RIGHT IS MIGHT

The glamorous Meyrav Wurmser is a director of the Center for Middle East Policy and a senior fellow and former executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute.
An expert in the Middle East, she is part of a neo-conservative family. Her husband David is special assistant to Undersecretary of State John Bolton and a member of the American Enterprise Institute -- a highly aggressive and well-supported right-wing think tank.
She is, along with a former Colonel in Israeli intelligence, the co-founder of a charity which monitors the Arab media for anti-semitic opinions.
Ms Wurmser was among a group of neo-conservatives who wrote a report intended as advice for the then incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996.
The report, called "Rebuilding Zionism" called for a clean break with the Middle East peace process and talked about "rolling back Syria".
It also spoke about removing Saddam Hussein from power.
Other signatories of that report included Richard Perle, David Wurmser and Douglas Feith - who is now number three at the Pentagon.

Ms Wurmser appeared on Lateline (Australia, 31 May) to answer claims by Amnesty International that the US had lost its moral compass in the fight against terrorism.

Her demeanor and responses were interesting: She said what had occurred at Abu Ghraib was not torture and that everyone needed to get things in perspective.
She said the invasion of Iraq was NOT about WMDs but freedom and democracy.
She also dealt with a citations from journalist Seymour Hersch by laughing and saying he was not a respectable source.
She was also questioned on 'disgraced' Brigadeer Janice Kapinsky's claim that the section of the prison where the torture and abuse was occuring appeared to be run by mysterious plain-clothed men who visited frequently.
Ms Wurmser arched an eyebrow and stated in even tones that the Brigadeer also, was an unreliable source.

Tonight's stories should appear here in about 8 hours.

RE: EDUCATION

The most important thing I learned in school this year

"What I learned this year is that the President is not someone to mock. Even if he is an idiot and a war criminal who deserves to be hanged, and even if no one in the media has the balls to say so. (You shouldn't say balls either.)" -- Billy Wilson, 15, a High School sophomore in Freyburg, Maine, from of the essay section of the final exam in his English class.

Big stink over students poem

Bill Nevins, a New Mexico high school teacher was fired and classes in poetry and the poetry club at Rio Rancho High School were permanently terminated. It had everything to do with extremist politics.
Teenage student Courtney presented one of her poems before an audience at Barnes & Noble bookstore in Albuquerque, then read the poem live on the school's closed-circuit television channel.
A school military liaison and the high school principal accused the girl of being "un-American" because she criticized the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's failure to give substance to its "No child left behind" education policy.

THE BIG ONE

Be alarmed, not alert ... internet rumour follows:

The nations of the world are sending their naval fleets out to deep water in order to protect them from damage when an asteroid strikes the earth next month!

A supposed intercept of a US military SSB radio transmission on 26 January of this year referred to a mysterious "countdown" to an unnamed event which (by the countdown) will occur around June 19 or 20 of this year. In the past few weeks, however, naval units worldwide have been putting to sea in unusual numbers, sufficient to cause us to revisit the original message to assess movements and adopt a watch mode going forward into the June 19-20 period.

Perhaps this has something to do with British military personnel getting stuck in a Mexican cave.

British cavers rescued in Mexico

Six British cavers rescued from caverns in Mexico after being trapped for over a week say they were never in danger. The cavers were reached by specialist divers from the UK who escorted each man through flood water using scuba diving equipment.
The group were waiting at a camp they had set up for such an emergency and said everything had gone as planned. The men, who were military staff spent the night in a military hospital.
The six men on the expedition were part of a 13-strong group from the Combined Services Caving Association and a row has broken out between the UK and Mexico about their visas.
Mexican President Vicente Fox on Wednesday asked the UK to explain what the soldiers had been doing in the Cuetzalan caves.
Mexico complained it had not been told the military officers, who entered the country on tourist visas, were there.

FALL GUY

Bush bingle from bike on 'wet track'

A bike ride left President Bush a bit dinged up. The White House said Bush suffered cuts and bruises after taking a spill while mountain biking on his Texas ranch.
A spokesman said Bush has minor abrasions and scratches on his chin, lip, nose, right hand and both knees.
His personal doctor was along for the ride and cleaned the cuts. The spokesman said there had been a lot of rain in the area lately and that the topsoil was wet.

[This is Texas in summer, right?]

PLAYGROUND BULLIES

Bush slips buddies $155 million worth of land for bargain $875

In April, Bush quietly gave a mining conglomerate larded with his top contributors a little gift: $155 million worth of federal land, the Denver Post reports. Invoking an obscure 1872 law designed to help frontier prospectors gain title to their small mining claims, Bush turned over a swathe of prime Colorado mountaintop property to the firm of Dodge Phelps, whose board is packed with oil men, military contractors and official Bush "Pioneers": corporate fat cats who've strongarmed at least $100,000 from their friends -- and employees -- for Bush campaign coffers.
Because the never-updated 1872 law requires that federal mining land be sold for $5 per acre, Bush's bagmen only had to pony up $875 for the whole spread -- in an area where land is worth a staggering $1 million per acre. The idea is to build an elite ski playground on the looted public property -- even though the law requires that such land sales be used for actual mining.

OIL WARS

Iraq government -- and economy -- beholden to US, for years to come

"Throughout the spring, ... Bush viceroy in Iraq Paul Bremer was quietly signing a series of edicts that will give the United States effective control over the military, ministries -- and money -- of any Iraqi government, for years to come, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Bremer has placed U.S.-appointed 'commissions' made up of Americans and local puppets throughout Iraqi government agencies; the ministers supposedly in charge weren't even told of the edicts.
These boards 'will serve multiyear terms and have significant authority to run criminal investigations, award contracts, direct troops and subpoena citizens,' the Journal reports. Any new Iraqi government 'will have little control over its armed forces, lack the ability to make or change laws and be unable to make major decisions within specific ministries without tacit U.S. approval, say U.S. officials.'"

OIL WARS

Why didn't Bush target al Qaeda after USS Cole attack

Q: Why didn't the Bush people punish al Qaeda when they got proof that the group was behind the Cole bombings?
A: Because they were trying to get a deal struck with the Taliban who were the allies of bin Laden. The pipeline was to run a constant supply of cheap natural gas to India, where it would have been picked up by a pipeline built by Enron which would deliver that gas to their Dabhol Electric utility

Enron is a scandal so enormous that it's hard to wrap your mind around it. Not just a single financial disaster, it's actually a jigsaw of interlocking scandals, each outrageous in its own right. There's Enron the Wall St. con game, where company bookkeepers used slight of hand to turn four years of steady losses into stunning profits. There's Enron the reverse Robin Hood, which stole from its own employees even as its executives were hauling millions of dollars out the backdoor. There's Enron's Ken Lay the Kingmaker, who used the corporation's fraudulent wealth to broker elections and skew public policy to his liking. And then there are the Enron coverups, as documents are shredded and the White House seeks to conceal details about meetings between Enron and Vice President Cheney. More ...

MOORE STRANGE TRUTH

When the oil sticks

In his latest documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, Mike Moore highlights several connections among Bush, his family and associates, and Saudi Arabia. Fifteen of the 19 September 11 hijackers were Saudis, as is Osama bin Laden.
The film notes that Bush's father, George H. W. Bush, worked as a senior adviser to the Carlyle Group, a private investment company with various ties to Saudi Arabia and even, for some years, to bin Laden's family.
'My point is first of all that the Bushes were so close to the Saudis that they essentially had turned a blind eye to what was really going on before 9/11,' Moore said.
'And after 9/11 they were in denial.'
More specifically, the movie implies that the Saudi connections explain why the US facilitated the departure of dozens of Saudi nationals from the country - including relatives of bin Laden - shortly after the September 11 attacks, and charges that they were not properly questioned. "

POLITICAL ANIMALS

Right-wing pundits play doctor; diagnose Gore as 'insane'

Former Vice President Al Gore's May 26 speech, delivered at New York University, called for the resignation of six top Bush administration officials. The American right wing media had no hesitation in declaring him insane and of making a hate speech.

TOMORROW PEOPLE

The invisibility cloak ... so crazy it might work.

The anti-game showcased at Frisco NextFest

Brainball is a computer game in which being ferociously competitive is not on. Co-inventor Thomas Broome, of Sweden's Interactive Institute, says it's an anti-game.
'The more relaxed you are, the more you can get unconnected to your state of winning and wanting that you actually win this game. Brainball measures your alpha waves and the person who is the most relaxed can push the ball to the other side and win.'
Among the game's fans are the musician Brian Eno, yoga gurus and children with attention deficit disorders.

