AP) --
A giant ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields has snapped free from Canada's Arctic, scientists said. The mass of ice broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 497 miles south of the North Pole, but no one was present to see it in Canada's remote north. Scientists using satellite images later noticed that it became a newly formed ice island in just an hour and left a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake.Warwick Vincent of Laval University, who studies Arctic conditions, traveled to the newly formed ice island and could not believe what he saw.
"This is a dramatic and disturbing event. It shows that we are loosing remarkable features of the Canadian North that have been in place for many thousands of years. We are crossing climate thresholds, and these may signal the onset of accelerated change ahead," Vincent said Thursday.
In 10 years of working in the region he has never seen such a dramatic loss of sea ice, he said.
read moreLabels: Canada's Arctic
December 27, 2006
GLOBAL WARMING WOES
The Bush administration is to propose listing polar bears as an endangered species. The move recognizes that the bears are under pressure due to global warming.
In former United States Vice President Al Gore's climate change movie "An Inconvenient Truth," an animated polar bear is depicted swimming for its life after the polar ice cap which forms its habitat melts. Now the current US administration is reported to be recognizing that the fate shown in the movie is a real possibility.
US President George W. Bush's administration is proposing to list polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because of warming temperatures in the animal's habitat, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.
The proposal, described by an Interior Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity, marks the first time the administration has identified climate change as the driving force behind the potential demise of a species, the paper said.
It further quoted the official as saying officials from the US Fish and Wildlife Service have concluded that polar bears could be endangered within 45 years.
Once a species is listed as threatened, the government is barred from doing anything to jeopardize the animal's existence or its habitat. In the case of the polar bear, environmentalists hope to force the government to curb emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide that can contribute to global warming.
The move is in response to fears that global warming will destroy the animal's natural habitat. "We've reviewed all the available data that leads us to believe the sea ice the polar bear depends on has been receding," the Post quoted the official as saying. "Obviously, the sea ice is melting because the temperatures are warmer."
The much-loved giant mammals are estimated to number between 22,000 and 25,000 worldwide. Populations exist in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Norway and Russia.
While their population has been stable in recent years, the bears face threats from global warming, environmental contamination and potential over-hunting.
The Bush administration has consistently rejected the scientific thesis that human activity contributes to global warming and has resisted capping greenhouse gas emissions because of fears it will impact negatively on the US economy.
Labels: global warming polar bears
22 December, 2006
San Francisco Chronicle
Israel maintains two separate road networks in the West Bank: one for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers, and one for Palestinian natives. Is that not apartheid?
Palestinians are not allowed to drive their own cars in much of the West Bank; their public transportation is frequently interrupted or blocked altogether by a grid of Israeli army checkpoints -- but Jewish settlers come and go freely in their own cars, without even pausing at the roadblocks that hold up the natives. Is that not apartheid?
A system of closures and curfews has strangled the Palestinian economy in the West Bank -- but none of its provisions apply to the Jewish settlements there. Is that not apartheid?
Whole sectors of the West Bank, classified as "closed military areas" by the Israeli army, are off limits to Palestinians, including Palestinians who own land there -- but foreigners to whom Israel's Law of Return applies (that is, anyone Jewish, from anywhere in the world) can access them without hindrance. Is that not apartheid?
Persons of Palestinian origin are routinely barred from entering or residing in the West Bank -- but Israeli and non-Israeli Jews can come and go, and even live on, occupied Palestinian territory. Is that not apartheid?
Israel maintains two sets of rules and regulations in the West Bank: one for Jews, one for non-Jews. The only thing wrong with using the word "apartheid" to describe such a repugnant system is that the South African version of institutionalized discrimination was never as elaborate as its Israeli counterpart -- nor did it have such a vocal chorus of defenders among otherwise liberal Americans.
The glaring error in Carter's book, however, is his insistence that the term "apartheid" does not apply to Israel itself, where, he says, Jewish and non-Jewish citizens are given the same treatment under the law. That is simply not true.
Israeli law affords differences in privileges for Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of the state -- in matters of access to land, family unification and acquisition of citizenship. Israel's amended nationality law, for example, prevents Palestinian citizens of Israel who are married to Palestinians from the occupied territories from living together in Israel. A similar law, passed at the peak of apartheid in South Africa, was overturned by that country's supreme court as a violation of the right to a family. Israel's high court upheld its law just this year.
Israel loudly proclaims itself to be the state of the Jewish people, rather than the state of its actual citizens (one-fifth of whom are Palestinian Arabs). In fact, in registering citizens, the Israeli Ministry of the Interior assigns them a whole range of nationalities other than "Israeli." In the official registry, the nationality line for a Jewish citizen of Israel reads "Jew." For a Palestinian citizen, the same line reads "Arab." When this glaring inequity was protested all the way to Israel's high court, the justices upheld it: "There is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish people." Obviously this leaves non-Jewish citizens of Israel in, at best, a somewhat ambiguous situation. Little wonder, then, that a solid majority of Israeli Jews regard their Arab fellow-citizens as what they call "a demographic threat," which many -- including the deputy prime minister -- would like to see eliminated altogether. What is all this, if not racism?
Many of the very individuals and institutions that are so vociferously denouncing President Jimmy Carter would not for one moment tolerate such glaring injustice in the United States. Why do they condone the naked racism that Israel practices? Why do they heap criticism on our former president for speaking his conscience about such a truly unconscionable system of ethnic segregation?
