it.’ This led to an adventurous mood in Damascus. Today, they are more sober.”

That notion was echoed by the ambassador of an Israeli ally who is posted in Tel Aviv. “The truth is not important,” the ambassador told me. “Israel was able to restore its credibility as a deterrent. That is the whole thing. No one will know what the real story is.”

There is evidence that the preëmptive raid on Syria was also meant as a warning about—and a model for—a preëmptive attack on Iran. When I visited Israel this winter, Iran was the overriding concern among political and defense officials I spoke to—not Syria. There was palpable anger toward Washington, in the wake of a National Intelligence Estimate that concluded, on behalf of the American intelligence community, that Iran is not now constructing a nuclear weapon. Many in Israel view Iran’s nuclear ambitions as an existential threat; they believe that military action against Iran may be inevitable, and worry that America may not be there when needed. The N.I.E. was published in November, after a yearlong standoff involving Cheney’s office, which resisted the report’s findings. At the time of the raid, reports about the forthcoming N.I.E. and its general conclusion had already appeared.

Retired Major General Giora Eiland, who served as the national-security adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, told me, “The Israeli military takes it as an assumption that one day we will need to have a military campaign against Iran, to slow and eliminate the nuclear option.” He added, “Whether the political situation will allow this is another question.”
In the weeks after the N.I.E.’s release, Bush insisted that the Iranian nuclear-weapons threat was as acute as ever, a theme he amplified during his nine-day Middle East trip after the New Year. “A lot of people heard that N.I.E. out here and said that George Bush and the Americans don’t take the Iranian threat seriously,” he told Greta Van Susteren, of Fox News. “And so this trip has been successful from the perspective of saying . . . we will keep the pressure on.”

Shortly after the bombing, a Chinese envoy and one of the Bush Administration’s senior national-security officials met in Washington. The Chinese envoy had just returned from a visit to Tehran, a person familiar with the discussion told me, and he wanted the White House to know that there were moderates there who were interested in talks. The national-security official rejected that possibility and told the envoy, as the person familiar with the discussion recalled, “‘You are aware of the recent Israeli statements about Syria. The Israelis are extremely serious about Iran and its nuclear program, and I believe that, if the United States government is unsuccessful in its diplomatic dealings with Iran, the Israelis will take it out militarily.’ He then told the envoy that he wanted him to convey this to his government—that the Israelis were serious.

“He was telling the Chinese leadership that they’d better warn Iran that we can’t hold back Israel, and that the Iranians should look at Syria and see what’s coming next if diplomacy fails,” the person familiar with the discussion said. “His message was that the Syrian attack was in part aimed at Iran.” ♦

McCain changes his position on Iraq (again)

2008-02-02T18:51:00.000-07:00

To hear some of John McCain’s media admirers tell it, “McCain, whether you agree with him or not, has been entirely consistent about the war.” To hear his campaign tell it, “John McCain has mainted [sic] a consistent record on Iraq since the very beginning.”

But pesky little details like reality keep getting in the way.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has long supported a 50-year troop presence in Iraq — or the “South Korea model” — set forth by President Bush and Gen. Petraeus. “We have had troops in South Korea for 60 years and nobody minds,” he said in June. On the Charlie Rose Show in August, McCain said the Korea model was “exactly” the right idea.

Yesterday on Charlie Rose, McCain changed his position, arguing that the Korea-like presence is not an “analogy” he would use for Iraq. Recognizing the “nature of the society in Iraq,” McCain suggested that Iraqi opposition to a permanent U.S. occupation may make the South Korea model implausible.

McCain added that the “nature of the society in Iraq” and the “religious aspects” of the country make it inevitable that the United States “eventually withdraws.”

But if you suggest five years of failed policies is long enough, you’re a cut-and-run coward who embraces defeat, loves al Qaeda, and hates our troops.

I have a very hard time understanding how it is this guy earned a reputation for “consistency.” The only thing consistent about McCain’s policy towards Iraq is that it changes every few months.Of course, that fits into a pattern with the senator. Long-time readers know what this means: it’s time to update the list of John McCain Biggest Flip-Flops.

* McCain used to champion the Law of the Sea convention, even volunteering to testify on the treaty’s behalf before a Senate committee. Now he opposes it.

* McCain was a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to illegal immigrants’ kids who graduate from high school. Now he’s against it.

* In 2006, McCain sponsored legislation to require grassroots lobbying coalitions to reveal their financial donors. In 2007, after receiving “feedback” on the proposal, McCain told far-right activist groups that he now opposes the measure.

* McCain has been both open and closed to a redeploy-to-perimeter strategy in Iraq.

* McCain said before the war in Iraq, “We will win this conflict. We will win it easily.” Four years later, McCain said he knew all along that the war in Iraq war was “probably going to be long and hard and tough.”

* McCain said he was the “greatest critic” of Rumsfeld’s failed Iraq policy. In December 2003, McCain praised the same strategy as “a mission accomplished.” In March 2004, he said, “I’m confident we’re on the right course.” In December 2005, he said, “Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course.”

* McCain went from saying he would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade to saying the exact opposite.

* McCain went from saying gay marriage should be allowed, to saying gay marriage shouldn’t be allowed.

* McCain criticized TV preacher Jerry Falwell as “an agent of intolerance” in 2002, but then decided to cozy up to the man who said Americans “deserved” the 9/11 attacks.

* McCain used to oppose Bush’s tax cuts for the very wealthy, but he reversed course in February.

* In 2000, McCain accused Texas businessmen Sam and Charles Wyly of being corrupt, spending “dirty money” to help finance Bush’s presidential campaign. McCain not only filed a complaint against the Wylys for allegedly violating campaign finance law, he also lashed out at them publicly. In April, McCain reached out to the Wylys for support.

* McCain supported a major campaign-finance reform measure that bore his name. In June, he abandoned his own legislation.

* McCain used to think that Grover Norquist was a crook and a corrupt shill for dictators. Then McCain got serious about running for president and began to reconcile with Norquist.

* McCain took a firm line in opposition to torture, and then caved to White House demands.

* McCain opposed a holiday to honor Martin Luther King, Jr., before he supported it.

* McCain was against presidential candidates campaigning at Bob Jones University before he was for it.

* McCain was anti-ethanol. Now he’s pro-ethanol.

* McCain was both for and against state promotion of the Confederate flag.

* McCain decided in 2000 that he didn’t want anything to do with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, believing he “would taint the image of the ‘Straight Talk Express.’” Kissinger is now the Honorary Co-Chair for his presidential campaign in New York.

Now, it’s worth noting that there are worse qualities in a presidential candidate than changing one’s mind about a policy matter or two. McCain has been in Congress for decades; he’s bound to shift now and then on various controversies.

But therein lies the point — McCain was consistent on most of these issues, right up until he started running for president, at which point he conveniently abandoned practically every position he used to hold. The problem isn’t just the incessant flip-flops; it’s the shameless pandering and hollow convictions behind the incessant flip-flops.

It’s a shame what running for the Republican nomination will do to a guy, isn’t it?

Sacked Paul volunteer: 'I don't have swastikas on'

2008-02-02T08:00:00.001-07:00

A former Midland County coordinator of GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul's campaign said he was never asked nor sent a questionnaire about his ties to the Ku Klux Klan.

Randy G. Gray II, 29, a self-described grassroots volunteer who campaigned door-to-door for the Texas Republican, also said he had no formal ties to the candidate's national organization.

"Nobody asked anything," said Gray, who acknowledges membership in the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. "I figure, why volunteer information if they don't need it?"

The Midland resident said he joined the Paul election bandwagon on his own to learn about political activism and because he agreed with the Texas congressman on "90 percent" of the issues.

Leslie Roszman, Michigan campaign coordinator for Paul, said Gray was sent a code of conduct for campaign workers. Gray said that he didn't receive it until "much later."

Roszman said while Gray went "above and beyond the call of duty" to work for Paul, she did not know about Gray's connection to the Klan.

On the Ron Paul 2008 campaign's national Web site, a statement previously attributed to Roszman posted a strongly worded response:

"... Randy Gray was not forthcoming about his background, and he was in clear violation of the campaign's code of conduct for volunteers," it said. "No one affiliated with racist organizations would ever knowingly be allowed to have any role with the campaign. Dr. Paul's philosophy of freedom and individual liberty is the antithesis of racism."

Gray made no apologies Wednesday for his involvement in the Klan.

"I believe in free speech," he said. "I'm conservative, I have libertarian views, but I also have racial views. ...

"I don't fit the stereotype. I don't have swastikas on."

He also disputed the campaign's description of the Klan, and added he has no criminal history.

A background check of Gray turned up no criminal record.

In August, Gray posted a notice on an American Socialist Workers Party Web log announcing his involvement in the campaign. The political party is a white supremacist group.

Daily Kos, a liberal news blog, has claimed Paul campaign coordinators were aware of Gray's Klan ties before Roszman's statement was posted.

Roszman said she knew nothing about Gray's connection to the group.

"The very first time I ever even heard of this is when national called me," she said. "I have been completely unaware of this. I was completely caught off guard."

Gray also acknowledged he was listed as an organizer, recruiter and Klan cable show sponsor on a list of speakers at the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Arkansas, the Web site stormfront.org reported.

He said he spoke at the gathering two years ago about using public access "as a means of getting our message out."

"I think people when they think of the KKK they blow it out of proportion about what it's all about," he said.

Gray once submitted a 30-minute television program entitled "This Is The Klan" to Midland Community Television.

A December 2005 Saginaw News story also reported that Gray submitted white supremacist James P. Wickstrom's 90-minute presentation, "The Enemy Among Us," to the MCTV public access channel. Wickstrom, whose Christian Identity teachings maintain that Jews descended from Satan while white Western Europeans descended from Adam, held meetings at a Hampton Township furniture store before an arsonist torched it.

Sick Cattle Used to Feed School Children

2008-01-30T15:55:00.000-07:00

Hidden-Camera Investigation Finds Slaughterhouse Used Banned 'Downed Animals'

By BRIAN HARTMAN
WASHINGTON, Jan. 30, 2008—

A hidden-camera investigation by an animal rights group has uncovered disturbing treatment of ailing cows at a California slaughterhouse that provides meat for school lunches.

The video, obtained during what the Humane Society of the United States [HSUS] said was a six-week undercover investigation, shows a sickly cow being dragged by a chain before being poked, prodded, rolled and lifted with a forklift. Workers also are seen hosing the faces of cows in a manner that HSUS described as "torture right out of a waterboarding manual."

An HSUS official said its investigator confirmed that at least some of the animals in the video were "spent dairy cows," allegedly sold for meat after they had grown too old and sick to produce milk, and that they were slaughtered for use in the human food supply.

HSUS says Westland Meat Company, which owns the slaughterhouse in Chino, Calif., is the No. 2 supplier of beef to a USDA program that "distributes the beef to needy families, the elderly and also to schools through the National School Lunch Program."

According to documents provided by HSUS, Westland was named a USDA "supplier of the year" for 2004-05. HSUS says the company "has delivered beef to schools in 36 states. More than 100,000 schools and childcare facilities nationwide receive meat through the lunch program."

Such treatment of cows is generally considered abuse and is prohibited. But slaughtering such sick cattle -- known as "downers" -- also is banned to protect humans from contracting mad cow disease. The USDA considers its enforcement of the ban aggressive; HSUS says it's actually riddled with holes.

"Downed animals may be falling through the cracks as a result of poor oversight, anemic enforcement, and a loophole created by inconsistent agency regulations," the group says.

Both the USDA and the meat packer responded quickly to the allegations.
The president of Westland and of Hallmark Meat Packing Co., where the video was recorded, said today two employees were fired and a supervisor was suspended "pending his explanation."

"We are shocked, saddened and sickened by what we have seen today," Westland's president Steve Mendell said in a prepared statement posted on the company's Web site. "Operations have been immediately suspended until we can meet with all of our employees and be assured these sorts of activities never again happen at our facility."

Mendell's plant is now under investigation by the USDA. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer has asked the USDA's Inspector General to look into violations at the facility but he assured the public that the episode was not reason for public alarm.

In the interim, Schafer said he has "indefinitely suspended" Westland Meat Company from supplying meat to federal food programs and all food from Westmoreland that is already in the pipeline has been placed "on administrative hold."

In a prepared statement released late today, Schafer said he is "deeply concerned" about the allegations. But he is also disappointed in the Humane Society.

"It is unfortunate that the Humane Society of the United States did not present this information to us when these alleged violations occurred in the fall of 2007," Schafer said. "Had we known at the time the alleged violations occurred, we would have initiated our investigation sooner, and taken appropriate actions at that time."

Westland and the USDA also may be forced to answer questions on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, one of Congress' most vocal critics of the nation's food safety system, emailed reporters today with a threat to hold a hearing that looks into "USDA policies" that "are allowing slaughtering and processing plants to use the National School Lunch Program as a dumping ground for bad meat."

Economy puts Republicans at risk

2008-01-29T13:35:00.000-07:00

The Great Depression cost Republican President Herbert Hoover his job

In his State of the Union address, President George W Bush made reviving the US economy the centrepiece of his last year in office. But can he do enough to avoid blame for the slowdown?

When the economy is in trouble, it rarely bodes well for the party in power.

Republican President Herbert Hoover was blamed for the 1929 Great Depression, leading to a landslide victory for Franklin D Roosevelt and ushering in an era of Democratic reform that lasted for a generation.

The most popular Republican president of recent times, Ronald Reagan, was elected in 1980 over his Democratic incumbent, Jimmy Carter, after inflation soared to a record high during the oil crisis.

Economic woes also played an important role in Bill Clinton's win in 1992 over Mr Bush's father, George H Bush, who lost after one term in office.

"It's the economy, stupid"

As the economy has become the most important election issue, the Republicans are increasingly getting the blame this time as well.

Recent polls show that Democrats have a wide lead over Republicans on which party would do better on the economy, dealing with the recession, helping home owners - and even lowering taxes.

Mr Bush's temporary stimulus package was designed to restore his government's credibility on economic issues, after months during which he refused to acknowledge the possibility of a major slowdown.

And he can point to a number of achievements during his two terms in office: 52 months of steady growth since the mild recession in the first year Mr Bush took office, eight million jobs created, and both the budget deficit and trade deficit, although high, coming down.

But his problem is that 2008 looks like being a much more difficult year.

House prices are continuing to fall, spooking the housing market, and recent stock market falls show that investors agree with the public that a recession is imminent.

Credit markets are still tight as banks seek to rebuild after their massive losses.

The IMF says that the US economy will grow by just 0.8% this year - a sharp slowdown.

And rising energy costs have put pressure on family budgets, while a sharp slowdown will also make the Federal budget deficit bigger.

So Mr Bush has limited room for manoeuvre, both economically and politically.

It has only been in the last few weeks that Mr Bush has begun speaking of broader economic difficulties that go beyond the woes of the housing market.

And it is only then that he reached out to get bipartisan support in Congress for a $150bn economic stimulus plan designed to help get the US economy back on its feet.

He argues that "if enacted in a timely manner", it will create 500,000 jobs and boost the economy by 0.66%.

But there are a number of problems under the surface that could still derail the agreement.

First, there is a real argument about whether targeting the money to poorer people would give a greater economic stimulus, as they are more likely to spend all the rebates immediately.

This is why Democratic Senators, such as Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, would like to include increased unemployment benefits in the package.

Secondly, there is a question of how quickly the IRS could actually distribute the money to taxpayers.

Based on previous experience, cheques are unlikely to be sent out until the summer, when the recession may already be over.

And finally, the spending threatens to send the budget deficit into a spiral at a time when tax receipts are falling, renewing the sharp debate between Republicans and Democrats about tax cuts as opposed to cuts in spending.

Deeper problems

Even if these issues are overcome, the slowdown in the US economy is unlikely to be reversed by a stimulus package of less than 1% of GDP.

The sharp Fed rate cuts have also been less effective than usual in stimulating the economy, because of the deeper problems in the credit markets.

The interest rate charged to consumers has not fallen in the same way as the Fed's short-term rate.

This is partly because bond markets have long-term concerns about inflation, and solutions which would reduce the US dependence on oil are a long way off.

The Bush Administration and Congress are still quite far apart on plans to fix the regulatory system which allowed lax lending to sub-prime mortgage borrowers.

Who's to blame?

As the November election draws nearer, Democrats are increasingly seeking to blame mistakes by the Republican administration - and the Federal Reserve - for opening the way to the present difficulties.

The president argues that the current short-term difficulties of the economy are overshadowing the long-term achievements under his stewardship - and that preserving his tax cuts is the key to future economic growth.

But with the public seemingly already sceptical, Republican candidates are increasingly referring to the achievements of Ronald Reagan, rather than the problems of the Bush administration, when talking about domestic issues.

It appears that for a Republican to be successful in the November presidential election, he will have to find a way to distance himself from the Bush Administration not just on Iraq, but also on the economy.

U.S. Spy Satellite On Collision Course With Earth

2008-01-27T08:55:00.000-07:00

Washington (dbTechno) - U.S. officials have come out and stated that an American spy satellite, which is no longer functional, is on a collision course with Earth and will likely hit our planet by the end of February.

U.S. government officials are watching the U.S. spy satellite very closely as they try to predict the trajectory of it and where it will land. As of right now it is completely unknown where the satellite is going to hit in the U.S., or outside of the U.S.

National Security Council spokesman Godron Johndroe stated “government agencies are monitoring the situation. Numerous satellites over the years have come out of orbit and fallen harmlessly. We are looking at potential options to mitigate any possible damages this satellite may cause.”

The U.S. spy satellite in question is believed to be an experimental imagery satellite which was launched back in December 2006.

It launched from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Once the satellite made its way into orbit, all communication was lost with it.

Officials have admitted that they have absolutely no way to control the trajectory of the satellite meaning that the chance is there that it would go through Earth’s atmosphere and land in a remote location, or a highly populated location.

With no control over where it will land and where the debris will go, all they can do now is wait and watch it closely. It has been stated that if it explodes coming through the atmosphere it will likely be able to be seen by the naked eye.

*****

Duck and cover.

Entire Synthetic Genome Created

2008-01-26T09:56:00.000-07:00

John Roach for National Geographic News
January 25, 2008

Scientists yesterday announced that they have successfully created an entire synthetic genome in the lab by stitching together the DNA of the smallest known free-living bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium.

Experts are hailing the research as an important breakthrough in genetic manipulation that will one day lead to the "routine" creation of synthetic genomes—possibly including those of mammals.

This is "a striking technical accomplishment," biochemist Leroy Hood, who was not involved in the study, wrote in an email.

"It represents the initial stages of an important new step in studying how genes function together in systems to create complex phenotypes [traits]," added Hood, co-founder of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Washington.

Step Toward Artificial Life

The new work is an important second step in a three-step process to the creation of synthetic life, said research leader Hamilton Smith, a biologist and Nobel laureate at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland.

The first step, reported last year by the same team at Venter's institute, was the successful transplantation of a genome from one species of bacteria into another, effectively switching the bug's identity.

