comments regarding the news

Universal Health Care is a must

2009-08-15T21:09:00.000-07:00

Every American deserves affordable healthcare. It is not a Democratic or Republican issue but an American issue.

An improved version of the UK or Canadian health care system would be preferable. I have spoken people who have lived in the UK and Canada, and they are not the horrible systems that the media and the insurance propaganda machine paint them out to be.

It is time for universal health care coverage now. Insurance companies have been taking premiums and denying coverage forever. They have failed to regulate themselves, and now is the time for the government to step in, at the cost of those over inflated profits.

Republicans criticize pay as you go

2009-06-09T12:37:00.000-07:00

"WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Tuesday challenged Congress to pay for new increases in federal benefit programs as it goes rather than sink the nation deeper into a debt, calling it a matter of public responsibility.

Republicans lashed back that Obama is no voice of fiscal restraint as the deficit soars.

The president's plan would require Congress to pay for new entitlement spending, such as health care, by raising taxes or coming up with budget cuts — a "pay-as-you-go" system that would have the force of law. Under the proposal, if new spending or tax reductions are not offset, there would be automatic cuts in so-called mandatory programs — although Social Security payments and some other programs would be exempt.

Not noted by the president: Tuesday's plan is a watered-down version of the so-called "PAYGO" rules proposed just last month in his own budget plan.

That version would have required, on average, all affected legislation to be paid for in the very first year. The new plan only requires such legislation to be financed over the coming decade. That mirrors congressional rules and reflects the likelihood that health care reform will add to the deficit in the early years.

Obama said the principle is simple: Congress can only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar somewhere else.

"It is no coincidence that this rule was in place when we moved from record deficits to record surpluses in the 1990s — and that when this rule was abandoned, we returned to record deficits that doubled the national debt," Obama said, flanked at the White House by supportive Democratic lawmakers.

"Entitlement increases and tax cuts need to be paid for," he said. "They're not free, and borrowing to finance them is not a sustainable long-term policy."

Republican leaders, critical of the Obama-championed $787 billion stimulus package and other deficit spending, called the president disingenuous.

"It's as if the administration and these Democrat leaders are living in an alternate universe," said House Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia. "The quickest way to save money is to stop recklessly spending it."

The pay-as-you-go rules would not apply to discretionary spending — the portion that Congress decides how to spend each year — which accounts for almost 40 percent of the budget, said Peter Orszag, the administration's budget director.

Obama's call for binding legislation comes as a reward to moderate-to-conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats who are big believers in pay-as-you go. Their votes were crucial to passing a congressional budget blueprint that generally follows Obama's budget.

The House and Senate already have their own PAYGO rules, but have routinely found ways around them. For example, a bill to effectively double GI Bill education benefits was enacted last year because of a loophole in congressional rules.

Obama's "PAYGO" plan would also require future tax cuts to be financed by tax increases elsewhere in the code, though exceptions are made for extending President George W. Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, as well as other tax cuts that are scheduled to expire.

The federal deficit is on pace to explode past $1.8 trillion this year, more than four times last year's all-time high.

The deficit figures flow from the deep recession, the Wall Street bailout and the cost of the economic stimulus bill. Obama has defended the massive stimulus plan as essential to helping pump some life back in the economy, one that is still shedding jobs but showing more signs of life in recent weeks.

"The fact is, there are few who aren't distressed by deficits," Obama said. He said restoring a pay-as-you-go method under law would force lawmakers to deal not just with the politics and crises of the day, but also remain fixed on the nation's long-term financial health."

The Republicans should not criticize the President's plan. The problem of ballooning deficits started under the Bush administration, and the recent crisis with billions of dollars in bailout money also started under the previous administration, and many of the Republicans who are now critics, formerly supported the billions in bailout money to big companies who were going under.

Why the experts missed the crash

2009-02-19T18:12:00.001-08:00

"Money Magazine) -- You've probably never wanted expert insight more than today - and never trusted it less. After all, the intelligent, articulate, well-paid authorities voicing these opinions are the ones who created the crisis or failed to predict it or lost 30% of your 401(k) in it.

Yet we can't tear ourselves away. The crisis has brought record ratings to CNBC and its parade of talking heads. You're probably still entrusting your portfolio to the experts running mutual funds. Despite everything, we can't shake the belief that elite forecasters know better than the rest of us what the future holds.

The record, unfortunately, proves no such thing. And no one knows that record better than Philip Tetlock, 54, a professor of organizational behavior at the Haas Business School at the University of California-Berkeley. Tetlock is the world's top expert on, well, top experts. Some 25 years ago, he began an experiment to quantify the forecasting skill of political experts.

By the time he finished in 2003, Tetlock had signed up nearly 300 academics, economists, policymakers and journalists and mapped more than 82,000 forecasts against real-world outcomes, analyzing not just what the experts said but how they thought: how quickly they embraced contrary evidence, for example, or reacted when they were wrong. And wrong they usually were, barely beating out a random forecast generator.

But you shouldn't simply write all gurus off. Tetlock's research found that one kind of expert turns out consistently more accurate forecasts than others. Understanding what makes them better can help you make more reliable predictions in your own life. Tetlock explained it all to Money's former managing editor, Eric Schurenberg, in a recent interview.

Why did so many experts miss the economic crash?

The people intimately involved in packaging [financial derivatives like] CDOs must have had some sense that they were unstable. But their superiors seem to have been lulled into complacency, partly because they were making a lot of money very fast and had no motivation to look closer. So greed played a role.

But hubris may have played a bigger one. Remember Greek tragedy? The gods don't like mortals who get too uppity. In this case the biggest source of hubris was the mathematical models that claimed you could turn iffy loans into investment-grade securities. The models rested on a misplaced faith in the law of large numbers and on wildly miscalculated estimates of the likelihood of a national collapse in real estate. But mathematics has a certain mystique. People get intimidated by it, and no one challenged the models.

Americans were shocked at how wrong the experts were. You weren't. Why not?

My research certainly prepared me for widespread forecasting failures. We found that our experts' predictions barely beat random guesses - the statistical equivalent of a dart-throwing chimp - and proved no better than predictions of reasonably well-read nonexperts. Ironically, the more famous the expert, the less accurate his or her predictions tended to be.

Money has written about human mental quirks that lead ordinary folks to make investing mistakes. Do the same lapses affect experts' judgment?

Of course. Like all of us, experts go wrong when they try to fit simple models to complex situations. ("It's the Great Depression all over again!") They go wrong when they leap to judgment or are too slow to change their minds in the face of contrary evidence.

And like all of us, experts have a hard time with randomness. I once witnessed an experiment that pitted a classroom of Yale undergrads against a lone Norwegian rat in a T-maze. Food was put in the maze in no particular pattern, except that it was designed to end up in the left side of the "T" 60% of the time. Eventually, the rat learned always to turn left and so was rewarded 60% of the time. The students, on the other hand, fell for a variant of the "gambler's fallacy." Picture a roulette player who sees a long sequence of red and puts all his money on black because it's "due." Or more subtly, he looks for complex, alternating patterns - the same kind of mental wild-goose chase that technical stock pickers go on. That's what happened to the Yalies, who kept looking for some pattern that would predict where the food would be every time. They ended up being right just 52% of the time. Outsmarted by a rat.

What makes some forecasters better than others?

The most important factor was not how much education or experience the experts had but how they thought. You know the famous line that [philosopher] Isaiah Berlin borrowed from a Greek poet, "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing"? The better forecasters were like Berlin's foxes: self-critical, eclectic thinkers who were willing to update their beliefs when faced with contrary evidence, were doubtful of grand schemes and were rather modest about their predictive ability. The less successful forecasters were like hedgehogs: They tended to have one big, beautiful idea that they loved to stretch, sometimes to the breaking point. They tended to be articulate and very persuasive as to why their idea explained everything. The media often love hedgehogs.

How do you know whether a talking head is a fox or a hedgehog?

Count how often they press the brakes on trains of thought. Foxes often qualify their arguments with "however" and "perhaps," while hedgehogs build up momentum with "moreover" and "all the more so." Foxes are not as entertaining as hedgehogs. But enduring a little tedium is worth it if you want realistic odds on possible futures.

So if you were looking for a money manager, you'd want a fox?

If you want good, stable long-term performance, you're better off with the fox. If you're up for a real roller-coaster ride, which might make you fabulously wealthy or leave you broke, go hedgehog.

But it was doomster hedgehogs like money managers Robert Rodriguez and Jeremy Grantham who first saw the crisis coming.

Hedgehogs are sometimes way, way out front. But they can also be way, way off.

Most of the experts who called the downturn are still bearish. Would you expect them to be able to call the rebound too?

No. In our research, the hedgehogs who get out front don't tend to stay out front very long. They often overshoot. For example, among the few who correctly called the fall of the Soviet Union were what I call ethno-nationalist fundamentalists, who believed that multi-ethnic nations were likely to be torn apart. They were spectacularly right with Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. But they also expected Nigeria, India and Canada to disintegrate. That's how it is with hedgehogs: You get spectacular hits but lots of false alarms.

How can we nonexperts test our own hunches?

Listen to yourself talk to yourself. If you're being swept away with enthusiasm for some particular course of action, take a deep breath and ask: Can I see anything wrong with this? And if you can't, start worrying; you are about to go over a cliff.

Considering how wrong they are, why are the same old talking heads continuing to give advice?

Unless you force experts to be specific, as we did, they can make predictions that are difficult to falsify. You know the cynical clich "Never assign a date and a number to the same prediction." That lets you get away with saying things like "Yes, I did say the Dow will hit 36,000, and it will - just wait. I was merely a little early."

Experts are also very good at explaining errors away by concocting counterfactual history. "If only the world had heeded the warnings of, say, [libertarian-leaning Texas Congressman] Dick Armey about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the financial crisis would have been far less severe." This is a ridiculous line of reasoning. Nobody knows what would have happened in a hypothetical world.

Who are you listening to in this market?

I look for a combination of cognitive flexibility and high IQ. Moody's Economy.com chief economist Mark Zandi is not a bad person to listen to. He was somewhat out in front in anticipating this crisis and has a capacity for seeing different points of view. Larry Summers, head of the National Economic Council, also has the kind of intelligence and cognitive style that makes him a good bet.

Could we live without experts?

No way. We need to believe we live in a predictable, controllable world, so we turn to authoritative-sounding people who promise to satisfy that need. That's why part of the responsibility for experts' poor record falls on us. We seek out experts who promise impossible levels of accuracy, then we do a poor job keeping score. "

Our Galaxy could have 1 billion Earths

2009-02-18T07:50:00.000-08:00

There could be one hundred billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, a US conference has heard.

Dr Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Science said many of these worlds could be inhabited by simple lifeforms.

He was speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago.

So far, telescopes have been able to detect just over 300 planets outside our Solar System.

Very few of these would be capable of supporting life, however. Most are gas giants like our Jupiter, and many orbit so close to their parent stars that any microbes would have to survive roasting temperatures.

But, based on the limited numbers of planets found so far, Dr Boss has estimated that each Sun-like star has on average one "Earth-like" planet.

This simple calculation means there would be huge numbers capable of supporting life.

"Not only are they probably habitable but they probably are also going to be inhabited," Dr Boss told BBC News. "But I think that most likely the nearby 'Earths' are going to be inhabited with things which are perhaps more common to what Earth was like three or four billion years ago." That means bacterial lifeforms.

Dr Boss estimates that Nasa's Kepler mission, due for launch in March, should begin finding some of these Earth-like planets within the next few years.

Recent work at Edinburgh University tried to quantify how many intelligent civilisations might be out there. The research suggested there could be thousands of them.

Coffee grounds next in line as biofuel source

2009-02-11T16:01:00.000-08:00

Coffee grounds — currently wasted or used as garden compost — could become a cheap and environmentally friendly source of biodiesel and fuel pellets, says a study.

Spent coffee grounds contain 11–20 per cent oil, depending on their type. "This is competitive with other major biodiesel feedstocks such as rapeseed oil (37–50 per cent), palm oil (20 per cent), and soybean oil (20 per cent)," say researchers writing in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Scientists at the US-based University of Nevada, Reno, used an inexpensive process to extract oil from the leftovers of making espressos, cappuccinos and other coffee preparations from a multinational coffeehouse chain.

This oil was then converted into biodiesel, which could be used to fuel cars and trucks.

The world's coffee production is more than 7.2 million tonnes per year, according to US Department of Agriculture figures cited in the study. This could yield about 340 million gallons of biodiesel, say the researchers.

"It is easy and economical to extract oil from used coffee grounds compared to traditional feedstocks," said Mano Misra, an author of the study. Further, coffee oil has some antioxidants which are required for biofuel stability," he told SciDev.Net. After the oil extraction the remaining solid waste from processed coffee can be used as garden compost or fuel pellets.

The process "would be ideal for countries where coffee is produced. A lot of defective coffee beans are discarded into the landfills every year. Processing these beans as well as coffee grounds would be an economical approach," said Misra.

The researchers calculate that in the United States an annual profit of more than US$8 million could be made from biodiesel and pellets from one major coffee chain alone.

• This article was shared by our content partner SciDev.Net, a member of the Guardian Environment Network

Bernanke Paulson to work with Congress through the weekend

2008-09-18T20:16:00.000-07:00

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke plan to work through the weekend with Congress on a comprehensive plan to deal with toxic bank assets choking the financial system, a Treasury spokeswoman said on Thursday."

How did we get here? All kinds of finger pointing and blame abound, but it appears to have started with too much money in the market and consumers tried to capitalize on that to buy the American Dream- a home of their own, thus driving the prices on housing sky high. Then mortgage and a lot of other companies started drafting all kinds of impossible instruments which actually made it harder for consumers to pay in the end, resulting in massive defaults.

Add to the mix complex derivative default swaps, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1851200120080919 and you have an incendiary situation, which is where we are now.

Meanwhile, businesses separate from banking finance and housing feel some of the crunch from consumers taking major hits, but as a whole they remain ok.

The sky may seem to be falling, but really, its not.

News on the Blue Marble

Is there a way out of this mess?

2008-09-11T19:52:00.000-07:00

"By Eduardo Garcia

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia (Reuters) - At least eight people were killed as violent anti-government protests flared in Bolivia on Thursday, creating havoc in the natural gas industry and raising tensions with the United States.

Opposition activists shot dead seven peasant farmers in the remote Amazon region of Pando, a government official said, describing the incident as a massacre. An employee of the opposition-led regional government was also killed.

"We're talking about a real massacre and the person responsible is the Pando governor," said Deputy Minister of Social Movements Sacha Llorenti.

President Evo Morales' leftist government blames the unrest on rightist governors who control four of the poor country's nine regions.

The opposition demands greater autonomy and energy revenue and opposes plans by Morales, a former coca farmer and Bolivia's first indigenous president, to rewrite the constitution and distribute land to the poor.

Washington ordered out the Bolivian ambassador on Thursday a day after Morales, a close ally of Venezuela's fiery leftist leader Hugo Chavez, expelled U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg.

Morales accused Goldberg of fanning the protests.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement that Washington "officially informed the government of Bolivia of our decision to declare Ambassador Gustavo Guzman persona non grata."

Here we have old wounds that never seem to heal. Historically we have supported the landowners and upper classes at the expense of the poor, which has given the communists political ammunition to shoot at the US.

Is there a way to work out a compromise here so that vast numbers of the poor are served while preserving the property rights of the landowners? In the end creating a better economy can help everyone. It may be naive but aligning with one group at the expense of the other groups and engaging in violence only makes things worse.

News on the Blue Marble

Response to Al Qaeda by any other name AC360

2008-09-11T14:01:00.000-07:00

"Perhaps the most significant change to have occurred over the last seven years of fighting the War on Terror is that we are no longer battling a terrorist organization called al Qaeda. We are now fighting a global social movement called al Qaeda.

The truth is al Qaeda was never the coherent, global entity it is so often imagined to be – an organization with an easily identifiable leadership structure and a systematic ideology. That al Qaeda existed only in the imaginations of those of us desperate for the days when America’s enemies were nations that could be assuredly defined and armies that could be conventionally overcome. It is no wonder that word al Qaeda continues to be rendered into English as “the base.” A base implies something concrete and conquerable, something that can be defended or assailed.

But the word al Qaeda also means “the rules” or “the fundamentals,” and is used by Arabs most often to refer to the basic teachings or creed of Islam. In that light, it may be somewhat appropriate to consider al Qaeda an Islamic form of fundamentalism, in so far as that word implies puritanical adherence to the elemental doctrines of a religion. But it is imprecise, and even dangerous, to consider al Qaeda the operational seat of global Islamic extremism.

al Qaeda is more like an ideological nerve center – a kind of brain trust propagating a series of simple propositions whose purpose is to classify the world into Good and Evil. Friend and Foe. Us and Them. As al Qaeda’s chief ideologue Abu Musab al-Suri said, “al Qaeda is not an organization…It is a call, a reference, a methodology.”

al Qaeda as methodology may be hard to swallow. Methodologies do not kill people; people kill people.

But when bin Laden refers to al Qaeda’s attacks on America as “messages” to America, he is conveying a fundamental truth about the tactic of terrorism. These are not necessarily actions in pursuit of specific political or social ends. They are symbolic statements of power directed at a carefully selected audience. Indeed, it is the audience that can be regarded the principal victims of terrorism. Perverse though it may seem, terrorism’s actual victims – the bloodied, maimed, and murdered – are merely tools through which the terrorist’s “message” is delivered. What is that message? It is simply this: We are powerful, we are aggrieved, and we will not be ignored.

That is a message that has resonated with a wide spectrum of people – particularly young people – across the world (and not just the Muslim world). It is a message that cuts across all boundaries of religion, culture, class, and ethnicity. It is a message that has fed off the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the larger War on Terror: the use of torture; extraordinary renditions; the flaunting of international laws. It is a message that has become far more important than the messenger.

Of course, you can’t shoot a message (especially when you can’t even shoot the messenger)."

In response to Reza Aslan's blog

Yes it is difficult to fight an "ideology" as well as a "methodology". In addition you cannot ignore the many issues al Qaeda raise as fodder for the "cause".

But perhaps like the fall of the Soviet Union, the fall of al Qaeda will not occur by force of arms, but by the weight of its oppressive nature. History has shown that all intolerant totalitarian regimes eventually fail, and al Qaeda whether a "methodology" or "ideology" will also fall.

At the same time the US can and should do several things. Continue its military operations in a more intelligent fashion (we are learning that in Iraq and Afghanistan), while at the same time seriously helping Islamic countries' development, and indeed the development of the third world. Finally, Israel and the Palestinians must find a meaningful resolution of all the issues and move forward towards peace together.

A tall order, and by no means easy.

News on the Blue Marble

Toxic Ayurvedic 'Cures'

2008-09-11T13:58:00.000-07:00

Yahoo News/Live Science

"Ayurveda, a healing tradition from India, is as old as the hills. And apparently ayurvedic medicine available through the Internet contains as many toxic metals as the hills, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

A team from Boston University found that more than 20 percent of nearly 200 samples of various ayurvedic cures contained dangerous amounts of lead, arsenic and mercury. Sometimes the presence of metals was a result of sloppy manufacturing; other times the metals were added deliberately as part of the cure.

The authors - who are advocates of alternative medicine and include an ayurvedic practitioner as well as a lead poisoning expert from India - said they hope their report can help separate wheat from chaff, that is, the useful elements from the ayurvedic tradition from the real whacky stuff.

Problems with ayurveda

India is proud of its ayurvedic tradition, which dates back over 7,000 years and likely predates Traditional Chinese Medicine. By 1000 BCE, when Europeans were still living in mud and beating each other with clubs, Indian doctors used the principles of ayurveda to drain fluids, sew wounds, remove kidney stones and even perform cosmetic surgery.

For the most part, the ayurvedic tradition - which incorporates yoga, meditation and diet - makes for a healthy lifestyle.

But the safety and efficacy of some ayurvedic cures are questionable, because often they incorporate chants and are based on astrology, personality traits, pulse readings, a supposed imbalance of three bodily humors (called vata, pitta and kapha, like China's yin and yang) and other discredited beliefs. Your herbal cure for, say, a bad cough might be different from the next person's as a result of your birthday and Mars being aligned with Jupiter.

Among these odd elements of ayurveda, the JAMA report targets a practice called rasa shastra, which uses mercury and other metals as curatives. Nearly half of the rasa shastra remedies tested had dangers levels of metals; several were 10,000 times over the U.S. safety limit.

Regardless whether you are a Leo or a Capricorn, that's not healthy. So the authors called into question the entire practice of rasa shastra.

India strikes back

Some folks in India didn't take the JAMA report lightly. The Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare issued a press release last week that stated:

"It needs to be emphasized that as per the directions issued by Department of AYUSH, herbo-metallic compounds are not being officially exported because of heavy metal concerns and only purely herbal Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha medicines are being exported from India with effect from 1st January 2006 after certification of heavy metals below the permissible limit by the manufacturing unit."

Read between the line, and this implies (a) herbo-metallic compounds still exist in India as part of the ayurvedic tradition; (b) herbo-metallic compounds are being unofficially exported; and (c) and herbo-metallic compounds used to be exported until European and American researchers exposed the practice.

The lead author on JAMA report, Robert Saper, was in fact one of the pesky researchers in 2004 who revealed the fact that more than 20 percent of imported ayurvedic cures in Boston's South Asian grocery stories had illegal levels of toxic metals.

Know your source

Ayurveda has gained popularity in the United States with promoters such as Deepak Chopra, who charges thousands of dollars for seminars about how ayurveda can improve your golf game. The tradition has become somewhat elitist in the United States, with ayurvedic spas, soaps, candles and other luxury items.

Many likely don't know nor want to know about the idiosyncrasies of ayurveda. (We haven't addressed the use of cow urine and dung.) Ayurveda, after all, has much going for it.

