from:"Alamaine"

-Caveat Lector-

This article from NYTimes.com
has been sent to you by [EMAIL PROTECTED]



Schools Resegregate, Study Finds

January 21, 2003
By GREG WINTER






CHARLOTTE, N.C., Jan. 20 - Sanetra Jant still wonders where
all the white kids went. Only last spring, they made up a
quarter of her class, not to mention her friends. And then,
poof, they were gone.

I don't know why they left, said Sanetra, a fourth grader
at Reid Park Elementary School.

Last year, before a federal appeals court ended three
decades of judicial-supervised desegregation by the
district, Sanetra's school was 68 percent black. Now it is
almost entirely black, and the many white pupils who once
rode in on yellow buses number one in a hundred.

Maybe they didn't like it here, Sanetra said, knitting
her brow in thought.

If there is any one place to witness the changing racial
composition of the nation's public schools, perhaps it is
here, in the city for which the Supreme Court first
endorsed the use of busing to desegregate.

Dozens of Charlotte schools have basically changed color in
the months since the appeals court lifted the desegregation
order, and though few other places have seen swings so
rapid, the city offers a time-lapse view of the steady
transformation of the nation's schools.

According to a new study by the Civil Rights Project at
Harvard University, black and Latino students are now more
isolated from their white counterparts than they were three
decades ago, before many of the overhauls from the civil
rights movement had even begun to take hold.

Nationally, the shift is a result of several factors: big
increases in enrollment by black, Latino and Asian
students; continuing white flight from the nation's urban
centers; and the persistence of housing patterns that
isolate racial and ethnic groups. But another big factor,
the Harvard study found, has been the termination of dozens
of court-ordered desegregation plans.

Spurred by Supreme Court decisions at the start of the
1990's, lower courts have lifted desegregation orders in at
least three dozen school districts in the last 10 years.
Little Rock, San Diego, Denver and Miami have all come out
from under court supervision, and next month a federal
judge will reconsider the integration plan in Chicago, the
nation's third-largest school district.

A chief principle in the voiding of these orders is one
established by the Supreme Court a decade ago: that school
districts can be considered successfully desegregated even
if student racial imbalances due entirely to demographic
factors, like where children live, continue to exist.

Largely as a result, black students now typically go to
schools where fewer than 31 percent of their classmates are
white, the new Harvard study found. That is less contact
than in 1970, a year before the Supreme Court authorized
the busing that became a primary way of integrating
schools.

Latino students, who have rarely been a focus of
desegregation efforts, now attend schools where whites
account for only 29 percent of all students, compared with
45 percent three decades ago, according to the study, which
draws on Education Department data through the 2000-1
school year.

And while white children increasingly come into contact
with minority students, mainly because of the tremendous
population growth among races that had only marginal
representation decades ago, they are still America's most
segregated group, the study found. On average, white
students, who make up about 61 percent of the nation's
public-school population, go to schools where 80 percent of
their classmates are white.

The consequence is a nation in which every racial group
that is big enough to be described as segregated generally
is: Blacks, though only 17 percent of public-school
children, typically attend schools where they are in a
majority. The same is true of Latinos, who are about 16
percent of the student population. Even American Indians, a
mere 1 percent of public-school children, go to schools
where nearly a third of all students are Native American.

Asians, the study says, are the most integrated group,
attending schools where the races are somewhat more
commensurate with their national representation. But they,
too, are disproportionately grouped together, for though
they are only about 4 percent of public-school children,
they typically go to schools that are 22 percent Asian.

We call our schools racially isolated, but it's really
just a euphemism for being segregated, said Mary Frances
Berry, chairwoman of the United States Commission on Civil
Rights. It has to be regarded as unhealthy. At a time when
the society is becoming increasingly diverse, it bodes ill
to have increasingly segregated schools.

Many researchers cite sweeping demographic changes, not
public policy, as the leading force behind racial
separation in the schools. The percentage of students who
are members of minority groups has almost doubled in the
last 30 years, and, whether as a

[CTRL] NYTimes.com Article: Slain Jewish Settler Is Finally Buried After Riot, Car Race and a Rabbinical Ruling

-Caveat Lector-

This article from NYTimes.com
has been sent to you by [EMAIL PROTECTED]



Slain Jewish Settler Is Finally Buried After Riot, Car Race and a Rabbinical Ruling

January 21, 2003
By JOHN KIFNER






JERUSALEM, Jan. 20 - Nathaniel Ozeri, a Jewish settler
slain by Palestinian gunmen on Friday night, was finally
buried early this morning, 15 hours after his followers on
the far edge of the religious right turned his funeral into
a riot that stunned even this normally contentious country.


There were a series of struggles over where the body would
be buried - including an aborted race with the body in a
car toward Jerusalem. His wife and supporters hoped to
display the body in front of the prime minister's office
there as a protest over the killing of settlers by
Palestinians.

Mr. Ozeri was finally laid to rest in darkness about 3 a.m.
today in Hebron's old city cemetery alongside victims of a
1929 massacre of Jews in that city.

The funeral, at noon on Sunday, was preceded by attacks on
Palestinian homes by settlers. The attackers broke windows
with iron bars, and at one point a young mother with a baby
strapped to her chest pounded a Palestinian house with a
big rock. There were wild scuffles as the army and the
police tried to intervene, and the crowd taunted the
police, shouting insults.

The eulogies at the funeral were bitter, condemning Yitzhak
Rabin, the prime minister who was slain in 1995 by a
religious extremist who was opposed to his efforts to make
peace with Palestinians.

Mr. Ozeri's father-in-law, Shaul Nir, demanded revenge and
called the police scum. He is a former member of the
Jewish underground who was sentenced to life in prison in
1985 for killing Palestinians in Hebron. He was later
pardoned along with other members of the group by President
Chaim Herzog.

Then Mr. Ozeri's elderly father took the microphone and
asked that his son be buried in Jerusalem so his mother
could easily visit the grave.

Wrangling ensued. A rabbi, Dov Lior, was brought in to
mediate and ruled that the burial should be in Hebron. But
then, urged on by Mr. Ozeri's widow, Livnat, young settlers
snatched the body from the bed of a pickup truck intending
to take it to the hilltop grave they had secretly dug. Some
family members were knocked over in the struggle, and the
rabbi was carried to safety on the back of a bodyguard.

Soldiers finally managed to block the group, and for a
moment it appeared that an agreement had been reached to
bury Mr. Ozeri in Hebron. But the car carrying the body
suddenly veered off, speeding away.

When Israeli soldiers and the police tried to restore
order, the settlers left behind continued to battle them
and to attack Palestinian homes and set cars on fire.

After they snatched his body, Mr. Ozeri's followers raced
over hills, fences and vineyards trying to bury it on the
isolated hilltop where he had been killed. They struck out
for Jerusalem after they were turned away from the site by
soldiers.

Mrs. Ozeri said later that she had wanted to put the body
on display so the whole country can see the results of the
terror and what happened when the Jews gave rifles to the
terrorists.

As Mr. Ozeri's followers in Hebron hoisted his body, on a
stretcher wrapped in a blue and white prayer shawl, they
pulled back the covering so his face was visible, in the
style of Palestinian funerals for what they call their
martyrs. It was a clear violation of Jewish religious law
and tradition, and the spectacle drew criticism today from
leading rabbis.

A disgrace, said the chief Ashkenazi rabbi, Yisrael Meir
Law, another bitter cup of sorrow. The chief Sephardic
rabbi, Eliyahu Bakshi-Doran, called the supporters' action
very serious, adding, If we leave the most extreme
person to decide what is a good deed, what is religious
law, all sorts of injustices will be done in God's name.

Hebron, home to a group of militant settlers who believe
that they have a mandate from God to reclaim the land they
call Judea and Samaria, is always a volatile place. In the
old city, an enclave of 450 religious Jews is guarded by
soldiers and surrounded by 150,000 Palestinians, confined
to their homes much of the time by army curfews. Nearby,
7,000 more Jewish settlers live in the sprawling settlement
of Qiryat Arba.

Tensions were running high even before Mr. Ozeri was killed
by two Palestinian gunmen on Friday night, after he
answered the door during his family's Sabbath dinner. There
have been four Palestinian attacks in Hebron and nearby
areas in the last two months in which 22 Israelis have been
killed. On Friday, the two attackers, armed with an M-16
rifle, a revolver, grenades, a knife and an ax, were also
killed.

Mr. Ozeri was a well-known figure on the far right, a
leader of the hilltop youth, who have been trying to
expand the settlers' presence by building outposts on
isolated hills. His family of seven was the only one living
on the illegal settlement known as Lot 26. He had returned
home

[CTRL] NYTimes.com Article: Mexico's Corrupt Oil Lifeline

-Caveat Lector-

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has been sent to you by [EMAIL PROTECTED]



Mexico's Corrupt Oil Lifeline

January 21, 2003
By TIM WEINER






CADEREYTA, Mexico - Tony Cantu grew up with the giant oil
refinery that Pemex, Mexico's state-owned oil company, runs
here in his hometown. He helped build it and operate it,
rising from construction worker to computer programmer to
chemical engineer.

Mr. Cantu gave Pemex a decade of his working life. But he
will never work there again. He can explain why in one
word.

Corruption, he said, gazing at the refinery, 20 miles
outside Monterrey in northern Mexico. People being stepped
on, forced to be corrupt - I hated that. There were a lot
of things you had to shut up about. The bosses would kill
to protect themselves. People were subjugated by fear.

For more than 60 years, Pemex, the world's fifth-largest
oil company, has been Mexico's economic lifeblood. A $50
billion-a-year enterprise, it controls every gas pump in
Mexico, and it sells nearly as much oil to the United
States as Saudi Arabia does.

Today, with some oil producers like Iraq and Venezuela
facing nation-shaking crises, Mexico looks like a sure and
steady source of oil. The United States may be tempted to
rely on it even more.

But Pemex is in danger of breaking down. Financially, we
are falling, its director, Raúl Muñoz Leos, said in an
interview. Nearly every peso of Pemex's profits goes to run
the government of Mexico. The company, after paying taxes
and royalties, actually lost $3.5 billion in in 2001.
Without major restructuring or tens of billions of dollars
in foreign investment, Mr. Muñoz Leos warned recently, We
would face, in the short term, a collapse.

One reason is a rottenness at Pemex's core. The company
loses at least $1 billion a year to corruption, its
executives say, in a continuous corrosion of the machine
that keeps Mexico solvent.

Fixing Pemex is as crucial to Mexico's future as it is to
American oil supplies. When Vicente Fox became president
two years ago after defeating the political machine that
ran Mexico for 71 years - the Institutional Revolutionary
Party, or PRI - he vowed to make his country more open and
democratic and to make Pemex run like a 21st-century
corporation.

To change Mexico, Mr. Fox must first change Pemex. It has
been a cash machine for the government, a slush fund for
politicians and a patronage mill for party loyalists since
the party created Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, in 1938.

After nationalizing American and British oil interests, the
party promptly changed the Constitution to bar foreign
investment in underground oil and gas. It was a declaration
of independence: Expropriation Day is still celebrated
each year.

Even today, the PRI, which still holds a plurality in
Congress, is fighting changes to the Constitution and at
the oil giant it created, in part on grounds of patriotism.
President Fox's attempts at reform have been hamstrung by
PRI resistance - and Pemex's history of corruption.

Pemex's last director, Rogelio Montemayor, a former PRI
governor, and its union boss, Carlos Romero Deschamps, a
PRI senator, each stand accused of stealing tens of
millions of dollars from Pemex for the PRI's 2000
presidential campaign against Mr. Fox.

Both men deny the charges. Mr. Romero Deschamps is battling
an attempt in Congress to strip him of the legal immunity
he enjoys as a sitting senator. Mr. Montemayor fled Mexico
last year and is fighting extradition from Houston. The
PRI, struggling to defend them - and itself, is also
resisting every effort to transform Pemex.

The political will needed to reform Pemex has just not
coalesced, said Eduardo Cepeda, the head of J. P. Morgan
Chase's Mexico office.

Edward L. Morse, executive adviser at Hess Energy Trading
Co. and former publisher of Petroleum Intelligence Weekly,
said by telephone from New York that the effort to reform
the beast had failed. President Fox, he said, does not
understand how thoroughly ingrained in the national
political culture the monopoly of Pemex is.

Pemex remains one of the world's few national oil companies
with no competition from within or without. Its resulting
inefficiencies are stark.

Othón Canales Treviño is Pemex's director for
competitiveness and innovation - the man in charge of
creating the new Pemex. He once ran a company that
supplied Pemex with chemicals, and he was often solicited
for bribes, he said. Today he sits on a commission on
corruption at Pemex, composed of 14 directors.

There is corruption, he said. But I think the
inefficiency is worse. There is brutal inefficiency.

For example, Mr. Canales said, he recently asked how much
Pemex paid each year for goods and services - everything
for ice packs to helicopters rented to fly engineers to
offshore rigs.

No one knew. It took four months to come up with the answer
- $7 billion.

We want to act like a company, he said. Pemex isn't a
company. It isn't Pemex Inc. We're not a government

[CTRL] A friend recommends a page from The Onion

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Euphorian at [EMAIL PROTECTED] recommends a page from The Onion.




The recommended page is:The Onion | Kim Jong Il Unfolds Into Giant Robothttp://www.theonion.com/onion3902/kim_jong_ii.html




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[CTRL] For your attention

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Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Murdoch TV channel hires Hewitt as war reporter
Matt Wells, media correspondent
Tuesday January 14 2003
The Guardian


James Hewitt, whose failed attempts to sell his love letters from Princess Diana 
earned him the love rat soubriquet, has been renamed the desert rat after being 
hired as a war correspondent.

Fox News Channel, the US network that has drawn criticism for its style of journalism, 
has signed up the former Life Guards officer to report on the conflict with Iraq. 
Hewitt has no reporting experience, but his lawyer said he would be flying out to the 
Middle East in the next few weeks.

Hewitt has become notorious for his attempts to sell the correspondence between him 
and Princess Diana, and is held in contempt by the tabloid press. But he would be 
attractive to Fox, which has become known for its personality-led style of reporting 
pioneered by the correspondent Geraldo Rivera, who carried a gun when reporting from 
Afghanistan.

While the Murdoch-owned network has been criticised by liberal commentators, it has 
overtaken CNN in the US as the most popular news channel.

There were reports yesterday that the Hewitt deal was worth #163;100,000, but his 
lawyer Michael Coleman said: I'm not in a position to disclose the terms of his 
contract or the details of the negotiations. A spokeswoman for Fox declined to 
confirm or deny the story.

Hewitt was criticised last week for confirming he was prepared to sell his love 
letters from Diana. The former officer said he has already been of fered #163;4m for 
10 of the 64 handwritten letters composed during their five-year affair.

Hewitt, a veteran of the 1991 Gulf war, said last week he was still a reservist and 
could be ordered to serve with British forces in any new conflict. Mr Coleman said 
this was theoretically possible but practically unlikely.

He also said he completed talks with Fox in Los Angeles last week while Hewitt took 
part in a series of interviews.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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DECLARATION  DISCLAIMER
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CTRL is a discussion  informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease!  These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

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[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net

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You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the 
Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com



 To view the entire article, go to 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19221-2003Jan20.html

 France Vows to Block  Iraq War Resolution

 By Glenn Kessler  and Colum Lynch
 UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 20 -- France suggested today it would wage a major diplomatic 
fight, including possible use of its veto power, to prevent the U.N. Security Council 
from passing a resolution authorizing military action against Iraq.

  France's opposition to a war, emphatically delivered here by Foreign Minister 
Dominique de Villepin, is a major blow for the Bush administration, which has begun 
pouring tens of thousands of troops into the Persian Gulf in preparation for a 
military conflict this spring. The administration had hoped to mark the final phase in 
its confrontation with Iraq when U.N. weapons inspectors deliver a progress report 
Monday.

  But in a diplomatic version of ambush, France and other countries used a high-level 
Security Council meeting on terrorism to lay down their markers for the debate that 
will commence next week on the inspectors' report. Russia and China, which have veto 
power, and Germany, which will chair the Security Council in February, also signaled 
today they were willing to let the inspections continue for months.

  Only Britain appeared to openly support the U.S. position that Iraqi President 
Saddam Hussein has thwarted effective inspections.

  If war is the only way to resolve this problem, we are going down a dead end, de 
Villepin told reporters. Already we know for a fact that Iraq's weapons of mass 
destruction programs are being largely blocked, even frozen. We must do everything 
possible to strengthen this process.

 The United Nations, he said, should stay on the path of cooperation. The other 
choice is to move forward out of impatience over a situation in Iraq to move towards 
military intervention. We believe that today nothing justifies envisaging military 
action.

 Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in the face of such comments, departed from his 
prepared text on terrorism and implored his colleagues to remember that the Security 
Council resolution passed unanimously Nov. 8 gave Iraq a last chance to meet its 
obligations. We must not shrink from our duties and our responsibilities when the 
material comes before us next week, Powell said. He used a variation of the phrase 
must not shrink three more times as he addressed the council.

  During the weeks of debate on the Iraq resolution, French officials had indicated 
they were open to some sort of military intervention if Iraq did not comply. But now 
the French appear to have set much higher hurdles for support.

  Rising opposition to war, particularly in France, appears to have played a role in 
the hardening positions on the Security Council. Foreign officials are also aware of 
polls in the United States suggesting that support for a war drops dramatically if the 
Bush administration does not have U.N. approval.

 While the United Nations was debating today, U.S. military officials announced that 
the Army is sending a force of about 37,000 soldiers, spearheaded by the Texas-based 
4th Infantry Division, to the Persian Gulf region. It is the largest ground force 
identified among an estimated 125,000 U.S. troops ordered to deploy since Christmas 
Eve, the Associated Press reported.

 At the United Nations, several foreign ministers said a war in Iraq would spawn more 
terrorist acts around the globe and, in the words of Germany's Joschka Fischer, have 
disastrous consequences for long-term regional stability.

  Terrorism is far from being crushed, said Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. 
We must be careful not to take unilateral steps that might threaten the unity of the 
entire [anti-]terrorism coalition. In this context we are strictly in favor of a 
political settlement of the situation revolving around Iraq.

  Powell replied: We cannot fail to take the action that may be necessary because we 
are afraid of what others might do. We cannot be shocked into impotence because we are 
afraid of the difficult choices that are ahead of us.

  But when the foreign ministers emerged from the council debate and addressed 
reporters, it appeared that Powell's pleas had made little impact. Although  President 
Bush said last week he was sick and tired of games and deception, Fischer said the 
inspections were a success.

  Iraq has complied fully with all relevant resolutions and cooperated very closely 
with the U.N. team on the ground, Fischer said. We think things are moving in the 
right direction, based on the efforts of the inspection team, and [they] should have 
all the time which is needed.

  Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said Monday's report should be regarded as a 
new beginning rather than an end to inspections. The chief weapons

[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net

-Caveat Lector-

You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the 
Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com

 A little blowback for entering into entangling alliances ... you don't always get 
the upper hand ...

 To view the entire article, go to 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19221-2003Jan20.html

 France Vows to Block  Iraq War Resolution

 By Glenn Kessler  and Colum Lynch
 UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 20 -- France suggested today it would wage a major diplomatic 
fight, including possible use of its veto power, to prevent the U.N. Security Council 
from passing a resolution authorizing military action against Iraq.

  France's opposition to a war, emphatically delivered here by Foreign Minister 
Dominique de Villepin, is a major blow for the Bush administration, which has begun 
pouring tens of thousands of troops into the Persian Gulf in preparation for a 
military conflict this spring. The administration had hoped to mark the final phase in 
its confrontation with Iraq when U.N. weapons inspectors deliver a progress report 
Monday.

  But in a diplomatic version of ambush, France and other countries used a high-level 
Security Council meeting on terrorism to lay down their markers for the debate that 
will commence next week on the inspectors' report. Russia and China, which have veto 
power, and Germany, which will chair the Security Council in February, also signaled 
today they were willing to let the inspections continue for months.

  Only Britain appeared to openly support the U.S. position that Iraqi President 
Saddam Hussein has thwarted effective inspections.

  If war is the only way to resolve this problem, we are going down a dead end, de 
Villepin told reporters. Already we know for a fact that Iraq's weapons of mass 
destruction programs are being largely blocked, even frozen. We must do everything 
possible to strengthen this process.

 The United Nations, he said, should stay on the path of cooperation. The other 
choice is to move forward out of impatience over a situation in Iraq to move towards 
military intervention. We believe that today nothing justifies envisaging military 
action.

 Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in the face of such comments, departed from his 
prepared text on terrorism and implored his colleagues to remember that the Security 
Council resolution passed unanimously Nov. 8 gave Iraq a last chance to meet its 
obligations. We must not shrink from our duties and our responsibilities when the 
material comes before us next week, Powell said. He used a variation of the phrase 
must not shrink three more times as he addressed the council.

  During the weeks of debate on the Iraq resolution, French officials had indicated 
they were open to some sort of military intervention if Iraq did not comply. But now 
the French appear to have set much higher hurdles for support.

  Rising opposition to war, particularly in France, appears to have played a role in 
the hardening positions on the Security Council. Foreign officials are also aware of 
polls in the United States suggesting that support for a war drops dramatically if the 
Bush administration does not have U.N. approval.

 While the United Nations was debating today, U.S. military officials announced that 
the Army is sending a force of about 37,000 soldiers, spearheaded by the Texas-based 
4th Infantry Division, to the Persian Gulf region. It is the largest ground force 
identified among an estimated 125,000 U.S. troops ordered to deploy since Christmas 
Eve, the Associated Press reported.

 At the United Nations, several foreign ministers said a war in Iraq would spawn more 
terrorist acts around the globe and, in the words of Germany's Joschka Fischer, have 
disastrous consequences for long-term regional stability.

  Terrorism is far from being crushed, said Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. 
We must be careful not to take unilateral steps that might threaten the unity of the 
entire [anti-]terrorism coalition. In this context we are strictly in favor of a 
political settlement of the situation revolving around Iraq.

  Powell replied: We cannot fail to take the action that may be necessary because we 
are afraid of what others might do. We cannot be shocked into impotence because we are 
afraid of the difficult choices that are ahead of us.

  But when the foreign ministers emerged from the council debate and addressed 
reporters, it appeared that Powell's pleas had made little impact. Although  President 
Bush said last week he was sick and tired of games and deception, Fischer said the 
inspections were a success.

  Iraq has complied fully with all relevant resolutions and cooperated very closely 
with the U.N. team on the ground, Fischer said. We think things are moving in the 
right direction, based on the efforts of the inspection team, and [they] should have 
all the time which is needed.

  Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said Monday's

[CTRL] For your attention

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site and thought you should 
see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site, go 
to http://www.observer.co.uk

Spies hide as Bank faces BCCI charges
Victims of the biggest banking fraud ever are putting UK regulators in the dock - and 
demanding security service documents.  Conal Walsh reports
Conal Walsh
Saturday January 18 2003
The Guardian


A mega-scandal much older than Enron or WorldCom is about to shake the British 
financial establishment. More than a decade after the spectacular collapse of the Bank 
of Credit and Commerce International, its creditors are finally to put the Bank of 
England in the dock.

The stakes could not be higher for the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. It was the 
financial regulator in 1991 when the BCCI crashed with #163;7 billion of undeclared 
debts, and has long been accused of turning a blind eye to fraud at the Middle Eastern 
bank.

Now it faces a giant lawsuit brought in London by BCCI's victims, who claim it is 
guilty of negligence amounting to 'misfeasance', or wilful misconduct. The Bank has 
fiercely denied the charge, and made every effort to get the legal action thrown out.

And no wonder. BCCI's creditors are claiming up to #163;1bn in damages. They are also 
breaking new ground by challenging the Bank's statutory immunity against being sued.

The Government's worries do not stop there. It will have to answer potentially 
embarrassing questions over what Ministers, civil servants and the regulator knew 
about BCCI before it crashed. The Bank's most senior officials, past and present, are 
expected to go into the witness box, and the High Court will also consider evidence 
from John Major, the former Prime Minister, as well as former Chancellors Norman 
Lamont, Nigel Lawson and Denis Healey.

Then there is the small matter of the role played by Britain's intelligence services, 
whose relationship with BCCI has long been questioned. Did MI6 use accounts at the 
secretive bank to pay sources and operatives around the world? Did BCCI channel 
Western funds to Mujahideen fighters in the Eighties - or even, as some conspiracy 
theorists have surmised, to Osama bin Laden?

All this may - or may not - come out when the trial begins in October. For now, 
though, both sides are engaged in pre-trial legal tussles over secret service 
documents.

The creditors are led by accountant Deloitte amp; Touche, BCCI's liquidator. They 
range from East End market traders to local councils to the state of Abu Dhabi, which 
had become BCCI's principal shareholder by 1991, and is thought to have lost #163;2bn.

BCCI remains the world's biggest-ever banking fraud, and the colour and complexity of 
the scam is awesome.

Press attention at the time tended to focus on such unsavoury customers as Panama's 
military leader Manuel Noriega, as well as the gilt-edged lifestyles of the bank's 
executives, many of whom remain fugitives from justice today. BCCI laundered drugs 
money, bribes and dictators' loot. But this reflected only part of an endemic culture 
of fraud, which would consume more than 90 per cent of the bank's assets.

BCCI was founded in 1972 by Agha Hasan Abedi, a charismatic banker and mystic from 
Pakistan. It grew rapidly, and would eventually boast offices in 70 countries and 
14,000 employees. But from the start, it had a taste for opaque finances. It was 
incorporated in two tax havens, Luxembourg and Grand Cayman, and used two sets of 
auditors, allowing it to avoid publishing meaningful consolidated accounts.

Abedi's bank was beloved of Asian and Middle Eastern expatriates, and he cherished a 
vision of the BCCI as a force for unity in the developing world. But by the late 
Seventies, its biggest borrower, the Gulf shipping group owned by Abbas Gokal, was 
heading for bankruptcy. Concerned that regulators would shut down BCCI if its 
exposures were revealed, Abedi and other executives falsified the books. BCCI secretly 
poured money into Gulf, just to make it look like a going concern capable of servicing 
its debts.

This deception lasted for 15 years, involved 750 false accounts and an estimated total 
turnover of $15bn. BCCI also created fictitious transactions to mask other 
non-performing loans, as well as hundreds of millions of pounds' worth of losses at 
its London-based treasury department. Reckless expansion into the United States and 
Europe dented profitability further. By the time it went down, BCCI was routinely 
plundering customer deposits to maintain an appearance of solvency.

It had been granted a licence to trade in the UK by the Bank of England in 1980, and 
opened dozens of outlets here, its largest branch network in any single country. 
BCCI's collapse provoked fury in the UK, as tens of thousands of depositors were left 
out of pocket.

Several protagonists, including Gulf's Gokal, were put behind bars by the Serious 
Fraud

[CTRL] For your attention

2003-01-19 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

US offers immunity to Saddam
Rumsfeld and Powell back exile plan
Richard Norton-Taylor and Helena Smith in Larnaca
Sunday January 19 2003
The Observer


The United States last night offered Saddam Hussein immunity from prosecution if his 
departure from Baghdad would avert war.

With only seven days to go before weapons inspectors deliver their crucial report to 
the UN security council, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary and one of the Bush 
administration's leading hawks, dangled the prospect of a peaceful way out, despite 
the massive military build-up.

If to avoid a war, Mr Rumsfeld said in a TV interview, I would ... recommend that 
some provision be made so that the senior leadership in that country [Iraq] and their 
families could be provided haven in some other country.

Hours later, in what appeared to be a series of choreographed interviews, his more 
doveish rival in the US administration, Colin Powell, backed his remarks. Asked about 
a reported Saudi initiative to grant amnesty to senior Iraqi leaders, he said: I 
would encourage Saddam Hussein, if he is getting any messages of this kind, to listen.

The hints from Washington added weight to an Arab initiative, backed by Saudi Arabia 
and others, that would urge the Iraqi leader to go into exile.

Even if the US granted President Saddam immunity from prosecution, the viability of 
the Arab plan would depend on his willingness to give up power, something many believe 
he would never contemplate. Allowing the Iraqi leader to avoid a trial for alleged war 
crimes might also prove controversial. In London, the Foreign Office maintained its 
view that the main issue was disarming Iraq rather than removing President Saddam.

The key issue is for Iraq to comply with its international obligations whatever group 
of people forms its leadership, a spokeswoman said.

Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, last night began high-level meetings in 
Baghdad, saying: We do not think that war is inevitable. We think that the inspection 
process that we are conducting is the peaceful alternative.

Mr Rumsfeld piled the pressure on the Iraqi regime by saying that Washington would 
know in a matter of weeks, not in months or years whether Iraq was cooperating 
fully with the inspectors.

His comment contrasted with remarks by Mohammed El Baradei, head of the International 
Atomic Energy Authority, who told the Guardian that UN monitors needed a few more 
months.

Mr El Baradei and Mr Blix have to report back to the UN by January 27, a deadline 
imposed by a security council resolution but whose significance is disputed by its 
five permanent members.

Last night they had talks with President Saddam's scientific adviser, Amir al-Saadi, 
and General Hussam Mohammad Amin, head of Iraq's national monitoring directorate.

We are having good, constructive meetings, Mr El Baradei told reporters. I think 
#91;the Iraqis#93; have said that there are still certain areas where they are ready 
to provide more information, he added. I think that in other areas they said they 
are ready to reconsider their position.

However, faced with mounting pressure from the US and Britain to come up with hard 
evidence to prove President Saddam has been lying about nuclear, chemical and 
biological weapons, Mr Blix insisted: It requires comprehensive inspections and it 
requires a very active Iraqi cooperation.

He earlier accused the Iraqi authorities of playing a cheap game of chess. He was 
speaking after being forced to cancel inspections in northern Iraq's no-fly zone. 
The Iraqis insisted that UN helicopters had to be escorted by Iraqi ones.

Mr Blix played down the significance of the discovery of 3,000 documents in the home 
of an Iraqi physicist, Faleh Hassan, last week. The papers, found after a tip-off by 
western intelligence, were not evidence of a weapon of mass destruction and are all 
pre-1990, Mr Blix said. We know very well they have dealt #91;in the past#93; with 
laser enrichment.

Gary Samore, a former proliferation expert at the US national security council, said 
that using laser technology to separate isotopes to enrich uranium was very very 
demanding and no country had produced it in that way.

Mr Blix said he had no doubt Tony Blair would like to have a peaceful solution through 
inspections, adding that the prime minister had refused to commit himself during 
talks on Friday to a timetable regarding the monitoring.

#183; A statement purportedly written by Osama bin Laden urging Muslims to unite 
against the crusader coalition was published yesterday by the London-based Arab 
newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat.

It said the statement was mailed to the paper from an Islamic source in London with 
close links to a Pakistan-based Islamic research centre

[CTRL] For your attention

2003-01-19 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Drugs and forgery 'sustain North Korean economy'
Matthew Engel in Washington
Sunday January 19 2003
The Observer


The threat from North Korea may be more insidious than the mere possibility of a 
nuclear attack, it was claimed yesterday. The regime is shoring up what remains of its 
economy by racketeering, according to US officials quoted in the magazine US News and 
World Report.

They believe North Korea is producing 40 tonnes of opium a year, huge quantities of 
high-quality amphetamines and millions of dollars worth of supernotes - beautifully 
made counterfeit $100 bills.

The magazine says the US has seen videotape of Kim Jong-nam, the son of the dictator 
Kim Jong-il, using the fake notes at a casino in Macao.

The officials say these may be worth almost as much as the legitimate North Korean 
trade: about $500m a year compared with $650m in official exports.

Some say the corruption is leading to a culture of bribery and a loosening of the 
regime's hold. The key here is lack of government control, one told the magazine. 
Criminal activity may bring about the disintegration of this regime.

The report coincides with another round of intense diplomacy. Although a Russian envoy 
was still in Pyongyang and a special UN envoy had just left, the official news agency 
was putting out apparently unyielding statements, including a rare comment from Kim 
Jong-il himself.

No force on earth can break the inexhaustible strength and indomitable will of this 
great army and people, he was quoted as saying.

More specifically, his first vice foreign minister, Kang Sok-ju, called for 
face-to-face talks with the US: an approach Washington rejects.

The internationalisation of this issue would make the prospect of its settlement more 
complicated and gloomy, he said.

But at a diplomatic reception he welcomed the Russian envoy, Alexander Losyukov, and 
praised the Russians' good will. Mr Losyukov described their talks so far as useful.

In an interview with South Korean TV the American ambassador to Seoul, Glenn Hubbard, 
gave a further hint that the US may offer the North a deal.

If they satisfy our concerns about the nuclear programmes, we are prepared to 
consider a broad approach, he said. That would entail, in the final analysis, some 
economic cooperation, perhaps in the power field.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
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Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

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[CTRL] For your attention

2003-01-17 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

---
Note from Euphorian:

Bloomberg's deficit was inherited ... so much for leadership ... AER
---

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

King of New York loses his lustre
The Big Apple is suffering from a $6bn debt and so is Mayor Bloomberg, whose 
popularity is plummeting
Oliver Burkeman in New York
Friday January 17 2003
The Guardian


Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, is rarely the bearer of good news these 
days. So on Tuesday he jumped at the opportunity to drop in at Yankee Stadium, in the 
Bronx, to welcome the baseball team's latest international star, Hideki Matsui - a 
towering 28-year-old Japanese player nicknamed Godzilla, who will earn $21m over three 
years.

Even then the beleaguered Mr Bloomberg was unable to avoid mentioning the subject that 
has come to define his mayoralty: New York's biggest financial crisis for more than 30 
years. Welcoming Mr Matsui, he delivered only one rather plaintive piece of advice. 
Spend a lot of money, he said.

But even Godzilla can only do so much. Facing a potential budget shortfall of$6bn, the 
mayor awoke to more bad news yesterday: a New York Times poll showed his popularity 
plummeting in recent months, 53% of New Yorkers disapproving of his handling of the 
job.

The media billionaire, elected by the numbed city in December 2001 as a safe pair of 
non-ideological hands and a man whose estimated $3bn fortune meant he would be 
beholden to no one, has failed to convince on the personal level, too. About 30% of 
those questioned reported a generally unfavourable impression - a rise from 13% in 
the middle of last year.

The fiscal meltdown, attributable in large part to the September 11 terrorist attacks 
and their aftermath, has forced Mr Bloomberg, 60, to introduce a harsh austerity plan.

He has ordering 25-30% cuts in expenditure by all city agencies, closing daycare 
centres for the elderly, threatening a rise in subway fares, increasing property taxes 
by 25%, and raising the price of cigarettes to more than $7 (about #163;4.50).

This has proved particularly unpopular in one of America's last nicotine-addicted big 
cities.

Most politically dangerous of all, Mr Bloomberg has not spared firefighters and police 
officers from the axe, introducing recruitment freezes on the emergency services.

Making things worse is the sense of aloofness conveyed by the man who is probably New 
York's least self-publicising mayor in living memory - in contrast to Rudolph 
Giuliani, or Ed Koch, who as mayor in the 1980s was fond of yelling How'm I doing? 
at almost any New Yorker he passed.

Mr Bloomberg, by contrast, prefers to fly state politicians by private jet to his 
Bermuda holiday home for negotiations.

He has been excoriated in the city's press for vanishing abroad at weekends, taking 
time off from a job traditionally done seven days a week.

He keeps his decision-making really close to his vest, said Bonnie Brower, executive 
director of City Project, a New York budgetary pressure group.

He relies on a very small circle of advisers, and he regards public participation as 
very messy and unnecessary. Bloomberg Corporation [the mayor's business media firm] 
wasn't a public company beholden to shareholders - it was Mike and his friends. I 
think that's the way he would like to rule.

For example, he said he didn't see any opposition to his budget proposals. Well, all 
he had to do was peek out the window of City Hall, because every day there were one or 
more protest rallies.