The NextFest expo in San Francisco, organised by Wired technology magazine also featured flying cars, transparent cloaks, and technology which can read mind.
The levitating Skycar is the brainchild of Paul Moller, who has spent $200 million trying to get his invention airborne. The car needs 35 feet to take off, but thanks to its 770hp engine can climb at 6,400 feet a minute and reach speeds of 365mph.
On the battlefield, an invisibility cloak could be just the ticket. Straight out of a Harry Potter adventure, the cloak is covered with tiny light-reflective beads. It appears to be transparent as it's fitted with cameras which project what is in front of the wearer onto the back of the cloak, and vice versa.
Also showcased is brain fingerprinting, which aims to help those solving crimes or interrogating terror suspects. It reads minds by measuring brain waves and the responses that someone has to trigger words or images of a specific event.
Its inventor is neuroscientist Dr Lawrence Farwell, of the Brain Fingerprinting Lab, who has worked with the CIA and FBI.
Larry Farwell, a Harvard-trained neuroscientist who works out of a small office in the Washington Technology Center on the University of Washington campus, hopes to use the case of Oklahoma death-row inmate Jimmy Ray Slaughter to convince law enforcement officials and the courts that the technique is scientifically sound and accurate.
A jury convicted Slaughter of shooting, stabbing and mutilating his former girlfriend, Melody Wuertz, and of shooting to death their eleven-month old-daughter, Jessica.
"Jimmy Ray Slaughter did not know where in the house the murder took place; he didn't know where the mother's body was lying or what was on her clothing at the time of death - a salient fact in the case," says Dr Farwell.

Visual gadgets of the future

A television sewn into your shirtsleeve. A dashboard screen to monitor the kids in the backseat. A 3-D computer monitor sharp enough to make a hardcore gamer's heart stop -- or help a surgeon start one.
The gizmo-packed exhibition hall at the Society for Information Display's international symposium offers a tantalizing vision of what's to come. This week's meeting was all about extremes -- monitors that are very big or very small, very thin, very light and very, very high-resolution.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

The rewriting of Iraqi history is now going on at supersonic speed

"Weapons of mass destruction? Forget it. Links between Saddam and al-Qaida? Forget it. Liberating the Iraqis from Saddam's Abu Ghraib life of torture? Forget it. Wedding party slaughtered? Forget it. Clear the decks for both 'full (sic) sovereignty' and 'chaotic events.' This is, at any rate, according to Bush. When I heard his hesitant pronunciation of Abu Ghraib as 'Abu Grub' on Monday night, I could only profoundly agree." -- Robert Fisk

CLOAK AND DAGGER

'CIA worked in tandem with Pak to create Taliban'

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked in tandem with Pakistan to create the 'monster' that is today Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, a leading US expert on South Asia said here.
'I warned them that we were creating a monster,' Selig Harrison from the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars said at the conference here last week on 'Terrorism and Regional Security: Managing the Challenges in Asia.'
Harrison said: 'The CIA made a historic mistake in encouraging Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan.' The US provided $3 billion for building up these Islamic groups, and it accepted Pakistan's demand that they should decide how this money should be spent, Harrison said.

MYSTERIOUS DNA

Biology's big brainteaser: are archaea cause for hope or concern?

Unravelling what role, if any, archaea play in disease is becoming a priority for teams of microbiologists around the world. Most believe it's a matter of time before they are confirmed, at least, as contributing to the progress of certain illnesses.
'It's very important we get to the bottom of this, because if archaea are causing diseases we may have a problem,' says Peter Westerman, an expert in archaea at the Technical University of Denmark. The antibiotics we have now have all been designed with bacteria in mind, and a new generation of drugs would be needed to tackle archaea. 'It's all a bit scary,' he says.

The microbiologist Carl Woese divided all life into three groups: bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes. The latter includes animals, plants and fungi. Archaea are somewhere in the middle but have genetic mechanisms closer to ours than bacteria.
They are tiny single-cell organisms. They make up about a fifth of all life on the planet and cover the whole spectrum of earth's environments.
It had been thought that archaea held the key to switching off pathogenic microbes, but there is increasing speculatiohn that the life-forms are not as benign as once thought.
"On the evidence we've got so far, we should be finding more than 30 types of archaea that cause disease," says Rick Cavicchioli, a molecular biologist at the University of New South Wales.

[Did you know: A gram of human faeces can hold 10 billion archaea.]

FREQUENT FLYER

Australia's costly asylum-seeker fiasco

AN asylum-seeker in Australia has been sent on a taxpayer-funded trip halfway round the world in a futile search for a home.
Edriess Abdulrahman and his entourage, including five guards, took 17 flights between them over 13 days in an extraordinary 24,000km journey. The cost to Australian taxpayers was almost $24,000.
But Mr Abdulrahman's travels ended where they began – in detention in Australia after Sudan refused to accept him as a citizen.
The trip began in remote Western Australia when authorities tried to deport Mr Abdulrahman last December.
Freedom of Information documents show escorts assigned to accompany Mr Abdulrahman cost taxpayers $4178 to guard him for more than 300 hours. About $3000 went on phone calls, accommodation and meals. The Immigration Department hired two troubleshooting companies – one Australian, the other South African – to help it offload Mr Abdulrahman, who spent three years in Port Hedland fighting for a visa.
The documents show taxpayers spent more than $15,000 for international and domestic flights as Mr Abdulrahman and his escorts criss-crossed two continents in search of a new home.
The journey turned to farce when his Australian Government-issued identity papers were rejected by Sudanese officials in Tanzania. Authorities tried to dump Mr Abdulrahman in Sudan even though Australia's refugee tribunal refused to accept he was Sudanese.
He was born in Kuwait to Sudanese immigrant parents, but the family was banished from that country after the 1990 Gulf War. Mr Abdulrahman, believed to be 29, went to Sudan for about one year, but left after refusing to join the national army.
Mr Abdulrahman is now in Baxter detention centre – at a cost of $310 a day – while Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone decides his future.

[If they put him in the Adelaide Hilton with three meals a day the Australian taxpayer would probably save $10 or $20 a da.]

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Al Qaeda highly likely to attack US: Homeland security chief says terror alert level will not be raised

Intelligence from multiple sources indicates that al Qaeda intends to attack the United States in the coming months, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said Wednesday.
'This disturbing intelligence indicates al Qaeda's specific intention to hit the United States hard,' Ashcroft said in a news conference. 'Beyond this intelligence, al Qaeda's own public statements indicate that it is almost ready to attack the United States.'
Ashcroft said that after the March 11 train bombings in Madrid, Spain, 'an al Qaeda spokesman announced 90 percent of the arrangements for an attack on the United States were complete.'

LAND OF THE FREE

'Un-American' poetry not allowed in schools

In March last year, a teenage schoolgirl named Courtney presented one her poem, Revolution X before an audience at Barnes & Noble bookstore in Albuquerque, then read the poem live on the school's closed-circuit television channel.
A school military liaison and the high school principal accused the girl of being 'un-American' because she criticized the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's failure to give substance to its 'No child left behind' education policy.
The girl's mother, also a teacher, was ordered by the principal to destroy the child's poetry. The mother refused and may lose her job.
Bill Nevins was suspended for not censoring the poetry of his students. Remember, there is no obscenity to be found in any of the poetry. He was later fired by the principal.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Gregory David Roberts: "When I was tortured in an Indian prison -- chained to a wall and tortured -- I was writing the experience."

Torture just grist for writer's mill

Gregory David Roberts has worked as a counterfeiter and a poet, a smuggler and a speech writer, a street soldier for the Bombay mafia and a journalist.
Finally, Gregory David Roberts, in Launceston yesterday to promote his debut novel Shantaram, has his dream job.
'Writing books is exactly what I've always wanted to do, all my life,' Roberts said before signing copies of the 933-page tome at a Tasmanian bookstore.

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

A day in the life of a Gaza mother involves keeping her little ones out of the way of the armoured demolition bulldozers.

Gaza raids 'left 2000 homeless'

The UN says nearly 2,000 Palestinians have been made homeless this month by Israeli house demolitions in Gaza.
May has been one of the worst months in last three years, the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees said, with 575 people made homeless in the last week.
Israeli forces have now withdrawn from Rafah, but the halt in the operation was described by the army as a "pause".

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Guard stops enlistments for two recruits

Army Reserve recruiters called part-time soldiers to tell them they would be sent to Iraq if they didn't re-enlist in the Reserves.
Two Oregon National Guard recruits were allowed to rescind their enlistments Monday after authorities learned that they felt pressured by "false advice" [aka lies] that they could otherwise be sent to Iraq with the US Army Reserve.
Army Reserve recruiters contacted members of the Individual Ready Reserve with "misleading efforts" [aka lies] to get them back into the active reserve, Army Reserve spokesman Stephen Stromvall said from Fort McPherson, Georgia.

