Hawking: Humans Must Colonize Other Planets

Taken from CNN, November 30, 2006
By Reuters

Humans must colonize planets in other solar systems traveling there using "Star Trek"-style propulsion or face extinction, renowned British cosmologist Stephen Hawking said on Thursday.

Referring to complex theories and the speed of light, Hawking, the wheel-chair bound Cambridge University physicist, told BBC radio that theoretical advances could revolutionize the velocity of space travel and make such colonies possible.

"Sooner or later disasters such as an asteroid collision or a nuclear war could wipe us all out," said Professor Hawking, who was crippled by a muscle disease at the age of 21 and who speaks through a computerized voice synthesizer.

"But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe," said Hawking, who was due to receive the world's oldest award for scientific achievement, the Copley medal, from Britain's Royal Society on Thursday.

Previous winners include Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin.

In order to survive, humanity would have to venture off to other hospitable planets orbiting another star, but conventional chemical fuel rockets that took man to the moon on the Apollo mission would take 50,000 years to travel there, he said.

Hawking, a 64-year-old father of three who rarely gives interviews and who wrote the best-selling "A Brief History of Time", suggested propulsion like that used by the fictional starship Enterprise "to boldly go where no man has gone before" could help solve the problem.

"Science fiction has developed the idea of warp drive, which takes you instantly to your destination," said.

"Unfortunately, this would violate the scientific law which says that nothing can travel faster than light."

However, by using "matter/antimatter annihilation", velocities just below the speed of light could be reached, making it possible to reach the next star in about six years.

"It wouldn't seem so long for those on board," he said.

The scientist revealed he also wanted to try out space travel himself, albeit by more conventional means.

"I am not afraid of death but I'm in no hurry to die. My next goal is to go into space," said Hawking.

And referring to the British entrepreneur and Virgin tycoon who has set up a travel agency to take private individuals on space flights from 2008, Hawking said: "Maybe Richard Branson will help me."

Wanted: Man To Land On Killer Asteroid And Gently Nudge It From Path To Earth

Taken from The Guardian, UK, November 17, 2006
David Adam

It is the stuff of nightmares and, until now, Hollywood thrillers. A huge asteroid is on a catastrophic collision course with Earth and mankind is poised to go the way of the dinosaurs.

To save the day, Nasa now plans to go where only Bruce Willis has gone before. The US space agency is drawing up plans to land an astronaut on an asteroid hurtling through space at more than 30,000 mph. It wants to know whether humans could master techniques needed to deflect such a doomsday object when it is eventually identified. The proposals are at an early stage, and a spacecraft needed just to send an astronaut that far into space exists only on the drawing board, but they are deadly serious. A smallish asteroid called Apophis has already been identified as a possible threat to Earth in 2036.

Chris McKay of the Nasa Johnson Space Centre in Houston told the website Space.com: "There's a lot of public resonance with the notion that Nasa ought to be doing something about killer asteroids ... to be able to send serious equipment to an asteroid.

"The public wants us to have mastered the problem of dealing with asteroids. So being able to have astronauts go out there and sort of poke one with a stick would be scientifically valuable as well as demonstrate human capabilities."

A 1bn tonne asteroid just 1km across striking the Earth at a 45 degree angle could generate the equivalent of a 50,000 megatonne thermonuclear explosion. Attempting to break it up with an atomic warhead might only generate thousands of smaller objects on a similar course, which could have time to reform. Scientists agree the best approach, given enough warning, would be to gently nudge the object into a safer orbit.

"A human mission to a near Earth asteroid would be scientifically worthwhile," Dr McKay said. "There could be testing of various approaches. We don't know enough about asteroids right now to know the best strategy for mitigation."

Matt Genge, a space researcher at Imperial College, London, has calculated that something with the mass, acceleration and thrust of a small car could push an asteroid weighing a billion tonnes out of the path of Earth in just 75 days.

Gianmarco Radice, an asteroid expert at Glasgow University, said the best approach would be to land a device to dig into the object. "You could place something on the surface to eject material that would push the asteroid in the other direction."

Mirrors, lights and even paint could change the way the object absorbed light and heat enough to shift its direction over 20 years or so. With less notice, mankind could be forced to take more drastic measures, such as setting off a massive explosion on or near the object to change its course. In 2005, Nasa's Deep Impact mission tested a different technique when it placed an object into the path of a comet.

Dr Radice said robots could do the job just as well, doing away with the need for a risky and expensive manned mission. Last year Japan showed with its Hayabusa probe that a remote spacecraft can land on an asteroid.

But with manned missions to the moon and possibly Mars on its to-do list again, Nasa is keen to extend the reach of its astronauts.

Dan Durda, a senior research scientist in the Department of Space Studies at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado said an asteroid landing mission would be a good way test the new Constellation programme spacecraft, the Apollo-style planned replacements for the space shuttle with which Nasa hopes to return to the moon.

He told Space.com: "A very natural, early extension of the exploration capabilities of this new vehicle's architecture would be a "quick-dash" near-Earth asteroid rendezvous mission."

Tom Jones, a former shuttle astronaut, said: "After a lunar visit, we face a long interval in Earth-Moon space while we build up experience and technology for a Mars mission. An asteroid mission could take us immediately into deep space, sustaining programme momentum, adding public excitement and reducing the risk of a later Mars mission."

Europe has its own efforts to tackle asteroids. Its planned Don Quijote mission will launch two robot spacecraft, one to tilt at a harmless passing space rock, and a second to film the collision and watch for any deviation in the asteroid's path.

'Not if, but when...' Hits and near misses
At Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in California, scientists monitor all "potentially hazardous asteroids" that might one day end up on a collision course with Earth. So far they number 831. The next close-ish shave - at a mere 17 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth - will be asteroid 2004QD14 on November 29.

The Earth has a long history of asteroid strikes. Thirty five million years ago, a 5km-wide asteroid ploughed into what is now Chesapeake Bay, in the US, leaving an 80km crater. In 1908, an asteroid devastated swaths of Siberia when it exploded mid-air with the force of 1,000 Hiroshimas. The theory that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a huge asteroid striking Mexico 65m years ago is controversial since scientists uncovered rocks from the crater predating the extinction of the dinosaurs by 300,000 years.

A near miss, when asteroid QW7 came within 4m km of Earth in September 2000, led Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik to declare: "It's not a case of if we will be hit, it is a question of when.

Each of us is 750 times more likely to be killed by an asteroid than to win this weekend's lottery."

In January 2002, the former science minister, David Sainsbury, announced the government's response to the threat from hurtling asteroids: a new information centre based in Leicester

Hubble Telescope's Top Ten Greatest Space Photographs

Taken from Daily Mail, UK, 23rd November 2006
By MICHAEL HANLON

I found these beautiful images of space in the Daily Mail website and though that this definately needs to be shared!

Picture 1 of 10: The Sombrero Galaxy - 28 million light years from Earth - was voted best picture taken by the Hubble telescope. The dimensions of the galaxy, officially called M104, are as spectacular as its appearance. It has 800 billion suns and is 50,000 light years across.

Picture 2 of 10: The Ant Nebula, a cloud of dust and gas whose technical name is Mz3, resembles an ant when observed using ground-based telescopes. The nebula lies within our galaxy between 3,000 and 6,000 light years from Earth.

Picture 3 of 10: In third place is Nebula NGC 2392, called Eskimo because it looks like a face surrounded by a furry hood. The hood is, in fact, a ring of comet-shaped objects flying away from a dying star. Eskimo is 5,000 light years from Earth.



Picture 4 of 10: At four is the Cat's Eye Nebula, which looks like the eye of disembodied sorcerer Sauron from Lord of the Rings.



Picture 5 of 10: The Hourglass Nebula, 8,000 light years away, has a pinched-in-the-middle look because the winds that shape it are weaker at the centre.



Picture 6 of 10: In sixth place is the Cone Nebula. The part pictured here is 2.5 light years in length (the equivalent of 23 million return trips to the Moon).



Picture 7 of 10: The Perfect Storm, a small region in the Swan Nebula, 5,500 light years away, described as 'a bubbly ocean of hydrogen and small amounts of oxygen, sulphur and other elements'.



Picture 8 of 10: Starry Night, so named because it reminded astronomers of the Van Gogh painting. It is a halo of light around a star in the Milky Way.



Picture 9 of 10: The glowering eyes from 114 million light years away are the swirling cores of two merging galaxies called NGC 2207 and IC 2163 in the distant Canis Major constellation.



Picture 10 of 10: The Trifid Nebula. A 'stellar nursery', 9,000 light years from here, it is where new stars are being born.

Ahmadinejad To Americans: Stop 'Blind Support' For Israel

Taken from The Jerusalem Post, Nov. 29, 2006
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

In an open letter, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged the American people Wednesday to demand the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and reject what he called the US government's "blind support" for Israel and its "illegal and immoral" actions in fighting terrorism.

The letter to "Noble Americans," distributed by Iran's UN Mission, denounced President George W. Bush's policies in the Middle East and US practices in the "war on terror." He appealed to the American people to work to reverse them and called on the Bush administration and the new Democratic-controlled Congress to heed the results of the recent midterm elections.

"Undoubtedly, the American people are not satisfied with this behavior and they showed their discontent in the recent elections," Ahmadinejad wrote. "I hope that in the wake of the mid-term elections, the administration of President Bush will have heard and will heed the message of the American people."

