Re: [CTRL] Virus Alert: [CTRL] For your attention Alamaine Ratliff
-Caveat Lector- 1/21/2003 8:35:42 AM, Ozzy bin Oswald [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This virus-ridden post was sent to me: This was sent directly from the site, using their -- as in THEIR -- email forwarding applet. Notice the For your attention heading. But -- guess what -- there's something between the source (site) and the destination (list) that is obviously the problem. A:E:R A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
Re: [CTRL] Virus Alert: [CTRL] For your attention Alamaine Ratliff
-Caveat Lector- It's not a virus, it's a legitimate file that is a part of the windows operating system. java debugger manager. At 02:56 PM 1/21/03 , you wrote: -Caveat Lector- 1/21/2003 8:35:42 AM, Ozzy bin Oswald [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This virus-ridden post was sent to me: This was sent directly from the site, using their -- as in THEIR -- email forwarding applet. Notice the For your attention heading. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Murdoch TV channel hires Hewitt as war reporter Matt Wells, media correspondent Tuesday January 14 2003 The Guardian James Hewitt, whose failed attempts to sell his love letters from Princess Diana earned him the love rat soubriquet, has been renamed the desert rat after being hired as a war correspondent. Fox News Channel, the US network that has drawn criticism for its style of journalism, has signed up the former Life Guards officer to report on the conflict with Iraq. Hewitt has no reporting experience, but his lawyer said he would be flying out to the Middle East in the next few weeks. Hewitt has become notorious for his attempts to sell the correspondence between him and Princess Diana, and is held in contempt by the tabloid press. But he would be attractive to Fox, which has become known for its personality-led style of reporting pioneered by the correspondent Geraldo Rivera, who carried a gun when reporting from Afghanistan. While the Murdoch-owned network has been criticised by liberal commentators, it has overtaken CNN in the US as the most popular news channel. There were reports yesterday that the Hewitt deal was worth #163;100,000, but his lawyer Michael Coleman said: I'm not in a position to disclose the terms of his contract or the details of the negotiations. A spokeswoman for Fox declined to confirm or deny the story. Hewitt was criticised last week for confirming he was prepared to sell his love letters from Diana. The former officer said he has already been of fered #163;4m for 10 of the 64 handwritten letters composed during their five-year affair. Hewitt, a veteran of the 1991 Gulf war, said last week he was still a reservist and could be ordered to serve with British forces in any new conflict. Mr Coleman said this was theoretically possible but practically unlikely. He also said he completed talks with Fox in Los Angeles last week while Hewitt took part in a series of interviews. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site, go to http://www.observer.co.uk Spies hide as Bank faces BCCI charges Victims of the biggest banking fraud ever are putting UK regulators in the dock - and demanding security service documents. Conal Walsh reports Conal Walsh Saturday January 18 2003 The Guardian A mega-scandal much older than Enron or WorldCom is about to shake the British financial establishment. More than a decade after the spectacular collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, its creditors are finally to put the Bank of England in the dock. The stakes could not be higher for the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. It was the financial regulator in 1991 when the BCCI crashed with #163;7 billion of undeclared debts, and has long been accused of turning a blind eye to fraud at the Middle Eastern bank. Now it faces a giant lawsuit brought in London by BCCI's victims, who claim it is guilty of negligence amounting to 'misfeasance', or wilful misconduct. The Bank has fiercely denied the charge, and made every effort to get the legal action thrown out. And no wonder. BCCI's creditors are claiming up to #163;1bn in damages. They are also breaking new ground by challenging the Bank's statutory immunity against being sued. The Government's worries do not stop there. It will have to answer potentially embarrassing questions over what Ministers, civil servants and the regulator knew about BCCI before it crashed. The Bank's most senior officials, past and present, are expected to go into the witness box, and the High Court will also consider evidence from John Major, the former Prime Minister, as well as former Chancellors Norman Lamont, Nigel Lawson and Denis Healey. Then there is the small matter of the role played by Britain's intelligence services, whose relationship with BCCI has long been questioned. Did MI6 use accounts at the secretive bank to pay sources and operatives around the world? Did BCCI channel Western funds to Mujahideen fighters in the Eighties - or even, as some conspiracy theorists have surmised, to Osama bin Laden? All this may - or may not - come out when the trial begins in October. For now, though, both sides are engaged in pre-trial legal tussles over secret service documents. The creditors are led by accountant Deloitte amp; Touche, BCCI's liquidator. They range from East End market traders to local councils to the state of Abu Dhabi, which had become BCCI's principal shareholder by 1991, and is thought to have lost #163;2bn. BCCI remains the world's biggest-ever banking fraud, and the colour and complexity of the scam is awesome. Press attention at the time tended to focus on such unsavoury customers as Panama's military leader Manuel Noriega, as well as the gilt-edged lifestyles of the bank's executives, many of whom remain fugitives from justice today. BCCI laundered drugs money, bribes and dictators' loot. But this reflected only part of an endemic culture of fraud, which would consume more than 90 per cent of the bank's assets. BCCI was founded in 1972 by Agha Hasan Abedi, a charismatic banker and mystic from Pakistan. It grew rapidly, and would eventually boast offices in 70 countries and 14,000 employees. But from the start, it had a taste for opaque finances. It was incorporated in two tax havens, Luxembourg and Grand Cayman, and used two sets of auditors, allowing it to avoid publishing meaningful consolidated accounts. Abedi's bank was beloved of Asian and Middle Eastern expatriates, and he cherished a vision of the BCCI as a force for unity in the developing world. But by the late Seventies, its biggest borrower, the Gulf shipping group owned by Abbas Gokal, was heading for bankruptcy. Concerned that regulators would shut down BCCI if its exposures were revealed, Abedi and other executives falsified the books. BCCI secretly poured money into Gulf, just to make it look like a going concern capable of servicing its debts. This deception lasted for 15 years, involved 750 false accounts and an estimated total turnover of $15bn. BCCI also created fictitious transactions to mask other non-performing loans, as well as hundreds of millions of pounds' worth of losses at its London-based treasury department. Reckless expansion into the United States and Europe dented profitability further. By the time it went down, BCCI was routinely plundering customer deposits to maintain an appearance of solvency. It had been granted a licence to trade in the UK by the Bank of England in 1980, and opened dozens of outlets here, its largest branch network in any single country. BCCI's collapse provoked fury in the UK, as tens of thousands of depositors were left out of pocket. Several protagonists, including Gulf's Gokal, were put behind bars by the Serious Fraud
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk US offers immunity to Saddam Rumsfeld and Powell back exile plan Richard Norton-Taylor and Helena Smith in Larnaca Sunday January 19 2003 The Observer The United States last night offered Saddam Hussein immunity from prosecution if his departure from Baghdad would avert war. With only seven days to go before weapons inspectors deliver their crucial report to the UN security council, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary and one of the Bush administration's leading hawks, dangled the prospect of a peaceful way out, despite the massive military build-up. If to avoid a war, Mr Rumsfeld said in a TV interview, I would ... recommend that some provision be made so that the senior leadership in that country [Iraq] and their families could be provided haven in some other country. Hours later, in what appeared to be a series of choreographed interviews, his more doveish rival in the US administration, Colin Powell, backed his remarks. Asked about a reported Saudi initiative to grant amnesty to senior Iraqi leaders, he said: I would encourage Saddam Hussein, if he is getting any messages of this kind, to listen. The hints from Washington added weight to an Arab initiative, backed by Saudi Arabia and others, that would urge the Iraqi leader to go into exile. Even if the US granted President Saddam immunity from prosecution, the viability of the Arab plan would depend on his willingness to give up power, something many believe he would never contemplate. Allowing the Iraqi leader to avoid a trial for alleged war crimes might also prove controversial. In London, the Foreign Office maintained its view that the main issue was disarming Iraq rather than removing President Saddam. The key issue is for Iraq to comply with its international obligations whatever group of people forms its leadership, a spokeswoman said. Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, last night began high-level meetings in Baghdad, saying: We do not think that war is inevitable. We think that the inspection process that we are conducting is the peaceful alternative. Mr Rumsfeld piled the pressure on the Iraqi regime by saying that Washington would know in a matter of weeks, not in months or years whether Iraq was cooperating fully with the inspectors. His comment contrasted with remarks by Mohammed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Authority, who told the Guardian that UN monitors needed a few more months. Mr El Baradei and Mr Blix have to report back to the UN by January 27, a deadline imposed by a security council resolution but whose significance is disputed by its five permanent members. Last night they had talks with President Saddam's scientific adviser, Amir al-Saadi, and General Hussam Mohammad Amin, head of Iraq's national monitoring directorate. We are having good, constructive meetings, Mr El Baradei told reporters. I think #91;the Iraqis#93; have said that there are still certain areas where they are ready to provide more information, he added. I think that in other areas they said they are ready to reconsider their position. However, faced with mounting pressure from the US and Britain to come up with hard evidence to prove President Saddam has been lying about nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, Mr Blix insisted: It requires comprehensive inspections and it requires a very active Iraqi cooperation. He earlier accused the Iraqi authorities of playing a cheap game of chess. He was speaking after being forced to cancel inspections in northern Iraq's no-fly zone. The Iraqis insisted that UN helicopters had to be escorted by Iraqi ones. Mr Blix played down the significance of the discovery of 3,000 documents in the home of an Iraqi physicist, Faleh Hassan, last week. The papers, found after a tip-off by western intelligence, were not evidence of a weapon of mass destruction and are all pre-1990, Mr Blix said. We know very well they have dealt #91;in the past#93; with laser enrichment. Gary Samore, a former proliferation expert at the US national security council, said that using laser technology to separate isotopes to enrich uranium was very very demanding and no country had produced it in that way. Mr Blix said he had no doubt Tony Blair would like to have a peaceful solution through inspections, adding that the prime minister had refused to commit himself during talks on Friday to a timetable regarding the monitoring. #183; A statement purportedly written by Osama bin Laden urging Muslims to unite against the crusader coalition was published yesterday by the London-based Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat. It said the statement was mailed to the paper from an Islamic source in London with close links to a Pakistan-based Islamic research centre
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Drugs and forgery 'sustain North Korean economy' Matthew Engel in Washington Sunday January 19 2003 The Observer The threat from North Korea may be more insidious than the mere possibility of a nuclear attack, it was claimed yesterday. The regime is shoring up what remains of its economy by racketeering, according to US officials quoted in the magazine US News and World Report. They believe North Korea is producing 40 tonnes of opium a year, huge quantities of high-quality amphetamines and millions of dollars worth of supernotes - beautifully made counterfeit $100 bills. The magazine says the US has seen videotape of Kim Jong-nam, the son of the dictator Kim Jong-il, using the fake notes at a casino in Macao. The officials say these may be worth almost as much as the legitimate North Korean trade: about $500m a year compared with $650m in official exports. Some say the corruption is leading to a culture of bribery and a loosening of the regime's hold. The key here is lack of government control, one told the magazine. Criminal activity may bring about the disintegration of this regime. The report coincides with another round of intense diplomacy. Although a Russian envoy was still in Pyongyang and a special UN envoy had just left, the official news agency was putting out apparently unyielding statements, including a rare comment from Kim Jong-il himself. No force on earth can break the inexhaustible strength and indomitable will of this great army and people, he was quoted as saying. More specifically, his first vice foreign minister, Kang Sok-ju, called for face-to-face talks with the US: an approach Washington rejects. The internationalisation of this issue would make the prospect of its settlement more complicated and gloomy, he said. But at a diplomatic reception he welcomed the Russian envoy, Alexander Losyukov, and praised the Russians' good will. Mr Losyukov described their talks so far as useful. In an interview with South Korean TV the American ambassador to Seoul, Glenn Hubbard, gave a further hint that the US may offer the North a deal. If they satisfy our concerns about the nuclear programmes, we are prepared to consider a broad approach, he said. That would entail, in the final analysis, some economic cooperation, perhaps in the power field. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
Re: [CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- In a message dated 1/18/2003 12:35:39 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Making things worse is the sense of aloofness conveyed by the man who is probably New York's least self-publicising mayor in living memory - in contrast to Rudolph Giuliani, or Ed Koch, who as mayor in the 1980s was fond of yelling "How'm I doing?" at almost any New Yorker he passed. Well it was Mr. Giuliani who wanted Mr. Bloomberg to be elected. Since they are both Republicans, we know all will be well. Prudy A HREF=""www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=""Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=""ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. --- Note from Euphorian: Bloomberg's deficit was inherited ... so much for leadership ... AER --- To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk King of New York loses his lustre The Big Apple is suffering from a $6bn debt and so is Mayor Bloomberg, whose popularity is plummeting Oliver Burkeman in New York Friday January 17 2003 The Guardian Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, is rarely the bearer of good news these days. So on Tuesday he jumped at the opportunity to drop in at Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx, to welcome the baseball team's latest international star, Hideki Matsui - a towering 28-year-old Japanese player nicknamed Godzilla, who will earn $21m over three years. Even then the beleaguered Mr Bloomberg was unable to avoid mentioning the subject that has come to define his mayoralty: New York's biggest financial crisis for more than 30 years. Welcoming Mr Matsui, he delivered only one rather plaintive piece of advice. Spend a lot of money, he said. But even Godzilla can only do so much. Facing a potential budget shortfall of$6bn, the mayor awoke to more bad news yesterday: a New York Times poll showed his popularity plummeting in recent months, 53% of New Yorkers disapproving of his handling of the job. The media billionaire, elected by the numbed city in December 2001 as a safe pair of non-ideological hands and a man whose estimated $3bn fortune meant he would be beholden to no one, has failed to convince on the personal level, too. About 30% of those questioned reported a generally unfavourable impression - a rise from 13% in the middle of last year. The fiscal meltdown, attributable in large part to the September 11 terrorist attacks and their aftermath, has forced Mr Bloomberg, 60, to introduce a harsh austerity plan. He has ordering 25-30% cuts in expenditure by all city agencies, closing daycare centres for the elderly, threatening a rise in subway fares, increasing property taxes by 25%, and raising the price of cigarettes to more than $7 (about #163;4.50). This has proved particularly unpopular in one of America's last nicotine-addicted big cities. Most politically dangerous of all, Mr Bloomberg has not spared firefighters and police officers from the axe, introducing recruitment freezes on the emergency services. Making things worse is the sense of aloofness conveyed by the man who is probably New York's least self-publicising mayor in living memory - in contrast to Rudolph Giuliani, or Ed Koch, who as mayor in the 1980s was fond of yelling How'm I doing? at almost any New Yorker he passed. Mr Bloomberg, by contrast, prefers to fly state politicians by private jet to his Bermuda holiday home for negotiations. He has been excoriated in the city's press for vanishing abroad at weekends, taking time off from a job traditionally done seven days a week. He keeps his decision-making really close to his vest, said Bonnie Brower, executive director of City Project, a New York budgetary pressure group. He relies on a very small circle of advisers, and he regards public participation as very messy and unnecessary. Bloomberg Corporation [the mayor's business media firm] wasn't a public company beholden to shareholders - it was Mike and his friends. I think that's the way he would like to rule. For example, he said he didn't see any opposition to his budget proposals. Well, all he had to do was peek out the window of City Hall, because every day there were one or more protest rallies. The decline in the mayor's fortunes follows a honeymoon period in the first half of last year when it seemed that Mr Bloomberg, though nominally a Republican, might have truly brought non-ideological government to New York. After September 11 Mr Giuliani's act was so obviously impossible to follow that nobody expected anyone to do so. Mr Bloomberg set about running the city like a forward-thinking corporation. His office adopted a far less controlling approach to reporters than Mr Giuliani. He cut the mayor's salary to $1. Respect mingled with amusement greeted his decision to turn City Hall into a vast open-plan office. He avoided wrangles over tax and sponsorship by funding cultural institutions from his own pocket, giving out $10m in December 2001. But, said Steven Malanga of the right-leaning Manhattan Institute thinktank, it was very naive of him to say he was going to govern without an ideological bias. One of his favourite expressions is that there's no Democratic or Republican way to pick up the garbage. But the truth of the matter is that sanitation costs differ from city to city, and some are making savings with privatisation. Curiously, news of Mr Bloomberg's dwindling popularity comes at a time when two of the old sores of New York life - crime and police conduct -
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Car wars The US economy needs oil like a junkie needs heroin - and Iraq will supply its next fix Ian Roberts Friday January 17 2003 The Guardian War in Iraq is inevitable. That there would be war was decided by North American planners in the mid-1920s. That it would be in Iraq was decided much more recently. The architects of this war were not military planners but town planners. War is inevitable not because of weapons of mass destruction, as claimed by the political right, nor because of western imperialism, as claimed by the left. The cause of this war, and probably the one that will follow, is car dependence. The US has paved itself into a corner. Its physical and economic infrastructure is so highly car dependent that the US is pathologically addicted to oil. Without billions of barrels of precious black sludge being pumped into the veins of its economy every year, the nation would experience painful and damaging withdrawal. The first Model T Ford rolled off the assembly line in 1908 and was a miracle of mass production. In the first decade of that century, car registrations in the US increased from 8,000 to almost 500,000. Within the cities, buses replaced trams, and then cars replaced buses. In 1932, General Motors bought up America's tramways and then closed them down. But it was the urban planners who really got America hooked. Car ownership offered the possibility of escape from dirty, crowded cities to leafy garden suburbs and the urban planners provided the escape routes. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, America road built itself into a nation of home-owning suburbanites. In the words of Joni Mitchell: They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. Cities such as Los Angeles, Dallas and Phoenix were moulded by the private passenger car into vast urban sprawls which are so widely spread that it is now almost impossible to service them economically with public transport. As the cities sprawled, the motor manufacturing industry consolidated. Car-making is now the main industrial employer in the world, dominated by five major groups of which General Motors is the largest. The livelihood and landscape of North Americans were forged by car-makers. Motor vehicles are responsible for about one-third of global oil use, but for nearly two-thirds of US oil use. In the rest of the world, heating and power generation account for most oil use. The increase in oil prices during the 1973 Arab oil embargo encouraged the substitution of other fuels in heating and power generation, but in the transport sector there is little scope for oil substitution in the short term. Due to artificially low oil and gasoline prices that did not reflect the true social costs of production and use, there was little incentive to seek alternative energy sources. The Arab oil embargo temporarily stimulated greater fuel efficiency with the introduction of gasoline consumption standards, but the increasing popularity of gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles over the past decade has substantially reduced the average fuel efficiency of the US car fleet. The US transportation sector is almost totally dependent on oil, and supplies are running out. It is estimated that the total amount of oil that can be pumped out of the earth is about 2,000 billion barrels and that world oil production will peak in the next 10 to 15 years. Since even modest reductions in oil production can result in major hikes in the cost of gasoline, the US administration is well aware of the importance of ensuring oil supplies. Every major oil price shock of the past 30 years was followed by a US recession and every major recession was preceded by an oil price shock. In 1997, the Carnegie commission on preventing deadly conflict identified factors that put states at risk. They include rapid population changes that outstrip the capacity of the state to provide essential services, and the control of valuable natural resources by a single group. Both factors are key motivators in the war with Iraq. Sprawling suburban America needs oil and Saddam Hussein is sitting on it. The US economy needs oil like a junkie needs heroin and Iraq has 112 billion barrels, the largest supply in the world outside Saudi Arabia. Even before the first shot has been fired, there have been discussions about how Iraq's oil reserves will be carved up. All five permanent members of the UN security council have international oil companies that have an interest in regime change in Baghdad. Car dependence is a global public health issue of which gasoline wars are only one facet. Every day about 3,000 people die and 30,000 people are seriously injured on the world's roads in traffic crashes. More than 85% of the deaths are in low and
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk US oil stocks evaporate to 27-year low Heather Stewart Wednesday January 15 2003 The Guardian Crude oil stocks in America have run dangerously low, raising fears that the government will be forced to tap its strategic reserves even before any full-blown conflict with Iraq. Inventories are down to their second-lowest level since records began in 1976 as the oil workers' strike in Venezuela holds back supply, the US department of energy revealed yesterday. Official estimates put the minimum stocks needed to run US refineries at 270m barrels a day but the DoE said there were only 272.3m barrels left in the system, down 6.4m barrels from a week earlier. The shortfall helped send oil prices soaring again yesterday, with Brent crude for February delivery up 64 cents a barrel to $31.25 by the afternoon. Paul Horsnell, oil analyst at JP Morgan, said that with US refineries guzzling 15m barrels of crude every day there was just four hours worth of slack in the system. Things are getting a bit tight if it gets below 300m barrels, Mr Horsnell said. Once you start running below that level, prices become more and more sensitive even to minor changes in supply. With the build-up to a conflict in Iraq accelerating, Mr Horsnell said, there was considerable potential for interruptions in supply in coming months. What's alarming about this is that it's got nothing to do with Iraq - it's got nothing to do with the Middle East, he said. The US government holds a massive strategic petrol reserve in salt caverns below Texas and Louisiana. Despite the spike in the oil price, industry spokesmen insisted yesterday that it was not yet time to turn on the taps. I don't see a reason, really, to release the SPR, said John Felmy, chief economist for trade body the American Petroleum Institute, arguing that there was not yet a crisis. We can't declare an emergency at this point. Mr Horsnell said that, although the oil price would be high enough normally to justify dipping into the SPR, the White House might be hoping to keep back supplies until the outbreak of a war with Iraq, when prices might rise further. There is little sign of an early resumption of normal oil supplies from Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest exporter, where striking workers are trying to force president Hugo Chavez to call early elections by starving the oil-dependent economy of cash. Cumulative loss of production is approaching 100m barrels. The oil markets were temporarily calmed last week by the prospect of a compensatory increase in supplies from Opec, the oil producers' cartel. But yesterday's jump in prices suggested traders are losing faith in Opec's ability to help. Oil ministers from the Opec countries agreed to raise production by 1.5m barrels a day at a meeting in Vienna last weekend. Lawrence Eagles, at commodity analyst GNI, said the 270m-barrel floor was probably an overestimate of the minimum amount needed to keep refineries running, and just-in-time production methods meant a smaller margin for error was sufficient. Regardless of whether that particular cut-off point is right, though, we have clearly gone down to very low stocks, he added. Mr Eagles calculates that reserves, plus the SPR and stocks of finished oil products, could keep the US economy going for 77 days. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk The zero tolerance Giuliani roadshow arrives in Mexico Protected by 10 cars and 12 motorcycles, New York's former mayor says he can sell his crime strategy in Latin America's biggest city Jo Tuckman in Mexico City Wednesday January 15 2003 The Guardian Mexico City, the biggest metropolis in Latin America, plagued by years of rampant crime, has welcomed its latest weapon against murder and corruption: Rudolph Giuliani. The former mayor of New York has arrived in the capital for the first instalment of a crime-busting contract which will earn his consultancy company a $4.3m (#163;2.7m) fee. During a frenetic two-day visit, he told residents he believed he could do for them what he achieved for the people of New York with a zero tolerance policy. Our purpose is to evaluate the situation, and then make recommendations using the experience and knowledge we have that has worked elsewhere, said Mr Giuliani, who is credited with bringing down crime in his own city by 60% overall, and murders by 70%. Mr Giuliani said he would be revealing his crime-busting recommendations in May. It will be the first time that the former mayor has tried to adapt the zero tolerance philosophy to a foreign city. Mexico City is not an easy place to start, even for the man who emerged a popular hero from September 11 and has become the personification of leadership for many people. The crime problem in Mexico City is not only tough, but also culturally specific. The crisis began in the mid-1990s, prompted by economic turmoil, and soon became firmly entrenched. Currently, about 500 crimes are reported daily, although criminologists say that this represents only about 10% of the total, and that only about 10% of crimes reported lead to convictions. The zero tolerance idea is rooted in the theory that combating major crimes is best done by tackling an underlying culture of crime - which means cracking down on even minor misdemeanors. This is something which could prove particularly difficult in Mexico City. Kidnappings, assaults and bank robberies catch the headlines, but rule-breaking runs particularly deep in a place where policemen called to investigate a burglary may walk off with an extra something for themselves; where bribing cops is accepted practice; where many ignore even the concept of taxes; and where only a tiny minority respect traffic regulations. While in Mexico, Mr Giuliani acknowledged there were difficulties in imposing the New York model wholesale, and promised cultural sensitivity. Some things are transferable and some are not, he said. But whatever the differences in culture, background and laws, the objective for all decent societies is absolutely the same, and that is protection and safety: the single most important human right. Although unwilling to give much away about his recommendations, he did mention the importance of fighting corruption in the police force. One policeman, Marcelino Flores, said: The first thing Giuliani needs to do is to raise salaries. The next is training. Salaries here are way too low if they want a clean police force. Part of the strategy seems to be just that, with an increase in salaries from the current average of about #163;4,300 a year. Although this was Mr Giuliani's first visit, his advisers have been in and out of Mexico since the contract was announced in October. A visit planned for November was cancelled at the last minute amid rumours of a kidnapping threat, and his arrival this week was a surprise to most. From the moment Mr Giuliani touched down at 3.30am on Tuesday, he moved around the city cocooned in ostentatious security and shadowed by a cloud of journalists. He took a ride through the Barrio Bravo of Tepito, where even army operations against drugs and arms trafficking are repelled by criminals defending their territory. Not that the former mayor could have seen much at such an early hour from inside a van surrounded by 10 other cars and a dozen motorcycles. There were also endless meetings with officials and the business leaders who are footing the bill, and who appear to view Mr Giuliani as a kind of saviour. Others are not convinced. The deal upsets nationalist sensitivities and seems at odds with the ethos of the leftwing mayor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who had previously criticized zero tolerance for promoting police abuse. A taxi driver, Alejandro Lagran, said: You can't compare New York to Mexico City. People there are richer and there is more control. Mr Giuliani brushed aside such doubts during a press conference on Tuesday. Back in 1990, New York City was known as The Rotten Apple, and now it is one of the safest cities in America, if not the safest, he said. But he warned against
Re: [CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- On 16 Jan 2003 at 15:20, Alamaine Ratliff wrote: The zero tolerance Giuliani roadshow arrives in Mexico Rudi goes from one mayor of mayhem to another ... A:E:R A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. --- Note from Euphorian: Or, Why they live over there and we live over here. --- To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Parole denied to farmer jailed for killing burglar Steven Morris Thursday January 16 2003 The Guardian Tony Martin, the farmer jailed for shooting dead a teenage burglar, last night learned he will not be freed early because he still refuses to concede what he did was wrong. The parole board is believed to have taken into account probation reports suggesting he might again attack a burglar if his home was broken into, and also that he was living in the past. Martin, who is serving five years for the manslaughter of 16-year-old Fred Barras, will not be released until the end of July, to the fury of supporters and some politicians. Businessman Malcolm Starr, who has led the campaign for the Norfolk farmer's release, said: This decision is completely wrong. The parole board is completely out of touch with public opinion. He added: Mr Martin regrets the fact that a 16-year-old lost his life but he feels he has done nothing wrong and will not lie to obtain his early release. A lot of prisoners lie and say they are sorry about something when they are not. He is not prepared to lie. Tory MP Henry Bellingham, whose North West Norfolk constituency includes Martin's farm, Bleak House, in the remote Fenland hamlet of Emneth Hungate, said he would raise the matter with the home secretary, David Blunkett. He said: It's a disgrace. Mr Martin has been a model prisoner and there's no reason to detain him a moment longer. After opening fire on Barras and his accomplice, Brendon Fearon, in August 1999, Martin was lionised by some sections of the media as a victim who was persecuted because he dared to fight back. The incident sparked a national debate about crime, rural policing and the rights of householders to defend their property. However, a jury at Norwich crown court dismissed Martin's claim that he was acting in self-defence. He was convicted of murder and jailed for life in April 2000. The conviction was reduced to manslaughter on appeal in 2001 when three judges accepted Martin had been suffering from a paranoid personality disorder, but said the jury was surely right to decide he had not acted reasonably by opening fire with an illegally held pump action shotgun. The parole board wrote to Roger Haley, the governor of Highpoint prison in Suffolk, last night to explain why it refused to grant Martin's release. A close friend of Martin's, Richard Portham, said: He told me he had seen one of the reports from a probation officer who said he shouldn't get released because he was a danger to burglars. I suppose the attitude came across in his report that he would do it again. I am sure Tony would have given the impression that if people were threatening him he would have no choice but to defend himself. He added: One of the probation officers criticised him for not living in the 21st century because he keeps saying things were better 40 years ago. Mr Martin's response is that things were better. There was not this problem with law and order. Martin's solicitor, James Saunders, said he did not believe the farmer could be regarded as a danger to society. He said: I think it [the decision] will confirm his view that it's an upside down world. He was saddened that a young man died but the position has been that he didn't have any alternative but to defend himself. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- [EMAIL PROTECTED] spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Secret gun finds raise gang fears Sharp rise in smuggling fuels drug wars Paul Lashmar and James Oliver Monday January 13 2003 The Guardian Growing arsenals of hand grenades, machine guns and Semtex explosives have been seized at ports by customs and excise in a wave of smuggling that is arming criminal gangs, the Guardian can disclose. One of the most disturbing aspects of the arms finds, in a climate of growing public anxiety about gun crime, is that customs, which is under the control of the government, has kept quiet about the most recent discoveries. The dramatic rise in gun crime has profoundly embarrassed the government in the wake of the fatal shooting of two teenage girls at a new year's party in Birmingham. Customs did not publicly disclose their most recent finds in June and November and have given few details of an earlier seizure in April. They cite ongoing investigations as the reason. The most significant seizure took place in early November at a south coast port, according to investigators, when customs discovered in a lorry load of frozen pizza about 30 Uzi machine pistols, magazines, silencers and ammunition believed to come from Croatia and heading for London. In another seizure in June at Dover, in a lorry purportedly carrying aircraft spares, customs found two mini submachine guns. In addition, four magazines, two silencers, a Magnum .44 handgun and ammunition were discovered. Last April customs intercepted a vehicle at Felixstowe docks. Seventeen hand grenades were hidden on board along with detonators, two packs of explosive, 10 handguns, three machine pistols and ammunition. Sources say that some of the weapons were destined for drug gangs, including the Turkish heroin gangs in north London and a south London crime family. Arms shipments, many from eastern Europe, are believed to have been destined for organised criminals. Police sources believe the surge in arms smuggling is motivated by drug gangs urgently increasing their firepower to cope with a growing spate of turf wars. According to sources in police intelligence: These seizures may well indicate the emergence of a new source of weapons for some organised crime groups. The problem is, we don't know what's got through. In 2001-2002 only a few handguns were found by customs. The seizures in the last nine months suggest a surge in arms smuggling. Customs usually estimate that they seize a small percentage of any regular contraband traffic. Some hand grenades are believed to be in criminal hands in Britain already. After the shooting of the two teenage girls in a drug gang shootout, the attacked gang has threatened to use hand grenades in retribution. Police are hunting the killers of Charlene Ellis, 18, and her cousin Letisha Shakespeare, 17. A customs press spokeswomen confirmed that there had been seizures. We have had some seizures of guns over the last eight months that naturally concern us. It is far too early to say any new trend was emerging with only handful of significant seizures over the last eight months and not much more than this over the past year. However, a customs source said: Within customs this is believed to show a new trend in smuggling in such serious weapons. Police sources say they are concerned that the number of dedicated customs firearms and explosive officers based at ports had declined over the last two years. Last month the head of intelligence at Scotland Yard warned that gun battles could break out in London between rival gangs fighting over the trade in crack cocaine and heroin. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Mike Fuller said the capital was on the cusp of turf wars between Albanians, Turks, Chinese triads and Jamaicans. He said the gangs were involved in drug dealing, human trafficking and kidnapping. Police are particularly worried because the foreign-based gangs have already shown they have access to firearms and are prepared to kill. There have been 18 murders this year involving black on black killings by British crack dealers and Jamaican Yardie gangsters. At the beginning of December Alisan Dogan, 43, a cleaner, was caught in the crossfire and shot dead when dozens of criminals staged a running battle in a busy shopping area of Green Lanes, in Haringey, north London. The incident that left four men with gunshot wounds is thought to be connected to Turkish organised crime linked to the heroin trade. Cutting off new sources of guns for criminals has so far been hampered by the lack of comprehensive and centralised intelligence of police and customs seizures. But April will see the launch of the forensic science service's firearms database that will provide centralised information on all firearms submitted by
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- [EMAIL PROTECTED] spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Sharon draws slim hope from polls as revelations continue Chris McGreal in Jerusalem Monday January 13 2003 The Guardian Ariel Sharon drew slight comfort from a new round of opinion polls yesterday that showed his dramatically curtailed television broadcast last week had stemmed the flow of votes from his party ahead of this month's general election. But the polls revealed that most of the Israeli public did not believe his denials over illegal campaign contributions and other financial shenanigans. In addition, Binyamin Netanyahu, the foreign minister, would be a more popular choice as the ruling Likud party's candidate for prime minister in the 28 January ballot. To add to Mr Sharon's woes, the dribble of revelations over his financial relationship with an old war comrade who now lives in South Africa continued yesterday, with claims that the prime minister lied when he said Cyril Kern had no business dealings in Israel. The newspaper Ma'ariv alleged that not only did Mr Kern try to sell diamonds and a gold refinery to Israeli businessmen, but the name of Mr Sharon's son, Gilad, occurs in the correspondence involved. Yesterday, in response to an earlier request from Israel's attorney general, South Africa said it would investigate Mr Kern's $1.5m (#163;930,000) loan to Mr Sharon. Two polls in the Israeli press show the Likud-led rightwing and religious bloc in the 120- seat knesset hanging on to its majority by five or six seats. Before Mr Sharon went on television to deny that the loan was an illegal campaign contribution, and to deny that he had lied to police over its source, the polls had shown the Likud-led bloc close to losing control of the government, with a majority of just three. But by itself, Mr Sharon's party is still down by about 10 seats on polls a month ago, and his personal standing has taken a battering. Before his television broadcast, Mr Sharon promised to disprove with documents and facts the despicable lies being told. But he did neither, and so may have squandered his single greatest asset - trust. Some 65% of Israelis who saw last Wednesday's broadcast - before it was halted by a judge for breaching election laws - were not convinced by Mr Sharon's statement that he was telling the truth. However, the opposition Labour party again failed to capitalise on events and fell in the polls by a couple of seats. Perhaps most worrying for Mr Sharon is that another poll in the Ma'ariv newspaper showed that if Mr Netanyahu were Likud's leader, he would boost the party's vote by 10%. An analysis in Ma'ariv said some voters had given the benefit of the doubt to Mr Sharon, being more furious with the 'hostile' media and the 'harassing' judicial system than they were shocked by the accusations. But the paper says Likud could see the slide resume if there were more revelations. And there are. In his broadcast, Mr Sharon said that Mr Kern never asked me for anything and never received anything. He does not have business here. Ma'ariv reported yesterday that Mr Kern was regularly in contact with Israeli businessmen, and tried to sell Sierra Leonean diamonds and three gold refineries in South Africa. The correspondence involved is copied to Gilad Sharon. It also noted that Mr Kern had met businessmen in Tel Aviv hotels during visits to Israel at which Gilad Sharon was present. More at guardian.co.uk/israel Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- [EMAIL PROTECTED] spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Dazzled by the science Biologists who dress up hi-tech eugenics as a new art form are dangerously deluded Jeremy Rifkin Monday January 13 2003 The Guardian Recently, J Craig Venter, the gene scientist whose company, Celera Genomics, led the race to map the human genome, announced a plan to create the first artificial life form in a laboratory dish. Venter, who has teamed up with the Nobel laureate biologist Hamilton Smith, says he hopes to use a $3m US government grant to create partially man-made organisms that could produce hydrogen for fuel or break down carbon dioxide from power plant emissions. Other scientists worry that Venter's creation could wreak havoc on natural ecosystems or be used to create new kinds of biological weapons. Venter is among a new genre of biologists who see themselves less as engineers and more as creative artists - designers and architects of what they envision as a second genesis - this one inspired not by divine guidance or by the forces of evolution, but by the human imagination. Ironically, this subtle shift in the focus of the biological sciences from engineering to art is being mirrored in the art community, raising the question of whether a new social gestalt is being readied to make acceptable this radical new manipulation of nature. All of a sudden, artists around the world have discovered DNA and are feverishly at play in their studios using the cutting-edge tools of biotechnology. An American artist, Eduardo Kac, commissioned a team of geneticists in France to create a transgenic rabbit named Alba with a fluorescent gene from a jellyfish in its biological code. The rabbit, which glows, is considered a living piece of genetic artistry. Currently, an exhibit entitled Genesis is touring the US with much fanfare. Like Kac's illuminated rabbit, many of the works on display use the tools of genetic science to create living representations just as their predecessors used paintbrushes to create their representations. A group calling itself the Critical Art Ensemble engages in a performance piece called GenTerra, in which it releases transgenic bacteria into the audience. Christine Paul, the curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art says: We are witnessing the emergence of a new type of artist, the artist/scientist/researcher. The new biotech artists say that such exhibits will help the public wrestle with the scientific, ethical and legal issues surrounding the new genomic science. Many of the artists hope that their work, which includes digitally produced portrait photographs of hybrid cat people and tubes of real DNA suspended from the ceiling, will provoke an emotional response from the audience and force people to think about the many implications of the new science. Maybe. But it's far more likely that the real consequence of such art exhibits will be to legitimise the idea of a new artful eugenics movement. The melding together of genetic science and artistic expression could help ease the way to a popular acceptance of Venter's new microbe, as well as cloned, transgenic and chimeric animals and designer babies. More than 30 years ago, Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg wrote expectantly of the possibility of designing a useful protein from first premises, replacing evolution by art. Recombinant DNA techniques are increasingly being viewed as the artist's tools of the postmodern era. With the new technologies, human beings assume the role of creative artists, continually transforming evolution into works of art. Already in laboratories around the world researchers are creating new hybrid creatures that have never before existed. Scientists have fused together the embryos of a sheep and goat, two totally unrelated species, and given birth to a new creature called a Geep, a chimeric animal with the head of a sheep and the body of a goat. The anti-freeze gene in a flounder fish has been inserted into the genetic code of a tomato plant, to make it resistant to freezes. Human growth hormone genes, the human immune system and even human brain tissue have been inserted into the genetic blueprint of mice embryos. The mature mice express these human genes in their bodies. The mice with the human growth hormone genes grew twice as big as ordinary mice. Scientists have even grown human skin, pancreases and breasts in laboratory jars. Other scientists have inserted the nucleus of a human cell into a cow egg whose own nucleus was removed in a partially successful effort to create a quasi-human embryo. Spider genes have been inserted into goat embryos and the mature goats produce spider silk in their milk. And Japanese scientists have just announced that they are planning to use tissue from the legs and
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site, go to http://www.observer.co.uk Sangatte refugees freeze on Paris streets Humanitarian 'crisis' fears as capital is swamped by asylum-seekers Paul Webster in Paris Saturday January 11 2003 The Guardian Hundreds of asylum-seekers, including families with small children, are now sleeping rough under the elegant bridges and in the doorways of Paris as the worst winter spell for years threatens to create a humanitarian 'crisis'. The sudden appearance of the refugees and illegal immigrants in the capital follows the joint British-French decision to freeze out the continuing flow of Iraqi and Afghan refugees and to close the Sangatte refugee centre, near Calais, last month. An estimated 300 illegal immigrants, many of them teenagers, are now wandering the streets of the Channel port while seeking ways to avoid strict French and British immigration controls on ferries and trains. Many others have drifted to Paris. In the city, where four homeless people died of cold last week, Iraqi Kurds and Afghans have swollen the queues seeking emergency shelter. Humanitarian organisations warned this weekend of an impending catastrophe because no provision had been made for groups of up to 50 or more pouring into France in the hope of rejoining families in Britain, which has now tightened post-Sangatte immigration. The growing numbers of the rootless - about 50,000 people from different countries have sought asylum in France in the past 12 months - has shocked aid workers in the Channel port and the capital. Paris's overnight refuges, with space for nearly 4,000 people, have been unable to cope with the demand, despite the fact that scores prefer to sleep rough and avoid the attention of any authority for fear of deportation. At the Pain de Mie reception centre in the 13th arrondissement, which has 500 places, a quarter of those seeking overnight beds were young Afghans and Kurds on their way to Calais who had temporarily abandoned hopes of reaching Kent after sleeping in the open since the demolition of Sangatte. 'The rise in demand has been spectacular since the Red Cross centre was closed,' aid worker Emmanuel Courvier said. 'About 150 Kurds and Afghans have been checking in each night and others have had to be turned away after a meal. We have no idea where they end up.' Asylum-seekers, conspicuous among the ageing down-and-outs seeking respite from the cold, said they had arrived after Sangatte's closure with hopes of entering Britain to join their families. Some were surviving on dwindling amounts of money sent from relations in Britain. Others had travelled with friends who preferred to sleep under bridges or in shop doorways, rather than risk registering in hostels and attracting attention. None of those who spoke to The Observer were among the 1,000 former Sangatte refugees who have been transferred to other centres far from the Channel ports, after the agreement with Britain that saw a limited number of the Sangatte residents being given refuge in the UK. Khaled, 25, whose parents still live in Baghdad, said he had been forced to leave Iraq a month ago after some of his family were arrested by Saddam Hussein's police. Speaking good English, he said he could not stay in France because he knew nobody. 'I may be forced to seek asylum here just to survive, even though I don't speak the language. I have an engineering degree and would be more use in Britain. Everyone I met has only one destination in mind - Britain - and they are ready to undergo any hardship to get there. If there is a war, there will be a rush of more candidates.' Other men in the queue said they believed the French, who have a harder line on refugees than the British, had no intention of giving residence permits and were determined to make life as uncomfortable as possible to discourage newcomers. They pointed out that more than 50 Kurds who had applied for temporary visas were on hunger strike in Bordeaux because their asylum applications had been rejected. The plight of the post-Sangatte generation in Paris has been overshadowed by a rush for shelter from local homeless - known as SDF (sans domicile fixe) - after the deaths of four rough sleepers. But it is causing public concern in Calais, where men, and sometimes families, sleep in public parks or makeshift shelters. Although the temperature dropped to minus 7C last week, the Communist mayor, Jackie H#233;nin, said he would oppose the opening of temporary refuges in case this encouraged the arrival of more asylum-seekers. Buses are sent every night to collect refugees and take them to towns far from the port. Only a score of the men who stay in the city are sure of an overnight refuge and many are sleeping in Second World War blockhouses.
