WAR ON JUSTICE

Hicks denied mental health assessment

An Australian forensic psychiatrist has been refused access to Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks to assess his mental health.
Professor Paul Mullen from the Victorian Institute for Forensic Mental Health visited Mr Hicks in February last year.
Last week the United States Defence Department cancelled a return visit.
Professor Mullen says there are significant questions that need to be answered about Mr Hicks's state of mind.
"Without independent mental health professionals coming in from outside, we have no idea what kind of state of mind this man is in and how close he is to suicide," he said.
"It's an outrageous situation from a mental health perspective."
Professor Mullen has told ABC Radio's AM Mr hicks needs an independent assessment of his mental health before he is brought to trial.
"Mr Hicks has made a number of statements and the state of mind that he might have been in when he made those statements are part of what the defence has to know," he said.
"There's also the issue of Mr Hicks's current state of mind - whether he is in a state to even be fit to stand trial should they bring him to trial."
Mr Hicks's military lawyer, Major Michael Mori, says he has been told that defence counsel can no longer conduct its own assessments at Guantanamo Bay.

[]

RULE OF LAW

The Enemy Within

“No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”

This writ — or written order — has developed over the years as the principal check on arbitrary state power, the original human right, allowing a person who has been arrested to challenge the legality of that detention. It is called the “great writ,” habeas corpus, or “produce the body so that it may be examined.” Habeas corpus was codified by the British Parliament in 1640 and 1679 and is one of a handful of common laws explicitly referred to and protected in the American Constitution. Alexander Hamilton, the most zealous exponent of executive power among the founding fathers, noted that habeas corpus provided “perhaps greater securities to liberty and republicanism” than any clause of the Constitution.
But as of Oct. 17 of this year, this great writ has been substantially weakened in the United States by the assent of both the presidency and Congress.

NUCLEAR DAYS

China awards massive nuclear deal

Westinghouse, the nuclear-plant builder sold by British Nuclear Fuels earlier this year, has won a billion-dollar contract to build reactors in China.

The deal, worth about $8bn (£4.1bn), is for four nuclear plants. Analysts said that the deal may help soothe trade tensions with the US.
US-based Westinghouse defeated a number of other international companies to win the tender, including France's Areva and Russia's Atomstroiexport.
The fact that Westinghouse is now owned by Japan's Toshiba may also have helped secure the deal, especially after Japan's new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe signalled an intention to restore friendlier ties with China.
"This is all relationship driven," said David Hurd, an analyst at Deutsche Bank. "The US is putting pressure on China at the moment, so China's response is 'let's thrown them a bone,'" he explained.

SCALES OF JUSTICE

The Sunday Age newspaper campaigns to bring David Hicks home

He lives in a cell of featureless walls, 24-hour lighting and a single window of frosted glass that in daylight glows like a fluorescent globe.

For five years, David Hicks has occupied spaces like this, caught between a US Government that has been unable to prosecute him and an Australian Government that refuses to try to free him. This sentence without trial, in conditions so secret that he cannot be photographed, could drag on for another two years unless the Federal Government asks the United States to send him home.
Hicks' military lawyer, Major Michael Mori, says Australia is tolerating a terrible situation. While Hicks has been in legal limbo, John Walker Lindh — the so-called American Taliban who trained at the same camp as Hicks — has been charged, pleaded guilty and sentenced. But Lindh broke American law; Hicks has not broken Australian law.

Associate professor at Monash University's Global Terrorism Research Unit, David Wright-Neville, regards Hicks' treatment as outrageous in a human rights sense, and counterproductive from the perspective of counter-terrorism. He says the denial of justice and due process smacks of victimisation and threatens an entire community within Australia.
"David Hicks has been offered up as a sacrifi ce to the Bush administration," Wright-Neville says. "They had to let go of the Poms and the Swedes, so they want some token white guy so they can say we are prosecuting Europeans, not just Pakistanis and Saudis."

Law Council of Australia president Tim Bugg says the passage of time and the resulting loss of evidence means Hicks could not have a fair trial. "The Federal Government's inactivity and refusal to do anything is just extraordinary. There's an Australian citizen in the most appalling circumstances and the Government has done nothing to assist," he says.
Bugg says it appeared that political considerations rather than principle lay behind the Government's stance. "Because of that, the Government and the minister involved deserve to be condemned."

The Sunday Age invites readers to register their support to bring David Hicks home, and we will pass it on to the Federal Government. Send your messages to bringdavidhome@theage.com.au

BEAZLEY PUTSCH

Voters dump Beazley for Rudd: poll

SENSE AND PERCEPTION

'Beer goggles' effect explained

Scientists believe they have worked out a formula to calculate how "beer goggles" affect a drinker's vision.
The drink-fuelled phenomenon is said to transform supposedly "ugly" people into beauties - until the morning after.

Researchers at Manchester University say while beauty is in the eye of the beer-holder, the amount of alcohol consumed is not the only factor.
Additional factors include the level of light in the pub or club, the drinker's own eyesight and the room's smokiness.
The distance between two people is also a factor. They all add up to make the aesthetically-challenged more attractive, according to the formula.

KEY TO FORMULA
Beer goggles equation
An = number of units of alcohol consumed
S = smokiness of the room (graded from 0-10, where 0 clear air; 10 extremely smoky)
L = luminance of 'person of interest' (candelas per square metre; typically 1 pitch black; 150 as seen in normal room lighting)
Vo = Snellen visual acuity (6/6 normal; 6/12 just meets driving standard)
d = distance from 'person of interest' (metres; 0.5 to 3 metres)

STRAW MEN

Straw Man arguments in the media

A couple of straw men have sprouted of late: arguments ignoring an actual position and substituting a distorted version of that position.

McDonalds:- The fast food behemoth (and enormous real estate owner) has a series of adverts on television in which a cool young person says their friends have been claiming the meat in McDonalds is crap, and that they intend to investigate the claim for themselves. They find out that McDonald's meat is of a relatively high grade.
The meat quality is the straw man. The truism is that the criticism levelled at McDonalds, by the intended audience of the advertisements, concerns general nutrition values, salt and sugar levels and the presence of high concentrations of trans-fats, the quality of the beef is not being criticised.

AWB:- Terence Cole's inquiry into the Australian single-desk wheat trader showed "no-wrongdoings" by members of the Australian Government's Foreign Office during AWB's six-year kickbacks arrangement with Saddam Hussein in an Oil for Food deal.

Despite the fact an investigation of the Government department was not among the terms of reference of the inquiry, the commissioner heavily criticised the Government's apparently lackadaisical attitude to scrutinising the grain trader's activities in the Middle East even ignoring repeated warnings that there was someting amis.
Mr Cole made a couple of dozen recommendations to the Government which, between the lines read: 'You fellows have been up to some very dodgy stuff but we'll let it slide this time if you put these new regulations in place.
The Government takes the bit of the Cole inquiry report about "no wrongdoings", which is politico-legalese for no criminal conduct, and then starts demanding apologies for all the nasty things their critics have been saying about them.
The finding of "no wrongdoing" is being put forward to insinuate that the Government did nothing wrong.
Prime Minister John Howard said: "The Commissioner has found in the most emphatic of terms imaginable that there's not evidence of wrongdoing. We didn't have anything to hide and the Commissioner has found that there was no wrongdoing on the part of any of my ministers." - ABC News: "Government Cleared in AWB Probe"
Regardless of the fact the comissioner was not looking for wrongdoing, the statement that no criminallity was suspected among members of the Government is, in the big picture, very far from not doing anything wrong.