In a message to Democrats, he said, "you will also be held to account by the people and by history."

"If the US government meets the current domestic and external challenges with an approach based on truth and justice, it can remedy some of the past afflictions and alleviate some of the global resentment and hatred of America," Ahmadinejad said.

"But if the approach remains the same, it would not be unexpected that the American people would similarly reject the new electoral winners, although the recent elections, rather than reflecting a victory, in reality point to the failure of the current administration's policies," he warned.

Ahmadinejad wrote a rambling, 18-page letter to Bush in May, which Washington criticized for not addressing Iran's nuclear program. The US is leading the drive to impose UN sanctions on Tehran for its refusal to stop enriching uranium.

Wednesday's letter made no mention of Iran's nuclear program.

Iranians in the street were disappointed by the cold response to the May letter because, while it did not make clear proposals, it was the first official communication between the two countries' presidents since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

Earlier this month, Ahmadinejad said he was planning to write a letter to Americans.

In Wednesday's letter, he focused on past good relations between the US and Iran and between their peoples who are both "inclined towards the good, and toward extending a helping hand to one another, particularly to those in need," and who deplore "injustice, the trampling of peoples' rights and the intimidation and humiliation of human beings."

Ahmadinejad has alienated many Americans by calling for Israel's destruction and repeatedly dismissing the Holocaust as a myth. He also strongly supports the Palestinian militant group Hamas and the Lebanese faction Hezbollah, which the US State Department lists as terrorist organizations.

In Wednesday's letter, he said, "we, like you, are aggrieved by the ever-worsening pain and misery of the Palestinian people" and accused the Bush administration of disregarding public opinion by remaining "in the forefront of supporting the trampling of the rights of the Palestinian people."

"What has blind support for the Zionists by the US administration brought for the American people?" Ahmadinejad asked. "It is regrettable that for the US administration, the interests of these occupiers supersedes the interests of the American people and of the other nations of the world."

He urged Americans to support the right of the Palestinians to live in their own homeland.

Twice this year, Iran has proposed talks with the United States over Iraq, but Ahmadinejad has said that for such negotiations to take place, Washington must change its behavior. On Sunday, he said Iran was ready to help the United States get out of the "Iraqi quagmire if the US changes its bullying policy toward Iran."

Ahmadinejad said in Wednesday's letter that the US invasion of Iraq, while overthrowing Saddam Hussein which people "are happy about," has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, an exponential growth of terrorism, and no rebuilding of Iraq's ruined infrastructure.

"I consider it extremely unlikely that you, the American people, consent to the billions of dollars of annual expenditure from your treasury for this military misadventure," he said.

"Now that Iraq has a constitution and an independent assembly and government, would it not be more beneficial to bring the US officers and soldiers home, and to spend the astronomical US military expenditures in Iraq for the welfare and prosperity of the American people?"

Ahmadinejad asked. "As you know very well, many victims of Katrina continue to suffer, and countless Americans continue to live in poverty and homelessness."

Iran and the United States have had no diplomatic relations since 1979 when, after the revolution, militants seized the US Embassy in Teheran and kept 52 people hostage for 444 days.

Anti-War Protester Burns Himself To Death In Vain

Taken from The Times, UK, 29.11.06
By Tom Baldwin

The death of Malachi Ritscher was reported by a local television station as just another frustration for commuters driving into Chicago one morning when police were told that a statue was burning and slowing-up traffic along the Kennedy expressway.



This was not how the anti-war activist had envisaged media coverage when on November 3, he set up a video-camera and a small sign reading “thou shalt not kill” next to Chicago’s Flame of the Millennium sculpture. He then doused his body in petrol and set himself on fire.

Mr Ritscher, 52, had even written a lengthy “mission-statement” on one of his many websites, saying: “If I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world. I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent civilians, who did nothing to threaten our country.”

There was a passage on the midterm Congressional elections taking place on November 7, which he perhaps hoped to influence, as well as some speculation about how others would judge him: “Maybe some will be scared enough to wake from their walking dream state — am I therefore a martyr or a terrorist? I would prefer to be thought of as a spiritual warrior.”

Like the Czech student Jan Palach in 1969, or Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc in South Vietnam in 1963, he had chosen the most dramatic and agonising form of suicide to draw attention to his protest against the Iraq war. “What has happened to my country,” he wrote, that it is “more concerned with sports on television and ring-tones on cell-phones than the future of the world?” What Mr Ritscher had not reckoned with was that people would continue to be more concerned with TV sport — and getting to work on time — as they drove past his flaming body. It was not until the day after the election that the Cook County medical examiner got round to identifying the corpse, charred beyond recognition. But it was at this time that a small article appeared in the alternative newspaper, the Chicago Reader, about his “apparent suicide”. Soon, its website was being inundated with hundreds of messages from people who knew him from the city’s jazz scene, fellow anti-war activists and family members.

The picture which emerged was that of a lonely, troubled man, who had struggled with bouts of alcoholism and depression, but also one with an obsessive, cogent mind who cannot easily be dismissed as a victim of mental illness.

“He believed in his actions, however extreme,” his younger brother, Paul Ritscher, wrote. “He believed they could help to open eyes, ears and hearts and to show everyone that a single man’s actions can effect change in the world.”

White House On Defensive As US Media Breaks Taboo To Declare Conflict 'Civil War'

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said at a business conference that the war in Iraq "could be considered a civil war," the conference organizer said. Powell made the comment during a question-and-answer session after a keynote speech, according to David Hellaby, who organized the "Leaders in Dubai Business Forum." No cameras were allowed in to record the talk, but Hellaby was present and issued a press release quoting Powell. Powell's comments come in sharp contrast to those of President Bush, who said Tuesday that Iraq is not in a civil war.

Hellaby said, Powell said the Iraq war had three phases. The first, the invasion phase, went as planned. But the second phase, the military occupation, was "badly handled," Powell said, according to the conference organizer. Mistakes during the second phase led to the third, "which could be considered a civil war," Powell told the conference, according to Hellaby.

Here is an interesting article taken from The Guardian, UK, November 29, 2006
By Julian Borger

The Bush administration appeared yesterday to be losing its fight to stop the US media calling the escalating violence in Iraq a civil war after one of the main television networks formally announced it would break the taboo.

The New York Times and Los Angeles Times have been using the phrase for a while without fanfare, but on Monday NBC News used one of its best-known presenters, Matt Lauer, to declare the network's semantic defiance of the White House. "After careful consideration, NBC News has decided a change in terminology is warranted, that the situation in Iraq, with armed, militarised factions fighting for their own political agendas, can now be characterised as civil war," Lauer, the host of the Today show, said.

Bill Keller, the New York Times' executive editor, said: "It's hard to argue that this war does not fit the generally accepted definition of civil war."

With rival sectarian militias fighting over Baghdad district by district, other US news organisations have said they were reconsidering their policies on the highly politicised issue, but the administration stuck to its position. Speaking at the opening of the Nato summit in Latvia yesterday, George Bush refused to accept the "civil war" label, arguing that the conflict was being artificially stoked.

"There's a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented, in my opinion, because of these attacks by al-Qaida, causing people to seek reprisals," he said.

His national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, was more explicit in countering the "civil war" terminology. "The Iraqis don't talk of it as a civil war, the unity government doesn't talk of it as a civil war," Mr Hadley said. "At this point in time the army and the police have not fractured along sectarian lines, which is what you've seen elsewhere, and the government continues to be holding together and has not fractured on sectarian terms."

But interviews printed in the US press suggest that many Iraqis believe a civil war is under way. Ayad Allawi, a former prime minister, said in March: "We are losing each day as an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more - if this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is." The death rate has since doubled and to many in Iraq the debate over words appears a grotesque quibble, but the choice of language has far-reaching significance in the US, where public support for military involvement is dwindling.

"There is a good deal of public opinion research that shows the American public generally doesn't like to get involved in what they see as other countries' civil wars. That's why the administration is fighting this," said Christopher Gelpi, an expert on war and public opinion at Duke University, North Carolina. "They think they can shape public opinion by talking about it in a certain way, but saying it doesn't make it so."

"There's no question there is a civil war by any reasonable political science definition of what that means," he added. "You have organised groups engaging in violence against one another where the goal is the destruction of the authority of the government or secession from the state."

Sam Gardiner, a retired air force colonel who has taught military strategy, said: "I think the important question is whether or not it's controllable. There's an implication with an insurgency you can do something about it. In a civil war, you can't." He rejected the White House argument that the survival of Nuri al-Maliki's government meant a civil war had not begun. "It is a failed state. It can't provide security or services, so it's irrelevant to whether there is a civil war," he said.

US news organisations have mostly been cautious about using the phrase. Some have left it to correspondents, and in general reporters in Washington have avoided it, while those in Baghdad have had no such qualms. Asked about the debate by a Washington-based presenter on Monday, CNN's Baghdad correspondent, Michael Ware, gave an emotional response. "Well, put it this way ... anyone who still remains in doubt about whether this is civil war or not is suffering from the luxury of distance," he said.

"We have areas that people of one sect cannot enter for fear of immediate execution by another sect. You drive in a minibus on your way to work. Suddenly, there's a checkpoint. If you're of the wrong faith, you are dead. There's literally defensive fighting positions now built in some suburbs. If that's not civil war ... then honestly I don't know what is."