"The third step, which we're working on now, is to take the chemically synthesized DNA, which is in the test tube, and get it into a bacterium where it can take over and produce a synthetic cell," Smith said.

Researchers liken that step to rebooting a computer, because a genome is akin an operating system that makes a cell function.

Successfully completing the final step would create the first synthetic life-form.

The research is also part of a project to create a cell with "the smallest number of genes that can still confer life," Smith added.

The team chose M. genitalium because it contains about 485 genes, the smallest known of any organism capable of surviving on its own. The researchers suspect that about 400 genes are necessary for life.

Once they have created a synthetic copy of the bacteria, scientists can begin to eliminate genes to determine which are essential.

Such an accomplishment would then allow scientists to create synthetic life-forms that may one day produce biofuels, clean up toxic waste, and fight global warming. (Related: "Gene-Altered Plant, Tree Can Suck Up Toxins" [October 15, 2007].)

"So, this is only the beginning," Smith said.

Genome Assembly

But completing that second step was no easy feat.
While scientists can pretty easily assemble short sequences of DNA—or order them out of a catalog—synthesizing entire genomes is difficult.

That's because as more base pairs of the four building blocks of DNA—adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine—are stitched together, the strands tend to weaken and eventually break.

Prior to this research, for instance, the longest synthesized string contained 32,000 base pairs of DNA. The M. genitalium genome is 582,970 base pairs.

So the researchers broke up the genome into 101 segments, called cassettes, each containing between 5,000 and 7,000 base pairs of genetic code.

The researchers also took steps at this stage to address concerns that the technology could be misused to engineer a deadly virus or that an unforeseen innocent error could lead to bacteria run amok.

The researchers added watermarks to the code to differentiate the synthetic DNA from genomes of wild M. genitalium. They also inserted a gene to block the ability of the synthetic genome to infect human or animal hosts.
Much of the cassette assembly work was outsourced to genetics companies.

Back at the lab, meanwhile, Smith and his colleagues devised a process to stitch the 101 cassettes into a full synthetic genome.

They combined increasingly larger sections of the genome together in a test tube with linking and repair enzymes found in the bacterium Escherichia coli until they had four overlapping quarter genome sections.

After unsuccessfully trying to combine the quarters into halves in E. coli, the team switched to brewers' yeast, and the genome came together through a process the yeast uses to repair damaged DNA.

"That was pretty remarkable," Smith said, explaining that scientists had not known that a single yeast cell would pick up all the overlapping pieces and correctly assemble them.

"Yeast will play a big part in the future in assembling large DNA molecules," he added.

Smith and his colleagues report the assembly process in a paper published on the Web site of the journal Science.

"Important Changes" to Genetics

Drew Endy is an assistant professor in the department of biological engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and an expert in the field of synthetic biology. He was not involved in this study.

In an email, he said "reconstructing a natural bacterial genome from scratch is a great technical feat."

While genomes up to eight million base pairs have previously been assembled from existing DNA fragments, he noted the new accomplishment heralds "important changes in the science of genetics."

By 2012, he added, the technology should exist to routinely design and construct genomes of any bacteria or single-celled organism with a membrane-bound nucleus.

"Which also means," he said, "that it will be possible to construct some mammalian chromosomes."

The Illustrated President

2008-01-25T20:12:00.000-07:00

W.H.D. Koerner, “A Charge to Keep” (1916)

By Scott Horton (Harpers)
January 24, 2008

George W. Bush is famous for his attachment to a painting which he acquired after becoming a “born again Christian.” It’s by W.H.D. Koerner and is entitled “A Charge to Keep.” Bush was so taken by it, that he took the painting’s name for his own official autobiography. And here’s what he says about it:

I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission. When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves.

So in Bush’s view (or perhaps I should say, faith) the key figure, with whom he personally identifies, is a missionary spreading the word of the Methodist Christianity in the American West in the late nineteenth century.

Wilhelm Heinrich Dethlef Körner (you see why he used initials, though he later Anglicized this as William Henry Dethlef Koerner) was born in Germany and immigrated to a small town in Iowa as a young tot. He made his way over time to Chicago and worked as an illustrator for the Chicago Tribune. He married Lillian Lusk, a well-know graphic artist in her own right, and moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, where he worked for Pilgrim Magazine. He and his wife scrimped and saved to finance a move to New York City. They were after more formal art training and to establish a position as artists in the heart of the publishing industry. They made it to New York in 1907, and they were very successful.

In fact, Koerner’s principal employer through the core of his career was Harper’s Magazine. Koerner published 43 feature illustrations in Harper’s, the first in 1910 and the last in 1925. You can view them here. Koerner was not exclusive to Harper’s, however, he also did important works for the Saturday Evening Post, McCall’s and Collier’s among other publications, and he did a brisk business for the book trade, again very heavily for Harpers Brothers, and he pioneered commercial illustration (Koerner did the first box artwork for C.W. Post’s Grapenuts, for instance). His serious work after 1907 focused heavily on the American West, and he clearly was one of the key “Golden Age” illustrators. His work is famous for dramatic images which for me are consonant with the age of Teddy Roosevelt—they suggest ruggedness, love for the outdoors, a strong sense of adventure and risk-taking. His paintings are packed with motion, and at times rather dramatic motion. I was not able to find much about Koerner and his sense of religion, through it is very clear that he did not engage in public displays of religious fervor and religious themes are absent entirely from his work.

So Bush’s description of “A Charge to Keep” struck me as very strange. In fact, I’d say highly improbable. Now, however, Jacob Weisberg has solved the mystery. He invested the time to track down the commission behind the art work and he gives us the full story in his forthcoming book on Bush, The Bush Tragedy:

[Bush] came to believe that the picture depicted the circuit-riders who spread Methodism across the Alleghenies in the nineteenth century. In other words, the cowboy who looked like Bush was a missionary of his own denomination.

Only that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled “The Slipper Tongue,” published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: “Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught.”

So Bush’s inspiring, prosyletizing Methodist is in fact a silver-tongued horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob. It seems a fitting marker for the Bush presidency. Bush has consistently exhibited what psychologists call the “Tolstoy syndrome.” That is, he is completely convinced he knows what things are, so he shuts down all avenues of inquiry about them and disregards the information that is offered to him. This is the hallmark of a tragically bad executive. But in this case, it couldn’t be more precious. The president of the United States has identified closely with a man he sees as a mythic, heroic figure. But in fact he’s a wily criminal one step out in front of justice. It perfectly reflects Bush the man. . . and Bush the president.

The “Brutal World”

2008-01-23T20:32:00.000-07:00

How did Western Civilization get a monopoly on “moral conscience” when it has no morality?

By Paul Craig Roberts

“The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction.” Five Western military leaders.

I read the statement three times trying to figure out the typo. Then it hit me, the West has now out-Owellled Orwell: The West must nuke other countries in order to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction! In Westernspeak, the West nuking other countries does not qualify as the use of weapons of mass destruction.

The astounding statement comes from a paper prepared for a Nato summit in April by five top military leaders--an American, a German, a Dutchman, a Frenchman, and a Brit. It can be found here: HERE

The paper, prepared by men regarded as distinguished leaders and not as escapees from insane asylums, argues that “the West’s values and way of life are under threat, but the West is struggling to summon the will to defend them.” The leaders find that the UN is in the way of the West’s will, as is the European Union which is obstructing NATO and “NATO’s credibility is at stake in Afghanistan.”

And that’s a serious matter. If NATO loses its credibility in Afghanistan, Western civilization will collapse just like the Soviet Union. The West just doesn’t realize how weak it is. To strengthen itself, it needs to drop more and larger bombs.

The German military leader blames the Merkel government for contributing to the West’s inability to defend its values by standing in the way of a revival of German militarism. How can Germany be “a reliable partner” for America, he asks, if the German government insists on “special rules” limiting the combat use of its forces in Afghanistan?

Ron Asmus, head of the German Marshall Fund and a former US State Department official, welcomed the paper as “a wake-up call.” Asmus means a call to wake-up to the threats from the brutal world, not to the lunacy of Western leaders.

Who, what is threatening the West’s values and way of life? Political fanaticism, religious fundamentalism, and the imminent spread of nuclear weapons, answer the five asylum escapees.

By political fanaticism, do they mean the neoconservatives who believe that the future of humanity depends on the US establishing its hegemony over the world? By religious fundamentalism, do they mean “rapture evangelicals” agitating for armageddon or Christian and Israeli Zionists demanding a nuclear attack on Iran? By spread of nuclear weapons, do they mean Israel’s undeclared and illegal possession of several hundred nuclear weapons?

No. The paranoid military leaders see all the fanaticism, religious and otherwise, and all the threats to humanity as residing outside Western civilization (Israel is inside). The “increasingly brutal world,” of which the leaders warn, is “over there.” Only Muslims are fanatics. All us white guys are rational and sane.

There is nothing brutal about the US/Nato bombing of Serbia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, or the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, or the Israeli ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, or the genocide Israel hopes to commit against Palestinians in Gaza.

All of this, as well as America’s bombing of Somalia, America’s torture dungeons, show trials of “detainees,” and overthrow of elected governments and installation of puppet rulers, is the West’s necessary response to keep the brutal world at bay.

Brutal things happen in the “brutal world” and are entirely the fault of those in the brutal world. None of this would happen if the inhabitants of the brutal world would just do as they are told. How can the civilized world with its monopoly on morality allow people in the brutal world to behave independently? I mean, really! God forbid, they might attack some innocent country.

The “brutal world” consists of those immoral fanatics who object to being marginalized by the West and who reply to mass bombings from the air and to the death and destruction inflicted on them through myriad ways by strapping on a suicide bomb.

Unable to impose its will on countries it has invaded with conventional arms, the West’s military leaders are now prepared to force compliance with the moral world’s will by threatening to nuke those who resist. You see, since the West has the monopoly on morality, truth, and justice, those in the outside world are obviously evil, wicked and brutal. Therefore, as President Bush tells us, it is a simple choice between good and evil, and there’s no better candidate than evil for being nuked. The sooner we can get rid of the brutal world, the sooner we will have “freedom and democracy” everywhere that’s left.

Meanwhile, the United States, the great moral light unto the world, has just prevented the United Nations from censuring Israel, the world’s other great moral light, for cutting off food supplies, medical supplies, and electric power to Gaza. You see, Gaza is in the outside world and is a home of the bad guys. Moreover, the wicked Palestinians there tricked the US when the US allowed them to hold a free election. Instead of electing the US candidate, the wicked voters elected a government that would represent them. The US and Israel overturned the Palestinian election in the West Bank, but those in Gaza clung to the government that they had elected. Now they are going to suffer and die until they elect the government that the US and Israel wants. I mean, how can we expect people in the brutal world to know what’s best for them?

The fact that the UN tried to stop Israel’s just punishment of the Gazans shows how right the five leaders’ report is about the UN being a threat to Western values and way of life. The UN is really against us. This puts the UN in the outside world and makes it a candidate for being nuked if not an outright terrorist organization. As our president said, “you are with us or against us.”

The US and Israel need a puppet government in Palestine so that a ghettoized remnant of Palestine can be turned into a “two state solution.” The two states will be Israel incorporating the stolen West Bank and a Palestinian ghetto without an economy, water, or contiguous borders.

This is necessary in order to protect Israel from the brutal outside world.

Inhabitants of the brutal world are confused about the “self-determination” advocated by Western leaders. It doesn’t mean that those outside Western civilization and Israel should decide for themselves. “Self” means American. The term, so familiar to us, means “American-determination.” The US determines and others obey.

It is the brutal world that causes all the trouble by not obeying.

Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan administration. He is credited with curing stagflation and eliminating “Phillips curve” trade-offs between employment and inflation, an achievement now on the verge of being lost by the worst economic mismanagement in US history.

Is true meaning of King's legacy lost?

2008-01-21T12:53:00.000-07:00

Dr. Martin Luther King

In this pop-culture moment, the message may be missed

By DEEPTI HAJELA

Nearly 40 years after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., some say his legacy is being frozen in a moment in time that ignores the full complexity of the man and his message.

"Everyone knows — even the smallest kid knows about Martin Luther King — can say his most famous moment was that 'I have a dream' speech," said Henry Louis Taylor Jr., professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Buffalo. "No one can go further than one sentence. All we know is that this guy had a dream. We don't know what that dream was."

King was working on anti-poverty and anti-war issues at the time of his death. He had spoken out against the Vietnam War and was in Memphis when he was killed in April 1968 in support of striking sanitation workers.

King had come a long way from the crowds who cheered him at the 1963 March on Washington, when he was introduced as "the moral leader of our nation" — and when he pronounced "I have a dream" on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

By taking on issues outside segregation, he had lost the support of many newspapers and magazines, and his relationship with the White House had suffered, said Harvard Sitkoff, a professor of history at the University of New Hampshire who has written a recently published book on King.

"He was considered by many to be a pariah," Sitkoff said.

But he took on issues of poverty and militarism because he considered them vital "to make equality something real and not just racial brotherhood but equality in fact," Sitkoff said.

Scholarly study of King hasn't translated into the popular perception of him and the civil rights movement, said Richard Greenwald, professor of history at Drew University.

"We're living increasingly in a culture of top 10 lists, of celebrity biopics which simplify the past as entertainment or mythology," he said. "We lose a view on what real leadership is by compressing him down to one window."

That does a disservice to both King and society, said Melissa Harris-Lacewell, professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University.

By freezing him at that point, by putting him on a pedestal of perfection that doesn't acknowledge his complex views, "it makes it impossible both for us to find new leaders and for us to aspire to leadership," Harris-Lacewell said.

She believes it's important for Americans in 2008 to remember how disliked King was before his death in April 1968.

"If we forget that, then it seems like the only people we can get behind must be popular," Harris-Lacewell said. "Following King meant following the unpopular road, not the popular one."

In becoming an icon, King's legacy has been used by people all over the political spectrum, said Glenn McNair, associate professor of history at Kenyon College.

He's been part of the 2008 presidential race, in which Barack Obama could be the country's first black president. Obama has invoked King, and Sen. John Kerry endorsed Obama by saying "Martin Luther King said that the time is always right to do what is right."

Not all the references have been received well. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton came under fire when she was quoted as saying King's dream of racial equality was realized only when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

King has "slipped into the realm of symbol that people use and manipulate for their own purposes," McNair said.

Harris-Lacewell said that is something people need to push back against.

"It's not OK to slip into flat memory of who Dr. King was, it does no justice to us and makes him to easy to appropriate," she said. "Every time he gets appropriated, we have to come out and say that's not OK. We do have the ability to speak back."

FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft

2008-01-20T08:48:00.000-07:00

The FBI has been accused of covering up a file detailing government dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets

THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.

The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency’s investigation of the network.

Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.

Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an “outright lie”.

“I can tell you that that file and the operations it refers to did exist from 1996 to February 2002. The file refers to the counterintelligence programme that the Department of Justice has declared to be a state secret to protect sensitive diplomatic relations,” she said.

The freedom of information request had not been initiated by Edmonds. It was made quite separately by an American human rights group called the Liberty Coalition, acting on a tip-off it received from an anonymous correspondent.

The letter says: “You may wish to request pertinent audio tapes and documents under FOIA from the Department of Justice, FBI-HQ and the FBI Washington field office.”

It then makes a series of allegations about the contents of the file – many of which corroborate the information that Edmonds later made public.

Edmonds had told this newspaper that members of the Turkish political and diplomatic community in the US had been actively acquiring nuclear secrets. They often acted as a conduit, she said, for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they attracted less suspicion.

She claimed corrupt government officials helped the network, and venues such as the American-Turkish Council (ATC) in Washington were used as drop-off points.

The anonymous letter names a high-level government official who was allegedly secretly recorded speaking to an official at the Turkish embassy between August and December 2001.

It claims the government official warned a Turkish member of the network that they should not deal with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market. The official’s warning came two years before Brewster Jennings was publicly outed when one of its staff, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA agent in a case that became a cause célèbre in the US.

The letter also makes reference to wiretaps of Turkish “targets” talking to ISI intelligence agents at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and recordings of “operatives” at the ATC.

Edmonds is the subject of a number of state secret gags preventing her from talking further about the investigation she witnessed.

“I cannot discuss the details considering the gag orders,” she said, “but I reported all these activities to the US Congress, the inspector general of the justice department and the 9/11 commission. I told them all about what was contained in this case file number, which the FBI is now denying exists.

“This gag was invoked not to protect sensitive diplomatic relations but criminal activities involving US officials who were endangering US national security.”

Insight: Chris Gourlay, Jonathan Calvert and Joe Lauria

ANALYSIS: Discontent Surges in Iraq

2008-01-20T08:25:00.000-07:00

By HAMZA HENDAWI

BAGHDAD (AP) — In the depths of a strangely cold winter in the Middle East, Iraqis complain that the lights are not on, the kerosene heaters are without fuel and the water doesn't flow — and they blame the government.

And with the war nearing its fifth anniversary, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is feeling the discontent as well from the most powerful political centers in the majority Shiite community.

It's a pincer movement of domestic anger that yet again could threaten al-Maliki's hold on his Green Zone office.

"Where's the kerosene and the water?" asked Amjad Kazim, a 56-year-old Shiite who lives in eastern Baghdad. "We hear a lot of promises but we see nothing."

Little kerosene is available on the state-run market at the subsidized price of $0.52 a gallon. But the fuel can be found on the black market, where it goes for more than $3.79 a gallon.

Overnight temperatures since the first of the year have routinely fallen below freezing when normally they only dip into the upper 30s Fahrenheit.

An average household needs at least 1.32 gallons a day to stay warm, which translates into a monthly expense of $150, or half what an average Iraqi earns.

"I have had no electricity for a week, and I cannot afford to buy it from neighborhood generators," said Hamdiyah Subeih, a 42-year-old homemaker from Baghdad's Shiite Baladiyat district. "I would rather live in Saddam Hussein's hell than the paradise of these new leaders."

Even during the shortages of last summer's heat, most Iraqi's were counting on electricity for air conditioners, fans and refrigeration about half the day. Now it's off for days at a stretch in many areas and on only a few hours daily on average, residents say.

"My children are so happy when the power comes back on they dance," said Marwan Ouni, a 34-year-old college teacher from Tikrit, Saddam's hometown north of Baghdad. "For me, the nonstop power cuts have made my life tedious. It's depressing."

That's the view from below, despite a considerable reduction in violence across the country. The view among those who hold power here is growing equally bilious.

Stinging criticism late last week from Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of parliament's largest Shiite bloc, was a stark break with the past. And a threat by Muqtada al-Sadr, the maverick Shiite cleric who once supported al-Maliki, not to renew an expiring six-month cease-fire he imposed on his feared militia could upend recent security progress.

In admonishing tones, al-Hakim called on the government and parliament not to be "entirely focused on political rivalries at the expense of the everyday problems faced by Iraqis." He also demanded that lawmakers quickly adopt key legislation divvying up the country's oil wealth and setting the rules for provincial elections to be held later this year.

