War news o'the day for Sunday June 1st 2003.

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Not a satire.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030528.ufilm0528/BNPrint/International/

Trapped on the other side of the country aboard Air Force One, the President has lost his cool: "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me! I'll be at home! Waiting for the bastard!" His Secret Service chief seems taken aback. "But Mr. President--" The President brusquely interrupts him. "Try Commander-in-Chief. Whose present command is: Take the President home!"

Was this George W. Bush's moment of resolve on Sept. 11, 2001? Well, not exactly. Actually, the scene took place this month, on a Toronto sound stage. The histrionics, filmed for a two-hour television movie to be broadcast this September, are… written and produced by a White House insider with the close co-operation of Mr. Bush and his top officials.

… A copy of the script obtained by The Globe and Mail reveals a prime-time drama starring a nearly infallible, heroic president with little or no dissension in his ranks and a penchant for delivering articulate, stirring, off-the-cuff addresses to colleagues.

That the whole thing was filmed in Canada and is eligible for financial aid from Canadian taxpayers, and that its loyal Republican writer-producer is a Canadian citizen best known for his adaptation of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz , are ironies that will be lost on most of its American viewers when it airs on the Showtime network this fall.

… Mr. [Lionel] Chetwynd said in an interview from his Los Angeles home Tuesday… "I let it be known that I was also interested in doing it. I threw myself on the mercies of my friend Karl Rove." … Mr. Chetwynd's script is based on lengthy interviews with Mr. Bush, Mr. Rove, top aide Andy Card, retiring White House press aide Ari Fleischer, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Republican officials.

… [For example,] Mr. Chetwynd has Mr. Bush… arguing with Democratic Party officials about the war, [and] he delivers a line that even more articulate presidents would find difficult: "I won't be seeking a declaration of war. With a shadowy enemy, specificity makes that problematic."

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canadian prime minister not invited to bush birthday party; italian p.m. "new best friend". not a satire!

http://www.globeandmail.ca/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030530.urice0531/BNStory/National/

The Bush administration's disappointment with Canada for refusing to join the war on Iraq will not disappear quickly, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said yesterday... "There was disappointment in the United States that a friend like Canada was unable to support the United States in what we considered to be an extremely important issue for our security," she said. The U.S. position was taken "for the security of the international community, and to try and spread freedom... So, yes, there was some disappointment that there seemed to be some questioning of American motives... When friends are in a position where we say our security's at stake, we would have thought, as we got from many of our friends, that the answer would have been, 'Well, how can we help?' "

...As for Mr. Bush's dealings with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who will be at the G8 summit in Évian, France, "I can't answer the question of whether personal relations between the President and the Chancellor will ever be the same."

Turning to France... Ms. Rice said, "I'll just put it very bluntly. We simply didn't understand it... The United States gave its blood to liberate France."

Italy, by contrast, got a glowing assessment. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi... has "a close personal relationship" with Mr. Bush.

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/05/31/MN163599.DTL

President Bush's contention that America went to war with Iraq to rid Saddam Hussein of hidden biological and chemical weapons "could be the greatest intelligence hoax of all time," the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee warned Friday. Rep. Jane Harman, D-Rancho Palos Verdes (Los Angeles County), has sent a letter along with Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., the Intelligence Committee chairman, to CIA Director George Tenet asking him to explain what intelligence led spy agencies to believe Iraq had stocks of the banned weapons.

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http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/05/30/wolfowitz.vanity.fair/index.html

A Vanity Fair article "misrepresents" statements made by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz about U.S. justification for the invasion of Iraq, Pentagon officials said... The article by Sam Tanenhaus quoted Wolfowitz as saying, "For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."

..."Vanity Fair only used a portion of the deputy secretary's quote," the [Pentagon] source said. "Their omission completely misrepresents what he was saying. The complete quote makes clear that there were multiple reasons for the use of military forces against Iraq." According to a tape recording made by the Pentagon, the actual quote is, "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction

...The Pentagon's transcript of the interview is posted on its Web site, www.defenselink.mil.

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from that very transcript. paul wolfowitz is now disinvited from mrs. henry's birthday party. he has bad maners

http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html

Wolfowitz: ...Policy, like life, is fundamentally about choices and the notion that we should have chosen to delay until we had a huge force and go more slowly and deal with all the problems that would have come from going slowly so that we would have had enough people, for example, to guard the museum in Baghdad is frankly absurd. And it may well turn out, in fact, that the museum in Baghdad was looted before the war even began.

...We'll never know exactly why the oilfields were not destroyed. We did not have an environmental disaster resulting from huge hydrogen sulfide fires in the north. We did not have attacks on Israel. We did not have a fortress Baghdad. We did not have a civil war in northern Iraq or a Turkish intervention in northern Iraq. We didn't have an Iranian intervention... The one that has always worried me the most was the use of weapons of mass destruction. We still don't know why they weren't used. That's something maybe we'll know more about one of these days.

...The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but -- hold on one second -- Wolfowitz: -- there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two. Sorry, hold on again.

To wrap it up. The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it. That second issue about links to terrorism is the one about which there's the most disagreement within the bureaucracy.

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did he really say the museum was looted before the bombs started falling? Here's a rummy take.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-694614,00.html

THE US Defence Secretary has shrugged off the lawlessness in Iraq by comparing looters in Baghdad to marauding English football fans… “Think of all the looting that took place after the earthquake in Turkey. Remember what happened after the riots in Los Angeles,” he said. “We know what happens at a football game, a soccer game, in England.”