John Daniszewski, international editor of Associated Press, which often sets the agenda for the rest of the US media, said he and his colleagues were still debating the issue. "There are different views in the newsroom," he said. "One of the editors who was in civil war in Lebanon felt it had not reached the zenith of disorder he saw as a civil war. Others thought it had, with armed groups fighting each other. We're being fairly agnostic about it now. We don't preclude saying civil war in our copy, if a correspondent thinks it appropriate. But we don't want to go out and declare it a civil war. It's something intelligent well-informed people can disagree on."

The administration has resisted terminology it did not like before. In a debate three years ago that now seems quaint, the defence secretary resisted the labels "guerrilla war" and "insurgency".

Howard Kurtz, media correspondent for the Washington Post, said the current dispute over the words "civil war" will ultimately be seen as equally irrelevant. "This is a sideshow," he said.

"Americans are smart and have already figured it out. Anyone with a TV set can see that something resembling a civil war is raging there."

Orthodoxy, Not Islam, Draws Pope To Turkey

Pope Benedict XVI urged leaders of all religions to "utterly refuse" to support any form of violence in the name of faith, while Turkey's top Muslim cleric complained to the pontiff of growing "Islamophobia" in the world.

As he began his first visit to a Muslim country — Benedict sought a careful balance as he extended friendship and brotherhood to Muslims, hoping to end the outcry from many Muslims over his remarks linking Islam to violence.

This is all good, but why did he really come to Turkey for? Here is an interesting article…

Taken from Philadelphia Inquirer, 11-28-2006
By David O'Reilly

While much of the world wonders whether Pope Benedict XVI will be met with violent Muslim demonstrations - or worse - when he visits Istanbul this week, it is Catholic relations with Orthodoxy, not Islam, that bring the pontiff to Turkey.

Muslims worldwide are still incensed by remarks Benedict made in September, when he linked Islam with violence and in the eyes of many insulted the prophet Muhammad.

Some don't want him to come at all; others are hoping for some words or signs that might repair the damage and restore Catholic-Islamic relations to the warmer days they knew under Benedict's predecessor, Pope John Paul II.

But unlike John Paul - who once kissed a copy of the Koran - Benedict is not a man of grand, theatrical gestures.

And, regardless of what assurances of respect and admiration for the Muslim world the pontiff might issue this week, the core of his visit will be a Thursday meeting with Bartholomew, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and spiritual leader of the world's 270 million Orthodox Christians.

While Westerners tend to think of ecumenism as rapprochement between Catholics and Protestants, Benedict "sees the greatest commonality and hope for ecumenism as with the Orthodox, not the Protestants," said Benedict's biographer David Gibson.

"He sees little theological difference [between Catholicism and Orthodoxy], and he identifies very much with that Orthodoxy's dynamism, its polity, its liturgy, and the fact that it speaks one of the original languages of the church," said Gibson, whose book, The Rule of Benedict, came out in September.

Catholic author and columnist George Weigel, who wrote the definitive biography of John Paul II, agreed. "This is not about the pope's visiting an Islamic country," he said yesterday. "The pope is visiting the patriarch."

Both Benedict and Bartholomew are committed to resolving the bitter theological differences that have split their ancient churches for more than 1,000 years.

No major breakthrough is anticipated, but the two are expected to sign a proclamation of affection between Catholicism and Orthodoxy at the close of their meeting, according to the Rev. Dr. Frank Marangos, executive director for communications for the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

"This is not a public-relations ploy or means to a political end," Marangos said in a phone interview from Istanbul. "The real intent of this trip, which was planned a year ago, was for the pope to visit the patriarchate and participate in prayer."

Weigel said he nevertheless expected the meeting to be eclipsed in news reports by any demonstrations, violence, or papal gestures to Islam.

In September, the pontiff incensed much of the Muslim world when, in a lecture to German theologians at Regensburg University, he warned against the demise of religious reason.

Most of his Regensburg remarks were directed at the collapse of Christianity in Europe, but he also pointed to Islamic jihadism, and quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who called Islam "evil and inhuman."

Those remarks so incensed Muslims that Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan originally said his schedule would not permit him to meet with Benedict during this trip; yesterday, he agreed to greet him at Ankara's airport before departing for the NATO summit in Latvia.

Erdogan's reluctance to spend time with Benedict might also be based on concern that the pope will call attention to Turkey's repression of non-Islamic faiths, which has slowed its efforts to join the European Union.

While Turkey is officially secular, the government recently closed the nation's only Orthodox seminary and restricts public worship by non-Muslims.

Weigel said he hoped Benedict does not apologize for his September remarks and instead "lifts up for the attention of the world the very difficult circumstances in which the patriarchate is obliged to operate in Turkey."

But Ali Khan, executive director of the Islamic Council of America, said in a phone interview yesterday from Chicago that he had "great expectations" the pope would make a "significant gesture" toward the Muslim world.

"I think the [Muslim] reaction to his remarks was extreme," Khan said. But, he added - perhaps more hopefully than accurately - the comments "did not do permanent damage."

"He has not been pope for very long," Khan said. "If he admits he made a mistake, let's move on."

'No Proof' Of Iran Nuclear Arms

Taken from BBC, 20.11.06

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has not found conclusive evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, a US magazine has reported.

Full Report: New Yorker - The Next Act

Veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, writing in The New Yorker, cites a secret CIA report based on intelligence such as satellite images.



Correspondents say the alleged document appears to challenge Washington's views regarding Iranian nuclear intentions.

The article says the White House was dismissive about the CIA report.

The US and Europe say Iran is pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons programme - a charge Iran has strongly denied.

'Hostile' response
The CIA assessment, according to unnamed officials quoted in the article, casts doubt on how far Iran has actually progressed to making a nuclear weapon.

"The CIA found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency," Mr Hersh wrote.

It says the agency based its conclusions on technical intelligence, such as satellite photography and measurements from sensors planted by US and Israeli agents.



The article says: "A current senior intelligence official confirmed the existence of the CIA analysis, and told me that the White House had been hostile to it."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino criticised the article, calling it an "error-filled" piece in a "series of inaccuracy-riddled articles about the Bush administration".

"The White House is not going to dignify the work of an author who has viciously degraded our troops, and whose articles consistently rely on outright falsehoods to justify his own radical views," she was quoted by AFP news agency as saying.

The BBC's Adam Brookes in Washington says if the New Yorker article is correct, it would suggest that the CIA is being more cautious than the Bush administration in evaluating whether or not Iran is on its way to building a bomb.

And he says, as with Iraq, it suggests political battles to come over how intelligence is used as a basis for American foreign policy.

Weekly Round Up: The Cold War Continues, Blair 'Sorrow' Over Slave Trade And West Must Prepare For Chinese, Indian Dominance

It’s been a quite week in the world of Politics. The main news has been dictated by death of two men. The death of Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian ex-spy who was a victim of a poisoning. Friends say the former KGB agent was poisoned three weeks ago because of his criticism of the Russian government. In the Lebanon, cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel, a key member of the anti-Syrian majority in the Lebanese parliament had been shot dead in an assassination that raises tensions between opponents and allies of Syria. U.S. President George W. Bush denounced the killing, saying that Syria and Iran were trying to undermine the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. One thing is for certain the accused Russian and Syrian governments have the least to gain from the death of the two men. I smell a rat and hope the truth gets unveiled pretty soon (and by the way it was nice of President Bush to put Iran in the picture – although what they’ve got to do with the Lebanese situation mystifies me– maybe it’s because they are I-ran! Also Israeli and Palestinian leaders have committed to a ceasefire agreed for the Gaza Strip, despite Palestinian rockets landing in Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he hoped the ceasefire would also be applied to the West Bank. Hamas leader Ismail Haniya said all Palestinian groups had made clear that they stood behind the ceasefire.

Here’s all the other news from around the world…

North America
US troops in sick taunt of Iraqi boys
A video showing US soldiers in Iraq taunting thirsty children with a bottle of water has caused outrage.

The footage shows a group of children desperately chasing a truck so they can get a drink. The US Department of Defense confirmed the video showed US soldiers and said the images were 'unfortunate'.

The faces of the two men in the vehicle are not revealed but they can be heard saying in American sounding accents: 'You want some water? Keep running.'

The children are waving and shouting as the men, dressed in military uniforms, laugh and tease them with it. Most of the children tire and lag behind until there is just one left.

Then one man throws the bottle out of the truck which results in a scramble as children nearby and the remaining boy try to grab it.

Much of Iraq still suffers from problems with the availability and stability of clean drinking water supplies.

Olympics could hurt Canada's Afghan military tour
Canada might not be able to extend the life of its 2,500-strong mission to Afghanistan beyond February 2009 because many troops will be needed to ensure security at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, according to a document released on Monday.

The mission was supposed to end in February 2007 but the ruling Conservatives, who won the election this year in part by promising to boost the overstretched and underfunded military, pushed through a parliamentary vote approving a two-year extension.

Although the government has said little about whether Canadian soldiers will stay beyond February 2009, a formerly secret military briefing document prepared for Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor casts doubt on this possibility.

U.S. to allow Israeli agents to testify against Rosenstein in disguise
A U.S. federal judge agreed Wednesday to allow Israeli undercover agents to testify in disguises in the upcoming trial of Zeev Rosenstein - the Israeli accused of operating a global Ecstacy trafficking organization - but refused a government request that they not use their real names.

