Idle Contractors Add Millions To Iraq Rebuilding

Taken from New York Times, Published: October 25, 2006

By James Glanz

Overhead costs have consumed more than half the budget of some reconstruction projects in Iraq, according to a government estimate released yesterday, leaving far less money than expected to provide the oil, water and electricity needed to improve the lives of Iraqis.

The report provided the first official estimate that, in some cases, more money was being spent on housing and feeding employees, completing paperwork and providing security than on actual construction.

Those overhead costs have ranged from under 20 percent to as much as 55 percent of the budgets, according to the report, by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. On similar projects in the United States, those costs generally run to a few percent.

The highest proportion of overhead was incurred in oil-facility contracts won by KBR Inc., the Halliburton subsidiary formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root, which has frequently been challenged by critics in Congress and elsewhere.

The actual costs for many projects could be even higher than the estimates, the report said, because the United States has not properly tracked how much such expenses have taken from the $18.4 billion of taxpayer-financed reconstruction approved by Congress two years ago.

The report said the prime reason was not the need to provide security, though those costs have clearly risen in the perilous environment, and are a burden that both contractors and American officials routinely blame for such increases.

Instead, the inspector general pointed to a simple bureaucratic flaw: the United States ordered the contractors and their equipment to Iraq and then let them sit idle for months at a time.
The delay between “mobilization,” or assembling the teams in Iraq, and the start of actual construction was as long as nine months.

“The government blew the whistle for these guys to go to Iraq and the meter ran,” said Jim Mitchell, a spokesman for the inspector general’s office. “The government was billed for sometimes nine months before work began.”

The findings are similar to those of a growing list of inspections, audits and investigations that have concluded that the program to rebuild Iraq has often fallen short for the most mundane of reasons: poorly written contracts, ineffective or nonexistent oversight, needless project delays and egregiously poor construction practices.

“This report is the latest chapter in a long, sad and expensive tale about how contracting in Iraq was more about shoveling money out the door than actually getting real results on the ground,” said Stephen Ellis, a vice president at Taxpayers for Common Sense in Washington.

“These contracts were to design and build important items for oil infrastructure, hospitals and education, but in some cases more than half of the money padded corporate coffers instead,” he said.

Although the federal report places much of the burden for the charges squarely on the shoulders of United States officials in Baghdad, the findings varied widely over a sampling of contracts examined by auditors, from a low of under 20 percent for some companies to a high of over 55 percent.

One oil contract awarded to a joint venture between Parsons, an American company, and Worley, from Australia, had overhead costs of at least 43 percent, the report found. One contract held by Parsons alone to build hospitals and prisons had overhead of at least 35 percent; in another, it was 17 percent.

The lowest figure was found for certain contracts won by Lucent, at 11 percent, but the report indicates that substantial portions of the overhead in those cases could not be determined.

The report did not explain why KBR’s overhead costs on those contracts — the contracts totaled about $296 million — were more than 10 percent higher than those at the other companies audited. Despite past criticism of KBR, the Army, which administers those contracts, has generally agreed to pay most of the costs claimed by the company.

Melissa Norcross, a spokeswoman for KBR, said in a written reply to questions, “It is important to note that the special inspector general is not challenging any of KBR’s costs referenced in this report.”

“All of these costs were incurred at the client’s direction and for the client’s benefit,” she said, referring to the Army Corps of Engineers, which is in charge of the oil contract.

But a frequent Halliburton critic, Representative Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat who is the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform, disputed those assurances. “It’s incomprehensible that over $160 million — more than half the value of the contract — was squandered on overhead,” Mr. Waxman said in a written statement.

The majority leader of the same committee, Thomas M. Davis III, a Virginia Republican, declined to comment.

A spokeswoman for Parsons, Erin Kuhlman, said the United States categorized overhead and construction costs differently from contract to contract in Iraq, making it difficult to make direct comparisons. “Parsons incurred, billed and reported actual costs as directed by the government,” she said.

In Iraq, where construction materials are scarce and contractors must provide security for work sites and housing for Western employees, officials have said they expect the overhead to be at least 10 percent, but the contractors and American officials have grudgingly conceded that the true costs have turned out to be higher.

But even the high of 55 percent could be an underestimate, Mr. Mitchell said, because the government often did not begin tracking overhead costs for months after the companies mobilized. He added that because of the haphazard way in which the government tracked the costs, it was not possible to say how well the figures reflected overhead charges in the entire program.

The report’s conclusions were drawn from $1.3 billion in contracts for which United States government overseers actually made an effort to track overhead costs, of the total of $18.4 billion set aside for reconstruction in specific supplemental funding bills for the 2006 fiscal year.

When all American and Iraqi contributions are added up, various estimates for the cost of the rebuilding program range from $30 billion to $45 billion. Language included in the Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Bush last week, states that the inspector general’s office will halt its examination of those expenditures by October of next year.

Maj. Gen. William H. McCoy, who until recently commanded the Persian Gulf region division of the Corps of Engineers, disputed some of the inspector general’s findings in a letter appended to the report. Things like “waiting for concrete to cure” could still be taking place during what seem to be periods of inactivity, General McCoy wrote, so a quiet period “does not mean that the project is not moving forward.”

But many of the delays came during 2004 and took place in response to political developments in Iraq, the inspector general’s report says. The American occupation government, the Coalition Provisional Authority, mobilized many of the companies early that year.

After the authority went out of existence in June 2004, handing sovereignty to the Iraqi government, top American officials then kept the companies idle for months as the officials rewrote the rebuilding plan, and ran up costs as little work was done.
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With regards to Halliburton, the Washington Post stated that inspector general's office overseeing Iraq spending found that at least 55 percent, or $163 million, of $296 million in total costs rung up by Halliburton unit KBR went to expenses such as back-office support, transportation and security.

That percentage was significantly higher than it was on work by other firms in Iraq, and experts said it is far above what is typically found on a government contract.

The findings are the latest that call into question KBR's work under the deal, which required the company to rehabilitate oil facilities in southern Iraq. Under the contract's terms, KBR is reimbursed for its costs and then receives a percentage for profit on top, an arrangement that critics contend has given the firm an incentive to run up its bills.

According to internal government documents released in March, auditors found that the company had repeatedly overcharged the government by, among other things, billing for work it didn't actually do and paying suppliers more than they were owed. Meanwhile, work schedules slid and company officials balked at requests for accurate cost estimates. At one point, officials threatened to terminate the deal. Instead, KBR -- which has received more money from the Iraq war effort than any other firm -- was allowed to keep the contract and is now winding up work.

In a statement, Halliburton spokeswoman Melissa Norcross defended the company's administrative spending. "All of these costs were incurred at the client's direction and for the client's benefit, and they have been extensively audited and deemed allowable and legitimate," she said.

The Army Corps of Engineers -- which oversaw the contracts -- acknowledged that
some of the administrative costs were high. But in a response to the inspector general's findings, the Corps argued that important work was getting done even when money was being spent on administrative matters rather than directly on Corps projects.

The United States has devoted more than $20 billion to rehabilitate Iraq, but critics contend that much of the money has been wasted as contractors used the government's checkbook to spend lavishly on hotels, food and employee salaries. Halliburton has come under particularly intense scrutiny because of the volume of work it has done in Iraq and because Vice President Cheney was once the firm's chief executive.

CBS: Corrupt Arms Deals Cost Iraq $800M

Taken from Yahoo News, 23 Ocober 2006

Iraq's former finance minister alleged in a U.S. television report that up to $800 million meant to equip the Iraqi army had been stolen from the government by former officials through fraudulent arms deals.

The former minister, Ali Allawi, told CBS' "60 Minutes" that $1.2 billion had been allocated from the Iraqi treasury to the defense ministry to buy new weapons. About $400 million was spent on outdated equipment, while the rest of the money was simply stolen, he said in the interview, which aired Sunday.

Allawi, who has repeatedly leveled such accusations in the past, said the arms fraud is "one of the biggest thefts in history" and that corrupt former Iraqi officials are now "running around the world hiding and scurrying around."

He did not name the officials who allegedly stole the money. Iraqi investigators are probing several weapons and equipment deals engineered by former procurement officer Ziad Cattan and other officials including former Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan.

Shaalan, a Sunni-Arab who held the defense portfolio under former interim Prime Minster Ayad Allawi's government, has denied any wrongdoing.

Most of the fraudulent arms purchases were allegedly made during Ayad Allawi's term. The former prime minister, who took office after occupation authorities turned over sovereignty to Iraqis on June 28, 2004, is a cousin of Ali Allawi.

When new Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi took office in May 2005, an investigation was opened into several alleged cases of corruption.

Tapes obtained by "60 Minutes" from a former associate of Cattan allegedly captured Cattan talking about paying large bribes to Iraqi officials.

Cattan, wanted by Iraqi authorities and now living in Paris, was interviewed in the same "60 Minutes" broadcast and said he can account for the hundreds of millions he used to purchase weapons.

"I have documentation. I give it to you in your hands," Cattan said.

He said the tapes, excerpts of which were played on the broadcast, had been doctored and were not authentic.

Experts at Jane's, a leading authority on military hardware, told "60 Minutes" the documentation Cattan provided did not prove whether any of the weapons he ordered — paid for in advance — had been delivered to Iraq.

Judge Radhi al-Radhi, chief of Iraq's Public Integrity Commission, told "60 Minutes" he had obtained arrest warrants for some top defense ministry officials in October 2005, and almost all of the suspects fled the country.

Al-Radhi said aside from the hundreds of millions of dollars believed to have been stolen by the officials, the arms that did make their way to Iraq — Soviet-era helicopters, bulletproof vests and ammunition — were in such poor shape they could not be used.

Al-Radhi said those accused of the fraud are thought to be hiding mostly in Europe and the Middle East but he is not receiving help from those countries in recovering any of the money or in apprehending the suspects.

Iraqi government officials could not immediately be reached for comment by The Associated Press.

But Sheik Sabah al-Saadi, chairman of the Iraqi Parliament's Integrity Commission, told the AP he had written to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry on Sunday asking it to contact Interpol to detain all those involved in the defense corruption case, including former Defense Minister Shaalan.

He said he had documents that show the theft of $2.2 billion from the time of Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003 until now.

Settlements Grow On Arab Land, Despite Promises Made To U.S.

The European Union Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana said following a meeting with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah Thursday that “the Palestinian people have suffered and suffered a lot, and it is time that the occupation that started in 1967 is over.”

But what can he achieve when behind the scenes, efforts for peace are diverted…

Taken from Haaretz, 24/10/2006
By Amos Harel

A secret, two year investigation by the defense establishment shows that there has been rampant illegal construction in dozens of settlements and in many cases involving privately owned Palestinian properties.

The information in the study was presented to two defense ministers, Amir Peretz and his predecessor Shaul Mofaz, but was not released in public and a number of people participating in the investigations were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements.

According to security sources familiar with the study, the material is "political and diplomatic dynamite."

In conversations with Haaretz, the sources maintained that the report is not being made public in order to avoid a crisis with the U.S. government.

Brigadier General Baruch Spiegel, assistant to the Defense Minister, retired earlier this month. Spiegel was also in charge of the various issues relating to the territories, which Dov Weisglass, chief of staff in prime minister Ariel Sharon's office, promised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in writing that Israel would deal with. These commitments included illegal settlement building, improvements in the conditions of Palestinian civilians, and a closer oversight over the conduct of soldiers at IDF roadblocks.

One of Spiegel's tasks was to update the data base on settlement activities. During talks with American officials and non-government organizations such as Peace Now, it emerged that the defense establishment lacked up to date information on the settlements, which was mostly based on data provided by the Civil Administration in the territories.

The lack of updated information stemmed from the fact that the defense establishment preferred not to know what was going on, but was also linked to a number of key officials in the Civil Administration actively deleting information from the data base out of ideological allegiance with the settlers.