[Bruce's Rave and Rant]

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Middle East facing three civil wars, Jordan's King says

Jordan's King Abdullah is warning that the Middle East could soon be engulfed in violence, saying three separate civil wars may be about to erupt in the region, including in Iraq.
King Abdullah says there could be civil wars brewing in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon.
"The United States has now spent as long in Iraq as it spent fighting World War II," he said.
Senior Republicans are saying Mr Bush will get tough with the Iraqis at this week's summit.

[A classified US Government document obtained by the New York Times says Iraq's insurgents are now financially self-sufficient, raising more than $100 million a year from kidnap ransoms, smuggling and counterfeiting.]

SPOIL A SPACEWALK

Cosmonaut tees off into space

At the start of a six-hour spacewalk, cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin hit a golf ball into Earth's orbit from the International Space Station (ISS) to raise money for the Russian space program.
The station flight engineer made a one-armed swat with a gold plated six-iron to send the lightweight ball on a journey estimated to take it around the Earth at least 48 times before it burns up in the atmosphere.
Mr Tyurin spent 16 minutes setting up the shot off a ladder on a Russian docking module, with the help of United States astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria and under the guidance of Russian flight controllers.

"Okay, there it goes," Mr Tyurin said. "It went pretty far. It was an excellent shot. I can still see it as a little dot moving away from us."

Cosmonaut's shanked space shot gives NASA yips

It may have been a golf shot that went around the world, but he fluffed it.
As he walked in space, 350 kilometres above the Pacific, the cosmonaut whacked an 3g ball into history.
But the $US5 million stunt, sponsored by a Canadian golf equipment manufacturer, immediately went into the rough.

Instead of going in a line opposite to the flight path of the international space station, the ball swerved unexpectedly to the side. Ground controllers declared Tyurin had "shanked" the shot and that the ball had zoomed far off course.

[He had been armed with three ultra-light balls, weighing just three grams each, but he was quickly ordered to put them away and get on with his real work, fitting new equipment outside the space station.
As he packed away his club, gold-plated to reduce static electricity, mission control reported that it was still trying to calculate the ball's trajectory.]

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Alexander Litvinenko, before and after poisoning.

Moscow to blame for poisoning, KGB director says

Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who had been fighting for his life in recent days after an apparent poisoning, has died.
In an interview just hours before he slipped into unconsciousness, Mr Litvinenko whispered: "The bastards got me, but they won't get everybody".
The Kremlin said on Friday the ex-spy's death was a "tragedy" but was now a matter for British police to investigate.
Litvinenko, a fierce critic of Putin, first began to feel ill on November 1, after having tea with two Russians at a central London hotel, followed by lunch at a London sushi bar with an Italian academic.

The former Russian spy London, has been a very public thorn in the side of Russian President Vladimir Putin, blaming the President for ramping up the violence in Chechnya and ordering the assassination of his opponents.
Now a KGB defector has told AM he has no doubt that Moscow ordered Mr Litvinenko's poisoning, which could set the scene for Britain's biggest ever clash with President Putin's Russia.
Some reports have it Mr Litvinenko was investigating the recent shooting of Russian Journalist Anna Politkovskaya

Alexander Litvinenko's vocal and constant derision of President Putin immediately had his friends claiming he was poisoned by the FSB (former KGB) or some other intelligence agency in Moscow.

GREEN URANIUM

Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu National Park in Australia's Northern Territory.

Uranium mine blamed for high Aboriginal cancer rate

CANCER cases among Aboriginal people living near Australia's biggest uranium mine appear to be almost double the expected rate, a study by the Federal Government's leading indigenous research body shows.
The study also found there had been no monitoring in the past 20 years on the Ranger mine's impact on local indigenous health. Yet since 1981, there have been more than 120 spillages and leaks of contaminated water at the mine, located in the world heritage-listed Kakadu National Park.

Switkowski task force to get Indigenous cancer report, co-author says
PM challenged on nuclear power ban

CRIMINAL MINDS

Islamist cops nab 22 in raid on Somali smokers

Islamic religious police on Tuesday arrested 22 people for smoking in the Somali port of Kismayo, where they will be flogged if found guilty of violating a new tobacco ban, officials said.
Those detained were nabbed just days after local Islamist officials announced a total ban on the use of tobacco in the key southern port, in a new sign of their increasingly strict application of Sharia law.
"We started raids against tobacco users and we have arrested 22 people so far," Kismayo police deputy chief Mohmaed Abdulkadir Jibril told reporters here, about 500km south of the capital Mogadishu. "Some of them were smoking cigarettes while others were using tobacco leaves when they were caught," he said.

[The anti-smoking raids are the latest indication that Somalia's powerful Islamist movement, which is now girding for war with the weak government, is intent on imposing a fundamentalist version of Koranic law in its territory.]

JUSTICE V DAVID HICKS

Justice at Guantanamo? The Paradox of David Hicks

Of the 500 detainees still imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Hicks is one of only four detainees formally charged with offences. The remaining detainees, many preparing to enter their fifth year of detention, have not yet been charged. In this sense, Hicks can be seen to be one of the ‘lucky’ ones, released from the limbo of detention in the absence of charge, trial or conviction. The paradox is that the treatment of David Hicks to date has transformed him from an alleged perpetrator of war crimes into a possible victim of one. This stems from his likely status as a prisoner of war.

CRIKEY!I do not know whether David Hicks is guilty or innocent of charges related to terrorism. It is, however, damaging to Australia's reputation that an Australian citizen has been rotting in Guantanamo Bay for nearly five years without trial. It has taken his American Army lawyer, Major Mori, to argue that he cannot receive a fair trial before an American military commission and a British judge to state that the long detention and proposed trial of Hicks is contrary to the rule of law.

[Former Chief Justice, Sir Gerard Brennan, has said that the Australian Government's supine acceptance of the situation "shows we are morally impoverished", adding that an "Australian citizen's right to justice should never be a mere trading item in international relations"]

BLACK-BOX VOTING

E-voting glitches plague US midterm elections

Technical glitches and usability flaws caused problems with many electronic voting systems in Tuesday's midterm elections. Experts say the systems, particularly those that let users cast their vote through touch-sensitive screens, must be tested more thoroughly in future to prevent such problems happening again.
More than 20,000 complaints were logged by the Election Protection Coalition, many involving e-voting systems. Close races in Virginia and Montana also threw the spotlight on the security and auditing of results.
Some voters complained that voting machines simply did not work, and those at polling places in Denver crashed repeatedly, according to reports. Polling staff across the country were also unfamiliar with the equipment, and some polling places were forced to stay open later than planned.

[The most disconcerting issue concerned touch-screen machines allegedly "flipping" votes cast for one candidate to another. Some voters were unable to correct on-screen mistakes, while others may not have spotted them.]

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

Sanaa Athamna lies dead with the bodies of her relatives Maysa and Maram. Eighteen members of the same family died in an Israeli artillery attack. Photograph: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images.

'I cannot see a day when we live in peace with them'

Sanaa Athamna lay as if she slept, dead on a steel tray in the morgue of Beit Hanoun hospital. Across her forehead was a single, hairline fracture and beneath her eye a smudge of blood, the only visible marks of the destruction brought by the wave of Israeli artillery shells that struck her street in Beit Hanoun before dawn yesterday.

In her arms, hospital staff laid the bodies of her relatives: two sisters, Maysa, one, and Maram, three. Their mother Manal was also killed in yesterday's attack, but lay in a morgue at another hospital awaiting burial.

In all, 18 members of the extended Athamna family died when Israeli artillery struck their houses on Hamad Street. At least 14 of the dead were women and children. It was the biggest single Israeli strike in the Palestinian territories for four years and came only a day after the military had ended a six-day incursion in Beit Hanoun, a heavy battle which claimed more than 50 lives.