U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas determined the six agents would not be completely hidden if their costumes are limited to wigs, makeup and facial hair for men. Defense lawyers for the accused Rosenstein had
objected to the testimony in disguise, saying it would violate his right to confront one's accuser.

"This is not a situation where the witnesses are not physically present in the courtroom and are testifying remotely," Dimitrouleas ruled. "Defendant's counsel and the jury will all be capable of viewing firsthand the reactions of the witnesses to both direct and cross-examination."

The judge sided with Rosenstein, however, in rejecting prosecutors' proposal that the Israeli agents use only "officer numbers" instead of their names when they testify. The true identities will help defense lawyers delve into their professional backgrounds and personal lives for cross-examination purposes.

RCMP arrest 90 in Mafia crime sweep
Canadian police arrested 90 people on Wednesday in a series of raids targeting what officials said was traditional Italian organized crime.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said those arrested included Nicolo Rizzuto, 82, and other individuals who officials said were affiliated members of the Mafia. They face some 1,350 criminal charges, including illicit drug trafficking, gangsterism and attempted murder.

RCMP Corporal Luc Bessette said 700 police officers were involved in the Montreal-area raids, which stemmed from an investigation dubbed Project Colisee that began in 2004.

"Essentially, Project Colisee will show that six individuals are at the head of a crime organization whose principle activities are committing or facilitating the commission of serious crimes such as the import and export of illicit substances, bookmaking, extortion and the possession of the proceeds of crime," he said.

South America
Chavez 'recalls Argentina envoy'
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has recalled his ambassador to Buenos Aires following a complaint by Argentina's leader, Argentine media report.

President Nestor Kirchner is said to have contacted Mr Chavez over the conduct of ambassador Roger Capella. Mr Capella is accused of supporting former Housing Secretary Luis D'Elia.

Mr D'Elia was fired for criticising an international arrest warrant for eight Iranian former cabinet ministers issued by Argentine prosecutors.

The warrants were issued over the ex-ministers' alleged involvement in a bomb attack on a Jewish cultural centre in Buenos Aires in 1994, in which 85 people were killed.

Correspondents say this is the latest in string of diplomatic incidents involving the Venezuelan ambassador.

The then Iranian authorities have been accused of directing Lebanese militia group Hezbollah to carry out the attack. Iran has rejected the charges, describing it as a "Zionist plot". Hezbollah has also denied its involvement in the attack.

The blast reduced the seven-storey Jewish-Argentine Mutual Association community centre to rubble. No-one has ever been convicted of the attack, but the current government has said it is determined to secure justice. Over the years, the case has been marked by rumours of cover-ups and accusations of incompetence, but little in the way of hard evidence.

11 die when tree hits Nicaraguan church
A giant tree fell on an evangelical church in remote northeastern Nicaragua while an American pastor was delivering his sermon, killing 11 people including the clergyman, authorities said Monday.

Rev. Larry Wayne Poll, a 64-year-old native of Alabama, was killed Sunday while preaching at the church in the Nicaraguan town of Lupuas, near the Honduran border, said Rigoberto Gonzalez, a spokesman for Honduran police.

Two Hondurans and eight Nicaraguans also died, Gonzalez said. More than 100 people were in the church when heavy winds knocked down the tree.

"We all lament the tragedy," Gonzalez said.

Poll's body was taken to a morgue in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, the closest major city to Lupuas, located near the Coco River that forms part of the border between the two Central American countries.

While both Honduras and Nicaragua are predominantly Roman Catholic, evangelical churches have made large inroads in recent years, especially in rural areas.

Ortega backs unified Central America
Nicaraguan President-elect Daniel Ortega, making his first official trip outside the country, promised on Tuesday to work toward a unified Central America but also said his country needs new trade partnerships beyond its neighbors and the United States.

After a meeting with Guatemalan President Oscar Berger, Ortega told a news conference, "If we don't unite, we'll sink…We have to work toward a union of the Americas, of Central America with the Caribbean and South America," he said. "Meanwhile, let's build the unity of Central America."

The trip is his first abroad since being elected as president on Nov. 5. Political analysts have suggested that by making such a visit before heading to either the U.S. or Venezuela, he could distance himself from a dispute between the two countries.

Central American leaders have been holding talks aimed at integrating the region by opening borders from Nicaragua to Guatemala. Both countries have also signed a new free-trade pact with the United States.

Ortega said Nicaragua should also embrace other possible trade partners, such as the Mercosur trade bloc, which currently includes Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela, and the left-leaning Bolivarian pact between Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia.

Europe
'War on terror' could last 30 years or more
The fight against terrorism could last 30 years or more, according to a report published by a British think tank that specialises in international security.

"There is every prospect of the 'war on terror' extending for 30 years or more," said the report by the Oxford Research Group…What is required is a complete re-assessment of current policies but that is highly unlikely, even with the recent political upheavals".

"Most people believe that the recent elections mark the beginning of the end of the Bush era but that does not apply to the war on terror," said Professor Paul Rogers, who wrote the report, in a statement…In reality there will be little change until the United States faces up to the need for a fundamental re-think of its policies".

The report showed that the United States is now faced with a dilemma: if it withdraws from Iraq, insurgent groups will be able to operate freely in the biggest oil reserve in the world.

"If it stays, though, then US soldiers become an increasing magnet for radical factions, with Iraq becoming a training ground for new generations of paramilitaries, just as Afghanistan was in the 1980s against the Soviet occupying forces," the report said.

It said that the "fundamental mistake" was to remove the regime of president Saddam Hussein by force, which was a "gift" for Al-Qaeda and extremist groups because the deployment of 150,000 US soldiers in the heart of the Arab world is considered by many to be "an occupation force".

The importance of oil in the region "means that it would be entirely unacceptable for the United States to consider withdrawal from Iraq, no matter how insecure the environment".

Blair 'sorrow' over slave trade
Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he feels "deep sorrow" for Britain's role in the slave trade.

In an article for the New Nation newspaper, the prime minister said it had been "profoundly shameful". But Mr Blair stopped short of issuing a full apology, which some commentators have demanded.

The government is reportedly setting out its plans for next year's bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has been drawing up ideas for the 25 March anniversary, including the possibility of a "statement of regret" for Britain's involvement. He has already ruled out a formal apology.

In comments reported by The Observer, Mr Blair said: "It is hard to believe what would now be a crime against humanity was legal at the time. "I believe the bicentenary offers us a chance not just to say how profoundly shameful the slave trade was - how we condemn its existence utterly and praise those who fought for its abolition - but also to express our deep sorrow that it could ever have happened and rejoice at the better times we live in today."

Livingstone decries vilification of Islam
Muslims are being singled out for demonisation on a par with the victimisation of Jews during the last century, the mayor of London claimed. Unveiling new research indicating that 75% of those polled in the capital support the right of Muslims, and those of other faiths, to dress "in accordance with their religious beliefs", Ken Livingstone criticised the "barrage" of attacks as an assault on freedom of religious and cultural expression.

His comments coincide with the launch of a high-powered coalition, involving MPs, Muslim groups, trade unions and the campaign group Liberty, to confront Islamophobia. The new coalition is supported by figures from the three major parties, Sikhs, black-led organisations and human rights groups.

Many leading figures are concerned about issues such as Jack Straw's observations on Muslim women who wear the veil and criticisms from ministers who say Islamic communities should do more to root out extremists.

Mr Livingstone said: "Over recent weeks we have seen a demonisation of Muslims only comparable to the demonisation of Jews from the end of the 19th century. As at that time, the attack on Muslims in reality threatens freedoms for all of us, which took hundreds of years to win - freedom of conscience and freedom of cultural expression. Every person who values their right to follow the religion of their choice or none should stand with the Muslim communities today." He linked the criticism of Muslims with the adverse scrutiny accorded to government policy overseas.

UK case targets arms sales to Israel
A London court has begun hearing a legal challenge brought by a Palestinian man claiming that Britain is violating its military hardware export rules by selling arms to Israel.

Lawyers for Saleh Hassan, a Palestinian resident of Bethlehem, want Britain to halt the export of military equipment to Israel. Hassan's attorney, Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers (PIL), said: "We intend to argue that the UK government should immediately review the legality and rationality of its arms-related trading activities with Israel."

There was a "systematic and continuing breach of the UK government's own consolidated criteria," Shiner contended in a statement, arguing there was "clear recent evidence that arms-related products from UK based companies are implicated in indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as Lebanese civilians."

Hassan's lawyers argued in court on November 15 that the sale of military spare parts and equipment to Israel violates Britain's ban on arms sales when there is a "clear risk" they "might be used for internal repression."

In 2005 Britain exported over 22.5m worth of components for combat helicopters, aircraft radars, air-to-surface missiles, airborne electronic warfare equipment and other military goods to Israel.

The Foreign Office has defended military exports, however Hassan's lawyers have argued the government's case for arms sales to Israel was contradicted by the testimony of its ministers. Foreign Office Minister for the Middle East Kim Howells told Parliament in August that "almost any use of equipment" sold to Israel "could be used aggressively, especially in occupied areas."

Middle East
Prominent Shiite cleric from Iraq dies
Grand Ayatollah Jawad Tabrizi, a prominent Shiite cleric who was deported by Saddam Hussein's government in 1979, died Monday, Iraq's top Shiite clerics said Monday. He was 82.