Spiegel and his team compared the data available from the Civil Administration to that of the Americans, and carried out dozens of overflights of the territories, using private aircraft at great expense, in order to complete the data base.

The findings of the study, security sources say, show an amazing discrepancy between the Civil Administration's data and the reality on the ground. The data in Spiegel's investigation served as the basis for the report on the illegal outposts prepared by attorney Talya Sasson and made public in March 2005.

"Everyone is talking about the 107 outposts," said a source familiar with the data, "but that is small change. The really big picture is the older settlements, the 'legal' ones. The construction there has been ongoing for years, in blatant violation of the law and the regulations of proper governance."

Three years ago, in talks with the Americans, Israel promised that all new construction in the older settlements would take place near existing neighborhoods. The idea was that construction would be limited to meeting the needs of the settlements' natural growth, and bringing to an end the out-of-control expansion over territory.

In practice, the data shows that Israel failed to meet its commitments: many new neighborhoods were systematically built on the edge of areas of the settlement's jurisdiction, which is a much larger territory than the actual planning charts account for.

The data also shows that in many cases the construction was carried out on private Palestinian land. In the masterplans, more often than not, Palestinian properties were included in the construction planned for the future. These included Palestinian properties to which the state had promised access.

However, exploiting the intifada and arguing that the settlers should not be exposed to security risks, Palestinian farmers were prevented access to their properties that were annexed by Israeli settlements.

In many settlements, including Ofra and Mevo Horon, homes have been constructed on private Palestinian land.

"The media is busy with the outposts, but how many of these are really large settlements like Migron? In most cases, it's a matter of a few mobile homes. Spiegel's study shows the real situation in the settlements themselves - and it is a lot more serious than what we knew to date," one of the sources said.

A senior security official expressed concern that with Spiegel's retirement, the data base will not be updated and the data will be lost.

"The [defense] establishment does not necessarily have an interest in preserving this information. It may cause diplomatic embarrassment vis-a-vis the Americans and cause a political scandal. It is not unlikely that there will be those who will seek to destroy the data," the senior officer says.

Other relevant sources said it is necessary for an objective, external source, like the State Comptroller's office, to intervene in this matter.

A statement issued by the Defense Minister's office in response said that "the matter is being examined internally and staff work will be completed soon, and the parts of the report that can be published will be made available. The Defense Minister will discuss the matter with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert."

Meanwhile, construction in the new outposts has intensified. Sources in the Yesha Council say that since the Lebanon War, "Junior officers on the ground are in our favor and in many instances turn a blind eye regarding mobile homes in place."

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There will never be peace in the middle East until these settlements stop. There is only one organisation that accurately records the developments of these settlements - PeaceNow(.org.il)

The basic principles of the movement from the outset were the right of Israel to live within secure borders and the right of our neighbors to do the same, including the right of Palestinians to self-determination. In time the movement became convinced the only viable solution to the conflict was the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories adjacent to Israel, which were occupied as a result of the 1967 war.

Heres are the latest report of settlements activity in occupied Palestine...

For Construction in Outposts - click here
For Construction in the Settlements - click here

For the report in Ynetnews
For the report in Haaretz

Check them out for accurate reports.

The Real Axis of Evil; A State Without Mercy

Our representatives do not represent the American people any more than our main stream media represents what the people of the United States.

Taken from PalestineChronicle.com
Article by William A. Cook, 24.10.06

“And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the Lord. … shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?” (Jeremiah 9:3, 5:29)

Nothing in the past 60 years revealed the true face of Israel to the world at large (and perhaps to the Lord above) as its illegal invasion of Lebanon. Never before has the Israeli government allowed the world to witness the depth of its brutal aggression as it defied international law with its collective punishment of the innocent.

At no time in the past has Israel lost control of the flow of information allowed into or out of Israel and the occupied territories until it abandoned its borders and invaded Lebanon. That mistake ripped away the veil of “victim hood” that the Israeli propaganda machine had constructed around the tiny, beleaguered state beset with fanatics intent on erasing it “from the map” and suicide bombers that threatened death in the streets.

For a full month the world watched as Israel let loose the enormous power of its military might on small towns, on cities, on roads and bridges, on electric power plants and water supply stations, on ports and ships, on oil tanks and beaches, and on the innocent who fled by car, truck, and foot. The condemnation from the world communities appeared universal, until one turned to America. Here our representatives crawled before AIPAC begging them to pen a resolution that would show our absolute commitment to the devastation being wrought on the Lebanese.

Fortunately, our representatives do not represent the American people any more than our main stream media represents what the people of the United States feel regarding the state without mercy, the reprehensible state of Israel. Indeed, the Jewish state of Israel does not represent the Jews of America. Listen to what Jews with a conscience say to the state of Israel: “There is no Jewish safety, nor claims to justice, reason, or equity, beyond Jewish commitment to the unconditional safety and liberation of the peoples of Palestine, Lebanon and the other Arab and Muslim countries currently under attack by Israel, the U.S. and its allies.”

Real Jews, those committed to the morals that give strength to Judaism, demand of Israel that “(1) it stop its brutal siege on Gaza and on Lebanon and call for an unconditional cease fire; (2) it stop expansion of the Israeli Wall of Separation, dismantle the completed sections, and completely withdraw from Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem; (3) the United States support the United Nations resolutions demanding that Israel uphold international law and support the sanctions against Israel necessary to enforce these resolutions; (4) the United States end military and economic aid to Israel; (5) that Israel support reparations for the Palestinian and Lebanese people for the death and destruction they have suffered and for the aid towards the rebuilding of their countries.” (Petition for U.S. Jewish Solidarity with Muslims and Arab Peoples).

Once the state of Israel realized that its mask of “victim hood” had been lifted and that the world had turned against its atrocities, it quickly accepted intervention by the UN. But its belligerence and defiance of the United Nations and international law continues, most brutally in the millions of unexploded cluster bombs left for the displaced people of Lebanon when they returned home and with the ever present war planes that invade Lebanese air space daily. Now the TV cameras are gone. The world no longer watches the wanton slaughter. Yet Israel has not abandoned its slaughter in Palestine; it’s now into the fourth month, hidden behind the prison walls erected by Israel to keep the cameras out and the people in.

No one sees inside Gaza; no TV anchor man or woman goes to Gaza to show the world what true terror is; nothing seeps through the locked gates that strangle the people inside; nothing reveals to the outside world that Israel and the U.S. are systematically and silently starving over a million people who suffer intense malnutrition; no statistics reveal the rate of unemployment that devastates a people unable to send its produce out or bring goods in; no information tells the world that Israel prevents medical supplies from reaching the people, that hospitals operate on generators only, that medical staff have been murdered, that access to care has been curbed; no one explains to the world the crippling impact this imprisonment has on the minds and souls of children who live in constant fear beneath the boots of an occupying army; no one talks about this calculated genocide behind walls as impenetrable as those at Auschwitz-Birkenau. No one is witness to this nation without mercy.

Inside Palestine there is a group that monitors the abominations committed on behalf of the Jewish state by the IDF, the Palestine Center for Human Rights. Consider just a handful of the statistics they have gathered that are relevant to the siege of Gaza. For the past four months the state of Israel has wrecked havoc on the people of Gaza killing over 320, roughly one third the number Israel slaughtered in Lebanon, including about 60 children, an abomination in any language. Two Israeli soldiers have been killed. As this sixth year of the Israeli occupation of Palestine comes to an end, the IDF killed 3859 Palestinians, 3069 of them civilians (79%).

In this last year, Israel killed 504 Palestinians, 398 civilians and 93 children (23%). In targeted killings, Israeli language for assassinations, 376 died, 209 civilians not targeted, including 71 children. Roughly 80% of those killed by Israelis are civilians (PCHR Reports).

Why mention such statistics: Americans never see them, their Congress is immune to them, and the United Nations is powerless to act since the United States, the power behind Israel, vetoes any action raised against this state that has no mercy. I mention these facts for two reasons, to mark the most recent and evident atrocity executed by the state of Israel against the people of Palestine, especially those trapped in the prison of Gaza, and to protest the absence of debate about the perils to the United States brought about by our Congress and the Executive branch’s absolute support for the state of Israel as it carries out untold illegal acts of collective punishment on the people of Palestine.

Let’s put it plainly: Israel is the real “axis of evil,” the primary cause that has brought forth on the United States the terror it fears, as the 9/11 Commission understood but did not report. This government of the Bush administration, working with a Congress that capitulates to the desires of the American Israeli Political Action Committee, not only supports but encourages the outrages committed by this state without mercy. Perhaps we should not be surprised by this, after all this Congress on September 28th passed the Military Commissions Act which, like the laws existing in Israel, “codifies racial and political discrimination, legalizes kidnaping and torture of those the government deems its political enemies, and eliminates habeas corpus – the ancient precept that prevents the police from arresting and holding without cause – a basic protection common to all modern legal systems, and one that dates to the Magna Carta.” (“America’s Nuremberg Laws,” Ted Rall, Commondreams 10/12/06)

It is precisely because this government supports an apartheid state that employs draconian and manifestly illegal laws in the areas it occupies that has turned the Arab countries of the mid-east and, with an ever growing hostility to America’s arrogant hypocrisy in its support of Israel, the nation states of the EU and Asia against the United States.

What is the true nature of this state of Israel that commands the allegiance of the American people?

It is a state without mercy, a state without morals, a state premised on racism, a state built on deception and lies,

*a state defiant of international law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Geneva Conventions that apply to occupying powers,

*a state, unlike North Korea or Iran, the other identified Axis of Evil states, that has invaded neighboring states and occupies them,

*a state, unlike all nations in the mid-east, that possesses weapons of mass destruction including hundreds of nuclear weapons and refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty,

*a state that uses cluster bombs and internationally banned weapons of warfare, not only against the innocent people of Lebanon, but the defenseless people of Palestine,

*a state that proclaims itself above the law as it executes individuals without arrest, without charges brought, without counsel, without habeas corpus and trial by jury,

*a state that imprisons over 10,000 Palestinians without charge and without due process of law,

*a state that tortures those it imprisons,

*a state that constructs a wall, in defiance of the International Court of Justice and the United Nations, that encircles the Palestinians with full intention of decimating their economy and hence their livelihood as well as their chance to create a state of their own, while inflicting a psychological humiliation that is inhumane and in defiance of every principle of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,

*a state that has systematically confiscated, appropriated, annexed, and assimilated virtually all land belonging to the Palestinians in a 60 year period of time leaving them approximately 14% of their original land making it the greatest visible land theft known to human kind in our day,

*a state whose laws protect a group that belongs to a religion and denies equality of citizenship to all others including the indigenous people of the land,

*a state that has defied more than 160 UNGA and 39 UNSC Resolutions demanding it act as a civilized state abiding by international law and protocol,

*a state that will not tolerate interference by the UN in its calculated genocide of the Palestinian people,

*a state that, through its Zionist supporters in America, particularly AIPAC, influences U.S. policy in the mid-east that has resulted in the unlawful invasion of Iraq and irrational economic and political procedures against Syria and Iran,

*a state that has convinced our Congress that it provide billions of dollars to ensure that the state of Israel continues this genocide of the Palestinian people,

*a state that proclaims itself a democracy but is not and, with malicious intent, confiscates the money belonging to a democratically elected government in Palestine and arrests their representatives without charge or trial,

*a state that proclaims peace but creates conditions that prevent peace,

*a state that, like the U.S. under Bush, has reached the nadir of the civilized state, a return to lawless barbarism inflicted on the weak by the strong, the imposition of the will of the few on the many,

*and, finally, in all brazen hypocrisy, a state that cries to the world that it is the victim of unspeakable cruelty and in constant peril of obliteration by forces within and without. And we wonder why the U.S. is castigated throughout the world when it supports this rogue state, this state without mercy.