The hawkish Defence Secretary had even assembled the statistics to support his case. Mr Rumsfeld had ordered his subordinates to take crime statistics from an average American city and multiply them so that they were proportionate to a population of five million — equivalent to Baghdad… [He said] Washington DC… would have 215 murders a month, were it the size of Baghdad, and 31,700 robberies.

In the US capital they had “learned to live with” such a crime rate… “It seems to me we need to put these numbers in context a little bit — just a little,” he said, adding a dig at France, to the amusement of the audience: “Paris would be 93 murders and 36,148 larcenies.” However, Mr Rumsfeld apparently confused the monthly Parisian murder rate with the annual figure.

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http://www.freep.com/news/nw/iraq31_20030531.htm

The senior Marine general in Iraq said Friday that extensive searches have failed to locate any of the chemical weapons that U.S. intelligence had warned the Iraqis might use. "It was a surprise to me then -- it remains a surprise to me now -- that we have not uncovered weapons, as you say, in some of the forward dispersal areas," Lt. Gen. James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, told reporters at the Pentagon in a video teleconference. "Believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there," Conway said.

Bush, however, speaking to a Polish TV network in advance of a visit to Poland on Friday and today, insisted that: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on."

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http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=13016955&method=full&siteid=50143&headline=BLAIR%20BLOWS%20TOP%20OVER%20WEAPONS%20REPORTS

TONY BLAIR yesterday furiously denied lying... after a senior intelligence officer said Blair's key WMD dossier was "sexed up". Spin doctors were said to have told intelligence officers to put in claims that Saddam was 45 minutes away from firing chemical weapons.

...Yesterday, a grim-faced Mr Blair said... "People are now trying to find a fresh reason for saying why it was not the right thing to do. When you go to Iraq as I did yesterday, speak to the people there, see the freedom they have, their liberation, you will realise it was emphatically the right thing." ...But, veteran Labour MP Tam Dalyell has tabled a Commons question to the PM asking to which Iraqis he was referring when he claimed he had spoken to local people. He said: "I understand that the only Iraqis to whom he spoke were schoolchildren."

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,967591,00.html

Most American troops have gradually scaled down from combat operations to policing patrols. But in Falluja and a string of smaller towns just west of Baghdad, they believe they are still very much at war. Troops from the US 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment are hunkered down in a heavily guarded former Ba'ath party building on the eastern edge of Falluja. Across the rest of the town yesterday, clerics in the mosques and ethnic leaders in their homes talked about the growing armed resistance to what they all call the American "occupiers".

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life in iraq

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/29/1054177674323.html

US soldiers opened fire on a festive wedding parade earlier this week, killing three teenagers and wounding seven others after the celebrants fired weapons in the air.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-fg-iraq29may29.story

HIT, Iraq — In the third straight day of Iraqi violence against the U.S. military occupation of the country, residents enraged over house-to-house searches in this western town ransacked the police station, stoned U.S. armored military vehicles and set police cars on fire Wednesday.

… Residents here said U.S. troops had provoked anger Tuesday when they searched houses in an outlying neighborhood and arrived shortly after dawn Wednesday to set up a checkpoint at the entrance to the town. They then began searching homes… When the searches continued despite what residents called a peaceful protest, a second, angrier, protest formed in the late afternoon that quickly turned violent… "They forced women and children to leave their houses!" shouted Esmael Rabee, a construction worker… Taxi driver Jumaa Khalif declared: "They were terrifying the women and children."

… The cooperation of local police with U.S. forces in the searches appeared to further anger residents, who insisted that there had been no change in leadership at all in Hit. The same men who harassed, intimidated and oppressed them under Hussein were at work Wednesday leading U.S. troops to the homes of those suspected of possessing concealed weapons, they said.

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http://slate.msn.com/id/2083271/

A fascinating piece in the May 19 Defense News quotes Gen. Tommy Franks, chief of U.S. Central Command… [confirmed] that, before Gulf War II began, U.S. special forces had gone in and bribed Iraqi generals not to fight.

…The article quotes a "senior official" as adding, "What is the effect you want? How much does a cruise missile cost? Between one and 2.5 million dollars. Well, a bribe is a PGM [precision-guided munition]—it achieves the aim, but it's bloodless and there's zero collateral damage."

One official is quoted as saying that, in the scheme of the whole military operation, the bribery "was just icing on the cake." But another says that it "was as important as the shooting part, maybe more important… We knew how many of these [Iraqi generals] were going to call in sick."

All of which further reinforces the vague sense that—for all the embeds, armchair generals, and round-the-clock news coverage—we still know startlingly little about what really happened in this war.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/31/international/worldspecial/31BRIT.html?ex=1055397329&ei=1&en=da135f0c64b218b3

A British soldier was arrested today after he left a roll of film at a photo store that appeared to show an Iraqi prisoner being tortured, the Defense Ministry said today... The Sun also reported that the roll included pictures of soldiers performing sex acts near Iraqi prisoners.

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http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/1,,2003250508,00.html

THE young mum who uncovered the Iraqi PoW sex snaps scandal said last night: “I felt sick to the stomach at those pictures.”

Kelly Tilford, 22, called police after developing a film in her photo shop… ONE [photo] was apparently taken in a warehouse. It showed a man stripped at least to the waist and suspended high in the air by a rope attached to one of the forks on a fork-lift truck… He was hanging horizontally and his frightened face was in close-up. A soldier driving the fork-lift truck could be seen in the background, staring at his victim and apparently laughing.