Perhaps it is because they themselves are all too aware that they are defending the indefensible; because they are all too aware that the emperor they keep trying to cover up really has no clothes. There is a limit to how long such a cover up can go on. And the main lesson of Carter's book is that we have finally reached that limit.
Saree Makdisi is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA and a frequent commentator on Middle East issues.
Original
By Katherine Hughes
18 December 2006
Urgent Request For Funds To Buy Trial Transcripts in defense of a blessed man wrongfully convicted by the Bush Justice Department for his crime of compassion:
In direct response to the humanitarian catastrophe created by the brutal and unjustifiable U.S. and U.K. sponsored UN embargo on Iraq, Dr. Rafil Dhafir started the charity Help the Needy (HTN). For 13 years he worked tirelessly to help publicize the plight of the Iraqi people and to raise funds to help them.
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Labels: Dr. Rafil Dhafir
"ONE BIG PRISON"A Glimpse at Daily Misery in the Gaza Strip
The 1.5 million inhabitants of the Gaza strip are trapped in poverty and hopelessness. The violence between the Palestinians stems not only from political disagreements, but from deep, daily despair. By Ulrike Putz in Gaza City
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By Israel Shamir
A talk given in Paris on October 5, 2006 at the presentation of Notre-Dame des Douleurs, the French translation of Shamir's book Our Lady of Sorrow
The Jews learned much from a stupid mistake made by their enemy, Haman, a character in the biblical Book of Esther. Prime Minister Haman was asked: "What shall be done to the man whom the King delights to honour?" The dummy answered: "He should be given the greatest honours". Of course, Haman thought that the King Ahasuerus was referring to himself when he asked Haman the question. It quickly became clear that Haman made a mistake: the King had in mind his bitter enemy Mordecai; and Haman was forced to pay obeisance to the Jew.
read more
LiveScience
2006-12-14
SAN FRANCISCO—Chipmunks, mice and squirrels are heading for the hills, perhaps chased to higher elevations by a
changing climate, scientists report.
Since the early 1900s, many small mammals in California have shifted their ranges dramatically, mostly to higher elevations.
Scientists compared modern notes with past museum director Joseph Grinnell, who investigated the diversity of
mammals,
reptiles,
amphibians and
birds along what he called the Yosemite Transect. With this information, scientists retraced this work, and documented with traps and photos the small mammals in this area that spans portions of the San Joaquin Valley, the Sierra Nevada, including parts of
Yosemite National Park.
They incorporated the information into computer simulations of climate to see how the animals' ranges changed with
climate changes.
"We can perhaps use this model to look into the future as long as the climate models are accurate," Chris Conroy of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology said here this week at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
The pint-size pika, related to the rabbit, shifted its range to higher elevations. Known for its need for cold weather and snowfall, the pika is also on the move across western North America, according to past studies.
A few other furry mammals migrating:
* The golden-mantled ground squirrel has shifted its primary habitat upward about 500 feet.
* The pinion mouse and pocket mouse now reside in the high-elevation Yosemite National Park—the first record of the mice there.
* The alpine chipmunk has scurried 1,800 feet upward since Grinnell's time.
The climate models are showing a relationship between the change in
weather and the animal movement, the scientists report. To strengthen their story, Conroy said they'd like to incorporate biological information into the simulations, including an animal's diet, whether it hibernates, and how well it deals with cold weather.
To continue the project, they needed money. "So now that we have preliminary data, and we've shown that there are definite changes that we may be able to tie to climate change, that makes it much more reasonable to fund it," Conroy told LiveScience.
Recently, the National Science Foundation granted funding for the Grinnell Project. So the team will go out and collect data at high-elevation and mid-elevation sites, all of which extend beyond Yosemite.
LINKLabels: climate change
The Associated Press
Published: December 14, 2006
WASHINGTON: The U.S. Navy's latest proposal to test a blood substitute on 1,100 trauma victims appears more likely to earn a go-ahead from regulators who had blocked the experiment over safety concerns.
The Navy wants to test the product, derived from cow blood, on civilian trauma victims in emergency situations. It proposes doing so without obtaining their consent in advance, as is customary in clinical trials.
The substitute blood, called Hemopure, would be given on the way to the hospital to patients ages 18 to 69 who have lost dangerous amounts of blood. It would substitute the saline fluids typically given in ambulances when donated blood is unavailable for transfusion.
Three times since June 2005, the Food and Drug Administration has blocked Hemopure trials from starting. Each time, it has cited safety concerns. Its manufacturer, Biopure Corp., based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, contends that the benefits of Hemopure outweigh its risks.
The Navy, which is overseeing the government-funded study, has since revised its design. It now says the product will not be given to patients 70 or older, and it is limiting the amount of Hemopure that would be given to trauma victims.
Those changes may persuade the FDA to allow the experiment to proceed.
"The restriction on age and on the volume of the test article suggests that the clinical requirements for exception from informed consent are much closer to being met than in the original protocol," an anonymous FDA reviewer wrote in agency documents. There "appears to be sufficient information provided to consider approval under waiver of consent," the reviewer added.
The FDA released the documents ahead of a public meeting of agency advisers convened to discuss the proposed experiment. The meeting Thursday originally was to have been held in secret in July but was postponed at the last minute.
Researchers say blood substitutes can both counter a dangerous drop in blood pressure in bleeding victims and carry oxygen from the lungs to the body. Saline fluids can do the former but not the latter. While blood can do both, it has its own limitations. Unlike blood, blood substitutes theoretically could be stored for years and then used without concern for infection or blood type.