Consider what Israel has done to the Palestinians. It has disfranchised a people in full defiance of international law when, in 1967, the Israeli government declared and treated inhabitants of occupied Palestine as non-citizens and foreign residents. Residents absent during this time period, approximately 250,000, were not allowed to return.

The IDF withdrew IDs from thousands of Palestinians when their visas expired thus disfranchising them making them permanent residents but not citizens.”Today, more than half of the eight million or so Palestinians are considered to be de jure stateless persons.”

The state of Israel created these conditions by issuing three laws: the Absentees’ Property Law, the Law of Return (that granted citizenship to Jews from anywhere in the world and denied Palestinians right of return), and the Israel Citizenship Law.

These laws “nullified the rights of the displaced non-Jewish population.” Yet, Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 (to which Israel is a signatory) declares that “everyone has the right to a nationality.” These actions have resulted in devastating conditions for Palestinians both economically and psychologically. (Abbas Shiblak, “Palestine Displacement”). Israel as an occupying power acted in defiance of international law.

From its very founding the state of Israel contained the seeds of apartheid. “The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel – known as ‘Israel’s Declaration of Independence – does not declare Israel an independent State, nor does it declare Israel a sovereign State, it rather declares Israel a Jewish State ... the Jewish State in the political Zionist sense of the term was to be an apartheid state.” (Uri Davis, Apartheid Israel). Dr. Davis refers particularly to the illegalities committed by Israel against the Palestinians by noting the acts of “ethnic cleansing of the majority of the native indigenous Palestinian Arab people from the territories that came under the control of the Israeli army and razing some 400 Palestinian rural and urban localities to the ground ...” and the plantation of Jewish settlements and subsequent annexation by the State in “violation of both the UN Charter and of international law.” He further stipulates that “Israeli claims to west Jerusalem, Safad or Jaffa ... are as thoroughly invalid as Israeli claims to East Jerusalem, Hebron or Gaza ...” In short, the present state of Israel as proclaimed by its current government does not legally exist and has not been legally sanctioned by the international community.

Anyone with eyes to see traveling from West Jerusalem to East Jerusalem cannot help but grasp the intentional and cynically calculated manner by which the Israeli state destroys the mental and physical well being of the Palestinian people. Herded like cattle, branded with ID cards, deprived of normal conveyance, forced to stand in long lines in intense heat or freezing cold, humiliated by teenagers dressed in uniforms and wielding an arrogant and insulting tongue, the people move back and forth between the squalor of their cramped homes and the splendor of the new Jerusalem, constructed in good measure with American tax payer money. Now, the people of Gaza, after four months of siege, unable to act in their own behalf since the Israeli military controls all access and egress from this sliver of land, one of the most congested in the world, await the inevitable – a slow agonizing journey into malnutrition, disease, depression and death.

Consider, finally, what must be considered the two most glaring acts of torture perpetrated by the Israelis on both the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza: the Walls that imprison them and the demolitions that eradicate their homes. Under Sharon and Olmert, the Jewish state has moved to systematically incarcerate the entire population, to imprison them collectively against international law and the UN resolutions. An occupying force has responsibility to provide for the welfare of those it occupies; not Israel. It establishes full military control by creating a Wall that confiscates not only land but natural resources from the people, particularly water and farm land, and then prevents them from selling what little remains by locking the gates that give access to the outside world.

Add to the torture inflicted on the people by the Wall, the introduction of a policy of home demolition that has resulted in the displacement of 80% of the Palestinians from what is now called Israel, and the viciousness of Zionist policies to eradicate the Palestinians from their “historic land,” becomes manifest, not to the outside world that never sees this policy in action, but to those who have been forcefully evacuated from their homes and land. This is a form of collective punishment, “either for ‘deterrence’ or for purposes of intimidation.”

Throughout Israel homes continue to be demolished. I’ve had lunch prepared by the displaced family in a home that had been demolished three times, always at night without warning, always with the children clinging to their parents as the bulldozers ram the walls and tear apart the home they were forced to evacuate. This home, built to house a family that could not get a permit to build, a policy that Israel enforces in order to eliminate Palestinians from land Israel wishes to confiscate, rebuilt its home with the help of international groups and peace loving Israelis, until they were finally forced to rebuild their home as a “peace center” to which outside groups were invited so they could witness the consequences of Israel’s demolition policy.

“Israel is the only Western country and Jerusalem the only city that systematically deny permits and demolish houses of a particular national group. These actions, reminiscent of apartheid-era South Africa and the Serbs in Kosovo, clearly violate international covenants of human rights.” (Jeff Halper, “The Message of the Bulldozer”). “The Global Strategy for Shelter to the year 2000, adopted by the UN General Assembly (Resolution 43/181. 20 December 1988), declares that ‘The right to adequate housing is universally recognized by the community of nations. Governments [must] accept a fundamental obligation to protect and improve houses and neighborhoods, rather than damage or destroy them.”

When torture is undertaken to elicit information that might reveal future harm to the torturer, one might excuse the act by denying the reality that no truth comes from the mouth of one in pain; but when torture is done for the sheer delight of witnessing pain and suffering, of delighting in the humiliation inflicted on the weak and helpless, of sick enjoyment derived by seeing children stricken in fear, mothers torn with grief, old women and aged men fallen in the ruins of what had been their life’s work, their fruit trees demolished, their homes leveled, their belongings strewn and broken beneath the crumbled walls, then there is no human excuse for such acts, only the recognition that people who can inflict pain will and will defend their sickness with excuses that have no basis in civilized justice.

The Nazis justified their experiments with a scientific rationale that mocked the reality of their evil. We now witness a justification of an equal evil as securing the safety of a population that has broken every known civilized law against another people to protect it from the wrath of those it has devastated. Such is the unmitigated gall of the state without mercy.

Having arrived now at the reality behind the mask Israel and the Bush administration present to the international community and especially the American people, it behooves us to consider solutions to the dilemma that creates the backlash America faces and, indeed, Britain, that has cast its lot with us, as they see their soldiers become the icons to destroy rather than the icons to thank for bringing “freedom” to Iraq and the “new Mid-East.” By yoking itself to the Zionist cause, the eradication of the Palestinians and the theft of their land, the U.S. President and the Congress have ensured a continuing supply of “terrorists” for years to come.

Ironically, the international community has faced this issue over and over again in the UNGA and the UNSC in the 100s of Resolutions it has placed before Israel, yet nothing is done because the U.S. vetoes the voice of outrage there. And in muting the voice of the UN, the U.S. has silenced the voice of the main stream media and hence the voice of the American people. But, as we have noted, the moral conscience of true Jews has spoken on this deceit and presented a plan for change. It appears as well that in America the people have become conscious of the masks worn by their representatives, the righteous face of Tom DeLay, Dick Cunningham, Denny Hastert, Mark Foley, the whole crew that proclaim their morals before their constituents and then slither behind closed doors to commit their sins.

The Israeli people have yet to show similar signs of an awakening. But the mask has been torn off and fear of exposure, of loss of the Zionist cause, of loss of Judaism’s cohesiveness hangs in the balance. The clarion voices of Uri Davis, Uri Avnery, Gideon Levy, Ilan Pappe, in the midst of the battlefield, calls the Jews for peace to rise once again so that justice can be done to the Palestinians.

Whatever crew of new representatives the American voters put in office this November must not become the lackeys of AIPAC and march to the drum of Kadima. 39% of Americans know the danger of this linkage with evil, with a nation driven by zealots and merciless men. They know the destructive power of yoking this nation to one that is racist and driven by an ideology of destruction, oblivious to international law and human rights.

It’s the people who must demand that those they put in office serve them, not themselves, that they protect our Bill of Rights, not dismantle it, that they respect and uphold the values collectively agreed upon in 1948 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, not join with forces who have demonstrated their desire to ethnically cleanse a people of their land to enlarge their own. Ultimately, it’s the voice of the people in the U.S. that must join forces with the voices of the international community as represented in the General Assembly and force Israel and the U.S. government to acquiesce to justice in favor of genocide.

The American moralist, Nathaniel Hawthorne, in the first half of the 19th century, captured the plight of the innocent Young Goodman Brown as he was led deep into the black forest to witness man’s inhumanity to man, and, while still young, came home a wiser but bitter man. What he witnessed was the hypocrisy of those who proclaim their goodness while they inflict their wickedness, a curse perhaps that inflicts all of human kind and for that reason he lived out the rest of his life in gloom and horror.

We too can witness the wickedness that one people inflict on another if we will but open our eyes, see what the TV cameras saw when the veil was lifted in Lebanon, understand the inconceivable wrath that envelopes the Palestinians, done with the blessing of this Bush government in our name, and cry out to the Lord that his soul be avenged on such a nation as this, that justice be done and genocide cease for that alone holds in our time the promise of peace.

-William Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of Tracking Depception: Bush's Mideast Policy He can be reached at: cookb@ULV.EDU.

Rice: Bush ‘Axis Of Evil’ Reference As Accurate

Taken from MSNBC, October 24, 2006

Top U.S. diplomat says history proves 2002 reference was ‘good analysis’

Recent events in Iran and North Korea support President Bush’s 2002 claim that those nations were part of an “axis of evil,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday.

After discussions of the North Korean nuclear test and the anti-Semitic remarks of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, radio host Sean Hannity asked Rice about the axis remark.

“You think of some of the world reaction to the president’s use of the word ‘axis of evil,’ and then you see how events have been unfolding,” Hannity remarked.

“It was a pretty good analysis, wasn’t it?” Rice replied. “It really was.”

Bush used the term to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea, states he said sponsor terrorism and seek weapons of mass destruction. Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, was toppled the next year in a U.S.-led coup, but autocratic governments remain in place in the other two countries, and both have nuclear programs that alarm the West.

The remark in Bush’s State of the Union address drew immediate criticism as too shrill and potentially damaging to U.S. foreign policy. In the case of North Korea, it has been blamed for souring what might have been an opportunity for the U.S. to engage the reclusive Pyongyang leadership and negotiate an end to its nuclear weapons program. The Bush administration says North Korea was determined to cheat and that it pursued a more effective strategy of international diplomacy.

“The president three years ago realized that in order to manage the North Korean nuclear problem, a problem that’s been going for decades, we have to have a regional coalition,” Rice said in the interview. “This isn’t something the United States was going to be able to do alone.”

Proof of the strategy’s success came when China voted this month to impose sanctions on its neighbor and ally North Korea, she said.

On Iran, Rice said that nation’s people deserve a better leader. She predicted the U.N. Security Council will approve sanctions against Iran over its disputed nuclear program “in the next few weeks.”

Hannity asked Rice about her career plans, including what Rice has called her dream job of running the NFL. She did not seek the NFL commissioner’s job when it came open earlier this year, saying she still had work to do at the State Department.

“Yeah, I lost that, “ Rice said. “It came up a little early.”

Hannity tried a political question Rice has shot down for months: “You have no intention of running for president?”

“No,” Rice said.

“Never?”

“No.”

CIA Tried To Silence EU On Torture Flights

Taken from the Guardian, October 26, 2006
By Richard Norton-Taylor

A Boeing 737 BBJ with registrations N313P and N4476S, which may have carried terror suspects, has been seen at UK airports and is seen here at Palma, Majorca.

The CIA tried to persuade Germany to silence EU protests about the human rights record of one of America's key allies in its clandestine torture flights programme, the Guardian can reveal.

According to a secret intelligence report, the CIA offered to let Germany have access to one of its citizens, an al-Qaida suspect being held in a Moroccan cell. But the US secret agents demanded that in return, Berlin should cooperate and "avert pressure from EU" over human rights abuses in the north African country. The report describes Morocco as a "valuable partner in the fight against terrorism".

The classified documents prepared for the German parliament last February make clear that Berlin did eventually get to see the detained suspect, who was arrested in Morocco in 2002 as an alleged organiser of the September 11 strikes.