A profound pessimism has taken hold of Israel
Grief turns to rage as Beit Hanoun buries its dead

THE 'MODERATE'

Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani: "Death to gays and anyone else with a Sunni disposition".

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani says, "Kill a Gay for Allah"

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani of Iraq has issued a death fatwa against lesbian and gay people. On his website, he calls for the killing of homosexuals in the "worst, most severe way" (see his text below).
“Sistani's murderous homophobic incitement has given a green light to Shia Muslims to hunt and kill lesbians and gay men,” says exiled gay Iraqi, Ali Hili, of the London-based gay human rights group OutRage.

Arabic link to Ayatollah's website
Go to the Sistani website [www.sistani.org]. Under the section Istiftaaat, go to letter L in Arabic, look up to Lewat which means (sodomy). See question 5.
Q5: What is the judgment for sodomy and lesbianism?
A5: Forbidden. Punished, in fact, killed. The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.

Death squad kills Iraqi boy for having sex with men

Baghdad, Iraq: A 14-year-old boy was murdered by an apparent police death squad because he had sex with men. Ahmed Khalil was shot repeatedly in front of his home in a poor section of the capital by men wearing police uniforms

Gay beaten and burned to death


Haydar Faiek, aged 40, a transsexual Iraqi, was allegedly beaten and burned to death.


Mahmoud Asgari (16) and Ayaz Marhoni (18) were tortured and then hanged in Iran for being gay July 19, 2005.

ON THIS MONTH

Reasons for war

In November 1990, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl testified before the US Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers tossing premature babies onto the floor of a Kuwaiti hospital so their incubators could be sent back to Iraq. Her testimony was cited by Senators as a crucial factor in their decision to go to war with Iraq. It later turned out that the girl, who had been brought forward by a US public relations company hired by Kuwait, was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S.


["The streets of our country are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might, and the Republic is in danger. Yes - danger from within and without. We need law and order! Without it our nation cannot survive." - Adolf Hitler, 1932]

VEILED THREATS

Long Black Veil: Tony Blair's Deadly Game of Muslim-Bashing

For centuries in Britain, each sentence of death was accompanied by a strange ritual. Before handing down the verdict, the judge would first take a piece of black silk cloth and put it on his head. With this rather bizarre and ancient drapery covering his powdered wig - itself a relic, a cultural fossil carried into modern times - he would then render the prisoner into the hangman's care.

In such a guise, the black cloth once represented the full, dread measure of state power. Today, however, a cloth of similar size, shape and color - worn across the faces of a small number of some of the most vulnerable members of British society - has become a target of that same dread power, after Britain's high and mighty unleashed a sudden, thunderous sneak attack on the nation's Muslim minority, centering the campaign around the tabloid-ready symbol of the veil.

LIQUID INTAKE

India finds pesticides in colas

Indian MPs have upheld the findings of an environment group which reported that Coca-Cola and Pepsi drinks contained pesticide residues. Activists of the Indian Democratic Party protest in Delhi

The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said last August that its investigations revealed the drinks contained harmful residues and posed a health risk.
A 15-member committee, which included MPs from both the government and the opposition, said the CSE findings on the presence of pesticide residues were correct.

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

"Where the bee can live, man too can live" - Juliette de Bairacli-Levy

Howard's science award lauds military applications of the bee

The Prime Minister's Science Prizes, awarded in Parliament House in Canberra, went to Professor Srinivasan of the Australian National University for studying the brilliance of bees and even how their brains may be adapted to fly combat aircraft.

Mandyam Veerambudi Srinivasan: "What I could tell you about is something that really excites me for some of my future work. I'm getting more and more interested in trying to learn how sophisticated these small nervous systems are in terms of being able to feel emotions and feel pain."

WAR IS HELL

Israel confirms phosphorus munitions used in Lebanon

Israel has confirmed for the first time that it used controversial white phosphorus shells against military targets in southern Lebanon, an Israeli newspaper has reported.
White phosphorus munitions cause severe burns and agonising deaths.
The chemical seeps into the bloodstream and causes respiratory problems and other ailments in victims, which has lead many to demand it be classified as a chemical weapon.
The Haaretz daily has reported that Israeli Government-Parliamentary Relations Minister Yakov Edery told law makers last week that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have used phosphorus munitions.
"The IDF made use of phosphorus shells during the war against Hezbollah in attacks against military targets in open ground," he told the newspaper.

[The International Red Cross and other human rights groups have long argued that phosphorus weapons should be banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention.
US leaders went on the defensive after reports surfaced last year that American troops in Iraq had used phosphorus in the battle for Fallujah in 2004.]


Melting the Skin Off of Children

In a documentary by RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, a former American soldier who fought at Fallujah says: "I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it's known as Willy Pete.

"Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 metres is done for."

The Independent, US forces 'used chemical weapons' during assault on city of Fallujah

EXPANDING SCIENCE

Occult claims clamor for serious study

A telepathy study, presented at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, involved 63 people asked to say in advance which of four friends or relatives was calling on the telephone.

The session featured research from Rupert Sheldrake, an independent biologist who is funded by Trinity College, Cambridge, that claims to have found evidence that some people know telepathically who is calling them before they answer the telephone. The answers were 45 percent correct, which, the researchers claimed, was above the 25 percent expected through chance. A host of angry British scientists said telepathy is "a charlatan's fancy".

"Either I or the scientist is a fool with our opposing views of probability,'' wrote William James, the famed American psychologist and philosopher 100 years ago regarding another famous experiment.

The risk of appearing foolish, he believed, was the least of the dangers. There also was the risk of failing to investigate the world in all its dimensions, or making it appear smaller and less interesting than it really is.
He worried about a time when people would become "indifferent to science because science is so callously indifferent to their experiences".

[He worried also that a close-minded community of science could become a kind of cult itself, devoted to its own beliefs and no more.]

Discussion between Rupert and a skeptical Prof Peter Atkins

Professor Peter Atkins, who is a chemist at Lincoln College Oxford: You can’t rely on any of these experiments. There is no serious work done in this field. The samples that people use are very tiny, the effects are statistically insignificant, the controls are not done in a scientific way. On the whole there’s just no point in doing it. There are no serious reasons for believing there should be an effect of telepathy anyway. There is no mechanism within modern science to account for it. There’s nothing that drives people to believe in it except sentiment, emotion, and things like that.
[Sheldrake is] just playing with statistics.
Interviewer: Let’s put that to Rupert. Rupert Sheldrake, he says you’re just playing with statistics. He doesn’t believe a word of it. What do you say to him?
Rupert Sheldrake: Well I’d like to ask him if he’s actually read the evidence? May I ask you Professor Atkins if you’ve actually studied any of this evidence or any other evidence?
Atkins: No, but I would be very suspicious of it.

HIPOCRITES RULE

Italian MPs Caught In TV Drugs Sting

Italy's privacy authority blocked the broadcasting of a television show exposing the widespread drug use of Italian politicians. The 'Lene' program carried out secret tests for illegal substances on 50 members of parliament.
Almost a third tested positive for cocaine and cannabis.
Although the identity of the parlamentarians was not revealed, the authority blocked the program saying it violated the privacy of the MPs who were unaware they were being tested.

A reporter interviewed lawmakers on a draft budget being debated in parliament.
Prior to the interview a make-up artist dabbed the faces of the interviewees and their perspiration was later tested for drug use. The drug wipe revealed drug consumption in purportedly in the 36 hours prior to the interview.

