ARMS EMBRACE

Rice holds back as U.S. rushes bombs to Israel

[From NYT, 22 July 2006] The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, American officials said.
The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration, the officials said.
Its disclosure threatens to anger Arab governments and others because of the appearance that the United States is actively aiding the Israeli bombing campaign in a way that could be compared to Iran's efforts to arm and resupply Hezbollah. The munitions are actually part of a multimillion-dollar arms-sale package.

Israel News Net reported the country was running low on bombs.

GLORIFYING TERRORISM

The plaque outside the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which has incensed the British Ambassador.

British anger at terror celebration

As Israel wages war against Hezbollah “terrorists” in Lebanon, Britain has protested about the celebration by right-wing Israelis of a Jewish “act of terrorism” against British rule 60 years ago this week.
The rightwingers, including Binyamin Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister, are commemorating the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of British rule, that killed 92 people and helped to drive the British from Palestine.

[A hot night in Jerusalem 60 years ago when the King David Hotel, HQ of the British Palestinian Mandate, was destroyed by bombs planted by Menachim Begin's terrorist group, the Irgun, killing British, Arabs, Jews and others. The Irgun was asked to do this by the main Zionist group, the Haganah, but successive governments are understandably reluctant to celebrate it.
The Irgun's defenders have always claimed that a warning was called in prior to the explosion. Police records suggest it was no more than a few minutes. The best a recently unveiled plaque celebrating the attack can say is:
From Crikey.com, edition 24 July 2006:
For reasons known only to the British, the hotel was not evacuated, and after 25 minutes, the bombs exploded, and to the Irgun's regret and dismay, 91 persons were killed.
In other words, even the official, set-in-stone, spin puts the founding fathers of Israel on a moral level with the Provisional IRA.
One thing is remarkable about this – the Irgun are routinely called "freedom fighters" these days but at the time they were described as terrorists not only by their enemies – but by themselves. Indeed at the time Irgun supporters took out a full page congratulatory ad in the New York Times offering praise TO THE JEWISH TERRORISTS.
But here's the real rub – it is not because incidents such as the King David Hotel, or the Stern Gang's kidnap and murder of two British soldiers (sound familiar?) were wanton terrorist acts that Israel's government shies away from them, but because they weren't – they were legitimate, if ruthless, actions against military targets in a declared guerrilla war (the massacre of Arab villages is another matter).
Yet to acknowledge that would be to concede that urban guerrilla action can shade into terrorism. It would inevitably lead people to make similar distinctions between a suicide bomb attack on a restaurant, and the same on a military checkpoint. And the last thing wanted is that sort of symmetry, which might suggest that freedom fighting is terrorism plus time.
Still, it's an ill-wind. Maybe some sympathetic group could be persuaded to put up a replica plaque in Australia. Then we can test the government's commitment to its "glorification of terror" legislation.]

MORONS RULE

Dr James Zogby on the Middle East conflict

TONY JONES: OK. But it appears that the Israelis appear to have come to the conclusion that it is only Iran that can effectively disarm Hezbollah or even tell them what to do and that conclusion has also been reached in the United States, in Washington, by a number of very influential neo-conservatives like William Kristol. He is already suggesting that the US now take this opportunity to strike at Iran's nuclear facilities. What do you think would happen if that were the case; if the United States or, indeed, Israel struck out at Iran?

DR JAMES ZOGBY, ARAB AMERICAN INSTITUTE PRESIDENT: Well, you know, the infantile fantasies of the neo-conservatives have brought great destruction to Iraq and I would add to our country in the Middle East.
Lord spare us from any more of their fantasies. They're a dangerous crew. They're about as dangerous as the ayatollahs. I think a strike against Iran would open the gates of hell for everybody in the Middle East and, frankly speaking, all of the footsteps of terrorism in the Middle East go directly back to Tehran. There's no question about that.
But these morons - and I use that term advisedly - led us into Iraq and only served the purpose of emboldening and strengthening Iran, giving them unleashed power in Iran - sorry in Iraq and they pose now a greater threat in the Gulf region.
There is an absolute need to deal with Iran, but at this point in time with 130,000 US troops in the middle of majority Shiah country, with Lebanon in flames, with Iran emboldened, the last thing we need to do is to envision a war against Iran that I believe would cause grave damage throughout the entire Persian Gulf on both the Arab side and the Iranian side, leading to a greater destabilisation in that broader region.
If Iran crumbles, and it very well might crumble if in fact a war were to occur, the spill-over into several neighbouring countries would be enormous. Even a more dangerous situation than what we are currently seeing in Iraq. I do not believe, as the neo-conservatives do, in creative chaos. In fact what they have brought us is nothing creative. Just chaos. We don't need more of that.

[ABC TV Lateline, broadcast: 26/07/2006]

IDIOTS RULE

Beazley's uranium push dividing the party

Australia's Prime Minister takes aim at Opposition Leader Kim Beazley's statement that nuclear power is the policy of an idiot.

JOHN HOWARD: There are 31 countries in the world that have nuclear power. Nuclear power produces 16 per cent of the world's electricity. Lots of idiots and lots of idiotic prime minister and idiotic presidents.

[ABC TV, Lateline, broadcast: 26/07/2006]

STRANGE FRUIT

China metes out capital punishment from specially equipped "death vans" that shuttle from town to town. Yunnan province alone has 18 mobile units.