The decline in the mayor's fortunes follows a honeymoon period in the first half of 
last year when it seemed that Mr Bloomberg, though nominally a Republican, might have 
truly brought non-ideological government to New York.

After September 11 Mr Giuliani's act was so obviously impossible to follow that nobody 
expected anyone to do so. Mr Bloomberg set about running the city like a 
forward-thinking corporation.

His office adopted a far less controlling approach to reporters than Mr Giuliani. He 
cut the mayor's salary to $1.

Respect mingled with amusement greeted his decision to turn City Hall into a vast 
open-plan office. He avoided wrangles over tax and sponsorship by funding cultural 
institutions from his own pocket, giving out $10m in December 2001.

But, said Steven Malanga of the right-leaning Manhattan Institute thinktank, it was 
very naive of him to say he was going to govern without an ideological bias.

One of his favourite expressions is that there's no Democratic or Republican way to 
pick up the garbage. But the truth of the matter is that sanitation costs differ from 
city to city, and some are making savings with privatisation.

Curiously, news of Mr Bloomberg's dwindling popularity comes at a time when two of the 
old sores of New York life - crime and police conduct -

[CTRL] For your attention

2003-01-17 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Car wars
The US economy needs oil like a junkie needs heroin - and Iraq will supply its next fix
Ian Roberts
Friday January 17 2003
The Guardian


War in Iraq is inevitable. That there would be war was decided by North American 
planners in the mid-1920s. That it would be in Iraq was decided much more recently. 
The architects of this war were not military planners but town planners. War is 
inevitable not because of weapons of mass destruction, as claimed by the political 
right, nor because of western imperialism, as claimed by the left. The cause of this 
war, and probably the one that will follow, is car dependence.

The US has paved itself into a corner. Its physical and economic infrastructure is so 
highly car dependent that the US is pathologically addicted to oil. Without billions 
of barrels of precious black sludge being pumped into the veins of its economy every 
year, the nation would experience painful and damaging withdrawal.

The first Model T Ford rolled off the assembly line in 1908 and was a miracle of mass 
production. In the first decade of that century, car registrations in the US increased 
from 8,000 to almost 500,000. Within the cities, buses replaced trams, and then cars 
replaced buses. In 1932, General Motors bought up America's tramways and then closed 
them down. But it was the urban planners who really got America hooked. Car ownership 
offered the possibility of escape from dirty, crowded cities to leafy garden suburbs 
and the urban planners provided the escape routes.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, America road built itself into a nation of 
home-owning suburbanites. In the words of Joni Mitchell: They paved paradise and put 
up a parking lot. Cities such as Los Angeles, Dallas and Phoenix were moulded by the 
private passenger car into vast urban sprawls which are so widely spread that it is 
now almost impossible to service them economically with public transport.

As the cities sprawled, the motor manufacturing industry consolidated. Car-making is 
now the main industrial employer in the world, dominated by five major groups of which 
General Motors is the largest. The livelihood and landscape of North Americans were 
forged by car-makers.

Motor vehicles are responsible for about one-third of global oil use, but for nearly 
two-thirds of US oil use. In the rest of the world, heating and power generation 
account for most oil use. The increase in oil prices during the 1973 Arab oil embargo 
encouraged the substitution of other fuels in heating and power generation, but in the 
transport sector there is little scope for oil substitution in the short term.

Due to artificially low oil and gasoline prices that did not reflect the true social 
costs of production and use, there was little incentive to seek alternative energy 
sources. The Arab oil embargo temporarily stimulated greater fuel efficiency with the 
introduction of gasoline consumption standards, but the increasing popularity of 
gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles over the past decade has substantially reduced 
the average fuel efficiency of the US car fleet.

The US transportation sector is almost totally dependent on oil, and supplies are 
running out. It is estimated that the total amount of oil that can be pumped out of 
the earth is about 2,000 billion barrels and that world oil production will peak in 
the next 10 to 15 years. Since even modest reductions in oil production can result in 
major hikes in the cost of gasoline, the US administration is well aware of the 
importance of ensuring oil supplies. Every major oil price shock of the past 30 years 
was followed by a US recession and every major recession was preceded by an oil price 
shock.

In 1997, the Carnegie commission on preventing deadly conflict identified factors that 
put states at risk. They include rapid population changes that outstrip the capacity 
of the state to provide essential services, and the control of valuable natural 
resources by a single group. Both factors are key motivators in the war with Iraq. 
Sprawling suburban America needs oil and Saddam Hussein is sitting on it.

The US economy needs oil like a junkie needs heroin and Iraq has 112 billion barrels, 
the largest supply in the world outside Saudi Arabia. Even before the first shot has 
been fired, there have been discussions about how Iraq's oil reserves will be carved 
up. All five permanent members of the UN security council have international oil 
companies that have an interest in regime change in Baghdad.

Car dependence is a global public health issue of which gasoline wars are only one 
facet. Every day about 3,000 people die and 30,000 people are seriously injured on the 
world's roads in traffic crashes. More than 85% of the deaths are in low and

[CTRL] For your attention

2003-01-16 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

US oil stocks evaporate to 27-year low
Heather Stewart
Wednesday January 15 2003
The Guardian


Crude oil stocks in America have run dangerously low, raising fears that the 
government will be forced to tap its strategic reserves even before any full-blown 
conflict with Iraq.

Inventories are down to their second-lowest level since records began in 1976 as the 
oil workers' strike in Venezuela holds back supply, the US department of energy 
revealed yesterday.

Official estimates put the minimum stocks needed to run US refineries at 270m barrels 
a day but the DoE said there were only 272.3m barrels left in the system, down 6.4m 
barrels from a week earlier.

The shortfall helped send oil prices soaring again yesterday, with Brent crude for 
February delivery up 64 cents a barrel to $31.25 by the afternoon.

Paul Horsnell, oil analyst at JP Morgan, said that with US refineries guzzling 15m 
barrels of crude every day there was just four hours worth of slack in the system.

Things are getting a bit tight if it gets below 300m barrels, Mr Horsnell said. 
Once you start running below that level, prices become more and more sensitive even 
to minor changes in supply.

With the build-up to a conflict in Iraq accelerating, Mr Horsnell said, there was 
considerable potential for interruptions in supply in coming months. What's alarming 
about this is that it's got nothing to do with Iraq - it's got nothing to do with the 
Middle East, he said.

The US government holds a massive strategic petrol reserve in salt caverns below Texas 
and Louisiana. Despite the spike in the oil price, industry spokesmen insisted 
yesterday that it was not yet time to turn on the taps.

I don't see a reason, really, to release the SPR, said John Felmy, chief economist 
for trade body the American Petroleum Institute, arguing that there was not yet a 
crisis. We can't declare an emergency at this point.

Mr Horsnell said that, although the oil price would be high enough normally to justify 
dipping into the SPR, the White House might be hoping to keep back supplies until the 
outbreak of a war with Iraq, when prices might rise further.

There is little sign of an early resumption of normal oil supplies from Venezuela, the 
world's fifth-largest exporter, where striking workers are trying to force president 
Hugo Chavez to call early elections by starving the oil-dependent economy of cash. 
Cumulative loss of production is approaching 100m barrels.

The oil markets were temporarily calmed last week by the prospect of a compensatory 
increase in supplies from Opec, the oil producers' cartel. But yesterday's jump in 
prices suggested traders are losing faith in Opec's ability to help. Oil ministers 
from the Opec countries agreed to raise production by 1.5m barrels a day at a meeting 
in Vienna last weekend.

Lawrence Eagles, at commodity analyst GNI, said the 270m-barrel floor was probably an 
overestimate of the minimum amount needed to keep refineries running, and just-in-time 
production methods meant a smaller margin for error was sufficient.

Regardless of whether that particular cut-off point is right, though, we have clearly 
gone down to very low stocks, he added. Mr Eagles calculates that reserves, plus the 
SPR and stocks of finished oil products, could keep the US economy going for 77 days.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A
DECLARATION  DISCLAIMER
==
CTRL is a discussion  informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease!  These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

Archives Available at:
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[CTRL] For your attention

2003-01-16 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

The zero tolerance Giuliani roadshow arrives in Mexico
Protected by 10 cars and 12 motorcycles, New York's former mayor says he can sell his 
crime strategy in Latin America's biggest city
Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
Wednesday January 15 2003
The Guardian


Mexico City, the biggest metropolis in Latin America, plagued by years of rampant 
crime, has welcomed its latest weapon against murder and corruption: Rudolph Giuliani.

The former mayor of New York has arrived in the capital for the first instalment of a 
crime-busting contract which will earn his consultancy company a $4.3m (#163;2.7m) 
fee.

During a frenetic two-day visit, he told residents he believed he could do for them 
what he achieved for the people of New York with a zero tolerance policy.

Our purpose is to evaluate the situation, and then make recommendations using the 
experience and knowledge we have that has worked elsewhere, said Mr Giuliani, who is 
credited with bringing down crime in his own city by 60% overall, and murders by 70%.

Mr Giuliani said he would be revealing his crime-busting recommendations in May. It 
will be the first time that the former mayor has tried to adapt the zero tolerance 
philosophy to a foreign city.

Mexico City is not an easy place to start, even for the man who emerged a popular hero 
from September 11 and has become the personification of leadership for many people.

The crime problem in Mexico City is not only tough, but also culturally specific.

The crisis began in the mid-1990s, prompted by economic turmoil, and soon became 
firmly entrenched. Currently, about 500 crimes are reported daily, although 
criminologists say that this represents only about 10% of the total, and that only 
about 10% of crimes reported lead to convictions.

The zero tolerance idea is rooted in the theory that combating major crimes is best 
done by tackling an underlying culture of crime - which means cracking down on even 
minor misdemeanors.

This is something which could prove particularly difficult in Mexico City. 
Kidnappings, assaults and bank robberies catch the headlines, but rule-breaking runs 
particularly deep in a place where policemen called to investigate a burglary may walk 
off with an extra something for themselves; where bribing cops is accepted practice; 
where many ignore even the concept of taxes; and where only a tiny minority respect 
traffic regulations.

While in Mexico, Mr Giuliani acknowledged there were difficulties in imposing the New 
York model wholesale, and promised cultural sensitivity. Some things are transferable 
and some are not, he said. But whatever the differences in culture, background and 
laws, the objective for all decent societies is absolutely the same, and that is 
protection and safety: the single most important human right.

Although unwilling to give much away about his recommendations, he did mention the 
importance of fighting corruption in the police force.

One policeman, Marcelino Flores, said: The first thing Giuliani needs to do is to 
raise salaries. The next is training. Salaries here are way too low if they want a 
clean police force.

Part of the strategy seems to be just that, with an increase in salaries from the 
current average of about #163;4,300 a year. Although this was Mr Giuliani's first 
visit, his advisers have been in and out of Mexico since the contract was announced in 
October. A visit planned for November was cancelled at the last minute amid rumours of 
a kidnapping threat, and his arrival this week was a surprise to most.

From the moment Mr Giuliani touched down at 3.30am on Tuesday, he moved around the 
city cocooned in ostentatious security and shadowed by a cloud of journalists. He 
took a ride through the Barrio Bravo of Tepito, where even army operations against 
drugs and arms trafficking are repelled by criminals defending their territory.

Not that the former mayor could have seen much at such an early hour from inside a van 
surrounded by 10 other cars and a dozen motorcycles. There were also endless meetings 
with officials and the business leaders who are footing the bill, and who appear to 
view Mr Giuliani as a kind of saviour.

Others are not convinced. The deal upsets nationalist sensitivities and seems at odds 
with the ethos of the leftwing mayor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who had previously 
criticized zero tolerance for promoting police abuse.

A taxi driver, Alejandro Lagran, said: You can't compare New York to Mexico City. 
People there are richer and there is more control.

Mr Giuliani brushed aside such doubts during a press conference on Tuesday.

Back in 1990, New York City was known as The Rotten Apple, and now it is one of the 
safest cities in America, if not the safest, he said.

But he warned against

[CTRL] For your attention

2003-01-16 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

---
Note from Euphorian:

Or, Why they live over there and we live over here.
---

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Parole denied to farmer jailed for killing burglar
Steven Morris
Thursday January 16 2003
The Guardian


Tony Martin, the farmer jailed for shooting dead a teenage burglar, last night learned 
he will not be freed early because he still refuses to concede what he did was wrong.

The parole board is believed to have taken into account probation reports suggesting 
he might again attack a burglar if his home was broken into, and also that he was 
living in the past.

Martin, who is serving five years for the manslaughter of 16-year-old Fred Barras, 
will not be released until the end of July, to the fury of supporters and some 
politicians.

Businessman Malcolm Starr, who has led the campaign for the Norfolk farmer's release, 
said: This decision is completely wrong. The parole board is completely out of touch 
with public opinion.

He added: Mr Martin regrets the fact that a 16-year-old lost his life but he feels he 
has done nothing wrong and will not lie to obtain his early release. A lot of 
prisoners lie and say they are sorry about something when they are not. He is not 
prepared to lie.

Tory MP Henry Bellingham, whose North West Norfolk constituency includes Martin's 
farm, Bleak House, in the remote Fenland hamlet of Emneth Hungate, said he would raise 
the matter with the home secretary, David Blunkett.

He said: It's a disgrace. Mr Martin has been a model prisoner and there's no reason 
to detain him a moment longer.

After opening fire on Barras and his accomplice, Brendon Fearon, in August 1999, 
Martin was lionised by some sections of the media as a victim who was persecuted 
because he dared to fight back. The incident sparked a national debate about crime, 
rural policing and the rights of householders to defend their property.

However, a jury at Norwich crown court dismissed Martin's claim that he was acting in 
self-defence. He was convicted of murder and jailed for life in April 2000.

The conviction was reduced to manslaughter on appeal in 2001 when three judges 
accepted Martin had been suffering from a paranoid personality disorder, but said the 
jury was surely right to decide he had not acted reasonably by opening fire with an 
illegally held pump action shotgun.

The parole board wrote to Roger Haley, the governor of Highpoint prison in Suffolk, 
last night to explain why it refused to grant Martin's release.

A close friend of Martin's, Richard Portham, said: He told me he had seen one of the 
reports from a probation officer who said he shouldn't get released because he was a 
danger to burglars.

I suppose the attitude came across in his report that he would do it again. I am sure 
Tony would have given the impression that if people were threatening him he would have 
no choice but to defend himself.

He added: One of the probation officers criticised him for not living in the 21st 
century because he keeps saying things were better 40 years ago. Mr Martin's response 
is that things were better. There was not this problem with law and order.

Martin's solicitor, James Saunders, said he did not believe the farmer could be 
regarded as a danger to society. He said: I think it [the decision] will confirm his 
view that it's an upside down world. He was saddened that a young man died but the 
position has been that he didn't have any alternative but to defend himself.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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[CTRL] For your attention

2003-01-13 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

[EMAIL PROTECTED] spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you 
should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Secret gun finds raise gang fears
Sharp rise in smuggling fuels drug wars
Paul Lashmar and James Oliver
Monday January 13 2003
The Guardian


Growing arsenals of hand grenades, machine guns and Semtex explosives have been seized 
at ports by customs and excise in a wave of smuggling that is arming criminal gangs, 
the Guardian can disclose.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the arms finds, in a climate of growing public 
anxiety about gun crime, is that customs, which is under the control of the 
government, has kept quiet about the most recent discoveries.

The dramatic rise in gun crime has profoundly embarrassed the government in the wake 
of the fatal shooting of two teenage girls at a new year's party in Birmingham.

Customs did not publicly disclose their most recent finds in June and November and 
have given few details of an earlier seizure in April. They cite ongoing 
investigations as the reason.

The most significant seizure took place in early November at a south coast port, 
according to investigators, when customs discovered in a lorry load of frozen pizza 
about 30 Uzi machine pistols, magazines, silencers and ammunition believed to come 
from Croatia and heading for London.

In another seizure in June at Dover, in a lorry purportedly carrying aircraft spares, 
customs found two mini submachine guns. In addition, four magazines, two silencers, a 
Magnum .44 handgun and ammunition were discovered.

Last April customs intercepted a vehicle at Felixstowe docks. Seventeen hand grenades 
were hidden on board along with detonators, two packs of explosive, 10 handguns, three 
machine pistols and ammunition.

Sources say that some of the weapons were destined for drug gangs, including the 
Turkish heroin gangs in north London and a south London crime family.

Arms shipments, many from eastern Europe, are believed to have been destined for 
organised criminals. Police sources believe the surge in arms smuggling is motivated 
by drug gangs urgently increasing their firepower to cope with a growing spate of turf 
wars.

According to sources in police intelligence: These seizures may well indicate the 
emergence of a new source of weapons for some organised crime groups. The problem is, 
we don't know what's got through.

In 2001-2002 only a few handguns were found by customs. The seizures in the last nine 
months suggest a surge in arms smuggling. Customs usually estimate that they seize a 
small percentage of any regular contraband traffic.

Some hand grenades are believed to be in criminal hands in Britain already. After the 
shooting of the two teenage girls in a drug gang shootout, the attacked gang has 
threatened to use hand grenades in retribution. Police are hunting the killers of 
Charlene Ellis, 18, and her cousin Letisha Shakespeare, 17.

A customs press spokeswomen confirmed that there had been seizures. We have had some 
seizures of guns over the last eight months that naturally concern us. It is far too 
early to say any new trend was emerging with only handful of significant seizures over 
the last eight months and not much more than this over the past year.

However, a customs source said: Within customs this is believed to show a new trend   
in smuggling in such serious weapons.

Police sources say they are concerned that the number of dedicated customs firearms 
and explosive officers based at ports had declined over the last two years.

Last month the head of intelligence at Scotland Yard warned that gun battles could 
break out in London between rival gangs fighting over the trade in crack cocaine and 
heroin. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Mike Fuller said the capital was on the cusp 
of turf wars between Albanians, Turks, Chinese triads and Jamaicans. He said the gangs 
were involved in drug dealing, human trafficking and kidnapping.

Police are particularly worried because the foreign-based gangs have already shown 
they have access to firearms and are prepared to kill. There have been 18 murders this 
year involving black on black killings by British crack dealers and Jamaican Yardie 
gangsters.

At the beginning of December Alisan Dogan, 43, a cleaner, was caught in the crossfire 
and shot dead when dozens of criminals staged a running battle in a busy shopping area 
of Green Lanes, in Haringey, north London. The incident that left four men with 
gunshot wounds is thought to be connected to Turkish organised crime linked to the 
heroin trade.

Cutting off new sources of guns for criminals has so far been hampered by the lack of 
comprehensive and centralised intelligence of police and customs seizures. But April 
will see the launch of the forensic science service's firearms database that will 
provide centralised information on all firearms submitted by

[CTRL] For your attention

2003-01-13 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

[EMAIL PROTECTED] spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you 
should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Sharon draws slim hope from polls as revelations continue
Chris McGreal  in Jerusalem
Monday January 13 2003
The Guardian


Ariel Sharon drew slight comfort from a new round of opinion polls yesterday that 
showed his dramatically curtailed television broadcast last week had stemmed the flow 
of votes from his party ahead of this month's general election.

But the polls revealed that most of the Israeli public did not believe his denials 
over illegal campaign contributions and other financial shenanigans. In addition, 
Binyamin Netanyahu, the foreign minister, would be a more popular choice as the ruling 
Likud party's candidate for prime minister in the 28 January ballot.

To add to Mr Sharon's woes, the dribble of revelations over   his financial 
relationship with an old war comrade who now lives in South Africa continued 
yesterday, with claims that the prime minister lied when he said Cyril Kern had no 
business dealings in Israel.

The newspaper Ma'ariv   alleged that not only did Mr Kern try to sell diamonds and a 
gold refinery to Israeli businessmen, but the name of Mr Sharon's son, Gilad, occurs 
in the correspondence involved.

Yesterday, in response to an earlier request from Israel's attorney general, South 
Africa said it would investigate Mr Kern's $1.5m (#163;930,000) loan to Mr Sharon.

Two polls in the Israeli press show the Likud-led rightwing and religious bloc in the 
120-  seat knesset hanging on to its majority by five or six seats.

Before Mr Sharon went on television to deny that the loan was an illegal campaign 
contribution, and to deny that he had lied to police over its source, the polls had 
shown the Likud-led bloc close to losing control of the government, with a majority of 
just three.

But by itself, Mr Sharon's party is still down by about 10 seats on polls a month ago, 
and his personal standing has taken a battering.

Before his television broadcast, Mr Sharon promised to disprove with documents and 
facts the despicable lies being told. But he did neither, and so may have 
squandered his single greatest asset - trust.

Some 65% of Israelis who saw last Wednesday's broadcast - before it was halted by a 
judge for breaching election laws - were not convinced by Mr Sharon's statement that 
he was telling the truth.

However, the opposition Labour party again failed to capitalise on events and fell in 
the polls by a couple of seats.

Perhaps most worrying for Mr Sharon is that another poll in the Ma'ariv newspaper 
showed that if Mr Netanyahu were Likud's leader, he would boost the party's vote by 
10%.

An analysis in Ma'ariv said some voters had given the benefit of the doubt to Mr 
Sharon, being more furious with the 'hostile' media and the 'harassing' judicial 
system than they were shocked by the accusations. But the paper says Likud could see 
the slide resume if there were more revelations. And there are.

In his broadcast, Mr Sharon said that Mr Kern never asked me for anything and never 
received anything. He does not have business here.

Ma'ariv reported yesterday that Mr Kern was regularly in contact with Israeli 
businessmen, and tried to sell Sierra Leonean diamonds and three gold refineries in 
South Africa. The correspondence involved is copied to Gilad Sharon.

It also noted that Mr Kern had met businessmen in Tel Aviv hotels during visits to 
Israel at which Gilad Sharon was present.

 More at guardian.co.uk/israel


Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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==
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screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease!  These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

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[CTRL] For your attention

2003-01-13 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

[EMAIL PROTECTED] spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you 
should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Dazzled by the science
Biologists who dress up hi-tech eugenics as a new art form are dangerously deluded
Jeremy Rifkin
Monday January 13 2003
The Guardian


Recently, J Craig Venter, the gene scientist whose company, Celera Genomics, led the 
race to map the human genome, announced a plan to create the first artificial life 
form in a laboratory dish. Venter, who has teamed up with the Nobel laureate biologist 
Hamilton Smith, says he hopes to use a $3m US government grant to create partially 
man-made organisms that could produce hydrogen for fuel or break down carbon dioxide 
from power plant emissions. Other scientists worry that Venter's creation could wreak 
havoc on natural ecosystems or be used to create new kinds of biological weapons.

Venter is among a new genre of biologists who see themselves less as engineers and 
more as creative artists - designers and architects of what they envision as a second 
genesis - this one inspired not by divine guidance or by the forces of evolution, but 
by the human imagination. Ironically, this subtle shift in the focus of the biological 
sciences from engineering to art is being mirrored in the art community, raising 
the question of whether a new social gestalt is being readied to make acceptable this 
radical new manipulation of nature.

All of a sudden, artists around the world have discovered DNA and are feverishly at 
play in their studios using the cutting-edge tools of biotechnology. An American 
artist, Eduardo Kac, commissioned a team of geneticists in France to create a 
transgenic rabbit named Alba with a fluorescent gene from a jellyfish in its 
biological code. The rabbit, which glows, is considered a living piece of genetic 
artistry. Currently, an exhibit entitled Genesis is touring the US with much fanfare. 
Like Kac's illuminated rabbit, many of the works on display use the tools of genetic 
science to create living representations just as their predecessors used paintbrushes 
to create their representations. A group calling itself the Critical Art Ensemble 
engages in a performance piece called GenTerra, in which it releases transgenic 
bacteria into the audience. Christine Paul, the curator at the Whitney Museum of 
American Art says: We are witnessing the emergence of a new type of artist, the 
artist/scientist/researcher.

The new biotech artists say that such exhibits will help the public wrestle with the 
scientific, ethical and legal issues surrounding the new genomic science. Many of the 
artists hope that their work, which includes digitally produced portrait photographs 
of hybrid cat people and tubes of real DNA suspended from the ceiling, will provoke an 
emotional response from the audience and force people to think about the many 
implications of the new science. Maybe.

But it's far more likely that the real consequence of such art exhibits will be to 
legitimise the idea of a new artful eugenics movement. The melding together of 
genetic science and artistic expression could help ease the way to a popular 
acceptance of Venter's new microbe, as well as cloned, transgenic and chimeric animals 
and designer babies.  More than 30 years ago, Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg wrote 
expectantly of the possibility of designing a useful protein from first premises, 
replacing evolution by art. Recombinant DNA techniques are increasingly being viewed 
as the artist's tools of the postmodern era. With the new technologies, human beings 
assume the role of creative artists, continually transforming evolution into works of 
art.

Already in laboratories around the world researchers are creating new hybrid creatures 
that have never before existed. Scientists have fused together the embryos of a sheep 
and goat, two totally unrelated species, and given birth to a new creature called a 
Geep, a chimeric animal with the head of a sheep and the body of a goat. The 
anti-freeze gene in a flounder fish has been inserted into the genetic code of a 
tomato plant, to make it resistant to freezes. Human growth hormone genes, the human 
immune system and even human brain tissue have been inserted into the genetic 
blueprint of mice embryos. The mature mice express these human genes in their bodies. 
The mice with the human growth hormone genes grew twice as big as ordinary mice. 
Scientists have even grown human skin, pancreases and breasts in laboratory jars.

Other scientists have inserted the nucleus of a human cell into a cow egg whose own 
nucleus was removed in a partially successful effort to create a quasi-human embryo. 
Spider genes have been inserted into goat embryos and the mature goats produce spider 
silk in their milk. And Japanese scientists have just announced that they are planning 
to use tissue from the legs and

[CTRL] For your attention

2003-01-12 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site and thought you should 
see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site, go 
to http://www.observer.co.uk

Sangatte refugees freeze on Paris streets
Humanitarian 'crisis' fears as capital is swamped by asylum-seekers
Paul Webster in Paris
Saturday January 11 2003
The Guardian


Hundreds of asylum-seekers, including families with small children, are now sleeping 
rough under the elegant bridges and in the doorways of Paris as the worst winter spell 
for years threatens to create a humanitarian 'crisis'.

The sudden appearance of the refugees and illegal immigrants in the capital follows 
the joint British-French decision to freeze out the continuing flow of Iraqi and 
Afghan refugees and to close the Sangatte refugee centre, near Calais, last month.

An estimated 300 illegal immigrants, many of them teenagers, are now wandering the 
streets of the Channel port while seeking ways to avoid strict French and British 
immigration controls on ferries and trains. Many others have drifted to Paris.

In the city, where four homeless people died of cold last week, Iraqi Kurds and 
Afghans have swollen the queues seeking emergency shelter.

Humanitarian organisations warned this weekend of an impending catastrophe because no 
provision had been made for groups of up to 50 or more pouring into France in the hope 
of rejoining families in Britain, which has now tightened post-Sangatte immigration.

The growing numbers of the rootless - about 50,000 people from different countries 
have sought asylum in France in the past 12 months - has shocked aid workers in the 
Channel port and the capital.

Paris's overnight refuges, with space for nearly 4,000 people, have been unable to 
cope with the demand, despite the fact that scores prefer to sleep rough and avoid the 
attention of any authority for fear of deportation.

At the Pain de Mie reception centre in the 13th arrondissement, which has 500 places, 
a quarter of those seeking overnight beds were young Afghans and Kurds on their way to 
Calais who had temporarily abandoned hopes of reaching Kent after sleeping in the open 
since the demolition of Sangatte.

'The rise in demand has been spectacular since the Red Cross centre was closed,' aid 
worker Emmanuel Courvier said. 'About 150 Kurds and Afghans have been checking in each 
night and others have had to be turned away after a meal. We have no idea where they 
end up.'

Asylum-seekers, conspicuous among the ageing down-and-outs seeking respite from the 
cold, said they had arrived after Sangatte's closure with hopes of entering Britain to 
join their families. Some were surviving on dwindling amounts of money sent from 
relations in Britain. Others had travelled with friends who preferred to sleep under 
bridges or in shop doorways, rather than risk registering in hostels and attracting 
attention.

None of those who spoke to The Observer were among the 1,000 former Sangatte refugees 
who have been transferred to other centres far from the Channel ports, after the 
agreement with Britain that saw a limited number of the Sangatte residents being given 
refuge in the UK.

Khaled, 25, whose parents still live in Baghdad, said he had been forced to leave Iraq 
a month ago after some of his family were arrested by Saddam Hussein's police. 
Speaking good English, he said he could not stay in France because he knew nobody.

'I may be forced to seek asylum here just to survive, even though I don't speak the 
language. I have an engineering degree and would be more use in Britain. Everyone I 
met has only one destination in mind - Britain - and they are ready to undergo any 
hardship to get there. If there is a war, there will be a rush of more candidates.'

Other men in the queue said they believed the French, who have a harder line on 
refugees than the British, had no intention of giving residence permits and were 
determined to make life as uncomfortable as possible to discourage newcomers. They 
pointed out that more than 50 Kurds who had applied for temporary visas were on hunger 
strike in Bordeaux because their asylum applications had been rejected.

The plight of the post-Sangatte generation in Paris has been overshadowed by a rush 
for shelter from local homeless - known as SDF (sans domicile fixe) - after the deaths 
of four rough sleepers. But it is causing public concern in Calais, where men, and 
sometimes families, sleep   in public parks or makeshift shelters.

Although the temperature dropped to minus 7C last week, the Communist mayor, Jackie 
H#233;nin, said he would oppose the opening of temporary refuges in case this 
encouraged the arrival of more asylum-seekers. Buses are sent every night to collect 
refugees and take them to towns far from the port. Only a score of the men who stay in 
the city are sure of an overnight refuge and many are sleeping in Second World War 
blockhouses.

[CTRL] For your attention

2003-01-12 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Supermarket giants to target Safeway with rival Â£3bn bids
Neil Hume
Sunday January 12 2003
The Observer


A fierce battle for control of Safeway will spill out into the open this week with J 
Sainsbury and Wal-Mart, the US owner of Asda, both expected to bid over #163;3bn to 
acquire Britain's fourth-largest supermarket chain.

Safeway was effectively put up for sale by its management last week when it agreed to 
be taken over by Wm Morrison, the Yorkshire-based grocery chain run by Sir Ken 
Morrison, in a deal worth #163;2.65bn.

However, Morrison's share price dropped sharply after the deal was announced, leaving 
it vulnerable to a counter bid from rivals who cannot afford to see the two chains 
combine.

Sainsbury fears that it will be left as the weakest of the four players in the 
cut-throat UK food retailing market if the deal goes ahead, while Wal-Mart will never 
achieve its ambition to become the No1 in Britain if it lets Safeway fall through its 
grip again - the two were just hours from agreeing a deal four years ago.

Sainsbury's directors held day-long discussions yesterday with the chief executive, 
Sir Peter Davis, seeking support for a cash and share offer of more than 300p for each 
Safeway share.

At the end of Friday's trading, Safeway shares closed at 279.75p, while the value of 
Morrison's offer stood at 251p.

An offer from Sainsbury could come as early as today, alongside the company's 
third-quarter results, which will the give the City the first indication of how 
Sainsbury traded over Christmas.

Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, is expected to wait until Sainsbury has shown 
its hands before announcing its move. Given its size the Arkansas-based company will 
easily be able to outbid Sainsbury and is likely to offer cash. City analysts believe 
it could afford to pay up to 400p.

The bids from Sainsbury and Wal-Mart will be conditional on regulatory approval. This 
is because their announcement will trigger an assessment by the office of fair trading 
and probably a referral to the competition commission, which will then launch an 
inquiry into whether either company should be able to buy Safeway.

This process could take up to six months and its findings can, in theory, be overruled 
by the trade and industry secretary, Patricia Hewitt.

A combination of Sainsbury and Safeway would create a food retailing giant in the UK 
with a market share of 27%, while a merged Asda and Safeway would control 26%. Either 
deal would reinforce the dominance of the big three - the Tesco, the market leader, 
Asda and Sainsbury. Critics claim this would stifle competition.

To overcome such objections both Sainsbury and Wal-Mart are prepared to sell up to 
one-third of Safeway's 479 stores.

Ironically, the two companies held talks about a carve up of the Safeway store 
portfolio late last year, but the discussions broke down last month after Wal-Mart 
objected to the terms of the deal.

Sainsbury is now talking to the US private equity group Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and 
the Royal Bank of Scotland.

However, there were indications from Whitehall yesterday that the government would 
block the Sainsbury and Wal-Mart bids even if both companies promised to sell large of 
numbers of stores.

This would play into the hands of Morrison, which claims that its deal will create a 
fourth power in the UK food retailing market. The company will make its submission to 
the OFT this week and is confident it will not be referred to the competition 
commission.

Morrison needs to buy Safeway so that it can expand out of its northern heartland. At 
the moment only eight of its 191 stores are south of Northampton.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A
DECLARATION  DISCLAIMER
==
CTRL is a discussion  informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease!  These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
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To

[CTRL] For your attention

2003-01-12 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Who's Bush going to war with? The poor
Charlotte Denny
Sunday January 12 2003
The Observer


We are the masters now, is the message coming loud and clear from the Republicans - 
not just in foreign policy but also when it comes to domestic politics.

On the campaign trail two years ago, George Bush promised a new world of compassionate 
conservatism. But, judging by last week's much-hyped tax cut plan, it is the rich Mr 
Bush feels compassion towards.

According to independent analysis, the top 1% of taxpayers will be $89,000 a year 
better off as a result, while the average middle class American will see just $265 cut 
off his/her tax bill. President Bush brands critics of his tax cut plan as exponents 
of class warfare. Class warfare it certainly is - conducted by the White House on 
behalf of the richest group of Americans.

The Republicans argue that the centrepiece of the plan - the abolition of taxes on 
dividends - will help the whole economy by reviving the battered stock prices and 
providing money for firms to invest.

In the United States the shares market plays the same role as the housing market does 
in Britain in supporting consumer spending. But most of the benefits of the 
president's package will go to the tiny group of rich citizens who hold shares 
directly.

As in Britain, most American households own shares through pension funds, which are 
already exempt from tax. The independent Tax Policy Centre estimates that 40% of the 
$360bn cost to the American treasury over the next 10 years will be captured by the 
wealthiest 1% of taxpayers.

Because most institutions buying and selling shares will not benefit from the plan, 
the boost to prices will be less than the administration hoped for. That could be a 
blessing in disguise - the economy is still working through the consequences of the 
last share market bubble and the enormous overhang of investment capital it created.

The last thing Wall Street needs now is a White House-sponsored bubble to follow the 
dotcom boom.

As Stephen Lewis of Monument Securities has pointed out, investment spending is 
depressed because companies are still trying to deal with the hangover from the last 
party. Encouraging a further bout of overinvestment is not likely to make capital 
spending profitable again.

The market appears to have already worked this out. Share prices soared ahead of the 
president's heavily trailed plan, but by the time Mr Bush began speaking the euphoria 
had already worn off.

Over the week the widest index of American share prices, the Samp;P 500, rose a 
measly 2.5% - well below the 10% increase the administration had hoped for.

If share prices are unlikely to provide the panacea for faltering confidence the 
administration is looking for, their other justification for the plan - that it will 
provide a direct fiscal boost - also seems flawed.

Standard Keynesian economics recommends letting borrowing rise when the economy is 
weak. The US economy needs help now, but most of the benefits of this package will 
start to take effect in a few years' time and will simply add to the already 
ballooning deficit.In addition, most of the money is being handed back to the rich who 
are much more likely to sit on the extra dosh than they are to spend it.

Karl Rove, Mr Bush's political mastermind, apparently persuaded him at the last minute 
that, rather than going for a refund on half of the dividend tax, he should go for the 
whole hog, doubling the cost of the package at a stroke. The reasoning appears to have 
been nakedly political: it puts Democrats in Congress in a difficult position by 
forcing them to vote against the package and thereby gain a reputation for being 
against giving people's money back to them. This is still a country which - even after 
the September 11 attacks - still distrusts what it calls big government.