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Supermarket giants to target Safeway with rival £3bn bids Neil Hume Sunday January 12 2003 The Observer A fierce battle for control of Safeway will spill out into the open this week with J Sainsbury and Wal-Mart, the US owner of Asda, both expected to bid over #163;3bn to acquire Britain's fourth-largest supermarket chain. Safeway was effectively put up for sale by its management last week when it agreed to be taken over by Wm Morrison, the Yorkshire-based grocery chain run by Sir Ken Morrison, in a deal worth #163;2.65bn. However, Morrison's share price dropped sharply after the deal was announced, leaving it vulnerable to a counter bid from rivals who cannot afford to see the two chains combine. Sainsbury fears that it will be left as the weakest of the four players in the cut-throat UK food retailing market if the deal goes ahead, while Wal-Mart will never achieve its ambition to become the No1 in Britain if it lets Safeway fall through its grip again - the two were just hours from agreeing a deal four years ago. Sainsbury's directors held day-long discussions yesterday with the chief executive, Sir Peter Davis, seeking support for a cash and share offer of more than 300p for each Safeway share. At the end of Friday's trading, Safeway shares closed at 279.75p, while the value of Morrison's offer stood at 251p. An offer from Sainsbury could come as early as today, alongside the company's third-quarter results, which will the give the City the first indication of how Sainsbury traded over Christmas. Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, is expected to wait until Sainsbury has shown its hands before announcing its move. Given its size the Arkansas-based company will easily be able to outbid Sainsbury and is likely to offer cash. City analysts believe it could afford to pay up to 400p. The bids from Sainsbury and Wal-Mart will be conditional on regulatory approval. This is because their announcement will trigger an assessment by the office of fair trading and probably a referral to the competition commission, which will then launch an inquiry into whether either company should be able to buy Safeway. This process could take up to six months and its findings can, in theory, be overruled by the trade and industry secretary, Patricia Hewitt. A combination of Sainsbury and Safeway would create a food retailing giant in the UK with a market share of 27%, while a merged Asda and Safeway would control 26%. Either deal would reinforce the dominance of the big three - the Tesco, the market leader, Asda and Sainsbury. Critics claim this would stifle competition. To overcome such objections both Sainsbury and Wal-Mart are prepared to sell up to one-third of Safeway's 479 stores. Ironically, the two companies held talks about a carve up of the Safeway store portfolio late last year, but the discussions broke down last month after Wal-Mart objected to the terms of the deal. Sainsbury is now talking to the US private equity group Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and the Royal Bank of Scotland. However, there were indications from Whitehall yesterday that the government would block the Sainsbury and Wal-Mart bids even if both companies promised to sell large of numbers of stores. This would play into the hands of Morrison, which claims that its deal will create a fourth power in the UK food retailing market. The company will make its submission to the OFT this week and is confident it will not be referred to the competition commission. Morrison needs to buy Safeway so that it can expand out of its northern heartland. At the moment only eight of its 191 stores are south of Northampton. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Who's Bush going to war with? The poor Charlotte Denny Sunday January 12 2003 The Observer We are the masters now, is the message coming loud and clear from the Republicans - not just in foreign policy but also when it comes to domestic politics. On the campaign trail two years ago, George Bush promised a new world of compassionate conservatism. But, judging by last week's much-hyped tax cut plan, it is the rich Mr Bush feels compassion towards. According to independent analysis, the top 1% of taxpayers will be $89,000 a year better off as a result, while the average middle class American will see just $265 cut off his/her tax bill. President Bush brands critics of his tax cut plan as exponents of class warfare. Class warfare it certainly is - conducted by the White House on behalf of the richest group of Americans. The Republicans argue that the centrepiece of the plan - the abolition of taxes on dividends - will help the whole economy by reviving the battered stock prices and providing money for firms to invest. In the United States the shares market plays the same role as the housing market does in Britain in supporting consumer spending. But most of the benefits of the president's package will go to the tiny group of rich citizens who hold shares directly. As in Britain, most American households own shares through pension funds, which are already exempt from tax. The independent Tax Policy Centre estimates that 40% of the $360bn cost to the American treasury over the next 10 years will be captured by the wealthiest 1% of taxpayers. Because most institutions buying and selling shares will not benefit from the plan, the boost to prices will be less than the administration hoped for. That could be a blessing in disguise - the economy is still working through the consequences of the last share market bubble and the enormous overhang of investment capital it created. The last thing Wall Street needs now is a White House-sponsored bubble to follow the dotcom boom. As Stephen Lewis of Monument Securities has pointed out, investment spending is depressed because companies are still trying to deal with the hangover from the last party. Encouraging a further bout of overinvestment is not likely to make capital spending profitable again. The market appears to have already worked this out. Share prices soared ahead of the president's heavily trailed plan, but by the time Mr Bush began speaking the euphoria had already worn off. Over the week the widest index of American share prices, the Samp;P 500, rose a measly 2.5% - well below the 10% increase the administration had hoped for. If share prices are unlikely to provide the panacea for faltering confidence the administration is looking for, their other justification for the plan - that it will provide a direct fiscal boost - also seems flawed. Standard Keynesian economics recommends letting borrowing rise when the economy is weak. The US economy needs help now, but most of the benefits of this package will start to take effect in a few years' time and will simply add to the already ballooning deficit.In addition, most of the money is being handed back to the rich who are much more likely to sit on the extra dosh than they are to spend it. Karl Rove, Mr Bush's political mastermind, apparently persuaded him at the last minute that, rather than going for a refund on half of the dividend tax, he should go for the whole hog, doubling the cost of the package at a stroke. The reasoning appears to have been nakedly political: it puts Democrats in Congress in a difficult position by forcing them to vote against the package and thereby gain a reputation for being against giving people's money back to them. This is still a country which - even after the September 11 attacks - still distrusts what it calls big government. This is a return to the Reaganite sup ply-side theories which the current president's father once derided as voodoo economics. The fundamentalist core of the Republican party has never stopped believing that cutting taxes is the route to growth, never mind if the budget deficit balloons as a result. The consequences are more likely to be negative for growth - a larger structural deficit that will crowd out private investment and push up long-term interest rates. Mr Rove may have misjudged the appetite of Americans for this brand of happy-clappy economics. Even some rightwing Republicans in Congress are worried that the plan will cause long-term deterioration in the budget position, while moderate Republicans are alarmed by its egregious redistribution to the rich. Moreover, it is a risky political and economic move at a time when Mr Bush is considering a war in the Middle East which could
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Terrorism suspect 'framed by in-laws' France releases baggage handler arrested at airport Jon Henley in Paris Friday January 10 2003 The Guardian The Algerian-born baggage handler arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport near the end of last month with guns and explosives in his car was framed by his in-laws in a family row, the Paris public prosecutor said yesterday. The retired soldier who told the police he had seen Abderazak Besseghir handling a gun in one of the airport's car parks admitted in custody having taken part in a plot with Mr Besseghir's in-laws to set him up, Yves Bot said. Mr Besseghir was released yesterday afternoon. The prosecutor's office sent an assistant public prosecutor to the prison where he was being held to explain the situation to him. Mr Besseghir, 27, was arrested on December 28 after the police found an automatic pistol, a machine gun, five cakes of plastic explosive, two detonators and a slow-burning fuse hidden in the spare wheel in the boot of his car. But he puzzled the investigators from the start. He had no police record and no known links to radical Islamists. He said that he had never seen the weapons before and that he was being framed by the family of his late wife, who died in a fire at their home in Bondy, outside Paris, last summer. After her death Mr Besseghir was questioned by the police about the blaze, but was released without charge. His wife's family subsequently claimed that just before her death she had threatened to leave him because he had become an Muslim fundamentalist. The airport and anti-terrorist police spent two weeks trying to unravel a non-existent terrorist plot at the airport, which is one of Europe's busiest, handling 1,200 flights and 130,000 passengers a day. In 2001 it was the point of departure for the shoe-bomber Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a Paris to Miami flight in mid-air using explosives concealed in his trainers. Mr Besseghir was placed under formal investigation - one step short of being charged - for criminal association in relations with a terrorist enterprise and multiple violation of legislation on firearms, munitions and explosives. But the police soon admitted their doubts about the case against him, saying that neither he nor any of his family fitted the profile of an Islamist extremist. Nor did the fingerprints found on the weapons match his. Sources close to the inquiry said yesterday that after being questioned for a second time, Marcel Le Hir, the ex-legionnaire whose tip-off originally led to Mr Besseghir's arrest, admitted placing the weapons in his car with an associate who is also in custody. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Gun crimes soar by 35% Staff and agencies Thursday January 09 2003 The Guardian Gun crime in England and Wales increase by 35% last year and criminals used handguns in nearly 50% more offences, Home Office figures revealed today. Firearms were used in 9,974 recorded crimes in the 12 months to last April, up from 7,362. The figures also show the number of crimes involving handguns has more than doubled since the ban on the weapons imposed after the Dunblane massacre from 2,636 in 1997-1998 to 5,871 in the 12 months to April last year. The number of homicide victims killed by firearms increased 32%, or 23 cases, in the year to April 2002. Overall there was a 1% rise in the number of homicides to 858 in England and Wales. In all, handgun crime rose 46% year-on-year. Unadjusted figures show overall recorded crime in the 12 months to last September rose 9.3% but the Home Office stressed that new procedures had skewed the figures. With new recording procedures taken into account the actual overall rise was just 2%, the Home Office said. Robbery was up 14.5% (up 13% adjusted) but from July to September, when the government's street crime initiative was in full swing, it actually fell by 10% in adjusted figures. Domestic burglary figures increased 7.9% (or increased 5% when adjusted), figures which are likely to embarrass ministers in the wake of the lord chief justice and lord chancellor's comments on jailing burglars. Violence against individuals was up 28% in the three months to September last year, which the Home Office adjusted to a 4% rise. Over the same period sex offences were up 25.6%, but ministers said this figure was likely to be inflated by the new statistical changes. Drug offences also rose 12.3% but no adjusted figures were available for this category. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Buffalo Grill sellers cause stampede Jon Henley in Paris Wednesday January 08 2003 The Guardian An avalanche of sell orders cost shares in the scandal-hit French steakhouse chain Buffalo Grill more than half their value yesterday as the stock resumed trading for the first time since December 18. Trading in Buffalo Grill had to be delayed at the start of the session because there were way too many sell orders, one trader said, and by lunchtime the share was changing hands at 5.50 euros, little more than 40% of its pre-opening value. Four top managers of the company and its purchasing subsidiary, Districoupe, are under formal investigation, one step short of being charged, in an investigation by judge Marie-Odile Bertella-Geffroy into a number of deaths in France from the human form of mad cow disease. At least two of the victims were alleged to be frequent customers at Buffalo Grill, which has 150 restaurants in France and 50 in the rest of Europe. The chain is said to have imported British beef between 1996 and 2000, when the meat was banned in France because of fears it could be tainted with the brain-wasting disease. In an exceptional step yesterday, Ms Bertella-Geffroy wrote to the Paris public prosecutor to ask for the inquiry's initial evidence against Buffalo Grill to be made public in an attempt to prove the continuing necessity of her investigation and halt media speculation. The company's founder and supervisory board chairman, Christian Picard, made the same request - for the opposite reasons - last week, asking the French prime minister and justice minister to order the release of all relevant documents to show that the case against the chain was inconsistent, dishonest, and completely empty of any telling or serious element. Mr Picard's lawyer, Jean-Pierre Versini-Campinchi, said the public prosecutor's assertion that the documents were covered by French judicial secrecy laws was becoming more and more untenable. A growing number of well-directed and carefully organised leaks to the press made publication of the entire dossier essential, he said. Emeric Ernoult, another Buffalo Grill lawyer, said one such leak - to Le Canard Enchain#233; - was just a lot of fuss about nothing. The satirical magazine printed an apparently incriminating email from a quality control manager referring to meat from the mad cow disease period which must be got rid of. Mr Ernoult said the mail referred to stocks of Argentinian and Brazilian beef built up in 2001, when a number of new cases of mad cow disease were coming to light in France. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. --- Note from Euphorian: Britland to ban knives next? Is a return to them olden dayze of ripping flesh off of bones in the offing? AER --- To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Rising gun use masks overall fall in offences Risk of being victim is the same as in 1981 Alan Travis, home affairs editor Thursday January 09 2003 The Guardian The shocking 35% increase in gun offences masks a more optimistic picture for England with the overall crime rate levelling off in the last 12 months after five years of continuous falls, according to both sets of official data published yesterday. Gun crime at 9,900 offences forms less than 0.3% of the overall crime rate. The police figures published yesterday show that total recorded crime rose to 5.7 million offences, a headline increase of 9%. But Home Office statisticians said yesterday most of this was accounted for by changes in police recording practices and it should be seen as a small annual rise of 2%. The second set of figures, however - the more authoritative British Crime Survey which measures people's experience of crime - shows a 7% drop in all crime to the year ending September 2002. This leads us to conclude that after falls in overall crime in recent years, crime is now relatively stable, said Professor Paul Wiles, Home Office statistics director. This is supported by the evi dence that the risk of becoming a victim of crime in England and Wales remains at the historically low level of 26% or about one in four, and around the same as it was in 1981. The figures show a conflicting picture on burglary with the police figures showing a 5% rise and the BCS data showing a 7% drop. The Home Office said the recent increases in recorded burglary appeared to be levelling off between July and September last year. But the police figures do show an alarming 15% rise in drug offences from 115,000 in 2000/2001 to 130,000 in 2001/02. This is particularly curious over a period during which the government announced its intention to relax the cannabis laws. The overall murder rate for 2001/02 stood at 858 deaths in England and Wales. This is the highest level for 50 years but was only a slight increase on the previous year's 849 deaths. Nearly all the increase in the last decade has been in murders of men, which have risen by 73% since 1991, while the number of women murdered has remained relatively stable at 250 deaths a year. The most common murder weapon re mains a sharp instrument although there was a 32% rise in deaths from shootings last year from 73 gun deaths to 97. Although gun crime has soared, the estimated underlying trend for all violent crime is only slightly upward - no more than 2%. Almost all of a headline increase of 23% in violent crime on the police figures is discounted by changes in recording practices. The government's street crime ini tiative appears to have turned a 13% increase in street robberies for the 12 months to September 2002 into a 10% drop between July and September. The figures published yesterday also indicate continuing falls in car crime and thefts from vehicles. Further optimism is provided in the British Crime Survey, which shows that for each of the main types of crime - burglary, car crime and violent crime - there were significant falls in the amount of public anxiety. This survey's detailed findings on the rise in gun crime shows that firearm offences are concentrated in the main inner urban areas of London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds. The police recorded crime figures show that gun crime has risen every year for the past four years and is now higher than the previous peak at 9,974 offences for the 12 months to September 2002. There has been a particularly large increase (46%) in the use of handguns but evidence published yesterday from the British Crime Survey shows that in most cases (84%) the gun was used as a threat and not fired, or used as a blunt instrument. There was also a sharp rise (21%) in the use of air weapons in crime to 12,000 offences but most involved criminal damage to property rather than attacks on people. As well as the 97 fatalities, 558 people were seriously injured in gun crimes. Changes in police body armour and other protective gear meant that only 10 police officers were slightly injured in gun crimes last year. No officer has been shot dead since 1995. The rise in gun crime came mainly as a result of 34% increase in armed robberies with most committed on shops and by attacks on security vans on the public highway and street robberies. The days of the sawn-off shotgun are nearly over. They were used in only 6% of robberies compared with handguns, which were used in 70% of cases. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. --- Note from Euphorian: I s noththinngg! --- To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk TV humiliation as Sharon fails to stem voter exodus Chris McGreal in Jerusalem Thursday January 09 2003 The Guardian An Israeli judge pulled the plug on his prime minister Ariel Sharon mid-way through an angry and rambling television address last night which was meant to deny corruption allegations and win back voters who are fleeing his party in droves. With opinion polls showing a rapid collapse in public trust and his rightwing bloc perilously close to losing its majority in this month's general election, Mr Sharon was forced to make a public statement about $1.5m given to his family last year by a British businessman. Before the address, commentators agreed that Mr Sharon is no longer the Teflon prime minister and that he needed a masterful performance to regain public trust. But after about 20 minutes of avoiding specifics in favour of vitriolic denunciations of his opponents whom he accused of despicable slander... with one purpose, to bring down the government of Israel, he was abruptly taken off the air for violating another law. Israel's election commission obtained a court order because Mr Sharon's speech amounted to electioneering which is illegal on television. Mr Sharon failed to explain convincingly the circumstances of the $1.5m (#163;934,000) loan. The broadcast may even have fuelled the decline of Likud which has lost about one-third of its backing over the past month, according to the latest polls. In addition, 31% of voters said they no longer believe Mr Sharon is fit to be prime minister. Supporters of the prime minister's arch-rival for the Likud leadership, the foreign minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, are already beginning to agitate for his resignation. The fraud squad is investigating whether the loan to one of Mr Sharon's sons from Cyril Kern, a wealthy former textile manufacturer in Cape Town, was indirectly used to repay illegal campaign funds. If so, Mr Sharon could face charges of deception, fraud and lying to the police over the source of the funds. There is no suggestion that Mr Kern did anything illegal. Last night the prime minister told the Israeli public he had been horrified to learn of the original illegal campaign funds even though the front company used to launder the funds was set up by his then lawyer, Dov Weisglass, who now heads the prime minister's office. He said he did not know where the money came from to repay the campaign funds after the state comptroller concluded they were illegal. The fraud squad alleges that the prime minister told the police and state comptroller that the money came from a mortgage on his ranch. But his bank had turned down the mortgage because Mr Sharon does not own the ranch. To win back the voters, they will have to believe that Mr Sharon knew nothing of the loan to his son. Last night, the prime minister tried to say that recent revelations of vote buying and organised crime infiltration of his Likud party were groundless and the work of his Labour opponent, Amram Mitzna, who was in London to meet Tony Blair. But that is unlikely to satisfy sceptical voters given that the police have already made several arrests and Mr Sharon was forced to fire one of his deputy ministers implicated in the scandal. The prime minister's friend and special envoy to the White House, Aryeh Ganger, refused to answer questions from fraud squad detectives last week about his role in funnelling illegal funds to Mr Sharon's 1999 campaign. To add to the prime minister's woes, the supreme court yesterday overturned a ban on two leading Arab-Israeli politicians from seeking re-election to the knesset. Likud is haemorrhaging support not only to its allies on the right but, crucially, to a centrist party, Shinui, that looks likely to triple its seats and emerge as the third largest party in the knesset. Shinui is led by a populist rabble rouser, Yosef Lapid, who has won support by virulently opposing religious parties and demanding a secular state. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Anti-war train drivers refuse to move arms freight Kevin Maguire Wednesday January 08 2003 The Guardian Train drivers yesterday refused to move a freight train carrying ammunition believed to be destined for British forces being deployed in the Gulf. Railway managers cancelled the Ministry of Defence service after the crewmen, described as conscientious objectors by a supporter, said they opposed Tony Blair's threat to attack Iraq. The anti-war revolt is the first such industrial action by workers for decades. The two Motherwell-based drivers declined to operate the train between the Glasgow area and the Glen Douglas base on Scotland's west coast, Europe's largest Nato weapons store. English Welsh and Scottish Railway (EWS), which transports munitions for the MoD as well as commercial goods, yesterday attempted to persuade the drivers to move the disputed load by tomorrow. Leaders of the Aslef rail union were pressed at a meeting with EWS executives to ask the drivers to relent. But the officials of a union opposed to any attack on Iraq are unlikely to comply. The two drivers are understood to be the only pair at the Motherwell freight depot trained on the route of the West Highland Line. An EWS spokesman declined to confirm the train had been halted, although he insisted no drivers had refused to take out the trains. We don't discuss commercial issues, he said. The point about the two drivers is untrue and we don't discuss issues about meetings we have. Yet his claim was flatly contradicted by a well-placed rail industry source who supplied the Guardian with the train's reference number. The MoD later said it had been informed by EWS that mechanical problems, caused by the cold winter weather, had resulted in the train's cancellation. One solution under discussion yesterday between the MoD and EWS was to transport the shipment by road to avoid what rail managers hoped would be an isolated confrontation. Dockers went on strike rather than load British-made arms on to ships destined for Chile after the assassination of leftwing leader Salvador Allende in 1973. In 1920 stevedores on London's East India Docks refused to move guns on to the Jolly George, a ship chartered to take weapons to anti-Bolsheviks after the Russian revolution. Trade unions supporting workers who refuse to handle weapons could risk legal action and possible fines for contempt of court. Lindsey German, convener of the Stop the War Coalition, said: We fully support the action that has been taken to impede an unjust and aggressive war. We hope that other people around the country will be able to do likewise. The anti-war group is organising a second national demonstration in central London on Saturday February 15. Organisers claimed more than 400,000 people attended a protest in September. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk MI5 link to royal plotter Tania Branigan Thursday January 02 2003 The Guardian A man who tried to shoot Edward VIII was in contact with MI5 and might have been the stooge of Austrian communists posing as Nazis. The dramatic assassination attempt was foiled by a bystander and police officers, who knocked the gun from George McMahon's hand as he levelled it at the King during a procession in London on July 16 1936. Ironically - in light of Edward VIII's contacts with the Third Reich - McMahon claimed to have been set up by Nazi agents who offered him #163;150 to assassinate the King. The Irish journalist said that he had been approached by agents who had discussed the injustices in Ireland and suggested he could help. He also claimed that he had never intended to fire the pistol, and had informed MI5 of the plot. Despite testimony that he had fascist sympathies, officials concluded that he was a liar who had invented the plot to gain attention. However, newly released documents show that McMahon's solicitor established that he had indeed been in touch with an MI5 agent. The police also overlooked his friendship with an Austrian emigre, whose close friends included a communist party member who was later investigated by MI5 following espionage activities at a London arsenal. It raises the possibility that communists could have posed as Nazis to win over McMahon for their own ends. He was sentenced to 12 months hard labour for wilfully producing a revolver near to the person of the King with intent to alarm His Majesty, after the judge said that he had not intended to kill the King. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Britain and Israel in furious row as Blair peace talks are scuppered Ewen MacAskill and Chris McGreal in Jerusalem Monday January 06 2003 The Guardian The British and Israeli governments were engaged in a full-scale row yesterday after Ariel Sharon banned Palestinians from attending a peace conference in London next week. The conference, a pet project of Tony Blair, is now almost certain to be postponed. Mr Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, who controls the movement of all Palestinians in and out of the West Bank and Gaza, imposed the travel ban as part of punishment measures after suicide bombings killed 22 in Tel Aviv on Sunday. The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, had fiery exchanges with his Israeli counterpart, Binyamin Netanyahu, yesterday morning. Mr Netanyahu further inflamed the situation by publishing extracts of the private conversation between the two men, an unusual breach of diplomatic etiquette. The row marks a distinct cooling in British-Israeli relations. Until now, Israel has viewed Mr Blair as being one of their few dependable supporters in Europe. A delegation of six Palestinians was invited to the Foreign Office residence at Carlton Gardens for a two-day conference next Monday and Tuesday to discuss reform of the Palestinian authority, including how to clamp down on militant groups. Also invited were representatives from the US, the UN, the EU, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. Mr Straw, angry that Israel had not informed him of the decision, which he had only heard about on the radio news, called Mr Netanyahu to express his regret at the ban. He asked Mr Netanyahu to reconsider but there is little expectation that Israel will back down. Mr Netanyahu, according to the Israeli transcript, told Mr Straw that the bombings ruled out business as usual and he urged Britain to adopt the position of the US president, George Bush, that leaders compromised by terror cannot be partners for peace. He added: You in Britain are doing the exact opposite. Mr Straw countered, according to the transcript: No, it is Israel that is doing the opposite. Instead of concentrating on dealing with terrorism, it is striking at [Palestinian] delegates. The Foreign Office took the line that it was a private conversation and it would not be commenting on the details of what took place. Mr Straw, in a speech later, said the conference was in the interests of Israelis as well as Palestinians because security was on the agenda. He phoned the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, to inform him of the ban but Washington is unlikely to intervene to put pressure on Israel because it had little interest in the conference in the first place. Mr Netanyahu, elaborating on the ban at a press conference, said: Legitimising the sham reform efforts of Arafat's regime will, in effect, legitimise a Palestinian leadership compromised by terror. Not only has the Palestinian Authority failed to fight terrorism, Arafat's own Fatah and Tanzim forces proudly took credit for yesterday's savage attack, and for many other atrocities over the last two years. Jonathon Peled, an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, said: Tony Blair's initiative is something we accepted half-heartedly. We were not invited to it and we had our reservations. The idea of a Palestinian conference emerged from a promise by Mr Blair in the autumn to try to help find a settlement to the conflict. Mr Blair has a genuine interest in trying to end the confrontation but the conference is also intended to temper criticism in the Arab world and within his own Labour party that it is wrong to concentrate on Iraq while ignoring Israel-Palestine. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Bush's multibillion-dollar tax cut for the rich Deal is unfair to poor, say Democrats Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington Monday January 06 2003 The Guardian President George Bush will be forced today to defend a massive regeneration package designed to kick-start the US economy which has come under withering attack as a sop to the rich. The centrepiece of the White House proposals to spur on the anaemic economy, which President Bush will unveil in a speech in Chicago, is the abolition of tax on shareholder dividends. The elimination of the tax has helped to double the expected cost of Mr Bush's economic package to around $600bn (#163;373bn) over the next decade. It has also exposed the White House to charges from Democrats and moderate Republicans that the Bush administration is seeking to take advantage of the economic recession to reward wealthy Americans and Republican party supporters at the expense of the poor and the middle classes. The wealthiest stratum of Americans - an estimated 200,000 people earning more than $1m a year - accounts for barely 1% of US taxpayers, according to figures from the internal revenue service. However, together they earned about $25.4bn in dividends last year, or about a quarter of the overall total of dividends for US taxpayers. Yesterday, Democrats and moderate Republicans lined up against the economic package, singling out the dividend tax as unfair and a blow to the poor. Economists, meanwhile, said it offered precious little to stimulate economic growth or create jobs. The furore over the tax cut was fuelled by reports yesterday that the Bush administration intended to freeze all spending on domestic programmes aside from homeland security. Officials argue that the spending cap on welfare, the environment, job creation and other government programmes is needed to put the budget on a war footing. However, poverty action groups say the freeze will take away $3bn from programmes that directly benefit lower-income groups at a time of recession. They singled out a $300m cut to a programme to help poor families with heating fuel costs. At a time when some people badly could use help, Mr Bush's tax cut mostly will help those who need it least, a leader comment in the Washington Post said yesterday. President Bush and the Republican party leadership have fought back by accusing their critics of indulging in class warfare. The emerging row over the president's economic package now threatens to overshadow the first week of the new Congress when the Bush administration had hoped to capitalise on Republican control of both chambers to further its conservative agenda. Instead, the handful of newly declared contenders for the Democratic party nomination for the 2004 presidential elections seized on the elimi nation of the dividend tax to kick-start their campaigns. The Democrats were to release their own, more modest, version of an economic stimulus package last night. The measures, expected to cost the US treasury $130bn over the next decade, were thought to include individual tax rebates of $300 a worker, as well as business tax incentives. President Bush's plan is also expected to include an extension of unemployment benefits and an acceleration of the tax cuts schedule approved two years ago, as well as tax incentives on equipment purchases for businesses. Although a reduction in dividend tax had been widely anticipated, it did not become clear until yesterday that President Bush intended to eliminate the tax entirely. However, administration officials claimed yesterday that shareholders suffered a double burden by being taxed on dividend earnings. Very often, critics of tax relief described everybody as rich in an effort to stop tax relief, the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said yesterday. I think that's been an old tactic by people who wanted to raise taxes on the American people in the first place. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- [EMAIL PROTECTED] spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk If only he would listen, this could be Blair's finest hour Britain's envoys want the PM to stall Bush's plans for war Richard Norton-Taylor Sunday January 05 2003 The Observer Telegrams from British embassies and missions around the world are urging Tony Blair to step up pressure on President Bush to pull back from a war against Iraq. In what amounts to a collective cri de coeur, our envoys - congregating in Whitehall today for an unprecedented Foreign Office brainstorming session - are warning of the potentially devastating consequences of such an adventure, including its impact on a greater threat than Saddam Hussein: al-Qaida-inspired terrorism. The warnings are not just coming from our envoys and defence attaches in Arab capitals. They are also, I am told, coming from Washington. This, our diplomats suggest, could be one of Blair's - and Britain's - finest hours, a unique opportunity to make a constructive contribution to world affairs. They also know, not least from American opinion polls, that the Bush administration needs Britain onside. Our contribution would be a token one in military terms, but significant politically. That gives Britain leverage. It is hard to find anyone in Whitehall who supports a war against Iraq and who is not deeply concerned about the influence of the hawks around Bush. They cannot say so in public, of course. Whitehall gives Blair the credit for helping to persuade Bush to go down the UN route - a prime example of what Whitehall describes as Britain punching above its weight. But this should be put into perspective. Richard Falk, Princeton's emeritus professor of international law, notes in the latest issue of Le Monde Diplomatique: This belated recourse to the UN does not fool many people outside the US, and is not very persuasive to Americans themselves. It is obvious that Bush is no friend of the UN, and only sought UN approval for US policy to defuse domestic opposition to blatant unilateralism. Falk addresses a key issue: For the US to insist in voting for resolution 1441 on 8 November, that the UN act as an enforcement agency by reviving weapons inspection, and in so onerous a form that it almost ensures a breakdown, is to enlist the UN in the dirty work of war-making. It is a key issue because UN security council backing for military action will be seized on by ministers to convince those, including Labour MPs and bishops, who have grave doubts about a war against Iraq. The fact is that the security council has always considered itself above any tenet of international law. In his biography, The Politics of Diplomacy, former US secretary of state James Baker shamelessly admits how, before the 1991 Gulf war, he met his security council counterparts in an intricate process of cajoling, extracting, threatening, and occasionally buying votes. America's relative power, and its willingness to use it, has increased over the past 12 years. James Paul, head of Global Policy Forum, a non-governmental body that monitors the UN, says: The capacity of the US to bring to heel virtually any country in the world is unbelievable. The US is corrupting the security council by bribing its permanent members - Russia with dollars, China with trade concessions, France and Britain (if it needs any carrots) with the prospect of oil concessions. And Turkey will be amply rewarded if it allows the US to use its bases for an assault on Iraq. Is this how international relations are going to be conducted among the world's most powerful countries in future? Is it that difficult for Blair to go down in history as the leader who prevented a potentially disastrous war fought, as one Whitehall official puts it, simply to prevent Bush from having egg over his face? What kind of country meekly succumbs to demands for war dictated by domestic party politics, even those of its closest ally? Where is the evidence that Iraq is lying about its weapons of mass destruction? Worried Whitehall officials ask: even if evidence is found, and Saddam Hussein is discovered to have lied, is it not better to keep the UN inspectors - the best deterrence against the use or development of such weapons - on the ground? One lie ministers could nail is that put about by elements in Washington and Israel - that there are links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. British and American intelligence insist there is no evidence of such a link, yet ministers are frightened to say so for fear of upsetting Washington. Though there is no love lost between the Iraqi regime and Islamist fundamentalists, an Anglo-American attack on Iraq is likely to attract more recruits to al-Qaida, thereby increasing the risk of terrorist strikes against British and American
