Taken from The Independent, UK, 06 April 2007
By Terry Kirby
What is Easter?
Easter is the oldest and most important Christian festival, marking the end of the fasting season of Lent and the death, on Good (derived from God's) Friday and resurrection of Jesus Christ, on Easter Sunday. It has deeper and more complex associations than Christmas, particularly in the Orthodox Christian world. There are many customs and traditions associated with Easter which, like most other holiday and feast days, are derived from a combination of both Jewish lore and pre-Christian and pagan practices. It is named after Eostre, the goddess of fertility and birth, worshipped by first-century pagans at the vernal equinox, who believed she would bless both their families and their crops. Christian missionaries saw this celebration took place around the time of the resurrection of Christ, so they adopted Easter as a Christian holiday to increase conversion.
Why does the date move around so much?
Discussion of the dating of Easter could fill an entire edition of The Independent and has been the subject of intense debate among the Christian churches since the second century AD.
However, for many years it has been agreed that Easter falls on the first Sunday after the Full Moon that occurs on or after the Vernal (spring) Equinox (21 March). If the Full Moon falls on a Sunday then Easter is the next Sunday. This means that Easter can fall as early as 22 March or as late as 25 April. Next year it falls on 23 March, the second earliest date possible. Easter last fell on the latest possible date, 25 April in 1943, and will next fall on that date in 2038. However, it will fall on 24 April, just one day before this latest possible date, in 2011. It is the origin of the phrase "moveable feast".
What is the link with Passover?
Some of the early Christian debate centred over the desire to keep the date of Easter separate from the week-long Jewish festival of Passover, which celebrates the Exodus and freedom of the Israelites from ancient Egypt. It is believed that the Last Supper was in reality the Seder meal, which traditionally marks the start of Passover. The word Paschal, used to describe many things associated with Easter, itself derives from Pascha, the Greek/Latin transliteration of Pesach, the Hebrew word for Passover.
So what is the Paschal Lamb?
Lamb has become associated with Easter for two reasons: one is that Christ became known as the Lamb of God in Christian theology, atoning for the sins of man by his sacrifice on the cross.
But the idea of the "sacrificial lamb" is older. Pesach means "skipping" or "passing over" and, according to Jewish lore, the Israelites marked their doors with the blood of a lamb to prevent the Angel of Death killing their first born; their doors were therefore literally "passed over".
Jewish temples began to sacrifice lambs ritually to mark the Passover. But the fact that newborn lambs mature into something that can be eaten around Easter must also be taken into account.
Why have rabbits and eggs become linked with Easter?
Eggs, of course, are ancient symbols of fertility, for very obvious reasons, while the Seder meal incorporates a hard boiled egg as a symbol of new life. The ancient Persians also painted eggs for Nowrooz, their New Year celebration falling on the spring equinox. An egg has also been seen to be associated with the rebirth or resurrection of Christ. The custom of eating them also derives from the fact that they were forbidden during Lent. There are a great many rituals associated with eggs, mainly dating from Mediaeval times in Europe, usually involving decorating, throwing, rolling or hiding eggs for children to find them.
The Easter bunny or rabbit comes from the hare, another ancient, pre-Christian symbol of fertility associated with spring. But it gets even more complicated than that. Anglo-Saxon mythology says Eostara changed her pet bird into a rabbit to entertain a group of children, and the rabbit laid brightly coloured eggs for them.
The chocolate bunny, like the chocolate Easter egg, is a much more recent idea, stemming from 18th and 19th-century middle European confectionery traditions, many of which were adopted in Britain.
What other foods are associated with Easter?
A great many. The Finns and Swedish eat mammi or memma, a baked malt porridge, while in Naples they eat pastiera, a cake made from ricotta cheese and in the province of Salamanca, a meat pie called hornazo, made from pork loin, chorizo sausage and hard boiled eggs. The Greeks eat a soup made from lambs' innards, magritsa, on Easter Sunday. Ham tends to be more popular in the United States, where the custom was brought by Scandinavians and Eastern Europeans. There are many Easter baking traditions which range from simnel cake, a light fruit cake made in Britain, to kulich, a traditional bread in Russia and the Ukraine while Poland's mazurki are sweet cakes made with honey and filled with nuts and fruit. Hot cross buns, made around Europe, are the most well known - spiced buns, made with currants and leavened with yeast, carrying the symbol of the cross and containing no ingredients that contravened the Lenten tradition. The idea of eating fish on Good Friday (and all Fridays) comes from the early Christians who decreed that Friday would be a fast day on which no meat was eaten because that was the day Christ was crucified.
And other Easter customs?
Where do you start? Many stem from ancient folklore and are specific to certain areas, usually reflecting the desire among people to get out and about on the first holiday of spring and the end of a fasting period. That's why we get Easter Parades, Easter Bonnets, egg-rolling festivals, etc.
But surely the oddest custom used to take place in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, where there was a tradition of spanking or whipping of woman on Easter Monday. In the morning, males throw water at females and spank them with a special handmade whip, consisting of eight, 12 or even 24 withies (willow rods), which is usually from half a metre to two metres long and decorated with coloured ribbons at the end. The spanking is symbolic and normally not painful or intended to cause suffering. A legend says females should be spanked in order to keep their health and beauty during the next year.
What is Maundy Thursday?
A slightly less painful experience, it is also called Holy Thursday or Great Thursday, in the Orthodox world. It marks four key events - the washing of the feet of the disciples by Jesus Christ, the institution of the Last Supper, the agony of Christ in Gethsemane and the betrayal by Judas Iscariot. Maundy, the British name, derives from the Latin "mandatum", the first word of the Latin translation of the statement by Jesus explaining to The Apostles the significance of the washing of their feet: "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you.''
The re-enactment of the act of washing the feet takes place in many churches and, in Britain, until the death of James II, the monarch would wash the feet of a selected group of poor people. The custom of the monarch giving out specially minted Maundy Money in red and white purses to deserving people - one man and one woman for each year of the sovereign's age - was first practised by Edward I.
But isn't it just an opportunity to go to the garden centre?
It depends on how religiously observant you are. But remember that every time you sow a few of those seeds or plant a rose bush and make a small wish they will grow, you are effectively taking part in a pagan celebration devoted to Eostre ...
Saturday, April 07, 2007
The Big Question: Why Do We Celebrate Easter, And Where Did The Bunny Come From?
Crucifixion Makes God Seem Like A Psychopath, Says Cleric
Taken from The Telegraph, UK, 05.04.07
By Jonathan Petre
One of the country's most controversial clerics was at the centre of a new controversy yesterday after saying that traditional teaching about the Crucifixion was "repulsive" and made God seem like a "psychopath".
The dean's comments in the run-up to Easter were met with outrage from leading evangelicals who said his comments verged on the heretical, even though he attempted to soften his message by adding extra lines on the eve of the broadcast.
Dr John, who was forced to stand down as Bishop of Reading in 2003 after it emerged he was homosexual, although no longer sexually active, said he had been taught that Jesus "took the rap" for our sins, but we got forgiven provided we said we believed in him."
But even at the age of 10, he had thought this particular explanation for the Crucifixion was "pretty repulsive as well as nonsensical."
"What sort of God was this, getting so angry with the world and the people he created and then, to calm himself down, demanding the blood of his own son?" Dr John said.
"And anyway, why should God forgive us through punishing somebody else? It was worse than illogical, it was insane. It made God sound like a psychopath. If any human being behaved like this, we would say they were a monster.
"Well, I haven't changed my mind since. That explanation of the cross just doesn't work but sadly, it's one that's still all too often preached."
A BBC spokesman said that the dean, reacting to criticism, had added two extra lines to "pre-empt any further misunderstanding or misinterpretation".
One of the lines was: "On the cross Jesus died for our sins; the price of our sin is paid; but it is not paid to God but by God." Fellow liberals defended his view, saying that a key difference between them and conservative evangelicals was their view of God. The Rev Giles Frasier, the vicar of Putney in south London, said: "What is at the heart of salvation, punishment or love? Liberals, like myself, believe it is love."
Evangelicals were furious, however, and the row will fuel their growing discontent with the liberal wing of the Church.
A number said yesterday that Dr John's comments showed how unsuitable he would have been as a bishop, regardless of his homosexuality.
In a statement, the Bishop of Lewes, the Rt Rev Wallace Benn, and the Bishop of Willeseden, the Rt Rev Pete Broadbent, said: "Jeffrey John is saying that the cross is not about anger or wrath or sin or atonement, but only about God's unconditional love.
"There is, he says, nothing to understand in the cross which is anything to do with sacrifice or Jesus dying for our sins - and we say, No. You've got it wrong."
Bishop Broadbent said: "Of course there are some very raw discussions amongst Christians about quite how Jesus died in our place and what that meant and how He suffered for our sins.
"But to ignore the entirety of the language about atonement and sacrifice and the cross is to nullify the message of what Good Friday and Jesus dying for us is all about. "Jesus Christ is sacrificed and he washes away the sins of the whole world and he completes the understanding of Scripture and fulfils it in a completely new way."
