The 20 Journalists Who Have Lost Their Lives In Putin's Russia

Taken from the Independent, UK, 11 March 2007
By Andrew Osborn in Moscow

Ivan Safronov did not die immediately, despite falling four floors from a window in his Moscow apartment block. Witnesses say he tried to get to his feet after hitting the ground, but then collapsed for the final time. The police say the death of the well-respected journalist, who worked for the daily Kommersant newspaper, has all the hallmarks of suicide - though they are willing to consider the possibility that he was "driven" to kill himself. But his friends insist he was not the sort to take his own life. Why should he?

Safronov is one of 20 journalists/media workers who have died recently. Here is the full list...

Ivan Safronov
Military affairs specialist for daily national newspaper 'Kommersant'. Was investigating a Kremlin arms deal with the Middle East. Found dead on 2 March after 'falling' from a window in his Moscow home in suspicious circumstances.




Anna Politkovskaya
Crusading investigative reporter specialising in Chechnya, attached to fortnightly national newspaper 'Novaya Gazeta'. Shot dead in a contract killing outside her apartment block in Moscow on 7 October 2006.




Vyacheslav Plotnikov
Reporter for a local TV channel in Voronezh. His body was found in a forest on 15 September 2006, dressed in someone else's clothes. No signs of a violent death, but his colleagues are convinced that he was murdered.




Yevgeny Gerasimenko
Investigative reporter on regional newspaper 'Saratovsky Rasklad' who had been looking into shady local business dealings. Found dead on 25 July 2006 in his flat, where he had been tortured and suffocated with a plastic bag.




Alexander Pitersky
Presenter on the St Petersburg radio station Baltika, who sometimes covered criminal investigations. His body was found in his flat, where he had been stabbed to death, on 30 August 2005.




Magomedzagid Varisov
A press commentator in his native Dagestan, where he also ran a think-tank, Varisov had criticised local politicians. Killed in a machine gun attack in Mahachkala, the capital of Dagestan, on 28 June 2005.




Pavel Makeev
Cameraman for Puls, a local TV station in southern Russia. Died on 21 May 2005 while covering illegal street racing in the town of Azov. His car was rammed by an unknown vehicle and his camera and tapes taken.




Paul Klebnikov
US citizen of Russian extraction. As editor of the Russian edition of 'Forbes' magazine, he put together the country's first rich list and specialised in corruption investigations. Shot dead in a contract killing in Moscow on 9 July 2004.




Aleksei Sidorov
The second editor of local newspaper 'The Togliatti Overview' to be murdered in as many years. He was stabbed in the chest with an ice pick or similar sharp object outside his apartment block on 9 October 2003.




Yuri Shchekochikhin
Investigative journalist, liberal MP and deputy editor of 'Novaya Gazeta'. Specialised in investigating corruption in the general prosecutor's office. Died on 3 July 2003 after an unexplained allergic reaction. His colleagues believe he was poisoned.





Dmitry Shvets
A senior executive at a local Murmansk TV station, TV-21 Northwestern Broadcasting. Had been highly critical of local officialdom. Shot dead outside the station's offices on 18 April 2003.




Valery Ivanov
Editor of 'The Togliatti Overview' and managing editor of the independent channel Lada-TV, specialising in crime and corruption in the local car industry. Shot dead in his car on 29 April 2002.




Natalya Skryl
Business reporter on 'Our Time', a local newspaper based in Rostov-on-Don, investigating controversial dealings in a local metals plant. Died on her way home after being beaten with a heavy object on 8 March 2002.




Eduard Markevich
Editor of 'Novy Reft', a local newspaper in the town of Reftinsky, Sverdlovsk region, who was critical of regional authorities. After a series of threatening phone calls, he was shot dead in the back on 19 September 2001.




Adam Tepsurgayev
TV cameraman for Reuters who filmed exclusive footage of the conflict in Chechnya. Shot dead in the village of Alkhan-Kala on 23 November 2000 by masked gunmen who burst into his home.




Sergey Ivanov
Director of the Lada-TV station in Togliatti. Showed an interest in the area's notoriously corrupt car manufacturing business. Shot five times outside his apartment building on 3 October 2000.





Iskandar Khatloni
Journalist investigating human rights abuses in Chechnya for the Tajik- language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Killed by an axe-wielding attacker in Moscow on 21 September 2000.




Sergey Novikov
Senior executive at the Vesna radio station in Smolensk. Claimed to be able to prove corruption among high-ranking local officials. Shot dead on 26 July 2000, in the lobby of his apartment building.




Igor Domnikov
Investigative reporter on 'Novaya Gazeta'. Died on 16 July 2000 after being attacked with a hammer in the lobby of his Moscow apartment block. His newspaper believes his murder was a case of mistaken identity.




Artyom Borovik
Senior executive at investigative magazine 'Completely Secret' that exposed the misdeeds of the rich and powerful. Died on 3 March 2000 in a plane crash that the authorities believe may not have been accidental.

Far-Right And Wrong, Or How To Ruin Judaism

This is a humorous article...

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 09/03/2007
By Bradley Burston - A Special Place In Hell Column:

For years, the members of the radical right have done their best to help ruin any chance for peace. They've done quite a job. Given free rein, in the end they'd ruin Judaism as well, replacing it with their own belief system. If the rest of us would only let them.

How would it look? Something like this perhaps:

THE NEW 13 ARTICLES OF FAITH

1. Jews have the full right, and the duty, to settle anywhere they choose in the biblically defined Land of Israel.

Author's note: No one in this world has the right to settle wherever they choose.

2. Settling the Land is a commandment of the highest order in Judaism.

Corollary:

3. Ceding land to Arabs under so-called peace deals is a sin. Judaism must revive the medieval concept of the moser, under which Jews who hand over Jewish land to gentiles, inform against fellow Jews or hand over fellow Jews to gentiles are guilty of capital crimes.

Author's note: The distortion of contemporary Judaism to a perverse extreme is especially evident in the works of the self-appointed "Sanhedrin" of leading far-right rabbis, whose rabbinical court recently pronounced overall IDF West Bank commander Yair Naveh, himself Orthodox, a moser for approving the eviction of 20 occupants of an illegal outpost.

Leaving aside the problematic issue of a Great Sanhedrin arbitrarily constituting itself after 1,650 years of inactivity, the ancient Sanhedrin was historically renowned, if for nothing else, for its marked reluctance to impose the death penalty.

4. Refusal of orders by leftist soldiers serving in the territories is an act of cowardice, self-hatred, treachery, defeatism.

5. Refusal of orders by rightist soldiers serving in the territories is an act of conscience, of uncommon valor, a defense of Jewish values, a historical necessity.

6. Meir Kahane was a saint and a prophet.
Author's note: Corollary - Racism against Arabs is thus not bigotry, but realism.

7. Baruch Goldstein was a saint and a savior.
Author's note: In Hebron, the second most holy city to Jews and the contemporary headquarters of twisting authentic Judaism into obscenity, Goldstein's grave has become a pilgrimage magnate for the Voodoo Jews who revere his massacre of 29 Muslims at prayer. Going obscenity one better, Goldstein chose for his terror attack the holiday of Purim, arguably the most joyous occasion on the Jewish calendar.

To hear the radical right tell it, Goldstein's action prevented an unimaginable terrorist plot from unfolding and murdering large numbers of Jews.

It was a fiction that has become an article of faith. Thus it is that radical rightist Jews have come to revere Goldstein not because of the lives - Arab and Jewish - that he saved as a physician, but because of those - exclusively Muslim - that he took as a gunman.

8. Leftist Jews are systematically destroying Israel. The leftist-dominated media foments and directs that process of destruction, through its treasonous criticism of right-wing governments.

9. Criticism by Jews of left-wing Israeli governments is a patriotic duty.

10. There is no difference between the Arabs of today and the Nazis of World War II. There is no such thing as a Palestinian people. The Arabs of the Land of Israel should be transferred to Muslim nations.

11. The Israel Defense Forces, the Border Police, and the Shin Bet, acting under the orders of left-leaning government officials, coddle the Palestinians and refrain from carrying out the kinds of operations that would put an end to terror once and for all.

12. Jews are no longer bound by the rabbinic prohibition against setting foot on the Temple Mount.

Author's note: No less an authority than Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook, first chief rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine, ruled that "it is a Torah commandment that until the day of the resurrection, we are not permitted to even enter the courtyard of the Temple."

The fact that Jewish law can be summarily ignored or rescinded for reasons of politics and ideology does not bode well. Neither does the possibility that it can only be revamped for reasons of right-wing politics or ideology.