Italy has one of the toughest drug laws in Europe. Under new legislation, people found in possession of cannabis could risk having their passport and their driving licence suspended. Dealing in cocaine or cannabis is punished with jail sentences of between six and 20 years and a fine of up to 260,000 euros.

Yahoo News version

[The program was to air on Italia Uno, one of three national television channels owned by the family of the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi]

FLASHBACK

Chirac drumming up support to halt US-British rush to war

French President Jacques Chirac is lobbying other heads of state to join him at an emergency summit of United Nations Security Council members to search for a compromise on Iraq, according to a statement from his office at the weekend.
The presidential palace also reiterated France's objection to a US-British draft resolution giving Saddam Hussein a March 17 ultimatum to destroy illicit weapons or prove he has none.
"War is not a small thing," Mr Chirac's office said. "When you declare death or life, this merits being taken to the highest level of responsibility."

[SMH: March 10 2003]

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Anna Politkovskaya. Shot by an assassin in the lift of her apartment building.

Prominent Journalist, Kremlin Critic, Shot Dead In Moscow

Hundreds rallied in downtown Moscow on Sunday to protest the murder of crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
the apparent contract killing Saturday of Politkovskaya, a fierce critic of the war in Chechnya who had tirelessly uncovered abuses against civilians, became a major focus of the protest that drew about 500 demonstrators to Pushkin Square.

Russian Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, 48, had today been due to publish an article on torture and kidnappings by pro-Moscow forces in the restless southern republic of Chechnya, her colleagues said. About a dozen other Russian reporters have been killed in Russia since Putin came to power.

Politkovskaya was poisoned on a flight to Belsan during the hostage seige which ended in the deaths of hundreds, mostly children. She was intent on arranging negotiations to defuse the situation.

Belsan questions

Was the hostage-taking preventable? How many guerrillas were there, and did any of them manage to escape? Why did the bombs in the gym explode, and why did the roof catch fire? The tank parked outside the school: how many times did it fire, and at what targets? Exactly why did the hostages die? Were there any plans to storm the school, and was there any possibility of reaching agreement with the terrorists on a "peaceful" withdrawal?
Other publications add further questions to this list. What were senior state officials doing during those three dark days? Why were orders from the Interior Ministries of North Ossetia ignored? They had prior information about the guerrillas planning an operation. How did a number of armed terrorists manage to enter Beslan at all?
That last question, as the Kommersant newspaper reports, is answered by Shamil Basayev in a statement posted on his Kavkazcenter.com website shortly before the first anniversary of the tragedy. He claims that his people were "encouraged" to seize the school by "the special services of North Ossetia".

ANIMAL FARM

BBC crew gathers evidence of organ harvesting in China

An undercover BBC crew appears to have found direct evidence of organ harvesting from executed prisoners, which is thriving on a growing demand from desperately ill foreigners.
BBC learnt that the going price for a liver transplant is now $125,000 and that according to the doctors, the donors are recently executed prisoners.

TRANSCRIPT:
I've told the hospital I'm looking for a new liver for my ailing father. The chief surgeon, Dr Dung, tells me he can get a matching liver in less than three weeks. Then I broach the awkward issue of where the liver will come from.
We have heard that many of the organs come from executed prisoners.
DR DUNG: Yes, it's true.
RUPERT WINGFIELD-HAYES: Another man arrives. This is the hospital's agent for dealing with foreign clients. He's eager to do business and produces documents for making a payment of £50,000 to a bank account in Hong Kong. He's also far less discrete.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To put it bluntly, it's true. We use a lot of organs from executed prisoners. The prisoners on death row have done many bad things. Before they die they give their organs as a present to society. It's a good thing.
RUPERT WINGFIELD-HAYES: Then an astonishing admission; that an increase in executions ahead of the 1 October national holiday means there is a sudden abundance of organs.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 1 October is China's National Day.

Mass arrest of Falun Gong practitioners on National Day

At first all appeared quiet. But then suddenly, at about 0830, throngs of Falun Gong protestors emerged amid the crowds, holding up large banners and shouting "Falun Gong is good".
Hundreds of police swarmed onto the square to try and suppress the protests but their efforts were hampered by the vast numbers of ordinary tourists, who gawped in amazement as the protestors were tackled.
Ranks of uniformed police began to clear the square completely as the Falun Gong protestors were gradually rounded up, herded onto buses and driven away.
The number of protestors is estimated to run into the hundreds.

Sale of executed Falun Gong prisoner organs in China 'shocking'
Falun Gong supporters say thousands of members have been jailed and hundreds killed.
How they were killed -- and for what purpose -- were troubling questions raised during a Congressional subcommittee hearing in Washington, DC.
The subject was a report from human rights activists who say the Chinese government is supporting the sale of organs from Falun Gong prisoners who have been executed.

Download PDF  Report into Allegations of
Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China
by David Kilgour, former Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific) for Canada, and David Matas, international human rights lawyer

UN Rapporteur Investigates CCP’s Live Organ Harvesting

The UN Human Rights Commission pays attention to the issue of the CCP killing and harvesting practitioners’ organs. Austria’s Manfred Nowak, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture will investigate the severe allegations.

MINI ME

Flores man ... a model of a skull from the newly found species of hobbit-sized humans that lived about 18,000 years ago in Indonesia.

Australian researchers back hobbit claims

Researchers from the Australian National University (ANU) are backing claims that the discovery of the so-called hobbit in Indonesia does represent a new species of human.
In 2003, Australian scientists unearthed the remains of a hobbit-like species, with adults about the height of a three-year-old child, in a cave on a remote island in Indonesia.
In a new paper, ANU researchers reject claims that the skeleton of a hobbit-like species was simply a very short human with a rare brain disease.

["What is particularly interesting about it is it survived in isolation through those two-million-years or so in eastern Indonesia and its existence was quite unsuspected until very recently," ANU Professor Colin Groves said.]

MIND OVER MATTER

What makes us human?

Scientists figured out decades ago that chimps are our nearest evolutionary cousins, roughly 98 percent to 99 percent identical to humans at the genetic level. When it comes to DNA, a human is closer to a chimp than a mouse is to a rat.
Yet tiny differences, sprinkled throughout the genome, have made all the difference.
Agriculture, language, art, music, technology and philosophy -- all the achievements that make us profoundly different from chimpanzees -- are somehow encoded within minute fractions of our genetic code.

[Genetic engineering by aliens?]

BIG NUKE

Is Big Oil going nucular?

[]

'NUCULAR' DAZE

Scientists create more efficient nuclear power fuel

United States researchers have re-designed nuclear reactor fuel by changing the shape of the fuel from solid cylinders to hollow tubes, adding surface area that allowed water to flow inside and outside the pellets, increasing heat transfer.
They claim new fuel design is also much safer because it reaches an operating temperature of about 700C, much lower than 1800C for conventional fuel and further from the 2840C melting point for uranium fuel.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers believe they can make nuclear power plants 50 per cent more powerful and safer.

OILY ADDICTS

'Iraq for sale' documentary has KBR fuming

Acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed, and Uncovered) takes you inside the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a result of profiteering in the reconstruction of Iraq. Iraq for Sale uncovers the connections between private corporations making a killing in Iraq and the decision makers who allow them to do so.

KBR's RESPONSE: "Halliburton supports an organization like Brave New Films’ right to free speech -- even when they have the facts wrong.
The claims alleged against KBR in this film represent yet another recycled rehash of inaccurate information.
Unlike a fictitious place such as Xanadu, the reality of Iraq, regardless of any political opinion or agenda, requires support and dedication that KBR is proud to continue providing to U.S. and coalition forces."
- Halliburton press release (14 Sept 2006)

HOWARD'S WAY

Australia's Prime Minister John Howard on the looming climate catastrophe

John Howard said he was “sceptical” about “gloomy” climate change predictions.