He added that he was disappointed that the BBC was using its schedules to undermine the message of Easter.
"You cannot read the Old Testament and New Testament and blank out an entirety of language and concept and understanding that means that we are guilty sinners, we need our sins to be paid for and we need Jesus Christ to die for us.
"That is what the Creeds say, it is what the Bible says and you cannot rewrite them. You cannot understand Jesus Christ without understanding Old Testament atonement material."
Bishop Benn added that "the truth that Jesus died as our sin-bearing substitute carrying the punishment for our sins on the cross is the glorious heart of the Gospel. It displays the love of God: Father, Son and Spirit, for us.
"To deny or vilify that is a tragic denial of the power and heart of the Gospel. I hope Jeffrey John will speedily reconsider and repent of his attack on apostolic Christianity."
A spokesman for the BBC said: "Lent Talks are short individual authored opinions in which the contributor is invited to reflect on a different part of Christ's passion.
"There will be those who agree with the points being made and those who disagree. They are a reflection of ongoing debates within the Church."
Terrorism bringing Us Closer To God: Pell
Taken from The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia, 06.04.2007
BY Linda Morris
ISLAMIC terrorism has prompted Australians to re-examine their religious beliefs and has perhaps given God a higher media profile, the Catholic Archbishop, Cardinal George Pell, has said
In a traditional Easter message likely to provoke church moderates and Islamic leaders, Australia's most senior Catholic cleric also took aim at the growing Christian green movement, saying Jesus had nothing to say on global warming.
Cardinal Pell is regarded as a hawk in the Vatican for his repeated public challenges to Islam on terrorism and religious freedom.
The god of the Koran or the gods of Eastern religions were "radically different" from the "one true God" proclaimed by Christianity's holy festival, he said.
"God often struggles for press coverage in Australia but He has been doing better lately - perhaps because the violence of a small number of Islamic terrorists has prompted us to rethink our religious beliefs, or absence of belief."
Acknowledging uneasiness over the climate, Cardinal Pell said Jesus was not an "insurance broker" meant to protect the world from trouble.
"We are told El Nino has disappeared but the drought is not over in most parts. And we have the threat of global warming. It is to be hoped the one true God will accept all those carbon credits.
"Neither did Jesus say anything on global warming, although he said much on the struggle between good and evil, meaning and fear, love and hate."
He called on Australians not to judge: "Jesus calls us to address the challenges in our own hearts, families and communities before we moralise about distant worlds, where we are usually powerless."
Taking a different tack on climate change, the Anglican Primate, Phillip Aspinall, said the drought reminded Australians about the fragility of life, and dry waterways, parched farming land and even the withering of gardens were "ready and immediate symbols of death".
But Easter brought the promise of life in the face of death. It was possible that the water crisis contained the seeds of future life and managing the waterways more effectively, the archbishop of Brisbane said.
"The God of the Bible acts in unexpected and surprising ways to create life and new beginnings where all looks dead and lost."
The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, singled out the modern-day slave trade, human trafficking, as evidence of human sinfulness and the need for reconciliation with God.
Jesus's death freed humans from slavery to sin, when they failed to live up to God's standards for life and relationships, Dr Jensen said.
"Human trafficking of men, women and children to be economic slaves or sex slaves or child soldiers exists today. People are still treated as objects and possessions to be bought and sold. This is also a scar on humanity. We must support those who fight against it," he said.
The president of the Baptist Union of Australia, Dr Ross Clifford, also invoked the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade. He called on consumers to black-list goods produced by slave labour.
People were also slaves to "legalism, consumerism, unjust employment regimes and practices that accelerate climate change", Reverend Clifford said.
"When Jesus frees us from our spiritual bonds, he empowers us to share the good news of freedom with others."
The president of the Uniting Church of Australia, Gregor Henderson, said this Easter he was praying for the peace of Jerusalem and that Israeli and Palestinian leaders learn from those of Northern Ireland.
"Easter is the most fitting time for peace to shine through. Christians believe the life, death and resurrection of Jesus brings us peace with God and, through commitment to the peaceful vulnerable courageous ways of Jesus, gives us the opportunity of peace with each other, across all our human divisions."
Brian Houston, the national president of Assemblies of God in Australia, said the message of Christ's resurrection was pivotal to Christianity. He criticised resurrection sceptics.
"For close to two millennia people have tried to discredit the truth, most recently in a documentary that claims to have found Jesus' sarcophagus, Mr Houston said.
"Jesus died and rose from the grave for all humanity. Spectacular? Yes. But more importantly, it was supernatural."
Friday, April 06, 2007
Saudi Arabia Hails Project To Reform Fighters
Taken from The Telegraph, UK, 03/04/2007
By David Blair
As American jets bombed his last stronghold in the mountains of Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden ordered a young supporter from Saudi Arabia to flee to safety.
Aged only 27, the young man had already spent seven years as a "holy warrior" in countries as far flung as the Philippines and Afghanistan.
He obeyed his leader's command and retreated over the border into Pakistan - where he was swiftly captured.
That was in December 2001. Abu Suleiman (not his real name) was to spend the next four years in Guantanamo Bay and a further 12 months in Saudi jails.
Yet his life could hardly be more different today. Recently married, he now drives a smart car and works as a financial analyst in Saudi Arabia's capital, Riyadh.
The 33-year-old is among 700 Saudis who have passed through a "rehabilitation course" run by the kingdom's interior ministry.
"When I was going to Afghanistan, I was going to help the Muslims around the world," says Abu Suleiman, the first of the reformed extremists to speak to western media. "When you are young - I was only 20 - you have no responsibility. You think you can help and so you go."
Videos of the carnage in Bosnia turned him into a radical. These tapes - widely distributed in Riyadh - convinced him that the West was waging a war on Islam and that his duty lay in defending his fellow Muslims.
First he travelled to the Philippines, where he joined Islamist guerrillas in the southern islands.
Then, in 1997, he ventured to Afghanistan for military training in an al-Qa'eda camp. He went back there before September 11 attacks - only to be captured near Tora Bora.
Each of those on the Saudi rehabilitation course once stood accused of involvement in domestic or international terrorism, usually linked to al-Qa'eda. Abu Suleiman's own rehabilitation included talks with religious scholars about Muslim doctrine. The Koran, they pointed out, prohibited the killing of citizens regardless of their religion.
In addition, psychologists helped him overcome the trauma inflicted by his time as a "jihadist" and by his four years in Guantanamo.
Finally, last year, the authorities gave him his freedom, a job and a car. And when he married last month, a representative of Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the minister who began the programme, attended the ceremony.
"I don't like thinking about what happened in the past. It was destroying my life," says Abu Suleiman.
"When I first went to Afghanistan, they weren't talking about fighting the Saudi government, it was just about fighting the Americans. But over time, it became more extreme. They fought anyone who opposed us."
Abu Suleiman met bin Laden several times and remembers his leadership with bitter disillusion.
Bin Laden, he says, fled Tora Bora, leaving his followers at the mercy of American bombs.
Bin Laden hails from a wealthy Saudi family and the kingdom has provided numerous recruits for al-Qa'eda.
The Saudi royal family is one of the terrorist group's principal targets, thanks to its alliance with the West and its invitation to US troops to enter the country after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
A wave of terrorist bombings in 2003 and 2004 targeted government ministries, oil refineries and compounds housing westerners.
But the number of attacks has fallen dramatically since. Western diplomats in Riyadh believe the terrorist threat has been greatly diminished by the crushing of most of the al-Qa'eda cells inside the kingdom.
Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former ambassador to London and Washington, is one of many hailing the rehabilitation project's contribution as a "major success".
"We believe the struggle is one of mind over matter," he says. "It's a struggle of ideas."
Release Of 'American Taliban' Is Urged
John Walker Lindh's parents contrast his five years in prison with the 9-month sentence recently given a Guantanamo detainee.
Taken from LA Times, April 5, 2007
By Richard A. Serrano
WASHINGTON — The parents of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, who is serving a 20-year sentence in the country's toughest federal prison, stepped up their request for his release Wednesday by noting that the first U.S. war crimes tribunal in Guantanamo Bay recently resulted in a sentence of nine months for an Australian detainee held in U.S. custody since late 2001.
"John has been in prison for more than five years," said his mother, Marilyn Walker. "It's time for him to come home."
Lindh's lead lawyer, James J. Brosnahan of San Francisco, called the effort "a simple cry for justice."
Lindh, who grew up in Marin County, left the United States when he was 18 to study Islam. In 2001 he was in Afghanistan, serving as a soldier for the Taliban army fighting the Northern Alliance.
Soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he was taken into custody by U.S. military forces and returned to the United States; the government contended that he had been trained at an Al Qaeda terrorist camp.
He was immediately branded the American Taliban by the tabloids, at a time when many Americans wanted revenge for the terrorist attacks.
In a plea deal with federal prosecutors in 2002, all terrorism charges were dropped. In the end, Lindh pleaded guilty to being a soldier for the Taliban and carrying a rifle and hand grenades while doing so.