He was flown from Morocco to Syria on another rendition flight. Syria offered access to the prisoner on the condition that charges were dropped against Syrian intelligence agents in Germany accused of threatening Syrian dissidents. Germany dropped the charges, but denied any link.

After the CIA offered a deal to Germany, EU countries adopted an almost universal policy of downplaying criticism of human rights records in countries where terrorist suspects have been held. They have also sidestepped questions about secret CIA flights partly because of growing evidence of their complicity.

The disclosure is among fresh revelations about how the CIA flew terrorist suspects to locations where they were tortured, and Britain's knowledge of the practice known as "secret rendition". They are contained in Ghost Plane, by Stephen Grey, the journalist who first revealed details of secret CIA flights in the Guardian a year ago. More than 200 CIA flights have passed through Britain, records show.

He describes how one CIA pilot told him that Prestwick airport, near Glasgow, was a popular destination for refuelling stops and layovers. "It's an 'ask-no-questions' type of place and you don't need to give them any advance warning you're coming," the pilot said.

The CIA used planes of Air America, a group of private companies it secretly owned, and a second company, Aero Contractors. A CIA Gulfstream V jet, frequently used for the secret rendition of prisoners, flew to Diego Garcia, the British Indian Ocean territory where the US has a large base, the book says. Grey plans to publish more than 3,000 logs of the CIA flights on the internet this week.

CIA pilots, sometimes using false identities and whose planes regularly passed through Britain, ran up huge bills in luxury hotels after flying terrorist suspects to secret locations where they were tortured. But they revealed their whereabouts and identities by indiscreet use of mobile phones and allowed outsiders to track their aircraft's flights.

On one occasion, CIA pilots and crew lived it up in Majorca after rendering Benyam Mohammed, an Ethiopian brought up in Notting Hill, west London, to Afghanistan where he was tortured. Benyam was detained in Pakistan early in 2002, and then flown to Morocco, where he says he suffered appalling torture. He is being held at Guantánamo Bay.

Benyam has said in a statement to his lawyer that he was tortured for more than two years after being questioned by US and British officials. He says that while in Morocco he was shown photos of people he knew from a west London mosque, and was asked about information he was told was supplied by MI5.

The UK government has consistently denied it has ever actively cooperated in the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" programme". The Foreign Office said yesterday that the government had "not approved and will not approve a policy of facilitating transfer of individuals through the UK to places where there are substantial grounds to believe they face a real risk of torture".

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According to an article published on the Independent on Sunday, 25 October 2006 , the German government is alleged to have received first-hand evidence that the CIA began torturing terrorist suspects at secret prisons in Europe shortly after the September 11 attacks.

Stern magazine quoted a leaked German intelligence report yesterday which said that only weeks after September 11 2001, two agents and a translator visited a US military prison at the American "Eagle Base" in the Bosnian town of Tuzla, where they saw a torture victim.

The German intelligence report said US interrogators at the base had beaten a 70-year-old terrorist suspect with rifle butts and that "his injuries meant that he had to be given 20 stitches to the head wound he sustained". The report said the American interrogator responsible "appeared to be proud" of his actions.

Stern said the German intelligence agents had been given access to documents confiscated by the Americans which were "smeared with blood". One German agent was said to have compared the actions of the US interrogators to Serbian war criminals during the break up of Yugoslavia. "The Serbs ended up before the international court in The Hague for this kind of thing," he was quoted as saying.

The two German agents and their translator had been asked to appear at the base to help the Americans interrogate suspects and help evaluate confiscated material. But according to the leaked report, they immediately informed Germany's federal prosecutor of what they had witnessed and left the base shortly afterwards.

The magazine's report appeared to directly contradict the German government's claims that it had only been made aware of the possible existence of secret CIA interrogation centres in Europe through media reports. Stern said that German intelligence, the country's Federal Criminal Bureau and German military intelligence had all been informed about the agents' visit to "Eagle Base". All three agencies refused to comment on the Stern report yesterday.

Germany was heavily criticised last year for allowing CIA prisoner rendition flights to stop over in the country. The German parliament is currently considering opening an investigation into allegations by a former terrorist suspect held prisoner by the US in Afghanistan that German special forces assisted in his interrogation.

Blair-Bush Ties Hamper Europe, Says Schröder

Taken from the Guardian, UK, October 26, 2006
By Jess Smee

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Photograph: Getty Images Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder has written a damning critique of Tony Blair's special relationship with the United States, saying it hampered Britain's links with Europe.

In his memoirs, Decisions: My Life in Politics, which were launched yesterday, Mr Schröder examines Mr Blair's relationship with George Bush and attempts to divine the motivation behind it.

"The British special relationship to America weighs on the European-focused future of the country," he writes. "More than others, Britain is prepared to anticipate American wishes and turn them into European political issues.

"I don't rule out that [Mr Blair's] stance could have been motivated by internal politics, driven by the aim of winning British-US relations back from the Conservatives, who made it their terrain during the Thatcher-Reagan era."

When he became German leader, Mr Schröder and Mr Blair bonded over similarities in their centre-left politics. In 1999 they even wrote a paper together, Europe: The Third Way - Die neue Mitte, which heralded a new era of social democracy.

But their unity did not last, Mr Schröder said. He described how initial high hopes for a triangular relationship between Germany, France and Britain soon proved illusory and Mr Blair's position on Europe turned out to be a "big disappointment"."In the foreseeable future, Britain will not give Europe any momentum," he said. "Quite the opposite, the country will continue to protect its role as a transatlantic mediator, even if that is to the cost of the European decision-making process."

He described how signals from Washington that they were "not amused" by a European bid to hammer out its own security policy prompted Britain to swiftly distance itself from the plans.

Tensions between London and Berlin peaked after Mr Schröder's outspoken criticism of the war in Iraq - a stance which drove German-US relations to their lowest point since the second world war, but also helped him retain power. "The British premier, certainly a man of strong moral convictions and by no means war-hungry, is paying a high personal price for this engagement," he wrote.

But he said that despite polarised positions on the Iraq war, they were able to maintain a working relationship based on "friendly cooperation".

During his leadership, Mr Schröder grew increasingly forthright about Britain. In 2005, during his last EU summit before handing over power, he told reporters Britain's free-market economic and social system was "certainly not" a model for the whole EU, saying continental Europeans wanted to preserve their social systems.

Excerpts of the memoirs have already caused a stir at home and abroad, most notably with his criticism of Mr Bush's "God-fearing" politics, where he described how the US president made important decisions on the basis of his religious faith.

Both Bill Clinton and Mr Bush found that their national interests were best served by a fragmented Europe, Mr Schröder commented, which gave way to America's "divide and rule" approach to Europe, especially in relation to military, trade and economic affairs.

"But the United States could always count on its special relationship with Britain," he wrote.

Report Faults Media, Police For Australian Race Riots

Taken from Yahoo News, 19.10.06

SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia's worst ever race riots were partly fuelled by media and allowed to spin out of control by an inadequate police response to the build-up of tensions, a police report has said.

The findings were part of a half-finished report released by New South Wales Police on the Cronulla riots in which white mobs attacked Lebanese-Australians in order to "reclaim the beach" last December.

Retired assistant police commissioner Norm Hazzard found evidence of racism and bias by local residents of Cronulla as well as of violent criminality by some Middle Eastern youths, the report showed.

But it also said that the risk assessment and planning by police ahead of the December 11 riot was flawed and inadequate and that the simmering tensions were heightened by talk-back radio shows.

"The review concluded that the risk assessment to indicate the necessary level of response was flawed," said the incomplete report, which was released by police under pressure from local politicians.

It noted that more than 270,000 text messages promoting racially motivated violence were sent in the lead-up to the riot, giving police time to prepare for possible trouble.

Instead only 47 riot-trained officers, with a further 52 on stand-by, were deployed to Cronulla on December 11, the report noted.

"Subsequently, the planning for the event was not adequate and some specialist resources that could have assisted in the management of the operation were not deployed," the report said.

Media, particularly talk-back radio, were also blamed for allegedly whipping up emotions in the week leading up to the riot, prompting Hazzard to urge media to use "caution" when reporting on issues that "may lead to civil unrest".

"The Cronulla riots clearly reaffirm the influence the media has in setting community mood," the report found.

The riots marked the climax of months of growing tensions between Cronulla residents and people of Middle Eastern descent, most of them Lebanese, visiting Cronulla beach from other areas of Sydney.

The violence was sparked by an attack on two Cronulla beach lifeguards - who are iconic Australian figures -- allegedly by a group of ethnic-Lebanese men.

The unprecedented violence in Cronulla led to retaliatory attacks in which churches, shops and cars were trashed, prompting widespread debate about the extent of latent racism in this multi-ethnic nation.

U.S. Skinhead Violence On The Rise: Watchdog Group

Taken from Yahoo News, Oct 20, 2006
By Matthew Bigg

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Violence by skinhead gangs in the United States is on the rise because of splits in the extreme right movement, a U.S. watchdog group said on Friday.

The Hammerskin Nation gang has long dominated the skinhead scene, but in the last two years other gangs like the Outlaw Hammerskins and the Vinlander Social Club have rebelled against them, said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project.

"When these small groups are trying to prove themselves you see an upsurge in extreme violence," said Potok who estimated that tens of thousands of people belonged to U.S. skinhead gangs.

"The remarkable thing of this rebellion is that it is a rebellion of the ultraviolent against the extremely violent," said Potok.

The gangs consist mainly of young white men and some women who are bonded around music, racist ideology and violence, according to the center, which is based in Montgomery, Alabama, and has tracked far-right groups for decades.

"The skinhead scene is both growing and is very much destabilized (because of splits in its ranks) and that presents a danger to the public," Potok said in an interview after the center published a report on skinhead gangs.

Skinheads became active in the United States in the early 1980s. Their violence reached a peak between 1988 and 1992 before falling off because of a crackdown by law enforcement agencies.

The gangs are mainly active in cities like Los Angeles, Portland, Salt Lake City, Denver, Boston and in the Midwest. The groups have links to similar gangs in Europe.

They are increasingly mixing with neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan groups, but pose no political threat because they are not linked to any mainstream party or organization, Potok said.

He said disaffected young people are initially attracted to the movement through music, which they usually hear on the Internet, and are later recruited at concerts before adopting the gangs' racist views.

There are also gangs of anti-racist skinheads, Potok said.

Masons Struggle With Racial Separation

Taken from Yahoo News, October 23, 2006
By JAY REEVES, Associated Press Writer

The Masons, the storied fraternal order whose members have included Mozart, George Washington and John Wayne, has become entwined across the Deep South with the remnants of another tradition in these parts: strict segregation.

Nationwide, Masonic groups operate in a separate-but-supposedly-equal system in which whites typically join one network of Masonic groups, called Grand Lodges, and blacks typically join another, called Prince Hall.

But in the South, it goes further: White-controlled Grand Lodges in 12 Southern states do not even officially recognize black Masons as their brothers — the Masonic term is "mutual recognition" — and in some cases, black lodges have taken similar stands.

Masons have quietly debated race relations for years, and the issue is increasingly coming into public view.

In Alabama, some dissident whites have split from the lodge system, and Republican Gov. Bob Riley's membership in an all-white lodge has drawn fire in his campaign for a second term. In North Carolina, white Masons recently voted down a bid to recognize members of the black group as fellow Masons.

"Only the states of the old Confederacy, minus Virginia and plus West Virginia, don't have mutual recognition," said Paul Bessel, a Maryland Mason who wrote a book on the topic. "There are, I'm sorry to say, some Masons who are racists. But the vast majority don't feel that way."

Grand Lodges and Prince Hall groups coexist with few problems and officially recognize each other in 38 states and the District of Columbia, with members free to mingle and attend each other's meetings. Frank Chandler, a leader of the black Masonic group in Delaware, was happy to see mutual recognition granted in his state last month.