LINK
From correspondents in Beijing
December 13, 2006 09:01pm
Article from: Agence France-Presse
A TEAM of foreign and Chinese scientists have failed to find an endangered dolphin during a six-week trip on China's mighty Yangtze river, making it all but certain the rare animal is extinct.
"We have to accept the fact, that the baiji is extinct. We lost the race," said August Pfluger, co-head of the expedition and chief of Swiss-based baiji.org, an environmental group dedicated to saving the dolphins.
"It is a tragedy, a loss not only for China, but for the entire world," admitted Mr Pfluger in a statement at the end of the six-week expedition.
Scientists estimate the baiji dolphin has lived on earth for up to 25 million years.
Mr Pfluger admitted that it was possible that one or two animals had been missed despite the use of high-tech optical and acoustic equipment, as well as a group of trained observers.
The baiji, believed to be among the world's oldest fresh-water mammals, made its home along the lower reaches of the China's environmentally degraded Yangtze River.
The cousin of the bottlenose dolphin had been critically endangered for years,
a victim of devastating pollution, illegal fishing and expressway-like cargo traffic on the river.Although the baiji had not been officially sighted in more than two years, scientists from China, Japan, Switzerland and the US had hoped that the 1750km search from Yichang to Shanghai would turn up the white dolphin.
The two expedition ships carried out the same procedures travelling and returning to Yichang, near China's massive Three Gorges dam.
Marine biologist Wang Ding, who has dedicated his life to the study of the baiji and another Yangtze dweller related to the dolphin, the finless porpoise, refused to give up hope.
"Although the expedition did not find any baiji, we still cannot merely rely on the expedition to conclude that the baiji is extinct," said the vice director of the hydrobiology institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Scientific data indicates that more than 90 per cent of baiji deaths were caused by human encroachment.
LINKLabels: white river dolphin extinct
George Monbiot
monbiot.com
Dec 12 06
US interrogators have devised a new form of torture. It debases the democracy they claim to be defending.
After thousands of years of practice, you might have imagined that every possible means of inflicting pain had already been devised. But you should never underestimate the human capacity for invention. United States interrogators, we now discover, have found a new way of destroying a human being.
Last week, defence lawyers acting for Jose Padilla, a US citizen detained as an "enemy combatant", released a video showing a mission fraught with deadly risk - taking him to the prison dentist. A group of masked guards in riot gear shackled his legs and hands, blindfolded him with black-out goggles and shut off his hearing with headphones, then marched him down the prison corridor.
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Labels: Jose Padilla
Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times13/12/2006
Men grieve over the three boys' bodies. The sons of a senior Fatah official were murdered when their car was riddled with 60 bulletsTwo days ago in the Gaza strip, unknown gunmen deliberately targeted and murdered 3 Palestinian children as they were being driven to school. The Guardian reports:
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Labels: Palestinian children
LITVINENKO POISONING CASE
Kovtun Apologizes for Bringing Polonium to Germany
German officials have so far spent the week tracking down numerous traces of radioactive polonium 210, left behind by Litvinenko's associate Dmitry Kovtun. Now, Kovtun has told SPIEGEL TV that he's sorry.
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Labels: Litvineko + Kovtun
December 13, 2006
THE PSYCHIATRIC GULAG
The Misery of Romania's Mentally IllBy Erich Wiedemann in Borsa, Romania
Patients in Romanian mental institutions are treated little better than animals. Neither the country's transition to democracy nor its preparations for entry into the European Union can make the government in Bucharest take action.
Doru discovered the dead man right after breakfast, lying in a meadow behind the lounge. A glass of water stood next to the charred corpse. The man had set himself on fire. Now he'll be examined by the doctors and then maybe he'll go to heaven, his friends say. He's put the worst behind him, they add.
The other patients don't have that option. They have to put up with the stinking gray underworld of the mental asylum in the Romanian town of Borsa. None of them know if they will ever get out again -- most of the patients in Borsa stay there until they die.
Mentally ill people are often seen as unwanted outsiders in Romania. No one wants to have to deal with them, and they're referred to colloquially as "varsa" ("weeds"). In this country, not even doctors believe a disturbed soul can become healthy again -- once crazy, always crazy.
Cursed
Borsa Castle is located in the most idyllic part of Transylvania, 260 kilometers (162 miles) west of Bucharest. It was the summer residence of the Bánffy family until shortly after the end of World War II. When the communists threw the family out, Baroness Bánffy put a curse on the expropriated house, wishing for it to become an asylum. The reality was worse than her curse. Borsa Castle became one of the most monstrous mental institutions in Romania.
The annual death rate here is around 10 percent. Those patients who don't have relatives to bribe the attendants with food parcels and gifts can't afford to become seriously ill. If they do, they may end up rotting in their own feces.
Outside visitors aren't welcome in the castle -- unless they're accompanied by Paul-Otto Schmid-Michel, a professor of psychiatry from Ravensburg in western Germany who has become something of a godparent to the asylum.
Less than rudimentary care
A young man stands in front of the carved wooden gate to the dormitory building, holding an apple and babbling. His gaunt skull has been shaven, and he is wearing gray-striped pajamas and a brown bathrobe. On his right foot is a grubby sneaker, while his bare left foot is almost completely black. He holds the apple out to the visitors, saying "Bun venit" ("Welcome").