But when experimenting with traditional medicines, particularly when you are outside of that culture, it's prudent to understand what you are getting into. The Boston University team is one group of alternative medicine advocates who want to legitimize useful ancient therapies not because they are ancient but because they work. "

News on the Blue Marble

World's Oldest Blogger dies at 108

2008-07-13T23:38:00.000-07:00

Sydney, Australia (AFP)- Olive Riley, an Australian woman described as the world's oldest Internet Blogger died at the age of 108. A note on her website said she passed away peacefully on July 12 and "will be mourned by thousands of internet friends and hundreds of descendants and other relatives."

We should all be so lucky.

AFP/Yahoo! News

Helping kids get well one car ride at a time

2008-07-03T08:04:00.000-07:00

"If Russell Jackson has his way any child who needs medical care but lacks the transportation to get there will have a safe and reliable alternative". CNN

Water like oil

2008-06-25T17:18:00.000-07:00

Crumbling levee system protects Missouri town: CNN California suffers at least 700 wild fires from a weekend lightning storm, and because of the drought this is going to be a rough fire season. CNN

With all our focus on oil, water is just as important. Why cant we build a dam and water pipeline system so that when the Mississippi rises like this, we send the water west.

What about desalinating sea water?

You think that with all the smart people out there, someone hasn't thought about this?

Tech executives plan for economic troubles ahead

2008-05-23T11:23:00.000-07:00

As consumers continue to take hits from rising gas and food prices, credit crunches and housing troubles, tech executives plan for more economic troubles ahead:

http://www.reuters.com/article/Technology08/idUSN2254961420080523

By Peter Henderson

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Technology executives around the world are preparing for economic troubles to deepen.

Many hope that their products will prove indispensable for customers and see emerging economies as sure-growth markets.

But low- and middle-income consumers in the United States are struggling, and the relative strength of U.S. corporations may not last, executives said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in Tokyo, Paris and New York this week.

Virgin Mobile USA Inc (VM.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the prepaid mobile phone service company, expects economic problems to last into the first half of next year for its mostly young customers.

Oil -- and gasoline -- prices keep breaking records, groceries are taking larger chunks of paychecks, and the mortgage crisis is still shuddering through the U.S. economy. That is especially difficult for low- and middle-income groups, said Virgin Mobile USA Chief Executive Dan Schulman.

"People are really and truly trying to make ends meet at the end of the month," he said. "There are debts to be paid."

Far beyond Main Street, the Wall Street banks and other financial titans will need room to raise new funds, since credit is tight, said Rick Simonson, chief financial officer of cell phone maker Nokia Oyj (NOK1V.HE: Quote, Profile, Research).

"It seems since last summer people have been trying to call the bottom for financials. It seems they haven't quite been found yet in terms of the restructuring and the capital raising that has to go on there," he said. Continued...

And even those who see a relatively strong corporate America still investing in products to cut risks or improve efficiency are girding for tougher times.

"If you read some of the written stuff, you would've expected that the U.S. basically spent absolutely no money in technology, and that is absolutely not true," said John Chen, chief executive of software maker Sybase Inc (SY.N: Quote, Profile, Research).

But he is not planning on an economic revival in the second half of the year. "I have to prepare. When I run a business I have to assume that it's not going to be pretty," he said.

Fujitsu Ltd (6702.T: Quote, Profile, Research) Senior Executive Vice President Chiaki Ito said he was concerned that the costs of absorbing the crisis in subprime mortgages -- the risky home loans that have gone bust for many U.S. and U.K. lenders -- could divert government funds usually spent on technology.

"I am extremely worried about the indirect effects of the subprime problem," he said. Meanwhile, manufacturing faces risks from rising food and fuel costs. "If costs go up, this could trigger a recession," he added.

The case of nerves has spread to many customers, executives agreed. "Most of the presidents (I've spoken to) have expressed concerns," said Tadahito Yamamoto, president of Fuji Xerox, the office equipment unit of Fujifilm Holdings Corp (4901.T: Quote, Profile, Research).

EMERGING GROWTH

Hope -- and success so far -- for many companies is based on smaller economies that are increasingly investing at home.

U.S. companies with wide international exposure like International Business Machines Corp (IBM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) have benefited from stronger economies and a weak dollar. Big Blue says that infrastructure projects in the developing world are key.
"If I were in a business model where I needed double-digit growth out of the G7 to drive my performance, I would be in a cold sweat," said IBM Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge, referring to the Group of Seven nations.

But Loughridge said an economic tremor in such big, advanced economies would not necessarily be felt by emerging ones. "I personally see less kind of linkage, dependency between the established markets and the high-growth markets," he argued.

Indeed, telecoms company Telstra Corp Ltd (TLS.AX: Quote, Profile, Research) said the Australian economy was booming. "They can't hire enough people," Chief Executive Sol Trujillo said.

In addition, many technology executives cling firmly to the belief that their products are must-haves -- whether they are cell phones that are kept when home phones are canceled, software to make vast computer "server farms" handle more work with less energy, or services to fend off vicious new attacks from hackers who are trying to steal money rather than just make trouble.

"We've seen no slowdown economically in IT (information technology) spending related to security. It's been a nice opportunity," said Dave Dewalt, chief executive of McAfee Inc (MFE.N: Quote, Profile, Research). "Am I nervous? Do I read the headlines, too? Yes."

(Additional reporting by Kirby Chien in Tokyo and Tova Cohen and Georgina Prodhan in Paris)

See also News on the Blue Marble

Why gas prices are hitting $4/gallon

2008-05-20T10:33:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- It's hard to imagine now, but in 1999 gasoline sold for 90 cents a gallon. How'd we get from there to $4 a gallon?

There is no short answer - many things happened, and together they formed a chain of events from cheap gas to $100 tankfuls.

2004: Demand pressure
One of the most common reasons cited for the price jump is supply and demand - we are using more oil, which accounts for 70% of the price of gas, and finding less of it.

Why we are finding less oil and using more of it is partly a result of the low prices during the 1990s. Those low prices - partly caused by low gas taxes in the U.S. compared to other developed nations - both encouraged rapid consumption domestically (think SUVs) and underinvestment in new production by the world's oil companies.

By the time 2004 rolled around - and developing economies around the globe roared to life - the world was left in a pinch.

"Our demand has skyrocketed, but our ability to supply that demand has stagnated," said Stephen Schork, publisher of the industry newsletter The Schork Report. Gasoline prices topped $2 a gallon for the first time ever in May of 2004, "and we've been off to the races since then," said Schork.

As demand grew and the supply of oil remained relatively flat, the difference between the amount of oil the world could produce and the amount it consumed narrowed. That meant a supply disruption from one place in the world could not be easily covered with spare oil from another part.

2005: The storm
This was illustrated in September 2005, when Hurricane Katrina knocked out a significant chunk of U.S. refining and gasoline prices spiked above $3 a gallon for the first time ever.

"It exposed how little surplus refining capacity we have in the U.S.," said James Crandell, an energy analyst at Lehman Brothers.

A new refinery hasn't been built in the United States in three decades, although capacity at existing refineries has been expanded.

2006: Hot tempers
The lack of spare supply has kept other geopolitical events in the forefront for the last few years. Iran and the spat over its nuclear program dominated the news in early 2006, and combined with Israel's invasion of Lebanon in the summer of that year to cause another spike in gas prices to over $3 a gallon.

Geopolitical events need not be shooting wars to attract attention. Analysts say general resource nationalism since 2004 is partly responsible for high oil prices.

In the past few years, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Russia's Vladimir Putin and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez have all become more bellicose on the world stage - in some cases, seeking a bigger share of the profit from foreign oil firms or threatening to cut off oil supplies if attacked.

Some say the Bush administration's provocation of Iran and Venezuela, coupled with a botched occupation of oil-exporting Iraq, has contributed to the geopolitical tension. But defenders say that, in the long run, the administration's actions will eventually lead to a more democratic - and thus stable - global supply.

2007: Tight supplies
New supplies of oil from non-OPEC countries were supposed to come online in 2007 and ease some of these supply bottlenecks. But problems in Kazakhstan and Russia - as well as sweeping drilling bans in the United States - mean global consumption is growing twice as fast as non-OPEC production.

Analysts say OPEC, which hold two-thirds of the world's oil reserves but sees a global economy humming along despite $130 oil, has little incentive to increase production.

2008: Speculators swarm
Strong demand, tight supplies and a volatile marketplace have attracted the interest of investors - the last main contributor to high prices.

"The speculator has seized upon this opportunity," said Schork. "They have recognized there is something fundamentally flawed in this market."

Since 2003, the number of oil contracts exchanged on the NYMEX has more than doubled, said Schork.

Money flowing into oil - and commodities in general - has been especially sharp over the last 6 months as investors look for good returns amid falling stock prices and an inflation hedge against a falling dollar.

That's helped push oil prices to nearly $130 a barrel and gasoline to an average of nearly $3.80 a gallon - smashing previous records even when adjusting for inflation.

Why do you think gas prices are so high? Post a comment.

Whether this investor influx into the oil market is justified is matter of debate. Some see high oil prices as necessary to boost supply and limit demand.

"You can't just point the finger at speculators," Michael Haigh, head of U.S. commodities research at the investment bank Société Générale, recently told CNNMoney.com "Fundamentally, the markets are where they are supposed to be."

Others are less certain.

"The fundamental picture to us doesn't justify the price," said Lehman's Crandell. "It's kind of suggestive of a bubble."

CNN/Money

see also News on the Blue Marble

If we don't get it right we will simply lose ground

2008-05-16T21:27:00.000-07:00

Is anyone listening here?

"McLEAN, VA - The U.S. is its own worst enemy when it comes to the desperately important task of recruiting immigrants as spies, analysts and translators in the war on terror, new Americans are telling intelligence officials. The government's policies raise suspicions and fear in the immigrants' home countries and disturb potential recruits here who might otherwise want to help.

The U.S. knows it needs the help. At the heart of a Friday summit with immigrant groups was a stark reality: The intelligence agencies lack people who can speak the languages that are needed most, such as Arabic, Farsi and Pashtu. More importantly, the agencies lack people with the cultural awareness that enables them to grasp the nuances embedded in dialect, body language and even street graffiti.

At the suburban Virginia summit, not far from the CIA and National Counterterrorism Center, officials gathered more than a dozen representatives of recent immigrant and other ethnic groups to get their recruiting assistance.

"We are going to ask you to open up your communities to us," said Ronald Sanders, an assistant national intelligence director, and the son of an Egyptian immigrant mother.

The officials got an earful in return — about immigration and hiring rules and foreign policies that make life harder in immigrants' old countries. The intelligence agencies' own practices also came under criticism: extraordinary rendition, holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, harsh interrogation practices that some say amount to torture.

"Basically they've scared people," said Amina Khan, of the Association of Pakistani Professionals and an attorney formerly with the U.S. Energy Department.

Immigrants "have always seen and regarded the United States as a law-abiding country," Khan said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Now we are the only superpower in the entire world. For us, when we hear things like renditions or Guantanamo Bay, which for many is considered outside the letter of the law, there is an element of fear."

Many immigrants come to the United States already fearing the intelligence agencies of their home countries.

A man named Aung, from Myanmar, said his countrymen in the United States are spied on by Myanmar agents.

"Basically by attending this conference I myself am on the list," he said. It will complicate his visits home to see his father, he said, asking that his full name not be used.

"In our culture it is looked down on to be a ... spy," added Humira Noorestani, whose family is from Afghanistan.

Some U.S. policies after the 9/11 terrorist attacks made things worse, said Kareem Shora, of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

"The policy missteps and mistakes tended to alienate the very community they are now trying to approach and work with," Shora said. "The NSA wiretapping, rendition, waterboarding, linking the war in Iraq with the issue of radicalization and the terrorism threat. ... What I ask is that at some point that these conversations address these hard issues."

Even the Japanese-American experience of World War II haunts this conference. Larry Shinagawa, of the University of Maryland's Asian American studies program, said immigrant groups have reason to be suspicious of the government's sudden interest. The government admitted in 2000 after years of denials that census records were used to track down Japanese-Americans by name and address for imprisonment in internment camps during the war.

One major need now is for people who can speak the languages most needed in the anti-terror fight. The children of immigrants, even if they don't grow up speaking their parents' language, can learn it to the required level of proficiency in 16 weeks. It takes people without that cultural heritage about 63 weeks, according to Jean AbiNader, a government cultural trainer with IdeaCom. Inc.

And then there are cultural matters as well. Immigrants and their children don't need to learn these things; they can teach them.

The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are collaborating on a summer internship program to begin to tap that expertise. Twenty college students are coming to Washington, D.C. for 10 weeks. They will get free Arabic classes in the morning at George Washington University and spend the afternoons working in the agencies' intelligence offices.

"We need these people, their expertise, their understanding of culture, of language. We don't have it today and it is a great deficiency," said Charles Allen, a long time CIA officer who is now the Homeland Security Department's intelligence chief. "This will be an enormous augmentation."

U.S. policies have until recently forbidden recruitment of first-generation Americans who have direct family ties abroad, a practice that began after World War II, despite the fact that many code breakers in that conflict were not born in America, said National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell.

New rules drop that obstacle, he said. Still, the security clearance process can take 12 to 18 months for a citizen without close ties abroad. It can go on for years for children of recent immigrants. McConnell wants to shorten that to 60 days.

The agencies will try to contain the risk of giving people with close foreign associations access to top secret information by increasing the scrutiny that all employees get once they are cleared, a practice known as life cycle monitoring.

McConnell told the meeting of immigrant community leaders that he is increasing sensitivity training for the intelligence agencies' 100,000 employees.

U.S. officials are trying to adjust how they talk about the war on terrorism so as not to alienate Muslims. That adjustment is needed, said Mohammed H. Ali, an imam with a Virginia Muslim community organization.

"I'm concerned about the language used to describe terrorism," he said.

McConnell said he is, too.

"We try not to refer to 'jihad' as something that's bad," McConnell noted, referring to a recent government communications policy.

It's a first and somewhat controversial step toward shaping the language the United States uses to compete with the international messages of al-Qaida. The terror group's messages are increasing: In 2005 it issued about 15 video or audio messages. In 2006, there were 50. In 2007 there were 97. There will probably be even more in 2008, including a fresh message from Osama bin Laden this week.

"We did a good job in the war against Communism. We have not done a halfway decent job of countering the virulence (of al-Qaida) and the message properly," Allen said.

"I never use the term 'global war on terrorism,'" Allen said. "I have never used it publicly, and I don't write it that way either."

"We have so much work to do because countering this ideology is absolutely central to everything that we do. This is our way of countering al-Qaida in the future. If we don't get it right and we don't do the outreach correctly, we will simply lose ground," Allen said.
"
Yahoo News AP

Acting Mexican police chief killed in front of home

2008-05-09T01:50:00.000-07:00

Yahoo News: Acting Mexican police chief was killed by gunmen in front of his home in Mexico City Going to hell in a handbasket in another round of violence.

Hizbollah takes over large parts of Beirut

2008-05-09T01:45:00.000-07:00

Reuters reports that Hizbollah has taken over large parts of Beirut. Reuters What can be done about this?

Everyone should be talking to each other....

2007-02-04T06:25:00.000-08:00

Former military chiefs urge talks with Iran. Talks should also occur with Syria. Talks should occur between and among the US Israel Hamas and Fatah, N Korea S Korea, China and the US.

More talking and less shooting and threatening to shoot.

War is just too terrible, and an incredible waste of lives and resources. However, for those who are just too full of hatred, the extreme punishment of war may be the only answer and full responsibility for the loss of life and resources lies squarely on their heads.

Rock and a hard place

2007-01-19T23:04:00.000-08:00

We are in a difficult position. If anyone remembers, the reason why went to Iraq is the information that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons. Hussein threatened to restart its nuclear program.

We are now embroiled in a civil war, which Iran and Syria, al Qaeda and every other crazed militant is getting involved to the detriment of the civilians of Iraq and US and Coalition forces there. This is why we must win in Iraq, because those who are intent on destroying us are obviously using it as a testing ground to see how far the US and the Coalition will go to achieve its aims.

This problem cannot be achieved by arms alone, unless a full all out technological war using even our nuclear capabilities is contemplated. It would be deplorable, to use such an option, but it seems readily apparent that if Iran, or Syria, or al Qaeda had the ability to use nuclear arms, they would do it. They are irresponsible, and have no morals, despite their invocation of God. God will judge them, truly.

The nuclear option was the deterrent in the 'cold war'. Now we have a whole lot of 'hot wars'. It is sad and difficult situation we find ourselves in, but let us not be naive. There are very real threats who will have the ability to use not only the weapons of guerrilla war and terror but nuclear weapons as well.

Every effort must be made on the diplomatic level to isolate extremist and downright crazy regimes. Punishing economic sanctions are a start.

Surveillance of all nuclear research and resources is necessary.

Continued pursuit and military action against extremists is necessary.

At the same time, it is very very important to build economically deprived areas and attempt to build secure areas which thrive economically and bring properity to the greater number of people.

It is totally unhelpful for the Democrats to attack the administration when we must unite in this effort...

But this is just my opinion...

Why the US must win in Iraq

2007-01-13T15:51:00.000-08:00

The US must not withdraw from Iraq or it will appear that we are weak.

Keep moving

2006-11-04T22:46:00.000-08:00

ABC news portrays British commander's tactics of constantly moving:Abcnews.com

Don't be a sitting duck. The tactics clearly are not working. Why are we focusing on Baghdad and areas where we have no control, and have little intelligence?

With all the construction resources available, new cities should be built that are clearly populated with people who can be trusted. Clearly trusted.

Leave the old ones behind. Do the continuous bombing that was done in Yugoslavia in this manner: You can tell people in advance that we will do a bombing run, that way civilians know in advance to get out of there. Why? If you do constant bombardment, the people will surely get tired of it and reject violence for non-violence.

Those who try to leave for heavily fortified safe zones must be screened first.
Let them come to you. Not the other way around. You cannot fight a guerrilla war the way we are doing it.

In those areas which are remote, constantly moving with air support is a very good idea.

Use your strengths to your advantage, and build up on your weaknesses.

MSNBC/Washington Post: the 2 paths

2006-09-15T23:48:00.000-07:00

"AL-FURAT, Iraq - With a biker's bandanna tied under his helmet, the Special Forces team sergeant gunned a Humvee down a desert road in Iraq's volatile Anbar province. Skirting the restive town of Hit, the team of a dozen soldiers crossed the Euphrates River into an oasis of relative calm: the rural heartland of the powerful Albu Nimr tribe.

Green Berets skilled in working closely with indigenous forces have enlisted one of the largest and most influential tribes in Iraq to launch a regional police force -- a rarity in this Sunni insurgent stronghold. Working deals and favors over endless cups of spiced tea, they built up their wasta -- or pull -- with the ancient tribe, which boasts more than 300,000 members. They then began empowering the tribe to safeguard its territory and help interdict desert routes for insurgents and weapons. The goal, they say, is to spread security outward to envelop urban trouble spots such as Hit.

But the initial progress has been tempered by friction between the team of elite troops and the U.S. Army's battalion that oversees the region. At one point this year, the battalion's commander, uncomfortable with his lack of control over a team he saw as dangerously undisciplined, sought to expel it from his turf, officers on both sides acknowledged.

The conflict in the Anbar camp, while extreme, is not an isolated phenomenon in Iraq, U.S. officers say. It highlights two clashing approaches to the war: the heavy focus of many regular U.S. military units on sweeping combat operations; and the more fine-grained, patient work Special Forces teams put into building rapport with local leaders, security forces and the people -- work that experts consider vital in a counterinsurgency.

"This war was fought with a conventional mind-set. The conventional units are bogged down in cities doing the same old thing," said the Special Forces team's 44-year-old sergeant, who like all the Green Berets interviewed was not allowed to be quoted by name for security reasons. "It's not about bulldozing Hit, driving through with a tank, with all the kids running away. . . . These insurgencies are defeated by personal relationships."

The real battles, he said, are unfolding "in a sheik's house, squatting in the desert eating with my right hand and smoking Turkish cigarettes and trying to influence tribes to rise up against an insurgency."

Cutting deals
Under the glittering chandeliers of his newly remodeled salon, Sheik Jubair adjusted his fine, white cotton dishdasha , or traditional robe, and lit a cigarette.

As if on cue, the American team sergeant leaned over and handed him an ashtray.

The 63-year-old sheik is the de facto ruler of the Albu Nimr, a wealthy tribe whose influence stretches from Anbar's violent capital of Ramadi up the Euphrates to Haditha. Jubair knows the U.S. military needs his tribe as much as it needs the military. Shunned in the 1990s for plotting against Saddam Hussein, the tribe backed the U.S.-led overthrow of Hussein in 2003. But Jubair now faces threats from Anbar's entrenched Sunni Arab insurgency, which he said put a $5 million bounty on his head.

Week after week, the team has spent long hours cultivating Jubair -- funding his projects, buying his son a PlayStation, even holding his hand during treatment at a U.S. military hospital for an infected toe. In return, Jubair has supplied hundreds of police and army recruits, as well as intelligence targeting insurgents in the region.

During a recent visit at his home in al-Furat, Jubair pressed the team sergeant for a hospital, a gas station, a school, payment for a damaged car and a mosque. "We don't do mosques," the sergeant replied.

One minute the tough and temperamental Jubair was unbuttoning his shirt to show off a wound acquired in the Iran-Iraq war. The next, he was pouting because the American team dared visit his nephew and rival, Sheik Hatem, a.k.a. the "boy king," who officially heads the tribe and lives in the same compound.

"He's young and doesn't know anything," Jubair scolded the team sergeant. "If you give him projects, I will close the city council and come here!"

For the Americans, such engagement is as vital as it can be maddening. "Sometimes I feel like I'm dealing with teenagers," the sergeant said. "They even do the 'mom' and 'dad' thing with me" and the team captain.