"The importance of it to me is that this is 2006. If we as black folks and they as white folks can't live together, we're got real problems," said Chandler, a retired Delaware state trooper.

But Bessel said the separation in the Deep South is entrenched and remains in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia.

It also extends to Shriners, the men who wear funny red hats and operate a network of 22 charity hospitals for children. Shriners draw all their members from Masonry, and many of their policies are based on Masonic rules, Bessel said.

The Masonic movement, also known as Freemasonry, began in Enlightenment-area England and is known for its white aprons and architectural symbols. It came to the United States more than 250 years ago. Mainstream Masonry was controlled by whites, so blacks began meeting at lodges of their own in the 1770s; the organization that resulted was later named for one of the founders, Prince Hall.

The all-black lodges flourished alongside their white counterparts. White Masons in Washington state, briefly considered admitting Prince Hall Masons in 1890, Bessel said, but the resulting uproar kept most such proposals on hold until 1989, when the Grand Lodge of Connecticut passed a resolution formally recognizing black Masons.

Since then, 37 other state organizations have granted mutual recognition.

In Alabama, where critics say Grand Lodge members rejected a move to recognize black Masons in 1999, a few white Masons have formed a group outside the old system.

The issue also has become political, with Democrats accusing Alabama's governor of racism for his membership in an all-white lodge. Riley said he didn't know there were two separate Masonic groups and hadn't heard of mutual recognition until questioned recently by an Associated Press reporter.

This fall, white Masons in North Carolina refused to grant recognition to Prince Hall Masons. The vote was 681 for recognition and 404 against — just short of the two-thirds majority required, according to Ric Carter, editor of the state's Masonic newspaper. Black Masons in North Carolina granted recognition of white Masons in 2004.

The whites' refusal to reciprocate "raises the ugly head of racism, segregation, all over again," said the leader of Prince Hall Masons in North Carolina, Milton G. "Toby" Fitch Jr., a state judge and former majority leader in the North Carolina House.

"The best analogy I can give is Baptist churches: You have black Baptist churches, and you have white Baptist churches. But they both recognize each other as being Baptist. We are talking about accepting the fact that `you practice Masonry and I practice Masonry.'"

The head of Prince Hall Masons in Arkansas, Cleveland Wilson, said neither black nor white groups there have discussed mutual recognition. Extending Masonic brotherhood would be nice, he said, "but we're fine without them."

"I'm of the attitude that since they haven't shown any interest, I'm not interested either," Wilson said.

To Israel With Love (Why America gives Israel its unconditional support)

The Economist, Aug 3rd 2006

ANYBODY who doubts the size of the transatlantic divide over Israel should try discussing the Middle East conflagration in Britain and then doing the same in America. Everybody watches much the same grisly footage. But, by and large, people draw very different conclusions. The emphasis in Britain is overwhelmingly on the disproportionate scale of the response. Americans are much more inclined to give Israel the benefit of the doubt—and to blame Hizbullah. Some Jewish organisations are so confident of support for Israel that they even take out slots during news programmes, pleading for donations.

Opinion polls confirm that Americans are solidly on Israel's side. A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted on July 28th-30th showed that eight in ten Americans believed that Israel's action was justified—though a majority were worried about the scale of the action. A plurality (44%) thought that America was doing “about the right amount” to deal with the conflict. An earlier USA Today poll found that 53% put “a great deal” of the blame for the current crisis on Hizbullah, 39% put the blame on Iran and only 15% blamed Israel.

Similarly, Americans are far more likely than Europeans to side with Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A Pew Global Attitudes survey taken between March and May found that 48% of Americans said that their sympathies lay with the Israelis; only 13% were sympathetic towards the Palestinians. By contrast, in Spain for example, 9% sympathised with the Israelis and 32% with the Palestinians.

The political establishment is even more firmly behind Israel than the public is. Support for Israel stretches from San Francisco liberals like Nancy Pelosi to southern-fried conservatives like Bill Frist. The House and Senate have both passed bipartisan resolutions condemning Hizbullah and affirming Congress's support for Israel. The House version passed by 410 to 8 (of which three were from districts in Michigan with concentrations of Arab-Americans). The Senate resolution, sponsored by 62 senators—including the leaders of both parties—passed unopposed.

Indeed, the parties are engaged in a competition to see who can be the most pro-Israeli. Twenty or so Democrats, including Ms Pelosi, the House leader, and Harry Reid, the Senate leader, demanded that Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, retract his criticisms of Israel or have his invitation to address Congress cancelled. (Mr Maliki, strongly backed by the administration, was eventually allowed to go ahead.) Several leading Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, have addressed pro-Israeli rallies. The contrast with the simmering rage within the Labour Party over Tony Blair's support for George Bush could hardly be more marked.

Pro-Israeli forces command the intellectual high ground as well as the corridors of power. Commentators such as Charles Krauthammer issue column after column ridiculing the notion of proportionality and stressing Hizbullah's responsibility for civilian casualties. Most middle-of-the-road commentators question the effectiveness, rather than the morality, of Israel's actions. Out-and-out critics of Israel are relegated to the sidelines.

Why is America so much more pro-Israeli than Europe? The most obvious answer lies in the power of two very visible political forces: the Israeli lobby (AIPAC) and the religious right.

AIPAC, which has an annual budget of almost $50m, a staff of 200, 100,000 grassroots members and a decades-long history of wielding influence, is arguably the most powerful lobby in Washington, mightier even than the National Rifle Association.

“Thank God we have AIPAC, the greatest supporter and friend we have in the whole world,” says Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister. The lobby, which is the centrepiece of a co-ordinated body that includes pressure groups, think-tanks and fund-raising operations, produces voting statistics on congressmen that are carefully scrutinised by political donors. It also organises regular trips to Israel for congressmen and their staffs. (The Washington Post reports that Roy Blunt, the House majority whip, has been on four.)

The Christian right is also solidly behind Israel. White evangelicals are significantly more pro-Israeli than Americans in general; more than half of them say they strongly sympathise with Israel. (A third of the Americans who claim sympathy with Israel say that this stems from their religious beliefs.) Two in five Americans believe that Israel was given to the Jewish people by God, and one in three say that the creation of the state of Israel was a step towards the Second Coming.

Religious-right activists are trying to convert this latent sympathy into political support. John Hagee, a Texas televangelist who believes that supporting Israel is a “biblical imperative”, recently founded Christians United for Israel. Last month he brought 3,500 people from across the country to Washington to cheer Israel's war against Hizbullah. Mr Hagee's brigades held numerous meetings on Capitol Hill; both Mr Bush and Mr Olmert sent messages to his rally.

These pressure groups are clearly influential. Evangelical Christians make up about a quarter of the American electorate and are the bedrock of Mr Bush's support. Congressmen take on AIPAC at their peril. But they deal with well-heeled lobbies every day. And the power of the religious right can hardly explain why Democrats are so keen on Israel. Two other factors need to be considered: the war on Islamic radicalism, and deep cultural affinities between America and Israel.

Seeing themselves in Israel
Americans instinctively see events in the Middle East through the prism of September 11th 2001. They look at Hizbullah and Hamas with their Islamist slogans and masked faces and see the people who attacked America—and they look at Israeli citizens and see themselves. In America the “war on terror” is a fact of life, constantly reiterated. The sense that America is linked with Israel in a war against Islamist extremism is reinforced by Iranian statements about wiping Israel off the surface of the earth, and by the political advance of the Islamists of Hamas in Palestine.

But the biggest reason why Americans are so pro-Israel may be cultural. Americans see Israel as a plucky democracy in a sea of autocracies—a democracy that has every right to use force to defend itself. Europeans, on the other hand, see Israel as a reminder of the atavistic forces—from nationalism to militarism—that it has spent the post-war years trying to grow beyond.

Americans are staunch nationalists, much readier to contemplate the use of force than Europeans. A German Marshall Fund survey in 2005 found 42% of Americans strongly agreeing that “under some conditions, war is necessary to obtain justice” compared with just 11% of Europeans. A Pew survey found that the same proportion of Americans and Israelis believe in the use of pre-emptive force: 66%. Continental European figures were far lower.

Yet all this unquestioning support does not mean that America will give Israel absolute carte blanche to do whatever it wills. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, was visibly shaken after the tragedy in Qana where at least 28 civilians, half of them children, were killed by Israeli bombs. There are growing worries both about Israel's conduct of the war and its wider impact on the Middle East. Many of these anxieties are expressed by the “realist faction”.

Chuck Hagel, a Republican maverick, has given warning that America's relationship with Israel “cannot be at the expense of our Arab and Muslim relationships”. Richard Haass, a State Department official under George Bush senior who now heads the Council on Foreign Relations, has laughed publicly at the president's “birth of a new Middle East” optimism about the crisis. Some of the worries extend to conservatives. Tony Blankley, a former press secretary for Newt Gingrich and a fire-breathing columnist for the Washington Times, says that “We ignore world opinion at our peril.”

A few cracks are starting to appear. But they are still insignificant in the mighty edifice of support.

U.S. Rank On Press Freedom Slides Lower

Washington Post, October 24, 2006; Page A15
By Nora Boustany

Some poor countries, such as Mauritania and Haiti, improved their record in a global press freedom index this year, while France, the United States and Japan slipped further down the scale of 168 countries rated, the group Reporters Without Borders said yesterday.

The news media advocacy organization said the most repressive countries in terms of journalistic freedom - such as North Korea, Cuba, Burma and China - made no advances at all.

The organization's fifth annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index tracks actions against news media through the end of September. The group noted its concern over the declining rankings of some Western democracies as well as the persistence of other countries in imposing harsh punishments on media that criticize political leaders.

"Unfortunately nothing has changed in the countries that are the worst predators of press freedom, and journalists in North Korea, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, Cuba, Burma and China are still risking their life or imprisonment for trying to keep us informed," the organization said in a news release. North Korea holds the worst ranking at 168.

Iran ranks 162nd, between Saudi Arabia and China. The report said conditions in Russia and Belarus have not improved. It said that Russia continued to steadily dismantle the independent media and that the recent slaying of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya "is a poor omen for the coming year."

Northern European countries top the index, with no reported censorship, threats, intimidation or physical reprisals, either by officials or the public, in Finland, Ireland, Iceland and the Netherlands. All of those countries were ranked in first place.

Serious threats against the artists and publishers of the Muhammad cartoons, which caricatured the prophet of Islam, caused Denmark, which was also in first place last year, to drop to 19th place. Yemen, at 149th place, slipped four places, mostly because of the arrests of journalists and the closure of newspapers that reprinted the cartoons. Journalists in Algeria, Jordan, Indonesia and India were harassed because of the cartoons as well.

Although it ranked 17th on the first list, published in 2002, the United States now stands at 53, having fallen nine places since last year.

"Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of 'national security' to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his 'war on terrorism,' " the group said.

"The zeal of federal courts which, unlike those in 33 U.S. states, refuse to recognize the media's right not to reveal its sources, even threatens journalists whose investigations have no connection at all with terrorism," the group said.

Lucie Morillon, the organization's Washington representative, said the index is based on responses to 50 questions about press freedom asked of journalists, free press organizations, researchers, human rights activists and others.

France, 35th, dropped five places since last year because of searches of media offices and journalists' homes, as well as physical attacks on journalists during a trade union dispute, the group said.

In Lebanon, a series of bomb attacks targeting journalists and publishers in 2005, and Israeli military attacks last summer, contributed to a drop in the country's ranking from 56th to 107th in the past four years.

UK Special: MOD Angry But ITN Reports Were 'Fair And Accurate'

Taken from the Guardian, UK, Tuesday October 24, 2006
Leigh Holmwood

ITN executives strongly defended last week's news reports about injured British servicemen, and said the news broadcaster will not back down in the face of government criticism, a senior source said today.

