but usually she is more like this: "When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look into the reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with others, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like lettuce. (Thich Nat Hanh, 1998)

and now for the end of the world news.

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TIKRIT, Iraq -- The roosters were just beginning to crow in that lost hour before dawn when Lt. Col. Steve Russell of the Army's 4th Infantry Division ordered his men to "go dark" and roll their Humvees up to the edge of a lone farmhouse here. It was quiet, the village shuttered by a curfew. Desert wind rattled dry grass... The troops smashed an M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle through the front gates.

This is the unfinished work of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. In an operation dubbed Desert Scorpion, U.S. forces gather intelligence from Iraqis by day then head out on raiding parties at night... The operation began in part to stanch the string of attacks on U.S. troops that have killed 17 soldiers since May 1, according to the Pentagon and news reports. It is, Russell said, "an ugly business, but it is the business we are in."

Russell's men come in like SWAT teams, ramming down compound walls. Children cry, women are terrified, and men are handcuffed and led away, sometimes with nylon bags over their heads. More often than not they are innocent.

...By day, U.S. troops put on what one soldier in Russell's unit called "the smiley face." By night, during a raid, Lt. Chris Morris, leader of the scout patrol, said, "if I see some guy sticking his head around a wall, and he doesn't show me his hands, and then he pops out again, he's likely to get shot."

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photo caption

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/030625/241/4hule.html

An Iraqi youth is arrested and handcuffed after calling out insults to a US military patrol in Baghdad as he was making his way to school.

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http://www.prolog.net/webnews/wed/au/Qus-iraq-rebuild-military.Rxu2_DuQ.html

WASHINGTON, June 26 (AFP) - The Pentagon has awarded a $48,000,000.00 contract to train the nucleus of a new Iraqi army to Vinnell Corporation... The Fairfax, Virginia-based company [is] a subsidiary of the US aerospace firm Northrup Grumman... Vinnell has for the past 20 years trained members of Saudi Arabia's National Guard and those of other Middle Eastern military forces.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=419411

The British military has ordered a suspension of weapons searches in the area of southern Iraq where six soldiers were killed... The Army has agreed to a two-month "cooling-off" period in the town of Majar al-Kabir, near Amara, and this may be extended to other areas in an effort to defuse the rise in anti-British sentiment... There is acknowledgement among defence staff that a lack of understanding of the local people contributed to the fatal confrontation... The British commander in Iraq... said that the violence might have been sparked by people believing they were about to be searched.

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http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=699792003

FURROWING a pair of ornately tattooed eyebrows, Kumbula Kami told of the moment the British lost the battle for hearts and minds in the village of Abu Allah. "They kicked their way through the door at five in the morning last Sunday," she said, waving an angry fist at the hut she shares with five other families. "They didn’t have translators with them so we had no idea why they were here, and the men soldiers rummaged through all my daughter’s clothing."

It was here, in the Shia shanty village of Abu Allah overlooking the Tigris, that the controversial weapons searches took place... Villagers claim women were searched intimately, that money went missing and that the soldiers behaved rudely. But the real flashpoint was over the sniffer dogs each team of Paratroopers brought. In a village where every household keeps several half-feral mongrels, it was pandemonium.

"As soon as they saw the British dogs every beast in the village began barking like mad," said Mohammad Aziz, 51. "My dog, Reddy, did the same and one of the officers got nervous and pointed his pistol at him. I said, ‘Please don’t shoot my dog’ and tried to get in the way, but then another soldier shot him twice. Why did they have to do that?"

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=419367

By Patrick Cockburn in Majar al-Kabir: On the edge of the Iraqi marshlands, guerrillas who fought Saddam Hussein's regime for years say they fear that Britain and the United States want to take away their weapons so that they can occupy Iraq for many years. Al Sayyid Kadum al-Hashimi is a leader in the town of Majar al-Kabir, south of Amara, where six British soldiers were killed on Tuesday. He said yesterday: "It is the belief of people here, and it is believed by all other Iraqis, that the British want to disarm us so they can stay for a long time." Guerrillas who resisted the Iraqi army for almost two decades, hiding out in the great reed beds of the Iraqi marshes, which Saddam tried to dry up by cutting drainage canals, say they are also prepared to fight against a permanent occupation by the US and Britain.