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Labels: romanian mental institution
Jeff Halper
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
23 Nov 06
Let's be honest (for once): The problem in the Middle East is not the Palestinian people, not Hamas, not the Arabs, not Hezbollah or the Iranians or the entire Muslim world. It's us, the Israelis. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the single greatest cause of instability, extremism and violence in our region, is perhaps the simplest conflict in the world to resolve. For almost 20 years, since the PLO's recognition of Israel within the 1949 Armistice Lines (the "Green Line" separating Israel from the West Bank and Gaza), every Palestinian leader, backed by large majorities of the Palestinian population, has presented Israel with a most generous offer: A Jewish state on 78% of Israel/Palestine in return for a Palestinian state on just 22% - the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. In fact, this is a proposition supported by a large majority of both the Palestinian and Israeli peoples. As reported in Ha'aretz (January 18, 2005):
read moreLabels: Israel
By FRANK RICH
12/10/06 "New York Times" -- -- IN America we like quick fixes, closure and an uplifting show. Such were the high hopes for the Iraq Study Group, and on one of the three it delivered.
The report of the 10 Washington elders was rolled out like a heartwarming Hollywood holiday release. There was a feel-good title, “The Way Forward,” unfortunately chosen as well by Ford Motor to promote its last-ditch plan to stave off bankruptcy. There was a months-long buildup, with titillating sneak previews to whip up anticipation. There was the gala publicity tour on opening day, starting with a President Bush cameo timed for morning television and building to a “Sunshine Boys” curtain call by James Baker and Lee Hamilton on “Larry King Live.”
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By Jimmy Carter
LA Times
December 8, 2006
I signed a contract with Simon & Schuster two years ago to write a book about the Middle East, based on my personal observations as the Carter Center monitored three elections in Palestine and on my consultations with Israeli political leaders and peace activists.
read moreLabels: Jimmy Carter
December 11, 2006
About Those Other Problems
The Iraq Study Group didn't just advise Bush to change strategy in Iraq. It also urged the president to stop lying to the American people.
No one could ever suggest that James Baker lacks ambition or self-confidence. So it is not surprising that along with its effort to salvage Iraq, the report from Baker's Iraq Study Group offers some strong advice on how to fix George W. Bush's dysfunctional Washington - and the president's dysfunctional relations with the rest of the world.
We were particularly drawn to Recommendations 46, 72 and 78. Under separate headings dealing with the military, the federal budget and the nation's intelligence agencies, they share one basic idea: Government officials should not lie to the public or each other, especially in matters of war.
One should not need a blue ribbon commission to know that. But the fact that it had to be said, and so often, in the report goes a long way toward explaining how Bush got the country into the Iraq mess and why it is proving so hard to dig out of it.
Consider Recommendation 46, which calls on the new secretary of defense to create "an environment in which the senior military feel free to offer independent advice" to civilian leaders, including the president. That is their sworn duty. But the back story is the Pentagon's prewar refusal to listen to the former Army chief of staff (and who knows how many other generals) who warned that it would take several hundred thousand troops to stabilize a post-invasion Iraq. The good news is that the new secretary of defense, Robert Gates, acknowledged as much in his confirmation hearings. The bad news is that Bush has not.
Recommendation 72 says that "costs for the war in Iraq should be included in the president's annual budget request." The report warns that the White House's habit of using emergency funding for the war has eroded both "budget discipline" and congressional oversight. And just in case you were worrying that you hadn't been paying sufficient attention to the war's price tag,
the report says the White House presents its requests in such a "confusing manner" that only detailed analyses by budget experts can answer "what should be a simple question: How much money is the president requesting for the war in Iraq?"And finally, Recommendation 78 calls on the Pentagon and the intelligence community to "institute immediate changes" in how they collect data on violence in Iraq "to provide a more accurate picture of events on the ground."
The report says that officials have used a standard for recording attacks (it notes that "a murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted") that systematically underreports Iraq's mayhem. It cites one day this past July when the government recorded 93 "attacks or significant acts of violence," while the Iraq Study Group's own analysis "brought to light 1,100 acts of violence."Sprinkled among the recommendations, the report also has some homespun advice on how Bush might fix America's foreign relations. It suggests that the nature of diplomacy is to engage with adversaries as well as friends. And it warns that the United States does Israel "no favors" by refusing to try to broker peace in the Middle East, adding that it is "an axiom that when the political process breaks down there will be violence on the ground."
It is mind-boggling that this commission felt compelled to deliver Governing 101 lessons to the president of the United States. But that fits with the implicit message of the entire exercise - a rebuke of the ideologically blinkered way Bush operates.
The report shows that there have always been plenty of alternatives to Bush's stubborn insistence on staying the course, and that if he were just willing to make an effort, it would be possible to forge a bipartisan consensus on the toughest issues.It's tragic that Bush could not figure that out for himself. It is far past time for him to heed this new advice.
LINK
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
08 December 2006
The Mexican fast-food chain Taco Bell is at the centre of America's latest food scare, after nearly 100 people were reported to have fallen sick with an acute bacterial infection after eating contaminated green onions at Taco Bell restaurants.
The chain immediately dropped the onions at all 5,800 of its North American outlets, and closed dozens of branches along the eastern seaboard. Government investigators working on similar cases are trying to find out how vegetables apparently infected by animal faeces entered the food chain.