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Gas masks in the classroom Chris McGreal, Jerusalem Tuesday December 31 2002 The Guardian The lesson is new to the children of Herzog school in Holon. First, breathe deeply and relax. Second, get to know your gas mask. Then listen carefully to the soldier from home front command as he or she explains what your mask will and will not save you from. Nerve gases are to be feared most. Each day growing numbers of kindergarten, primary and secondary school pupils across Israel are introduced to the looming threat of chemical and biological warfare. And they are full of questions. I live on the seventh floor. Can the gas reach me? asked one. Can the chemicals penetrate inside the mask? asks another. What about the pets? asks a third child. Finally, after wending their way through the family emergency plan, how to behave in a bomb shelter and memorising the code words for war - Mr Leon, Iron Wall and Suddenly, Suddenly - the pupils go home with a computer game called Emergency Defence Games in the hope that they will educate their parents. That is, if you are an Israeli child. Pupils in Palestinian schools get no such protection. But then the gas mask training is imbued with a strange air of optimism about the coming conflict which few Palestinians share. To the Israeli leadership, an American war on Iraq this year holds out the promise of reshaping the Middle East. Ariel Sharon's generals talk of 2003 as potentially one of the most important years in Israel's history. A US-led war against Iraq, if it actually occurs, will create dramatic changes throughout the region because Saddam is a major symbol for tyrants like Arafat and others, said Major General Amos Gilad, commander of Israeli forces in the occupied territories. If Saddam collapses, this would create a positive 'earthquake' in the Middle East that could lead to an unparalleled opportunity to change things in the region. If his regime collapses, this could lead to new initiatives to change the entire situation in the region. The Palestinians do not disagree that the shock waves of war will reverberate throughout the region, or that the Israelis have reason to feel optimistic. The Palestinians believe that besides the Iraqi leader, they will be the ones who pay the price. War, they fear, will distract the world from their plight and provide Mr Sharon with the cover and justification for yet more killings and destruction. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Pentagon build-up reaches unstoppable momentum Julian Borger Monday December 30 2002 The Guardian The Pentagon's order to deploy large numbers of combat troops, warplanes and a hospital ship in the Gulf have created a near unstoppable momentum towards war with Iraq, US military analysts said yesterday. Over the year, the US military has conducted low-profile preparations for a conflict, moving headquarters and equipment into the region. But the new deployment orders reported over the weekend represent a serious commitment of manpower and resources from which it will be hard to climb down without ousting Saddam or at least forcing his disarmament. There is a bit of 1914 in this in that once mobilisation begins, it's hard to turn it off. There are financial costs and practical costs, Ralph Peters, a former army intelligence specialist on the Middle East said. You've already decided to take the political costs mobilising reserves, and the world is psychologically prepared for it. It would take an act of great fortitude to stop the train now. The White House wanted to hold back the deployment orders until after the new year, but the Pentagon (which would have preferred the large-scale troop build-up to begin in early December) insisted it begin earlier if an invasion was to take place before March. The Iraqi spring heat begins to make desert warfare much more difficult. After the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, signed the deployment order, the army's 3rd Infantry Division based in Georgia was put on alert. The 101st Airborne Division and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, which have both been intensively rehearsing urban warfare techniques, are also preparing to leave for the Gulf. About 25,000 troops are expected to fly to the region in the next few months to join 60,000 already there, with many more on 96-hour notice to leave. Up to 80,000 soldiers are expected to spearhead an assault along with marines and airborne troops. The air force's Air Combat Command sent out deployment orders to F-16 and F-15 fighter units in Virginia and North Carolina and B-1 bombers based in North Carolina. The navy put the 10,000 sailors on board the George Washington aircraft carrier and its battle group of warships and submarines on 96-hour alert, despite the fact that they had just returned from a six-month tour of duty. And in a move that some military experts had earlier predicted would be a signal that the administration was serious about going to war early in 2003, a hospital ship, the USS Comfort was ordered to prepare a 1,000-bed trauma centre and make preparations to leave for Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The Bush administration insists that no decision has yet been taken on whether to go to war, while it waits for results of UN weapons inspections under way in Iraq. But most observers believe that only a radical move by Baghdad - such as a confession to stockpiling weapons of mass destruction - or a dramatic worsening of the North Korean crisis can stop an invasion. Nothing is inevitable, but the logic of the situation points towards a war sometime in February, said Gary Schmitt, the head of Project for a New American Century, a conservative thinktank with close links to the administration. It's very hard for a country to mobilise for war, and not to go for war without a very serious reason. If you signal to the world that you're serious, and you don't do anything, then you're saying you're not a serious country. Mr Peters said that the international community now believed that a conflict was inevitable and that regional allies like Saudi Arabia were prepared to offer limited assistance, after much cajoling by US officials. Stephen Baker, a retired US Navy rear-admiral now at the Centre for Defence Information, said that the troops on standby would be able to fly in to the Gulf and pick up their pre-positioned equipment in a few days. However, he said the deployments were not a point of no return. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Sharon takes on rabbis over Jewish identity Religious and secular clash over right to settle in Israel Chris McGreal in Jerusalem Monday December 30 2002 The Guardian Ariel Sharon has called on religious leaders to make it easier to become a Jew to revive the immigration that provides a buffer to the burgeoning Arab population. The prime minister's remarks follow a call by one of his own cabinet for a ban on immigration by secular Jews, exposing a deep divide in the government between those who say an influx from the former Soviet Union threatens Israel's religious identity and those who increasingly fear the high Arab birthrate. The ultra-orthodox health minister, Nissim Dahan, revived debate on the issue by declaring that secular Jews and those who do not qualify as Jewish under religious law, which is more stringent in its definition than government legislation, should not be allowed to settle in Israel. We prefer a Jew overseas to a gentile in Israel, he said. But Mr Dahan was quickly shot down by the prime minister, who said: It should be possible for anyone who wants to become a Jew to do so. Israel's establishment is split on the issue. At the heart of the disagreement is the decade-long wave of immigration in which about 1 million Russians and citizens of the former Soviet republics have come to Israel under the grandfather clause of the Law of Return, which permits anyone with a Jewish grandparent to obtain Israeli citizenship. The clause was introduced in 1970 as a response to the Nazi definition of a Jew as anyone with a Jewish grandparent. Orthodox rabbis say that up to 70% of the arrivals in recent years do not qualify as Jewish under religious law, which requires an individual's mother to have been Jewish. The government estimates that 25% of all Russian immigrants are not Jewish according to religious law and need to convert. Most do not, partly because the process is laborious and partly because the Russian community tends to be secular. The interior minister and leader of the Shas party, Eli Yishai, says such figures threaten the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. By the end of the year 2010 the state of Israel will lose its Jewish identity, he said. A secular state will bring ... hundreds of thousands of goyim [gentiles] who will build hundreds of churches and will open more stores that sell pork. In every city we will see Christmas trees. The leftwing Meretz party reinforced the point by bringing a Christmas tree to the launch of its election campaign among Russian voters yesterday because it is part of the immigrants' tradition. Mr Yishai and Israel's chief rabbis, Yisrael Meir Lau and Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, want the grandfather clause repealed and the right of return limited to those who are Jews as defined by religious law. But Mr Sharon sees a more important demographic process at work. The higher Arab birthrate means that Jews will be outnumbered in Israel and the areas it now governs within decades. Arabs already account for 20% of Israeli citizens. Immigration has fallen to its lowest level since the end of the cold war and Mr Sharon is keen to revive it, even if that opens the gates to people of questionable Jewish ancestry. The government's view is that while the first generation of each wave of immigration may have difficulty embracing Israel and Jewishness, their sons and daughters frequently become enthusiastic Zionists. In the present climate, they are also often very rightwing. For political and security reasons, Mr Sharon is not about to alienate Russian immigrants by questioning their right to be in Israel. For a start the Russians, as all immigrants from the former Soviet Union are known in Israel, have the voting power to decide who governs. The latest opinion polls show that almost all Russian voters have swung behind Mr Sharon because of his hard line in dealing with the Palestinians. But while the Russians are rightwing on security and economic issues, they view religious conservatives with suspicion and complain of maltreatment at the hands of the orthodox. Many are unable to marry because only religious weddings are permitted under Israeli law and the chief rabbis refuse to recognise them as Jewish. The defence ministry calls up young Russian immigrants to serve in the army while the interior ministry denies them rights because they are not deemed Jewish. Some, suspected of lying about being Jewish have been subjected to humiliating DNA tests. The Russian community was particularly outraged when, after a suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv disco last year killed 20 young people, rabbis objected to the burial of three Russian-born teenagers in Jewish cemeteries because their mothers were not Jewish.
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Our quality of life peaked in 1974. It's all downhill now We will pay the price for believing the world has infinite resources George Monbiot Monday December 30 2002 The Guardian With the turning of every year, we expect our lives to improve. As long as the economy continues to grow, we imagine, the world will become a more congenial place in which to live. There is no basis for this belief. If we take into account such factors as pollution and the depletion of natural capital, we see that the quality of life peaked in the UK in 1974 and in the US in 1968, and has been falling ever since. We are going backwards. The reason should not be hard to grasp. Our economic system depends upon never-ending growth, yet we live in a world with finite resources. Our expectation of progress is, as a result, a delusion. This is the great heresy of our times, the fundamental truth which cannot be spoken. It is dismissed as furiously by those who possess power today - governments, business, the media - as the discovery that the earth orbits the sun was denounced by the late medieval church. Speak this truth in public and you are dismissed as a crank, a prig, a lunatic. Capitalism is a millenarian cult, raised to the status of a world religion. Like communism, it is built upon the myth of endless exploitation. Just as Christians imagine that their God will deliver them from death, capitalists believe that theirs will deliver them from finity. The world's resources, they assert, have been granted eternal life. The briefest reflection will show that this cannot be true. The laws of thermodynamics impose inherent limits upon biological production. Even the repayment of debt, the pre-requisite of capitalism, is mathematically possible only in the short-term. As Heinrich Haussmann has shown, a single pfennig invested at 5% compounded interest in the year AD 0 would, by 1990, have reaped a volume of gold 134bn times the weight of the planet. Capitalism seeks a value of production commensurate with the repayment of debt. Now, despite the endless denials, it is clear that the wall towards which we are accelerating is not very far away. Within five or 10 years, the global consumption of oil is likely to outstrip supply. Every year, up to 75bn tonnes of topsoil are washed into the sea as a result of unsustainable farming, which equates to the loss of around 9m hectares of productive land. As a result, we can maintain current levels of food production only with the application of phosphate, but phosphate reserves are likely to be exhausted within 80 years. Forty per cent of the world's food is produced with the help of irrigation; some of the key aquifers are already running dry as a result of overuse. One reason why we fail to understand a concept as simple as finity is that our religion was founded upon the use of other people's resources: the gold, rubber and timber of Latin America; the spices, cotton and dyes of the East Indies; the labour and land of Africa. The frontier of exploitation seemed, to the early colonists, infinitely expandable. Now that geographical expansion has reached its limits, capitalism has moved its frontier from space to time: seizing resources from an infinite future. An entire industry has been built upon the denial of ecological constraints. Every national newspaper in Britain lamented the disappointing volume of sales before Christmas. Sky News devoted much of its Christmas Eve coverage to live reports from Brent Cross, relaying the terrifying intelligence that we were facing the worst Christmas for shopping since 2000. The survival of humanity has been displaced in the newspapers by the quarterly results of companies selling tableware and knickers. Partly because they have been brainwashed by the corporate media, partly because of the scale of the moral challenge with which finity confronts them, many people respond to the heresy with unmediated savagery. Last week this column discussed the competition for global grain supplies between humans and livestock. One correspondent, a man named David Roucek, wrote to inform me that the problem is the result of people breeding indiscriminately ... When a woman has displayed evidence that she totally disregards the welfare of her offspring by continuing to breed children she cannot support, she has committed a crime and must be punished. The punishment? She must be sterilised to prevent her from perpetrating her crimes upon more innocent children. There is no doubt that a rising population is one of the factors which threatens the world's capacity to support its people, but human population growth is being massively outstripped by the growth in the number of farm animals. While the rich
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Rumsfeld 'offered help to Saddam' Declassified papers leave the White House hawk exposed over his role during the Iran-Iraq war Julian Borger in Washington Monday December 30 2002 The Guardian The Reagan administration and its special Middle East envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, did little to stop Iraq developing weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s, even though they knew Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons almost daily against Iran, it was reported yesterday. US support for Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war as a bulwark against Shi'ite militancy has been well known for some time, but using declassified government documents, the Washington Post provided new details yesterday about Mr Rumsfeld's role, and about the extent of the Reagan administration's knowledge of the use of chemical weapons. The details will embarrass Mr Rumsfeld, who as defence secretary in the Bush administration is one of the leading hawks on Iraq, frequently denouncing it for its past use of such weapons. The US provided less conventional military equipment than British or German companies but it did allow the export of biological agents, including anthrax; vital ingredients for chemical weapons; and cluster bombs sold by a CIA front organisation in Chile, the report says. Intelligence on Iranian troop movements was provided, despite detailed knowledge of Iraq's use of nerve gas. Rick Francona, an ex-army intelligence lieutenant-colonel who served in the US embassy in Baghdad in 1987 and 1988, told the Guardian: We believed the Iraqis were using mustard gas all through the war, but that was not as sinister as nerve gas. They started using tabun [a nerve gas] as early as '83 or '84, but in a very limited way. They were probably figuring out how to use it. And in '88, they developed sarin. On November 1 1983, the secretary of state, George Shultz, was passed intelligence reports of almost daily use of CW #91;chemical weapons#93; by Iraq. However, 25 days later, Ronald Reagan signed a secret order instructing the administration to do whatever was necessary and legal to prevent Iraq losing the war. In December Mr Rumsfeld, hired by President Reagan to serve as a Middle East troubleshooter, met Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and passed on the US willingness to help his regime and restore full diplomatic relations. Mr Rumsfeld has said that he cautioned the Iraqi leader against using banned weapons. But there was no mention of such a warning in state department notes of the meeting. Howard Teicher, an Iraq specialist in the Reagan White House, testified in a 1995 affidavit that the then CIA director, William Casey, used a Chilean firm, Cardoen, to send cluster bombs to use against Iran's human wave attacks. A 1994 congressional inquiry also found that dozens of biological agents, including various strains of anthrax, had been shipped to Iraq by US companies, under licence from the commerce department. Furthermore, in 1988, the Dow Chemical company sold $1.5m-worth (#163;930,000) of pesticides to Iraq despite suspicions they would be used for chemical warfare. The only occasion that Iraq's use of banned weapons seems to have worried the Reagan administration came in 1988, after Lt Col Francona toured the battlefield on the al-Faw peninsula in southern Iraq and reported signs of sarin gas. When I was walking around I saw atropine injectors lying around. We saw decontamination fluid on vehicles, there were no insects, said Mr Francona, who has written a book on shifting US policy to Iraq titled Ally to Adversary. There was a very quick response from Washington saying, 'Let's stop our cooperation' but it didn't last long - just weeks. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site, go to http://www.observer.co.uk 'Human shields' head for Iraq Paul Harris Saturday December 28 2002 The Guardian A convoy of anti-war activists, likely to include dozens of British volunteers, will leave London next month to act as human shields protecting strategic sites in Iraq. The convoy to Baghdad is being organised by former US marine Kenneth Nichols, who served in the first Gulf war and won a combat medal but has now become a vociferous opponent of another Gulf conflict. British protesters are also heading for the country in advance of any Anglo-American bombing. Nichols, 33, aims to gather scores of volunteers together in London and lead the convoy on 10 January. It will drive across Europe, holding rallies in various capital cities and collecting other human-shield demonstrators along the way. It plans to travel via Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Zurich, Milan, Sarajevo, Istanbul and Syria to Baghdad. He is hoping that the convoy will arrive in the Iraqi capital around 24 January, three days before President George W Bush is to make his decision on whether Iraq has complied with the UN weapons inspections, potentially triggering a US-led invasion. Nichols is willing to put his own life on the line to stop a war. 'In going to Iraq I understand that I will likely not survive a US invasion,' he said. Once in Iraq, members of the convoy will identify infrastructure targets for bombing, such as power stations, key bridges and roads, and deploy themselves as human shields in the glare of the international media. 'I don't think anyone will be happy about bombing somewhere they see being protected by North Americans or Europeans,' he said. In the 1991 conflict, Nichols was serving in the 2nd Battalion of the Marine Corps. He was an infantryman on the road to Basra, where heavy Allied bombing killed hundreds of retreating Iraqi soldiers. He left the Marine Corps a year later. His experience of war left him disillusioned with American foreign policy, and he is now a vociferous opponent of US foreign interventions. 'Part of the reason I want to go back is to apologise to the Iraqi people for what I was doing there the first time I was in their country,' he said. Part-time law student Jo Wilding, 28, is one Briton who is heading for the region. She expects to fly to Baghdad on 10 January and then go to the southern city of Basra. 'There is something I can do there just by being a foreigner,' she said. 'If something does start when we are there, we will be able to document it.' Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. --- Note from Euphorian: Democracy in action ... --- To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Knesset moves to bar Arab members Israel's impending general election is colouring committee hearings on the expulsion and barring of three 'hostile' parliamentarians Chris McGreal in Jerusalem Sunday December 29 2002 The Observer The knesset has begun proceedings to bar three Arab members and their parties from next month's general election because of their support for the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. The hearings by a knesset committee are expected to result in the expulsion of Israel's leading Arab politician, Azmi Bishara, and two colleagues. Their parties are likely to be banned, stripping Israel's one million Arabs of their principal voices in parliament. Mr Bishara has already been stripped of his parliamentary immunity and put on trial for alleged crimes against the state. If he is now banned from the knesset, he and his colleagues will be the first Arab members to be expelled. The knesset has previously banned extreme rightwing Jewish parties and politicians. The Labour opposition says that expulsion could create turmoil and an uprising by Israeli Arabs who believe they are being denied democratic rights. The ostensible reason for barring Mr Bishara and his National Democratic Assembly is his attendance at the funeral of President Hafez Assad of Syria in June 2000, when he made a speech in which he implicitly endorsed the Hizbullah military campaign that drove Israel out of southern Lebanon two years ago. He also accused the Israeli government of resorting to war against Palestinians, and said they were left with little choice but to escalate the struggle against occupation. He called on Arab countries to unite behind the resistance. There is no possibility of continuing with the... way of resistance other than by means of the renewed expansion of this sphere, so that people will be able to struggle and carry out resistance, he said. The Israeli attorney general, Elyakim Rubenstein, told the knesset that Mr Bishara's support for resistance endorsed suicide bombings, and his call for Arab backing was an invitation to destroy the state. Mr Bishara says resistance to occupation is a recognised right under international law and that it can take many forms. I never called for armed struggle. I have always opposed the suicide bombs in writing and in speaking, and the targeting of civilians in general, he said. What I did do is show understanding of the option of resistance to occupation, which referred to strikes, demonstrations, mass rallies, even studies. And I said that a united Arab stand and international activity will prevent war and prevent a political dictate. But the real issue is wider than his comments at the funeral. The knesset hearings are being held in the politically charged atmosphere of a general election and after two years of intifada which has created new depths of distrust of Israeli Arabs. Some rightwing politicians portray them as a fifth column. That suspicion has been reinforced by Mr Bishara's questioning of whether Israel can be both a Jewish and a democratic state, and his demands for better treatment of the one in five of its citizens who suffer discrimination because they are Arabs. He also believes that an independent Palestinian state should be established alongside Israel. Under a new law introduced in May, the knesset can disqualify a candidate or party for denying Israel's existence as a Jewish or democratic state or for support of armed struggle, terrorism or an enemy of Israel. Mr Rubenstein has chosen to interpret Mr Bishara's desire for an overhaul of Israeli democracy as a threat to the existence of the state and therefore in breach of the law. In these circumstances, Mr Bishara is not hopeful of a fair hearing before the knesset committee. In the atmosphere of the elections in Israel, and the chauvinist atmosphere, people are competing to be anti-Arab and I think it's going to be very very hard to get a rational decision, he said. That view is confirmed by a far-right politician, Michael Kleiner, who is among those pressing for Mr Bishara's expulsion. In any normal country, they would put him before a firing squad, he said. It's inconceivable that an Israeli knesset member would encourage Arab states to launch a full-scale war against Israel. Mr Bishara is already being prosecuted under the anti-terrorism laws and for illegally arranging visits to reunite elderly Palestinians with their refugee relatives in Syria. But the trial has stalled and so the attorney general is looking to the knesset to act. #183; The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has ordered an increase in targeted assassinations and arrests
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk France to toughen laws on cannabis Paul Webster in Paris Thursday December 26 2002 The Guardian France is planning to tighten restrictions on the smoking of cannabis in an attempt to curb its steadily rising popularity. Campaigners claim that millions of people are regularly defying existing laws as more plantations of cannabis are discovered, particularly in the south of the country. At normal levels of consumption, up to three million French people will have smoked the drug on Christmas day. France's hardline interior minister, Nicholas Sarkozy, has been consulting cabinet members and government officials on raising the maximum penalties for cannabis use, from the present level of a year in prison or a #163;5,000 fine. This month the government made it an offence to drive under the drug's influence after a series of fatal road accidents. The interior ministry's anti-drugs chief, Michel Bouchet, has also been asked to investigate the cultivation of cannabis after police reported that more than 40,000 plants were pulled out in raids last year, compared to 1,500 10 years ago. But the pro-cannabis Collectif d'information et de recherche cannibiques, Circ, claimed that there was not a village south of the Loire valley without a plantation. In addition, hundreds of thousands of plants were grown indoors. The fashion for home-grown cannabis was linked to two DIY books, Fum#233;e clandestine (secret smoke) and Culture en placard (cupboard growing) which have sold 100,000 copies between them. Drugs squad detectives admit to being overwhelmed, during this month's Hemp Salon in central Paris. The event was backed by Circ's founder, Jean-Pierre Galland, who campaigns through the Green party for the legalisation of the drug. He has had to pay about #163;30,000 in fines for his lobbying activities in its favour. Police visited the salon but there were no arrests despite the sale of gadgets such as the Pollinator which can be used to make hashish. Visitors were given catalogues by Sensi Seedbank, Holland's main producer, but many amateur growers depend on cannabis seeds sold to feed racing pigeons, which, according to one advertisement, was like putting a turbo-engine into a sparrow. Other catalogues offered bat manure, considered as the best fertiliser for growing the seven-leaved plant. The great problem is not police raids but theft, a grower from the Var said. You'll find small fields hidden in pine forests. Once they have been located, they have to be guarded night and day. A good crop earns enough to keep you all year round, even though it is sold only to friends. So far, no action has been taken against shops selling specialised equipment, of which there are about 50 in France. But a decision will have to be taken soon on whether to stop the annual summer festival at Montjean-sur-Loire where cannabis, described as the symbol of the Loire valley, is easily available. It's only a matter of time before pot overtakes tobacco, a festival organiser said. There are already nearly half as many pot smokers as tobacco smokers. Some of our visitors say that cannabis saved their life. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Email Chris MacGreal @ Bethlehem Monday December 23 2002 The Guardian Once again, there is no room at the Bethlehem Inn. Two thousand years on, the hotel has been commandeered by Israeli soldiers, and just about every other lodging in Christ's hometown will be closed on his birthday for lack of business. For the first time in living memory there is no Christmas tree on Manger Square. Even the priests at the Church of the Nativity - the 4th-century basilica said to be built around the cave where Jesus was born - are down on the festivities at the end of a year that has seen Israeli tanks roll into the town five times and a 39-day army siege of the church itself. Now the ancient town is enduring a month-long curfew with no certainty the Israeli military will lift it for midnight mass on Christmas eve. Yet the services will go on, in no small part because of the politics of religion. The Greek Orthodox, the Armenians and the Franciscans all command control of a share of the Church of the Nativity under a rights-of-possession agreement drawn up by the Turks in 1757, when Bethlehem fell in the orbit of the Ottoman empire. It is known as the status quo. Each church is allocated parts of the building, and specified time for services. None dares alter the schedule for fear of undermining the agreement and feeding the intense rivalries that have reduced priests to fisticuffs over territorial infringements during the annual cleaning. But this year there will be no parade of boy scouts, choirs in the square or the sometimes raucous party ahead of the service. There will be no Yasser Arafat either, or his Christian wife to light the Christmas tree. The Israelis have banned the Palestinian leader from attending midnight mass for the second year running. The Franciscan parish priest, Amjad Sabbara, will stick to the annual theme of children as he leads prayers during the first hours of Christmas day. But rather than celebrating birth, he plans to reflect on death - particularly the sickening reality that, just as in Jesus's time, children are being killed by forces indifferent to their age or innocence. The latest victim is an 11-year-old girl leaning out of a window to watch the funeral procession of another child. Father Sabbara was among the hundreds of people trapped in the Church of the Nativity during the Israeli siege in April and May. That was the busiest the church has been in a couple of years, with Palestinian men sheltering in the grotto built around the cave of Christ's birth. The Franciscan priest predicts a smaller turnout than that for Christmas. Just 400 of the 2,000 once-prized tickets for seats at midnight mass have been taken. So most of Bethlehem's hotels have closed and those few that have stayed open say they have no bookings. Over the past month of perpetual curfew, lifted for just a few hours each week, Bethlehem has endured the punishment favoured by the Israelis against the people they rule. The army is largely of the view that Palestinians are either terrorists or terrorist sympathisers, so there's no reason why they shouldn't all suffer for the actions of a few. But there is a deeper and longer crisis. When Bethlehem's mayor, Hanna Nasser, can find a tourist, he offers chapter and verse on what the past two years of intifada and periodic occupation have done to the town's economy. Bethlehem is dying, he says. For years, it has relied on tourism to survive. Now not a single one of the hundreds of gift shops is open to offer their bizarre mix of nativity scenes alongside T-shirts sporting the Israeli army logo. Seven out of 10 residents are unemployed. Average income, at about #163;1 a day, is just a quarter of what it was three years ago. The capital of Christmas, as the mayor puts it, is in no mood to celebrate. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Iraq hits back with CIA offer US agents invited to search for weapons Ewen MacAskill, Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington and Richard Norton-Taylor Sunday December 22 2002 The Observer Baghdad fought back in the highly charged propaganda battle with the US and Britain yesterday by inviting its arch-enemy, the CIA, to enter Iraq and track down the country's elusive weapons of mass destruction. The Iraqi offer of unhindered access to US intelligence agents came after intensive pressure from Washington that made war early in the new year appear almost inevitable. After four days of diplomatic pounding, Iraq hit back yesterday, accusing the Bush administration of rehashing old lies. We have told the world we are not producing these kind of weapons, but it seems that the world is drugged, absent or in a weak position, President Saddam Hussein said. At a press conference in Baghdad yesterday, General Amir al-Sadi, scientific adviser to the president, issued a challenge to the US and British intelligence to offer up hard evidence that Iraq has any biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. We do not even have any objections if the CIA sent somebody with the inspectors to show them the suspected sites, Gen Sadi said. This marks a major turnaround. Until yesterday, Iraq had objected to the possibility of US or other Western spies infiltrating the UN weapons teams. Baghdad said, rightly, that the inspections team that left Iraq in 1998 had been infiltrated by intelligence agents and, in the intervening four years, repeatedly cited this as a reason why it objected to the return of the UN inspectors. A CIA spokesman said yesterday that he did not want to comment on Baghdad's offer. Both the US and Britain claim, against Iraqi denials, that they have evidence that Iraq has continued to develop weapons of mass destruction. The UN chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, said at the end of last week that if the US and Britain had such evidence, they should hand it over. US officials said at the weekend that they have been handing over intelligence and will provide more specific information to the inspectors over the next fortnight. The Foreign Office made a similar promise yesterday: The weapons inspectors will get all the help they need to carry out their job in Iraq. But it emerged that British intelligence is reluctant to hand over everything it claims to have, insisting there is a danger that sources could be compromised. British government officials have already privately admitted that they do not have any killer evidence about weapons of mass destruction. If they had, they would have already passed it to the inspectors. Babil, the Iraqi government newspaper run by president Saddam's son, Uday, said in a front-page editorial yesterday: Everybody knows that if they had concrete information, they would have put it on television all around the world before giving it to the inspection teams. Gen Sadi accused the US and Britain of rushing to judge Iraq's weapons programmes. He claimed that objections raised by the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, and the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, to Iraq's declaration on weapons of mass destruction, were a rehash of old information that had already been dealt with. But US officials said yesterday the accusation made by Washington last week that Iraq was in material breach of a UN resolution on disarmament had come from specific information it has obtained and not from the declaration. This new information, they said, was based on satellite pictures that showed construction at sites that had previously been bombed by US-led forces. They also claimed to have fresh information based on records of suspicious dual-use material - that which has both a civilian and military function - procured by Iraq as part of a UN deal to relieve the suffering of Iraqis from sanctions. British military chiefs are drawing up detailed plans in which thousands of Royal Marines would take part in a huge amphibious assault to seize the Iraqi port of Basra to control key strategic areas in south of the country. The Ministry of Defence confirmed yesterday that HMS Ocean, Britain's biggest helicopter and marine commando carrier, will be available to join a flotilla heading towards the Gulf next month after a major refit. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Banned Farrakhan reaches UK audience via satellite Vikram Dodd Sunday December 22 2002 The Observer The controversial American black leader Louis Farrakhan yesterday tried to undermine the government's ban on him entering Britain by speaking live by satellite to a 1,700-strong audience in London. Mr Farrakhan, banned for 17 years by successive home secretaries, used his first live address to Britain to lambast his exclusion. The Nation of Islam leader said Britain's colonial history was satanic, and that the government had banned him because it feared his presence would set black people free from white oppression. The audience, overwhelmingly black and young, watched the transmission beamed from a mosque in Phoenix, Arizona, on a giant screen at the Apollo Theatre in Hammersmith. Unfortunately for Mr Farrakhan, who forbids his followers from drinking, the theatre is sponsored by the Carling lager. As he appeared on the screen the audience gave him a standing ovation. Mr Farrakhan, at times quoting from the Koran and Bible, compared himself to a messenger carrying particular truths, feared by Britain, that will free the black man and free white people from the sick mentality of white supremacy. As a leading colonial power and slave trader, Britain had had a pervasive influence on black society as lingering as the smell of a skunk: They are here in the way we think, they are here in the way we act, so we need a complete washing. You have to wash from having an intercourse with Satan. Mr Farrakhan is accused of being anti-semitic and is banned from Britain because ministers fear his presence would lead to disorder. In May the court of appeal reinstated the ban on Mr Farrakhan entering the UK which a lower court had overturned. Yesterday he countered that the Nation of Islam, which has several thousand UK followers, was peaceful. You can't show one person that those who follow me have harmed, he said. We have not plucked a nail or one strand of hair from one white person, a Jewish person, or from our own brothers. Mr Farrakhan, 69, said yesterday's live transmission gave Britons the chance to make up their own minds. Some of those in his audience yesterday, who paid up to #163;25 for the privilege, said they wanted to hear the man alleged by some to be a preacher of hate for themselves. Christine Muhammad, 32, a bank cashier from London said: It was inspiring to hear him live, and enlightening. Chris Obi, 34, an actor from London, said: The idea that he is banned in an age of free expression and free speech is wrong. There's a white fear of black empowerment. Mr Farrakhan said there were strong similarities between the American and British black experience: The British system, like the American system, is designed to create in us a subject mentality. Supporters of Mr Farrakhan said they hoped yesterday's event would show that his message preached black empowerment, not hate, and that its effect on supporters was to inspire them to help themselves, not provoke disorder. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site, go to http://www.observer.co.uk Blair fury over terror warnings to the public Security breach hits Foreign Office Kamal Ahmed, Antony Barnett and Martin Bright Saturday December 21 2002 The Guardian Tony Blair has intervened to prevent the Government's war on terror policy descending into chaos after senior officials admitted that the public was being unnecessarily scared about the level of threat to Britain. He made his move as fresh evidence revealed that Foreign Office computer systems used to disseminate intelligence material, have suffered a series of security breaches. Officials had to suspend the system for three days late last year because they were so concerned that it was leaking information. As Ministers warned Downing Street and Cabinet Office officials that they were in danger of 'scaring the public witless' with a string of terror alerts, The Observer can reveal that Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's Director of Communications, gave civil servants a dressing down over security briefings that were not cleared with Number 10. The briefings led to a series of headlines suggesting that Britain was on the brink of a terrorist attack. Officials also said that 'sooner or later' a terrorist would get through and that it was time to build up a system of 'national resilience', where people learned to live with the terrorist threat. One Cabinet Minister said there was a degree of 'macho posturing' over the threat of the terrorist attacks. 'The problem is that a lot of this is leaving the public concerned about what actually is going on,' the Minister said. 'If you don't have something concrete to say, then don't say anything.' Blair was left 'angry and irritated', according to one source, after he felt he was answering questions during Prime Minister's Questions last week without a full knowledge of two briefings given by the Cabinet Office, in charge of British security issues, and the Foreign Office, on Iraq, an hour before he arrived at the House of Commons. At the following morning meeting of Government staff, Campbell said that there 'was no point in having a strategy' for telling the public the latest details of the terrorist threat if departments started operating unilaterally. Last night the Foreign Office said that it was investigating new evidence obtained by The Observer that highly sophisticated computer systems used to convey sensitive intelligence material did not work properly. A spokesman insisted: 'Our systems for handling classified information are among the most secure of any used by diplomatic services worldwide. We take any breach of security very seriously.' A whistleblower contacted The Observer with the evidence a few weeks after confidential Foreign Office documents appeared on a website which showed that a year before 11 September the sys tems were experiencing serious problems. The whistleblowersaid he had decided to speak out because he was worried about the possibility of a threat to national security. Last month the Foreign Office was criticised for failing to warn tourists about the danger of travelling to Indonesia in the run-up to the Bali bomb atrocity. Almost 200 people, including 26 Britons, died in the massacre on the holiday island in October. Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, has studied the concerns raised by the whistleblower. He is writing to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, demanding to know whether these computer problems were responsible for the lack of clear travel advice in relation to both the bombings in Bali and in Mombasa, Kenya. The Whitehall source claims that at the end of last year the system was shut down for three days after a blunder allowed hundreds of pieces of top secret material to go astray. Some documents included highly clas sified information on codewords used by MI6. The source claims there is such a lack of trust in the system, called Aramis, that intelligence officers downgrade the security status of classified documents so they can read them on their PCs. This means that top secret material is being used on systems that are easy prey for hackers. The source said: 'When MI6 wants to pass on grade A intelligence material it can do so quickly and efficiently. Once that information has arrived at the Foreign Office, however, it is anyone's guess where it goes from there.' Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site, go to http://www.observer.co.uk Britain has 'no first-class university left now' Kamal Ahmed, political editor Saturday December 21 2002 The Guardian The academic standards of Britain's leading universities were facing fresh scrutiny last night after Shirley Williams, the former Education Secretary, said there were no 'internationally first-rate universities' left in the country. Baroness Williams, who leads the Liberal Democratic Party in the House of Lords, said that gross under-funding had seriously affected the quality of research and teaching in the UK. 'At the bottom end there is a tail of colleges and universities that are not even second-rate,' she said in an interview with Prospect magazine. 'And at the top end I doubt whether there are any internationally first-rate universities left in Britain.' Her comments brought condemnation from universities. Cambridge said that Williams's claims were 'ridiculous', while the head of Universities UK, which represents all universities across the country, described them as 'disappointing'. The row will rekindle the debate on the rapid expansion of university education, which critics say has left too many students attempting second-rate courses that don't suit them academically. Charles Clarke, the current Education Secretary, has suggested that the target to get 50 per cent of all children into higher education is no longer a leading priority. Williams, who was Education Secretary in the Seventies, said students would have to pay more towards their university education if the present funding crisis was to be solved. Some form of graduate tax, where students paid back their tuition fees once they had graduated, was the best way forward. 'How do we deal with the under-funding problem?' she said. 'We have to face the fact that the flow of payments from graduates will take 15 years or so to grow into a significant income stream. To cover that gap you need government funding.' Williams said that upfront tuition fees were divisive and would deter students from poorer backgrounds. Next month the Government will publish its long-awaited plans for funding higher education. Early indications that Downing Street favoured top-up fees, where students pay for courses before they start them, were quashed after a threatened revolt by Labour MPs. The Government is now moving towards a form of deferred payment which would come into effect once students were earning over a certain sum. 'Obviously there is a very, very serious funding problem for universities in this country,' said Dr David Secher, Director of Research Services at the University of Cambridge. 'But to suggest that there are no internationally first-rate universities left in Britain is frankly ridiculous.' Diana Warwick, chief executive of Universities UK, said: 'Though correctly identifying the enormous funding challenge universities are facing, it is disappointing that Baroness Williams sells them short.' Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site and thought you should see it. --- Note from Euphorian: A taste of the Romantic Commando --- To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site, go to http://www.observer.co.uk War is the only option A former winner of the Nobel peace prize says we must stop Saddam's killing machine Observer special: Iraq Elie Wiesel Saturday December 21 2002 The Guardian Since the unanimous resolution of the UN Security Council, the world has lived in anguish, anticipating an event that would profoundly affect the course of affairs in the Middle East. Will a war on Iraq, which Washington and London have advocated from the beginning, finally take place? And if it does, will it be justified? If UN arms inspectors come home with nothing to report, can we trust that Saddam Hussein has truly granted them the freedom to do their jobs? Or is Saddam a liar, concealing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons capable of devastating entire regions? These are crucial questions, as troubling as they are complex. Impossible to resolve, but also impossible to circumvent. Saddam almost certainly harbours deadly arsenals. Ideally, the international inspectors would uncover and then destroy the weapons that are putting many other countries in danger, not only Israel. But what if Iraqi hiding places turn out to be too deep, too well concealed? The weapons may be buried in hospital basements and cemeteries, and plants may be operating in presidential palaces. Do the inspectors have adequate tools to discover them? Few intelligence specialists doubt that Saddam would be ready to use weapons of mass destruction. His mentality, his temperament and his past are well known: Killing a great number of human beings would not concern him. He proved that at the end of the 1980s, when he ordered the slaughter by gas of thousands of his own citizens. In truth, that was the time for the leaders of civilised nations to raise their voices and condemn Saddam in the name of the world's conscience, plainly and clearly, for crimes against humanity. But for purely political reasons, they did not: At the time, Saddam was the enemy of Iran, which was the enemy of the United States and its allies. So he was handled carefully - while his regime grew ever stronger. Will Saddam hesitate before using the same murderous tactics he has already proved himself capable of? Will he fear international reaction? It is possible. But it is also possible that he will be shrewd enough to exploit the stand-off between the US and the UN. Then time will be on his side. And when all is said and done, he will be the one to decide when, against whom and where to launch his missiles bearing poison and death. This is the worst scenario of all. Because numerous lives are at stake. The lives of Israelis, Americans and, of course, Iraqis. Tens of thousands. Therefore one thing is obvious: we must do everything possible to prevent Saddam from using his weapons. Does this mean war? Not necessarily. Since our intelligence services, which seem to be well informed, know where the plants in question are located (at least, I hope so), I am na#239;ve enough to believe that a kind of James Bond operation would be best. I imagine American, British and Israeli commandos, the best trained in the world, would one night parachute into Iraq. They would destroy all the missile bases and centres for weapons production and set out again at dawn, if possible, without killing a single Iraqi. Am I too romantic? Why wouldn't I be? After all, I am also a novelist. Only I must admit that the military professionals to whom I proposed my plan did not find it very realistic. And the fact that I know nothing about war strategies did not strengthen my position. So where are we going? If all the roads to peaceful resolution are closed and therefore any attempts at negotiation are doomed to failure, and if Saddam sends the inspectors back empty-handed, vanquished and ridiculed, will only war bring the desired solution? I find war repugnant. All wars. I know war's monstrous aspects: blood and corpses everywhere, hungry refugees, devastated cities, orphans in tears and houses in ruins. I find no beauty in it. But it is with a heavy heart I ask this: what is to be done? Do we have the right not to intervene, when we know what passivity and appeasement will make possible? Is President Bush's policy of intervention the best response to an imperative need? Yes, it is said, and I am reluctant to say anything else. Bush's goal is to prevent the deadliest biological or nuclear conflict in modern history. If the US, supported by the UN Security Council, is forced to intervene, it will save victims who are already targeted, already menaced. And it will win. The US owes it to us, and owes it to future generations. As the great French writer
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site, go to http://www.observer.co.uk More balls than a Christmas tree In an Observer world exclusive, the Prime Minister candidly confesses that his government's difficulties are all not his fault Andrew Rawnsley Saturday December 21 2002 The Guardian In an unprecedented appearance at the Christmas party of the National Association of Lifestyle Gurus, Holistic Psychics and Fresh Cut Papaya Marmalade Rubdown Therapists, Tony Blair came close to tears as he delivered an astonishingly candid speech about his recent personal difficulties. Here, for the first time, The Observer publishes the full text of the Prime Minister's searing and heartfelt account of the scandals which have touched Number 10. In view of the controversy around me at the moment, I hope you don't mind me using this event to say a few words. You can't have failed to notice that there have been a lot of allegations about me and I haven't said anything. Well, OK, I vaguely remember saying something about the Mittal Affair. I described it as 'garbagegate' - or was that the Richard Desmond donation? You know how it is: I issue the first denial that comes into Alastair's head. When I got back to Downing Street today and discovered that some of the press are effectively suggesting that I am responsible for all of the failures of the Government, I knew the time had come for me to say something in my own words. It is not fair to Gordon, Jack, David, Clare, Robin, Derry and all the other members of the Cabinet whose names temporarily elude me that the entire focus of political debate at the moment is about me. It is particularly not fair to Gordon that he should escape all the blame for our collective difficulty in keeping our promises. I know I am in a very special position. I am the Prime Minister. I have an interesting job, a wonderful family, a couple of nice houses, a transatlantic hotline, a nuclear deterrent, a fast plane whenever I need it and a swanky limo with motorcycle outriders. But I also know I am not superman. To be frank, I really can't do anything much at all without Gordon's say-so. I realise now that I should not have allowed a situation to develop over the past five years where Number 10 spokesmen suggested that I was superman. I take full responsibility for that on their behalf. The reality of my daily life is that I am juggling a lot of balls in the air. Trying to be a good husband and father. Trying to be the Prime Minister at home and abroad, being a barrister, an aid worker, a party fundraiser, a chairman of Cabinet, a leading partner in Europe, a philosopher-king of the Third Way, an international statesman, a global peace-maker, a global warmaker, a world-class actor. So many balls! There are days when all I can see are spherical objects, especially when I am in the company of Jacques Chirac. And, sometimes, some of the balls get dropped. Stephen Byers got dropped. Estelle Morris got dropped. Even Cherie very nearly got dropped. There just aren't enough hours in the day, days in the week, years in the decade, seconds in the minute, talents on the backbenches. I choose my friends carelessly and Gordon Brown has been a mistrusted friend and support to me as I have tried to adapt to the pressures of my public role and to do Alastair and the country proud. When I was just a barrister, I didn't spend much time worrying about how I looked, what I believed or what I said. But I found out quickly when I became leader of the Labour Party that I had to get my act together and Gordon has been a great help in that. When he told me that he had a new friend called deficit, it really didn't cross my mind that he was going to land me in the mess I am now in and, anyway, I don't think it's my business to choose my friend's friends. The same is true of John Prescott. What I was told was that he had been trouble in the past, but he was now a reformed character. I had no idea that he had been in Jags in more than one country, including this country, while Britain's rail network fell apart. His role in the notorious Earth Summit scam came as a complete shock when it was finally revealed to me. Maybe I should have asked more questions about the handling of the firefighters' strike, but I didn't. Even when I learned his name, I had no idea who John Prescott was and I didn't know the full story until a couple of weeks ago when the police alerted me that a newspaper was trying to set me up in a meeting with him. Even now, I have only met him once, for less than five minutes. I have also been faced with allegations that I or people in Downing Street on my behalf telephoned the Home Office urging them to kick asylum-seekers out of the country. It is true that when I first decided to launch another
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Failure of the 82nd airborne As the US prepares for war on Iraq, its troops in Afghanistan are coming under increasing attack from the forces they were sent to dig out Dan Plesch Wednesday December 18 2002 The Guardian American forces in Afghanistan have suffered a series of setbacks during 2002, and a year after the fall of the Taliban the US army is under almost daily attack in its bases in eastern Afghanistan. In the latest incident, in Kabul yesterday, two American soldiers were seriously injured in a grenade attack. The main US force in the country is the 82nd airborne division, which is based at Bagram near Kabul. There are secondary bases at and around Khost in eastern Afghanistan, some 20 miles from the Pakistan border. Since mid-September US forces based in this area have been increased to more than 2,000, from just a few hundred earlier in the year, with a full battalion of parachute infantry at the new base of Camp Salerno outside Khost. Several US-led attacks, using hundreds and even thousands of troops, have been ineffective, suffered outright defeat, or resulted in disaster. These failures have led the US to keep its forces mostly inside their bases: at Khost and Kandahar they are under attack almost daily from missiles and machine guns. When it was launched in March, the US gave Operation Anaconda maximum publicity. It was supposed to crush remaining al-Qaida forces. Locally recruited Afghans were trained to act as beaters, driving al-Qaida from its high mountain caves on to the guns of US soldiers lying in ambush. The reality was that it was the US army that was ambushed. According to the Washington Post and other US reports, the plan was betrayed to the enemy through the Afghan militias. At a dozen mountain passes, al-Qaida attacked US and allied forces as they jumped from their helicopters to take up what they thought would be their own ambush positions. So intense was the enemy fire that for two days the US could not fly in helicopters to support its own troops, who remained pinned down in vicious fighting. The US had eight men killed and 100 wounded before al-Qaida pulled back. After proclaiming the operation a complete success, the US announced that no more operations of this kind would be undertaken. During the summer, the units involved - the 101st air assault and 10th mountain - were replaced by the 82nd airborne. This is the most highly trained infantry unit in the US army, and one Pentagon planners would prefer to have available for Iraq. It began operations intended to dig out enemy forces from the villages of eastern Afghanistan. Newsweek described as a disaster its first high-profile mission, quoting other US troops and civilian witnesses. They said that 600 soldiers had gone on the rampage in Operation Mountain Sweep, undoing in minutes six months of community building. They went through villages as if Bin Laden was in every house, said one of the US army's own special forces soldiers. So serious were the complaints from other units about the conduct of the 82nd airborne that the army took sworn statements from all the officers and senior NCOs involved. The civilian casualties have not been accounted for. The 82nd is continuing to conduct cordon and search operations and has reduced media access. One senior US editor told me he had been prevented by his own organisation from filing reports on the futility and brutality of US operations. He said the only comparison in US military history was with a punitive expedition into Mexico conducted by General Pershing in 1915. This produced virtually no results after months searching the desolate Mexican countryside in search of Pancho Villa, chasing up false leads provided by the local population. Former British officers well informed on the Afghan operations are concerned at the US approach. British troops are trained to operate according to rules of engagement governing when it is considered acceptable to shoot to kill. This approach is designed to ensure that force is used to help achieve wider political goals. In the US army this kind of fine-tuning is not regarded as relevant. Despite its power, the US has not been able to prevent its bases in Afghanistan from coming under frequent attack. Mostly, these achieve little more than keeping the troops in their dugouts. From time to time, as yesterday, a few soldiers are wounded and trucks blown up. Containing the violence at this relatively low level could be considered a victory in itself but it will be hard to keep the lid on indefinitely. At the same time, the vaunted claim not to have once more left Afghanistan in the lurch is looking increasingly hollow. Some aid has been delivered, but its impact has been
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk French court convicts Soros of insider trading Staff and agencies Friday December 20 2002 The Guardian A French court today convicted US billionaire investor George Soros of insider trading and fined him 2.2m euros. The fine by the court is the same amount the Hungarian-born magnate was accused of having made from buying stocks at French bank Soci#233;t#233; G#233;n#233;rale with insider knowledge 14 years ago. The fine was in line with the request by prosecutors. Mr Soros, 72, the president of Soros Fund Management, denies having privileged information. He was not in court today. In court testimony in November, Mr Soros said: I have been in business all my life, and I think I know what is insider trading and what isn't. Soci#233;t#233; G#233;n#233;rale was privatised in 1987. A year later, its stock price went up during an unsuccessful takeover bid. Mr Soros was accused of having obtained insider information before the abortive corporate raid pushed up the stock price. Mr Soros went on trial with two other men, Jean-Charles Naouri, a former top aide to France's then-finance minister Pierre Beregovoy, and Lebanese businessman Samir Traboulsi. The court cleared both men of any wrongdoing. Prosecutors had sought fines of 290,000 euros for Mr Naouri and 1.98m euros for Mr Traboulsi. Mr Soros has said he was interested in Soci#233;t#233; G#233;n#233;rale based on information he claims was widely known: France's leftist government of the time favoured takeovers to change the leadership at recently privatised companies. Mr Soros said he was buying stock in many companies and had no reason not to include Soci#233;t#233; G#233;n#233;rale. Afterward, he sold the stock, saying he felt the takeover attempt was politically motivated and was not going to benefit the company. Mr Soros was reportedly the first American to earn a billion dollars in a single year. Born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1930, he emigrated to the United States in 1956 and became a citizen five years later. He made his fortune managing investment funds. Forbes magazine ranked him this year as the 37th richest person in the world, with an estimated $6.9bn fortune. Prosecutors said the case dragged on because Swiss authorities took years to respond to requests for information. Defence lawyers argued unsuccessfully that the case should be thrown out because it took so long to bring to court. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Bank 'fixed gold price for years' JP Morgan accused of manipulation David Teather, New York Thursday December 19 2002 The Guardian JP Morgan Chase has been named in a $2bn (#163;1.3bn) lawsuit alleging that the Wall Street bank conspired to manipulate the price of gold. The action against JP Morgan and Canadian mining group Barrick Gold has been filed by Blanchard and Co, the biggest retailer of the precious metal in the US. It alleges they dumped gold on to the market for years in order to suppress the price and allow them to reap billions in short-selling profits. New Orleans-based Blanchard is seeking restitution of the money for clients who buy its bullion and gold coins. It also alleges that, by keeping the price of gold low, Barrick, the second largest gold producer in the world, could buy other mining companies. The gold price, $350 an ounce, is at its highest for six years as nervousness about stock markets has sent investors looking for a safe harbour. But Blanchard chief executive Donald Doyle claims it would be higher without the alleged manipulation. Since the end of 1987, when the collaboration between Barrick and JP Morgan began, the growth of global income and wealth would have lifted the gold price to approximately $740 if it had been able to respond to the normal laws of supply and demand. The lawsuit alleges that in the past five years JP Morgan and Barrick injected millions of additional ounces of gold into the market, several times more than the annual production of every goldmine in South Africa, the world's largest producer. The suit also claims that, by using privately negotiated derivative contracts and concealing additional billions of dollars worth of physical gold with off balance sheet accounting, Barrick made it almost impossible to determine the size and impact of its trading position. Barrick dismissed the claims as ludicrous and totally without merit. It said the suit contains numerous factual inaccuracies and defamatory statements, adding that it would vigorously defend itself. The company is heavily involved in hedging its gold production - often selling a substantial portion before it is mined in a series of forward contracts to ensure it gets a certain price. It has also borrowed gold from bullion banks, including JP Morgan, to sell into the spot market and drive the price down. But it claims to have done so to prevent dramatic price swings. Other producers, such as Vancouver's Placer Dome and Newmont Mining, undertake similar hedging but critics have long cast a cynical eye over the activity. JP Morgan declined to comment. Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers yesterday both posted higher fourth-quarter earnings, after higher revenues from bond trading and tighter cost controls. But Morgan Stanley reported a 16% fall in profits as trading revenues dropped. All three investment banks have cut jobs and slashed bonuses as they wrestle with the downturn. Goldman reported fourth quarter profits of $505m, up 1.6% as cost cutting offset a 16% decline in revenues. Lehman's earnings, at $243m, up from $130m a year earlier, were the first improvement since the second quarter of 2001. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk The name of the game is assassination The Pentagon has learned from Israel's policy of 'targeted killings' Tony Geraghty and David Leigh Wednesday December 18 2002 The Guardian Israeli hardliners had the pleasure this week of seeing their controversial tactic of targeted killing of their enemies vindicated by being imitated. For it has emerged that their close allies in the US administration have now drawn up a target list for a systematic policy of assassination against those they call terrorists. Considering the closeness of the Israeli right and the hawks at the Pentagon, this development should come as no surprise. The US has borrowed not just their policy, but their techniques too. It was Israel that pioneered the use of the Hellfire missile for summary executions such as the US carried out last month in Yemen. Developed as a tankbuster during the cold war, Hellfire hits its target at 950mph. On November 3, a Landcruiser with an alleged al-Qaida leader and five other men was stalked from the air by a pilotless Predator controlled by a US team in Djibouti, 150 miles away. The Hellfire it carried enabled them to kill their prey from the comfort of an office chair. A decade earlier, another terrorist, Sheik Abbas Moussawi, leader of Lebanon's fundamentalist Hizbollah group, was stalked from the air in this way. On February 16 1992, he was vaporised by an Israeli helicopter armed with Hellfire. In biblical times, David made do with just one missile to cut down Goliath. But since Moussawi's Mercedes was in a guarded convoy, he got five. His wife Siham and their son Hussein, aged five, were killed with him. Israel's defence minister, Moshe Arens, rejoiced over a message to all terrorist organisations... whoever opens an account with us, we will close the account with them. Three years later, Israel assassinated another Hizbollah leader, Rida Yassin, in a similar way as he drove along a road east of Tyre. Two Cobra helicopter gunships fired the radar-guided missiles, again believed to be Hellfires. One reportedly exploded inside the vehicle, burning Yassin and an aide alive. The other set fire to trees and bushes, hindering rescue workers. The US's recent technical contribution has been to marry Israel's novel use of Hellfire with unmanned drones. The Predator was conceived in 1994 as a spy plane, operated from a safe position by a member of the joystick generation - and three others managing cameras and communications. Airforce chiefs then transformed it into a tankbuster. The first successful test was in Nevada on February 21 2001. Air combat command moved on to try satellite links against the harder challenge of a moving target. Al-Qaida's attack on the twin towers soon afterwards dramatically changed it targets - to take out not tanks, but individuals. In this, it seems clear the Pentagon drank at the well of Israel's experience as a laboratory for fighting terror. This May, Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's hawkish undersecretary for policy, went to Tel Aviv to talk to Ariel Sharon and his defence minister, Binyamin Ben Eliezer. The Israeli paper Ha'aretz said they discussed war games, intelligence sharing and other cooperation. Feith is such an enthusiast for the Israeli right that the reactionary Zionist Organisation of America describes him approvingly as the noted pro-Israel activist. Four weeks later, Israel's top two security chiefs went to Washington to propose a new US-Israeli office specifically to combat terrorism. Brigadier General David Tzur and Uzi Landau, minister of interior security, met Feith on June 27. The joint office, to be based in Washington, would involve a communications link between the proposed US department of homeland defence and the Israeli government, it was explained. Visa policies, terrorist profiles and other internal security data - except classified intelligence - would be swapped by computer, fax and telephone. The topic of the US-Israeli meeting was confirmed as homeland security. Mr Landau said: Israel is a laboratory for fighting terror. It was only a matter of days after those talks that defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld drafted a secret directive. It is reported he ordered Air force General Charles Holland on July 22 to develop a plan to find and deal with members of terrorist organisations. The objective is to capture terrorists for interrogation or if necessary to kill them, not simply to arrest them in a law-enforcement exercise, he wrote. Following the Yemen attack - what the Pentagon apparently hopes was the first of many successful operations - the third of the Pentagon's trio of hawks, deputy secretary Paul Wolfowitz, told CNN the killing was regarded as a very successful tactical
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. --- Note from Euphorian: Considering that this is a pre-mature birth of something that will be delivered dead, doesn't that amount to abortion? If so, is this Shrub's signal that he favours spending unlimited amounts of taxpayer money on such things? AER --- To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk America announces premature birth of Son of Star Wars Rumsfeld says defences will be put in place before they work but will deter attacks Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington and Richard Norton Taylor Tuesday December 17 2002 The Guardian Washington formally inaugurated the Son of Star Wars anti-missile shield yesterday, inviting Britain and other allies to subscribe to the controversial new vision of strategic defence. It is expected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming decades, but it appeared yesterday that the US hopes to defray part of the cost by enlisting its allies in the project. The White House expects to spend $7.4bn on the researching and developing the system in each of the next two years. Critics say the money should be spent on the war on terror. The announcement was seen as further evidence of Washington's focus on the threat posed by ballistic missile proliferation, specifically in North Korea. The project will be in the project stage for at least two years. President George Bush said it was intended to protect our citizens against what is perhaps the greatest danger of all - catastrophic harm that may result from hostile states or terrorist groups armed with weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. A former assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation, Robert Einhorn, said: The belief of this administration is that missile proliferation is occuring faster than it was thought and that new and additional countries are acquiring these missiles some of which are not as easy to deter as the Soviet Union was, and so to be prudent we need a defensive capability. Whether the threat materialises as quickly as they expect is an issue. They are predicting a rather rapid advance of this problem of ballistic missile proliferation ... One has to look at it in terms of tradeoffs, how effective is it, and how serious is the threat. In London the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, told MPs that the US had requested the use of the Fylingdales early warning radar on the North York Moors. He said in a written statement that while there was no immediate significant threat to Britain from ballistic missiles, intentions can change quickly and the proliferation and development of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles is continuing. The government had not decided how to respond and was keen that a decision would be informed by public and parliamentary discussion. But he made it clear that the government would respond positively after a Commons debate in the new year. He said: An upgraded Fylingdales radar would be a key building block in the extension of missile defence to Europe, should we and other European allies so desire. The US said it would be prepared to extend missile defence coverage and make missile defence capabilities available to the UK ... subject to agreement on appropriate political and financial arrangements. Mr Hoon said the project offered opportunities for British hi-tech companies. Opponents of the project, including many senior Whitehall officials, believe it is unnecessary - even dangerous in that it could fuel an arms race - expensive - it is estimated to cost Britain up to #163;10bn - and technologically unproved. Malcolm Savidge, a Labour backbencher whose motion expressing concern at the project attracted the support of nearly 300 MPs, said yesterday that it undermined prospects for progressive disarmament. It makes one wonder whether a PR exercise has been choreographed jointly by Washington and Whitehall, rather than having a democratic debate.. Last week the former defence minister Peter Kilfoyle said he feared the government was acting as a satellite to the US in this instance rather than an ally without any reference to anybody. The US has made a similar request to the Danish government to upgrade the early warning radar at Thule in Greenland. The initial stages of the plan are modest - far less ambitious in their scope than the 1983 variant of Star Wars pursued by Ronald Reagan. But it remains a considerable expansion of the ground-based programme pursued by President Bill Clinton by ordering research and testing of sea-based and space-based systems. The plan involves an initial 10 land-based interceptor missiles at Fort Greely, Alaska, by 2004, essentially as a test facility, and an additional 10 land-based interceptors by 2005, Pentagon officials said. Eventually it is expected to spread in
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk The mystery assassin The shooting of three anti-Chavez demonstrators has unleased a wealth of conspiracy theories, says Duncan Campbell Duncan Campbell Tuesday December 17 2002 The Guardian One of the mysterious aspects of the current crisis in Venezuela is who was behind the fatal shootings of three demonstrators taking part in a rally against the president, Hugo Chavez, earlier this month. Both sides are blaming the other for organising the attack and competing conspiracy theories have turned it into a Venezuelan equivalent of the Kennedy assassination. A Portuguese-born taxi-driver, Joao De Gouveia, has already confessed to all three killings. On December 6, De Gouveia opened fire in Plaza Francia in Altamira, a centre for opposition protests. Josefina de Inciarte, 76, Keyla Guerra, a 17-year-old student and Professor Jaime Giraud, 53, were killed and are now seen as martyrs of the movement to remove Chavez. Thousands took part in marches in their memory last week. De Gouveia was grabbed by demonstrators at the square after his gun appeared to jam and only rescued from a lynching by the police who took him into custody. Owain Johnson, a Welsh freelance journalist based in Caracas, who was in the square at the time, told me: I thought he was going to be lynched on the spot. One big guy said 'we can't put up with this any more, we've got to stand up for ourselves'. The face of the gunman, bloodied in the attack, has appeared daily in the press and on television since then, often with the question attached: Who is Joao De Gouveia? De Gouveia was born in Madeira 39 years ago this week and moved to Venezuela in 1980 where he found work as a taxi driver. According to the daily El Nacional, he lived a solitary life and had told neighbours recently that he was planning to go to the US. Just before the shooting the black haired De Gouveia had his hair dyed red. Initially, it was suggested that De Gouveia had mental problems and had been so angered by the anti-government coverage on private television stations that he decided to attack a television crew working for Globovision, the most anti-Chavez of the stations. The opposition suggest that De Gouveia was probably hired by the government or its supporters to intimidate the opposition. A tape has been shown repeatedly on the anti-government stations which purports to show De Gouveia the day before the killings at a pro-Chavez rally that was also attended by Freddy Bernal, a pro-Chavez mayor. The government, on the other hand, suggest that the opposition hired the gunman as an agent provocateur to create the climate for a military takeover. In April, a military coup took place after a similar attack with the military using the violence as a justification for the coup. Mr Bernal, mayor of the Libertador municipality in the centre of Caracas, denies any knowledge of the gunman. He said that he believed that De Gouveia suffered from shizophrenia and paranoia and had been used by the opposition. It was a trick to create a provocation, said Mr Bernal who was previously a special forces police officer before entering politics. He suggested that the tape showing De Gouveia at the rally had been tampered with. One senior government official has even claimed that De Gouveia has already confessed to receiving money from a dissident member of the armed forces and admitted to working for the CIA. The official said that he recognised that the allegation was like Mission Impossible. He said that De Gouveia confessed after being told that there had been a plan to kill him after the shootings, in the same way that Lee Harvey Oswald was killed after the assassination of President Kennedy. All of this is dismissed by the opposition as a typical fabrication of the government. Whether the full story will ever emerge seems, at present, unlikely. Journalists based in Caracas say the record for such investigations is not hopeful and the secretary general of the Organisation of American States, Cesar Gaviria, has criticised what he sees as a culture of impunity in the country. Venezuela remains in limbo as negotiations between the two sides, overseen by the OAS, continue. At the weekend, Mr Chavez rejected a call from White House to defuse the situation by having early elections, arguing that he is only half way through the six year term for which he was elected. His opponents, who claim that he has seriously damaged the economy and behaved autocratically, say that he must go now for the good of the country. Both sides say they fear another shooting similar to that carried out by the mysterious De Gouveia. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER ==
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk British envoy questions Israel on terrorism Chris McGreal in Jerusalem Monday December 16 2002 The Guardian Britain's ambassador in Tel Aviv has described terrorism as justified, if defined in certain ways, drawing parallels between the Jewish fight for a state of Israel and the present day Palestinian struggle. Sherard Cowper-Coles said that the killing of non-combatants, particularly children, could never be defended. Terrorism defined as attacks against innocent civilians is always and absolutely wrong, he told a conference in Berlin on European-Israeli relations. However, he went on to say: If terrorism is defined more widely as attacks on formal military units, we can all think of times in history when it was not always wrong. Mr Cowper-Coles pointed to Israel's own struggle for independence and the activities of the Stern Gang, labelled as terrorist by the British authorities in Palestine for bombing Jerusalem's King David hotel and for killing British soldiers but seen as national heroes by many Israelis. Ariel Sharon's government prefers to describe the killing of all Israelis, in whatever circumstances, as terrorist. The Palestinian leadership argues that soldiers in the occupied territories and, sometimes, Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza are legitimate. In carefully worded remarks, the ambassador suggested that the failure to pursue political options fuels terrorism. Regarding the founding of the Jewish state, he laid the blame at the feet of Field Marshal Montgomery, who in 1946, he said, refused to negotiate with moderate Jewish insurgents in order to separate them from those the high commissioner viewed as extremists, such as the Stern Gang. Montgomery insisted on a military solution. We put 100,000 troops into Palestine and 20,000 paramilitary police with catastrophic results. He likened terrorism to a cancer. You need to ask yourself what the carcinogens are and you need to use a range of therapies Britain has learned from bitter experience, he said, that terrorism must be tackled by tough security combined with political, economic and social measures to separate terrorists from the sea of popular support in which they swim. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk The scourge of Wall Street on the cusp of a historic victory Eliot Spitzer, New York attorney-general and champion of the small investor, scents blood David Teather in New York Monday December 16 2002 The Guardian Few people in the US had heard of Eliot Spitzer 12 months ago. In Britain, virtually no one had. The New York State attorney-general says that he still cannot quite understand why anyone outside his home state, let alone anyone overseas, should be interested. But it is a feint. He clearly knows why. In the past year, Mr Spitzer has become the scourge of Wall Street. While the securities and exchange commission, the chief US financial regulator, foundered, it was Mr Spitzer who emerged as the champion of the small investor. He pointed out the corruption bred during the stock market boom and he did something about it. On his own website, he describes himself as the people's lawyer - a figure of retribution. Now he is on the cusp of a historic victory, a sweeping reform of the largest and most powerful investment banks on Wall Street, while extracting fines likely to top $1bn. The scandals of the past year have attracted a welter of investigations from Congress, the SEC, other securities regulators and the US justice department, many still running in parallel. But it is the inquiry into conflicts of interest inside investment banks led by Mr Spitzer which has been the swiftest and most successful. After three days of talks last week, a resolution is expected within weeks. We are approaching a point now where I think it's fair to say there will either be a resolution of some sort in the reasonably near term or the efforts to reach that resolution will fall apart, he said. I'm hoping for the former and not the latter. Mr Spitzer, lantern-jawed, with receding dark hair and piercing blue eyes is dressed in a dark pinstripe suit with a bright red tie - the uniform of the City, albeit with an American flag on his lapel. But while his clothes fit in with the financial world, his behaviour does not. He was after all invited to an awards dinner for institutional investors last month only to stun his hosts with an excoriating critique of analysts' conflicts of interest and the basis of the awards. I sort of gave a hard time to some of those who had won awards, he admitted. But with equity ownership comes responsibility and the notion of passive institutional investors is a notion that we have to get over. You have to get involved because if you don't you are abdicating and our notion of what equity ownership means is dissipated. Mr Spitzer has stinging criticisms for each participant in the scandals that have arisen over the past year in corporate America. He describes a quagmire of self-interest that has robbed small investors of billions of dollars. I use a simple ratio, he said of accountants. If you look at accounting statements and look at the ratio of text to footnotes, the more that ratio is weighted in footnotes the greater the problem. Lawyers put things they don't want you to read in footnotes and accountants do the same. Increasingly over the past couple of years, accounting statements had lengthy footnotes. He rebukes the chief executives who became excessively empowered, directors who felt they just needed to show up to meetings and lawyers who did nothing more than paperwork. But it is the investment banks where he has turned the screw tightest. Mr Spitzer has already wrung a $100m settlement from Merrill Lynch over allegations that research analysts at the bank were issuing supposedly impartial advice to investors that was overly rosy to please clients and win further investment banking business. To put pressure on the bank he used shock tactics, releasing a now infamous series of damning internal emails, describing shares in one case as a piece of shit while recommending them to the public as a buy. Mr Spitzer insisted the emails, many by former star internet analyst Henry Blodget, were released to ensure systemic reform. The practice was widely known within the industry and the ferocity of Mr Spitzer's attack astonished the banks. He has put similar pressure on Citigroup with a lawsuit aimed at five chief executives of clients who took shares in hot flotations during the boom years. The allegation is that they were payments in return for pushing business the bank's way and he wants the five to hand back $28m in easy profits made from selling the shares. The writ again included internal emails embarrassing the bank and leading to the resignation of Jack Grubman, probably the highest paid analyst on Wall Street. The scrutiny has also put chief executive Sanford Weill under severe pressure and already precipitated structural