The Ministry of Defence wrote to the news broadcaster yesterday accusing it of inaccurate and intrusive reporting about soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The MoD particularly singled out one report, broadcast last Monday, which it branded a "hatchet job", and said it was considering legal action over one wounded soldier's "invasion of privacy".

However, a senior ITN source has told MediaGuardian.co.uk that the news broadcaster stands by its reporting.

"The MoD raised a particular concern with our report that focused on the experience of a serving soldier with serious combat injuries sustained in Afghanistan, who had his treatment alongside civilians at Selly Oak hospital [in Birmingham]," the source said.

"But this was an issue that had already been raised as a problem by the head of the army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, and the day after our broadcast the prime minister himself said it was an issue that would be addressed. He has since announced that there will be a separate military ward opened at Selly Oak.

"We stand by our report which was fair, accurate and in the public interest." The source added that ITN had not yet replied to the MoD's letter, but that it was considering its response.

ITN has received backing from the National Union of Journalists, as well as serving and former soldiers.

The NUJ's national broadcasting organiser, Paul McLaughlin, said he was "very concerned" about the way the MoD had handled the issue, while contributors to an army internet forum, the British Army Rumour Service, said ITN was right to cover the issue.

"I just hope that ITN and ITV do not give into [the MoD]; all they have to do is look on here ... to see the support they have," one forum contributor said.

The MoD said ITN reporters had been banned from being embedded with troops until the news broadcaster "clarified" its concerns.

ITV news screened five reports in all about the treatment of British troops in its 6.30pm and 10.30pm bulletins last week.
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UK news agencies (such as ITN and BBC) are some of the most independent reporters of news in the world. It is shameful for the UK government to condemn ITN for inaccurate reporting to the public - have we forgotten how the government took the UK into a war with Iraq with false information?

Last week most people throughout the world was talking about the report of 650,000 people having died in Iraq, it now seems that (according to the Washington Post) the United Nations office in Baghdad says that Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has ordered the country’s medical authorities to stop providing the organization with monthly figures on the number of civilians killed and wounded in the conflict there, according to a confidential cable. Who is controlling the media in this instance? Is the puppet prime minister really in control?

Weekly Round Up: North Korea Is Very Sorry, Putin's Joke Unfunny & The UN Seat Still Up For Grabs

It’s been another hectic week in the world of politics. The most dominant news story has been North Korea saying sorry for the nuke test. The week really started with General Sir Richard Dannatt, chief of the UK general staff, stating that the presence of foreign troops might be "exacerbating" the situation in Iraq. We also had the stalemate in the UN Security council seat for Latin America between Venezuela and Guatemala. Midweek the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned Iran that they would have "a price to pay" if it doesn't back down from its nuclear ambitions. In response Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Europe was stirring up hatred in the Middle East by supporting Israel and warned it "may get hurt" if anger in the region boiled over. Also in the news was Russian President Vladimir Putin's whose joke that went wrong about rape charges against Israel's president, and the week ended with the news that Clare Short, a British Labour politician departing from her 23-year parliamentary career denouncing Tony Blair's "half-truths" and his "arrogant, error-prone government".

Here’s all the other news…

North America
Bush toughens 'anti-terror' laws
George Bush, the US president, has signed a law legalising the use of secret CIA prisons, harsh interrogation practices and military trials against suspected 'terrorists'.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 means Bush can continue a secret CIA programme for interrogating terrorism suspects. Bush said the law will also allow intelligence professionals to question suspects without fear of being sued by them later. He signed the new legislation just six weeks after acknowledging that the CIA had been secretly interrogating suspected terrorists overseas and pressed Congress to quickly give authority to try them in military commissions.

The international Red Cross said Thursday it has "concerns and questions" over whether a new U.S. anti-terror law signed by President Bush complies with the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war.

Opponents of the legislation say it eliminates defendants' rights considered fundamental to American values, such as the use of coerced testimony as evidence. For example, the military commissions which will try terror suspects are allowed to consider hearsay evidence so long as a judge determines it is reliable — a provision barred in civilian courts.

Calif. candidate's office, home raided
For two days, a Republican congressional candidate had promised to explain how a threatening letter was sent by his campaign without his knowledge to thousands of Hispanic immigrant voters.

As about 200 people gathered Friday in front of his campaign headquarters seeking answers, Tan D. Nguyen was a no-show at his own news conference. Instead, 10 uniformed California Department of Justice police officers arrived with a search warrant and pounded on the glass of Nguyen's storefront headquarters.

Agents spent two hours sifting through cabinets, boxes and computers. They left carrying several boxes and plastic bags of evidence.

Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant trying to unseat a popular Democratic incumbent, has acknowledged his campaign sent the letter, which wrongly said immigrants could be jailed if they voted. He blamed an unidentified staffer whom he said he has fired.

Nguyen has resisted calls from leaders in his own party to quit the race, saying he did not approve the letter and did not know about it.

The letter, written in Spanish, was mailed to an estimated 14,000 Democratic voters in Orange County. It warns, "You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time."

In fact, immigrants who are adult naturalized citizens are eligible to vote. Secretary of State Bruce McPherson said Friday his office will send letters to homes that received the mailing to clarify voters' rights.

Natives face prison discrimination: report
Aboriginal prisoners face ongoing discrimination in Canada's corrections system, a federal report charged on Monday, noting that natives are more likely to be placed in high security jails and get only limited access to early parole.

While aboriginal people, including native Indians, make up only about 3 percent of Canada's general population they make up 18 percent of the federal prison population, according to the annual report by the federal prison system's ombudsman.

Corrections Investigator Howard Sapers said officials have taken steps to improve the conditions of aboriginal prisoners, but "these efforts have not resulted in the kind of significant progress needed."

Sapers said because aboriginal inmates do not get timely access to rehabilitation services they are more likely to return to prison, and the gap between their recidivism rates and those of other offenders is growing. The Correctional Service said it agreed more must be done to help aboriginal prisoners, but denied there was systemic discrimination.

Gang beheadings common in central Mexico
The drug lords at war in central Mexico are no longer content with simply killing their enemies. They are putting their severed heads on public display.

Beheadings and accompanying notes in sometimes cryptic and misspelled Spanish are becoming a ghoulish vogue among the gangs that grow marijuana, cook methamphetamine and run cocaine in Michoacan.

There have been 420 homicides in the state this year, including 19 police chiefs and commanders, and Juan Antonio Magana, the state's attorney general, says well over half the killings were drug-related - the work of smuggling gangs reorganizing after authorities captured some of their top leaders.

"These are groups that are very big, very strong and are out to dominate territory," Magana said in an interview.

Many farmers have abandoned avocado, coffee and corn in favor of marijuana in the highlands, where roads are few and police can't easily penetrate. Smuggling gangs have cleared forests for airstrips. Small planes crammed with Colombian cocaine streak in, leaving loads that are ferried to the coast and stowed on fast boats that speed north toward the U.S. border.

IOC's corruption whistleblower Hodler dies
Marc Hodler, the senior International Olympic Committee (IOC) member who exposed the Salt Lake City corruption scandal, died on Wednesday in Switzerland, the IOC said. Hodler, a Swiss, was 87.

He was the main whistleblower in the biggest corruption and bribery affair in the IOC' s 110-year history, which involved several of its members and Salt Lake City officials.

The accusations centered on lavish gifts and other inducements to IOC members in return for their votes in the contest to host the 2002 Winter Olympics. These included cash payments, presents, scholarships and other benefits. Salt Lake City crushed Switzerland's Sion to win the nod.

"The IOC expresses its sadness at the passing of a member who dedicated so much to the Olympic movement. Our thoughts and prayers are with Mr Hodler's family," IOC president Jacques Rogge said in a statement which made no mention of the Salt Lake City affair.

Tasteless use of 10-year-old girl to model skimpy bikini
A celebrity bikini designer was under fire for parading a young girl down the catwalk with near-naked models during a sell-out show at the Los Angeles Fashion Week.

Critics were shocked at the sight of the schoolgirl in a bikini alongside older scandily-clad models. "She can only have been about ten," said one member of the audience. "It was very inappropriate."

The stunt was part of a show by designer Ashley Paige, famous for her knitted and crocheted bikinis and for the sexy swimwear favoured by stars including Jennifer Lopez, Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Gwen Stefani and Carmen Electra.

It is not unheard of for young models to be used during the fashion week when top designers show off their new lines in LA, but not on a catwalk surrounded by almost topless women - some with just flower motifs covering their nipples.

Conservative family campaigner Jean Terry said designers need to be more aware of the message they are sending out by using young children on the catwalks. "Nearly naked models are not the kind of role models we want for our children," she said, "and young girls should certainly not be used to promote a promiscuous image.

Online gambling firm collapses
The beleaguered online gambling industry is bracing itself for a wave of company collapses and redundancies, after World Gaming collapsed into administration today.

It is the first company to crash, following the shock decision of the US senate to outlaw online gaming last month.

All the online gambling companies are racing to close or sell their US operations by the time he signs. 888 emerged today as the latest to be looking for a suitor. Asked if the company would go private, chief executive John Anderson told Dow Jones: "I think that's got to be looked at."

He said all options are being considered, including opportunities to expand the business in Europe.

Gibraltar is likely to be particularly hard hit by the US crackdown. One in ten adults of the island works for the online gambling and betting industry.

Picasso seller puts hole in canvas
Steve Wynn, the American casino mogul and briefly proud owner of the world’s most expensive work of art, has decided to keep and restore the Picasso painting that he accidentally damaged shortly after he sold it for a record price.

Mr Wynn had agreed to sell Picasso’s Le Rêve (The Dream) to Steven Cohen, an art collector, for $139 million (£74.7 million). But as he was showing it off in his Las Vegas office this month to guests including the screenwriter Nora Ephron, he struck the 1932 portrait of Picasso’s mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter with his right elbow, leaving a 2in tear.

“There was a terrible noise,” Ms Ephron wrote in her blog. Mr Wynn, who suffers from an eye condition that affects his peripheral vision, exclaimed: “Oh, s***. Look what I’ve done. Thank God it was me.”

The world’s most expensive painting remains Gustav Klimt’s 1907 portrait Adele Bloch-Bauer I, sold in July for $135 million.

South America
Strong earthquake rattles Peruvian coast
A strong earthquake rattled Peru's southern coast on Friday, but no damage or injuries were reported. The magnitude 6.4 quake struck at 5:48 a.m. below the floor of the Pacific Ocean, 56 miles northwest of the coastal city of Pisco, according to Peru's Geophysics Institute. The U.S. Geological Survey reported the quake as magnitude 6.5.

The earthquake was felt as a long shudder in the capital, Lima, and inland in the Andean provincial city of Huancavelica. But it caused the most alarm in Ica, a coastal city 165 miles to the southeast, where local radio reports said panicked residents rushed from their homes into streets and parks.

Europe
Dutch terror suspects go on trial
Dutch prosecutors are using tough new anti-terror laws in the trial of six alleged Islamists accused of links to a terrorist group.

The men are charged with belonging to a terrorist organisation, planning to attack Dutch politicians and government buildings, and possessing weapons. They are alleged to have links with the so-called Hofstad group, nine of whom were jailed earlier this year. They included the man convicted of killing film-maker Theo Van Gogh.

Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch Moroccan considered to be the leader of the Hofstad group, is serving a life sentence for the murder. New anti-terror laws in the Netherlands have not been strong enough to gain convictions in some cases, but earlier this year the nine Hofstad group members were sentenced to up to 15 years in prison for membership of a terrorist organisation.

Prosecutors believe the six men on trial at a high security court in Amsterdam are linked to the Hofstad group. The main suspect, 20-year-old Samir Azzouz, a Dutch Moroccan man, was acquitted last year on charges that he planned attacks, although the court ruled he had terrorist intent. His acquittal led to calls for tougher legislation.