...Abu Hatem warned that Iraqis must not be excluded from power and "any programme for reconstruction without an interim Iraqi government will fail." ... "We will put an end to this occupation with our weapons," said Maythem al-Mohammed Dawi, a lean-faced man with a submachine-gun who had been fighting in the marshes since 1998.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/06/27/wiran27.xml

America gave notice yesterday that it was ready to act alone against Iran and North Korea if European countries did not co-operate in stopping them from developing nuclear weapons. "If we do not want a 'Made in America' solution, let's find out how to resolve the issues of North Korea and Iran," declared Condoleezza Rice, the US national security adviser, during a visit to London... "The avoidance of war is not in itself a final goal," she said. "Sometimes one has to fight wars to deal with tyrants."

...Addressing the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Miss Rice delivered a thinly-veiled attack on Jacques Chirac, the French president, and his desire to create a "multi-polar" world in which Europe acts as a counter-weight to America. She described the notion of competing poles as a destructive throw-back to European rivalry in the 19th century.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/06/27/wliber27.xml/

An American military operation to restore order in Liberia looked likely last night as President George W Bush... drew cheers and applause... when he called on Liberia's President Charles Taylor, an indicted war criminal, to stand down.

...Last week almost every civilian spoken to in a straw poll in Monrovia begged for military assistance from America to help break the cycle of violence.

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http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030626/1/3c47v.html

Syria says it is still awaiting an explanation from the United States a week after five of its border guards were detained in a US special forces raid on the frontier with Iraq... The ministry demanded "an explanation from the US government ... and the return of the wounded soldiers for treatment in Syria in order to avoid any misunderstanding that might lead to an esclalation neither side wants," the SANA statement said. "The ministry is still waiting."

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged Tuesday that no wanted Iraqi officials were found in the June 19 raid by Task Force 20, a secret unit set up to hunt down senior members of Saddam Hussein's regime. Other US officials said five Syrian borderguards were held in a subsequent clash, three of whom were wounded. They said the raid may even have taken place in Syrian territory.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/06/27/wirq227.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/06/27/ixnewstop.html

Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, the former Iraqi information minister [said]... in an interview with Al-Arabiya satellite network in Baghdad [that]... he had surrendered to American forces, was questioned and released. Al-Arabiya said he "was exclusively interviewed in his hide-out in Baghdad" but did not specify where.

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/26/1056449368283.html

The State Department's intelligence division is disputing the CIA's conclusion that mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making biological weapons, US government officials say. In a classified memorandum dated June 2, the officials said, the [State] Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research said it was premature to conclude that the trailers were evidence of an Iraqi biological weapons program, as President George Bush has done.

...The precise reasons cited in the State Department memorandum to justify its dissent could not be learnt.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1520&ncid=1520&e=3&u=/afp/20030626/pl_afp/us_iraq_weapons_politics_030626140212

WASHINGTON (AFP) - [Bill Frist,] the Republican leader in the Senate, said that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was not the main justification for the US-led invasion of Iraq... "If you talk to most of the American people today, to have Saddam Hussein and his rogue regime out of there is something the American people want, it's something they deserve," the Republican leader said [on NBC television's Today Show].

...Frist added that he was not surprised that weapons of mass destruction have not been found in Iraq. "The weapons of mass destruction that we're talking about today are new. They're little viruses, they're bacteria, they're chemicals, things you can't see, you can't touch, you can't smell. So intelligence is tough," [said alleged medical doctor Frist].

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http://www.canada.com/news/story.asp?id=B7E04EA8-FFAF-4989-87B3-8CF010973C31

The UN atomic agency said Thursday that a find of parts from Baghdad's original nuclear weapons program appears to back its stance that the project had never been reactivated.

