Primary Story Page

 

Microsoft 'patents human skin' 

July 23,2004

Microsoft has reportedly succeeded in patenting human skin as a new kind of network.

InSourced claims recently awarded US Patent No. 6,754, 472 is a 'method and apparatus for transmitting power and data using the human body'.

The patent, it says, is part of a new plan to link together several devices using skin as a connector.

As an example, Microsoft says it would be possible to have just one speaker for a person's watch, PDA, and portable radio, if they were all connected to that speaker through skin.

It adds that different devices could be powered from a single power source strapped to the skin.

Each would be driven by multiple power supply signals working at different frequencies, and data and audio signals could also be transmitted over that same power signal.

The power source and devices would be connected to the body via electrodes.

 

Physical Universe: More Than 156 Billion Years Wide

 

By Robert Roy Britt
5/24/04

If you've ever wondered how big the universe is, you're not alone. Astronomers have long pondered this, too, and they've had a hard time figuring it out. Now an estimate has been made, and it’s a whopper. The universe is at least 156 billion light-years wide.  

In the new study, researchers examined primordial radiation imprinted on the cosmos. Among their conclusions is that it is less likely that there is some crazy cosmic "hall of mirrors" that would cause one object to be visible in two locations. And they've ruled out the idea that we could peer deep into space and time and see our own planet in its youth.

First, let's see why the size is a number you've never heard of before.

Stretching reality

The universe is about 13.7 billion years old. Light reaching us from the earliest known galaxies has been travelling, therefore, for more than 13 billion years. So one might assume that the radius of the universe is 13.7 billion light-years and that the whole shebang is double that, or 27.4 billion light-years wide.

But the universe has been expanding ever since the beginning of time, when theorists believe it all sprang forth from an infinitely dense point in a Big Bang.

"All the distance covered by the light in the early universe gets increased by the expansion of the universe," explains Neil Cornish, an astrophysicist at Montana State University. "Think of it like compound interest."

Need a visual? Imagine the universe just a million years after it was born, Cornish suggests. A batch of light travels for a year, covering one light-year. "At that time, the universe was about 1,000 times smaller than it is today," he said. "Thus, that one light-year has now stretched to become 1,000 light-years."

All the pieces add up to 78 billion-light-years. The light has not traveled that far, but "the starting point of a photon reaching us today after travelling for 13.7 billion years is now 78 billion light-years away," Cornish said. That would be the radius of the universe, and twice that -- 156 billion light-years -- is the diameter. That's based on a view going 90 percent of the way back in time, so it might be slightly larger.

"It can be thought of as a spherical diameter is the usual sense," Cornish added comfortingly.

(You might have heard the universe is almost surely flat, not spherical. The flatness refers to its geometry being "normal," like what is taught in school; two parallel lines can never cross.)

Hall of mirrors

The scientists studied the cosmic microwave background (CMB), radiation unleashed about 380,000 years after the Big Bang, when the universe had first expanded enough to cool and allow atoms to form. Temperature differences in the CMB left an imprint on the sky that was used last year to reveal the age of the universe and confirm other important cosmological measurements. 

The CMB is like a baby picture of the cosmos, before any stars were born.

The focus of the new work, which was published last week in the journal Physical Review Letters, was a search of CMB data for paired circles that would have indicated the universe is like a hall of mirrors, in which multiple images of the same object could show up in different locations in space-time. A hall of mirrors could mean the universe is finite but tricks us into thinking it is infinite.

Think of it as a video game in which an object disappearing on the right side of the screen reappears on the left. 

"Several years ago we showed that any finite universe in which light had time to 'wrap around' since the Big Bang would have the same pattern of cosmic microwave background temperature fluctuations around pairs of circles," Cornish explained. They looked for the most likely patterns that would be evident in a CMB map generated by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).

They didn't find those patterns.

Don't Look Back

"Our results don't rule out a hall-of-mirrors effect, but they make the possibility far less likely," Cornish told SPACE.com, adding that the findings have shown "no sign that the universe is finite, but that doesn't prove that it is infinite."

The results do render impossible a "soccer ball" shape for the universe, proposed late last year by another team. "However, if they were to 'pump up' their soccer ball to make it larger, they could evade our bounds" and still be in the realm of possibility, Cornish said. Other complex shapes haven't been ruled out.

The findings eliminate any chance of seeing our ancient selves, however, unless we can master time travel.

"If the universe was finite, and had a size of about 4 billion to 5 billion light-years, then light would be able to wrap around the universe, and with a big enough telescope we could view the Earth just after it solidified and when the first life formed," Cornish said. "Unfortunately, our results rule out this tantalizing possibility."

 

 

Bright Light Yields Unusual Vibes 

MONTREAL, CANADA -- By bombarding very thin slices of several copper/oxygen compounds, called cuprates, with very bright, short-lived pulses of light, Ivan Bozovic, a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, and his collaborators have discovered an unusual property of the materials: After absorbing the light energy, they emit it as long-lived sound waves, as opposed to heat energy. This result may open up a new field of study on cuprates -- materials already used in wireless communications and under investigation for other applications in the electronics industry. As the light pulses strike each film, illuminating an area only about a thousandth of a millimeter across, they transfer their energy to the film's atoms. In response, the atoms vibrate, and tiny sound wave "packets," called phonons, spread through the sample. Bozovic observes that, mysteriously, these emitted sound waves do not die out quickly, as they do with other materials. Instead, the atoms oscillate many times before dissipating the absorbed energy. "This is very unusual, as it seems that the atoms find it hard to convert these oscillations into ordinary thermal energy (heat)," said Bozovic. Through further studies, Bozovic hopes to learn more about this phenomenon, the first step toward finding possible applications for it. For example, this work could contribute to the development of a phaser, a laser-like device that emits phonons instead of light. "Much more research needs to be done," Bozovic said. "We don¹t know yet how this property might be useful. However, I have little doubt that the phaser would be a very useful scientific tool for a broad new class of experiments," Bozovic said. {Brookhaven National Laboratory release 3/24/04}

On The NASA News Briefing About Unusual Solar Object

The discovery of a mysterious object in our solar system was the topic of a listen-and-log-on news briefing on Monday, March 15, 2004. Dr. Michael Brown, associate professor of planetary astronomy, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. will present his discovery of the most distant object ever detected orbiting the sun. He and colleagues made the discovery as part of a NASA-funded research project.

Images and information about this discovery:

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2004-05

Two More Israelis In Van Arrested Near US Nuke Facility
By Daniel Hopsicker
 5-22-4

For the second time in the past two weeks Israelis in a moving van have been detained near a U.S. nuclear facility, this time at the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base near St. Marys, GA. 