He was re-arrested on suspicion of planning new attacks and now faces new laws, which allow suspects to be tried for attacks that security forces believe they are planning to carry out.

Two dead in Rome subway collision
Two subway trains collided during morning rush hour Tuesday in a central Rome station, killing two people and injuring about 110 others, five seriously, authorities said.

Officials said one train was slowing down as it approached the station when it was hit by another one. Some passengers said the driver of the second train appeared to have jumped a red light.

The body of a woman apparently in her 30s was pulled from the rubble, officials said. Television footage showed bloodied passengers coming out from the station.

"I saw lots of blood, the impact was brutal," said Andrew Trovaioli, a passenger on one of the two trains. Trovaioli suffered a slight injury to his elbow. He said he saw about 10 people lying on the ground, and three or four covered in rubble.

Newspaper report: Neo-Nazi crime rises sharply in Germany
Neo-Nazi crime in Germany has risen sharply this year, and attacks by rightists have also become increasingly brutal, a newspaper said yesterday.

Almost 8,000 crimes by the far right were reported during the first eight months of this year, compared with 6,605 for the same period in 2005, said Berlin's Tagesspiegel paper, quoting German Interior Ministry figures provided to a member of parliament.

A total of 452 violent neo-Nazi attacks were reported in Germany from January to August of this year, leaving 325 people injured. For the same period in 2005, there were 363 attacks and 302 injuries, the newspaper said.

A statement by the Interior Ministry confirmed the figures for rightist crime, but cautioned that the data was still "preliminary" and might later be adjusted.

"At the same time, the fact that the number of violent attacks has risen by a not inconsiderable number is causing concern," said the statement, adding that the new figures show "the necessity of intensified measures being carried out by the ministry" against neo-Nazis.

Germany's domestic intelligence service, the Verfassungsschutz, says that about 40,000 people belong to far right groups in the country, of whom over 10,000 are deemed to be violent skinheads. The total German population is 82 million

Russia Suspends Scores of Foreign Groups
Scores of foreign private organizations were forced to cease their operations in Russia on Thursday while the government considered whether to register them under a new law that has received sharp international criticism.

Among the suspended organizations were some of those most critical of the Kremlin, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and others, like the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, that have been accused by Russian officials of instigating or assisting revolutions against other former Soviet republics.

The Justice Ministry, which is responsible for registering foreign private organizations, insisted that the suspensions were neither retaliatory nor permanent.

It issued a statement saying the suspended organizations had not properly filed new registration materials or had submitted the required materials on the last day before the registration deadline, which was midnight on Wednesday. It said it was rushing to review the applications it had received.

“It is important to note that lack of re-registration does not entail the liquidation of the organization,” the statement said. “The talk here is only that these organizations cannot carry out the activity envisaged by their charters before they are brought into the register.”

The number of suspended organizations is not entirely clear. The statement said the ministry had received applications from 185 organizations, approved 108 of them and continued to review the 77 others.

Polish boat opens fire on German 'tax-free' cruiser
A Polish patrol boat was alleged to have chased and fired warning shots at a German pleasure steamer in the Baltic this week after a dispute over customs and tax regulations that appears likely to bring relations between the two countries to a new low.

The incident occurred after the Adler-Dania, which was packed with tourists and bound for the Polish port of Swinoujscie, was boarded late on Tuesday by three Polish customs officials who demanded to see the ship's supply of alcohol and cigarettes.

German reports said that after being informed that the Polish officials were not in uniform and were insisting that the ship's alcohol be confiscated, the captain of the Adler-Dania immediately turned his ship around and made for the open sea, with the officials still on board.

Eyewitnesses, including the crew of the German ship, said a Polish patrol boat gave chase. One German crew member said sailors on the Polish vessel sent a volley of pistol shots over the top of the Adler-Dania in an attempt to force the ship to turn round.

A frantic pursuit ensued with the Polish patrol boat attempting several times to block the Adler-Dania before giving up when the vessel entered German waters. The three Polish customs officials were released after being questioned by police in the German seaside town of Herringsdorf.

Polish officials said the patrol boat had simply fired two flares in an attempt to encourage the German captain to stop his ship. Polish media reports said the three customs officials had been kidnapped.

Iceland to resume commercial whaling
Iceland said Tuesday it would resume commercial whaling after a nearly two-decade moratorium, defying a worldwide ban on hunting the mammals for their meat.

Fisheries Minister Einar Kristinn Gudfinnsson told Iceland's parliament that his ministry would begin issuing licenses to hunt fin and minke whales. He said the ministry would permit the hunting of nine fin whales and 30 minke whales in the year ending Aug. 31, 2007.

Icelanders have been hunting whales since the days of the Vikings, but stopped all whaling in 1989 under an international moratorium. The country continued to observe the ban after quitting the whaling commission in 1992. But when Iceland rejoined in 2002, the government said it would not be bound by the moratorium after 2006.

In 2003, Iceland resumed the killing of whales in the name of scientific testing, a move condemned by environmental groups and some nations, including the United States and Britain.

Since 2003, 161 minke whales have been hunted for research purposes in Iceland, according to the country's Marine Institute. Minke whale meat is still readily available at some of the island's restaurants, from whales caught in fishermen's nets, and many Icelanders staunchly defend the country's right to resume hunts.

Iceland's Ministry of Fisheries said there are more than 43,000 minke whales and 25,000 fin whales in Icelandic coastal waters.

Top Vatican official opposes euthanasia
The Vatican's top official for health issues reiterated the Catholic Church's strong opposition to euthanasia in an interview published Thursday, but said the church was in favor of allowing terminally ill patients to opt against aggressive treatment.

An Italian Senate committee has been hearing arguments over legislation to approve a living will — allowing people to decide in advance how they want to be treated if they become incapacitated in the last stages of a terminal illness.

Some politicians have viewed the measure with suspicion, warning that a living will could become a first step toward approving euthanasia.

Euthanasia is illegal in Italy, where the Catholic Church is politically influential. Euthanasia is forbidden by the Vatican, which insists that life must be safeguarded from its beginning to its "natural" end.

Portugal lawmakers OK abortion vote
Portugal took a major step toward legalizing abortion on Thursday as parliament approved holding a national referendum on the issue in this conservative Roman Catholic country with one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.

Abortion is currently allowed only in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy in cases of rape, fetus malformation or if a mother's health is at risk. Voters now will decide whether to make abortion legal up to the 10th week of pregnancy.

No date has been set for the national referendum, which is expected to take place early next year. Before a date can be set, the Constitutional Court and the president both need to rubber stamp the proposal.

"Our current laws say that a woman who aborts should be criminally prosecuted," Socialist legislator Alberto Martins said in parliament ahead of Thursday's vote. "This is, in the 21st century and in Europe, an unfair, cruel, retrograde and irrational stance."

In Europe, only Poland and Ireland have similarly restrictive rules on abortion, while Malta forbids abortion altogether.

Belgian grandparents convicted for heroin dealing
A Belgian court has sentenced two 73-year-old grandparents to two-year suspended jail terms this week after they were convicted of dealing in heroin and other drugs, the tribunal said on Wednesday.

The elderly pensioners had taken over the business of their grandson, who himself had been imprisoned for selling heroin, cocaine and ecstasy. The court established that the couple had sold a variety of drugs to people, including one minor, who dropped by their apartment near the northern town of Aalst. Some even came by to make large orders, the court said.

"The only thing that counted for them was to continue the profitable drug dealing business of their grandson," the judges wrote in their ruling on Tuesday. The couple, who had no prior criminal record, were also ordered to pay fines of 1,000 euros each.

Middle-East
Hamas threatens to break ceasefire after Israeli air strikes
Israel and Hamas were on the brink of war last night as a senior member of the Islamic movement hinted that it would stop observing a 20-month-old ceasefire in retaliation for the latest Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military insisted that it would carry on targeting Hamas, after what it described as clear evidence that the movement was smuggling weapons into Gaza to mount cross-border attacks. After a series of raids by Israel over the past four days in which 22 Palestinians, mostly Hamas members, died, Atef Idwan, a minister in the Hamas government, said Israel's offensive showed the ceasefire was effectively over.

"Which is better – to respond to the Israeli aggression or not to respond?" asked Mr Idwan, who serves as minister for refugee affairs. "Which is better – to defend yourself or surrender to the enemy? The ceasefire should be bilateral but what we see now shows Israel has never committed to a ceasefire."

Mr Idwan said that while his side had largely observed the ceasefire, Israel has continued to mount operations against Palestinian targets. "Israel asked others to ask for the ceasefire, but Israel has never stopped its crime against the Palestinian people," he said.

"The Palestinian people should defend himself. Israel is beating us badly, that is true, but that does not mean we should not respond." Human rights groups have reported that Israel has killed more than 230 Palestinians, including scores of civilians, since it launched Operation Summer Rains in the summer. Two Israeli soldiers, including one killed by so-called friendly fire, have died in the same period.

Israel's UN envoy: Iran bribed Hamas to block Shalit's release
Israel's envoy to the United Nations on Thursday accused Iran of bribing a Hamas leader to sabotage the release of Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit who was captured by Palestinian militants near Gaza in June and has not been heard from since.

Ambassador Dan Gillerman told the UN Security Council that "we heard news" earlier in the day that Tehran had paid $50 million to Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, who lives in the Syrian capital Damascus, "to sabotage the negotiations on the release of Corporal Gilad Shalit and prevent his release."

"We have every reason to believe that the Iranian regime has bribed Khaled Meshal," he later told reporters. "I cannot divulge the sources or give you any further details on this."

America's Iran-watchers flock to Dubai, on Iran's doorstep
A handful of US diplomats here on Iran's doorstep have quietly re-opened an Iran-focused diplomatic mission, the first such office since the US embassy in Tehran was taken over by radical students 27 years ago.

The low-key Iran Regional Presence Office, which sits inside the US consulate in Dubai, is coming to life at a time when Iran-US relations have plummeted to their lowest depths in years.
Iran's disputed nuclear program has pushed the two countries into sharp conflict. But in booming Dubai, home to hundreds of thousands of Iranians, the atmosphere is friendly. The United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is one of seven city-states, maintains close ties with both Washington and Tehran.

Expatriate Iranians and Americans mingle freely here, especially those with business interests.
With Iran just 100 miles (150 kilometers) across the Persian Gulf, the US government has found a valuable spot to both watch Iran and reach out to its citizens.

"We don't intend to reopen our embassy anytime soon," said Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, describing plans for the Iran office in March. "But we do plan to put more people, better trained, on the job of watching Iran."

Congress recently approved an $85 million Iran initiative, which mostly increases the duration of State Department broadcasts into Iran by Radio Farda and Voice of America. Burns said $5 million would also be earmarked for Iranians to study at US universities.

Moscow tells Israel it will tighten its export controls on weapons
Moscow has told Israel that it intends to tighten its export controls on arms. The statement follows Israeli claims that Russian weapons reached Hezbollah during the war in Lebanon.

The Russian statement, couched in very general terms, acknowledged a need for stricter arms export controls to ensure that weapons reach the designated end user and no one else.

For all intensive purposes, the order is directed mainly against Syria, and intended to prevent the transfer of Russian arms to Hezbollah and other terror groups.

About a month ago, after the war in Lebanon, an Israeli delegation of defense experts, headed by Deputy Director General of the Foreign Ministry Mark Sofer and Ambassador to Russia Arkady Milman, visited Russia.

The delegation told senior Russian foreign affairs and defense officials that Russian arms that had been sold to Syria, especially antitank missiles, had reached Hezbollah and were used against Israel in the recent conflict in Lebanon.

The new Russian directive says that any state that buys Russian arms will be subject to strict supervision, and Russian delegations will be able to visit to verify that the arms are appropriately used and not transferred contrary to the agreement

Asia
Japanese family sues over death by American Sailor
The family of a Japanese woman robbed and beaten to death by an American sailor filed a lawsuit Friday against the attacker and the Japanese government, a court official said.