MEET THE PRESS

US paper apologises for false Iraq reports

The New York Times has admitted that information it published about Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction programme was not supported.
In a letter from its editors entitled The Times and Iraq the paper said its coverage had not been "rigorous". "In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged."
"Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged - or failed to emerge."

ELECTION TERROR

Terrorists planning summer attack

Intelligence that has heightened concern throughout the government indicates that a group of terrorists already deployed inside the United States is preparing to launch a major attack this summer, U.S. counterterrorism and law enforcement officials say. The intelligence was described Tuesday by a senior counterterrorism official on condition of anonymity as extremely credible and backed by an unusually high level of corroboration. "

DEAD SCIENTISTS

Secrecy may have cost Russian virus scientist her life

A Russian scientist at a former Soviet biological weapons laboratory in Siberia has died after accidentally sticking herself with a needle laced with Ebola, the deadly virus for which there is no vaccine or treatment.
The accident occurred on May 5 at the State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology - known as Vector - but it was not reported to the World Health Organisation until last week, raising concerns about safety and secrecy at the centre, which in Soviet times specialised in turning deadly viruses into biological weapons.
Although the centre had isolated the scientist to contain any potential spread of the disease and there is no requirement that accidents involving Ebola be reported, the delay meant that WHO scientists could not provide prompt advice on her treatment that might have saved her life.
Vector officials said the scientist, Antonina Presnyakova, was working on an Ebola vaccine, but have declined to identify who was financing the research or to discuss its specific nature.

[Vector is one of two repositories of the deadly smallpox virus - the other is in Atlanta.]

NO CHECKS, NO BALANCES

Why Justice Antonin Scalia should duck off

Justice Antonin Scalia's own argument for why he should stay on the Cheney case -- to decide if Cheney should have to name the members of his secret Energy Task Force, which he has kept hidden from the public -- offers the best evidence for why he should recuse.

The 21-page Scalia memo is, in part, a heartwarming buddy story. Scalia fondly describes his tradition of going duck hunting at the camp of a friend named Wallace Carline. 'During my December 2002 visit, I learned that Mr. Carline was an admirer of Vice President Cheney,' Scalia wrote. 'Knowing that the vice president, with whom I am well acquainted (from our years serving together in the Ford administration), is an enthusiastic duck-hunter, I asked whether Mr. Carline would like to invite him to our next year's hunt.
"The answer was yes," Scalia went on. "I conveyed the invitation (with my own warm recommendation) in the spring of 2003 and received an acceptance (subject, of course, to any superseding demands on the vice president's time) in the summer. The vice president said that if he did go, I would be welcome to fly down to Louisiana with him."

[Would a rational person doubt that, all things being equal, the judge just might tilt toward the man with whom he is so "well acquainted?"]

OIL WARS

'I killed innocent people for our government,' says disillusioned soldier

"Yes. I killed innocent people for our government. For what? What did I do? Where is the good coming out of it? I feel like I've had a hand in some sort of evil lie at the hands of our government. I just feel embarrassed, ashamed about it." -- Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey, ex marine.

From his interview: "There was this one particular incident - and there's many more - the one that really pushed me over the edge. It involved a car with Iraqi civilians. From all the intelligence reports we were getting, the cars were loaded down with suicide bombs or material. That's the rhetoric we received from intelligence. They came upon our checkpoint. We fired some warning shots. They didn't slow down. So we lit them up.
"Every car that we lit up we were expecting ammunition to go off. But we never heard any. Well, this particular vehicle we didn't destroy completely, and one gentleman looked up at me and said: 'Why did you kill my brother? We didn't do anything wrong.' That hit me like a ton of bricks."

CHONG'S BONGS

Tommy Chong's life going up in smoke

Half of the 70s comedy duo Cheech and Chong -- who made a joke out of the marijuana sub-culture -- is spending his 66th birthday languishing in prison for selling smoking paraphernalia in his shop "Chong's Bongs". If he had named the shop "Chong's Water Pipes", he would probably still be free.
His legion of fans have set up a web site to try to liberate their hero:
"In a free society, a man should be free to do as he chooses so long as he harms no-one. It is our firm belief that Mr. Chong has harmed no-one, and is being unfairly targeted for prosecution because of his celebrity status. In short, 'this sucks', and we won't stand for it. Join the movement to stop this travesty of justice! If you won't stand up for Tommy Chong, who will stand up for you when you're being unfairly imprisoned?"

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

'One lifeform's deadly radiation may be another lifeform's lunch,' says David Grinspoon of the South West Research Institute in Colorado.

Venus clouds 'might harbour life'

There could be life on the planet Venus, US scientists have concluded in a report in the journal Astrobiology.
The existence of life on the planet's oven-hot surface is unimaginable.
But microbes could survive and reproduce, experts say, floating in the thick, cloudy atmosphere, protected by a sunscreen of sulphur compounds.
Rare transit of Venus on June 8. The previous transit of Venus occurred on December 6, 1882 -
one of merely five events of its kind ever watched by mankind.

POISONED PLANET

Thirteen pesticides in body of average American

Ninety-nine per cent of Americans, including virtually all children born in recent years, had DDT residues. The use of the insecticide has been subject to controls and outright bans since the late 1960s, and its presence indicates how persistent it is in the general environment.
A comprehensive survey of more than 1300 Americans has found traces of weed- and bug-killers in the bodies of everyone tested, leading environmentalists in both Canada and the United States to call for far tighter controls on pesticides.

NEW WORLD ORDER

Masked men identified as Chechen officers of the OMON special police escort an unidentified man from his home at an undisclosed location in southern Chechnya in April.

Mystery wave of abductions hits Ingushetia

Masked men in Ingushetia (population 300,000 and a tiny fragment of the restive Caucasus region) arrive in cars without license plates. In full view of witnesses, they seize their prey, shove him in the car and speed off. Weeks pass, then months -- the victim isn't heard from again.
That has happened more than 40 times this year alone in Ingushetia, say human rights groups that are demanding answers to the rising wave of abductions. Officials say almost nothing in response.

ARMAGEDDON WORRIED

Nuclear experiment planned at Nevada site

Government scientists plan an underground nuclear experiment, short of a nuclear blast, at the Nevada Test Site on Tuesday. The experiment will involve detonating high explosives around plutonium in a steel sphere while X-rays, radar and lasers chart the behavior of the radioactive element.
Scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico will run the test in a tunnel nearly 1000 feet below ground at the site about 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The test dubbed "Armando" is the 21st subcritical experiment at the site, which Federal officials say are essential for the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Israeli agents believed involved in Abu Ghraib

Diplomatic sources in Washington tell NewsMax's U.N. correspondent Stew Stogel that Israeli nationals are believed to be involved in the Iraq prison controversy.
'Israelis have been to Abu Ghraib and other prisons [in Iraq],' says one source familiar with the U.S. operations.
It was explained that the Israelis involved have been assigned as 'civilian contractors' to work with Coalition forces in interrogating Iraqi POWs.
The 'contractors' are said to be veterans of Israel's domestic intelligence unit, Shin Bet, as well as the more famous international intelligence agency, the Mossad.

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Soldier beaten during training at Guantanamo

A former military police officer said he was severely beaten while posing as a detainee during a January 2003 training exercise at Guantanamo Bay.
Sean Baker, a former member of the 438th Military Police Company, said he played the role of a prisoner and was beaten so badly by four U.S. soldiers that he suffered a traumatic brain injury and seizures.
'I don't want this to happen to anyone else, what I'm living with daily,' Baker said.
Kentucky National Guard Capt. David Page, a guard spokesman, said 'There was a training accident, after which he [Baker] was medically discharged.'

ELECTION TERROR

More 'Washington whispers' about possible pre-election terrorist attack

In the "Washington Whispers" section of this week’s US News & World Report, columnist Paul Bedard reports: "White House officials say they’ve got a ‘working premise’ about terrorism and the presidential election: It’s going to happen." Bedard quotes a top administration official as asserting, "We assume an attack will happen leading up to the election," and that it will happen in Washington, D.C.

There is an obvious question raised by these discussions: Are top officials in the Bush administration planning to allow such an attack in order to reap political advantage?
Anyone who would dismiss this possibility as an outlandish conspiracy theory underestimates both the depth of the administration’s crisis and the criminality of those who set its policy.
This is a government that came to office by means of theft and intimidation, gaining power only through the intervention of the Supreme Court on an explicitly anti-democratic basis.