"Security scare shuts Kings Bay" reported the Jacksonville Times-Union on Saturday. "Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base was locked down for security reasons Friday after two Israelis were detained for questioning." 

Two Israeli men attempted to enter the base about 10:30 a.m., on the pretext that that had been hired by a moving-and-storage company to pick up household goods at an address on the base, the paper reported. 

One occupant of the vehicle was unable to provide base security personnel with proper credentials, a base spokesman told reporters. 

"Base personnel then inspected the van." 

What the MP's found has no doubt since become highly classified. But before that could happen, a base spokesman had blurted this much of it out... 

"A briefcase was removed from the vehicle with a remote control robot, but nothing was found in it." 


FULL STORY AT: The Mad Cow Morning News    

 

 

Al Qaeda's Chief Of Ops Has Startling Background  
By Michael Collins Piper
American Free Press
5-21-4

In the April 19 issue, American Free Press reported on the little-noticed point that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the purported chief of operations of the Al Qaeda terrorist network, had told U.S. interrogators that the Sears Tower in Chicago was also an intended Al Qaeda target-a significant fact in light of evidence that Israeli operatives taken into custody on U.S. soil after the 9-11 terrorist attacks were carrying detailed videotapes of the Sears Tower. This week AFP follows up and details the little-known background of Mohammed. 

SECOND IN A SERIES 

There is one detail about Al Qaeda's alleged chief of operations Khalid Shaikh Mohammed that, while reported in the media, never receives the focus it deserves: Mohammed is the uncle of Ramzi Yousef, the reported brains behind the first 1993 terror bombing of the World Trade Center and who has often been "linked" by some sources to the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. 

There has been widespread belief that Mohammed's nephew, Yousef, may have been a secret asset of Israel's intelligence service, the Mossad. In addition, it is a most uncomfortable fact that Yousef worked closely with a reported Mossad asset, Ahmad Ajaj, in the first bombing of the World Trade Center. 

So the question is whether Mohammed, like his nephew and longtime collaborator, has actually been a deep-cover Mossad asset operating inside an Arabic and Muslim network. Let's look at some facts. 

For years, there have been questions as to Yousef's ethnic or cultural background, not to mention his identity. He has variously been described as an "Iraqi" or as a Kuwaiti national or as a Baluchi from Pakistan. 

At the time Yousef was claiming to be an Iraqi, during his period operating in New York just prior to the first World Trade Center attack, there were Arabs who doubted it. However, for those who were eager to link Saddam Hussein and Iraq to both attacks on the World Trade Center and, as some continue to do today, to the Oklahoma City bombing, Yousef's claim of Iraqi heritage has been convenient. 

According to an investigative report by Emily Fancher, of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism: "Yousef's identity was never settled in court." So the truth is that not even the United States government has actually-at least officially-determined if Yousef really is an Arab or a Baluchi or a Muslim. 

What makes this little-reported anomaly so interesting is that a formerly secret CIA assessment, dated March 1979, of Israel's foreign intelligence and security services, reported, candidly, that it is a long-standing policy for Israeli intelligence to disguise Jews as Arabs. The CIA report stated: 

One of the established goals of the intelligence and security services is that each officer be fluent in Arabic. A nine-month, intensive Arabic language course is given annually . . . to students. . . . 

As further training, these Mossad officers work in the [Israeli-controlled Arab lands] for two years to sharpen their language skills. . . . 

Many Israelis have come from Arab countries where they were born and educated and appear more Arab than Israeli . . . 

By forging passports and identity documents of Arab and western countries and providing sound background legends and cover, Mossad has successfully sent into Egypt and other Arab countries Israelis disguised and documented as Arabs or citizens of European countries. . . . 

These persons are also useful for their ability to pass completely for a citizen of the nation in question. 

The Israeli talent for counterfeiting or forging foreign passports and documents ably supports the agent's authenticity. 

As if that were not enough to raise suspicions, on Sept. 29, 1998, Israeli journalist Yossi Melman, writing in Israel's Ha'aretz, revealed: 

Shin Bet agents, who worked undercover in the Israeli-Arab sector in the 1950s, went as far as to marry Muslim women and have children with them, in an attempt to continue their mission without raising suspicion. 

So the question remains: are the individuals known as Mohammed and Yousef really who they say they are, and are they really Arabs or Baluchis or Muslims at all? 

And if the uncle-and-nephew team really are Arabs and Muslims, the fact that the nephew, Yousef, was working closely with a reported Israeli intelligence asset in the first WTC attack is still noteworthy indeed, particularly since the Israeli asset in question was himself an Arab. 

Here are the facts about Yousef's Mossad connection to the first WTC tragedy first revealed by investigative reporter Robert I. Friedman in the August 3, 1993, article in The Village Voice, an independent left-wing New York weekly whose reports on this topic have been referenced by American Free Press. 

Friedman reported that Yousef's traveling companion and close collaborator, Ajaj, a 27-year-old West Bank Palestinian held in federal custody for conspiring to bomb the World Trade Center, may have been a Mossad mole. 

Ajaj was arrested at Kennedy Airport on Sept. 1, 1992, after he arrived on a Pakistani International flight from Peshawar carrying a forged Swedish passport and bombmaking manuals. He was taken into custody, and subsequently pleaded guilty to entering the country illegally. Ajaj's traveling companion was Yousef. 

Although the FBI identified Ajaj as a senior intifada terrorist with links to Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist organization, Kol Ha'ir, a respected Hebrew-language weekly published in Jerusalem, reported that Ajaj was never involved in intifada activities or with Hamas or even the Palestine Liberation Organization. 

Instead, according to Kol Ha'ir, Ajaj was a petty crook arrested in 1988 for counterfeiting U.S. dollars out of East Jerusalem. Ajaj was convicted of counterfeiting charges and then sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. 

According to Friedman, writing in The Village Voice: "It was during his prison stay that Mossad, Israel's CIA, apparently recruited him, say Israeli intelligence sources. By the time he was released after having served just one year, he had seemingly undergone a radical transformation." 

Friedman reported that Ajaj had suddenly become a devout Muslim and an outspoken hard-line nationalist. Then, Ajaj was arrested for smuggling weapons into the West Bank, supposedly for El Fatah, a subdivision of the PLO. 

But Friedman says this was actually a sham. Friedman's sources in Israeli intelligence say that the arrest and Ajaj's subsequent deportation were "staged by Mossad to establish his credentials as an intifada activist. Mossad allegedly 'tasked' Ajaj to infiltrate radical Palestinian groups operating outside Israel and to report back to Tel Aviv. Israeli intelligence sources say that it is not unusual for Mossad to recruit from the ranks of common criminals." 