13. The Muslim occupation of the Temple Mount should be ended at the first opportunity, and the construction of the new Temple to begin. Jews, who everywhere in the world pray facing the direction of the Temple Mount, have a clear right to the site, in contrast to Muslims, who pray facing Mecca.

Author's note: For Jews to decide how much Muslims care about their holy sites is fully as wrong as Muslims deciding how much Jews care about theirs.

Among many of us, there is a tendency to discount the potency and the danger of the far right. Perhaps this is because of the funhouse mirror carnival aspect of the ragtag righteous: the End of Days addicts, the Temple Mount groupies, the hilltop hormone punks, the Kahane-rama tubby hippies, the curiously mousy men of the Women in Green, the fanatical would-be settler, the gun nut, the Messiah crank, the Earthmother curser of Arab mothers, the thick of payes and the thin of patience, the wide of scullcap and the wild of eye, the would-have-been ghetto fighter and the might-have-been Maccabee.

What unites them? What do they know that we don't know? The destructive potential of the lunatic notion, the obscene plan, the crackpot mantra.

They know that this is no joke. This is a struggle for the soul of Judaism. Ultimately, however, the result will not be up to them. It will be up to the rest of us.

Uncovered: Churchill's Warnings About The 'Hebrew Bloodsuckers'

Unpublished article from 1937 suggests 'aloof' Jews to blame for antagonism towards them

Taken from the Independent, UK, 11 March 2007
By Paul Bignell

Winston Churchill suggested Jewish people were "partly responsible for the antagonism" that saw them branded "Hebrew bloodsuckers", according to an article made public for the first time today.

The 1937 document, "How the Jews Can Combat Persecution", was unearthed by Dr Richard Toye, a Cambridge University historian. Written three years before Churchill became Prime Minister, the article has apparently lain unnoticed in the Churchill archives at Cambridge since the early months of the Second World War.

The article argues that "the wickedness of the persecutors" was not the sole reason for the ill-treatment of Jews down the ages. Churchill criticised the "aloofness" of Jewish people from wider society and urged them to make the effort to integrate themselves."

Dr Toye said: "I nearly fell off my chair when I found the article. It appears to have been overlooked. I think a lot of people thought that the file it was in only contained copies of articles that had already been published. It was certainly quite a shock to read some of these things and it is obviously at odds with the traditional idea we have of Churchill."

The article was intended for the US publication Liberty but withdrawn when another magazine Churchill wrote for objected to him supplying a rival.

In the piece Churchill criticised Jewish employers in the clothing trade and their use of sweated labour. Because refugee Jews escaping the Nazi regime in Germany were willing to work for lower wages, this was in his view "bad citizenship" because it forced English workers out of jobs - and "bad policy" as it created anti-Semitism. Churchill says: "The central fact which dominates the relations of Jew and non-Jew is that the Jew is 'different'. He looks different. He thinks differently. He has a different tradition and background."

He then goes on to criticise Jewish moneylenders: "Every Jewish moneylender recalls Shylock and the idea of the Jews as usurers. And you cannot reasonably expect a struggling clerk or shopkeeper, paying 40 or 50 per cent interest on borrowed money to a 'Hebrew Bloodsucker', to reflect that almost every other way of life was closed to the Jewish people."

Elsewhere in the article Churchill is sympathetic towards Jewish people and clearly disapproves of their persecution: "The Jew is, as a rule, a good citizen. He is sober, industrious and law-abiding... The Jews are suffering from persecutions, cruel and relentless."

Dr Toye said: "Although Churchill lapsed into some extremely unfortunate stereotypes, he did so in the context of trying to be helpful - trying to help the Jews avoid persecution. But unfortunately he kind of blames the Jews themselves in part."

However, Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill's biogra-pher, says there is another reason for the anti-Semitic language: "Churchill had a ghostwriter who was a member of the Mosleyite party. This article was the only serious subject the ghostwriter was asked to tackle, in which he went over the top in the use of his language."

Israel Accused Of Using Palestinian Children As Human Shields

Taken from The Guardian, UK, March 9, 2007
By Conal Urquhart in Tel Aviv


Sameh Amira is escorted by heavily armed Israeli soldiers on a door-to-door sweep in Nablus, providing some of the strongest evidence to date that the Israeli army is still using Palestinian civilians as human shields.

The Israeli army is investigating whether its troops used two Palestinian children as human shields during a house search operation in the West Bank following claims by the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem.

The use of human shields to deter gunmen from opening fire on soldiers was banned by Israel's supreme court and forbidden by the army. However the practice, in which soldiers force Palestinians to approach, enter and search buildings where they believe gunmen may be hiding, remains common.

Israelis soldiers were filmed using Sameh Amira, 24, as a human shield on February 25, during a week-long raid into the West Bank city of Nablus. Mr Amira was made to search homes in the city's casbah, or old city, during a search for wanted men and bomb-making laboratories. The casbah in the centre of the city was placed under curfew for two days and a Palestinian man was shot dead when he went onto the roof of his home.

Mr Amira's cousin, 15-year-old Amid Amira, told B'Tselem that soldiers also forced him to search three houses, making him enter rooms, empty cupboards and open windows.

An 11-year-old girl, Jihan Dadush, told B'Tselem that soldiers took her from her home three days later, on February 28, forcing her to open the door of a neighboring apartment and enter ahead of them. The soldiers then took her home, she said.

In her testimony to B'Tselem, Jihan said that after the soldiers left, "I was shaking with fear. I was afraid they would kill me or put me in jail. The only thing I wanted to do was sleep. I am afraid that the soldiers will come back and take me".

B'Tselem said that it was clear from the testimonies that the soldiers believed the houses presented a risk and that they were therefore knowingly placing the Palestinians in danger.

Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for B'Tselem said that the group had written to the judge advocate-general to demand a thorough investigation of the use of human shields. "The use of civilians especially a 11-year-old is very problematic and we want the army to investigate it properly using military police rather than an internal inquiry mechanism."

In August 2002, a 19-year-old Palestinian student, Nidal Daraghmeh, was killed when troops in the West Bank town of Tubas forced him to knock on the door of a neighbouring building where a Hamas fugitive was hiding. Gunfire erupted and Daraghmeh was killed.

Yesh Din, another Israeli human rights group, has reported that the Israeli army used peaceful Palestinian villages to carry out training exercises. The group said that the villagers were harassed and scared as two battalions of reservists acted out a battle in their midst for three hours. The exercises were carried out without warning in the early morning in the villages of Beit Lid and Safarin last month.

Egypt Wants Probe Into 'Israeli Massacre'

Taken from The Jerusalem Post, Israel, Mar. 3, 2007

National Infrastructures Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer of Labor may be joining the long list of political officials currently under investigation, following a claim that the reconnaissance unit he commanded during the Six Day War killed 250 prisoners of war.



Egyptian parliamentarians are demanding that the IDF investigate whether Ben-Eliezer's elite Shaked unit killed the prisoners.

Dr. Mustafa al-Faki, chairman of the Egyptian legislature's Foreign Affairs Committee, denounced what he called the "massacre of helpless Egyptian soldiers," adding that it was the first time evidence had been presented proving that "Israeli hands are drenched with the blood of Egyptian prisoners."

Last week, Channel 1 aired Ruah Shaked (The Spirit of Shaked), a documentary compiled by journalist Ran Edilist. It claimed that Ben-Eliezer's unit killed 250 unarmed Egyptian prisoners of war in the Sinai desert after the fighting had stopped.

Edward Rali, head of the Egyptian parliament's Committee for Human Rights, called for his panel to meet on Sunday to discuss "the Israeli massacre of innocent Egyptian soldiers, which represents a serious violation of human rights and international law."

Ben-Eliezer, a former brigadier-general, told an Egyptian newspaper on Saturday that the accusations were inaccurate. Those killed, he said, were not Egyptian POWs, but rather Palestinian fedayun (suicide troops paid and trained by Egyptian intelligence) who were killed in battle.

Former education minister Yossi Sarid told Egypt's Al-Ahram that the "killing of prisoners of war is a war crime with no statute of limitations. The problem, however," said the former Meretz chairman, "is that the region is filled with war crimes."

Sarid told the paper he had not seen the documentary, but that he was aware that Israeli forces had committed such acts. "Punishing those responsible for these crimes is difficult due to the fact that 40 years have passed since the 1967 war, but history will judge these people," he said.

Israel: Olmert Primed For War Before A Pretext Came

At last Prime Minister Olmert admits what we all have known...