He spoke of administrative and financial corruption, saying Iraqis were now forced to pay bribes to get business done with ministries and government agencies.

"It makes one's heart bleed ... it's a violation of man's freedom and dignity," he told tens of thousands of supporters in Baghdad on Friday.

Al-Hakim's harsh words carry considerable weight because his party, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, is al-Maliki's most important backer after al-Sadr pulled ministers loyal to him from the Cabinet last year and took his 30 lawmakers out of the Shiite bloc.

Al-Hakim's focus on the daily hardships of most Iraqis finds a ready audience among those struggling to keep warm through one of the coldest winters in years — it snowed across Baghdad for the first time in living memory on Jan. 11. And al-Sadr's huge following among more radical Shiites could close the pincer on al-Maliki.

Who Wrote Ron Paul's Newsletters?

2008-01-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

Libertarian movement veterans, and a Paul campaign staffer, say it was "paleolibertarian" strategist Lew Rockwell

Julian Sanchez and David Weigel January 16, 2008

Ron Paul doesn't seem to know much about his own newsletters. The libertarian-leaning presidential candidate says he was unaware, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, of the bigoted rhetoric about African Americans and gays that was appearing under his name. He told CNN last week that he still has "no idea" who might have written inflammatory comments such as "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks"—statements he now repudiates. Yet in interviews with reason, a half-dozen longtime libertarian activists—including some still close to Paul—all named the same man as Paul's chief ghostwriter: Ludwig von Mises Institute founder Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr.

Financial records from 1985 and 2001 show that Rockwell, Paul's congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982, was a vice president of Ron Paul & Associates, the corporation that published the Ron Paul Political Report and the Ron Paul Survival Report. The company was dissolved in 2001. During the period when the most incendiary items appeared—roughly 1989 to 1994—Rockwell and the prominent libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard championed an open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a coalition with populist "paleoconservatives," producing a flurry of articles and manifestos whose racially charged talking points and vocabulary mirrored the controversial Paul newsletters recently unearthed by The New Republic. To this day Rockwell remains a friend and advisor to Paul—accompanying him to major media appearances; promoting his candidacy on the LewRockwell.com blog; publishing his books; and peddling an array of the avuncular Texas congressman's recent writings and audio recordings.

Rockwell has denied responsibility for the newsletters' contents to The New Republic's Jamie Kirchick. Rockwell twice declined to discuss the matter with reason, maintaining this week that he had "nothing to say." He has characterized discussion of the newsletters as "hysterical smears aimed at political enemies" of The New Republic. Paul himself called the controversy "old news" and "ancient history" when we reached him last week, and he has not responded to further request for comment.

But a source close to the Paul presidential campaign told reason that Rockwell authored much of the content of the Political Report and Survival Report. "If Rockwell had any honor he'd come out and I say, ‘I wrote this stuff,'" said the source, who asked not to be named because Paul remains friendly with Rockwell and is reluctant to assign responsibility for the letters. "He should have done it 10 years ago."

Rockwell was publicly named as Paul's ghostwriter as far back as a 1988 issue of the now-defunct movement monthly American Libertarian. "This was based on my understanding at the time that Lew would write things that appeared in Ron's various newsletters," former AL editor Mike Holmes told reason. "Neither Ron nor Lew ever told me that, but other people close to them such as Murray Rothbard suggested that Lew was involved, and it was a common belief in libertarian circles."

Individualist-feminist Wendy McElroy, who on her blog characterized the author as an associate of hers for many years, called the ghostwriter's identity "an open secret within the circles in which I run." Though she declined to name names either on her blog or when contacted by reason, she later approvingly cited a post naming Rockwell at the anonymous blog RightWatch.

Timothy Wirkman Virkkala, formerly the managing editor of the libertarian magazine Liberty, told reason that the names behind the Political Report were widely known in his magazine's offices as well, because Liberty's late editor-in-chief, Bill Bradford, had discussed the newsletters with the principals, and then with his staff. "I understood that Burton S. Blumert was the moneybags that got all this started, that he was the publisher," Virkkala said. "Lew Rockwell, editor and chief writer; Jeff Tucker, assistant, probably a writer; Murray Rothbard, cheering from the sidelines, probably ghosting now and then." (Virkkala has offered his own reaction to the controversy at his Web site.) Blumert, Paul's 1988 campaign chairman and a private supporter this year, did not respond to a request for an interview; Rothbard died in 1995. We reached Tucker, now editorial vice president of Rockwell's Mises.org, at his office, and were told: "I just really am not going to make a statement, I'm sorry. I'll take all responsibility for being the editor of Mises.org, OK?"

The early 1990s writings became liabilities for Paul long before last week's New Republic story. Back in 1996, Paul narrowly eked out a congressional victory over Democrat Lefty Morris, who made the newsletters one of his main campaign issues, damning them both for their racial content and for their advocacy of drug legalization. At the time, Paul defended the statements that appeared under his name, claiming that they expressed his "philosophical differences" with Democrats and had been "taken out of context." He finally disavowed them in a 2001 interview with Texas Monthly, explaining that his campaign staff had convinced him at the time that it would be too "confusing" to attribute them to a ghostwriter.

Besides Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell, the officers of Ron Paul & Associates included Paul's wife Carol, Paul's daughter Lori Pyeatt, Paul staffer Penny Langford-Freeman, and longtime campaign manager Mark Elam (who has managed every Paul congressional campaign since 1996 and is currently the Texas coordinator for the presidential run), according to tax records from 1993 and 2001. Langford-Freeman did not respond to interview requests as of press time. Elam, president of M&M Graphics and Advertising, confirmed to reason that his company printed the newsletters, but said that the texts reached him as finished products.

The publishing operation was lucrative. A tax document from June 1993—wrapping up the year in which the Political Report had published the "welfare checks" comment on the L.A. riots—reported an annual income of $940,000 for Ron Paul & Associates, listing four employees in Texas (Paul's family and Rockwell) and seven more employees around the country. If Paul didn't know who was writing his newsletters, he knew they were a crucial source of income and a successful tool for building his fundraising base for a political comeback.

The tenor of Paul's newsletters changed over the years. The ones published between Paul's return to private life after three full terms in congress (1985) and his Libertarian presidential bid (1988) notably lack inflammatory racial or anti-gay comments. The letters published between Paul's first run for president and his return to Congress in 1996 are another story—replete with claims that Martin Luther King "seduced underage girls and boys," that black protesters should gather "at a food stamp bureau or a crack house" rather than the Statue of Liberty, and that AIDS sufferers "enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick."

Eric Dondero, Paul's estranged former volunteer and personal aide, worked for Paul on and off between 1987 and 2004 (back when he was named "Eric Rittberg"), and since the Iraq war has become one of the congressman's most vociferous and notorious critics. By Dondero's account, Paul's inner circle learned between his congressional stints that "the wilder they got, the more bombastic they got with it, the more the checks came in. You think the newsletters were bad? The fundraising letters were just insane from that period." Cato Institute President Ed Crane told reason he recalls a conversation from some time in the late 1980s in which Paul claimed that his best source of congressional campaign donations was the mailing list for The Spotlight, the conspiracy-mongering, anti-Semitic tabloid run by the Holocaust denier Willis Carto until it folded in 2001.

The newsletters' obsession with blacks and gays was of a piece with a conscious political strategy adopted at that same time by Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard. After breaking with the Libertarian Party following the 1988 presidential election, Rockwell and Rothbard formed a schismatic "paleolibertarian" movement, which rejected what they saw as the social libertinism and leftist tendencies of mainstream libertarians. In 1990, they launched the Rothbard-Rockwell Report, where they crafted a plan they hoped would midwife a broad new "paleo" coalition.

Rockwell explained the thrust of the idea in a 1990 Liberty essay entitled "The Case for Paleo-Libertarianism." To Rockwell, the LP was a "party of the stoned," a halfway house for libertines that had to be "de-loused." To grow, the movement had to embrace older conservative values. "State-enforced segregation," Rockwell wrote, "was wrong, but so is State-enforced integration. State-enforced segregation was not wrong because separateness is wrong, however. Wishing to associate with members of one's own race, nationality, religion, class, sex, or even political party is a natural and normal human impulse."

The most detailed description of the strategy came in an essay Rothbard wrote for the January 1992 Rothbard-Rockwell Report, titled "Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement." Lamenting that mainstream intellectuals and opinion leaders were too invested in the status quo to be brought around to a libertarian view, Rothbard pointed to David Duke and Joseph McCarthy as models for an "Outreach to the Rednecks," which would fashion a broad libertarian/paleoconservative coalition by targeting the disaffected working and middle classes. (Duke, a former Klansman, was discussed in strikingly similar terms in a 1990 Ron Paul Political Report.) These groups could be mobilized to oppose an expansive state, Rothbard posited, by exposing an "unholy alliance of 'corporate liberal' Big Business and media elites, who, through big government, have privileged and caused to rise up a parasitic Underclass, who, among them all, are looting and oppressing the bulk of the middle and working classes in America."

Anyone with doubts about the composition of the "parasitic Underclass" could look to the regular "PC Watch" feature of the Report, in which Rockwell compiled tale after tale of thuggish black men terrifying petite white and Asian women. (Think Birth of a Nation crossed with News of the Weird.) The list of PC outrages in the February 1993 issue, for example, cited a Washington Post column on films that feature "plenty of interracial sex, and nobody noticing," a news article about black members of the Southern Methodist University marching band "engaged in mass shoplifting while in Japan," and a sob story about a Korean shop-owner who shot a black shoplifter and assailant in the head: The travesty is that Mrs. Du got five years probation, and must cancel a trip to Korea.

The populist outreach program centered on tax reduction, abolition of welfare, elimination of "the entire 'civil rights' structure, which tramples on the property rights of every American," and a police crackdown on "street criminals." "Cops must be unleashed," Rothbard wrote, "and allowed to administer instant punishment, subject of course to liability when they are in error." While they're at it, they should "clear the streets of bums and vagrants. Where will they go? Who cares?" To seal the deal with social conservatives, Rothbard urged a federalist compromise in their direction on "pornography, prostitution, or abortion." And because grassroots organizing is "plodding and boring," this new paleo coalition would need to be kick-started by "high-level, preferably presidential, political campaigns."

The presidential campaign Rothbard and Rockwell supported in 1988 was Ron Paul's run on the Libertarian Party ticket. In 1992, they were again ready to back Paul, until Pat Buchanan convinced the obstetrician to withdraw and back his conservative challenge to then-president Bush. "We have a dream," Rockwell wrote in that same January 1992 edition of RRR, "and perhaps someday it will come to pass. (Hell, if 'Dr.' King can have a dream, why can't we?) Our dream is that, one day, we Buchananites can present Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the liberal and conservative and centrist elites, with a dramatic choice....We can say: 'Look, gang: you have a choice, it's either Pat Buchanan or David Duke.'"

Carol Moore, a left-libertarian activist who opposed Rothbard, Rockwell, and Paul at the late 1980s Libertarian conventions that led to the paleo split, theorizes that the defeat made them bitter. "They had a tendency to be anti-PC," Moore told reason, "and it was really stepped up after they lost. They were really angry and not that funny."

They are less angry these days. Visitors to LewRockwell.com or Mises.org since 2001 are less likely to feel the need for a shower. One can almost detect what sounds like mellowing in Rockwell's reflections on the high and heady paleo days, unburdened by ominous warnings of the looming race war. Nowadays the fiery rhetoric is directed at the "pimply-faced" Kirchick, "Benito" Giuliani, and the "so-called 'libertarians'" at reason and Cato.

But perhaps the best refutation of the old approach is not the absence of race-baiting rhetoric from its progenitors, but the success of the 2008 Ron Paul phenomenon. The man who was once the Great Paleolibertarian Hope has built a broad base of enthusiastic supporters without resorting to venomous rhetoric or coded racism. He has stuck stubbornly to the issues of sound money, "humble foreign policy," and shrinking the state. He wraps up his speeches with a three-part paean to individualism: "I don't want to run your life," "I don't want to run the economy," and "I don't want to run the world." He talks about the disproportionate effect of the drug war on African-Americans, and appeared at a September 2007 Republican debate on black issues that was boycotted by the then-frontrunners. All this and more have brought him $30 million-plus from more than 100,000 donors; thousands of campaign volunteers; and the largest rallies he's ever spoken to, including a crowd of almost 5,000 in Philadelphia.

Yet those new supporters, many of whom are first encountering libertarian ideas through the Ron Paul Revolution, deserve a far more frank explanation than the campaign has as yet provided of how their candidate's name ended up atop so many ugly words. Ron Paul may not be a racist, but he became complicit in a strategy of pandering to racists—and taking "moral responsibility" for that now means more than just uttering the phrase. It means openly grappling with his own past—acknowledging who said what, and why. Otherwise he risks damaging not only his own reputation, but that of the philosophy to which he has committed his life.

Julian Sanchez is a contributing editor and David Weigel is an associate editor of reason.

*****

Ron Paul claims 100,000 subscribers at $50 a pop that is $5 million dollars - we are suppose to believe he has no idea who wrote the racist garbage published under his name? Sure - and the tooth fairy will put money under your pillow.

Gulf allies turn their backs on Bush

2008-01-15T11:21:00.000-07:00

By M K Bhadrakumar

So, it was Filipino Monkey, after all. The Pentagon has admitted that the footage of the famous incident of January 6 when five speedboats of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)"buzzed" three US Navy warships in the Strait of Hormuz could have been compromised.

"I am coming at you. You will explode in a few minutes" - that was what the American navy men heard. An indignant Washington announced the US Navy was on the verge of firing on the IRGC boats, but for the latter abruptly turning away. President George W Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates added their strident warning that Tehran would face dire consequences if "provocative actions" were repeated.

But the Iranian footage of the "incident" makes a laughing stock of the US administration. The funny thing is, it was an incident that didn't happen. Commander Lydia Robertson, spokeswoman for the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, put a brave face, while admitting, "We don't know for sure where they [threats] came from. It could have been a shore station." Chief of Naval Operations in the Pentagon, Admiral Gary Roughhead, backed up explaining, "Based on my experience in operating in that part of the world, where there is a lot of maritime activity, trying to discern is very hard to do."

"Filipino Monkey" is the code name given by the US Navy to a mysterious but profane voice which often challenges it in the Strait of Hormuz. The voice could be, if The Seattle Times newspaper is to be believed, "likely more than one person, who listens in on ship-to-ship radio traffic and then jumps in, shouting insults and jabbering vile epithets". US Navy women are said to suffer particularly degrading treatment.

ElBaradei counters Bush

Tehran has asked Washington to apologize for "attempts to mislead public opinion". Instead, Bush has lashed out at Iran during the various halts of his ongoing seven-nation Middle East tour. But here, again, there has been a problem. He has to make the Iranians look like the baddies on the basis of counter-terrorism. The Iranians have ensured that the counter-proliferation card in Bush's pack lacks punch.

Even as Bush was swinging his way through the Persian Gulf, the region had another distinguished visitor - the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei. The timing couldn't have been better fine-tuned. ElBaradei arrived in Tehran just as Bush was touching down in Kuwait. They could almost hear each other. Tehran rolled out a red-carpet welcome for ElBaradei, with senior officials repeatedly underlining that Iran's relations with the IAEA have entered a "new phase". ElBaradei's itinerary included a meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

IAEA spokeswoman in Vienna Melissa Fleming has since confirmed that ElBaradei's visit has been of a substantive nature, with Iran committing to answering all questions about its past nuclear activities within the coming four weeks, including activities that were alleged by the US as linked to a weapons program. Fleming revealed that ElBaradei was given information on Iran's "new generation of centrifuges", which was a topic of considerable interest to the IAEA for assessing the extent of Iran's technological advancement in the nuclear field. [1]

Fleming claimed ElBaradei was able to "press his case" with his hosts for a suspension of Iran's uranium enrichment. Conceivably, ElBaradei proposed to the Iranian side an exit strategy for the impasse that the United Nations Security Council currently faces. He told the media he discussed in Tehran "ways of solving the issue as well as ways to negotiate with the United Nations Security Council". He stressed his intention is "to find solutions for Iran's nuclear issue so as to turn the problem into a normal issue". The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Agency, Gholam-Reza Aqazadeh, also confirmed that "grounds are now being prepared" for resolving all issues and that Tehran has the "necessary political determination" in this direction.

Aqazadeh advised the West to seize the "existing positive atmosphere" and shift towards engaging Iran. The influential head of the Majlis (Parliament)National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, Alae'ddin Broujerdi, aptly summed up the dead seriousness with which the Iranian leadership approached the visit. He said the IAEA chief's visit was "important", "positive in principle" and "helpful for the country".

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, also welcomed the "constructive role" of ElBaradei, while the latter expressed the hope that a "breakthrough" in the Iran nuclear issue would be possible by March. Significantly, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad assured ElBaradei Iran was keen to resolve remaining issues with the IAEA. Tehran has no doubt given the utmost seriousness to packing ElBaradei's trip with content and substance with the objective of enabling a favorable IAEA report in March.

The meeting with Khamenei was most certainly intended to convey that the Iranian leadership is speaking with one voice. Khamenei stressed, "Iran has time and again declared that Islam prohibits the proliferation and use of nuclear weapons."

ElBaradei being in Tehran has major implications. In Iranian politics itself, it becomes a boost for Ahmadinejad's standing and is bound to cast its shadow on the parliamentary elections of March 14. The continuing cooperation between Iran and the IAEA makes it virtually impossible for the Bush administration to rake up the matter in the Security Council. The indications are that Paris senses that President Nicholas Sarkozy needlessly antagonized Tehran. European rhetoric on the whole has diminished. Russia and China are able to dig in with greater conviction on the issue in the Security Council, while at the same time they feel more comfortable in pressing ahead with their strategic cooperation with Iran.

All eyes are now on the report of ElBaradei at the IAEA meeting in March. Tehran, naturally, is pinning high hopes that the Iran nuclear file may become a routine affair involving a nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty member country. But the most important outcome of the ElBaradei visit is perhaps its impact in molding regional opinion in the Middle East and in the Persian Gulf region.

It gives the decisive push to the "pro-West" Arab regimes to turn their backs on Bush's desperate pleas to join an anti-Iran coalition. Even for the most ardent "pro-West" Arab regimes, there is a serious problem now in identifying with the US-Israeli chorus. Equally, this "new thinking" will have implications for the Palestine-Israel peace process, as well as the situation in Lebanon and Iraq. Simply put, Tehran may be on the verge of breaking through to mainstream Arab regional politics - a historic breakthrough.

ElBaradei appeals to Arab opinion

ElBaradei further chipped in by giving an exclusive interview just before his departure for Tehran to the Saudi-owned newspaper published from London, al-Hayat, which is widely read in the region. It is significant he chose al-Hayat, and, more important, al-Hayat took such an initiative.

