IRAQ: PROFIT OVER PEOPLE

Pacific News: U.S. Arrests Iraqi Union Leaders

SAN FRANCISCO--U.S. occupation forces in Iraq escalated their efforts to paralyze Iraq's new labor unions with a series of arrests this weekend.

On Dec. 6, according to a union spokesperson interviewed by phone, a convoy of 10 Humvees and personnel carriers descended on the old headquarters building of the Transport and Communications Workers union, in Baghdad's central bus station, which has been used since June as the office of the Iraqi Workers Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU). Twenty soldiers jumped out, stormed into the building, put handcuffs on eight members of the Federation's executive board, and took them into detention.

"They gave no reason at all, despite being asked over and over," says IFTU spokesperson Abdullah Muhsin. Soldiers painted over the name of the federation on the front of the building with black paint, Muhsin says. The union had few resources, "but we did have a few files, and they took those," Muhsin adds. Ironically, the office had posters on the walls condemning terrorism, which soldiers tore down in the raid.

Früher hat man die Mafia losgeschickt um die Gewerkschaften von ihrem subversiven Treiben abzuhalten. Heute hat man das Militaer

ISRAEL

WSWS: Ethnic Cleansing Now Official Israeli Government Policy

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his ministers have openly declared that Palestinians must be driven out to make way for Jewish settlements in land occupied illegally since the 1967 war.

Sharon and his cabinet utilised the November 15 ambush of Israeli security forces in Hebron by Islamic Jihad and the ensuing gun battle that killed 12 members of the Israeli armed forces and injured 15, as well as three of the Palestinian attackers, to make their announcements.

Sharon himself called for "territorial contiguity" between Kiryat Arba, a settlement overlooking Hebron, the tiny Zionist enclaves and the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a religious site venerated by both Moslems and Jews, inside the city. Palestinians living between the settlement, the enclaves and the Tomb would be forced to leave their homes to make way for the settlers-a policy known throughout the world as ethnic cleansing. He told army commanders in Hebron that Israel had to "take advantage of the opportunity" to "minimise the number of Palestinians living among Jewish settlers" and establish "Jewish points of presence". He described this as "an appropriate Zionist response" to such attacks.

Sharon's newly appointed foreign affairs minister and main leadership rival, Benyamin Netanyahu, was even more explicit. "We are going to cleanse the whole area and do the work ourselves." he declared

IRAQ

WSWS: US, Israel Prepare Mass Killings In Iraq

The Bush administration is about to launch a campaign of wholesale killings in Iraq with the assistance of the Israeli military, according to both US and Israeli sources quoted in several recent news reports.

Frustrated over the growing popular resistance to the US military occupation and determined to reduce US casualties in Iraq before next November's election, the administration has authorized a policy that could well resemble the infamous "Operation Phoenix" assassination program run by the CIA during the Vietnam War. That operation claimed the lives of as many as 41,000 Vietnamese over a four-year period beginning in 1968.

In preparation for the new counterinsurgency campaign, the US military has brought urban warfare specialists from the Israeli Defenses Force (IDF) to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the headquarters of the US Special Forces. They are training assassination teams in methods that the IDF has used to suppress Palestinian resistance to the Israel occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"This is basically an assassination program.... This is a hunter-killer team," a former senior intelligence official told the British Guardian newspaper. He warned that Washington's reliance on Israeli assistance in launching the operation would only intensify anger over the US occupation throughout the Middle East.

"It is bonkers, insane," the former official said. "Here we are-we're already being compared to Sharon in the Arab world, and we've just confirmed it by bringing in the Israelis and setting up assassination teams."

The Guardian also cited intelligence sources in Washington as reporting that Israeli military "consultants" have been sent to Iraq to advise US forces there on counterinsurgency operations.

According to the British newspaper, the new operation also includes the deployment of killer squads inside Syria to hunt down suspected resistance fighters from other Arab countries before they cross the border into Iraq.

Meanwhile, an article by Seymour Hersh, the veteran US investigative reporter, appeared in this week's New Yorker magazine also warning of a "major escalation of the Special Forces covert war in Iraq" and providing additional confirmation of Israel's role in training those who will carry out the assassination program.

According to Hersh, a new Special Forces group-Task Force 121-has been formed, drawing upon Army Delta Force troops, Navy SEALs and CIA paramilitaries. "Its highest priority is the neutralization of the Baathist insurgents, by capture or assassination," he reports.

Hersh continues: "According to American and Israeli military and intelligence officials, Israeli commandos and intelligence units have been working closely with their American counterparts at the Special Forces training base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and in Israel to help them prepare for operations in Iraq. Israeli commandos are expected to serve as ad-hoc advisers-again, in secret-when full-field operations begin."

US and Israeli officials have refused to comment on the record about this collaboration on the Iraqi counterinsurgency campaign. "No one wants to talk about this; it's incendiary," an Israeli official told Hersh. "Both governments have decided at the highest level that it is in their interest to keep a low profile on US-Israeli cooperation" on the assassination program

EURO VS. DOLLAR

Hindustan Times: OPEC may trade oil in euros to compensate for dollar decline

OPEC Secretary General Alvaro Silva said the organisation is considering trading oil in euros to compensate for the US dollar's decline in value.

Another alternative is to trade in a basket of currencies other than the greenback, Silva told Venezuela's state news agency, Venpres.

"There is a talk of trading crude in euros. It is one of the alternatives," the former Venezuelan oil minister said from Vienna late on Monday.

"It is possible that the organisation will discuss that, and make a decision at some point in time," he said.

Silva did not provide more details.