DEVIL IN THE DETAILS

Christianity bedevils talks on EU treaty

The controversial question of Christianity returned to the EU yesterday when seven states, led by Italy, urged the union to recognise a 'historical truth' and refer explicitly to the 'Christian roots of Europe' in its new constitution.
Britain's foreign secretary, Jack Straw, and his fellow foreign ministers were forced to divert into a theological and cultural minefield at the meeting in Brussels called to tackle highly charged but technical issues, such as voting weights and budget procedures.

France rejects God reference in EU draft

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Combat with a firefight involves aggressive attack ... and it could be your home



S.O.S. Rubber International Inc. describes one of its newfirefighting hoses:
Hi-Combat II, the second generation of aggressive interior attack hose, has all the benefits of Hi-Combat, plus the added feature of the 'IdentiFire' information system...

[Businesses have lately been bringing in military handbooks and ex-mil trainers for their managers so they can gain an edge in the cut-throat world of profit making.
IRONICALLY the military is becoming more "business-oriented" by the day:
Private commandos shoot back on the Iraq firing line]

OUR COSMOS

John Baez's candid admission on loop and string theory as bogus

“There is not one whit of experimental evidence for either string theory or loop quantum gravity, and both theories have some serious problems, so it might seem premature for philosophers to consider their implications. It indeed makes little sense for philosophers to spend time chasing every short-lived fad in these fast-moving subjects. Instead, what is worthy of reflection is that these two approaches to quantum gravity, while disagreeing heatedly on so many issues, have so much in common. It suggests that in our attempts to reconcile the quantum-theoretic notions of state and process with the relativistic notions of space and spacetime, we have a limited supply of promising ideas. It is an open question whether these ideas will be up to the task of describing nature. But this actually makes it more urgent, not less, for philosophers to clarify and question these ideas and the implicit assumptions upon which they rest.”

OUR COSMOS

More Big Bang for yor buck

The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed-- inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory.

MARK OF THE BEAST

Child ID system makes its mark

Tom Bruynell was among the estimated 14,000 children who participated in a massive, seven-state identification drive organized by the Masonic Child Identification Program, or CHIP.
With 67 participating communities, including several in and around the Boston area, the effort was touted as the largest single-day "comprehensive" child identification drive ever held in the United States.
In addition to being fingerprinted, the children were videotaped answering questions about their family, favorite hiding spots, and places they like to go after school. Dentists and dental hygenists volunteered their time, taking teeth impressions and saliva samples for DNA analysis from each child.

FAMINE AND PESTILENCE

Sudan 'on verge of mass starvation'

Aid agencies were today warning of looming famine and a humanitarian crisis in Darfur, western Sudan, where up to a million people have been driven from their homes by government-backed militias.
The arid desert region is hit by a cyclical 'hunger gap' from April until harvest-time in October, but attacks on towns and villages by the 'Janjawid' mounted Arab militias, which human rights observers say include members of the armed forces, have exacerbated the crisis this year.

UK mulled using birds for bio-war after WWII

Britain considered training pigeons to deliver biological weapons after World War II but decided the birds had outlived their usefulness in battle, government files released last week show.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

CIA cut Nick Berg's head off?

The video of execution of American hostage Nick Berg in Iraq is threatening to develop into a major scandal. During a press conference the father of the beheaded American accused Bush and Rumsfeld of killing his son. There are more and more suspicions that Nick Berg was really executed not by Arab militants, but by the US intelligence services in order to divert the attention from the scandal about the tortures in Baghdad prison.

Berg video the smoking gun?

Digital signatures are being incorporated in various digital consumer products. Photocopiers and digital cameras can store an encrypted signature to identify the unit that made the recording.
Today new pictures were released of prison torture at Abu Ghraib prison. But not just still pictures. Today video was released showing prisoners being tortured by Americans. It has been suggested that the digital signature from this latest video has been removed from the sides of the footage -- which is why the video is higher than it is wide, not because it was shot sideways.
The other suggestion is that this was done to conceal the evidence that this was the same camera that was used to film the decapitation.

Berg decapitation video was filmed inside the Abu Ghraib prison

There is now ample evidence that the video showing the decapitation of 26 year old Nicholas Berg of Philadelphia by purported Al queda members is a complete fraud. The real Nick Berg may or may not be dead, but the heavily edited video is nothing but a fake. This is the conclusion of La Voz de Aztlan after a frame by frame analysis and the conclusion of hundreds of film, medical and other experts world wide who downloaded, viewed and analyzed the video as well.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

US propaganda that costs lives

"Why are most black people, unless forced by dire necessity to earn their livelihood with 'the sweat of their brow', so loath to undertake any work that dirties the hands?"
"The all-encompassing preoccupation with sex in the black person's mind emerges clearly in two manifestations ..."
"In the black person's view of human nature, no person is supposed to be able to maintain incessant, uninterrupted control over himself. Any event that is outside routine everyday occurrence can trigger such a loss of control ... Once aroused, a black person's hostility will vent itself indiscriminately on all outsiders."

Offended yet? Now replace "black person" with Arab:

The Arab Mind, by cultural anthropologist Raphael Patai, is a book promoted by its US publisher as "one of the great classics of cultural studies", and described by Publisher's Weekly as "admirable", "full of insight" and with "an impressive spread of scholarship"
According to one professor at a US military college, The Arab Mind is 'probably the single most popular and widely read book on the Arabs in the US military'. It is even used as a textbook for officers at the JFK special warfare school in Fort Bragg.
In some ways, the book's appeal to the military is easy to understand, because it gives a superficially coherent view of the Arab enemy and their supposed personality defects. It is also readily digestible, uncomplicated by nuances and caveats, and has lots of juicy quotes, a generous helping of sex, and no academic jargon.

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

The Marine's tale: 'We killed 30 civilians in six weeks. I felt we were committing genocide'

'In a month and a half my platoon and I killed more than 30 civilians,' Mr Massey said. He saw bodies being desecrated and robbed, and wounded civilians being dumped by the roadside without medical treatment. After he told his commanding officer that he felt 'we were committing genocide', he was called a 'wimp'.
...
"A gunny from Lima Company came running and said to us: 'Hey, you just shot that guy, but he had his hands up.' My unit, my commander and me were relieved of our command for the rest of the day. Not more than five minutes later, the Lima Company took up our position and shot a car with one woman and two children. They all died."

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Berg beheading staged, say forensic experts

A leading surgical authority and a noted forensic death expert separately told Asia Times Online, the video depicting the decapitation of Nicholas Berg appears to have been staged.
'I certainly would need to be convinced it [the decapitation video] was authentic,' Dr John Simpson, executive director for surgical affairs at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, said from New Zealand. Echoing Dr Simpson's criticism, when this journalist asked forensic death expert Jon Nordby, PhD and fellow of the American Board of Medicolegal Death Investigators, whether he believed the Berg decapitation video had been 'staged', Nordby replied: 'Yes, I think that's the best explanation of it.'
Questions of when the video's footage was taken, and the time elapsed between the shooting of the video's segments, were raised by both experts, reflecting a portion of the broader and ongoing video controversy. Nordby, speaking to Asia Times Online from Washington state, noted: 'We don't know how much time wasn't filmed,' adding that 'there's no way of knowing whether ... footage is contemporaneous with the footage that follows'.
While the circumstances surrounding both the video and Nick Berg's last days have been the source of substantive speculation, both Simpson and Nordby perceived it as highly probable that Berg had died some time prior to his decapitation. A factor in this was an apparent lack of the 'massive' arterial bleeding such an act initiates.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Top 10 reasons some think Berg beheading was psychological black operation courtesy CIA

1) Hooded executioner identified as 'Al-Zarqawi' within minutes. Others say he lacked a Jordanian accent.
2) There was no blood spurting from neck. Experts noticed the obvious lack of blood spurting from any neck artery which should accompany a beheading - there was none.
3) Video apparently from the same director who did the previous phony Bin Laden Video with the admittedly fake Bin Laden.
4) Berg worked at the Abu Ghraib prison.
5) The link to Moussaoui (referred to as the 20th hijacker in the 911 event). Moussaoui emailed something from Berg's laptop two years ago.
6) Berg had a mysterious Israeli passport stamp.
7) Berg had sensitive electronic equipment on his person that he had no paperwork for.
8) Berg travelled the world helping the disadvantaged?
9) What is a jew doing as a freelancer in the apocalyptic war torn Jew hating Iraq? Does he have a death wish? Is he mentally retarded? Nope, He's a US government agent - and a patsy.
10) Bergs father thinks it's the US Gov killed his son - and not abstractly so either.

SHOW ME YOUR PAPERS

Poll suggests ID card backlash

The UK Home Secretary David Blunkett wants to see ID cards phased in gradually, making it compulsory to have one by 2013.
However the government could face a public backlash to its proposals a new survey has found.
Up to 5 million people (28pc of voters) would demonstrate against ID cards the survey conducted by online research firm YouGov found.