In the interview, he put the problem in a historical perspective as an "issue of distrust" ensuing from the West's abrupt boycott of Iran following the revolution in that country in 1979, which only prompted Tehran to keep up its so-called fissile cycle through covert means after all Iranian attempts to "build bridges of trust with the West" failed. Therefore, "There is a process of distrust and the only solution to build trust in the future is through negotiation because the Security Council can impose sanctions, but these alone cannot reach a complete solution for this problem," he explained.

ElBaradei said Iran is still years away from being able to make a nuclear weapon; that he drew a "deep sigh of relief" when the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)was released in Washington in end-November, which "eliminated the element of urgency from the Iranian file and created an opportunity to start a serious dialogue to resolve the problem through negotiation"; that the Iranian nuclear program "cannot be separated from the security process in the Middle East".

The most significant portion of the interview related to ElBaradei's passionate call for a security system in the Middle East where the initiative rested with the Arabs. In this he virtually echoed a long-standing Iranian stance. "We [Arabs] have to be involved, and we should know that we have to be in a leading position in any matter that has to do with our security. We cannot leave our fate, security, future and civilization to be the subject of discussion in European and American councils. We cannot sit back and wait for the outcomes of what they decide for us. If this continues, our existence will never be recognized. As the Koran says, God does not change the condition of a people until they change the condition of their own selves," he concluded.

Tehran ignores Bush rhetoric

There is no need to second-guess what could be the impact of the interview on Arab opinion, specially the elite in the Middle East which respects ElBaradei as a world statesman commanding immense prestige. Tehran correctly estimated that it didn't need to add a comma to what ElBaradei said in his outspoken interview. During the talks with ElBaradei, none of the top leaders in Tehran bothered to match Bush's rhetoric. They seem to have decided that the best thing is simply to ignore the US president.

A sole exception is the main speaker at a Friday prayer meeting on January 11 in Tehran, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami. The senior cleric said the Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf region knew "it would be in their best interests to be friends with powerful Iran". He expressed the hope they would be "wise enough not to let a bankrupt and helpless president decide their fate in the last year of his government, as just one more year remains of Bush's presidency and he is at the end of the line."

But short of rhetoric, Tehran has effectively undercut Bush's diplomatic moves in the region. The Iranian Foreign Ministry announced on Sunday the first session of an Iran-Kuwait joint commission will be held in Tehran this week at the level of the foreign ministers. The deep irony cannot be lost on the region. Bush will still be in the region when the foreign minister of one of Washington's key allies in the region will be visiting Tehran, breaking fresh ground for cooperation with Iran.

The Kuwaiti foreign minister's visit to Tehran comes within a day of Bush's call on Persian Gulf countries to "confront this danger [posed by Iran] before it is too late". Indeed, Kuwait was Bush's first halt in the Persian Gulf during the current tour. What emerges once again is that, frustrated with US regional policies, a key ally is breaking loose and pursuing its own diplomatic drive towards Iran.

Saudis spurn anti-Iran coalition

Reactions coming from Saudi Arabia, which has been projected by Washington in recent months as the linchpin of the Bush administration's efforts to put together an anti-Iran coalition, have been even more revealing. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said on Wednesday Riyadh's national interests came first when dealing with Tehran. "We have relations with Iran and we talk with them, and if we felt any danger we have links ... that allow us to talk about. So we welcome any issue the president [Bush] raises and we will discuss them from our point of view," he said. Such bluntness is unprecedented in US-Saudi relations.

Again, on the eve of Bush's arrival in Riyadh on Monday, the leading pro-government newspaper, al-Riyadh, which reflects the views of the Saudi authorities, said Saudi Arabia refused to be drawn into wars or tensions with Iran and the Iran nuclear issue should be solved through diplomatic means and dialogue. It advised Bush that he was "welcome as a man of peace, but not as a man of war" and that if he sought Arab solidarity, then "he must focus rationally on the most important issue which is the question of peace".

Al-Riyadh urged Bush "not to preoccupy himself with a danger which the US intelligence has qualified as non-existent in the short term", a reference to the NIE report that said Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years ago.

Similarly, influential Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said on Sunday, "Iran and Saudi Arabia can turn into a proper model for the rest of the Islamic world through mutual cooperation and with the help of other regional states." He said recent developments such as the Saudi invitation to the Iranian president to participate in the hajj were "clear indications of a deepening of Riyadh's relations with Tehran".

Setback to US standing

Bush's Persian Gulf tour has suffered erosion from various quarters. ElBaradei's visit to Tehran virtually pre-empted any attempt by Bush to stoke the fires of the Iran nuclear issue. Ahmadinejad chose the exact median point of Bush's regional tour to send a communication to the heads of the six Gulf Cooperation Countries ( GCC - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) states recalling his proposal at the Doha summit of the regional body on December 2. This was to the effect that the security of the region is best addressed via greater political, security, economic and cultural cooperation between Iran and those countries. Ahmadinejad exhorted the GCC to hold more such meetings with Iran, while he assured his Arab counterparts of Iran's cooperation.

But the proverbial last nail on the coffin of American credibility in Arab opinion would have been the sensational report appearing in the Sunday Times on January 13, quoting Iraqi government sources, that the head of the IRGC, Major General Mohammed Ali Jafari, had slipped into the so-called Green Zone of Baghdad last month. Jafari apparently passed through checkpoints on his way to the fortified enclave that contains the American Embassy, even though he is on Washington's "most wanted" list.

Arab regimes will be wondering what Washington is really up to by holding secret talks with a high-ranking Iranian official while Bush makes incessant demands that they must confront Iran. Besides, only a few months ago, the Bush administration declared the IRGC as a "foreign terrorist organization" and imposed sanctions on it. It is immaterial whether the Sunday Times report turns out to be substantiated or not. Either way, US standing in the region suffers.

In the Arab world, perceptions matter the most, and nothing hurts more than being made to look foolish. The Filipino Monkey and Jafari have caused havoc on US standing in the Persian Gulf. Washington looks foolish. The Arabs have assessed that the right thing to do is to bide their time until a new president moves into the White House - which is also what Tehran's substitute Friday prayer leader Khatami advised them to do.

Note
1. The agreement ElBaradei carried away with him from Tehran on January 13 deals with two issues. One relates to so-called military-linked studies. These include indications that Iran was examining how to convert uranium dioxide into a semi-refined product called UF4, which can be refined further into gas suitable for an enrichment cascade; and among other things, that Iran was studying designs for missile re-entry vehicles. The second issue relates to radioactive contamination found at an Iranian technical university. The IAEA wants to know how this uranium contamination got there, and it wants access to the individuals working at the university, as well as to the equipment that was used. These two areas that Iran has agreed to explain within a month are the remaining unanswered questions on a "work plan" formulated by the IAEA last year, and endorsed by the agency's Board of Governors on November 15, 2007. - Radio Free Europe

M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).

The Presidential Psychology at the End of Days

2008-01-13T09:47:00.000-07:00

What Is He Capable Of?

By John P Briggs, M.D. and JP Briggs II, Ph.D.

t r u t h o u t Perspective
Thursday 10 January 2008

The true rule in determining to embrace, or reject anything, is not whether it has any evil in it, but whether it have more of evil, than of good. There are few things wholly evil, or wholly good. Almost every thing, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded. - Abraham Lincoln, June 20, 1848

In defiance of his circumstances as an unpopular, lame duck president with a minority party in Congress, George W. Bush pursues a sharply autocratic tone. He has intimidated both parties in Congress and violated the Constitution. Through dissimulation and delay, he has forced the nations of the world to conclude they must wait until his term ends to negotiate any serious treaty on the imminent perils of climate change.

A sort of thousand-mile stare has descended on the country. Frank Rich writes, "we are a people in clinical depression" as a result of Bush's leadership. Perhaps, a more apt diagnosis would be "dissociation." Like a child or spousal victim of a psychological abuser, Bush's "victims" try to mentally compartmentalize him; they attempt to get on with their lives - even as he keeps on being abusive. You can hear the dissociation when Congressional leaders talk about their inability to make Washington work as it should.

Some, including Daniel Ellsberg, who challenged the autocratic aspirations of Richard Nixon by releasing the Pentagon Papers, suggest Bush has already created a "presidential coup." Ellsberg has said, "If there's another 9/11 under this regime, it means that they switch on full extent all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently constructed."

We would like to answer several questions here. Is the president psychologically capable of such treasonous behavior? Why and how does his psychology make it so difficult for Democrats and others to stand up against his negativity and destructiveness (what he thinks of as his optimism)? How might they neutralize his psychology, which seems geared to inflict harm?

Behind the Torture, All That Stuff He Can't Admit

The president's reflex to justify his right to use torture, even as he insists "we don't torture," illuminates how his psychology works and provides a glimpse into its dark potential.

The man who campaigned in 1999 as a "uniter not a divider" constructs and maintains a polarized world. In his book, "A Tragic Legacy," Glen Greenwald, observes polarizing reality "explains the president's personal approach to all matters - his foreign policy decisions; his relations with other countries; his domestic programs; the terms he adopts when discussing, debating, and analyzing political matters; his attitude toward domestic political opponents ... and his treatment of the national media. For the president, there always exists a clear and identifiable enemy who is to be defeated by any means, means justified not only by the pureness of the enemy's Evil but also by the core Goodness that he believes motivates him and his movement." (48)

Those who question the president's policies are either part of the evil or dangerously unaware of its threat. His dictum,"you're either with us or against us," sums up his closed psychological system. As Greenwald says, because Bush believes he is on the side of Good and Right in a struggle with Evil, he construes even his unpopularity as not "an impediment, but a challenge, even a calling, to demonstrate his resolve and commitment by persisting even more tenaciously in the face of almost universal opposition." (37)

So, torture by his administration is justified - in fact is not even torture - because it is used by Good Americans in a war against Satanic forces.
Bush's torture rationale echoes that of an extreme form of Christianity found among his personal "spiritual" advisers and the prominent televangelists he regularly consults. The religious justification for his worldview has prompted him to bestow billions of dollars on radical "faith-based" activities and to sanction an extremist Christian transformation of the military - actions that foster the idea of the US as a theocratic state called on "to rid the world of evil," as the president has asserted.

As reported by Truthout last June, many of the religious figures associated with Bush believe the final battles of the apocalypse are near, with fires that will spread from the Middle East. Where James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tim LaHaye and John Hagee once pressed Bush hard for war with Iraq, they now clamor for one with Iran. The president cloaks himself in the innocuous terms "Christian," "evangelical" and "born again," and carefully avoids stating his beliefs specifically. But the type of Christianity most influential on his thinking is clearly radical or extremist rather than evangelical; it has an authoritarian, punishing, us-versus-them flavor; it views Christ less as a figure of tolerance and forgiveness than as a five-star general coming to wreck vengeance on anyone who has failed to join His army.

Former President Jimmy Carter's faith, like that of many evangelicals, involves a powerful commitment to love and tolerance. We do not detect a similar commitment in Bush. Spiritual issues and political motives appear secondary to Bush's subconscious use of his faith as a psychological defense. That defense "resolves" and protects him from the pain of a core inner conflict. The drinking and alleged drug taking of his younger years once resolved that same conflict. The supposed spiritual awakening Bush underwent in the mid-1980s allowed him to trade one defense for another. (Author Craig Unger has shown Bush's famous "mustard seed" moment with the Rev. Billy Graham - widely celebrated by the president - never happened; at the same time, Bush carefully avoids mentioning the faith awakening moment he probably really did have with radical evangelical preacher Arthur Blessitt.) In one sense, a half-hidden Manichean Christianity was more effective than alcohol in masking Bush's inner conflict. It made it possible for him to be president.

The Core Conflict

The central, secret conflict that consumes George W. Bush and motivates much of his action can be summed up in a few words: the desperate need to avoid, contain and disguise disabling fears about his competence and adequacy in a context where he expects to feel superior. Out of this core conflict have arisen his good and evil worldview, his lack of empathy, even cruelty, his competitiveness, his bullying, his inability to make a rational decision (despite styling himself "the decider"), his tendency for deception and self-deception, his proclivity for unconsciously sabotaging the success of his own projects.

Bush's biography is well known by now: growing up in family circumstances with a mother who was a "bully," and a father who, though passive, seemed effortlessly successful and talented as an athlete, war hero, businessman and politician. The younger Bush, expecting to demonstrate these same gifts, discovered quickly he couldn't measure up. The discovery probably began early, for example, when he wanted to be the catcher on his little league baseball team but couldn't do well because he reflexively blinked every time a batter swung (Unger, "The Fall of the House of Bush" 81), or his slowness in school, perhaps due to undiagnosed dyslexia or anxiety.

Biographer Bill Minutaglio described a moment at Yale when young Bush apparently tried to take another direction from his father, but couldn't pull away. (Minutaglio, "First Son" 104) Instead, he imitated (to the point of parody) his father's career, compiling failure everywhere his father found success: a C-student at Yale, a desultory pilot, a money-losing businessman. The fact his father or his father's friends needed repeatedly to rescue him from his failures (with Defense Secretary Robert Gates the latest rescuer) would have only increased the conflict between his sense of entitlement and expectation on the one hand, and his sense of insufficiency and incompetence on the other. Bush's sensitivity to his father's approval and disapproval is well established. Younger brother Marvin said the elder Bush could, intentionally or not, make his older son feel he alone had "committed the worst crime in history." (Minutaglio 148). And younger brother Jeb once speculated the attempt by George junior to live up to his disapproving father was the kind of thing that "creates all sorts of pathologies." (Minutaglio 101)

So, Bush indulged in pure wishful thinking when he recently told journalist Robert Draper, "I've never had a fear of losing. I don't like to lose. But having parents who give you unconditional love, I think it means I had the peace of mind to know that even with failure there was love. So I never feared failure." (Draper, "Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush" 36)

In fact, failure has been George W. Bush's single greatest fear.

Substance abuse would have numbed the feelings of inadequacy and given license to his hidden anger about his circumstances. He probably understood in a family as hermetically sealed from self-reflection as his, he could never openly admit feelings that he was a child "left behind" emotionally.

Then, George W. Bush accepted Jesus as his personal savior and the drinking - and presumably those painful feelings the drinking needed to numb - disappeared. The failure-shriveled Bush of the past was replaced by a new God-filled Bush of the future, armed against his inadequacies with the defense of "faith." But his sense of his inadequacy continued beneath the surface.

For example, the president tries to control his environment (speaking only to friendly audiences), and consistently seeks to avoid or deflect definitive "tests" of his competency (though he is eager to test the competency of school children). His plain speaking style, rigidly on message, or laced with platitudes and moralistic bromides, compensates to cover his fear that he is unable to cogently think through an argument. He often looks as if he is trying to remember what he's supposed to say because he's fears he'll say the wrong thing.

His biography strongly suggests it was difficult for him to engage in activities involving the ambiguity, uncertainty and mistakes that normally lead to learning and growth. Instead, he put his energies into defenses and avoidance. He undermined his own ability to think about complex issues. He currently likes to imagine he's living a presidential life similar to Abraham Lincoln's, with a war and religious fervor he imagines is like the Second Great Awakening of Lincoln's time. He thinks of himself making decisions in a similar fashion to Lincoln. (Greenwald 64-65) The problem is Bush lacks precisely the characteristic that made Lincoln a profound decision-maker: an ability to tolerate the ambivalence of situations long enough to perceive the shades of positive and negative, and emerge with what Lincoln called "our best judgment of the preponderance between them" (see epigraph).

In place of a Lincolnesque decision process, Bush's Christian defense supplies divine inspiration in the form of what he calls "gut" feelings that tell him, without much thought, what's right and wrong, good or evil. He feels this form of magical thinking absolves him of the fear that his incompetence or confusion might lead to a wrong or "stupid" choice. In his glaring reluctance to admit mistakes, he's like a child confronted by his parents. But for him, admitting a mistake may be even more threatening than the child's fear of losing his parents' love. By admitting a mistake, he would acknowledge the deep inadequacy he secretly believes defines him. So, he assures himself his spiritual gut feelings can never be mistakes or failure because they come from his attunement with God. But what Bush hears in his gut is not the divine; it is the workings of his own psychology organized to deny and transcend the family image of him as a failure that circulates in his head and has become his image of the world.

As part of his Christian defense, the president has developed strategies that substitute for rational evaluation. To decide whether someone is competent, for example, the president believes he needs only to approve (from his gut) that an individual is a "good person" - Harriet Miers, Alberto Gonzales, Nouri al-Maliki are some examples. Their actual abilities and performance don't matter. If the president gives his stamp of "good person" approval, then it is "unfair" to quibble about performance or qualifications.
Bush's "Christian defense" also allows him to cope with failures by reassuring him that his divinely inspired decision will prove right in the long run. Seeing himself as Good and those who oppose him as Evil or dangerously naive, Bush can justify using any means at his command to defeat them. In this way, he can also give reign to his underlying anger and his desire to inflict harm on a world that had considered (and, he knows, still considers) him inadequate. He can vent his rage at being shackled to a father he has to endlessly compete with. Because he feels weak himself, the weaker are often his targets: children needing medical insurance, endangered species. Meanwhile, he gives uncritical affirmation to authoritarian ("good father") figures who he thinks approve of him: former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Despite his best efforts, his feelings of anxiety about his own inadequacy constantly spill over. Spillage through his body language is notorious among reporters. In a Washington Post article following his failures to respond to Katrina, Dana Milbank closely observed movements as Bush underwent pointed questioning by NBC's Matt Lauer. "The president was a blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts ... He had the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere," he wrote. When Lauer asked Laura Bush about the strain on her husband, he jumped in with a mocking third-person statement about himself: "He can barely stand! He's about to drop on the spot." In this abrupt defensive reflex, Bush denied his inner feelings by aggressively ridiculing thoughts he was afraid the viewer might just have had. Explaining his need to have Cheney with him at the 9/11 Commission interview, he said he wanted commission members to "see our body language ... how we work together." Another unconscious leak. What exactly did he think the commission would see except his own exposed inadequacy? His attempt to hide it, revealed it.

From the beginning of his December 4, 2007, press conference, the president offered a display of goofy facial grimaces, scowls, shifting stances, nervous and inappropriate chuckles accompanying serious statements, winking while reporters asked questions as if to indicate that the questions were foolish and that he was in cahoots with other reporters who appreciated the joke. The president had come to explain the fact he had recently trumpeted Iran ready to start "World War III," or a "nuclear holocaust," though the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) had recently concluded that Iran had, in fact, abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

At first, the president claimed (an obvious lie) that he hadn't known about the NIE conclusions when he issued his dire warnings about Iran. (Later the White House had to clarify he had indeed known.) Then, he said the NIE didn't make any difference to his opinion. Bush is famously adverse to attempts to probe his psychology, and so, after about 40 minutes, when a reporter questioned him about his body language and thought it indicated he was depressed, the president lashed back, "And so, kind of Psychology 101 ain't working. It's just not working. I understand the issues, I clearly see the problems ..." - and in a gesture of angry denial, ended the news conference.