After Ajaj's "deportation" from Israel, he showed up in Pakistan where he turned up in the company of the anti-Soviet Mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan. 

This could point further toward Ajaj working for the Mossad, for according to the September 1987 issue of Covert Action Information Bulletin the funding and supply lines for the Mujahideen were not only the "the second largest covert operation" in the CIA's history, but it was also, according to former Mossad operative Victor Ostrovsky (writing in The Other Side of Deception) under the direct supervision of the Mossad. 

According to Ostrovsky: "It was a complex pipeline, since a large portion of the Mujahideen's weapons were American made and were supplied to the Muslim Brotherhood directly from Israel, using as carriers the Bedouin nomads who roamed the demilitarized zones in the Sinai." 

After Ajaj's ventures with the Mujahideen, he popped up in New York and purported to befriend members of a small so-called "radical" clique surrounding Sheikh Abdel-Rahman who was accused of being the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. 

On Feb. 26, 1993, the day of the World Trade center bombing, Ajaj was "safe" in federal prison serving a sixmonth sentence for entering the country on a forged passport. Later, then, he was indicted for conspiracy in the WTC bombing. 

"If Ajaj was recruited by Mossad [Freidman's emphasis], it is not known whether he continued to work for the Israeli spy agency after he was deported. One possibility, of course, is that upon leaving Israel and meeting radical Muslims close to the blind Egyptian sheikh, his loyalties shifted," writes Friedman. 

"Another scenario is that he had advance knowledge of the World Trade Center bombing, which he shared with Mossad, and that Mossad, for whatever reason, kept the secret to itself. If true, U.S. intelligence sources speculate that Mossad might have decided to keep the information closely guarded so as not to compromise its undercover agent," writes Friedman. 

Columbia University's Emily Fancher reported that Robert Precht, a defense lawyer for one of Ajaj's co-defendants in the WTC trial, said: "We felt that there were unseen actors behind this. Neither defense lawyers nor the government knew who it was." 

It's probably no coincidence, considering that when Yousef was finally taken into custody, according to U.S. Secret Service agent Brian Parr, "he was friendly, he seemed relaxed and he actually seemed eager to talk to us." That's precisely what one might expect from an Israeli agent, doing his job, spreading the Al Qaeda legend for the benefit of his Israeli sponsors. 

The possibility of a high-level FBI cover-up of Israeli involvement in the first World Trade Center attack must be considered inasmuch as the former head of the FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force, who was a key player in the first WTC investigation, was Neil Herman. 

After leaving the FBI, Herman temporarily assumed the post of the then-recently deceased Irwin Suall, longtime director of "fact finding" for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith. _ 

 

Former Israeli Foreign Minister charged with drug smuggling  
1o May 2004 Adi Shalem

Indictment filed against Gonen Segev for attempting to smuggle 30,000 ecstasy pills from Holland to Israel and with using an expired passport.

Former Minister of Science and Energy, Gonen Segev was indicted Sunday on charges of possession of drugs, attempting to smuggle drugs and conspiring to commit a crime. Other indictments were filed at the Tel–Aviv District court against Segev’s cousin, Moshe Werner, and attorney Ariel Freedman for their alleged part in the affair. 

Segev is also charged with using an expired passport- about a month ago he presented the Dutch Border Authorities with a diplomatic passport from the period he served as a minister. Segev was briefly detained by the Dutch authorities over the expired passport but was then released and allowed to continue his journey to Israel. The day after Segev landed in Tel-Aviv he was already on his way back to Amsterdam. A couple of days later, when he tried to go back to Israel, the Dutch authorities grew suspicious and detained him for questioning again. 

Dutch police found a large suspicious parcel in Segev’s bag. Segev claimed that attorney Freedman had asked him to transport a package of candies (M&Ms) from Holland to Israel. The Dutch released Segev and sent him on his way after alerting their Israeli counterparts that he would soon be arriving at Ben Gurion International airport in Tel-Aviv. Segev rented a locker at the Amsterdam airport, stashed his bag there and returned to Israel. 

Israeli police conducted an undercover investigation and discovered that the bag contained over 30,000 ecstasy pills. The investigation was exposed after Freedman tried to leave Israel. At that stage, police arrested Segev who claimed that he believed the bag contained candy. 

Police say there are repeated contradictions in Segev’s testimony. In addition, police say Segev forged the date of his expired diplomatic passport so that he could bypass security and smuggle the drugs into Israel. 

 

============

Halliburton Pulling the Plug on GI Communications
May 8, 2004

A week after a scandal broke involving photos of American troops torturing Iraqi prisoners, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, & Root is pulling the plug on private electronic communications with the folks back home, apparently at the request of the Department of Defense. See, for example, this note from military blogger :

I might be getting transferred within the next week to another post. At the very least, KBR is not allowing any private computers on their system for the next ninety days. There might be one other option, but if you don't hear from me for a while...God, I don't know what I'll do about the kitty.

. . . I told them when I got here that I couldn't drive. They insisted on giving me a license. Now they're angry at me because I'm not comfortable driving. Go figure. The fact that this happened almost immediately after SB and I had an argument about it and then it came to someone else's attention is purely coincidental, I'm sure.

Edited to add: Screw it. No matter what it takes, I will get to my email.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden remarks:

Email from a friend with contacts among American troops in Iraq prompts me to wish some journalist would investigate reports that the military has ordered KBR, which provides net connectivity for US camps and bases in Iraq, to cut off all soldiers’ “inessential” access to email and the net for the next 90 days.

The Bush administration has faced rising criticism over the course of the week, with many calling for the resignation of Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld. Vice President Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton before his departure to become the Vice President of the United States.

 

F.A.A. Official Scrapped Tape of 9/11 Controllers' Statements

NY Times May 6

WASHINGTON, May 6 — At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording that day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said today...

The taping began before noon on Sept. 11 at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center, in Ronkonkoma, on Long Island, but it was later destroyed by an F.A.A. quality-assurance manager, who crushed the cassette in his hand, cut the tape into little pieces and dropped them in different trash cans around the building, according to a report made public today by the inspector general of the Transportation Department.

The inspector general had been asked by Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, to look into how well the Federal Aviation Administration had cooperated with the 9/11 Commission.

The quality-assurance manager told investigators that he had destroyed the tape because he thought making it was contrary to F.A.A. policy, which calls for written statements, and because he felt that the controllers "were not in the correct frame of mind to have properly consented to the taping" because of the stress of the day.