...A U.S. intelligence official said Wednesday that American authorities were examining parts and documents from an Iraqi weapons program run in the early 1990s that were handed over by a former Iraqi nuclear scientist. The scientist, Mahdi Shukur Obeidi, was quoted as saying he had kept the parts buried in his Baghdad garden on the orders of Saddam Hussein's government. Once sanctions against Iraq ended, the material was to be dug up and used to reconstitute a program to enrich uranium to make a nuclear weapon, Obeidi claimed to U.S. officials... In Vienna Thursday, the International Atomic Energy Agency [said that] the revelations tended to back its arguments that there was no evidence of such revived programs. "The findings and comments of Obeidi appear to confirm that there has been no post-1991 nuclear weapons program in Iraq and are consistent with our reports to the Security Council," said agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2838161,00.html

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - The Australian government on Thursday branded multilateral forums such as the United Nations "ineffective and unfocused" and said its foreign policy will increasingly rely on "coalitions of the willing" like the one that waged war in Iraq. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer also said that in Canberra's view, other nations' sovereignty was "not absolute."

...Downer's speech reflected comments late last year by Prime Minister John Howard that Australia would be prepared to launch pre-emptive strikes against terror targets in Asia.

...[Downer said,] "Sovereignty in our view is not absolute. Acting for the benefit of humanity is more important."

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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N26225135.htm

At Russia's request, the United Nations on Thursday added former Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev to its list of groups and people with suspected ties to Osama bin Laden or his al Qaeda network... Michael Chandler, chairman of an expert committee charged by the Security Council with monitoring al Qaeda, told reporters on Thursday his panel saw similarities between the workings of Chechen separatists and al Qaeda. Both were "looking for big publicity with maximum casualties," he said.

...Putting groups and individuals on the U.N. list obliges the United Nations' 191 member nations to freeze their funds and other assets and block their movements... Most of the names on the U.N. list have come from Washington... But China, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Kyrgyzstan have also contributed names.

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http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1054966468692&p=1012571727159

The UK is "highly unlikely" to fight a large-scale war without the US, Geoff Hoon, the British defence secretary, said on Thursday as he signalled radical changes in the armed forces. Calling for a US-style strategic shift from tanks to modern technology, Mr Hoon implied it was Europe's responsibility to prevent the US going it alone in future combat.

...[Hoon said that] Britain's planning needed to centre on "frequent, and often concurrent, medium and small-scale operations."

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http://media.guardian.co.uk/iraqandthemedia/story/0,12823,985255,00.html

The media operation at Central Command in Qatar did too little to put the events of the Iraq war in context, the head of communications planning at the [British] Ministry of Defence admitted yesterday. David Howard blamed lack of "context setting" on the fact that central command was run by the US military... His comments were backed by the head of Sky News, Nick Pollard, who described the briefings as "poor" and dominated by spin... Michael Wolff, the media commentator and New York Magazine columnist, who was based at the million dollar press centre in Doha, Qatar, went further, saying he and other journalists had been entirely cut off from events and might just as well have been in Florida. There was nothing. There was no one to talk to. It was embarrassing.

...Mr Wolff put forward the "semi-conspiracy theory" that major media companies in the US meekly followed the flag-waving agenda of the Bush administration in order to persuade the Federal Communications Commission to change its regulations. "Ass-kissing has gone on to a profound degree. It's pervasive throughout all these news organisations."

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/military/story/0,11816,985136,00.html

Britain and the United States are attempting to weaken the provisions of an international treaty requiring belligerents to clear up unexploded cluster bombs after the end of any conflict, according to the group Landmine Action. Talks have been going on for 10 days in Geneva to reach consensus on a protocol under the United Nations convention on conventional weapons. Draft proposals would oblige countries to pay for the safe destruction of cluster bombs they had used during a war.

Richard Lloyd, the director of Landmine Action, said yesterday: "Rather than adopt a clear obligation to clear up the mess, the UK [delegation] is suggesting it should 'cooperate' in addressing the problems that unexploded munitions cause... [But] the biggest problem is the United States," Mr Lloyd said. "...At present they want a voluntary declaration [of intent to remove cluster bombs] rather than having a duty imposed on them.