Prime Minister John Howard, a friend and ally of Bush, said he would not meet Al Gore during his Australian visit and would not heed his advice to sign up to Kyoto. "I don't take policy advice from films," Howard told reporters.

"Whilst believing that the planet is getting warmer and whilst accepting some, I don't accept all, and I believe that the methods that he [Gore] proposes will do a lot of short and medium term damage to the Australian economy."

AL GORE: “He is increasingly alone in that view among people who've really looked at the science. The so-called "gloomy predictions" are predictions of what would happen if we did not act. It's not a question of mood. It's a question of reality. And, you know, there's no longer debate over whether the earth is round or flat, though there are some few people who still think it's flat, we generally ignore that view because the evidence has mounted to the point where we understand that it shouldn't be taken seriously.”

In a talk given in February, Clive Hamiliton (director of Australia's most prominent progressive think tank, The Australia Institute) identifies John Howard as one of Australia's climate change "dirty dozen".

[Australia's Prime Minister John Howard said terrorism was a greater threat to Australia in the future than global warming.
"I think terrorism is a greater threat because I think we are doing things about global warming. We're doing things about terrorism, but terrorism is more arbitrary, it's far more capricious, and of course its immediate consequences on the people it touches are more hideous.]

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

Relatives of 14-Year Old Girl Azza Hammad Killed in an Israeli raid on Rafah yesterday.

Girl killed, seven hurt in IAF Gaza strike

Israel Air Force air strikes on a house in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah early Wednesday killed a 14-year-old girl and wounded seven other people, hospital officials said.
There were no major injuries in the initial strike, which leveled the house. However, as children gathered to look at the rubble, a second airstrike hit the house, killing a 14-year-old girl and wounded seven other children, hospital officials said.

[Flashback: Not guilty. The Israeli captain who put 17 bullets into a Palestinian schoolgirl. [November 16, 2005]]

EXOTIC ETHICS

AWB lawyer denies ignoring ethics

Senior AWB lawyer Jessica Lyons has told the oil-for-food inquiry she did not put her legal ethics aside to work out how to circumvent UN sanctions.

Ms Lyons received outside legal advice that a lump sum payment would breach UN sanctions. She told AWB executives they could pay over time as long as it was to a company outside Iraq, and they could also get a deal for more wheat sales.
Commissioner Terence Cole says the advice reads as, "We can't pay, here's a way of getting around sanctions on Iraq, and an argument that we're not paying Iraq".

[The Iraqi Grains Board wanted $US2.2 million as compensation for alleged wheat contamination.
The inquiry is investigation $290 million worth of kickbacks paid by AWB to the regime of Saddam Hussein.]

HOT TOPIC

Earth's temperature nears million-year high

Earth may be close to the warmest it has been in the last million years.
James Hansen, of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, says this does not necessarily mean there will be more frequent El Ninos, which can disrupt normal weather around the world.
But he says it could well mean that these wild patterns will be stronger when they occur.
The El Nino phenomenon is an important factor in monitoring global warming, according to a paper by Mr Hansen and colleagues published in the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[They blame this phenomenon on global warming that is affecting the surface of the western Pacific before it affects the deeper water. ]

AMIGO NO GO

Costello questions Trujillo's $9m salary

Treasurer Peter Costello is demanding the Telstra board explain why chief executive Sol Trujillo is being paid nearly $9 million.
Mr Trujillo has infuriated the Government by strongly opposing its appointment of the former government adviser, Geoff Cousins, to the Telstra board.

[Mr Costello is demanding that the board explain why Mr Trujillo is being paid $8.7 million this year when the company's share price is falling.]

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

US report says Iraq fuels terror

The New York Times newspaper has published what it says are the findings of a classified US intelligence paper on the effects of the Iraq war.
The document reportedly blames the three-year-old conflict for increasing the threat of terrorism and helping fuel Islamic radicalism worldwide.
This latest finding, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, is the most comprehensive report yet, based on the considered analysis of all 16 of the US intelligence agencies.

[According to the New York Times, the report says the invasion and occupation of Iraq has spawned a new generation of Islamic radicalism that has spread across the globe.]

But Bush says America is safer

"We are safer because we've taken action to protect the homeland. We are safer because we're on the offensive against our enemies overseas."

Homer: Ah, not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm!
Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, honey.
Lisa: By your logic, I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away!
Homer: Uh-huh, and how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around here, do you?
Homer: (Looks around) Lisa, I'd like to buy your rock.

PAPAL BULL

Pope comment 'linked to crusade'

The Pope's statement has failed to defuse the anger of many Muslims.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said recent remarks by the Pope on Islam were in line with what he called a "crusade" against Muslims.

The background to the controversy, he said, was the "wish of powers whose survival depends on creating crises".

The furore over the Pope's remarks about Islam has left many Catholics inside and outside the Vatican shaking their heads in disbelief over concerns about the Pope's attitude towards the Church's relations with the Islamic world.

The previous Pope, John Paul II, wanted to reach out to other religions and in 2001, on a visit to Syria, he became the first pope to set foot in a mosque.
Benedict XVI undoubtedly wants to achieve better relations with Islam, but there is an important proviso.
It can be summed up in a single word: reciprocity. It means that if Muslims want to enjoy religious freedom in the West, then Christians should have an equal right to follow their faith in Islamic states, without fear of persecution.


[The row began last week, when Pope Benedict XVI repeated criticism of the Prophet Muhammad by a medieval scholar.]

WEATHER CHANGE

Paul Ehrlich

Old school conservative lashes out

“I’m very conservative on conservation issues. We shouldn't allow people to steal the term conservative who are actually radicals and want to destroy the world now for fun and profit. When they nominated George Bush, who was drunk for his entire time at Yale University, knows absolutely nothing, and was a terrible Governor of Texas, I could no longer stand being labeled a Republican."

Ex-Republican, Stanford Professor of Biology Paul Ehrlich.

[Download MP3 of this edition.]

ROCKET GIRL

US entrepreneur and space tourist Anousheh Ansari.

Space tourist breaks three records

A RUSSIAN Soyuz spacecraft blasted off yesterday carrying a woman set to notch up three space records: the first woman tourist, first Muslim woman, and first Iranian in orbit.
Anousheh Ansari, 40, an Iranian-American telecommunications entrepreneur, joined a Russian cosmonaut and US astronaut in the cramped interior of Soyuz TMA-9 for a flight to the International Space Station.

Ms Ansari, a US citizen based in Texas who left Iran in 1984, said she wanted to be an example to her compatriots. "I think my flight has become a sort of ray of hope for young Iranians living in Iran, helping them to look forward to something positive, because everything they've been hearing is all so very depressing and talks of war and bloodshed," she said last week.

[Ms Ansari has not said how much her ticket cost but previous space tourists have paid the Russian space program about $US20 million ($A26.5 million).]

PONTIFICATION

"Ratz."

Pope sorry for offending Muslims

In a speech at Regensburg University, German-born Pope Benedict XVI quoted an Emperor of the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire regarding:

"part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both."

[The Emperor] "addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The speech incensed Muslims across the world, resulting in the Pontif's belated apology and putting an imminent visit to Turkey into question.


[Read the Pope's entire speech [37KB PDF]]

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

IAEA blasts U.S. intelligence report on Iran

The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has written a scathing letter to a U.S. congressional committee saying part of its case against Iran is "outrageous and dishonest".
The report came a day before an Iranian opposition figure accused Iran of using lasers to enrich uranium in its bid to develop a nuclear weapon.
The International Atomic Energy Agency wrote the leadership of the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, lambasting it for claiming that the Islamic republic "is currently enriching uranium to weapons grade".