This is a return to the Reaganite sup ply-side theories which the current president's 
father once derided as voodoo economics. The fundamentalist core of the Republican 
party has never stopped believing that cutting taxes is the route to growth, never 
mind if the budget deficit balloons as a result. The consequences are more likely to 
be negative for growth - a larger structural deficit that will crowd out private 
investment and push up long-term interest rates.

Mr Rove may have misjudged the appetite of Americans for this brand of happy-clappy 
economics. Even some rightwing Republicans in Congress are worried that the plan will 
cause long-term deterioration in the budget position, while moderate Republicans are 
alarmed by its egregious redistribution to the rich.

Moreover, it is a risky political and economic move at a time when Mr Bush is 
considering a war in the Middle East which could

[CTRL] ABCNEWS.com: US Faces Worst 2-Week Cold Snap in 7 Years-Forecast

2003-01-10 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

You have received this ABCNEWS.com mail from:

Euphorian
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

I thought you might find this story interesting.

US Faces Worst 2-Week Cold Snap in 7 Years-Forecast
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20030110_568.html

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2003-01-10 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

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To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
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Terrorism suspect 'framed by in-laws'
France releases baggage handler arrested at airport
Jon Henley in Paris
Friday January 10 2003
The Guardian


The Algerian-born baggage handler arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport near the end 
of last month with guns and explosives in his car was framed by his in-laws in a 
family row, the Paris public prosecutor said yesterday.

The retired soldier who told the police he had seen Abderazak Besseghir handling a gun 
in one of the airport's car parks admitted in custody having taken part in a plot with 
Mr Besseghir's in-laws to set him up, Yves Bot said.

Mr Besseghir was released yesterday afternoon. The prosecutor's office sent an 
assistant public prosecutor to the prison where he was being held to explain the 
situation to him.

Mr Besseghir, 27, was arrested on December 28 after the police found an automatic 
pistol, a machine gun, five cakes of plastic explosive, two detonators and a 
slow-burning fuse hidden in the spare wheel in the boot of his car.

But he puzzled the investigators from the start. He had no police record and no known 
links to radical Islamists.

He said that he had never seen the weapons before and that he was being framed by the 
family of his late wife, who died in a fire at their home in Bondy, outside Paris, 
last summer.

After her death Mr Besseghir was questioned by the police about the blaze, but was 
released without charge.

His wife's family subsequently claimed that just before her death she had threatened 
to leave him because he had become an Muslim fundamentalist.

The airport and anti-terrorist police spent two weeks trying to unravel a non-existent 
terrorist plot at the airport, which is one of Europe's busiest, handling 1,200 
flights and 130,000 passengers a day.

In 2001 it was the point of departure for the shoe-bomber Richard Reid, who tried to 
blow up a Paris to Miami flight in mid-air using explosives concealed in his trainers.

Mr Besseghir was placed under formal investigation - one step short of being charged - 
for criminal association in relations with a terrorist enterprise and multiple 
violation of legislation on firearms, munitions and explosives.

But the police soon admitted their doubts about the case against him, saying that 
neither he nor any of his family fitted the profile of an Islamist extremist.

Nor did the fingerprints found on the weapons match his.

Sources close to the inquiry said yesterday that after being questioned for a second 
time, Marcel Le Hir, the ex-legionnaire whose tip-off originally led to Mr Besseghir's 
arrest, admitted placing the weapons in his car with an associate who is also in 
custody.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net

2003-01-10 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

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You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the 
Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com



 To view the entire article, go to 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28625-2003Jan8.html

 The View From Symantec's Security Central

 By Leslie Walker
   An ordinary office building on Route 1 in Alexandria offers a rare window into the 
Internet hacker wars and a few clues to why Uncle Sam wants more monitoring 
capabilities in cyberspace.

  Inside a cavernous room on the first floor there, security analysts for Symantec sit 
in long, curved rows 24 hours a day, working on computers and facing a wall of 
theater-size screens. Information displayed on the screens helps them keep tabs on 
whether any attacks are underway at any of the company's more than 600 corporate 
clients.

 Every five minutes or so, a giant, illuminated globe appears on the central screen 
and starts to rotate, displaying the locations worldwide where hackers are launching 
the most attacks. Symantec uses special technology to monitor a huge chunk of the 
public Internet along with the internal nooks and crannies of its clients' private 
networks, looking for telltale signs of computer break-ins.

  Its software constantly compares current hacker activity with a database of prior 
attacks, then displays in red the names of countries where an unusual amount of 
malicious Internet activity is originating that day. The rotating globe also displays 
the number of attempted break-ins against Symantec clients over the past 24 hours in 
the 10 most active countries.

  On a recent Friday, the globe showed more than 16,000 attempted break-ins 
originating from the United States, which often ranks as the world's top launching pad 
for computer hackers. Brazil ranked No. 4 with 722 attacks. South Korea, Japan, 
Germany and Taiwan also frequently appear on Symantec's top 10 list for malicious 
computer activity.

  Big numbers are par for the course at the Alexandria center, where analysts detect 
more than 15,000 discrete security events against Symantec's clients every day. 
About 4,000 are deemed real hacker attacks after further analysis, company officials 
said.

  You can tell from these statistics that it's the Wild West out there on the 
Internet, said Grant Geyer, who supervises the 12,000-square-foot facility. 
Companies need to do whatever they can to protect themselves.

  The four-year-old operation, which includes special monitoring and data mining 
technology, was created by a local start-up called Riptech. Last year, 
California-based Symantec paid about $350 million to buy Riptech and three other 
electronic-security firms (Recourse Technologies, SecurityFocus and Mountain Wave) 
that had developed proprietary anti-hacker technology. Symantec merged Riptech's 
operations with its own and now has four similar centers -- in Britain, Japan, Germany 
and San Antonio.

  Symantec is known as the maker of the Norton anti-virus software that runs on many 
home computers. But like competitor Network Associates, it has been diversifying its 
security arsenal in an attempt to be at the forefront of an emerging industry -- 
managing cybersecurity on behalf of companies and governments. Mid-size companies 
typically pay Symantec $1,000 to $2,000 a month to monitor their networks. The firm 
has big clients, too -- including 55 of the Fortune 500 companies -- and does work for 
several federal agencies.

  The managed-security industry is complex and growing fast, especially as companies 
awake to the difficulties of interpreting the deluge of data on their computer 
networks. Not only is it hard to make sense of who's doing what on a firm's network, 
Web sites and wireless devices, but almost no company can see what is happening on 
other computer networks. One advantage managed-security firms have is a global view 
that lets them detect patterns.

  The Alexandria facility is a private, miniature version of the kind of public 
Internet-monitoring capability the Bush administration wants the federal government to 
develop to protect the nation's electronic infrastructure. The administration is 
readying for release in a few weeks a final draft of its national strategy for 
bolstering cybersecurity.

  Hacking -- unauthorized break-ins on private computers and networks -- is increasing 
dramatically as more computers connect to the Internet. So, too, is the distribution 
of computer viruses and worms that travel the globe via images, documents and 
plain-text e-mail messages. Riptech, one of the few companies that monitored global 
hacking, detected a rise in malicious computer traffic during the first half of last 
year amounting to an annual rate of 65 percent.

  One reason for the jump was the explosive growth in the distribution of 
point-and-click hacking tools online. At the same time, more critical commercial and 
government operations are moving online, presenting a greater

[CTRL] For your attention

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Gun crimes soar by 35%
Staff and agencies
Thursday January 09 2003
The Guardian


Gun crime in England and Wales increase by 35% last year and criminals used handguns 
in nearly 50% more offences, Home Office figures revealed today.

Firearms were used in 9,974 recorded crimes in the 12 months to last April, up from 
7,362.

The figures also show the number of crimes involving handguns has more than doubled 
since the ban on the weapons imposed after the Dunblane massacre from 2,636 in 
1997-1998 to 5,871 in the 12 months to April last year.

The number of homicide victims killed by firearms increased 32%, or 23 cases, in the 
year to April 2002.

Overall there was a 1% rise in the number of homicides to 858 in England and Wales.

In all, handgun crime rose 46% year-on-year.

Unadjusted figures show overall recorded crime in the 12 months to last September rose 
9.3% but the Home Office stressed that new procedures had skewed the figures.

With new recording procedures taken into account the actual overall rise was just 2%, 
the Home Office said.

Robbery was up 14.5% (up 13% adjusted) but from July to September, when the 
government's street crime initiative was in full swing, it actually fell by 10% in 
adjusted figures.

Domestic burglary figures increased 7.9% (or increased 5% when adjusted), figures 
which are likely to embarrass ministers in the wake of the lord chief justice and lord 
chancellor's comments on jailing burglars.

Violence against individuals was up 28% in the three months to September last year, 
which the Home Office adjusted to a 4% rise.

Over the same period sex offences were up 25.6%, but ministers said this figure was 
likely to be inflated by the new statistical changes.

Drug offences also rose 12.3% but no adjusted figures were available for this category.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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[CTRL] For your attention

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Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Buffalo Grill sellers cause stampede
Jon Henley in Paris
Wednesday January 08 2003
The Guardian


An avalanche of sell orders cost shares in the scandal-hit French steakhouse chain 
Buffalo Grill more than half their value yesterday as the stock resumed trading for 
the first time since December 18.

Trading in Buffalo Grill had to be delayed at the start of the session because there 
were way too many sell orders, one trader said, and by lunchtime the share was 
changing hands at 5.50 euros, little more than 40% of its pre-opening value.

Four top managers of the company and its purchasing subsidiary, Districoupe, are under 
formal investigation, one step short of being charged, in an investigation by judge 
Marie-Odile Bertella-Geffroy into a number of deaths in France from the human form of 
mad cow disease.

At least two of the victims were alleged to be frequent customers at Buffalo Grill, 
which has 150 restaurants in France and 50 in the rest of Europe. The chain is said to 
have imported British beef between 1996 and 2000, when the meat was banned in France 
because of fears it could be tainted with the brain-wasting disease.

In an exceptional step yesterday, Ms Bertella-Geffroy wrote to the Paris public 
prosecutor to ask for the inquiry's initial evidence against Buffalo Grill to be made 
public in an attempt to prove the continuing necessity of her investigation and halt 
media speculation.

The company's founder and supervisory board chairman, Christian Picard, made the same 
request - for the opposite reasons - last week, asking the French prime minister and 
justice minister to order the release of all relevant documents to show that the case 
against the chain was inconsistent, dishonest, and completely empty of any telling or 
serious element.

Mr Picard's lawyer, Jean-Pierre Versini-Campinchi, said the public prosecutor's 
assertion that the documents were covered by French judicial secrecy laws was becoming 
more and more untenable. A growing number of well-directed and carefully organised 
leaks to the press made publication of the entire dossier essential, he said.

Emeric Ernoult, another Buffalo Grill lawyer, said one such leak - to Le Canard 
Enchain#233; - was just a lot of fuss about nothing. The satirical magazine printed 
an apparently incriminating email from a quality control manager referring to meat 
from the mad cow disease period which must be got rid of.

Mr Ernoult said the mail referred to stocks of Argentinian and Brazilian beef built up 
in 2001, when a number of new cases of mad cow disease were coming to light in France.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
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Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

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[CTRL] For your attention

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

---
Note from Euphorian:

Britland to ban knives next?  Is a return to them olden dayze of ripping flesh off of 
bones in the offing?
AER
---

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Rising gun use masks overall fall in offences
Risk of being victim is the same as in 1981
Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Thursday January 09 2003
The Guardian


The shocking 35% increase in gun offences masks a more optimistic picture for England 
with the overall crime rate levelling off in the last 12 months after five years of 
continuous falls, according to both sets of official data published yesterday. Gun 
crime at 9,900 offences forms less than 0.3% of the overall crime rate.

The police figures published yesterday show that total recorded crime rose to 5.7 
million offences, a headline increase of 9%. But Home Office statisticians said 
yesterday most of this was accounted for by changes in police recording practices and 
it should be seen as a small annual rise of 2%.

The second set of figures, however - the more authoritative British Crime Survey which 
measures people's experience of crime - shows a 7% drop in all crime to the year 
ending September 2002.

This leads us to conclude that after falls in overall crime in recent years, crime is 
now relatively stable, said Professor Paul Wiles, Home Office statistics director.

This is supported by the evi dence that the risk of becoming a victim of crime in 
England and Wales remains at the historically low level of 26% or about one in four, 
and around the same as it was in 1981.

The figures show a conflicting picture on burglary with the police figures showing a 
5% rise and the BCS data showing a 7% drop. The Home Office said the recent increases 
in recorded burglary appeared to be levelling off between July and September last year.

But the police figures do show an alarming 15% rise in drug offences from 115,000 in 
2000/2001 to 130,000 in 2001/02. This is particularly curious over a period during 
which the government announced its intention to relax the cannabis laws.

The overall murder rate for 2001/02 stood at 858 deaths in England and Wales. This is 
the highest level for 50 years but was only a slight increase on the previous year's 
849 deaths.

Nearly all the increase in the last decade has been in murders of men, which have 
risen by 73% since 1991, while the number of women murdered has remained relatively 
stable at 250 deaths a year. The most common murder weapon re mains a sharp instrument 
although there was a 32% rise in deaths from shootings last year from 73 gun deaths to 
97.

Although gun crime has soared, the estimated underlying trend for all violent crime is 
only slightly upward - no more than 2%. Almost all of a headline increase of 23% in 
violent crime on the police figures is discounted by changes in recording practices. 
The government's street crime ini tiative appears to have turned a 13% increase in 
street robberies for the 12 months to September 2002 into a 10% drop between July and 
September.

The figures published yesterday also indicate continuing falls in car crime and thefts 
from vehicles. Further optimism is provided in the British Crime Survey, which shows 
that for each of the main types of crime - burglary, car crime   and violent crime - 
there were significant falls in the amount of public anxiety.

This survey's detailed findings on the rise in gun crime shows that firearm offences 
are concentrated in the main inner urban areas of London, Birmingham, Manchester, 
Liverpool, and Leeds.

The police recorded crime figures show that gun crime has risen every year for the 
past four years and is now   higher than the previous peak at 9,974 offences for the 
12 months to September 2002.

There has been a particularly large increase (46%) in the use of handguns but evidence 
published yesterday from the British Crime Survey shows that in most cases (84%) the 
gun was used as a threat and not fired, or used as a blunt instrument.

There was also a sharp rise (21%) in the use of air weapons   in crime to 12,000 
offences but most involved criminal damage to property rather than attacks on people.

As well as the 97 fatalities, 558 people were seriously injured in gun crimes. Changes 
in police body armour and other protective gear meant that only 10 police officers 
were slightly injured in gun crimes last year. No officer has been shot dead since 
1995.

The rise in gun crime came   mainly as a result of 34% increase in armed robberies 
with most committed on shops and by attacks on security vans on the public highway 
and street robberies.

The days of the sawn-off shotgun are nearly over. They were used in only 6% of 
robberies compared with handguns, which were used in 70% of cases.



Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

A

[CTRL] For your attention

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

---
Note from Euphorian:

I s noththinngg!
---

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

TV humiliation as Sharon fails to stem voter exodus
Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Thursday January 09 2003
The Guardian


An Israeli judge pulled the plug on his prime minister Ariel Sharon mid-way through an 
angry and rambling television address last night which was meant to deny corruption 
allegations and win back voters who are fleeing his party in droves.

With opinion polls showing a rapid collapse in public trust and his rightwing bloc 
perilously close to losing its majority in this month's general election, Mr Sharon 
was forced to make a public statement about $1.5m given to his family last year by a 
British businessman.

Before the address, commentators agreed that Mr Sharon is no longer the Teflon prime 
minister and that he needed a masterful performance to regain public trust.

But after about 20 minutes of avoiding specifics in favour of vitriolic denunciations 
of his opponents whom he accused of despicable slander... with one purpose, to bring 
down the government of Israel, he was abruptly taken off the air for violating 
another law.

Israel's election commission obtained a court order because Mr Sharon's speech 
amounted to electioneering which is illegal on television. Mr Sharon failed to 
explain convincingly the circumstances of the $1.5m (#163;934,000) loan.

The broadcast may even have fuelled the decline of Likud which has lost about 
one-third of its backing over the past month, according to the latest polls. In 
addition, 31% of voters said they no longer believe Mr Sharon is fit to be prime 
minister.

Supporters of the prime minister's arch-rival for the Likud leadership, the foreign 
minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, are already beginning to agitate for his resignation.

The fraud squad is investigating whether the loan to one of Mr Sharon's sons from 
Cyril Kern, a wealthy former textile manufacturer in Cape Town, was indirectly used to 
repay illegal campaign funds.

If so, Mr Sharon could face charges of deception, fraud and lying to the police over 
the source of the funds. There is no suggestion that Mr Kern did anything illegal.

Last night the prime minister told the Israeli public he had been horrified to learn 
of the original illegal campaign funds even though the front company used to launder 
the funds was set up by his then lawyer, Dov Weisglass, who now heads the prime 
minister's office.

He said he did not know where the money came from to repay the campaign funds after 
the state comptroller concluded they were illegal. The fraud squad alleges that the 
prime minister told the police and state comptroller that the money came from a 
mortgage on his ranch. But his bank had turned down the mortgage because Mr Sharon 
does not own the ranch.

To win back the voters, they will have to believe that Mr Sharon knew nothing of the 
loan to his son.

Last night, the prime minister tried to say that recent revelations of vote buying and 
organised crime infiltration of his Likud party were groundless and the work of his 
Labour opponent, Amram Mitzna, who was in London to meet Tony Blair. But that is 
unlikely to satisfy sceptical voters given that the police have already made several 
arrests and Mr Sharon was forced to fire one of his deputy ministers implicated in the 
scandal.

The prime minister's friend and special envoy to the White House, Aryeh Ganger, 
refused to answer questions from fraud squad detectives last week about his role in 
funnelling illegal funds to Mr Sharon's 1999 campaign.

To add to the prime minister's woes, the supreme court yesterday overturned a ban on 
two leading Arab-Israeli politicians from seeking re-election to the knesset.

Likud is haemorrhaging support not only to its allies on the right but, crucially, to 
a centrist party, Shinui, that looks likely to triple its seats and emerge as the 
third largest party in the knesset.

Shinui is led by a populist rabble rouser, Yosef Lapid, who has won support by 
virulently opposing religious parties and demanding a secular state.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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DECLARATION  DISCLAIMER
==
CTRL is a discussion  informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease!  These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and

[CTRL] For your attention

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Anti-war train drivers refuse to move arms freight
Kevin Maguire
Wednesday January 08 2003
The Guardian


Train drivers yesterday refused to move a freight train carrying ammunition believed 
to be destined for British forces being deployed in the Gulf.

Railway managers cancelled the Ministry of Defence service after the crewmen, 
described as conscientious objectors by a supporter, said they opposed Tony Blair's 
threat to attack Iraq.

The anti-war revolt is the first such industrial action by workers for decades.

The two Motherwell-based drivers declined to operate the train between the Glasgow 
area and the Glen Douglas base on Scotland's west coast, Europe's largest Nato weapons 
store.

English Welsh and Scottish Railway (EWS), which transports munitions for the MoD as 
well as commercial goods, yesterday attempted to persuade the drivers to move the 
disputed load by tomorrow.

Leaders of the Aslef rail union were pressed at a meeting with EWS executives to ask 
the drivers to relent. But the officials of a union opposed to any attack on Iraq are 
unlikely to comply.

The two drivers are understood to be the only pair at the Motherwell freight depot 
trained on the route of the West Highland Line.

An EWS spokesman declined to confirm the train had been halted, although he insisted 
no drivers had refused to take out the trains.

We don't discuss commercial issues, he said.

The point about the two drivers is untrue and we don't discuss issues about meetings 
we have.

Yet his claim was flatly contradicted by a well-placed rail industry source who 
supplied the Guardian with the train's reference number.

The MoD later said it had been informed by EWS that mechanical problems, caused by the 
cold winter weather, had resulted in the train's cancellation.

One solution under discussion yesterday between the MoD and EWS was to transport the 
shipment by road to avoid what rail managers hoped would be an isolated confrontation.

Dockers went on strike rather than load British-made arms on to ships destined for 
Chile after the assassination of leftwing leader Salvador Allende in 1973.

In 1920 stevedores on London's East India Docks refused to move guns on to the Jolly 
George, a ship chartered to take weapons to anti-Bolsheviks after the Russian 
revolution.

Trade unions supporting workers who refuse to handle weapons could risk legal action 
and possible fines for contempt of court.

Lindsey German, convener of the Stop the War Coalition, said: We fully support the 
action that has been taken to impede an unjust and aggressive war. We hope that other 
people around the country will be able to do likewise.

The anti-war group is organising a second national demonstration in central London on 
Saturday February 15. Organisers claimed more than 400,000 people attended a protest 
in September.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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[CTRL] For your attention

2003-01-06 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

MI5 link to royal plotter
Tania Branigan
Thursday January 02 2003
The Guardian


A man who tried to shoot Edward VIII was in contact with MI5 and might have been the 
stooge of Austrian communists posing as Nazis.

The dramatic assassination attempt was foiled by a bystander and police officers, who 
knocked the gun from George McMahon's hand as he levelled it at the King during a 
procession in London on July 16 1936.

Ironically - in light of Edward VIII's contacts with the Third Reich - McMahon claimed 
to have been set up by Nazi agents who offered him #163;150 to assassinate the King.

The Irish journalist said that he had been approached by agents who had discussed the 
injustices in Ireland and suggested he could help.

He also claimed that he had never intended to fire the pistol, and had informed MI5 of 
the plot.

Despite testimony that he had fascist sympathies, officials concluded that he was a 
liar who had invented the plot to gain attention.

However, newly released documents show that McMahon's solicitor established that he 
had indeed been in touch with an MI5 agent. The police also overlooked his friendship 
with an Austrian emigre, whose close friends included a communist party member who was 
later investigated by MI5 following espionage activities at a London arsenal. It 
raises the possibility that communists could have posed as Nazis to win over McMahon 
for their own ends.

He was sentenced to 12 months hard labour for wilfully producing a revolver near to 
the person of the King with intent to alarm His Majesty, after the judge said that he 
had not intended to kill the King.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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[CTRL] For your attention

2003-01-06 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Britain and Israel in furious row as Blair peace talks are scuppered
Ewen MacAskill and Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Monday January 06 2003
The Guardian


The British and Israeli governments were engaged in a full-scale row yesterday after 
Ariel Sharon banned Palestinians from attending a peace conference in London next week.

The conference, a pet project of Tony Blair, is now almost certain to be postponed.

Mr Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, who controls the movement of all Palestinians 
in and out of the West Bank and Gaza, imposed the travel ban as part of punishment 
measures after suicide bombings killed 22 in Tel Aviv on Sunday.

The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, had fiery exchanges with his Israeli counterpart, 
Binyamin Netanyahu, yesterday morning. Mr Netanyahu further inflamed the situation by 
publishing extracts of the private conversation between the two men, an unusual breach 
of diplomatic etiquette.

The row marks a distinct cooling in British-Israeli relations. Until now, Israel has 
viewed Mr Blair as being one of their few dependable supporters in Europe.

A delegation of six Palestinians was invited to the Foreign Office residence at 
Carlton Gardens for a two-day conference next Monday and Tuesday to discuss reform of 
the Palestinian authority, including how to clamp down on militant groups. Also 
invited were representatives from the US, the UN, the EU, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt 
and Jordan.

Mr Straw, angry that Israel had not informed him of the decision, which he had only 
heard about on the radio news, called Mr Netanyahu to express his regret at the ban. 
He asked Mr Netanyahu to reconsider but there is little expectation that Israel will 
back down.

Mr Netanyahu, according to the Israeli transcript, told Mr Straw that the bombings 
ruled out business as usual and he urged Britain to adopt the position of the US 
president, George Bush, that leaders compromised by terror cannot be partners for 
peace.

He added: You in Britain are doing the exact opposite.

Mr Straw countered, according to the transcript: No, it is Israel that is doing the 
opposite. Instead of concentrating on dealing with terrorism, it is striking at 
[Palestinian] delegates.

The Foreign Office took the line that it was a private conversation and it would not 
be   commenting on the details of what took place.

Mr Straw, in a speech later, said the conference was in the interests of Israelis as 
well as Palestinians because security was on the agenda. He phoned the US secretary of 
state, Colin Powell, to inform him of the ban but Washington is unlikely to intervene 
to put pressure on Israel because it had little interest in the conference in the 
first place.

Mr Netanyahu, elaborating on the ban at a press conference, said: Legitimising the 
sham reform efforts of Arafat's regime will, in effect, legitimise a Palestinian 
leadership compromised by terror. Not only has the Palestinian Authority failed to 
fight terrorism, Arafat's own Fatah and Tanzim forces proudly took credit for 
yesterday's savage attack, and for many other atrocities over the last two years.

Jonathon Peled, an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, said: Tony Blair's initiative 
is something we accepted half-heartedly. We were not invited to it and we had our 
reservations.

The idea of a Palestinian conference emerged from a promise by Mr Blair in the autumn 
to try to help find a settlement to the conflict. Mr Blair has a genuine interest in 
trying to end the confrontation but the conference is also intended to temper 
criticism in the Arab world and within his own Labour party that it is wrong to 
concentrate on Iraq while ignoring Israel-Palestine.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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[CTRL] For your attention

2003-01-06 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Bush's multibillion-dollar tax cut for the rich
Deal is unfair to poor, say Democrats
Suzanne Goldenberg  in Washington
Monday January 06 2003
The Guardian


President George Bush will be forced today to defend a massive regeneration package 
designed to kick-start the US economy which has come under withering attack as a sop 
to the rich.

The centrepiece of the White   House proposals to spur on the anaemic economy, which 
President Bush will unveil in a speech in Chicago, is the abolition of tax on 
shareholder dividends.

The elimination of the tax has helped to double the expected cost of Mr Bush's 
economic package to around $600bn (#163;373bn) over the next decade.

It has also exposed the White House to charges from Democrats and moderate Republicans 
that the Bush administration is seeking to take advantage of the economic recession to 
reward wealthy Americans and Republican party supporters at the expense of the poor 
and the middle classes.

The wealthiest stratum of Americans - an estimated 200,000 people earning more than 
$1m a year - accounts for barely 1% of US taxpayers, according to figures from the 
internal revenue service.

However, together they earned about $25.4bn in dividends last year, or about a quarter 
of the overall total of dividends for US taxpayers.

Yesterday, Democrats and moderate Republicans lined up against the economic package, 
singling out the dividend tax as unfair and a blow to the   poor. Economists, 
meanwhile, said it offered precious little to stimulate economic growth or create jobs.

The furore over the tax cut was fuelled by reports yesterday that the Bush 
administration intended to freeze all spending on domestic programmes aside from 
homeland security.

Officials argue that the spending cap on welfare, the environment, job creation and 
other government programmes is needed to put the budget on a war footing.

However, poverty action groups say the freeze will take away $3bn from programmes   
that directly benefit lower-income groups at a time of recession.

They singled out a $300m cut to a programme to help poor families with heating fuel 
costs.

At a time when some people badly could use help, Mr Bush's tax cut mostly will help 
those who need it least, a leader comment in the Washington Post said yesterday.

President Bush and the Republican party leadership have fought back by accusing their 
critics of indulging in class warfare.

The emerging row over the president's economic package   now threatens to overshadow 
the first week of the new Congress when the Bush administration had hoped to 
capitalise on Republican control of both chambers to further its conservative agenda.

Instead, the handful of newly declared contenders for the Democratic party nomination 
for the 2004 presidential elections seized on the elimi nation of the dividend tax to 
kick-start their campaigns.

The Democrats were to release their own, more modest, version of an economic stimulus 
package last night. The measures, expected to cost the US treasury $130bn over the 
next decade, were thought to include individual tax rebates of $300 a worker, as well 
as business tax incentives.

President Bush's plan is also expected to include an extension of unemployment 
benefits and an acceleration of the tax cuts schedule approved two years ago, as well 
as tax incentives on equipment purchases for businesses.

Although a reduction in dividend tax had been widely anticipated, it did not become 
clear until yesterday that President Bush intended to eliminate the tax entirely.

However, administration officials claimed yesterday that shareholders suffered a 
double burden by being taxed on dividend earnings.

Very often, critics of tax relief described everybody as rich in an effort to stop 
tax relief, the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said yesterday. I think that's 
been an old tactic by people who wanted to raise taxes on the American people in the 
first place.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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DECLARATION  DISCLAIMER
==
CTRL is a discussion  informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease!  These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

[CTRL] For your attention

2003-01-05 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

[EMAIL PROTECTED] spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you 
should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

If only he would listen, this could be Blair's finest hour
Britain's envoys want the PM to stall Bush's plans for war
Richard Norton-Taylor
Sunday January 05 2003
The Observer


Telegrams from British embassies and missions around the world are urging Tony Blair 
to step up pressure on President Bush to pull back from a war against Iraq. In what 
amounts to a collective cri de coeur, our envoys - congregating in Whitehall today for 
an unprecedented Foreign Office brainstorming session - are warning of the potentially 
devastating consequences of such an adventure, including its impact on a greater 
threat than Saddam Hussein: al-Qaida-inspired terrorism.

The warnings are not just coming from our envoys and defence attaches in Arab 
capitals. They are also, I am told, coming from Washington. This, our diplomats 
suggest, could be one of Blair's - and Britain's - finest hours, a unique opportunity 
to make a constructive contribution to world affairs. They also know, not least from 
American opinion polls, that the Bush administration needs Britain onside. Our 
contribution would be a token one in military terms, but significant politically. That 
gives Britain leverage.

It is hard to find anyone in Whitehall who supports a war against Iraq and who is not 
deeply concerned about the influence of the hawks around Bush. They cannot say so in 
public, of course.

Whitehall gives Blair the credit for helping to persuade Bush to go down the UN route 
- a prime example of what Whitehall describes as Britain punching above its weight. 
But this should be   put into perspective. Richard Falk, Princeton's emeritus 
professor of international law, notes in the latest issue of Le Monde Diplomatique: 
This belated recourse to the UN does not fool many people outside the US, and is not 
very persuasive to Americans themselves. It is obvious that Bush is no friend of the 
UN, and only sought UN approval for US policy to defuse domestic opposition to blatant 
unilateralism.

Falk addresses a key issue: For the US to insist in voting for resolution 1441 on 8 
November, that the UN act as an enforcement agency by reviving weapons inspection, and 
in so onerous a form that it almost ensures a breakdown, is to enlist the UN in the 
dirty work of war-making.

It is a key issue because UN security council backing for military action will be 
seized on by ministers to convince those, including Labour MPs and bishops, who have 
grave doubts about a war against Iraq. The fact is that the security council has 
always considered itself above any tenet of international law.

In his biography, The Politics of Diplomacy, former US secretary of state James Baker 
shamelessly admits how, before the 1991 Gulf war, he met his security council 
counterparts in an intricate process of cajoling, extracting, threatening, and 
occasionally buying votes. America's relative power, and its willingness to use it, 
has increased over the past 12 years. James Paul, head of Global Policy Forum, a 
non-governmental body that monitors the UN, says: The capacity of the US to bring to 
heel virtually any country in the world is unbelievable.

The US is corrupting the security council by bribing its permanent members - Russia 
with dollars, China with trade concessions, France and Britain (if it needs any 
carrots) with the prospect of oil concessions. And Turkey will be amply rewarded if it 
allows the US to use its bases for an assault on Iraq. Is this how international 
relations are going to be conducted among the world's most powerful countries in 
future? Is it that difficult for Blair to go down in history as the leader who 
prevented a potentially disastrous war fought, as one Whitehall official puts it, 
simply to prevent Bush from having egg over his face?

What kind of country meekly succumbs to demands for war dictated by domestic party 
politics, even those of its closest ally? Where is the evidence that Iraq is lying 
about its weapons of mass destruction? Worried Whitehall officials ask: even if 
evidence is found, and Saddam Hussein is discovered to have lied, is it not better to 
keep the UN inspectors - the best deterrence against the use or development of such 
weapons - on the ground?

One lie ministers could nail is that put about by elements in Washington and Israel - 
that there are links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. British and American 
intelligence insist there is no evidence of such a link, yet ministers are frightened 
to say so for fear of upsetting Washington.

Though there is no love lost between the Iraqi regime and Islamist fundamentalists, an 
Anglo-American attack on Iraq is likely to attract more recruits to al-Qaida, thereby 
increasing the risk of terrorist strikes against British and American

[CTRL] For your attention

2003-01-01 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Gas masks in the classroom
Chris McGreal, Jerusalem
Tuesday December 31 2002
The Guardian


The lesson is new to the children of Herzog school in Holon. First, breathe deeply and 
relax. Second, get to know your gas mask. Then listen carefully to the soldier from 
home front command as he or she explains what your mask will and will not save you 
from. Nerve gases are to be feared most.

Each day growing numbers of kindergarten, primary and secondary school pupils across 
Israel are introduced to the looming threat of chemical and biological warfare. And 
they are full of questions.

I live on the seventh floor. Can the gas reach me? asked one.

Can the chemicals penetrate inside the mask? asks another.

What about the pets? asks a third child.

Finally, after wending their way through the family emergency plan, how to behave in a 
bomb shelter and memorising the code words for war - Mr Leon, Iron Wall and Suddenly, 
Suddenly - the pupils go home with a computer game called Emergency Defence Games in 
the hope that they will educate their parents.

That is, if you are an Israeli child.

Pupils in Palestinian schools get no such protection. But then the gas mask training 
is imbued with a strange air of optimism about the coming conflict which few 
Palestinians share.

To the Israeli leadership, an American war on Iraq this year holds out the promise of 
reshaping the Middle East. Ariel Sharon's generals talk of 2003 as potentially one of 
the most important years in Israel's history.

A US-led war against Iraq, if it actually occurs, will create dramatic changes 
throughout the region because Saddam is a major symbol for tyrants like Arafat and 
others, said Major General Amos Gilad, commander of Israeli forces in the occupied 
territories. If Saddam collapses, this would create a positive 'earthquake' in the 
Middle East that could lead to an unparalleled opportunity to change things in the 
region. If his regime collapses, this could lead to new initiatives to change the 
entire situation in the region.

The Palestinians do not disagree that the shock waves of war will reverberate 
throughout the region, or that the Israelis have reason to feel optimistic. The 
Palestinians believe that besides the Iraqi leader, they will be the ones who pay the 
price. War, they fear, will distract the world from their plight and provide Mr Sharon 
with the cover and justification for yet more killings and destruction.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

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[CTRL] For your attention

2003-01-01 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Pentagon build-up reaches unstoppable momentum
Julian Borger
Monday December 30 2002
The Guardian


The Pentagon's order to deploy large numbers of combat troops, warplanes and a 
hospital ship in the Gulf have created a near unstoppable momentum towards war with 
Iraq, US military analysts said yesterday.

Over the year, the US military has conducted low-profile preparations for a conflict, 
moving headquarters and equipment into the region. But the new deployment orders 
reported over the weekend represent a serious commitment of manpower and resources 
from which it will be hard to climb down without ousting Saddam or at least forcing 
his disarmament.

There is a bit of 1914 in this in that once mobilisation begins, it's hard to turn it 
off. There are financial costs and practical costs, Ralph Peters, a former army 
intelligence specialist on the Middle East said. You've already decided to take the 
political costs mobilising reserves, and the world is psychologically prepared for it. 
It would take an act of great fortitude to stop the train now.

The White House wanted to hold back the deployment orders until after the new year, 
but the Pentagon (which would have preferred the large-scale troop build-up to begin 
in early December) insisted it begin earlier if an invasion was to take place before 
March. The Iraqi spring heat begins to make desert warfare much more difficult.

After the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, signed the deployment order, the army's 
3rd Infantry Division based in Georgia was put on alert. The 101st Airborne Division 
and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, which have both been intensively rehearsing 
urban warfare techniques, are also preparing to leave for the Gulf.