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Anti-US feeling spurs new wave of patriotism in Seoul Washington relations at risk as poll looms Jonathan Watts in Seoul Sunday December 15 2002 The Observer The vast square outside Seoul's city hall is becoming the rallying point for a new, middle-class brand of Korean nationalism. At last summer's football world cup finals, the square was alive with hundreds of thousands of fans cheering on their team. At the weekend, the traffic was again stopped and huge-screens re-erected for a very different outpouring of pan-Korean emotion: one of the biggest protests against the US military for 50 years. Some 50,000 rallied in protest against the deaths of two schoolgirls in a road accident involving a US tank. Although political protests are two-a-penny in South Korea, this one is attracting concern for its scale and the likely impact on Thursday's presidential election and an alliance facing a fresh nuclear threat from North Korea. Past anti-US protests were organised by student radicals and communist unions, but last week thousands of middle-class salarymen, mothers and children gathered each night at the US embassy to vent their anger, which was further fuelled by a US military tribunal's acquittal of the two soldiers of negligent homicide. President Kim Dae-jung himself asked why no one had been held responsible. Protesters have called for an apology from President Bush, a retrial and changes to the rules under which the 37,000 US troops in South Korea operate. For many of the mostly young demonstrators, it is nationalism not pacifism that drives them. Brought up in a period of relative peace with the North, they feel less reason to be grateful to the US for security and economic growth than their parents who lived through the 1950-53 Korean war. They are also a more confident generation, which has seen its country bounce back from the Asian financial crisis of 1997 to become one of the strongest economies in the region. After a period of detente, they have warmed towards the North and world cup success has left many basking in national pride. South Korea has grown up and we should have a more balanced relationship with America, said Kim Sun-hee, who plans to take her two toddlers to today's rally. The issue has played a key role in a presidential race in which the main candidates have taken strikingly different positions on how to deal with the North and Washington. The frontrunner, Roh Moo-hyun of the Millennium Democratic party, is a 56-year-old former human rights lawyer who pledges engagement with the North. Although he has distanced himself from the latest protests, his anti-American credentials have won over many young voters. His rival, Lee Hoi-chang, is a former supreme court judge standing for the presidency for the second time with the Grand National party. The 67-year-old is close to Washington and favours cutting aid to the North unless it abandons its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Although polls show Mr Roh between 3% and 9% ahead, rising security fears over North Korea could cut the gap. Whatever the outcome, analysts warn that the rising tide of frustration towards the US is pushing ties towards their worst crisis for half a century. This is the most critical moment the alliance has faced, said Kim Sung-han, a professor at the institute of foreign affairs and national security. We must put all our problems on the table and start again. With the North threatening to go nuclear, foreign observers view this election as pivotal. The next five years will be crucial, said a western diplomat. Korea faces huge challenges from the North Korean and the Chinese economy. These candidates are two very different people who are likely to handle things in very different ways. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Credit card swindler jailed for five years Friday December 13 2002 The Guardian A member of one of Israel's most distinguished families was jailed for five years yesterday for planning and executing an international fraud. Dan Mazar, 33, whose uncle, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, was Israel's second president, used 300 credit cards in an array of bogus identities to pay for holidays, hotel rooms and shopping sprees. Martin Hicks, prosecuting, told Southwark crown court, in south London: He was involved both as prime mover and principal beneficiary. It was a meticulously planned, carefully executed conspiracy to defraud credit card companies on an unprecedented scale. Mazar, of Hendon, north London, admitted one count of conspiracy to defraud, reflecting #163;286,903, the UK element of the scam. His two-year 10-month crime spree - interrupted by a seven-month prison sentence for the Israeli end of the scam - ended when his luck ran out in a central London branch of Superdrug in April. As a taxi paid for with one of the many credit cards waited outside, Mazar tried to embark on yet another shopping expedition. But staff became suspicious and called the police, who arrested him as he tried to escape in the cab. Police found 15 credit cards in different names, and an extensive aide memoir with identification details. Mr Hicks said Mazar, the only one to be arrested in connection with the scam in this country, used cards obtained from various American issuers, including American Express, either based on a variation of his own name or using other people's identities. He had a string of credit card telephone numbers to check that the cards issued in the names of others had not been cancelled, and to make sure he did not exceed credit limits. Judge Stephen Robbins said: This type of offending is rife in this country and it causes massive losses. The annual loss to the banks in Britain is said to be #163;700m each year. As well as ordering him to pay #163;40,000 of prosecution costs, the judge made a #163;286,902 confiscation order. Jonathan Goldberg QC, defending, said Mazar was driven to crime after getting into debt with a loan shark. Press Association Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk British academic boycott of Israel gathers pace Andy Beckett and Ewen MacAskill Wednesday December 11 2002 The Guardian Evidence is growing that a British boycott of Israeli academics is gathering pace. British academics have delivered a series of snubs to their Israeli counterparts since the idea of a boycott first gained ground in the spring. In interviews with the Guardian, British and Israeli academics listed various incidents in which visits, research projects and publication of articles have been blocked. Colin Blakemore, an Oxford University professor of physiology, who supports a boycott, said: I do not know of any British academic who has been to a conference in Israel in the last six months. Dr Oren Yiftachel, a left-wing Israeli academic at Ben Gurion University, complained that an article he had co-authored with a Palestinian was initially rejected by the respected British journal Political Geography. He said it was returned to him unopened with a note stating that Political Geography could not accept a submission from Israel. Mr Yiftachel said that, after months of negotiation, the article is to be published but only after he agreed to make substantial revisions, including making a comparison between his homeland and apartheid South Africa. The issue of a boycott was highlighted in the spring when two British academics, Steven and Hilary Rose, had a letter published in the Guardian supporting the idea. It was signed by 123 other academics. Professor Paul Zinger, outgoing head of the Israeli Science Foundation, said: Every year we send most of our research papers abroad for reference. We send out about 7,000 papers a year. This year, for the first time, we had people writing back, about 25 of them, saying 'We refuse to look at these'. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Top 10 rules for survival Cherie Blair might have avoided the pain of last night's public statement if she had learned from past scandals Jonathan Freedland Tuesday December 10 2002 The Guardian We don't yet know if Cherie Blair's bravura performance last night has saved her future seat on the high court, but her entry into another kind of elite pantheon is already guaranteed. The last 10 days have earned the PM's wife a place in the ever-fattening textbook of political scandal. She is destined to join Peter Mandelson, Norman Lamont, Richard Nixon and, of course, Hillary Clinton in the bumper volume that records the disgrace, deserved and undeserved, that fate routinely heaps on public figures - and which is bursting with advice for future victims yet unknown. It's a rich text, though a painfully repetitious one: the characters and storylines may change, but the same themes come through again and again. The only pity is that Mrs Blair didn't read the book before now. If she had, it might have spared her some agony. Here's a distilled version of its 10 key lessons. 1. It's never the crime, it's always the cover-up. This is the oldest lesson in the book, yet the world's prominent people never seem to learn it. Richard Nixon gave the masterclass 30 years ago: Watergate might have remained a third-rate burglary, had the Nixon White House admitted it from the start. Instead the subsequent lies, deceptions and obstructions of justice produced the biggest scandal in US history. Bill Clinton made the same error when he lied (under oath) about Monica: if he had 'fessed up, it would have been embarrassing, but it would never have ended in impeachment. Likewise if Cherie had said 10 days ago, as soon as the Mail on Sunday got wind of Peter Foster and those Bristol flats, what she said last night, this story would have been dead on arrival: I'm not superwoman, I needed help, Carole Caplin came to the rescue and, yes, I made a mistake in believing her boyfriend was a reformed character. Fleet Street would have reached for the collective sick bag, but Cherie would have won. 2. Get all the facts out in one go. If Mrs Blair had disclosed everything in one shot, her pursuers would have had nowhere to go. Without a hunt for new, undisclosed facts a story soon dies. The folly of the alternative approach has been on display for 10 straight days. In the absence of full disclosure, Cherie was submitted to the drip-drip-drip of daily revelation. All that does is prolong the agony. What's worse, the scandalee looks like he or she has something to hide, only admitting the truth when it's dragged out. Witness Cherie's admission yesterday that she looked up the name of Foster's trial judge: would she have said that if the Daily Mail were not about to publish it? By telling all, early on, the scandal victim keeps the initiative. The instructive parallel here is the Whitewater affair which dogged the Clintons' first term. It could all have been prevented if the relevant papers had been released in a bloc, right at the start: Bill wanted to do that, Hillary said no. Cherie had the same instinct. 3. Context and timing is all. Scandals only blossom if the political climate is right. Judged on substance alone, the most serious scandal of the Blair period remains the Formula One affair, in which Labour took Bernie Eccelstone's cash and did a screaming u-turn to exempt the sport from the ban on tobacco advertising. Yet no heads rolled over that episode. That's because it broke in the autumn of 1997, when New Labour was still basking in a honeymoon glow. Voters had a positive view of Tony Blair which served as a protective shield: the revelations barely left a dent. Now it's different. There is a mood of rising disaffection, unfocused perhaps, with this government which makes people willing to hear such negative talk. Impatience at public service reform, worry about a war on Iraq and anger over university top-up fees and firefighters' pay are all swirling around - making Labour vulnerable, particularly with its own supporters. This episode channels at least two elements of that fury. First, the Blairs are exposed as people with enough cash to buy two classy student flats, even as they consider charging parents big money to give their kids a university education. Second they have #163;500k to spend, even as they refuse the firefighters #163;30k a year. Labour defenders insist Cheriegate is a media invention, but the evidence, whether from public meetings or phone-in shows, suggests the episode has stirred some genuine anger. That may dissipate now that Cherie has appealed above the heads of the Daily Mail, directly to working mothers like her. 4. Hypocrisy is always a
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk How Diamond Joe's libel case could change the future of the internet Australian court gives millionaire go-ahead to sue US website David Fickling in Sydney and Stuart Millar Tuesday December 10 2002 The Guardian Once it was heralded as the last bastion of freedom of speech, a realm which transcended national law and the whims of the courts. But last night the internet was facing up to a harsh new reality after Australia's supreme court ruled that a local businessman could sue a website for libel in Melbourne even though it was based in the United States. In a case which opens up a legal minefield for web publishers across the English-speaking world, the high court judges decided that an internet article is published wherever it is read, rather than where the publisher is based. The landmark ruling is the first instance in the developed world of a libel trial being admitted in a foreign jurisdiction purely because of the possibility of an article being downloaded from the internet. Media companies and internet campaigners immediately denounced the decision amid fears that it would open the floodgates for a wave of libel actions from around the world. They said the chilling ruling would seriously undermine the internet's much-cherished reputation for freedom of speech and raised the threat of forum-shopping by wealthy litigants looking for the easiest jurisdiction to ensure their victory in libel proceedings. The case centres on a two-year-old article about Melbourne gold mining magnate Joe Gutnick, published in the American business magazine Barron's. The article, entitled Unholy Gains, alleged that Mr Gutnick - a multimillionaire rabbi nicknamed Diamond Joe who became a local hero in Melbourne after he saved the local Australian Rules football club with a A$3m (#163;1.1m) cash injection - was involved in tax evasion and money laundering. Most significantly, it claimed that he was the biggest customer of Nachum Goldberg, a Melbourne money launderer jailed in 2000 for washing A$42m (#163;15.5m) in used notes through a bogus Israeli charity. Mr Gutnick is suing the American business information company Dow Jones, which owns Barron's as well as the Wall St Journal. He has brought the case in Victoria, where libel laws give him a better chance of winning than in the US, where 98% of Barron's' readers live. The magazine has 14 subscribers in Australia, of which five are in Victoria. But 1,700 of its internet subscribers had paid their bills using Australian credit cards, and the court ruled yesterday that this was enough to admit the case in Victoria. Publishers are not obliged to publish on the internet, the ruling stated. If the potential reach is uncontrollable then the greater the need to exercise care in publication. Barron's offices are in New York, and Dow Jones had argued that the place of internet publication was New Jersey, where the magazine's web servers are based. The company's defence even at one point floated the suggestion of declaring the internet a libel-free zone, based on a 1928 legal decision about the meaning of publication. In a clear indication of how serious the implications of the ruling may be, 18 of the world's biggest media organisations - including AOL Time Warner, Amazon and Yahoo! - made submissions to the court urging the judges to dimiss Mr Gutnick's action. Mr Gutnick said after yesterday's verdict that the case had been a David and Goliath battle against all the strongest media in the world. You have to be careful what you write, and if you offend somebody or write malicious statements about people, like what was done in my case, you can be subject to being prosecuted, he told the Nine Network. Dow Jones issued a statement expressing disappointment at the verdict. The result means that Dow Jones will defend those proceedings in a juris diction which is far removed from the country in which the article was prepared and where the vast bulk of Barron's readership resides. The court made it clear that they were not ruling whether Mr Gutnick had been libelled, merely that the case could now go ahead. Crucially, however, the court made clear that a claim could only be brought in Australia if the person claiming libel had a reputation there that could be defamed. This will make it difficult for many foreign nationals to use the Australian courts to pursue internet libel actions. But the ruling has thrown internet publishers into disarray and left them facing a choice between two equally costly and undesirable options: restricting access to their websites to prevent people in potentially difficult legal jurisdictions reading them; or employing international legal teams to vet all content to ensure that it
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Supreme court to decide on Klan's burning cross Is it freedom of speech or incitement to violence? Julian Borger in Washington Tuesday December 10 2002 The Guardian The US supreme court will today hear arguments about whether the public burning of wooden crosses by the Ku Klux Klan is an incitement to racial violence or constitutionally-protected free expression. The sight of burning crosses near black homes was once a menacing icon of the South. According to Klan lore, the practice originated as a means of gathering ancient Scottish clans, but in the South they were used to scare blacks into fleeing from white neighbourhoods. Two recent cases have reopened the racially charged debate that pits freedom of speech against freedom from intimidation. In one, three white teenagers in Virginia put together an improvised cross and tried to set it alight outside the home of a black neighbour four years ago. In the other, also from Virginia in 1998, a white supremacist, Elton Black, was charged with cross-burning at a Klan rally on private land with the owners' consent, but in a spot where it could be seen from a public road a mile away, drawing complaints from neighbours. In Virginia, as in some other states, the public burning of crosses is banned, but in other states it is legal. The discrepancy arises from different interpretations of the US constitution's first amendment, which forbids laws abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. The Supreme Court last addressed the issue ten years ago, when it overturned a cross-burning ban in Minnesota arguing that the ban was a form of discrimination. Virginia, Florida, California and Washington, have pointed to another Supreme Court ruling, that hate speech in the course of a crime could be considered an aggravating factor in sentencing. They argue that the 1992 decision does not protect people who burn crosses as a deliberate threat. A burning cross - standing alone and without explanation - is understood in our society as a message of intimidation, Virginia's attorney general, Jerry Kilgore, argued in court documents. In both the current cases, the federal government favours state prosecutors arguing that intimidation was not protected speech. Lawyers for the defendants say that the case against their clients is discriminatory, pointing out that the law in Virginia does not ban the burning of circles or squares. According to the defence case submitted to the Supreme Court: It is but a short step from the banning of offending symbols such as burning crosses or burning flags to the banning of offending words. Mr Kilgore argues that the significance of the burning cross sets it apart. He said that even a white man would feel threatened if he woke up and found a burning cross in his garden. Jonathan Turley, a law professor, said the supreme court has a record of being extremely protective of the right to free speech, but said it might choose to distinguish between the Black case, where the cross was used in the course of a meeting, and the other case - in which it was targeted against an individual. The cases offer the court a great amount of flexibility if it wants to develop a new rule, Prof Turley said. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk US and UK admit lack of 'killer' proof Whitehall puts onus on Saddam to show banned arms have gone Julian Borger in Washington, Nick Paton-Walsh in Moscow, Ewen MacAskill and Richard Norton-Taylor Monday December 09 2002 The Guardian The US and Britain lack killer intelligence that will prove conclusively that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, according to sources in London and New York. If we had intelligence that there is a piece of weaponry at this map reference, we would tell the inspectors and they would be there like a shot, a source said. After handing over 12,000 pages of documentation to UN weapons inspectors, Iraq challenged the US and Britain to produce evidence that it still has weapons of mass destruction. The US and Britain will insist the onus is on Iraq to prove that it has no weapons of mass destruction, as it claims, rather than for them to prove that it does. Whitehall sources yesterday stood by their claims that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and that this was based not on what we say but on what we know. But they said that passing the intelligence to the UN chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, would alert the Iraqis to the activities of US intelligence and might jeopardise its secret sources. UN weapons inspectors in New York and Vienna began studying the Iraqi paperwork yesterday. The five permanent members of the UN security council, the US, Britain, France, China and Russia, also received copies of the documents. In Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that much of the 2,400-page nuclear annexe appeared to be a copy of a declaration Iraq had made four years ago, repeating its account of how the country's nuclear weapons had been dismantled after the 1991 Gulf war. An additional Arabic language section, 300 pages long, gave details of more recent activity, according to an IAEA spokeswoman, Melissa Fleming. The Arabic text was titled, Activities that could be interpreted as nuclear-related 1991-2002, suggesting that it dealt with dual-use items, such as radioactive material used in hospital scanners. Ms Fleming said the IAEA's three Arabic-speaking experts had begun analysing the document on Sunday night as soon as it arrived in Vienna, but added that it would take several days to finish the work. Meanwhile, another group of IAEA specialists is working on the other 2,100 pages in English. Ms Fleming said the IAEA would not give a full assessment of the document until its head, Mohammed el-Baradei, addressed the UN security council on December 19. She said the nuclear agency was hoping to cross-check the document against information supplied by the world's intelligence agencies, as envisaged in last month's security council resolution on disarmament. We've been told the intelligence would be forthcoming after the declaration has been delivered, Ms Fleming said. US officials said that the CIA and national laboratories specialising in chemical, biological and nuclear warfare had begun an analysis of the entire Iraqi declaration, and had been told to focus on a handful of Iraqi claims that could be proved false with available intelligence. They also said that American analysts would look for Iraqi explanations of what had happened to thousands of tonnes of chemical and biological agents, and equipment used in the construction of nuclear weapons that were not accounted for in Iraq's 1998 declaration. Russia indicated yesterday that it was ready to support military action against Baghdad if Iraq breaks any UN resolution, while the Kremlin's foreign ministry welcomed the Iraqi declaration as a basis for [settling] the problem within political and diplomatic channels. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. --- Note from Euphorian: Cherie Blair has one of the sharpest legal brains in the country. --- To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk The court of Cherie Long before the row over her links with a conman, Cherie Blair's eccentric pals were a source of concern in Downing Street. So why did she refuse to drop them? Libby Brooks reports Libby Brooks Thursday December 05 2002 The Guardian Soon after Labour's triumphant 1997 election, Alastair Campbell was greeted on arrival at Downing Street by a vision which promptly shattered his morning good cheer. Tripping down the stairs from the prime minister's private apartments was lifestyle therapist Carole Caplin, already recognised as one of Cherie Blair's most intimate advisers, and this week described variously as a former soft-porn model, an ex-member of the discredited 80s cult Exegesis and, of course, as the daughter of Sylvia, who has reputedly assisted Blair in her communications with the spirit world. Campbell wasted no time in making his concerns apparent. What's that woman doing in here? he barked, within Caplin's earshot. He was astounded that, following her elevation to the role of first lady, Blair had not conducted a serious re-evaluation of those she kept close to her. The friction between the more colourful elements of Cherie Blair's entourage, and the more sober demands of her position, neither began nor ended with that morning encounter. But the unravelling allegations of this past week, which resulted in Blair's extraordinary statement yesterday - in which she admitted that Caplin's convicted fraudster partner, Peter Foster, had indeed helped broker the purchase of two flats in Bristol, despite previous denials - only hint at the significance of this key relationship. Cherie is completely emotionally dependent on Caplin, says a source (no one in the Blair's inner circle will go on the record on the subject of Cherie). [Caplin] is the person who helps her in the one area of her life where she feels genuinely insecure - her appearance. In her relationship with Blair, she was always used to being the less attractive partner - she was the brains and he was the brawn. Suddenly she found herself being judged on completely different terms. Carole Caplin's role in managing this vulnerability has brought her into direct conflict with both Campbell and his partner, Fiona Millar, Blair's unofficial minder, who have regarded her as a political liability for many years. But Blair is a supremely loyal person and, even as the Mail on Sunday story was breaking last weekend, she was reportedly hosting Caplin at Chequers. Cherie and Caplin first met when Caplin was running an exercise class at the Albany fitness centre in Regent's Park, London, long before her husband became prime minister. After Blair's election to leader, the pair became much closer, and Caplin has since been employed to advise on many aspects of dress, health and fitness, and is credited with introducing Blair to a number of alternative therapists. She has chosen clothes for Blair from the likes of Ronit Zilkha and Paddy Campbell, and over the years she has negotiated deals with a number of designers. It is important to distinguish between Caplin, and her mother and boyfriend, but long before this current round of guilt-by-association began, Caplin was attracting potentially compromising press. In 1994, the Express, for example, alleged that she used to run a company giving women advice on how to spice up their sex lives. Campbell has never been comfortable with Caplin's proximity. If you're the prime minister's press secretary and you see this happening, what do you do? says one Downing Street insider. You're into damage avoidance. But is it reasonable that someone should be banished to the wastes of Siberia just because the yellow press will have a pop at her every two years or so? No. Blair has remained loyal to her friend, and continued to be introduced to people by her. Granted, many highly pressured women - and men - enjoy the benefits of a personal trainer and the occasional holistic massage or session of acupuncture. But even by the eccentric standards of the alternative therapy community, Blair's choice of practitioners has been pilloried for being at the kooky end of the spectrum. While all who have dealt with Blair observe a strict code of silence, one can readily gain a sense of their chosen parish. Eighty-five-year-old Jack Temple, for example, runs the Temple Healing Centre in West Byfleet in Surrey. Although he refuses to discuss individual patients, Blair was reportedly introduced to him by Caplin six years ago. Temple says that he is able to reverse the ageing process by dowsing, and that he is able to undertake absent healing of clients all
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited Politics site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited Politics site, go to http://politics.guardian.co.uk No 10 attacks media over Cheriegate Danny Penman and agencies Tuesday December 10 2002 The Guardian Downing Street has launched a withering assault on the media after nearly two weeks of embarrassing revelations about Cherie Blair's dealings with convicted conman Peter Foster. Tony Blair's official spokesman told the media to gain a sense of perspective over the issue. He said: The central fact in all of this is quite simply nothing improper or illegal has been done or has been shown to be done. At the end of it, what is the worst that Mrs Blair can be accused of? That she believed the best of someone? That she helped a pregnant friend understand the legal process? That she bought a flat for her son at university? Are we saying that we have reached the point that the prime minister's wife is entitled to no privacy at all? That she and other ministers' wives have to keep a log of everything they do in case accusations are made? Accusations that turn out to be false? There is a growing sense of anger in government circles about the way the media has treated Cherie Blair. Last night the international development secretary, Clare Short, waded into the debate by stating on Sky News that Cherie Blair was entirely innocent of any wrongdoing. Ms Short said: If she's got any lack of judgement it's being kind and caring. If she did anything that was foolish she helped out this friend who was pregnant and who was worried about whether the guy's case was being properly handled. The latest revelations came to light last night when it emerged that the prime minister's wife had telephoned Mr Foster's solicitors to reassure them that deportation proceedings against him would be handled in the normal way. Mr Foster was refused entry to Britain on August 31 because of his criminal past. He successfully appealed and is currently awaiting a final decision. Cherie Blair denies any attempt to influence proceedings. The prime minister's spokesman said: She didn't involve herself in an immigration case, she did not contact the Home Office, she did not contact the immigration service. She helped her friend understand the process Peter Foster's solicitors were carrying out. That's not involving yourself in an immigration case. Neither ministers, private staff nor officials from the immigration and nationality service have been contacted by Downing Street at any time on the matter of Mr Foster. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Jenin riddle: Why did an Israeli soldier shoot a British official in the back? Jonathan Cook in Jenin, Chris McGreal in Jerusalem and Ewen MacAskill Friday December 06 2002 The Guardian Stand where the Israeli army sniper stood and the questions come flooding in. Foremost among them is how the soldier who shot Iain Hook in the back in Jenin refugee camp could have mistaken the lanky British UN official with a mobile phone to his ear for a Palestinian youth waving a gun, as the army claims. The sniper was only 25 metres from his victim, in daylight, and he had a telescopic sight. British officials say they are determined that the Israelis will not be allowed to get away with a cursory investigation into Mr Hook's killing a fortnight ago. Whitehall, in turn, is under pressure from Hook's two sons, both British officers, who visited the site of his death and came away sceptical about the Israeli version of events. Sources in Whitehall say that the Foreign Office is unhappy about the delay in providing an explanation, and that British diplomats in Jerusalem meet the Israelis every day to press the issue. We will not let this be swept under the carpet. If it was a mistake, we want them to apologise and provide compensation, the source said. Hook, 54, from Felixstowe in Suffolk, died on November 22 after the Israeli army swept into Jenin refugee camp searching for a particular terrorist. The subsequent fighting was intense. The army's hunt focused on buildings around the small UN compound where Hook worked for The Crown Estate, the British agency which manages crown property on behalf of the government. He led a project to rebuild Jenin camp, large parts of which were destroyed by the Israeli army in April. Two hours before he was shot, Hook took a decision that may have sealed his fate. He was in the compound with another Briton, Paul Wolstenholme, 30 Palestinian staff, and two young children. He spent the morning trying to persuade the army by phone to call a temporary ceasefire with the Palestinian gunmen. He spoke repeatedly to the local Israeli liaison officer, Captain Peter Lerner, then tried to appeal to the soldiers directly. But as he left the compound a Palestinian gunman ran up behind him and used him as cover to fire at the army. Israeli soldiers have long regarded the UN as collaborators with the Palestinians. The sight of a gunman sheltering behind Hook would have reinforced their hostility. When Hook failed to achieve a ceasefire, Palestinians trying to get in to the compound knocked a hole in the wall. He telephoned Capt Lerner and left a message. Hi Peter, it's Iain here. I'm just making a progress report, really. We're pinned down in the compound. The shabab [young men] have knocked a hole in the wall, which I'm not happy about at all. I'm trying to keep them out and I will just keep my people pinned down in the corner until I hear from you. Twenty minutes later Hook walked out of his office and into the courtyard. Shortly after that, the sniper's bullet caught him in the back. Ate first the Israelis said he was shot outside the compound while standing among Palestinians. When that was shown to be false, they changed their story, saying Hook's final message proved that Palestinian fighters had overrun the UN compound and that the sniper had mistaken him for one of them and his mobile phone for a gun or grenade. The UN says that is totally incredible. Its investigators have been told by staff, including Mr Wolstenholme, that no gunmen entered the site. One question is why, if the Israeli army's version is correct, was Hook alone killed, and none of the Palestinian gunmen supposedly around him? And where, if the Palestinians were using the compound to attack the Israelis, is the evidence of such a battle? None of the surrounding homes carry any evidence of bullet holes. Witnesses told the UN investigators that there was no gunfire around the compound for tens of minutes before Hook was hit. Mr Wolstenholme told them that he looked up and saw the face of the soldier who fired the fatal shot. The Israeli army says that it was told that Hook had been shot 10 minutes after it happened. But soldiers prevented an ambulance reaching the compound for 25 minutes. Hook had bled to death before the ambulance reached the hospital. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Why war is now on the back burner Bush is waiting until the 2004 elections are nearer to attack Iraq Dan Plesch Tuesday December 03 2002 The Guardian President Bush may have put an invasion of Iraq on hold until it can best help his 2004 re-election campaign. The administration would prefer to see change in Iraq by subtler means than 300,000 troops and mass bombing. He does not want to relive his father's experience of winning a war a year too early and finding that come the election the victory was forgotten or, worse, the post-war peace was turning sour. Most observers focus on the perceived role of the Pentagon hawks versus State Department doves in the battle for influence over Bush. But his political advisers in the White House - especially Karl Rove - are far more influential. It was Rove who, in June, gave a presentation explaining that the war should be central to the Republicans' successful campaign to win control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. But it was also Rove who saw that voters were as frightened by the go-it-alone war talk as they were enthusiastic for a tough line on terrorism. It was this reading of voter concern that provided the boost for talks at the UN and produced much milder language from Bush. In Britain, we were told that it was Blair's September meeting with Bush and Cheney that changed things, however the need to win an election was far more influential in persuading Bush to be patient. In Washington there are still some close to the Pentagon who see an invasion of Iraq coming soon. But a view shared by political strategists for the Democrats, veteran reporters and long-time Republican insiders was that all the signs are that the war is now on the back burner. Had the White House really wanted to, it would have used the victory in the midterm elections to force through a faster timeline on Iraq at the UN and would have increased the pay-offs needed to ensure its 15-0 approval by the security council. As it was, they agreed a process that can easily be spun out for a year. Then, almost as soon as the resolution passed, Iraq again fired on US and British planes. What happened? Nothing. There was no speeches declaring that Iraq had once again flouted the will of the international community and that we now had to go to war. Rather, we were reminded that our planes enforcing the no-fly zones were not covered by these UN resolutions, something that had strangely been left out of briefings these last 10 years. If this was happening under Clinton, he would be under a howling attack from the right for wimpishness, something the Bush administration need not fear. Even if some in the government go to the media wanting a harder line, there is little they can do if the president fears an early war will damage his election chances. Delaying the invasion does not mean that Bush will not keep up the pressure and how Saddam reacts may yet trigger US action. A lot of the forces are in place but a major British force would need to be mobilised now for action early next year. The deadlines of an Iraqi declaration of its weapons and the first UN report timed for February can all be spun on. Indeed that date in February is close to the onset of the hot weather when, we are told, it is too hot to fight. Conventional wisdom is that it is impossible to fight in the heat wearing a full chemical and biological protection suit. Officials believe it unlikely that Saddam will be caught red-handed with his hands in a cauldron of toxins surrounded by missiles. The inspectors will have to make a judgment on a host of fragmentary and circumstantial evidence and it is likely that Britain and the US will have a different view from the rest. With a dispute over evidence and a call for more inspections there may be an effort from Washington to apply more military pressure on Iraq through inspections backed by force, or even by using troops to capture suspected weapons sites. These troops would then be used to secure an airbase or two inside Iraq so that we end up with a gradual occupation backed up by the threat of air strikes if Saddam tries to move his forces. Such an effort may be fitted into the next UN resolution. What will also be interesting to watch is whether the real multilateralists at the UN are better prepared to get concessions from the US on disarmament in exchange for disarming Iraq. Now that disarmament is back on the agenda we must ensure that it applies to not just to Bush's bad guys but to a global effort to manage and eliminate weapons of mass destruction. As we watch the saga of the inspectors unfold, remember Ronald Reagan's motto: always have a bad guy and if you get in trouble change the subject.