Tabrizi, a religious leader for many Shiites worldwide, died Monday in the Iranian holy city of Qom, some 82 miles south of the capital Tehran, the clerics said in statements released by their offices in Najaf. Tabrizi once lived in Iraq but was deported by the Saddam's regime in 1979 shortly after the Iranian revolution, according to an aide for Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most prominent religious leader.

During Saddam's 23-year rule many Shiite clerics fled Najaf for Qom — both major centers of Shiite learning

Syrian Jews: Talk to Syria now
The head of New York's Jewish-Syrian community, Jack Avital, has blasted Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel for failing to "check the sincerity" of Syrian President Bashar Assad's peace overtures, the New York Jewish Week reported.

"Maybe we should remind you that if any Arab leader is sending signs of peace maybe the slightest ones you should respond. You should immediately check his sincerity and seriousness. You do not have the moral permission to avoid him. You must do it for the sake of those you may demand to sacrifice their lives in case war commences," Avital was quoted as saying to Olmert in a letter.

The letter, described by the Jewish News as a "surprising move," came after Syrian Ambassador to the United States Imad Moustapha told the Jewish News: "Once peace talks between Syria and Israel start, all issues will be on the table. We repeat: We are offering full recognition and full relations in this peace process. They (the Israelis) have nothing to lose. We are very clearly saying, we want to talk to you; we want to have peace."

"We had excellent relations in the past with Iran . But it did not prevent us from seriously working on a peace agreement with Israel," the Syrian ambassador added.

Iran invites Iraqi, Syrian presidents
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad invited his Iraqi and Syrian counterparts to a weekend summit in Tehran to tackle the chaos in Iraq, where violence is hurtling toward civil war, four key lawmakers told The Associated Press on Monday.

The diplomatic gambit coincided with a groundbreaking visit to Baghdad by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, who was challenged over Damascus' role in supporting the Sunni insurgency. The Iraqi government said diplomatic relations between the two countries — severed nearly a quarter-century ago — would be restored by Tuesday.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told the Syrian envoy that Damascus should not let its disputes with the United States be played out in Iraq, where the chaos and bloodshed has become "a danger that threatens all, not Iraq only."

Although a spokesman for the Iraqi president said Syrian President Bashar Assad would not be attending the summit, the Iranian move appeared designed to upstage possible American efforts to reach out to Tehran and Damascus in a wider effort to subdue runaway violence in Iraq.

Russia sends defense system to Iran
Russia has begun delivery of Tor-M1 air defense missile systems to Iran, a Defense Ministry official said Friday, confirming that Moscow would proceed with arms deals with Tehran in spite of Western criticism.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue, declined to specify when the deliveries had been made and how many systems had been delivered.

Ministry officials have previously said Moscow would supply 29 of the sophisticated missile systems to Iran under a US$700 million (€565 million) contract signed in December, according to Russian media reports.

The United States called on all countries last spring to stop all arms exports to Iran, as well as ending all nuclear cooperation with it to put pressure on Tehran to halt uranium enrichment activities. Israel, too, has severely criticized arms deals with Iran.

Tehran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but the United States and its allies suspect Iran is trying to develop weapons.

The UN Security Council, where Russia is a veto-wielding permanent member, is currently stalemated on the severity of sanctions on Iran for defying its demand to cease uranium enrichment.

The Tor-M1 deal, involving conventional weapons, does not violate any international agreements.Russian officials say that the missiles are purely defensive weapons with a limited range.

Asia
West must prepare for Chinese, Indian dominance
Western nations must prepare for a future dominated by China and India, whose rapid economic rise will soon fundamentally alter the balance of power, former World Bank chief James Wolfensohn has warned.

Wealthy countries were failing to understand the impact of the invevitable growth of the two Asian powerhouses, Wolfensohn said in the 2006 Wallace Wurth Memorial Lecture at the University of New South Wales at the weekend.

"It's a world that is going to be in the hands of these countries which we now call developing," said Australian-born Wolfensohn, who held the top job at the global development bank for a decade until last year.

Rich nations needed to try to capitalise on the inevitable emergence of what would become the engine of the world's economic activity before it was too late, he said.

"Most people in the rich countries don't really look at what's happening in these large developing countries," said Wolfensohn, who is now chairman of Citigroup International Advisory Board and his own investment and advisory firm.

Within 25 years, the combined gross domestic products of China and India would exceed those of the Group of Seven wealthy nations, he said. "This is not a trivial advance, this is a monumental advance." Wolfensohn said that somewhere between 2030 and 2040, China would become the largest economy in the world, leaving the United States behind.

India mulls unmanned mission to Mars by 2013
Indian space scientists plan to send an unmanned mission to Mars by 2013 to look for evidence of life, a news report said.

The six-to-eight-month mission, likely to be launched in the next seven years, would cost three billion rupees (67 million dollars), the Hindustan Times reported.

"Mars is emerging on our horizon. The geo-stationary launch vehicle can take a payload to Mars and our Deep Space Network can track it all the way," G. Madhavan Nair, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), told the newspaper.

"There is a lot of interest in Mars. The missions of the United States and the European Space Agency have given us some interesting data. Let us see what value addition our mission can bring," he said.

The mission will study the chemical attributes of the Martian atmosphere and the planet's sub-soil and terrain, ISRO programme director S.C Chakravarthy told the English-language daily.

India plans to send its first unmanned probe to the moon in two or three years' time.

Experts: Nepal king may face charges
A government commission blamed King Gyanendra on Monday for a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters that left 19 people dead earlier this year, and Nepal's prime minister hinted that criminal charges were possible.

Since April's mass protests, which forced Gyanendra to reinstate parliament 14 months after he suspended it and seized complete power, the monarch has since seen his status plummet from demigod to delinquent. Monday's report was an ominous portent for Nepal's centuries-old monarchy, the last Hindu throne in the world.

In the short term, some legal analysts said it could lead to criminal charges against Gyanendra, who since April has been stripped of his powers, command over the army, and his immunity from prosecution.

Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala indicated as much when he received the report on Monday, vowing to punish those culpable for the crackdown that killed 19 and injured hundreds.

The commission did not recommend how to proceed, leaving open the thorny question of whether to prosecute the king and how to punish him if he is found guilty.

In the long term, the report's findings are certain to provide ammunition to those looking to do away with the monarchy — especially the Maoist rebels, who took part in the April unrest and are now on the cusp of signing a peace deal with the government to which Gyanendra ceded power.

India told to get grip on HIV in 2007
India must get on top of its HIV epidemic by next year or risk seeing it spiral out of control, the man who controls the richest private anti-AIDS fund in the country and a senior United Nations official warned.

"The signs are still ominous," Ashok Alexander, the director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's $258-million Indian HIV-prevention project, told Reuters in an interview.

He said the rising prevalence of HIV in more than 100 districts in which the foundation operates showed that a decade of government efforts had not slowed the virus, which is now estimated to have infected 5.7 million Indians.

"The huge challenge is scaling up prevention efforts. 2007 is when we need to have done this by," added Alexander, who has repeatedly said India's epidemic is at a tipping point. "It's very urgent."

India already has more HIV-positive people than any other country, UNAIDS says. The AIDS-causing virus is presently thought to be largely confined within a sexual triangle of poor, male migrant workers, the prostitutes they visit, and their wives back home.

For that reason, the Gates Foundation spends much of its efforts telling the first two groups to use condoms.

Pakistan parliament backs rape bill
Pakistan's parliament has approved a controversial bill aimed at helping victims of rape, despite strong protests from muslim politicians who claim the legislation violates Islamic law. The bill is set to go before Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, who is expected to ratify the document.

President Musharraf has been a strong supporter of changing contentious sections of the 1979 Hudood Ordinance, or rape law, as a way of softening the country's hard-line Islamic image and appeasing moderates and human rights groups opposed to the statutes.

Activists have long condemned the laws for punishing, instead of protecting, rape victims while providing legal safeguards for their attackers. But conservatives and opposition supporters have rallied to keep the old laws, which were introduced by general Zia ul-Haq, the sixth president of Pakistan, to make laws more Islamic.

Africa
Gaddafi: Oil behind Darfur crisis
Muammar Gaddafi has accused the West of trying to grab Sudan's oil wealth with its plan to send UN troops to Darfur.

The Libyan president, a mediator in several African wars, was echoing Sudanese criticisms of the proposed deployment as a Western attempt at colonisation.

Gaddafi also urged the Khartoum government to reject the proposal. "Western countries and America are not busying themselves out of sympathy for the Sudanese people or for Africa but for oil and for the return of colonialism to the African continent," he said.

Gaddafi's opinions are listened to in Africa because of his advocacy of African unity and development. Gaddafi was speaking at a ceremony in Tripoli last Sunday attended by
Sudanese government officials and a faction of the Sudan Liberation Army rebels to celebrate their signing on Saturday of an agreement aimed at bringing peace to Darfur.

"To be occupied by the Sudanese army is better than to be occupied by UN forces, and the biggest disaster is if the Atlantic army came and positioned itself in Sudan," he said, referring to Western troops.

The UN and the African Union (AU) have been pressing Sudan to accept a UN-led peacekeeping force in Darfur to halt three years of violence that has killed tens of thousands of people.

U.S. threatens 'Plan B' if Sudan ignores deadline
The US envoy to Sudan warned Khartoum to meet a January 1 deadline for full acceptance of a UN plan to deploy international peacekeepers to Darfur or face tougher action to end atrocities in the war-torn region.