Taken from The Sydney Morning Heraldm March 10, 2007
By Conal Urquhart in Tel Aviv

PREPARATIONS for Israel's war in Lebanon last July were drawn up at least four months before two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah in July, the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has admitted.

His submission to a commission of inquiry, leaked on Thursday, contradicted the impression at the time that Israel had been provoked into a battle for which it was ill-prepared.

Mr Olmert told the Winograd commission, a panel of judges investigating Israel's perceived defeat in the 34-day war, that he first discussed the possibility of war in January last year and asked to see military plans in March.

According to the Ha'aretz daily, which obtained details of Mr Olmert's testimony, the Prime Minister chose a strategy of air attacks on Lebanon and a limited ground operation to be implemented in the event of an abduction by Hezbollah, which had made several attempts to capture Israeli soldiers on the border since Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000.

Israeli commentators believed that Mr Olmert and his Defence Minister, Amir Peretz, took the opportunity of the kidnapping to show they could manage a war in spite of their limited military experience. But the outcome seemed to highlight their lack of experience, as well as deficiencies in Israel's military planning.

The commission's interim report is expected by the end of the month. Although the commission was appointed by the Government, Mr Olmert's continuation in office would be unlikely if its report criticises him.

One political analyst, Shmuel Sandler, said it seemed that people close to Mr Olmert had leaked his submission, made on February 1, in an attempt to increase his popularity. In an opinion poll published this week, only 3 per cent of Israeli voters said they would vote for Mr Olmert, while 72 per cent said he should resign.

Zalman Shoval, of the Likud party, said Mr Olmert's testimony cast his decisions in a worse light than before. "If he had prepared plans, then to any objective commentator, this makes the situation worse," he said.

"Why were the plans not carried out? It all also places a darker complexion on his decision to expand ground operations, which led to the loss of 33 more Israeli lives."

On July 12 Hezbollah fighters abducted Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, Israeli reservists, in an incident on the Israel-Lebanon border. Israel then launched air strikes on southern Lebanon before attacking other areas. Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets into Israel.

Mr Olmert said at the time that Israel went to war to force the return of the soldiers, eliminate Hezbollah's rocket supplies and push the militia north of the Litani River in southern Lebanon.

Israeli forces launched several ground operations which met strong resistance. It was difficult to move supplies and troops around the battlefield because of Hezbollah's anti-tank weapons.
After a final offensive in which Israel lost 33 soldiers, the Government agreed on a ceasefire without having achieved its objectives. In the fighting, 1200 Lebanese and 158 Israelis were killed. Of the dead almost 1000 Lebanese and 41 Israelis were civilians.

Captain America Killed When US Needs Him

Taken from The Telegraph, UK, 10/03/2007
By Tom Leonard in New York

The death of a comic book superhero created during the Second World War has prompted an intense debate in the US over the decline in traditional American values.

Marvel Comics' decision to have a New York sniper polish off ultra-patriotic Captain America in the latest issue of his comic has not only horrified his fans but provoked questions about the continued relevance of his commitment to "truth, justice and the American way".

At a time of growing scepticism among Americans about the morality of their country's foreign policy, the decision to kill off the nation's comic book embodiment has been widely interpreted as being heavily laden with political symbolism.

"It's a hell of a time for him to go. We really need him now," said Joe Simon, 93, the writer who came up with the hooded, masked and shield-carrying character as a way of bolstering American patriotism during the Second World War.

He appeared on the cover of the first edition punching Adolf Hitler and, notwithstanding a period when the character was dropped, he has been dispatching America's enemies, including the Japanese, Communists and criminals, ever since.

His appeal was partly based on the fact that he had no real superpowers. His alter ego, Steve Rogers, was a scrawny student who volunteered to be injected with "Super Soldier" serum, making him the embodiment of a human being at his utmost potential.

An estimated 210 million Captain America comics have been sold in 75 countries, but sales have been slipping due to the popularity of more modern superheroes such as Spiderman.

Its writers also admitted that the character probably suffered because there was no longer the same consensus about what an all-American hero should stand for.

Ed Brubaker, the series writer, admitted it was not easy to kill off the character but said that he wanted to explore in future issues what the hero meant to the country in more polarised times.

"What I found is that all the really hard-core Left-wing fans want Cap to be giving speeches on the street corner against the Bush administration, and all the really Right-wing fans all want him to be over in the streets of Baghdad, punching out Saddam," he said.

Stan Lee, the comic writer, said he resurrected Captain America in the 1960s "because he represented everything that people found admirable - he was courageous, honest, loyal, he tried always to do the right thing... he was like a perfect human being".

Another "perfect" hero, Superman, was killed off in 1993 by DC Comics, only to be brought back a few months later and Marvel refused to rule out the possibility that Captain America might also return.

As news shows debated yesterday what his demise said about American values, comic store owners said that many fans behaved as if they were in mourning.

US Admits Failings In Rights Record

Taken from The Sydney Morning Herald, March 8, 2007
By Reuters

WASHINGTON: In a rare admission, the US has said its own human rights record was in question in an annual report that criticised Iraq for its death squads with government links, kidnapping and torture.

"We do not issue these reports because we think ourselves perfect but rather because we know ourselves to be deeply imperfect," the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, said as she presented the report, which assesses human rights in more than 190 countries but does not review the US record.

Iraq was among the most problematic nations listed in the report for 2006, which found respect for rights had also deteriorated in China, Russia, Venezuela and Egypt.

The State Department's report said worsening sectarian violence and terrorism in Iraq prevented progress on rights last year.

On one side were Sunni Arab groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq and Baathist remnants, on the other Shiite militias with ties to the Iraqi security forces.

Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Sudan, North Korea, Burma, Kazakhstan and Iran were among other nations listed as the most serious rights offenders.

The report said there had been advances in Liberia, where Africa's first female head of state was inaugurated a year ago, and in Morocco and Haiti.

--------------------------------------------------------------

China & Russia have both been ganging up on the US over the U.S. violating Iraqis' rights. China on Thursday accused the United States of trampling on Iraq's sovereignty, saying Washington was using its campaign against terrorism as an excuse to torture people around the world and violate the rights of its own citizens. The Chinese report on US Human Rights Abuses states the following:
# The United States has used its military power to trespass on the sovereignty of other countries and violate human rights.
# The Chinese report cites U.S. news stories estimating that more than 655,000 Iraqis have died in Iraq since war started in March 2003, and repeats charges of atrocities carried out by U.S. forces there.
# It said the United States has "a flagrant record" of violating the Geneva Convention by systematically abusing prisoners in Iraq and in Afghanistan, citing the mistreatment of prisoners in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.
# The report said the international image of the United States had been hurt by these rights violations it said were carried out under the banner of "safeguarding human rights".
# China also said the United States had a poor domestic human rights record, with its citizens suffering "increasing civil rights infringements" under security measures imposed after the Sept. 11 attacks.
# Citing U.S. reports, it said nearly three-quarters of the terrorism suspects seized by the United States in the five years since the attacks have not come to trial due to lack of evidence.
# The report also criticized the United States for not protecting its citizens' economic and social rights, saying that according to the U.S. Census Bureau 37 million people lived in poverty in the United States in 2005, or about one in eight Americans.
# "The ethnic minorities are at the bottom of American society," the Chinese report said.
The document quotes a U.S. Justice Department report that said there were 5.2 million violent crimes in the United States in 2005, the highest number in 15 years.

US Seizes Afghan Shooting Footage

Taken from Al Jazeera News Agency, MONDAY, MARCH 05, 2007

US forces in Afghanistan tried to confiscate video and destroy photographic evidence taken after a shooting incident that left at least 10 civilians dead, witnesses have told Al Jazeera.

Footage obtained by Al Jazeera shows the scene in Nangarhar province immediately after US forces opened fire following a car bomb attack on their convoy.

The footage shows local people in shock, treating the wounded and pulling bodies from the debris left by the shooting.

After the Nargarhar incident, a separate Nato air raid in northern Afghanistan left nine civilians dead, according to a local official.

'Complete lie
'Witnesses say the suicide bomber had acted alone, that there were no accomplices and that US troops had panicked, firing at anything that moved immediately after the attack.

One told Al Jazeera: "There were no gunmen, this is a complete lie. This is a peaceful area, we don't have guns."

The dead included an 80-year-old man, whose grandson said: "A bomb exploded, my grandfather sat in a car and at that time American soldiers were shooting into my grandfather's car."

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, condemned the killings earlier on Monday and ordered an investigation into Sunday's attack.