It's also work that involves keen judgment and knowing when to cut deals. After the team arrived in January, it captured a former police colonel accused of stealing cars and $60,000 in pay and killing another police officer. But when the colonel was detained and sent to Abu Ghraib prison, sheiks Jubair and Hatem pleaded for his release. "They said you will increase your wasta and all that," the team sergeant said, "so we secured his release, a controlled release."

The compromise helped win the tribe's backing for a local police force. But it also heightened frictions with the U.S. Army battalion, whose convoy transporting the detainee had hit a roadside bomb."...

See The conflict in the Anbar camp, while extreme, is not an isolated phenomenon in Iraq, U.S. officers say. It highlights two clashing approaches to the war: the heavy focus of many regular U.S. military units on sweeping combat operations; and the more fine-grained, patient work Special Forces teams put into building rapport with local leaders, security forces and the people -- work that experts consider vital in a counterinsurgency.

"This war was fought with a conventional mind-set. The conventional units are bogged down in cities doing the same old thing," said the Special Forces team's 44-year-old sergeant, who like all the Green Berets interviewed was not allowed to be quoted by name for security reasons. "It's not about bulldozing Hit, driving through with a tank, with all the kids running away. . . . These insurgencies are defeated by personal relationships."

The real battles, he said, are unfolding "in a sheik's house, squatting in the desert eating with my right hand and smoking Turkish cigarettes and trying to influence tribes to rise up against an insurgency."

Cutting deals
Under the glittering chandeliers of his newly remodeled salon, Sheik Jubair adjusted his fine, white cotton dishdasha , or traditional robe, and lit a cigarette.

As if on cue, the American team sergeant leaned over and handed him an ashtray.

The 63-year-old sheik is the de facto ruler of the Albu Nimr, a wealthy tribe whose influence stretches from Anbar's violent capital of Ramadi up the Euphrates to Haditha. Jubair knows the U.S. military needs his tribe as much as it needs the military. Shunned in the 1990s for plotting against Saddam Hussein, the tribe backed the U.S.-led overthrow of Hussein in 2003. But Jubair now faces threats from Anbar's entrenched Sunni Arab insurgency, which he said put a $5 million bounty on his head.

Week after week, the team has spent long hours cultivating Jubair -- funding his projects, buying his son a PlayStation, even holding his hand during treatment at a U.S. military hospital for an infected toe. In return, Jubair has supplied hundreds of police and army recruits, as well as intelligence targeting insurgents in the region.

During a recent visit at his home in al-Furat, Jubair pressed the team sergeant for a hospital, a gas station, a school, payment for a damaged car and a mosque. "We don't do mosques," the sergeant replied.

One minute the tough and temperamental Jubair was unbuttoning his shirt to show off a wound acquired in the Iran-Iraq war. The next, he was pouting because the American team dared visit his nephew and rival, Sheik Hatem, a.k.a. the "boy king," who officially heads the tribe and lives in the same compound.

"He's young and doesn't know anything," Jubair scolded the team sergeant. "If you give him projects, I will close the city council and come here!"

For the Americans, such engagement is as vital as it can be maddening. "Sometimes I feel like I'm dealing with teenagers," the sergeant said. "They even do the 'mom' and 'dad' thing with me" and the team captain.

It's also work that involves keen judgment and knowing when to cut deals. After the team arrived in January, it captured a former police colonel accused of stealing cars and $60,000 in pay and killing another police officer. But when the colonel was detained and sent to Abu Ghraib prison, sheiks Jubair and Hatem pleaded for his release. "They said you will increase your wasta and all that," the team sergeant said, "so we secured his release, a controlled release."

The compromise helped win the tribe's backing for a local police force. But it also heightened frictions with the U.S. Army battalion, whose convoy transporting the detainee had hit a roadside bomb."

Continued at MSNBC.com

ABCNews The Jerusalem File: Israel may talk to Syria

2006-08-24T17:26:00.000-07:00

"August 22, 2006
Israel May Talk To Syria
Some of Israel’s leaders are starting to talk about making peace with part of the "Axis Of Evil."

Avi Dichter floated the idea on Israeli Army Radio this week. Dichter is no "dove." He is the Minister of Internal Security and was the head of Shin Bet, the lead security service in Israel.

Simply, the deal would mean Israel gives back The Golan it conquered in 1967 and then latter annexed from Syria and in exchange it would get security guarantees on its border.

Syria would also have to stop supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, two organizations the Israeli government has been trying to topple unsuccessfully for years. The belief is that Lebanon would then fall in line and a three-way peace deal would be possible.

Even critics in Israel are not ruling out talks. One Israeli cabinet minister saying, “Syria houses the worst terrorists there are. Any negotiation with it must be gradual."

For the United States it would mean isolating Iran from Syria, splitting apart the ‘Axis of Evil’ and perhaps adding pressure on Iran when it comes to the nuclear debate.

The complications would be in the details of this deal. The Golan is strategically significant to Israel. Much of the land is a plateau between 400 and 1,700 feet high, looking right down into Israel. The Golan is also an essential source of water for the country, providing more than 12 percent of the nation’s water requirements.

One major stumbling block to any deal maybe the present U.S. administration. Bush has made it clear his government does not negotiate with countries harboring terrorists and he may demand Israel do the same. Still, Dichter is hinting that perhaps a country like the US should step forward

“Israel can initiate it. Ultimately, initiatives of this kind are of a third party – and there is an abundance of third parties in the world. If a third party approaches us, we must reply in the positive."

While this has been talked about for years, Israel is now starting the idea of negotiating again, after accomplishing so little on the battlefield in the 33-day conflict with Syrian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Already, Syria is sending messages back through the media. A Syrian Member of Parliament, Dr. Muhammad Habash told an Arabic newspaper that "in principle Syria has nothing to prevent it from holding public and realistic negotiations (with Israel)."

CNN/Money: Blogging for dollars

2006-08-24T10:49:00.000-07:00

"(Business 2.0) -- Michael Arrington is a partying kind of guy. While showing off his home in Atherton, Calif., he boasts about how he crammed 500 people into his one-acre backyard at a bash in February. Then there are the official parties, like the one he threw in mid-August at August Capital, a nearby venture firm. Arrington posted an open invitation on his website at 3 a.m. By sunrise, all 500 spots were taken; the onslaught of traffic crashed his site. "I knew it would be fast," says Arrington, who houses so many out-of-towners in his ranch home that he often isn't sure who's crashing on which mattress on which floor in which room.

Arrington, a 36-year-old entrepreneur behind a long list of unrecognizable startups, has suddenly become one of the rising stars of Silicon Valley. Why? The answer lies in TechCrunch, Arrington's blog about new technologies and companies. In the year since he launched the site, he has amassed such a strong following that he's become a go-to person for VCs and tech execs looking to leak corporate tidbits or announce news. More than 1.5 million readers regularly check out his site. But here's what gives Arrington real distinction: He's pulling in $60,000 in ad revenue every month. That's 10 times what the site was making earlier this year, which was when Arrington, convinced of the potentially monstrous riches ahead, quit his day job as president of a startup to blog full-time.

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With Internet-like speed, blogs have gone from self-indulgent hobbies to flourishing businesses. Real businesses, with real revenue streams from real advertisers--not overhyped next big things with pick-a-number valuations based on selling out someday to some overenthusiastic big-media sugar daddy. Boing Boing, a four-person operation that bills itself as a directory of wonderful things, is on track to gross an estimated $1 million in ad revenue this year. The digital-media news site PaidContent.org, headquartered in the second bedroom of a Santa Monica apartment, is set to post even more than that. And Fark.com, a site packed with sophomoric humor run by a lone guy in Lexington, Ky., is on pace to become a multimillion-dollar property. In short, some of the most popular blogs, long the bane of the mainstream media, are themselves becoming mainstream.

What has changed? For starters, blogs today benefit from what might be termed uneconomies of scale: They are so cheap to create and operate that a lone blogger or a small team can, with the ever-expanding reach of the Internet, amass vast audiences and generate levels of profit on a per-employee basis that traditional media companies can only fantasize about.

At the same time, advertisers--shunning old-line media in favor of the Web--are discovering the unique power of blogs. Blogs offer a personal touch in the mediascape; small sites have become our guides to a content-saturated world. As such, their recommendations are highly valued by readers--which naturally has made advertisers take notice. In recent months, big-name companies like Banana Republic and Coca-Cola (Charts) have for the first time run campaigns on blogs, in the belief that blog communities often consist of concentrated numbers of the passionate and influential people all marketers want to reach. Intel bought its first blog ad in March; now all its ads run on blogs as well as traditional outlets. Says Thom Campbell, head of media strategy for Intel (Charts), "The audience on blogs is the cream of the crop."

But before you quit your day job, consider that this isn't easy money, nor is it guaranteed to last. For one thing, the market is small right now: Web ad agency Organic puts ad spending on blogs at $40 million this year. Bloggers are typically selling only about a third of their available ad space at top rates. (The rest goes at heavily discounted prices.) And as with any business dependent on the mercurial ad market, prone as it is to sudden skids, the threat of crashing and burning always looms.

Still, the blogging-for-dollars phenomenon is only in its infancy, and already blog ad spending is roughly twice what it was last year. With overall Web advertising expected to grow by 50 percent to $23.6 billion in 2010, it's certain that more and more ad dollars will land on blogs. For a growing cadre of bloggers, the opportunities to score fat profits from pumping out posts on whatever their particular passions might be are widening--and one consequence could be a radical reshaping of our notions of how to build a successful media company.

The monetization of blogging can trace its roots to late 2002, when Google (Charts) created a revolutionary system that allowed anyone with a website to run ads. The technology, called AdSense, matched ads with a site's content. Each time a visitor clicked on a linked ad, the site's owner got paid (a model now referred to as cost-per-click advertising). For the first time, anyone could be a real publisher with real advertisers, with no need for the big sales forces that magazines, newspapers, and other traditional media employ.

For do-it-yourselfers, however, the revenue stream created by AdSense in its early days was for the most part simply beer money. At the same time, display ads--the banners, buttons, and skyscrapers that had fallen into disfavor with the bursting of the Internet bubble in 2000--began to make a comeback on major destination sites such as Yahoo (Charts) and MSN. Marketers pay for those kinds of ads based on a formula known as CPM, which stands for cost per 1,000 impressions.

The promise of these two Web advertising models whet the whistles of wannabe publishers, and among the first was Nick Denton. He bet that he could run sites as low-cost one- or two-person operations and offer advertisers ready-made, easily targeted niche audiences. He reasoned that he could eventually one-up automated systems by handselling display ads for his sites at premium CPMs. But to lure advertisers into uncharted blog waters, he initially gave away ad space for free.

Denton launched his company in New York in 2002 with the media gossip site Gawker and the gadget blog Gizmodo. Gawker Media now runs 13 sites, including such edgy titles as Defamer and Wonkette. Denton recently announced that he's "battening down the hatches" and selling two sites, but his core properties are on a tear: Gawker Media sites clocked 66 million pageviews in June, more than double the traffic they saw a year earlier. Denton won't discuss financial details, but industry experts estimate that Gawker Media will bring in as much as $3 million in revenue this year. Gawker Media's average CPM is between $8 and $10; CPM rates on Google AdSense and competing automated systems are estimated at anywhere from 50 cents to a few bucks.

Another pioneer, Jason Calacanis, provided a big shot of momentum to the blogging-for-bucks phenomenon last October when he sold Weblogs Inc., his conglomeration of 85 sites, to AOL for a reported $25 million. "Everyone in the ad industry took notice after that deal," says Mark Kingdon, CEO of Organic.

All the while, big-picture changes have been unfolding in the background, contributing to today's blogging business sweet spot. By constantly improving its algorithms, for instance, Google engineers have made AdSense a far more powerful placer of more-varied and better-targeted ads; AdSense alone is expected to generate sales of $4 billion this year.

At a more fundamental level, the Web has become deeply embedded in our daily lives, for business and pleasure, in ways no advertiser can ignore. Today 71 percent of American households have Web access; Americans ages 13 to 24 now spend more time online than they do in front of the TV.

As for blogs, they've exploded: There are 50 million of them, and two new ones are launched every second, according to blog search engine Technorati. To some experts, all these developments mean but one thing. "This time, Web advertising is for real," concludes Karen Francis, CEO of San Francisco-based ad agency Publicis & Hal Riney. "And marketers are all looking for new opportunities online."

Trying to provide those opportunities has become the mission of a host of would-be blog entrepreneurs. John Battelle, a founding editor of Wired magazine and the creator of the now-defunct Industry Standard (as well as a freelance columnist for Business 2.0), was working on a book about Google when he had an epiphany: Where mainstream publishers were spending a fortune buying subscriber lists and shoving subscription cards into magazines, bloggers were building huge audiences for free. Yet even popular bloggers couldn't make a living full-time; existing networks like Google and BlogAds weren't paying enough.

Unlike Denton, Battelle had no interest in owning sites. He figured he could simply peruse the blogosphere and analyze Web tracking data to find out which bloggers were already generating heavy traffic, and then serve as a middleman between them and advertisers. He launched his startup, called Federated Media Publishing, last fall with seed money from the New York Times Co. (Charts) and eBay (Charts) founder Pierre Omidyar.

Battelle compares FM's model to a record company. He and his team are the band managers; the bloggers are the bands. The key difference is that bloggers own their content, earning 60 cents of every ad dollar. Like a band manager, FM works closely with its acts, yet ultimately it's up to the bloggers to keep pumping out material. "If they stop writing, the ads go away," Battelle says.

He has signed about 75 of the most popular bloggers of various stripes and hopes to land a few hundred in all. His authors range from tech-oriented guys like Arrington and Om Malik, who writes about telecom on GigaOm and just left his full-time gig with Business 2.0, to Heather Armstrong, whose deeply personal Dooce site is bringing in enough money to allow her family to live comfortably. Her enterprise has a staff of two: Armstrong and her husband.

FM's eight-person sales force has been aggressively approaching big marketers, armed with detailed and persuasive demographics. The data has helped FM steadily boost ad rates on its sites. The average CPM doubled in the past six months to roughly $8. The aim is to get rates between $20 and $30, which, Battelle says, would put his blogs on par with sites like CNET and NYTimes.com. But thanks to the uneconomies-of-scale twist, overhead at FM sites like Boing Boing, Battelle's top act, is almost invisible compared with that of any mainline media concern.

Journalist Mark Frauenfelder founded Boing Boing, then a paper-based cyberpunk zine, in 1988 and took it online in 1995. Four years later he accepted a freelance assignment to write what became one of the first stories about blogs--and afterward decided to turn his zine into one. He discovered the power of building traffic by "deep linking" to specific stories or items on other sites. Other bloggers would return the favor, and the community grew. "I was getting a thousand visitors a day, and I thought, 'Oh, that's fun,'" Frauenfelder recalls.

Eventually he discovered that the more posts Boing Boing put up, the more traffic grew; he recruited three friends to keep the posts coming hot and heavy. By 2004 the site had 20,000 visitors a day, rivaling many mainstream magazine sites. But the team was spending about a thousand bucks a month in Web hosting fees. That's when Frauenfelder called Battelle, a former colleague, and began selling ads for the site. Today, Boing Boing's roughly 325,000 daily visitors make it the most lucrative property in Battelle's stable. Though not all of Boing Boing's ad inventory is sold, the site will gross more than $1 million this year, based on CPMs and traffic. "It's turned out to be a good business," Frauenfelder says.

But Battelle believes an eccentric blog called Fark.com, a collection of reader-submitted links to amusing videos, jokes, and curiosities from all over the Web, could become the most profitable site in mainstream blogdom. Already it vies with FM stablemate MetaFilter for the top spot in blog traffic rankings. Fark founder Drew Curtis made up the site's offbeat name as code for the real F-word when posting in chat rooms in the early 1990s. In 1993, while a student in England, Curtis began sending e-mail messages to friends back home with weird items he found in the news. In 1999 he decided to post them on a webpage.

Fark is incredibly cost-efficient: Almost all of its content is generated by its readers, and aside from Curtis it has just two contract employees, both tech guys. Fark devotees post links to news items accompanied by rubrics like "spiffy" and "dumbass," annotate them with blurbs of text, and open them up for comment. Controversial items about politics, religion, or sex ignite all-out flame wars--and, naturally, boost traffic, which overall stands at 40 million pageviews a month. The beautiful part is that virtually none of the content (pictures, videos, etc.) is hosted on Fark, which simply links to the goodies. This means that, despite its huge traffic, Fark doesn't incur the crushing bandwidth fees that eat into profit at sites like video trove YouTube.

Without a dedicated sales force, however, Curtis had trouble drawing mainstream advertisers. That changed after News Corp. (Charts) purchased MySpace and AOL bought Weblogs, moves that only boosted advertiser interest in blogs. "That hit like a hammer," Curtis says. Within days of the Weblogs sale, Curtis inked a deal with his first major advertiser, the National Hockey League. Curtis recently signed on with Battelle's FM and cut a side deal with Dennis Digital, a division of Maxim magazine's publisher. Dennis approached Curtis because Fark's audience demographic matches Maxim's. Curtis won't disclose his current revenue but insists that he can soon log monthly ad sales of $600,000 to $800,000. Battelle expects Fark to become the first indie blog to earn a million dollars a year in profit. "Fark's going to get there," he says.

Arrington also stumbled into the blog business. He was tossing back drinks at a bachelor party in Belgrade in 2005 when another Silicon Valley entrepreneur called with an idea for a startup based on the new technologies that have come to be lumped together as Web 2.0. Arrington began doing research about the emerging tech trend. He couldn't find one comprehensive source, and as he compiled his information, he decided to post it on a blog. "It was purely a hobby," he says.

People began reading. People began posting. Traffic grew. In addition to building many startups, during the 1990s Arrington had been a lawyer at the Valley's prestigious Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where he worked on IPOs and mergers, and his sources from those days began feeding him information. In March, for instance, he published screenshots of Google's new calendar application before its release. He was quickly contacted by a Google attorney, who asked that he reveal the source of the leak. (He refused.)

More and more people started to flock to TechCrunch to read scoops and analysis about new ventures. Arrington's big financial boost came a couple of months ago when he redesigned the site. He created six small boxes and announced that he was selling ad space. They sold out in a few days.

That's no surprise, considering how affluent and techie his readers are. Thirty-six percent say they spend more than 40 hours a week viewing online content, and even better, they check out TechCrunch multiple times each day. More than a third earn salaries topping $100,000, with 12 percent making more than $250,000. It's a coveted group for some advertisers.

"Sixty percent of our business is from startups," says Jeff Kearl, chief marketing officer for software maker Logoworks, which recently bought a TechCrunch sponsorship. "Arrington's blog is the epicenter of the startup community."

Big brands also want in. Apple and Hewlett-Packard just signed on to advertise on TechCrunch. Intel is planning to run ads on the site, complementing ads the chip giant has already placed on sites like Boing Boing and Gizmodo. A major appeal, Intel's Campbell says, is that a blog's unique interactive properties can vastly increase the reach of an ad, as it bounces around the Web and triggers comment on myriad sites.

Intel's current campaign for its Core 2 Duo chips brags about performance measures, something Intel hasn't done in its ads in years. By running these ads on blogs occupied by tech fanatics, Campbell expects that people will test the company's claims and write about them. "We're going out on a limb," he says. "But I'm always looking for integrity where we advertise. And these authors are passionate about their subjects."

Success stories like Arrington's have helped spur a gold rush-style stampede into the blogosphere. One of the most ambitious efforts comes from Sugar Publishing, founded in April by 32-year-old San Francisco software entrepreneur Brian Sugar with $250,000 of his own money.

Sugar Publishing's mainstay property is PopSugar, a fast-growing celebrity gossip site with 12 million monthly pageviews, an audience that took sites like Boing Boing and Fark years to build. Sugar Publishing doesn't expect to earn a dime until the end of next year, but just two months after it was founded, a Boston-based VC offered to pump in $2.5 million, valuing the company at $10 million.

PopSugar and a new generation of blogs, like Egotastic and PerezHilton.com, have built massive followings in just the past few months by devoting themselves to celebrity gossip. "We create editorial for an ADD culture," Sugar says. His ambition is to drive traffic from his gossip blog to 12 ancillary sites he'll launch during the next two years, all of them aimed at women younger than 35. The projections that Sugar shows investors claim that his small blog empire will bring in $15 million in revenue in 2008 and $40 million in 2009.

Far-fetched? Maybe. But consider this: Sugar hasn't even hired a sales staff yet, but Banana Republic already approached Sugar Publishing and bought out its entire ad inventory for a week in July. The campaign, called "Drop Your Pants," offered customers a discount if they donated pants to charity. It was the company's first blog buy.

"People who read blogs are more likely to recommend products," says Chris Nicklo, Banana Republic's vice president for brand management. "There was an amazing viral explosion."

The rapid march into the blogosphere isn't limited to entrepreneurs and advertisers: Investors are moving in too, including some with lofty pedigrees. Alan Patricof, a highly regarded VC who early on bankrolled the likes of Apple (Charts), AOL, and New York magazine, recently invested in ContentNext, the publisher of PaidContent.org and other blogs run by journalist Rafat Ali. Ali's blogs are logging about 5 million pageviews a month, and he's on pace to generate revenue of more than $1 million this year. And VC firm Softbank Capital just invested $4 million in Arianna Huffington's political and news blog, the Huffington Post, a site also backed by $1 million from Patricof's firm.

Despite all the ferment a critical question remains unanswered: Do blog ads work? Sure, readers can click on ads and view an advertiser's website, potentially even making a purchase, but that rarely happens. Intel's Campbell says the industry standard is a click-through rate of less than 1 percent.

But major advertisers aren't just looking for click-throughs; they're looking to get in front of the right audiences. "Blogs are very targeted, so one would project that ROI is very good," says Publicis & Hal Riney's Francis. "But it's still early. What may get ad dollars today may not get them tomorrow."