Another outbreak involves the E.coli O157:H7 bacteria, a singularly nasty E.coli strain that originates in the stomachs of grain- and corn-fed cattle. In September, three people died and 200 others fell ill after eating bagged spinach from a Californian grower. There have been problems, too, with salmonella, including one outbreak in tomatoes which affected dozens of people across 21 states.
Michael Pollan, a journalism professor who has written extensively about food safety, said all the recent problems stemmed from the intensive, industrial-style agriculture increasingly practised in the United States.
The 0157:H7 strain of E.coli was unknown until cattle were taken from their traditional grazing grounds, pushed into industrial feedlots and fed grain and corn instead.
Faeces from those animals, in turn, can sometimes enter the water supply on big farms and find its way into irrigation canals in vegetable fields.
Professor Pollan recently likened many US farms to giant "petri dishes" in which all sorts of bacterial cultures could grow and thrive. Fast-food chains have taken steps to safeguard their ground beef - which can easily get mixed with faeces - but vegetables represent a new front in the fight for public health.
Federal investigators responding to the Taco Bell outbreak also checked the safety of other ingredients. Now the lawsuits are flying. On Long Island, outside New York, the family of an 11-year-old boy who fell ill filed a negligence suit against the chain. The boy ate three tacos last month and had to be treated in hospital. He recovered.
LINKLabels: E.Coli
December 9th, 2006
What are they going to do with the cash? Do the rats have anywhere to hide their cheese?
Via:
NY Post:
America’s corporate chiefs are unloading their own stocks at one of the boldest paces in 20 years.
In cases of the very rich, such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Google’s top brass, the executives are selling a whopping $63 for each $1 of stock they bought, says a report by Bloomberg.
In November alone, leaders of public companies dumped $8.4 billion worth of stock they owned as insiders, most of it awarded as compensation, bonuses or other management incentives.
LINK
By Philip Martin
12/08/06 "Lew Rockwell" ---
I'm sick and tired of this patriotic, nationalistic and fascist crap. I stood through a memorial service today for a young Marine that was killed in Iraq back in April. During this memorial a number of people spoke about the guy and about his sacrifice for the country. How do you justify 'sacrificing' your life for a war which is not only illegal, but is being prosecuted to the extent where the only thing keeping us there is one man's power, and his ego.
A recent Marine Corps intelligence report that was leaked said that the war in the al-Anbar province is unwinnable. It said that there was nothing we could do to win the hearts and minds, or the military operations in that area. So I wonder, why are we still there? Democracy is not forced upon people at gunpoint. It's the result of forward thinking individuals who take the initiative and risks to give their fellow countrymen a better way of life.
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Signs of the Times08/12/2006
Yesterday was the 65th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the day when President Roosevelt gave the American people and the world conclusive proof that, as a general rule, war doesn't just happen but is deliberately created by politicians.
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EPIDEMIC IN AFRICA
Ebola Virus Kills Thousands of Gorillas
Outbreaks of the deadly Ebola virus has killed up to 5,500 gorillas in West Africa. A study released on Friday says that together with commercial hunting, the virus could threaten the species with extinction.
more...
Labels: Ebola
Signs Editorial:
US and Israel targeting DNA in Gaza? Part 1: The DIME bomb, yet another genotoxic weapon
James Brooks
Online Journal
Dec 5, 2006
It's been almost five months since the first report that Israeli drone aircraft have been dropping a "mystery weapon" on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Since then, news media around the world have run stories depicting the strange and "horrific" wounds inflicted by the new bomb. The international press has spoken with Palestinian doctors and medics who say Israel's new device is a kind of chemical weapon that has significantly increased the fatality rate among the victims of Israeli attacks. [1] [2]
In mid-October, Italian investigators reported forensic evidence that suggests the new weapon
may also represent the near future of US "counterinsurgency warfare." Combined with photographs of the victims and testimony from attending doctors, this evidence points to the use of Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME). [3]DIME is an LCD ("low collateral damage") weapon developed at the US Air Force Research Laboratory. Publicly, it is slated for initial deployment in 2008. DIME bombs produce an unusually powerful blast within a relatively small area, spraying a superheated "micro-shrapnel" of powdered Heavy Metal Tungsten Alloy (HMTA). Scientific studies have found that HMTA is chemically toxic, damages the immune system, rapidly causes cancer,
and attacks DNA (genotoxic). [4-11]
It is unfortunate that the US media have virtually blacked out the story of Israel's new weapon, not least because our own military may soon be using it in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The story might also have told us something about the grossly disproportionate brutality of Israel's war on the Palestinian people -- reason enough for the media to suppress it. [12]
Thanks to the intrepid Italians, the story could even have introduced Americans to their government's DIME weapons program. This three-part article will ask whether Israel is 'testing' US DIME bombs in the Gaza Strip, and explore the workings, dangers, and projected use of DIME weapons and their roots in depleted uranium (DU) research. These parallels will lead us to consider DIME in its historical context, as the latest innovation in the US military's long-running development of genotoxic weapons.