His office and the Afghan interior ministry on Monday put the death toll at 10 civilians while the coalition late on Sunday said eight Afghans were killed and 35 wounded.

Response
Responding to Al Jazeera's discovery of the footage, a spokesman for the US contingent within the international force insisted US troops acted in self-defence.

"We regret the loss of life of the Afghan civilians, but coalition forces were attacked by both a suicide bomb vehicle and small arms fire. "Our forces returned fire in self-defence against numerous enemy positions," said Lieutenant Colonel David Accetta, coalition forces spokesman.

"We don't train or order our troops to fire on unarmed civilians, and it's uncertain at this time what caused the casualties. "But it's important to note that the extremists conducted this attack in an area that they knew would cause civilian casualties," he said.

Civilian deaths
In a separate incident, nine civilians, including two children, were killed after a Nato air attack hit a house in northern Afghanistan, according to a local official. Sayed Daud Hashimi, a deputy provincial governor in the Kapisa province, said five women were among the dead overnight on Monday after artillery fire hit their home in the area north of Kabul.

Hashimi said a Nato reconstruction base in the province was attacked and that they "responded with artillery and an air strike, killing nine Afghan civilians".

The interior ministry confirmed an incident in the Nijrab district involved "some casualties" but said it was searching for more details.

The Nato base in Kapisa is staffed by US forces. William Mitchell, a spokesman for the US military, said officials were looking into the incident.

Liar In The White House: Cheney Aide Found Guilty In CIA Leak Case

Saga of Washington's discredited WMD claims leads to the conviction for perjury of Dick Cheney's key aide

Taken from The Independent, UK, 07 March 2007
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington

In a massive new blow to the credibility of the White House, Vice-President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff Lewis Libby has been convicted of obstruction of justice, perjury and lying to the FBI, during the investigation into the leaking of the identity of a CIA agent.

After a seven-week trial, the jury found Libby guilty yesterday on four of the five counts against him. Ever calm in court, Libby merely blinked as the verdict was read out. Defence lawyers immediately said they would seek a fresh trial, and if that failed, lodge an appeal. In theory Libby faces up to 25 years in jail, though federal sentencing guidelines mean he is likely to receive a far shorter term.

The case arose from the investigation into the leak in July 2003 of the name of Valerie Plame, the CIA agent whose husband, the former ambassador Joseph Wilson, had been a virulent critic of the Iraq war. Ms Plame's identity was revealed a few days after Mr Wilson had written a New York Times column debunking White House claims that Saddam Hussein had sought to buy uranium in Africa, and accusing the Bush administration of deliberately manipulating pre-war intelligence. Libby was not accused of leaking the name deliberately, which is a criminal offence.

His crime was to lie to the FBI and the grand jury investigating the case, by maintaining he only learnt who Ms Plame was from a reporter, two days before her name appeared in print.

But some of the most celebrated journalists in Washington went into the witness box to testify they had been told by Libby in person that Mr Wilson's wife worked for the CIA - in one case three weeks before Libby said he became aware of the fact.

Defence lawyers contended that if he made a mistake, it was simply because of a faulty memory caused by pressure of work. But the jury decided that Libby had directly lied. The motive, one juror explained to reporters afterwards, was to cover up the involvement of the Vice-President himself in the campaign to discredit the former ambassador.

In a statement, Mr Cheney said he was "very disappointed with the verdict". At the White House the mood was equally grim. George Bush respected the result of the trial, but was "saddened for Scooter Libby and his family", a spokesman said.

But there is no concealing the extent of the damage. Libby is not only the most senior Bush administration official to face - and now be convicted of - criminal charges. As chief of staff to arguably the most powerful vice-president in US history, he was one of the two or three most important policy-makers at the White House after the President and Vice-President.

The trial, in which neither Libby nor his former boss testified, threw no new light on the handling of the WMD intelligence used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But it revealed the obsessive sensitivity of the Vice-President's office to any attack on its pre-war use of intelligence, and its determination to discredit critics.

At one point the prosecution produced a specimen of the offending article, annotated by Mr Cheney himself, asking who Mr Wilson was, and whether he had been sent on his 2002 fact-finding mission to Africa as a "junket" organised by his wife. The guilty verdict against Libby is thus bound to tarnish further the reputation of both Mr Bush and Mr Cheney, whose approval ratings are even lower than those of the President.

Libby, said Denis Collins, one of the 11 jurors, seemed to be the "fall guy" who had been given the job of talking to reporters by the Vice-President. There was "a tremendous amount of sympathy" for him, Mr Collins said, but in the end they could not believe that a man whose exceptional grasp of detail had been attested to in court had simply forgotten when and with whom he had discussed Ms Plame.

The chief prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald denied suggestions that he had made more of the affair than it merited. Mr Fitzgerald was named special prosecutor in November 2003, after the Justice Department opened an investigation into the leak.

"We could not walk away from the facts of the case that we knew in December 2003. Any lie under oath is serious," he said.

Libby's appeal could run for many months through the courts, possibly as far as the Supreme Court.

If the case is not settled by the time a new president is elected in November 2008, Mr Bush could pardon Libby.

But Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, flatly opposed any pardon, saying: "It's about time someone in the Bush administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics."

The fallen war advocate
Until October 2005, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was the chief of staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney and a powerful influence within the White House, particularly on matters of national security.

He was among the loudest voices making the case for war with Iraq and helped put together the dossier that Secretary of State Colin Powell notoriously revealed to the United Nations in the spring of 2003.

A former private lawyer, Libby joined the government in the early 80s, joining the State Department where he served under his former law professor Paul Wolfowitz. After a brief departure from government to return to public practice, Libby returned to work for Mr Wolfowitz at the Pentagon in 1989.

He was also a founding member of the Project for the New American Century, a right-wing group seeking the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

When he became Mr Cheney's chief of staff he received the name "germ boy", so named because of his insistence on universal smallpox vaccination.

But his closeness to the Vice-President also earned him the title "Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney".

In 1996 Libby published a novel, The Apprentice, that told the story of a group of travellers stranded in northern Japan in 1903. The publishers described it as "an everyday tale of bestiality and paedophilia in 1903 Japan... [and] packed with sexual perversion, dwelling on prepubescent girls and their training as prostitutes".
Andrew Buncombe

A LIAR IN THE WHITE HOUSE

The Lie
The Blair Government's September 2002 dossier claims Saddam Hussein has sought to buy uranium for his nuclear weapons programme from Niger. George Bush, in his State of the Union address in January 2003, ignores CIA reservations and repeats the assertion. The claim becomes a central plank in the argument for war.

The Doubts
The CIA dispatches a former ambassador, Joseph Wilson, to investigate the Niger claims, which he concludes are false. Related documents are subsequently obtained by Italian authorities and passed to the UN nuclear agency which declares them to be crude forgeries in March 2003, just before the invasion.

The Whistle-Blower
When no WMD are found in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, Joseph Wilson accuses the Bush administration of deliberately manipulating intelligence before the war. His views are first aired in an off-the-record interview with The Independent on Sunday in June of that year, before he goes public in American newspapers.

The Smear Campaign
Valerie Plame, Joseph Wilson's wife, is identified as an undercover agent by columnist Robert Novak on 14 July 2003 and the search is on for the source of the leak within the Bush administration, accused of deliberately smearing Ms Plame while potentially endangering her life by exposing her as a CIA agent. Revealing a CIA agent's identity is against the law.

The Cover-up
A special prosecutor is appointed to uncover the leaker, with suspicion falling on the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, whose chief of staff, Lewis Libby, takes pains to protect his boss. Although no charges are brought over the leak itself, Mr Libby is put on trial for trying to frustrate the investigation.

The Conviction
Lewis Libby becomes the first Bush administration official to be convicted over the flawed intelligence used to justify the war when he is found guilty yesterday of obstructing justice, lying and perjury. He faces up to 25 years in jail. Many in Washington say it was, in effect, the trial of Mr Cheney, who was responsible for the actions of his aide.

'No Reward' For Non-Nuclear Libya

Libyans are marking the 30th anniversary of their leader's unique system of "popular rule". In 1977 Muammar Gaddafi changed the country's name to the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. Eight years earlier, as a young army officer, he had seized power in a military coup. Jamahiriya - a new Arabic term - roughly translates as "state of the masses". It seems that the Colonel who has renounced Nuclear weapons is finding out the hard way that No Nuclear Weapons means No Bargaining Power and who knows could result in a change of regimes (like Saddam found out)...