At the time, federal prosecutors said they thought the sentence was appropriate, given that Lindh had faced life in prison with no parole if convicted of conspiring to kill Americans and aiding Al Qaeda.
Lindh, now 26, is in the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colo.
His family and lawyers think that with the passage of time, there is a new opportunity to persuade President Bush to reduce the 20-year sentence.
In addition, they said, the ruling last week that Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks of Australia will be freed after serving another nine months has moved them to seek what they consider equal justice.
Hicks was captured about the same time as Lindh in Afghanistan; unlike Lindh, Hicks was convicted of providing material support to terrorists.
"The Hicks result is again evidence that John's sentence should be commuted," Brosnahan said.
Lindh's family began asking Bush for clemency in 2004, when Yaser Esam Hamdi — a U.S. citizen who was captured in Afghanistan at the same time — was deported to Saudi Arabia, where his family lives.
Brosnahan said the family and his legal team thought a reduction in Lindh's sentence was appropriate because of the leniency that others were receiving.
"It's a matter of fundamental justice," he said.
Margaret Love, who served as the U.S. pardon attorney from 1990 to 1997, noted that clemency petitions that cited other cases did not always prevail. She added that Bush, as governor of Texas and as president, has not been one to show mercy for criminal offenders.
"This president has shown very little interest in pardoning," she said. "And that's peculiar because that's the one power that's really unlimited. He has stretched the other powers of the presidency beyond the breaking point. But this one power that really is all his, with no checks except the popular will, he's shown very little interest in it."
She said that under Bush, about 900 pardon requests remained pending, along with thousands of commutation petitions.
Also hurting Lindh's chances is the death of CIA operative Johnny "Mike" Spann, who was killed in a riot in the Afghan prison where Lindh was being held. His father, Johnny Spann, would have preferred a life sentence and thinks Lindh should at least do 20 years. He said Wednesday that he opposed any commutation of the sentence.
"I would encourage President Bush not to, and I hope to hell he never considers it," Spann said.
His son's efforts to question Lindh days before his death were shown worldwide on a CNN video. Spann said those involved in the riot were "guilty of murder. That's the way I feel about it."
Nevertheless, Lindh's parents remain hopeful. They emphasized that their son was repentant and had acknowledged that while he traveled abroad to study Islam, he was too young and naive to understand what the Taliban and other terrorist groups were about.
His father, Frank Lindh, said, "We love our son very much."
Ethiopia Secret Prisons Under Scrutiny
Taken from Yahoo News, 05 Apr 2007
By ANTHONY MITCHELL, Associated Press
Ethiopia was under pressure Thursday to release details on detainees from 19 countries held at secret prisons in the country where U.S. agents have carried out interrogations in the hunt for al-Qaida in the Horn of Africa.
Canada, Eritrea and Sweden were lobbying for information about their citizens. Human rights groups say hundreds of prisoners, including women and children, have been transferred secretly and illegally to the prisons in Ethiopia. An investigation by The Associated Press found that
CIA and FBI agents have been interrogating the detainees.
Officials from Ethiopia were not immediately available for comment, but in the past have refused to acknowledge the existence of the prisons.
Ethiopia has a long history of human rights abuses. In recent years, it has also been a key U.S. ally in the fight against al-Qaida, which has been trying to sink roots among Muslims in the Horn of Africa.
Canadian citizen Bashir Makhtal is among the detainees, Canadian authorities said.
"We know that he is in Ethiopia," Canadian Foreign Affairs spokesman Rejean Beaulieu said.
"We've been making, and continue to make, representations both here in Ottawa and in Ethiopia to get access to him," Beaulieu said.
Some detainees were swept up by Ethiopian troops who drove a radical Islamist government out of neighboring Somalia late last year, according to Kenyan officials and police. Others have been deported from Kenya, where many Somalis have fled the continuing violence in their homeland, they said.
They are kept without charge or access to lawyers and families.
The CIA began an aggressive program in 2002 to interrogate suspected terrorists at an unknown number of secret locations from Southeast Asia to Europe. Prisoners were frequently picked up in one country and transferred to a prison in another, where they were held incommunicado by a cooperative intelligence service. But President Bush announced in September that all the detainees had been moved to military custody at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
U.S. government officials contacted by AP have acknowledged questioning prisoners in Ethiopia. But they said American agents were following the law and were fully justified in their actions because they are investigating past attacks and current threats of terrorism.
The detainees include at least one U.S. citizen and some from Canada, Sweden and France, according to a list compiled by a Kenyan Muslim rights group and flight manifests obtained by AP. They also include citizens from Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Rwanda, Tunisia and Morocco.
Eritrea is asking Kenyan authorities for details on three of its citizens, handed over to Somalia on Jan. 20. Human rights groups say they are in Ethiopia.
"At this juncture, the Government of Eritrea again calls on the Kenyan authorities to get the three Eritrean citizens released at the earliest and repatriate them to their country," according to a statement by Eritrea's Information Ministry. "Furthermore, it reminds the Kenyan authorities that the responsibility for the lives of the Eritrean citizens rests on them."
Eritrea and Ethiopia are bitter rivals and have no diplomatic relations.
Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua said the government had no comment to make until it received an official communication from the Eritrean government.
Swedish Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Nina Ersman said they had managed to gain access to its nationals still being detained, including two Swedish citizens and one who holds a permanent residence permit.
"We have visited them, but not in recent days," she told the AP. She said she did not know the dates of the visit.
Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law who has been assisting the family of a detained U.S. citizen, 24-year-old Amir Mohamed Meshal, said Thursday he had still not spoken to him.
The State Department said late Wednesday that a U.S. Embassy official made a third visit to Meshal on Wednesday.
In a message passed from the official to his parents, Amir Meshal asked his family to be "patient."
Associated Press writers Karl Ritter in Stockholm, Sweden, and Rebecca Santana in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
Briton 'Could Stage Another September 11'
Taken from The Telegraph, UK, 05/04/2007
By Toby Harnden
Interview: America's new homeland security chief tells Toby Harnden of his fears of 'clean skin' terrorists
The United States fears that the next September 11-style attack on America could be launched by Muslims from Britain or Europe who feel "second-class citizens" and alienated by a "colonial legacy", according to the US Homeland Security chief.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Michael Chertoff, who arrives in Britain tomorrow for talks with John Reid, the Home Secretary, said the US was determined to build extra defences against so-called "clean skin" terrorists from Europe.
"We need to build layers of protection, and I don't think we totally want to rely upon the fact that a foreign government is going to know that one of their citizens is suspicious and is going to be coming here," he said.
Mr Chertoff insisted that the US required additional information, including email addresses and credit card details, to vet European passengers and rejected "the idea that we're going to bargain with the European Union over who's going to come into the United States" under the visa waiver scheme.
"We have an absolute right to get this, in the same way that if someone wants to be a guest in my house I have a right to ask them who they are and get identification."
The July 7 tube and bus bombs nearly two years ago had shown that Britain had a problem with its Muslim immigrant population that America did not share, he argued.
"Our Muslim population is better educated and economically better off than the average American. So, from a standpoint of mobility in society, it's a successful immigrant population. To some degree, the whole country is a country of immigrants, and therefore there's no sense that we have insiders or outsiders. In some countries [in Europe], you had an influx of people that came in as a colonial legacy and may have always have felt, to some extent, that they were viewed as second-class citizens, and they've tended to impact and be kind of clustered in some areas."
Mr Chertoff, a former federal prosecutor, said that one of his biggest worries was that "unknown terrorists" - such as most of the 7/7 bombers, who were British citizens with no criminal record or intelligence traces - could use the visa waiver scheme to enter and attack America.
Britain is among 27 countries that participate in the scheme, which allows visitors to enter the US without a visa for up to 90 days. About 18 million people visit America every year under this programme.
Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber" who attempted to blow up a transatlantic flight in 2001, was a British citizen travelling under the visa waiver scheme.
Zacharias Moussaoui, one of the September 11 plotters, was a French citizen who entered America without a visa. Mr Chertoff said that "we can do a good job with the known terrorists, if we have their name, or if we've previously arrested them and have their fingerprint on file" but a more potent threat was the terrorist with no known form.
"The fear has always been the so-called 'clean skin' - that's a person whose documents are completely legitimate, are not forged."
This had led the US to require a significant tightening of the rules for passengers travelling under a visa waiver. Among the new requirements are that all passenger information be transmitted to the US before a plane takes off. Soon, passengers will have to give all 10 fingerprints, rather than just two.
"If someone's a terrorist, and they've left their fingerprints at a training camp, or in a safe house where a bomb was built, and those latent fingerprints are collected, we can then, when someone crosses a border, match their real prints against those latent prints even if we don't know their name," he said.
Mr Chertoff rejected the idea that the Iraq war had made the world more dangerous.
"Those that are inclined to be radicalised will find a reason to be radicalised no matter what's going on in the world."
America was "unquestionably safer and more secure" than it was on September 11 2001 but there was a danger of complacency because it had not been attacked for more than five years.