A year prior, however, in a more relaxed and expansive context with friendly journalist, Robert Draper, Bush did indicate curiosity about his own inner workings. "I really do not feel comfortable in the role of analyzing myself," Bush told Draper, but then he emphasized. "I'll try." He didn't get far, though. Immediately after saying that he would "try," he launched into how the primaries are a test of will, then insisted ("eyes clenched, like little blue fists," Draper writes) that he felt constantly watched: "I fully understand that the enemy watches me, the Iraqis are watching me, the troops watch me, and the people watch me. The other thing is that you can't fake it. You have to believe it. And I believe it," he told Draper, leaving ambiguous whether the "it" referred to Iraq or something more deeply personal. "I believe we'll succeed." ("Dead Certain" x)

Of course, his feeling watched and "faking it" (faking certainty, faking competence) is exactly what George Bush is doing.

When the Defenses Become the Reality

We have noted in previous articles other prominent defenses Bush employs to cover his feelings of inadequacy: He is a classic emotional bully. Bullies disguise sensations of their own weakness by splitting the weakness off and casting it out of their own conscious awareness - projecting it - onto the consciousness of others. They generate a stream of signals and behaviors that keep others on guard and seek to enfeeble them. Bush's signing statements where he reserves the right not to abide by the law he's just adopted, his foreign policy asserting his right to preemptive strikes, his denial of Habeas Corpus, his fixation on retaining the torture option, his rejection of subpoenas from Congress, his diminishment of people by giving them nicknames - at different scales, these are emotional bullying tactics. Friends from his younger days remember that in basketball and tennis games Bush would force opponents who had beaten him to continue playing until he had worn down their will so he could beat them. Bush emotionally bullies his White House staff, making them afraid to tell him any news that doesn't fit his "optimistic" expectations. Draper reports senior staffer Josh Bolton greeting Bush each morning with the line, "Thank you for the privilege of serving." (397)

In January 2000 - and more decisively after September 11, 2001 - Bush came into possession of what we have called his "presidential defense." He became "the decider," the "commander guy," leader of the most powerful nation on earth overseeing a war he imagines is without end. Bush feels that his powerful office means - magically - that reality is his to define. Many have noted that the president is convinced that just because he says a thing will be so, it will be so.

As "the decider," Bush regularly asserts that he alone is the one who has to make the "tough" decisions, his primary job as president. At the same time, he has often declared that he loses no sleep and suffers no anxiety over his decisions. What does he mean by "tough," then? The statements are actually the paradox of how he avoids his inadequacy: he can be supremely competent on the grounds that he's the decider who decides what is competent; but since his competent decisions come magically, he doesn't lose sleep over them. In talking about why he never gets advice from his former president father, he says they both understand that as president he knows what his father doesn't know. That statement also doesn't make much logical sense; but it makes great psychological sense: a form of "I'm the daddy now, and daddy's not; daddies don't need advice."

Bush clings to a bad decision and can't change it because he had no rational basis for making it, or any decision, in the first place. Sticking with his decisions stubbornly - what he calls "leadership" - is all he really feels he has to offer as the nation's chief executive.

Absorbed in keeping up his psychic deflector shields, Bush seems shockingly unempathetic, even sadistically cruel about the pain of others. He is callous about torture; he takes pride in executions. His empathy for Katrina victims was clearly forced. He's a man who can put on a jacket of compassion or outrage when he needs to, but then takes it off and can't remember where he left it when a new need for empathy arrives. He's too busy expending that energy on his own situation.

Former Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan has puzzled in her Wall Street Journal column at "the president's seemingly effortless high spirits" these days, at his "jarring peppiness" in circumstances that call for a sober demeanor. Bush's inappropriate affect connects with his inability to feel empathy and shows that he is disowning his depression about his failures and projecting it elsewhere. At the same time, he wants desperately to be liked. That explains the often inappropriate clowning and joking.

Bush's "presidential defense" traps him in a difficult paradox: It dramatically escalates the potency of his protection against being decisively (in his shifting terms) "found out" as inadequate. But it also dramatically escalates the psychically devastating consequences to him if he were to be found out (or find himself out).

As president, Bush is surrounded by what critics have taken to calling "enablers," a term that alludes to Bush's years of drinking and implies that the alcoholic's dynamic remains in force. Cheney is perhaps the chief enabler. As we've discussed previously, the vice president fulfills his need for personhood and power through taking on the wishes of his "patron" and serving as what Sidney Blumenthal calls "the pluperfect staff man." To do this, Cheney operates behind the scenes, where he is comfortable. His strategy translates into an obsessive secrecy for the administration as he carries out Bush's agenda of disguising weakness through bullying and authoritarianism. Doing the boss's dirty work has turned Cheney into a man who is amoral, paranoid and resentful at having framed himself as always second man. He likes the idea of being considered "the evil genius" who operates from the shadows. A deeply passive character with little sense of his own agency apart from a patron, Cheney makes himself, as he has said, "indispensable." He has worked his whole career to establish the presidency as an almost totalitarian "unitary executive," the ruler above all. His effort strikes us as a metaphor of his own internal struggle to be "the man": the paradoxical attempt to exercise his own will by exercising the will of his patron.

Other enablers include the women who surround Bush, principally Laura Bush, Karen Hughes and Condoleezza Rice. These women probably function for him as "good mothers" in contrast to his own mother. They seem to sense his distress, his inner fragility, and his extensive anxiety on a subconscious level, and try to sooth it. In his observations of Bush during the interview with Matt Lauer, reporter Milbank noted that "the first lady had a calming influence on the presidential wiggles. When Laura Bush spoke about her husband's 'broad shoulders,' the president put his arm around her - and the swaying and shifting subsided. The president, now on more comfortable terrain, delivered a brief homily about the decency of others. Through the entire passage, he blinked only 12 times" (down from 37 blinks the reporter counted during Bush's previous statement). The women may help him control his anxiety, but he would not be able to talk to them about it. They have their own issues with him. Rice revealed much about her psychology as enabler and victim of the administration's Stockholm syndrome when she told a friend, "People don't understand. It's not my exercising influence over him. I'm internalizing his world." (Draper 286) Like the alcoholic he once was, Bush has nobody to genuinely confide his anxieties to, not even Laura, who threatened to leave him if he didn't stop drinking. So, even in his most intimate friendships and relationships he is on stage, on message, exerting self-control (not always successfully), riding his bike to distract himself, keeping up his facade.

Bush's psyche throws out a fog of opposites as he attempts to control his ambivalence by disowning and splitting off parts. He can see himself only as Good, Successful, Loyal, Strong. The opposites of those must be cast outside him. He has negligible capacity to explore and draw nourishment from the fertile ground that exists in all of us between the poles of our conceptions and emotions. Insight grows from that ground. There he might discover, for example, that success and failure have many shades. In place of shades, Bush's character decompensates into stark contradictions. Claiming he is not a divider means the opposite, a "compassionate conservative" means the opposite. When his administration holds conferences to help resolve climate change or the Palestinian issue, his internal fragmentation dictates that he really doesn't want these things resolved - he wants the opposite. When he urges the success of an enterprise, it is likely that he has implanted somewhere the seeds of its failure. In the "surge" plan of last January there were several, for example: one flaw - vigorously warned against by the surge plan's supporters - would have created independent command structures for American and Iraqi forces. The command structures idea has been quietly scuttled by the military, which explains that "there are limitations preventing the Iraqi Security Forces from operating fully independently from Coalition forces."

Another flaw involved Bush's remarkable failure to press the Iraqi leadership for the political reconciliation he said last year was the whole point of the surge's improvement of security in Baghdad. Thus, the surge has failed to accomplish its central purpose.

Because he unconsciously expects to be seen by the world as a failure, Bush feels a strange comfort and familiarity in failing and then in denying that he is failing. He can never learn from mistakes. Worse, his psychodynamics ensure that his efforts to avoid his failures inevitably produce more failures.

Bush's administration has become famous for the hubris of believing it would create its own reality; that fantasy inflated an expanding bubble of self-deception that left the White House increasingly out of touch with reality in every political dimension, except for intimidation. The cause of this is clear: To an unprecedented scale, a president's entire administration has been focused on the service of his psychological defense system.

Then, What Is He Capable of?

After previous articles about Bush's psychology, we received a number of emails from clinicians agreeing with our description of Bush's basic psychodynamic, and offering their diagnoses. These varied from one another, sometimes substantially, as might be expected, since no one we know of has had access to a first-hand psychiatric evaluation of Mr. Bush. What can we say about his psychopathology? We find no evidence in the public record that the president hears voices or is mentally ill in a way that would require hospitalization or medication, though some psychiatrists or psychopharmacologists might prescribe medication if he came in for treatment of his own accord. We think Bush's psychological dysfunctions are profound, but they are of the sort that would probably not arouse notice if he were, say, the owner of the Texas Rangers, a job he apparently enjoyed. (Draper 42) (Of course, being a baseball team owner replayed his central theme: his father had the baseball talent and he lacked it.) That said, we believe the effect of the presidency on Bush's psychodynamics and the effect of Bush's psychodynamics on the presidency have created a situation where his personality is as genuinely dangerous to the nation as if he were delusional.

Psychologically, Bush's one non-negotiable position is that he must never have to face his failures because once he found Jesus as his personal savior, he put all his failures (and failings) behind him. But now, after seven years as president, his failure is everywhere. Unlike presidents Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson and even Richard Nixon, Bush seems incapable of coping with his defeats by taking some redeeming direction. In the next year, we believe his behavior will continue to be guided by his need for massive avoidance of his feelings of inadequacy, particularly with regard to Iraq. Success in other areas means little to him and he gives them scant concern for his "legacy." He has identified himself as "a war president." The war is linked to his vague sense of divine mission, his internal aggression, his never-ending competition with his father.

We believe the great foreseeable peril of Bush's remaining year in office is the intersection of his Christian defense with Iran. In recent months, when Bush warned that Iran sought to launch World War III, he seems to have unconsciously told us it is he who wants war. The neo-conservative agenda to capture the Middle East for its oil, only reinforces Bush's own psychological reasons for attacking Iran: 1) to certify his biblical mission, and 2) to avoid facing the colossal incompetence of the Iraq war by bequeathing a widened and inextricable conflict to his successor. We believe Bush is aware that the long-term chaos that might result from an attack on Iran could confound the historical image of his administration enough to make his own failures harder to see. In 50 or 100 years - after he is dead, anyway - historians might even see his worldview in a favorable light. After all, they're still debating George Washington. That's what he thinks. The presidency has become for Bush like the popular "global domination" board game he played with fellow undergrads at Yale. There, he was known as the player willing to take the most risks.

Despite the mainstream press's inclination to construe the president's position euphemistically as a "hard line" on Iran, anyone who followed other reports, including Seymour Hersh's in The New Yorker, could reasonably conclude that the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate was a serious blow to Bush and Cheney's long-standing effort to provoke, create or discover a pretext to attack Iran and expand the Middle East wars. Hersh reported that in 2006 the president and vice president had pressed for use of nuclear weapons against Iranian facilities but were rebuffed by the military. We believe the president is probably already committed internally to pursue this belligerent course for his legacy. Vague fantasies of an "end-of-days" mission may be in his mind, as well.

It remains to be seen whether Secretary of Defense Robert Gates - Bush's father's designated new "minder" inside the administration - or senior military commanders can prevent Cheney from finding a way to operationalize the decision. So far they've succeeded. Meanwhile, the Democrats appear to be in denial about the risk of Bush's intentions. They know that almost everyone in authority who is rational actor believes taking on Iran at this time would be a colossal blunder, and they assume - though they must know better - that Bush will be persuaded by that rationality. We think this "misunderestimates" his psychology. The Democrats should overcome their denial and take their own preemptive action to block him from such an attack.

Some have imagined a worse scenario. In 2007, a statement to a small group of constituents by Democratic representative John Olver of Amherst, Mass., made the rounds on the Internet. Olver worried that Bush would attack Iran, declare a national emergency and suspend the 2008 elections. A clarifying email from Olver's press secretary to us said the congressman had no evidence that any of this would happen but that he had worried about a "thought crime" on the part of the president.

Is Bush psychologically capable of acting out such a "thought crime," maneuvering to remain in power? Would Bush ever actually move to suspend the Constitution? Unfortunately, he's done just that already, in significant ways. How committed is he really to the idea of democracy he talks about incessantly? Psychologically these are interesting questions. Given his tendency to polarize and split his ambivalence, we'd have to say that his constant pieties about democracy suggest the opposite is significantly at work in his consciousness. He's even joked about it: "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." Of course, he would vehemently deny that he is dictator even if he became one.

When Draper asked Bush about what plans he had after leaving the White House, they appeared vague, shiftless: making more money than his father on speaking engagements, setting up some foundation or something for encouraging democracy. "I can just envision getting in the car, getting bored, going down to the ranch." (406) His fantasies suggest his polarized ambivalence. He may yearn to escape into his old drinking days shiftlessness to get out from under the constant anxiety he feels about being competent as president; yet, he also seems keenly aware of the narcotic feeling of being a "consequential" person with a biblical mission, surrounded by the most powerful psychological defenses in the world. (Once out of office, how will he return to the family that knows his secret?) Is Bush capable of wanting to take the nation down an authoritarian road (a different question from whether he could get away with it)? If there were a terrorist attack on US soil or the assassination of a candidate, he could claim he is defending America by postponing the election. Cheney's office could provide the Constitutional rationale. With Bush's psychohistory, it's easy to become paranoid. Purely speculating: We think that Olver's "thought crime" is not the first thing on the president's mind and that he is not so out of touch with reality that he wouldn't have serious pause at such an action. (Martial law hasn't worked well for Pakistani strong man Pervez Musharraf.) That said, we believe Bush's psychodynamics could propel him in that direction if certain conditions arose.

As Greenwald observes: "The most dangerous George Bush is the one who feels weak, impotent, and under attack. Those perceptions are intolerable for him and it is doubtful if there are many limits, if any, on what he would be willing to do in order to restore a feeling of potency and to rid himself of the sensations of his own weakness and defeat." (95)

Responding to the Bush Psychology

It's likely that members of Congress in particular have experienced the subliminal shockwaves of what Greenwald describes. When the president feels weak, you don't know what he'll do. You sense that somewhere beneath your feet lie tripwires, which are his psychological defenses. Step on one, and you feel he'll react in a way that will be time consuming, unpleasant, distracting and possibly personally humiliating. He will pretend that his assault on you will be about important matters of national concern, but it will be really about himself. It will be hard to explain all that to the public, however. The president gives off subtle, angry irrationality that takes the air out of individuals of either party who might want to challenge him. They'd rather not deal with him if he can be avoided. They try to evade his polarizations. In that way they, too, become his enablers.
Unfortunately, there's no magic formula countering the psychology of the kind discussed here in the unique circumstance where the owner of that psychology is the president. But here are some things to consider:

Bush-type personality operates in a defensive, binary mode. Greenwald observes that the president's neocon advisers have found they can manipulate him by casting the policy they're advancing in a binary, good-evil terms. Then Bush manipulates others using such polarizations. When he says some variation of, "You're either with us or against us," he makes you feel angry and weak. You want to strike back, but you can't if you wish to remain rational. So you want to say logically, "No, I'm not against you, but I'm not with you, either." But that requires explaining, which is immensely difficult in our media environment. Reporters have become addicted to conflict-based storytelling as a way of getting audience attention. They prefer a polarized fight and will even try to start one if it doesn't exist. They tell stories by juxtaposing antagonistic sound bites. A politician trying to articulate a position that is non-polarized, nuanced and non-conflictual is at a disadvantage. Perhaps, serious politicians need to develop some tactics that can directly confront polarizing. "There you go again, Mr. President, creating a false division. There are third and forth options here." Whenever possible, the mainstream press should be chastised and educated about its addiction to this kind of conflict-based reporting, which creates a free fire zone, an information free environment that destroys public discourse.

A person polarizing the world as Bush does is like a small, weak animal that puffs itself up in order to scare off attackers. In Bush's case, the presidency has frequently led him into the illusion that he actually is his puffed up size. It might help to remember that he's not.

Polarizing tactics work because they provoke and rely on fear in those at the receiving end - fear of being wrong, fear of what the other guy will do, fear of uncertainty, fear of mistakes. Fear these things less and the tactics will work less. Such fears make us feel like children again. But we're adults. Binary, absolutist categories are always an inadequate description of the real world, which is, as Lincoln said, an "inseparable compound" of various polarities. As adults, we can think and speak about subtleties and complexities. If we do, fear will go down, not up. Most adults implicitly understand that the real world is, more often than not, nuanced, and an appeal to the truth of shades has its own strong power.

The Democrats have recently tried to operate in the grand American tradition that opposition and diversity must be accompanied by a willingness to negotiate. That is the message of the Constitution, a document that embodies a psychologically very deep understanding of the give-and-take of creative process. The Democrats attempted to work with the president and their Republican colleagues in this spirit after they won the Congress in 2006. Psychologically, it was the right thing to do. They tried to heal the wounds the president had inflicted and draw him into a creative collaboration. But the president's massive defensiveness over his failures has kept him truculently binary. He has obviously intimidated his fellow Republicans so that they, too, have continued in a merely oppositional mode and are supporting his vetoes. The president is dismissing Congress as incidental to his authority.

At this point, it appears that the Democrats and moderate Republicans are succumbing to their fear of direct confrontation with his psychology. They seem afraid the president might be vindicated by another terrorist attack on US soil (as though the attack would prove that polarizing the world is the true path). They want to avoid a constitutional crisis in the months until Bush leaves office. They haven't wanted their legislative time consumed with investigations of administrative corruption and usurpation of power. They haven't wanted to alienate the electorate during an election season. Their own ambivalence has been set off by his, but with a different result. They waffle: one minute resisting him, the next backing down. All this is understandable, but it misses the point that corruption and usurpation of the sort that has been unleashed by the president's psychology may have already seriously damaged our national institutions. What is the message to the future if we allow this president's psychological defenses against his failures to inflict such damage and then evade our responsibility to hold him accountable for it?

Members of Congress can stop being victims of the president's abusive psychology. You can confront a polarizer about his behavior without yourself becoming a polarizer. Instead of splitting ambivalence as Bush does, ambivalence can be used it to think through a clear course of action. The Constitution helps, in this case. The Democrats might, for example, articulate their balancing duties under the Constitution and carefully and firmly distinguish them from acts of partisan opposition. They might publicly acknowledge that this president, with the past complicity of Congress, has damaged our institutions. They could insist on the investigative and deliberative process called for by our system of government. Methodically holding Bush and his administration to account for his abuses (such a thing has never before happened to him) may be the most effective way to neutralize the further acting out of his dangerous psychology. It would empower others in his administration to resist him. It would refocus Congress on its own responsibilities in the constitutional process. Of course, to accomplish this would require some adults and "profiles in courage."

John P. Briggs, M.D. is retired from over 40 years of private practice in psychotherapy in Westchester County, New York. He was on the faculty in psychiatry at the Columbia Medical Center in New York City for 23 years and was a long-time member of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis. He trained at the William Alanson White Institute in New York. For 20 years he practiced co-therapy for married couples with his late wife, Muriel.