...The Ottawa Treaty on landmines already requires states which plant mines to remove them after a conflict. As well as unexploded cluster bombs, the new protocol would also cover hand grenades and other explosive devices... Landmine Action is one of the main groups campaigning on the issue, and has estimated that US and UK forces used around 300,000 cluster bomb sub-munitions, or "bomblets", on Iraq in the war earlier this year. A significant number failed to explode... UN agencies have estimated that hundreds of Iraqi children have been killed or injured since the end of the fighting from picking up unexploded shells and bomblets.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/06/26/wbush26.xml/

President George W Bush presented European Union envoys yesterday with a list of demands, ranging from putting more pressure on Iran and the Palestinian militant group Hamas to opening EU markets to genetically modified foods. In a hurried few hours of meetings at the White House - officially designated an EU-US summit - Mr Bush leaned on Romano Prodi, the European Commission president, and Costas Simitis, the Greek prime minister... The two sides signed what Mr Bush called agreements "to increase our co-operation in the war on terror and to speed the extradition of terrorists," including steps to form joint EU-US investigative teams, and share information on suspect bank accounts.

Critics have expressed fears that European human rights principles have been left on one side by an unprecedented EU-US extradition treaty, which was signed yesterday. It lowers the threshold of crimes that can trigger extradition to any offence carrying a prison sentence of more than a year.

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http://hartfordadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:22309

We're Not Making This Up, by Chris Harris - June 26, 2003: Newspaper's fax machines ring off around the clock. Here, at the Advocate, it's no different. But it is a rare fax that doesn't offer some kind of contact information -- an address, a phone number, the name of a person to whom questions can be directed... That said, this reporter was confounded last week at the arrival of several faxes, here at the Advocate's office, from the United States Department of Homeland Security... The faxes failed to include contact information for the agency's press offices, and did not include details concerning from where, specifically, the fax had come. The fax claimed to come from the Office of the Press Secretary, but that person wasn't named. There were no names or phone numbers or addresses on the fax.

So we logged onto the Homeland Security website, looking for contact information No luck. However, double-clicking on the link dubbed "Contact Us" did lead to an online form that visitors can fill out, and submit to the department's offices stating what business they've got with Homeland Security... A quick call to "411," and I was able to secure a phone number for the department. A simple question -- "Could I speak with the press secretary?" -- was met with a dismissive response from the woman who answered the phone at Homeland Security's press office.

"I will tell the press secretary you called, and give him the message," I was informed. But, wait -- why is there no contact information on your fax transmissions? "...We'll look into that. We're a little jammed up right now. I'll pass your message along." We never heard back from the Office of Homeland Security, whoever they are.

It's a little-known fact that every fax transmission must include what is called "identifying information," to allow recipients of said faxes the opportunity to respond to the whoever had sent it. That's the law -- the Federal Communications Commission, an independent United States government office requires that, at the top of all fax transmissions, the name and telephone number of the fax's originator be displayed.

...The law reads that it is "unlawful for someone to send a fax unless the message clearly contains, at the margin at the top or bottom of each transmitted page, or on the first page of the transmission, the date and time it was sent, an identification of the business, other entity, or individual sending the message, and the telephone number of the sending machine or such business, other entity, or individual," Schroeder says, a violation that carries a fine of up to $11,000. This reporter called Homeland Security's press office four times in three days, left messages, and by press time, had not heard back from the press secretary, whoever that might be.

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http://www.latimes.com/la-na-delivery26jun26,0,4594100.story

BOSTON — Police arrested three men accused of hogtying, beating and stabbing a pizza delivery man because they mistakenly believed he was Muslim. Saurabh Bhalerao, 24, was attacked late Sunday while delivering pizza in New Bedford, about 60 miles south of Boston. The suspects originally intended to rob Bhalerao, but escalated the assault because they believed he was Muslim, said Fairhaven Police Chief Gary F. Souza. The attacks continued as Bhalerao, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, explained that he was Hindu. "He pleaded with his attackers," Souza said. "They were using disparaging remarks and telling him he should go back to Iraq." ...Bhalerao was taken to a hospital, where he was listed in fair condition Wednesday night... The suspects face various charges.

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=310788&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

Selected minutes acquired by Haaretz from one of last week's cease-fire negotiations between Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and faction leaders from the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular and Democratic Fronts, reveal some of the factors at play behind the scenes in the effort to achieve a hudna [truce].

Abbas opened the session after hearing scathing criticism from faction leaders for his Aqaba speech in which he defined their activities as "terrorism." He began with a broad review of his two meetings with Prime Minister

Ariel Sharon and the Aqaba summit. "After seven days we did not reach agreement in Cairo on either the hudna or the united leadership... Despite our reservations we [believed]... that the road map was a life saver for a tiger whose head was caught in the neck of the bottle."