The family of Yoshie Sato is demanding that William Reese, as well as the Japanese government, pay more than $1.69 million in damages, Yokohama District Court spokesman Kazutaka Kutsumizu said.

Reese, from Pittsgrove, N.J., was convicted in June of robbing and fatally beating the 56-year-old woman near the U.S. Navy base in Yokosuka, southwest of Tokyo, in January. He is serving a life sentence.

Reese held the rank of seaman at the time of the killing, which rekindled lingering concerns over crimes related to the roughly 50,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan.

Kutsumizu refused to provide any other details about the lawsuit. The Japanese newspaper Mainichi said that the family is seeking damages from the Japanese government for failing to urge the U.S. military to properly train American servicemen.

Anti-U.S. military sentiment runs high among neighbors of U.S. bases in Japan, especially in the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, which shoulders more than half of the U.S. troops here. The 1995 rape of a schoolgirl in Okinawa by three U.S. servicemen triggered large protests.

Defector: Kim's ouster would stop nukes
The man once considered the mentor of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il said Tuesday that the reclusive country's nuclear weapons program cannot be stopped unless the strongman is ousted.
But Kim's total grip on the communist society makes that only a remote possibility, Hwang Jang Yop, the highest-ranking North Korean government official ever to defect to South Korea, told The Associated Press.

The 83-year-old Hwang, wearing a lapel badge in the shape of the South Korean national flag, is also skeptical that United Nations sanctions imposed on the North for a nuclear test explosion will hurt Kim's rule.

"I don't think his grip on power will be significantly weakened," Hwang said, adding that South Korea continues to give aid to North Korea, while other countries, most notably China and Russia, are opposed to the idea of pressuring the North.

Hwang, who seldom gives interviews, made his surprising defection in 1997 when he and an aide took refuge in the South Korean embassy in Beijing while on a visit to the Chinese capital. At the time, he was a longtime member of the North's elite, serving as secretary of the ruling Workers' Party.

Hwang said China is key to bringing an end to Kim's regime. "No Chinese officials like the North Korean leader, but they keep him in power," Hwang said, adding that Kim's regime serves Beijing's interests by helping keep U.S. influence in the region at bay.

Scores killed in Sri Lanka blast
At least 67 people, mainly navy sailors, have been killed when their convoy was hit by an explosives-laden truck in an apparent suicide attack, an army spokesman has said.

The attack took place near the town of Habarana, about 190km northeast of the capital, Colombo, police said on Monday. Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe, a Sri Lankan military spokesman, said Tamil Tiger separatist fighters had rammed a small truck loaded with explosives into the convoy.

"They have so far recovered 67 bodies and there may be more," he said. "All these people were without weapons and were going on leave." Another 60 people, including some civilians, were injured in the blast, he said. The attack comes amid increasingly heavy-fighting between the Sri Lankan army and the Tigers.

Sri Lanka's government said today that it will provide safe passage for rebels travelling to Geneva for peace talks. Tamil Tiger rebel leaders must travel through Colombo, the site of the country's only international airport, to fly to Switzerland.

"We have accommodated them over the years. We will provide necessary security, although they have unleashed terror," government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said. "We are a democratic government and not a terrorist outfit."

Death row Briton gets two-month reprieve
The execution of a British man held in Pakistan will not take place during Prince Charles's visit to the country, it was announced this week.

Mirza Tahir Hussain, 36, was due to be hanged for murder on November 1, three days after the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are due to arrive in Pakistan for a state visit. Instead, prison officials in Pakistan today said his execution would be postponed for two months, until December 31.

Mr Hussain's brother Amjad, and Amnesty International said today that postponement was not good enough. They called for guarantees that he would not be executed. The move comes after the Guardian reported Prince Charles was considering not visiting the country unless the execution was cancelled. A spokesman for the prince said he had written to Pakistan's prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, asking that Mr Hussain's life be spared.

Mr Hussain, originally from Leeds, was cleared by two courts of murdering a cab driver, only to be found guilty by judges operating under Islamic law. He has been in prison in Pakistan for the last 17 years and has received three stays of execution.

US "troubled" by death of jailed pro-democracy activist in Myanmar
The United States said that it was "deeply troubled" by the death in Myanmar of jailed pro-democracy activist Thet Win Aung.

Myanmar's military junta "arrested Thet Win Aung in 1998 for organizing peaceful student demonstrations and sentenced him to 59 years in prison," read a State Department statement.

"This death demonstrates the tragic price the people of Burma (Myanmar) are forced to pay for opposing the repressive policies of the regime and standing up for their human and democratic rights."

The United States also "condemns the continued detention of the six pro-democracy activists arrested in September: Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi, Htay Kywe, Min Zeya, Pyone Cho, and Myint Aye.

"We call for the immediate and unconditional release of Aung San Suu Kyi, these six activists, and all other political prisoners; and for the initiation of a genuine process of national reconciliation.

Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won 1990 elections but was never allowed to rule. Its offices have been shut down by the junta, which has also locked up many other party members.

Chinese panda cub bites U.S. visitor
A panda cub bit off part of the thumb of an American visitor who was feeding the animal at a reserve in southwest China, state media reported Thursday.

The 50-year-old woman, identified only as Lisa, had registered in the Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Center in Sichuan province as a volunteer, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. She was wearing gloves and feeding the panda bamboo on Tuesday morning when "suddenly, the panda bit into her thumb," Xinhua said.

"When she cried out, the cub became excited and gripped more tightly," it said. "Lisa finally managed to wrench herself free." About 20 percent of the thumb had been bitten off, Xinhua said.

More than 1,200 volunteers from America, Japan, Switzerland, France and Spain already have worked in the center, Xinhua said.

Australasia
Tasmania unveils pay-out for Aborigine 'stolen generations'
An Australian state has unveiled an historic five million dollar (3.8 million dollars US) compensation package for Aborigines forcibly taken from their families as children.

In a first for Australia, Tasmania announced a proposed law offering one-off payments to the "stolen generation" of Aborigines, who were snatched from their parents under ethnic assimilation policies between the 1930s and the 70s.

Under the proposed package, around 124 descendants of deceased members of the stolen generations would receive one-off payments of 5,000 dollars, capped at 20,000 dollars per family, with the remainder of the funding divided among living members.

As many as 10,000 Aboriginal children across the nation were removed from their family homes by government and church agencies between 1935 and 1975 and became wards of the state, the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre's Michael Mansell told AFP.

Up to 125 Aboriginal children were taken from their families in Tasmania and of those, more than 40 Tasmanians could be eligible for compensation, and a further 27 had "very strong" cases, he said

Australian ex-army chief says Iraq war boosted militants
Australia's defence force chief at the time of the invasion of Iraq said in remarks published Sunday that he now believes the war has increased the threat of Islamic militancy.

The comments by retired general Peter Cosgrove come just days after Britain's army chief caused a furore by saying British troops in Iraq were exacerbating security problems around the world.

"If people say that there has been an energising of the jihadist movement through the protracted war in Iraq - well that's pretty obvious," Cosgrove told the Sunday Telegraph, using the Islamic term for "holy warrior".

The highly respected Vietnam veteran, who retired last year, said he had apologised to national police chief Mick Keelty for criticising his comments that the Iraq war had inspired the 2004 terrorist attacks in Madrid.

"Things have moved on. I have got no reason to argue the weighty assessments that I am seeing," Cosgrove said. The Australian government of Prime Minister John Howard, a close ally of Washington, contributed troops to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and maintains a force of some 1,300 involved in Iraqi operations.

Australian PM avoids censure over Iraq war
Australia's opposition have launched an unsuccessful censure motion in parliament against Prime Minister John Howard, accusing him of sending troops to Iraq "on a lie".

The motion against Howard, a key ally of the United States and its war in Iraq, was defeated 80 to 58 in a vote on party lines after an angry debate. The leader of the opposition, Labor Party chief Kim Beazley, charged that the invasion of Iraq was based on the false claim that the regime of Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Beazley said the war had also contributed to the spread of Islamic militancy. "We are much less safe, we are much less influential, we are much less effective as a result of what this prime minister has done," Beazley said.

Beazley has promised to withdraw Australia's troops from Iraq if Labor wins elections due next year, a policy Howard said would be a victory for terrorists. The prime minister contributed troops to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and maintains a force of some 1,300 involved in Iraqi operations.

Brochure sheds light on Australia's tarnished spy agencies
Australia's prime minister has shed unprecedented light on the country's spy agencies, in an effort to boost the tarnished reputation of the country's "frontline" in the war on terror.

Prime Minister John Howard unveiled a brochure outlining the role of the usually clandestine intelligence community after it was flayed for failing to detect that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction.

"It aims to improve public understanding of and confidence in our intelligence agencies," Howard said of the move to publicise Australia's six usually-shadowy spy agencies.

The agencies - ASIO, ASIS, DIO, DSD, ONA and DIGO - played a vital role in keeping the government abreast of developments in Australia and abroad which might affect national security and the country's international interests.

"They are the frontline of Australia's effort to combat the threat of international terrorism and their work is essential to preserving the freedoms and way of life that Australians value so highly," he said.

The publicity blitz came after a 2004 inquiry conducted following Australia's decision to join the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 called for more accountability and increased supervision of intelligence agencies.

Former intelligence chief Philip Flood said in his report that Australia's spy agencies had "failed to judge accurately the extent and the nature of Iraq's (weapons of mass destruction) programs" due to an over reliance on foreign intelligence.

Don't go backpacking - join the army, Australia tells school leavers
Australia announced a drive to lure school leavers into joining the army for a year instead of going backpacking abroad - the latest in a series of attempts to boost flagging troop numbers.

The "try before you buy" plan is aimed at thousands of students who take time out for a 'gap year' between school and work or university to travel or work on aid projects, Defence Minister Brendan Nelson told reporters.

He denied that the programme was a move towards conscription, saying volunteers simply would not have to sign up for the current minimum commitment of four years in uniform.

"At the moment young people baulk at the thought of a long-term commitment of four years if they join up. For them that's an eternity," he said. "Around 34,000 kids a year complete Year 12 and they then take either one or two years off to go backpacking or work on aid projects.

The defence force has a total strength of 52,000 personnel and Nelson said he wanted to boost the annual recruitment of 7,500 people by about 1,000.

Africa
Egyptian border guard killed in gun accident
An Egyptian border guard was killed on Saturday in a gun accident while on patrol in the Sinai peninsula along the border with Israel, officials said.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said the guard was shot in the head when another guard's gun discharged two bullets as he was loading it.

Earlier, some security sources said preliminary investigations showed one guard was killed and another wounded after a dispute with a third guard. Other sources said a probe would include the possibility shots may have come from Israel.

The Sinai peninsula has been the scene of three deadly bomb attacks over the past two years that have targeted popular Red Sea resorts and killed scores of people. Egypt has blamed local militants for the bombings. Smuggling is common along the Egypt-Israel border

7 foreign hostages freed in Nigerian oil delta
The men were kidnapped on October 3 in an unprecedented raid on a residential compound for expatriate contractors working for U.S. oil giant Exxon Mobil.

"All seven have been released. They are all in good health," said Suur Chafa, deputy superintendent of police in Akwa Ibom state, where the men were kidnapped.

The employer of three of the men, Sparrows Offshore Services Limited, said their employees had spoken to their wives by telephone, and would undergo routine medical checks before flying to Britain.

The Niger Delta, a vast wetlands region home to Africa's biggest oil industry, has been plagued by attacks on oil facilities and abductions of oil workers this year.

Abductions for ransom are common in the Niger Delta and local rights activists say companies usually pay up, fuelling the cycle. Companies deny this.

Violence in the Niger Delta is rooted in poverty, corruption and lawlessness. Many residents of the impoverished region resent the multibillion-dollar oil industry which has damaged their environment and brought them few benefits.