ANOTHER picture showed a pair of white legs and the head of a male Iraqi. The hand of a man behind the Iraqi’s head appeared to be forcing him to perform oral sex… A THIRD picture showed a pair of bare backsides. One Iraqi man was on his knees on the floor with his body bent. Another was pressed behind him, tightly moulding his body like a spoon in what seemed to be a sexual position. THE FOURTH snap showed two naked Iraqis cowering on the ground as if thrown there.

… DO YOU know Fusilier Gary Bartlam? Call The Sun on 020 7782 4105. We’ll call you straight back.

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http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2003250503,00.html

THE mum of the soldier held over the "torture snaps" said yesterday he had made “one big mistake”. Margaret Bartlam claimed her son Gary, 18, was naive. She told The Sun: “S**t happens in the Army. I feel sorry for our lad because he’s gone through a lot. We know it’s very serious. But he’s a young lad. He made one big mistake, but how many other soldiers are like him who go in naive and find themselves in the same position?” ...Dad Paul, a former miner, said: “You never know what your kids get up to.” ...Gary, who has a brother Mark, was a leisure centre swimming pool attendant [and presumably not a torturer] before joining the Army.

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http://www.khilafah.com/home/category.php?DocumentID=7298&TagID=2

For 20 years, say the residents of a town in Kenya, soldiers from the nearby British army camp have been systematically raping its women… no soldier has ever been investigated or punished for those rapes. When I visited Kenya, hundreds of women had come together to discuss the possibility of legal action with their chiefs and a British solicitor, Martyn Day.

As the meeting finishes, I find myself sitting under a tree, talking to one of the very few women here who speaks any English. Elizabeth Rikanna is wearing western clothes today, but she grew up within a Masai family who lived in the traditional pastoralist way… She was scooping water into her jerrycans when she saw three British soldiers approaching along the river bed. "Jambo," they said to her; Swahili for hello.

"I thought they wanted some water, so I spoke to them," Elizabeth says, and suddenly she seems to be reliving the moment. Her voice, which until now has been so clear and measured, drops and speeds up, and I have to lean close to hear her words. "I ask myself always: why did I speak in English to them? That haunts me even today… The man who raped me first was the man behind me. The third man did not rape me. He held the guns… I have still not forgiven. I have not yet come to forgiveness… Who would want to marry the mother of a half-white child? …Only now is it dawning on me that I do not suffer alone."

… Over 200 Masai women in this area can tell stories of rapes that are supported by some independent evidence; sometimes police or medical records, more often the testimony of their chiefs. And hundreds more women from the Samburu tribe around Archers Post, another training area in northern Kenya, have also come forward with similar stories.

… At least eight separate instances of reports being made to the British army - all of which were ignored - have now come to light… Evidence has also emerged of individual allegations of rape being reported to the British army, including one incident just five years ago. Peter Kilesi… worked as a guard for a British army camp and carries in his pocket a letter of recommendation from the commanding officer. On the morning of February 22 1998, Peter Kilesi remembers how his fellow guard, Kabori Ole Saikol, came rushing into the camp, shaking, carrying a spear. "He said, 'A soldier has raped my wife.'

…Kabori Ole Saikol's wife, Tianta Ilkabori Saikong, also remembers the day clearly. She is now 72; she was 67 at the time of the rape… Her front teeth were knocked out, her high forehead is scarred, and one of her fingers was broken and has set at an odd angle. "Even today when I sleep," she tells me through an interpreter, "sometimes I feel as if I am running away from the British man."

… Despite all the complaints made to the army, the alleged rapes continued unabated… Now that there is a threat of legal action, the army has finally decided to act - 20 years after the first complaints were made. A team from the Royal Military Police arrived in Kenya last month to begin investigating some of the women's stories. The Ministry of Defence refuses to comment on any aspect of any case.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55921-2003May29?language=printer

The Bush administration is pushing to limit the ability of foreign nationals to obtain judgments against despots and multinational corporations in U.S. courts, arguing that such lawsuits have become a threat to U.S. foreign policy and could undermine the war on terrorism.

… For the past 23 years, federal courts have allowed victims of torture and other abuse to file claims under an obscure 1789 statute for violations of human rights norms, commonly known as the Alien Tort Claims Act.

Since a 1980 lawsuit was filed against a former Paraguayan police chief accused of torturing and killing a teenage boy, lawsuits have been filed against Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and banks and other companies alleged to have profited from Nazi war crimes.

But the Justice Department… argues in a 30-page brief filed this month that such lawsuits frequently… complicate foreign policy objectives by targeting allies.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=411051

Tony Blair rounded angrily on his tormentors yesterday, telling them that the British authorities in Iraq had more urgent priorities than finding weapons of mass destruction.

...An unnamed diplomatic source reveals to a national newspaper today that the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, and his US counterpart, Colin Powell, also privately exchanged serious doubts about the chemical weapons capability of Iraq before the war. The source, who read a transcript of a 10-minute discussion between the two at the Waldorf Hotel in New York before a UN meeting on 5 February, said General Powell indicated that he was "apprehensive" about what he called at best circumstantial evidence. He said he hoped the facts would not "explode in their faces" when they came out.

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speaking of blowing up in your face

http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,968161,00.html

The shocking extent of unexploded cluster bombs dropped by American and British planes, which litter Iraq eight weeks after the conflict, is revealed in detail for the first time today. The first map based on military intelligence to show the exact location of unexploded anti-personnel mines, cluster bombs and anti-tank mines, obtained by The Observer, shows the vast area of the country which is at danger from live munitions. Experts in clearing conflict zones of unexploded bombs say that millions of Iraqi adults and children are at risk, along with humanitarian aid workers, United Nations personnel, civilian staff and military officials.