FREE SPEECH CHOKED

PayPal service closes accounts that violate 'acceptable use' policy [read 'unacceptable politics]:

"Paypal has frozen the account we [Freenet] use to accept donations over the web, they refuse to give any reason other than "use of an anonymous proxy", which suggests that someone at Paypal took a dislike to the goals of our project, since I have never used an anonymous proxy to access Paypal".

Freenet is free software which lets users publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. To achieve this freedom, the network is entirely decentralized and publishers and consumers of information are anonymous. Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack.
Communications by Freenet nodes are encrypted and are 'routed-through' other nodes to make it extremely difficult to determine who is requesting the information and what its content is.
At about the same time PayPal froze the account of the anti-war (among other interests) website Cassiopaea.org because PayPal's policy "prohibits the sale of items which graphically portray violence or victims of violence, and lack substantial social, artistic or political value."

PayPal Sucks: For anyone with an issue to raise with PayPal their number can be found by: clicking on "help" at the top of their page and then "contact us" at the bottom/left of their page, then "Customer Support Inquiries," near the middle of the page, then "Service Center" under the "Help by phone" toward the bottom/middle of the page. There you will find their non-toll free number. Obviously they intentionally make their phone number very difficult to find in order to save costs.

Paypalwarning.com reports that Paypal is currently being investigated by regulatory authorities in three US states.

[The lockdown of the internet is taking place right now. Web sites such as Cassiopaea.org and Freenet have no recourse against this censorship. While many have been expecting a sort of "Internet 9/11" event, the powers that be have already begun clamping down.]

IRONY MY SHIRT

Joke of the day

"It is essential that people respect innocent life in order for us to achieve peace"
-- President George W Bush [said with a creepy little laugh].

SPEECH, SPEECH

Who said 'We won't cut and run, we'll stay til the job is done'? If you're not sure, it is probably because many politicians and commentators have been using the phrase or similar of late... maybe they just all use the same speech writer?

When 'cut and run' became a rout
We're not going to cut and run," President George Bush said last month, "from the people who long for freedom." The next day, John McCain asked rhetorically, "Is it the time to panic, to cut and run?" His answer, as you might expect, was, "Absolutely not." And a week later, John Kerry used the ringing derogation as a compound adjective: "I don't believe in a cut-and-run philosophy."
The phrase circles the English-speaking world. "If we cut and run," warned Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, "their country would be at the mercy of warring groups." And the Australian prime minister, John Howard, answered a question about an "exit strategy" with "We don't have a cut-and-run strategy."
Paul Lacey expressed the wonderment of many: ... "Doesn't it seem time to examine where cut and run comes from and why it has taken on the resonance it has? Why is it worse to cut and run?" ...
The phrase, imputing panic [...], is always pejorative. Nobody, not even those who urge leaders to "bring our troops home," will say, "I think we ought to cut and run." It is a phrase imputing cowardice, synonymous with bug out (probably coined in World War II but popularized in the Korean conflict); both are said in derogation of a policy to be opposed with the utmost repugnance.
Eleven years ago, as many in the United States urged a pullout of U.S. troops from Somalia, General Colin Powell said, "I don't think we should cut and run because things have gotten a little tough." ...
The nautical metaphor was defined in the 1794 "Elements and Practice of Rigging and Seamanship" as "to cut the cable and make sail instantly, without waiting to weigh anchor." Sailors extended the metaphor to fit other hasty, though not panicky, departures: Melville, in his 1850 novel, "White-Jacket," had a midshipman cry out, "Jack Chase cut and run!" about a buddy who ran away with a seductive lady. Tennyson wrote to his wife, Emily, in 1864: "I dined at Gladstone's yesterday - Duke and Duchess there … but I can't abide the dinners … I shall soon have to cut and run."
That lighthearted sense has since disappeared. Like the word quagmire, the phrase has gained an accusatory edge in politics and war.

References:
The United States will not cut and run in Iraq despite the accelerated timetable for ending the military occupation and handing back political power to the Iraqis, President Bush said in an interview that aired Sunday in Great Britain.
Bush pledges he won't "cut and run" from Iraq
President George W. Bush has pledged that the United States will not "cut and run" from Iraq where guerrilla attacks have sharply escalated in the seven months since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Aust must not cut and run in Iraq: Fed Govt
Australien Foreign Minister ALEXANDER DOWNER: Look, if we all cut and run, we'll leave Iraq as a failed state. If we leave Iraq as a failed state, it'll become a haven for terrorists.
Cut-and-run or needed exit strategy: Parliament argues over troops
The Government's countering Opposition Leader Mark Latham's promise by calling it uninformed and a cut-and-run approach, and labelling it un-Australian. ...
JOHN HOWARD: Speaker, the leader of the Opposition talks about an exit strategy. Can I say this on behalf of the Government. We don't have a cut-and-run strategy, Mr Speaker. [Latham interjection] ... It's not the Australian way to cut and run. It's the Australian way to stay and do the job and see it through and that's what we intend to do.
I will not cut and run, says angry Blair
A defiant Tony Blair faced down his critics last night and delivered an unequivocal message that he has no intention of standing down or "cutting and running in Iraq".

URBAN FACT

Mobile phone sparks fireball at Mobil fuel outlet

Pumping gas and gabbing on the cell phone can be a combustible mix - and Matthew Erhorn is singed proof of that.
Erhorn, a 21-year-old SUNY-New Paltz student, caught on fire Thursday night at a Mobil station near the college when his ringing cellular phone ignited vapors near the gas pump, firefighters said.
He escaped with just minor burns, but his mishap fuels the debate over whether a cell phone can really set off an explosion at a gas station.

Experts blame static

Experts believe that it was static electricity — not the cell phone — that caused the fire. Static fires at the pumps are rare events, but they do happen. The Petroleum Equipment Institute reports on its Web site it has counted 158 reports to date of gas pump fires attributed to static electricity.
Static electricity ignited a gas station fire captured by security cameras in San Antonio, Texas, in November 2002. The customer pumping gas was badly burned, but survived. Static is also suspected in a 1996 fireball at a Tulsa, Okla., gas pump that killed a 33-year-old woman.
Steve Fowler, an electrical engineer from Fowler Associates, says cell phone signals are far too weak to ignite even explosive gasoline fumes. He and Jim Farr, a fire marshal from Gaston County, N.C., study static fire and say your body can build up a static charge in different ways, such as getting in and out of a vehicle.

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Soldier charged in Iraqi abuse scandal strikes plea deal; absolves higher-ups

U.S. government lawyers have advised against the release of hundreds of even more gruesome pictures and videos, some depicting corpses and several forms of sexual abuse, taken by U.S. soldiers.
Ironically, one reason they give is they would violate a Geneva Convention rule against revealing images that degrade prisoners.
Two top Pentagon officials admitted Thursday that interrogation tactics approved for use at Abu Ghraib violated the convention, which prohibits physical and mental torture of detainees.

Abu Ghraib: the rule, not the exception

Americans are no novices to inflicting pain and humiliation, says torture expert MILES SCHUMAN. U.S.-sanctioned torment has a long and diverse pedigree.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has revealed over the past days that the gross human-rights abuses of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison were not confined to a few soldiers. Indeed, it appears they were well-known to U.S. government and military officials while they occurred. As a physician who has worked with many survivors of torture in Canada -- and has lived in Guatemala, Haiti and Mexico, working with survivors of state-sponsored violence -- the images of the detainees in Abu Ghraib represent a hauntingly familiar pattern of abuse.

WATCH THE SKIES

Ivana Calhoun's impression of the strange object she saw while delivering newspapers early one morning. When she returned home, husband Kelly could tell something had scared his wife. "And she doesn’t scare easily, either," he said.

UFO sighted by two separate newspaper distributors

Delivering papers in rural McFall, Missouri, one morning Ivana Calhoun saw fluorescent orange sphere about 15 metres away and 15 metres off the ground. It appeared to be the size of a basketball and zipped across Ms Calhoun's windshield. The orb flew in a straight line and didn't make a sound and was aout of sight about three seconds after first appearing.

More strangely: Mrs. Calhoun was on her mobile phone talking to another newsagent, David Stafford, at the time. He was just leaving Grayson, also in Missouri, when he saw the same “Day-Glo” orange object about 10 metres away.
“We described it to each other, and it was the exact same thing,” Mr. Stafford said. “I thought it was a falling star, but it was going parallel to the ground. Both of us were going south.”

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Inquiry into Carr documents theft

The girlfriend of Soham murderer Ian Huntley is due to be released with a new identity but papers relating to Maxine Carr's release were stolen from a Home Office official's car and recently found on Hampstead Heath.
The High Court has issued a ban on revealing Carr's whereabouts after her expected release on Friday.
Carr, 27, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail, but spent only 21 months in custody, 16 of which were on remand. She was given a three-year community rehabilitation order earlier this week after pleading guilty to 20 charges of benefit fraud and lying on job applications.