JP Briggs II, Ph.D. is a distinguished CSU professor at Western Connecticut State University, specializing in creative process. He is the senior editor of the intellectual journal, "The Connecticut Review" and author and co-author of books on creativity and chaos, including "Fire in the Crucible" (St. Martins Press); "Fractals, the Patterns of Chaos" (Simon and Schuster); "Seven Life Lessons of Chaos" (HarperCollins); and a collection of short stories, "Trickster Tales" (Fine Tooth Press). He is currently at work on a book about the power of ambivalence with Philadelphia psychologist John Amoroso. Email: profbriggs@comcast.net

Bin Laden Identifies Saudi Arabia as the Enemy of Mujahideen Unity

2008-01-11T08:53:00.000-07:00

By Michael Scheuer

01/08/2008 - Osama bin Laden’s latest message is one of the richest, most comprehensive and starkly realistic he has issued since the start of the Iraq war. The following essay is the first of two that will analyze the message and offer an assessment of its importance. This essay considers al-Qaeda’s dour recognition of its inability to control post-occupation events in Iraq as a small vanguard organization and a non-Iraqi presence in the country. The second part of this article will examine bin Laden’s confidence that al-Qaeda has accomplished its main goal in Iraq: establishing a base from which to project its influence and military power into the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula.

FULL STORY

Ron Paul's Acutal Newsletters!

2008-01-08T14:28:00.000-07:00

Selections From Ron Paul's Newsletters

The New Republic Published: Tuesday, January 08, 2008

The Newsletters:

Since at least 1978, Ron Paul has attached his name to a series of newsletters--Ron Paul's Freedom Report, Ron Paul Political Report, The Ron Paul Survival Report, and The Ron Paul Investment Letter--that frequently made outrageous statements:

Race

"A Special Issue on Racial Terrorism" analyzes the Los Angeles riots of 1992: "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. ... What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the violence subsided."

The November 1990 issue of the Political Report had kind words for David Duke.

This newsletter describes Martin Luther King Jr. as "a world-class adulterer" who "seduced underage girls and boys" and "replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration."

The January 1991 edition of the Political Report refers to King as a "world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours" and a "flagrant plagiarist with a phony doctorate."

A February 1991 newsletter attacks "The X-Rated Martin Luther King."

An October 1990 edition of the Political Report ridicules black activists, led by Al Sharpton, for demonstrating at the Statue of Liberty in favor of renaming New York City after Martin Luther King. The newsletter suggests that "Welfaria," "Zooville," "Rapetown," "Dirtburg," and "Lazyopolis" would be better alternatives--and says, "Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house."

Gays

In the course of defending homophobic comments by Andy Rooney of CBS, a 1990 newsletter notes that a reporter for a gay magazine "certainly had an axe to grind, and that's not easy with a limp wrist."

The June 1990 issue of the Political Report says: "I miss the closet.

Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities."

From the August 1990 issue of the Political Report: "Bring Back the Closet!"

A January 1994 edition of the Survival Report states that "gays in San Francisco do not obey the dictates of good sense," adding: "[T]hese men don't really see a reason to live past their fifties. They are not married, they have no children, and their lives are centered on new sexual partners." Also, "they enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick."

Survivalism and Militias

The November 1994 issue of the Survival Report celebrates anti-government militias.

The January 1995 issue of the Survival Report--released just three months before the Oklahoma City bombing--cites an anti-government militia's advice to other militias, including, "Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."

The October 1992 issue of the Political Report paraphrases an "ex-cop" who offers this strategy for protecting against "urban youth": "If you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds, for example)."

Conspiracies

This 1978 newsletter says the Trilateral Commission is "no longer known only by those who are knowledgeable about international conspiracies, but is routinely mentioned in the daily news."

A 1986 newsletter names Jeane Kirkpatrick and George Will as "two of our enemies" and notes their membership in the Trilateral Commission.

In an undated solicitation letter for The Ron Paul Investment Letter and the Ron Paul Political Report, Paul writes: "I've been told not to talk, but these stooges don't scare me. Threats or no threats, I've laid bare the coming race war in our big cities. The federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS (my training as a physician helps me see through this one.) The Bohemian Grove--perverted, pagan playground of the powerful. Skull & Bones: the demonic fraternity that includes George Bush and leftist Senator John Kerry, Congress's Mr. New Money. The Israeli lobby, which plays Congress like a cheap harmonica."

Middle East

A 1989 newsletter compares Salman Rushdie to Ernst Zundel, a Canadian Holocaust-denier.

The March 1987 issue of The Ron Paul Investment Letter calls Israel "an aggressive, national socialist state."

Other Documents: Paul has had a long association with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Auburn, Alabama. The think tank was founded by Lew Rockwell, who served as Paul's congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982.

This March 1995 letter from Lew Rockwell advertises the Mises Institute's upcoming conference on secession (at which Paul spoke): "We'll explore what causes [secession] and how to promote it."

An advertisement for the Mises Institute's 1995 secession conference--to be held in Charleston, "hotbed of America's two great secessions, against Britain and D.C."

***************

Now what excuse can the Paul supporters come up with?

Sibel Edmonds Speaks

2008-01-07T11:15:00.000-07:00

From The Sunday Times
January 6, 2008

For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets

A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.

Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.

Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.

Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims.

However, Edmonds said: “He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”

She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents.

“If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,” she said.

Her story shows just how much the West was infiltrated by foreign states seeking nuclear secrets. It illustrates how western government officials turned a blind eye to, or were even helping, countries such as Pakistan acquire bomb technology.

The wider nuclear network has been monitored for many years by a joint Anglo-American intelligence effort. But rather than shut it down, investigations by law enforcement bodies such as the FBI and Britain’s Revenue & Customs have been aborted to preserve diplomatic relations.

Edmonds, a fluent speaker of Turkish and Farsi, was recruited by the FBI in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Her previous claims about incompetence inside the FBI have been well documented in America.

She has given evidence to closed sessions of Congress and the 9/11 commission, but many of the key points of her testimony have remained secret. She has now decided to divulge some of that information after becoming disillusioned with the US authorities’ failure to act.

One of Edmonds’s main roles in the FBI was to translate thousands of hours of conversations by Turkish diplomatic and political targets that had been covertly recorded by the agency.

A backlog of tapes had built up, dating back to 1997, which were needed for an FBI investigation into links between the Turks and Pakistani, Israeli and US targets. Before she left the FBI in 2002 she heard evidence that pointed to money laundering, drug imports and attempts to acquire nuclear and conventional weapons technology.

“What I found was damning,” she said. “While the FBI was investigating, several arms of the government were shielding what was going on.”

The Turks and Israelis had planted “moles” in military and academic institutions which handled nuclear technology. Edmonds says there were several transactions of nuclear material every month, with the Pakistanis being among the eventual buyers. “The network appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States,” she said.

They were helped, she says, by the high-ranking State Department official who provided some of their moles – mainly PhD students – with security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities. These included the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent.

In one conversation Edmonds heard the official arranging to pick up a $15,000 cash bribe. The package was to be dropped off at an agreed location by someone in the Turkish diplomatic community who was working for the network.

The Turks, she says, often acted as a conduit for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they were less likely to attract suspicion. Venues such as the American Turkish Council in Washington were used to drop off the cash, which was picked up by the official.

Edmonds said: “I heard at least three transactions like this over a period of 2½ years. There are almost certainly more.”

The Pakistani operation was led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief.

Intercepted communications showed Ahmad and his colleagues stationed in Washington were in constant contact with attachés in the Turkish embassy.

Intelligence analysts say that members of the ISI were close to Al-Qaeda before and after 9/11. Indeed, Ahmad was accused of sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks.

The results of the espionage were almost certainly passed to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist.

Khan was close to Ahmad and the ISI. While running Pakistan’s nuclear programme, he became a millionaire by selling atomic secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. He also used a network of companies in America and Britain to obtain components for a nuclear programme.

Khan caused an alert among western intelligence agencies when his aides met Osama Bin Laden. “We were aware of contact between A Q Khan’s people and Al-Qaeda,” a former CIA officer said last week. “There was absolute panic when we initially discovered this, but it kind of panned out in the end.”

It is likely that the nuclear secrets stolen from the United States would have been sold to a number of rogue states by Khan.

Edmonds was later to see the scope of the Pakistani connections when it was revealed that one of her fellow translators at the FBI was the daughter of a Pakistani embassy official who worked for Ahmad. The translator was given top secret clearance despite protests from FBI investigators.

Edmonds says packages containing nuclear secrets were delivered by Turkish operatives, using their cover as members of the diplomatic and military community, to contacts at the Pakistani embassy in Washington.

Following 9/11, a number of the foreign operatives were taken in for questioning by the FBI on suspicion that they knew about or somehow aided the attacks.

Edmonds said the State Department official once again proved useful. “A primary target would call the official and point to names on the list and say, ‘We need to get them out of the US because we can’t afford for them to spill the beans’,” she said. “The official said that he would ‘take care of it’.”

The four suspects on the list were released from interrogation and extradited.

Edmonds also claims that a number of senior officials in the Pentagon had helped Israeli and Turkish agents.

“The people provided lists of potential moles from Pentagon-related institutions who had access to databases concerning this information,” she said.

“The handlers, who were part of the diplomatic community, would then try to recruit those people to become moles for the network. The lists contained all their ‘hooking points’, which could be financial or sexual pressure points, their exact job in the Pentagon and what stuff they had access to.”

One of the Pentagon figures under investigation was Lawrence Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst, who was jailed in 2006 for passing US defence information to lobbyists and sharing classified information with an Israeli diplomat.

“He was one of the top people providing information and packages during 2000 and 2001,” she said.

Once acquired, the nuclear secrets could have gone anywhere. The FBI monitored Turkish diplomats who were selling copies of the information to the highest bidder.

Edmonds said: “Certain greedy Turkish operators would make copies of the material and look around for buyers. They had agents who would find potential buyers.”

In summer 2000, Edmonds says the FBI monitored one of the agents as he met two Saudi Arabian businessmen in Detroit to sell nuclear information that had been stolen from an air force base in Alabama. She overheard the agent saying: “We have a package and we’re going to sell it for $250,000.”

Edmonds’s employment with the FBI lasted for just six months. In March 2002 she was dismissed after accusing a colleague of covering up illicit activity involving Turkish nationals.

She has always claimed that she was victimised for being outspoken and was vindicated by an Office of the Inspector General review of her case three years later. It found that one of the contributory reasons for her sacking was that she had made valid complaints.

The US attorney-general has imposed a state secrets privilege order on her, which prevents her revealing more details of the FBI’s methods and current investigations.

Her allegations were heard in a closed session of Congress, but no action has been taken and she continues to campaign for a public hearing.

She was able to discuss the case with The Sunday Times because, by the end of January 2002, the justice department had shut down the programme.

The senior official in the State Department no longer works there. Last week he denied all of Edmonds’s allegations: “If you are calling me to say somebody said that I took money, that’s outrageous . . . I do not have anything to say about such stupid ridiculous things as this.”

In researching this article, The Sunday Times has talked to two FBI officers (one serving, one former) and two former CIA sources who worked on nuclear proliferation. While none was aware of specific allegations against officials she names, they did provide overlapping corroboration of Edmonds’s story.

One of the CIA sources confirmed that the Turks had acquired nuclear secrets from the United States and shared the information with Pakistan and Israel. “We have no indication that Turkey has its own nuclear ambitions. But the Turks are traders. To my knowledge they became big players in the late 1990s,” the source said.

How Pakistan got the bomb, then sold it to the highest bidders

1965 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s foreign minister, says: “If India builds the bomb we will eat grass . . . but we will get one of our own”

1974 Nuclear programme becomes increased priority as India tests a nuclear device

1976 Abdul Qadeer Khan, a scientist, steals secrets from Dutch uranium plant. Made head of his nation’s nuclear programme by Bhutto, now prime minister

1976 onwards Clandestine network established to obtain materials and technology for uranium enrichment from the West

1985 Pakistan produces weapons-grade uranium for the first time

1989-91 Khan’s network sells Iran nuclear weapons information and technology

1991-97 Khan sells weapons technology to North Korea and Libya

1998 India tests nuclear bomb and Pakistan follows with a series of nuclear tests. Khan says: “I never had any doubts I was building a bomb. We had to do it”

2001 CIA chief George Tenet gathers officials for crisis summit on the proliferation of nuclear technology from Pakistan to other countries

2001 Weeks before 9/11, Khan’s aides meet Osama Bin Laden to discuss an Al-Qaeda nuclear device

2001 After 9/11 proliferation crisis becomes secondary as Pakistan is seen as important ally in war on terror

2003 Libya abandons nuclear weapons programme and admits acquiring components through Pakistani nuclear scientists

2004 Khan placed under house arrest and confesses to supplying Iran, Libya and North Korea with weapons technology. He is pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf

2006 North Korea tests a nuclear bomb

2007 Renewed fears that bomb may fall into hands of Islamic extremists as killing of Benazir Bhutto throws country into turmoil

Old Habits

2008-01-05T18:15:00.000-07:00

How the Giuliani method may defeat him.

by Elizabeth Kolbert
January 7, 2008

In a normal season, losing all the early contests would almost certainly end a candidacy.

Though he is not especially funny, Rudy Giuliani likes to begin with a joke. “Did you know that I’m running for President of the United States?” he asked at a recent house party in Windham, New Hampshire. “Did I tell you that?” His hosts, Al and Patti Letizio, and their friends cheered. “I’m running because I believe that the country needs strong leadership for the future.”

Giuliani advised the Letizios and their neighbors to look at what he calls his Twelve Commitments. In June, also in New Hampshire, he had laid out these commitments, which range from “I will keep America on offense in the Terrorists’ War on Us” (No. 1) to “I will expand America’s involvement in the global economy and strengthen our reputation around the world” (No. 12). Giuliani carries the list on a laminated card the size of a driver’s license; he says that he will keep the card on his desk in the Oval Office.

“The goals that we have, they’re big goals,” he said. “They’re very difficult things to do. They’re very difficult things to accomplish. And they’re things, quite frankly, that America in the past hasn’t been able to accomplish.

“There are some people who believe that this country is declining,” he went on. “There are some people who believe that we’re going in the wrong direction. Well, you know something? They’re wrong! And we can make them wrong, by making the right choices. By making the right choices about our leadership. Because this is about leadership.”

After a while, it was time for questions. The first came from a man in a Patriots sweatshirt, which led Giuliani to muse about his own favorite team, the Giants, which in turn led the man to rib him about the Yankees. The second came from a woman who wanted to know more about Commitment No. 6, which deals with energy. How, she asked, did Giuliani plan to make the country “energy independent”?

“This is where we really need a leader,” he told her. “We need somebody who can do the impossible. Now, I say that because I did this a lot in New York.”

Depending on whether you count his abortive race for the U.S. Senate in 2000, this is either Giuliani’s fourth or his fifth political campaign. In the earlier races, his goal was to persuade New Yorkers to vote for a Republican; this time around, it’s to persuade Republicans to vote for a New Yorker. Gone are the “Godfather” imitations, the snapping at the press, and the praise for immigration (“the single most important reason for American greatness”). The candidate who stopped by the Letizios’, and before that had coffee at Suzie’s Diner, in Hudson, and before that went on a holiday stroll in Nashua, where he waited in line to buy a Christmas ornament of a moose, is a less ethnic, less impatient, and more conservative candidate than voters in Brooklyn and the Bronx ever knew. This Giuliani invokes Ronald Reagan, smiles—or tries to—at children, and pledges to “secure our borders and identify every non-citizen in the nation.”

And yet the logic of his new campaign is—mutatis mutandis—the same as that of the old. Once again, Giuliani is in the awkward situation of wanting to represent a group of people whose views he does not actually represent. Once again, appeals based on “values” or personal history are closed to him. (Fourteen years ago—before he had appeared in drag, or ditched his second wife on TV, or met his third wife at a cigar bar—a “vulnerability study” commissioned by his staff noted that Giuliani’s “personal life raises questions about a ‘weirdness factor.’ ”) And so, once again, Giuliani is left to campaign on the basis of a single, strongly held idea: a great-leader theory of history, in which the great leader happens to be himself.

Mayors of New York have often seen themselves as singularly suited for higher office. “It’s the second-toughest job in America!” according to John Lindsay’s famous slogan. Giuliani likes to say that having run the city “is about as good a preparation for being President as exists”—an assessment that, not surprisingly, is much the same as the one offered by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has flirted with running as an Independent. (In 2000, when Bill Clinton was rumored to be thinking of entering the New York mayoral race, his press secretary inverted Lindsay’s formula, observing that the President “already has the second-toughest job in American politics—why would he want the toughest?”)

Yet what seems self-evident to New York mayors has rarely seemed that way to voters. The last mayor to make it even as far as Albany was John T. Hoffman, who, with the help of Boss Tweed, became governor in 1869. (Briefly, Mayor William J. Gaynor seemed headed for state or national office, but he died in 1913, before his prospects could be tested.) During Lindsay’s Presidential run, in 1972, he thought that the support of retired New Yorkers living in Florida would help him win that state’s primary, and thus the Democratic nomination; instead, he finished fifth out of seven, and dropped out of the race shortly thereafter. Ronald Reagan, then the governor of California, reportedly turned the mayoralty-is-the-second-toughest-job slogan against Lindsay, saying, “It probably is, the way he does it.”

Giuliani filed his “statement of candidacy” with the Federal Election Commission on February 5, 2007, and nine days later told Larry King, “Yes, I’m running.” (He never delivered a formal announcement speech.) The field he entered was a jumble. John McCain, thanks to his moderate stand on immigration, had alienated much of the Republican Party’s base. Mitt Romney hadn’t figured out how, as a Mormon, to appeal to evangelical Christians. Mike Huckabee had figured out how to appeal to evangelical Christians, but (or perhaps because) he didn’t believe in evolution. (“If you want to believe that you and your family came from apes, that’s fine,” Huckabee said after an early debate. “I’ll accept that. I just don’t happen to think that I did.”)

Giuliani’s campaign got off to a bumpy start; a lengthy internal campaign memo, citing potentially “insurmountable” personal and political vulnerabilities, was leaked to the News. The campaign righted itself—Giuliani led the Republican field in second- and third-quarter fund-raising—only to run into trouble again. In November came the indictment of his former police commissioner Bernard Kerik, on sixteen counts of fraud, tax evasion, and making false statements. That was followed by the revelation that Giuliani’s consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, had done business with, among others, the son of a Macao gambling tycoon reputed to have ties to Chinese organized crime, and the news that some of the security expenses for his then-mistress-now-wife, Judith Nathan, were initially billed to obscure New York City agencies, like the Office for People with Disabilities. (Giuliani has said that the billing was done this way to speed up payments, a claim that several current and former city officials told me they found implausible.) In recent weeks, Giuliani’s numbers in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina have been sinking, and his once comfortable lead in the national polls has vanished. It now seems possible that he will emerge from the first three major contests with three third-place finishes, or worse.