...'This shows an appalling level of contamination,' said Richard Lloyd, director of Landmine Action, who is travelling to Iraq this weekend to assess the extent of the danger. 'It also confirms that American and British forces attacked built up areas in cities with cluster bombs.' ...Landmine experts say that up to 10,000 separate cluster bombs and bomblets could be lying in cities, farmland and on the main road arteries across the country.

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let's review

http://www.fair.org/media-beat/990513.html

By Norman Solomon

Hi! My name is CBU-87/B, but let's not be formal. A lot of my friends call me Cluster Bomb. I've been busy lately, doing what I'm supposed to. And I sure appreciate the careful treatment that I receive from the American news media. You see, I'm a 1,000-pound marvel, a cluster bomb with an ingenious design. When I go off, a couple of hundred "bomblets" shoot out in all directions, aided by little parachutes that look like inverted umbrellas. Those 'chutes slow down the descent of the bomblets and disperse them so they'll hit plenty of what my maker calls "soft targets." Before that happens, though, each bomblet breaks into about 300 pieces of jagged steel shrapnel.

...Back in the offices of top Washington officials, and in the upper echelons of American news media, I've got lots of friends in very high places. They may pretend not to know me, but we understand each other very well.

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tony, pipe down!

http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,968164,00.html

Prime Minister Tony Blair last night insisted he had secret proof that weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq.

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http://www.reuters.com/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=2843578

WARSAW (Reuters) - The mayor of the Polish city of Krakow said Thursday he had been excluded from President Bush's visit to the city this weekend because of his opposition to the war on Iraq.

"It is customary that the mayor, as the host of this city, should take part in the welcoming ceremony. But the Americans have said they will not have it," Mayor Jacek Majchrowski told private radio RMF. "It is strange that guests dictate where the host should or should not be," he added.

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robert fisk says a little prayer for you

http://www.counterpunch.org/fisk05192003.html

Was it not President Bush who boasted to us of how America had struck a devastating blow in the "war on terror" in Iraq? Was it not Vice-President Cheney who informed us that al Qaeda was reeling from America's bombardment of Afghanistan? Was it not Defence Secretary Rumsfeld who would have us believe that half of al Qaeda's leadership was eliminated? … What comes next? More boasts by President Bush that he is winning the "war against terror" or more claims--yes, he told you so--that the "war on terror" is eternal? Heaven spare us all.

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live from Baghdad

http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/2003_05_01_dear_raed_archive.html#200360720

… If you were me these days you would be meeting very interesting people. There was a very long talk with mark from Boar.com who was on a two-day trip in Iraq. I met him after he was in one of the presidential palaces looting. He had a stainless steel teapot hidden under his t-shirt when he came into the hotel where we were supposed to meet. Pah, amateur amrikaan! At least choose something that looks like it could be gold or something.

… A day before that I sold my soul to the devil. I talked to Rory from the Guardian.

Look, he paid for a great lunch in a place which had air-conditioning and lots of people from foreign. It was fun talking to him but when Raed saw me after “the talk” he said I looked like someone had violated me. So there is a bit of guilt. But that was washed away with the cool air-conditioning. Yeah, I am cheap like that. I would sell my parents for a nice bottle of wine.

… Raed said that this week’s trip was more dispiriting than the week before. Something in the Nasiriyah electricity station exploded, this station feeds most of the southern areas with the exception of Basra. Between Karbala and Diwaniya the grid is down. Nasiriayh does not have drinking water at all and people are drinking untreated river water, you can imagine what that will do. An hour and a half down the road is Basra where the RO Water is now more than they need but no one is driving water tanks to Nasiriyah.

The type of “humanitarian aid” reaching the southern governorates turns the situation into a sick comedy. Nasiriayh Hospital got 20 boxes; six of them had only shampoo in them. Need a blood transfusion? Have shampoo, it smells nice.

Another four or five were full of past-use-date stitching thread. In Basra the trucks of “humanitarian aid” coming from Saudi Arabia have crates of Pepsi in them. The Pediatric ward there is running out of medicine to suppress a fever, but they do have Pepsi. If this was in a movie it would be hilarious.

… All I can do is tell you what is going on in the streets and if you think journalists are doing a better job of that then maybe you should go read them. One day, like in Afghanistan, those journalists will get bored and go write about Syria or Iran; Iraq will be off your media radar. Out of sight, out of mind. Lucky you, you have that option. I have to live it.

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http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/20030529-1036-iraq-palestinianraid.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq – U.S. troops raided the Palestinian Authority's mission in Baghdad and arrested 11 people after ransacking the building, a Palestinian official said Thursday. A top U.S. general said eight people were arrested. The detained men included charge d'affairs Majah Abdul Rahman, who was running the mission in the ambassador's absence, mission official Mohamed Abdul Wahab said. They were taken to a U.S. base in the center of the city and have not been released, he said. "They even took all of our water bottles and food cans," Wahab said. "They behaved like common thieves."

...U.S. troops have conducted numerous sweeps against suspected criminals and loyalists of Saddam Hussein's regime. Wednesday's raid was believed to be the first such action against a foreign diplomatic mission.

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/28/1053801444576.html

A day after he stunned Israelis and Palestinians by describing his nation's long hold on the West Bank and Gaza Strip as an "occupation", Ariel Sharon backtracked, referring to Israel's "control over disputed lands".