[The subcommittee's report also insinuates that the IAEA may be in cahoots with Tehran in covering up Iran's nuclear ambitions. The IAEA shot back that the claim was "an outrageous and dishonest suggestion".]

STONE THE CROWS

CWA votes to push for marijuana trials

THE normally conservative Country Women's Association will lobby governments to begin trials in the medicinal use of marijuana.
In a decision that may send ripples of concern through conservative parties, the CWA national executive voted in Darwin to lobby for cannabis to be tested as a treatment for chronic pain.
Incoming CWA president Leslie Young, a member of the Tasmanian branch from where the motion is understood to have originated, said "cannabis is another option for people who are terminally and chronically ill.
"We'd just like them to do the trials and find out."
Ms Young, a trained nurse who runs a vegetable and livestock farm with her husband and 28-year-old son at East Sassafras near Devonport.

[Queensland Nationals president Bruce McIvor said his party was against the use of marijuana in any form for any purpose.]

LAW OF WAR

Bush aims to kill War Crimes Act

The US War Crimes Act of 1996 makes it a felony to commit grave violations of the Geneva Conventions.
The Washington Post recently reported that the Bush administration is quietly circulating draft legislation to eliminate crucial parts of the War Crimes Act.

Observers say the Administration plans to slip it through Congress this fall while there still is a guaranteed Republican majority -- perhaps as part of the military appropriations bill, the proposals for Guantánamo tribunals or a new catch-all "anti-terrorism" package.

[The War Crimes Act was little noticed until the disclosure of Alberto Gonzales's infamous 2002 "torture memo." Gonzales, then serving as presidential counsel, advised President Bush to declare that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to people the US captured in Afghanistan. That, Gonzales wrote, "substantially reduced the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act."]

VOICE OF REASON

France rejects "war on terror"

France issued an implicit criticism of U.S. foreign policy on Thursday, rejecting talk of a "war on terror."

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, speaking in parliament, expressed these views on global terrorism and noted Chirac's strong opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
He said the Arab state had now sunk into violence and was feeding new regional crises.

"Let us not forget that these crises play into the hands of all extremists," the prime minister said in a debate on the Middle East. "We can see this with terrorism, whether it tries to strike inside or outside our frontiers," he added.
"Against terrorism, what's needed is not a war. It is, as France has done for many years, a determined fight based on vigilance at all times and effective cooperation with our partners.

[Villepin's speech in parliament made much of France's leading role in securing a peace agreement in Lebanon backed by the United Nations, which he said had shown the virtues of "listening and dialogue."]

ENLIGHTENMENT

Chop wood, carry water

[The lotus flower is a symbol for enlightenment. Its roots are sunken in silt and debris, yet it grows out of that debris through the water and emerges into the bright sunlight as a beautiful, perfect, fragrant flower. It does not grow out of a pure, rarefied atmosphere, but from decayed matter, from the very stuff of our lives.]

Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

BIG BROTHER

The net closes

The exposure of a massive database of Google customers' search queries, some of them excruciatingly personal, highlights the internet’s power to infiltrate our privacy.

In March this year, a man with a passion for Portuguese football, living in a city in Florida, was drinking heavily because his wife was having an affair. He typed his troubles into the search window of his computer. "My wife doesnt love animore," he told the machine. He searched for "Stop your divorce" and "I want revenge to my wife" before turning to self-examination with "alchool withdrawl", "alchool withdrawl sintoms" (at 10 in the morning) and "disfunctional erection". On April 1 he was looking for a local medium who could "predict my futur".

But what could a psychic guess about him compared with what the world now knows?

[This story is one of hundreds, perhaps tens of thousands, revealed recently when AOL published the details of 23 million searches made by 650,000 of its customers during a three-month period earlier this year. The searches were actually carried out by Google - from which AOL buys in its search functions.]

DARFUR CONFLICT

Photo by BBC News cameraman Glenn Middleton in Darfur.

A peace deal signed in Nigeria offered hope that a three-year conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region, in which at least 200,000 people have died, could be drawing to a close.
But the violence is continuing.
Attacks by the pro-government Janjaweed militia have caused 2m people to flee their homes since the conflict began. Displaced people continue to arrive in camps, like this one at Gereida.

On the brink of new conflict

For days now the United Nations has nervously monitored the planeloads of Sudanese troops arriving in North Darfur.
Now the purpose of the build-up has become clear: the African Union is being asked to leave, and the days of international peacekeeping are to end. Khartoum is to settle the three-year-old rebellion on military terms.
There now seems no way that a United Nations force can be deployed in Darfur, since the idea of peacekeepers fighting their way into this vast, remote region is hardly plausible.

That will leave the huge camps housing two million displaced people extremely exposed.

EXCELLENT NO MORE

Image provided by the Canda-France-Hawaii Telescope Corp shows the impact of Europe's first spacecraft to the moon.

Europe's spacecraft hits the moon

Europe's first spacecraft to the moon ended its three-year mission Sunday by crashing into the lunar surface in a volcanic plane called the Lake of Excellence, to a round of applause in the mission control room in Germany.

[Mission officials said they had to raise the low point of the spacecraft's orbit by 600 meters by using its positioning thrusters to avoid the 1.5 kilometer-high rim of a lunar crater. Had the orbit not been raised the craft would have crashed one orbit too soon, making the impact difficult or impossible to observe.]

GRAVESTONE MILESTONE

A funeral is held August 25 for U.S. Marine Capt. John McKenna, one of more than 2,600 U.S. service members killed in Iraq.

U.S. deaths in Iraq, war on terror surpass 9/11 toll

The announcement of four more U.S. military deaths in Iraq raises the death toll to 2,974 for U.S. military service members in Iraq and in what the Bush administration calls the war on terror.
The 9/11 attack killed 2,973 people, including Americans and foreign nationals but excluding the terrorists. The 9/11 death toll was calculated by CNN.

["It's now almost five years since September 11, 2001. And the number of young men and women in our armed forces who have sacrificed their lives that we might live in freedom is approaching the number of Americans who were murdered on 9/11 in New York, in Washington, D.C., and in Pennsylvania."
- General Peter Pace, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.]

DUMBING DOWN

A demonstrator wears a similar T-shirt at a New York protest.

Arabic T-shirt sparks airport row

An architect of Iraqi descent has said he was forced to remove a T-shirt that bore the words "We will not be silent" before boarding a flight at New York.
Raed Jarrar said security officials warned him his clothing was offensive after he checked in for a JetBlue flight to California on 12 August.
Mr Jarrar's black cotton T-shirt bore the slogan in both Arabic and English.

He said he had cleared security at John F Kennedy airport for a flight back to his home in California when he was approached by two men who wanted to check his ID and boarding pass.
Mr Jarrar said he was told a number of passengers had complained about his T-shirt - apparently concerned at what the Arabic phrase meant - and asked him to remove it.

"We Will Not Be Silent" is a slogan adopted by opponents of the war in Iraq and other conflicts in the Middle East.
It is said to derive from the White Rose dissident group which opposed Nazi rule in Germany.

[After a difficult exchange with airline staff, Mr Jarrar was persuaded to wear another T-shirt bought for him at the airport shop.]

SUNNI-SHIA SNAFU

Private pessimism on Iraq grows

In a confidential memo, the outgoing UK ambassador in Iraq, William Patey, has warned that civil war is a more likely outcome in Iraq than democracy.