"There's a point, January 1st, either we see a change or go to Plan B," Andrew Natsios, President George W. Bush's special envoy to Sudan, told reporters.

Natsios, who helped negotiate a tentative agreement last week for sending a joint African Union- United Nations force to Darfur, said the Khartoum government had yet to give its approval for the timing, size and command structure of the peacekeeping operation.

He refused to elaborate on what Plan B would entail if no response was forthcoming by January 1 beyond saying it's "a different approach" to the negotiated deployment of peacekeepers. "I think making threats is not a wise thing to do," he said when pressed to provide details. "I'm not going to go into that."

Human rights groups and former US officials have called for unilateral military action, possibly by NATO forces, if Sudan continues to refuse the deployment of a robust peacekeeping force to Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have died in three-and-a-half years of ethnic civil war.

Other options for action include sanctions targeting companies owned by ruling party officials, financial action against foreign firms operating in Sudan and efforts to prosecute government leaders for crimes against humanity.

Rwandan president recommended for war crimes trial
A French judge recommended that Rwandan President Paul Kagame should face an international war crimes court over his alleged involvement in the death of a former Rwandan leader that sparked the 1994 genocide, court sources said.

Jean-Louis Bruguiere, the judge leading a probe into the attack on a plane carrying the then president Juvenal Habyarimana, said Kagame should face charges at the international war crimes court for Rwanda in Tanzania.

The attack on the plane carrying Habyarimana, an ethnic Hutu, in April 1994 ignited ethnic tensions in the country, sparking a genocide in which Hutu extremists slaughtered some 800,000 people, mainly minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania is currently hearing the case of several former high-ranking Rwandan army officers accused of genocide during the 100 days of carnage that followed.

AU finance ministers call for debt cancellation
The African Union's 53 finance ministers, meeting in Yaounde, called for debt cancellation from their creditors and increased aid packages.

"We reaffirm our desire to see the cancellation (of debt) extended to all African countries," the finance ministers said in a final declaration published at the end of their second conference.

In his opening speech on Thursday morning, Cameroonian Prime Minister Ephraim Inoni proposed the creation of a "specific mechanism" to alleviate debt in countries not currently covered by existing financial aid.

Cameroon said in April it was at the "point of completing" its membership to the initiative for very poor indebted countries, which would effectively cut much of its debt.

Several other states, such as oil producers, have "intermediary revenues" and are therefore not admissible to the initiative.

Ethiopian lions poisoned to save money
Rare Abyssinian lion cubs are being poisoned at a zoo because staff cannot afford to keep them, a wildlife official said Wednesday.

The dead cubs are sold to taxidermists for $170 each to be stuffed and sold as decorations, said Muhedin Abdulaziz, the administrator at the old imperial Lion Zoo in the capital, Addis Ababa.

"These animals are the pride of our country. We need to do something about this. But our only alternative right now is to send them to the taxidermist," Abdulaziz said.

Ethiopia's lions, famous for their black manes, are the country's national symbol and adorn statues and the local currency. Wildlife experts estimate that only 1,000 Ethiopian lions, which are smaller than other lions, remain in the wild. Despite a recent crackdown, hunters also kill the animals for their skins, which can fetch $1,000.

Abdulaziz said it costs around $6,000 a month to run the zoo, but it only receives $5,000 in revenues from entrance fees. He added that the poisoning has been going on at least since he arrived two years ago; the number of cubs that have been killed was not immediately clear.

The zoo is a popular local attraction, although poor facilities have led to concerns by international wildlife organizations. It was built in 1948 by Emperor Haile Selassie and currently has 16 adult lions and five cubs.

Australasia
East Timor leader apologises for govt mistakes
East Timor President Xanana Gusmao has apologised for the violence that has rocked the nation over the past six months, saying his government had made "mistakes".

Speaking at the presidential palace in Dili late Friday, Gusmao called for reconciliation. "I humbly apologise to the people ... in the past six months the people have been suffering, living in fear and tears," Gusmao said.

Factions within the military and police force were involved in violence that rocked Dili and surrounding towns in April and May, leaving at least 37 people dead.

The violence followed the dismissal of almost a third of the armed forces by then prime minister Mari Alkatiri.

"We know that we were wrong. Our mistakes spread and affected all of you -- old people, adults and children. Our mistakes also spread to the armed forces," Gusmao said.

Gusmao, a hero of the nation's bloody fight for independence, said it was time to set aside differences and to "be brave and forgive each other."

India Calls Off Its 'Peacocks'

Taken from The Telegraph, 24.11.06
By Isambard Wilkinson

India has brought to an end the aggressive "peacock-style" posturing by its guards on its border with Pakistan in a goodwill gesture towards its arch-foe.

Every day before sunset since the British partition of India in 1947, border guards from both sides of the Wagah border crossing performed a testosterone-fuelled "Beating the Retreat" ceremony.



The martial ballet, which takes place on the border's only land transit point on the road between Amritsar in India and the Pakistani city of Lahore, featured guards hand-picked for their height, impressive facial hair and ability to perform a belligerent goose-step.

It was watched by thousands of spectators, who shout patriotic slogans from either side, and even triggered an exchange of gunfire almost a decade ago.

But the Indian Border Security Force has now ordered its guards to refrain from the provocative ritual of glaring, shouting and air-kicking and to restrict themselves to standard drill practice.

The "soft gesture" ahead of peace talks between Pakistan and India prompted great interest in both countries, which have gone to war three times since Partition. Commentators from both countries called for Pakistan's Rangers border guards to follow suit.

Yesterday however, the Pakistan army's spokesman, Maj Gen Shaukat Sultan, flatly rejected any change to their border procedure.

The Indian gesture is the latest in a series of "confidence building measures" that have included cricket matches and the opening of cross-border bus services. They are intended to improve the tense relations between the two nuclear rivals.

Peace talks were put on hold until last week following the train bombings in July that killed 186 people in India's financial capital Bombay, now renamed Mumbai.

India's Border Security Force said that in changing its drill, India was toning down its "body language". In the nuanced parlance of Indo-Pakistani politics, the lowering of a leg by a few inches carries significance. The Indian guards have agreed to not lift their legs higher than the "horizontal" level.

"Soldiers have been told to refrain from high-rise stomping of feet," said Commander Pradeep Katyal, the chief Indian official at Wagah. "The new gesture speaks of friendship, while the earlier body language bordered on hostility – a display of might."

He said that there had been no let-up in "aggressiveness" shown by the Pakistan Rangers.

An editorial in the influential Pakistani newspaper The News called for an end to the ritual. "It is high time that this surly spectacle ceremony, which is clearly out of place in this day and age and which only plays to the gallery and stirs the wrong kind of emotions among people, was stopped. One hopes that the Pakistani side will follow suit," it said.

Pinochet Takes Responsibility For Regime

Taken from Yahoo News, 25.11.06
By EDUARDO GALLARDO, Associated Press

SANTIAGO DE CHILE - Gen. Augusto Pinochet took full responsibility for the first time Saturday for the actions of his 1973-90 dictatorship, which carried out thousands of political killings and is blamed for widespread torture and illegal imprisonment.

At a celebration of his 91st birthday, Pinochet also defended the bloody military coup that toppled freely elected Marxist President Salvador Allende, in a statement read aloud by his wife as he sat by her side.

"Today, near the end of my days, I want to say that I harbor no rancor against anybody, that I love my fatherland above all and that I take political responsibility for everything that was done which had no other goal than making Chile greater and avoiding its disintegration," he said.

"I assume full political responsibility for what happened."

Pinochet, surrounded by family, bodyguards and retired generals outside his home, raised his hand to acknowledge about 200 supporters gathered outside who sang him "Happy Birthday" and chanted "Long live Chile! Long live Pinochet!" A mariachi band played one of his favorite songs. After about a half-hour, he slowly stood and walked inside supported by a cane and the arm of a bodyguard.

According to an official report, 3,197 people were killed for political reasons under Pinochet, including more than 1,000 who were made to disappear. Thousands more were illegally imprisoned, tortured or forced into exile.

Pinochet rarely speaks in public and has not made such extensive comments for several years.
Ricardo Israel, a political scientist at the University of Chile, said Pinochet has never taken full responsibility for his regime's actions, instead blaming abuses on subordinates.

"But I think it's too late," Israel told The Associated Press. "He should have done it while he was in power, or when he remained as army commander after stepping down. Things would have been different."

In his statement, Pinochet claimed the military had to act against Allende's government because the social and political convulsions at the time were threatening the country's integrity.

He also sent "a message of support to my comrades in arms, many of whom are imprisoned, suffering persecution and revenge," in a clear reference to the scores of trials of military officers for rights abuses.

"It is not fair to demand punishment for those who prevented the continuation and worsening of the worse political and economic crisis than one can remember," he added.

Pinochet is currently under indictment in two human rights abuse cases and for tax evasion, and has scores of others criminal suits pending, filed by victims of abuses or their relatives. Until now, the courts have dropped the charges against him citing his poor health.

He spoke of his own legal problems in the statement, and indicated that he accepted the prosecutions as a necessary part of the process of national healing.

"All the vexations, persecutions and injustices affecting me and my family, I gladly offer for the sake of harmony and peace that must prevail among Chileans," Pinochet said.

He defended his 1973 coup and the military regime, saying it left "a vigorous, modern, admired country."