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk London TB rates similar to China Infection levels have risen by 80% in capital, say doctors Sarah Boseley, health editor Wednesday December 04 2002 The Guardian Tuberculosis, a 19th century disease that modern medicine and sanitation virtually eradicated, has made such a dramatic comeback that parts of the UK are experiencing levels of the disease higher than those in China and parts of India and Africa. The UK cannot escape the TB epidemic that is ravaging some of the poorest countries in the world, said experts yesterday, and it will have to get better at recognising and treating it. Doctors are failing to spot TB; some cases are misdiagnosed as asthma, which leaves those with the disease untreated and spreading infection. The highest rates in the UK are in parts of London with high levels of immigration, such as Brent, Newham, Ealing and Hackney. The TB burden in those boroughs is not dissimilar to Russia, China, and Brazil - countries that have some of the highest rates in the world. London is a snapshot of the global epidemic. What we are witnessing here and in other European capitals reminds us of the 'globalisation' of disease - so long as there is TB in the world, no one can feel completely safe, said Chris Dye of the World Health Organisation yesterday. Two million people die of TB around the world each year, and the HIV/Aids epidemic is driving rates up by undermining people's immune systems and making them vulnerable to other infections. Dr Dye was speaking at a briefing for MPs on the world TB epidemic at the House of Commons, organised by the Stop TB Partnership - a coalition of concerned groups that includes the WHO and the Department of International Development. Tuberculosis rates have risen by 80% in London over 10 years, to reach 40 cases per 100,000. Last year there were 7,300 cases in the whole of the UK, of which more than 3,000 were in London. Foreign travel and moving populations make it impossible for any country to isolate itself from global diseases. What the UK was experiencing, said Peter Davies, a consultant chest physician in Liverpool, was the return - at a lower level - of the tidal wave of TB that built up in the industrial revolution, as people crammed into cities living in poor housing where contagion easily spread. The tidal wave carried off one in four, including the three Bront#235; sisters, said Dr Davies. Then it declined, because of better living conditions and natural selection; but the tidal wave moved on. Africa and Asia have not had the improvement in living conditions we have. Around 60% of the UK's TB cases are people who were foreign-born and acquired it before they arrived. A study in 1995 showed that, among the homeless, levels of TB were 200 times higher than in the general population. Kenneth Citron, a retired consultant from the Royal Brompton hospital in London and a former government adviser, said that, in his opinion, hostels for the homeless could incubate an epidemic. I think this present government has done a great job getting the homeless off the streets into the hostels, but that may have aggravated things. In these hostels there is an excellent chance for TB to spread. All those staying in hostels should be screened for TB, he said. Dr Davies said he felt that a major advertising campaign to the medical profession by the pharmaceutical industry with the slogan, Cough? Think of asthma, may have been inadvertently responsible for doctors failing to diagnose TB. A paper presented to a meeting of the British Thoracic Society yesterday showed that more than half the 121 cases of TB that arrived at an accident and emergency department in Newham were not recognised as TB, in spite of symptoms such as coughing up blood. Ian McCartney MP told the House of Commons gathering that it took him, a white middle-class man, nine months to convince doctors that he was really ill and not suffering from stress. After treatment for TB, he spent further years trying to get medical help for the painful after-effects caused by scar tissue, and will now be on medication for life. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Boston cardinal praised priest who molested novice nuns Julian Borger in Washington Wednesday December 04 2002 The Guardian The crisis in the Catholic church in Boston deepened dramatically yesterday when secret files surfaced providing details of the way its leaders hushed up one lurid case after another implicating priests in sexual abuse. The pressure on Cardinal Bernard Law to resign seems bound to increase because the church documents, made public in a court case brought by abuse victims, make it clear that he was well aware of the crimes committed by his priests but frequently responded by simply transferring them to another parish. In one extraordinary case the Rev Robert Meffan persuaded teenage novice nuns, some as young as 15, to perform sexual acts as a means of becoming intimate with Christ, telling them he was the second coming. Despite the allegations by some of the victims and a warning from a bishop in 1985 that Father Meffan could really harm us Cardinal Law sent him to another parish. When he retired in 1996, the cardinal had warm words for him. He wrote to him, with no apparent irony: Without doubt over these years of generous care, the lives and hearts of many people have been touched by your sharing of the Lord's Spirit. We are truly grateful. Three women testified that Fr Meffan had come to their dormitory or summoned them to his rectory office when they were teenagers, told them to undress and persuaded them to stroke and kiss his genitals and perform other sexual acts short of intercourse, telling them to imagine making love with Christ. Fr Meffan, now 73, has not apologised. I was trying to get them to love Christ even more intimately and even more closely, he told the Boston Globe. To me they were just wonderful, wonderful young people. It was a very beautiful, I thought, beautiful, spiritual relationship that was physical and sexual. Nowhere in the correspondence on the Meffan case is there any hint of legal action, nor any mention of concern for the victims. It is one of the many insights which came to light in 2,200 pages published yesterday from formerly secret files the church was forced to hand over to lawyers acting for abuse victims. Another 9,000 surrendered pages have yet to be made public, suggesting that the archdiocese will have to withstand more devastating publicity in the coming weeks. Faced with sexual abuse cases which could cost it more than $100m, the hierarchy in Boston leaked hints earlier this week that it might declare itself bankrupt. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Robert Redford urges a different kind of patriotism Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles Monday December 02 2002 The Guardian The actor and director Robert Redford has accused President Bush of pursuing a dangerous and self-defeating path in the Middle East and asserted that true American patriotism lies in reducing the country's dependence on oil. Redford is the latest public figure to attack the Bush administration's policy on Iraq and call for a new definition of patriotism. The Bush White House talks tough on military matters in the Middle East while remaining virtually silent about the long-term problems posed by US dependence on fossil fuels, Redford writes in an article in the Los Angeles Times. The Bush administration's energy policy to date - a military garrison in the Middle East and drilling for oil in the Arctic and other fragile habitats - is costly, dangerous and self-defeating. Redford asserts that weaning our nation from fossil fuels should be understood as the most patriotic policy to which we can commit ourselves. He attacks the absence of leadership on the issue and writes that the current policy on oil would guarantee homeland insecurity. Redford, star of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, accepts that the political climate may be unsympathetic to such an argument. To get the United States off fossil fuels in this uneasy national climate of terrorism and conflict in the Persian Gulf we must treat the issue with the urgency and persistence it deserves. He argues that changes in petrol consumption are essential and that the government should have the courage to embrace the changes. Big challenges require bold action and leadership, he writes. Redford argues that the US policy on energy creates political liabilities overseas and makes the country a leading contributor to global warning. Other well-known names have also challenged the Bush administration's calls to patriotic support for the war. TV host Jerry Springer said recently that a true patriot would be opposing the threat of war in Iraq because such a war would create a new generation of people who hated the US. A former politician and a Democrat, he said that most Americans were concerned about threats from al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden but not about Saddam Hussein. Many public figures have been slow to criticise the war plans for fear of being called unpatriotic but there are a growing number of exceptions. The actor Sean Penn has taken out a full-page ad in the Washington Post to question President Bush's motives and policies. Others, including Susan Sarandon, Marisa Tomei, Kurt Vonnegut and Steve Earle have signed similar challenges to the war in the national media. The actor Woody Harrelson expressed his opposition in an article in the Guardian last month. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Bank pursues Enron's insurers for $1bn David Teather in New York Monday December 02 2002 The Guardian JP Morgan Chase yesterday began its move to wring $1bn in Enron-related losses out of 11 insurance companies which have refused to honour contracts signed before the energy group went bankrupt. The court case opened in Manhattan and is the first trial related to the collapse of the company since the successful prosecution of its auditor Arthur Andersen. The case begins exactly a year after Enron filed for bankruptcy and the complex deals to disguise debts began to unravel before investors. The Wall Street bank wants the insurers to honour six surety bonds they wrote to back trades involving Enron and a Jersey-based vehicle Mahonia. The insurers are ar guing that the bank misrepresented the transactions as oil and gas trades when they were in fact little more than straightforward loans. Legal experts have said that JP Morgan is pursuing a dangerous strategy. Shareholders in Enron will be eagerly watching the outcome and could use it as a basis to undertake further legal actions against the bank. It could also provide further details of some of the more complex financial engineering used by Enron. The banks that advised Enron are viewed as a more cash rich target for legal action than the company itself. The judge presiding over the case, US district judge Jed Rakoff, has twice refused JP Morgan's request that the insurers be forced to pay up without the case being presented before a jury. Lawyers for both sides were involved in jury selection yesterday and due to deliver opening arguments. The bonds covered six contracts between 1998 and 2000. JP Morgan funded Mahonia, which prepaid Enron for future delivery of gas and oil, but the energy firm defaulted when it filed for bankruptcy. They were supposed to cover the risk that Enron might default but the insurers claim to have been misled. A JP Morgan spokesman described the insurers' version of events as a brazen distortion of the facts. He said: The insurance companies sold us guaranteed protection against Enron credit risk. They agreed that their obligation to pay was absolute and unconditional. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site, go to http://www.observer.co.uk Eating meat 'may still pose CJD risk' Robin McKie, science editor Saturday November 30 2002 The Guardian Muscle and flesh of cattle and sheep may harbour deadly levels of prions that cause variant CJD. This stark prospect, raised by the Nobel Prize winner who first discovered that these infective particles can cause brain illnesses, suggests eating meat may still pose a serious health risk. The prospect that a timebomb may still be ticking in our kitchens was raised by Stanley Prusiner, who revealed yesterday that experiments at the University of California in San Francisco had shown that scrapie-infected mice have unexpectedly high concentrations of prions in their muscles. 'These are just mouse models, but they raise the obvious worry that cows and sheep could be similarly affected,' said Prusiner, who received the 1997 Nobel Prize for medicine for discovering that degenerative brain diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease are caused by prions. Until now, scientists had assumed that only brains and spinal columns of cows and sheep contain dangerous levels of prions. But it appears that cuts of beef and lamb, which largely consist of muscle, could also be affected. 'The levels we found were a hundredfold less than those found in brains, but were still significant,' he said. 'In particular, we found that the hind legs of mice had high numbers of prions. It remains to be seen if that is mirrored in the hind legs of cattle or sheep.' Prusiner said that part of the problem could be traced to existing tests for the existence of prions in animals or humans. 'These tests chew up prion molecules in such a way that means we fail to spot them. We were destroying critical evidence of infections, perhaps up to 99 per cent of it. It is very serious.' As a result, he and his colleagues have perfected a new technique for detecting prions in samples, one that is 10,000 times more sensitive than existing tests used in Europe and America. The new test - conformation dependent immunoassay (CDI) - works on a completely different principle. Essentially, it recognises the shape of prion molecules. 'We believe that by applying the test to cattle we should significantly reduce human exposure to bovine prions,' said Dr Jiri Safar, one of Prusiner's colleagues. 'Previous attempts to quantify BSE and scrapie prions in milk or non-neural tissue, such as muscle, may have underestimated infectious titers [levels] by as much as a factor of 10,000, raising the possibility that prions could be present in sufficient quantities to pose risk to humans. The high sensitivity of this new test may profoundly alter our view of the epidemiology of prion diseases.' However, Prusiner had one reassuring message. He dismissed a study, published last week by British researcher John Collinge, which suggested that BSE was responsible for more than one type of CJD in this country. In the journal of the European Molecular Biology Organisation, Collinge suggests that a second form of the disease was also caused by prions from meat. However, Prusiner dismissed the idea. 'I simply do not read the data the way that he does. I can see no evidence of such an effect. I just don't think it is likely.' Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk The Churchill you didn't know Thousands voted him the greatest Briton - but did they know about his views on Gandhi, gassing and Jews... Wednesday November 27 2002 The Guardian I will not pretend that, if I had to choose between communism and nazism, I would choose communism. Speaking in the House of Commons, autumn 1937 I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes. Writing as president of the Air Council, 1919 It is alarming and nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organising and conducting a campaign of civil disobedience, to parlay on equal terms with the representative of the Emperor-King. Commenting on Gandhi's meeting with the Viceroy of India, 1931 (India is) a godless land of snobs and bores. In a letter to his mother, 1896 I do not admit... that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia... by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race... has come in and taken its place. Churchill to Palestine Royal Commission, 1937 (We must rally against) a poisoned Russia, an infected Russia of armed hordes not only smiting with bayonet and cannon, but accompanied and preceded by swarms of typhus-bearing vermin. Quoted in the Boston Review, April/May 2001 The choice was clearly open: crush them with vain and unstinted force, or try to give them what they want. These were the only alternatives and most people were unprepared for either. Here indeed was the Irish spectre - horrid and inexorcisable. Writing in The World Crisis and the Aftermath, 1923-31 The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate... I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed up before another year has passed. Churchill to Asquith, 1910 One may dislike Hitler's system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as admirable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations. From his Great Contemporaries, 1937 You are callous people who want to wreck Europe - you do not care about the future of Europe, you have only your own miserable interests in mind. Addressing the London Polish government at a British Embassy meeting, October 1944 So far as Britain and Russia were concerned, how would it do for you to have 90% of Romania, for us to have 90% of the say in Greece, and go 50/50 about Yugoslavia? Addressing Stalin in Moscow, October 1944 This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States)... this worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire. Writing on 'Zionism versus Bolshevism' in the Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 1920 Research by Amy Iggulden Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Good buy, adieu Sarah Left on how to survive Buy Nothing Day with your ethics (and your wallet) intact Sarah Left Thursday November 28 2002 The Guardian Hello there. I hope you made that cup of coffee yourself, because today is Buy Nothing Day, an anti-consumerist celebration that appeals to both the very ethical and the very cheap. The 11th annual break from the shops falls the day after Thanksgiving, the US holiday that traditionally sounds a starting gun for an all-out, hedonistic rush to the shops for Christmas goodies. Adbusters, the group behind Buy Nothing Day, wants people to stop consuming for 24 hours and consider alternatives to a Christmas that costs money. In Britain the buying spree has already begun - Oxford Street switched on the Christmas lights earlier this month. The Credit Card Research Group estimates we will spend £20bn - or £7,600 a second - before sitting down to Christmas lunch. No better time than the present to cut up a credit card, then, and stop the energy-wasting, package-producing, landfill-bursting gluttony of the consumer Christmas. For those of you who did not realise until now that today is Buy Nothing Day, but want to do your bit for planet and wallet, here are answers to some frequently asked questions: That coffee came from Starbucks. Can I still take part? Yes, but penance is required. The credit card will have to go. Get out the scissors. I have no food. How am I going to get lunch? Try bartering for lunch with a colleague, the office canteen or a locally owned shop. If you are near a park, field or wood, many leaves and berries are edible. My umbrella snapped in the wind. I need another one. Rather than adding it to a landfill, attempt a repair with some duct tape. If that fails, improvise with a plastic bag or a newspaper. Even if I make it through today without spending money, I can't avoid spending money on Christmas presents. Exchange Christmas gift exemption vouchers - downloadable from the Adbusters site - with friends and family. The kids will not like that. Give children library cards instead of books. Take them to a story-telling session. Or ice skating. Or to a local playground. It's Friday, it's dark and it's cold. I need a pint. Call your friends and throw a party. Have them bring the booze. If it has to be the pub, remember that bartering while drunk could be dangerous. Try to avoid buying your round instead. Have a very merry Buy Nothing Day, each and every one. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
Re: [CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- In a message dated 11/26/2002 12:09:40 PM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: That was in September. Since then, bulldozers have cleared a swath of land 50 metres wide through Jayyous's olive groves and within tens of metres of the western side of the town. In a few more weeks, the concrete foundations of a wall eight metres high will be in place. A trench, barbed wire, floodlights, cameras and electronic detectors will follow. Jayyous does not yet know whether it will also get a military watchtower like neighbouring Qalqilya. Of course it does make me so proud to know that the Israeli are finding a use for my tax dollars. Of course they have it easy. They just have a few million olive trees and orchards to destroy. We had to kill off almost every bison in America in order to starve the Indians. I don't remember now if we made it impossible for them to get water. Still we had a much bigger challenge. Prudy A HREF=""www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=""Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=""ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. --- Note from Euphorian: Where your $14B is going ... where is Ronnie? Mr. Sharon, tear down that wall! --- To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk The £1m-a-mile wall that divides a town from its own land of plenty Chris McGreal in Jayyous Monday November 25 2002 The Guardian The first the people of Jayyous knew of the wall was a piece of paper flapping from an olive tree. It was a military order, said Sharif Omar, who has come to rue that day. It informed us we had to meet an Israeli army officer the next week and follow him to see the route of the wall. Hundreds of people turned out. We were shocked, very shocked, when we saw where it was going. People burst into tears. Some fainted. That was in September. Since then, bulldozers have cleared a swath of land 50 metres wide through Jayyous's olive groves and within tens of metres of the western side of the town. In a few more weeks, the concrete foundations of a wall eight metres high will be in place. A trench, barbed wire, floodlights, cameras and electronic detectors will follow. Jayyous does not yet know whether it will also get a military watchtower like neighbouring Qalqilya. But, by the end of next year, the wall severing the town from much of its land will be just one link in a concrete barrier running 250 miles through the West Bank. The Israeli government is spending #163;1m a mile to build this massive fortification, in the belief that it will keep the suicide bombers at bay. That, too, is what the Israeli public believes. Polls suggest that more than 70% believe that cooperation with the Palestinians has failed, so it is better to build barriers. The government calls it the separation fence; the army, the security obstacle; and the Israeli right, the terror wall. The Palestinians compare it to the Berlin wall, and say it will turn the West Bank into the world's biggest prison. In Jayyous, they are not so much worried about being shut in as shut out. The wall wriggles its way through the heart of Jayyous, leaving marginally more of the town's land on the Israeli side of the barrier. The mayor, Fayez Salim, calculates that the town will lose access to 80% of its 18,000 olive trees and about 50,000 citrus trees. It will be cut off from dozens of large greenhouses and thousands of jobs will be lost during the annual harvest. Crucially, Jayyous will be separated from its seven wells and the Israelis have forbidden the drilling of new ones. We've told the Israelis about this. They don't reply. They say it's an order of the military. They don't speak to us. They just hung the notice on a tree, Mr Salim said. Among those facing calamity is Mr Omar, one of the wealthiest landowners in Jayyous. He has 20 hectares (49 acres) of olive groves, citrus orchards and two sprawling greenhouses stuffed with tomatoes. The wall will separate him from all but 2.5 hectares. The green line is more than five kilometres from here, he said. Why is the wall only 40 metres from our houses? Why do they need to build it so close? The Palestinians say the wall serves a dual purpose: to cage the West Bank's residents just as the people of Gaza are locked behind security fences; and to lay open yet more of their land to seizure as Israel continues its creeping colonisation through the expansion of Jewish settlements. Although the wall loosely follows the 1967 border - the green line - it deviates considerably in places, such as Jayyous. That is in part because the government says it did not want the obstacle to become a de facto border which would be used to weaken its hand in negotiations over a Palestinian state. But some Palestinians believe that the wall will indeed become a border and that everything west of it will fall into Israeli hands. That would include not only valuable fertile land, but an equally precious commodity in a parched region - water. Jayyous and neighbouring towns sit on the western aquifer basin which produces about half of all the water on the West Bank. Most of their wells will fall on the wrong side of the wall for the Palestinians. The wall also winds around a number of the larger Jewish settlements, while encircling Jayyous's neighbouring city of Qalqilya on three sides. The rightwing Jerusalem Post laid out the thinking: The fence must be built to generously incorporate blocs of Israeli communities_ [This] maximises the amount of territory with which Israel would enter into some future final-status negotiation. But some settler groups and rightwing parties oppose the wall, saying it represents nothing less than the establishment of a Palestinian state by Israel. The barrier is part-fence, part-wall, depending on location. Parts of the wall can already be seen from Jayyous, surrounding Qalqilya, which has
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk BNP snatches council seat in Straw constituency David Ward Friday November 22 2002 The Guardian The British National party claimed yesterday that it had delivered a snub of epic proportions to Labour after snatching a seat on the council in Blackburn, the Lancashire constituency of the foreign secretary, Jack Straw. In the shock result, BNP candidate Robin Evans, a 38-year-old builder, won a byelection in Mill Hill ward with a 16-vote majority after two recounts. The victory prompted memories of the 1970s when the National Front had three councillors in Blackburn. It also brings the BNP's national tally of seats to four. In May the party picked up three council seats in neighbouring Burnley but failed to make headway in Oldham or Bradford. Although some commentators feared the result could indicate the onward march of the BNP in the north-west of England, local politicians and community leaders were swift to play down its significance in a town where race relations have been strong in recent years and where there was no trouble on the streets during the race riots summer of 2001. They suggested that the BNP had exploited both hostility to Islam after last year's attacks on the US and the national debate about asylum seekers. This result will not obstruct our efforts to build a more tolerant, multi-religious community in the town, said Mr Straw. The politics of racial exclusion can have no place in British society and all mainstream parties will now have to work harder to defeat it. Ibrahim Master, chairman of the Lancashire council of mosques, described the result as a surprise and a shock. This has been a protest vote about local issues rather than a reflection on the state of race relations in Blackburn. I don't believe the BNP has any real support at grassroots level, he said. There is an element of the racist vote in Blackburn, said Sue Reid, the council's deputy leader. The BNP literature was overtly racist. But we saw them off in the 1970s and I believe we will see them off again. The BNP used pub meetings and leaflet campaigns to target Blackburn, where about 20% of residents are thought to be from ethnic minorities, after its Burnley victories. It also made much of a planning application - turned down by the council - to establish a hostel for asylum seekers in mainly white Mill Hill ward, scene of the election. The party hailed its success as a victory for common sense and said core values of decency, respect, civic pride, love of one's family and neighbours had won the day. Like other successful BNP candidates, Mr Evans refused to be interviewed after his win but read from a prepared statement in which he said he would not be handicapped by political correctness. He looked forward to further success in 2004 when all seats on Labour-controlled Blackburn with Darwen council will be contested because of boundary changes. The BNP exploited a similar situation in Burnley this year and their latest victory will be a wake-up call to the mainstream parties. Bill Taylor, the council's Labour leader, described the result as deeply disappointing. We are not going to let something like this stop us working to improve the lives of all of our people here, he said. The Conservative leader Colin Rigby said his party had fielded a candidate to show its distaste and loathing of all that the BNP stands for. He viewed the result with dismay and horror. We had the early warning in Burnley and should have taken more notice of the tactics used, he said. David Foster, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats who were defending the seat, said: This is a sad day for Blackburn. The one crumb of comfort is that the majority of people in Mill Hill voted against the BNP. He added: We have made an official complaint to both the police and the returning officer about the BNP leaflet which we believe contravened election law. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at:
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Not so big, Mac All is not well at McDonald's. After years of rampant expansion, it's closing down 175 outlets in 10 countries. Is the shine finally coming off those golden arches? Oliver Burkeman investigates Oliver Burkeman Thursday November 21 2002 The Guardian According to the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention, first put forward by the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in the mid-1990s, no two countries possessing at least one branch of McDonald's have ever gone to war with each other. So the prospects for global peace must have diminished alarmingly this month when the Illinois-based fast-food chain and de facto world government announced it was pulling out entirely from three unnamed countries in the Middle East and Latin America. For McDonald's - if not for the corporation's multifarious opponents - the news was much worse: it is closing a total of 175 outlets in 10 countries, too, and reducing its staff by 600. Among those restaurants to go may be the cavernous Oxford Street branch and five other London sites - including, possibly, the one on Hampstead high street that the company battled so fiercely to open in the face of opposition from offended locals. There are, of course, about 30,000 McDonald's worldwide, so 175 is a mere drop of grease in the deep-fat fryer. But for years now, one of life's certainties has been the opening of hundreds more outlets annually, often well over 1,000 a year, with the number reaching a record 2,000 in 1996. In 2002, only 600 new restaurants will open. Not that you would have noticed much amiss with McDonald's self-assumed role as the alternative UN the day before yesterday. Wednesday was World Children's Day, a history-making fundraising initiative uniting people in more than 100 countries, in a global drive to help disadvantaged children. Oh, and to eat lots of Big Macs - because although the event was supported by Kofi Annan, and organised in partnership with Unicef, World Children's Day is actually a trademark of the McDonald's Corporation. The chief beneficiary was Ronald McDonald House Charities, the burger giant's main philanthropic arm. And much of the money came from $1 donations that the company made for every Big Mac and Egg McMuffin sold in the US, supplemented, in part, by that easiest of corporate generosity gestures: donations from employees. We're not asking you to give money, the singer Celine Dion told viewers bluntly in an interview on Wednesday morning. We're asking you to eat at McDonald's. In truth, though, things have arguably never been so bad for McDonald's. You might have noticed something amiss if you had recently driven through the midwestern American town of Evansville, Indiana, where the golden arches now tower over an establishment called McDonald's With the Diner Inside. As well as a counter serving the usual burgers and fries, the outlet includes a full-service diner, where customers attended by waitresses can choose from more than 100 menu items, while imagining Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's as a national concern and an advocate of ironclad standardisation from store to store, spinning in his grave. Or maybe you would have been annoyed to be standing in a queue three years ago while McDonald's trailed its Made for You service, offering personalised burgers in another assault on Kroc's philosophy. You would certainly have noticed something was wrong in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday night, when a man walked into a McDonald's near a US Air Force base and torched it. Or in Jouineh, in Lebanon, two months ago, when another branch was the target of a violent attack. Flailing to capture changing public tastes in its homeland, retrenching abroad, and, furthermore, damaged in Europe and Asia by the legacy of BSE, the corporation announced a profit shortfall warning this month, and earnings have declined for seven of the past eight quarters. These actions are the right things to do for McDonald's shareholders, the brand and our business, chief executive Jack Greenberg said, explaining the restaurant closures. It was hard to imagine that the boss of the chain that Loves To See You Smile was smiling as he said it. I see this as another case of imperial over-reach, says Eric Schlosser, author of the surprise bestseller Fast Food Nation, a stomach-churning and meticulously researched investigation of the industry's farming, food preparation and employment practices. They got too big too fast and, like the British empire, their huge increase in size abroad really cloaked fundamental weaknesses. If you put a little flag on a map for every branch of McDonald's in the world, it looks so impressive. But expansion is much more expensive in Kuala Lumpur
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Dove wins Israel's Labour leadership Chris McGreal in Jerusalem Tuesday November 19 2002 The Guardian Israel's Labour party hauled itself back into the peace camp yesterday by electing a dovish former army general to lead it into January's general election. An exit poll gave Amram Mitzna, the mayor of the coastal city of Haifa, 57% of the vote, compared to 35% for the current Labour party leader Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. Knesset member Haim Ramon was a distant third with 8%. His victory offers voters a stark choice between Mr Sharon's belief in military control as the best means of assuring Israel's security and the view that peace will come only by ending the occupation of the Palestinian territories. He has pledged to immediately remove the highly contentious Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip and to dismantle most, but not all, of those on the West Bank. To the fury of many on the right, he said that as prime minister he would begin unconditional negotiations with Yasser Arafat to establish an independent Palestine. His most radical proposal is to unilaterally pull the Israeli army out of the West Bank and leave the Palestinians to govern themselves if talks fail by the end of his first year in office. We will try to separate ourselves from the Palestinians by agreement. If that fails, we go to a unilateral approach, he said. While Ariel Sharon and the right insist that they will not talk to Mr Arafat under any circumstances - and only to other members of the Palestinian leadership once the terrorist attacks stop - Mr Mitzna says he will not lay down any preconditions to talks. We will talk as if there is no terrorism and we will fight terrorism as if there are no negotiations. To say there can be no negotiations while there is terrorism is to give the right of veto to extremists. That's stupid, he said. Mr Mitzna is also in a minority among Israelis in questioning the sincerity of previous peace offers to the Palestinians. As things stand, he is unlikely to be able to put his policies into practice. An election today would probably see Mr Sharon's Likud snap up a third more seats in the knesset while Labour will be hard pressed to hang on to what they already have. Even half of all Labour members do not believe their party can win the general election on January 28. But some of Mr Mitzna's al lies believe that voters are tiring of policies that may have hit back at the Palestinians but have done little for Israel's security. It is one of the paradoxes of Israeli society that Mr Sharon's militarist approach and the peace camp both command high levels of support. I can't say people are ready to leave the military option but I can say that both sides are ready to consider solutions they haven't considered before, said Yossi Beilin, a former Labour party cabinet minister. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Harvard overturns bar on Oxford poet Oliver Burkeman in New York Wednesday November 20 2002 The Guardian Harvard University has voted to reinvite the Oxford poet, Tom Paulin, to read his work there, one week after it withdrew the invitation amid protests at his opinion that Jewish settlers in the West Bank should be shot dead. English department academics voted to overturn the decision, faculty chairman Lawrence Buell said, out of widespread concern and regret for the fact that the decision not to hold the event could easily be seen, and indeed has been seen - both within Harvard and beyond - as an unjustified breach of the principle of free speech within the academy. Students and tutors had protested after Mr Paulin, who is lecturing at Columbia University in New York but is based at Hertford College, Oxford, had been invited to give Harvard's Morris Gray poetry reading, scheduled for last week. It was cancelled, the English department said, by mutual consent. In an interview with the Egyptian paper Al-Ahram in April, Mr Paulin said settlers in the occupied territories were Nazis, racists for whom he felt nothing but hatred. He added: I never believed that Israel had the right to exist at all. One Harvard protester, Professor Rita Goldberg, said his comments constituted incitement to violence. Last year, Mr Paulin, a regular on the BBC discussion show Newsnight Review, caused controversy with a poem in the Observer referring to Israeli soldiers as the Zionist SS. Speaking about his Al-Ahram interview, he told the BBC: My quoted remarks completely misrepresent my real views. For that, I apologise. Max Davis, a member of a pro-Israel group at Harvard, told the university's Crimson newspaper that Mr Paulin's opponents will be out there to give him the reception he deserves. If he comes back and has his free speech, I'm sure I'll have mine as well. The decision may have implications for Vermont University which, it emerged yesterday, had cancelled an invitation to Mr Paulin shortly after Harvard's initial decision. James Shapiro, a colleague of Mr Paulin's in the Columbia English faculty, said it had been an issue of free speech. Nobody was defending what Tom Paulin said - everyone was defending his right to say it, and I think it took a few days for Harvard's English faculty to come to that conclusion. But they did, they acted impressively, and this is past history now. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk The tragedy of Kut Military headstones have started arriving in Iraq from Britain. Not in preparation for an invasion but to commemorate allied soldiers who died in a previous attempt at 'regime change'. Ross Davies Tuesday November 19 2002 The Guardian The 500 military headstones that have just arrived in Baghdad from England already bear the names of soldiers killed in action in Iraq. But these troops died in an ill-fated, little-remembered attempt at regime change nearly a century ago. In the winter of 1915, towards the end of the first full year of the first world war, an Anglo-Indian force was sent to capture Baghdad. To the historian and veteran CRMF Cruttwell the attack was a capital sin: the advance on Baghdad was perhaps the most remarkable example of an enormous military risk being taken, after full deliberation, for no definite or concrete military purpose. Officials from the Commonwealth war graves commission have just arrived in Iraq to assess the damage done by 20 years of upheaval - and many more years of decay - to the 13 war cemeteries the commission tends there. The new headstones are the first phase of a major programme: a total of 51,830 British and Commonwealth servicemen died during the war in what was then Mesopotamia, and there are 22,400 graves (more than two-thirds of the troops who fought in Mesopotamia were Indians whose faith requires cremation rather than burial). Many of these deaths were the result of the decision to attack Baghdad, and in particular of what happened in a loop of the Tigris river at Kut-al-Amara. On November 22 1915, General Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend and his force of about 9,000 men of the 6th Indian division were advancing on Baghdad by boat along the Tigris, the land being roadless - an arid billiard table. At Ctesiphon, about 20 miles short of the capital, the Indian and British troops came up against a larger, better armed and better supplied Turkish force which had had months to dig in on both sides of the river. Townshend's force drove out the defenders, but at the cost of 40% casualties. Unable to withstand a counter-attack, let alone continue the advance, Townshend retreated back down the Tigris, with 1,600 Turkish prisoners and more than 4,500 wounded from both sides. The long, slow journey was nightmarish for the wounded, for Townshend had been kept short of boats and medical supplies by a stingy government in India. An over-optimistic superior, Sir John Nixon, had ordained that the men would find all they needed - in Baghdad. Collecting other troops as he inched along, Townshend made his stand at Kut, a strategic river junction he had captured a month previously. It had been one of a number of cheap and brilliant victories by a clever and resourceful soldier who knew the value of morale, and until the end kept the respect of his men. He had argued all along against going on to Baghdad; he lacked sufficient men, food and artillery as well as river transport and medical back-up. But the general and his men were to be the victims of their own success. The invasion of Mesopotamia itself was about oil, but that required only a landing on the Gulf coast to secure the southern part of the country around Basra. This would keep the Turks away from the nearby Persian port of Abadan, terminus of the Anglo-Persian pipe-line which was the source of the Royal Navy's oil supply. Basra was taken and held with little cost at the end of 1914 by a small invasion force launched from India. By late 1915, however, the war cabinet needed a success story to round off a year of military disaster, most recently at Gallipoli, where the British were preparing to pull out, having failed to break out and take Constantinople. Why not push beyond Basra province and take Baghdad? The Gallipoli campaign ended on January 8 1916 with a re-embarkation of Dunkirk proportions. By then, Kut, a collection of flyblown hovels, with Townshend and his men inside, had been surrounded for more than a month: included in the 13,500 penned inside were some 3,500 Indian non-combatants and 2,000 sick and wounded. There were also 6,000 Arabs to be fed. They held out in freezing cold and then torrential rain against infantry assault, sniper fire, shelling, and bombing, until a relief force could get near enough for the defenders to risk breaking out. It never happened. Three attempts were made to relieve Kut. Each failed, at a total cost of 23,000 casualties. Food began to run out, and many of the Indian troops could or would not eat what meat there was. The defenders' draught animals, the oxen, were the first to go, followed by their horses, camels, and finally, starlings, cats, dogs and even hedgehogs. Kut was the first siege