Any downturn in the economy and ad market will, of course, hurt bloggers. The sheer numbers of blogging-for-dollars artists charging into the game could also muddy the market and put pressure on ad rates. And profitable blogging is hard work; a solo act like Dooce's Armstrong must post constantly to keep her traffic and ad revenue up. "There are days when I panic," she says.

Still, in some ways the lean, do-it-yourself ethos of blog businesses makes them ideally equipped to deal with business cycle blows. It's far easier to weather a downturn when your costs are next to nothing. Plus, many players are diversifying, even within the blogosphere. "I know that I'm riding the Web 2.0 wave," says Arrington, who points out that he turns down frequent VC offers, some in the $5 million range, because he doesn't want to give up editorial control. Now he's preparing for a day when the wave crests.

He just launched a gadget site and staffed it with a former writer for Gizmodo, which is part of Denton's network and is packed with big-name advertisers such as Nokia and Sprint. He has plans for a gaming site and a site devoted exclusively to analyzing heavy-duty enterprise software. Even as he expands, however, he expects to keep his expenses--now about 12 percent of revenue--at no more than 30 percent.

And occasionally there are bonuses. With little effort, Arrington got dozens of sponsors, mostly Web 2.0 startups and VCs, to bankroll the party he held at August Capital. So after a night of revelry, Arrington had pocketed an extra $50,000. Now that's something to blog about.

To send a letter to the editor about this story, click here.

From the September 1, 2006 issue"

Israel puts ground offensive on hold

2006-08-09T22:01:00.000-07:00

"JERUSALEM - Israel has put its massive new ground offensive into southern Lebanon on hold to give the U.N. Security Council more time to come to an agreement on a cease-fire, an Israeli Cabinet minister and senior officials said Thursday.

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Israel's Security Cabinet on Wednesday approved an expanded ground offensive in Lebanon, but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert decided to put the campaign on hold for two or three days to see whether diplomatic efforts will produce results, a senior Israeli government official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Asked by Israel Radio about the plans for such a delay, Cabinet minister Rafi Eitan said: "There are diplomatic considerations. There is still a chance that an international force will arrive in he area. We have no interest in being in south Lebanon. We have an interest in peace on our borders."

The United Nations has been under tremendous pressure to agree quickly on a cease-fire to end the fighting that has caused widespread destruction across southern Lebanon and forced hundreds of thousands of Israelis into bomb shelters. Israeli officials implied they would halt the new offensive if a cease-fire agreement removes Hezbollah from the border.

Diplomatic efforts to reach a quick U.N. resolution have faltered over differences between Washington and Paris on an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. France backed Lebanon's call for Israeli troops to pull out once hostilities end, while the United States supported Israel's insistence on staying until a robust international force is deployed. Lebanon has offered to send troops to patrol the border region.

Despite the delay in the offensive, Israeli troops, backed by tanks and armored vehicles, entered several southern Lebanese towns early Thursday and took up positions, witnesses said.

Hezbollah said that its guerrillas were engaged in "a violent confrontation" with Israeli forces whose tanks tried to advance toward the border town of Khiam, the group's Al-Manar television reported. Israel Army Radio reported that heavy battles were in progress in south Lebanese villages across from Israel's Galilee panhandle, hard hit by rockets.

No further information was available."

Now is the time to send in a multinational peacekeeping force along with the Lebanese army to act as a buffer.

Syria warns Israel

2006-07-16T13:59:00.000-07:00

"DAMASCUS (AFP) -

Syria has warned it would respond directly and by all means necessary to any Israeli attack on its territory, in its first official reaction to Israel's offensive on neighboring Lebanon. "

Syria has joined Iran in warning Israel.

Israel's efforts to route out kidnappings and rocket attacks threatens to escalate into spiraling violence. We do not know where this will end, but it can end badly, with Syria and Iran, supported by militant organizations world wide, and who knows how many supporting nations, and Israel supported by the US and possibly Europe, meaning NATO, being drawn into a general conflagration.

This process began with Palestinian militants kidnapping Cpl Shalit, continuing to fire rockets into Israel, with Hizbollah militants kidnapping Israeli soldiers and now firing rockets into Israel.

What is Israel to do? These militant organizations are provocateurs of the worst kind. One solution would be to run a continued bombing campaign similar to what was done in Yugoslavia...

At the same time, the loss of life, the continuing resentment and hatred will continue for generations.

Now is the time for the G8, and the international community to stop the violence immediately, with an established process to somehow build up a trust building process for all parties.

1. mutual release of prisoners except for prisoners who will be a security threat.
2. negotiations for a border agreeable to all parties.
3. economic development of depressed areas, but no funds for organizations which continue to call for the destruction of Israel.

I am sure that there could be other means of achieving peace in the middle east, besides the continuing state of warfare, death, anxiety and poverty.

CNN:Israel declares a state of emergency;Hizbollah fire more rockets

2006-07-15T23:07:00.000-07:00

"BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) -- After a night of attacks, Israeli warplanes blasted the southern suburbs of Beirut early Sunday in an attempt to destroy Hezbollah strongholds.

Some of the bombs were dropped only 10 minutes apart and were aimed at targets in the center of the capital, CNN Senior International Correspondent Nic Robertson said.

A Hezbollah stronghold in Dahiya, in Beirut's southern suburbs, was also hit, Israel Defense Forces said. The day before, the IDF said soldiers conducted an aerial attack on the group's main headquarters in Beirut.

Israel also struck northern Lebanon near its border with Syria.

A power station south of Beirut was on fire early Sunday morning after an Israeli airstrike, The Associated Press reported. Firefighters in Jiyeh said they didn't have enough water to put out the flames.

At least 93 Lebanese and 13 Israelis had been killed as the region entered its fifth day of violence triggered by the capture of two Israeli soldiers Wednesday. Israel has vowed to free the soldiers.

Targeting radar stations
In response to a Hezbollah attack on an Israeli warship off the coast of Lebanon, the Israeli military launched airstrikes Saturday targeting Lebanon's military radar stations along its coast, the Israel Defense Forces said.

The IDF blamed "cooperation between Hezbollah and the Lebanese military" for the missile attack Friday night, which killed at least one sailor. Three other Israeli sailors are still missing.

The IDF said that it "has no intention" of targeting the Lebanese military, but "will continue to act with determination to eliminate the threat of terror by terror organizations operating from Lebanon at Israel and to return the abducted soldiers."

The IDF initially said the warship was struck by an unmanned aircraft packed with explosives. But Daniel Ayalon, Israel's ambassador to the United States, said Saturday that it was a Chinese-made C-802 missile.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had claimed responsibility for the attack on the Israeli warship and called it "just the beginning." He also threatened "open war" with Israel. (Watch Nasrallah say Hezbollah is ready for war -- 2:14)

Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel. The group holds 23 of the 128 seats in Lebanon's parliament. (What is Hezbollah?)

'War machine'
Lebanon Prime Minister Fouad Siniora on Saturday called Israel's military a "war machine" and said attacks had turned his country into a "disaster zone."

Israel later declared a state of emergency in the northern Galilee region, Israel Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.

The declaration allows the Israeli government to close public institutions such as schools, shopping malls and restaurants in northern Israel, where Hezbollah has been aiming its rockets since the crisis began, Regev said.

Hezbollah again on Saturday launched scores of rockets from Lebanon into Israel.

Siniora called for an immediate U.N.-backed cease-fire and international help to stop Israel's attacks.

A cease-fire, he said, will allow Lebanon to "establish its sovereignty over all its lands" based on the 1949 armistice agreement.

"We are pained as well as angry yet determined and patient," Siniora said, adding that "these are hours for unity, not for division."

He said Israel was "punishing all Lebanese collectively, with their actions lacking any moral or legal legitimacy."

In remarks Saturday, Siniora reiterated that the Lebanese government had no knowledge of Hezbollah's plans.

Israel blames Lebanon
In response, Regev said Lebanon had triggered the crisis by failing to disarm Hezbollah. He further called Israel's offensive "surgical" and Hezbollah's "indiscriminate."

"This whole crisis was initiated by aggression by Lebanon into Israel," Regev said.

If Siniora "had done his job correctly," followed relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions and disarmed Hezbollah, "this crisis would have been averted," Regev added.

Israel is willing to implement a cease-fire in accordance with those resolutions, he said.

Israel intensified its attacks from air, sea and land Saturday on targets such as Beirut and the ports of Tripoli, Amchit and Junieh, according to Lebanese media.

Israeli warplanes hit Hezbollah's main headquarters in Beirut, which was struck Friday as well, according to Lebanese interior ministry officials. No casualties were reported from those strikes, the officials said.

The IDF confirmed the aerial attack, saying, "The state of Israel warned the Lebanese population who are present at the compound or around it, using leaflets and different means of communication, to stay clear from the site for their own safety."

Al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language TV channel, reported that the headquarters of Hezbollah's spiritual leader, Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, was targeted.

Israel also said it had attacked the Beirut headquarters of Hamas, the Palestinian movement that dominates the Palestinian Authority government. (Watch the ties between Hezbollah and Hamas -- 2:25)

Minibus hit
Earlier on Saturday, an Israeli airstrike near Tyre hit a minibus carrying 20 civilians, killing at least 15 of them, Lebanese internal security sources said.

The IDF said it was making "every effort" to avoid civilian casualties, adding: "Responsibility for endangering civilian population rests on the Hezbollah terror organization, which operates and launches missiles at Israel from populated civilian areas."

More than 75 rockets were fired at Israeli towns on Saturday, the IDF said.

Other developments:

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa called the Middle East peace process "dead." Speaking at a news conference after a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo, he said the peace process failed "because certain powers have given Israel every capacity to do whatever it wishes."

On Saturday in St. Petersburg, Russia, U.S. President Bush called on Syria to urge Hezbollah to lay down its arms and placed the blame for the violence on Hezbollah and its backers in Damascus. (Full story)

The U.S. State Department on Saturday is fine-tuning plans to evacuate Americans in Lebanon, estimated to number around 25,000, to nearby Cyprus. (Full story)

The Mideast violence has been blamed for surging oil prices, and Wall Street has been pummeled in the process. (Watch how the Mideast crisis is hitting your wallet -- 2:07)"

What is to stop this from escalating into a war with Syria and Iran?

BBC: Israel has rejected a call for a ceasefire

2006-07-08T23:37:00.000-07:00

"Israel has rejected a call by the head of the Hamas-led Palestinian government for a ceasefire to end several days of fierce fighting in the Gaza Strip.
Ismail Haniya had said the only way out of the current crisis was for all parties to restore calm through a mutual cessation of hostilities.

Officials in the Israeli PM's office said there would be no truce until a captured Israeli soldier was free.

Earlier Israel said its troops had left their positions in northern Gaza.

...
Officials in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said he would not agree to a truce unless Hamas first released Cpl Shalit.

Focus on the Gaza Strip
Hard times for residents
Send us your comments

"We do not hold negotiations with terrorists," an unnamed official told AFP news agency.

"They must first return the kidnapped soldier unharmed and cease their fire.

"We will decide on our next moves according to the steps taken by the Palestinian government."

Mr Haniya said he was still committed to the proposal despite the rejection.

"We presented it out of conviction... and we hope the leaders of the occupation will show reason and logic," he said, quoted by AFP.

His Hamas-led government has also urged Israel to open negotiations over the fate of Cpl Shalit.

The Israeli army says all of the forces that entered northern Gaza late on Wednesday have left the town of Beit Lahiya and are now back in Israel.

The BBC's Wyre Davies in Gaza City says the withdrawal is significant, because the areas has been the scene of heavy fighting.

Our correspondent adds that it is not clear why Israel has decided to leave now, but that it should ease tensions.

This leaves Israeli forces in the southern Gaza strip, as well east of Gaza City. "

"Have mercy on us, O Lord, Son of David!" Matthew 20:30

CNN: 'Fahrenheit 9/11" Marine killed in Iraq

2006-06-28T14:21:00.000-07:00

"DETROIT (AP) -- A U.S. Marine and one-time recruiter who appeared in Michael Moore's acclaimed documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" has died in a roadside bombing in Iraq.

Although Staff Sgt. Raymond J. Plouhar willingly appeared in a segment of the 2004 film, his father, Raymond, said Tuesday that his son did not realize that it was for a movie critical of the war.

The 57-year-old Plouhar said his son took four years off from active duty to serve as a recruiter in Michigan after donating one of his kidneys to his uncle.

During that time, the Marine was filmed as part of "Fahrenheit 9/11," about the Bush administration's actions after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Raymond Plouhar said that all his 30-year-old son ever wanted to do was serve his country.

The younger Plouhar died Monday of wounds suffered while conducting combat operations in Anbar province of Iraq, the Defense Department announced Tuesday.

He signed up for the Marines immediately after graduating from high school, his father said in a telephone interview.

"I'm devastated, sad and proud," Plouhar said. "This just makes me devoted even more to his belief that people need help in Iraq, and he felt that he was helping." "

CNN: Motorcyclist killed in rush hour lightning strike

2006-06-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

"WESTMINSTER, Colorado (AP) -- A motorcyclist died after he was struck by lightning while riding in rush hour traffic between Denver and Boulder, police said.

Witnesses reported seeing a flash of light shortly before the motorcyclist struck the center divider on U.S. 36 Wednesday, police spokesman Tim Read said.

Gary Missi, 46, of Longmont was pronounced dead at the scene.

A coroner's investigation was under way to determine whether the lightning bolt, the collision or something else caused his death, Read said.

The lightning blasted a 4-inch-deep hole in the highway and sent chunks of asphalt hurtling across the highway."

It's probably not a good idea to be out of a car when t-storms and lightning threaten.

ABCNews Silicon Insider: The CIA discovers the Blogosphere

2006-04-27T10:05:00.000-07:00

"By MICHAEL S. MALONE

April 27, 2006 — Don't look now, but the Central Intelligence Agency is reading the nation's diaries …

You may have missed the recent story — these days the mainstream media seems more arbitrary than ever about what news it deems important — but it seems that the CIA has begun data mining the blogosphere in search of new trends, intelligence and early indicators of emerging international problems.

The story, as reported in The Washington Times by Bill Gertz, notes that the CIA's newly created Open Source Center — even the name shows that the Company is getting pretty computer hip — has "recently stepped up data collection and analysis based on bloggers worldwide and is developing new methods to gauge the reliability of the content," according to the Washington Times story.

The story goes on to say that the amount of the resulting "unclassified intelligence" reaching President Bush and other senior policy makers has dramatically increased in recent months. Though the center won't go into detail, it will say that the amount of blog-based reporting has gone up in the president's daily briefing.

As OSC Director Douglas J. Naquin told The Washington Times, "A lot of blogs now have become very big on the Internet, and we're getting a lot of rich information on blogs that are telling us a lot about social perspectives and everything from what the general feeling is to … people putting information on there that doesn't exist anywhere else."

As an example of this unique information, Naquin pointed to the fact the most information on avian flu outbreaks around the world come from open sources. And a Defense Department official told Gertz that the DOD has gained considerable knowledge of China's secret military buildup from Chinese bloggers.

Some of this material is even packaged in the form of "open source intelligence reports" and sold to a number of clients, including local police forces around the United States. And to make sure the material is both complete and reliable, the CIA has brought to bear, as only a government intelligence agency can, powerful computer networks to sift through the Web and gather information in real time. And it is apparently using increasingly sophisticated software to compare multiple sources and history to determine the reliability of its findings.

Bloggers May Find Guilty Pleasure

This is all pretty amazing stuff, and yet one more reminder of the growing primacy of the Web, and now the blogosphere, as the key conduit of news, opinion and culture in the 21st century. It is also amusing: One can only imagine what the president and his people think over their morning coffee as they read the rants and raves of bloggers like Juan Cole (It's an Israeli conspiracy!) and the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler (Put the hippies in Guantanomo!). If they weren't convinced before that this country is ungovernable, these new CIA reports might just convince them.

One can also imagine how this news will go down in the deeper, danker, conspiracy-obsessed corners of the blogosphere. Imagine the secret thrill in knowing that the CIA itself might be reading your rambling essay on the secret cabal of the Bush family and Osama bin Laden to take over the oil industry and rule the world. Ha! You can add a whole new conspiracy to your vision of a secret society of Overlords as the Devil itself, the CIA, tracks every seditious word you write in preparation for the general roundup of clear thinkers when the Dark Night of Fascism descends at last on Amerikkka.

For myself, I'm impressed the CIA has been this astute in its understanding of the power of this new phenomenon — and its increasingly central importance to modern society. That's especially true when you consider that some of our other great institutions — notably some key figures in the traditional media — still disparage bloggers as puffed-up amateurs. When even trailing indicators of social change like the CIA and the White House have come to appreciate the unique power of blogs, who can still deny the power of what über-blogger Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) calls an Army of Davids?

Will the CIA Really 'Get It?'

I'll admit to some bias here. My father, if I've never mentioned it, was a spook for much of his career. He started out in the Army CIC, and then with the creation of the Air Force, joined the Office of Special Investigations. A counterintelligence expert, he had a number of postings in Germany (where I was born), in Morocco and, at the end of his career, in Washington, D.C., where he served as liaison between the OSI, Pentagon and CIA among other agencies.

Truth be told, my father despised the CIA as a bunch of cowboys who would rather charge into a critical intelligence situation with guns blazing than actually try to get their agents out alive and with critical information. More than once, my father told me, his or another intelligence agency would be deep into a carefully constructed and subtle mission when the CIA would get wind of it, show up and ham-fistedly screw everything up. His view of the agency as being as much a liability as an asset to the United States did not markedly change during his years in D.C. working directly with CIA headquarters.

My father died a year before the fall of the Soviet Union, but I know he would have shaken his head in disbelief that, right up until the end, the CIA was still reporting that the Soviet government was still strong and in command. After 40 years chartered to do essentially one thing — track the health of the Soviet Union — and after burning through billions of dollars in service of that goal … the CIA blew it. Nor would my dad be surprised to learn of the news in the last few days of a CIA leaker to the media. Just par for the course, my old man would have said.

So, while I'm cheered that the CIA is for once ahead of the curve — well actually, in the middle, but close enough — in recognizing the importance of the latest great high-tech social phenomenon, I have serious doubts that it will actually do the job right.

In fact, it makes me a little nervous. As someone who spends a lot of time surfing the blogosphere, I know just how weird and wacky it can get out there — and how hard it can be sometimes to separate the truth from the carefully crafted crazy. At least the mainstream media is predictable in its slant and its omissions.

That said, and while I'm impressed by what the CIA is attempting, I must say that I'm still quite skeptical. My distrust of the CIA comes from an entirely different direction than the conspiracy buffs. I don't fear the Company because of its terrifying, hidden power, but because of its vast and influential incompetence.

Given the history of the CIA's judgment and its ability to separate fact from rumor and outright falsehood, I shudder to think what is in those Open Source Reports to the president. And the notion that the agency has developed a computer program to winnow out "reliable" blogs makes me shudder even more: Didn't they have that for reports of Soviet wheat production? And Saddam Hussein's nuclear program?

Still, in all, this new initiative by the CIA is yet one more reminder that, whatever the troglodytes say, we are in the midst of the greatest communications revolution since the rise of newspapers, perhaps even since Gutenberg. The age of blogs has arrived.

Meanwhile, let's pray our elected leaders put down those briefing documents once in a while and actually surf the blogosphere on their own."

Let us also pray the CIA gets it right in guaging what is going on out there because we live in trying times.

BBC: Hamas vows no talks with Israel

2006-02-18T13:49:00.000-08:00

"Newly-elected members of militant group Hamas have taken their seats in the new Palestinian parliament, rejecting calls for negotiations with Israel.
The Hamas members who dominate the new assembly criticised Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas's call for peace talks.

After the swearing-in ceremony, Mr Abbas said Hamas would be forming the next government but urged it to respect the Oslo accords signed with Israel.

He also hit out at unilateral Israeli measures and military strikes.

Hamas have already nominated a senior Gaza Strip leader, Ismail Haniya, as their prime minister.

Click here to see the make-up of the new parliament
Academic Aziz Duaik, another Hamas representative, has already been confirmed as speaker of the parliament - the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).

Hope v despair

The group's Gaza-based members joined the ceremony by video link, as Israel has not allowed them to travel to the West Bank town of Ramallah.

In a wide-ranging speech, Mr Abbas reminded delegates of his commitment to negotiations.

He called for greater funds to develop Palestinian institutions, and insisted that only "one legitimate force" should operate within the Palestinian Authority

Hamas, which refuses to recognise Israel, has waged an armed campaign against Israel and retains an extensive armed wing.

Palestinians must aim for a free society, Mr Abbas said, where hope replaces despair.

He urged Hamas to respect the process of negotiation, but reserved strong words for Israel, insisting that the Palestinians would not accept a state with temporary borders.

"In order to achieve security we must have peace. There is no military solution to this conflict," Mr Abbas.

"The continuation of occupation and settlement... will only increase despair. Let us make peace so we can live in two states side by side."

Hamas doubts

Mr Abbas' comments were swiftly rejected by Hamas spokesman Sami abu-Zuhri.

"Hamas rejects negotiations with the occupation under the current circumstances, while occupation and aggression continues," he said.

"We re-emphasise the commitment to [armed] resistance as a natural right of our people."

Israel refuses to deal with Hamas unless the militant group recognises their state and lays down its arms.

Speaking to the BBC, Aziz Duaik, the newly-chosen PLC speaker, said the issue of recognising Israel was a two-way process.

"Any kind of recognition should go between a state and a state and this is not the case in our situation."

Hamas controls the new parliament 74 members - with just 45 representatives from Mr Abbas' Fatah party, formerly the dominant group.

Israel has postponed until Sunday any decision on whether to impose sanctions on the Palestinian Authority after Hamas' election win. "

All three books of faith for Jews, Muslims and Christians explicitly state that Israel is the land of the Jews.

Hamas, if it is to call itself fundamentalist, must recognize Israel.

The current state of affairs can only make Abraham, the Father of all three faiths, weep.

How long can this go on with continued bloodshed on all sides?