Her boyfriend Huntley, sentenced for the murder of schoolgirls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, was first sent to a high security mental hospital without access to a lawyer, the liason officer in charge faced child pornography charges. Ian Huntley then had access to pills and attempted suicide.

MARS OBJECT MOVES

Mars 'Bunny' hops to new location

NASA writes, "After looking at pictures of Opportunity's lander up-close, I think we might have, again, spotted the bunny. It looks as if the object has been blown under the north-facing egress ramp."
Johnson and his colleagues believe that a light wind whirling from the north over Opportunity's Challenger Memorial Station landing site could have transported the article. Its small size indicates that it would be easily carried by even a light wind. The three-color Pancam images acquired of the object as part of the mission success panorama even showed some evidence that the object moved slightly between images from the gentle wind. Johnson estimates that the breeze pushed the "bunny ears" an estimated 5 to 6 meters. Rense.com report...

JPL states. "Our team believes that this odd-looking feature is a piece of soft material that definitely came from our vehicle," said Rob Manning, lead engineer for entry, descent and landing. "We cannot say exactly where it came from but we can say that there are several possibilities: cotton insulation, Vectran covers and wraps from the airbag, zylon bridle tensioning ties, or felt insulation from the gas generators.... The list goes on. We do not think this is parachute material, however, due to its color).

FIRST CASUALTY

Nick Berg decapitation video declared "a fraud" by medical doctor

We forwarded the video to Doctor Raul Castro Guevara, a surgeon and forensic expert in Mexico City for his expert opinion. He wrote back and commented, "No hay manera que el individuo en el video estaba vivo y su corazon funcionando cuando le estaban cortando la cabeza. En estos casos, el corazon impela sangre con gran presion, y se corta las arterias del pezqueso, hay una gran cantidad de sangre que salpica por todos lados. En mi opinion el video es un fraude."
Doctor Raul Castro Guevara is saying that there is no way that the individual in the video was alive and his heart pumping while his neck was being cut. The doctor adds that in these cases, while the heart is pumping, cutting a person artery in the neck, would cause copious amounts of blood to spurt all over the immediate environment. He says that in his opinion the video is a fraud.

[There seemed to be plenty of blood involved in this atrocity in your humble editor's opinion -- abk]

Nick Berg, 26 disappeared into incommunicado detention after his arrest by Iraqi police in March, 2004. He vanished again after his release 13 days later. His body was found last Saturday in Baghdad, and the video of his beheading -- supposedly by a radical Islamic group -- was posted on the Internet on Tuesday. The official story of his gruesome murder has many dubious aspects, not least the real reason why Iraqi police detained the young man at a checkpoint.
And now: The family firm of beheaded American Nick Berg, was named by a conservative website in a list of 'enemies' of the Iraq occupation. The FreeRepublic.com web site and forum has a reputation for right-wing views, fanatical Republicanism and relentless pro-war activism.
On 7th March, 2004, just three weeks before the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, an 'enemies' list of anti-war groups and individuals was posted on a Free Republic forum. Among those listed was this entry: "Michael S. Berg, Teacher, Prometheus Methods Tower Service, Inc." That's Nick Berg's father, Michael who acts as business manager for his son in their family radio communications firm, Prometheus Methods Tower Service.
Michael Berg charges that his son's detention until 5th April, was a violation of civil rights which fatally delayed his exit from Iraq and instead left him dangerously stranded in the middle of the explosion of violence which erupted in early April, 2004.
President Bush -- on his way to an event in Maryland to talk about his No Child Left Behind program -- offered condolences to the Berg family.

A "New York Times" article quotes a senior FBI official, saying that Nick Berg was never in US custody, he was in local custody.
At that point, Nick Berg's brother said this was not "as we know it", saying that the family had received e-mails from Nick Berg when he was released in Iraq on April 6. And between April 6 and April 9, April 9 was the last time that they heard from him.

WATCH THE SKIES

Mexico's DoD releases spectacular UFO video

An international press conference was held to announce the findings of a joint official and private effort to investigate a UFO sighting. The Mexican Department of Defense -- in collaboration with a top Mexican UFO researcher, Jaime Maussan -- released information concerning the appearance of up to 11 UFO's in the vicinity of a Mexican Air force flight that was on a drug surveillance mission on March 5, 2004.
Using infrared cameras and radar tracking, the eight-man crew of the Merlin C26/A flight was able to monitor the UFOs, which at one point formed a circle around the flight.
THE ACCOUNT:
On April 20 at aproximately 17:00 PM a Mexican Air Force Merlin C26A detected unknown traffic at 10,500 feet over Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche airspace. As the Merlin C26A tried to approach the unknown traffic to make a visual identification it suddenly in a surprising maneuver escaped flying away at tremendous speed. Some moments later the unknown object returned and began following the Merlin C26A. This was detected by the RADAR and the FLIR while the personnel aboard were trying to make visual contact with the craft now following them ... more unknown objects arrived. The RADAR and the FLIR detected the presence of nine new objects of the same size and characteristics.
At the middle of a complete confusion and disconcert among the C26A crew the unknown objects suddenly made a maneuver surrounding the mexican Air Force airplane in a circle at close range. The RADAR and FLIR presented an insolit image of an eleven objects near by in a circle formation around the Merlin C26A. The situation turned out of control.
Pictures here...

[In the US, military personnel have been legally proscribed from participating in the release of information of UFO sightings according to military regulations described in the Joint Army Navy Air Publication (JANAP) 146 released in 1953. Similar provisions are found in the British Ministry of Defense and other major nations that have had to deal with the UFO phenomenon, and/or cooperate closely with the US.]

NEW WORLD ORDER

Nick Berg, beheaded by "terrorists" earlier this month, had a strange encounter with "terrorist" a few years ago.

Berg's encounter with 'terrorist' revealed by father

When Nicholas Berg took an Oklahoma bus to a remote college campus a few years ago, the American recently beheaded by terrorists allowed a man with terrorist connections to use his laptop computer, according to his father.
Michael Berg said the FBI investigated the matter more than a year ago.
Government sources told CNN that the encounter involved an acquaintance of Zacarias Moussaoui -- the only person publicly charged in the United States in connection with the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Government sources said Berg gave the man on the bus his password, which was later used by Moussaoui, the sources said.

[Prior to his execution, Berg had been arrested by Iraqi police, detained briefly, and then handed over to U.S. troops who held him in a coalition facility for almost two weeks, a friend told CNN.
And for the conspiratorially minded there are a couple more issues to consider. First, the executioner wore a large gold ring -- prohibited in Islam. Second, check the chair Berg sat on as he awaited his execution. Possibly an Abu Ghraib standard issue. Another Abu Ghraib chair?

JackBlood.com has learned the web addresses for the ‘Islamic Websites’ that posted the Nick Berg decapitation video. The website addresses are www.al-asnar.net and www.al-asnar.biz . Both websites have apparently been disabled by 'authorities.' The location of the web server is reportedly in Malaysia. However, the addresses of the publishers for these sites are located in London, England and Nurnberg, Denmark.
The addresses began to disappear from the internet listings soon after this development was reported.]

NEW WORLD ORDER

Rumsfeld criticised for ordering prisoner abuse to generate intelligence

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq.
According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq.
A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Curveball informer had Chalabi connections

From the April 11 edition of NBC's 'Meet the Press:

"The Los Angeles Times has now come forward with the following story. 'Iraqi Defector's Tales Bolstered U.S. Case for War.' And it says, 'The Bush administration's prewar claims that Saddam had built a fleet of trucks and railroad cars to produce anthrax and other deadly germs were based chiefly on information from a now-discredited Iraqi defector code-named `Curveball,' according to current and former intelligence officials. ...
Based largely on his account, President Bush and his aides repeatedly warned of the shadowy germ trucks, dubbed `Winnebagos of Death,' `Hell on Wheels' and they became a crucial part of the White House case for war -- including Colin Powell's dramatic presentation to the United Nations'.
'Only later, U.S. officials said, did the CIA learn that the defector was the brother of Ahmed Chalabi's top aides, and begin to suspect that he might have been coached to provide false information.'"