Taken form The BBC, 3 March 2007

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has said his country has not been given adequate compensation for its decision to renounce nuclear weapons in 2003.



Speaking to the BBC, Colonel Gaddafi said the failure by the West to reward Libya meant Iran and North Korea were reluctant to follow Tripoli's lead.

He insisted there would be no return to the confrontation of the past, however.

Sanctions were lifted after Libya ended its nuclear weapons programme, and the US and UK have resumed diplomatic ties.

Libya was also removed from the US list of state sponsors of terror, a major step towards international rehabilitation.

Investment promise
However, Col Gaddafi says the West has not properly compensated his country because it has failed to transform its nuclear weapons programme into nuclear power.

Speaking to BBC diplomatic correspondent James Robbins, Col Gaddafi said this meant the West had lost bargaining power with countries like Iran and North Korea.

"This should be a model to be followed, but Libya is disappointed because the promises given by America and Britain were not fulfilled," he said.

"And therefore those countries said 'we are not going to follow Libya's example because Libya abolished its programme without any compensation'."

Mr Gaddafi said that the US and Britain had a duty to help Libya develop civilian nuclear power plants.

"They said if you abolish your war programme we will help you to develop your nuclear abilities into peaceful ones. This has not happened."

Our correspondent says the Libyan leader may have been bargaining for foreign investment, but a return to hostility does not seem to be on the cards.

'International dictatorship'
Col Gaddafi spoke to the BBC as celebrations were taking place to mark the 30th anniversary of his declaration of Libya's unique system of "popular rule".

He also held a rare public debate with Western scholars, in which he criticised the control that nations with military and economic power held over poorer countries.

It was a pragmatic desire to avoid being destroyed by the "international dictatorship" of such powers that had persuaded Libya to improve its relations with the world, he added.

Col Gaddafi's remarks come as six major powers - the US, Russia, China, the UK, France and Germany - discuss possible further sanctions against Iran over its refusal to halt its nuclear programme.

US officials have said ambassadors to the UN could begin drafting a new resolution on Iran next week.

Meanwhile, North Korea last month agreed at six-party talks to take the first steps towards nuclear disarmament, in return for economic and fuel aid.

Pressure to find a solution to the nuclear issue increased after Pyongyang conducted its first atomic test in October.

Israeli Web Sites Post Nazi, Holocaust-Denial Materials

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 25.02.07
By Moti Katz

Haaretz has uncovered Internet sites put up by Israelis in their 30s who immigrated from the CIS that supply Nazi and Russian nationalist content.In 2003 a Web site operated by Ilia Zolotov, an Israel Defense Forces soldier who called himself a "Russian patriot," was exposed.

The Web site, whose name translates to the White Israeli Union, was housed on an Israeli server. Its content included Nazi and Holocaust-denial materials. It was eventually closed down by the police. Zolotov was sentenced to community service and sent on a tour of death camps in Poland. Since the closure of Zolotov's Web site, his successors have gotten more sophisticated.

Now they use servers based abroad, usually in Russia, to evade the authorities. One such site operator is Alex [a pseudonym], who is in his 30s and holds a security-related job. His site, www.rusnatcentre.tk, is hosted by a Russian server. Alex refers to himself on the site as "the Russian tank operator" or "the fighter from Jerusalem," a tribute to his service in the Armored Corps. In a conversation with Haaretz, he denied that his site carries anti-Semitic messages, asserting that it is pro-Russian only.

"The Russian National Center is a Russian nationalist association that lives in Israel," Alex explains. "The main mission of our organization is nationalist propaganda among ethnic Russians residing in Israel, encouraging their return to Russia, opposing the return of Jews from Israel to Russia, and opposing conversion to Judaism," Alex said. He will not reveal membership figures, saying only it is a "global organization whose members are adults, most of them after army service and the majority living in the center of the country."

A Haaretz probe reveals that the RNC site is indeed Russian nationalist in nature, but it also contains anti-Semitic material. The home page features a Celtic cross, a symbol that has been adopted by neo-Nazis, and warns all Jews who have immigrated to Israel not to dare to return to Russia. It calls on all non-Jewish Russians who immigrated to Israel to return to Russia and to leave the Jews [using the derogatory Russian term zhid] in their country.

Alex is active on other, specifically Nazi, forums, such as www.slavnazi.com, in which he recommended Jurgen Graf's "The Myth of the Holocaust" to readers in July 2005. There were 118 favorable responses from Israel to that posting.

Alex also regularly recommends films and music in Russian with Nazi content. One of his recommendations in the latter category is Kolovrat, which is known as a Nazi band. About a year ago the band members were arrested and banned for distributing Nazi propaganda when they traveled to the Czech Republic on a concert tour. Alex's site asks readers to sign a petition calling for the group's release, which has garnered about 150 signatures from Israeli Internet users.

Alex gets mad when he is asked whether the call to release Kolovrat is anti-Semitic. "Of course such an action won't please the Jews, like any other action on the part of Russian nationalist!" Alex says.

When asked whether the mass Jewish immigration of Russian Jews in the 1990s was a mistake, he says it depends which immigrants you mean. "The Jewish immigration to Israel is the best and only solution, apparently, to the Jewish question in Russia. On the other hand, the mass emigration of ethnic Russians from Russia is a big mistake that we [the RNC] must correct."
Dr. Elana Gomel, chair of the English Department at Tel Aviv University and author of "Atem ve'anachnu" ("You and Us"), a book on being Russian in Israel, agrees that there is anti-Semitism in Israel. "After the collapse of Communism," she says, "states that were part of the Soviet Union licked their wounds and looked for ways to make up for the downfall, and it came in the form of reinforcing their nationalism. The vacuum left by Communism was filled by fascism and Nazism," Gomel says.

"Their message is, 'if I'm not accepted here as a Jew, then I'll remain Russian,'" Gomel said.

"The enormous gap in mentality between the cultures of the Sabras and the immigrants doesn't help their absorption into society and they develop antagonism to Israeli society. The absurdity," Gomel adds, "is that even if the anti-Semitic nationalists return to Russia, the Russian anti-Semites won't accept them and will persecute them just as people of Jewish extraction in the Wehrmacht during the Nazi regime were persecuted. The phenomenon is sick because it is a form of self-flagellation that cannot be stopped," Gomel said.

Vandalism as an expression of anti-Semitism in IsraelSix minors, immigrants from the CIS, were arrested early this year on suspicion of burning flags and stealing mezuzahs from Nahshonim School in Bat Yam. They also confessed to stealing mezuzahs from homes in the city on eight additional occasions. The teens attributed their actions to a hatred for Jews and Judaism. In the past three months, there have been five break-ins at synagogues in the southern city of Arad. All of the incidents have involved vandalism, the theft of charity boxes and the scrawling of obscenities on the walls.

In the past several years there have been similar incidents carried out by young immigrants from the CIS, including the desecration of Jewish cemeteries, throughout the country. Many religious institutions have instituted security measures as a result. In 2006 there were at least six reports of broken headstones, desecration of synagogues and graffiti with swastikas and anti-Semitic sentiments, according to figures gathered by Damir, an organization that assists victims of anti-Semitism.

Hitler youth Irina, 18, lives in central Israel. She belonged to a group of young people, "Nazi skinheads," that terrorized the ultra-Orthodox residents of a central-Israel city. "I was a 'skin girl,'" relates Irina, whose was the girlfriend of the group's leader, Leonid [a pseudonym - M.K.]. Leonid, who is now about 19, immigrated at age 10 from Azerbaijan on the Law of Return. The only Jew in his family was one of his grandfathers.

Irina says that Leonid's downslide began in the ninth grade. He felt alienated from Israeli society and decided to join up with a Nazi skinhead group. "We were a bunch of Russian new immigrants, boys and girls," Irina relates. "Most of the boys had shaved heads and wore army pants."

A group of about 15 teens who believed in the Nazi ideology coalesced around Leonid. One of their favorite activities, Irina says, was attacking Haredi. "Nazi skinheads hate the religious, especially Haredim, for them the Haredim are the ugly Jews ... On weekends we'd meet in the parks, drinking and smoking and listening to Nazi music," and then they would go out in search of dossim [a derogatory Hebrew term for religious Jews], Irina related. "On Hitler's birthday we'd met at a cemetery and celebrate," she said.