BBC: Palestinians give back US aid

2006-02-17T22:53:00.000-08:00

"The Palestinian Authority has agreed to return $50m (£28.7m) of American aid following a request from Washington.
The US State Department said that it did not want the money going to a Hamas-led government that refused to recognise Israel.

The US has already said that it is reviewing all aid to the Palestinians in light of Hamas' election victory.

As proof that it is serious, it has asked for $50m of aid to the Palestinian Authority to be returned.

The money was to be spent on regenerating the Palestinian economy following Israel's withdrawal from Gaza.

However, most of the $50m is still in the bank and the Palestinian Authority has agreed to return it.

President Bush has already made clear that he will not deal with Hamas, which the US lists as a terrorist group, until it renounces violence and recognises Israel.

However, the State Department says it will continue to work to meet the humanitarian needs of ordinary Palestinians."

BBC: US attacks release of Iraq abuse pictures

2006-02-15T22:30:00.000-08:00

"The US has said images broadcast on Australian TV showing the apparent abuse of Iraqi detainees by US soldiers should not have been released.
A US defence department official said the images could "further inflame and cause unnecessary violence".

The official said action had already been taken against US soldiers guilty of abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail.

Australian TV on Wednesday aired previously unseen images of apparent prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib in 2003.

The images on SBS TV are thought to be from the same source as those that caused an outcry around the world and led to several US troops being jailed.

The new images show "homicide, torture and sexual humiliation", SBS said.

The SBS' Mike Carey told the BBC the images screened by his network on Wednesday mark a "leap in seriousness" from previously released images of abuse at Abu Ghraib.

"We thought we had a responsibility first and foremost once we had obtained these photographs to broadcast them," he said.

'Held accountable'

A US state department legal adviser said the government felt it was better for the photos not to be released.

John Bellinger said this was "not because there was anything to hide" - but rather "because we felt it was an invasion of the privacy of the people in the pictures".

He said the images, which show "conduct that is absolutely disgusting" were likely to "fan the flames around the world and cause more violence".

His view was echoed by Pentagon official Bryan Whitman, who added that several US soldiers had been prosecuted over past abuses.

"There have been more than 600 criminal investigations into allegations of detainee mistreatment, and there have been more than 200 people held accountable for misconduct," he said.

"In Abu Ghraib specifically, there have been more than 25 individuals - officer and enlisted - that have been held accountable for criminal acts and other failures."

Government appeal

A Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, has confirmed the images aired on Wednesday are authentic, the AFP news agency reports.

"There is nothing new here," the official reportedly said, adding that the images "have been previously investigated as part of the Abu Ghraib investigation".

The images are thought to be part of a group of more than 100 photographs and four videos taken at Abu Ghraib and later handed to the US army's Criminal Investigations Division.

In September, a New York judge ruled in favour of a request from the American Civil Liberties Union for the pictures to be released.

The judge rejected the government's arguments that publication could fuel anti-US feelings.

The SBS' Dateline programme, which broadcast the pictures, says the government is appealing against the decision.

'Long-running pain'

The broadcast of the images comes at a time of increased tension between Muslim nations and the West over cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad.

Analysts say the reaction in the Muslim world may depend on how widely the images are shown. In Iraq, the emergence of the images come amid tension caused by the release of a video appearing to show UK troops beating Iraqi civilians.

An Iraqi teacher, Hanan Adeeb, told the Reuters news agency that the new pictures "reignited the long-running pain that started with the occupation of Iraq".

One of the videos broadcast on the Dateline programme appears to show prisoners being forced to masturbate for the camera.

Other video footage appears to show a prisoner hitting his head against a wall.

The channel said he was a mentally disturbed patient who became a plaything of guards who practised ways of restraining him.

Some photos are said to show corpses. There are also images of prisoners with body and head wounds.

Some of the pictures have now been re-broadcast on US networks and on Arab satellite channels al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera."

Only an idiot will fail to see that projecting these images will further inflame Muslims against the West, and in particular, the United States.

You have to question the motives of Australian tv in disseminating them.

NYTimes:France backs Russia on talks with Hamas

2006-02-11T10:19:00.000-08:00

"By JOEL BRINKLEY
Published: February 11, 2006
WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 — France on Friday endorsed Russia's decision to hold talks on the Middle East conflict with Hamas, the radical Islamist Palestinian group, saying the discussion "can contribute to advancing our positions."

Other European countries distanced themselves from the French statement, which appeared to be in defiance of the American and European view that Hamas is a terrorist organization and therefore should not be officially recognized. Israel condemned it. But the United States took a more cautious approach.

"Our position is not to tell the whole world that they can't talk to Hamas," said a senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "That would be hard to enforce. The issue is less who's talking than what they are saying."

On Thursday, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said he was considering inviting Hamas, the winner of the Palestinian parliamentary elections on Jan. 25, to Moscow for talks, and on Friday the Kremlin confirmed that it would do so. Mr. Putin's remarks took the Bush administration and European leaders by surprise.

Israel reacted to the Russian decision with fury on Friday. Transportation Minister Meir Sheetrit called the Putin invitation "a real knife in the back."

But in Washington, a State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, on Friday and was reassured to hear that the Russians would deliver a "clear, strong message" to Hamas.

The United States considers Hamas a terrorist group, and American officials are forbidden to talk to the organization. The European Union's policy on talks is not as clear, several officials and diplomats said in interviews. But none said their countries would talk with Hamas.

Foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany is to go to Israel and the Palestinian territories on Sunday, but a German official insisted, "He is definitely not going to talk to Hamas."

A French diplomat said France "won't have contacts with Hamas," despite its statement of support for the Russian talks.

Speaking to reporters in Paris on Friday, Denis Simonneau, a French Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Russia had not informed European leaders of its intent to talk with Hamas. Still, he added, "we share with Russia the goal to bring Hamas to the positions which allow us to reach the goal of two states living in peace and security."

"As long as we remain within the framework of the goals and principles that we have set for ourselves, we consider that this initiative can contribute to advancing our positions" — specifically that Hamas disarm, renounce violence, recognize Israel and respect previous agreements with Israel.

Sabbath had begun in Israel by the time the French position became known in Jerusalem on Friday. But Daniel Ayalon, the Israeli ambassador to Washington, said in an interview, "I wish they would not have said anything about having a dialogue with terrorists."

Israeli officials in Jerusalem were less restrained when speaking on Friday about the Russian decision.

Housing Minister Zeev Boim said, "Putin is dancing with wolves."

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, returning from New York on Friday, said, "Every sign of weakness and of recognition will be interpreted by Hamas as legitimizing terror."

Egyptian Diplomat Is Released

GAZA, Saturday, Feb. 11 (Reuters) — An Egyptian military attaché kidnapped Thursday by gunmen in Gaza was released unharmed on Saturday, an Egyptian official in Gaza said.

A previously unknown militant group, calling itself the Free Men Brigades, had claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of the diplomat, Hussam al-Musli, demanding the release of all Palestinians held in Egyptian prisons.

The Egyptian official who had announced Mr. Musli's release would not discuss the circumstances.

Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Jerusalem for this article, and Ariane Bernard from Paris.
"

Yahoo! News/AP: The Army plans to send body armor plates to Iraq

2006-01-11T22:34:00.000-08:00

"WASHINGTON - The Army plans to send thousands of ceramic body armor plates to Iraq this year to better protect soldiers while the Marine Corps already is delivering such gear, military officers said Wednesday.

In a private appearance before members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the officers defended the body armor available to U.S. troops. A Pentagon study done last summer but only disclosed recently found that improved armor may have prevented or minimized torso wounds that proved fatal to Marines in Iraq.

The committee chairman, Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), said he was satisfied the military was ensuring that U.S. troops had adequate body armor. "Everything that can be done, is being done," said Warner, R-Va.

But some Democrats urged more congressional oversight on body-armor issues. "Our soldiers and their families deserve nothing less," Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass., said in a statement.

Sen. Christopher Dodd (news, bio, voting record), D-Conn., said he planned to offer legislation to force the Pentagon to give troops serving in combat zones "the most complete personal body armor protection." The legislation also would create a $1,100 allowance to each service member to buy body armor from properly certified military suppliers.

After the briefing, Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson said the Army decided to send soldiers side protective plates after troops driving military vehicles made the suggestion over the past year.

He said the Army has finished determining the specifications for the plates and hopes to begin production soon that 230,000 sets can be provided this year.

Sorenson said the protective vest that soldiers now wear has been improved seven times. "It already has some side protections" that were added a year ago, he said. The vest also contains ceramic plates covering the chest and back.

Army spokesman Paul Boyce said soldiers in Iraq will get 3 1/2 pound ceramic side plates as well as the Velcro-attached pouches into which the plates will fit on the vest.

The Marine Corps said that since June it has shipped to Iraq 9,000 sets of side plates and that a total of 28,000 will be in the combat zone by April.

"We're fielding the best body armor and equipment available, we think, in the world today, and as we have the opportunity to upgrade the equipment, we do that," Marine Maj. Gen. William Catto said.

The unreleased study that prompted the briefing was done last summer by the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner. It looked at 93 fatal wounds from the start of the war in March 2003 through June 2005. The study found that of 39 fatal torso wounds in which the bullet or shrapnel entered the Marine's body outside of the ceramic armor plate that protects the chest and back, 31 were close to the plate's edge.

"Either a larger plate or superior protection around the plate would have had the potential to alter the final outcome," the report concluded."

Reuters: NSA datamining wider than acknowledged

2005-12-26T10:03:00.000-08:00

"NEW YORK (Reuters) - The volume of information gathered from telephone and Internet communications by the National Security Agency without court-approved warrants was much larger than the White House has acknowledged, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

Citing current and former government officials, the Times said the information was collected by tapping directly into some of the U.S. telecommunication system's main arteries. The officials said the NSA won the cooperation of telecommunications companies to obtain access to both domestic and international communications without first gaining warrants.

A former telecommunications technology manager told the Times that industry leaders have been storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal government to aid in tracking possible terrorists since the September 11 attacks.

Government and industry officials with knowledge of the program told the newspaper the NSA sought to analyze communications patterns to gather clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, as well as the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages.

Calls to and from Afghanistan were of particular interest to the NSA, the Times said. This so-called "pattern analysis" on calls within the United States would often otherwise require a warrant if the government wanted to trace who calls whom.

U.S. President George W. Bush and his aides have said his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to monitoring international phone and e-mail communications linked to people with connections to al-Qaeda. What has not been acknowledged, according to the Times, is that NSA technicians combed large amounts of phone and Internet traffic seeking patterns pointing to terrorism suspects.

Some officials described the program as a large data mining operation, the Times said, and described it as much larger than the White House has acknowledged.

Several officials said senior government officials went to the nation's big telecommunications companies to get access to switches that act as gateways between U.S. and international communications.

Many calls going from one foreign country to another are routed through U.S. switches and a communications expert who once worked at the NSA said in recent years government officials have been encouraging the telecommunications industry to bring more international traffic through U.S.-based switches.

The officials who spoke to the newspaper requested anonymity because the program's details remain classified. Bush administration officials declined to comment on the operation's technical details, the Times said."

The NSA must do what is necessary to catch terrorists in our midst. Unfortunately each and every one of us has paid and will continue to pay the price to fight the war on terror: we must give up a little of our privacy to insure that terrorists do not succeed.

On the one hand, if you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide. On the other hand, it does feel a little uncomfortable. But what about the thousands of people who are currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan? What about the thousands of US Muslims who have to endure surveillance because jihadists have hijacked their religion. We are all suffering, courtesy of Osama bin Laden and Al Zarqawi.

The assault on our privacy is a direct result of the insanity of jihadism.

Since 9/11 it will never be the same as it was when we were blissfully ignorant of what was going on in the world.

We must know where our enemies are, and what they are up to.

ABCNews: Scientists manipulate bacteria to take pictures of themselves

2005-11-23T15:23:00.000-08:00

"By PAUL ELIAS AP Biotechnology Writer
The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO Nov 23, 2005 — The notorious E. coli bug made its film debut Wednesday. That's when researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and the University of Texas announced in the journal Nature that they had created photographs of themselves by programming the bacteria best known for outbreaks of food poisoning to make pictures in much the same way Kodak film produces images.

It's the latest advance in "synthetic biology," a disputed research movement launched largely by engineers and chemists bent on genetically manipulating microscopic bugs into acting like tiny machines, creating new, powerful and inexpensive ways to make drugs, plastics and even alternatives to fossil fuel.

The field seeks to go beyond traditional genetic engineering feats where a single gene is spliced into bacteria and other cells to manufacture drugs. Synthetic biologists are trying to create complex systems that function as logically and reliably as computers.

Mainstream biologists, however, scoff that biology life itself is too unpredictable and prone to genetic mutation to understand, let alone tame and turn into miniature factories.

Bioethicists, meanwhile, fret that synthetic biologists are attempting to create new living creatures and are inventing technology that can readily be used by terrorists.

Still, a growing number of engineers are jumping into the nascent field, whose chief goals include breaking down microbes and other living things into smaller components and reassembling those parts into useful machines.

"There is kind of a hacker culture behind all of this," said Chris Voigt, a University of California, San Francisco researcher who, at 29, was the senior author on the bacteria-as-film paper in Nature.

Voigt and colleagues took from algae light-sensitive genes that emit black compounds and spliced them into a batch of E. coli bacteria. The organisms were then spread on a petri dish that resembles a cookie sheet and placed in an incubator. A high-powered projector cast photographic images of the researchers through a hole on top of the incubator, exposing some of the bacteria to light.

The result: Ghostly images like traditional black-and-white photographs of the researchers responsible for the invention, at a resolution Voigt said was about 100 megapixels, or 10 times sharper than high-end printers.

The work, though, isn't intended for commercial markets.

"They aren't going to put Kodak out of business any time soon," said Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Drew Endy, a leading synthetic biologist.

Instead, the creation will be used as a sensor to start and stop more complex genetic engineering experiments. The idea is to create a genetically engineered cell that lays dormant until a laser is shined on it, prompting it into action.

Such an accomplishment would add to the growing success of a field that is making strides around the world, in such projects as:

Scientists in Israel made the world's smallest computer by engineering DNA to carry out mathematical functions.

J. Craig Venter, the entrepreneurial scientist who mapped the human genome and launched the Rockville, Md.-based research institute named after himself, is attempting to create novel organisms that can produce alternative fuels.

With a $42.6 million grant that originated at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Berkeley researchers are engineering the E. coli bug with genes from the wormwood plant and yeast to create a new malaria drug.

Even as they wrestle with scientific hurdles like controlling genetic mutations, thorny ethical issues are cropping up.

It's cheap and easy to buy individual genes online. They cost about $1 each, down from the $18 apiece charged just a few years ago. Researchers last year created a synthetic polio virus by simply stitching together these mail-order genes.

National security experts and even synthetic biologists themselves are concerned that rogue scientists could create new biological weapons like deadly viruses that lack natural foes. They also worry about innocent mistakes: organisms that could potentially create havoc if allowed to reproduce outside the lab.

Researchers are casting about for ways to self-police the field before it really takes off. Leaders in the field have organized a second national conference to grapple with these issues this coming May and the Arthur P. Sloan Foundation in June handed out a $570,000 grant to study the social implications of the new field.

"This is powerful work and we live in an age that many tools and technologies can be turned into weaponry," said Laurie Zoloth, a bioethicist at Northwestern University. "You always have the problem of dual-use in every new technology. Steel can be used to make sewing needles or spears." "

Self police before someone unethical uses it to hurt people.

Despite no withdrawal plans anytime soon, withdrawal plans are being submitted

2005-11-22T23:16:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post reports:

"3 Brigades May Be Cut in Iraq Early in 2006
Some U.S. Troops Would Stay 'On Call' in Kuwait

By Bradley Graham and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 23, 2005; Page A01

Barring any major surprises in Iraq, the Pentagon tentatively plans to reduce the number of U.S. forces there early next year by as many as three combat brigades, from 18 now, but to keep at least one brigade "on call" in Kuwait in case more troops are needed quickly, several senior military officers said.

Pentagon authorities also have set a series of "decision points" during 2006 to consider further force cuts that, under a "moderately optimistic" scenario, would drop the total number of troops from more than 150,000 now to fewer than 100,000, including 10 combat brigades, by the end of the year, the officers said.

Despite an intensified congressional debate about a withdrawal timetable after last week's call by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) for a quick pullout, administration officials say that military and political factors heavily constrain how fast U.S. forces should leave. They cite a continuing need to assist Iraq's fledgling security forces, ensure establishment of a permanent government, suppress the insurgency and reduce the potential for civil war.

U.S. military commanders, too, continue to favor a gradual, phased reduction, saying that too rapid a departure would sacrifice strategic gains made over the past 30 months and provide a propaganda windfall to insurgents.

Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, the senior tactical commander in Iraq, indicated to reporters at the Pentagon yesterday that his staff had looked at shrinking U.S. force levels more quickly. But he made his opposition to such a move clear.

"A precipitous pullout, I believe, would be destabilizing," Vines said from Baghdad.

Another senior general likened an accelerated withdrawal to "taking the training wheels off of a bike too early," warning that a sudden removal of all U.S. troops would risk the collapse of Iraq's fledgling security forces. He and several other officers privy to the planning for force reductions said the process has not been affected by the mounting political pressure in the United States and among some Iraqi leaders for U.S. troops to leave.

The current number of U.S. forces in Iraq represents an increase of more than 15,000 troops over a base level this year of about 138,000, including 17 combat brigades. The equivalent of another brigade's worth of combat power was added this fall to bolster security for the Oct. 15 constitutional referendum and the coming Dec. 15 vote on a new national government.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld spoke over the weekend of plans to bring the force level back down to 138,000 after the elections, effectively removing the extra brigade equivalent added for the election period.

In addition, officers said, two combat brigades that had been slated to move into Iraq to replace units coming out are now expected to be held back. One of those units -- a brigade of the 1st Armored Division based in Germany -- will probably be positioned in Kuwait. The other unit -- a brigade of the 1st Infantry Division -- will probably remain at its home base of Fort Riley, Kan., the officers said.

The plan to keep at least one brigade in Kuwait represents what one senior officer called a "hybrid option." It is intended to hedge against events in Iraq deteriorating once U.S. force levels begin to drop, the officer said, adding that the Pentagon probably will place troops on alert elsewhere as well.

"These would be middle measures that would allow for a mitigation of the risks of reducing forces in Iraq and make the decisions more palatable," the officer said.

Murtha, in his call for withdrawal last week, also suggested retaining a quick-reaction force in the region as well as Marines within a short sailing time away. Similarly, in an article published by the Center for American Progress last month, Lawrence J. Korb and Brian Katulis, two defense specialists, outlined a plan for redeploying some U.S. forces from Iraq to Kuwait and offshore in the Persian Gulf.

One general involved in the planning said there is some concern about avoiding a perception that the United States, by shifting forces to Kuwait that were intended for Iraq, is beginning a new military buildup in the region.

We prefer to describe it as shifting troops forward to the region, not building up a force on the border with Iraq," the general said.

All the officers who spoke about the troop plans stressed that final decisions will come only after the Dec. 15 vote. But they described the moves as likely, assuming no major turn for the worse in Iraq. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to discuss the plans. They also were unable to provide an exact figure for how many troops would remain in Iraq after the initial reductions take effect next year.

Military officers and defense officials have frequently described the challenge of deciding how many forces to keep in Iraq as a balancing act between trying to provide security and avoiding the appearance of an occupation force that may fuel insurgent violence and engender Iraqi dependence on U.S. assistance.

"The tension that the commanders feel between heavy presence and lower footprint is something they're measuring all the time," Lawrence T. Di Rita, the Pentagon's primary spokesman, said yesterday.

To help gauge the particular impact that growth of Iraq's security forces might have on the pace of a U.S. drawdown, military planners in Baghdad have devised a simple formula -- what one general called a "rough rule of thumb."

The formula estimates that for every three Iraqi battalions and one Iraqi brigade headquarters achieving a readiness rating of level two, a U.S. battalion can be dropped. A level two rating, on a scale of one to four, indicates that a unit is able to take the lead in operations but still requires some U.S. military support.

The withdrawal formula is a planning tool, several officers stressed, not a definitive predictor of how many U.S. forces are likely to leave, or when.

The Iraqi military has experienced rapid growth in combat units this year, but it continues to suffer from much slower development of transportation, engineering and other critical support elements. That will require U.S. forces to provide backup for months, U.S. officers said.

There are also concerns about Iraq's new police force and the presence of militias. Last week, U.S. troops discovered a secret Interior Ministry facility holding more than 170 detainees, many of whom said they had been treated badly. It had been run by members of the Badr Brigade, a Shiite militia loyal to Iraq's largest political faction.

"What it illustrates is that we have failed to form a unified police force," said a U.S. official involved in Iraq policy. "There are now militias all over Iraq that operate freely and as an arm of political coercion."

Iraq's political timetable also will require a substantial U.S. presence next year, officials say. After the Dec. 15 election, Iraqis will need time to form a new government -- that took more than three months after January's vote. The new parliament is then to begin a four-month process of amending the constitution approved in October. Iraqis will then vote in another constitutional referendum.

"The reconciliation process will span a long period of time," said a White House official. "They have significant political benchmarks for the next six months or longer, and we anticipate they'll want us to play an important role in facilitation." "

Reuters reports:

"
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States may not need the number of troops it has in Iraq "all that much longer," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said amid reports the Pentagon may pull back three combat brigades.

With political pressure building on U.S. President George W. Bush to shift course in Iraq, U.S. officials are trying to reassure Americans that sufficient progress is being made in training Iraqi forces to possibly permit some U.S. troops to leave.

"I suspect that American forces are not going to be needed in the numbers that they're there for all that much longer, because Iraqis are continuing to make progress in function, not just in numbers, but in their capabilities to do certain functions," Rice told CNN on Tuesday.

She said "the number of coalition forces is clearly going to come down because Iraqis are making it possible now to do those functions themselves."