..."You may not like the word, but what's happening is occupation," Mr Sharon told angry MPs from his Likud party on Monday. And occupation, he said, repeating the word throughout his comments, "is a terrible thing" for both Israelis and Palestinians. On Tuesday Mr Sharon said he had been referring to Israel's rule over Palestinians, not the occupied territories themselves.

...The Palestinian Information Minister, Nabil Amr, and other officials voiced concern, however, about emerging details of Israel's objections to the peace blueprint that Mr Sharon's cabinet insisted on attaching before it voted to endorse the plan. Israel has demanded a "complete cessation of terror" before it begins implementing the plan. Palestinian officials say this would hold the process hostage to anyone with a bomb or gun. The demand is among 14 amendments, leaked to the media on Tuesday, that the Israeli cabinet is seeking to the plan. However, the Israelis say they should not be subject to similar conditions. "The road map will not state that Israel must halt violence, incitement against the Palestinians," the document says.

Other minimum demands include a requirement that the Palestinians waive any right of return to Israel for refugees, and the dismantling of Hamas and other "terrorist" organisations. Israel also demands a bar on any discussion within the plan of the fate of established Jewish settlements or Jerusalem until final-status talks towards the end of the process, and acceptance before talks begin that Israel will control the borders and other aspects of a provisional Palestinian state.

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http://www.sfbg.com/37/35/news_chron.html

THE SAN FRANCISCO Chronicle is 20 times more likely to report on the deaths of Israeli children killed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than it is to cover Palestinian children's deaths, a new study shows. If Americans Knew, a fledgling Berkeley outfit dedicated to disseminating underreported information on Israel and the occupied territories, analyzed the Chronicle's coverage of the region during the first months of the current intifada – a time period the study's researchers chose "because of its significance in forming the context within which all subsequent reporting on the conflict is viewed."

Four Israelis under the age of 18 died as a result of clashes that took place from Sept. 29, 2000, the first day of the uprising, through March 31, 2001, according to the report, the preliminary results of which were released May 21 to both the Chronicle and the Bay Guardian. During that period, it found, the Chronicle reported on those incidences in a headline or a first paragraph five times. The deaths of Palestinian minors received such attention only six times, although 93 were killed in that same time frame.

If Americans Knew based its calculations on figures from Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, which keeps detailed statistics on deaths resulting from the conflict (see www.btselem.org). B'Tselem and If Americans Knew deem their figures on Palestinian deaths conservative, since they don't include those who died as a result of their inability to access medical care due to Israeli-imposed road closures and curfews.

Among the study's other findings: Israeli deaths made headlines and/or first paragraphs in the Chronicle 72 times, while Palestinian deaths got similar placement 129 times – although a total of 65 Israelis and 343 Palestinians died as a result of the conflict during the six months the study covered. The Chronicle reported the total death toll from the conflict only 12 times in 251 news articles on the conflict – and not once did it give a breakdown of total Israeli versus total Palestinian deaths. Yet, "during this period, Palestinians were being killed at a rate approximately 5.3 times greater than Israelis," reads the preliminary report.

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http://inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=203_0_3_0_C

The White House is engaged in a domestic covert operation to pervert American public opinion. Such campaigns are illegal under the laws governing U.S. intelligence agencies. In a May 15 letter to members of Congress, the Bush administration and the U.S. media, French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte draws attention to eight reports that appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, MSNBC and Newsweek (www.info-france-usa.org). The stories range from France’s harboring secret supplies of smallpox, to France’s providing false passports to help Iraqi leaders escape capture by U.S. forces, to France’s selling Iraq switches that could be used to detonate a nuclear bomb.

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did you know?

http://www.info-france-usa.org/franceus/

An American woman and a Frenchman, Eleanor Roosevelt and René Cassin, together wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights more than 50 years ago.

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more fun facts to know and tell

http://www.info-france-usa.org/franceus/history/casualties.asp

FRENCH CASUALTIES IN WWI AND WWII

1,385,000 soldiers died

361,000 were declared missing

4,200,000 were wounded

10% of the active population and 3,5% of the total population died on the battlefields. As a comparison, if this were to happen now in the United States, the number of casualties would reach 10 million. There would also be 680,000 widows and 760,000 orphans. Throughout Europe, the number of crippled soldiers amounted to 6,500,000. Between 1914 and 1918, the drops in births in France is estimated at 1 million.

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back to 'in these times'

http://inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=203_0_3_0_C

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), the media watch group, studied the coverage of six major nightly newscasts: ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS’s Evening News, NBC’s Nightly News, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Reports, Fox’s Special Report with Brit Hume and PBS’s NewsHour With Jim Lehrer. FAIR examined 1,617 on-camera sources appearing on Iraq-related stories during the height of the war, from March 20 to April 9. Who were these sources?

63 percent were current or former government employees.

52 percent were Bush administration officials.

64 percent were pro-war.

10 percent were anti-war, and the majority of these were man-on-the street soundbites.

3 percent of all U.S. sources were anti-war.

0 percent of all sources who were invited to have a sit-down on camera interview were identified as being against the war.

(The prize for the most lopsided coverage goes to CBS Evening News: 75 percent of its sources were officials, and the single anti-war voice it aired was a snip from Michael Moore’s Oscar speech.)

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39280-2003May25.html

An internal e-mail by Judith Miller, [the New York Times'] top reporter on bioterrorism, acknowledges that her main source for such articles has been Ahmad Chalabi, a controversial exile leader who is close to top Pentagon officials.

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http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/30933.html

Regulations preventing the complete colonization of America's television airwaves by a handful of media cartels are set to be relaxed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Monday... The new regs will lift restrictions currently impeding companies wishing to own too many newspapers, television stations and radio stations in a single city.