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Israeli army desertions rise Conal Urquhart in Jerusalem Monday November 18 2002 The Guardian The Israeli Defence Force has been hit by a sharp rise in the number of desertions among its troops, according to an army report. Military police are dealing with at least 40% more deserters than last year, the result of increasing numbers of reservists refusing to perform military service. One report put the increase as high as 67%. Since the beginning of the intifada in 2000, the army has been forced to call up tens of thousands of reservists every month to conduct operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It consists of 186,500 regular troops supplemented by a reserve force of 445,000. The regular army consists of men and women aged between 18 and 21 doing national service and career soldiers. The reservists are mainly men aged between 21 and 45. A report in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, quoted military sources saying that as of last week, military police were dealing with 2,616 deserters compared with 1,564 last year. It also stated that reservists are now forced to serve an average of 33 days per year. A spokesman for the IDF said yesterday that the rate of desertions had increased massively since the beginning of the intifada. The rate of desertion in 1999 increased by 7%, by 31% in 2000 and by 40% in 2002. He added that the latest figures were still being analysed and refused to give the numbers involved. Although 208 members of the Israeli security services have been killed in the intifada, the army believes that the majority of deserters are ignoring the call up for economic reasons. Wages have fallen by 7%, the economy has shrunk by 1% and unemployment stands at more than 10%. Both reservists and conscripts have claimed that they deserted to earn more money for their families while reservists feared losing their jobs because of the prolonged absence caused by their military service. The deserters also include conscientious objectors who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories although they are willing to serve within Israel's international borders. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site, go to http://www.observer.co.uk Blair 'is arming tyrants' to beat terror Kamal Ahmed, political editor Sunday November 17 2002 The Observer Tony Blair has abandoned his 'ethical foreign policy' in favour of arming key allies in the war against terror, even if they have poor records on human rights. A former aide to Clare Short says the Government has shown 'serious inconsistencies' over arms exports, deliberately loosening controls to encourage customer-nations to unite against al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. David Mepham, who was the International Development Secretary's special adviser until April, makes the claims in a think-tank report of which he is co-author. The study, published by the Institute of Public Policy Research, says the Government is making increasing use of arms export licences allowing an unlimited quantity of goods to go to a range of destinations with no specified end-user. Mepham's attack is thought to reflect the thinking of his old boss, who has raised the issue privately with her colleagues. 'Post-11 September, there is evidence of a loosening of UK controls on arms exports, with a greater willingness to supply arms to countries seen as on side in the war on terror, even when they have poor human rights records,' says the report, written with Paul Eavis, director of the Saferworld campaign. 'Yet there are concerns that some governments use the war on terror to justify cracking down on internal dissent.' Mepham said that 'open' export licences had been granted to Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, 'despite serious concerns about human rights in all these countries'. He added: 'They are all regions of instability, and there are concerns about the possible diversion of military equipment to other destinations.' Such licences mean that any equipment - from small arms to armoured vehicles, tanks and helicopters - can be exported without further controls. The study says Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have been granted licences despite 'highly critical' human rights assessments by the Foreign Office. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the MediaGuardian.co.uk site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the MediaGuardian.co.uk site, go to http://www.mediaguardian.co.uk Worsthorne criticises Israeli bias of Telegraph owner's wife Ciar Byrne Thursday October 17 2002 The Guardian A former editor the Sunday Telegraph today launched a scathing attack on the wife of the newspapers' owner, Conrad Black, branding her articles in the Daily Telegraph as logic-chopping apologies for Israel. Sir Peregrine Worsthorne said both papers and the Spectator magazine, which is also owned by the Canadian Lord Black, were obsessive in their pro-American and pro-Israeli editorial stance. Sir Peregrine describes articles written for the Telegraph by Lord Black's wife, Barbara Amiel, as enragingly narrow-minded and logic-choppingly unpersuasive apologies for Israel. In an article in today's New Statesman, he warned that Lord Black's stance on America threatened the very existence of his newspapers. Nobody on the inside seems to be telling Black that his obsessive and out-of date, pro-American certitudes are rendering the papers' entire political coverage suspect - as if written in another country and in a foreign language - that the titles are once again in danger of self-destruction. Sir Peregrine, 79, was one of the most distinguished and outspoken editors of recent times - he worked at the Daily Telegraph between 1953 and 1961 and had a 28 year stint at the Sunday Telegraph between 1961 and 1989, spending five years as deputy editor and three as editor. Earlier this year Amiel accused war reporters of misreporting events in Israel. She said correspondents had abandoned balanced criticism and ignored the relatively heavy Israeli casualties, instead printing Palestinian propaganda about massacres. She singled out for criticism Janine di Giovanni of the Times, Sam Kiley of the London Evening Standard and Orla Guerin of the BBC. Amiel also found herself at the centre of a row over comments made about Israel last year, when she referred in her Telegraph column to remarks made by the French ambassador, Daniel Bernard, at a private function hosted by her husband. She claimed the ambassador of a major EU country told her that the international security crisis had been triggered by that shitty little country Israel. The press secretary of the French embassy later defended Mr Bernard by saying he could not remember whether he had used the phrase, adding that he had not expected comments made at a private party to be repeated. He denied Mr Bernard was anti-Semitic or anti-Israel. In a review of Sir Max Hasting's new book about his stint as editor of the Daily Telegraph, Sir Peregrine said: I fear [Sir Max Hastings' account] is also a story that must raise very serious questions over the continuing propriety of Black's obsessive pro-American partisanship, exercised not only over the two Telegraphs, but also over the Spectator, in the rather changed foreign circumstances of today, said Sir Peregrine. For with the cold war over and the new so-called war against terrorism raging, it is by no means so certain that it is anything other than a minor scandal to have these three titles so closely tied to American, and now also to Israeli, coat-tails, he said. It emerged today that the head of the Israeli government press office has been heavily criticised by international news organisations after accusing them of gross bias in favour of Palestinians. Sir Peregrine also claimed in his New Statesman review of Editor: An Inside Story of Newspapers, that Sir Max was unsuitable to edit the Daily Telegraph because his politics did not tally with those of the paper. However, Sir Peregrine added that Sir Max's book answered the question of how he managed to survive in the editor's chair for so long. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Pampered prince puts sun king in shade Even the Queen is said to regard her son's demands as 'grotesque' Stuart Millar and Jamie Wilson Friday November 15 2002 The Guardian His lifestyle would seem extravagant to Louis XIV: a team of four valets so that one is always available to lay out and pick up his clothes; a servant to squeeze his toothpaste on to his brush, and another who once held the specimen bottle while he gave a urine sample. Step into the world of the Prince of Wales, a lifestyle so pampered that even the Queen has complained that it is grotesque. As the storm of scandal which has engulfed the royal family since the collapse of the Paul Burrell theft trial continues unabated, attention is focusing on the vast households employed by senior royals to look after every aspect of their personal and public lives, and their role in bringing about the current crisis. It is the 85-strong court of Prince Charles that has emerged most seriously discredited - with a growing number of MPs demanding to know how he can justify such a large staff - at least one of whom is accused of fencing gifts. Archaic At the end of a year that was being heralded as a triumph for the reinvented, modernised, scaled-down royal family, the unedifying reality revealed to the public this week is of a strictly hierarchical, archaic institution that has sneaked into the 21st century, rife with bullying, bitching, backstabbing, and general bad behaviour, while the prince turned a blind eye and on occasion even aided and abetted some of the excesses. In the end it might not be the rape tape allegations that do the most damage. What will the British public think of an institution, already fabulously wealthy, that has servants carry out the most menial of tasks while others hawk its unwanted silverware around various shops for a pocketful of tax-free fivers? Charles's supporters make much of the fact that the prince does not receive money from the civil list. Instead, his twin households at St James's Palace and his Gloucestershire home, Highgrove, are financed by the lucrative estate of the Duchy of Cornwall, his birthright as the male heir to the throne. According to the duchy's latest accounts, filed in the House of Commons library, the estate made a profit of #163;6.9m for the year to March 31 2000, when it was valued at around #163;308m. The prince admits that he lives well on the profit - on which he voluntarily pays 40% tax - and saves little of it. The biggest expenditure, according to the accounts, is the full-time domestic and office staff of around 85, whose duties range from handling contacts with the 400 organisations with whom the prince is involved, to answering the 300,000 letters he and his sons receive every year. It his lavish domestic staff which has caused most consternation. Compared with George Smith's claims in last week's Mail on Sunday that he was raped by a member of the prince's staff, the revelation that he was one of five valets who accompanied the prince on a trip to Egypt may not have registered high on the shock scale. The number of valets has since been reduced to four - two senior, two assistant - in the spirit of royal cuts, but the central concern remains: why exactly does one man need so many people to help him get dressed? According to Ingrid Seward, editor of Majesty magazine, the answer can be found in Charles's fondness for being fussed over. The prince often changes his clothes five times a day. The discarded outfits, including #163;2,000 bespoke suits and handmade Turnbull and Asser shirts, are left strewn across the floor for one of the valets to pick up. It is then their job to make sure the clothes are washed and returned to the correct place in his mahogany wardrobes. Wherever he is in the world, Charles demands that at least one of the senior valets or two of the assistants are available around the clock to prepare his wardrobe. Picking up his clothes from the floor is not the only menial task his staff are expected to perform. It emerged this week that the prince even gets one of his valets to squeeze his toothpaste on to his toothbrush (from a crested silver dispenser), while one of the more bizarre facts to emerge from the Paul Burrell theft trial was that when the prince broke his arm he even got his then head valet, Michael Fawcett, to hold his specimen bottle. Unease It is Mr Fawcett, since promoted to personal consultant to the prince, who has been causing most unease for St James's Palace. I can do without just about anyone, except for Michael, Prince Charles is said to have told a friend. At an employment tribunal where former aide Elizabeth Burgess alleged she was the victim of racial and sexual
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. --- Note from Euphorian: Your guide to Baghdad http://www.guardian.co.uk/flash/0,5860,836462,00.html --- To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Iraqi army is tougher than US believes The US claims a war against Saddam would be quick. Wrong, says analyst Toby Dodge, the conflict could be long and bloody Toby Dodge Friday November 15 2002 The Guardian With just two days to go before the UN weapons inspectors arrive in Baghdad, George Bush's administration is still beating the war drum. On Thursday night, Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, confidently predicted that, should a war erupt, the Iraqi army would soon surrender in the face of overwhelming US force. He noted that in the first Gulf war, when allied forces pushed Iraq out of Kuwait, ground combat had lasted only 100 hours. I can't say if the use of force would last five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that, he said. It won't be a world war three. You have always got to hope for minimum loss of life in any war, but Mr Rumsfeld's prognosis about the speed of an Iraqi army collapse is ideologically driven and strategically ill-informed. In the event of an invasion, US forces will face an army that has been thoroughly indoctrinated, with party commissars in every unit. In addition, a ruthless system of surveillance and constant purges mean that the officer corps has had to renounce political activity to survive. To quote President Saddam Hussein: With our party methods, there is no chance for anyone who disagrees with us jumping into a couple of tanks and overthrowing the government. These methods have gone. It is true that Iraqi resistance in the 1991 Gulf war was negligible. The troops that surrendered in their thousands to coalition forces were badly trained, poorly led and had often not been fed for days. The war was a one-sided affair, with the Iraqis overwhelmed by superior weapons, technology and air power. However, it is often forgotten that the Iraqi leadership made no serious attempt to defend Kuwait City. The fortifications were half-hearted and badly planned. They were primarily designed for propaganda, to convince coalition forces that military liberation would be too costly. Despite the portrayal of a heroic resistance in the mother of all battles, once the ground war began, President Saddam quickly withdrew most of the republican guard, redeploying them around Baghdad to guard his regime. Substandard and ill-prepared troops were left to face certain defeat. After the Gulf war defeat, the Iraqi army was cut to less than half its original size. The idea was to create a smaller, more disciplined force, ideologically committed to defending the regime. For more than a decade Washington has looked to this army for regime change. Today, the US government still hopes a coup triggered by an invasion will save American troops the high cost of fighting through Baghdad's streets to reach the presidential palace. Like Washington, President Saddam is also aware of the dangers the Iraqi armed forces pose to his continued rule. To counter this he has staffed the upper ranks with individuals tied to him by bonds of tribal loyalty or personal history. Like him, most officers are Sunni Arabs, the country's traditional ruling class. They are outnumbered by Shia Muslims and well aware of the resentment towards them. In addition, members of President Saddam's tribe, the Albu-Nasir, and those hailing from his hometown, Tikrit, dominate the army and security services' command, benefiting from regime patronage and enforcing his rule. They are also more than aware of the anger that will be directed at them if he goes. Because of this, those hoping for a coup may be disappointed. The regime has created a coalition of guilt that underpins its continued rule with corruption and great fear about what will happen when it is finally toppled. Sanctions In contrast to 1991, the battle this time will be not for a foreign land but for the very survival of a regime many have spent their lives serving. An invading US army will face 375,000 Iraqi troops and 2,200 tanks. Analysts are right to point out that the army as a whole has suffered greatly during more than a decade of sanctions. Beyond elite regiments, equipment is old and badly maintained. Estimates suggest that the army is only 50% combat effective, and regular troops may well behave as they did in 1991, fleeing the battlefield once war begins. On the other hand, President Saddam has surrounded himself with a robust security system spreading out in three concentric rings. The security services become more disciplined, motivated and reliable the closer they are to the president. The republican guard makes up the first
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk 'What would Jesus drive?' gas-guzzling Americans are asked Oliver Burkeman in New York Wednesday November 13 2002 The Guardian The midwestern United States, equally devout in its worship of God as in its worship of gas-guzzling four-wheel-drive vehicles, is about to be asked to choose between the two. What Would Jesus Drive? is the slogan dominating a television advertising campaign about to blanket cities in Iowa, Indiana and Missouri, along with the southern state of North Carolina. The question presumably did not arise in first-century Galilee, but the Christian group behind the ads believes the answer would not include sports utility vehicles, the fuel-inefficient, environmentally unfriendly monsters that rule America's roads. We have confessed Christ to be our saviour and Lord, and for us, that includes our transportation choices, the Rev Jim Ball, of the Washington-based Evangelical Environmental Network, said. Most folks don't think of transportation as a moral issue, but we're called to care for kids and for the poor, and filling their lungs with pollution is the opposite of caring for them. The campaign's slogan is inspired by What Would Jesus Do?, a phrase ubiquitous among young Christians in the US who sport it on bracelets, clothing and customised Bible covers. We take seriously the question What Would Jesus Do?, Mr Ball said. What Would Jesus Drive? is just a more specific version. What would he want me to do as a Christian? Would he want me to use public transportation? A coalition of religious groups, led by Christians and Jews, are due to launch a related campaign later this month in Detroit, America's car capital, where they have called for a meeting with representatives from the big three manufacturers, Ford, General Motors and DaimlerChrysler. Though all three companies have begun to launch hybrid cars powered partly by electricity, SUVs, vans and pickups still account for half the new vehicles sold in the US. TV ads abound declaring them professional grade and built like a rock. Car companies say they are only responding to demand. If people would be demanding tailfins on cars, we'd be making tailfins on cars, said Eron Shosteck, of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. At least one car maker is fighting on the same territory as Mr Ball: Chevrolet has been touring a series of nationwide evangelical rock concerts entitled Chevrolet Presents: Come Together and Worship, prompting condemnation from non-Christian groups. This may be a sign of the times, Rabbi James Rudin, spokesman for the American Jewish Committee, said recently. But it's not a good sign. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/ A HREF=http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. --- Note from Euphorian: Merit badges? Seems like someone's always gotta get something out of everything. The point is no longer being human or humane (unless there's a distinct hue and whiff of green associated with it) AER --- To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Who chooses the righteous gentiles? Court enters row about non-Jews honoured for Holocaust heroism Chris McGreal in Jerusalem Wednesday November 13 2002 The Guardian The Avenue of the Righteous records 19,141 names of gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews from Hitler's murderers. Among those honoured are some made famous by film, their own tragedy or the sheer scale of their actions - Oskar Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg, the entire Danish resistance. But this week the Israeli courts waded into the process of selecting who to include on the list of righteous gentiles at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem amid a campaign to add two Germans - one of them a convicted war criminal who was at the centre of a recent Hollywood film - and to strike off a Ukrainian who Jewish survivors say has no place among heroes. The court case centres on Yad Vashem's refusal to proclaim a German Protestant minister, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a righteous gentile. The lawsuit was brought by the world body of reform Jews which claims that Bonhoeffer publicly criticised the Nazis and helped save Jews by sending them to Switzerland, ostensibly as spies for Germany, before he was arrested and executed in 1945. Rabbi Uri Regev leads the campaign in Israel. Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazi regime because, among other reasons, he wrote a letter in an attempt to improve the conditions of a Jewish professor. Doesn't that prove that he acted to save Jews? he asked. Yad Vashem says not. The chairman of its directorate, Avner Shalev, says the only Jew that Bonhoeffer tried to save was a woman who converted to Christianity and rose to a senior position in the church. Not only was the man an anti-Semite at the beginning of his public career - although he does appear to have changed his ways - not only did his opposition to Hitler stem from his fear for the fate of the church and have nothing to do with the Jews, but he also never actually saved a single Jew, Mr Shalev said. But Yad Vashem's refusal to make public the information and discussions on which it selects righteous gentiles has prompted unusual legal challenges that threaten to taint the image of the organisation responsible for preserving the memory of the Jewish people's darkest hours. This week, a judge ruled that the memorial council is accountable to the Israeli public and that it must open its files under the country's freedom of information law. The campaign to win recognition for Bonhoeffer has implications for a case built around the success of Roman Polanski's film The Pianist - the story of a Jewish pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman, in the Warsaw ghetto. Szpilman's son, Andrzej, has for years sought recognition for the German officer who helped his father, Wilm Hosenfeld. Szpilman says that Hosenfeld's diary is evidence of his assistance to Jews. I just cannot understand how we have been able to commit such crimes against defenceless civilians, against the Jews. I ask myself again and again, how is it possible? Hosenfeld wrote. Mordechai Paldiel, the director of the Righteous Among the Nations department, rejected the application because Hosenfeld was a uniformed German soldier who served on the Russian front at a time when atrocities against Jews and non-Jews alike were widespread. After Hosenfeld was taken prisoner by the Russians at the end of the war he was convicted of war crimes against Polish civilians. He died in captivity in 1952. Andrzej Szpilman says the Russians fabricated the accusations. Yad Vashem is facing a second, potentially more embarrassing lawsuit, to strip someone of their place among righteous gentiles. Stefan Wrzemczuk submitted his own application for recognition on the grounds that when he was a child he helped his mother lead Jews from Ludmir ghetto - then in Ukraine, now in Poland - to the protection of partisans in the surrounding forests. After Wrzemczuk had his name added to the wall of Righteous Among the Nations he emigrated to Israel in 1995 and received a regular government stipend. Four years ago, a group of Ludmir survivors denounced the story as a fabrication. Out of the 22,000 Jews of Ludmir, only 58 survived, the leader of the campaign, Moshe Margalit, told the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. Not a single one was saved by Wrzemczuk. The partisans we fled to never heard of him either. After so many people from our town were murdered, it pains me that a bastard like him should falsely receive the title of Righteous Among
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Europe lacks moral fibre, says US hawk Edward Pilkington and Ewen MacAskill Tuesday November 12 2002 The Guardian Richard Perle, a leading Pentagon adviser on Iraq, last night launched an extraordinary tirade against Europe which he accused of losing its moral direction and providing succour to Saddam Hussein. I think Europe has lost its moral compass. Many Europeans have become so obsessed by the prospect of violence they have failed to notice who we are dealing with, he said in an interview with the Guardian. Mr Perle expressed serious reservations about the United Nations chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, and the ability of his team to disarm Iraq. But he reserved his most scathing comments for Germany and Chancellor Gerhard Schr#246;der's new anti-war stance. Germany has subsided into a moral numbing pacifism. For the German chancellor to say he will have nothing to do with action against Saddam Hussein, even if approved by the United Nations, is unilateralism, Mr Perle said. France, which led resistance within the UN security council to the Bush administration's drive for an automatic mandate for war against Iraq, fared little better. Did the French show more signs of moral fibre? I have seen diplomatic manoeuvre, but not moral fibre, Mr Perle said. He exempted Tony Blair from his criticism, saying the British prime minister had displayed the outrage towards President Saddam that should be felt. But he accused the European left in general of choosing to ignore the realities of the Iraqi leader's excesses. I don't see how anyone, particularly any liberal, can say anything that can be construed as protecting the regime of Saddam Hussein. And yet that's the position that many on the left have taken. Mr Perle's comments reflect the strained ties between Washington and Europe since George Bush came to power in 2000 over a range of issues, from the environment to trade and now Iraq. US-German relations slumped to their worst since 1945 in the wake of Chancellor Schr#246;der's recent anti-Iraq war election campaign. Mr Perle, who is close to key hawks within the Pentagon and who was an early advocate of regime change in Baghdad, predicted that Iraq was just the first of a long list of dictatorships and countries harbouring terrorists that merited the international community's attention. He mentioned Iran, Syria and North Korea. Referring to North Korea's recent admission that it had a nuclear weapons programme, he said: Now you understand what he [President Bush] meant by axis of evil. There are some people you can't do deals with. You could not do a deal with Hitler, and you can't do a deal with Saddam Hussein or with North Korea. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/ A HREF=http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Israelis fear war crimes arrests Chris McGreal in Jerusalem Monday November 11 2002 The Guardian The Israeli government has ordered an urgent assessment of whether its politicians and soldiers could face arrest and trial for war crimes while travelling abroad. The move follows a report by the justice ministry that singled out Britain, Spain and Belgium as the most likely to prosecute Israeli officials who breach international law. But the government fears there is a growing trend towards global justice that could see Israelis effectively barred from visiting a host of states. We are building a map of all those countries that might give us a headache, said Ra'anan Gissin, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon. They want to arrest Israelis who are enforcing the law while the real war criminals, like Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat, get away scot free. The report was ordered after lawyers presented the cabinet with a report commissioned in the wake of a failed legal action in the Belgian courts last year accusing Mr Sharon of war crimes over the massacres of Palestinians in refugee camps 20 years ago. Last month, Scotland Yard launched an investigation of Israel's new defence minister, Lieutenant General Shaul Mofaz, during his short visit to Britain. Amnesty International has called on signatories to the Geneva conventions to put on trial Israeli soldiers responsible for war crimes as defined in the Geneva conventions, such as unlawful killings, torture and the use of Palestinians as human shields in Jenin and Nablus earlier this year. #183; Binyamin Netanyahu, the new Israeli foreign minister, yesterday called for Mr Arafat's removal after a gunman killed five Israelis, including a mother and two children, in a kibbutz on Sunday. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/ A HREF=http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- In a message dated 11/12/2002 3:18:22 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: "We are building a map of all those countries that might give us a headache," said Ra'anan Gissin, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon. Is that a threat or what? Will we be required to bomb countries that give problems to Israeli? I guess the third world war is on the way. Prudy A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html"Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/"ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site and thought you should see it. --- Note from Euphorian: You know? This makes sense. With the imperialist nations acquiring all the goodies and transporting them to the uppermost regions of the world, we can only expect that the Earth would become top-heavy ... AER --- To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site, go to http://www.observer.co.uk Sun's rays to roast Earth as poles flip Robin McKie, science editor Saturday November 09 2002 The Guardian Earth's magnetic field - the force that protects us from deadly radiation bursts from outer space - is weakening dramatically. Scientists have discovered that its strength has dropped precipitously over the past two centuries and could disappear over the next 1,000 years. The effects could be catastrophic. Powerful radiation bursts, which normally never touch the atmosphere, would heat up its upper layers, triggering climatic disruption. Navigation and communication satellites, Earth's eyes and ears, would be destroyed and migrating animals left unable to navigate. 'Earth's magnetic field has disappeared many times before - as a prelude to our magnetic poles flipping over, when north becomes south and vice versa,' said Dr Alan Thomson of the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh. 'Reversals happen every 250,000 years or so, and as there has not been one for almost a million years, we are due one soon.' For more than 100 years, scientists have noted the strength of Earth's magnetic field has been declining, but have disagreed about interpretations. Some said its drop was a precursor to reversal, others argued it merely indicated some temporary variation in field strength has been occurring. But now Gauthier Hulot of the Paris Geophysical Institute has discovered Earth's magnetic field seems to be disappearing most alarmingly near the poles, a clear sign that a flip may soon take place. Using satellite measurements of field variations over the past 20 years, Hulot plotted the currents of molten iron that generate Earth's magnetism deep underground and spotted huge whorls near the poles. Hulot believes these vortices rotate in a direction that reinforces a reverse magnetic field, and as they grow and proliferate these eddies will weaken the dominant field: the first steps toward a new polarity, he says. And as Scientific American reports this week, this interpretation has now been backed up by computer simulation studies. How long a reversal might last is a matter of scientific controversy, however. Records of past events, embedded in iron minerals in ancient lava beds, show some can last for thousands of years - during which time the planet will have been exposed to batterings from solar radiation. On the other hand, other researchers say some flips may have lasted only a few weeks. Exactly what will happen when Earth's magnetic field disappears prior to its re-emergence in a reversed orientation is also difficult to assess. Compasses would point to the wrong pole - a minor inconvenience. More importantly, low-orbiting satellites would be exposed to electromagnetic batterings, wrecking them. In addition, many species of migrating animals and birds - from swallows to wildebeests - rely on innate abilities to track Earth's magnetic field. Their fates are impossible to gauge. As to humans, our greatest risk would come from intense solar radiation bursts. Normally these are contained by the planet's magnetic field in space. However, if it disappears, particle storms will start to batter the atmosphere. 'These solar particles can have profound effects,' said Dr Paul Murdin, of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge. 'On Mars, when its magnetic field failed permanently billions of years ago, it led to its atmosphere being boiled off. On Earth, it will heat up the upper atmosphere and send ripples round the world with enormous, unpredictable effects on the climate.' It is unlikely that humans could do much. Burrowing thousands of miles into solid rock to set things right would stretch the technological prowess of our descendants to bursting point, though such limitations do not worry film scriptwriters. Paramount's latest sci-fi thriller, The Core - directed by Englishman Jon Amiel, and starring Hilary Swank and Aaron Eckhart - depicts a world beset by just such a polar reversal, with radiation sweeping the planet. The solution, according to the film, to be released next year, involves scientists drilling into Earth's mantle to set off a nuclear blast that will halt the reversal. Given that temperatures at such depths rival those of the Sun's surface, such a task would seem impossible - except, of course, in Hollywood. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site, go to http://www.observer.co.uk A dark week for democracy The stranglehold the far Right has now taken on America will make it a more divided, reactionary and illiberal country Will Hutton Saturday November 09 2002 The Guardian The election in Georgia said it all. The Democrat governor, Roy Barnes, had dared to remove the Confederate symbol from the state flag last year. His Republican challenger wanted to bring it back, to honour, he said, 300,000 Confederate 'veterans'. A Republican has not occupied Georgia's governor's mansion since 1872. After last Tuesday, one does, courtesy of wanting to celebrate a civil war fought to defend slavery. Europeans do not understand the curious civilisation that the current America is becoming, and the grip that a visceral and idiosyncratic conservatism has on its national discourse. They especially do not understand the undercurrents of an increasingly self-confident and subtle racism that is its own variant of the forces that in Europe gave us Le Pen and Pim Fortuyn. George Bush Jnr is a chip off the old multilateralist, transatlantic establishment, runs the European argument. He may seem hawkishly conservative but, in the end, he seeks UN resolutions like other American Presidents. Even at home, his bark is worse than his bite. Wrong, wrong and wrong again. Anyone who thinks the Tory party is 'nasty' has not encountered contemporary American republicanism. Georgia's Republican Party, for example, is now lead by Ralph Reed, a long-time crusader against abortion, divorce and single parent families. He would regard last week's vote in the House of Lords allowing unmarried and gay couples to adopt as the work of Satan. He is part of US conservatism's ideological hard core. Reed played every card he could. If the governorship was to be won celebrating the Confederacy, the race for the Senate seat would be no less shameless. The Democrat incumbent had lost three limbs fighting in Vietnam, but was attacked for being unpatriotic - the worst accusation in today's US - because he believed that unions should be able to recruit in the newly established Department of Homeland Security. And so one of American liberalism's darkest days was repeated across the country. Minnesota and Missouri, long-time Democrat strongholds, fell. Governor Jeb Bush, despite the Democrats insisting that justice now be done for those infamous chads, won in Florida. As if to underscore conservatism's ascendancy, the only Democrat gain was in Arkansas where the Republican senator had suffered a messy divorce and his Democrat challenger was even more pro-gun and pro-Bible than the incumbent. The result is that the Republicans now control the Senate, House and the presidency for the first time since President Eisenhower. The consolidation of America as an ultra conservative country is going to take place rapidly. Mr Bush may have offered a few tit-bits to show his credentials as a 'compassionate conservative', like his concern to reduce the price of prescription drugs for the elderly, but the core of the Republican programme is anything but. There will be radical tax cuts for the rich and the corporations; a freezing of all efforts to stiffen regulation in the wake of America's corporate scandals; moves to privatise the social security system; and a roll-back of environmental protection. Abroad, there will be the continued construction of a new international order built around the prejudices of the American Right; unqualified support for Israel, building the National Missile Defence System and tepid support for the framework of international law and treaties. Nor do the Conservatives' ambitions stop there. Following the ideas of the high priest of ultra conservatism, Leo Strauss, they want to construct a republic of 'moral', god-fearing citizens who adhere to traditional virtues, rewarding the rich who can only have become rich through the virtue of hard work and penalising the poor who are only poor because of their own fecklessness. Above all, by now having the opportunity to pack the judiciary with extreme right-wing judges, they intend to do away with the famous Roe v Wade judgment that legalised abortion. This is the most fiercely reactionary programme to have emerged in any Western democracy since the war, and for which last Tuesday's vote, argue Republicans, is an explicit mandate. Horseshit. George Bush has al-Qaeda and a low turn-out to thank for his victory. The central message of his five-day tour of 15 key states in the last week of the election was to play on Americans' fears about terrorism, rallying them behind their national leader. When the electorate voted locally, the Democrats had the edge, winning governorships in four of the