"I am absolutely certain that tomorrow, once the political passions and resentments are ended, history will judge our work objectively and will recognize that we put Chile on top of the nations in our continent."

Rumsfeld Okayed Abuses Says Former U.S. General

Taken from Yahoo News, 25.11.06
By Reuters News Agency

MADRID (Reuters) - Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the prison's former U.S. commander said in an interview on Saturday.

Former U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told Spain's El Pais newspaper she had seen a letter apparently signed by Rumsfeld which allowed civilian contractors to use techniques such as sleep deprivation during interrogation.

Karpinski, who ran the prison until early 2004, said she saw a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld detailing the use of harsh interrogation methods.

"The handwritten signature was above his printed name and in the same handwriting in the margin was written: "Make sure this is accomplished,"" she told Saturday's El Pais.

"The methods consisted of making prisoners stand for long periods, sleep deprivation ... playing music at full volume, having to sit in uncomfortably ... Rumsfeld authorized these specific techniques."

The Geneva Convention says prisoners of war should suffer "no physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion" to secure information.

"Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind," the document states.

A spokesman for the Pentagon declined to comment on Karpinski's accusations, while U.S. army in Iraq could not immediately be reached for comment.

Karpinski was withdrawn from Iraq in early 2004, shortly after photographs showing American troops abusing detainees at the prison were flashed around the world. She was subsequently removed from active duty and then demoted to the rank of colonel on unrelated charges.

Karpinski insists she knew nothing about the abuse of prisoners until she saw the photos, as interrogation was carried out in a prison wing run by U.S. military intelligence.

Rumsfeld also authorized the army to break the Geneva Conventions by not registering all prisoners, Karpinski said, explaining how she raised the case of one unregistered inmate with an aide to former U.S. commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.

"We received a message from the Pentagon, from the Defense Secretary, ordering us to hold the prisoner without registering him. I now know this happened on various occasions."

Karpinski said last week she was ready to testify against Rumsfeld, if a suit filed by civil rights groups in Germany over Abu Ghraib led to a full investigation.

President Bush announced Rumsfeld's resignation after Democrats wrested power from the Republicans in midterm elections earlier this month, partly due to public criticism over the Iraq war.

Expert Says Oceans Are Turning Acidic But Fighting Global Warming Unlikely Before U.S. President Bush Steps Down

The U.N. climate talks kept a plan for fighting global warming on track for expansion beyond 2012, but breakthroughs look unlikely before U.S. President George W. Bush steps down, experts said last Saturday.

"Everyone is waiting for the United States. I think the whole process will be on ice until 2009," when Bush's second term expires, said Paal Prestrud, head of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo.

The United States is the biggest source of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, and Bush's decision to reject caps under the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol discourages involvement by other big-polluting outsiders such as China and India.

Whilst we argue who can do what and by how much it has become apparant that one of the sources of our food is serious danger. Here is a good article published in the Washington Post, 10.11.06 - article by ANTHONY MITCHELL, the Associated Press:

The world's oceans are becoming more acidic, which poses a threat to sea life and Earth's fragile food chain, a climate expert said Thursday.

Oceans have already absorbed a third of the world's emissions of carbon dioxide, one of the heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming, leading to acidification that prevents vital sea life from forming properly.

"The oceans are rapidly changing," said professor Stefan Rahmstorf on the sidelines of a U.N. conference on climate change that has drawn delegates from more than 100 countries to Kenya. "Ocean acidification is a major threat to marine organisms."

Fish stocks and the world's coral reefs could also be hit while acidification risks "fundamentally altering" the food chain, he said.

In a study titled "The Future Oceans Warming Up, Rising High, Turning Sour," Rahmstorf and eight other scientists warned that the world is witnessing, on a global scale, problems similar to the acid rain phenomenon of the 1970s and 1980s.

Rahmstorf, the head of Germany's Potsdam Institute for Research into Climatic Effects, says more research is urgently needed to assess the impact of ocean acidification.

David Santillo, a senior scientist at Greenpeace's Research Laboratories in Exeter, Britain, said it had come as a shock to scientists that the oceans are turning acidic because of carbon dioxide emissions.

"The knock on effect for humans is that some of these marine resources that we rely on may not be available in the future," the marine biologist, who was not involved in Rahmstorf's study, told The Associated Press by telephone.

Rahmstorf also reiterated warnings of rising sea levels caused by global warming, saying that in 70 years, temperature increases will lead more frequent storms with 200 million people threatened by floods.

Scientists blame the past century's one-degree rise in average global temperatures at least in part for the accumulation of carbon dioxide, methane and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere byproducts of power plants, automobiles and other fossil fuel burners.

The 1997 Kyoto accord requires 35 industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The Kyoto countries meeting in Nairobi are continuing talks on what kind of emissions targets and timetables should follow 2012.

----------------------------------------------------------
Here are some interesting information from BBC News Online's Planet under Pressure series:
Food: An estimated 1 in 6 people suffer from hunger and malnutrition while attempts to grow food are damaging swathes of productive land.
Water: By 2025, two-thirds of the world's people are likely to be living in areas of acute water stress.
Energy: Oil production could peak and supplies start to decline by 2010
Climate change: The world's greatest environmental challenge, according to the UK prime minister Tony Blair, with increased storms, floods, drought and species losses predicted.
Biodiversity: Many scientists think the Earth is now entering its sixth great extinction phase.
Pollution: Hazardous chemicals are now found in the bodies of all new-born babies, and an estimated one in four people worldwide are exposed to unhealthy concentrations of air pollutants.

Recommended Reading:
BBC: Planet Under Pressure

Rich Countries 'Blocking Cheap Drugs For Developing World'

Taken from The Guardian, UK, 14.11.06
By Sarah Boseley,

Poor people are needlessly dying because drug companies and the governments of rich countries are blocking the developing world from obtaining affordable medicines, a report says today.

Five years to the day after the Doha declaration - a groundbreaking deal to give poor countries access to cheap drugs - was signed at the World Trade Organisation, Oxfam says things are worse.

The charity accuses the US, which champions the interests of its giant pharmaceutical companies, of bullying developing countries into not using the measures in the Doha declaration and the EU of standing by and doing nothing. Doha technically allows poor countries to buy cheap copies of desperately needed drugs but the US is accused of trying to prevent countries such as Thailand and India, which have manufacturing capacity, making and selling cheap generic versions so as to preserve the monopolies of the drug giants.

"Rich countries have broken the spirit of the Doha declaration," said Celine Charveriat, head of Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign. "The declaration said the right things but needed political action to work and that hasn't happened. In fact, we've actually gone backwards. Many people are dying or suffering needlessly."

The Indian generics firms make most of the cheap drug cocktails that are now being rolled out to people with HIV in Africa and are keeping more than a million people alive. They brought the price of a basic three-drug cocktail down from $10,000 (£5,250) a year to less than $150 (£79).

But new Aids drugs will soon be needed because the virus will become resistant to the basic ones now in use - as has happened in the EU and the US.

Those newer Aids drugs, together with drugs for cancer and diabetes, are under patent. The Oxfam report points out that 4 million people were newly infected with HIV in 2005 and cancer and diabetes are expanding faster in developing countries than in the richer world.

The report says that, since the signing of the Doha declaration on November 14 2001, "rich countries have failed to honour their promises. Their record ranges from apathy and inaction to dogged determination to undermine the declaration's spirit and intent. The US, at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry, is uniqely guilty of seeking ever higher levels of intellectual property protection in developing countries."

The US has pursued its own free trade agreements with developing countries, tying them into much tighter observance of patent rights than anticipated at Doha. "The USA has also pressured countries for greater patent protection through threats of trade sanctions," the report says.

The drugs firms are also fighting to have patents observed. Pfizer is challenging the Philippines government in a bid to extend its monopoly on Norvasc, a drug pressure drug. Novartis is engaged in litigation in India to enforce a patent for Glivec, a cancer drug, which could save many lives if it were available at generic prices.

The Stop Aids campaign, a coalition of 90 NGOs of which Oxfam is a member, is calling for the government to champion the issue at the G8 summit next year. Three-quarters of HIV drugs are still under monopoly and unaffordable in poor countries, it said. More than 75% of those who need HIV treatment urgently are still not getting it. Only 8% of children with HIV are on drugs, which cost four times more than those for adults.

"Sadly, promising words have not translated into life-saving treatments and five years is too long to wait when the stakes are so high," said Steve Cockburn, campaign coordinator.

Case study
Premavati, a 60-year-old widow living in Delhi who is suffering from non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system, has spent around $900 (£470) on medicines. "My husband died two years ago," says Premavati. "We have absolutely no savings. Of my two sons one is a casual labourer, the other has no job. My daughter is 30, has two children and is also a widow."

She is one of 1.42 billion people in India who cannot afford the drugs they need to save their lives. Their country is the leading producer of inexpensive generic drugs but about 67% of the output is exported, and it is under pressure to stop copying new patented drugs. The future looks bleak for Premavati. "How will I raise the money for my treatment?" she says, "Already, I've spent what we had. If nobody helps I will just go back to my daughter and will have to die without medicines."

Archbishop And Pope Admit Strains

Taken from BBC News, 23.11.06

The Archbishop of Canterbury and Pope Benedict XVI have publicly acknowledged that "serious obstacles" stand in the way of their Churches' cooperating.