"They cannot return to life again"The first reports about 'Israel's new weapon' came from Dr Joma Al-Saqqa, chief of the emergency unit at Gaza's largest hospital, Al-Shifa. Dr. Al-Saqqa said that Israel was using "a new 'chemical' weapon" and its siege was "a live exercise
on a new ammunition that, so far, has resulted in killing 50 Palestinians and injuring 200." He observed that, "despite the damage in internal soft tissue in the bodies of injured people,
the fragments were not detected by X-ray. In other words, they had disappeared or dissolved inside the body." [13]
"There were usually entry and exit wounds," Dr. Al-Saqqa reported. "When the wounds were explored no foreign material was found. There was tissue death, the extent of which was difficult to determine. . . . A higher deep infection rate resulted with subsequent amputation. In spite of amputation there was a higher mortality." The effects of the weapon seemed "radioactive." [14] [15]
According to Palestine News Network, Dr. Al-Saqqa "confirmed that there were dozens of wounded legs and arms. Many of them had been burned from the inside, and distorted to the point that they cannot return to life again." [16]
"When the shrapnel hit[s] the body, it causes very strong burns that destroy the tissues around the bones . . . it burns and destroys internal organs, like the liver, kidneys, and the spleen and other organs and makes saving the wounded almost impossible. As a surgeon, I have seen thousands of wounds during the Intifada, but nothing was like this weapon." [17]
However, Dr. Al-Saqqa could not analyze the chemistry of the bizarre wounds. On the first day of the siege, June 27, Israel had conveniently destroyed Gaza's only crime laboratory. [18]
Despite his pleas to the "international community" to investigate and lend assistance in treating the victims, "no one has lifted a finger," the doctor was quoted in mid-July. "What we found were journalists who came to take pictures, but as for the medical community, nothing." [19]
On August 3, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) reported that Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd had visited Dr. Al-Saqqa's hospital, "where the staff is struggling to deal with wounds resulting in an unusually high number of amputations." Commissioner AbuZayd commented that "what we saw in Al-Shifa . . . was rather horrific." [20]
According to Merlin (Medical Emergency Relief International),
"75 per cent of war-wounded patients admitted at one hospital needed amputations" following an Israeli attack on Gaza City. [21]
The World Health Organization was reportedly considering an investigation into the injuries. Physicians for Human Rights - Israel "agreed to take away fragments of tissue from the bodies of Palestinians killed during the recent military operations in Gaza for possible analysis in Israel but urged the medics to seek an international investigation." [22]
Tungsten in tissue samples: A DIME weapon?On October 19, Italy's Rai24news televised an investigative report that supplied crucial new information. The Italian investigators had tissue samples from the victims in Gaza analyzed by Dr. Carmela Vaccaio at University Parma.
Dr. Vaccaio reportedly found "a very high concentration of carbon and the presence of unusual materials, such as copper, aluminum and tungsten." The doctor concluded that her "findings could be in line with the hypothesis that the weapon in question is DIME."Rai24news reporters also talked to Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Ben-Israel, former chief of the Israeli Defense Force's (IDF's) weapons development program. General Ben-Israel appeared to be familiar with DIME weapons. He explained that "one of the ideas is to allow those targeted to be hit without causing damage to bystanders or other persons." [23]
The US Air Force refers to this emerging realm of weaponry as FLM (Focused Lethality Munitions). FLM is expected to provide the 'weapons of choice' for targeting "terrorists hiding among civilians," as a cheerleading Wall Street Journal article put it. [24]
With "focused lethality [and] higher energy materials . . . nano particles, intelligent fuzing, [and] mass focus lethality," the Air Force "will be able to strike effectively, wherever and whenever necessary, with minimal collateral damage."
Ominously, the military thinks these weapons will allow it to target sites "previously off limits to the warfighter." [25] [26]
This warfare of the future is reminiscent of what Israel has been doing for years, but with one-ton bombs, 155-mm artillery shells, and tank-fired antipersonnel flechette bombs. Are FLM weapons like DIME an improvement?
Or will they actually increase civilian casualties and suffering, and mimic depleted uranium weapons by inducing disease and genetic damage in their victims? These disturbing questions will be explored in the next installment of this article.
References1)
Palestinian injuries suggest Israel is using chemical weapons in Gaza, Ma'an News, 7/10/2006
2)
Israel used chemical weapons in Lebanon and Gaza, Jean Shaoul, wsws.org, 10/24/2006
3) Italian TV:
Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip, Ha'aretz, 10/19/2006
4)
Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME), GlobalSecurity.org, 10/18/2006
5)
Abstract: Potential late health effects of depleted uranium and tungsten used in armor-piercing munitions: comparison of neoplastic transformation and genotoxicity with the known carcinogen nickel, Miller, AC, et al, PubMed, 11/26/2006
6)
Neoplastic transformation of human osteoblast cells to the tumorigenic phenotype by heavy metal-tungsten alloy particles: induction of genotoxic effects, Miller, AC, et al, Carcinogenesis, Vol. 22, No. 1, 115-125, January 2001, Oxford University Press
7)
Abstract: Carcinogenic Potential of Depleted Uranium and Tungsten Alloys, Alexandra C Miller, Ph. D., Department Of Defense, Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI)
8)
Depleted uranium-catalyzed oxidative DNA damage: absence of significant, alpha particle decay, Miller, AC, et al, Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, Issue 91, 2002 pp. 246- 252
9)
Embedded Weapons-Grade Tungsten Alloy Shrapnel Rapidly Induces Metastatic High-Grade Rhabdomyosarcomas in F344 Rats, Kalinich et al, Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 113, Number 6, June 2005
10)
Abstract: Effect of the militarily-relevant heavy metals, depleted uranium and heavy metal tungsten-alloy on gene expression in human liver carcinoma cells (HepG2), Miller, AC, et al, SpringerLink/Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, 1/1/2004
11)
Preconceptional paternal exposure to radiation or heavy metals like cadmium can induce cancer in unexposed offspring, Alexandra C. Miller, Rafael Rivas, Robert J. Merlot and Paul, Carcinogenesis 5: Environmental and Endogenous Carcinogens/Proc Amer Assoc Cancer Res, Volume 47, 2006
12)
If Americans Knew13)
Israel 'is using chemical ammunition' in Gaza, Duraid Al Baik, Centre for Research on Globalization/Gulf News, 6/13/2006
14)
Are New Weapons Being Used In Gaza and Lebanon?, David Halpin MB BS FRCS, Electronic Intifada, 8/14/2006
15)
Ministry of Health report on toxic Israeli weapons confirmed by Gaza City medical sources, Palestine News Network, 7/13/2006
16) ibid.