About 25,000 troops are expected to fly to the region in the next few months to join 
60,000 already there, with many more on 96-hour notice to leave. Up to 80,000 soldiers 
are expected to spearhead an assault along with marines and airborne troops.

The air force's Air Combat Command sent out deployment orders to F-16 and F-15 fighter 
units in Virginia and North Carolina and B-1 bombers based in North Carolina. The navy 
put the 10,000 sailors on board the George Washington aircraft carrier and its battle 
group of warships and submarines on 96-hour alert, despite the fact that they had just 
returned from a six-month tour of duty. And in a move that some military experts had 
earlier predicted would be a signal that the administration was serious about going to 
war early in 2003, a hospital ship, the USS Comfort was ordered to prepare a 1,000-bed 
trauma centre and make preparations to leave for Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

The Bush administration insists that no decision has yet been taken on whether to go 
to war, while it waits for results of UN weapons inspections under way in Iraq. But 
most observers believe that only a radical move by Baghdad - such as a confession to 
stockpiling weapons of mass destruction - or a dramatic worsening of the North Korean 
crisis can stop an invasion.

Nothing is inevitable, but the logic of the situation points towards a war sometime 
in February, said Gary Schmitt, the head of Project for a New American Century, a 
conservative thinktank with close links to the administration.

It's very hard for a country to mobilise for war, and not to go for war without a 
very serious reason. If you signal to the world that you're serious, and you don't do 
anything, then you're saying you're not a serious country.

Mr Peters said that the international community now believed that a conflict was 
inevitable and that regional allies like Saudi Arabia were prepared to offer limited 
assistance, after much cajoling by US officials.

Stephen Baker, a retired US Navy rear-admiral now at the Centre for Defence 
Information, said that the troops on standby would be able to fly in to the Gulf and 
pick up their pre-positioned equipment in a few days.

However, he said the deployments were not a point of no return.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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CTRL is a discussion  informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease!  These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net

2003-01-01 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the 
Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com



 To view the entire article, go to 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61009-2002Dec31.html

 Firms Accused of Giving Space Technology to China

 By John Mintz
 The State Department has charged that two of the country's largest aerospace 
companies, Hughes Electronics Corp. and Boeing Satellite Systems Inc., illegally 
transferred sensitive U.S. space technology to China in the 1990s that could have 
helped Beijing's military develop intercontinental missiles.

 If a federal administrative judge and, later, a top State Department official agree 
with the allegations in a 32-page State Department charging letter filed without 
public notice last Thursday, the companies could be fined as much as $60 million and 
barred for three years from selling controlled technologies overseas, a penalty that 
could particularly hurt Boeing.

 The companies have strenuously denied wrongdoing in the case, which began with a 
series of failed space launches in China starting in 1995. Hughes officials are 
alleged to have given Chinese experts detailed information about rocketry to help 
China's space program figure out why its rockets were failing soon after launch.

 The Hughes Electronics space launch division, which committed the supposed 
improprieties, was purchased by  Boeing in 2000 for $3.7 billion. The two corporate 
bodies charged by the State Department last week are the Hughes parent company and the 
division of Boeing that gobbled up the former Hughes space launch unit.

 This type of administrative charge is extraordinarily rare, U.S. officials said. The 
filing reflects officials' anger that the two firms have aggressively battled the 
charges and resisted admitting what they did in China was wrong, they added.

 We don't believe we've done anything wrong, said Hughes Electronics spokesman 
Robert Marsocci. We're in negotiations with the State Department, and we'll be 
reviewing our options.

 A Boeing spokesman, Dan Beck, said the company would not comment.

 The Justice Department spent years on a criminal investigation of those companies and 
a third, Loral Space  Communications Ltd., involved in similar activity in China. But 
several months ago, federal prosecutors informed the firms that they would not file 
criminal charges.

 Last January, Loral agreed  to pay a $14 million fine and to spend $6 million on 
internal reforms to stop overseas technology transfers. The government did not file 
the kind of administrative charges against Loral that it filed last week against 
Hughes and Boeing.

 The charging document, signed by William J. Lowell, director of the State 
Department's office of defense trade controls, said Hughes and Boeing committed 123 
violations of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms 
Regulations.

 Government officials praised Loral for facing up to its past improprieties and 
imposing corporate guidelines to prevent a recurrence. Officials offered no such 
praise for Boeing and Hughes.

 The department has had several rounds of discussion with Hughes and Boeing to 
explore a resolution similar to the one with Loral, said State Department spokesman 
Jay Greer. We can note that unlike Loral, Hughes and Boeing have both failed to 
recognize the seriousness of the violations and have been unprepared to take steps to 
resolve the matter, or to ensure no recurrence of violations in the future.

 Hughes and Boeing for years have insisted the State Department is wrong to declare it 
improper for them to have had discussions with Chinese officials about the space 
launch failures. The firms point out that during the mid-1990s, their operations in 
China were covered by Commerce Department regulations that were more lax and, the 
companies say, allowed for some give and take with Beijing officials. The State 
Department says that the more stringent export control laws still were in force, and 
that the companies broke them.

 After the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, President Ronald Reagan 
decided in 1988 that U.S. space companies should be allowed to launch their satellites 
aboard China's Long March rockets to accommodate the fast-growing American 
telecommunications industry.

 But the U.S. firms were barred from giving the Chinese any help on their launches 
without U.S. licenses and supervision by Pentagon inspectors. The U.S. government's 
fear was that the Chinese could use American know-how on the Long March commercial 
rocket launches to help the performance of Beijing's nuclear-tipped missiles.

 The problem was that China's space officials were extremely aggressive in demanding 
that the U.S.  companies provide technology transfer as a condition for entry into 
the desirable Chinese market. The issue came to a head each time a Long March rocket 
crashed or failed, because global

[CTRL] For your attention

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Sharon takes on rabbis over Jewish identity
Religious and secular clash over right to settle in Israel
Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Monday December 30 2002
The Guardian


Ariel Sharon has called on religious leaders to make it easier to become a Jew to 
revive the immigration that provides a buffer to the burgeoning Arab population.

The prime minister's remarks follow a call by one of his own cabinet for a ban on 
immigration by secular Jews, exposing a deep divide in the government between those 
who say an influx from the former Soviet Union threatens Israel's religious identity 
and those who increasingly fear the high Arab birthrate.

The ultra-orthodox health minister, Nissim Dahan, revived debate on the issue by 
declaring that secular Jews and those who do not qualify as Jewish under religious 
law, which is more stringent in its definition than government legislation, should not 
be allowed to settle in Israel. We prefer a Jew overseas to a gentile in Israel, he 
said.

But Mr Dahan was quickly shot down by the prime minister, who said: It should be 
possible for anyone who wants to become a Jew to do so.

Israel's establishment is split on the issue. At the heart of the disagreement is the 
decade-long wave of immigration in which about 1 million Russians and citizens of the 
former Soviet republics have come to Israel under the grandfather clause of the Law 
of Return, which permits anyone with a Jewish grandparent to obtain Israeli 
citizenship.

The clause was introduced in 1970 as a response to the Nazi definition of a Jew as 
anyone with a Jewish grandparent.

Orthodox rabbis say that up to 70% of the arrivals in recent years do not qualify as 
Jewish under religious law, which requires an individual's mother to have been Jewish.

The government estimates that 25% of all Russian immigrants are not Jewish according 
to religious law and need to convert. Most do not, partly because the process is 
laborious and partly because the Russian community tends to be secular.

The interior minister and leader of the Shas party, Eli Yishai, says such figures 
threaten the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.

By the end of the year 2010 the state of Israel will lose its Jewish identity, he 
said. A secular state will bring ... hundreds of thousands of goyim [gentiles] who 
will build hundreds of churches and will open more stores that sell pork. In every 
city we will see Christmas trees.

The leftwing Meretz party reinforced the point by bringing a Christmas tree to the 
launch of its election campaign among Russian voters yesterday because it is part of 
the immigrants' tradition.

Mr Yishai and Israel's chief rabbis, Yisrael Meir Lau and Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, want 
the grandfather clause repealed and the right of return limited to those who are Jews 
as defined by religious law.

But Mr Sharon sees a more important demographic process at work. The higher Arab 
birthrate means that Jews will be outnumbered in Israel and the areas it now governs 
within decades. Arabs already account for 20% of Israeli citizens.

Immigration has fallen to its lowest level since the end of the cold war and Mr Sharon 
is keen to revive it, even if that opens the gates to people of questionable Jewish 
ancestry. The government's view is that while the first generation of each wave of 
immigration may have difficulty embracing Israel and Jewishness, their sons and 
daughters frequently become enthusiastic Zionists. In the present climate, they are 
also often very rightwing.

For political and security reasons, Mr Sharon is not about to alienate Russian 
immigrants by questioning their right to be in Israel.

For a start the Russians, as all immigrants from the former Soviet Union are known in 
Israel, have the voting power to decide who governs. The latest opinion polls show 
that almost all Russian voters have swung behind Mr Sharon because of his hard line in 
dealing with the Palestinians.

But while the Russians are rightwing on security and economic issues, they view 
religious conservatives with suspicion and complain of maltreatment at the hands of 
the orthodox. Many are unable to marry because only religious weddings are permitted 
under Israeli law and the chief rabbis refuse to recognise them as Jewish.

The defence ministry calls up young Russian immigrants to serve in the army while the 
interior ministry denies them rights because they are not deemed Jewish. Some, 
suspected of lying about being Jewish have been subjected to humiliating DNA tests.

The Russian community was particularly outraged when, after a suicide bombing at a Tel 
Aviv disco last year killed 20 young people, rabbis objected to the burial of three 
Russian-born teenagers in Jewish cemeteries because their mothers were not Jewish.

[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net

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 Bush's Moonshine Policy

 By Mary McGrory
   George W. Bush ends the year with a genuine nuclear crisis on his hands. He has 
been assiduously trying to foment one with Iraq, dropping bombs on the country and 
expletives on its leader. But North Korea, which is not just suspected of working on 
the bomb but of having at least two, has muscled Saddam Hussein off the front pages 
and made our crusade against Baghdad seem crass: We're starting a war not just for oil 
or for Ariel Sharon but because we can win it.

  North Korea is a different story. It has a million men under arms. It has a built-in 
hostage situation at hand in the presence of 37,000 U.S. soldiers who guard South 
Korea. Kim Jong Il, the Communist leader of North Korea, almost makes Saddam Hussein 
look like Rotarian of the Year. While Hussein is welcoming U.N. arms inspectors, Kim 
is throwing them out. He has dismantled the international surveillance equipment 
installed by a treaty in 1994; he has announced he is going to make all the 
weapons-grade plutonium he wants. He is, in short, behaving like the radioactive 
lunatic he is.

  And what is George W. Bush, defender of the free world, scourge of terrorists, doing 
about all this? As of this moment, nothing.

  As far as we can see, he seems to feel that not speaking to the North Koreans is the 
solution. Isolation and marginalization will bring these rogues to heel? A leader 
who will starve his own people to feed his military machine, whose father invaded his 
neighbor, who shows no acquaintance with reality, will be cowed by a snub from 
Washington?

  The president has asked North Korea's neighbors to warn Kim Jong Il of the 
consequences of his horrendous behavior. Up to now, the Japanese have reported 
themselves as scared to death. Russia and China seem to have a million other things to 
do. The incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar 
(R-Ind.), says we should talk and talk and talk to the outlaws. His is a lone voice.

  Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld exhibited a reflex swagger response. The North 
Koreans better watch out. They mustn't think for a minute we couldn't wage war against 
them. Just in time for Christmas, he brought our war list up to three -- the one 
against al Qaeda, which we seem to have forgotten, the one brewing in Iraq -- and now 
Pyongyang?

  We should perhaps remember that President Bush has never liked talking to Koreans. 
His first overseas visitor was the estimable Kim Dae Jung, whom Bush snubbed.

  Bush, as he was eager to demonstrate, was not a fan. Kim's sin? He was instituting a 
sunshine policy with the North, ending a half-century of estrangement. Bush, who 
looked upon North Korea as the most potent argument for his obsession to build a 
national missile defense, saw Kim, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, as nothing but trouble. 
He sent him home humiliated and empty-handed.

  Kim's successor, Roh Moo Hyun, may be even worse. He is a passionate advocate of the 
sunshine policy, and he seeks a more mature relationship with the United States -- 
bad news for Bush.

  This ugly international set-to occurs just when the president has scored his most 
dazzling domestic political triumph. The hullabaloo over Trent Lott, the prospective 
leader of the Senate, was caused by Lott's letting the cat out of the bag on the 
subject of the Republicans' covert Southern strategy. Lott told a birthday party for 
Strom Thurmond what everyone has always known: The strategy was based on race. 
Republicans were mortified.

 Then Bush apprentice Karl Rove stepped in and saved the day. Bush and Rove engineered 
Lott's resignation and the substitution of glamorous Bill Frist of Tennessee, 
literally a medicine man, who spends his off-time flying his own plane to Africa to 
minister to AIDS patients. Bush issued a sharp criticism of Lott's remarks and 
nourished the Frist boomlet into a surge, all the while insisting through his 
spokesman that he did not think Lott should resign.

  Republicans are delighted. In an assembly largely given over to small minds and big 
egos, Frist's aura as a healer and his proclivity for rendering first aid on Capitol 
Hill make him a romantic figure. It's like getting Lord Byron on your condo board.

  The finesse of the operation was universally applauded. The qualities displayed -- 
the regard for the other guy's sensibilities, the willingness to forgo credit, are 
ones that can be successful in foreign policy negotiations. Bush could never send 
Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton to represent him in the deadly and proliferating tension 
in North Korea -- he blames them for coddling Pyongyang. But he might send Karl Rove. 
He knows how the game is played.

A

[CTRL] For your attention

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Our quality of life peaked in 1974. It's all downhill now
We will pay the price for believing the world has infinite resources
George Monbiot
Monday December 30 2002
The Guardian


With the turning of every year, we expect our lives to improve. As long as the economy 
continues to grow, we imagine, the world will become a more congenial place in which 
to live. There is no basis for this belief. If we take into account such factors as 
pollution and the depletion of natural capital, we see that the quality of life peaked 
in the UK in 1974 and in the US in 1968, and has been falling ever since. We are going 
backwards.

The reason should not be hard to grasp. Our economic system depends upon never-ending 
growth, yet we live in a world with finite resources. Our expectation of progress is, 
as a result, a delusion.

This is the great heresy of our times, the fundamental truth which cannot be spoken. 
It is dismissed as furiously by those who possess power today - governments, business, 
the media - as the discovery that the earth orbits the sun was denounced by the late 
medieval church. Speak this truth in public and you are dismissed as a crank, a prig, 
a lunatic.

Capitalism is a millenarian cult, raised to the status of a world religion. Like 
communism, it is built upon the myth of endless exploitation. Just as Christians 
imagine that their God will deliver them from death, capitalists believe that theirs 
will deliver them from finity. The world's resources, they assert, have been granted 
eternal life.

The briefest reflection will show that this cannot be true. The laws of thermodynamics 
impose inherent limits upon biological production. Even the repayment of debt, the 
pre-requisite of capitalism, is mathematically possible only in the short-term. As 
Heinrich Haussmann has shown, a single pfennig invested at 5% compounded interest in 
the year AD 0 would, by 1990, have reaped a volume of gold 134bn times the weight of 
the planet. Capitalism seeks a value of production commensurate with the repayment of 
debt.

Now, despite the endless denials, it is clear that the wall towards which we are 
accelerating is not very far away. Within five or 10 years, the global consumption of 
oil is likely to outstrip supply. Every year, up to 75bn tonnes of topsoil are washed 
into the sea as a result of unsustainable farming, which equates to the loss of around 
9m hectares of productive land.

As a result, we can maintain current levels of food production only with the 
application of phosphate, but phosphate reserves are likely to be exhausted within 80 
years. Forty per cent of the world's food is produced with the help of irrigation; 
some of the key aquifers are already running dry as a result of overuse.

One reason why we fail to understand a concept as simple as finity is that our 
religion was founded upon the use of other people's resources: the gold, rubber and 
timber of Latin America; the spices, cotton and dyes of the East Indies; the labour 
and land of Africa. The frontier of exploitation seemed, to the early colonists, 
infinitely expandable. Now that geographical expansion has reached its limits, 
capitalism has moved its frontier from space to time: seizing resources from an 
infinite future.

An entire industry has been built upon the denial of ecological constraints. Every 
national newspaper in Britain lamented the disappointing volume of sales before 
Christmas. Sky News devoted much of its Christmas Eve coverage to live reports from 
Brent Cross, relaying the terrifying intelligence that we were facing the worst 
Christmas for shopping since 2000. The survival of humanity has been displaced in the 
newspapers by the quarterly results of companies selling tableware and knickers.

Partly because they have been brainwashed by the corporate media, partly because of 
the scale of the moral challenge with which finity confronts them, many people respond 
to the heresy with unmediated savagery.

Last week this column discussed the competition for global grain supplies between 
humans and livestock. One correspondent, a man named David Roucek, wrote to inform me 
that the problem is the result of people breeding indiscriminately ... When a woman 
has displayed evidence that she totally disregards the welfare of her offspring by 
continuing to breed children she cannot support, she has committed a crime and must be 
punished. The punishment? She must be sterilised to prevent her from perpetrating her 
crimes upon more innocent children.

There is no doubt that a rising population is one of the factors which threatens the 
world's capacity to support its people, but human population growth is being massively 
outstripped by the growth in the number of farm animals. While the rich

[CTRL] NYTimes.com Article: Tyco Finds $300 Million in Accounting Errors

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Tyco Finds $300 Million in Accounting Errors

December 30, 2002

By REUTERS

Filed at 9:13 p.m. ET

BOSTON (Reuters) - Tyco International Ltd., battered this
year by scandal and accounting worries, on Monday said an
internal investigation found no fraud, but uncovered $382
million in accounting errors.

While Tyco (TYC.N) said the errors did not represent
significant or systemic fraud, the Bermuda-based
conglomerate admitted previous management used aggressive
bookkeeping to boost results. The results also confirmed
some of the suspicions that have been dogging Tyco since
1999.

Tyco's stock is down about 74 percent this year.

Tyco said the company kept shoddy records and had
inadequate corporate governance policies during the reign
of indicted former chairman Dennis Kozlowski.

In fact, Kozlowski's personal assistant authorized
restricted stock awards and investigators found internal
memos using terms such as ``financial engineering'' in
discussions on how to meet profit goals.

To correct the accounting errors, Tyco said it would take
pretax charges totaling $382 million in the 2002 fiscal
year, which ended Sept. 30. Of that amount, more than half
stemmed from Tyco's ADT burglar alarm business, which
recognized income too soon from fees it charged a network
of independent dealers who sell and install security
systems.

Tyco CEO Edward Breen, chief financial officer David
FitzPatrick and outside auditor PriceWaterhouseCoopers
signed off on the company's fiscal 2002 financial
statements, according to the annual report.

Shares of Tyco rose to $15.95 in Instinet trade on Monday
from a closing price of $15.35.

AGGRESSIVE ACCOUNTING

Aggressive accounting is not necessarily improper. But the
Tyco investigation concluded former management was not
neutral in its treatment of accounting policies. It sought
out techniques that would boost profits while shying away
from those that would reduce them, the report said.

Specifically, the report said prior management manipulated
its accounting for acquisitions to boost its financial
results. This long-running criticism of the conglomerate
was central to an earlier probe by the Securities and
Exchange Commission which ended in July 2000 with the body
taking no action.

The SEC began another investigation into Tyco's accounting
earlier this year. No results have been reported.

As part of Tyco's internal accounting investigation, Tyco
reviewed 15 acquisitions that were valued at about $30
billion at the suggestion of the SEC. Tyco said it
completed more than 700 acquisitions between 1999 and 2001.

The report questioned accounting surrounding the
acquisitions of electronics companies AMP and Raychem and
health care company U.S. Surgical. Tyco boosted earnings in
the companies it was acquiring by artificially reducing
revenue or increasing expenses in the quarter immediately
before the deal closed. The effect was that earnings were
enhanced after the acquisition.

One example showed that Tyco understated by $235 million
the value of equity and employee stock options it issued to
acquire medical product maker Mallinckrodt Inc. in 2000.
This meant a $5.6 million overstatement in fiscal 2001
earnings because of the related goodwill.

``There were also instances where senior management exerted
pressure and provided incentives which had the purpose and
effect of encouraging unit and segment officers to achieve
higher earnings, including in some cases by their choice of
accounting treatments,'' the Tyco report stated.

Tyco said $185.9 million of the $382.2 million in errors
for fiscal 2002 were a result of miscalculation of
reimbursements to dealers of its ADT burglar alarms.

Earlier this year, Tyco hired lawyer David Boies, who
prosecuted the Justice Department's antitrust case against
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O) during the Clinton administration,
to conduct an internal investigation.

Boies and an army of forensic accountants stepped in as New
York City prosecutors investigated Tyco's former chairman,
Kozlowski, and his top lieutenant, ex-finance chief Mark
Swartz. The men are accused of orchestrating a corruption
scheme that netted them more than $600 million through
unauthorized compensation and fraudulent stock
transactions.

Both men have pleaded innocent to the charges.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-manufacturing-tyco-investigation.html?ex=1042370728ei=1en=942834ab3af89300

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2002-12-30 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

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Rumsfeld 'offered help to Saddam'
Declassified papers leave the White House hawk exposed over his role during the 
Iran-Iraq war
Julian Borger in Washington
Monday December 30 2002
The Guardian


The Reagan administration and its special Middle East envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, did 
little to stop Iraq developing weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s, even though 
they knew Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons almost daily against Iran, it 
was reported yesterday.

US support for Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war as a bulwark against Shi'ite militancy 
has been well known for some time, but using declassified government documents, the 
Washington Post provided new details yesterday about Mr Rumsfeld's role, and about the 
extent of the Reagan administration's knowledge of the use of chemical weapons.

The details will embarrass Mr Rumsfeld, who as defence secretary in the Bush 
administration is one of the leading hawks on Iraq, frequently denouncing it for its 
past use of such weapons.

The US provided less conventional military equipment than British or German companies 
but it did allow the export of biological agents, including anthrax; vital ingredients 
for chemical weapons; and cluster bombs sold by a CIA front organisation in Chile, the 
report says.

Intelligence on Iranian troop movements was provided, despite detailed knowledge of 
Iraq's use of nerve gas.

Rick Francona, an ex-army intelligence lieutenant-colonel who served in the US embassy 
in Baghdad in 1987 and 1988, told the Guardian: We believed the Iraqis were using 
mustard gas all through the war, but that was not as sinister as nerve gas.

They started using tabun [a nerve gas] as early as '83 or '84, but in a very limited 
way. They were probably figuring out how to use it. And in '88, they developed sarin.

On November 1 1983, the secretary of state, George Shultz, was passed intelligence 
reports   of almost daily use of CW #91;chemical weapons#93; by Iraq.

However, 25 days later, Ronald Reagan signed a secret order instructing the 
administration to do whatever was necessary and legal to prevent Iraq losing the war.

In December Mr Rumsfeld, hired by President Reagan to serve as a Middle East 
troubleshooter, met Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and passed on the US willingness to help 
his regime and restore full diplomatic relations.

Mr Rumsfeld has said that he cautioned the Iraqi leader against using banned 
weapons. But there was no mention of such a warning in state department notes of the 
meeting.

Howard Teicher, an Iraq specialist in the Reagan White House, testified in a 1995 
affidavit that the then CIA director, William Casey, used a Chilean firm, Cardoen, to 
send cluster bombs to use against Iran's human wave attacks.

A 1994 congressional inquiry also found that dozens of biological agents, including 
various strains of anthrax, had been shipped to Iraq by US companies, under licence 
from the commerce department.

Furthermore, in 1988, the Dow Chemical company sold $1.5m-worth (#163;930,000) of 
pesticides to Iraq despite suspicions they would be used for chemical warfare.

The only occasion that Iraq's use of banned weapons seems to have worried the Reagan 
administration came in 1988, after Lt Col Francona toured the battlefield on the 
al-Faw peninsula in southern Iraq and reported signs of sarin gas.

When I was walking around I saw atropine injectors lying around. We saw 
decontamination fluid on vehicles, there were no insects, said Mr Francona, who has 
written a book on shifting US policy to Iraq titled Ally to Adversary. There was a 
very quick response from Washington saying, 'Let's stop our cooperation' but it didn't 
last long - just weeks.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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'Human shields' head for Iraq
Paul Harris
Saturday December 28 2002
The Guardian


A convoy of anti-war activists, likely to include dozens of British volunteers, will 
leave London next month to act as human shields protecting strategic sites in Iraq.

The convoy to Baghdad is being organised by former US marine Kenneth Nichols, who 
served in the first Gulf war and won a combat medal but has now become a vociferous 
opponent of another Gulf conflict.

British protesters are also heading for the country in advance of any Anglo-American 
bombing.

Nichols, 33, aims to gather scores of volunteers together in London and lead the 
convoy on 10 January. It will drive across Europe, holding rallies in various capital 
cities and collecting other human-shield demonstrators along the way. It plans to 
travel via Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Zurich, Milan, Sarajevo, Istanbul and Syria to 
Baghdad.

He is hoping that the convoy will arrive in the Iraqi capital around 24 January, three 
days before President George W Bush is to make his decision on whether Iraq has 
complied with the UN weapons inspections, potentially triggering a US-led invasion.

Nichols is willing to put his own life on the line to stop a war. 'In going to Iraq I 
understand that I will likely not survive a US invasion,' he said.

Once in Iraq, members of the convoy will identify infrastructure targets for bombing, 
such as power stations, key bridges and roads, and deploy themselves as human shields 
in the glare of the international media.

'I don't think anyone will be happy about bombing somewhere they see being protected 
by North Americans or Europeans,' he said.

In the 1991 conflict, Nichols was serving in the 2nd Battalion of the Marine Corps. He 
was an infantryman on the road to Basra, where heavy Allied bombing killed hundreds of 
retreating Iraqi soldiers. He left the Marine Corps a year later.

His experience of war left him disillusioned with American foreign policy, and he is 
now a vociferous opponent of US foreign interventions. 'Part of the reason I want to 
go back is to apologise to the Iraqi people for what I was doing there the first time 
I was in their country,' he said.

Part-time law student Jo Wilding, 28, is one Briton who is heading for the region. She 
expects to fly to Baghdad on 10 January and then go to the southern city of Basra. 
'There is something I can do there just by being a foreigner,' she said. 'If something 
does start when we are there, we will be able to document it.'

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
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[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52241-2002Dec29.html

 U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup

 By Michael Dobbs
 High on the Bush administration's list of justifications for war against Iraq are 
President Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons, nuclear and biological programs, 
and his contacts with international terrorists. What U.S. officials rarely acknowledge 
is that these offenses date back to a period when Hussein was seen in Washington as a 
valued ally.

 Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward Baghdad during the 
1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Donald H. Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, whose December 
1983 meeting with Hussein as a special presidential envoy paved the way for 
normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld 
traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an almost 
daily basis in defiance of international conventions.

 The story of America's involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his 1990 
attack on Kuwait -- which included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster 
bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical 
and biological precursors -- is a topical example of the underside of U.S. foreign 
policy. It is a world in which deals can be struck with dictators, human rights 
violations sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms proliferators, all 
on the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

  Throughout the 1980s, Hussein's Iraq was the sworn enemy of Iran, then still in the 
throes of an Islamic revolution. U.S. officials saw Baghdad as a bulwark against 
militant Shiite extremism and the fall of pro-American states such as Kuwait, Saudi 
Arabia, and even Jordan -- a Middle East version of the Communist domino theory. 
That was enough to turn Hussein into a strategic partner and for U.S. diplomats in 
Baghdad to routinely refer to Iraqi forces as the good guys, in contrast to the 
Iranians, who were depicted as the bad guys.

  A review of thousands of declassified government documents and interviews with 
former policymakers shows that U.S. intelligence and logistical support played a 
crucial role in shoring up Iraqi defenses against the human wave attacks by suicidal 
Iranian troops. The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized 
the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, 
including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and 
bubonic plague.

  Opinions differ among Middle East experts and former government officials about the 
pre-Iraqi tilt, and whether Washington could have done more to stop the flow to 
Baghdad of technology for building weapons of mass destruction.

  It was a horrible mistake then, but we have got it right now, says Kenneth M. 
Pollack, a former CIA military analyst and author of The Threatening Storm, which 
makes the case for war with Iraq. My fellow [CIA] analysts and I were warning at the 
time that Hussein was a very nasty character. We were constantly fighting the State 
Department.

  Fundamentally, the policy was justified, argues David Newton, a former U.S. 
ambassador to Baghdad, who runs an anti-Hussein radio station in Prague. We were 
concerned that Iraq should not lose the war with Iran, because that would have 
threatened Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Our long-term hope was that Hussein's government 
would become less repressive and more responsible.

  What makes present-day Hussein different from the Hussein of the 1980s, say Middle 
East experts, is the mellowing of the Iranian revolution and the August 1990 invasion 
of Kuwait that transformed the Iraqi dictator, almost overnight, from awkward ally 
into mortal enemy. In addition, the United States itself has changed. As a result of 
the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, U.S. policymakers 
take a much more alarmist view of the threat posed by the proliferation of weapons of 
mass destruction.
 U.S. Shifts in Iran-Iraq War
  When the Iran-Iraq war began in September 1980, with an Iraqi attack across the 
Shatt al Arab waterway that leads to the Persian Gulf, the United States was a 
bystander. The United States did not have diplomatic relations with either Baghdad or 
Tehran. U.S. officials had almost as little sympathy for Hussein's dictatorial brand 
of Arab nationalism as for the Islamic fundamentalism espoused by Iran's Ayatollah 
Ruhollah Khomeini. As long as the two countries fought their way to a stalemate, 
nobody in Washington was disposed to intervene.

  By the summer of 1982, however, the strategic picture had changed dramatically. 
After its initial gains, Iraq was on the defensive, and Iranian troops had

[CTRL] Thames' Terror

-Caveat Lector-

Alertnet



Date: 29 Dec 2002
Headline: UK may cordon off cities after terror attacks

 LONDON, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Britain may impose emergency
cordons around London and other major cities to stop people
fleeing after a biological terror attack, The Sunday Times
reported.

 The cordons would be enforced by the military and police to
prevent people spreading infection to other parts of the
country.

 Existing legislation is not flexible enough to deal with
the threats we are facing, a government spokeswoman told
Reuters on Sunday.

 On the setting up of health cordons, the law may need to be
tightened in this area, she said.

 A new civil contingencies bill would allow police and
military to quarantine or evacuate people by force, The Sunday
Times said.

 Professor Michael Langman, of the joint vaccinations and
immunisation committee which advises on how to deal with
biological warfare threats, said there was concern that people
in cities would try to leave after an anthrax or smallpox
attack, potentially spreading infection.

 There will certainly be some panic with people jumping into
their cars with their families to try to flee the city and avoid
contamination, but they would be stopped, he told The Sunday
Times.








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That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
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[CTRL] For your attention

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

---
Note from Euphorian:

Democracy in action ...
---

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Knesset moves to bar Arab members
Israel's impending general election is colouring committee hearings on the expulsion 
and barring of three 'hostile' parliamentarians
Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Sunday December 29 2002
The Observer


The knesset has begun proceedings to bar three Arab members and their parties from 
next month's general election because of their support for the Palestinian resistance 
to Israeli occupation.

The hearings by a knesset committee are expected to result in the expulsion of 
Israel's leading Arab politician, Azmi Bishara, and two colleagues. Their parties are 
likely to be banned, stripping Israel's one million Arabs of their principal voices in 
parliament.

Mr Bishara has already been stripped of his parliamentary immunity and put on trial 
for alleged crimes against the state. If he is now banned from the knesset, he and his 
colleagues will be the first Arab members to be expelled. The knesset has previously 
banned extreme rightwing Jewish parties and politicians.

The Labour opposition says that expulsion could create turmoil and an uprising by 
Israeli Arabs who believe they are being denied democratic rights.

The ostensible reason for barring Mr Bishara and his National Democratic Assembly is 
his attendance at the funeral of President Hafez Assad of Syria in June 2000, when he 
made a speech in which he implicitly endorsed the Hizbullah military campaign that 
drove Israel out of southern Lebanon two years ago.

He also accused the Israeli government of resorting to war against Palestinians, and 
said they were left with little choice but to escalate the struggle against occupation.

He called on Arab countries to unite behind the resistance.

There is no possibility of continuing with the... way of resistance other than by 
means of the renewed expansion of this sphere, so that people will be able to struggle 
and carry out resistance, he said.

The Israeli attorney general, Elyakim Rubenstein, told the knesset that Mr Bishara's 
support for resistance endorsed suicide bombings, and his call for Arab backing was 
an invitation to destroy the state.

Mr Bishara says resistance to occupation is a recognised right under international law 
and that it can take many forms.

I never called for armed struggle. I have always opposed the suicide bombs in writing 
and in speaking, and the targeting of civilians in general, he said.

What I did do is show understanding of the option of resistance to occupation, which 
referred to strikes, demonstrations, mass rallies, even studies.

And I said that a united Arab stand and international activity will prevent war and 
prevent a political dictate.

But the real issue is wider than his comments at the funeral.

The knesset hearings are being held in the politically charged atmosphere of a general 
election and after two years of intifada which has created new depths of distrust of 
Israeli Arabs.

Some rightwing politicians portray them as a fifth column.

That suspicion has been reinforced by Mr Bishara's questioning of whether Israel can 
be both a Jewish and a democratic state, and his demands for better treatment of the 
one in five of its citizens who suffer discrimination because they are Arabs.

He also believes that an independent Palestinian state should be established alongside 
Israel.

Under a new law introduced in May, the knesset can disqualify a candidate or party for 
denying Israel's existence as a Jewish or democratic state or for support of armed 
struggle, terrorism or an enemy of Israel.

Mr Rubenstein has chosen to interpret Mr Bishara's desire for an overhaul of Israeli 
democracy as a threat to the existence of the state and therefore in breach of the law.

In these circumstances, Mr Bishara is not hopeful of a fair hearing before the knesset 
committee.

In the atmosphere of the elections in Israel, and the chauvinist atmosphere, people 
are competing to be anti-Arab and I think it's going to be very very hard to get a 
rational decision, he said.

That view is confirmed by a far-right politician, Michael Kleiner, who is among those 
pressing for Mr Bishara's expulsion.

In any normal country, they would put him before a firing squad, he said.

It's inconceivable that an Israeli knesset member would encourage Arab states to 
launch a full-scale war against Israel.

Mr Bishara is already being prosecuted under the anti-terrorism laws and for illegally 
arranging visits to reunite elderly Palestinians with their refugee relatives in Syria.

But the trial has stalled and so the attorney general is looking to the knesset to act.

#183; The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has ordered an increase in targeted 
assassinations and arrests

[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net

2002-12-27 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the 
Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com



 To view the entire article, go to 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41796-2002Dec26.html

 Area Housing Boom Drives Out Mobile Homes

 By Mary Otto
 The white gate at Holiday Mobile Estates in Jessup reads Maryland's Finest Mobile 
Home Community. The place is surrounded by trees, seemingly deep in the forest.

  Joe Parinchak parked his 1965 mobile home here when it was new, and he has stayed. 
Inside, his wood-paneled home is like a snug old Chris-Craft that boasts a place for 
everything and everything in its place. Bedroom cubbyholes for shoes, a neat cabinet 
over the kitchen window for cans of stew.

  I've enjoyed it, said Parinchak, 80, a retired Army man from Fort Meade. His 
little home is paid for, and the $445 he pays each month covers his rent of the lot 
and utilities. The place feels like his safe berth in a world that has changed a lot 
since he arrived.

  Since the end of World War II, mobile homes have served as low-cost housing for 
retirees, young families and working people. And in the Washington area, where the 
shortage of affordable housing has become a crisis, this private-sector solution has 
been perfect for a small segment of the population.