Dr Rowan Williams, the leader of the worldwide Anglican Church, is on a short visit to Rome.
In a joint declaration, they said it was a matter of urgency that talks continue on issues which divide them.

It comes amid concerns in the Roman Catholic Church over possible women bishops and gay Anglican bishops.

The Common Declaration was signed by Pope Benedict and Dr Williams during a formal audience at the Vatican.

'Arduous journey'
"Our long journey together makes it necessary to acknowledge publicly the challenge represented by new developments which, besides being divisive for Anglicans, present serious obstacles to our ecumenical progress," it read.

"It is a matter of urgency, therefore, that ... we also commit ourselves in our continuing dialogue to address the important issues involved in the emerging ecclesiological and ethical factors making that journey more difficult and arduous."

The statement also called for the two churches to stand together over issues including the "pursuit of peace in the Holy Land" and the "negative effects of materialism".

It made a commitment to talk to other religions and "reach out to our non-Christian brothers and sisters".

The Vatican declaration comes only a few days before the Pope leaves for Turkey to address problems caused by another deep division among Christians - between Rome and the Orthodox Churches, dating back almost 1,000 years.

After the formal audience, the religious leaders shared worship together at the Vatican.
Earlier they had held a private 15-minute meeting.

Speaking afterwards, Dr Williams said it had been a "very warm meeting" and stressed the importance of his relationship with the Pope.

"I think if we are not able to understand where each other is coming from in terms of our thoughts about God, our thoughts about the church, our thoughts about our vocation, then really a great deal of the negotiating and the fine detail and fine tuning has been a waste of time.

"I think we need to understand each other as fellow pastors and fellow teachers in the church. I think this morning is a great step towards that."

Symbolic meeting
Dr Williams was expected to spend most of Thursday inside the Vatican city.

It is thought he will give two lectures - one at the Vatican's Academy of Sciences - during his six-day tour.

The Roman Catholic Cardinal, Archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Murphy O'Connor is thought to have accompanied Dr Williams on the visit.

This latest meeting was intended to mark the 40th anniversary of the meeting between their predecessors, Dr Michael Ramsey and the late Pope Paul VI, at the Holy See.

The ordination of Gene Robinson - a divorced man in an openly gay relationship - as the Bishop of New Hampshire in the US in 2003 was viewed with "concern" by the Catholic Church.

Israel & Palestine: Ten Ways To Make Sure that Peace Stays Dead

Palestinian militant groups offered to stop firing rockets into Israel in exchange for a cessation of all attacks on the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, an official said on today.

Islamic Jihad leader Khader Habib said the main Palestinian factions including the governing Hamas group, the rival Fatah of President Mahmoud Abbas and other smaller groups reached the understanding while meeting Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

"For the good of the national Palestinian interest ... there is a position supporting calm (a ceasefire) by stopping rocket fire in return for an end to the aggression against our people in Gaza and the West Bank," Habib told Reuters.

Habib said a deal would only take effect after Israel agrees and actually ends military actions. The offer was limited only to rocket firing and did not include other forms of attacks by militants such as cross-border attacks and suicide bombings.

It was the first time that all Palestinian factions and militant groups had agreed on a common proposal.

If the Isaeli's agree to a truce - how long can it last? How long before either side breaks the truce?

Below is a great article published in Haaretz, 23.11.06 by Bradley Burston

We're six dreadful years into this war of ours. The number of dead has passed our ability to keep track, many more than 4,000 Palestinians, many more than 1,000 Israelis.

We are in a state of permanent eclipse. Never have we been more distrustful of the other. Never have we had less faith in our leaders. So poverty-stricken are we in leadership, Israelis and Palestinians as one, that even our leaders have lost the little esteem they may have once had for each other.

In Israel, the only conflict that Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz are conducting with vigor and precision is a war with each other. The public having long lost all faith in either of them, each of them now shares at least the public's view of the other.

In Gaza, Fatah has long since lost its credibility, and Hamas is fast losing the adoration it held for nearly two decades.

Six dreadful years into this war, we have uncounted reasons why neither side can recognize the other long enough to sit at the same negotiating table. Neither side can quell its own internal spats long enough to discuss a cease-fire with the other.

Six years older, none the wiser, we have learned only this:

This is the place where peace plans come to die.

At this point, perhaps intransigence is all we have left. On both sides. Having lost our hope, we've lost our freedom. Having lost our compassion, we've lost our self-respect. Having lost our faith, we've lost our very future.

In the dim light of a spent horizon, in a place of crushed hopes, what, really, do the two sides have in common?

Too much, it turns out.

Incompetent in governance, unwilling to do what is needed to provide for our needy, incapable of finding ways to protect the vulnerable from enemy attack, we, Israelis and Palestinians both, have becomes masters only at making certain that peace stays dead.

Two peoples once known for their industriousness and creativity, we have become energetic only in dismissal, creative only in rejection.

Too many people on each side see the other as wholly culpable. Too many people on each side see themselves as wholly innocent, wholly victimized, ill-served by the well-meaning, abandoned by former allies, betrayed by the media, misunderstood by people who should know better, forgotten by the world.

Too many people on each side see only the suffering that has been caused them. Too many people have learned to wall themselves off from the suffering that they have caused.

At this point, even those of us who still have an ember of faith in a far dawn, may find that we're playing into the despair. Those of us who believe that the two sides should have an opportunity to listen to what the other has to say, run the risk of making it possible for each side to hear the other at its very worst.

Witness the Talkback.

For good or ill, there is nothing like this in human communication. Enemies talk. Real enemies.

Furious, battered, vengeance-starved mortal enemies.

Now and then, enemies even listen. They may even learn.

Let this be said: the great majority of those who send talkbacks are people who honestly want to participate in an ongoing exchange of ideas.

But the price of relatively free speech - we will pause here for a moment to allow virtual produce and eggs to be thrown at our hard-working crew of censors - is the need on the part of a minority to vent, and thus propagate, venom.

For some among the community of the Extreme Talkbacker, the voice of reason is often the voice of racism.

For others, the talkback is tantamount to PlayStation 4, an entirely virtual world at your fingertips. A world that you yourself can construct. A fellow talkbacker takes issue with your opinion? Hit the Thesaurus of Death button. Take pride in a newfound epithet, a new vein of mud heretofore unslung.

The World According to Extreme Talkbacks is to the real world, as PlayStation is to actual warfare, actual martial arts, actual artistic endeavor, actual pleasure, actual blood.

But as virtual as this world can be, there is no question that the Extreme Talkbacker can do real harm.

Perhaps the harm is intentional, a function of rage and activism with no available address. Like the reader in Connecticut who feels the need to respond to an Israeli moderate who expresses sorrow and dismay and responsibility for the unintentional deaths of Palestinians, by telling the Israeli that he probably rejoiced in the killing of a fellow Israeli in a Palestinian rocket attack.

Then there are those, Palestinians and Israelis alike, who do not want to see peace, who have no interest in co-existence, who do not believe that the Holy Land was meant to be shared, and who could not care less if the talkbacks they send, only drive a further wedge between our two peoples.

So, for their sake, we unveil a new set of Extreme Talkback Guidelines, as seen from the viewpoint of the talkback terrorist, intended to maximize the strife here, intensify the conflict, and render any eventual peace accord so distant as to be hopeless:

1. There is only one side to any story. My side.

2. The people on the other side, children included, are undeserving of sympathy.

3. Even the maimed and the dead on the other side are undeserving of sympathy.

4. The term massacre may only be used to describe casualties on my side.

5. The automatic fire, bombing, shelling or other lethal action taken by my side are acts of self-defense. If there are fatalities as a result of fire by my side, whether intentional or incidental, they deserved to die.

Pro-Israel version I: Palestinian terrorists are to blame for the deaths, as they operate in residential areas, drawing fire that kills innocent civilians.

Pro-Israel version II: They're all terrorists. They all deserve what they get.

Pro-Palestinian version I: Suicide bombings, Qassams and drive-by's are the only defense that a vastly out-gunned people has against well-armed occupation forces.

Pro-Palestinian version II: All Israelis ultimately serve in the army, so all are legitimate targets.

6. The concept of drawing comparisons of moral equivalency or mutual responsibility for violence is, in all cases, obscene, disgraceful, artificial, mendacious.

All political, military, social and religious modalities can be reduced to pure victims and pure villains, which is to say, Us and Them, which is to say, Us and animals/murderers/mass-murderers/racist genocidalists/Nazis/Hitler.

Option 7A: The goal of the left, the center, this newspaper, its writers, even some of its readers, is the destruction of the State of Israel.

Option 7B: The destruction of Israel is a worthwhile goal.

8. If I am a pro-Israel extremist, responding to a pro-Israel moderate, I should attack and dismiss the writer as a whiner, a crybaby, a defeatist, a moron, a wimp, an imbecile, a self-hater, an extreme leftist, naïve, brainwashed, a pipe-dreamer, duped by the pro-Arab bias of the mass media, a traitor.

9. If I am a pro-Palestinian extremist, responding to a pro-Palestinian moderate, I should immediately dismiss the writer as a sell-out, a fool, misguided, an Uncle Tom, unaware of the real facts, duped by a the pro-Israel bias of the mass media, a traitor.

10. The depth of my conviction, that is, the degree of my extremism, is directly proportional to the distance from my home to the Holy Land. The farther away, the more foaming-at-the-mouth my fanaticism.