Lawrence Of Arabia Was Really A Zionist, Historian Claims

Taken from The Independent, UK, 24 February 2007
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

It appears to be revisionism on a grand scale. Popular imagination, fed on Peter O'Toole's portrayal in David Lean's film classic Lawrence of Arabia, will have a hard time absorbing the startling assertion by the historian Sir Martin Gilbert that its hero was in fact a "serious Zionist" who believed in a "Jewish state from the Mediterranean shore to the River Jordan".

Sir Martin, who plans to back up his myth-challenging claim in his next book, declared here this week that TE Lawrence, long regarded as the unrivalled prototype of the British Arabist, "had a sort of contempt for the Arabs, actually. He felt that only with a Jewish state would the Arabs make anything of themselves."

The British Jewish historian who has written histories of Israel and the Holocaust, as well as his monumental biography of Winston Churchill, made front-page news here when he told The Jerusalem Post during the city's international book fair: "The most interesting thing from an Israeli perspective is about Lawrence of Arabia. The great Arabist, right? The man who supported the Arabs and pushed for Arab nationhood in the 1920s. He is always pictured wearing Arab robes. What is so astonishing ­ which you'll see in my next book, Churchill and the Jews ­ is that he was a serious Zionist."

Sir Martin revealed last night that a series of minutes written by Lawrence, which he uncovered in the National Archive, demonstrated his sympathy with the Zionist cause. Working for Churchill in 1921, for example, he clearly identified "the area of Palestine from the Mediterranean to Jordan" as the "Jewish National Home".

While the discoveries overturn many popular assumptions about Lawrence in Britain and much of the Arab world, they will come as less of a surprise to prominent historians here.

Norman Rose of the Hebrew University, and a leading expert on the history of Zionism in Britain, leaves little room for doubt about Lawrence's admiration for Chaim Weizmann in his biography of the Belarus-born Zionist who became a British citizen in 1910, was the leading lobbyist for the 1917 Balfour declaration pledging a Jewish homeland, and the first President of Israel.

The biography quotes Lawrence as telling the Archbishop of Jerusalem, a sceptic about Weizmann, that the Zionist leader "is a great man whose boots neither you nor I are fit to black". When Weizmann finally settled in Palestine in 1934, and told his friend Lewis Namier that he regretted not having done so a decade earlier, Namier could not resist replying that Lawrence had remarked to him of Weizmann that "one does not build the National Home by living in a villa in Addison Road". This was hardly, to put it mildly, the sentiment of an anti-Zionist.

Lawrence, who had played a leading part in co-ordinating the Arab revolt against the Turks to serve British interests, mediated and translated at the post war Jewish-Arab accord between the future King Feisal of Iraq and Weizmann, which allowed for "large-scale immigration" of Jews to Palestine and implementation of the Balfour declaration in return for the Arab state promised ­ and then reneged on ­ by the British.

Professor Rose said yesterday: "I am no expert on Lawrence, but this was when many people did not see a contradiction between a Jewish National Home and Arab independence."

In 1921, when Churchill was Colonial Secretary, Lawrence worked closely with him as an adviser from the Department's Middle East Department, travelling with him to the Cairo conference when Feisal was assigned the kingship of Iraq and his brother Abdullah the Emirate of Transjordan.

It was from this period that several of the documents uncovered by Sir Martin originate.

Lawrence, for example, wrote that part of Abdullah's job would be to "check anti-Zionism" and prevent infiltration from what is now Jordan into the "Jewish National Home".

It seems logical to imagine that working so closely with the minister, he shared at the time Churchill's warmth to the idea of a Jewish homeland, and probably an eventual Jewish state.

"Churchill was pro-Zionist," says Professor Rose. "No question."

Israeli Group Calls For Increased Rights For Arabs

Taken from The Guardian, UK, February 28, 2007
Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem

An Israeli human rights group today proposed a new national constitution that gives more rights to the country's Arab minority and says Israel should be defined not as a Jewish state but as a "democratic, bilingual and multicultural state".

Although the paper - from Adalah, a legal organisation working for Arab rights - is unlikely ever to become law, it is part of a fresh effort by the Arab minority in Israel to argue for a stronger role in society.

Most striking was the proposal to scrap Israel's law of return, which gives automatic citizenship to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent. The paper argues that citizenship of Israel should be for those born in Israel with a parent also born there; those with a parent who is a citizen; those married to a citizen; or those arriving for humanitarian reasons, including political persecution.

Adalah also proposed that a parliamentary committee, with half its members drawn from Arab parties, should have a veto on laws related to the constitution unless outvoted by a two-thirds majority of parliament.

It said Israel should "recognise its responsibility for past injustices suffered by the Palestinian people," which would include recognising the right of return of Palestinian refugees, restoring property and land and a withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967.

It is not the first challenge to the current system. A similar document was drawn up in December by a group of prominent Arab activists and intellectuals led by the National Committee of the Local Arab Authorities in Israel.

The paper, entitled The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel, also challenged the Jewish definition of the state and called instead for a "consensual democratic system" that included "individual and collective civil, historic, and national rights".

Israel's Arabs, who make up around 20% of the population, have citizenship and voting rights and last month the first Arab Muslim minister was appointed to cabinet. But the community is widely acknowledged to suffer discrimination, particularly at work and in government spending on housing and education.

Even the name given to the minority is unresolved. Among Israeli Jews they are referred to as Arab Israelis or Israeli Arabs, but often they refer to themselves as Palestinian Arabs, Palestinian citizens of Israel or 1948 Palestinians.

Israel does not have a constitution and divisions over the role of religion, defining the country's borders and relations between its Jewish and Arab citizens mean it is unlikely to agree one in the near future.

Instead, it relies on a series of so-called basic laws and on the inaugural 1948 Declaration of Independence, signed by David Ben-Gurion, which talks of the establishment of a Jewish state but adds "it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens irrespective of religion, race or sex".

Hassan Jabareen, 42, an academic and lawyer who founded Adalah, said the group's proposals would make Israel more democratic. "Our intention is to define who is a citizen in Israel, not who is a Jew in Israel," he said.

"We are at a time when there is much debate about the Jewishness of the state and when there is an increasing discourse about Arabs as a demographic threat. They try to emphasize the ethnicity of the state. This is our time to respond."

However, the suggestions have been met with consternation by many Israeli Jews. "It is an Arab nationalist programme and its aim is to de-legitimise Israel as a Jewish state," said Shlomo Avineri, a professor of political science at Hebrew University.

"This document is not going to end discrimination. It is counter-productive and will create the exact opposite effect - an extreme response from the Israeli right wing."

Evangelicals' Work In Africa Criticized

Taken from Yahoo News, March 01 2007
By KATY POWNALL, Associated Press

ALER, Uganda - "Telephone to Jesus. Hello?" the children of Aler refugee camp sing, their bare feet thumping the ground as they dance wildly in their concrete chapel. Most camp residents have never used a phone, but they are learning about Jesus. The Rev. Franklin Graham, son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, smiled as he watched the children — members of a club run by Samaritan's Purse, the Christian missionary organization he leads.


Pastor George Purkweri and former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist stand alongside Samaritan's Purse president Franklin Graham as Graham preaches to the young members of a Samaritan's Purse children's club in Aler refugee camp, northern Uganda, Monday, Feb 5, 2007. Evangelicals like Graham say his Samaritan's Purse organization helps Africa's sick and hungry. But critics say the vulnerable communities are being forced to abandon their traditional beliefs and customs in exchange for material goods and medicine.

Christian evangelicals have been coming to Africa for centuries. Critics accuse them of taking advantage of vulnerable communities — forcing people to abandon traditional beliefs in exchange for desperately needed goods and medicine. Graham, though, says his group is meeting spiritual as well as physical needs, and he's proud of what has been accomplished.

"We want to bring these children to Christ," Pastor George Purkweri told Graham.

"You have a pastor's heart," the American responded, slapping him on the back.

Purkweri said the war in northern Uganda has exposed children to many horrors. "This generation is our hope for the future," he said. "They are seeing lots of bad things that divert them from Christ and can corrupt their hearts. We bring them back."

Graham flew his private jet to East Africa last month with a 20-member delegation, including former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, to check on the work of Samaritan's Purse.

Randall Balmer, professor of American religious history at Columbia University, said the influence of groups like Graham's can be far-reaching.

"One of the most common criticisms of evangelicals is that they are looking for cultural conversions as well as spiritual ones," he said. "They want to change the way people dress and behave."

Graham, however, is adamant that his organization helps the world's sick and suffering regardless of their religious beliefs. Humanitarian assistance only earns the Christians a hearing for the gospel they teach, he said.