"It sometimes feels as if Baghdad is descending into madness. Over the past seven days, within sight of our bureau, we have seen a simultaneous suicide, rocket and mortar attack and a car bombing.
Last night in Baghdad, a bomb was planted under a football pitch to kill children as they played."
- BBC defence correspondent Paul Wood

[William Patey's telegram does not depart from the official formula that civil war is neither imminent nor inevitable. But he does say it is probably the more likely outcome, at this stage, along with the break-up of Iraq.
Even what he witheringly refers to as President Bush's lowered expectations for Iraq - of a government that can sustain and defend itself - must "remain in doubt".]

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

LRA leader Joseph Kony is wanted by the ICC for war crimes.

LRA rebels in DR Congo withdrawal

Lord's Resistance Army rebels are leaving their bases in the Democratic Republic of Congo as demanded by a peace deal with Uganda's government.
The truce, signed on Saturday, has a ceasefire coming into effect on Tuesday and gives rebels three weeks to move into assembly points in southern Sudan.
Thousands have died during the 20-year conflict in northern Uganda, and more than one million have fled their homes.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) wants the LRA's top officials - among them Joseph Kony - to face charges including murder, rape and forcibly enlisting children.
The LRA has abducted thousands of children and forced them to fight since the conflict began.

[Abduction, brutalisation and desensitisation: ABC Radio's Radio National program All in the mind aired a harrowing account of the effects of pressing children, some younger than 10 years old, into becoming killers. Transcript and audio download available here.]

Senior Child Protection Specialist Michael Wessells: I've talked with young people in Sierra Leone who said that they were pumped up on what they called 'brown brown' which was mostly amphetamines and cannabis and alcohol, all at once. And the way they used to do the 'brown brown' was they would cut your temple, or your pectoral muscle on your chest and they would literally pack it in to make sure that you had a good healthy dose inside of you. And they would tell me when I went into combat that I felt no fear. And villagers often said that the worst thing was when they saw these small boys' units, when they showed up with what they described as 'that look on their face', they knew that horrible things would happen.
They were out of their minds and some of those small boys' units were involved in committing atrocities. One of the ways that the RUF, the rebel group in Sierra Leone, terrorised villagers was to commit mutilations. They would literally line people up and ask , 'Do you want a long sleeve or a short sleeve?' And if you said long sleeve they'd take a machete and hack your arm off at the elbow and if you said 'A short sleeve,' they'd hack your arm off at the shoulder.

MAD MATHS

Grigory "Grisha" Perelman has been described as an "unconventional" and "reclusive" genius.

Maths genius declines top prize

Grigory Perelman, the Russian who seems to have solved one of the hardest problems in mathematics, has declined one of the discipline's top awards.
Dr Perelman was to have been presented with the prestigious Fields Medal by King Juan Carlos of Spain for solving a century-old problem called the Poincare Conjecture.

[The conjecture says - colloquially - that the three-sphere is the only type of bounded three-dimensional space possible that contains no holes. ]

Professor John Ball, outgoing president of the International Mathematical Union, said he had spoken to Dr Perelman of personal experiences with the mathematical community during his career that had caused him to remain at a distance.
"However, I am unable to disclose these comments in public," he said, adding: "He has a different psychological make up, which makes him see life differently."
Manuel de Leon, chairman of the ICM, said: "The reason Perelman gave me is that he feels isolated from the mathematical community and therefore has no wish to appear as one of its leaders."

[In 1996, Perelman turned down a prize awarded to him by the European Congress of Mathematicians. Observers suspect he will refuse a US$1m prize offered by the Clay Mathematics Institute in Massachusetts, US, if his proof of the Poincare Conjecture stands up to scrutiny.]

PAST LIVES

Severely malformed ear (microtia) in a Turkish boy who said that he remembered the life of a man who was fatally wounded on the right side of the head by a shotgun discharged at close range.

Where Biology and Reincarnation Intersect

In 1993, Ian Stevenson MD, head of the Department of Psychiatric Medicine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine [Charlottesville, Virginia], published "Birthmarks and Birth Defects Corresponding to Wounds on Deceased Persons", this article was based on his presentation at the 11th annual meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration at Princeton University in June 1992.
His paper presented dramatic evidence of how past life traumas become so embedded in an individual's cellular memory that they are carried from one life to the next.

Published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Volume 7, No 4, pp 403-410, 1993.

Almost nothing is known about why pigmented birthmarks (moles or nevi) occur in particular locations of the skin. The causes of most birth defects are also unknown. About 35% of children who claim to remember previous lives have birthmarks and/or birth defects that they (or adult informants) attribute to wounds on a person whose life the child remembers. The cases of 210 such children have been investigated.
The birthmarks were usually areas of hairless, puckered skin; some were areas of little or no pigmentation (hypopigmented macules); others were areas of increased pigmentation (hyperpigmented nevi). The birth defects were nearly always of rare types.

In cases in which a deceased person was identified the details of whose life unmistakably matched the child's statements, a close correspondence was nearly always found between the birthmarks and/or birth defects on the child and the wounds on the deceased person.

Alternative rendition.

[Naevi are caused by visible clusters of cells in the skin. Vascular naevi are due to clusters of blood vessels, melanocytic naevi are due to clusters of pigmented skin cells (melanocytes), epidermal naevi to keratinocyte skin cells and so on. The exact cause of why these occur is unknown but it may relate to localised abnormalities of certain genes. There is no known way to prevent them.]

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME

Kidnapped at age 10, Natascha has escaped her dungeon now aged 18.

Austrian woman, kidnapped at 10, flees dungeon prison

An Austrian girl, abducted in 1998 when she was 10 years old, has been reunited with her parents after fleeing a basement prison, Vienna police said today.

``A young girl disappeared eight years ago,'' Police General Nicholas Koch said at a press conference.
``What we have now is a grown woman.''
Natascha Kampusch, now 18, broke free yesterday afternoon. Her kidnapper, identified only as Wolfgang P., died last night after he was hit by a train, Koch said. Police are investigating whether he killed himself and are searching his house.

[Kampusch disappeared on the morning of March 2, 1998 as she was on her way to school, prompting Austria's largest-ever manhunt. Police interviewed more than 1,000 owners of white mini-vans, the kind of car Kampusch was seen entering the day she went missing.]

COINCIDENTALLY

Diverted European flight leads to 12 arrests over suspicious behavior

A Northwest Airlines plane flying from Amsterdam to India was escorted back to the airport by Dutch F-16 fighter jets Wednesday, and police arrested 12 passengers whose behavior had aroused the crewís suspicion.
Coincidentally, among the 149 passengers aboard Northwest Flight NO0042 was the tipster who first alerted the FBI to al Qaida operative Zacarias Moussaoui's odd behavior at a Minneapolis area flight school five years ago.

[Nelson and a fellow flight-school program manager have been hailed as heroes for their phone calls that led to Moussaouiís Aug. 16, 2001, arrest and brought the FBI tantalizingly close to uncovering the Sept. 11 terror plot.]

OUR COSMOS

The claims are based on observations of the Bullet Cluster.

Team finds 'proof' of dark matter

Until now, astronomers have only been able to infer the existence of dark material through the gravitational effects it has on ordinary matter.
Researchers have now discovered what is effectively the gravitational signature of dark matter created by dark matter and ordinary matter being wrenched apart by the immense collision of two large galaxy clusters.
In the cosmic smash-up known to astronomers as the Bullet Cluster, these components have been pulled apart.
The astronomers were lucky enough to catch the collision just 100 million years after it occurred -- the blink of an eye in cosmic time.