17)
Doctors Report Unusual Weapon Used in Gaza, Pacifica/Free Speech Radio News 7/11/2006
18)
Israel 'is using chemical ammunition' in Gaza, Centre for Research on Globalization/Gulf News, 6/13/2006
19)
Ministry of Health report on toxic Israeli weapons confirmed by Gaza City medical sources, Palestine News Network, 7/13/2006
20) UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd: "
Please don't forget what's going on in Gaza," ReliefWeb/UNRWA, 8/3/2006
21)
Hospitals in Gaza overwhelmed and running out of supplies, Electronic Intifada/Merlin, 8/8/2006
22)
Gaza doctors encounter 'unexplained injuries', Donald Macintyre, The Independent 9/4/2006
23)
Italian TV: Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip, Ha'aretz, 10/12/2006
24)
Air Force seeks bomb with less bang, Greg Jaffe, The Wall Street Journal/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/11/2006
25)
Munition Technology Drivers, Col. Thomas "Mas" Masiell, Air Force Research Laboratory, 12/1/2006
26)
USAF Unfunded Priority List (UPL), SAF/FMB POC, FY 2007, February 2006, Page 54
LINK
"Intercourse is painful for circumcised women. To be able to penetrate, men must often force themselves into their wives' vaginas. Those whose penises are incapable of doing the job use a knife to enlarge the opening."
December 06, 2006
A SMALL REVOLUTION IN CAIRO
Theologians Battle Female Circumcision
By Amira El Ahl in Cairo
In Cairo, a small revolution has been launched: A conference of high-ranking Muslim theologians has agreed that the practice of female genital mutilation is irreconcilable with Islam. The painful and often deadly practice of female circumcision affects millions of women in Africa.
Fatima's scream is as blood-curdling as it is heart-wrenching. The little girl, who looks to be about eight years old, screams in a panic, initially in fear and then because she is unable to bear the pain she is experiencing. She is lying on the floor of a dirty hut somewhere in the Ethiopian desert. Her body is contorted with pain as she screams, cries and finally lies there whimpering. Her new, green floral dress is soaked in blood.
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Ramzy Baroud PalestineChronicle.com
The unfortunate reality is that Israel's campaign of ethnic cleansing has never stopped and is now more active than it has been for decades.
"The term ethnic cleansing refers to various policies of forcibly removing people of another ethnic group. At one end of the spectrum, it is virtually indistinguishable from forced emigration and population transfer, while at the other it merges with deportation and genocide."
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(Update1)
By Marc Wolfensberger
Dec. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil exporter, plans to reduce its use of the U.S. dollar in world trade and increase use of the euro, two Tehran-based newspapers reported.
The Tehran Times said today Iran has started substituting euros for dollars in oil sales, citing an unidentified person at the Oil Ministry. Iran Daily reported Iran wants to cut its dollar-based transactions to a minimum, citing Minister of Economy Davoud Danesh-Ja'fari.
Iran's policy of selling oil in U.S. dollars ``has not changed yet,'' said Hojatollah Ghanimifard, executive director for international affairs at National Iranian Oil Co., in a statement read to Bloomberg News from his office.
The U.S. and several European nations are pushing the United Nations to sanction Iran for its nuclear program. The dollar touched a 20-month low against the euro this week, and central banks in the Middle East including the United Arab Emirates have plans to convert some of their dollar reserves into euros.
Exporting nations ``are only holding so many dollars because of all the trade in the currency, but if the trend begins to move out of it, then it's going to be a positive for the euro and add to the negative sentiment on the dollar,'' said David Mann, a foreign-exchange strategist at Standard Chartered Bank Plc in Hong Kong.
The dollar was at $1.3278 against the euro at 8:07 a.m. in New York, compared with $1.3317 late yesterday.
Iran's oil export contracts for months have included a clause that allows the nation to seek payment in the euro and other currencies, creating a mechanism for a switch should Iran's policy change, according to traders who buy Iranian oil.
Lender Blocked
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries members including Qatar earlier this week expressed concern about the falling dollar, saying output should be cut to drive prices higher.
Iran has repeatedly said it would limit dollar-based transactions following the U.S. decision in September to block one of Iran's biggest state-owned lenders from doing business with the U.S. The U.S. Treasury on Sept. 8 blocked Bank Saderat for its alleged support of ``terrorist organizations'' such as Lebanon's Hezbollah movement and Hamas in the Palestinian territories.
Iran exports 60 percent of its crude to Asia, 32 percent to Europe and 8 percent to Africa. It is the world's fourth-largest exporter of crude and OPEC's second-biggest member. The nation last month produced 3.76 million barrels a day, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
To contact the reporter on this story: Marc Wolfensberger in Tehran at mwolfens@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: December 6, 2006 11:03 EST
When Denial Goes Pathological
Is President Bush Sane?