As a minister, he said, "I want to help people physically, I want to help them with their hurt, with their pain, but I want to do that so I can tell them about God's son, Jesus Christ. The conversion we do is through persuasion, through reasoning. ... They will receive material help from us regardless."

Samaritan's Purse receives the vast majority of its considerable funding from private donations, which enables Graham to operate independently and quickly.

"Financially I'm not dependent on government, which is why I'm free to preach the Bible,"

Graham said. "Our money comes from Christians. ... An average gift would be under $100 dollars a year, but we have millions of people who support us. That gives us an advantage because when there is a crisis, I don't have to wait and write a proposal."

This dynamism helps make Samaritan's Purse popular and powerful.

During his visit, Graham met with President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, President Salva Kiir of southern Sudan and President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, a Muslim. Graham has political connections in the United States too; he read the invocation at President Bush's inauguration in 2001.
Nevertheless, he insists Samaritan's Purse is apolitical.

"I'm not a politician, I'm not a military person, I'm a preacher," Graham said.

Samaritan's Purse runs six programs in northern Uganda, a region ravaged by a rebel group for the past 20 years. Two million people have fled their homes.

While Christian teaching and Bible distribution overarch all the group's work, many of its programs are secular — such as helping the U.N. manage refugee camps.

In the blazing midday sun at Agweng, another northern Uganda camp, Graham witnessed the distribution of 600 tons of U.N. food aid to over 30,000 people.

Another Samaritan's Purse program focuses on AIDS. The group gets some funding from the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief; the Bush administration has been criticized for channeling money through religious groups who play down condom use in favor of abstinence.

In Uganda, Samaritan's Purse has worked to make sure camp residents are tested for HIV. Staff members provide AIDS sufferers with blankets and food — and share their love of Jesus.

"You are the most important thing that has happened in my life," Sipriano Ojok, an HIV-positive 54-year-old, told Graham. "I was too weak before your staff came to visit us. ... I accepted Jesus Christ into my life and now I feel good."

"One day you and I will be together in heaven worshipping God together," Graham told Ojok before praying with him. "You will have a new body and be strong and healthy."

Those infected with HIV here are normally shunned.

"It's important to show people that we're not afraid," said Graham. "When a person has AIDS you can give medicine — many agencies do — but what hope do people have if you don't show them love?"

In Yei, southern Sudan, Graham was visibly delighted to be greeted by a crowd of women dressed in immaculate white shifts, ululating, singing hymns and waving tree branches.

Yei was once an epicenter of the war between Sudan's Muslim-dominated north and mainly Christian and animist south. Residents told of pastors being crucified, their churches destroyed and Christians enslaved. Evangelicals lobbied the U.S. government to get involved. A peace deal was reached in 2004.

Today, the people of Yei live in huts with no access to electricity and face a seven-mile walk to the nearest hospital.

Graham proudly inspected a large church built by his organization, its mahogany shutters and immaculate stonework looking markedly out of place. Though designed for worship, the building will double as a school.

"You go into these remote communities, and the church is the center of that community,"

Graham said. "And when the church was destroyed, the people feared and became discouraged.

Now the war is over and for the church to come back is a symbol ... of hope, a symbol of independence."

He noted that Samaritan's Purse also built a hospital and drilled water wells.

Graham acknowledged that Christian evangelical organizations like his have detractors, but asked that Samaritan's Purse be judged fairly.

"They may not agree with me. But do we feed people? Yes. Do we clothe people? Yes. Do we provide doctors and medicines? Yes. Do we have hospitals? Yes, we do," he said. "If they want to look at the work I do, they can't complain because the work is there."

The Murdering Messiah

Taken from The Daily Mail, UK, 3rd March 2007
by RICHARD SHEARS

When a tall stranger calling himself 'Black Jesus' lured Rita Hemen away from her remote jungle village, he promised to make her one of his special 'flower girls' and convinced her that her family would one day be rich beyond their wildest dreams.



The pretty Papua New Guinean girl, just 13 years old, could never have imagined, as she innocently followed the attractive figure up the mountain, that she would become tangled in a pagan web of evil from which there was no escape.

After being stripped naked, she was tied to a crude bed in a dark hut, raped by the 31-year-old man claiming to be the true Messiah - and then, with birds of paradise calling in the valley below, her throat was brutally cut with a bush knife.

Rita was Black Jesus's first human sacrifice. As the girl lay dying, her blood was drained into a coconut shell and drunk by the murderer and his evil henchmen. In a final horrific act, they cut strips of flesh from her body and feasted on it.

And in a grotesque twist, witnesses claim that Rita's mother not only encouraged her to have sex with the 'Messiah' but also participated in the blood-drinking ceremony that followed her daughter's murder.

This is not one of the many dark episodes from Papua New Guinea's ancient past when cannibalism was rife.

Rita was killed only a matter of months ago - and two more young women have since been sacrificed in similarly barbaric ceremonies. The last body was found just three weeks ago.

Today, Black Jesus is in hiding, deep in the most impenetrable mountain jungle. Armed with spears, bows and arrows and stone-headed clubs, his loin-clothed henchmen are said to be ready to fight to the death - for the brutal figure claiming to be the most powerful of all men has promised them Paradise, win or lose.

But while the local police have confirmed that the bodies of three murdered young girls have been exhumed from crude jungle graves, are these reports of child sacrifice and cannibalism true, or simply borne out of fertile imagination and rumour? And who is this brutal, murdering self-styled prophet?

Steven Tari was born on the island of Manus, north-east of Papua New Guinea, where Prince Charles once danced with the local women before he married Princess Diana.

After Tari's parents split up, he made his way to the mainland town of Madang, where he enrolled at the Amron Bible College to study to be a Lutheran pastor.

However, according to the college principal, Pastor Kyther Worrety, Tari quickly set himself apart from the other students.

"He saw himself as different from the other young men here," says Pastor Worrety. "He went off at a tangent, didn't agree with the Bible's teachings and eventually vanished, leaving behind all his clothes and belongings.

"I learned in time that he had gone to a village called Matepi, up in the mountains, and had started preaching to people there, saying that he was the real Christ.

"He called himself Black Jesus, obviously because of the colour of his skin - although from what we know of him now, the title is more appropriate because of the darkness of his mind."

Concerned that his former student was spreading the wrong word among the tribes, Pastor Worrety made the torturous journey into the mountains, where the sight he was met by took his breath away.

"Steven had made a platform on the tip of the highest peak and was addressing an enormous crowd of at least 6,000 people. His hair was much longer, and his face was tattooed with coloured markings.

"He was wearing a long, white shroud, like the kind Jesus wears in all the paintings, and his feet were bare.

"On the ground in front of him were two crossed spears and two bush knives, and on each side of him were 25 of his flower girls, all naked except for a small cloth.

"He had his arms wide, as if he were embracing all the people, and he was telling them that the Jesus the missionaries had told them about was a liar and that he was the chosen son of God.
"With the wind blowing his robes, he shouted that the people should burn their Bibles because they were filled with untruths. He commanded the gathering to follow him because, he promised, they would benefit from great gifts from God."

When Pastor Worrety was spotted by Tari's bodyguards, they stormed up to him, pointed to the spears and bush knives, and said: "Those are for you if you dare talk about this."

Undeterred, the pastor returned straight to Madang and reported all that he had seen to the police. While cults have existed in Papua New Guinea for centuries, it is now illegal to make false promises to people in order to gain personal fame and fortune.

A team of heavily-armed police worked their way up the mountain, where they took Tari by surprise and led him away in handcuffs. He was driven to Madang and charged with spreading misleading statements, falsely soliciting property by demanding sustenance from villagers, and hindering arrest.

But before he appeared in court, he escaped and disappeared into the mountains again - accompanied by a church pastor who was meant to be counselling him but who had fallen under his influence.

Now Tari was back in his jungle domain, he gathered the fiercest men he could find to protect him, and travelled through the mountain villages preaching his own kind of warped Gospel, again insisting he was the true Messiah and persuading parents to let their daughters join his flock and become his 'flower girls'.

He punished those who resisted him by destroying the simple Lutheran village churches, burning down homes, stealing money and food, and driving hundreds of tribal people out of the jungle to the safety of the coast.

Having built up a devout congregation scattered across the mountains, Tari set up a new headquarters in a village called Gal - which he promptly renamed Galilee - and conducted a bizarre series of interviews there with the young girls he had gathered.

Stripping them naked, he asked if they had been married, had ever had a boyfriend and if they had ever had sex.