Rice's comments come after a bitter debate on Capitol Hill about Bush's Iraq policy, including a demand by one of the most hawkish members of the U.S. Congress, Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, that U.S. forces withdraw immediately.

The Washington Post said on Wednesday that barring any major surprises in Iraq, the Pentagon tentatively plans to reduce the number of U.S. forces there early next year by as many as three combat brigades, from 18 now, but to keep at least one brigade "on call" in Kuwait in case more troops are needed quickly.

Quoting several senior military officers, the Post said Pentagon authorities also have set a series of "decision points" during 2006 to consider further force cuts that, under a "moderately optimistic" scenario, would drop the total number of troops to fewer than 100,000 from more than 150,000 now, including 10 combat brigades, by the end of the year.

A U.S. Army brigade has between 3,000 and 5,000 soldiers.

Bush has consistently said that U.S. forces would stand down when Iraqi forces stand up. He hinted at the possibility of a troop drawdown on Sunday in Beijing.

"As the Iraqi security forces gain strength and experience we can lessen our troop presence in the country without losing our capability to effectively defeat the terrorists," Bush told reporters.

Bush is under pressure to change course in Iraq after the deaths of more than 2,000 Americans there and an unending train of suicide bombings

But White House officials said he was not shifting his strategy, that any troop reductions would be based on conditions on the ground and the ability of Iraqi forces to defend themselves.

"A precipitous pullout, I believe, would be destabilizing," Lt. Gen. John Vines, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, told Pentagon reporters in a teleconference on Tuesday. He refused to set any timetable.

Vines said any recommendation from U.S. commanders in Iraq to begin withdrawing forces would be made based on the security situation and not on political considerations."

Ok. Totally confused?

We'll see what happens.

CNN: Rumsfeld given Iraq withdrawal plan

2005-11-18T21:26:00.000-08:00

"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The top U.S. commander in Iraq has submitted a plan to the Pentagon for withdrawing troops in Iraq, according to a senior defense official.

Gen. George Casey submitted the plan to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. It includes numerous options and recommends that brigades -- usually made up of about 2,000 soldiers each -- begin pulling out of Iraq early next year.

The proposal comes as tension grows in both Washington and Baghdad following a call by a senior House Democrat to bring U.S. troops home and the deaths of scores of people by suicide bombers in two Iraqi cities.

House Republicans were looking for a showdown Friday after Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat and well-respected Vietnam veteran, presented a resolution that would force the president to withdraw the nearly 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq "at the earliest predictable date." (Watch Murtha urge legislators to sign off on pulling out troops -- 1:37)

Murtha on Thursday called the administration's management of the conflict "a flawed policy wrapped in illusion" that is "uniting the enemy against us."

"It's time to bring the troops home," he said.

Republicans were looking to lock horns with Democrats after Murtha's remarks.

Rather than distancing themselves from Friday's resolution, House majority leader Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, welcomed a debate and vote, forcing Democrats to stand alongside Murtha or go on record against the withdrawal. (Read about the House showdown)

Meanwhile, at least 90 people were killed in two suicide bombings in Iraq, according to hospital officials. The U.S. military put the casualties at 150, without giving a breakdown. (Full story)

The deadliest of the attacks took place in Khanaqin, a Shiite-Kurdish town about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Baquba. Two suicide bombers detonated bombs near or inside Shiite Muslim mosques, destroying both of the structures, Iraqi and U.S. authorities said.

Scores of people were killed.

The attacks came during midday prayer services, when the mosques were full of worshippers, many of them children, the Khanaqin mayor said.

Also Friday, two suicide car bombings in Baghdad killed at least six people near a hotel, police said. (Watch security camera video of suicide car bomb -- :30)

The hotel is near the Iraqi Interior Ministry compound, where about 170 detainees were found last weekend, some with signs of torture, according to Iraqi officials. There were no reports of damage to the compound, and the U.S. military said the hotel was the target of the attack.

Rumsfeld has yet to sign Casey's withdrawal plan but, the senior defense official said, implementation of the plan, if approved, would start after the December 15 Iraqi elections so as not to discourage voters from going to the polls.

The plan, which would withdraw a limited amount of troops during 2006, requires that a host of milestones be reached before troops are withdrawn.

Top Pentagon officials have repeatedly discussed some of those milestones: Iraqi troops must demonstrate that they can handle security without U.S. help; the country's political process must be strong; and reconstruction and economic conditions must show signs of stability.

CNN's Dana Bash, Arwa Damon, Enes Dulami and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.
"

ABCNews:The House rejects immediate withdrawal from Iraq

2005-11-18T21:24:00.000-08:00

"By LIZ SIDOTI Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON Nov 18, 2005 — The House on Friday overwhelmingly rejected calls for an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq, a vote engineered by the Republicans that was intended to fail. Democrats derided the vote as a political stunt.

"Our troops have become the enemy. We need to change direction in Iraq," said Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a Democratic hawk whose call a day earlier for pulling out troops sparked a nasty, personal debate over the war.

The House voted 403-3 to reject a nonbinding resolution calling for an immediate troop withdrawal.

"We want to make sure that we support our troops that are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. We will not retreat," Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said as the GOP leadership pushed the issue to a vote over the protest of Democrats.

It was the second time in less than a week that President Bush's Iraq policy stirred heated debate in Congress. On Tuesday, the Senate defeated a Democratic push for Bush to lay out a timetable for withdrawal.

Murtha, a 73-year-old Marine veteran decorated for combat service in Vietnam, issued his call for a troop withdrawal at a news conference on Thursday. In little more than 24 hours, Hastert and Republicans decided to put the question to the House.

Democrats said it was a political stunt and quickly decided to vote against it in an attempt to drain it of significance.

"A disgrace," declared House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "The rankest of politics and the absence of any sense of shame," added Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat.

Republicans hoped to place Democrats in an unappealing position either supporting a withdrawal that critics said would be precipitous or opposing it and angering voters who want an end to the conflict. They also hoped the vote could restore GOP momentum on an issue the war that has seen plummeting public support in recent weeks.

Democrats claimed Republicans were changing the meaning of Murtha's withdrawal proposal. He has said a smooth withdrawal would take six months...."

CNN: jobseeker's journal. "Lessons my 6yr old taught me"

2005-11-16T13:11:00.000-08:00

"From CareerBuilder.com

Wednesday, November 16, 2005; Posted: 8:13 a.m. EST (13:13 GMT)

Editor's Note: CNN.com has a business partnership with CareerBuilder.com, which serves as the exclusive provider of job listings and services to CNN.com.
The following is the second in a series of journal entries from a member of the CareerBuilder.com community about losing a job and searching for a new one. At his request, his real name has been withheld so that he can relay his experiences with his former company and potential employers with impunity.

"Joe" (his nom de blog) is 45 years old and was let go from a management position at a major consumer products company. He relocated with his family to take the job a little more than a year ago. He has agreed to write an online diary about his experience.

I read once that most companies fire people on Tuesday mornings. That way the exiled workers have time to pull themselves together before going home to their families or, even worse, their empty apartment. It also gives them three days to begin their job search rather than sit and stew over a weekend.

I spent my Tuesday afternoon at the library pulling together a list of friends and contacts whom I could call to discuss my future plans. That evening I took my son, Jacob, to his indoor soccer league, which was finishing up its season.

Being temperamentally unsuited to coach 6-year-olds at anything, I sat in the stands and watched. Turnout was low, and they had to mix up teams. The volunteer coach designated two captains and had them choose sides.

I watched in agony as my son was one of the last picked. I felt an abject failure, not only as a professional but also as a role model for my child.

Even though there were barely enough kids to play, Jacob began the game on the sidelines. "Rejected like his father," I thought.

By the third quarter, I began to feel immense anger. "If they think he stinks so badly, let's leave," I fumed.

I began to put on my coat and storm down the bleachers when suddenly Jacob was put in as goalie.

A huge grin spread over his face as he skipped out onto the court. He was in the game.

I watched nervously as he danced about in the goal cheering as his team scored and watching tensely as the ball approached his goal. The other team's "captain" kicked the ball toward the goal, and Jacob jumped out and retrieved it. His teammates and their parents cheered.

Jacob began to hop up and down, pumping his spindly arms in the air. He was so elated he didn't see the next shot coming. It landed in the net for a goal.

My moment of euphoria ended, and thankfully, soon after, so did the game. The teams did their congratulatory hand slaps. As we rode home, I asked him if he had a good time. "Oh yes, it was awesome," he chirped.

That's when I realized I'd found my job-hunt mentor.

Jacob certainly isn't a star, but he always plays to please himself and have fun. No matter how many goals he lets by, no matter how many shots he misses, no matter how many hyper-competitive parents grumble at the coach to take Jacob out of the game, he comes back for more -- with an unwavering conviction that eventually he'll make it.

And it's not just on the soccer field. Who but an intractable optimist would keep asking to watch "Finding Nemo" after being refused 1,000 times? If he could keep getting up and starting over, so could I.

"How was your day, Dad?" he asked. "Not, so great," I answered. "But things will get better soon."

Eventually I'd tell him what had happened. But I wasn't going to spoil our moment. At least I knew I wouldn't be a loser in his eyes. (At least not for now -- it will be a couple of more years before he's a teenager.)"

Yup. How many millions of Americans are in this situation?

MSNBC: The Pentagon issues manual on the handling of detainees

2005-11-08T22:01:00.000-08:00

"WASHINGTON - Thrown on the defensive after the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, the Pentagon has issued a broad new directive mandating that detainees be treated humanely and has banned the use of dogs to intimidate or harass suspects.

The directive pulls together for the first time all the Defense Department’s existing policies and memos covering the interrogation of detainees captured in the war against terrorism. It comes as Congress is considering a ban on inhumane treatment of U.S. prisoners and as Democrats in the House and Senate push for the creation of a commission to investigate the treatment of foreign prisoners.

On Tuesday, the Senate voted 55-43, largely along party lines, against legislation that would create a commission modeled after the one that investigated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Democrats contend that investigations into abuse allegations by the Pentagon have been incomplete.

“There are major gaps in the investigations held so far,” said Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who sponsored the legislation. “We cannot sweep these gaps under the rug.”

But Republicans called the commission unnecessary and they all voted against the measure. Ben Nelson of Nebraska was the only Democrat who sided with them.

Addressing unacceptable techniques Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said the issues have been addressed in congressional hearings and Pentagon investigations. He highlighted the new Pentagon directive as evidence that defense officials were addressing the problems.

While the policy maps out broad requirements for humane treatment and for reporting violations, it is just the first step in the development of a new Army manual that would detail more precisely which interrogation techniques are acceptable and which are not.

The directive, which was first reported Tuesday by The New York Times, says “acts of physical or mental torture are prohibited” and directs that any violations be reported, investigated and punished when appropriate.

But the only specific prohibition in the directive says that dogs used by any government agency “shall not be used as part of an interrogation approach or to harass, intimidate threaten or coerce a detainee for interrogation purposes.”

Investigations into detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib facility in Iraq found that unmuzzled dogs were used to intimidate inmates.

The new policy, a product of about 11 months work, governs the interrogation of any detainee under Defense Department control. It leaves open the possibility that prisoners in department facilities, such as Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib, could at times be considered under the control of another agency — such as the Central Intelligence Agency — and therefore would not be subject to the
directive’s policies.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the new directive is a recognition that interrogations play a prominent and crucial role in the war on terror.

“Intelligence is critical to this conflict, probably more so than in any other conflict this nation has been engaged in,” said Whitman. “We know that we learn from our enemies that we have captured information that thwarts attacks and saves lives.”

Degrading, inhuman treatment to be banned The Pentagon also expects to release another policy soon on the broader treatment of detainees, including requirements for holding, transferring and releasing them. That would address an aspect of Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain’s proposed amendment, which would ban degrading and inhuman treatment of prisoners.

The Army manual is expected to be released soon, however, it is likely to speak in somewhat general terms. The most specific guidelines on interrogation techniques — for example, how long detainees can be forced to sit or stand in certain positions or exactly how hot or cold their holding areas can be — will be included in a classified document.

Administration officials have balked at proposals that expressly outline accepted and prohibited methods of interrogation, saying they don’t want America’s enemies to know the exact limits. They argue that such knowledge would allow enemy combatants to train to endure those specific techniques.

In a related matter, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is considering proposing legislation that would eliminate habeas corpus rights for detainees captured in the war on terrorism.

Detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, jail have turned to U.S. courts to file habeas corpus lawsuits challenging their detentions. Graham’s proposal, which he may try to attach to a defense bill the Senate is considering, would bar them from doing so.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other rights groups are urging senators to oppose the proposal."

Reuters: US using white phosphorus on Falluja

2005-11-08T21:23:00.000-08:00

"By Phil Stewart
ROME (Reuters) - U.S. forces in Iraq have used incendiary white phosphorus against civilians and a firebomb similar to napalm against military targets, Italian state-run broadcaster RAI reported on Tuesday.

A RAI documentary showed images of bodies recovered after a November 2004 offensive by U.S. troops on the town of Falluja, which it said proved the use of white phosphorus against men, women and children who were burned to the bone.

"I do know that white phosphorus was used," said Jeff Englehart in the RAI documentary, which identified him as a former soldier in the U.S. 1st Infantry Division in Iraq.

The U.S. military says white phosphorus is a conventional weapon and says it does not use any chemical arms.

"Burned bodies. Burned children and burned women," said Englehart, who RAI said had taken part in the Falluja offensive. "White phosphorus kills indiscriminately."

A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said he did not recall white phosphorus being used in Falluja. "I do not recall the use of white phosphorus during the offensive operations in Falluja in the fall of 2004," Lieutenant Colonel Steven Boylan said.

An incendiary device, white phosphorus is used by the military to conceal troop movements with smoke, mark targets or light up combat areas. The use of incendiary weapons against civilians has been banned by the Geneva Convention since 1980.

The United States did not sign the relevant protocol to the convention, a U.N. official in New York said.

The Falluja offensive aimed to crush followers of al Qaeda's Iraq leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said to have linked up with local insurgents in the Sunni Arab city west of Baghdad.

Some Western newspapers reported at the time that white phosporus had been used during the offensive.

In the documentary called "Falluja: The Hidden Massacre", RAI also said U.S. forces used the Mark 77 firebomb, a weapon similar to napalm, on military targets in Iraq in 2003"

This is not good. Do we really need this kind of weapon? Won't it galvanize the opposition even more? We certainly can't win hearts and minds with this.

Yahoo!New/Christian Science Monitor:the Qalat minesweeper

2005-11-07T21:34:00.000-08:00

"By Scott Baldauf, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Mon Nov 7, 3:00 AM ET

QALAT, AFGHANISTAN - The latest thing to come out of the motor pool here at Qalat Forward Operating Base isn't pretty, and it isn't all that easy to steer. But it might just save some lives.

It's a minesweeper that rides out front of a Humvee, designed to detect land mines or roadside bombs by setting them off.

"Hopefully, it will blow up the mines and save the lives of the men inside the Humvee," says Sgt. Byron Begay, a motor pool mechanic from Superior, Ariz.

The minesweeper, due to make its battlefield debut this month, has a distinctly Frankensteinish look to it - iron welded to iron, a steering column, and a Humvee-length space of nothingness, where an exploding roadside bomb will be unable to do harm. It's the type of battlefield ingenuity that the Pentagon could draw upon as it tasks a high-level general to develop countermeasures to roadside bombs, or improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

The Qalat minesweeper was cobbled together from parts scavenged from broken-down
Humvees. And that, unfortunately, is something the Army has a lot of these days.

IEDs have become the weapon of choice for Taliban and other insurgents. In Zabul Province alone, the area of operation for the 2nd Regiment of the 503rd Airborne Infantry - part of the storied 173rd Airborne division - some 41 IEDs have been used against US or Afghan troops in the past six months.

Half of these IEDs were discovered before they detonated. The rest exploded near coalition vehicles, killing five servicemen, injuring dozens of others, and rendering dozens of vehicles inoperable.

The deadliest attack came Aug. 21, when four US Army servicemen from Battle Company of the 2/503rd hit a pressure plate mine - the most common type of mine here, which is triggered by a vehicle's weight - while riding in an "up-armored" Humvee.

It was then that motor pool Chief Thomas Waltman, of Hot Springs, Colo., came up with the idea of creating a minesweeper that could ride out front of the lead Humvee in a convoy.

"Once we get the materials, we can make as many as we want," says Staff Sgt. Ilon Crittenden, of Buffalo, N.Y. Parts are generally hard to come by, so the motor pool makes do by stripping damaged Humvees.

The hardest nut to crack was how to steer the minesweeper. Pushing a trailer out front of a car requires a separate, passenger-side steering system.

On their first test drives, motor pool mechanics found that when the driver of the Humvee and the driver of the minesweeper both steered at the same time, the two vehicles began to move sideways, like a crab. Now, they have learned to steer the trailer first, and the Humvee second. Once the Humvee has moved onto blacktop road, where land mines cannot be placed, the trailer can be disconnected and put behind the Humvee.

The minesweeper may help slow a trend in adding heavy armor to Humvees. In recent years, Army motor pools have been customizing lightly-armored Humvees, adding inch-thick panels of fiberglass to door panels and fenders to protect against shrapnel and small arms fire. On paper, this makes sense, but on the battlefield, this added weight can be dangerous.

"We want to be careful here; the Humvee was not designed to be a tank," says Capt. Thomas Anderson, a military spokesman in Qalat. "They were designed to be maneuverable. You can't sacrifice that in this terrain. On long-range missions, you cross a lot of rivers, and the last thing you want is to get stuck in a riverbed or a snowbank." "

Get the kinks out and put that baby to work.

REUTERS: Fighting IEDs

2005-11-03T17:16:00.000-08:00

"By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Having failed so far to blunt the deadliest threat posed by Iraq's insurgency, the Pentagon said on Thursday it planned to expand its effort to find better ways to defend against the roadside bombs used by rebels to kill and maim U.S. troops.

The Pentagon is considering putting a more senior officer in charge of a task force set up last year to deal with the so-called improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, often planted by insurgents on roads to attack U.S. vehicles, officials said. The Pentagon also intends to add more people to the effort.

Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James Conway, director of operations for the military's Joint Staff, told a briefing that instead of the one-star Army general who heads the group, the Pentagon may put a three-star officer with more clout in charge.

"It's the only tool the enemy really has left in order to be able to take us on and cause casualties," Conway said of the IEDs. "And when we defeat that one method, it's over."

IEDs are the leading cause of death and injury for U.S. troops in Iraq. The Pentagon said more than half of all U.S. casualties stem from these homemade bombs, often buried along a roadside or hidden inside debris or even animal carcasses and usually detonated by remote control or with a timer device.

Insurgents have vexed U.S. forces with their ability to adapt technologies and to build increasingly powerful devices. For example, in one of the rebels' deadliest attacks on U.S. forces, 14 Marines died on August 3 south of Haditha in western Iraq when their Amphibious Assault Vehicle was blown up with a roadside bomb fashioned from three land mines.

October was the fourth deadliest month of the war for U.S. forces, with 96 troops killed. Of those, at least 57 were killed by IEDs. In addition, blast wounds from IEDs have been responsible for many of limb amputations for troops who survived attacks.

About 2,030 U.S. troops have been killed since the war began in March 2003, with nearly 15,500 more wounded.

The U.S. Army first created a task force to counter the IED threat in October 2003 in the early months of the insurgency that rose up after the U.S.-led invasion ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

At the request of Gen. John Abizaid, top U.S. commander in the region, the Pentagon in July 2004 formed an IED task force encompassing all military branches. It is headed by Army Brig. Gen. Joseph Votel and has a staff of about 140. Officials did not state how many more people would be assigned to the task force.

Some military officers have privately expressed frustration that the IED threat has not been better quelled

"There's never going to be a quick fix. There's no silver bullet," said a defense official who asked not to be named. "There's never going to be a single piece of technology that takes care of the IED problem when we face an adaptive enemy who looks at what he does and what works and looks at what we do in response and adjusts accordingly."

The U.S. military has fielded jamming devices to counter radio-controlled IEDs and a small number of bomb-detecting robots have been deployed, officials said. The officials said the percentage of effective IED attacks has fallen, but the number of attacks has risen, thus increasing the number of U.S. casualties.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said the IED task force has almost $1.5 billion in funding this year alone. Di Rita said it also would be appropriate to expand the reach of the task force into other parts of the U.S. government that might be able to supply answers."

We are hopeful answers come soon.

REUTERS: Army adapts to the war of the flea

2005-11-03T13:31:00.000-08:00

"By Bernd Debusmann
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In small steps and without fanfare, the U.S. Army is adapting its training to "the war of the flea," the type of hit-and-run insurgency that is gripping Iraq, where more than 2,000 American military personnel have been killed.

Counterinsurgency training, military experts say, largely vanished from the curriculum of Army schools after the Vietnam War. It began a slow comeback after the Iraq war, which opened with a massive ground and air assault, turned into a protracted conflict of ambushes, bombings and hit-and-run attacks.

"Now, there is counterinsurgency (instruction) at every level, from the warrior leader course (for front-line sergeants) through to the war college," said Brig. Gen. Volney Warner, deputy commandant of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.

A revised field manual on counterinsurgency, compiled jointly by the Army and the U.S. Marine Corps, is due to be issued next spring, Warner said in an interview. From the beginning of next year, the syllabus at the Command and General Staff College will include 18 hours on the theory of counterinsurgency.

One of the books that will be required reading at the college -- an essential career step for all officers who want to rise above the rank of major -- is a textbook by David Galula which was first published in 1964.

It deals with the central dilemma facing counterinsurgency forces: To break an insurgency you need intelligence about the insurgents from the population. But the population will not talk to counterinsurgency forces unless it feels safe from retribution from the insurgents. It does not feel safe as long as insurgents are active.

In Iraq, assassinations and bomb attacks have killed thousands of people seen as sympathetic to the Americans or working with the government. The Iraqi civilian death toll has topped 50 a day on average for many months.