  But Washington's pricey market and expensive development are pressing in on 
Parinchak's oasis of affordable housing. He can still hear hoot owls at night, but the 
sprawling Arundel Mills mall that lies beyond the trees epitomizes the powerful 
economic forces bearing down on area mobile home parks.

  In some parts of the nation, by comparison, mobile homes have been booming. Their 
numbers nationally have almost doubled since 1980 and grew by nearly 20 percent in the 
'90s.

  In the Washington area, however, the number of mobile homes has been falling, after 
some growth in the '80s. And the decline came even as the population grew rapidly. In 
the 1990s, the region added 293,000 housing units, but few of them were targeted to 
low-income families. And lost in all that development was the future of mobile homes.

  As the Washington suburbs continue to sprawl, once-outlying mobile home parks have 
been engulfed.

  Displacement is the word, said Bruce Savage, a spokesman for the Arlington-based 
Manufactured Housing Institute, a trade association. The owners can't rationalize 
keeping these little communities running when they can take the money and run.

  St. Mary's County lost more than 1,000 manufactured homes in the 1990s, according to 
the 2000 Census. A number of parks there were overtaken by commercial and suburban 
growth. One turned into our local Wal-Mart, said Dave Chapman of the county 
Department of Planning and Zoning.

  In Fairfax County, another Wal-Mart rose at the site of the former Oak Grove Trailer 
Park on Route 1. Calvert and Charles counties each lost more than 100 manufactured 
homes in the past decade, according to the 2000 Census.

  And on an island between the northbound and southbound lanes of Route 1 in North 
Laurel, a for sale sign is planted on land that in 2000 was host to three mobile 
home parks.

  Across the county line in Anne Arundel, zoning laws and competition for land have 
placed a ceiling on the growth of the parks, people in the business said.

  The builders have bought up all the lots if they are buildable, said Rollan Grice, 
a salesman at Chesapeake Mobile-Modular Homes in Millersville. The lack of space for 
new mobile homes has sure stifled off affordable housing, he said, taking away an 
easy way of solving a housing issue for that guy who makes $20,000 to $50,000.

  As the Washington area has become more affluent -- median household income is 
$64,000 -- lower-income families have been forced to move farther into the outer 
suburbs, double up with friends and relatives and search for months to find something 
they can afford. And as property values rise and developers lean toward high-end 
homes, mobile home parks are less and less welcome, said Keith Martin, whose family 
has run Holiday Mobile Estates for four decades.

  A mobile home park might as well be a leper colony, Martin said.

  The park has grown to its limits and includes more than 400 spaces, from Parinchak's 
vintage model in space A-1 to deluxe double-wide manufactured homes, like those 
occupied by Audrey Palmer in the park's new section. Palmer's home has a pitched 
roof and high ceilings, an eat-in kitchen, three bedrooms and two baths, including one 
with a king-size tub.

  Palmer and her family bought the home for $59,000. And even the fancier models, at 
$70,000 and higher, sell for roughly half Anne Arundel County's median house price.

  But the pressure to put this land to other uses is real.

  You could put 500 townhouses here, Martin said.

  His father, Hershel Martin, 73, said he has turned down millions for his small 
kingdom.

  It's

[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net

2002-12-26 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the 
Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com



 To view the entire article, go to 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31358-2002Dec23.html

 Smallpox Plan May Force Other Health Cuts

 By Ceci Connolly
 The Bush administration's plan to vaccinate as many as  10.5 million medical 
personnel and emergency responders against smallpox will cost between $600 million and 
$1 billion and is likely to siphon money from other bioterrorism and public health 
efforts, local and state officials warn.

  With most of the 50 states already buckling under budget deficits, the widespread  
immunization campaign due to begin in late January amounts to the ultimate unfunded 
federal mandate, said George Hardy, executive director of the Association of State 
and Territorial Health Officials. We can't afford to do this at the expense of all 
other preparedness.

  For months, city and state leaders have been preparing to inoculate about 450,000 
medical professionals who would serve on  smallpox response teams in the event of an 
outbreak. But few expected President Bush to adopt a much broader proposal, known as 
Phase 2, to encourage every remaining health care worker, police officer, firefighter 
and emergency medical technician to be immunized.

  States and localities already are diverting significant resources to smallpox 
vaccination and there is no end in sight, said Patrick Libbey, executive director of 
the National Association of County and City Health Officials. We urge that the 
program be kept at minimal levels and grow only as rapidly as threat assessments 
demand, so as not to disrupt other basic community health protections or cause 
unnecessary harm.

  The decision to revive a vaccine known for its dangerous side effects is a 
reflection of the changing times, Bush said in announcing the plan. In anticipation of 
a likely war with Iraq, he ordered mandatory inoculation for 500,000 members of the 
armed forces and is recruiting volunteers among medical workers and emergency 
responders to serve as a sort of domestic front line against biological attack. Other 
Americans will be able to receive  the vaccine, even though it has not yet gone 
through the Food and Drug Administration's licensing and approval process, but the 
government is recommending against universal vaccination for the general public.

  The cost of  biodefense is rising steadily. Already, the federal government has 
spent more than $862 million to buy the smallpox vaccine. Last spring, the Bush 
administration distributed $918 million to state health departments for homeland 
security, money it says could defray smallpox vaccination costs.

  We're absolutely committed to working with the states to make this work efficiently 
and safely, said Tom Skinner, spokesman for  the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention. There are a lot of dollar figures out there, some of which I believe do 
not take into account the infrastructure that's been put in place.

  But that infusion of cash came with extensive demands, said Michael Richardson, 
acting health director for the District of Columbia. To qualify for the money, states 
and large cities such as the District submitted detailed plans for improving computer 
systems, training medical workers  and adding emergency hospital beds.

  The word smallpox wasn't even mentioned,   he said. The $10 million given to the 
city was spent stockpiling medications, hiring epidemiologists and other bioterrorism 
experts and upgrading the public health laboratory. Richardson  said he does not know 
where the District will find the $3.6 million needed to inoculate 10,000 to 20,000 
emergency personnel over and above the first group of 3,000 health care workers.

  Bill Pierce, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said he 
expects Congress to approve an additional  $940 million for states to conduct disease 
surveillance, upgrade labs and improve public health infrastructure.

  The impact of leaping from 450,000 to as many as 10 million inoculations next spring 
is far greater than the numbers suggest, state officials said. Mounting a smallpox 
vaccination program 30 years after routine immunizations were stopped in the United 
States will require extensive education and training, careful medical screening for 
people at risk of complications, near-daily checking of inoculation sites and vast 
data collection, health officials say.

  Because Phase 1 focuses on medical workers,  states plan to rely heavily on 
hospitals to administer the vaccine and monitor employees for side effects. But 
hospitals cannot be expected to oversee the second phase, which will entail not only 
logistical challenges, but also many more medical complications. Historical data 
suggest that for every 1 million immunized, about one-third will miss at least a day 
of work because of adverse reactions

[CTRL] For your attention

2002-12-26 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

France to toughen laws on cannabis
Paul Webster in Paris
Thursday December 26 2002
The Guardian


France is planning to tighten restrictions on the smoking of cannabis in an attempt to 
curb its steadily rising popularity.

Campaigners claim that millions of people are regularly defying existing laws as more 
plantations of cannabis are discovered, particularly in the south of the country.

At normal levels of consumption, up to three million French people will have smoked 
the drug on Christmas day.

France's hardline interior minister, Nicholas Sarkozy, has been consulting cabinet 
members and government officials on raising the maximum penalties for cannabis use, 
from the present level of a year in prison or a #163;5,000 fine.

This month the government made it an offence to drive under the drug's influence after 
a series of fatal road accidents.

The interior ministry's anti-drugs chief, Michel Bouchet, has also been asked to 
investigate the cultivation of cannabis after police reported that more than 40,000 
plants were pulled out in raids last year, compared to 1,500 10 years ago.

But the pro-cannabis Collectif d'information et de recherche cannibiques, Circ, 
claimed that there was not a village south of the Loire valley without a plantation. 
In addition, hundreds of thousands of plants were grown indoors.

The fashion for home-grown cannabis was linked to two DIY books, Fum#233;e 
clandestine (secret smoke) and Culture en placard (cupboard growing) which have sold 
100,000 copies between them.

Drugs squad detectives admit to being overwhelmed, during this month's Hemp Salon in 
central Paris.

The event was backed by Circ's founder, Jean-Pierre Galland, who campaigns through the 
Green party for the legalisation of the drug. He has had to pay about #163;30,000 in 
fines for his lobbying activities in its favour.

Police visited the salon but there were no arrests despite the sale of gadgets such as 
the Pollinator which can be used to make hashish.

Visitors were given catalogues by Sensi Seedbank, Holland's main producer, but many 
amateur growers depend on cannabis seeds sold to feed racing pigeons, which, according 
to one advertisement, was like putting a turbo-engine into a sparrow.

Other catalogues offered bat manure, considered as the best fertiliser for growing the 
seven-leaved plant.

The great problem is not police raids but theft, a grower from the Var said.

You'll find small fields hidden in pine forests. Once they have been located, they 
have to be guarded night and day. A good crop earns enough to keep you all year round, 
even though it is sold only to friends.

So far, no action has been taken against shops selling specialised equipment, of which 
there are about 50 in France.

But a decision will have to be taken soon on whether to stop the annual summer 
festival at Montjean-sur-Loire where cannabis, described as the symbol of the Loire 
valley, is easily available.

It's only a matter of time before pot overtakes tobacco, a festival organiser said.

There are already nearly half as many pot smokers as tobacco smokers. Some of our 
visitors say that cannabis saved their life.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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==
CTRL is a discussion  informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease!  These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

Archives Available at:
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[CTRL] NYTimes.com Article: Iraq Courts Its Kurds With an Anti-U.S. Islamic Edict

2002-12-25 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

This article from NYTimes.com
has been sent to you by [EMAIL PROTECTED]


Same old story: families will fight until someone steps in; then they'll fight off the 
do-gooder' then go back to fighting amongst themselves.  Kinda like the Dems and Reps 
around the time they voted in the PATRIOT Act.  A:E:R

[EMAIL PROTECTED]


Iraq Courts Its Kurds With an Anti-U.S. Islamic Edict

December 24, 2002
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR






KIRKUK, Iraq, Dec. 23 - The Iraqi government unleashed a
salvo in the struggle for the hearts and minds of its
Kurdish citizens today, gathering hundreds of Muslim
clerics in this northern provincial capital to issue a
religious fiat saying it was time to fight the Americans
even as they prepare for war.

The assembly in this somewhat drab city, known more for its
vast oil reserves than for any Islamic bent, was a kind of
pep rally for prayer leaders, seminary students and other
devotees. Each speaker brought much the same message,
exhorting the Kurdish clerics to spread the word that
anyone who cooperated with the Americans and their designs
on Iraq would be considered an apostate.

Coming after recent reports that American intelligence
officials have been recruiting for a possible invasion
force in the autonomous Kurdish region, about 90 miles
northeast of here, Iraq is apparently accenting the bond of
religion to try to sway its often estranged Kurdish
minority toward Baghdad. Organizers said that about 530 of
the 600 clerics who showed up were from within the northern
area, which Iraq has not controlled since the aftermath of
the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

The Americans have prepared everything to occupy the land
of Islam, to occupy Iraq in order to loot its wealth and to
license all that God has forbidden, read the fiat, or
fatwa. Fighting them has already become an obligation. We
should not stand still and wait and not fight them, as we
know very well what they have already done and what they
are doing to Muslims in Palestine and Afghanistan and
elsewhere.

From a vantage point inside Iraq, it was difficult to
evaluate what impact the fatwa might have. Given that it
reflects official policy, no one was likely to stand up and
condemn it. Indeed, each spontaneous outburst from the
floor was more volcanic than the next in denouncing the
American administration and Israel.

One speaker suggested that the clerics deploy their
minarets - a reference to the loudspeakers used to
broadcast sermons - to light a fire that will burn the
face of the enemy.

Furthermore, although fatwas are in theory binding on all
Muslims, the force of any individual edict largely boils
down to the degree of esteem in which the faithful hold the
scholar who issues it. Organizers from the Baghdad-based
Popular Islamic Conference Organization said this one was
issued by Abdel Karim al-Mudarris, a venerable Sunni cleric
of Kurdish origin, said to be 110 years old, whose frail
health confines him to Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

The most noted clerics in Iraq, both Shiite and Sunni,
issued similar rulings three months ago, saying it was a
religious duty to fight American invaders. Apart from its
target audience of Kurds, the fatwa issued today was much
the same, giving anyone who opposes the presence of
American troops or advisers in northern Iraq religious
license to attack them.

At least one participant said he left convinced that the
fatwa was just and that it would put a religious spin on
any future conflict.

This is the real thing, but it will not be applied unless
they attack us, said Ali Ahmed Khuduk, a 23-year-old
cleric from Sulaimaniya in the autonomous zone. It will
possibly be a religious war.

Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister, said in a speech in
Baghdad today that the American military buildup was aimed
at the whole Arab world. It is a strategic buildup for a
war at the level of a world war, which is at this stage
targeting the entire Arab nation, he said.

Iraq for some time has been seeking to put an Islamic tint
on its differences with Washington, so as to rally Muslim
support to its side. Religion is a strictly
state-controlled affair here, with Saddam Hussein's
government denying any links to terrorist figures like
Osama bin Laden, despite attempts by Washington to make the
connection.

At the conference, though, clerics unleashed the kind of
vitriolic oratory against the United States and its Israeli
allies that has become increasingly common. Damn the
Americans and the Zionists, said Sheik Omar Hussein
al-Sangawi, the head of the organization's Kirkuk office,
in his sermon. They want to destroy us, to destroy our
people, with their missiles and dangerous weapons, and to
impose on us their evil decisions.

The cleric said he had gone onto the Internet and
discovered to his horror a speech attributed to President
Bush in which he boasted of shaving the beards of the
faithful in Afghanistan and tearing the burkas off the
women, while introducing every manner of moral corruption.

[CTRL] For your attention

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Email
Chris MacGreal @ Bethlehem
Monday December 23 2002
The Guardian


Once again, there is no room at the Bethlehem Inn. Two thousand years on, the hotel 
has been commandeered by Israeli soldiers, and just about every other lodging in 
Christ's hometown will be closed on his birthday for lack of business.

For the first time in living memory there is no Christmas tree on Manger Square. Even 
the priests at the Church of the Nativity - the 4th-century basilica said to be built 
around the cave where Jesus was born - are down on the festivities at the end of a 
year that has seen Israeli tanks roll into the town five times and a 39-day army siege 
of the church itself. Now the ancient town is enduring a month-long curfew with no 
certainty the Israeli military will lift it for midnight mass on Christmas eve. Yet 
the services will go on, in no small part because of the politics of religion.

The Greek Orthodox, the Armenians and the Franciscans all command control of a share 
of the Church of the Nativity under a rights-of-possession agreement drawn up by the 
Turks in 1757, when Bethlehem fell in the orbit of the Ottoman empire. It is known as 
the status quo. Each church is allocated parts of the building, and specified time 
for services. None dares alter the schedule for fear of undermining the agreement and 
feeding the intense rivalries that have reduced priests to fisticuffs over territorial 
infringements during the annual cleaning.

But this year there will be no parade of boy scouts, choirs in the square or the 
sometimes raucous party ahead of the service. There will be no Yasser Arafat either, 
or his Christian wife to light the Christmas tree. The Israelis have banned the 
Palestinian leader from attending midnight mass for the second year running.

The Franciscan parish priest, Amjad Sabbara, will stick to the annual theme of 
children as he leads prayers during the first hours of Christmas day. But rather than 
celebrating birth, he plans to reflect on death - particularly the sickening reality 
that, just as in Jesus's time, children are being killed by forces indifferent to 
their age or innocence. The latest victim is an 11-year-old girl leaning out of a 
window to watch the funeral procession of another child.

Father Sabbara was among the hundreds of people trapped in the Church of the Nativity 
during the Israeli siege in April and May. That was the busiest the church has been in 
a couple of years, with Palestinian men sheltering in the grotto built around the cave 
of Christ's birth. The Franciscan priest predicts a smaller turnout than that for 
Christmas. Just 400 of the 2,000 once-prized tickets for seats at midnight mass have 
been taken. So most of Bethlehem's hotels have closed and those few that have stayed 
open say they have no bookings.

Over the past month of perpetual curfew, lifted for just a few hours each week, 
Bethlehem has endured the punishment favoured by the Israelis against the people they 
rule. The army is largely of the view that Palestinians are either terrorists or 
terrorist sympathisers, so there's no reason why they shouldn't all suffer for the 
actions of a few.

But there is a deeper and longer crisis. When Bethlehem's mayor, Hanna Nasser, can 
find a tourist, he offers chapter and verse on what the past two years of intifada and 
periodic occupation have done to the town's economy. Bethlehem is dying, he says. For 
years, it has relied on tourism to survive. Now not a single one of the hundreds of 
gift shops is open to offer their bizarre mix of nativity scenes alongside T-shirts 
sporting the Israeli army logo. Seven out of 10 residents are unemployed. Average 
income, at about #163;1 a day, is just a quarter of what it was three years ago. The 
capital of Christmas, as the mayor puts it, is in no mood to celebrate.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net

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 Nothing like a little speculation to foster a self-fulfilling prophecy ... A:E:R

 To view the entire article, go to 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34403-2002Dec24.html

 Sharon Says Iraq May Be Hiding Weapons in Syria





  JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on
Tuesday that Israel suspected that Iraq has been transferring
chemical and biological weapons to Israel's arch-foe Syria to
hide them from U.N. inspectors.

  Sharon, in an interview with Israel's Channel Two
television, said his comments were based on unconfirmed
information and he gave no evidence to support the allegation.

  What we believe, and I say that we have not yet confirmed
it conclusively, is that weapons he wants to hide -- chemical
and biological weapons -- have indeed been sent to Syria,
Sharon said.

  He said Israel was trying to verify the information.

  U.N. weapons inspectors returned to Iraq last month after a
four-year hiatus to resume a hunt for alleged weapons of mass
destruction, amid threats by the United States to disarm Iraq
by force if it does not obey U.N. resolutions.

  Iraq says its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons
programs have already been destroyed.

  Israel has stepped up preparations for possible Iraqi
missile attacks should the United States go to war against
Iraq. Baghdad fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel in the 1991 Gulf
War, causing one death and extensive damage in residential
areas.

  Israel and Syria have been in an official state of war for
decades.

  Syria, which took part in the 1991 Gulf War that drove Iraq
from Kuwait, has since rebuilt ties with Baghdad after decades
of rivalry. Nonetheless, to some surprise, Damascus cast its
U.N. Security Council vote last month in favor of resolution
1441, which demands that Iraq disarm or face a possible war.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31589-2002Dec23.html

 In U.S., Terrorism's Peril Undiminished

 By Barton Gellman Late last year, in secret, the Bush administration erected a 
provisional defense against nuclear terrorism in the nation's capital.

 It was called Ring Around Washington, and it aimed to detect a nuclear or 
radiological bomb before the weapon could be used. Still under development, according 
to three knowledgeable sources, the system was pressed into service in a large-scale 
operational trial. Scientists placed a grid of radiation sensors in the District and 
at major points of approach by river and road. Vehicles patrolled with mobile sensors. 
And an elite combat unit from the Joint Special Operations Command, already trained to 
render harmless a nuclear weapon or its components, moved to heightened alert at a 
staging area near the capital.

 Ring Around Washington has since been shut down, the sources said.  Under some 
conditions, which The Washington Post will not describe, the neutron and gamma ray 
detectors failed to identify dangerous radiation signatures. In other conditions they 
raised false alarms over low-grade medical waste and the ordinary background emissions 
of stone monuments. The Energy Department's national laboratories learned a lot about 
how to operate a distributed network of sensors, one official said, but not enough to 
keep it in place.

 U.S. exposure to ruinous attack, more than 15 months into the war with al Qaeda, 
remains unbounded. The global campaign launched by President Bush has destroyed Osama 
bin Laden's Afghan sanctuary, drained his financial resources, scattered his foot 
soldiers and killed or captured some of his most dangerous lieutenants. But there is 
nothing in al Qaeda's former arsenal -- nothing it was capable of doing on Sept. 11, 
2001 -- that the president's advisers are prepared to say is now beyond the enemy's 
reach.

 The threat of bin Laden's network -- which the White House considers to number 
perhaps three dozen men at its vital core -- continues in important ways to outpace 
the national response. Working-level and senior participants in the conflict, many of 
them interviewed at length, displayed a striking fatalism even when describing their 
common belief that the United States will eventually prevail. Nearly all of them, when 
pressed, said they would measure their success by the frequency, not the absence, of 
mass-casualty attacks against the American homeland.

 They're not 10  feet tall, they're not supermen, and in a lot of cases they're very 
primitive, said retired Army Gen. Wayne A. Downing, who was President Bush's deputy 
national security adviser for counterterrorism until July 8, referring to al Qaeda. 
But they are probably more capable than before.

 One Bush appointee, working full-time in counterterrorism, pointed to Director of 
Central Intelligence George J. Tenet's testimony as recently as two months ago that 
we were vulnerable to suicidal terrorist attacks and we remain vulnerable to them 
today. The official said: With untold billions spent -- money, personnel and blood 
-- how can we claim any kind of success if we're just as vulnerable as before? It just 
doesn't balance. It can't balance.

 The elements of the U.S. security deficit, as another current official termed it 
recently, are varied. In their own fields of responsibility, across a wide range of 
government functions, nearly all of those interviewed acknowledged laboring under 
threats for which they have no present answer. In some cases they described the 
challenge as unavoidable. In others they said they had lost opportunities to respond. 
In still others, implicitly and explicitly, the officials raised questions about the 
president's choices in the war on terrorism.

  Thirteen of 20 men that The Post could identify on the government's classified 
roster of high value targets remain unaccounted for. Bush's overriding objective, a 
high-ranking official at the heart of the effort said Friday, is to capture or kill 
the small cadre of leaders he sees as uniquely responsible for al Qaeda's potent 
threat. We want to get that inner core more than anything, the official said, 
describing their number as roughly 30. The Post identified the 20 (see box) from 
interviews and a set of notes made by a participant in the hunt. Called HVTs in the 
argot of government, the 13 men believed at large include four of the five  in the 
uppermost tier. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, in a brief interview for 
this report, said we are hunting down systematically members of terrorist networks, 
but that said, this is not just a numbers game.

  Some of those involved in the hunt said the government lost many and perhaps most 
of its best chances

[CTRL] For your attention

2002-12-23 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Iraq hits back with CIA offer
US agents invited to search for weapons
Ewen MacAskill, Suzanne Goldenberg  in Washington and Richard Norton-Taylor
Sunday December 22 2002
The Observer


Baghdad fought back in the highly charged propaganda battle with the US and Britain 
yesterday by inviting its arch-enemy, the CIA, to enter Iraq and track down the 
country's elusive weapons of mass destruction.

The Iraqi offer of unhindered access to US intelligence agents came after intensive 
pressure from Washington that made war early in the new year appear almost inevitable.

After four days of diplomatic pounding, Iraq hit back yesterday, accusing the Bush 
administration of rehashing old lies.

We have told the world we are not producing these kind of weapons, but it seems that 
the world is drugged, absent or in a weak position, President Saddam Hussein said.

At a press conference in Baghdad yesterday, General Amir al-Sadi, scientific adviser 
to the president, issued a challenge to the US and British intelligence to offer up 
hard evidence that Iraq has any biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.

We do not even have any objections if the CIA sent somebody with the inspectors to 
show them the suspected sites, Gen Sadi said.

This marks a major turnaround. Until yesterday, Iraq had objected to the possibility 
of US or other Western spies infiltrating the UN weapons teams.

Baghdad said, rightly, that the inspections team that left Iraq in 1998 had been 
infiltrated by intelligence agents and, in the intervening four years, repeatedly 
cited this as a reason why it objected to the return of the UN inspectors.

A CIA spokesman said yesterday that he did not want to comment on Baghdad's offer.

Both the US and Britain claim, against Iraqi denials, that they have evidence that 
Iraq has continued to develop weapons of mass destruction.

The UN chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, said at the end of last week that if the US 
and Britain had such evidence, they should hand it over.

US officials said at the weekend that they have been handing over intelligence and 
will provide more specific information to the inspectors over the next fortnight.

The Foreign Office made a similar promise yesterday: The weapons inspectors will get 
all the help they need to carry out their job in Iraq.

But it emerged that British intelligence is reluctant to hand over everything it 
claims to have, insisting there is a danger that sources could be compromised.

British government officials have already privately admitted that they do not have any 
killer evidence about weapons of mass destruction. If they had, they would have 
already passed it to the inspectors.

Babil, the Iraqi government newspaper run by president Saddam's son, Uday, said in a 
front-page editorial yesterday: Everybody knows that if they had concrete 
information, they would have put it on television all around the world before giving 
it to the inspection teams.

Gen Sadi accused the US and Britain of rushing to judge Iraq's weapons programmes.

He claimed that objections raised by the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, and the 
foreign secretary, Jack Straw, to Iraq's declaration on weapons of mass destruction, 
were a rehash of old information that had already been dealt with.

But US officials said yesterday the accusation made by Washington last week that Iraq 
was in material breach of a UN resolution on disarmament had come from specific 
information it has obtained and not from the declaration.

This new information, they said, was based on satellite pictures that showed 
construction at sites that had previously been bombed by US-led forces.

They also claimed to have fresh information based on records of suspicious dual-use 
material - that which has both a civilian and military function - procured by Iraq as 
part of a UN deal to relieve the suffering of Iraqis from sanctions.

British military chiefs are drawing up detailed plans in which thousands of Royal 
Marines would take part in a huge amphibious assault to seize the Iraqi port of Basra 
to control key strategic areas in south of the country.

The Ministry of Defence confirmed yesterday that HMS Ocean, Britain's biggest 
helicopter and marine commando carrier, will be available to join a flotilla heading 
towards the Gulf next month after a major refit.



Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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[CTRL] For your attention

2002-12-23 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

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Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Banned Farrakhan reaches UK audience via satellite
Vikram Dodd
Sunday December 22 2002
The Observer


The controversial American black leader Louis Farrakhan yesterday tried to undermine 
the government's ban on him entering Britain by speaking live by satellite to a 
1,700-strong audience in London.

Mr Farrakhan, banned for 17 years by successive home secretaries, used his first live 
address to Britain to lambast his exclusion. The Nation of Islam leader said Britain's 
colonial history was satanic, and that the government had banned him because it feared 
his presence would set black people free from white oppression.

The audience, overwhelmingly black and young, watched the transmission beamed from a 
mosque in Phoenix, Arizona, on a giant screen at the Apollo Theatre in Hammersmith. 
Unfortunately for Mr Farrakhan, who forbids his followers from drinking, the theatre 
is sponsored by the Carling lager.

As he appeared on the screen the audience gave him a standing ovation. Mr Farrakhan, 
at times quoting from the Koran and Bible, compared himself to a messenger carrying 
particular truths, feared by Britain, that will free the black man and free white 
people from the sick mentality of white supremacy.

As a leading colonial power and slave trader, Britain had had a pervasive influence on 
black society as lingering as the smell of a skunk: They are here in the way we 
think, they are here in the way we act, so we need a complete washing. You have to 
wash from having an intercourse with Satan.

Mr Farrakhan is accused of being anti-semitic and is banned from Britain because 
ministers fear his presence would lead to disorder.

In May the court of appeal reinstated the ban on Mr Farrakhan entering the UK which a 
lower court had overturned.

Yesterday he countered that the Nation of Islam, which has several thousand UK 
followers, was peaceful.

You can't show one person that those who follow me have harmed, he said. We have 
not plucked a nail or one strand of hair from one white person, a Jewish person, or 
from our own brothers.

Mr Farrakhan, 69, said yesterday's live transmission gave Britons the chance to make 
up their own minds. Some of those in his audience yesterday, who paid up to #163;25 
for the   privilege, said they wanted to hear the man alleged by some to be a preacher 
of hate for themselves.

Christine Muhammad, 32, a bank cashier from London said: It was inspiring to hear him 
live, and enlightening.

Chris Obi, 34, an actor from London, said: The idea that he is banned in an age of 
free expression and free speech is wrong. There's a white fear of black empowerment.

Mr Farrakhan said there were strong similarities between the American and British 
black experience: The British system, like the American system, is designed to create 
in us a subject mentality.

Supporters of Mr Farrakhan said they hoped yesterday's event would show that his 
message preached black empowerment, not hate, and that its effect on supporters was to 
inspire them to help themselves, not provoke disorder.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
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[CTRL] For your attention

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site and thought you should 
see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site, go 
to http://www.observer.co.uk

Blair fury over terror warnings to the public
Security breach hits Foreign Office
Kamal Ahmed, Antony Barnett and Martin Bright
Saturday December 21 2002
The Guardian


Tony Blair has intervened to prevent the Government's war on terror policy descending 
into chaos after senior officials admitted that the public was being unnecessarily 
scared about the level of threat to Britain.

He made his move as fresh evidence revealed that Foreign Office computer systems used 
to disseminate intelligence material, have suffered a series of security breaches. 
Officials had to suspend the system for three days late last year because they were so 
concerned that it was leaking information.

As Ministers warned Downing Street and Cabinet Office officials that they were in 
danger of 'scaring the public witless' with a string of terror alerts,  The Observer 
can reveal that Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's Director of Communications, 
gave civil servants a dressing down over security briefings that were not cleared with 
Number 10.

The briefings led to a series of headlines suggesting that Britain was on the brink of 
a terrorist attack. Officials also said that 'sooner or later' a terrorist would get 
through and that it was time to build up a system of 'national resilience', where 
people learned to live with the terrorist threat.

One Cabinet Minister said there was a degree of 'macho posturing' over the threat of 
the terrorist attacks. 'The problem is that a lot of this is leaving the public 
concerned about what actually is going on,' the Minister said. 'If you don't have 
something concrete to say, then don't say anything.'

Blair was left 'angry and irritated', according to one source, after he felt he was 
answering questions during Prime Minister's Questions last week without a full 
knowledge of two briefings given by the Cabinet Office, in charge of British security 
issues, and the Foreign Office, on Iraq, an hour before he arrived at the House of 
Commons.

At the following morning   meeting of Government staff, Campbell said that there 'was 
no point in having a strategy' for telling the public the latest details of the 
terrorist threat if departments started operating unilaterally.

Last night the Foreign Office said that it was investigating new evidence obtained by  
The Observer that highly sophisticated computer systems used to convey sensitive 
intelligence material did not work properly. A spokesman insisted: 'Our systems for 
handling classified information are among the most secure of any used by diplomatic 
services worldwide. We take any breach of security very seriously.'

A whistleblower contacted  The Observer with the evidence a few weeks after 
confidential Foreign Office documents appeared on a website which showed that a year 
before 11 September the sys tems were experiencing serious problems.

The whistleblowersaid he had decided to speak out because he was worried about the 
possibility of a threat to national security.

Last month the Foreign Office was criticised for failing to warn tourists about the 
danger of travelling to Indonesia in the run-up to the Bali bomb atrocity. Almost 200 
people, including 26 Britons, died in the massacre on the holiday island in October.

Menzies Campbell, the Liberal   Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, has studied the 
concerns raised by the whistleblower.

He is writing to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, demanding to know whether these 
computer problems were responsible for the lack of clear travel advice in relation to 
both the bombings in Bali and in Mombasa, Kenya.

The Whitehall source claims that at the end of last year the system was shut down for 
three days after a blunder allowed hundreds of pieces of top secret material to go 
astray.

Some documents included highly clas sified information on codewords used by MI6. The 
source claims there is such a lack of trust in the system, called Aramis, that 
intelligence officers downgrade the security status of classified documents so they 
can read them on their PCs. This means that top secret material is being used on 
systems that are easy prey for hackers.

The source said: 'When MI6 wants to pass on grade A intelligence material it can do so 
quickly and efficiently. Once that information has arrived at the Foreign Office, 
however, it is anyone's guess where it goes from there.'



Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site and thought you should 
see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site, go 
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Britain has 'no first-class university left now'
Kamal Ahmed, political editor
Saturday December 21 2002
The Guardian


The academic standards of Britain's leading universities were facing fresh scrutiny 
last night after Shirley Williams, the former Education Secretary, said there were no 
'internationally first-rate universities' left in the country.

Baroness Williams, who leads the Liberal Democratic Party in the House of Lords, said 
that gross under-funding had seriously affected the quality of research and teaching 
in the UK.

'At the bottom end there is a tail of colleges and universities that are not even 
second-rate,' she said in an interview with Prospect magazine. 'And at the top end I 
doubt whether there are any internationally first-rate universities left in Britain.'

Her comments brought condemnation from universities. Cambridge said that Williams's 
claims were 'ridiculous', while the head of Universities UK, which represents all 
universities across the country, described them as 'disappointing'.

The row will rekindle the debate on the rapid expansion of university education, which 
critics say has left too many students attempting second-rate courses that don't suit 
them academically.

Charles Clarke, the current Education Secretary, has suggested that the target to get 
50 per cent of all children into higher education is no longer a leading priority.

Williams, who was Education Secretary in the Seventies, said students would have to 
pay more towards their university education if the present funding crisis was to be 
solved. Some form of graduate tax, where students paid back their tuition fees once 
they had graduated, was the best way forward.

'How do we deal with the under-funding problem?' she said. 'We have to face the fact 
that the flow of payments from graduates will take 15 years or so to grow into a 
significant income stream. To cover that gap you need government funding.'

Williams said that upfront tuition fees were divisive and would deter students from 
poorer backgrounds.

Next month the Government will publish its long-awaited plans for funding higher 
education.

Early indications that Downing Street favoured top-up fees, where students pay for 
courses before they start them, were quashed after a threatened revolt by Labour MPs.

The Government is now moving towards a form of deferred payment which would come into 
effect once students were earning over a certain sum.

'Obviously there is a very, very serious funding problem for universities in this 
country,' said Dr David Secher, Director of Research Services at the University of 
Cambridge. 'But to suggest that there are no internationally first-rate universities 
left in Britain is frankly ridiculous.'

Diana Warwick, chief executive of Universities UK, said: 'Though correctly identifying 
the enormous funding challenge universities are facing, it is disappointing that 
Baroness Williams sells them short.'

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CTRL is a discussion  informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
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sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

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[CTRL] For your attention

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site and thought you should 
see it.

---
Note from Euphorian:

A taste of the Romantic Commando
---

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site, go 
to http://www.observer.co.uk

War is the only option
A former winner of the Nobel peace prize says we must stop Saddam's killing machine

Observer special: Iraq
Elie Wiesel
Saturday December 21 2002
The Guardian


Since the unanimous resolution of the UN Security Council, the world has lived in 
anguish, anticipating an event that would profoundly affect the course of affairs in 
the Middle East.

Will a war on Iraq, which Washington and London have advocated from the beginning, 
finally take place? And if it does, will it be justified? If UN arms inspectors come 
home with nothing to report, can we trust that Saddam Hussein has truly granted them 
the freedom to do their jobs? Or is Saddam a liar, concealing chemical, biological or 
nuclear weapons capable of devastating entire regions?

These are crucial questions, as troubling as they are complex. Impossible to resolve, 
but also impossible to circumvent.

Saddam almost certainly harbours deadly arsenals. Ideally, the international 
inspectors would uncover and then destroy the weapons that are putting many other 
countries in danger, not only Israel. But what if Iraqi hiding places turn out to be 
too deep, too well   concealed? The weapons may be buried in hospital basements and 
cemeteries, and plants may be operating in presidential palaces. Do the inspectors 
have adequate tools to discover them?

Few intelligence specialists doubt that Saddam would be ready to use weapons of mass 
destruction. His mentality, his temperament and his past are well known: Killing a 
great number of human beings would not concern him. He proved that at the end of the 
1980s, when he ordered the slaughter by gas of thousands of his own citizens.