"Where you find some softness is in some elements of the media or in some elements of the intellectual class who convince themselves that this is our fault, or that there's an easier way to avoid the problem if we can just figure what price we have to pay. That is a plea to the sensibility of exhaustion and history has shown that's a very damaging and very destructive impulse."
Cheney Asserts Iraq - Al Qaeda Link
Taken from The BBC, 06.04.2007
Mr Cheney told a US radio show: "They were present before we invaded Iraq."
Hours earlier, a declassified Pentagon report said information obtained from Iraq's former leader Saddam Hussein had confirmed they had no strong ties.
Its publication followed pressure from Democrats who suggest intelligence was twisted in the run-up to the war.
The belief that Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda were working together was an important element in the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq.
Critics have since suggested the administration "cherry-picked" from available intelligence to bolster that case.
'Inappropriate' intelligence
Mr Cheney, in an interview with conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, insisted there had been a link between Saddam Hussein's regime and the al-Qaeda terror group.
He said former al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been leading the network's operations in the country before the 2003 US-led invasion.
"He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organised the al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June," he told the show.
The newly declassified Pentagon report was based on interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two of his aides, as well as documents seized in Iraq.
The Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, had pushed for its full release after it was released in summary form in February.
In a statement on Thursday, he said the document showed why a defence department investigation had concluded that some Pentagon pre-war intelligence work had been "inappropriate".
The report into former Pentagon policy chief Douglas Feith's handling of intelligence on Iraq was prepared by the defence department's top watchdog, Inspector General Thomas Gimble.
Under repeated questioning by Mr Levin in February, Mr Gimble said the conclusions reached in reports by Mr Feith were not fully supported by the available intelligence.
In particular, his conclusion there was a "mature and symbiotic relationship" between Iraq and al-Qaeda could not be justified on the basis of the available intelligence.
In addition, an alleged meeting between an Iraqi intelligence officer and a leader of the 9/11 attacks, Mohamed Atta, never took place.
Mr Feith's supporters stress that the inspector general found no evidence of illegal or unauthorised activity.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Report: Israeli Objections Delaying U.S. Arms Sale To Arab Countries
Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 05/04/2007
Israeli objections are delaying a major arms-sale package that the Bush administration is planning to offer Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies to deter Iran, the New York Times reported on Thursday.
Israeli government officials confirmed the report, saying that Israel has pressed the United States not to offer a major weapons deal to its Gulf Arab allies for fear it would damage Israel's military deterrent in the Middle East.
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz raised the matter during a March 11 meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the officials said on condition of anonymity since they were not authorized to discuss the sensitive subject with the press.
While there is no official dollar figure provided for the planned sales, an American defense industry executive said that if the transaction would be performed as planned - including tanks, warships and advanced air defense systems - the deal could run from $5 billion to $10 billion.
According to the report, a series of Israeli officials, including former defense minister Shaul Mofaz, have come to Washington in recent months to argue against parts of the planned sales.
Israel's main concerns lie with the possible handover of precision-guided weapons that would significantly enhance Saudi warplanes' ability to accurately strike targets, officials told the NY Times.
There is less Israeli opposition, however, to possible sales to Gulf countries of several advanced weapons systems that are seen as more defensive in nature. These include advanced Patriot anti-missile batteries as well as new missile-armed coastal warships and a version of the sophisticated Aegis radar system, officials and defense industry executives told the NY Times.
One defense industry official said Saudi Arabia was considering buying as many as a dozen of the new ships.
The United States has made few, if any, sales of satellite-guided ordnance to gulf countries, several officials said. Israel has been supplied with such weapons since the 1990s and used them extensively against Hezbollah in the Second Lebanon War.
Several officials in the State Department and the Pentagon told the paper that plans to formally notify Congress about the potential weapons sales had been delayed at least until later this month. After notification, Congress has 30 days to decide whether to block the sales.
Support for maintaining Israel's military superiority remains strong on Capitol Hill, and administration officials are discussing how to allay the concerns, including the possibility of a separate arms package for Israel, the NY Times said.
David Siegel, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, declined to comment "due to sensitivities of issues such as this," he said.
Administration officials told the paper that Israel did not seem intent on using its political clout in Congress to kill the entire planned sale.
"It's not like the Israelis are going to end up with nothing," said a senior administration official, adding "the Israelis understand that it's in our interest and their interest" that the United States try to shore up military systems for Sunni Arab allies. But Israel is also concerned that the Bush administration's ambitions for an American-Israeli-Sunni coalition allied against Iran may never materialize, or that there could be a revolution in Saudi Arabia that would leave the mostly American-made Saudi arsenal in the hands of militant Islamists, the paper said.
"The Israelis believe the government of Saudi Arabia is under a great deal of pressure," said David Schenker, a former Pentagon official who is now a senior fellow on Arab politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
"Osama bin Laden would like to change the Saudi government to what he considers a real Islamist government. So Israel doesn't want them to have this heightened military capability," he told the paper.
PA Upset By Merkel's Pro-Israel Stance
Taken from The Jerusalem Post, Apr. 4, 2007
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Palestinian Authority officials have accused German Chancellor Angela Merkel of "offending the Palestinians' feelings" during her visit earlier this week to Ramallah, where she met with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
The accusations, the first of their kind against a European leader, were made by top PA officials only hours after Merkel and her entourage left Ramallah on Monday.
"She did everything to provoke the Palestinians during her visit," said one official. "She showed no understanding for the plight of our people. On the other hand, she appeared to be very biased toward Israel."
The official claimed that while Merkel refused to meet with families of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, she focused during her talks with Abbas on the need to release kidnapped IDF Cpl. Gilad Schalit, who has been held in the Gaza Strip since last June. In addition, he noted, Merkel met with the families of missing IDF soldiers during her visit to Jerusalem.
At the joint press conference with Abbas, Merkel refused to answer a question about the Palestinian prisoners in Israel, the official added. "She appeared to be obsessed with the case of Gilad Schalit," he said. "But she refused to even acknowledge the fact that we have more than 10,000 prisoners in Israel."
Another PA official described Merkel's visit to Ramallah as "extremely negative and a total disappointment." He revealed that Abbas had originally requested that the meeting take place in Bethlehem, where Christians are celebrating Holy Week.
"We were hoping to show her the wall that Israel built around Bethlehem, but she refused to go there," he said. "President Abbas was hoping to draw parallels between Israel's wall and the Berlin Wall. He wanted to remind Merkel of the days when she lived in East Berlin."
Merkel, according to the official, also turned down a request to meet with church leaders and representatives of Palestinian civil societies. "Almost all the European leaders meet with Christian leaders and representatives of civil societies," he pointed out. "But Merkel refused to do so. She did not offer any explanation and that's why we are very disappointed with her and the German government. This behavior is completely unacceptable."
The Palestinians are also angry with Merkel for visiting the Hebrew University, where she received an honorary doctorate on Sunday, while refusing to tour the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem.
PA officials were hoping to escort Merkel on a tour of the Arab neighborhoods to show her how Israel was "changing the Arab and Muslim character" of the city.
"This woman is trying to be more Israeli than the Israelis," the official said. "During her talks with President Abbas, she totally ignored major issues related to the peace process and chose to focus on the case of Gilad Schalit.
"Germany will not be able to play any role in the peace process because of the chancellor's bias to Israel. Our people are obviously paying the price for the crimes that were perpetrated against the Jews during World War Two."
In an attempt to avoid a diplomatic crisis between the Palestinians and Germany, a senior official in Abbas's office said the allegations did not represent the official PA line.
"We categorically reject the derogatory remarks made against the German chancellor," said Nimer Hamad, political adviser to Abbas. "We appreciate the ongoing support of Germany to the Palestinians and its efforts to reactivate the role of the Quartet and support for the Arab peace plan that was re-endorsed in Riyadh last week."
In another development, Abbas reiterated on Monday his desire to meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert once every two weeks, as agreed during the last visit of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region.
Abbas's remarks came during a meeting he held in Ramallah with US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Abbas briefed Pelosi on the "national unity" agreement with Hamas and called for lifting sanctions imposed on the Palestinians since Hamas came to power, said PA negotiator Saeb Erekat.
Many Palestinian journalists boycotted the meeting, in solidarity with BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, who was kidnapped in the Gaza Strip three weeks ago. Earlier this week, Palestinian journalists announced that they would stop covering the activities of Palestinian leaders for three days to protest the PA's failure to secure the release of Johnston.
Israel: IDF Troops Kill Unarmed Palestinian Near Jericho
Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 06/05/07
By Avi Issacharoff and The Associated Press
Israel Defense Forces troops shot and killed a Palestinian civilian Thursday evening in a case of suspected misconduct while on patrol in the Nabi Moussa area of the Judean Desert, the army said.
The army said soldiers patrolling a live-fire training zone in the desert between Jerusalem and Jericho saw three men and ordered them to halt.
When the men fled, the soldiers fired into the air and then at the men, killing one, the army said.