Crime and lawlessness have added to the perception, reflected in Iraqi opinion polls, that U.S. forces are providing little or no security to Iraqis -- the key condition for winning the hearts and minds of the population.

Galula's book first appeared at about the same time as another treatise on counterinsurgency that is now high on contemporary military reading lists because of Iraq, "War of the Flea" by Robert Taber.

Taber likened guerrillas to fleas and conventional armies to dogs. The dog is always at a disadvantage against the flea -- he has "too much to defend, too small, ubiquitous and agile an enemy to come to grips with. If the war continues long enough ... the dog succumbs to exhaustion and anemia without ever having found anything on which to close its jaws or to rake with its claws."

The U.S. approach reflects a distinct shift of policy. President George W. Bush made aversion to "nation building", the process under way in Iraq, a plank in his election campaign platform in 2000.

Condoleezza Rice, now secretary of state, said peacekeeping and civil administration functions in such places as Bosnia were sapping the morale of the military. "We don't need to have the 82nd Airborne escorting kids to kindergarten."

Hostility to using American military forces for anything other than fighting war ran so deep that the Pentagon decided to close the only U.S. military establishment devoted to post-combat peacekeeping operations, the Peacekeeping Institute at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

The decision was canceled after protests from both inside and outside the Pentagon and as violence took hold in the streets of Iraq despite the overwhelming military victory over the Iraqi army in 2003.

Now renamed the U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, its faculty has doubled, according to its director, Col. John Agoglia.

The Army is addressing two of the biggest hurdles for an effective counterinsurgency -- problems in understanding cultural differences and problems in communicating.

It is including "cultural awareness" classes in its training and to help overcome a severe shortage not only of Arabic speakers but also of interpreters, the Army has issued hundreds of hand-held translation devices.

Called SpeechGuard, the device enables the user to communicate by proxy -- it "speaks" a list of around 3,000 phrases stored in its memory and can be hooked up to loudspeakers.

At the same time, the Army is encouraging voluntary language training.

While official efforts to sharpen counterinsurgency skills have proceeded at a stately pace, know-how spread rapidly through an informal network of Web logs that began appearing during the war in Afghanistan.

"The informal channels are running ahead of the institutional ones," said John Gavrilis, a Special Forces major who published a first-person account of the occupation of the city of Rutbah in Foreign Policy magazine this month. For a time, Gavrilis served as the city's mayor.

"These exchanges can happen in real time, with commanders exchanging tips on what works and what doesn't. That makes for fast learning." "

Why it took this long to get this, is not known. Hopefully this knowledge can be used quickly and effectively.

MSNBC/Washington Post: The conspicuous Mr. Wilson

2005-10-24T21:34:00.000-07:00

"By Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus, The Washington Post-
To his backers, Joseph C. Wilson IV is a brave whistle-blower wronged by the Bush administration. To his critics, he is a partisan who spouts unreliable information.

But nobody disputes this: Possessed of a flamboyant style and a love for the camera lens, Wilson helped propel the unmasking of his wife's identity as a CIA operative into a sprawling, two-year legal probe that climaxes this week with the possible indictment of key White House officials. He also turned an arcane matter involving the Intelligence Identities Protection Act into a proxy fight over the administration's credibility and its case for war in Iraq.

Also beyond dispute is the fact that the little-known diplomat took maximum advantage of his 15 minutes of fame. Wilson has been a fixture on the network and cable news circuit for two years -- from 'Meet the Press' to 'Imus in the Morning' to 'The Daily Show.' He traveled west and lunched with the likes of Norman Lear and Warren Beatty.

He published a book, 'The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity.' He persuaded his wife, Valerie Plame, to appear with him in a January 2004 Vanity Fair photo spread, in which the two appeared in his Jaguar convertible.

Now, amid speculation that prosecutors could bring charges against White House officials this week, Republicans preparing a defense of the administration are reviving the debate about Wilson's credibility and integrity.

Wilson's central assertion -- disputing President Bush's 2003 State of the Union claim that Iraq was seeking nuclear material in Niger -- has been validated by postwar weapons inspections. And his charge that the administration exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq has proved potent.

Vanity Fair photo shoot
At the same time, Wilson's publicity efforts -- and his work for Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign -- have complicated his efforts to portray himself as a whistle-blower and a husband angry about the treatment of his wife. The Vanity Fair photos, in particular, hurt Plame's reputation inside the CIA; both Wilson and Plame have said they now regret doing the photo shoot.

Wilson's critics in the administration said his 2002 trip to Niger for the CIA to probe reports that Iraq was trying to buy uranium there was a boondoggle arranged by his wife to help his consulting business.

The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial page, defending the administration, wrote yesterday that, 'Mr. Wilson became an antiwar celebrity who joined the Kerry for president campaign.' Discussing his trip to Niger, the Journal judged: 'Mr. Wilson's original claims about what he found on a CIA trip to Africa, what he told the CIA about it, and even why he was sent on the mission have since been discredited.'

Wilson's defenders say he is a truth-teller who has been unfairly attacked. '(T)he White House responded to Ambassador Wilson in the worst possible way,' said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said at a Democratic gathering in July. 'They did not present substantive evidence to justify the uranium claim. . . . Instead, it appears that the president's advisers launched a smear campaign, and Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, became collateral damage.'

Before the Niger episode, Wilson was best known as the charg d'affaires in Baghdad, a diplomat commended by George H.W. Bush for protecting and securing the release of American "human shields" at the time of the Persian Gulf War. He was not known as a partisan figure -- he donated money to both Al Gore and George W. Bush in 1999 -- and says he was neither antiwar nor anti-Bush when he went to Niger in late February 2002.

But that changed when he went public with his criticism of the Niger affair in mid-2003. In August, he said at a forum that he would like to see Karl Rove "frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs." In the fall, he endorsed Democrat Kerry. He had given money to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) political action committee in 2002 and gave to Kerry's presidential campaign in 2003.

Later, Wilson became prominent in the antiwar movement. In June 2005, he participated in a mock congressional hearing held by Democrats criticizing the war in Iraq. "We are having this discussion today because we failed to have it three years ago when we went to war," he said at the time. The next month, he joined Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) at a news conference on the two-year anniversary of the unmasking of Plame.

Wilson has also armed his critics by misstating some aspects of the Niger affair. For example, Wilson told The Washington Post anonymously in June 2003 that he had concluded that the intelligence about the Niger uranium was based on forged documents because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." The Senate Intelligence committee, which examined pre-Iraq war intelligence, reported that Wilson "had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports." Wilson had to admit he had misspoken.

‘A conduit’?
That inaccuracy was not central to Wilson's claims about Niger, but his critics have used it to cast doubt on his veracity about more important questions, such as whether his wife recommended him for the 2002 trip, as administration officials charged in the conversations with reporters that special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald is now probing. Wilson has maintained that Plame was merely "a conduit," telling CNN last year that "her supervisors asked her to contact me."

But the Senate committee found that "interviews and documents provided to the committee indicate that his wife . . . suggested his name for the trip." The committee also noted a memorandum from Plame saying Wilson "has good relations" with Niger officials who "could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." In addition, notes on a State Department document surmised that Plame "had the idea to dispatch him" to Niger.

The CIA has always said, however, that Plame's superiors chose Wilson for the Niger trip and she only relayed their decision.

Wilson also mistakenly assumed that his report would get more widespread notice in the administration than it apparently did. He wrote that he believed "a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president" had probably taken place, perhaps orally.

But this apparently never occurred. Former CIA director George J. Tenet has said that "we did not brief it to the president, vice president or other senior administration officials." Instead his report, without identifying Wilson as the source, was sent in a routine intelligence paper that had wide circulation in the White House and the rest of the intelligence community but had little impact because it supported other, earlier refutations of the Niger intelligence.

Wilson also had charged that his report on Niger clearly debunked the claim about Iraqi uranium purchases. He told NBC in 2004: "This government knew that there was nothing to these allegations." But the Senate committee said his findings were ambiguous. Tenet said Wilson's report "did not resolve" the matter.

On another item of dispute -- whether Vice President Cheney's office inspired the Wilson trip to Niger -- Wilson had said the CIA told him he was being sent to Niger so they could "provide a response to the vice president's office," which wanted more information on the report that Iraq was seeking uranium there. Tenet said the CIA's counterproliferation experts sent Wilson "on their own initiative."

Wilson said in a recent interview: "I never said the vice president sent me or ordered me sent." "

So what is the truth about Mr. Wilson? Why does he appear to have a vendetta against Mr. Rove? What is really going on here? Inquiring minds want to know.

CNN/AP: Carjacker picks the wrong man to mess with

2005-10-21T20:47:00.000-07:00

"BLUFFTON, South Carolina(AP)- A would-be carjacker got a different kind of jolt from his intended victim's morning cup of coffee, authorities said.

The suspect tapped the car window Wednesday morning with a gun and motioned the driver to get out, Chief Deputy Roy Hughes said.

But the driver--who had just bought a cup of hot coffee-- slammed the car door into the carjacker's legs, threw the coffee at his neck and face and wrestled him to the ground, Hughes said.

A shot was fired during the scuffle but no one was hurt, Hughes said. He said the driver managed to get the gun from the suspect and point it at him.

The suspect ran into the nearby woods, Hughes said. Deputies are searching for him and two people thought to be with him who drove off during the scuffle."

Yahoo!News/AP: Guardian journalist freed unharmed

2005-10-20T13:55:00.000-07:00

"BAGHDAD, Iraq- A journalist for a British newspaper who was kidnapped by gunmen was released unharmed Thursday after a day in captivity, the publication said.

Rory Carroll, 33, an Irish citizen who is The Guardian's Baghdad correspondent, was on assignment when he was abducted by gunmen on Wednesday.

'He just said, "I am safe and well and I have all my limbs on, " Caroll's father, Joe said in a story posted on the Guardian Web site."

WP: EFF cracks printer code that is tracking you

2005-10-19T14:07:00.000-07:00

The EFF cracked the code of widely used Xerox printers to show that the printers have a code that could track what you are printing. The Secret Service acknowledged using the code as a counter measure against counterfeiters.

If you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide.

WP: A year later and the CIA is still in turmoil

2005-10-19T00:16:00.000-07:00

This is sad, very sad, and bad, very bad.

NYTimes:The Miller case.

2005-10-18T23:47:00.000-07:00

The Judith Miller case just gets curiouser and curiouser.

"Douglas Frantz, who succeeded Mr. Engelberg as the investigative editor said that Ms. Miller once called herself "Miss Run Amok"

"I said 'What does that mean?'" said Mr. Frantz, who was recently appointed managing editor at The Los Angeles Times. "And she said, 'I can do whatever I want.'"

Merriam Webster defines the adverb:

3 entries found for Amok.
To select an entry, click on it.
amok[1,noun]amok[2,adverb]amok[3,adjective]

Main Entry: 2amok
Function: adverb
1 : in a murderously frenzied state
2 a : in a violently raging manner a virus that had run amok b : in an undisciplined, uncontrolled, or faulty manner films ... about computers run amok -- People

Wikipedia defines running amok as follows:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_Amok

Amok, sometimes spelled amuck and often used as "running amok," is a Malay word which in that language means to be out of control.

The word is often used in English to refer to the behaviour of someone who, in the grip of strong emotion, obtains a weapon and begins attacking people indiscriminately, often with multiple fatalities. This could be used to describe the École Polytechnique Massacre, for example. The slang term going postal is similar in intent and more common, particularly in North America. Police describe such an event as a spree killing.

Some sources have identified Malays as having a particular tendency to run amok, making this an example of a culture-bound syndrome, but they are by no means the only people to do so. For example, W.W. Skeat writes in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica: "A Malay will suddenly and apparently without reason rush into the street armed with a kris or other weapons, and slash and cut at everybody he meets till he is killed. These frenzies were formerly regarded as due to sudden insanity. It is now, however, certain that the typical amok is the result of circumstances, such as domestic jealousy or gambling losses, which render a Malay desperate and weary of his life. It is, in fact, the Malay equivalent of suicide. "The act of running amuck is probably due to causes over which the culprit has some amount of control, as the custom has now died out in the British possessions in the peninsula, the offenders probably objecting to being caught and tried in cold blood."

See also the development of the .45 caliber pistol in Wikipedia:
The weapon originated in response to problems encountered by American units fighting Moro insurgents during the Philippine-American War. The then-standard .38 caliber (9.65 mm) revolver was found to be unsuitable for the rigors of jungle warfare, particularly in terms of stopping power. (The Moros were found to be wearing improvised chest armor, and frequently used native drugs to inhibit the sensation of pain.) The Army briefly reverted to the .45 Long Colt revolvers which had been standard during the last decades of the 19th Century; the slower, heavier bullet was found to be more effective against charging tribesmen. An Ordnance Board, headed by John T. Thompson, concluded that a .45 caliber (11.4 mm) semi-automatic weapon would be most appropriate, and took bids from six firearms manufacturing companies in 1906.

That Ms. Miller would describe herself as Ms. Run Amok is instructive.

Yahoo!News: Marine mourns the loss of 11 friends

2005-10-01T10:43:00.000-07:00

"HADITHA DAM, Iraq-Cpl. David Kreuter had a new baby boy he'd seen only in photos. Lance Cpl Michael Cifuentes was counting the days to his wedding. Lance Cpl. Nicholas Bloem had just celebrated his 20th birthday.

Travis Williams remembers them all- all 11 men in his Marine squad-all now dead. Two months ago they shared a cramped room stacked with bunk beds at this base in northwest Iraq where the Euphrates River rushes by. Now the room has been stripped of several beds, brutal testament that Lance Cpl. Williams' closest friends are gone.

For the 12 young Marines who landed in Iraq early this year, the war was a series of hectic, constant raids into more than a dozen lawless towns in Iraq's most hostile province, Anbar. The pace and the danger bound them together into what they called a second family, even as some began to question whether their raids were making any progress.

Now, all of the Marines assigned to the 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon, Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, based in Columbus, Ohio, are gone — except Williams. They died in a roadside-bomb set by insurgents on Aug. 3 that killed a total of 14 Marines. Most of the squad were in their early 20s; the youngest was 19.

"They were like a family. They were the tightest squad I've ever seen," said Capt. Christopher Toland of Austin, Texas, the squad's platoon commander. Even though many did not know each other before they got to Iraq, "They truly loved each other."

All that is left are photos and snippets of video, saved on dusty laptops, that run for a few dozen seconds. As they pack up to return home by early October, the Marines from Lima Company — including the squad's replacements — sometimes huddle around Williams' laptop in a room at the dam, straining to watch the few remaining moments of their young friends' lives. Some photos and videos carry the squad's adopted motto, "Family is Forever."

In one video, Lance Cpl. Christopher Dyer, who graduated with honors last year from a Cincinnati area high school, strums his guitar and does a mock-heartfelt rendition of "Puff the Magic Dragon" as his friends laugh around him.

In a photo, Kreuter rides a bicycle through a neighborhood, swerving under the weight of body armor and weapons, as Marines and Iraqis watch and chuckle.

Each video ends abruptly, leaving behind a blank screen. Some are switched off as soon as they start — some images just hurt too much to see right now.

___

The August operation began like most of the squad's missions — with a rush into another lawless Iraqi city to hunt insurgents and do house-to-house searches, sometimes for 12 hours in temperatures near 120 degrees.

On Aug. 1, six Marine snipers had been ambushed and killed in Haditha, one of a string of cities that line the Euphrates, filled with waving palm trees. Two days later, Marines in armored vehicles, including the 1st Squad, rumbled into the area to look for the culprits.

Like other cities in this region, Haditha has no Iraqi troops, and its police force was destroyed earlier in the year by a wave of insurgent attacks. Marines patrol roads on the perimeter and occasionally raid homes in the city, which slopes along a quiet river valley. Commanders say insurgents have challenged local tribes for control and claim Iraq's most wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, once had a home here.

Since their arrival in February, the Marines had spent nearly all their time on such sweeps or preparing for them, sometimes hurrying back to their base to grab fresh clothes, then heading off again to cities that hadn't seen American or Iraqi troops in months.

The intense pace of the operations, and the enormous area their regimental combat team had to cover — an expanse the size of West Virginia — caught some off guard.

The combat was certainly not what the 21-year-old Williams had expected.

"I didn't ever think we'd get engaged," said the soft-spoken, stocky Marine from Helena, Mont. "I just had the basic view of the American public — it can't be that bad out there."

In some sweeps, residents warmly greeted the Marines. But in others, such as operations in Haditha and Obeidi near the Syrian border, the squad members met gunfire and explosions. In the Obeidi operation in early May, another squad from Lima Company suffered six deaths. Williams himself perhaps saved lives, once spotting a gunman hidden in a mosque courtyard, said Toland, the platoon commander.

The night before the Aug. 3 operation, an uneasy Toland couldn't sleep. Instead he spent his last night with his squad members talking and joking, trying to suppress worries the mission was too predictable for an enemy that knew how to watch and learn.

"I had concerns that the operation was hastily planned and executed, with significant risks and little return," Toland said.

The road had been checked by engineers and other units, Marine commanders say. But insurgents had been clever — hiding the massive bomb under the road's asphalt.

Several Humvees first drove over the bomb, but the triggerman in the distance apparently waited for a vehicle with more troops. Then, as the clanking sound of their armored vehicles neared, a massive blast erupted, caused by explosives weighing hundreds of pounds. It threw a 26-ton Amphibious Assault Vehicle into the air, leaving it burning upside-down.

The blast was so large that Toland and his radioman, Williams — traveling two vehicles ahead and not injured — thought their vehicle had been hit by a bomb. They scrambled out to inspect the damage, but instead found the blazing carnage several yards down the road.

A total of 14 Marines and one Iraqi interpreter were killed.

___

There was no time for grieving — not at first. There was only sudden devastation, then intense anger as the Marines pulled the remains of their friends from the vehicle.

Then there was frustration, as they fanned out to find the triggerman. Instead, they found only Iraqis either too sympathetic toward the insurgency, or too afraid, to talk.

Although the bomb had been planted in clear view of their homes, residents claimed they had seen nothing of the men who had spent hours digging a large hole several feet deep and concealing the bomb.

It was a familiar — and frustrating — problem.

"They are totally complacent with what's going on here," said Maj. Steve Lawson of Columbus, Ohio, who commands Lima Company. "The average citizen in Haditha either wants a handout, or wants us to die or go away."

In a war where intelligence is the most valued asset, the Marines say few local people will divulge "actionable" information that could be used to locate insurgents.

Some Iraqis apparently fear reprisal attacks from militants. Many just want to stay out of the crossfire. Others hate the Americans enough to protect the insurgents: Marines say lookouts in cities would often launch flares as their vehicles approached.

In this region ruled by Sunni tribal loyalties, few voted for the new central Iraqi government, and many suspect the U.S. military is punishing them and empowering their longtime rivals, the Shiites of the south and the Kurds of the north.

"From a squad leader's perspective, the intelligence never helped me accomplish my mission," said Sgt. Don Owens, a squad leader in Lima Company from Cincinnati, who fought alongside the 1st Squad throughout their tour.

"Their intelligence is better than ours," Owens said.

___

The first night after the attack, Williams couldn't sleep. He stayed near his radio, listening to the heavy sobbing of fellow Marines that punctured the night around him.

He thought of his best friend, Lance Cpl. Aaron Reed, a 21-year-old with a goofy demeanor and a perpetual smile, now dead.

A world without his second family had begun. The young men Williams had planned to meet up with again, back in the States, had vanished in a matter of minutes. He was alone.

Yet from a military standpoint, it was important to press on to show the enemy that even their best hits couldn't stop the world's most powerful military. The Marines were ordered away from the blast site, to hunt insurgents, just one hour after the explosion.

They stayed out for another week, searching through dozens of homes in the nearby city of Parwana and struggling to piece together intelligence about who had planted the bomb.

"I pushed them back out the door to finish the mission," said Lawson. "They did it, but they were crying as they pushed on."

As word spread back in the United States that 14 men had been killed, the Marines on the ongoing mission couldn't even, at first, contact their families to let them know they had survived.

___

Marine commanders say the large-scale raids in western Anbar province have kept the insurgency off-balance, killing hundreds of militants and leaving a dwindling number of insurgent bases in the area.

They say the sweeps are critical to beat back the insurgent presence in larger cities such as Ramadi and Baghdad, where suicide bombings have been rampant.

But, among some Marines and even officers, there are doubts whether progress has been made.

The insurgents lurk nearby — capable of launching mortars and suicide car bombs and quietly re-entering cities soon after the Marines return to their bases on the outskirts.

"We've been here almost seven months and we don't control" the cities, said Gunnery Sgt. Ralph Perrine, an operations chief in the battalion from Brunswick, Ohio. "It's no secret."

Even commanders acknowledge that with the limited number of U.S. and Iraqi troops in the region, the mission is focused on "disrupting and interdicting" the insurgency — that is, keeping them on the run — and not controlling the cities.

"It's maintenance work," said Col. Stephen W. Davis, commander of all Marine operations in western Anbar. "Because this out here is where the fight is, while the success is happening downtown while the constitution is being written and while the referendum is getting worked out. ... If I could bring every insurgent in the world out here and fight them all day long, we've done our job."

For Williams, the calculation is much more visceral and personal.

"Personally, I don't think the sweeps help too much," he said quietly on a recent day, sitting in a room at the dam, crowded with Marines resting from a late mission the night before.

"You find some stuff and most of the bad guys get away. ... For as much energy as we put in them, I don't think the output is worth it," he said.

Williams, a Marine for three years, has decided not to re-enlist.

Instead, in these last days in Iraq, he thinks of home and fishing in the clear streams of Montana. He hopes to open a fishing and hunting gear shop once he returns and complete his bachelor's degree in wildlife biology. He looks forward to seeing his mother, his only surviving parent, and traveling to her native Thailand this fall.