In truth, that was the time for the leaders of civilised nations to raise their voices 
and condemn Saddam in the name of the world's conscience, plainly and clearly, for 
crimes against humanity. But for purely political reasons, they did not: At the time, 
Saddam was the enemy of Iran, which was the enemy of the United States and its allies. 
So he was handled carefully - while his regime grew ever stronger.

Will Saddam hesitate before using the same murderous tactics he has already proved 
himself capable of? Will he fear international reaction? It is possible. But it is 
also possible that he will be shrewd enough to exploit the stand-off between the US 
and the UN. Then time will be on his side. And when all is said and done, he will be 
the one to decide when, against whom and where to launch his missiles bearing poison 
and death.

This is the worst scenario of all.   Because numerous lives are at stake. The lives of 
Israelis, Americans and, of course, Iraqis. Tens of thousands. Therefore one thing is 
obvious: we must do everything possible to prevent Saddam from using his weapons.

Does this mean war? Not necessarily. Since our intelligence services, which seem to be 
well informed, know where the plants in question are located (at least, I hope so), I 
am na#239;ve enough to believe that a kind of James Bond operation would be best.

I imagine American, British and Israeli commandos, the best trained in the world, 
would one night parachute into Iraq. They would destroy all the missile bases and 
centres for weapons production and set out again at dawn, if possible, without killing 
a single Iraqi.

Am I too romantic? Why wouldn't I   be? After all, I am also a novelist. Only I must 
admit that the military professionals to whom I proposed my plan did not find it very 
realistic. And the fact that I know nothing about war strategies did not strengthen my 
position.

So where are we going? If all the roads to peaceful resolution are closed and 
therefore any attempts at negotiation are doomed to failure, and if Saddam sends the 
inspectors back empty-handed, vanquished and ridiculed, will only war bring the 
desired solution?

I find war repugnant. All wars. I know war's monstrous aspects: blood and corpses 
everywhere, hungry refugees, devastated cities, orphans in tears and houses in ruins. 
I find no beauty in it. But it is with a heavy heart I ask this: what is to be done? 
Do we have the right not to intervene, when we know what passivity and appeasement 
will make possible?

Is President Bush's policy of intervention the best response to an imperative need? 
Yes, it is said, and I am reluctant to say anything else. Bush's goal is to prevent 
the deadliest biological or nuclear conflict in modern history.

If the US, supported by the UN Security Council, is forced to intervene, it will save 
victims who are already targeted, already menaced. And it will win. The US owes it to 
us, and owes it to future generations. As the great French writer

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The Politics of Selling Tax Breaks for the Wealthiest

December 22, 2002
By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM






WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is torn between what
some officials believe is good tax policy and others fear
is bad politics. At issue are tax cuts for the rich.

Many conservatives have long despised the progressive
income tax, which taxes the wealthy at a higher rate,
holding that it is unfair, unnecessarily complicated and
economically inefficient. They argue that the tax burden
falls so heavily on so few people that it is difficult to
mobilize political support for overhauling the tax system.

It not only makes it more difficult to get people to want
to abolish the income tax, it also makes it more difficult
to give tax relief to anyone, said former Representative
Bill Archer, a Texas Republican who was chairman of the
House Ways and Means Committee until he retired from
Congress last year.

In the next few weeks, President Bush will propose a
package of tax cuts, convinced that lowering taxes is the
right tonic for whatever ails the economy. No one in the
know will say exactly what the president plans. But the
best guess is that he would eliminate or sharply reduce the
income taxes individuals pay on stock dividends, move to
2003 the upper-bracket rate reductions scheduled for 2004
and give companies more generous breaks for investments in
equipment. Mr. Bush is also expected to propose making
permanent the tax cuts enacted last year. These cuts,
including abolition of the estate tax, are scheduled to
expire in 2011.

Democrats are looking for every opportunity to portray the
president as the patron of fat cats. And they pounced on a
passage in a speech this month by R. Glenn Hubbard, the
chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers,
maintaining that the increasing reliance on taxing
higher-income households and targeted social preferences at
lower incomes stands in the way of moving to a simpler,
flatter system.

The administration's strategy, declared Democratic
Representatives Charles B. Rangel of New York and Robert T.
Matsui of California in a letter to colleagues, is to
raise taxes on lower- and middle-class families in order to
finance deeper tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

Mr. Hubbard declined last week to respond to repeated
inquiries about whether he in fact supported increasing
taxes on low- and moderate-income families. But Claire
Buchan, a White House spokeswoman, dismissed the notion
that this was the president's position.

A more senior White House official said, It is
preposterous to think that the president would stand up and
say, `I want to put more people on the tax rolls.' 

Yet, as soon as the president's plan is unveiled,
Washington will be deluged with statistical tables, showing
that the big winners would be the richest people in the
country.

Using data compiled by the Congressional tax staff and the
Internal Revenue Service, Citizens for Tax Justice, a
liberal research institute, found that the wealthiest 1
percent of taxpayers - those with annual incomes over
$356,000 - would receive about half the revenue the
government would lose next year if dividends went untaxed
and 45 percent of all the money from accelerating the rate
cuts. The 80 percent of households with incomes below
$73,000 a year would get less than 10 percent of the new
tax breaks.

These findings are not surprising. After all, the richest 1
percent has 18 percent of all the pretax income and pays 36
percent of all personal income taxes.

But studies like this reinforce the public perception that
the Bush administration favors the rich. A New York
Times/CBS News Poll in October showed that 55 percent of
those surveyed held this view, while only 25 percent
thought the administration treated everyone equally. It was
one of few instances where the national poll found that Mr.
Bush was seen in a negative light.

To make his tax-cut proposals more politically palatable,
people who follow administration policy closely say the
president will probably offer additional tax cuts that
would make his proposal look less lopsided in the
statistical analyses.

One possibility is another rebate like the one taxpayers
received last year, but limited to lower-income families.
Another is a temporary suspension of the Social Security
payroll tax for workers. A third is an additional tax break
for retirement savings by people with modest incomes.

Robert M. Teeter, a Republican pollster, said politicians
in his party tended to be overly anxious about how their
tax cuts benefited the wealthy. Surveys show, Mr. Teeter
said, that ordinary people are not so much jealous of the
rich as they are hopeful of reaching the point where they,
too, can get tax relief.

But officials who have worked on tax matters inside
previous Republican administrations said enormous attention
was paid to the political effect of the

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The legacy of JonBenet?  People as living dolls? AER

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 Way Too Much Fantasy With That Dream House

 By Deborah Roffman
 Still seeking that perfect gift for a special young girl in your life? Well, look no 
further  than page 50 of the FAO Schwarz 2002 holiday catalogue. For a mere $45, you 
can surprise and delight her with a Lingerie Barbie.

 And what a Barbie Babe she is, decked out in her sexy black (or, if you prefer, pink) 
garters, stockings and obligatory stiletto heels. Even her PR is PG, giving the phrase 
sex toy a whole new level of meaning: Barbie exudes a flirtatious attitude in her 
heavenly merry widow bustier ensemble accented with intricate lace and matching 
peekaboo peignoir.

 Oh darn, reading this too late for holiday gift giving? Not to worry. Mattel plans a 
February launch for its sixth limited edition Lingerie Barbie, promising she'll be 
simply sassy in a short pearl-grey satin slip trimmed in black lace and thigh-high 
stockings that add a hint of flair.

 A middle school principal in New Hampshire first alerted me to Bimbo, uh, Lingerie 
Barbie (nickname courtesy of a seventh-grade boy who wanted to know, What's next? 
'Playboy Barbie'?). I've been actively assessing the Lingerie Barbie gasp factor for 
several weeks now. It's huge. Teachers and parents (even among Barbie fans) can't 
believe their ears when they hear about this one: Disgusting! How dare they! Don't 
they have little girls of their own? Where will it all end? Enough!!

 Many teens I know, and even younger children, have been equally outraged. High school 
students at one all-girls school in Tennessee where I recently spoke were moved to 
start a national letter-writing campaign to chastise Mattel for this brazen 
sexualization of children.

 And girls I know are neither the slightest bit reassured nor deterred by the 
company's for age 14 and up disclaimer. Get real, said one. No 14-year-old girl 
would be caught dead playing with a Barbie Doll, 'lingerie' or otherwise. Who do they 
think they're kidding? Said another: Yeah, right. Maybe they mean 14-year-old boys.

 As for Mattel, it seems to be playing peekaboo with its own LB marketing strategy. 
Says company spokeswoman Ria Freydl, We're not marketing it to kids, and true 
enough, the Barbie Fashion Model Collection can be found in the more adult-oriented 
collectible section on Mattel's Web site. And yet, consider this tag line on LB #5's 
blurb: Golden hoop earrings and high heels complete this simple but elegant ensemble, 
perfect for dress-and-play fun!

 Dress-and-play fun for adult collectors? I don't think so. At least, I hope not.

 And though $45 is more than twice what a parent forks out for the average Barbie, 
it's still far more affordable (and more child friendly) than most of the other Barbie 
collectibles found in the Schwarz catalogue and those of other mainstream retailers.

 One 10-year-old in my class wasn't buying any of it. He told me last week he'd 
actually been given one of the dolls by a 5-year-old cousin who had tired of it. She 
gives me lots of toys she doesn't want, he said. Most of them I give to charity. But 
not this one, no way. I threw it in the river. No child should play with something 
like that. They'll get all the wrong ideas.

 Out of the mouth of babes -- real honest-to-goodness babes, not Barbie Babes. If 
10-year-olds are getting it, maybe, just maybe, the adults out there will begin to 
see it more clearly, too.

 I had begun to wonder what it would take. During the past decade, there have been an 
unprecedented number of assaults on the whole concept of sexual boundaries (with 
Lingerie Barbie only of the more egregious examples), typically without so much as a 
peep from the adult world. Maybe we've just been too busy or too overwhelmed to 
notice, or perhaps we've become so adjusted to the ever-quickening pace of cultural 
change that the change itself is simply harder and harder to perceive.

 How else to explain the gradual appearance of soft porn in perfume and clothing 
advertisements? How and when did that become okay? And when exactly did fashion 
stop being about getting dressed, and start being about getting -- or increasing the 
chance that you'll soon be getting -- undressed? About the same time, I guess, that 
Victoria's Secret decided that lingerie (previously thought of as underwear or private 
wear) was fashion, too.

 Wasn't it only a matter of time before we were treated to a prime-time Victoria's 
Secret lingerie fashion show? And, excuse me, but who was paying attention when the 
junior streetwalker/sex slave look became the predominant mode of dress among teens 
and even preteens? Or the

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More balls than a Christmas tree
In an Observer world exclusive, the Prime Minister candidly confesses that his 
government's difficulties are all not his fault
Andrew Rawnsley
Saturday December 21 2002
The Guardian


In an unprecedented appearance at the Christmas party of the National Association of 
Lifestyle Gurus, Holistic Psychics and Fresh Cut Papaya Marmalade Rubdown Therapists, 
Tony Blair came close to tears as he delivered an astonishingly candid speech about 
his recent personal difficulties.

Here, for the first time, The Observer publishes the full text of the Prime Minister's 
searing and heartfelt account of the scandals which have touched Number 10.

In view of the controversy around me at the moment, I hope you don't mind me using 
this event to say a few words. You can't have failed to notice that there have been a 
lot of allegations about me and I haven't said anything. Well, OK, I vaguely remember 
saying something about the Mittal Affair. I described it as 'garbagegate' - or was 
that the Richard Desmond donation? You know how it is: I issue the first denial that 
comes into Alastair's head.

When I got back to Downing Street today and discovered that some of the press are 
effectively suggesting that I am responsible for all of the failures of the 
Government, I knew the time had come for me to say something in my own words.

It is not fair to Gordon, Jack, David, Clare, Robin, Derry and all the other members 
of the Cabinet whose names temporarily elude me that the entire focus of political 
debate at the moment is about me. It is particularly not fair to Gordon that he should 
escape all the blame for our collective difficulty in keeping our promises.

I know I am in a very special position. I am the Prime Minister. I have an interesting 
job, a wonderful family, a couple of nice houses, a transatlantic hotline, a nuclear 
deterrent, a fast plane whenever I need it and a swanky limo with motorcycle outriders.

But I also know I am not superman. To be frank, I really can't do anything much at all 
without Gordon's say-so.

I realise now that I should not have allowed a situation to develop over the past five 
years where Number 10 spokesmen suggested that I was superman. I take full 
responsibility for that on their behalf.

The reality of my daily life is that I am juggling a lot of balls in the air. Trying 
to be a good husband and father. Trying to be the Prime Minister at home and abroad, 
being a barrister, an aid worker, a party fundraiser, a chairman of Cabinet, a leading 
partner in Europe, a philosopher-king of the Third Way, an international statesman, a 
global peace-maker, a global warmaker, a world-class actor. So many balls! There are 
days when all I can see are spherical objects, especially when I am in the company of 
Jacques Chirac. And, sometimes, some of the balls get dropped.

Stephen Byers got dropped. Estelle Morris got dropped. Even Cherie very nearly got 
dropped.

There just aren't enough hours in the day, days in the week, years in the decade, 
seconds in the minute, talents on the backbenches.

I choose my friends carelessly and Gordon Brown has been a mistrusted friend and 
support to me as I have tried to adapt to the pressures of my public role and to do 
Alastair and the country proud.

When I was just a barrister, I didn't spend much time worrying about how I looked, 
what I believed or what I said. But I found out quickly when I became leader of the 
Labour Party that I had to get my act together and Gordon has been a great help in 
that.

When he told me that he had a new friend called deficit, it really didn't cross my 
mind that he was going to land me in the mess I am now in and, anyway, I don't think 
it's my business to choose my friend's friends.

The same is true of John Prescott. What I was told was that he had been trouble in the 
past, but he was now a reformed character. I had no idea that he had been in Jags in 
more than one country, including this country, while Britain's rail network fell 
apart. His role in the notorious Earth Summit scam came as a complete shock when it 
was finally revealed to me.

Maybe I should have asked more questions about the handling of the firefighters' 
strike, but I didn't. Even when I learned his name, I had no idea who John Prescott 
was and I didn't know the full story until a couple of weeks ago when the police 
alerted me that a newspaper was trying to set me up in a meeting with him. Even now, I 
have only met him once, for less than five minutes.

I have also been faced with allegations that I or people in Downing Street on my 
behalf telephoned the Home Office urging them to kick asylum-seekers out of the 
country. It is true that when I first decided to launch another

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Failure of the 82nd airborne
As the US prepares for war on Iraq, its troops in Afghanistan are coming under 
increasing attack from the forces they were sent to dig out
Dan Plesch
Wednesday December 18 2002
The Guardian


American forces in Afghanistan have suffered a series of setbacks during 2002, and a 
year after the fall of the Taliban the US army is under almost daily attack in its 
bases in eastern Afghanistan. In the latest incident, in Kabul yesterday, two American 
soldiers were seriously injured in a grenade attack.

The main US force in the country is the 82nd airborne division, which is based at 
Bagram near Kabul. There are secondary bases at and around Khost in eastern 
Afghanistan, some 20 miles from the Pakistan border. Since mid-September US forces 
based in this area have been increased to more than 2,000, from just a few hundred 
earlier in the year, with a full battalion of parachute infantry at the new base of 
Camp Salerno outside Khost.

Several US-led attacks, using hundreds and even thousands of troops, have been 
ineffective, suffered outright defeat, or resulted in disaster. These failures have 
led the US to keep its forces mostly inside their bases: at Khost and Kandahar they 
are under attack almost daily from missiles and machine guns.

When it was launched in March, the US gave Operation Anaconda maximum publicity. It 
was supposed to crush remaining al-Qaida forces. Locally recruited Afghans were 
trained to act as beaters, driving al-Qaida from its high mountain caves on to the 
guns of US soldiers lying in ambush. The reality was that it was the US army that was 
ambushed.

According to the Washington Post and other US reports, the plan was betrayed to the 
enemy through the Afghan militias. At a dozen mountain passes, al-Qaida attacked US 
and allied forces as they jumped from their helicopters to take up what they thought 
would be their own ambush positions. So intense was the enemy fire that for two days 
the US could not fly in helicopters to support its own troops, who remained pinned 
down in vicious fighting. The US had eight men killed and 100 wounded before al-Qaida 
pulled back.

After proclaiming the operation a complete success, the US announced that no more 
operations of this kind would be undertaken. During the summer, the units involved - 
the 101st air assault and 10th mountain - were replaced by the 82nd airborne. This is 
the most highly trained infantry unit in the US army, and one Pentagon planners would 
prefer to have available for Iraq.

It began operations intended to dig out enemy forces from the villages of eastern 
Afghanistan. Newsweek described as a disaster its first high-profile mission, 
quoting other US troops and civilian witnesses. They said that 600 soldiers had gone 
on the rampage in Operation Mountain Sweep, undoing in minutes six months of community 
building. They went through villages as if Bin Laden was in every house, said one of 
the US army's own special forces soldiers. So serious were the complaints from other 
units about the conduct of the 82nd airborne that the army took sworn statements from 
all the officers and senior NCOs involved. The civilian casualties have not been 
accounted for. The 82nd is continuing to conduct cordon and search operations and has 
reduced media access.

One senior US editor told me he had been prevented by his own organisation from filing 
reports on the futility and brutality of US operations. He said the only comparison in 
US military history was with a punitive expedition into Mexico conducted by General 
Pershing in 1915. This produced virtually no results after months searching the 
desolate Mexican countryside in search of Pancho Villa, chasing up false leads 
provided by the local population.

Former British officers well informed on the Afghan operations are concerned at the US 
approach. British troops are trained to operate according to rules of engagement 
governing when it is considered acceptable to shoot to kill. This approach is designed 
to ensure that force is used to help achieve wider political goals. In the US army 
this kind of fine-tuning is not regarded as relevant.

Despite its power, the US has not been able to prevent its bases in Afghanistan from 
coming under frequent attack. Mostly, these achieve little more than keeping the 
troops in their dugouts. From time to time, as yesterday, a few soldiers are wounded 
and trucks blown up.

Containing the violence at this relatively low level could be considered a victory in 
itself but it will be hard to keep the lid on indefinitely. At the same time, the 
vaunted claim not to have once more left Afghanistan in the lurch is looking 
increasingly hollow. Some aid has been delivered, but its impact has been

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 U.S. Social Security May Reach To Mexico

 By Jonathan Weisman
 Pushed by the Mexican government, the Bush administration is working on a Social 
Security accord that would put tens of thousands of Mexicans onto the Social Security 
roster and send hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits south of the border.

 White House and Mexican government officials say discussions on an agreement to align 
the Social Security systems of the two countries are informal and preliminary. But 
excerpts from an internal Social Security Administration memo obtained this month say 
the agreement is expected to move forward at an accelerated pace, with the support 
of both governments, and could be in force by next October.

 The pact would be the latest, but by far the largest, of a series of treaties 
designed to ensure that people from one country working in another aren't taxed by 
both nations' social security systems. In its first year, the agreement is projected 
to trigger 37,000 new claims from Mexicans who worked in the United States legally and 
paid Social Security taxes but have been unable to claim their checks, according to a 
memo prepared by Ted Girdner, the Social Security Administration's assistant associate 
commissioner for international operations.

 Extrapolating from U.S. and Mexican government statistics, the accord could cost $720 
million a year within five years of implementation. One independent estimate put the 
total at $1 billion a year -- a large sum, but a trifle compared with the $372 billion 
in Social Security benefits currently being paid to 46.4 million recipients.

  Mexican President Vicente Fox has been pushing President Bush to sign a Social 
Security agreement with Mexico as something of a consolation prize to make up for 
Bush's failure to pursue promised immigration reforms, according to Latino lobbyists 
close to the Fox administration. Mexican officials began pressing the White House hard 
at meetings that preceded the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Los Cabos, 
Mexico, in October.

 When the legalization talks began going nowhere, the Mexicans began focusing on 
this, said Maria Blanco, national senior counsel for the Mexican American Legal 
Defense and Educational Fund. They really bore in at Los Cabos.

 Arturo Sarukhan, a top official in Mexico's foreign ministry, said that after 
Mexico's failure to win a comprehensive package of immigration reforms from Bush, it 
is lobbying in Washington for important incremental steps. How do you eat an 
elephant? One bite at a time, he said.

  The Social Security agreement, he said, is one of those less-sexy things that Mexico 
has been pushing to deepen its relationship with the United States and improve the 
day-to-day lives of Mexicans.

 Just yesterday, Fox underscored the political pressure he is under domestically to 
secure concessions from the United States when he journeyed to the border city of 
Nuevo Laredo to call for an urgent immigration accord to end discrimination against 
Mexican workers north of the border.

 Concern is rising on Capitol Hill -- and even among some White House economic aides 
-- that any agreement on Social Security could add a new burden to the benefits 
system, just as the baby-boom generation is preparing to retire. House Ways and Means 
Committee staff members are meeting today with Social Security officials to hash out 
projected costs for such an agreement.

 We are concerned about the sheer magnitude of the agreement, said a House 
Republican aide who is an expert on Social Security. About 94,000 beneficiaries living 
abroad have been brought into the system by the 20 existing international agreements. 
A Mexican agreement alone could bring in 162,000 in the first five years.

 White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said the issue is being explored only at a 
technical level at this point, and the administration has not yet decided to move 
forward with formal negotiations. A totalization agreement with Mexico would have 
significant implications, she said.

 Miguel Monterrubio, a spokesman for the Mexican Embassy, said several meetings have 
taken place between the Social Security Administration and its Mexican counterpart 
since November 2001, but he, too, called them informal.

 The Social Security memo indicates that work may be further along than both 
governments are saying. According to the memo, the application workloads generated by 
an agreement with Mexico will be much larger than those resulting from any of the 20 
existing agreements with other countries.

 In addition to the flurry of new claims, an additional 13,000 Mexicans entitled to 
benefits but cut off by provisions in recent immigration laws could also begin

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French court convicts Soros of insider trading
Staff and agencies
Friday December 20 2002
The Guardian


A French court today convicted US billionaire investor George Soros of insider trading 
and fined him 2.2m euros.

The fine by the court is the same amount the Hungarian-born magnate was accused of 
having made from buying stocks at French bank Soci#233;t#233; G#233;n#233;rale 
with insider knowledge 14 years ago. The fine was in line with the request by 
prosecutors.

Mr Soros, 72, the president of Soros Fund Management, denies having privileged 
information. He was not in court today.

In court testimony in November, Mr Soros said: I have been in business all my life, 
and I think I know what is insider trading and what isn't.

Soci#233;t#233; G#233;n#233;rale was privatised in 1987. A year later, its stock 
price went up during an unsuccessful takeover bid. Mr Soros was accused of having 
obtained insider information before the abortive corporate raid pushed up the stock 
price.

Mr Soros went on trial with two other men, Jean-Charles Naouri, a former top aide to 
France's then-finance minister Pierre Beregovoy, and Lebanese businessman Samir 
Traboulsi. The court cleared both men of any wrongdoing. Prosecutors had sought fines 
of 290,000 euros for Mr Naouri and 1.98m euros for Mr Traboulsi.

Mr Soros has said he was interested in Soci#233;t#233; G#233;n#233;rale based on 
information he claims was widely known: France's leftist government of the time 
favoured takeovers to change the leadership at recently privatised companies. Mr Soros 
said he was buying stock in many companies and had no reason not to include 
Soci#233;t#233; G#233;n#233;rale.

Afterward, he sold the stock, saying he felt the takeover attempt was politically 
motivated and was not going to benefit the company.

Mr Soros was reportedly the first American to earn a billion dollars in a single year. 
Born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1930, he emigrated to the United States in 1956 and 
became a citizen five years later. He made his fortune managing investment funds.

Forbes magazine ranked him this year as the 37th richest person in the world, with an 
estimated $6.9bn fortune.

Prosecutors said the case dragged on because Swiss authorities took years to respond 
to requests for information. Defence lawyers argued unsuccessfully that the case 
should be thrown out because it took so long to bring to court.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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Bank 'fixed gold price for years'
JP Morgan accused of manipulation
David Teather, New York
Thursday December 19 2002
The Guardian


JP Morgan Chase has been named in a $2bn (#163;1.3bn) lawsuit alleging that the Wall 
Street bank conspired to manipulate the price of gold.

The action against JP Morgan and Canadian mining group Barrick Gold has been filed by 
Blanchard and Co, the biggest retailer of the precious metal in the US.

It alleges they dumped gold on to the market for years in order to suppress the price 
and allow them to reap billions in short-selling profits. New Orleans-based Blanchard 
is seeking restitution of the money for clients who buy its bullion and gold coins.

It also alleges that, by keeping the price of gold low, Barrick, the second largest 
gold producer in the world, could buy other mining companies.

The gold price, $350 an ounce, is at its highest for six years as nervousness about 
stock markets has sent investors looking for a safe harbour. But Blanchard chief 
executive Donald Doyle claims it would be higher without the alleged manipulation.

Since the end of 1987, when the collaboration between Barrick and JP Morgan began, 
the growth of global income and wealth would have lifted the gold price to 
approximately $740 if it had been able to respond to the normal laws of supply and 
demand.

The lawsuit alleges that in the past five years JP Morgan and Barrick injected 
millions of additional ounces of gold into the market, several times more than the 
annual production of every goldmine in South Africa, the world's largest producer.

The suit also claims that, by using privately negotiated derivative contracts and 
concealing additional billions of dollars worth of physical gold with off balance 
sheet accounting, Barrick made it almost impossible to determine the size and impact 
of its trading position.

Barrick dismissed the claims as ludicrous and totally without merit. It said the 
suit contains numerous factual inaccuracies and defamatory statements, adding that 
it would vigorously defend itself.

The company is heavily involved in hedging its gold production - often selling a 
substantial portion before it is mined in a series of forward contracts to ensure it 
gets a certain price. It has also borrowed gold from bullion banks, including JP 
Morgan, to sell into the spot market and drive the price down.

But it claims to have done so to prevent dramatic price swings.

Other producers, such as Vancouver's Placer Dome and Newmont Mining, undertake similar 
hedging but critics have long cast a cynical eye over the activity.

JP Morgan declined to comment.

Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers yesterday both posted higher fourth-quarter 
earnings, after higher revenues from bond trading and tighter cost controls. But 
Morgan Stanley reported a 16% fall in profits as trading revenues dropped. All three 
investment banks have cut jobs and slashed bonuses as they wrestle with the downturn.

Goldman reported fourth quarter profits of $505m, up 1.6% as cost cutting offset a 16% 
decline in revenues. Lehman's earnings, at $243m, up from $130m a year earlier, were 
the first improvement since the second quarter of 2001.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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[CTRL] For your attention

2002-12-19 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

The name of the game is assassination
The Pentagon has learned from Israel's policy of 'targeted killings'
Tony Geraghty and David Leigh
Wednesday December 18 2002
The Guardian


Israeli hardliners had the pleasure this week of seeing their controversial tactic of 
targeted killing of their enemies vindicated by being imitated. For it has emerged 
that their close allies in the US administration have now drawn up a target list for a 
systematic policy of assassination against those they call terrorists.

Considering the closeness of the Israeli right and the hawks at the Pentagon, this 
development should come as no surprise. The US has borrowed not just their policy, but 
their techniques too. It was Israel that pioneered the use of the Hellfire missile for 
summary executions such as the US carried out last month in Yemen.

Developed as a tankbuster during the cold war, Hellfire hits its target at 950mph. On 
November 3, a Landcruiser with an alleged al-Qaida leader and five other men was 
stalked from the air by a pilotless Predator controlled by a US team in Djibouti, 150 
miles away. The Hellfire it carried enabled them to kill their prey from the comfort 
of an office chair.

A decade earlier, another terrorist, Sheik Abbas Moussawi, leader of Lebanon's 
fundamentalist Hizbollah group, was stalked from the air in this way. On February 16 
1992, he was vaporised by an Israeli helicopter armed with Hellfire.

In biblical times, David made do with just one missile to cut down Goliath. But since 
Moussawi's Mercedes was in a guarded convoy, he got five. His wife Siham and their son 
Hussein, aged five, were killed with him.

Israel's defence minister, Moshe Arens, rejoiced over a message to all terrorist 
organisations... whoever opens an account with us, we will close the account with 
them.

Three years later, Israel assassinated another Hizbollah leader, Rida Yassin, in a 
similar way as he drove along a road east of Tyre. Two Cobra helicopter gunships fired 
the radar-guided missiles, again believed to be Hellfires. One reportedly exploded 
inside the vehicle, burning Yassin and an aide alive. The other set fire to trees and 
bushes, hindering rescue workers.

The US's recent technical contribution has been to marry Israel's novel use of 
Hellfire with unmanned drones. The Predator was conceived in 1994 as a spy plane, 
operated from a safe position by a member of the joystick generation - and three 
others managing cameras and communications.

Airforce chiefs then transformed it into a tankbuster. The first successful test was 
in Nevada on February 21 2001. Air combat command moved on to try satellite links 
against the harder challenge of a moving target.

Al-Qaida's attack on the twin towers soon afterwards dramatically changed it  targets 
- to take out not tanks, but individuals.

In this, it seems clear the Pentagon drank at the well of Israel's experience as a 
laboratory for fighting terror. This May, Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's hawkish 
undersecretary for policy, went to Tel Aviv to talk to Ariel Sharon and his defence 
minister, Binyamin Ben Eliezer. The Israeli paper Ha'aretz said they discussed war 
games, intelligence sharing and other cooperation.

Feith is such an enthusiast for the Israeli right that the reactionary Zionist 
Organisation of America describes him approvingly as the noted pro-Israel activist.

Four weeks later, Israel's top two security chiefs went to Washington to propose a new 
US-Israeli office specifically to combat terrorism. Brigadier General David Tzur and 
Uzi Landau, minister of interior security, met Feith on June 27.

The joint office, to be based in Washington, would involve a communications link 
between the proposed US department of homeland defence and the Israeli government, it 
was explained. Visa policies, terrorist profiles and other internal security data - 
except classified intelligence - would be swapped by computer, fax and telephone. The 
topic of the US-Israeli meeting was confirmed as homeland security. Mr Landau said: 
Israel is a laboratory for fighting terror.

It was only a matter of days after those talks that defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld 
drafted a secret directive. It is reported he ordered Air force General Charles 
Holland on July 22 to develop a plan to find and deal with members of terrorist 
organisations.

The objective is to capture terrorists for interrogation or if necessary to kill 
them, not simply to arrest them in a law-enforcement exercise, he wrote.

Following the Yemen attack - what the Pentagon apparently hopes was the first of many 
successful operations - the third of the Pentagon's trio of hawks, deputy secretary 
Paul Wolfowitz, told CNN the killing was regarded as a very successful tactical

[CTRL] Euphorian wants you to check out this Phoenix Article

2002-12-19 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Dear ,

Euphorian wanted us to send you this article.
Here's what Euphorian had to say:
Britlandic subject to effect recolonisation

The Phoenix article, TALKING POLITICS,
can be found by clicking on the link below.
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/this_just_in/documents/02598244.htm

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[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net

2002-12-18 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the 
Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com

 And of course, it goes without saying that Wolfie and Newt are gonna be on the ground 
in the first wave.  And, they're gonna be there when the three faction (Shi'a, Sunni, 
 Kurd) guerrilla warfare starts up.  If you like(d) Kosovaria, you'll love Iraq!
AER

 To view the entire article, go to 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4096-2002Dec17.html

 Projection on Fall Of Hussein Disputed

 By Thomas E. Ricks
 With war possible soon in Iraq, the chiefs of the two U.S. ground forces are 
challenging the belief of some senior Pentagon civilians that Iraqi President Saddam 
Hussein will fall almost immediately upon being attacked and are calling for more 
attention to planning for worst-case scenarios, Defense Department officials said.

 The U.S. war plan for a possible attack on Iraq, which has been almost a year in the 
making, calls for a fast-moving ground attack without an overwhelming number of 
reinforcements on hand. Instead, some follow-on troops would be flown into Iraq from 
outside the region. Among other things, this rolling start would seek to achieve 
tactical surprise by launching an attack before the U.S. military appears ready to do 
so.

 In addition, the plan calls for some armored units, instead of traveling a 
predetermined distance and pausing to allow slow-moving supply trucks to catch up, to 
charge across Iraq until they run into armed opposition and then engage in combat, 
officials said.

 Those aspects of the plan, which appear riskier than usual U.S. military practice, 
worry the chief of the Army, Gen. Eric Shinseki, and the commandant of the Marine 
Corps, Gen. James L. Jones,   defense officials said.

 Shinseki and Jones, who as service chiefs are members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 
have questioned the contention of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and other 
top officials that  Hussein's government is likely to collapse almost as soon as a 
U.S. attack is launched, the officials said.

 The two generals are concerned that the Wolfowitz school may underestimate the risks 
involved, the officials said. They have argued that planning should prepare thoroughly 
for worst-case scenarios, most notably one that planners have labeled Fortress 
Baghdad, in which Hussein withdraws his most loyal forces into the Iraqi capital and 
challenges the United States to enter into protracted street fighting, perhaps 
involving chemical or biological weapons.

 In an interview last night, Wolfowitz rejected the view that he has been 
overoptimistic in his views. He said he also believes that, You've got to be prepared 
for the worst case. He added: It would be a terrible mistake for anyone to think 
they can predict with confidence what the course of a war is going to be. In 
discussions of the war plan, he said, he has repeatedly emphasized the risk of  
Hussein using his most terrible weapons.

 The dispute, which is taking place mainly in secret reviews of the war plan, promises 
to be the last major issue in the Pentagon's consideration of that plan, as more signs 
point toward forces being ready to launch a wide-ranging, highly synchronized ground 
and air attack in six to eight weeks. Psychological operations, such as leafleting and 
broadcasting into Iraq, have been stepped up lately, and there is talk at the Pentagon 
of large-scale troop movements or mobilizations being announced soon after the 
holidays.

  The debate became more open last week when Jones alluded to it in comments made at a 
dinner held in his honor by former  defense  secretary William S. Cohen. Jones is 
scheduled next month to leave the Marine  post to become the commander of U.S. 
military forces in Europe. At that dinner, Jones indicated that he and other senior 
officers did not  share the optimism of others about the ease of fighting in Iraq.

 In an interview, Jones said that he did not  name who he thought was being overly 
optimistic. I did not say, 'folks at the Pentagon,'  he said. I said I didn't align 
myself with folks around town who seem to think that this is preordained to be a very 
easy military operation.

  If a victory were swiftly won, he continued: It is to be celebrated. But military 
planners should always plan for the worst case. He insisted that in his remarks he 
had not expressed a conclusion about how quickly Hussein might fall.

 He said he believed that he and Shinseki, the Army chief, are of the same view on 
this.

 If anything, the Army's leadership is even more worried than Jones, said a senior 
officer who sides with the Wolfowitz view. The Army really is conservative on this, 
he said dismissively.

 The Army also has qualms about the likely burden of postwar peacekeeping in Iraq -- a 
mission that is likely to be executed mainly by the Army. They're concerned they're 
going to be left holding the bag after

[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net

2002-12-18 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the 
Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com



 To view the entire article, go to 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4767-2002Dec18.html

 Conseco Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy


INDIANAPOLIS   Insurance and finance company Conseco Inc., facing $6.5 billion in 
debt and a federal investigation of its accounting practices, filed for Chapter 11 
protection in the third-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.


 Terms were negotiated before Tuesday night's filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in 
Chicago, said Conseco spokesman Mark Lubbers. Conseco, the nation's seventh-largest 
insurance provider, has an agreement in principle with several of the company's 
stakeholders.


 Details of the tentative agreement reached with two of three investor groups must 
still be resolved and approved by group members before a reorganization plan can be 
submitted for the court's approval, Lubbers said. A filing outlining specifics of the 
plan could be submitted within four to six weeks.