...It will difficult to exercise democracy when the ubiquitous national oracle propagates only those biases that four or five multinational conglomerates wish to see propagated, and which are backed up by co-owned newspapers and radio stations. The architect of this perversion is FCC Chairman Michael Powell, son of Colin, a Republican appointed by Dubya... The young Powell reckons that cable TV and the Internet will suffice to vouchsafe information and editorial diversity in America. Unfortunately, much of cable TV is owned by broadcast heavyweights and involves a few Internet cousins; and a good deal of Internet content is dominated by MSN and AOL Time Warner, both of which run broadcast concerns on cable and off.

...Thirty members of Congress signed a joint letter to Powell Jr. back in February, asking that the public be given a chance to understand and then consider what is being done to their very valuable property, but he disdained the request. There will be no Congressional oversight or public debate. All that will be left are lawsuits.

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http://media.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4675511,00.html

Veteran media mogul and legendary deal-maker Rupert Murdoch prompted laughter from senators in Washington yesterday when he said that he did not plan to take advantage of the upcoming relaxation in America media ownership laws.

…Mr Murdoch said that, apart from the £4.1bn bid for satellite broadcaster DirecTV for which News Corp is currently seeking regulatory approval, he had no plans for further expansion. "I have no plans for anything other than what I have before you today," he said, prompting laughter in the senator benches.

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http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?GXHC_gx_session_id_=0fd143edcafd3e8f&pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1052251688195&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968705899037

PALESTINE, W.Va. (AP) - American army PoW Pte. 1st Class Jessica Lynch's parents turned aside questions today about their daughter's rescue in Iraq... "We're really not supposed to talk about that subject," her father, Greg Lynch, said during a news conference at the family's rural West Virginia home. "It's still an ongoing investigation and we can't talk about nothing like that."

...Greg Lynch said his daughter's memory is good, despite media reports that she suffered from amnesia. "Her memory is as good as it was when she was home," he said. "She can still remember everything."

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bush hard at work as always

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030529-5.html

Executive Order Establishing the Bob Hope American Patriot Award

By the Authority Vested in Me as President and as Commander in Chief by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is ordered as follows:

Section 1. Establishment of the Award. In order to encourage love of country, service to the people of the United States, and support for our Armed Forces, and in order to recognize the unique and lifelong service of Bob Hope to the United States Armed Forces and to the Nation through his unwavering patriotism and dedication to maintaining the morale of the troops he entertained for nearly six decades, and on the occasion of his 100th birthday, there is hereby established the Bob Hope American Patriot Award. [and so on]

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support the troops

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/content/news/ap/ap_story.html/National/AP.V2804.AP-Anthrax-Vaccine.html

FORT DRUM, N.Y. (AP)--A military panel on Wednesday found an Army reservist guilty of disobeying an order for refusing to take the anthrax vaccine and tossed her out of the Army. The panel of eight officers--only two of whom said during questioning that they have taken the six-shot regimen--took 40 minutes to return a guilty verdict against Pvt. Kamila Iwanowska and two hours to determine her penalty: a bad conduct discharge.

...Iwanowska, who is Polish and became an American citizen last year, told her superiors she considered the shot medically dangerous to children she might have in the future, saying the vaccine's long-term effects are unknown. As a Roman Catholic, she also cited religious reasons. Since the vaccinations were made mandatory for all U.S. military personnel in 1998, hundreds of service members have been disciplined or discharged for refusing to take the shot. At least 37 have been court-martialed.

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http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascitystar/business/5962629.htm

There are six government-sanctioned definitions of unemployment. The six measures produce a broad range of unemployment numbers. For April 2003, the range was a scant 2.5 percent to a scary 9.8 percent. One of the midrange numbers, dubbed U-3 and defined as "total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force," is the official unemployment rate.

To understand the statistical spread, start with three basic definitions used by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: People with jobs are employed. People who are jobless but are looking for jobs and are available to work are unemployed. People who do not have jobs and are not looking or available for work are not in the labor force.

The official unemployment rate measures joblessness without including people in the third group... To catch these nearly invisible jobless or income-impaired people, look to three other less publicized unemployment measures:

U-4, which estimates total unemployed plus discouraged workers. In April, U-4 was 6.1 percent.

U-5, which estimates total unemployed plus discouraged workers plus all other "marginally attached" workers. (The marginally attached are those who are neither working nor looking for work but say they want a job and are available for one and have looked for work recently.) In April, U-5 was 6.7 percent.

U-6, which estimates total unemployed plus marginally attached plus those who settled for part-time employment even though they want a full-time job. In April, U-6 was 9.8 percent. In the U-6 category is the engineer who can't find an engineering job and so is working part time watering plants at the garden center. Here also is the retail clerk whose hours were cut back to 20 a week. Here too is the software developer who thinks job hunting is futile and will try to start her own business but hasn't yet made an entrepreneurial dime.

In short, U-6 includes a lot of people you know.

...While we're on the subject, be aware that the official unemployment rate is based on answers given each month by 60,000 randomly selected households... The unemployment number is not an absolute count each month of every unemployment claim.

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http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=41463§ion=NEWS&subsection=FOCUS&year=2003&month=5&day=30

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department has begun using its expanded counterterrorism powers to seize millions of dollars from foreign banks that do business in the United States... A provision in the sweeping anti-terrorism legislation passed in October 2001 [p.a.t.r.i.o.t. act] gave federal authorities in such cases the power to seize money that passes through U.S. banks without notifying the foreign government or tracing the money to the target of an investigation... Information about the seizures has been tightly guarded, and federal judges have sealed the records on most of them.