 

 

Saddam Lawyer Says Access to Client Denied 

10 May 2004

 

AMMAN (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein's defense lawyers said on Monday they had received no response from the U.S. administration in Iraq and the International Committee of the Red Cross to repeated requests to see their client.  Lawyers representing the ousted leader also said they were ready to represent Iraqi prisoners abused by U.S. and British soldiers, whose pictures angered people around the world. 

"We are willing to take legal action against the U.S. administration and the Red Cross if they don't allow us to see President Saddam," said Jordanian lawyer Mohammad Rashdan, one of a 20-strong legal team appointed by Saddam's wife to represent him. Rashdan told Reuters in Amman his team had received no response so far to requests to visit Saddam. 

The U.S.-appointed Governing Council is setting up a war crimes tribunal and has already chosen judges to try Saddam, who was captured in December, on charges that may include genocide and crimes against humanity. 

Washington has said 66-year-old Saddam, whose interrogation was being led by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), should be tried in Iraq. Rashdan told Reuters no war crimes tribunal had the right to try the former Iraqi president because the U.S.-led invasion that toppled him was itself illegal. 

"It was an illegal act and every step or decision that follows, including forming the court that would try Saddam, is illegitimate as well," said Rashdan. Human rights groups fear that Iraq under U.S. occupation lacks the people and institutions to conduct fair trials. Salem Chalabi, a U.S.-educated lawyer in charge of administering the special tribunal that will try Saddam, said he expected prosecutors to seek the death penalty for the former Iraqi strongman and officials of his Baath Party. 

Rashdan said the legal team, hailing from the Arab world, the United States and France, was ready to represent the abused Iraqi prisoners. "According to international humanitarian laws and the Geneva conventions, The U.S. and Britain should either bring things back the way they were before the invasion or compensate the Iraqi people for every crime committed since," he said. 

The first of seven U.S. soldiers charged with abusing detainees will face a public trial later this month, the U.S. military said on Sunday. Rashdan showed Reuters the power of attorney statement signed by Sajida Khairallah Tilfa on January, 11, 2004. He said the statement, which also had the support of Saddam's daughters Raghad, Rana and Hala, was signed in Syria. French Lawyer Jacques Verges, who said in March that Saddam's nephew had asked him to defend the former Iraqi dictator, was not a member of the group, Rashdan said. Verges is known for defending Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and international guerrilla Carlos the Jackal. 

Vegas has new crime element: Israeli mob

April 30, 2004 
Jeff German
Las Vegas Sun

WITH ITS FREE flow of cash and high-stakes gambling, Las Vegas has always been an attractive target of opportunity for organized crime.

For years the traditional La Cosa Nostra dominated street rackets here and even managed to gain hidden interests in casinos on the Strip. We were considered an "open city" for more than two dozen of the nation's Mafia families.

Today Las Vegas still is considered fertile ground for organized crime, but as the mob's influence has waned because of stepped-up pressure from law enforcement authorities, other criminal groups have risen to prominence on the streets.

In recent months authorities have discovered that Israeli organized crime syndicates have set their sights on Las Vegas. One ranking crime figure was overheard a year ago by lawmen on court-approved wiretaps describing Las Vegas as "wide open" territory.

"They're really trying to rear their ugly head in Las Vegas," says Sheriff Bill Young, who has detectives assigned to a joint federal drug task force investigating the Israeli crime connection here.

The Israeli syndicates are involved in traditional rackets, such as loan sharking, extortion, money laundering, prostitution and illegal gambling.

And they're just as violent as the Mafia. Two of the biggest families, one based in Jerusalem and the other in Tel Aviv, currently are involved in a bloody war over control of street rackets in Israel.

But unlike the Mafia, the Israeli crime groups are far more sophisticated and have far-reaching international tentacles. Key members of the groups have homes in multiple countries and make most of their money importing cocaine and the club drug Ecstasy (MDMA) from Europe into the United States. Las Vegas has been the site of some Ecstasy deals, drug task force affidavits revealed.

The booming Strip nightclub scene in Las Vegas, where Ecstasy is popular, has become not only a favored playground for the rising stars of the Israeli crime families, but also an ideal climate to conduct their illicit business.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents, who have taken the lead in gaining a handle on the Israeli mob's growing influence here, say crime family members have cultivated ties with local casinos, members of the legal community and Israeli-born business people, some of whom are being shaken down for money in protection rackets.

"In my opinion, law enforcement still doesn't have a full understanding of the presence of Israeli organized crime figures here," one member of the federal drug task force says.

But the increased scrutiny -- which has taken agents around the world and prompted unprecedented cooperation with the Israeli National Police -- has begun to bear fruit.

On April 6, following an investigation that began in Las Vegas, a federal indictment quietly was unsealed in Los Angeles charging several suspected Israeli crime figures who have ties here with conspiracy, extortion and money laundering. These figures, agents allege, are members of the Jerusalem crime family known as the "Jerusalem Network."

The indictment received no publicity in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, but it clearly has significance in the ongoing local efforts to keep tabs on the Israeli mob.

The biggest fish named in the indictment is Gabriel Ben Harosh, the reputed 39-year-old jet-setting No. 2 man in the Jerusalem Network, which authorities believe is run by Itzhak Abergil, who recently was ordered to leave Israel amid the rising mob bloodshed.

Ben Harosh, who is represented by Las Vegas lawyer David Chesnoff, was taken into custody in Toronto and is awaiting extradition.

Though investigators describe Ben Harosh in sworn affidavits as a "high-ranking member of an Israeli organized crime syndicate," Chesnoff says his Moroccan-born client is a legitimate businessman.

"He's a multimillionaire who owns one of the biggest construction companies in Israel," Chesnoff says, adding that this client is looking forward to fighting the charges against him.

Another key defendant in the case is Hai Waknine, 32, a suspected crime family associate who has a beach front home in Los Angeles. DEA agents believe Waknine collects debts and launders money for Ben Harosh.

Over the past 14 months local agents secretly have watched Waknine and his entourage of bodyguards and associates live in the fast lane during numerous trips to Las Vegas. Waknine is regarded as a high roller at several casinos, including the Venetian, Paris and the Palms.

On one trip in 2003, drug task force affidavits say, a member of Waknine's entourage was arrested by Metro Police on drug charges at the Palms after a prostitute Waknine reportedly brought with him from Los Angeles had overdosed and was rushed by ambulance to the hospital. Police seized a container filled with liquid GHB, a date rape drug, from the associate during the incident. Chesnoff defended him on the charges.

After the prostitute recovered, DEA agents learned through wiretaps that Waknine had instructed her to take a large sum of cash to Ben Harosh in Spain.