Abbas said "we were told that [President George] Bush is committed to the establishment of a viable Palestinian state beside the state of Israel, so based on our saying that we are ready to try that experiment... The Palestinians would speak publicly about their commitments according to the map and then

the Israelis would do the same thing."

Bush told the Arab leaders that he is fully committed to a solution based on his vision speech from June 24, 2002... [Abbas] said the discussion of the start of the implementation of the ["peace roadmap"] dealt with Gaza, where he said that Palestinian Authority institutions "are 75 percent destroyed, while in the West Bank they are 100 percent destroyed... We need time and capabilities to stand on our feet. And I explained that I had already spoken with Ariel Sharon about reaching a hudna between all the Palestinian factions."

According to Abbas, "Bush exploded with anger and said "there can be no deals with terror groups." We told him that they are part of our people and we cannot deal with them in any other way... I made clear to Bush that Sharon already agreed with that." ...Bush said "a cease-fire is not the whole story."

...Abbas said: "We were asked what we need if Israel withdraws and we said 'that there not be raids, chases, assassinations or house demolitions, because that kind of activity will destroy everything.'"

Abbas tried to placate the faction leaders by telling them that Palestinian Security Minister Mohammed Dahlan had raised the exact same issues with John Wolf, the American monitor of the road map. He tried to explain that in the wake of the failed attempt on Abdel Aziz Rantisi's life, the PA was now insisting on an end to the assassinations... "We did not speak of our rights but only of our commitments. Bush was impressed by that and mentioned the prisoners and settlements in his speech."

On the matter of the right of return, Abbas said "that right appears in all theprevious initiatives, and is not under discussion now. Bush asked, if that's the case, why mention the settlements now, and I told him the settlements are happening now."

...[Abbas] said nobody can speak to or pressure Sharon except the Americans.

According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/311595.html

U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday demanded that Hamas and groups like it be taken out of business, saying that only then will there be "a chance for peace." The president also reacted skeptically to the reported agreement of Palestinian militants to halt attacks on Israelis for three months. "I'll believe it when I see it," Bush said.

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http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2003/june/06_27_3.html

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The United States is said to be slowly moving toward cooperation with Israel in a new concept for missile defense... Officials said the Israeli concept of BPI constituted unmanned air vehicles hovering over suspected enemy missile sites. A airborne relay station would detect a missile launch and one of the UAVs, or a fighter-jet, would then fire an air-to-air rocket that would destroy the missile in its ascent stage.

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http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1657.shtml

One thousand days of violence have killed just over 3,000 people (2,398 Palestinians and 704 Israelis) and left 28,000 injured (23,150 Palestinians and 4,849 Israelis) in Israel and the Palestinian Autonomous and Occupied Territories.

[i.e, approximately 3.4 palestinians per israeli have been killed, and 4.8 palestinians per israeli, injured - mrs.h]

This is the human toll since the second Intifada started on September 29, 2000, according to figures from the Palestine Red Crescent (PRCS) and Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel's equivalent of a Red Cross or Red Crescent Society.

...Currently, the PRCS receives, on average, 640 emergency calls a day, in the West Bank and Gaza.

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=310798&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

"We have never been in such danger as we are now," Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, the rabbi of the West Bank

Jewish settlement Elon Moreh, told 500 of his colleagues at a meeting of the Federation for the People of Israel and Land of Israel in Jerusalem yesterday. "The government has decided on alien sovereignty over the Land of Israel, and the earth is burning beneath our feet. We are defending, with our bodies, against the great danger every single moment, and we have no rear lines. I call upon the great rear line to arise and come to life, from Metulla to the Negev. The truth must be reawakened... The Holy One, blessed be He, gave us the Land of Israel. There is holiness in every single grain." He also said that if a Jew eats the fruit of a tree that a gentile has planted and cultivated in the Land of Israel, he is obligated to tithe the fruit.

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a final word from thich nat hanh

http://www.spiritwalk.org/thichnhathanh.htm#quotations

...I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks. And I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands. And I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people, dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth. My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills the four oceans. Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and my pain are one.

Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up and the door of my heart could be left open, the door of compassion.