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you have the right to remain silent, if you are unconscious

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0527scotus-miranda27-ON.html

A splintered Supreme Court took another swipe at the landmark Miranda ruling Tuesday, saying the right to remain silent doesn't apply when authorities aggressively - or even coercively - interrogate someone they're not prosecuting,

Oliverio Martinez thought he was dying in 1997 after an Oxnard, Calif., police officer shot him five times in the face, legs and back. He begged another officer to stop questioning him as he waited for medical treatment... The relentless questioning of Martinez under the circumstances could have violated his 14th Amendment rights to due process, because it could be compared to torturing him... Martinez, who was left blind and paralyzed, is suing the Oxnard police for damages.

...Mary Cheh, a law professor at George Washington University... said that to prove a 14th Amendment violation, Martinez would have to show that his treatment was so cruel as to "shock the conscience" of the court. In Tuesday's opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas denied that police conduct was egregious, saying it served a "justifiable government interest."

...Tuesday's ruling came after a series of Supreme Court decisions narrowing Miranda rights and as the court prepares to undertake a more comprehensive review of Miranda requirements later this year. The justices will decide in the fall when - and even whether - Miranda violations by police require evidence to be tossed out.

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life in the burbs

http://www.thetimesonline.com/articles/2003/05/28/roundups/roundups/376786b28eec71fd86256d340054398a.txt

HARVEY, Ill. (AP) -- A troubled Chicago suburb is fighting its crime wave with clergy in a novel program... Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg... has appointed a Christian minister to serve each of the town's six wards. Kellogg said he is looking for a rabbi and a Muslim minister. Their unpaid duties include comforting crime victims and reminding residents of their view of life's meaning.

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life in akron

http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/living/education/5957915.htm

Akron students will be fingerprinted beginning this fall to identify them in school lunch lines. After a lengthy debate, school board members voted 5-2 Tuesday to spend $700,000 on a controversial, modernized cafeteria system… Students' fingerprints will be put into a scanner that will make a template of binary numbers corresponding with the unique swirls and arches of each print. When students go through the lunch line, they will place their finger on a scanner that will identify them based on the stored template.

…The money for the system will come from the budget for Child Nutrition Services… This department is funded with a combination of state and federal tax dollars and the money spent on school lunches.

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life in texas

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/1928977

Houston City Council on Wednesday passed an anti-prostitution ordinance... Under the ordinance, effective within five days, any officer may arrest a "known prostitute" ...for loitering in a public place.

..."This ordinance makes it a crime for looking like you want to proposition someone for sex," said Annette Lamoreaux, East Texas regional director for the American Civil Liberties Union. "In this country, we only arrest people for committing a crime, not for looking like they are about to commit a crime."

...The new ordinance makes prostitution a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of $500 to $2,000... Councilman Gabriel Vasquez has been pushing for a stronger law, saying there has been a spike in prostitution in his district, specifically in Independence Heights. "It gives police more power to stop people before they engage in actual prostitution," he said.

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http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/05/22/ED63093.DTL

Google has opened up a universe of information but ended privacy as we once knew it. So, unless you've been a recluse, chances are that Google can dish up all kinds of information about your life -- whether you like it or not... [For example,] Lucretia Marcus of Alamo has an unlisted and unpublished home phone number and "thought we had some semblance of privacy." But then she typed her name and phone number into Google and was stunned by the number of hits that appeared.

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what does google have on mrs. henry today?

from bobdylan.com: Well, I've already had two beers, I'm ready for the broom; Please, Mrs. Henry, won't you take me to my room? I'm a good ol' boy, but I've been sniffin' too many eggs, talkin' too many people, drinkin' too many kegs. Please, Mrs. Henry, Mrs. Henry, please, please, Mrs. Henry, Mrs. Henry, please? I'm down on my knees, and I ain't got a dime.

from members.aol.com/alicebeard: Alice (Mrs. Henry) Lake, executed as a witch (1651).

from hickory.k12.nc.us: Welcome to Mrs. Henry’s Second Grade Bear Den.

from nottingham.ac.uk: Year: 1965. Title: Burning cross on colored family's front door, Handsworth… A close shot of a black woman (Mrs Henry) standing by the front door of a house on which there are marks left by a fire, and the paint has peeled away. Shot of Reg Harcourt with microphone speaking to Mrs Henry by the door.

RH: Mrs Henry what happened?

Mrs Henry: Well, last night, five past eleven. Well one came down here to put his park light on, no fire was on the door. Then about 15 minutes after I could hear a big shout that the front is on fire, then when he rushed down the door was on fire, there was a cross on the door and it was blazing. He tried to take the cross off, and I rushed to get some water.

…RH: Have you had any incidents here before?

Mrs Henry: No.

RH: How do you get on with your neighbours?

Mrs Henry: Alright.

…RH: And how do you feel now about living here?

Mrs Henry: I don't think we'll stop here any longer.

…RH: What about your husband, what does he think?

Mrs Henry: What?

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=68&ncid=68&e=2&u=/nyt/20030529/ts_nyt/tax_law_omits_child_credit_in_low_income_brackets

WASHINGTON, May 28 A last-minute revision by House and Senate leaders in the tax bill that President Bush signed today will prevent millions of minimum-wage families from receiving the increased child credit that is in the measure, say Congressional officials and outside groups. Most taxpayers will receive a $400-a-child check in the mail this summer as a result of the law, which raises the child tax credit, to $1,000 from $600… [But] because of the formula for calculating the credit, most families with incomes from $10,500 to $26,625 will not benefit. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal group, says those families include 11.9 million children, or one of every six children under 17.