One of the more intriguing defendants in the Los Angeles case is Sasson Barashy, a 47-year-old alleged Jerusalem Network member who is now in custody in Israel, where he has a lengthy rap sheet.

The Los Angeles investigation took off after local DEA agents discovered in January 2003 that Barashy was living at a home in Summerlin with his wife. At the time he was a fugitive from Israel in a well-publicized criminal case involving a $60 million bank embezzlement and extortion plot allegedly pulled off by the Jerusalem Network.

Telephone calls coming in and out of the Summerlin home were secretly monitored by agents, who found that Barashy was in steady contact with a who's who of suspected Israeli crime figures, including Ben Harosh and Waknine.

Calls were made to associates in Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Miami. There were plenty of international calls as well. In one two-month stretch, according to drug task force affidavits, more than 350 calls were made to associates in Israel, Morocco and Spain.

In the ensuing months, through wiretaps and physical surveillance, agents stayed hot on the trail of the activities of the group, documenting, among other things, efforts to extort cash from a luxury car dealer in Beverly Hills, launder money through lawyers in Miami and set up drug deals in various parts of the world.

Through it all members of the group were not afraid to maintain a high profile in Las Vegas. In April 2003, for example, Barashy and Waknine hosted a lavish Passover seder, live band and all, at Bally's.

Their days of celebrating may be over for now.

But with so much "open territory" for the taking, the odds are that other family members will be more than willing to keep the party going. 

==========

'Israelis Are A Nation Of Spies And Drug Dealers' 
By The Jerusalem Post 

By JPost.com Staff
5-9-4

"Israelis are a nation of spies and drug dealers", according to New Zealand immigration officials speaking to the Jewish Agency treasurer Shai Hermesh upon his arrival there, reported Army Radio Saturday. 

Hermesh and his assistant were detained and searched by airport officials for 3 hours after their arrival in Auckland in spite of the fact that Hermesh presented a diplomatic passport. 

The immigration officer at the airport explained his actions saying the two raised suspicion due to their arrival from a terror-inflicted country and last month's arrest of two Israelis suspected of being Mossad operatives. 

==============

Saddam's Wife Says US
Prisoner Isn't Her Husband
By Maxim Pogodin
4-17-4

Last week, American authorities arranged a meeting of the former Iraqi dictator with his wife.

 

She was the first of Hussein-s relatives to meet with the ex-leader of Iraq at a new place, at the American military base in Qatar. Accompanied by Sheikh Hamad Al-Tani, Sajida Heiralla Tuffah has arrived from Syria on his private jet in the end of March.

 

The outcome of their meeting turned out to be quite scandalous. Sajina claims that the person she encountered was not her husband, but his double. If someone were to say for sure that it was not insinuation, it would have been easy to believe the wife with a 25-year experience. It is also possible to assume that Saddam has simply changed since the day of his sons' deaths, June 24 2003. This however is highly unlikely. In case we believe Hussein-s wife, all DNA testing of the ex-Iraqi leader should be considered a mere fake. Overall, today there remain more questions then there are answers.

 

On the other hand however, those statements of Hussein's wife can in fact be quite understandable. After all, this is the easiest way to demoralize an enemy.

 

Hussein's younger daughter Hala has also arrived at the base in Qatar along with Saddam Hussein's two grandsons and two sisters, total of eight people. They were all invited by Shekh-s wife Muza to stay in one of the palaces. Eldest daughters Ragad and Rada along with five Hussein-s grandchildren have recently arrived to Doha from Jordan.

 

Elaf| newspaper writes that, most likely, the entire Hussein's family will stay in Qatar permanently.

 

Saddam Hussein was captured by the American forces in December 2003 and held in one of the palaces in Baghdad in a region controlled by the coalition forces. Afterward, due to security reasons, he was transferred to the American military base in Qatar, where he is expected to remain until the trial.

©1999-2003 "PRAVDA.Ru". When reproducing our materials in whole or in part, reference to PRAVDA.Ru should be made. The opinions and views of the authors do not always coinside with the point of view of PRAVDA.Ru's editors.

http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/91/366/12494_saddam.html

US Quietly Sacks Its Prize
Witness Against Saddam
By Patrick Cockburn
The Independent - UK

4-16-4

 

Once he was a prize witness before congressional committees, arguing that the US must invade Iraq immediately because Saddam Hussein possessed a fearsome arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Given a top job in Baghdad after the war, he has now been quietly sacked by the US authorities.

 

Khidir Hamza was the dissident Iraqi nuclear scientist who played an important role persuading Americans to go to war in Iraq. His credentials appeared impeccable because he claimed to have headed Saddam's nuclear programme before defecting in 1994.

 

After the war, Dr Hamza was rewarded, to the distress of many Iraqi scientists, with a well-paid job as the senior advisor to the Ministry of Science and Technology. Appointed by the Coalition Provisional Authority, he had partial control of Iraq's nuclear and military industries.

 

It was not a successful appointment, according to sources within the ministry. Dr Hamza seldom turned up for work. He obstructed others from doing their jobs. On 4 March, his contract was not renewed by the CPA. It is now trying to evict him from his house in the heavily guarded "Green Zone" where the CPA has its headquarters. He could not be contacted by The Independent but is believed to have taken up a job with a US company.

 

Dr Hamza's fall from grace with the US administration is in sharp contrast with the seriousness with which it took his views on WMD before the war. Speaking excellent English, he was also regularly interviewed by US television and quoted by the press.

 

There were always doubts that Dr Hamza had been as central as he claimed to Saddam's programme to develop a nuclear bomb. Dr Hussain Shahristani, an Iraqi nuclear scientist, tortured and imprisoned under Saddam for refusing to help build a nuclear device, said: "Hamza really was only a minor figure in our nuclear programme and always exaggerated his own importance when he got to the US."

 

Dr Hamza's own account of his career was that, after being educated in the US, he had been working at Florida State University in 1969 when he was approached by an Iraqi agent. He was told that unless he returned to Iraq his family would be in danger. He came back and was compelled to work for 20 years for Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission on developing an atomic bomb. Deeply opposed to the project, he defected to the US embassy in Hungary in 1994 and swiftly became a persuasive expert witness, testifying as an Iraqi insider on how Saddam was developing a terrifying arsenal. In the lead-up to the war he proclaimed: "Saddam has a whole range of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, biological and chemical."

 

It was as if Dr Hamza had studied the agenda of the hawks in the US, who wanted to invade Iraq, and was willing to supply evidence supporting their arguments. Several other Iraqi defectors during the 1990s also produced information which they said proved Saddam was secretly producing WMD, but Dr Hamza was the most convincing because he was able to clothe his evidence in appropriate scientific jargon. He wrote a book, Saddam's Bomb Maker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda.