In a normal primary season—if such a thing can be said to exist—losing all the early contests would almost certainly end a candidacy. It is the Giuliani camp’s stated belief that this will not be a normal season. California, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey have moved up their primaries to February 5th, or “super-duper Tuesday,” as it has become known. Florida has moved up its primary even farther, to January 29th. Until a few weeks ago, Giuliani enjoyed a wide lead in the polls in Florida, and while all the other candidates have been camped out in Sioux City and Manchester he has been spending an unusual amount of time in places like Tampa. “Our strategy from the beginning has been an eight-, nine-inning game,” Giuliani recently told reporters. “I call it a proportionate strategy.” A presentation prepared for Giuliani volunteers, which was obtained by the Washington Post, declares, “Florida is the firewall,” and offers a list of “key coalitions” for the former mayor in the state; these include Italian-Americans, first responders, and—shades of John Lindsay—transplanted Northeasterners.

In January of 2001, Giuliani signed, for a reported $2.7 million, a two-book deal with Talk Miramax Books. The first book, according to Publishers Weekly, was to be a memoir that would “deal frankly” with Giuliani’s family background, his career, and “his struggles between wife and lover.” One can only imagine what such a memoir would have related, because so far the only book to appear, “Leadership,” is the one that was supposed to come second.

“Leadership” is written in the style of a self-help guide for those with superior judgment. “Accept that maybe you really do know better and can see a little further down the road than others,” Giuliani writes. Like most books by politicians, it is self-protective and, precisely because of that, self-revealing. Its chapters are headed by organizational maxims, like “Prepare Relentlessly” and “Be Your Own Man,” and mix truisms (“Leaders must find a balance between speed and deliberation”) with anecdotes that illustrate how Giuliani put the principle into practice. In the chapter titled “Reflect, Then Decide,” Giuliani relates at length how he chose a course of treatment for his prostate cancer—he opted for radiation seed implants and external radiation—and also how he chose the physician to implant the seeds. (The doctor’s method reminded him of innovations in crime-fighting.) In the chapter titled “First Things First,” he tells how he got rid of the squeegee men. (It turned out that many of them had outstanding warrants.) And in “Surround Yourself with Great People” Giuliani describes the process by which, in August, 2000, he picked Kerik to be the city’s fortieth police commissioner.

The obvious candidate for the job was the Police Department’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, Joe Dunne. In Giuliani’s words, Dunne was a “cop’s cop,” and he was being recommended by the outgoing commissioner, Howard Safir, and by many of the Mayor’s other advisers. But Giuliani was torn. During the 1993 mayoral campaign, Kerik, a detective, had volunteered to drive him around the city on weekends, and Giuliani had subsequently made him commissioner of the Corrections Department. Although Kerik lacked some obvious credentials for the position of police commissioner—among them a college degree—Giuliani decided that he would be the better choice. “The reasons I picked Bernie are complicated, and boil down to factors of chemistry and feel,” he writes. “As I told Joe, if I had known him as long as I’d known Bernie, it could easily have been him.” (A few days before Kerik was indicted, Giuliani told the Associated Press, “There were mistakes made,” but he suggested that these, too, should be counted in his favor: “Anybody running for President that hasn’t made their share of mistakes is probably not ready to be President.”)

Many, perhaps most, politicians probably value competence and probity somewhat less than devotion. What’s unusual about Giuliani is how little effort he makes to disguise this. Take, for example, the story of his Taxi and Limousine commissioner Christopher Lynn, which Giuliani invokes in the chapter titled “Loyalty: The Vital Virtue.” One day, Lynn, because his boyfriend had complained to him about a cabdriver’s behavior, personally suspended the driver’s taxi license. His action—and his subsequent insistence that he had not violated the commission’s rules when evidently he had—became a running story in the News, prompting several aides to advise Giuliani to get rid of Lynn. Instead, the Mayor promoted him to transportation commissioner: “I wasn’t going to let any newspaper choose my administration.” (In his new job, Lynn made more news, for a variety of additional scandalettes, and in 2000 he was forced to withdraw his name from consideration as the District of Columbia’s taxicab chief.) In the same chapter, Giuliani explains how he picked Robert Harding to be the city’s budget director. Harding’s father, Raymond, the longtime chairman of the New York State Liberal Party, had secured for Giuliani the Liberal Party ballot line, which he ran on three times. Giuliani writes that he “knew there’d be heat” for what could appear to be a patronage hire. But, he goes on, “I wasn’t going to choose a lesser candidate simply to quiet critics.” This self-praise is particularly noteworthy, since Giuliani also appointed a second Harding son, Russell, to lead the New York City Housing Development Corporation. Russell, a college dropout with no experience in the housing field, embezzled more than four hundred thousand dollars from the agency, and was eventually sentenced to five years in federal prison.

Meanwhile, some of the most talented people Giuliani brought to New York get scant mention in “Leadership,” perhaps because by the time he wrote the book he was no longer speaking to them. In 1995, Giuliani forced out the city’s schools chancellor, Ramon Cortines, after first subjecting him to a series of humiliations. The next schools chancellor, Rudy Crew, became a close friend of the Mayor’s, smoking cigars and going to Yankees games with him. But Crew, too, ran afoul of Giuliani—he refused to endorse school vouchers, a measure that Giuliani, after years of opposing, had suddenly decided to support—and he, too, was hounded out. (“It’s tragic how wounded this man really is,” Crew later said of Giuliani. “And wounded people inevitably wound other people.”) Giuliani briefly alludes to the falling out he had with his first and most innovative police commissioner, William Bratton, only to argue that “had there been no change atop the Police Department, we would not have achieved the reductions in crime that we did.” (Bratton, who is now the Los Angeles police chief, told me he found that “a very strange assertion,” since at the time of his departure the decline in the crime rate was accelerating.)

During Giuliani’s early years in office, his achievements were impressive. Between 1993 and 1996, the city’s murder rate fell by forty-four per cent, the number of people on welfare dropped by nearly twenty per cent—the first significant decrease in the city’s history—and the Mayor succeeded in closing a $2.3-billion budget gap with a series of nearly no-growth spending plans. (As his tenure wore on, he became more freehanded, and ultimately he left Bloomberg a gap of nearly five billion dollars.)

But, even as Giuliani was coasting to a second term, the circle around him was growing narrower, and the few dissenting voices fewer. Bratton recalled that after a while he couldn’t even make a promotion without consulting City Hall. “A leader like Giuliani will end up having around him people who are comfortable being micromanaged,” he told me. Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, who served as commissioner of the city’s Human Resources Administration under Giuliani, has described the dynamic among the Mayor’s top aides—the so-called “yes-Rudy’s”—this way: “If Rudy would say, ‘Let’s kill twelve-year-olds,’ there would be a deep silence in the room and then somebody would say, ‘That’s brilliant! ’ And then somebody else would say, ‘Have you thought of thirteen-year-olds, too?’ ” Dissent from outside the administration was tolerated little better; elected officials judged to be less than fully supportive of the Mayor found themselves unable to get the most basic information from City Hall. In 1997, for instance, Giuliani decided to deny the state comptroller, H. Carl McCall, access to the city’s books. McCall took Giuliani to court, and won. Giuliani appealed, and McCall won again. The case went to the state’s highest court, and McCall won a third time. “The bottom line is we had to spend two years and millions of dollars in taxpayer money just to do our jobs,” McCall told me.

Giuliani fought similar, losing battles with the Independent Budget Office, the city’s campaign-finance board, and New York’s major newspapers. He tried to change the rules of mayoral succession to bypass the public advocate, Mark Green, whom he particularly loathed. He lost that battle, too. After Amadou Diallo, an unarmed Guinean immigrant, was killed by plainclothes policemen, in February, 1999, some of New York’s top-ranking black officials, including McCall, asked to meet with Giuliani. Giuliani refused. The following month, former mayor Ed Koch was briefly hospitalized. Koch, who had crossed party lines to endorse Giuliani over David Dinkins, recently recalled the day that Giuliani came to visit him.

“I sat up in bed, and asked him, ‘Why won’t you meet with them?’ ” Koch told me. “And he said, ‘I don’t agree with them.’ And I said, “Rudy, you only meet with people you agree with? That’s crazy!’ ” Koch went on, “Rudy was a good mayor in the sense of delivering services. I have always said that. He was not a great mayor, because he didn’t respect people.”

When news got out that Giuliani was building a new emergency command center at 7 World Trade Center, the City Council speaker, Peter Vallone, joked that if the Mayor needed space only for those people he trusted he could put the center in “a phone booth.”

Around the time that Giuliani travelled to New Hampshire to make his case to the Letizios and their neighbors, members of the 9/11 Firefighters and Families travelled to New Hampshire to try to undermine it. The group, which consists of relatives of some of the people who died in the World Trade Center attack, rented a basement room at Dartmouth College, and sent out invitations to the local press. A half dozen reporters showed up, along with some firefighters from nearby companies and a few curious members of the Dartmouth staff. The first person to speak was Sally Regenhard, who carried a photograph of her son, Christian, a probationary firefighter who had been on the job for just six months at the time of the disaster.

“He was a person who loved life,” Regenhard said, her voice breaking. “He loved his country. On 9/11, his dreams, and our dreams for him, ended. After 9/11, we started to find out about why my son and other firefighters met a brutal and needless death. We started to find out about things like the radios and the lack of unified command structure. We were shocked. We were heartbroken. But we were very determined that our children, our loved ones, had to have a legacy. And that had to be a legacy of truth.

“Our group does not endorse any political candidate,” she went on. “Our group represents registered Conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, and Right to Life Party members. We’re here because we need to point out the mistakes that occurred in New York City on 9/11, because we want people to know the truth about Rudy Giuliani running for President on a false hero issue.”

September 11th is obviously at the heart of Giuliani’s candidacy, so much so that his campaign would hardly be conceivable without it. Tens of millions—probably hundreds of millions—of Americans saw the images of him walking through clouds of dust that morning, and heard him reassuring the city, “New York is going to be here tomorrow morning, and it’s going to be here forever.” His handling of the disaster turned him from a not terribly popular lame duck into, in Oprah’s famous formula, “America’s Mayor.”

But many of those who are most knowledgeable about what happened on September 11th, or at least had the most at stake, are actively opposing Giuliani’s bid. The head of the city’s largest police union recently declared that his organization “could never support Rudy Giuliani for any elected office,” and the head of the city’s largest firefighters’ union has similarly made it known that his union, which three years ago endorsed George Bush, will not be endorsing Giuliani. “Rudy Giuliani is not the individual he portrays himself to be,” John McDonnell, the head of the city’s fire officers’ union, which is also working against the former mayor, told me. The 9/11 Commission has five Republican members, only one of whom is supporting Giuliani. (Three have declared for John McCain and the fifth has remained neutral.) Meanwhile, the man who set up the city’s Office of Emergency Management for Giuliani, Jerome Hauer, is supporting Hillary Clinton.

“From my perspective, Rudy would be a very dangerous President,” Hauer told me. “And I think people need to be very frightened of him. When you look at the way he picked battles unnecessarily as mayor, imagine if he’s got nuclear weapons at his disposal.

“He’s certainly got one of the weakest homeland-security advisory groups you can imagine,” Hauer continued. Among the group’s members are Thomas Von Essen, Giuliani’s former fire commissioner, and Richard Sheirer, Hauer’s successor as head of the Office of Emergency Management; both men have been faulted for failing to establish clear lines of command on September 11th, and both now work for Giuliani Partners. “If that’s who he’s going to depend on to keep this country secure, this country’s in very serious trouble.” (The Giuliani campaign’s spokeswoman, Maria Comella, pointed out that the advisory group also includes Louis Freeh, the former F.B.I. director, and said, “Anything from Mr. Hauer on this is nothing more than sour grapes.”)

As Giuliani often observes, September 11th was not the first time that terrorists struck at America. The World Trade Center bombing of February 26, 1993, which killed six and forced the evacuation of twenty-five thousand others, demonstrated the city’s vulnerability. As mayor, Giuliani made preparedness a priority, hiring Hauer to head the Office of Emergency Management and building a state-of-the-art command center for use during crises (albeit in a known terrorist target).

And yet critics argue that, in crucial respects, the city had made little progress by the time of the second World Trade Center attack. The so-called “handie-talkies” that firefighters relied on to communicate with one another proved so inadequate on the day of the 1993 bombing that firefighters had to resort to using foot messengers. It was not until 1997 that the Fire Department started the process of procuring new radios, and it was not until early 2001 that the radios were issued. Within days, the new radios were recalled. (An investigation by the City Council subsequently revealed that the department, in its testing of the radios, had violated its own protocols.) As a result, firefighters who rushed to the World Trade Center on September 11th were carrying the same handie-talkies that had failed them eight years earlier.

It is impossible to say how many firefighters’ deaths might have been prevented had they had better communications. Still, the numbers are suggestive. The Fire Department is believed to have lost at least a hundred and twenty men in the collapse of the second building—the North Tower—even though the command for them to evacuate had been issued half an hour earlier. The Police Department, which had a different and, under the circumstances, far more effective radio system, is believed to have lost no members in the North Tower. The 9/11 Commission concluded that most fire companies in the North Tower had received the message to get out, either over their handie-talkies or by word of mouth. (One fire chief in the building, who was carrying a bullhorn, went from floor to floor yelling, “All F.D.N.Y., get the fuck out!”) But the Times, which successfully sued the city to obtain transcripts of interviews that the Fire Department conducted with survivors, reached a grimmer conclusion: it found that, of fifty-eight firefighters who made it out of the North Tower, only three had heard radio warnings that the tower was in danger of collapse. Particularly galling to many families is that Giuliani has yet to acknowledge that there were failures that might have been avoided. Testifying before the 9/11 Commission, in May, 2004, he praised firefighters for electing “to stand their ground and not retreat,” implying that they had heard the evacuation order but chose to ignore it.

“It’s like a knife in our hearts,” Sally Regenhard told me. “As if we didn’t have enough already.”

A few weeks ago, Giuliani held a town hall meeting at V.F.W. Post 1670, in Laconia, New Hampshire. The meeting took place in a large wood-panelled room with placards listing rules for bingo, among them Rule No. 5: “Special cards for the handicapped are not available.” Giuliani once again began by recommending that everyone in the audience read his Twelve Commitments. Then he launched into a riff on leadership which turned into a discussion of foreign policy.

“Leadership is about hope,” he said. “It’s about people believing they’re going to have a better future. And if they believe they’re going to have a better future they get it done.” When he became mayor, he said, “The conclusion was that things were going to get worse. And, by the time I left, the overwhelming conclusion was that things were going to get better, because all these problems had been solved that other people thought couldn’t be solved.

“It’s the same thing now—people think that the war on terror is going to go on forever,” Giuliani continued. “The reality is when we get the right leadership, when we deal with it from the point of view of being on offense, we can reduce that terrorists’ war against us to the minimum amount of time, and the minimum amount of casualties. But we do it through strength, not weakness.” He added, “I’d be happy to talk to you about it, because it’s an area in which I’ve done a great deal of study and an area in which—safety and security—I think of all the people running I have the most experience.”

There are several candidates in the Republican field who are short on foreign-policy experience, including Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney. Giuliani is the only one of them who is running as a foreign-policy expert. When, in October, Giuliani was accused by Senator Joseph Biden, Democrat of Delaware, of knowing “virtually nothing” about foreign affairs, he shot back that it was actually Biden, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, whose background was thin. (“Has he ever been in the State Department?” the former mayor asked. “Has he ever been an executive?”) What, exactly, Giuliani sees as the basis of his expertise is unclear. He declined a chance to serve on the congressionally appointed Iraq Study Group, citing “previous time commitments.” As of this writing, he has never visited Iraq. Sometimes he suggests that he is drawing on years of careful study; just as often, on his tenure as mayor. A few months ago, in response to a question about elections in Gaza, he observed that he knew firsthand how tough it can be to introduce democracy.

“I learned this in New York City when I became the mayor,” he said. “People were afraid to go out at night, because crime was so rampant. I mean, we had all kinds of civil rights, but nobody could exercise them, because they were too darn afraid to go out, too darn afraid to go to the movies or go buy groceries at the grocery store.” Giuliani has taken the point further: the principles that he applied successfully in Bed-Stuy can be applied just as successfully in Baghdad. “I know from personal experience that when security is reliably established in a troubled part of a city, normal life rapidly reestablishes itself,” he wrote recently in Foreign Affairs. He went on:

Shops open, people move back in, children start playing ball on the sidewalks again, and soon a decent and law-abiding community returns to life. The same is true in world affairs. Disorder in the world’s bad neighborhoods tends to spread. Tolerating bad behavior breeds more bad behavior.

In his first mayoral campaign, Giuliani said that crime in New York was not going to be solved by “talking unity” and “singing songs.” He now says, “You don’t achieve peace by singing songs about peace.”

“You know what our goal should be in Iraq?” he asks. “How about this as a goal? How about victory for the United States?”

Presidential candidates are, of course, full of bluster, and a rational voter might well dismiss Giuliani’s more exaggerated claims—about himself, about New York, and about the world at large—as so much posturing. But that would probably be unfair. For all the reasons that he mentions—the fall in crime, the drop in the welfare rolls, the general change of mood in the city—Giuliani was an unusually accomplished mayor. What made him remarkable was that he didn’t settle for these achievements. In addition to muggers and drug dealers, he eventually went after cabdrivers, jaywalkers, hot-dog venders, street artists, museum curators, strippers, and people who were just insufficiently civil—in short, practically everyone in New York. The same mayor who urged calm on September 11th two weeks later sought—unsuccessfully—to declare a sort of municipal state of emergency in order to extend his term in office.

Among the distinctive characteristics of Giuliani’s political life has always been his scorn for conventional thinking. He may genuinely believe that before he took office New Yorkers were too terrified to exercise their civil rights. He may also believe that eight years in City Hall constitute foreign-policy experience. He may even believe that he can eliminate global disorder, in the same way that he got rid of the squeegee guys. And that may be, in the end, what makes him a leader. ♦

ILLUSTRATION: JOHN CUNEO

The Benazir Bhutto dossier: ‘secret service was diverting US aid for fighting militants to rig the elections’

2008-01-01T21:15:00.000-07:00

Jeremy Page in Naudero

On the day she was assassinated, Benazir Bhutto was due to meet two senior American politicians to show them a confidential report alleging that Pakistan’s intelligence service was using US money to rig parliamentary elections, officials in her party said yesterday.

The report was compiled by the former Prime Minister’s own contacts within the security services and alleged that the Inter-Services Intelligence agency was running the election operation from a safe house in the capital, Islamabad, they said. The operation’s aim was to undermine Ms Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and to ensure victory for the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) party, which supports President Musharraf, in the elections scheduled for January 8.

Patrick Kennedy, a Democratic congressman for Rhode Island, and Arlen Specter, a Republican member of the Senate sub-committe on foreign operations, have confirmed that they were planning to have dinner with Ms Bhutto on Thursday evening but were not available for comment yesterday.