Former Chinese policeman lifts lid on organ harvesting

Earlier this month PM reported on a Canadian human rights study about political prisoners being executed and then harvested for body parts.
It claimed since 2000 almost 40,000 transplants have been carried out using body parts harvested from executed members of the Falun Gong movement.
Former Beijing policeman Sun Liyong says he knows the methods used by Chinese authorities to harvest body parts from prisoners.
Mr Sun now lives in Australia, but during the 1980s he says he was well aware of what was happening to executed prisoners.
"Before the prisoners were executed the Public Security Bureau would go to the detention centre and test their blood," he said. "As far as I know during the period I was a policeman all the organs were harvested by the Friendship Hospital in Beijing."
Records show the Friendship Hospital boasts of an excellent reputation in transplant operations.
"The Beijing Public Security Bureau would notify the Friendship Hospital before they carried out the execution of prisoners," Mr Sun said.

[China is relying more on lethal injection because it is harvesting organs of executed prisoners in an effort to supply the country's growing market for organ transplants. ]

EARTH CHANGES

Sahara Desert Was Once Lush and Populated

At the end of the last Ice Age, the Sahara Desert was just as dry and uninviting as it is today. But sandwiched between two periods of extreme dryness were a few millennia of plentiful rainfall and lush vegetation.
During these few thousand years, prehistoric humans left the congested Nile Valley and established settlements around rain pools, green valleys, and rivers.
The ancient climate shift and its effects are detailed in the July 21 issue of the journal Science.

[In the 1930s the 'Sleeping Prophet' Edgar Cayce told of the past fertility of the Sahara ... "The Nile entered into the Atlantic Ocean. What is now the Sahara was an inhabited land and very fertile." (Reading #364-13)]

SEPARATION OF POWERS

Lawyers urged to speak out about Hicks's treatment

The New South Wales Director of Public Prosecutions, Nicholas Cowdery QC, has urged the legal community to speak out about the treatment of Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks.
Speaking last night to more than 100 members of Newcastle's legal community, on the NSW central coast, Mr Cowdery reiterated his concerns about the continued detention of Hicks, saying his treatment was an unprincipled disgrace.
He described recent criticism by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer that he, Mr Cowdery, should "stick to his job", as offensive and patronising.
"My job is intricately bound up with the protection and the observance of the rule of law, so I see being concerned about, holding views about and expressing those views about David Hicks as being part of my responsibilities," he said.

[ The 30-year-old convert to Islam was captured in Afghanistan where he allegedly fought alongside the ruling Taliban against US-led forces who invaded after the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.]

DEATH PREMONITION

Jake Kovco ... dreamed of his death one month before he was shot.

Diary of Kovco's death dream

Private Jake Kovco was worried by a premonition he had about being shot in the head a month before he died in Baghdad, an inquiry has been told.
The board of inquiry into the death of the 26-year-old father of two has heard how he wrote about a disturbing and graphic dream he had one month before he died on April 21.
Pte Kovco wrote in his personal diary on March 31 about the dream the previous night in which he was shot in the head with his own 9mm pistol.
"I'm a bit worried it could be a premonition about a bullet hitting me in the head ... f--k I hope not," he wrote.
Pte Kovco stressed in his diary entry that while the dream had unnerved him he had no intention of ever shooting himself.
'Very happy with my life'

["Don't get me wrong, I don't have any intention of shooting myself," he wrote. "I'm very happy with my life. It just shook me up a bit."]

CASHLESSNESS

Show me the money: Mohammed is a terrorist now
Western Union profiles Muslim names

Money transfer agencies like Western Union have delayed or blocked thousands of cash deliveries on suspicion of terrorist connections simply because senders or recipients have names like Mohammed or Ahmed, company officials said.
In one example, an Indian driver here said Western Union prevented him from sending US$120 to a friend at home this month because the recipient's name was Mohammed.

[An executive who deals with security measures said about 1 percent of the store's 30,000 daily money transfers - about 300 a day - are delayed or blocked because of suspected terrorist links. Thus far, all have proven false, the executive said on condition of anonymity, because she wasn't permitted to speak to the press.]

NET NANNIES

Web postings worry summer camp directors

Summer camp directors have a new scourge, and it is not mosquitoes or impetigo. It is the Internet, specifically sites like MySpace, Facebook and Friendster, where young people often post personal or revealing information
Some camps are banning or limiting digital cameras, fearful that images could wind up in undesirable places online. Some are telling counselors, parents and campers to remove camp references from personal Web pages, blogs or social networking sites like MySpace or Xanga.

[ Some camps, like Camp Fernwood, a girls camp in Poland, Maine, are trademarking their names, logos or slogans so they can legally order others not to use them online. ]

UP IN SMOKE

New airline targets smoking niche

German entrepreneur Alexander Schoppmann wants to reignite the romance of travel. Schoppmann is all fired up about a business opportunity born from the anti-smoking trend -- a luxury airline that allows passengers to light up.
He plans to launch Smintair (that stands for Smoker's International Airways) in March as the first smoking-permitted carrier, with flights from Dusseldorf to Tokyo's Narita International on two Boeing 747 aircraft.
Schoppmann says he's seeking a return to simpler times, when air travel seemed exotic and cigarettes were not verboten.