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk France chops at the roots of elitism Parliamentary move to close the school for top mandarins is likely to bring a sharp cut-back Jon Henley in Paris Thursday November 07 2002 The Guardian It would be like abolishing Oxbridge, except that the establishment clout of the alumni of Britain's two oldest universities pales into insignificance besides the power wielded in France by the select band of men and women known as #233;narques . Almost unthinkably, the French parliament began a debate yesterday on closing down the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, the super-elite finishing school for technocrats which has furnished two of France's last three presidents and six of its last eight prime ministers. Ena, as it is widely known, is cut off from the people, the fiefdom of a new state nobility and a caste capable only of looking after the careers of its own members, said Jean-Michel Fourgous and Herv#233; Novelli, the two conservative MPs who tabled the heretical motion. The venerable establishment, founded in 1945 by General Charles de Gaulle to groom the people who would one day run France, had become a blockage in French society and an absolute brake on all innovation, the MPs said, a symbol of French archaism and a high temple of the administered rather than the market economy. It had to go. The debateis more likely to lead to reforms than to the outright closure of Ena, but it reflects the new centre-right government's preoccupation with reforming France's bloated state apparatus, decentralising power and, above all, closing the gulf between the Paris governing elite and the disaffected electorate. There are about 4,500 Ena graduates at work in France. Three quarters of them have a monopoly on the top jobs in the civil service, most of the rest are presidents or senior executives of public sector and part-privatised companies. In the previous Socialist-led cabinet, fully half the most senior 17 ministers were #233;narques. Ena and the more junior grandes #233;coles , Sciences-Po and the Ecole Polytechnique have over the years supplied France with a pool of super-mandarins able to push through ambitious schemes like the high-speed TGV train network and to govern forcefully. But the system has incontestably widened the social divide in France, creating a hermetically sealed caste of self-interested power-players at the summit of the state who shamelessly hand each other the top jobs in a sad mockery of the equality France boasts of in its national motto. The two MPs (both close to the free-market Liberal Democracy party leader Alain Madelin, who once famously declared: Britain has the IRA, Spain has Eta, Italy has the mafia and France has Ena) have proposed cutting the school's 2003 budget from euro;30.9m to euro;15.4m, leaving it just enough to survive until the two current classes of 150 students each have completed their courses. Another centre-right MP, Louis Giscard d'Estaing, the son of the former president who was himself an #233;narque, has tabled a less radical motion to simply cut Ena's funds by euro;5m a year, forcing a big reduction in its intake. The present cabinet has only handful of Ena graduates: testimony to the prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin's effort to erase the remote, aloof and elitist image of government seen as responsible for the massive protest vote against the mainstream parties of right and left in the tumultuous presidential election this spring. But many parliamentarians, including Mr Raffarin, a blokeish provincial who even had he applied to Ena would not have got in, seem unwilling to take the radical step of abolishing the institution. It's useful to open the debate about Ena's future, a leading conservative MP, Jacques Barrot, said. But attacking the ultimate symbol of the administrative elite in France isn't the real point - we have to reduce the excessive power and weight of the administration itself. Who There are fewer Ena graduates in total than the annual output of Oxford and Cambridge, but they include the former and present presidents Val#233;ry Giscard d'Estaing and Jacques Chirac and recent prime ministers Edouard Balladur, Michel Rocard, Alain Jupp#233;, Laurent Fabius and Lionel Jospin. When Jospin confronted the employers on the 35-hour week he was speaking to an Ena classmate. His interior minister was in the same year's intake What Ena defines France's immutable attachment to the importance of the state: Charles de Gaulle said they were 'called by vocation to exercise the most noble function that exists in the temporal sphere - that is to say, the service of the state' How The test of success on finishing the 18-month course is said to be the ability, using the same set
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Defending their honorarium French prostitutes have taken to the streets, not to sell their bodies, but to defend the right to do so, writes Jon Henley Jon Henley Wednesday November 06 2002 The Guardian In their first national demonstration for more than a quarter of a century, some 400 prostitutes marched through the streets of Paris this week in protest at a government bill that will effectively outlaw streetwalking. Whores: neither victims nor criminals, read one of the banners held aloft by the women, most of whom wore white masks as they gathered outside the Senate to demand the withdrawal of the bill, tabled by the hardline interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy. Other banners proclaimed: Sarkozy, it's hypocrisy, sex is therapy, You sleep with us, then you vote against us, and The state taxes us; the state criminalises us. Dozens of women wore stickers printed with an even more direct slogan: Sarkozy, you give fascists a hard-on. Mr Sarkozy's bill, which he has defended as an attempt to address a menace to public security and tranquillity, will create a new offence of passive soliciting, allowing police to arrest and prosecute any prostitute considered to be offering her services including in the way she is dressed or her attitude. Under existing French law, prostitution is legal but pimping is not. France's estimated 15,000 prostitutes could in theory be prosecuted for active soliciting (a wink and a come-hither), but only 350 were last year. By in effect outlawing the practice of standing on a street corner in a short skirt - which will become punishable by up to six months in prison and a fine of £2,500 - experts, social workers and women's rights groups say France is taking a huge step backwards. The 1949 United Nations convention on prostitution, which France ratified, was abolitionist, said Martine Costes, a sociologist. Prostitutes were not criminals but victims, to be helped wherever possible. This new law is prohibitionist. Putting girls in prison for prostitution is an extraordinarily retrograde step. Many streetwalkers fear the legislation will make their lives both more difficult and more dangerous; prostitution will be driven underground, into isolated and inaccessible corners where women will be even more exposed to violence and abuse from their clients. We are ordinary women, wives, daughters, mothers and neighbours, said Betty, 36, who had travelled up from Marseille with four colleagues. We have a life beyond our work, we have our dignity too. Why should we be forced even further into the gutter, dumped among the dregs? Besides simply demanding the right to work, many of France's prostitutes are outraged that the bill makes no attempt to distinguish between women who decide for themselves, for whatever reason, to become sex workers, and those who are the victims of organised criminal gangs. Sarkozy should attack the real problem, the east European mafia gangs who turn young foreign girls into slaves, said Barbara, 44, a Parisian from the capital's main red-light street, the rue Saint-Denis. I don't see how women like me are a security problem. He's got the wrong target. The demonstration was the first by French prostitutes since 1975, when a national movement was formed to protest at the violent and exploitative excesses of the country's pimps and the police's refusal to prosecute them. Claire Carthennet, a prostitute from Lyon who was one of the first to protest publicly against the Sarkozy bill, said: If this law is passed, we'll be back where we were before 1975, when women suffered threats and violence. Sarkozy should go for the real criminals - this is just politics playing to the gallery. It's like he pays more attention to the far right and to Jean-Marie Le Pen than to us. In an editorial yesterday, the leftwing daily Liberation agreed. The prostitutes, who want a legitimate professional status, and the associations who defend them but are far from sharing all their demands, are agreed on one thing - this bill will aggravate the prostitute's condition by multiplying her risks, without really affecting the men who pull the strings. That is a heavy price to pay for the good conscience of a few chic neighbourhoods and town centres. Dodging the real problem like this is not only populist, but cruel. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Drones of death Bush takes the law into his own hands Leader Tuesday November 05 2002 The Guardian Zap! Pow! The bad guys are dead. And they never knew what hit them. Living his presidency like Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, George Bush etched another notch in his gun butt this week, blowing away six terrorists in Yemen's desert. Their car was incinerated by a Hellfire missile, fired by a CIA unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or drone. Dealing out death via remote-controlled flying robots could be the spooks' salvation after the September 11 and Afghan intelligence flops. It makes the agency look useful. It is quick and bodybag-free. It is new wave hi-tech, a 21st century equivalent of James Bond's Aston Martin. And the hit had full authority, right from the top, judging by Mr Bush's comments. The president is keen on hunting down America's foes, on the ugly old premise that the only good Injun is a dead Injun. For redskin, read al-Qaida. It is part, he says, of his anti-terrorist war-without-end. All the world's a battlefield for Mr Bush. The United States of America, 001: licensed to kill. Zap! Ping! Even as the bullets ricochet, it should be said there are some problems with this approach to international peacekeeping. For a start, it is illegal. The Yemen attack violates basic rules of sovereignty. It is an act of war where no war has been declared. It killed people, some of whom who may have been criminals, but who will never now face trial. It assassinated men who may have been planning attacks. But who can tell? It is, at best, irresponsible extra-judicial killing, at worst a premeditated, cold-blooded murder of civilians. And it is also, and this is no mere afterthought, morally unsustainable. Those who authorised this act have some serious ethical as well as legal questions to answer. That there is no prospect at all that they will, and no insistence by Britain or others that they do so, only renders ever more appalling the moral pit which gapes and beckons. Zap! Crunch! So where next for the drones of death? What about Georgia or Turkey, where shady Chechens lurk? Russia would approve. Lebanon, Iran, or Gaza, as rehearsed by Israel's gunships? Or Finsbury Park perhaps? How would that feel? Stateless, gangster terrorism is a fearsome scourge. But state-sponsored terrorism is a greater evil, for it is waged by those who should know better, who are duty-bound to address causes not mere symptoms, who may claim to act in the people's name. As Alexander Herzen said in another age of struggle: We are not the doctors. We are the disease. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/ A HREF=http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Eight held for suicide attack on synagogue Jon Henley in Paris Wednesday November 06 2002 The Guardian French intelligence agents have arrested eight people in connection with the suicide attack earlier this year on a synagogue in Tunisia that killed 21 people, the interior ministry said yesterday. The suspects were detained in the Lyon area by agents from the DST counter-intelligence service acting on instructions from France's leading anti-terrorist judge, Jean-Louis Brugui#232;re, the ministry said in a statement. Judicial sources identified one of the eight as Walid Naouar, the brother of the man believed to have been driving the lorry when it exploded outside the 2,000- year-old El Ghriba synagogue on the Tunisian holiday island of Djerba on April 11. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Sites, a group believed to have close ties with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. The same group took credit for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Fourteen Germans, five Tunisians and a French man were killed when the tanker lorry, containing cooking gas, blew up near the synagogue. The supposed driver, Nizar Naouar, a 24-year-old Tunisian, was also reported to have died in the explosion. Naouar's parents, brother-in-law and two family friends were among the suspects arrested at Saint-Pirest and V#233;nissieux near Lyon, the city's prosecutor, Christian Hassensrat, said. All eight can be held for up to four days without being charged. In Tunisia, Naouar's uncle, Belgacem Naouar, was also arrested and is likely to face charges of concealing information about preparations for the bombing. Judge Brugui#232;re's investigation into Naouar's relatives and friends in France was launched after a formal complaint for assassination and attempted assassination in relation to a terrorist organisation filed by the son of Paul Sauvage, 75, who was the synagogue attack's only French victim. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/ A HREF=http://archive.jab.org/ctrl;listserv.aol.com/ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. --- Note from Euphorian: So ... after Iraq there's Iran then ... NoIreland? --- To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Crucified man brands attackers as cowards Rosie Cowan, Ireland correspondent Monday November 04 2002 The Guardian A young Catholic man subjected to a barbaric crucifixion by loyalist vigilantes spoke from his hospital bed yesterday to brand those who attacked him as animals and cowards. The gang beat Harry McCartan, 23, from Poleglass in west Belfast, to a pulp, breaking his legs in several places. He was left nailed by his hands to a wooden stile, bleeding profusely from his eyes, ears and mouth in the early hours of Saturday. His face was so badly cut and bruised that his father, also called Harry, only recognised him from a tattoo of his five-year-old daughter's name, Chloe, on his arm. Loyalist sources said the attack was a reaction to car crime, but Mr McCartan senior, 55, condemned it as sectarian. His son wept when he saw newspaper photographs of his horrific injuries. The victim was taken to hospital semi-conscious, with his hands still attached to bits of wood, and had to undergo a five-hour emergency operation. He is receiving injections of painkillers every four hours. His family said it could be weeks before doctors would know whether he would regain full use of his hands. Yesterday, struggling to speak through his pain, he said: Nobody should be treated like this. They are just cowards. I was on my own and it must have taken more than four people to do this. They're just animals. Mr McCartan remembered little about his ordeal. He said he woke up in hospital with a terrible ache in his hands and knees and saw the blood running down his face. I thought it was a dream, he said. Then I saw my father and brother and asked them what had happened. An Ulster Defence Association source claimed that the attack was not orchestrated by the UDA but was carried out by loyalists in response to car crime in the area where he was found, the staunchly Protestant Seymour Hill area of Dunmurry, on the outskirts of south Belfast. The victim admitted he had previously been beaten with hammers over joyriding allegations. But although he was released from prison a few weeks ago after serving 15 months in connection with car theft, Mr McCartan senior believed his son was attacked this time because he was a Catholic. He was getting his life back together, seeing the daughter he hadn't seen in months, and we think he was alone in his own car on the Stewartstown Road when he was attacked, he said. May they burn in hell, added Sharon McCartan, 29, one of the victim's sisters. Mr McCartan senior said the police came to his door just before 5am on Saturday. When I got to the hospital he was that disfigured I couldn't make him out and I had to pull back the sheet to see the tattoo on his arm. I didn't even notice his hands at first because I had to go out and be sick. This is because he is a Catholic, yet this is supposed to be a free country. If these animals are caught, they'll serve a couple of years in jail while my son suffers for the rest of his life. Paramilitaries routinely carry out so-called punishment attacks within their own communities, and less commonly outside their communities, for anti-social behaviour, including car theft and drug dealing not authorised by them. Victims are usually beaten, sometimes with nail-studded baseball bats, which Mr McCartan's attackers are thought to have used, or kneecapped - shot in the legs - the severity of the punishment reflecting the perceived seriousness of the offence. Occasionally, a particularly vicious assault is inflicted as a warning to others, and crucifixion techniques have been used in previous incidents, but police said Mr McCartan's ordeal was brutal in the extreme. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited Observer site, go to http://www.observer.co.uk US in denial as poverty rises Next door to Yale, the bastion of privilege that turns out the land's leaders, lies a tent city of America's poor, huddled masses. Ed Vulliamy reports on the rise in inequality as the nation prepares to vote Ed Vulliamy Saturday November 02 2002 The Guardian The north wind cuts cold and sudden across the historic green of New Haven. It blows through the 'tent city' where the homeless huddle. And it blows round the spires and quadrangles of Yale University, one of America's richest Ivy League colleges. The contrast is stark: Charlene Johnson, three months pregnant, emerges from her bivouac, worrying about the winter that lies between her and her due date. And all around are Yale's stone walls, elegant colonial churches and smart people walking past boutiques and coffee shops, carrying their course books. 'You know what's underneath you?' challenges Rod Cleary, who was released from prison in Los Angeles after a conviction for gang fighting, found but lost a job in New Haven, and has now been evicted. 'I'll tell ya: bones. This green was a cemetery once; you're sitting on a pauper's grave. And, man, that's what it's going to be again if we ain't careful.' Charlene fell behind with her rent in June and took a bribe of $200 to move out of her digs, so the landlord could hike up the price. 'It seemed like I had some money for once, and it was summer.' Her son Nikolas was billeted with a friend and Charlene started looking for a place with her boyfriend, Scott, hopefully before the cold set in. Without success - Scott was laid off on Wednesday from a construction firm. 'Not enough work,' he says. 'And once you're out, you're a speck of dirt on the ground, and they walk over you.' New Haven's tent city was established after the authorities closed down a homeless overflow shelter a few weeks ago. At sundown yesterday it was to be cleared by the police, with Charlene, Scott, Rod and 150 others sent on their way into what promises to be a vicious winter. New Haven is a metaphor for the America which on Tuesday elects its Senate and House of Representatives. It is the country's fourth poorest city, where the ghetto laps at the walls of a university worth $11 billion (#163;7bn) in tax-exempt endowments, educating America's next generation of rulers. A sign at the freeway turn-off advertises New Haven as the birthplace of President George Bush. It is a city with the same infant mortality rate as Malaysia and a terrifying rate of deaths from Aids - one day care centre alone commemorated the loss of 600 clients at a memorial service on Wednesday. But it is located in America' richest state, Connecticut, which has, proportionally, more millionaires than any other. This is the super-rich New York hinterland for those too wealthy even to feel the pinch on Wall Street. It is called the 'Zebra Coast', laid out in strips of black/white, black/white; poor/rich, poor/rich. And in New Haven the polarity is underpinned by the history of Yale University's engagement in the slave trade - currently being excavated by some of its own students. 'New Haven,' says the Rev David Lee of Varick Church in the city's northwestern ghetto, 'is a microcosm of America. It's the vicious cycle between rich and poor and the system of exploitation. The wealth is in your face all the time, something you can never aspire to. It's like being a kid in a candy store, being told you can look but you can't never have a lollipop.' The mall downtown, on the 'wrong' side of the green, is a ghost mall; just a few 'hoodrats' hanging around Cross Flava records and security guards to keep them in order. 'Folks who commute to work,' says the boy behind the counter, 'they spend where they live. And the people who live here don't have anything to spend.' Statistics released last month by the government census bureau show that for the first time in 10 years the number of people caught in the poverty trap has suddenly increased. Unemployment is up from 4.2 per cent in 2000 to 5.7 per cent last year. While the middle class shrinks, the numbers living below the official poverty line of $18,104 a year for a family of four has shot up to 33 million - from 11.3 to 11.7 per cent. That's the first increase since 1992. While President Bush's windfall tax breaks to the super-rich breezed through Congress (with Democratic help), the proposed rise in the minimum wage is frozen. The proportion of children without health cover has increased from 63.8 per cent to 67.1 per cent. The poverty rate for children in the US is worse than in 19 'rich' countries, according to a study by the University of Michigan. Income statistics showed the first significant decline in
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-Caveat Lector- alamaine spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Criminal records crisis deepens Child protection checks on 300,000 care staff postponed Alan Travis, home affairs editor Friday November 01 2002 The Guardian The crisis surrounding the criminal records bureau deepened last night when ministers were forced to announce that child protection checks on the background of more than 300,000 care home and nursing home staff are to be postponed. The Home Office said last night that without this emergency action hundreds of care homes would be forced to close because the CRB was unable to cope with the legal requirement to provide background checks by the specified deadline. The government recognises the importance of criminal record checks but at the same time providers must not be prevented from operating, said Home Office minister Lord Falconer. It also became clear yesterday that the government is likely to abandon its plans to make available a basic criminal record check from next summer for the 10 million people who change jobs every year. It also seems increasingly likely that the future of the CRB's chief executive, Bernard Hardan, will be in doubt when an inquiry team headed by Patrick Carter delivers its verdict to the home secretary, David Blunkett, by the end of the year. The number of weekly checks done by the Liverpool-based CRB has risen from 24,500 a week in August just before the crisis over teacher recruitment to 40,000 a week. But application forms are still being sent to India to be saved on to computer disks and the process is taking an average of six weeks instead of the three weeks promised in the contract. The CRB is dealing with 194,000 applications, with 86,000 already taking longer than the three weeks promised delivery time. The project, which involves making greater use of police criminal records to ensure that those who work with children and vulnerable adults have no history of abuse, is a #163;940m private finance initiative joint venture between Capita and the Home Office. The decision, announced yesterday, to suspend the legal requirement for 300,000 people to have a CRB check affects those who work in care homes, nurses' agencies, domiciliary care agencies, and school governors. They were agreed this week between Mr Blunkett, the health secretary, Alan Milburn, and the education secretary, Charles Clarke. To ease the pressure the legal deadline for all existing staff working in care homes for adults to get CRB clearance is to be put back from March next year until the end of 2004, although all new recruits will have to get their checks done. But in the case of nurses supplied by nurses' agencies and staff supplied by domiciliary care agencies to nursing homes, the legal requirement to get a CRB certificate showing they have a clean criminal record is to be abandoned altogether. Instead they will be asked to make a personal declaration about whether or not they have any criminal convictions. Care homes have to be able to continue to employ existing staff, and we believe that domiciliary care agencies and nurses' agencies should not be prevented from being able to place staff because they have not obtained checks, said Lord Falconer. On top of this the health secretary has postponed the introduction of a special register designed to check those working with vulnerable adults - the protection of vulnerable adults list - because it involves applications to the CRB. It has also been decided to drop for the time being the requirement on thousands of school governors to have a CRB check. The depth of the crisis surrounding the CRB means that plans which were to be introduced next summer for every new job applicant to obtain a basic certificate showing whether or not they had a clean criminal record is also likely to be postponed indefinitely. A Home Office spokesman said that this plan had been put on the back burner while checks for those working with children and vulnerable adults were sorted out. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
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-Caveat Lector- alamaine spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Sharon tries to neutralise Netanyahu with job offer Former Israeli prime minister unlikely to accept cabinet post in collapsing government Chris McGreal in Jerusalem Friday November 01 2002 The Guardian Ariel Sharon sought to neutralise the single greatest threat to his chances of remaining Israel's prime minister yesterday by inviting his arch-rival and former premier, Binyamin Netanyahu, to join the cabinet as foreign minister. The prime minister and the man with his eye on the post were expected to meet yesterday to discuss the offer, but sources in Mr Netanyahu's camp said he was not enthusiastic about joining a collapsing government. The two men are the chief rivals for the nomination to be Likud party candidate for prime minister - a directly elected post in Israel - at the next general election. That could come within weeks if Mr Sharon is unable to put together a coalition in the knesset before a confidence vote on Monday. The latest poll shows that support for Likud has surged since the last election two years ago, mostly because of Mr Sharon's crackdown on the Palestinians in response to the suicide bombings. Likud can expect to almost double its number of seats in the knesset, while Labour faces losing about a quarter of its members. That in effect turns the Likud primary into a ballot to decide who will be Israel's next prime minister. I think Sharon is trying to avoid a bloody leadership fight with Netanyahu, said Professor Gerald Steinberg, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan university. It could badly split Likud. Netanyahu has no interest in trying to prop up Sharon, but Sharon's card is that if Netanyahu says no he would be portrayed as someone who is abandoning his national responsibility. Some of Mr Sharon's ministers are urging him to call an election immediately because he still holds a number of advantages over Mr Netanyahu, but they could fall away. The finance minister, Silvan Shalom, and two cabinet colleagues, Ruby Rivlin and Limor Livnat, believe a shaky coalition, marred by infighting and inevitable collapse, will damage the prime minister. It is not certain that Sharon will beat Netanyahu today, Mr Raven told Israeli journalists. But it is certain that every day that goes by reduces Sharon's chances of victory. There are also political dangers in seeking an alliance with the extreme right. Mr Sharon is looking to a coalition with the National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu amalgam of parties to keep him in power. Complicating the issue is the fact that the leader, Avigdor Lieberman, is a close ally of Mr Netanyahu. The prime minister's allies fear that Mr Lieberman and his party could prove a Trojan horse if he joins the government only to trap Mr Sharon by setting up a confrontation over any number of issues dear to the right. For instance, Mr Netanyahu favours expelling Yasser Arafat from the West Bank, while Mr Sharon has been dissuaded from doing so by the Americans. The prime minister is much more trusted than Mr Netanyahu on the issue of the moment: security, particularly with war looming in Iraq. On the other hand, Mr Netanyahu is a superior political operator who has organised an effective group of campaigners within Likud that has already seized control of the party's crucial Jerusalem branches. Netanyahu still has an unusual charisma with the party members that he has lost with the general public, said Professor Yaron Ezrahi, a political scientist at Hebrew university. Likud people are prone to be impressed by the appearance of strong rhetoric and Netanyahu is more extreme than Sharon because Netanyahu is great at tapping fear and hatred as political assets. That's not what Sharon does. And then there is the conduct of the primaries themselves, which have been marred by irregularities in the past in both of Israel's major parties. The internal processes are not particularly transparent or particularly democratic. There is a lot that goes on that no one knows about, Prof Steinberg said. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
[CTRL] For your attention
-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk 'Marxists are retards' Recently unearthed documents reveal that Franco's psychiatrist carried out bizarre experiments on members of the International Brigade in 1930s Spain. His aim: to prove that leftwingers are mad. Giles Tremlett reports Giles Tremlett Thursday October 31 2002 The Guardian For dictator General Francisco Franco's chief psychiatrist, Dr Antonio Vallejo Nagera, it must have seemed obvious. If the generalissimo and his fellow right-wing rebels in the Spanish civil war were crusaders for justice, God and the truth, then their leftwing opponents had to be mad, psychotic or at least congenitally subnormal. At the end of the 1930s, Vallejo decided to prove exactly that. The solution, he decided, lay in an abandoned monastery at San Pedro de Cardena, near Burgos, which had become a makeshift jail for captured volunteers from the pro-republican International Brigades. It was here, in 1938, that International Brigade members were subjected to a bizarre set of physical and psychological tests in one of the first systematic attempts to put psychiatry to the service of ideology. Sixty-four years later, the results of Vallejo's project to unravel the biopsyche of Marxist fanaticism have finally come to light. Former prisoners at San Pedro de Cardena remember being subjected to up to 200 tests. They were quizzed on their sex lives, and had their heads and noses measured. They made us strip and did all these measurements. We supposed they thought it would be useful if the fascists ever invaded Britain, says Bob Doyle, one of the few remaining survivors of a group of 75 British and Irish prisoners tested at the camp. Another, Carl Geiser, the senior ranking American in the jail and a former political commissar to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, recalls: I was photographed with just a small cloth over my penis. Two men dressed in civilian clothes went through a long list of questions in a small office before the prisoners were taken outside. It took them several days to survey some 200 British, Irish, American, Canadian, Portuguese and Latin American prisoners. An assistant... called out the length, breadth, and depth of his skull, the distance between his eyes, the length of his nose, and described the skin colour, body type, wound scars and disability, Geiser recalled in his 1986 book, Prisoners of the Good Fight. Each prisoner was instructed to stand in front of a camera for a front and side view, and a close-up of the face. We were now 'scientifically' classified. The results of Vallejo's tests were published in a military medical journal that languished in Spanish libraries until historian Ricard Vinyes unearthed them for his book, The Lost Children of Franco. The results would be laughable, if Vallejo had not been a man of influence. At the time of the study, he was the Spanish army's chief psychologist. He went on to become Spain's most important psychiatrist, holding the country's first-ever university chair in the subject, writing dozens of books and taking part in international conferences until his death in 1960. His conclusions ranged from the sublime to the sinister. The report claimed, for example, that 58%of English prisoners were single men with sexual experience outside prostitution, that 7% were recruited by charlatans in Hyde Park, that 17% had signed up in employment agencies. All (three) Welsh prisoners were alcoholics, he found. A priori, it seems probable that psychopaths of all types would join the Marxist ranks, he reasoned before starting the project. Since Marxism goes together with social immorality... we presume those fanatics who fought with arms will show schizoid temperaments. Little surprise, then, that he classified almost a third of the English prisoners as mental retards. Another third were deemed to be suffering degenerative mental illnesses that were turning them into schizoids, paranoids or psychopaths. Their fall into Marxism was, in turn, exacerbated by the fact that 29% were also considered social imbeciles. Once more we see confirmed that social resentment, frustrated aspirations and envy are the sources of Marxism, he added. The persistence of the ideological attitude of the English Marxists is the result of their closed minds and lack of culture. The results, predictably concluding that Marxists really were mad, tell us more about the mindset of those who, with Franco at the helm, would run Spain for the next 40 years than about the British and other men at San Pedro de Cardena. They also reinforced the use of one of Franco's preferred political solutions for his opponents - the firing squad. Those who could not be saved were better dead. Brigade members still alive today have been astonished to
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. --- Note from Euphorian: Cows, sheep, fish, juice, and NOW they're preying on their own! --- To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Hospital blunder leaves patients at risk of fatal brain disease James Meikle, health correspondent Tuesday October 29 2002 The Guardian Twenty-nine patients at a hospital in the north-east of England will be told within the next 24 hours that they have been exposed to possible infection from a deadly brain disease. They all underwent operations involving instruments that might previously have been used on a person being tested for CJD, a rare but incurable disease. The Department of Health last night confirmed an appalling incident had taken place at Middlesbrough general hospital in which the hospital had failed to prevent avoidable exposure to such diseases. Catastrophic errors in decontamination procedures and measures to ensure that equipment can be traced to their use in particular surgical procedures mean that health officials have little idea exactly which instruments might have been used in the operations that followed a brain operation on the CJD patient. The full extent of the calamity only dawned on hospital staff when the diagnosis of the patient was confirmed. The South Tees NHS trust said last night it was urgently bringing forward plans to inform patients who might have been exposed. The Department of Health said crystal clear guidance on decontamination procedures had been issued to the NHS in August 1999. Instruments used on any suspected case of CJD must be quarantined immediately after use, pending the confirmation of diagnosis. All NHS trusts must adhere to this guidance to prevent avoidable and unnecessary exposure to these diseases. In this case, it appears that the trust concerned has failed to do so. As a result some patients may have been put at risk. This is an appalling incident which reinforces the need to strictly adhere to our guidance. The original incident happened in July and Department of Health officials were given advice on how to handle the case at least a week ago, although the hospital said it only received this yesterday. The scale of the incident will alarm those who believe the government and medical establishment might have become complacent over the risk from CJD and its variant, the human form of BSE. The Guardian understands that the hospital did not follow advice that equipment used on confirmed or suspected cases of any type of CJD should not be used again. The instruments from the set used on the CJD case were apparently split between different sets of equipment after cleaning and decontamination. It is unclear exactly how traceable these were. In cases where operations are carried out on patients whose CJD symptoms were not apparent to medical teams at the time of surgery, guidance is in place to protect public health. The aim is to enable officials and doctors to trace patients whose operations followed closely after. In such cases the next six patients would normally be told of the potential risk. However, because the instruments in the Middlesbrough case appear to have been split between several sets of theatre equipment, nearly five times that number will be contacted. The lapse at Middlesbrough is likely to alarm even those health officials and medical personnel who are sceptical about the necessity of precautionary measures introduced over the use of blood, tissues and instruments in the wake of the BSE/vCJD fiasco. The South Tees trust last night said the CJD patient had a brain operation on July 19 and the diagnosis was confirmed on August 8. The equipment was then withdrawn. The trust had been working closely since then with the Department of Health's CJD surveillance unit to look at any possible risk to these patients, though it must be stressed it is extremely low. The trust said it had been advised not to contact patients until further guidance was given. This was issued yesterday afternoon. The trust was now meeting every individual to fully explain their unfortu nate circumstances ... We appreciate the distress and concern this news may cause to these patients, their families and the public at large. The incident calls into question government assurances that hospitals are responding effectively to the vCJD crisis. Individuals with human BSE have more potentially infective tissues than those with other forms of CJD. Ministers will now have to explain how procedures to protect the public seem to have gone wrong and reassure the public that this is an isolated incident. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are
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-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it. --- Note from Euphorian: First the cows, then the sheep, next the fish, and lo! and behold!, the juice. For those of you who don't speak English, a torch is a flashlight. AER --- To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk Inquiry called after power cut misery Two days after storm, up to 65,000 homes without electricity and train services still subject to delays and cancellations Helen Carter Tuesday October 29 2002 The Guardian Brian Wilson, the energy minister is to investigate the performance of energy suppliers after a million homes were left powerless following the weekend's storms. Up to 65,000 homes were still without electricity yesterday, according to the Energy Association, with East Anglia and the west and east Midlands the worst hit. Mr Wilson wants an immediate review as to how companies performed in restoring power. The industry watchdog, Energywatch, has criticised some suppliers for failing to keep customers informed. In East Anglia 26,000 households were still without electricity yesterday afternoon as engineers from 24Seven continued to work to restore the supply. Candles and torches were scarce as people tried to find alternative sources of light and heat. South Norfolk MP Richard Bacon described the company's name as a bit of a joke in the circumstances. They seem to have done a rather poor job in dealing with this emergency, he said. People were left in the dark - literally and metaphorically. Despite criticism that 24Seven's tree trimming programme was behind schedule, the company insisted it was not. Richard Robinson, of 24Seven's parent company London Electricity Group, said: Some 92% of our customers now have had electricity restored. We have 500 field staff working on the problem - including additional sup port from France and Ireland. Although we are very sorry that some people are still without power, in 1987 this problem went on for three weeks. In outlying areas it can take between five and six hours to restore the supply. He said it would be astronomically expensive to put the cables underground. We are doing as much as we can, he added. As some of the gusts were up to 95mph there is little doubt that the tree trimming programme would not have made much difference - trees would still have fallen. He said the company had no regrets about its name, which suggests efficiency and accessibility. Our technical staff are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he added. Staff have been terrific, working in the wet and traipsing through ponds to restore power. But customer Jojo Moyes, an author who lives with her two young children near Saffron Walden, Essex, was angered that her family were without power for more than 48 hours. It is ridiculous to think that in this day and age the supplier is not able to restore electricity any quicker, she said. Our power went off at 9am on Sunday and at first we assumed it would be back on within five or six hours. But before dark we decided to locate the candles and torches. It was a nightmare trying to feed two small children and put them to bed without power. My youngest child has a cold so we had to bundle him up in the car, go to my mother's house and decamp there for the night. We have no gas supply in the village so we are completely dependent on electricity. The hardware store has sold out of candles and torches. We had to use tealights to light the house, but my 20-month-old son just wanted to stick his fingers into them. Luckily we have an Aga to cook with. Our electricity supplier TXU Energi said the damage was a lot worse than in the 1987 storms. It has made us realise how dependent we are on these companies. We are now thinking of buying a generator as we wouldn't want to go through two nights like that again. The power was finally restored yesterday morning. A TXU Energi spokesman admitted it was a bad time for customers - but the priority had been to get it sorted out as quickly and safely as possible. Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