The slain man was identified as Aziz Hamed Matur, 30, a taxi driver who was on his way to Jericho from Bethlehem at the time of the shooting. He was not armed.
The two other Palestinians were arrested and brought in for police questioning. They are not suspected of planning terrorist activities but of illegally entering a firing zone. The three apparently entered the zone in order to gather metal pieces to sell.
GOC Central Command Yair Naveh has frozen activities of the army unit pending investigation of the incident, an exceptional step seemingly indicating the army has reason to believe the soldiers acted improperly.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. No Palestinian confirmation was immediately available.
On Wednesday, an IDF unit shot and killed Islamic Jihad militant Ramez Zanin on the border with the Gaza Strip. Another militant was injured in the incident.
Soldiers from the Givati Brigade engaged three militants they saw approaching the border fence in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. The three fled, but the soldiers gave chase several hundred meters into the Gaza Strip.
During the incident, the militants detonated two bombs they had planted on the Palestinian side of the fence. There were no injuries among the IDF soldiers.
Also Wednesday, an IDF soldier was moderately wounded predawn while patrolling in the West Bank city of Jenin.
The soldier was wounded in the shoulder in an ambush by Palestinian gunmen in the Jenin refugee camp. He was evacuated to Haemek Hospital
Misery Of Palestinian Children
Taken from The Al-Jazeera News Agency, 05/04/2007
Children throughout the West Bank and Gaza have observed Palestinian Children's Day, which aims to highlight the plight of children living under Israeli occupation.
To mark the day, the Palestinian Network for Children's Rights issued new figures on Thursday showing how the Israeli occupation has damaged the lives of thousands of children.
"In 2007, the Israeli army continues to deploy the same violent policy towards Palestinian children with eight children being killed so far this year," a press release from the group said on Thursday.
"This brings the total number of children killed since the beginning of the second intifada in September 2000, by the Israeli army and illegal Israeli settlers, to 860."
Additionally, 5,200 Palestinian children have been arrested by the Israeli army and about 400 are still being held in Israeli prisons and interrogation centres, the statement said.
Palestinian children also suffer unusually levels of stress and mental problems - largely as a result of living in a state of near-constant insecurity.
A child's story
Typical of many Palestinian children is Amna Ghaben. Ten years old, her name in Arabic means to be safe and secure but she has enjoyed little of either.
A year ago an Israeli rocket landed on her family's house in Gaza. Her eight-year-old sister, Hadeil, was killed and 11 other family members were injured in the attack.
Amna suffered shrapnel wounds all over her body. But although the physical injuries have now healed, she remains mentally traumatised.
"During shelling, I'm with them and their father hugs them too, but they keep telling us this house could be destroyed on our heads," her mother said.
Dr Ismail Ahmad, a psychiatrist, has been working with Amna since the attack, analysing her drawings.
He says her drawings are a window into how Amna has dealt with the tragedy.
"The smile is gone from Amna's face, her academic level went down, and she feels insecure in her house," Ahmad said.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Colombia Seeks Israelis Accused Of Training Death Squads
Taken from Haaretz., Isreal, 04.03.2007
By The Associated Press
Interpol issued an international arrest warrant Tuesday for three Israelis accused of training private armies of Colombian drug cartels and right-wing death squads.
Yair Klein, Melnik Ferri and Tzedaka Abraham were being sought on charges of criminal conspiracy and instruction in terrorism and face nearly 11 years in prison if convicted, a spokesman for Colombia's domestic intelligence agency said, speaking on the condition that he not be identified.
The men are accused of helping set up training camps to teach private armies working for drug lords Pablo Escobar and Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha about explosives, car bombs and high-profile killings. The armies later morphed into Colombia's right-wing death squads.
Klein, a former lieutenant colonel in the Israeli army, appeared in a 1998 video used to train far-right squads. In 1991, he was convicted and fined US$13,400 (10,030) by an Israeli court for selling arms to Colombia's illegal groups.
Klein also spent 16 months in a Sierra Leon prison for his role in a guns for blood diamonds deal.
In an interview with Caracol television conducted in Israel and broadcast in March, Klein denied ever working with the cocaine cartels, but confirmed that he did instruct the far-right death squads in how to eliminate the leftist insurgency.
He said he was originally hired - with the Colombian Ministry of Defense's blessing - to organize security for the banana industry in the northern region of Uraba.
Many of his students went on to carry out some of Colombia's most brutal massacres.
Klein said, however, that, They were not trained to kill, only trained to defend themselves.
Headed by Escobar, the Medellin cartel pioneered the use of unrestrained violence in its dealings with enemies and allies alike.
As Escobar fought against the threat of extradition, he declared war on Colombia, bringing down air planes, blowing up police headquarters and offering his army of assassins a set rate for the killing of policemen.Escobar was finally shot down by police in his hometown of Medellin in 1993. Rodriguez Gacha was killed by police in 1989.
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I'm glad the truth is coming out. The US asked the Israel government to do the dirty work and assist the right wing governments in South America. I suppose this is a small price to pay for the billions of money in Aid and Arsenal Isreal receive from the US. Also The Mossad helped establish, organize, and train SAVAK (secret service of Shah of Iran) and also helped the secret police of apartheid South Africa, Pinochet`s Chile, and the right-wing military dictatorships of Argentina, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Uganda and El Salvador. Seems wrong doesn't it but now it is all coming out.
Fire Destroys NY Anti-Zionist Synagogue
Taken from Ynet News, Israel, 04.02.07
By Associated Press
Neturei Karta members suspect arson because of previous threats made after group’s representatives attended Holocaust denial conference in Tehran
A fire destroyed the synagogue and residence of a senior rabbi of an anti-Zionist, ultra-Orthodox Jewish group whose members attended an Iran-sponsored conference late last year that debated the occurrence of the Holocaust.
Police and fire investigators said the blaze Sunday night in Monsey, about 35 miles north of New York City, was considered suspicious because the group, Neturei Karta, has been the target of threats, the Journal News reported on its Website.
Police would not confirm for The Associated Press that the blaze was considered suspicious.
No one was injured in the fire. The senior rabbi who lived at the location was in London.
Rabbi Yisroel Dovid of Neturei Karta said the group suspects arson because of previous threats.
"There's no question that the issue is to stifle the opposition to Zionism," he said by telephone early Monday morning.
Rabbi Moshe Beck, a senior rabbi for the group, lived on the top floor of the building, Dovid said. Beck is one of the group's more outspoken leaders.
"He's the backbone of much of the activity, so that's why he's supposedly been singled out," Dovid said.
In December, about five members of the group traveled to Tehran for a two-day conference convened to debate whether the Holocaust occurred. Some were photographed meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called the Holocaust a "myth" and criticized the existence of Israel.
The conference outraged many other Jewish groups.
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Neturei Karta is a peaceful group that is against Zionism because they see Zionism a force against jewfish laws (what is written in the Torah) as well it being a hindrance towards Jewish groups and causing suffering towards Jews. They seek dialogue for peace when governments and other religious groups would not go. There attendance to the Iranian conference had brought the wrong headlines when it should’ve brought good headlines – a chance for peace. For that
The members that had attended the Holocaust denial conference in Iran have been banned entrance to the State of Israel. These men are citizens of the United States and Europe, some of them have visited Israel in the past, and some even have relatives in Israel. They must be the only Jews not allowed into the so called Jewish state, which like all other Arab countries is not a democratic country in the Middle East.
A new Website launched by New York-based group calls for boycott of Neturei Karta Jews and had even named them and provided their address and telephone numbers for people to harass them. This is disgusting. What happened to freedom of speach?
"OPERATION SCREWBALL" IN MONSEY! http://www.e-agle.com/nk/
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Further Reading: NETUREI KARTA WEBSITE- http://www.nkusa.org/
Controversial Historian To Quit Israel For UK
Taken from The Jerusalem Post, Apr. 1, 2007
By JONNY PAUL
Ilan Pappe, a senior lecturer in the University of Haifa's Department of Political Science, says he is moving to the UK because it is "increasingly difficult to live in Israel" with his "unwelcome views and convictions."
In an interview in The Peninsula, Qatar's leading English-language daily, during a visit last week to Doha as a guest of the Qatar Foundation, Pappe said: "I was boycotted in my university and there had been attempts to expel me from my job. I am getting threatening calls from people every day. I am not being viewed as a threat to the Israeli society but my people think that I am either insane or my views are irrelevant. Many Israelis also believe that I am working as a mercenary for the Arabs."
Pappe is to join the History Department at Exeter University, in southwest England. He is active in anti-Israel academic boycott efforts.
Referred to in the Peninsula article as "the onlyJewish academic in Israel who is vehemently critical of Zionism," Pappe said the only solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was the creation of a single state, shared by Jews, Arabs and others. He said that two independent states cannot coexist in "the land of Palestine."
He also said there was "no immediate solution to the crisis and only international pressure can force Israel to end the occupation and the continuing atrocities against the Palestinians.""Over the past six years, the Israeli government has become more oppressive, thanks to the strong support from the Bush administration. They now feel that they can do anything they want," he said.