SAVVY INVESTMENTS

HYDERABAD HYDRA

Pakistan blames West for terrorism

Writing this weekend in the News, Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani Prime Minister, recalls that General Zia-ul-Haq, who toppled her father's regime in a coup in the 1970s, played a key role in assisting the US and the Mujahadeen to defeat the Soviet-backed Afghan government.
'This alliance not only brought modern weapons and technology to the Mujahadeen but converted my homeland from a peaceful nation into a violent society of Kalashnikov weapons, heroin addiction and a radicalised interpretation of Islam,' she stated.
Thus, she suggests, were the seeds of the current harvest sown.

'You have created a monster and now you don't know what to do with it,' said Senator Asfundyar Wali, the Awami National Party senator who was jailed at the age of 14 for his political beliefs and has been arrested many times since. 'The war against the Soviet Union turned refugees into jihadis.'
Throughout that war, the CIA channelled an estimated US$3bn into the hands of the Afghan resistance groups and their foreign fellow-fighters

[General Zia-ul-Haq brutally ruled Pakistan under martial law for more than a decade before he died when his plane exploded in mysterious circumstances on 17 August 1988, killing him, along with five generals and the American ambassador]

JUSTICE FOR DAVID

David Hicks

Moving mountains one hill at a time

Guantanamo Bay's token white man, David Hicks, has now spent almost five years in detention without a trial.
His US military-appointed legal representative Major Michael Mori has been meeting with politicians from all sides in Canberra, and support for this shameful situation is at an all-time low.
Australia's Government is starting to waver, but to really face facts and take action, they need to see and hear from we the people that enough is enough.

On Wednesday, the people of Adelaide are coming together to do something about it. You and your family are invited to join in. GetUp is hosting a candlelight vigil in Adelaide with Major Michael Mori, culminating in a walk to the office of Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, where we will present our letter of demand to repatriate David Hicks.

[Major Michael Mori will speak at 5:30. Sunset is at 5:49, when we will light our candles and walk peacefully to Alexander Downer's ministerial office nearby, to present our letter of demand.]

CASH COW

Systems to have little direct role in terror fight

The estimated costs for the development of major weapons systems for the US military have doubled since September 11, 2001, with a trillion-dollar price tag for new planes, ships, and missiles that would have little direct role in the fight against insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The soaring cost estimates -- disclosed in a report for the Republican-led Senate Budget Committee -- have led to concerns that supporters of multibillion-dollar weapons programs in Congress, the Pentagon , and the defense industry are using the conflicts and the war on terrorism to fulfill a wish-list of defense expenditures, whether they are needed or not for the "war on terrorism".
The report, based on Defense Department data, concluded that the best way to keep defense spending in check in the coming years lies in "controlling the cost of weaponry," especially those programs that the Pentagon might not necessarily need.

[The projections of what it will cost to acquire "major weapons programs" currently in production or on the drawing board soared from $790 billion in September 2001 to $1.61 trillion in June 2006, according to the congressional analysis of Pentagon data.]

VOX POPULI

Little grey men spin a new reality

Left and right alike promote their interests by coining phrases which often insinuate meanings that bear no relation to the original words. Beware this Unspeak

The Conservatives under David Cameron talk a lot about "social welfare". It sounds warm and fuzzy, but what do they mean by it? The phrase arose alongside "the welfare state", implying that the well-being of all was the responsibility of all: a responsibility discharged through the operations of government. Yet what it describes for the new Tories is almost the opposite: an intention to farm off some of the duty of ensuring welfare to other, voluntary organisations. Under the friendly-sounding cloak of "social", it expresses a wish to save money by abrogating governments' duty towards the unfortunate.

[Copy of full article here.]

CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS

US judge rules wiretaps illegal

A US program to tap some phones without warrants is unconstitutional, and must be halted at once, a federal judge in Detroit has ruled.
The scheme, approved by President George W Bush in 2001, involves tapping conversations between some callers in the US and people in other countries.
Civil liberties campaigners brought the case against the program, which was uncovered by the US media.
The White House said the scheme was legal and it would seek an appeal.

[Mr Bush authorised the Terrorist Surveillance Programme, as the secret interception scheme is known, after the 11 September 2001 attacks on Washington and New York and insists that it is a vital tool in the US war on terror.]

NEW VAMPIRES

Australia backs call for investigation into Chinese organ harvesting

Canadian human rights activist David Kilgour, and human rights campaigner David Matas produced a report backing up extraordinary claims by the Falun Gong spiritual movement that more than 4000 of their followers have been murdered and their organs removed inside a hospital in northern China, to be used for lucrative organ transplant operations.
Mr Kilgour met with Australian MPs in Parliament House, to push for an independent investigation.

The Australian Government has confirmed that officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have asked the Chinese government to allow an independent investigation into claims of mass organ harvesting in China. [Video podcasts available.]

Opposition Foreign Affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd has backed calls for an independent investigation.



[FLASHBACK: 1943, a 19-year-old Auschwitz survivor described the horrors happening inside the concentration camp where an estimated 1.5 million people of various races, but mostly Jews, were murdered by Nazi Germany. His account, and those of many others after the liberation, was of crimes of such depravity and on such a scale that it was far beyond human comprehension. In fact many, many people said at the time, "this can't be happening".]

ROADMAP TO PEACE

FEAR FACTOR

A plan 'to commit unimaginable mass murder'

ALARMING intelligence that an attack was imminent was the trigger for police raids which captured 24 terrorist suspects, including two white converts to Islam. ...

US sources claimed last night that substantial sums of money had been wired from Pakistan to two of the alleged ringleaders so that they could purchase airline tickets. One report said they were planning a “dry run”.
...
Surveillance on internet traffic between the suspected terrorists indicated that they had considered setting off their devices simultaneously ...
...
A number of events are understood to have convinced the counter-terrorist agencies to act. A telephone call about the alleged plot was intercepted, internet communication increased noticeably and two men under surveillance disappeared off the intelligence radar. However, security sources indicated that the key event — thought to be the transfer of funds — had taken place overseas. “It was very close, and it was too risky to allow the surveillance operation to go on for any longer,” one source said.

Don't these people read the newspapers. Western intelligence services are widely reported to be tapping Internet traffic, telephone conversations and finance transfers and yet their operation -- which obviously requires strict secrecy -- is planned using the email, phones and wire transfers of money!
The Times article then names 19 of the supposedly 'innocent until proven guilty' suspects.

EARTH CHANGES

A view of Greenland and its ice sheet from space. If the ice sheet melted, global sea levels would rise an estimated 7 meters (23 feet).

Greenland ice sheets melting: Global warming advances faster than anticipated

As the world digests the flow on from rising petrol prices, the implications of its increased use are also being debated. A new study published in the journal Science reveals that global warming is melting Greenland's ice sheet three times faster than scientists had thought.

Accererating melt

By 2020, the snows of Kilimanjaro may exist only in old photographs. The glaciers in Montana's Glacier National Park could disappear by 2030. And by mid-century, the Arctic Sea may be completely ice-free during summertime. As the earth's temperature has risen in recent decades, the earth's ice cover has begun to melt. And that melting is accelerating.

Sea Levels Likely To Rise Much Faster Than Was Predicted

Global warming is causing the Greenland ice cap to disintegrate far faster than anyone predicted. A study of the region's massive ice sheet warns that sea levels may - as a consequence - rise more dramatically than expected.
Scientists have found that many of the huge glaciers of Greenland are moving at an accelerating rate - dumping twice as much ice into the sea than five years ago - indicating that the ice sheet is undergoing a potentially catastrophic breakup.
The implications of the research are dramatic given Greenland holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by up to 21ft, a disaster scenario that would result in the flooding of some of the world's major population centres, including all of Britain's city ports.

[Glaciers and Sea Ice Endangered by Rising Temperatures]

HOWARD'S HYBRID