Sarfraz Ali Lashari, a senior PPP official who works in its election monitoring cell, told The Times that he had helped to compile a 200-page report on the Government’s efforts to rig the poll, which Ms Bhutto planned to give to the Americans and to the press the day she was killed.

“But there is another report relating to the ISI and she was going to discuss it with them,” said Mr Lashari, an envi-ronmental economist who taught at Cranfield University for several years.

The second report, which Ms Bhutto did not plan to release to the media, alleged that the ISI was using some of the $10 billion (£5 billion) in US military aid that Pakistan has received since 2001 to run a covert election operation from a safe house in G5, a central district of Islamabad, he said.

“The report was done by some people who we’ve got in the services. They directly dealt with Benazir Bhutto,” he continued, adding that Ms Bhutto was planning to share the contents of the report with the British Ambassador as well as the US lawmakers.

Asif Ali Zardari, Ms Bhutto’s widower and the new co-chairman of the PPP, confirmed the existence of the report, its basic contents and Ms Bhutto’s plans to meet the US lawmakers last Thursday. Asked if such a report was in his possession, he said: “Something to that effect.” Asked if Ms Bhutto was planning to share its contents with the American legislators, he said: “I am not in a position to make an answer to that.” Asked if the report contained evidence that the ISI was using US funds to rig the elections, he said: “Possibly so.” He declined to give further details, but said the confidential report could have been one of several motives for killing Ms Bhutto, who died after a suicide-bomb and gun attack on an election rally near Islamabad. “It was a general combination of all of these things. The fact that she’s on the ground exposing everybody, I guess, would have been one reason. There are many views and many reasons one can think of for her assassination.”

The allegation is likely to fuel the already intense speculation surrounding the death, which triggered nationwide riots and raised fears that President Musharraf could reimpose emergency rule and postpone the elections.

Electoral fraud is nothing new in Pakistan, which has been led by military rulers for more than half of its 60-year history, and whose politics is dominated by feudal and tribal loyalties. In 1996 a former army chief called Mirza Aslam Baig alleged in court that he had been aware of a secret ISI political cell that distributed funds to antiPPP candidates in the run-up to the 1990-1991 elections.

Ms Bhutto had often accused President Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999, of rigging elections and there have been reports that foreign financial aid to Pakistan’s Central Election Commission was being used to fix the result of next month’s poll.

However, the report that Ms Bhutto allegedly planned to share with the US politicians made the more serious allegation that the ISI was directly involved in rigging the coming parliamentary elections – and was using American money to do it. The United States has given Pakistan at least $10 billion in military aid since President Musharraf agreed to back the War on Terror after the September 11 attacks.

The money was supposed to be used to help Pakistan’s armed forces to fight al-Qaeda and Taleban militants sheltering in northwestern tribal areas near the porous border with Afghan-istan. But there has been almost no accounting for the funds, most of which have been transferred in cash directly to the Defence Ministry, and critics of President Musharraf say that much has been diverted towards other aims, such as upgrading forces on the border with India, or into private pockets.

This month the US Congress ordered the Government to withhold a portion of military aid to Pakistan until President Musharraf demonstrated progress in the campaign against the militants and in a transition towards civilian, democratic rule.

Mr Lashari, the PPP official, said that Ms Bhutto wanted to share the report with them because she did not entirely trust the US Government, which still regards President Musharraf as a key ally in the War on Terror. “The idea was to discuss it with all the international stakeholders, mainly including Britain and the United States, but we didn’t want to share it with anyone who could use it against us,” he said.

“It would be unwise to do anything that would annoy Musharraf. and the international stakeholders. Everything could collapse if the Army comes to know that there is something substantial against them. It’s dangerous to name people in Pakistan.” Pakistani media reports have alleged the existence of an ISI safe house used to rig the elections and identified Ijaz Hussain Shah, a retired general who heads the civilian Intelligence Bureau, as one of those involved.

Mr Lashari also said that Ms Bhutto was planning to show the report with the British Ambassador, Robert Brin-kley. A spokesman for the British Embassy denied any knowledge of the report. The ISI does not have a spokes-person, but a government official dismissed the allegations as baseless.

This is the most important election of our lifetime

2007-12-31T18:06:00.000-07:00

Whichever candidates the voters nominate, the choice before Americans in November 2008 will be stark indeed

Michael Tomasky in Washington
Monday December 31, 2007
The Guardian

The best news as 2008 dawns, of course, is that this most endless of presidential campaigns now finally reaches a point at which something actually happens. Finally the people will speak, starting Thursday in Iowa. So what will they say?

The races in both parties have developed along very unexpected lines, making this probably the most fascinating presidential election in decades. Let's start with the Republicans. Here we have the most unpopular sitting president since Richard Nixon. Significant majorities of his countrymen have long since concluded that they made a mistake in electing him; that he isn't up to the job; that he basically lied us into a war; that his domestic policies have been at best no great shakes; and that the conservative ideology to which he has been in thrall has not served the country well, to put it mildly.

And yet, by and large, the Republican candidates are running on exactly the same policies that Bush has pursued. Consider this list. All the major Republican candidates want to "stay the course" in Iraq, denouncing any discussion of withdrawal as evidence of pusillanimity. All see the fight against terrorism in more or less Bushian terms. All want to make the Bush tax cuts, now scheduled to sunset in 2010, permanent - even John McCain, who at the time voted against them. All have promised the leaders of the Christian right that they will appoint supreme court judges "in the mould of" Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

What this euphemistic language means is that whatever a candidate's previous positions on abortion and gay rights - Rudy Giuliani, for instance, has supported both - the leaders of the religious conservative movement have exacted commitments from all the Grand Old Party candidates to appoint the kind of judges they want, and that matters far more than past positions.

There's more. Healthcare is a priority in this election. But to hear these Republicans, you'd never know it. Their healthcare plans range from cynical to inadequate. Climate change? They barely acknowledge the problem and are particularly loath to acknowledge that human activity has contributed to it. They continue to insist, as Republicans since Ronald Reagan have, that the only real domestic enemy the American people face is the federal government, which they continue to want to starve.

It's pretty astonishing, really - we're at the tail end of a failed presidency, and the people running to succeed it are promising to continue its failed policies.

Now, many observers would say, well, they're just pandering to their party's rightwing base, and once one of them secures the nomination, he will tack to the centre. Undoubtedly, he will, for tactical reasons. But the real question is how the next Republican will govern should he happen to win. And the answer to that question is that there's every reason to assume that he will be just as a conservative as Bush for one simple reason: the interest groups that run the GOP will not brook much deviation from the standard line.

Those interest groups are three. The neocons run foreign policy - the Iraq disaster has not affected their influence in the GOP one whit. The theocons run social policy. And the radical anti-taxers run domestic policy. Until forces inside the GOP rise up to challenge these interests, any Republican administration will be roughly as conservative as Bush. The candidates have slightly different theories of stasis, they will tinker around this edge or that, but that's about all you can say.

On the Democratic side, there is far more divergence. Not so much on policy - they're all for universal or nearly universal healthcare, for getting out of Iraq, for doing more for unions, for bringing some equity and progressivity to our taxation system and so on. If you'd asked me a year ago what the major Democrats' positions on the leading issues would be, I would not have guessed that they'd be this uniformly liberal.

What they differ on is how they and the country will accomplish these things. The astute analyst and writer Mark Schmitt was the first to identify this phenomenon, naming the Democratic race the "theory of change" primary. John Edwards's theory of change is that the system is corrupt, spoiled by corporate greed, and so the way to get change is to wage a kind of class war against it. Barack Obama's theory of change is to ask independents and conservatives of good faith to work with him on encircling resistant forces and changing the system. Hillary Clinton's theory of change is that the system is failing Americans in certain particular respects and that it is best massaged by someone with years of experience working within it.

The Democratic caucus-goers of Iowa will tell us Thursday night which of these theories, retailed to them at close range for many months, they've embraced, although the outcome seems likely to be close, so the question won't yet be settled. Republican caucus-goers seem more likely to tell us that they like Mike Huckabee's version of stasis. But even that won't reveal much, because Iowa's GOP caucus-goers are heavily weighted toward religious conservatives like Huckabee.

Whichever theory of change Democratic voters nominate, and whichever theory of statis Republican voters select, the choice before Americans next November will be stark. In 2004, many Americans, particularly liberals fearful about a second Bush term, took to calling that election "the most important of my lifetime". And it was, for a while. Now this one is.

· Michael Tomasky is editor of Guardian America

michael.tomasky@guardian.co.uk

Dogs Do Well on Computers

2007-12-31T08:16:00.000-07:00

They sport bejeweled chokers, lavish in spa bubble baths and have their own leather-bag chauffeurs. And now our almost-human dogs might also try their paws at computers.

Four dogs strutted their stuff recently by using touch-screen computers to classify color photographs for a study of animal cognition.

"Using touch-screen computers with dogs opens up a whole world of possibilities on how to test the cognitive abilities of dogs by basically completely controlling any influence from the owner or experimenter," the University of Vienna, Austria, researchers write in the most recent online issue of the journal Animal Cognition.

Getting inside the brains of our canine pets has been frustrating for researchers, because a foolproof method for testing dog smarts has remained elusive. Until now, methods relied on the dog's owner or an experimenter to cue the animal, a variable that could influence the results.

Friederike Range and colleagues turned to computers. In order to test whether dogs can visually categorize pictures and transfer their knowledge to new situations, four dogs were shown landscape and dog photographs, and expected to make a selection on a computer touch-screen.

In the training phase the dogs were shown a landscape photo and dog photo simultaneously on a computer screen. When they nose-selected the dog, they received a treat.

To test whether the canines could transfer the learned info to a new situation, the researchers flashed onto the screens a different set of dog-landscape photographs. Sure enough, the four-legged subjects chose the dog photographs.

Then, the researchers added a twist: The dog pictures were pasted onto the landscape pictures used in the training phase. In this test, the dogs had to choose between a dog-on-landscape image and a landscape-only photo. Good doggies ... they aced the test, selecting the images that included dogs.

The results indicate, according to the authors, the dogs were able to form a concept of a "dog." Whether the dogs recognized the pup pictures as actual dogs, however, is unknown.

Iraq Progresses To Some Of Its Worst

2007-12-29T12:52:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON, Dec 29 (IPS) - Despite all the claims of improvements, 2007 has been the worst year yet in Iraq.

One of the first big moves this year was the launch of a troop "surge" by the U.S. government in mid-February. The goal was to improve security in Baghdad and the western al-Anbar province, the two most violent areas. By June, an additional 28,000 troops had been deployed to Iraq, bringing the total number up to more than 160,000.

By autumn, there were over 175,000 U.S. military personnel in Iraq. This is the highest number of U.S. troops deployed yet, and while the U.S. government continues to talk of withdrawing some, the numbers on the ground appear to contradict these promises.

The Bush administration said the "surge" was also aimed at curbing sectarian killings, and to gain time for political reform for the government of U.S.-backed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

During the surge, the number of Iraqis displaced from their homes quadrupled, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent. By the end of 2007, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that there are over 2.3 million internally displaced persons within Iraq, and over 2.3 million Iraqis who have fled the country.

Iraq has a population around 25 million.

The non-governmental organisation Refugees International describes Iraq's refugee problem as "the world's fastest growing refugee crisis."

In October the Syrian government began requiring visas for Iraqis. Until then it was the only country to allow Iraqis in without visas. The new restrictions have led some Iraqis to return to Baghdad, but that number is well below 50,000.

A recent UNHCR survey of families returning found that less than 18 percent did so by choice. Most came back because they lacked a visa, had run out of money abroad, or were deported.

Sectarian killings have decreased in recent months, but still continue. Bodies continue to be dumped on the streets of Baghdad daily.

One reason for a decrease in the level of violence is that most of Baghdad has essentially been divided along sectarian lines. Entire neighbourhoods are now surrounded by concrete blast walls several metres high, with strict security checkpoints. Normal life has all but vanished.

The Iraqi Red Crescent estimates that eight out of ten refugees are from Baghdad.

By the end of 2007, attacks against occupation forces decreased substantially, but still number more than 2,000 monthly. Iraqi infrastructure, like supply of potable water and electricity are improving, but remain below pre-invasion levels. Similarly with jobs and oil exports. Unemployment, according to the Iraqi government, ranges between 60-70 percent.

An Oxfam International report released in July says 70 percent of Iraqis lack access to safe drinking water, and 43 percent live on less than a dollar a day. The report also states that eight million Iraqis are in need of emergency assistance.

"Iraqis are suffering from a growing lack of food, shelter, water and sanitation, healthcare, education, and employment," the report says. "Of the four million Iraqis who are dependent on food assistance, only 60 percent currently have access to rations through the government-run Public Distribution System (PDS), down from 96 percent in 2004."

Nearly 10 million people depend on the fragile rationing system. In December, the Iraqi government announced it would cut the number of items in the food ration from ten to five due to "insufficient funds and spiralling inflation." The inflation rate is officially said to be around 70 percent.

The cuts are to be introduced in the beginning of 2008, and have led to warnings of social unrest if measures are not taken to address rising poverty and unemployment.

Iraq's children continue to suffer most. Child malnutrition rates have increased from 19 percent during the economic sanctions period prior to the invasion, to 28 percent today.

This year has also been one of the bloodiest of the entire occupation. The group Just Foreign Policy, "an independent and non-partisan mass membership organisation dedicated to reforming U.S. foreign policy," estimates the total number of Iraqis killed so far due to the U.S.-led invasion and occupation to be 1,139,602.

This year 894 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq, making 2007 the deadliest year of the entire occupation for the U.S. military, according to ICasualties.org.

To date, at least 3,896 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq, according to the U.S. Department of Defence.

A part of the U.S. military's effort to reduce violence has been to pay former resistance fighters. Late in 2007, the U.S. military began paying monthly wages of 300 dollars to former militants, calling them now "concerned local citizens."

While this policy has cut violence in al-Anbar, it has also increased political divisions between the dominant Shia political party and the Sunnis – the majority of these "concerned citizens" being paid are Sunni Muslims. Prime Minister Maliki has said these "concerned local citizens" will never be part of the government's security apparatus, which is predominantly composed of members of various Shia militias.

Underscoring another failure of the so-called surge is the fact that the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad remains more divided than ever, and hopes of reconciliation have vanished.

According to a recent ABC/BBC poll, 98 percent of Sunnis and 84 percent of Shias in Iraq want all U.S. forces out of the country. (END/2007)

Navy JAG Resigns Over Torture Issue

2007-12-28T16:56:00.000-07:00

"It was with sadness that I signed my name this grey morning to a letter resigning my commission in the U.S. Navy," wrote Gig Harbor, Wash., resident and attorney-at-law Andrew Williams in a letter to The Peninsula Gateway last week. "There was a time when I served with pride ... Sadly, no more."

Williams' sadness stems from the recent CIA videotape scandal in which tapes showing secret interrogations of two Al Qaeda operatives were destroyed.

The tapes may have contained evidence that the U.S. government used a type of torture known as waterboarding to obtain information from suspected terrorists.

Torture, including water-boarding, is prohibited under the treaties of the Geneva Convention.

It was in the much-publicized interview two weeks ago between Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, who is the chief legal adviser at the Pentagon's Office of Military Commissions, that led Williams to resign.

In the interview, Graham asked Hartmann how the uniformed legal community should respond if the Iranian government used waterboarding to torture a U.S. solider into disclosing when the next U.S. military operation would occur.

Hartmann responded: "I am not prepared to answer that question."

For Williams, a former naval Lieutenant Commander and member of the Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG), this answer went against "every training I had as an attorney" and as a member of the military.

Williams enlisted in the Navy in 1991 after completing law school at Santa Clara University. He was a legal officer and defense counsel in the U.S. Navy, meaning he both prosecuted and defended people in military courts.

He served on the USS Nimitz CVN-68, based in Bremerton, before becoming a member of the Naval reserves in 1995.

Williams, 43, felt that Hartmann was admitting torture is now an acceptable interrogation technique in the United States -- an admission that did not sit well with him.

"There was this saying in the Marines: 'We don't lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate people who do,' " Williams said. "And that sort of echoed through the Navy."

Williams felt that resigning from the reserves was not enough to demonstrate his dissatisfaction. He wrote to the Gateway hoping to set an example, echoing his same reason for joining the Navy two decades ago: "It was my way of serving the public," he said.

In his letter, Williams likened the use of torture by the United States to techniques used by the Spanish Inquisition, Nazi Germany and the Khmer Rouge. He also wrote that he hopes "the truth about torture, illegal spying on Americans and secret renditions is coming out."

Williams doubts that much will come of his letter of resignation and acknowledges that his life in Gig Harbor -- which consists of practicing personal injury law and spending time with wife and young son -- will not change much.

"I suspect (the Navy is) probably going to be fine with it," he said. "I doubt they would keep me in voluntarily."

He also states that, although reserve officers only perform military service once a year, he "probably would have stayed on if this hadn't happened, both for sentimental value and if something big happened where I was needed."

Outrage over CIA scandal

Below is an excerpt from the letter Andrew Williams submitted to The Peninsula Gateway. For the entire letter, see Letters to the Editor 16A.

"Thank you General Hartmann for finally admitting the United States is now part of a long tradition of torturers going back to the Inquisition. In the middle ages the Inquisition called waterboarding "toca" and used it with great success. In colonial times, it was used by the Dutch East India Company during the Amboyna Massacre of 1623.

"Waterboarding was used by the Nazi Gestapo and the feared Japanese Kempeitai. In World War II, our grandfathers had the wisdom to convict Japanese Officer Yukio Asano of waterboarding and other torture practices in 1947 giving him 15 years hard labor. Waterboarding was practiced by the Khmer Rouge at the infamous Tuol Sleng prison. Most recently, the United States Army court martialed a soldier for the practice in 1968 during the Vietnam conflict."

Make Fun Of Ron Paul And Get Fired From Your Job

2007-12-26T15:25:00.001-07:00

Somebody emailed pretty much every staffer who works at Philadelphia Weekly except me and sent them an email about how my post about Ron Paul made Baby Jesus cry or something. (For reference, Anthony Clifton owns PW.)

What you are allowing is unprofessional. Ron Paul is a presidential candidate. I remember the day JFK was killed. I remember the day MLK was killed. I remember the day RFK was killed. I remember the day George Wallace was shot. I remember the day Ronald Reagan was shot. I remember the day Jerry Ford was almost shot. I am sure there is a Philadelphia way to deal with idiots like Daniel McQuade but in the mean time I feel terminating his position would be enough. If something happens to a Presidential Candidate, the blood will be on your hands and I will point out to the media you had the chance to take the article down or change it and ANTHONY CLIFTON chose not to.

Apparently, telling jokes about and linking to a report about Ron Paul possibly being assassinated by a pot of neo-conservatives is a horrible capital offense or something and I should be fired. And maybe be killed, too? I dunno. Hooray for the Internet!

Posted by D-Mac on December 26, 2007 05:10 PM

*******

No wonder the Paulbots always ask any non-cult member "who do you work for" - they will try to get you fired. Talk about freedom and liberty.

These folks are unhinged and dangerous.