The interviewer in Qatar admitted to being "a bit surprised" by Pappe's support for Hamas.
"A bit surprisingly," the paper wrote, Pappe said: "I support Hamas in its resistance against the Israeli occupation, though I disagree with their political ideology. I am for separating state from religion."
Pappe also questioned Israeli democracy: "Any state that perpetrates occupation cannot be called a democratic state," he said, adding that Israeli democracy was meant "only for Jews" and there is "no space for other communities."
The interview then looks at what has shaped Pappe's opinions: "Pappe's transformation from a 'typical Jew' to a strong critic of Zionism started in the 1980s while studying in the UK," it wrote.
"I reexamined the events of 1948, which changed my perceptions, and I realized how the Israeli state was formed at the expense of the Palestinians. I don't subscribe to the view that a community which has a claim to a land that goes back thousands of years had the right to occupy it by dispossessing indigenous communities," Pappe said.
Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said: "After taking full advantage of all the freedoms accorded to him in Israel, a country he has so shamelessly attacked, Pappe has decided to set up shop here. Whilst this provides the opportunity for academics here to challenge him on his revisionist agenda, the uncomfortable fact is that in the lecture theaters and seminar rooms at Exeter, many impressionable young minds will be exposed to his partial and biased views."
Mitch Simmons, campaign director of the Union of Jewish Students, said: "We not angry or frustrated that he's coming to the UK. What is of concern is that he may use his position to vocalize support for the boycott of Israeli academics."
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Dr. Ilan Pappe is a great man. He is one of many Jews in Isreal that tries to point the wrongs that have been done by the State of Israel. He has been correcting misinformation of Israeli history from citing the atrocities done by the Israeli regime against the Palestinians (which had been wiped off from history) but he also stated unhelpfulness of some Arab states against the Palestinians. He is a person who is not afraid to speak his mind and tell the truth. Alas now he is paying the price. There has been a campaign in Israel against lecturers who sway to the left. Many university professors and lecturers have been targeted by Zionists and hate groups and had been overlooked for promotion.
A recent book by Ilan Pappe “The Ethnic Cleansing Of Palestine” is out in all good bookshops. It offers a scorching indictment of Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people in The Ethnic Cleansing Of Palestine. Through a meticulous account of events around the 1948 'War of Independence', he effectively demonstrates that the mass displacement of about 1million Palestinians was not a voluntary exodus but rather a planned act of ethnic cleansing by the Israeli government against a defenceless people. Using recently declassified Israeli military archives, cabinet meeting minutes and memoirs of key players such as David Ben-Gurion, he shows that direct comparisons can be drawn with events in the former Yugoslavia. Pappe makes the case that peace can never be achieved as long as Israel denies committing war crimes and refuses Palestinians the right of return. He also offers an antidote to Israel's attempt to wipe out Palestinian heritage by recording where some razed towns and villages once stood, amassing a sad litany of destruction and loss.
Read the book and read his blog.
http://www.ilanpappe.org/
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
British Nasa Hacker Loses Extradition Fight
Taken from The Telegraph, UK, 03/04/2007
By staff and agencies
A British computer hacker accused of committing one of the largest ever cyber-attacks on the US government has lost his High Court challenge to avoid extradition to America.
Gary McKinnon, a 41-year-old former computer systems administrator known online as "Solo", had challenged a decision by John Reid to send him to the US to face trial for illegally accessing military and NASA computer systems.
A judge ruled last May that McKinnon, indicted in New Jersey and northern Virginia, should face trial in the United States and Mr Reid signed off on the request.
McKinnon, who was arrested in 2002, is accused of hacking into around 100 US government computers between February 2001 and March 2002, causing around $700,000 (£354,400) damage.
One attack, which occurred immediately after Sept 11 targeted the Earle Naval Weapons Station in New Jersey and shut down its computer system for a week.
McKinnon was caught after some of the software used in the attacks was traced back to his girlfriend's e-mail account.
The Briton had claimed he could face prosecution under US anti-terror laws and told a British court he accessed systems because he was looking for evidence that America was concealing the existence of UFOs.
But Judge Nicholas Evans said at an earlier court hearing that McKinnon had left notes on computer systems criticizing American foreign policy.
"US foreign policy is akin to government-sponsored terrorism," Judge Evans quoted one such note as saying.
Lord Justice Maurice Kay and Justice Goldring, at the High Court, said McKinnon had no grounds to appeal his extradition, but also expressed their disquiet at an alleged American threat to deny him the right to serve out part of his sentence in Britain.
McKinnon's refusal to plead guilty in the United States had earned him the ire of the American authorities, who were preparing to prosecute him as cyber-terrorist and bar him from serving out part of his sentence in Britain, his lawyers said in a statement.
"His punishment could not be more severe," the statement said. "It amounts to a life sentence in a foreign country."
McKinnon is applying to have his case heard in the House of Lords, Britain's highest court of appeal.
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So how did he do it? The Guardian (April 3, 2007) explained everything...
With national security a primary concern after September 11, you would assume puncturing the protective layers around military computers would be of Herculean difficulty. So how did Gary McKinnon become a "master hacker"? Very easily, it turns out.
From a house in north London, Mr McKinnon - a self-confessed "bumbling computer nerd" - spent hours laboriously testing different ways of accessing US computers in his quest, he claims, to prove that UFOs exist.
After discovering the addresses of some computers at the fringes of the military system - in departments such as logistics and support - he found it easy to break in. With a management tool usually used by IT staff, Mr McKinnon was then able to work his way into networks at Nasa and the Pentagon.
The biggest loopholes had been created by users who failed to follow basic security measures - such as changing their password from the default "password".
With such glaring errors leaving the backdoor wide open to intruders, Mr McKinnon said it was a simple task to control computers remotely, from the other side of the world.
Deliberately working at times when American staff would be asleep, he would hop on to more secure systems that were impenetrable to outsiders but wide open to "trusted" users.
By time he was caught, Mr McKinnon was even leaving messages on the desktops of the computers he had hacked into.
He has admitted his efforts were more like those of the Keystone Cops than a masterful thriller. "It got a bit silly," he told the Guardian last year. "I suppose it means I'm not a secretive, sophisticated, checking-myself-every-step-of-the-way type of hacker."
Israel Tops The World In Rate Of Malicious Internet Activity
Taken from The Jerusalem Post, Mar. 31, 2007
By JOSHUA FREEMAN
Web-savvy criminals have turned Israel into the world's highest ranking source of malicious Internet activity per user, security experts have told The Jerusalem Post.
From July through December 2006, 9 percent of all such activity could be traced back to Israel. Taiwan came next with 8%, while Poland and the US tied at 6%, according to a report issued in March by security software giant Symantec, based in Cupertino, California.
For overall numbers, the US still has the most malicious activity at 31 percent. China was second with 10 percent.
"It is hard to say exactly how many people may be involved" in making money over the Internet via activities that increasingly involve the theft of sensitive personal information, said Ricardo Reznik, vice president for Marketing at Rosh Ha'ayin-based TrekIT.
"It [malicious Internet activity] is definitely being carried out mostly by organized crime groups looking for new streams of revenue rather than [by] individuals," said Reznik, whose company represents Internet security firms.
Most of the activity, according to the report, is criminal in nature and is executed by organized groups that sometimes target massive networks of users at the same time.
The sophistication of Israel's Internet users and its developed hi-tech sector have contributed to the high level of malicious Web activity, said Arie Danon, Symantec manager for the Mediterranean region.
"Some people will use their knowledge to do good and some people will use their knowledge for bad purposes," he said.
This is the first time that Symantec has included a per capita ranking for countries in its semiannual Internet Security Threat Report.
The new Symantec figure does not mean that a high proportion of Israel's 3.7 million Internet users engage in "malicious activities," cautioned Reznik.
Although Israel tops the ranking in per capita Internet abuse, in absolute terms it does not even place in the top 10, lagging far behind the top-ranked USA, the world's largest Web market, which accounts for 31% of the malicious activity.
According to Symantec, the organized malicious activity often involves propagation of viruses, "trojan horses" and other programs designed to take over target computers. Such programs may be delivered via e-mail and take over control of a victim's computer without his knowledge and/or steal sensitive information.
"It's not like 10 years ago when people were sending out viruses just to play pranks," said Amir Lev, president of Commtouch Software LPD in Netanya, a messaging and security company.
Criminal groups use viruses and trojans to set up networks of infected computers, he said. An e-mail may be used to deliver a virus that then installs a robot program, or "bot," on the user's computer. This bot program hides itself and then makes contact with a server to obtain further instructions. These servers are run by "botmasters" working for criminal groups who run "bot networks" of infected computers.
Once a botmaster has established control over a network, money can be made by using those computers to send spam advertisements for everything from pornography to cheap viagra.
Reznik chalked the high amount of criminal Internet activity here up to the fact that Israel, according to a study his company performed in February, is a large exporters of spam, accounting for approximately 2% of world junk mail in 2006.