 

One employer in the US decided that his account of his past simply did not stand up to examination but the US government stuck by him and made him a consultant to the US Department of Energy. Dr Hamza also hinted that Saddam had secret links to al-Qa'ida and might give them anthrax.

 

Back in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam, Dr Hamza's position as a senior advisor was very influential. The US-appointed advisors share control over ministries with Iraqi ministers. The ministry was, among other things, in charge of monitoring and securing the remains of Iraq's nuclear industry.

 

Dr Hamza's life in Baghdad was not entirely happy. At first he lived outside the Green Zone with his family until a remotely detonated bomb exploded near his car on the morning of Christmas Eve, buckling the doors and blowing out the windows.

 

He and his son were in the car at the time but were not injured. Dr Hamza asked for and was given a house in the Green Zone. It is this which the CPA is now trying to recover.

 

Of the Iraqi defectors after the Gulf War in 1991 who built a career in the US by providing evidence that Saddam Hussein was covertly building up an arsenal of WMD, Dr Hamza was the most successful. Once the war was over and no WMD had been found, he was something of an embarrassment, all the more so since he could not do his job.

 

© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=512242

 

Terrorism & The Fear Market
By Terrell E. Arnold
4-14-4

 

Since 9-11, our country, on its best days, has been on conditional alert against a possible terrorist attack. Before 9-11 we were conscious of the possibility of terrorist attacks and we fitted that risk into a spectrum of perils that ranged from slipping on a bar of soap in the bathtub to being on a plane when it was blown out of the sky; a broad, random, dour, but not readily personalized set of risks. We took it that way and learned to live with it. Carefully assessed, the reality still looks much the same, but we are behaving differently. What is going on?

Life on earth is fraught with natural and manmade disasters. Natural disasters can be devastating as we saw recently in Bam, Iran with the number of deaths approaching 40,000 people. Preparedness between events has steadily improved over the years, but the response is considered, compassionate, and generally focused on recover and rebuild. War, a manmade disaster, leaves more scars, but in time it too devolves into recover and rebuild. What then is so unique about terrorism that we respond to it so differently, seem prepared to allow our leadership to corrupt our democratic system to deal with it, and appear to have allowed ourselves to become enslaved by it in the backlash from 9-11?

We have entered the fear market, where mainly ignorance and mere perception drive our thoughts, emotions and responses. This place demands our close attention, because we are seldom given enough information to make specific defensive moves credible or useful. Terrorists seldom announce their moves in advance; quite often the announcement is the attack. They cynically scare us and move on. Governments are compelled politically to say they are well informed about the matter and are on top of it, but in reality they are seldom either. The next real attack is likely to catch everyone by surprise, and no amount of warlike preparation significantly alters that prospect.

How does 'terrorism' compare with other 'risks'?

Our reactions to the possibility of terrorism are out of proportion to the facts. In order to understand the problem, it is useful to look at several common risk situations.

Upward of 320,000 Americans died in homicides or suicides during the period 1996-2002. That amounts to about 45,000 people per year, and the chance that an American might die this way is roughly one in 6,500. American deaths from terrorism during that period amounted to only 1,538, including over 1,400 Americans who died in the 9-11 attacks. In this period, inclusive of 9-11, the chance of an American dying by terrorist hands was roughly one in 1.3 million.

Almost 200,000 people were killed or injured in vehicle accidents in the United States involving drunk driving during 2001. A total of 1530 Americans were killed or injured in the 9-11 attacks that year.

During 2002 more than 17,400 people in the United States died in alcohol related motor vehicle accidents. Only 61 Americans died or were injured as a result of terrorist attacks during 2002.

Data gathered by the Centers for Disease Control indicate that since 1981 over 660,000 Americans or more than 30,000 per year have died in the United States from homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings involving firearms. During the period 1981-2002 worldwide terrorist deaths and injuries amounted to about 51,600 or roughly 2350 per year.

On average more than 40,000 Americans are killed and close to 3 million are injured in highway accidents each year. The odds are less than one in 100 that any of us could be involved in such an accident in the United States. Last year the worldwide chance of someone dying by terrorist hands was about one in 2.7 million.

How do we put 'terrorism' in perspective?

There is genuine concern in many parts of our society about losses of life through accidents and murder or suicide, but there is no great political furor about any of it. Nor do we seem prepared to deal effectively-assuming that we could-- with the mayhem annually perpetrated by use of firearms. Most people respond to the situation on our highways by being more careful, wearing their seat belts, avoiding alcohol abuse, and getting on with their lives. We mostly shrug off the fact that the National Rifle Association and its membership have a political hammerlock on gun controls, no matter what the arguments are on both sides of this question. Why is it therefore that our leadership has been driven to a state of near paranoia by terrorism? Just what is this fear market? How do we put the threat terrorism poses for our lives, property and lifestyles into some sensible perspective?

Before 9-11, fear was not our organizing principle but the Bush administration has made it so in the 28 months since 9-11. Terrorism, and the shadows of fear around it, were centerpieces of this year's Bush State of the Union address. Yet, since 9-11 we have not been attacked at home and Americans have experienced only limited attacks abroad. We have instead become the attacker while talking ourselves into a frenzy. Our leadership, our media, and a burgeoning array of firms and organizations that market their goods and services through playing on fear have built and sustain the overblown images we now confront. In effect, fear has become a major marketing tool for government budgets, leadership acceptance, political campaigns, government programs, publishing and media programming, insurance and other private business activities.

Who are the targets of fear marketing?

We Americans are the targets. Politicians argue that not telling us about threats is a bad policy. The net effect of current terrorism information policy, notably the national alert system, keeps us apprehensive, and gives the terrorists one of their best tools: fear.

This fear campaign can be effective with us only if we do not do our homework. Since 9-11 the impact of government policy and publicity has been to keep us focused on the here-now. That single day's events have been turned from a single disastrous day into a continuum. Tomorrow, we are counseled, can be like another 9-11. Terrorism alerts stay in the yellow to orange zones. Therefore, we must organize our lives around that prospect. This indeed is a pretty hairy outlook, but let's remember Franklin D. Roosevelt's caution: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Then let us look critically at the available data about terrorism.

What are the 'terrorism data'?

For the past three decades our country has coped with a worldwide pattern of terrorist attacks, some of which were deliberately aimed at us, but most of which involved Americans only incidentally; we were often in the wrong places at the wrong times. The attacks would have occurred had we not been there, because we were not the targets. US terrorism data do not make that distinction, counting any attack that involves death or injuries to Americans or American property as anti-US attacks.