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Tens of millions of Americans want President George W. Bush to be impeached for the lies and deceit he used to launch an illegal war and for violating his oath of office to uphold the US Constitution.
Millions of other Americans want Bush turned over to the war crimes tribunal at the Hague. The true fate that awaits Bush is psychiatric incarceration.
The president of the United States is so deep into denial that he is no longer among the sane.
Delusion still rules Bush three weeks after the American people repudiated him and his catastrophic war in elections that delivered both House and Senate to the Democrats in the hope that control over Congress would give the opposition party the strength to oppose the mad occupant of the White House.
On November 28 Bush insisted that US troops would not be withdrawn from Iraq until he had completed his mission of building a stable Iraqi democracy capable of spreading democratic change in the Middle East.
Bush made this astonishing statement the day after NBC News, a major television network, declared Iraq to be in the midst of a civil war, a judgment with which former Secretary of State Colin Powell concurs.
The same day that Bush reaffirmed his commitment to building a stable Iraqi democracy, a secret US Marine Corps intelligence report was leaked. According to the Washington Post, the report concludes: "the social and political situation has deteriorated to a point that US and Iraqi troops are no longer capable of militarily defeating the insurgency in al-Anbar province."
The Marine Corps intelligence report says that Al Qaeda is the "dominant organization of influence" in Anbar province, and is more important than local authorities, the Iraqi government and US troops "in its ability to control the day-to-day life of the average Sunni."
Bush's astonishing determination to deny Iraq reality was made the same day that the US-installed Iraqi prime minister al-Maliki and US puppet King Abdullah II of Jordan abruptly cancelled a meeting with Bush after Bush was already in route to Jordon on Air Force One.
Bush could not meet with Maliki in Iraq, because violence in Baghdad is out of control. For security reasons, the US Secret Service would not allow President Bush to go to Iraq, where he is "building a stable democracy."
Bush made his astonishing statement in the face of news leaks of the Iraq Study Group's call for a withdrawal of all US combat forces from Iraq. The Iraq Study Group is led by Bush family operative James A. Baker, a former White House chief of staff, former Secretary of the Treasury, and former Secretary of State. Baker was tasked by father Bush to save the son. Apparently, son Bush hasn't enough sanity to allow himself to be saved.
Bush's denial of Iraqi reality was made even as one of the most influential Iraqi Shiite leaders, Moqtada al-Sadr, is building an anti-US parliamentary alliance to demand the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
Maliki himself appears on the verge of desertion by his American sponsors. The White House has reportedly "lost confidence" in Maliki's "ability to control violence." Fox "News" disinformation agency immediately began blaming Maliki for the defeat the US has suffered in Iraq. NY governor Pataki told Fox "News" that "Maliki is not doing his job." Pataki claimed that US troops were doing "a great job."
A number of other politicians and talking heads joined in the scapegoating of Maliki. No one explained how Maliki can be expected to save Iraq when US troops cannot provide enough security for the Iraqi government to go outside the heavily fortified "green zone" that occupies a small area of Baghdad. If the US Marines cannot control Anbar province, what chance is there for Maliki? What can Maliki do if the security provided by US troops is so bad that the President of the US cannot even visit the country?
The only people in Iraq who are safe belong to Al Qaeda and the Sunni insurgents or are Shiite militia leaders such as al-Sadr.
An American group, the Center for Constitutional Rights, has filed war crimes charges in Germany against former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. A number of former US attorneys believe President Bush and Vice President Cheney deserve the same.
Bush has destroyed the entire social, political, and economic fabric of Iraq. Saddam Hussein sat on the lid of Pandora's Box of sectarian antagonisms, but Bush has opened the lid. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed as "collateral damage" in Bush's war to bring "stable democracy" to Iraq. Tens of thousands of Iraqi children have been orphaned and maimed. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have fled their country. The Middle East is aflame with hatred of America, and the ground is shaking under the feet of American puppet governments in the Middle East. US casualties (killed and wounded) number 25,000.
And Bush has not had enough!
What better proof of Bush's insanity could there be?
LINK
If you use Shoutwire check this out.Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times01/12/2006
Readers of this web site will probably have noticed the recent additions of Shoutwire advertisements at the top and bottom of the Signs page. The background to this is that, several months ago, a number of readers of the Signs of the Times (SOTT) page began to submit to the Shoutwire website Signs of the Times editorials that they thought deserved to be more widely distributed.
As time passed, SOTT editors also began to submit editorials to Shoutwire. This process of submitting articles is, after all, supposed to be the whole point of the Shoutwire web site where anyone can sign up and submit articles or editorials that they enjoyed and which other members can then vote for and comment on.
More often than not, SOTT editorials received a lot of "Shouts" propelling them on to the "top stories" list and therefore under the noses of many Shoutwire's readers and members. Within a short period of time however, it became clear that the usual SOTT detractors had spotted the growing popularity of SOTT editorials and, rather than see it as a genuine reflection of the quality of our writing, they began to attack every SOTT submission to Shoutwire by posting petulant, juvenile, and even defamatory comments in the comments section under each editorial. The fact that these few individuals (many of whom were probably the same person signed up under different names with different IP addresses) had a personal problem with Signs of the Times rather than the content of our editorials became clear when they resorted to attacking editorials from mainstream news sites like the UK Guardian simply because it was a SOTT editor that submitted it!
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