MYSTERIOUS DNA

'Junk DNA' throws up precious secret

A collection of mystery DNA segments, which seem to be critical for the survival of many animals, are causing great interest among scientists.
Researchers inspecting the genetic code of rats, mice and humans were surprised to find they shared many identical chunks of apparently 'junk' DNA.
According to the traditional viewpoint, the really crucial things were genes, which code for proteins - the "building blocks of life". A few other sections that regulate gene function were also considered useful. The rest was thought to be excess baggage - or 'junk' DNA.
But the new findings suggest this interpretation was somewhat wanting.
Scientists have just found 480 streches of at least 200 base pairs of DNA in humans, mice, rats, chickens, dogs and fish are identical.
The really interesting thing is that many of these "ultra-conserved" regions do not appear to code for protein. If it was not for the fact that they popped up in so many different species, they might have been dismissed as useless "padding". "These initial findings tell us quite a lot of the genome was doing something important other than coding for proteins," researcher Professor Haussler of UCA said.

[Professor Chris Ponting, from the UK Medical Research Council's Functional Genetics Unit, told BBC News Online: "Amazingly, there were calls from some sections to only map the bits of genome that coded for protein - mapping the rest was thought to be a waste of time.
He added: "I think other bits of 'junk' DNA will turn out not to be junk. I think this is the tip of the iceberg, and that there will be many more similar findings.]

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Poor judgment cited in destruction of 9/11 FAA tape

"What those six [air-traffic] controllers recounted in a group setting on September 11, in their own voices, about what transpired that morning, are no longer available to assist any investigation or inform the public" -- Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth Mead.

Air controllers who communicated with or tracked hijacked jets on Sept. 11, 2001, taped their recollections later that day but the recording was destroyed without anyone ever listening to it, a U.S. investigator said on Thursday.
Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth Mead found irregularities in how two Federal Aviation Administration managers at the main air traffic center on New York's Long Island handled the tape and concluded they used poor judgment.
The tape dealt specifically with the two aircraft that crashed into the World Trade Center towers.
Mead also found the two managers misconstrued a directive from FAA headquarters to save all data and records pertaining to the Sept. 11 event.

[The directive to save all data and records pertaining to the Sept. 11 event was misconstrued thus: One of the men, a quality assurance manager, destroyed the tape by crushing the audiocassette in his hand, then cutting the recording tape into small pieces. He then threw the debris into different trash cans at the center, Mead said.]

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Iraq: Killings of civilians in Iraq continues

More than a year after the occupation of Iraq, civilians are still being killed unlawfully every day by Coalition Forces, armed groups and individuals. In recent weeks hundreds of civilians have been killed as clashes between Coalition Forces and armed groups and individuals opposed to the occupation have intensified. In Falluja alone, at least 600 people, including many children, have been killed during clashes between Coalition Forces and insurgents.

MY GOD, YOUR GOD

US hostage beheaded as payback for 'satanic degradation' of Iraqi prisoners

Al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq beheaded an American civilian and vowed more killings in revenge for the 'Satanic degradation' of Iraqi prisoners, an Islamist Web site said on Tuesday.
A poor quality videotape on the site showed a man dressed in orange overalls sitting bound on a white plastic chair in a bare room, then knelt on the floor with five masked men behind him.
"My name is Nick Berg, my father's name is Michael... I have a brother and sister, David and Sarah," said the bound man.
The masked men then pushed the 26-year-old American to the floor and shouted "God is greatest" above his screams as one of them sawed his head off with a large knife then held it aloft for the camera.

[The Islamic web site said Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a top ally of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, was the man who cut off Berg's head. The statement in the video was signed off with Zarqawi's name and dated May 11.]

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Rumsfeld 'doing a superb job' [at avoiding blame?]

President Bush continued to steer blame for the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal away from Mr Rumsfeld when he led a powerful show of support for his Defence Secretary during a visit to the Pentagon.
But despite this endorsement, there is mounting evidence undermining sworn testimony -- by Mr Rumsfeld and the Pentagon's senior commanders -- that the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison were carried out only by "a handful" of junior officers.
Numerous witnesses told the military's inquiry chief Major-General Antonio Taguba that shocking abuses, including sexual humiliation, were encouraged at the prison by US military intelligence officers.
General Taguba's internal army report described systemic abuse problems at Abu Ghraib and said junior officers were instructed by military intelligence and private contractors to "set the conditions" for prisoner interrogations.

Army Times newspaper, which often reflects opinion in the armed forces, condemned Mr Rumsfeld and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers in an editorial headed "A failure of leadership at the highest levels".

NEW WORLD ORDER

IBM: the 'Final Solutions' company

In the Holocaust museum in Washington sits a gleaming black, beige and silver machine. The label said it was an IBM Hollerith D-11 card-sorting machine. What did IBM, one of America's most powerful corporations, have to do with Hitler's attempt to exterminate European Jewry?

Nazi Germany was IBM's biggest overseas customer

Herman Hollerith invented the system of punch-cards and high-speed sorting in the 1880s for the census needs of the US government. His company, which was renamed International Business Machines in 1924, cornered 90pc of the global market in punch-card technology.
IBM provided “field engineers” to work with Nazi clients to custom-design the punch-cards. For concentration camp prisoners, column 3, hole 3 was for homosexual, hole 1 was for “political”, hole 8 was for Jew. Code 6 in column 34 was for “special handling” (gas oven/crematoria) prisoners.

MARK OF THE BEAST

Impassioned stallion kills handler

A sexually excited stallion bit a Polish man to death when he tried to calm the beast which had become uncontrollably aroused by a nearby mare, police said.
The horse went wild and began straining and bucking while pulling a farm cart through a village near the Baltic port of Szczec.

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Canada firm wins a slippery contract

A Canadian company has won a $2.5-million contract from the US Marine Corps to develop equipment to spay a super-slippery gel.
The 'Mobility Denial System' will be used to make roads and surfaces so slippery it will be impossible for mobs and rioters in a confrontation to stand or walk, or drive a vehicle.
Its customers include New York City, the 'Mounties', FBI, US Secret Service, US Army and Marines, various fire and police departments and the US Centers for Disease Control.

WATCH THE SKIES

UFO streaks through Martian sky

The US Spirit rover on Mars has seen a UFO streak across the Red Planet sky.
Astronomers say it could be the first meteor seen from the surface of another world, or a redundant orbiting spacecraft sent to Mars 30 years ago.
"We may never know, but we are still looking for clues," said Dr Mark Lemmon, from Texas A&M University.
Whatever it was, Spirit was lucky to catch sight of the UFO as the rover's main mission is to look downwards to study rocks and soil on the planet.

TRUTH, JUSTICE, THE AMERICAN WAY

Prison abuse should have rung a bell

"[Iraqis] must understand that I view those practices as abhorrent. They must also understand that what took place in Abu Gharib prison does not represent the America that I know."
- George W. Bush in response to the reports of torturing of Iraqi inmates by US troops in Abu Gharib prison.

Bush must have had a rare moment of speaking the truth, when he said he didn't read the papers: An October, 1999 story in the Austin American Statesman detailed how female prisoners there were regularly kept in portable detention cells for hours at a time in summer heat with no water. "In fear of more time in the cages," the article explains, "many women submit sexually to their oppressors and are raped, molested and forced to perform sodomy on their captors.

Mistreatment of prisoners is called routine in US

Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates. In Pennsylvania and some other states, inmates are routinely stripped in front of other inmates before being moved to a new prison or a new unit within their prison.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Disney's craven behavior: Farenheit 911 distribution stymied

NEW YORK TIMES Editorial leader of May 6, 2004:
Give the Walt Disney Company a gold medal for cowardice for blocking its Miramax division from distributing a film that criticizes President Bush and his family. A company that ought to be championing free expression has instead chosen to censor a documentary that clearly falls within the bounds of acceptable political commentary.
The documentary was prepared by Michael Moore, a controversial filmmaker who likes to skewer the rich and powerful. As described by Jim Rutenberg yesterday in The Times, the film, "Fahrenheit 9/11," links the Bush family with prominent Saudis, including the family of Osama bin Laden. It describes financial ties that go back three decades and explores the role of the government in evacuating relatives of Mr. bin Laden from the United States shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The film was financed by Miramax and was expected to be released this summer.
Mr. Moore's agent said that Michael Eisner, Disney's chief executive, had expressed concern that the film might jeopardize tax breaks granted to Disney for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Jeb Bush is governor. If that is the reason for Disney's move, it would underscore the dangers of allowing huge conglomerates to gobble up diverse media companies.
On the other hand, a senior Disney executive says the real reason is that Disney caters to families of all political stripes and that many of them might be alienated by the film. Those families, of course, would not have to watch the documentary.
It is hard to say which rationale for blocking distribution is more depressing. But it is clear that Disney loves its bottom line more than the freedom of political discourse.

NEW WORLD ORDER

DRAFT REGISTRATION: United States Armed Forces

Pursuant to Sub-Section 8, Paragraph C of Executive Branch Classified Directive #13334-P, dated 1 May 2004, the Armed Forces of the United States stand directed by President George W. Bush to accelerate preparations for compulsory induction of the adult non-homosexual population into active combat duty in the War Against Terror.