The data are distorted in another way in that the most numerous of so-called anti-US attacks are oil pipeline bombings in Colombia. Over the past decade more than 1,300 attacks have been billed as anti-US. However, more than 1,000 of those were Colombia pipeline bombings in which casualties were rare. During the three-year period 2000-2002 that straddled 9-11 there were 968 international terrorist attacks recorded worldwide. Over 400 of those were Colombia pipeline bombings.

To get rid of such anomalies as Colombia pipeline bombings, the official US data published by the State Department isolated a set of significant incidents, those involving deaths, injuries, hostage takings, kidnappings or property damage. In the 2000-2002 period, State recorded 403 significant incidents worldwide, 150 of which occurred in India, largely clustered around the Kashmir problem.

To get the problem of international terrorism clear in our minds, it is essential to look at such patterns. What the data show is that during 2000-2002 there were about 250 significant terrorist incidents worldwide, but only four of them occurred in North America, all on 9-11.

How are we misled?

Nothing about the terrorism pattern warrants launching a worldwide "War on Terrorism." Without the fear factor, the threat is not credible. How is the fear factor sustained?

There are several aspects of fear mongering we must assess. One is implicitly to lump together all the small insurgent groups in the world as a more or less monolithic enemy of the United States. This is fallacious, because the majority of insurgencies are directed against the governments or the elites of their own countries.

Such insurgencies exist in many of the 50 or so failed or failing nation states. Some fairly large groups, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerca Armada Revolutionaria Colombiana) or FARC, which numbers 10,000 or more, seldom venture out of their own countries. The Abu Sayaff group in the Philippines, which operates in the fringes such as the China Sea island of Palawan, fights in Philippine territory. These groups represent some threat to Americans who get in their way, but they pose virtually no threat to the United States.

Another fallacy is the loose play around the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. Although Muslims may be closer to their core beliefs than many Christians, fundamentalists represent a small fraction of the Islamic adherents of the world who number upward of 1.3 billion people. In fact mainstream Muslims and believers of secular government who want to depose their elite, corrupt or oligarchic leaders are far more numerous than fundamentalists. Here again, the primary targets of their energies are their own governments. We become the enemy because we visibly ally with their hated governments, but that threat is largely centered on the national territories of those countries.

What about 'al Qaida'?

Osama bin Laden well understands the situations outlined above. Through al Qaida he aids and abets dissidents in those situations to undercut secular governments or, as in the Saudi Arabian case, leaders who oppose and suppress his brand of Islamism. Such individuals and groups pose a threat to Americans and American interests in those countries, but they are not generally a threat to the United States. Much of the terrorism al Qaida recently has been blamed for has occurred in Islamic countries against indigenous targets. If bin Laden is serious about his scheme to recreate an Islamic caliphate-and it is not known how serious he is about that-then much of his terrorist activity and terrorist attack sponsorship will be to destabilize and unseat secular or nominal Islamic governments in Islamic countries and to disrupt the pattern of support that the US and other developed countries long have extended to those governments. This is not an easy challenge for US leadership, because disengaging and/or reducing support without losing influence on those governments is unlikely.

Al Qaida and bin Laden are poised, however, to take advantage of any flaws in American conduct or activities, especially in Islamic countries. Iraq is the immediate case in point. There are enough indigenous sources of dissension among Iraqis to sustain more than one insurgency until the Americans, British and Coalition partners give up and leave. Bin Laden can leverage small investments of resources and people in this conflict to make it worse, but the main sources of trouble in Iraq are indigenous and they are feeding on the occupation. The argument that what goes on in Iraq is part of the War on Terrorism is mere window dressing. The Iraq conflict must be faced as a struggle between an occupying force and indigenous sources of resistance. Sources and causes of terrorism in the rest of the world are largely irrelevant to it.

How is fear generated?

The generators of fear are largely controlled by government attitudes and actions. What scares serious thinkers most is the fact that the United States Government is prepared to go to a condition of all out global war preparedness against small groups of non-state actors in sixty or more countries. Even if all the world's terrorists were on the same team, which they are not, they would still number fewer than the population of Delaware. In effect, the United States has a wartime President who has declared all out and global war on the equivalent at worst of a micro-state. Even more pointedly, he has declared war on groups that many of the countries that contain them may find irritating but not sufficiently to go to war. High level US rhetoric about these groups makes it appear that they are mainly enemies of the United States, but that is hardly the case. The majority of these groups lack the resources or the inclination to go truly international. In many instances they get an international label in State Department reporting because they attack foreigners inside their own countries.

The most pervasive fear maintenance system is the national terrorism alert program run by the Department of Homeland Security. An Orange Alert status was maintained throughout the Christmas-New Years holidays. That was based as much as anything on rumors and speculations about how effective a major attack would be somewhere such as Times Square at midnight New Year's eve. A similar alert was maintained during the period around the anniversary of 9-11.

The second most pervasive fear mechanism is media reporting, often inspired by government leaks or press conferences about possible terrorism threat situations. Few media appear interested in talking about the chronic problems that generate terrorism in many countries, because those tales do not make good headlines. A story about people who blow things away is more likely to make headlines than one about millions of people who suffer in silence, even if their suffering is among the main roots of terrorism.

The third currently pervasive threat mechanism is Osama bin Laden's practice of periodically sending the world a tape that Washington officials consciously or unconsciously use to refurbish the threat. The interplay between Osama and US officialdom works to broadcast that Osama is still alive and al Qaida a real threat. The fear machine works.

A deeply insidious fear mechanism is the unwillingness of honest skeptics and opponents of the war in both parties to speak out against it. Because they are afraid that either the public or their political opponents or both will punish them politically for taking a stand against a useless war, that war endures and even gains life as the Republican leadership around Bush cynically uses that fear of criticism to silence and undercut opposition to the War on Terrorism

Where does this leave us?

The cumulative effect of all these fear-generating mechanisms is a human condition closely akin to superstition. Rumor and supposition substitute for facts and information. But combined with that ambiguous state of knowledge is a bogey-man theory of world terrorism. We were struggling with world terrorism well before the CIA began training Osama bin Laden and other fighters against the Russians in Afghanistan. What bin Laden has done since graduation is assess and capitalize on the patterns of grievances many groups around the world have against their governments, the dominant elites or religious and secular groups that compete for power. He uses that assessment for recruitment and action against enemies who actually or potentially interfere with his goal of recreating a Muslim caliphate to rule Islam. He did not invent the bogey man. We did that for him. An elusive, amorphous enemy that was world terrorism before bin Laden is not nearly as satisfying a target as a specific, humanized enemy. He satisfies the need for an enemy. We satisfy his need for identity and influence.