…"I don't know why they would cut that out of the bill," said Senator Blanche Lincoln, the Arkansas Democrat who persuaded the full Senate to send the credit to many more low income families… Ms. Lincoln noted that nearly half of all taxpayers in her state had adjusted gross incomes that were less than $20,000.

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brief interlude: earned income tax credits in Britain

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/2952928.stm

Michelle Stradling, of Yate, South Gloucestershire, called an automated phone line to ask for advice about children's tax credits.

After listening to the recorded message, she left her name and address and requested some information.

But the 29-year-old mother was shocked when the pack arrived on her doorstep days later - addressed to "Mrs Michelle Deserves-Strangling". Mrs Stradling said: "I did a double take. I thought someone must have have misspelt my name.

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http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pri&dt=030529&cat=news&st=newsbushtaxesreportdc

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Thursday denied suppressing a report that projects the U.S. government faces a long-term budget deficit of more than $44,000,000,000,000.00 [that would be in trillions-- mrs. h]... The administration was responding to a front-page report in Thursday's Financial Times saying the White House kept the findings out of its annual budget blueprint in February while it prepared to lobby for a new round of tax cuts.

… the study was commissioned by ex-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and written by Jagadeesh Gokhale, a senior economic advisor with the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and Kent Smetters, a former Treasury deputy assistant secretary for policy coordination… in testimony before a House of Representatives subcommittee in March, Smetters, with the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, said: "These estimates were made with a detailed model developed by Jagadeesh Gokhale and myself during our time in the Bush administration."

…Well-known economists Laurence Kotlikoff and Jeffrey Sachs wrote in a column in the Boston Globe that it had been "yanked from the budget." … "It was not a conspiracy, I don't believe," Gokhale told Reuters after an appearance at a Washington budget conference.

"Things changed along the way. Secretaries changed. Perhaps the new secretary and his staff didn't have enough time to vet the numbers and get comfortable (with them)," he said.

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http://www.msnbc.com/news/919446.asp?0cv=BA00&cp1=1

THE STUDY, the most comprehensive assessment of how the U.S. government is at risk of being overwhelmed by the “baby boom” generation’s future healthcare and retirement costs, was commissioned by then-Treasury secretary Paul O’Neill… It estimates that closing the gap [between promised benefits and available funds] would require the equivalent of an immediate and permanent 66 percent across-the-board income tax increase.

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http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/148/nation/Quietly_Bush_signs_bill_raising_debt_ceilingP.shtml

Without comment or ceremony, President Bush yesterday signed a bill allowing a record $984,000,000,000.00 increase in the amount the federal government can borrow, to a record $7,400,000,000,000.00. [note: the original ceiling would then have been around $6,416,000,000,000.00; the increase is about 15% of this original ceiling. 15% of just one trillion is 150 billion. that is a lot of potatoes, as damon runyon would say--mrs. h]

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how much is 150 billion?

http://www.ptd.neu.edu/Neuroanatomy/Cyberclass/Histology/howmany.htm

Neuroscientists… have estimated how many cells there are in the human brain. And the number they come up with varies a bit. From a low of 100 billion up to a high of 200 billion. So let's take the average of the two as our estimate. 150 billion cells. That's 150,000,000,000 cells!

… If you had 150 billion cells produced in nine months [of gestation], you must have produced about 17 billion cells a month. And if you assume 30 days to a month, you would have to make about 550 million cells a day… That requires cranking out neurons at 380,000 per minute… About 6,000 new little baby neurons [must] be born per second.

Six thousand is still a pretty big number. But it's one that I can at least vaguely grasp. So, imagine spending $6,000 each second of every minute of every hour of each day of each month for nine months… That's what you would have to do to spend 150 billion dollars. $150 billion is a bunch of money.

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http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1052251679411

The gimmicks used to make a tax cut of more than $800 billion (U.S.) carry an official price tag of only $320 billion are a joke, yet the cost without the gimmicks is so large that the U.S. can't possibly afford it while keeping its other promises.

…The Financial Times suggests that "more extreme Republicans" actually want a fiscal train wreck: "Proposing to slash federal spending, particularly on social programs, is a tricky electoral proposition, but a fiscal crisis offers the tantalizing prospect of forcing such cuts through the back door."

…Although you wouldn't know it from the rhetoric, American taxes are already historically low as a share of GDP. Once the new round of cuts takes effect, U.S. taxes will be lower than their average during the Eisenhower administration. How, then, can Washington pay for Medicare and Medicaid — which didn't exist in the 1950s — and Social Security, which will be far more expensive as the population ages? It can't.

…How can this be happening? Most people, even most liberals, are complacent. They don't realize how dire the fiscal outlook really is, and they don't read what the ideologues write.

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http://www.harpers.org/harpers-index/listing.php3

Christine Todd Whitman resigned as head of the Environmental Protection Agency and said that President Bush had been "hurt" by his inability to explain his environmental policies. The House of Representatives voted to exempt the Pentagon from environmental laws that protect animals such as the tidewater goby fish, the Arroyo toad, the San Diego fairy shrimp, and the coastal California gnatcatcher. Governor Jeb Bush of Florida signed a bill that could delay the restoration of the Everglades for ten years.

…The Republican Party was selling lunch with Karl Rove, the president's political adviser, to anyone who can raise $50,000… It was reported that Republican fund-raisers who bring in at least $200,000 for the 2004 campaign will be called "Rangers"; those who bring in $100,000 get to be called "Pioneers."