"What he was trying to establish," explains Police Sergeant Darius Lasisi, as we travel together to the village of Gohe, where two of the murdered girls came from, "was which ones were virgins. He'd send the ones who weren't on their way, warning them not to talk about his attempts to recruit them".

Sgt Lasisi is fearful of the damage Tari is causing across the mountain.

"His whole philosophy is based on a twisted religious ego - reversing all that the Bible teaches - and on sex. Those poor girls truly believed that if they became his flower girls - which is just a nice way of saying sex slaves - good things would come to their families.

"He appointed one girl, Dorothy Gasan, as his queen, but we've caught her and she's now in jail, regretting the day she ever met this Black Jesus."

But there is a deeper regret in the heart of Brigitta Laspain, whose sisters Rita and Evenick, 16, were sacrificed by Tari.

"The girls who have come back have all talked about it," she says. "Some of my family who were influenced by him have also talked about the sacrifice. And, of course, we have the absolute proof of the bodies that have been found." Rita's decomposing corpse was found during another police raid - dubbed Operation Black Rose - on Tari's camp.

This time, the officers were met by fierce resistance from 1,500 war-painted warriors. As arrows, spears and police bullets flew, Tari slipped away into the jungle.

A post mortem carried out on Rita's body, exhumed from a crude grave, confirmed the stories of sacrifices.

There were severe knife wounds to her neck and torso and both her palms had been slashed. Since then, Tari has emerged from his jungle hideout to sacrifice another girl, called Siralas, aged only 13.

"He may say he is the son of God, but he has the devil's heart," says Brigitta.

"One day the police will catch him, no matter how deep in the jungle he hides. But, until then, I fear that other innocent young women will fall under his wicked spell and their lives will be taken, too."

In Gohe village, home to many of Tari's supporters, Brigitta's father makes the astonishing admission that he feels no anger towards Black Jesus for killing two of his daughters.

"I believe that he is the Messiah, and if he took my daughters in that way to give him more power, then I understand that he had to do it," he says.

"The girls were not forced to go with Steven. When he came to this village, he asked me if it was all right to take them with him and I gave him permission. First, Rita went with him but I believe she did not want to have sex with him and she came back.

"Then he came and took her away again, but this time I wasn't present because the police had thrown me in jail for being one of Steven's supporters.

"She may have been sacrificed because she ran away, or he may have thought she was a special person who had to die in this way."

It is clear that these are simple, poor people who are easily influenced by anyone charismatic who offers some form of salvation from their daily struggles.

The girls' father allowed Black Jesus to appoint Rita and Evenick as flower girls because he wanted to believe in Tari's new vision in which no one would ever want for anything again.

Friends of the murdered teenagers are filled with grief, but they, too, show no anger towards the evil man who is still at large, and perhaps even gathering more followers and flower girls in the mountains.

"I believe he would have taken me with him if I had not already had a child," says 25-year-old Della Rodly. "And I would have gone with him if he had asked."

"What I am concerned about," says Police Sergeant Lasisi, "is that this is not going to have a clean ending. Judging by the battle we have already had, he is determined not to be caught.

"He is also very clever. He has struck a deal with his bodyguards that if God comes after him, he will deal with Him - but if the police arrive, his warriors must do the fighting and let Tari get away."

Israel's European Pipe Dream

Desire to join EU won't materialize unless we renounce Jewish State's essence

Taken from Ynet News, Israel, 23.02.07,
By Sharon Pardo

Seventy five percent of Israelis are interested in joining the European Union, according to a survey undertaken by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Israel. Quite a few leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu, Silvan Shalom, Avigdor Lieberman and others, are also talking about Israel joining the EU in the future. Meanwhile, some in Europe itself, including Silvio Berlusconi in Italy and the Transnational Radial Party in the EU parliament, are engaged in a campaign for full-fledged Israeli membership.

This is an amazing phenomenon, where citizens and senior policymakers in Israel are clinging to an idea that not only has no chance of materializing in the foreseeable future, but can also gravely undermine the essence of the country.

The support for the notion of Israel joining the EU completely ignores the contradiction between Israel's essence as the Jewish State and the Jewish people's country, and the basic idea the EU is premised on – turning the continent into an open, united space, devoid of internal borders, where there is no significant difference between the citizens of member states.

The fact that Israel is a democratic, liberal country where humanistic universal values are part of the local spirit does not change the Jewish State's reality and aspirations. Israel is a unique case, which is radically different than other countries. This essential difference will prevent it from joining the EU, even if it were invited to join it. On the other hand, renouncing its uniqueness is akin to abandoning Israel's "raison d'etat," when examined through Jewish-Zionist eyes.

False hopes
It is easy to provide concrete examples, such as the contradiction that exists between the Israeli Law of Return and the freedom of movement of people in the European space. Israel's aspiration to constitute a central element in the prosperity of the entire Jewish nation is also incommensurate with the values of the European Union and its institutions.

In terms of the political reality, as EU Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner explained, Israel is not perceived by official institutions as a candidate for joining the EU in the foreseeable future. Instead, it makes do with membership in the "European Neighborhood Policy," which aims to bring all Europe's new neighbors closer to the EU.

Israeli aspirations and hopes to join the EU in its current format are therefore false both in terms of values and political reality. Instead, we should aspire to deepen our cooperation with the EU. This aspiration should be a basic point of departure to a grander strategy. It may be appropriate to reconsider this position in the long run. However, in the first half of the 21st century, and likely in the more distant future as well, Israel will not be joining the EU as a full-fledged member.

Dr. Sharon Pardo is the executive director of the Center for the Study of European Politics and Society at Ben Gurion University, which assisted in undertaking the Konrad Adenauer Foundation survey

Professor Jailed In US For Spying

Taken from The Times, UK, February 28, 2007
By Devika Bhat and agencies

A Florida university professor and his wife have been handed jail terms after being charged with spying on Cuban exiles and sending information back to the Havana government.



Carlos Alvarez, 61, a professor in psychology at Florida International University in Miami, was sentenced to five years in prison and three years probation after pleading guilty to conspiracy to become an unregistered foreign agent.

His wife Elsa, 56, a counsellor at the university, admitted to knowing about her husband’s activities but failing to report them to authorities, and was given three years in jail and one year of probation – despite the prosecution requesting only 21 months.

The couple, who were born in Cuba but emigrated to the US and have since become American citizens, had originally been charged with the more serious crime of acting as illegal Cuban agents, but were sentenced on the reduced charges to which they admitted guilt.

Alvarez confirmed that for almost three decades he had supplied the Cuban Intelligence Service with information about Miami’s exile community and prominent Cuban-Americans opposed to Fidel Castro’s regime, as well as reporting on US political affairs.

His defence argued that Alvarez’ intentions were not malevolent, insisting he opposed communism and Castro’s command but hoped that by sharing information he would open dialogue between Cuban exiles and the communist nation. The judge however, ruled that “good motive is never an excuse for criminal conduct" and their actions had “undermined U.S. foreign policy.”

Mrs Alvarez was initially also accused of working as a covert agent from 1982, but because she apparently ended such activities in the 1990s, she was sentenced only for concealing her husband’s actions.

Lawyers for the couple told the Miami court that the information conveyed to Cuba was little more than gossip, available in the public domain and free from any secret, classified or defence material.

But the prosecution insisted it was unclear how much damage the pair may have done as only a fraction of the information transmitted was retrieved. Operating under the codenames David and Deborah, they worked under a shroud of secrecy while pretending to be upstanding US citizens, it was claimed.

“This is not idle chit-chat. Mr. Alvarez was tasked by Cuban intelligence to collect information,” said Matthew Axelrod, for the prosecution, adding that this was a case of classic intelligence work."

Mr Axelrod said that “sensitive details” recovered from a computer at the couple’s home showed that Alvarez had written reports on the business ventures of the university’s president, and discussed a “redacted” version of a US report on telecommunications in Cuba.

Before he was sentenced, Alvarez - described in testimony by friends and colleagues as a hardworking teacher and devout Roman Catholic - told the court he had once belonged to an underground movement that sought to topple Castro’s regime by force, but later became “an advocate of dialogue."

“I decided to engage in a relation that would require sharing what I consider innocuous information and analysis for access,” he said. “The method and channel that I used were unfortunately wrong.”

He pleaded for leniency for his wife, who insisted her husband had acted in good faith and did not profit from the Cuban government.

Several family members and friends gave emotional testimony on behalf of the couple, insisting Alvarez was a man of integrity and loyal US citizen. “We are extremely upset,” said the couple’s 40-year-old son, also named Carlos Alvarez, after the hearing.