 Banks and bondholders who took part in the talks reached terms with Conseco, but 
holders of preferred securities did not, Lubbers said. Talks will continue with those 
investors, Lubbers said.


 The agreement with two creditor groups is critical to moving forward with the 
restructuring, Lubbers said. Sales of some Conseco assets are part of the tentative 
agreement, he said.


 Bondholders, who submitted a proposal in the talks to take full equity ownership of 
Conseco, are owed $2.5 billion in public debt. Banks are due $1.5 billion, with more 
than $2 billion owed to holders of preferred stock.


 Although the bankruptcy filing was not surprising given Conseco's recent woes, it 
marked a dramatic downfall for a company whose stock was once a Wall Street darling.


 From 1988 to 1998, the company's stock averaged a total return of 47 percent per year 
and Conseco shares traded as high as $58. Today, the stock trades at less than a 
nickel per share.


 Under the most commonly used measure to rank bankruptcies, Conseco's ranks third in 
the United States based on the $52.3 billion in assets the company and its 
subsidiaries reported as of Sept. 30.


 WorldCom's total assets at its July filing were $104 billion, followed by Enron's $64 
billion.


 Before Conseco's filing, the third-largest bankruptcy was the 1987 filing by Texaco, 
which had nearly $36 billion in assets at the time. Adjusted for inflation, that 
amount would be more than $56 billion today, according to the research Web site 
BankruptcyData.com.


 Conseco maintains the use of assets to measure bankruptcies is inappropriate in its 
case because its insurance operations are not included in the bankruptcy filing. Also, 
Conseco says its debt entering bankruptcy is much smaller than several other 
companies' debts at the time they filed.


 The filing follows a yearslong tailspin after the conglomerate's aggressive 
acquisition strategy in the 1990s backfired.


 Company founder Stephen Hilbert was ousted in April 2000 after piling up $8.2 billion 
in debt. Federal regulators are investigating the company's accounting around the time 
of Hilbert's resignation and his replacement by Gary Wendt.


 The decline in Conseco's financial condition accelerated in recent months, leading to 
Wendt's Oct. 3 resignation. He had received a $45 million signing bonus when he was 
hired.


 Wendt, who remained board chairman, said as recently as May 1 that Conseco's 
short-term debt problems were behind it, and that he was confident about next year's 
prospects. Those statements and other reassurances from Conseco executives led to the 
filing of a string of recent shareholder lawsuits.


 Conseco has also suffered a series of downgrades by Wall Street credit rating 
agencies. Those downgrades, combined with bankruptcy fears, have hurt the ability of 
Conseco's insurance and finance subsidiaries to keep existing customers and attract 
new ones.


 Company officials have said Conseco's insurance subsidiaries have remained 
fundamentally sound despite the parent company's debt problems. However, the finance 
division, Conseco Finance, is insolvent after failing to make a $4.7 million payment 
due Dec. 4.


 The filing covers Conseco Inc., the parent company, as well as St. Paul, Minn.-based 
Conseco Finance Corp. and its consumer finance subsidiaries. Conseco's insurance 
operations are not included in the filing, Lubbers said.


 Conseco is based in the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel.

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CTRL is a discussion  informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
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[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net

2002-12-18 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the 
Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com



 To view the entire article, go to 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6347-2002Dec18.html

 List of the 12 Largest U.S. Bankruptcies

 The top 12 U.S. bankruptcies, ranked by assets:P#150; WorldCom Inc., July 21, 
2002; $103.9 billionP#150; Enron Corp., Dec. 2, 2001; $63.4 billionP#150; 
Conseco Inc., Dec. 18, 2002; $52 billionP#150; Texaco Inc., April 12, 1987; $35.9 
billionP#150; Financial Corp. of America, Sept. 9, 1988; $33.9 billionP#150; 
Global Crossing Ltd., Jan. 28, 2002; $25.5 billionP#150; UAL Corp., Dec. 9, 2002; 
$25.2 billionP#150; Adelphia, June 25, 2002; $24.4 billionP#150; Pacific Gas and 
Electric Co., April 6, 2001; $21.5 billionP#150; MCorp., March 31, 1989; $20.2 
billionP#150; Kmart Corp. Jan. 22, 2002, $17.0 billionP#150; NTL Inc., May 8, 
2002, 16.8 billionP#150;#150;#150;PSource: Bankruptcy Data.com, Securities and 
Exchange Commision filings

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sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
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Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

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[CTRL] For your attention

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

---
Note from Euphorian:

Considering that this is a pre-mature birth of something that will be delivered 
dead, doesn't that amount to abortion?  If so, is this Shrub's signal that he 
favours spending unlimited amounts of taxpayer money on such things?  AER
---

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

America announces premature birth of Son of Star Wars
Rumsfeld says defences will be put in place before they work but will deter attacks
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington and Richard Norton Taylor
Tuesday December 17 2002
The Guardian


Washington formally inaugurated the Son of Star Wars anti-missile shield yesterday, 
inviting Britain and other allies to subscribe to the controversial new vision of 
strategic defence.

It is expected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming decades, but it 
appeared yesterday that the US hopes to defray part of the cost by enlisting its 
allies in the project.

The White House expects to spend $7.4bn on the researching and developing the system 
in each of the next two years. Critics say the money should be spent on the war on 
terror.

The announcement was seen as further evidence of Washington's focus on the threat 
posed by ballistic missile proliferation, specifically in North Korea.

The project will be in the project stage for at least two years.

President George Bush said it was intended to protect our citizens against what is 
perhaps the greatest danger of all - catastrophic harm that may result from hostile 
states or terrorist groups armed with weapons of mass destruction and the means to 
deliver them.

A former assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation, Robert Einhorn, said: 
The belief of this administration is that missile proliferation is occuring faster 
than it was thought and that new and additional countries are acquiring these missiles 
some of which are not as easy to deter as the Soviet Union was, and so to be prudent 
we need a defensive capability.

Whether the threat materialises as quickly as they expect is an issue. They are 
predicting a rather rapid advance of this problem of ballistic missile proliferation 
...

One has to look at it in terms of tradeoffs, how effective is it, and how serious is 
the threat.

In London the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, told MPs that the US had requested the 
use of the Fylingdales early warning radar on the North York Moors.

He said in a written statement that while there was no immediate significant threat to 
Britain from ballistic missiles, intentions can change quickly and the proliferation 
and development of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles is continuing.

The government had not decided how to respond and was keen that a decision would be 
informed by public and parliamentary discussion.

But he made it clear that the government would respond positively after a Commons 
debate in the new year.

He said: An upgraded Fylingdales radar would be a key building block in the extension 
of missile defence to Europe, should we and other European allies so desire.

The US said it would be prepared to extend missile defence coverage and make missile 
defence capabilities available to the UK ... subject to agreement on appropriate 
political and financial arrangements. Mr Hoon said the project offered opportunities 
for British hi-tech companies.

Opponents of the project, including many senior Whitehall officials, believe it is 
unnecessary - even dangerous in that it could fuel an arms race - expensive - it is 
estimated to cost Britain up to #163;10bn - and technologically unproved.

Malcolm Savidge, a Labour backbencher whose motion expressing concern at the project 
attracted the support of nearly 300 MPs, said yesterday that it undermined prospects 
for progressive disarmament.

It makes one wonder whether a PR exercise has been choreographed jointly by 
Washington and Whitehall, rather than having a democratic debate..

Last week the former defence minister Peter Kilfoyle said he feared the government was 
acting as a satellite to the US in this instance rather than an ally without any 
reference to anybody.

The US has made a similar request to the Danish government to upgrade the early 
warning radar at Thule in Greenland.

The initial stages of the plan are modest - far less ambitious in their scope than the 
1983 variant of Star Wars pursued by Ronald Reagan.

But it remains a considerable expansion of the ground-based programme pursued by 
President Bill Clinton by ordering research and testing of sea-based and space-based 
systems.

The plan involves an initial 10 land-based interceptor missiles at Fort Greely, 
Alaska, by 2004, essentially as a test facility, and an additional 10 land-based 
interceptors by 2005, Pentagon officials said.

Eventually it is expected to spread in

[CTRL] For your attention

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

The mystery assassin
The shooting of three anti-Chavez demonstrators has unleased a wealth of conspiracy 
theories, says Duncan Campbell
Duncan Campbell
Tuesday December 17 2002
The Guardian


One of the mysterious aspects of the current crisis in Venezuela is who was behind the 
fatal shootings of three demonstrators taking part in a rally against the president, 
Hugo Chavez, earlier this month. Both sides are blaming the other for organising the 
attack and competing conspiracy theories have turned it into a Venezuelan equivalent 
of the Kennedy assassination.

A Portuguese-born taxi-driver, Joao De Gouveia, has already confessed to all three 
killings. On December 6, De Gouveia opened fire in Plaza Francia in Altamira, a centre 
for opposition protests. Josefina de Inciarte, 76, Keyla Guerra, a 17-year-old student 
and Professor Jaime Giraud, 53, were killed and are now seen as martyrs of the 
movement to remove Chavez. Thousands took part in marches in their memory last week.

De Gouveia was grabbed by demonstrators at the square after his gun appeared to jam 
and only rescued from a lynching by the police who took him into custody.

Owain Johnson, a Welsh freelance journalist based in Caracas, who was in the square at 
the time, told me: I thought he was going to be lynched on the spot. One big guy said 
'we can't put up with this any more, we've got to stand up for ourselves'.

The face of the gunman, bloodied in the attack, has appeared daily in the press and on 
television since then, often with the question attached: Who is Joao De Gouveia?

De Gouveia was born in Madeira 39 years ago this week and moved to Venezuela in 1980 
where he found work as a taxi driver. According to the daily El Nacional, he lived a 
solitary life and had told neighbours recently that he was planning to go to the US. 
Just before the shooting the black haired De Gouveia had his hair dyed red.

Initially, it was suggested that De Gouveia had mental problems and had been so 
angered by the anti-government coverage on private television stations that he decided 
to attack a television crew working for Globovision, the most anti-Chavez of the 
stations.

The opposition suggest that De Gouveia was probably hired by the government or its 
supporters to intimidate the opposition. A tape has been shown repeatedly on the 
anti-government stations which purports to show De Gouveia the day before the killings 
at a pro-Chavez rally that was also attended by Freddy Bernal, a pro-Chavez mayor.

The government, on the other hand, suggest that the opposition hired the gunman as an 
agent provocateur to create the climate for a military takeover. In April, a military 
coup took place after a similar attack with the military using the violence as a 
justification for the coup.

Mr Bernal, mayor of the Libertador municipality in the centre of Caracas, denies any 
knowledge of the gunman. He said that he believed that De Gouveia suffered from 
shizophrenia and paranoia and had been used by the opposition. It was a trick to 
create a provocation, said Mr Bernal who was previously a special forces police 
officer before entering politics. He suggested that the tape showing De Gouveia at the 
rally had been tampered with.

One senior government official has even claimed that De Gouveia has already confessed 
to receiving money from a dissident member of the armed forces and admitted to working 
for the CIA. The official said that he recognised that the allegation was like 
Mission Impossible. He said that De Gouveia confessed after being told that there 
had been a plan to kill him after the shootings, in the same way that Lee Harvey 
Oswald was killed after the assassination of President Kennedy.

All of this is dismissed by the opposition as a typical fabrication of the government.

Whether the full story will ever emerge seems, at present, unlikely. Journalists based 
in Caracas say the record for such investigations is not hopeful and the secretary 
general of the Organisation of American States, Cesar Gaviria, has criticised what he 
sees as a culture of impunity in the country. Venezuela remains in limbo as 
negotiations between the two sides, overseen by the OAS, continue.

At the weekend, Mr Chavez rejected a call from White House to defuse the situation by 
having early elections, arguing that he is only half way through the six year term for 
which he was elected. His opponents, who claim that he has seriously damaged the 
economy and behaved autocratically, say that he must go now for the good of the 
country. Both sides say they fear another shooting similar to that carried out by the 
mysterious De Gouveia.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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[CTRL] canada.com Story

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canada.com story:

Poll suggests Americans don't buy Bush administration war case

http://www.canada.com/news/story.asp?id=189B7EE3-C859-423C-9FBD-99257A9C79A6



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British envoy questions Israel on terrorism
Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Monday December 16 2002
The Guardian


Britain's ambassador in Tel Aviv has described terrorism as justified, if defined in 
certain ways, drawing parallels between the Jewish fight for a state of Israel and the 
present day Palestinian struggle.

Sherard Cowper-Coles said that the killing of non-combatants, particularly children, 
could never be defended. Terrorism defined as attacks against innocent civilians is 
always and absolutely wrong, he told a conference in Berlin on European-Israeli 
relations.

However, he went on to say: If terrorism is defined more widely as attacks on formal 
military units, we can all think of times in history when it was not always wrong.

Mr Cowper-Coles pointed to Israel's own struggle for independence and the activities 
of the Stern Gang, labelled as terrorist by the British authorities in Palestine for 
bombing Jerusalem's King David hotel and for killing British soldiers but seen as 
national heroes by many Israelis.

Ariel Sharon's government prefers to describe the killing of all Israelis, in whatever 
circumstances, as terrorist. The Palestinian leadership argues that soldiers in the 
occupied territories and, sometimes, Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza are 
legitimate.

In carefully worded remarks, the ambassador suggested that the failure to pursue 
political options fuels terrorism.

Regarding the founding of the Jewish state, he laid the blame at the feet of Field 
Marshal Montgomery, who in 1946, he said, refused to negotiate with moderate Jewish 
insurgents in order to separate them from those the high commissioner viewed as 
extremists, such as the Stern Gang.

Montgomery insisted on a military solution. We put 100,000 troops into Palestine and 
20,000 paramilitary police with catastrophic results.

He likened terrorism to a cancer. You need to ask yourself what the carcinogens are 
and you need to use a range of therapies

Britain has learned from bitter experience, he said, that terrorism must be tackled by 
tough security combined with political, economic and social measures to separate 
terrorists from the sea of popular support in which they swim.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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http://www.guardian.co.uk

The scourge of Wall Street on the cusp of a historic victory
Eliot Spitzer, New York attorney-general and champion of the small investor, scents 
blood
David Teather in New York
Monday December 16 2002
The Guardian


Few people in the US had heard of Eliot Spitzer 12 months ago. In Britain, virtually 
no one had. The New York State attorney-general says that he still cannot quite 
understand why anyone outside his home state, let alone anyone overseas, should be 
interested. But it is a feint. He clearly knows why.

In the past year, Mr Spitzer has become the scourge of Wall Street. While the 
securities and exchange commission, the chief US financial regulator, foundered, it 
was Mr Spitzer who emerged as the champion of the small investor. He pointed out the 
corruption bred during the stock market boom and he did something about it. On his own 
website, he describes himself as the people's lawyer - a figure of retribution.

Now he is on the cusp of a historic victory, a sweeping reform of the largest and most 
powerful investment banks on Wall Street, while extracting fines likely to top $1bn.

The scandals of the past year have attracted a welter of investigations from Congress, 
the SEC, other securities regulators and the US justice department, many still running 
in parallel. But it is the inquiry into conflicts of interest inside investment banks 
led by Mr Spitzer which has been the swiftest and most successful. After three days of 
talks last week, a resolution is expected within weeks.

We are approaching a point now where I think it's fair to say there will either be a 
resolution of some sort in the reasonably near term or the efforts to reach that 
resolution will fall apart, he said. I'm hoping for the former and not the latter.

Mr Spitzer, lantern-jawed, with receding dark hair and piercing blue eyes is   dressed 
in a dark pinstripe suit with a bright red tie - the uniform of the City, albeit with 
an American flag on his lapel.

But while his clothes fit in with the financial world, his behaviour does not. He was 
after all invited to an awards dinner for institutional investors last month only to 
stun his hosts with an excoriating critique of analysts' conflicts of interest and the 
basis of the awards. I sort of gave a hard time to some of those who had won awards, 
he admitted. But with equity ownership comes responsibility and the notion of passive 
institutional investors is a notion that we have to get over. You have to get involved 
because if you don't you are abdicating and our notion of what equity ownership means 
is dissipated.

Mr Spitzer has stinging criticisms for each participant in the scandals that have 
arisen over the past year in corporate America. He describes a quagmire of 
self-interest that has robbed small investors of billions of dollars.

I use a simple ratio, he said of accountants. If you look at accounting statements 
and look at the ratio of text to footnotes, the more that ratio is weighted in 
footnotes the greater the problem. Lawyers put things they don't want you to read in 
footnotes and accountants do the same. Increasingly over the past couple of years, 
accounting statements had lengthy footnotes.

He rebukes the chief executives who became excessively empowered, directors who felt 
they just needed to show up to meetings and lawyers who did nothing more than 
paperwork. But it is the investment banks where he has turned the screw tightest.

Mr Spitzer has already wrung a $100m settlement from Merrill Lynch over allegations 
that research analysts at the bank were issuing supposedly impartial advice to 
investors that was overly rosy to please clients and win further investment banking 
business. To put pressure on the bank he used shock tactics, releasing a now infamous 
series of damning internal emails, describing shares in one case as a piece of shit 
while recommending them to the public as a buy. Mr Spitzer insisted the emails, many 
by former star internet analyst Henry Blodget, were released to ensure systemic 
reform.

The practice was widely known within the industry and the ferocity of Mr Spitzer's 
attack astonished the banks.

He has put similar pressure on Citigroup with a lawsuit aimed at five chief executives 
of clients who took shares in hot flotations during the boom years. The allegation is 
that they were payments in return for pushing business the bank's way and he wants the 
five to hand back $28m in easy profits made from selling the shares.

The writ again included internal emails embarrassing the bank and leading to the 
resignation of Jack Grubman, probably the highest paid analyst on Wall Street. The 
scrutiny has also put chief executive Sanford Weill under severe pressure and already 
precipitated structural

[CTRL] NYTimes.com Article: Limits Sought on Wireless Internet Access

-Caveat Lector-

This article from NYTimes.com
has been sent to you by [EMAIL PROTECTED]



Limits Sought on Wireless Internet Access

December 17, 2002
By JOHN MARKOFF






SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 16 - The Defense Department, arguing
that an increasingly popular form of wireless Internet
access could interfere with military radar, is seeking new
limits on the technology, which is seen as a rare bright
spot for the communications industry.

Industry executives, including representatives from
Microsoft and Intel, met last week with Defense Department
officials to try to stave off that effort, which includes a
government proposal now before the global overseer of radio
frequencies.

The military officials say the technical restrictions they
are seeking are necessary for national security. Industry
executives, however, say they would threaten expansion of
technology like the so-called WiFi systems being used for
wireless Internet in American airports, coffee shops, homes
and offices.

WiFi use is increasingly heavy in major American
metropolitan areas, and similar systems are becoming
popular in Europe and Asia. As the technology is installed
in millions of portable computers and in antennas in many
areas, industry executives acknowledge that high-speed
wireless Internet access will soon crowd the radio
frequencies used by the military. But industry executives
say new types of frequency spectrum sharing techniques
could keep civilian users from interfering with radar
systems.

The debate, which involves low-power radio emissions that
the Defense Department says may jam as many as 10 types of
radar systems in use by United States military forces,
presents a thorny policy issue for the Bush administration.


Even as the armed forces monitor United States air space
for signs of military or terrorist attacks and gear up for
a possible war with Iraq, the nation's technology companies
hope that the popularity of wireless Internet access will
help pull their industry out of its two-year slump. New
limits on that technology could help undermine the economic
recovery on which the administration is also pinning its
hopes.

Nobody, including the Pentagon, doubts that this is
important for consumers and industry, said Steven Price,
deputy assistant secretary of defense for radio spectrum
matters. The problem comes when it degrades our military
capabilities.

So far, though, there have been no reports of civilian
wireless Internet use interfering with military radar,
Edmond Thomas, chief of the office of engineering and
technology for the Federal Communications Commission, said.


Industry executives say that military uses can coexist with
the millions of smart wireless Internet devices that can
sense the nearby use of military radar and automatically
yield the right of way. These devices are in use in Europe
and will soon be used in the United States.

But Pentagon officials say that the new digital
technologies are unproven and could interfere with various
types of military radar systems, whether ones used for
tracking storms, monitoring aircraft or guiding missiles
and other weapons.

The Pentagon wants regulators to delay consideration of
opening an additional swath of radio frequencies in the
5-gigahertz band that is eagerly sought by American
technology companies and is already in civilian use
internationally.

In this country, industry executives and some members of
Congress see new spectrum-sharing technologies as a way to
jump-start innovation and commerce. Last month, for
example, Senator Barbara Boxer, a Democrat from California,
and her Republican colleague Senator George Allen of
Virginia, said that they would introduce a bill in the next
session of Congress to expand the radio spectrum available
for wireless Internet use.

The military-industry debate also involves the merits of a
technical standard known as dynamic frequency selection,
which is being used by advanced wireless Internet radios
overseas to avoid interference.

Military officials are asking the American industry, and
companies in other countries, to create and install even
more sensitive versions of dynamic frequency selection -
something that the companies say may cause the technology
to operate incorrectly. American executives say that the
military's demands may also curtail the capacity of
wireless Internet services and could even force a
complicated redesign of millions of computer communications
systems already in place or nearly ready for shipment.

An estimated 16 million WiFi-enabled computers and other
devices are already in use in this country and overseas.
And in the coming year, Intel plans to put currently
designed WiFi technology on all of the microprocessor chips
it ships for tens of millions of desktop, laptop and
hand-held computing devices.

This is a hugely important issue to Intel, said Peter
Pitsch, Intel's communications policy director in
Washington. I'm hopeful at the end of the day, the U. S.
government will accept a

[CTRL] For your attention

2002-12-16 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Anti-US feeling spurs new wave of patriotism in Seoul
Washington relations at risk as poll looms
Jonathan Watts in Seoul
Sunday December 15 2002
The Observer


The vast square outside Seoul's city hall is becoming the rallying point for a new, 
middle-class brand of Korean nationalism.

At last summer's football world cup finals, the square was alive with hundreds of 
thousands of fans cheering on their team. At the weekend, the traffic was again 
stopped and huge-screens re-erected for a very different outpouring of pan-Korean 
emotion: one of the biggest protests against the US military for 50 years.

Some 50,000 rallied in protest against the deaths of two schoolgirls in a road 
accident involving a US tank.

Although political protests are two-a-penny in South Korea, this one is attracting 
concern for its scale and the likely impact on Thursday's presidential election and an 
alliance facing a fresh nuclear threat from North Korea.

Past anti-US protests were organised by student radicals and communist unions, but 
last week thousands of middle-class salarymen, mothers and children gathered each 
night at the US embassy to vent their anger, which was further fuelled by a US 
military tribunal's acquittal of the two soldiers of negligent homicide.

President Kim Dae-jung himself asked why no one had been held responsible. Protesters 
have called for an apology from President Bush, a retrial and changes to the rules 
under which the 37,000 US troops in South Korea operate.

For many of the mostly young demonstrators, it is nationalism not pacifism that drives 
them. Brought up in a period of relative peace with the North, they feel less reason 
to be grateful to the US for security and economic growth than their parents who lived 
through the 1950-53 Korean war.

They are also a more confident generation, which has seen its country bounce back from 
the Asian financial crisis of 1997 to become one of the strongest economies in the 
region. After a period of detente, they have warmed towards the North and world cup 
success has left many basking in national pride.

South Korea has grown up and we should have a more balanced relationship with 
America, said Kim Sun-hee, who plans to take her two toddlers to today's rally.

The issue has played a key role in a presidential race in which the main candidates 
have taken strikingly different positions on how to deal with the North and Washington.

The frontrunner, Roh Moo-hyun of the Millennium Democratic party, is a 56-year-old 
former human rights lawyer who pledges engagement with the North. Although he has 
distanced himself from the latest protests, his anti-American credentials have won 
over many young voters.

His rival, Lee Hoi-chang, is a former supreme court judge standing for the presidency 
for the second time with the Grand National party. The 67-year-old is close to 
Washington and favours cutting aid to the North unless it abandons its pursuit of 
weapons of mass destruction.

Although polls show Mr Roh between 3% and 9% ahead, rising security fears over North 
Korea could cut the gap.

Whatever the outcome, analysts warn that the rising tide of frustration towards the US 
is pushing ties towards their worst crisis for half a century.

This is the most critical moment the alliance has faced, said Kim Sung-han, a 
professor at the institute of foreign affairs and national security. We must put all 
our problems on the table and start again.

With the North threatening to go nuclear, foreign observers view this election as 
pivotal.

The next five years will be crucial, said a western diplomat. Korea faces huge 
challenges from the North Korean and the Chinese economy. These candidates are two 
very different people who are likely to handle things in very different ways.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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DECLARATION  DISCLAIMER
==
CTRL is a discussion  informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease!  These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

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[CTRL] NYTimes.com Article: A First Step to Cutting Reliance on Oil

2002-12-15 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

This article from NYTimes.com
has been sent to you by [EMAIL PROTECTED]

A First Step to Cutting Reliance on Oil

December 15, 2002
By TOM REDBURN

WHICH events of recent days are likely to have the most
significant long-term impact on American business and the
economy?

To my mind, it was not the Bush administration's new team
of economic policy makers, who dominated the headlines last
week. Nor the efforts to clean up Wall Street. And not the
buildup of troops to fight a war in Iraq, either.

No, my money is on the barely noticed introduction by Honda
and Toyota of a handful of experimental fuel cell vehicles
to be tested by the State of California.

The possibility of running cars on fuel cells has been
heavily promoted in business circles in recent years, and
for good reason. Imagine a global economy no longer
dependent on oil and the internal combustion engine. Fuel
cells, because they produce energy from pure hydrogen
rather than from petroleum, emit only water and heat as
waste, potentially generating power without burning fossil
fuels.

By making it possible to shift from petroleum to other
primary energy sources, fuel cells could ease the threat of
global warming without taking away the freedom and mobility
that Americans and Europeans take for granted - and the
rest of the world is determined to get for itself. China
and India, with more than one-third of the world's
population, could sustain rapid growth for decades without
choking the sky with pollutants and climate-damaging carbon
dioxide.

But this vision of a truly sustainable economic future is
far from inevitable. The technological challenges to
building a commercially successful fuel cell vehicle are
overwhelming. And who would supply them? Recasting the
entire petroleum-based infrastructure to produce and
deliver hydrogen safely to hundreds of millions of such
vehicles presents a classic chicken-and-egg problem of
immense proportions.

Every major automaker and oil company has a hydrogen or
fuel cell research effort under way; supporters say they
recognize that fossil fuels can't last forever.
Environmentalists carp that industry is simply trying to
preserve the status quo and avoid more immediate steps to
improve the fuel efficiency of conventional automobiles.

In a generally positive article on the efforts of General
Motors to reinvent the automobile, Wired magazine noted
that Rick Wagoner, G.M.'s chief executive, likes to call
the fuel cell car the holy grail, but that the
description may be a truer assessment than he intends.
After all, as David Redstone, editor of Hydrogen Fuel
Cell Investor, a newsletter, told the magazine: The holy
grail is something you spend your entire life looking for.
The whole point is that you never find it.

No one knows for sure whether a hydrogen economy is a
possible dream.

The oil companies and automakers are not doing this
because they want to kill it, said Steven Taub, an expert
on alternative fuels at Cambridge Energy Research
Associates in Cambridge, Mass. But they are not doing this
because they know it's the future, either. They're doing it
because they don't know whether or not it's the future.

It's worth the risk to find out.

Bolstered by modest
support from the government and a new commitment from the
Bush administration, American automakers and other
companies are already investing in fuel cell research. But
an effort to put tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of
vehicles on the road within a decade, which many analysts
regard as feasible, would require a substantial commitment
from Washington to help jump-start the market and support
the investment in a supply infrastructure.

THIS shouldn't mean giving up on less ambitious efforts, as
both the White House and the auto industry have done in
abandoning the research program to build a very
fuel-efficient car using existing technology. If nothing
else, as an insurance policy to avoid being usurped again
by Japanese automakers, Detroit should also be investing
more in fuel-efficient hybrid electric-gasoline vehicles
like the Toyota Prius.

True, big federal programs like the Interstate System of
highways, the development of the Internet and the creation
of the semiconductor chip (which grew out of the space
program) have gone out of fashion. But even in an era in
which markets have rightly assumed a much greater role in
allocating resources, government commitment is needed to
set ambitious goals in crucial areas.

And when the nation is preparing to spend at least $100
billion to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein and much more
to maintain stability in the Persian Gulf, nothing is more
crucial than investing a fraction of that sum to help
liberate the world economy from its addiction to Middle
East oil.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/15/business/yourmoney/15VIEW.html?ex=1040943532ei=1en=a2e9f7e17f2a8156

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[CTRL] canada.com Story

2002-12-15 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Dear [EMAIL PROTECTED],

Your friend [EMAIL PROTECTED] thought you might be interested in this 
canada.com story:

Leaders distance FSIN from anti-Semitic rant: Group's ex-chief praises Holocaust

http://www.canada.com/regina/story.asp?id=9B486E8C-19A2-4A26-B9E0-974DDEAC0C0C



___
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DECLARATION  DISCLAIMER
==
CTRL is a discussion  informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease!  These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

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[CTRL] NYTimes.com Article: General Sees Scant Evidence of Threat Near in U.S.

-Caveat Lector-

This article from NYTimes.com
has been sent to you by [EMAIL PROTECTED]


The FBI gets some credible leadership ... at last!  AER

[EMAIL PROTECTED]


General Sees Scant Evidence of Threat Near in U.S.

December 13, 2002
By ERIC SCHMITT and PHILIP SHENON






WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - The nation's top general for domestic
security says he has seen little evidence to suggest an
imminent terrorism threat inside the United States by
members of Al Qaeda's network, and warns against using
McCarthyism in combating terror.

I am not aware of a significant threat to this nation
from so-called sleeper cells, said the officer, Gen. Ralph
E. Eberhart.

General Eberhart, who as head of the military's newly
created Northern Command oversees the Pentagon's
contribution to domestic counterterrorism efforts,
expressed concern that undetected terrorist cells could be
operating in the United States and plotting new attacks.

To say that we're not aware of it, he said, is not the
same to say that it doesn't exist.

But he said there was scant intelligence to suggest an
immediate domestic threat from Al Qaeda or other terrorist
groups, and voiced growing optimism about the government's
ability to prevent and respond to terrorist strikes.

The comments by the general, a four-star Air Force officer
who has access to much of the same intelligence that
President Bush receives, may be reassuring to a public made
jittery by repeated terrorism alerts from Washington. But
they appeared to contradict pronouncements from senior law
enforcement officials, including Attorney General John
Ashcroft, of an impending threat of domestic terrorist
attacks.

In a wide-ranging 45-minute conversation at his
headquarters in Colorado Springs this week, General
Eberhart said his command had established a strong working
relationship with law enforcement agencies, noting that the
F.B.I. had a permanent representative on his staff. And
aides to the general said later that his comments, in his
first major interview since the Northern Command was
established on Oct. 1, were simply a candid airing of his
views, not a purposeful departure from Mr. Ashcroft's
outlook or Bush administration policy.

In Congressional testimony last summer, Mr. Ashcroft said
that Al Qaeda maintained an active presence in the United
States, waiting to strike again, and that the United
States was at war with a terrorism network operating
within our borders. He said that there remain sleeper
terrorists and their supporters in the United States.

In June, the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, said a
substantial number of people suspected of ties to Al
Qaeda and other terror groups were under constant
surveillance in the United States. Since late summer, the
bureau has rounded up more than a dozen people in upstate
New York, Detroit and elsewhere who have been accused of
involvement in sleeper cells.

General Eberhart said he was increasingly confident that if
terrorist cells were in the United States, law enforcement
would ferret them out before they struck. But he said there
was a natural tension between a need for aggressive pursuit
of terrorists on one hand and, on the other, a need for
caution that there be no abridgements of civil liberties -
some of the things we did in the 50's with McCarthyism,
which I think was a very sad chapter in our history.

We just have to be very, very careful that we don't
misread some things we see, that we don't jump to
conclusions, he said.

Our basic freedoms must be protected, he said, though he
acknowledged that those who attack us usually leverage
those freedoms to do things that they couldn't do in other
countries.

A White House spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, said he could not
comment on the general's remarks without studying the full
context in which they were made. But Mr. Johndroe, who
works for Tom Ridge, the president's domestic security
adviser, said the White House supported the Justice
Department in its concern about the possibility that there
may be Al Qaeda members or sympathizers here in the United
States.

In his recent public statements on domestic terrorism
threats, Mr. Ridge, like General Eberhart, has sounded a
reassuring tone. In television interviews last month, he
said the government was in a much better position to
respond to threats of terrorism on American soil than
before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. had no
formal response to General Eberhart's remarks. But senior
officials at both the department and the bureau, speaking
on condition of anonymity, said the arrests since late
summer, in Lackawanna, N.Y., Detroit and elsewhere, showed
that the domestic terrorism threat was real.

The Northern Command is responsible for coordinating the
Pentagon's response to terrorism on American soil and to
other domestic threats, including natural disasters like
floods and forest fires. Fourteen military, law
enforcement, intelligence and other agencies have

[CTRL] Source: U.S. Firms on List Aided Iraq Arms Development

-Caveat Lector-

From: Euphorian




Source: U.S. Firms on List Aided Iraq Arms Development


By Mohamad Bazzi
United Nations Correspondent

December 13, 2002

United Nations -- Iraq's 12,000-page declaration of its weapons programs lists 
American companies that provided materials used by Baghdad to develop chemical and 
biological weapons in the 1980s, according to a senior Iraqi official.

The public release of such a list could prove embarrassing for the United States and 
highlight the extent to which the Reagan and first Bush administrations supported Iraq 
in its eight-year war with neighboring Iran in the 1980s. U.S. military and financial 
assistance to Iraq continued until Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 
August 1990.

The Iraqi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, would not name the companies 
or discuss how much detail the Iraqi declaration gives about them. The official said 
the American firms are named along with other foreign companies that provided arms and 
ingredients for making chemical and biological weapons to Iraq.

The declaration, which was submitted to UN weapons inspectors Saturday, was mandated 
under a new Security Council resolution that requires Iraq to declare and destroy all 
of its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Iraqi leaders insist they no longer 
have any such weapons, but the United States and Britain accuse Hussein of continuing 
with a secret program to develop banned weapons - and have threatened to go to war to 
disarm Iraq.

Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, said Tuesday that he does not intend to 
release the names of foreign companies that provided material to Iraq. He said such 
firms could be valuable to UN inspectors as sources of information about Iraq's 
weapons program. If the inspectors were to give the names publicly, then they would 
never get another foreign supplier to give them any information, Blix said.

A Bush administration official declined to comment on U.S. companies' presence in the 
declaration, or the potential embarrassment if the list were made public. The issue 
is not so much who the suppliers are. The issue is really Iraq's program and making 
sure that Iraq declares what it has, said the official, who asked not to be named. 
We want companies to be able to provide information to the weapons inspectors. It's 
important to find out what the Iraqis may have received.

Other officials in Washington declined to comment. But U.S. officials have long 
acknowledged close military collaboration with Iraq while it was at war with Iran, 
which Washington viewed as a greater threat.

A 1994 report by the Senate Banking Committee concluded that the United States 
provided the government of Iraq with 'dual-use' licensed materials which assisted in 
the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programs.

This assistance, according to the report, included chemical warfare-agent precursors; 
chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings; chemical 
warfare filling equipment; biological warfare-related materials; missile fabrication 
equipment and missile system guidance equipment.

There is dissension within the council over the handling of Iraq's declaration. Under 
a deal quietly worked out over the weekend, the United States received the sole copy 
of the dossier and supporting material that was intended for the council. Washington 
then made duplicates for the four other permanent council members: Britain, France, 
Russia and China. Blix said the other 10 rotating council members will get edited 
copies of the dossier by Monday, with any information that could help countries 
develop weapons of mass destruction excised by UN inspectors.