He said his "best memory" will be the day he leaves Iraq. His only good memories, he said, are of his friends:

Of Dyer, 19, an avid rap music fan who would bop his head to Tupac Shakur. He played the viola in his high school orchestra and had planned to enroll in a finance honors program at Ohio State University.

Of Reed, his best friend. He was president of his high school class from Chillicothe, Ohio, and left behind a brother serving in Afghanistan.

Of Cifuentes, 25, from Oxford, Ohio. He was enrolled in graduate school in mathematics education and had been working as a substitute teacher when he was deployed.

"I think the most frustrating thing is there's no sense of accomplishment," Williams said. "You're biding your time and waiting. But then you lose your friends, and it's not even for their own country's freedom."

___

EDITOR'S NOTES:

Associated Press reporter Antonio Castaneda spent three weeks in western Anbar province in Iraq with Marines in Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, 4th Division, earlier this year. He was with the unit when they led an offensive into the city of Haditha in late May. And he returned to the area after an August blast killed 14 Marines — and shortly before the unit began demobilizing to return to the United States by early October.

The ranks listed for the Marines were those they held when they were killed. Some of the men were promoted posthumously"

CNN: Red Cross: Urgent call for 40,000 new volunteers

2005-09-10T14:25:00.000-07:00

"BATON ROUGE- Louisiana (CNN)- The American Red Cross put out an urgent call Saturday for 40,000 new volunteers to help feed, house and comfort Hurricane Katrina victims"

CNN: Harrowing stories emerge from Katrina's devastation

2005-08-31T12:11:00.000-07:00

"SLIDELL, Louisiana (CNN)-- For many of the survivors of Hurricane Katrina, little is left but heartbreak and hardship."

"Deteriorating conditions are difficult for survivors to bear"

Give help or send money.

Go to:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/30/katrina.advice.us/index.html

for some resources, and all over the net.

ABC News: Boy calls 911 says 'My Daddy killed me'

2005-08-25T19:25:00.000-07:00

"Aug. 25, 2005--If you saw Anthony Sukto, you wouldn't think he's any different from most little boys. He's just as playful and cheerful.

But many people call him a hero. Less than a year ago, Anthony's father stabbed his mother to death before the boy's eyes in their home in Tacoma, Wash. Then he turned the knife on Anthony.

The eight year-old was stabbed six times--slashed in the face, neck and chest and cut twice in the liver. Despite bleeding profusely, he managed to call 911.

When emergency worker Kristin Woodrow answered the call, she heard the boy's plaintive cry: 'Please help me!'

He continued, 'My daddy killed me with a knife and I'm gone. Can you please send the army men or the ambulance?'

Anthony gave an address, and then suddenly hung up. Woodrow called back. Anthony explained to her: 'My daddy killed me with a butcher knife.'

'How did that happen if you are talking to me?' Woodrow asked.

'My dad, he was killing my mom and then, my dad told me to go into the other bed,' Anthony said. 'Then he's like "You're next" and then he killed me. I'm still alive. I kind of survived.'

"...Anthony says he wasn't acting alone. 'God helped me. He sent his angel,' he told Quinones. 'The angel carried me to dial 911.'

Anthony says that as he lay there bleeding, he actually heard a voice telling him to play dead until his father left the house. 'I heard "I will save you" ' he told Quinones.
...
He still has nightmares about the day his mom was killed, but today Anthony is recovering surpisingly well-thanks to the love of his family and friends and thanks to those 'angels' who he says saved his life."

Yahoo! News/AP: Airlines face growing fuel shortage risk

2005-08-10T13:51:00.000-07:00

"By Brad Foss, AP Business Writer
Washington- Lost luggage, bad weather and now...no fuel?

While fliers haven't yet had to add that problem to the list of headaches associated with air travel, it may not be far away. Airports in Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada recently came within a few days-and at times within hours-of running out of jet fuel.

Because of supply bottlenecks, airlines were forced to fly in extra fluel from other markets and scramble for deliveries by truck. But these are expensive, short term fixes that do not address what airline executives consider to be the underlying problem: with passenger traffic rising above pre-9/11 levels, the nation's aviation business is slowly outgrowing the infrastructure that fuels it.

...

But the near shortages underscore the added strain on refineries, pipelines and the airlines' own fuel procurement efforts as the industry recovers from its worst-ever downturn-June passenger traffic was up 4 percent from 2001 levels, according to industry data-and energy demand rises throughout the economy.

'It's really starting to surface as an issue', said James Holland, vice president of logistics at Kinder Morgan Energy Partners L.P. a Houston based pipeline operator.

Part of the problem is that refining and pipeline capacity in some regions of the US have grown slower than demand, meaning companies must run their equipment harder to satisfy growing fuel needs. This raises the chances of operational snags and leaves less of a cushion when something does go wrong. Recent refinery outages have helped push oil prices to record heights near $64 a barrel."

It hit over $64 a barrel recently. It would seem that these problems are the just a tip of the iceberg we are heading for just as the Titanic did back in its day.

You can see cries for more national production of oil rather than dependence on oil from the Middle East. That would only exacerbate pollution which could only make things worse from an economic and health standpoint. Is anyone noticing the increase in asthma rates which is affecting the young in America? Doesn't this point to a national security issue? In addition, China's warning that pollution affects economic development should also make us pay attention to the problem of dependence on fossil fuels.

It seems that developing a clean and renewable source of energy should be a primary national security concern since energy is the fuel of our economy...

It does not take a rocket scientist to notice this trend, but as in the past, people just don't seem to move on an issue until it becomes a crisis...

CNN: Judith Miller praises jail officials

2005-07-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

Alexandria, Virginia(AP)-"New York Times reporter Judith Miller imprisoned for refusing to name a confidential source, said she is allowed to read and write in jail but has been outside just twice in three weeks according to press freedom advocates."

Despite blogger criticism of the "liberal" press, and the security issues surrounding the press, journalists should not have to go to jail for protecting their sources. It is an intrusion on the First Amendment.

ABCnews: Some documents to be released

2005-07-26T09:03:00.000-07:00

Washington DC- "Risking a showdown with Democrats, the White House said Tuesday it won't release documents that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts prepared while working on cases to argue on behalf of the first Bush administration..."

One of the duties of a Judge, or in this case a Justice, is to follow established precedent regardless of one's personal or political views, and to apply the law impartially, that is, without prejudice.

Nominee John Roberts said he will do that.

However, the process has become severely politicized and publicized which does not bode well for the doctrine of Separation of Powers. A Justice of the Supreme Court is not supposed to be swayed by political forces, nor publicity. Yet both the press and the politicians are exerting a great amount of pressure on him. They need to cut it out.

CNN: Shuttle managers optimistic

2005-07-23T21:23:00.000-07:00

One is reminded of the study that Richard Feynman did on Space Shuttle Challenger, in which Mr. Feynman stated:

"The Space Shuttle Main Engine was handled in a different manner, top down, we might say. The engine was designed and put together all at once with relatively little detailed preliminary study of the material and components. Then when troubles are found in the bearings, turbine blades, coolant pipes, etc., it is more expensive and difficult to discover the causes and make changes....

A further disadvantage of the top-down method is that, if an understanding of a fault is obtained, a simple fix, such as a new shape for the turbine housing, may be impossible to implement without a redesign of the entire engine.

The Space Shuttle Main Engine is a very remarkable machine. It has a greater ratio of thrust to weight than any previous engine. It is built at the edge of or outside of, previous engineering experience. Therefore, as expected, many different kinds of flaws and difficultires ahve turned up. Because, unfortunately, it was built in the top-down manner, they are difficult to find and to fix...."

Report to the Space Shuttle Challenger Inquiry.

I for one hope that the managers have truly found what the problem is, and that the astronauts are not relying on "finger crossing".

NYTimes: Who's afraid of China Inc?

2005-07-23T21:18:00.000-07:00

In one sense, it is beneficial that China become more interdependent with the US. China may become less communist and more capitalist, once it realizes that there is no benefit to attempting to "dominate" the world through ideology.

The bottom line is whether people will benefit from your economic system.

China may become enculturated and realize that it has nothing to fear from capitalism U.S. style.

Of course, this does not mean that the US should carte blanche open its doors to China without the requisite security checks. Such a path would not be beneficial to the US at all.

Achieving balance in this regard can be reached. We have the minds and the will to do it.

BBC: London bombs kill at least 50 people. What should we do now?

2005-07-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

London- The terrorists have attacked London, but they have failed to realize that the people of the world have become even more galvanized against their cause. Terrorism has had the opposite effect: You cannot terrorize anyone without risking the complete and utter anger of the terrorized and the unity and solidarity of its victims.

Just look at Britain during WWII. Or the US after Pearl Harbor.

Violence will never achieve the desired goal.

Experts have said repeatedly that there is no way that one can stop what happened in London, or Madrid, and that it is inevitable. Time and again, authorities have said, leave security to the experts. Well, it is time to change that thinking. The general populace must be educated on how to combat terror wherever it can occur. And the training should start now.

Those of us who cherish our civil liberties know that security is just as important, because in these days, you cannot have one without the other.

Yahoo! News: A proposal to seize Justice Souter's home

2005-06-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

Weare, N.H.- An individual by the name of Darrow Clements of California faxed a letter to town officials in Weare New Hamshire, proposing that Justice Souter's farmhouse be turned into a hotel, following the Supreme Court's decision in No. 04-108 Kelo v. City of New London

"The letter dubbing the project the 'Lost Liberty Hotel' was posted on conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh's Web site. Clements said it would include a dining room called the "Just Desserts Cafe" and a museum focused on the "loss of freedom in America".

There's nothing like uniting the right and the left.
However, what people forget, is that you must be compensated for any taking.

Washington Post: not beyond a reasonable doubt

2005-06-13T21:30:00.000-07:00

Santa Maria, California- It's finally over. We can move on now.

But before we do, let us pause to think about the work that the jury did in the Michael Jackson case. They weighed the facts carefully and applied them to the law as instructed to them by the Judge, and found that there wasn't enough evidence to convict Michael Jackson beyond a reasonable doubt.

There were serious problems with the prosecution's case, including but not limited to the credibility problems of the accuser's mom, which, from the looks of it, spilled over to her son.

It is a testament to the American judicial system that disputes can be settled in this fashion, without having to resort to violence, or having one judge or three judges decide your fate.

Now, let us get on with other issues, as quickly as possible.

Yahoo!News/AP: The Judge reads the instructions to the jury

2005-06-01T15:06:00.000-07:00

So here we are near the end of the sordid trial of Michael Jackson. The judge has read the jury instructions to the jury, and soon they will deliberate after closing arguments.

If the past several months of reporting by the press have been correct, this trial may not get the conviction the prosecution is hoping for. However, it will be very hard for the defense to overcome past allegations of uncharged molestations, which despite all the testimony of Michael Jackson's defense witnesses, will leave in the minds of the jurors questions that some of the present allegations must be true...

Even if Michael Jackson is convicted of misdemeanor exposure allegations, he would have to register as a sex offender under California law...

In the mean time, I am sure if there is a conviction, his lawyers will take it up on appeal.

Yahoo!News/Knight Ridder: trying to fine tune the Patriot Act

2005-05-03T20:12:00.000-07:00

Washington DC- A coalition of groups including civil libertarians, gun owners and Republican senators want some changes to the Patriot Act, and the Attorney General is listening.

Washington Post: Fake hospital inspectors probed

2005-04-22T12:00:00.000-07:00

"The FBI and other law enforcement agencies are looking into incidents in which people masquerading as unannounced inspectors were found poking around three hospitals in Boston, Detroit and Los Angeles.

In each case the imposters were stopped by security guards or hospital staff, and then either left or were expelled. No one has been arrested, and neither the identity of the intruders nor their motives are known."

" 'There is no working hypothesis. It could be any number of things, from identity theft to something more nefarious,' an FBI spokesman, who declined to be named, said yesterday."

"The Department of Homeland Security is also 'aware of these suspicious reports' said Brian Roehrkasse, a department spokesman. He added the agency does not have 'any intelligence information that indicates al Qaeda is planning an attack or targeting hospitals.'"

Yahoo! News/Knight Ridder: The Conclave has a past--

2005-04-15T10:22:00.000-07:00

The Conclave has a bloody and notorious past, which has only recently been changed. Regardless, everyone, Catholics, and non-Catholics, Liberals and Conservatives, wants to know who will be the next Pope.

ABC news: The President said his privacy must be protected

2005-04-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

Washington-ABC news reported that the President said the public should know as much as possible about government decision making but national security and personal privacy including his own, needed to be protected.

Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists Secrecy Project said "Protecting the president's personal e-mail does not in any way justify the pattern of withholding that we've seen."

Perhaps one of the great issues and the challenge of our time is the tension between and among the right to open government, and freedom of information and national security and the right to privacy.

There is no easy path in striking a balance between and among these issues. But in our system of checks and balances, a reasoned balance can be achieved. It may have to be through a vigorous press and public taking these issues before an independent judiciary (which is why maintaining an independent judiciary is very important). An independent judiciary may be able to strike the appropriate balance.

BBC: Blogging from East to West

2005-04-03T22:09:00.000-07:00

Blogs feature everything under the sun. But not everyone is free to say what they think.

Authoritarian governments are worried about blogging. "In the West, particularly in America, they are also making waves among traditional journalists."

CNN: Pope John Paul II to lie in state

2005-04-03T22:05:00.000-07:00

Pope John Paul II will be moved Monday to the Sala Bologna at St. Peter's Basilica where he will lie in state until his funeral in four to six days. Authorities expect 2 million people to pay their respects in the next few days.

BBC News: Sharon welcomes Palestinian truce

2005-03-17T12:43:00.000-08:00

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon welcomed a pledge by Palestinian militants to continue to observe a conditional halt in attacks until the end of the year.

The pledge was tied to Israel's commitment to end its targeted attacks and to release prisoners.

Israel still believes armed groups "cannot continue to exist."

A Hamas spokesman has said Israel would have to stop building its West Bank barrier if there was to be a formal and complete ceasefire.

Reuters: Zarqawi threat to soft targets in the US

2005-03-13T22:38:00.000-08:00

Reuters reports a Time magazine article that Zarqawi may be planning attacks on soft targets in the US including movie theatres, restaurants and schools.

However earlier this week ABC News reported that the FBI doubts that al Qaeda has the ability to strike within the US and there are no known sleeper cells.http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=566425&page=1

The FBI report said it was concerned about what they did not see.

ABC News: Silicon Insider-Drop that dime

2005-03-10T22:43:00.000-08:00

The First Amendment is being attacked by the totalitarian corporate interests.
Mr. Malone says to drop that dime on them.

"What I'm saying is that if you are an employee, supplier, or distributor for Apple Computer, and you care more about the First Amendment than the Little People's Republic, you might think about dropping a dime on Apple, and help pre-announce everything the company's got in the works for the next five years. And if you are a business or tech reporter and you want to preserve the freedom that built your profession, you should take those calls and run with them. Turn Apple into an information sieve for a while. Teach the company a lesson in the Bill of Rights. Bury the legal department in cases--and if they do ever get around to you, reply by sending along a nice engraved portrait of James Madison."

Guerrilla warfare. James Madison style.

Yahoo! News/Knight Riddeer: Italians express anger over the killing of agent

2005-03-05T16:56:00.000-08:00

Rome- Italians expressed anger over the news that US troops killed an Italian intelligence agent who had just helped to free an Italian hostage in Iraq.

NY Times: Superior Court Judge is inclined to force 3 bloggers to reveal their sources in Apple case

2005-03-05T16:18:00.000-08:00

Judge James Kleinberg of the Santa Clara County Superior Court told lawyers that he was leaning towards permitting Apple to issue subpoeanas on Powerpage.org, Apple Insider and Think Secret. He is expected to issue a formal ruling as early as next week.

Better get your writs ready boys. Take it up to the Sixth Appellate District and beyond.

BBC: The campaign to save the "Enterprise" raises $3million

2005-03-02T22:42:00.000-08:00

The campaign to save the Star Trek show "Enterprise" raised $3million dollars from anonymous figures in the space flight industry.

BBC: Russia cautiously supports Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon

2005-03-02T21:54:00.000-08:00

Washington Post: CEO of Riggs Bank courted Augusto Pinochet

2005-03-02T21:47:00.000-08:00

When Joe L. Albritton was CEO of Riggs Bank he received personal gifts from Augusto Pinochet and wanted the former Chilean dictator to visit the Allbritton horse farm in Virginia according to drafts of letters from 1996 and 1997.

Washington Post: Suicide Bomber kills at least 4 at Tel Aviv night club

2005-02-25T21:42:00.000-08:00

The truce, which held so much promise, appears to have been broken. Israel must now weigh its response, and the Palestinians appear powerless to stop the militants. The peace is on the edge of a precipice.

Perhaps the international community should step in as a buffer between Israel and the Palestinians with several things happening:

1. A mixed US/Arab/Third country force in a buffer zone to provide security for both Israel and the Palestinians.

2. The Palestinians with the aid of this buffer security force dismantle the militant organizations which will have an opportunity to voice their concerns legally and non violently in the political arena.

3. The Israelis continue to dismantle settlements.

This buffer zone shall stay in effect until a peaceful political solution can be worked out.

Its just a thought.

Washington Post/AP: Hunter S. Thompson commits suicide at 67

2005-02-20T20:54:00.000-08:00

BBC: Blogs vs Main Stream Media

2005-02-19T22:16:00.000-08:00

"With the abrupt resignation of CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan, the American media are struggling with how to respond to bloggers. Some see the bloggers as an explosion of free speech, a democratic counterbalance to media arrogance and a much needed call for greater transparency in the media, while others see bloggers as vigilante partisans bent on discrediting and destroying the media".

But attempting to categorize the bloggers who blog as either conservative or liberal is similar to attempting to categorize the internet as either one or the other. You can't categorize bloggers as either left or right, because sometimes they might be one or the other, or both at the same time, or neither. The internet is one big dialogue, on going, and views may or may not change, depending on the facts, arguments, or evidence.

And you cannot take the internet, or bloggers, for granted.

"Bloggers didn't want his head, most of us didn't. We wanted the truth."

ABC News: The Simpson's town of Springfield will legalize gay marriage

2005-02-18T18:05:00.000-08:00

"As the mayor of Springfield says in a clip of Sunday's show provided to ABC News: 'Springfield: a place where everyone can marry-even dudes.' What's more, one of the main characters on the show will come out as a homosexual. (This is a carefully guarded secret that has caused much speculation on blogs and chat rooms.)"

Washington Post: Ansar al Islam a recruiting force in Europe

2005-02-17T21:12:00.000-08:00

Ansar al-Islam operates an extensive underground network across Europe which recruits young Muslims to join the insurgency in Iraq.

CNN: FBI spy chief asks for help

2005-02-10T21:53:00.000-08:00

New York Times: Senate approves bill to curb class action lawsuits

2005-02-10T19:41:00.000-08:00

In an effort to hit trial lawyers and their clients, generally the public, the Senate approved a bill to curb class action lawsuits. This bill may directly affect the ability of millions of Vioxx, Celebrex and Bextra users who have been injured by coxib drugs. It will also make it difficult for consumers to sue companies that harm them. Under the guise of eliminating "frivolous" lawsuits, this bill appears to also affect "meritorious" lawsuits.

CNN: North Korea pulls out of talks, will bolster its nuclear weapons arsenal

2005-02-10T01:03:00.000-08:00

Oh Geez.

ABC News: Blogging could get you into trouble at work

2005-02-09T23:08:00.000-08:00

Duh. That is why everyone must be very careful not to divulge their identity online, or at work. Don't use the computers at work, because your sysadmin may tell your boss, etc... Geez.

BBC: Militants in Gaza launch mortars in retaliation

2005-02-09T22:55:00.000-08:00

for the death of a Palestinian man earlier. It looks like the cease fire may fall apart, unless the militants are brought to the negotiating table. Even though talking with violent groups is not the approved method of obtaining peace, it is apparent that we are getting nowhere without their participation. Comments anyone?

ABC News: Israel and the Palestinians to declare a cease-fire

2005-02-07T16:55:00.000-08:00

During a summit Tuesday in Egypt.

ABC News: The President's budget will make deep cuts

2005-02-07T16:54:00.000-08:00

Erasing scores of programs, slicing Medicaid, disabled housing and many more.

ABC News: Paul Shanley convicted of 4 counts

2005-02-07T16:51:00.000-08:00

BBC: Iran will retaliate and develop nuclear technology if the US or Israel attacks

2005-02-06T15:22:00.000-08:00

ESPN: It's Super Bowl XXXIX, New England Patriots v. the Philadelphia Eagles

2005-02-06T15:21:00.000-08:00

Washington Post: Study recommends that the CIA not cede paramilitary ops

2005-02-05T01:04:00.000-08:00

"There have been repeated articles suggesting that this is a Pentagon power grab. That's not the case" one defense official said. Covert ops are intended to be clandestine and secret, but can be acknowledged later. "I don't want the military to get into the business of lying after the fact whether they've conducted a military operation" said R. James Woolsey a lawyer who was CIA director in the Clinton administration.

ABC News: The President takes his Social Security proposals on the road

2005-02-03T22:36:00.000-08:00

The President seeks support for his plan to overhaul Social Security on the road.

CNN: The President to outline his strategy for the second term

2005-02-02T13:45:00.000-08:00

The President will present his strategy for the second term regarding a variety of issues such as Iraq, and details of his Social Security proposal in tonight's State of the Union address.

Washington Post: Iraq vote yields higher turn out than expected

2005-01-30T09:37:00.000-08:00

Observers said the vote yielded a higher turnout than expected and less violence than feared.

ABC News: Vice President Cheney criticized for his attire at Auschwitz ceremony

2005-01-28T14:05:00.000-08:00

Vice President Cheney raised eyebrows for wearing an olive drab parka, hiking boots and knit ski cap to represent the US at the solemn ceremony commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz. Other leaders wore dark, formal overcoats and dress shoes or boots.