"The figures clearly show that spammers are operating intensively in Israel on an international level" said Yaniv Barzilai, TrekIT deputy managing director of sales, referring to the TrekIT report.
Although spam is not itself considered malicious by the researchers and is not necessarily illegal, the Symantec report found that it is increasingly intertwined with malicious criminal activities.
The Knesset passed a anti-spam law in 2005 requiring that recipients "opt-in" for marketers to be able to send them spam. Regulators, however, are still largely powerless to stop international spamming networks.
"We accept that there is a big problem with spam and other [Internet] activities in Israel," said a source at the Communications Ministry. "We're looking at options in the Knesset, examining both European and American models of spam legislation to decide what's best for Israel."
He admitted, however, that he was "not sure" whether new legislation would target the worst offenders - Israelis who send illegal spam to computers all over the world as well as those who send spam solely within Israel.
According to Barzilai, the state needs to act to get such activity under control.
"Ultimately, Israel will have to contend with the problem of junk mail emanating from here, as a result of international pressure by countries or pressure from companies such as Microsoft, which has already taken action against Israeli spammers," he said.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
My Own Personal War Against The Arabs.
This is one of the most beautiful articles I've read on the web and have decided to copy and use this to share with everyone. Taken from The Democratic Underground website.
Article submitted by Byronius - Fri Dec-08-06 04:07 PM
I lived in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia as a child. My father taught chemical engineering at the College of Petroleum and Minerals to young Arabian men in long white thobes and headresses. I went to elementary school at Dhahran Academy, the American Embassy school where Americans were in short supply -- most kids were British, or Dutch, or one of the twenty other nationalities that outnumbered the American kids. Unlike the Americans locked behind razor-wire in the Aramco compound, where they had movie theaters and actual lawns, we lived in the South Compound, a collection of concrete housing open to the desert. I could drive at any age, because I was male; I used to take my minibike out into the deep desert, on the edge of the Rub' Al Khali itself. My mother and sister were forbidden to drive, ever, but I drove my sleeping father from Dhahran to Riyadh when I was ten years old. It was the Wild Life Of Freedom for a kid.
I and my pack of buddies from the North and South compounds would roam the desert at will, exploring the massive and empty world of 1960's Saudi Arabia. We would climb djebels, catch lizards, explore caves -- when it rained, which it did once a year, it would rain so hard the desert would become a shallow sea for a few hours. We would go out and splash around in it. The entire area would bloom profusely for a week or two after the rain, and then -- back to desert. Sometimes we'd find dead goats and camels, often surrounded by incongruent patches of green grass, growing in the middle of the rocky sand. It was an entrancing place to spend one's childhood.
It was also often dangerous. My friend Marco Porro, a kid from Portugal, got caught by the mullahs in Al-Khobar and had his head shaved with garden shears. They damaged his scalp in the process. His family left the country immediately, and I never saw him again. Similar events marred the otherwise tranquil landscape, but only occasionally. The Dean of the College was an arab, and was hauled off by Saudi police late one night -- his family lived on in the North Compound for years. No one asked about his fate. He, also, was never seen again.
One 120-degree day, I and my desert-rat buddies were playing outside the walls of the North Compound. We were a motley crew -- American, French, Austrian, Taiwanese, Nigerian. We suddenly saw a group of young arab kids about our age, slowly walking toward us. For some reason I now forget, we ended up in a giant Rockfight. For half an hour, we hurled deadly missiles at each other, dodging and leaping from bush to boulder to rise to wadi, trying to do as much damage as a ten-year-old with a sharp-edged rock could do. Blood flowed freely from most of us. I got hit on the head pretty bad; blood ran down the side of my face. At the end of the half-hour, all of us were gasping, bleeding, some crying. The arab kids had it just as bad, we could see. There was a momentary pause in the battle, while we all regrouped.
Suddenly, one of the arab kids stood up and held up his hands in an obvious gesture of truce. We held our fire; I walked out to meet him in the middle of the battlefield. As we approached each other, I could see that he was bleeding as badly as I was. We met in the middle, and just looked at each other for a few minutes, breathing heavily. He reached in his pocket, and pulled out a knife -- and then also pulled out some sort of desert fruit. To this day, I have no idea what it was. He swiftly peeled it, cut off a slice, and handed it to me. It was delicious.
The War ended immediately. All the other kids from both sides wandered out, took a slice of the strange fruit, and tried to communicate with each other somehow. Some of us spoke a rudimentary Arabic, but none of the arab kids spoke English -- we did our best. We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the desert together, all thoughts of conflict forgotten. I remember my mother's shock at seeing my blood-encrusted face and shirt -- I had completely forgotten about it by then.
We never saw them again, but I've never forgotten the moment, or the look in that boy's eyes as we approached each other, or the swiftness with which the bloody battle was smoothed over.
And that is why I think it's never too late to make peace.
‘Israel Right Or Wrong’ Is Not A Grown-Up Debate
America’s prejudices are a barrier to Middle East peace
Taken from The Times, UK, March 30, 2007
By Gerard Baker
The blowtorch of media scrutiny is steadily taking layers of gaudy paint off the happy caravan that is Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Last week his hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, subjected some of the claims made in his compelling autobiography, Dreams from my Father, to the unforgiving audit of the fact-checker. It turns out that the title might have been even more appropriate than it seemed, since some of the incidents Mr Obama eloquently relates about his early life may have been more the stuff of idealised reverie than reality.
But all politicians embellish their life story a bit. No election can be won without an appealing “personal narrative”. If George Washington didn’t really cut down that cherry tree, then surely Mr Obama can be forgiven for misplacing his role in some of his earliest recollections of the civil rights movement.
Of much more interest is the flak that the Democratic senator is taking for some remarks he made about the Middle East. Hillary Clinton, his main opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination in next year’s election, has seized upon them as proof that the senator cannot be trusted with US national security nor as a true friend of Israel.
What exactly, was the young senator’s offence? Did he, in an unguarded moment of adolescent radicalism, say something nice about Yassir Arafat? Did he call on Israel to give back the occupied territories?
Here, for the record, is precisely what he said, in a speech in Iowa a few weeks ago: “Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people.”
The response to this little aside, the shower of invective heaped on Mr Obama from all sides of the political arena, is instructive and depressing. In American political debate, saying something sympathetic about the Palestinians is evidently now deemed unsayable. Even as mild and neutral an observation as noting that Palestinians are “suffering” is considered a gaffe somewhat akin to expressing a kindly word for KGB pensioners.
The potential political penalties for such dangerous talk are well demonstrated by Mr Obama’s own rather pitiful response to the incident. Under pressure for his remarks, his spokesman “clarified” them, saying that what Mr Obama meant was that Palestinians were suffering because of the cruelties of their own, Hamas-dominated leadership. Phew! Thank goodness he cleared that one up. We thought for a horrible moment he might have been offering just the minutest criticism of Israeli policy.
It is sadly true, as America’s critics contend, that US debate about the Middle East is constrained within an impossibly narrow field of discussion. In fact it is striking that it is much easier for an Israeli to say things critical of the Israeli Government than it is for an American to offer the same critique. No one questions the anti-terrorist bona fides of those who express concern for the plight of the Palestinians there.
A popular view outside America, occasionally expressed inside the US, is that the limits to debate about the Middle East are set by some powerful group called the Israel Lobby. This shadowy bunch, depending on your favoured conspiracy theory, either bankrolls all American politicians or plants its own members in critical positions inside the US Government. No politician dare step out of line from what is decreed acceptable by the Lobby. Last year two academics gave public voice to this view in a paper that quickly earned notoriety.
But fixation on the Israel lobby is not only misplaced and, with its evocation of wealthy bankers and unscrupulous political consultants, just a tiny bit antiSemitic. It also misses the real reasons that the US can’t seem to have a sensible discussion now about the Middle East.
That there is an Israel lobby in American politics is not really in dispute. In a political system as vast and complex as America’s, all kinds of groups seek to influence the outcome of the policy debate. There is also an Ireland lobby, a Taiwan lobby, and for all I know a Liechtenstein lobby.
The Israel lobby is certainly among the more influential, but its influence is still much less than its critics think, and much, much less important than a range of factors that keep politicians on the straight and narrow with regard to the Middle East.
Some of these reasons are to do with internal political developments long in the making. The rise of evangelical Christianity as a political force, especially within the Republican Party, has something to do with it. The belief that the Jews must be returned to the Biblical lands of Judaea and Samaria before the world can end has driven up support for an aggressive Israeli approach to its neighbours in the Holy Land.
Those of us who are not evangelical Zionists will feel a little queasy about that idea. But there are two good reasons why Americans are sensitive about criticism of Israel that have nothing to do either with the power of the mysterious lobby or with the millennarian theology of certain protestant groups.