Arms experts say it is likely that companies from all five permanent council members 
sold materials to Iraq that were used to develop its weapons. All the permanent five 
members are probably on the Iraqi supplier list. They all have advanced chemical and 
biological industries, said Susan Wright, a research scientist at the University of 
Michigan and co-author of the book Biological Warfare and Disarmament.

Wright said the release of a supplier list containing American companies would 
embarrass the United States. It would bring people's attention to something that the 
Bush administration would rather forget about: that the United States was a supplier 
state to Saddam Hussein, even after it became clear that he was producing and using 
chemical weapons, she said.

At the heart of U.S. and other foreign trade with Iraq in the 1980s were so-called 
dual-use materials, which have both civilian and military applications. Under the 
new Security Council resolution, Iraq had to account for all its dual-use programs and 
materials.

The 1994 Senate report found that the United States had licensed dozens of companies 
to export various materials that helped Iraq make mustard gas, VX

[CTRL] For your attention

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Credit card swindler jailed for five years
Friday December 13 2002
The Guardian


A member of one of Israel's most distinguished families was jailed for five years 
yesterday for planning and executing an international fraud.

Dan Mazar, 33, whose uncle, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, was Israel's second president, used 300 
credit cards in an array of bogus identities to pay for holidays, hotel rooms and 
shopping sprees.

Martin Hicks, prosecuting, told Southwark crown court, in south London: He was 
involved both as prime mover and principal beneficiary. It was a meticulously planned, 
carefully executed conspiracy to defraud credit card companies on an unprecedented 
scale.

Mazar, of Hendon, north London, admitted one count of conspiracy to defraud, 
reflecting #163;286,903, the UK element of the scam.

His two-year 10-month crime spree - interrupted by a seven-month prison sentence for 
the Israeli end of the scam - ended when his luck ran out in a central London branch 
of Superdrug in April.

As a taxi paid for with one of the many credit cards waited outside, Mazar tried to 
embark on yet another shopping expedition. But staff became suspicious and called the 
police, who arrested him as he tried to escape in the cab.

Police found 15 credit cards in different names, and an extensive aide memoir with 
identification details.

Mr Hicks said Mazar, the only one to be arrested in connection with the scam in this 
country, used cards obtained from various American issuers, including American 
Express, either based on a variation of his own name or using other people's 
identities.

He had a string of credit card telephone numbers to check that the cards issued in the 
names of others had not been cancelled, and to make sure he did not exceed credit 
limits.

Judge Stephen Robbins said: This type of offending is rife in this country and it 
causes massive losses. The annual loss to the banks in Britain is said to be 
#163;700m each year.

As well as ordering him to pay #163;40,000 of prosecution costs, the judge made a 
#163;286,902 confiscation order.

Jonathan Goldberg QC, defending, said Mazar was driven to crime after getting into 
debt with a loan shark.

Press Association

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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[CTRL] Meteors from the Twilight Zone

-Caveat Lector-

Hi!  I thought you'd be interested in this story from Science@NASA: The Geminid meteor 
shower, which peaks this year on Saturday morning, Dec. 14th, has begun.  Unlike the 
recent Leonids, which were nearly overwhelmed in some places by moonlight, the 
Geminids of 2002 will not be dimmed by a glaring moon.  These meteors come from a 
curious object--a Twilight Zone cross between a comet and an asteroid--called 3220 
Phaethon.
 http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/09dec_geminids.htm?friend

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[CTRL] For your attention

2002-12-13 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

British academic boycott of Israel gathers pace
Andy Beckett and Ewen MacAskill
Wednesday December 11 2002
The Guardian


Evidence is growing that a British boycott of Israeli academics is gathering pace.

British academics have delivered a series of snubs to their Israeli counterparts since 
the idea of a boycott first gained ground in the spring.

In interviews with the Guardian, British and Israeli academics listed various 
incidents in which visits, research projects and publication of articles have been 
blocked.

Colin Blakemore, an Oxford University professor of physiology, who supports a boycott, 
said: I do not know of any British academic who has been to a conference in Israel in 
the last six months.

Dr Oren Yiftachel, a left-wing Israeli academic at Ben Gurion University, complained 
that an article he had co-authored with a Palestinian was initially rejected by the 
respected British journal Political Geography. He said it was returned to him unopened 
with a note stating that Political Geography could not accept a submission from Israel.

Mr Yiftachel said that, after months of negotiation, the article is to be published 
but only after he agreed to make substantial revisions, including making a comparison 
between his homeland and apartheid South Africa.

The issue of a boycott was highlighted in the spring when two British academics, 
Steven and Hilary Rose, had a letter published in the Guardian supporting the idea. It 
was signed by 123 other academics.

Professor Paul Zinger, outgoing head of the Israeli Science Foundation, said: Every 
year we send most of our research papers abroad for reference. We send out about 7,000 
papers a year. This year, for the first time, we had people writing back, about 25 of 
them, saying 'We refuse to look at these'.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
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That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

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[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net

2002-12-12 Thread Alamaine Ratliff

-Caveat Lector-

You have been sent this message from [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a courtesy of the 
Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com

 Here's the old father - daughter thing again.  Shrub and his coupla six packers; 
John Ellis and his renegade; now, one of the white male Supremes.  Ain't no behaviour 
low enough ...  AER

 To view the entire article, go to 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42681-2002Dec11.html

 GAO Widens Inquiry of Rehnquist

 By Edward Walsh
 The General Accounting Office has expanded its investigation of Health and Human 
Services Inspector General Janet Rehnquist, the daughter of Chief Justice William H. 
Rehnquist, beyond its initial focus on widespread personnel changes in her office.

 According to congressional investigators, the GAO is now also looking into 
allegations involving the delay in an audit of a Florida pension fund that could have 
benefited Gov. Jeb Bush (R), the unauthorized possession of a gun by Rehnquist and the 
shredding of documents after the GAO inquiry had begun.

 Ben St. John, a spokesman for Rehnquist, confirmed that these additional elements 
have become part of the GAO inquiry, which he said HHS officials do not consider an 
investigation but a management review. The GAO is the investigative arm of Congress.

 Rehnquist, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Alexandria who worked in the White 
House under then-President George H.W. Bush, supervises a staff of about 1,600, the 
largest Office of Inspector General (OIG) at any federal agency. One of the office's 
main tasks is to investigate allegations of fraud and waste in the huge Medicare and 
Medicaid health insurance programs that are administered by HHS.

  The GAO first began looking at the operations of Rehnquist's office in October in 
response to a request from Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), Max Baucus (D-Mont.) 
and John Breaux (D-La.). In a letter to top GAO officials, the three senators said 
they were concerned about the impact of the loss or reassignment of several senior 
managers on OIG operations.

 In a separate statement, Grassley said that, since Rehnquist was confirmed in August 
2001, there had been 19 senior staff changes in the office, including the retirement, 
resignation or reassignment of six deputy inspectors general, most of whom had at 
least 30 years experience at the agency.

  I want the GAO to determine whether the loss or transfer of these key people will 
erode this office's performance, Grassley said at the time.

 Since that initial request, the GAO inquiry has branched out into other areas, 
including an almost six-month delay earlier this year in beginning an audit of a 
Florida state government pension fund at a time that Gov. Bush, President Bush's 
brother, was facing a tough reelection battle. The audit, scheduled to begin in April, 
did not start until September, ensuring  that any potentially embarrassing results 
would not be known until well after the Nov. 5 election in which Bush eventually won a 
second term.

 St. John said the audit was delayed at least three times at the request of Florida 
officials. He said that at least the first request, seeking a delay because the 
pension fund was about to get a new director, came from Gov  . Bush's office and was 
referred to Rehnquist.

 But St. John said that the delays were not linked to Florida politics, and that the 
outcome of the audit would not have been known until after the election even if the 
audit had started in April.

 A congressional investigator disputed that assertion, saying that interviews with 
people in Florida indicated that the audit would have been done before Nov. 5.

  June Gibbs Brown, Rehnquist's predecessor at HHS who served as IG at four federal 
agencies, said in an interview that requests to delay an audit are unusual and rarely 
reach the head of the IG office.

 Late yesterday, Rehnquist released internal documents on the audit decision and a 
letter to Grassley in which she said my decision to delay the audit was based on the 
merits and not motivated by political reasons. According to an internal e-mail 
message that Rehnquist released, before the audit was delayed, OIG officials expected 
a draft report on the audit by Sept. 30, more than a month before the election.

 Rehnquist confirmed yesterday that the delay request came from Kathleen Shanahan, Jeb 
Bush's chief of staff. Rehnquist said her staff advised her that it was a reasonable 
request.

 Congressional investigators said they have also determined that Rehnquist, who 
apparently has become a shooting enthusiast but is not licensed to own a gun, had an 
unloaded handgun in her office for a short time.

  St. John said he knew nothing about a handgun, but confirmed that Rehnquist at one 
point had a laser gun in her office that she used to practice aiming at a poster of a 
human figure. A laser gun does not shoot bullets, but aims a beam of light.

 Another source said Rehnquist

[CTRL] For your attention

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Top 10 rules for survival
Cherie Blair might have avoided the pain of last night's public statement if she had 
learned from past scandals
Jonathan Freedland
Tuesday December 10 2002
The Guardian


We don't yet know if Cherie Blair's bravura performance last night has saved her 
future seat on the high court, but her entry into another kind of elite pantheon is 
already guaranteed. The last 10 days have earned the PM's wife a place in the 
ever-fattening textbook of political scandal. She is destined to join Peter Mandelson, 
Norman Lamont, Richard Nixon and, of course, Hillary Clinton in the bumper volume that 
records the disgrace, deserved and undeserved, that fate routinely heaps on public 
figures - and which is bursting with advice for future victims yet unknown.

It's a rich text, though a painfully repetitious one: the characters and storylines 
may change, but the same themes come through again and again. The only pity is that 
Mrs Blair didn't read the book before now. If she had, it might have spared her some 
agony. Here's a distilled version of its 10 key lessons.

 1. It's never the crime, it's always the cover-up.  This is the oldest lesson in the 
book, yet the world's prominent people never seem to learn it. Richard Nixon gave the 
masterclass 30 years ago: Watergate might have remained a third-rate burglary, had 
the Nixon White House admitted it from the start. Instead the subsequent lies, 
deceptions and obstructions of justice produced the biggest scandal in US history.

Bill Clinton made the same error when he lied (under oath) about Monica: if he had 
'fessed up, it would have been embarrassing, but it would never have ended in 
impeachment. Likewise if Cherie had said 10 days ago, as soon as the Mail on Sunday 
got wind of Peter Foster and those Bristol flats, what she said last night, this story 
would have been dead on arrival: I'm not superwoman, I needed help, Carole Caplin came 
to the rescue and, yes, I made a mistake in believing her boyfriend was a reformed 
character. Fleet Street would have reached for the collective sick bag, but Cherie 
would have won.

 2. Get all the facts out in one go.  If Mrs Blair had disclosed everything in one 
shot, her pursuers would have had nowhere to go. Without a hunt for new, undisclosed 
facts a story soon dies. The folly of the alternative approach has been on display for 
10 straight days. In the absence of full disclosure, Cherie was submitted to the 
drip-drip-drip of daily revelation. All that does is prolong the agony. What's worse, 
the scandalee looks like he or she has something to hide, only admitting the truth 
when it's dragged out. Witness Cherie's admission yesterday that she looked up the 
name of Foster's trial judge: would she have said that if the Daily Mail were not 
about to publish it? By telling all, early on, the scandal victim keeps the initiative.

The instructive parallel here is the Whitewater affair which dogged the Clintons' 
first term. It could all have been prevented if the relevant papers had been released 
in a bloc, right at the start: Bill wanted to do that, Hillary said no. Cherie had the 
same instinct.

 3. Context and timing is all.  Scandals only blossom if the political climate is 
right. Judged on substance alone, the most serious scandal of the Blair period remains 
the Formula One affair, in which Labour took Bernie Eccelstone's cash and did a 
screaming u-turn to exempt the sport from the ban on tobacco advertising. Yet no heads 
rolled over that episode. That's because it broke in the autumn of 1997, when New 
Labour was still basking in a honeymoon glow. Voters had a positive view of Tony Blair 
which served as a protective shield: the revelations barely left a dent.

Now it's different. There is a mood of rising disaffection, unfocused perhaps, with 
this government which makes people willing to hear such negative talk. Impatience at 
public service reform, worry about a war on Iraq and anger over university top-up fees 
and firefighters' pay are all swirling around - making Labour vulnerable, particularly 
with its own supporters. This episode channels at least two elements of that fury. 
First, the Blairs are exposed as people with enough cash to buy two classy student 
flats, even as they consider charging parents big money to give their kids a 
university education. Second they have #163;500k to spend, even as they refuse the 
firefighters #163;30k a year.

 Labour defenders insist Cheriegate is a media invention, but the evidence, whether 
from public meetings or phone-in shows, suggests the episode has stirred some genuine 
anger. That may dissipate now that Cherie has appealed above the heads of the Daily 
Mail, directly to working mothers like her.

 4. Hypocrisy is always a

[CTRL] For your attention

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

How Diamond Joe's libel case could change the future of the internet
Australian court gives millionaire go-ahead to sue US website
David Fickling in Sydney and Stuart Millar
Tuesday December 10 2002
The Guardian


Once it was heralded as the last bastion of freedom of speech, a realm which 
transcended national law and the whims of the courts. But last night the internet was 
facing up to a harsh new reality after Australia's supreme court ruled that a local 
businessman could sue a website for libel in Melbourne even though it was based in the 
United States.

In a case which opens up a legal minefield for web publishers across the 
English-speaking world, the high court judges decided that an internet article is 
published wherever it is read, rather than where the publisher is based. The landmark 
ruling is the first instance in the developed world of a libel trial being admitted in 
a foreign jurisdiction purely because of the possibility of an article being 
downloaded from the internet.

Media companies and internet campaigners immediately denounced the decision amid fears 
that it would open the floodgates for a wave of libel actions from around the world. 
They said the chilling ruling would seriously undermine the internet's 
much-cherished reputation for freedom of speech and raised the threat of 
forum-shopping by wealthy litigants looking for the easiest jurisdiction to ensure 
their victory in libel proceedings.

The case centres on a two-year-old article about Melbourne gold mining magnate Joe 
Gutnick, published in the American business magazine Barron's.

The article, entitled Unholy Gains, alleged that Mr Gutnick - a multimillionaire rabbi 
nicknamed Diamond Joe who became a local hero in Melbourne after he saved the local 
Australian Rules football club with a A$3m (#163;1.1m) cash injection - was involved 
in tax evasion and money laundering.

Most significantly, it claimed that he was the biggest customer of Nachum Goldberg, a 
Melbourne money launderer jailed in 2000 for washing A$42m (#163;15.5m) in used notes 
through a bogus Israeli charity. Mr Gutnick is suing the American business information 
company Dow Jones, which owns Barron's as well as the Wall St Journal. He has brought 
the case in Victoria, where libel laws give him a better chance of winning than in the 
US, where 98% of Barron's' readers live.

The magazine has 14 subscribers in Australia, of which five are in Victoria. But 1,700 
of its internet subscribers had paid their bills using Australian credit cards, and 
the court ruled yesterday that this was enough to admit the case in Victoria.

Publishers are not obliged to publish on the internet, the ruling stated. If the 
potential reach is uncontrollable then the greater the need to exercise care in 
publication.

Barron's offices are in New York, and Dow Jones had argued that the place of internet 
publication was New Jersey, where the magazine's web servers are based. The company's 
defence even at one point floated the suggestion of declaring the internet a 
libel-free zone, based on a 1928 legal decision about the meaning of publication.

In a clear indication of how serious the   implications of the ruling may be, 18 of 
the world's biggest media organisations - including AOL Time Warner, Amazon and Yahoo! 
- made submissions to the court urging the judges to dimiss Mr Gutnick's action.

Mr Gutnick said after yesterday's verdict that the case had been a David and Goliath 
battle against all the strongest media in the world.

You have to be careful what you write, and if you offend somebody or write malicious 
statements about people, like what was done in my case, you can be subject to being 
prosecuted, he told the Nine Network. Dow Jones issued a statement expressing 
disappointment at the verdict. The result means that Dow Jones will defend those 
proceedings in a juris diction which is far removed from the country in which the 
article was prepared and where the vast bulk of Barron's readership resides.

The court made it clear that they were not ruling whether Mr Gutnick had been 
libelled, merely that the case could now go ahead.

Crucially, however, the court made clear that a claim could only be brought in 
Australia if the person claiming libel had a reputation there that could be defamed. 
This will make it difficult for many foreign nationals to use the Australian courts to 
pursue internet libel actions.

But the ruling has thrown internet publishers into disarray and left them facing a 
choice between two equally costly and undesirable options: restricting access to   
their websites to prevent people in potentially difficult legal jurisdictions reading 
them; or employing international legal teams to vet all content to ensure that it

[CTRL] For your attention

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Supreme court to decide on Klan's burning cross
Is it freedom of speech or incitement to violence?
Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday December 10 2002
The Guardian


The US supreme court will today hear arguments about whether the public burning of 
wooden crosses by the Ku Klux Klan is an incitement to racial violence or 
constitutionally-protected free expression.

The sight of burning crosses near black homes was once a menacing icon of the South. 
According to Klan lore, the practice originated as a means of gathering ancient 
Scottish clans, but in the South they were used to scare blacks into fleeing from 
white neighbourhoods.

Two recent cases have reopened the racially charged debate that pits freedom of speech 
against freedom from intimidation.

In one, three white teenagers in Virginia put together an improvised cross and tried 
to set it alight outside the home of a black neighbour four years ago.

In the other, also from Virginia in 1998, a white supremacist, Elton Black, was 
charged with cross-burning at a Klan rally on private land with the owners' consent, 
but in a spot where it could be seen from a public road a mile away, drawing 
complaints from neighbours.

In Virginia, as in some other states, the public burning of crosses is banned, but in 
other states it is legal. The discrepancy arises from different interpretations of the 
US constitution's first amendment, which forbids laws abridging the freedom of 
speech, or of the press.

The Supreme Court last addressed the issue ten years ago, when it overturned a 
cross-burning ban in Minnesota arguing that the ban was a form of discrimination.

Virginia, Florida, California and Washington, have pointed to another Supreme Court 
ruling, that hate speech in the course of a crime could be considered an aggravating 
factor in sentencing.

They argue that the 1992 decision does not protect people who burn crosses as a 
deliberate threat.

A burning cross - standing alone and without explanation - is understood in our 
society as a message of intimidation, Virginia's attorney general, Jerry Kilgore, 
argued in court documents.

In both the current cases, the federal government favours state prosecutors arguing 
that intimidation was not protected speech.

Lawyers for the defendants say that the case against their clients is discriminatory, 
pointing out that the law in Virginia does not ban the burning of circles or squares.

According to the defence case submitted to the Supreme Court: It is but a short step 
from the banning of offending symbols such as burning crosses or burning flags to the 
banning of offending words.

Mr Kilgore argues that the significance of the burning cross sets it apart. He said 
that even a white man would feel threatened if he woke up and found a burning cross in 
his garden.

Jonathan Turley, a law professor, said the supreme court has a record of being 
extremely protective of the right to free speech, but said it might choose to 
distinguish between the Black case, where the cross was used in the course of a 
meeting, and the other case - in which it was targeted against an individual.

The cases offer the court a great amount of flexibility if it wants to develop a new 
rule, Prof Turley said.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net

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 A question arises as to when nations exceed their legal authority and become pirates.

 To view the entire article, go to 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40649-2002Dec11.html

 U.S. Releases Missile Shipment to Yemen

 By Ahmed Al-HajSAN'A, Yemen #150;#150;  The U.S. Navy released the shipment of 
North Korean-made Scud missiles it seized, sending the vessel and its cargo on their 
way Wednesday to the original destination of Yemen.PWhite House spokesman Ari 
Fleischer said the United States had authority to stop and search the vessel, but not 
to seize it.PThere is no clear authority to seize the shipment, Fleischer told a 
news conference in Washington. The merchant vessel is being released.PYemeni 
Foreign Ministry officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated 
Press the decision followed high-level contact between Yemen and the United 
States.PThe official Saba news agency said the United States had assured Yemen that 
the shipment would be released as long as the Yemen-North Korea deal was concluded on 
legal basis.PVice President Dick Cheney told Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh 
that President Bush ordered the shipment to be returned, Saba reported. Fleischer said 
Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell had talked with Yemeni authorities.PThe 
Spanish navy had stopped the ship Monday off the Arabian peninsula, and U.S. 
authorities boarded it on Tuesday. The action came after intelligence officials 
watched the ship for weeks as part of an interdiction operation in the U.S.-led war on 
terrorism.PSpanish Defense Minister Federico Trillo said Wednesday the unflagged 
vessel was carrying 15 Scud missiles hidden in a cargo of cement.PWe became aware 
of the departure of the ship from North Korea that was carrying what we believe to be 
weapons of concern, Fleischer said. This was a non-flagged vessel, which gave us 
further concern. And the vessel was destined for Yemen.PWe had a concern about what 
was on it. We had a concern before ascertaining, indeed, that it was going to Yemen, 
that it may have been heading for a nation that is a potential terrorist nation.PAs 
a result, the action that was taken, where the ship was stopped and boarded, 
Fleischer continued. We have looked at this
rnational law prohibiting Yemen from accepting delivery of missiles from North 
Korea.PThe Bush administration in August imposed sanctions on the North Korean 
company Changgwang Sinyong Corp. for selling Scud missile parts to Yemen. At that 
time, U.S. authorities asked Yemen why it bought the parts; San'a apologized and 
promised not to do so again, two defense officials said Wednesday in 
Washington.PUnder the U.S. sanctions, Changgwang Sinyong Corp. will be barred for 
two years from obtaining new individual export licenses through the Commerce or State 
departments for any controlled items. The sanctions have little practical effect, one 
official said, because there is so little commerce between the United States and North 
Korea.PBefore the ship was freed, Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Kerbi summoned 
U.S. Ambassador Edmund J. Hull to tell him the arms shipment was a property of the 
Yemeni government and its armed forces and demanded that the United States should hand 
the shipment over to Yemen, Saba reported.PThe weapons contained in the shipment 
were to be used for defensive purposes as Yemen has no aggressive intentions toward 
any country, and owning such weapons would not harm the international peace and 
security, Saba quoted the official protest handed to Hull.PYemeni officials had 
refused further details about the deal, including from what threat the Scud missiles 
were designed as a defense.PThe Saba agency said the memo given to Hull claimed the 
shipment was part of a long-standing deal with North Korea. A senior Yemeni official, 
speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the 
Americans knew of the deal.PTrillo, Spain's Defense Minister, said the U.S. Navy had 
been planning to take the ship to Diego Garcia island, a British island leased to the 
United States as a military base.PSpain's role in the shipment's seizure earned the 
country a Yemeni protest memorandum as well in which San'a said the Spanish navy 
didn't serve (to improve) relations betw
 was silent Wednesday about the interception of the ship, but said it had the right to 
develop weapons to defend itself.PIt is necessary to heighten vigilance against the 
U.S. strategy for world supremacy and 'anti-terrorism war,' the North's official 
newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said in an editorial.PAll the countries are called upon 
to build self-reliant military power by their own efforts, the newspaper said. It was 
unclear whether the editorial was a response to the interception, as North Korea 
usually takes several

[CTRL] For your attention

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

US and UK admit lack of 'killer' proof
Whitehall puts onus on Saddam to show banned arms have gone
Julian Borger in Washington, Nick Paton-Walsh in Moscow, Ewen MacAskill and Richard 
Norton-Taylor
Monday December 09 2002
The Guardian


The US and Britain lack killer intelligence that will prove conclusively that Iraq 
has weapons of mass destruction, according to sources in London and New York.

If we had intelligence that there is a piece of weaponry at this map reference, we 
would tell the inspectors and they would be there like a shot, a source said.

After handing over 12,000 pages of documentation to UN weapons inspectors, Iraq 
challenged the US and Britain to produce evidence that it still has weapons of mass 
destruction.

The US and Britain will insist the onus is on Iraq to prove that it has no weapons of 
mass destruction, as it claims, rather than for them to prove that it does. Whitehall 
sources yesterday stood by their claims that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and 
that this was based not on what we say but on what we know.

But they said that passing the intelligence to the UN chief weapons inspector, Hans 
Blix, would alert the Iraqis to the activities of US intelligence and might jeopardise 
its secret sources.

UN weapons inspectors in New York and Vienna began studying the Iraqi paperwork 
yesterday. The five permanent members of the UN security council, the US, Britain, 
France, China and Russia, also received copies of the documents.

In Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that much of the 
2,400-page nuclear annexe appeared to be a copy of a declaration Iraq had made four 
years ago, repeating its account of how the country's nuclear weapons had been 
dismantled after the 1991 Gulf war.

An additional Arabic language section, 300 pages long, gave details of more recent 
activity, according to an IAEA spokeswoman, Melissa Fleming.

The Arabic text was titled, Activities that could be interpreted as nuclear-related 
1991-2002, suggesting that it dealt with dual-use items, such as radioactive 
material used in hospital scanners. Ms Fleming said the IAEA's three Arabic-speaking 
experts had begun analysing the document on Sunday night as soon as it arrived in 
Vienna, but added that it would take several days to finish the work.

Meanwhile, another group of IAEA specialists is working on the other 2,100 pages in 
English. Ms Fleming said the IAEA would not give a full assessment of the document 
until its head, Mohammed el-Baradei, addressed the UN security council on December 19.

She said the nuclear agency was hoping to cross-check the document against information 
supplied by the world's intelligence agencies, as envisaged in last month's security 
council resolution on disarmament.

We've been told the intelligence would be forthcoming after the declaration has been 
delivered, Ms Fleming said.

US officials said that the CIA and national laboratories specialising in chemical, 
biological and nuclear warfare had begun an analysis of the entire Iraqi declaration, 
and had been told to focus on a handful of Iraqi claims that could be proved false 
with available intelligence.

They also said that American analysts would look for Iraqi explanations of what had 
happened to thousands of tonnes of chemical and biological agents, and equipment used 
in the construction of nuclear weapons that were not accounted for in Iraq's 1998 
declaration.

Russia indicated yesterday that it was ready to support military action against 
Baghdad if Iraq breaks any UN resolution, while the Kremlin's foreign ministry 
welcomed the Iraqi declaration as a basis for [settling] the problem within political 
and diplomatic channels.


Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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DECLARATION  DISCLAIMER
==
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sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
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major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
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Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

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[CTRL] For your attention

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.

---
Note from Euphorian:

Cherie Blair has one of the sharpest legal brains in the country.
---

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to 
http://www.guardian.co.uk

The court of Cherie
Long before the row over her links with a conman, Cherie Blair's eccentric pals were a 
source of concern in Downing Street. So why did she refuse to drop them? Libby Brooks 
reports
Libby Brooks
Thursday December 05 2002
The Guardian


Soon after Labour's triumphant 1997 election, Alastair Campbell was greeted on arrival 
at Downing Street by a vision which promptly shattered his morning good cheer. 
Tripping down the stairs from the prime minister's private apartments was lifestyle 
therapist Carole Caplin, already recognised as one of Cherie Blair's most intimate 
advisers, and this week described variously as a former soft-porn model, an ex-member 
of the discredited 80s cult Exegesis and, of course, as the daughter of Sylvia, who 
has reputedly assisted Blair in her communications with the spirit world. Campbell 
wasted no time in making his concerns apparent. What's that woman doing in here? he 
barked, within Caplin's earshot. He was astounded that, following her elevation to the 
role of first lady, Blair had not conducted a serious re-evaluation of those she kept 
close to her.

The friction between the more colourful elements of Cherie Blair's entourage, and the 
more sober demands of her position, neither began nor ended with that morning 
encounter. But the unravelling allegations of this past week, which resulted in 
Blair's extraordinary statement yesterday - in which she admitted that Caplin's 
convicted fraudster partner, Peter Foster, had indeed helped broker the purchase of 
two flats in Bristol, despite previous denials - only hint at the significance of this 
key relationship.

Cherie is completely emotionally dependent on Caplin, says a source (no one in the 
Blair's inner circle will go on the record on the subject of Cherie). [Caplin] is the 
person who helps her in the one area of her life where she feels genuinely insecure - 
her appearance. In her relationship with Blair, she was always used to being the less 
attractive partner - she was the brains and he was the brawn. Suddenly she found 
herself being judged on completely different terms. Carole Caplin's role in managing 
this vulnerability has brought her into direct conflict with both Campbell and his 
partner, Fiona Millar, Blair's unofficial minder, who have regarded her as a political 
liability for many years. But Blair is a supremely loyal person and, even as the Mail 
on Sunday story was breaking last weekend, she was reportedly hosting Caplin at 
Chequers.

Cherie and Caplin first met when Caplin was running an exercise class at the Albany 
fitness centre in Regent's Park, London, long before her husband became prime 
minister. After Blair's election to leader, the pair became much closer, and Caplin 
has since been employed to advise on many aspects of dress, health and fitness, and is 
credited with introducing Blair to a number of alternative therapists. She has chosen 
clothes for Blair from the likes of Ronit Zilkha and Paddy Campbell, and over the 
years she has negotiated deals with a number of designers.

It is important to distinguish between Caplin, and her mother and boyfriend, but long 
before this current round of guilt-by-association began, Caplin was attracting 
potentially compromising press. In 1994, the Express, for example, alleged that she 
used to run a company giving women advice on how to spice up their sex lives.

Campbell has never been comfortable with Caplin's proximity. If you're the prime 
minister's press secretary and you see this happening, what do you do? says one 
Downing Street insider. You're into damage avoidance. But is it reasonable that 
someone should be banished to the wastes of Siberia just because the yellow press will 
have a pop at her every two years or so? No. Blair has remained loyal to her friend, 
and continued to be introduced to people by her.

Granted, many highly pressured women - and men - enjoy the benefits of a personal 
trainer and the occasional holistic massage or session of acupuncture. But even by the 
eccentric standards of the alternative therapy community, Blair's choice of 
practitioners has been pilloried for being at the kooky end of the spectrum.

While all who have dealt with Blair observe a strict code of silence, one can readily 
gain a sense of their chosen parish. Eighty-five-year-old Jack Temple, for example, 
runs the Temple Healing Centre in West Byfleet in Surrey. Although he refuses to 
discuss individual patients, Blair was reportedly introduced to him by Caplin six 
years ago. Temple says that he is able to reverse the ageing process by dowsing, and 
that he is able to undertake absent healing of clients all

[CTRL] For your attention

-Caveat Lector-

Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited Politics site and thought you should 
see it.

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited Politics site, go 
to http://politics.guardian.co.uk

No 10 attacks media over Cheriegate
Danny Penman and agencies
Tuesday December 10 2002
The Guardian


Downing Street has launched a withering assault on the media after nearly two weeks of 
embarrassing revelations about Cherie Blair's dealings with convicted conman Peter 
Foster.

Tony Blair's official spokesman told the media to gain a sense of perspective over 
the issue.

He said: The central fact in all of this is quite simply nothing improper or illegal 
has been done or has been shown to be done.

At the end of it, what is the worst that Mrs Blair can be accused of? That she 
believed the best of someone? That she helped a pregnant friend understand the legal 
process? That she bought a flat for her son at university?

Are we saying that we have reached the point that the prime minister's wife is 
entitled to no privacy at all? That she and other ministers' wives have to keep a log 
of everything they do in case accusations are made? Accusations that turn out to be 
false?

There is a growing sense of anger in government circles about the way the media has 
treated Cherie Blair.

Last night the international development secretary, Clare Short, waded into the debate 
by stating on Sky News that Cherie Blair was entirely innocent of any wrongdoing.

Ms Short said:  If she's got any lack of judgement it's being kind and caring.

If she did anything that was foolish she helped out this friend who was pregnant and 
who was worried about whether the guy's case was being properly handled.

The latest revelations came to light last night when it emerged that the prime 
minister's wife had telephoned Mr Foster's solicitors to reassure them that 
deportation proceedings against him would be handled in the normal way.

Mr Foster was refused entry to Britain on August 31 because of his criminal past. He 
successfully appealed and is currently awaiting a final decision. Cherie Blair denies 
any attempt to influence proceedings.

The prime minister's spokesman said: She didn't involve herself in an immigration 
case, she did not contact the Home Office, she did not contact the immigration 
service. She helped her friend understand the process Peter Foster's solicitors were 
carrying out. That's not involving yourself in an immigration case.

Neither ministers, private staff nor officials from the immigration and nationality 
service have been contacted by Downing Street at any time on the matter of Mr Foster.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
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That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
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Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

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[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32361-2002Dec9.html

 Dorgan Urges Gore to Give Up on Presidency

 By Dan Balz
  As Al Gore contemplates another run for president, Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) has 
some crisp advice: Don't do it again.

 Al Gore is a fine person, and I like him, Dorgan said in an interview. My feeling 
is that our party must turn the page.

 Dorgan, burned by the way Gore and the national Democratic Party ran the 2000 
presidential campaign, sent the former vice president a three-page letter in April 
outlining his complaints. He blamed Gore for issuing an I give up message in North 
Dakota and many other states long before the campaign  was over.

 It's one thing to try and fail, Dorgan said in the letter. But I think it is 
unforgivable to fail to try. . . . I want a presidential candidate who will give us a 
fighting chance in the heartland states.

 Dorgan said over the weekend that his views haven't changed. Vice President Gore is 
pretty much a known commodity, he said. My own view is that, at this point, I hope 
he will make a decision not to seek the presidency.

 Dorgan's letter carries an inherent warning to other Democrats thinking of running in 
2004. Democratic candidates in Republican-leaning states need financial and rhetorical 
support from the party's presidential nominee and national organization to avoid what 
happened in North Dakota in 2000, which was a Republican sweep.

 Dorgan  isn't the only Democratic elected official sounding  off about Gore lately. 
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said last week he  thinks Gore should not run.

 Gore would lose, Frank told the Boston Herald, adding that the aftermath of Sept. 
11, 2001, had made Bush  much more popular. Al's been wounded, Frank said. It's not 
his fault and it's unfair, but it's reality.

 Gore has said he will announce a decision shortly after the holidays.
 Senate Democrats Prime for '04
 Senate Democrats yesterday tapped Sens. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey and Debbie 
Stabenow of Michigan -- whose contacts stretch from Wall Street to auto unions -- to 
lead the party's effort take back control of the Senate in 2004.

 Corzine, a former chairman of the Goldman Sachs investment firm who made history by 
spending $60 million to win his seat two years ago, will be in charge of candidate 
recruitment and fundraising as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign 
Committee. Fellow first-termer Stabenow, who was regarded as a skillful 
dollar-stretcher in a campaign boosted by strong union support, will be vice chairman.

 Although Democrats lost their Senate majority in last month's elections, Sen. Mary 
Landrieu's reelection in Saturday's hotly contested runoff in Louisiana has lifted 
their spirits. We have bounce in our step this morning, said Senate Democratic 
leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) in announcing the appointments.

 We will do well because we have the right issues, said Corzine, stressing the need 
for firm support for homeland security and a forceful assertion of economic 
priorities. An aide to Corzine said he will try to broaden the base of campaign 
fundraising in response to restrictions on large contributions in the new campaign 
finance law.
 Barbour Readies for Race
 It's all but official, it seems. Former Republican National Committee chairman Haley 
Barbour has filed paperwork needed to begin raising money for his planned 2003 
campaign for Mississippi governor.

 Barbour hasn't formally announced his candidacy, but he has been  traveling the state 
and criticizing  Gov. Ronnie Musgrove (D), who  hopes for a second term. Barbour was 
the state's 1982 GOP nominee for the Senate. He lost that race but went on to serve in 
the Reagan White House, head the RNC and found a Washington lobbying firm.

 Staff writer Helen Dewar and researcher Brian Faler contributed to this report.

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CTRL is a discussion  informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
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sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.

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[CTRL] A washingtonpost.com article from: alamaine@uffdaonline.net