[WARNING: Persons failing to register by 2 November 2004 will be classified as deserters and become subject to the penalties prescribed therefore by the Rules and Articles of War, up to and including incarceration for a period not to exceed fifteen (15) calendar years and fines up to $125,000.00.]

WATCH THE SKIES

Is Earth in imminent danger from meteors?

"I happened to come across a message board in which one poster revealed that they had an insider in NASA who had been providing them information. In a nutshell he revealed that by mid to late May and going on through 2005, the earth's orbit is potentially going to go through the tail of several comets and afterward be inundated by meteors causing worldwide calamity from not only the vapor, but the impact(s). "

[The writer may or may not have correct information but there is no doubt that plenty of meteors have hit the atmosphere or the earth lately.

OIL WARS

The 19-year-old soldier in this photo, Army Pfc. Lynndie England, joined the army straight from school. According to her mother, her commanders told her and her fellow soldiers to do whatever was necessary to make the prisoners talk. She is now in the US, pregnant to a fellow soldier. Because she appeared in many of the released photos, she is now facing charges.

Bush apologises for torture of Iraqi prisoners ... but not to the Iraqis

More images and videos of Iraqi prisoner abuse will surface in the investigation of the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners held by the coalition authority, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told congressional investigators.
"If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

US Army Report on Torture of Iraqis in Abu Ghraib Prison
INVESTIGATION OF THE 800th MILITARY POLICE BRIGADE [prepared by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba]

MYSTERIOUS DNA

People who have lost or damaged teeth may soon grow their own

Pioneering technology will allow the patient to grow his or her own natural replacement teeth instead of having a synthetic implant..
The project is the brainchild of genetic research scientist, Professor Paul Sharpe, who is currently the Head of Division of Craniofacial Biology and Biomaterials of the Dental Institute, Kings College London. His discovery is based on human stem cell technology.

MEDIC ALERT

Girl burned from inside out by rare drug reaction

In an extremely rare, often fatal and little-known severe toxic reaction to a medical drug, Samantha Grasham's body caught fire - from the inside out - blistering most of the attractive 18-year-old's skin, as well as her mouth, throat, esophagus and airway, perhaps leaving her scarred for life. She spent nearly three weeks in the Burn Unit at St. Mary's Hospital, as doctors there worked to save her life and her skin.
As happens in most of these strange cases of what is known as Stevens-Johnson syndrome, there was no warning that Grasham would react so severely to a medication.
many common drugs - including prescription painkillers and antibiotics - even over-the-counter pain and fever medicines for children - are linked to this "fire in the flesh." In its severe form, when the skin is literally burned off the body and even internal organs are damaged, about half die.
Although the syndrome is rare - occurring at the rate of about 1 to 7 cases per million people per year - some say it is starting to increase significantly as more antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs hit the market.
Drugs that can trigger Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS) receive little warning publicity.

WATCH THE SKIES

Meteor lights up Perth

Residents across Perth have reported seeing a huge meteor across the north west skies. The Mundaring observatory says people from Armadale, south-east of the city, to The Vines in the north-east reported the event.
Paul Chester from Dianella said 'It was sort of brilliant white with an orange tail but it was really large, I mean much bigger than any I've seen before.'

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

Trial of 17 accused of child gang rape, torture and barbary opens in northern France

Seventeen people, including six women, went on trial in northern France on Tuesday for the gang rape over a five-year period of 18 children, aged three to 12, in a case that shocked the country.
Some of the defendants, aged 24 to 67, are also charged with 'rape with torture' or 'rape with barbaric acts' in connection with events that unfolded in a rundown housing project in Outreau, outside the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer.

OIL WARS

Rant on US news coverage of prisoner abuse

It is remarkable how the US press allows themselves to be manipulated by the government. When the Abu Ghuraib [Gharib] story broke, Bush just issued a statement that he was disgusted, taking no responsibility. The headlines the next day? 'Bush Disgusted by Photos.' The proper headline would have been 'Permanent Damage to US Image in Muslim World; Bush Fires No One.'

Abu Ghuraib prisoners speak of 'torture'
One of the released detainees who was forced to pose naked in a human pyramid has told Aljazeera that the acts committed against them were so horrible that he still could not get himself to speak about most of it.
Bremer 'knew of abuse in November'
Former Iraqi human rights minister Abdel Basset Turki said today US overseer Paul Bremer knew in November that Iraqi prisoners were being abused in US detention centres.
"In November I talked to Mr Bremer about human rights violations in general and in jails in particular. He listened but there was no answer. At the first meeting, I asked to be allowed to visit the security prisoners, but I failed," Turki said.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Iraqi civilian casualties ... but who's counting

"We do keep records of innocent civilians who are killed accidentally by coalition force soldiers,' said Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling, assistant commander for the First Armored Division, which patrols Baghdad. 'And, in fact, in every one of those innocent death situations, we conduct internal investigations to determine what happened.'
This contradicts the Pentagon line:
For example, three Pentagon officials told Helen Thomas that the military doesn't keep track of the number of Iraqi dead - military or civilian.
When White House Spokesman Scott McClellan was asked if Bush knows the Iraqi death toll, he refused to answer either way. Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Jane Campbell told the New York Times: "We don't keep a list. It's just not policy."

WATCH THE SKIES

City-sized asteroid to pass earth this spring

On September 29 an asteroid the size of a small city will make the closest known pass of such an enormous space rock anytime this century.
The orbit of Toutatis is pinned down with better precision than any other large asteroid known to cross Earth's orbit. Toutatis' 4-year trek around the Sun ranges from just inside the Earth's path out to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. This spring, it will pass within a million miles of our planet, about four times the distance to the Moon, which is close by cosmic standards -- especially for an object that could cause global devastation.

[Toutatis' dimensions are about 4.6 by 2.4 kilometers. One of the most amazing things about Toutatis is its bizarre, non-principal-axis spin state. To see what this gigantic rock looks like as it tumbles through space, view this mpeg video. The name comes from an ancient god of Celts and Gauls, whose name means father of the tribe. He was a god of war, growth and prosperity.]

ELECTRONIC DEMOCRACY

California decertifies Diebold bugware

In a move anticipated for several months, the state of California has decertified all touch-screen voting machines due to security snafus and vendor stonewalling.
California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley announced the decision late last week. The move is in response to Diebold's failure to deal honestly with numerous security issues in particular, but extends, at least temporarily, to all touch-screen devices. Still, only the Diebold AccuVote TSx will be strictly forbidden.

[Diebold can now choose between fixing its systems in short order, or challenging California's commonsense decision vigorously in the courts. It will be difficult for the company to sit by and let this dangerous precedent stand, perhaps encouraging other states to question their equipment as well.]

NEW WORLD ORDER

Selective Service eyes draft for women and older Americans

The US Selective Service System has mooted registering women for the military draft. The proposal -- which the agency's Acting Director Lewis Brodsky presented to senior Pentagon officials just before the US-led invasion of Iraq -- also seeks to extend the age of draft registration to 34 years old, up from 25.
The concept highlights the extent to which agency officials have planned for an expanded military draft in case the administration and Congress authorizes one.

HEARTS AND MINDS

Abuse may have been 'order'

Seymour Hersh, investigative reporter for The New Yorker, said that Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, one of six US military policemen accused of humiliating Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Gharib prison outside Baghdad, wrote home in January that he had 'questioned some of the things' he saw inside the prison, but that 'the answer I got was, 'This is how military intelligence wants it done'.'
The UK Guardian reported the treatment may have been ordered by US military intelligence to extract information from the captives, and was possibly more cruel than officially acknowledged.

CIA behind Iraqi prisoner abuse: Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told The New York Times in a telephone interview that the special high-security cellblock at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad had been under the direct control of army intelligence officers, not the reservists under her command.
Torture commonplace, say inmates' families: Photos of US soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqi detainees may have provoked outrage across the world. But for Hiyam Abbas they merely confirmed what she already knew - that US guards had tortured her 22-year-old son Hassan.

OIL WARS

A year on: 'Mission (still not) Accomplished' ... but what was the mission? WMD, regime change ...?

A year after President George Bush famously declared 'major combat' in Iraq over, how is it that so many Iraqis now have such a visceral hatred of Americans? One reason is that the photographs of brutality and humiliation of Iraqi detainees by British and American troops, which have so shocked the rest of the world and angered Arab countries, have come as little surprise to Iraqis. For months it has been clear to them that the occupation is very brutal; for weeks they have been watching pictures of the dead and injured in Fallujah on al-Jazeera satellite television which CNN did not broadcast.