How can we break out of this 'situation'?

Data and analysis are available in the public domain to deal with this problem. The State Department annual report, required under Title 22 of the United State Code, and which this writer helped to create in the early 1980s, provides an increasingly clear and comprehensive picture of world terrorism. The report called Patterns of Global Terrorism provides a sound basis for judgment about terrorist groups and situations in countries where terrorism occurs each year.

Unfortunately this report does not appear to be read by senior officials of the government. If read, its logic is certainly not driving US policy, because using a worst case estimate al Qaida membership accounts for less than ten percent of known world terrorist group membership. The report itself has fallen prey since 9-11 to an exaggerated focus on Muslim terrorists and al Qaida, but the obvious conclusion to draw from the annual reports is that if Osama bin Laden were to die from natural causes or be killed and al Qaida shrivel to nil, most of the world's terrorist groups and problems would remain with us.

We need a policy that is based on knowledge and understanding of those facts, not one that relies on fear and uncertainty. Today, our country is being victimized by its own leadership. Ideologues and extremists, as well as true believers in the utility of military power and direct action, drive a national policy that favors preemptive war and global domination as the only tools to meet a largely local problem that exists in some measure in many nations. Only the United States now argues that this problem can be met by military means. Fear (of an exaggerated enemy) and uncertainty (about when, where and how a terrorist attack may occur) are the only arguments made to sustain this policy

Is there no good news?

On the other side of this situation, we should marvel at how calm most people remain under conditions of deep privation, repression, servitude and injustice. If there were ever a generalized human reaction to these conditions, we could have about a third of the world's people up in arms. One of the most remarkable results of the Israeli treatment of the Palestinian people is not that it produces suicide bombers but that, given the millions of repressed peoples in the West Bank and Gaza, it produces so few of them. The Palestinians give us the reassuring fact that even when subjected to extremes of repression, the great majority of people are not prone to violence. The world terrorism threat is as modest as it is because comparatively few of the world's 6.3 billion people are violent.

What can be 'done about the situation'?

The War on Terrorism ignores most of the foregoing facts. The President launched a small-scale special operation in Afghanistan. He then kept the country on a war footing to launch a war against Iraq that the facts did not and do not support. He and his neo-con advisers have loosely labeled the conflict in Iraq as "the central front" in the war on terrorism, but that ignores the obvious truth that a people whose country is invaded will fight back by whatever means available.

Little to no effort is being mounted to deal with the causes of terrorism. The causes-- poverty, hunger, disease, political and economic repression--are well known to many workers in international organizations and in the United States Government. In the competition for resources, war fighting gets priority. Mitigating or eliminating the causes of terrorism does not. Trying to reduce or eliminate terrorist attacks without doing anything about the causes of terrorism is like trying to eliminate drunk driving without doing anything about alcohol abuse. That logic would appeal to someone who wants to strike a coin that has a head but no tail. Of course the same logic works for someone who insists on increasing government spending while reducing government revenue. But worse still, this logic works for present policy advocates who appear to believe that terrorists can be hounded or beaten into giving up their grievances.

The majority of the world's terrorists and their grievances are not in the United States. Most remain within their own countries and pursue battles against their own country's leaders and elites. The United States is often treated as an enemy because it allies itself with those leaders and elites. Those alliances are prime recruiting arguments for al Qaida. But the only way a global war on terrorism can be justified is to make a convincing case that world terrorism is principally aimed against the United States and therefore justifies a warlike response worldwide.

No such case factually exists. The only case that can be made is that terrorists can attack us at home at any time. In the abstract that is true, but in fact it always has been true. The only other argument that can be persuasive is that such attacks are imminent. That assertion depends on the willing cooperation of the bogey man. Our leadership now responds to Osama bin Laden tapes with all the certainty of Pavlov's dog. Terrorism alerts go up a notch. Fear refurbishes public support for the War on Terrorism.

Is there a way out?

What a mess. But we can break out of it.

- Demand straight talk and question what our leadership tells us. - Demand better intelligence and closer attention to analysis. We should not ever have a repeat of the mismatch between truth and action that is Iraq. - Recognize and apply the knowledge our government already has about the worldwide causes of terrorism - Devote needed human and material resources to mitigating those problems. - Promote actual delivery of those human and material resources by all governments that have any to spare. - Assure that the world's wealthiest nations stay with it for the long haul. - Shut down the War on Terrorism. - Put the task of combating terrorist crimes back where it belongs, in the law enforcement and intelligence communities of all countries concerned.

Our best prospects for making a severe terrorist attack on the United States less likely are contained in those steps. We must accept that perfection is impossible and that uncertainties of the types that commonly beset our lives every day are unavoidable. Terrorism at worst is one of those, but it is less likely than many others. This is the antidote to fear.

The writer is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer of the United States Department of State. 

 

Viagra - Chemical Population Control in Disguise?

Viagra users' sperm short on firepower
Date: April 27 2004

Men who use the anti-impotence drug Viagra could be impairing their fertility, say scientists, after laboratory experiments indicated the drug can damage sperm.

They are now warning younger men to use caution before taking the drug recreationally.

Researchers from Queen's University in Belfast found that sperm exposed to Viagra became more active. But at the same time a mechanism used by sperm to penetrate the egg wall during fertilisation was greatly speeded up.

Known as the "acrosome reaction", it involves firing an armour-piercing warhead of digestive enzymes at the egg.

If the sperm release their "ammunition" too early, before reaching the egg, they do not get another shot and are rendered infertile. The study showed that this was likely to happen to sperm exposed to Viagra.

The university's Sheena Lewis said: "The fact that this sperm function is impaired by the presence of Viagra is worrying."

The scientists, who presented their findings to a recent British Fertility Society conference, studied 45 samples of semen. Half were treated in the lab with a dose of Viagra equivalent to the amount in the blood of a man who has taken a 100-milligram pill.

These sperm were found to be more motile than untreated sperm: they had more energy and moved around more.

This would normally be considered a positive effect, since sperm motility is linked to fertility. But the extra energy given to the sperm also seemed to speed up the acrosome reaction. Most of the untreated sperm spontaneously released their acrosome enzymes after about three hours.

But sperm exposed to Viagra released the enzymes after only one hour. Although no attempt was made to fertilise eggs, this was too fast to have allowed successful fertilisation in a real-life situation.

Dr Lewis said while Viagra had become popular for sexual enhancement, men should exercise caution if hoping to start a family.

Deutsche Presse-Agentur