Most Americans, whatever their religious or political views, feel a special solidarity with Israel. Part of it is to do with strong similarities in national consciousness, a sense that both America and Israel were founded as refuges for persecuted national Americans believe — rightly, as it happens — that if it hadn’t been for US intervention, the Holocaust might have succeeded in annihilating every last Jew from the earth. They feel — again, correctly — that without staunch US support for the past 40 years, Israel would almost certainly have ceased to exist. Since September 11, 2001, this sense of solidarity has only deepened. The same jihadism that wants to destroy Israel, and has murdered thousands of Jews over the decades, now targets America and its people.
But none of this should be allowed to prevent a proper debate in America about the Middle East. The lesson of Mr Obama’s “gaffe” is that the rules of American politics mean it is impossible for politicians to express sympathy for Palestinians in their plight or to argue that Israel must bear at least some responsibility for alleviating it. Playing by those rules might pave the way to the White House. It will never smooth the way to Middle East peace.
Olmert: Arab Peace Plan "Revolutionary"
Taken from The Times, UK, March 30, 2007
David Byers and Richard Beeston in Riyadh
The Israeli Prime Minister today described an Arab plan to make peace with the Jewish State as "revolutionary" and said the region could sign a final deal within five years.
Ehud Olmert made his remarks in a series of newspaper interviews this morning, after leaders of the 22 Arab countries gave their unanimous backing to a plan which would commit them to developing diplomatic relations with Israel if it first agreed to a "land-for-peace" deal with the Palestinians.
The Arab leaders' plan - originally drawn up by Saudi Arabia in 2002 - would see the concept of a Palestinian state founded in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip with Jerusalem as its capital.
Only two states, Egypt and Jordan, currently have full diplomatic relations with Israel after signing peace treaties in 1979 and 1994, so the latest pledge for full diplomatic normalisation - which includes the hawkish Syrian regime - is regarded as hugely significant.
Speaking to the mass-circulation Israeli Yediot Aharonot newspaper today, Mr Olmert hailed the agreement as a possible new beginning for the region.
“There is a real possibility that Israel can sign a global peace accord with its enemies within five years," the Israeli Prime Minister said.
Asked whether he meant “all of the Arab world,” the Israeli leader replied: “yes."
In an interview with the liberal Ha'aretz newspaper, Mr Olmert added that he believed a bloc of states was "emerging that understands that they may have been wrong to think that Israel is the world's greatest problem".
“That is a revolutionary change in outlook," he added. “There are things that are happening, which have not happened in the past, which are developing and ripening."
However, Mr Olmert stressed that although the plan was a positive step, he still had reservations over a number of details.
In particular, these are that a future Palestinian state should have Jerusalem as its capital city, and that the descendents of Palestinian refugees who lived in what is now Israel prior to its formation in 1948 should be allowed to return to what is now the modern day state.
However, the Prime Minister said that he wanted to iron out those differences as part of direct negotiations with the Saudi Government.
“We are ready to hold discussions and hear from the Saudis about their approach and to tell them about ours," Mr Olmert told Ha'aretz.
“Saudi Arabia is the country that in the end will determine the ability of the Arabs to reach a compromise with Israel."
Yesterday's Arab agreement marks the latest stage of a dramatic Saudi Arabian strategy to get involved in the Middle East peace process after years of isolation. This is likely to be motivated by a desire to counter-balance Iran's growing influence in the region, as well as the United States' corresponding failure to come up with any meaningful recent initiatives of their own.
Traditionally, the oil-rich Saudi kingdom has avoided taking centre stage in resolving the regional crises. But last month it mediated the creation of a Palestinian national unity Government, heading off what many feared could become a civil war between the rival Hamas and Fatah factions.
The Saudis, who have not hosted an Arab League summit for more than 30 years, then offered to convene the current conference.
It is hoped that the initiative could open the way to real dialogue for the first time since 2000. UN officials are trying to plot the next step by convening a meeting next month in Egypt of the Quartet — America, the European Union, Russia and the UN — which coordinates Arab-Israeli peace efforts. This time other countries, such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, would be invited to attend.
How I Know Blair Faked Iran Map
Taken from The Daily Mail, UK, 1st April 2007
By CRAIG MURRAY, Former Ambassador to Uzbekistan and Head of the Foreign Office's Maritime Section
Like most senior Royal Navy officers, Commodore Nick Lambert has great reserves of professional expertise and common sense. The Coalition task force commander was aboard HMS Cornwall when 15 Royal Navy personnel serving on the frigate were seized at gunpoint by Iranian forces on March 23.
The Navy states the 14 men and one woman were on a routine patrol in rigid inflatables off Iraqi shores - Iran insists they were in its waters illegally.
A few hours after the 15 were seized, Cdre Lambert said: 'There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that they were in Iraqi territorial waters. Equally, the Iranians may well claim that they were in their territorial waters. The extent and definition of territorial waters in this part of the world is very complicated.'
And his predecessor in command of the task force, Commodore Peter Lockwood of the Royal Australian Navy, said last October: 'No maritime border has been agreed upon by the countries.'
Both officers told the truth. It is the burial of this truth by No 10 spin doctors, and Tony Blair's remark that he is 'utterly certain' the incident took place within Iraqi territorial limits, that has escalated this from an incident to a crisis. Blair is being fatuous.
How can you be certain which side of a boundary you are when that boundary has never been drawn?
I am best known as the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, but from 1989 to 1992 I headed the Foreign Office's maritime section. This included responsibility for territorial sea claims and for negotiating our own maritime boundaries. The expertise of the Royal Navy was invaluable.
For eight months I also worked with Royal Naval and Defence Intelligence Service personnel in the Embargo Surveillance Centre, a secret unit operating 24 hours a day from an underground command centre in Central London to prevent Iraqi attempts at weapons procurement.
We analysed information from intelligence and other sources, and could instruct Royal Naval craft in the Gulf to board and inspect individual ships. I was responsible for getting the political clearance for operations just like the one now in question, in this exact location. So I know what I'm talking about.
There is no agreed boundary in the Northern Gulf, either between Iran and Iraq or between Iraq and Kuwait. The Iran-Iraq border has been agreed inside the Shatt al-Arab waterway, because there it is also the land border. But that agreement does not extend beyond the low tide line of the coast.
Even that very limited agreement is arguably no longer in force. Since it was reached in 1975, a war has been fought over it, and ten-year reviews - necessary because waters and sandbanks in this region move about dramatically - have never been carried out.
But what about the map the Ministry of Defence produced on Tuesday, with territorial boundaries set out by a clear red line, and the co-ordinates of the incident marked in relation to it?
I have news for you. Those boundaries are fake. They were drawn up by the MoD. They are not agreed or recognised by any international authority.
To put it at its most charitable, they are a potential boundary. It is accepted practice, where no boundary exists, to work by a rule-of-thumb idea of where a boundary, based on a median line between the two coasts, might be.
But to elevate that to a hard and fast boundary, and then base a major international incident on being a few hundred yards one side or the other, is out of order.
Negotiating a maritime boundary is horribly complicated. To set a median line you agree a series of triangulation points on both coastlines and do a geometric triangulation exercise to find a line running out from the coast.
Of course, both sides will argue about which triangulation points on the coast to use. You are allowed, for example, to draw a line across a bay entrance and use that as the coast, but there is plenty of room for the other side to argue over where that line is drawn.
That is only the start. For territorial seas you start at the low tide mark and uninhabited rocks and sandbanks count.
There is huge room for argument - ownership of a useless sandbank is not necessarily a settled thing. Then it really gets complex. What if the sandbank appears only at low tide or moves? In this area of the Gulf, sands shift endlessly.
It is, in short, impossible to say where a real, negotiated or adjudicated Iran-Iraq boundary might eventually lie. It is also why the instinct of both the Foreign Office and MoD was to play this quietly and negotiate our people back.
But the No10 spin doctors stepped in, seeing a propaganda opportunity to portray Blair as fighting evil Iranians.
Navy and Foreign Office experts were horrified at the notion of publishing that map.
In doing so we entrenched Blair's ridiculous boast that our 15 Navy personnel were definitely in Iraqi territorial seas, and claimed the right to dictate Iran's boundary.
It's not surprising Iraq backed British claims - the map is favourable to them. But it makes compromise on the captives very difficult.
Of course, the Iranians equally cannot say unilaterally that these are their territorial waters, and act as if they owned them.
In disputed waters it behoves everyone to act with caution and respect. Plainly the Iranians are not doing that.
None of this vindicates Iran's aggressive behaviour in holding the captives or the so-called confessions.
For Iran to detain the British sailors in these circumstances was provocative and bellicose.
To hold them for a few hours could have been taken as a legitimate, if over forceful way, of indicating their claim to the disputed waters in which the British personnel boarded a neutral vessel.
But Iranian behaviour in the past few days has tipped over into the plain illegal and indefensible.
However I have no doubt Blair is delighted at last to have a Middle East issue with popular support before May's elections.
Yes, Iran has a bad government that is behaving stupidly. But perhaps it is not alone. Both sides have to climb down. We have to state that no agreed border exists and that we had no intention of straying into Iranian waters.
The Iranian government should let our people go immediately. That is the way out of this mess for both sides.
These are extracts from Craig Murray's blog. The opinions expressed are those of the author.