Goodbye USA

IRAQ: LIBERATORS?

Information Clearinghouse: Take no Prisoners

Another proud moment in U.S. Military History.

U.S. Marines execute an Iraqi to the cheers of fellow marines

-:WARNING:-

This video should only be viewed by a mature audience

VIDEO

Page Updated: 12/11/03 2:13 PM: PST.

Transcript:

CNN Presents: Fit To Kill

Aired October 26, 2003 - 20:00 ET

CROWLEY: Wounded, another Iraqi writhes on the ground next to his gun. The Marines kill him -- then cheer.

RIDDLE: Like, man, you guys are dead now, you know. But it was a good feeling.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fire!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah!

CROWLEY: When the battle is over and you are still standing, the adrenalin rush is huge.

RIDDLE: I mean, afterwards you're like, hell, yeah, that was awesome. Let's do it again.

CROWLEY: Inexplicable to some, but not to generations of veterans


Convention (I) for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field. Geneva, 12 August 1949.
Art. 3. In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:
(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.
To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(b) taking of hostages;
(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgement pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
(2) The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.
An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.

Das Video zeigt wie ein US-Soldat einen verwundeten, am Boden liegenden Iraker hinrichtet und die ganze Sache ziemlich cool findet. Kriegsverbrechen auf CNN

IRAQI RESISTANCE

Haaretz: Explosions Rock Central Baghdad Near US Compound


BAGHDAD, Iraq - Three loud explosions boomed through central Baghdad early Friday, and sirens wailed in the compound housing the headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition.

U.S. military sources confirmed to CNN that three or four blasts had occurred in central Baghdad.

Some smoke rose inside the compound, known as the "Green Zone," but it was unclear whether it was related to the thunderous booms.

"We are aware that some explosions did take place. We do not know the location," a spokeswoman for the coalition said on customary condition of anonymity.

A spokesman said he heard three explosions.

"They were loud," he said. "But I've heard louder."

Insurgents last month fired mortars into the "Green Zone," a five-square-kilometer (two-square-mile) area that encompasses several buildings. But if Friday's explosions occurred inside, it would be the first time in several weeks that the seat of coalition power was hit.

ANTI-SEMITISM

Haaretz: Anti-Semitism, Real And Exaggerated

Much was revealed by the study of anti-Semitism in Europe that caused such a controversy when the European Center for Monitoring Racism decided to shelve the results.

It showed a growing distancing from Israel and from European Jews, the ostensible representatives of the Jewish state. It exposed the failure of the immigrant absorption and integration policies adopted by European countries toward their Muslim minorities. And finally, the attitude to the report, whose data was not always well-grounded, showed how much hostility there is to Europe, particularly among members of the coalition parties in Israel, and the disproportionate manner in which they use the ghosts of anti-Semitism to distract themselves and Israeli public opinion in general from their own domestic problems.

First to the matter of anti-Semitism. Since September 11, it is being felt the way anger toward America is felt. But this is not the old style of race hatred against Jews; rather, it is more a general rejection of everything Israeli. Jews are identified with Israelis, just as the Israeli public is identified with its government. That first identification is more grave - it shows that hundreds of years of life in Europe and the memory of the genocide of the Jews has not been enough for the Jews to be recognized as citizens of their countries.

Add to that the criticism of Israeli policy. It can be justified, but the intensity with which it is expressed discloses not only the extent to which Germans are unable to put themselves in the place of a people suffering from constant terror; it also reveals a desire to disconnect, to get rid of decades' worth of complexes.

INTERNET

MSNBC: A Net of Control

UNTHINKABLE: How the Internet could become a tool of corporate and government power, based on updates now in the works

Picture, if you will, an information infrastructure that encourages censorship, surveillance and suppression of the creative impulse. Where anonymity is outlawed and every penny spent is accounted for. Where the powers that be can smother subversive (or economically competitive) ideas in the cradle, and no one can publish even a laundry list without the imprimatur of Big Brother. Some prognosticators are saying that such a construct is nearly inevitable. And this infrastructure is none other than the former paradise of rebels and free-speechers: the Internet

"CHECK IT"

RUSSIA

Anti-War.com: NOW THEY'RE AFTER PUTIN

The decisive victory of Russian President Vladimir Putin's "United
Russia" slate of candidates for the Duma is the occasion for a new round of
Putin-bashing, with "human rights officials" condemning the election
results as "a retreat from Russia's democratic reforms."

Just what is a "human rights official," anyway? The way the Associated
Press puts it, one might almost suppose that we're talking about
elected officials here, or else guardian angels appointed by God to watch over
the human race in His stead. In either case, these unofficial officials
deserve to be recalled forthwith, just on the basis of their phony complaints
about the Russian electoral process:

"International observers delivered a blistering assessment of the vote,
calling it free but not fair. Taxpayer money and state television was
used to benefit a few parties, monitors said in their criticism."

When the Republicans run television ads featuring Bush's Top Gun
landing on that aircraft carrier, I wonder if these same monitors will lodge
complaints about inappropriate use of taxpayers' money. The
state-supported media of the OSCE countries – in whose name the rebuke to Putin was
issued – all have an indisputable political bias, and the problem is
even worse in Eastern Europe.

Bruce George, head of the OSCE's "parliamentary assembly," had the
nerve to pontificate that the election "failed to meet ... international
standards."
The White House endorsed this hypocritical hyperbole, noting "concerns
about the fairness of the election campaign. We share those concerns."
George openly worried that, "because of the use of administrative
resourcesand the biased media, legitimate democratic opposition parties would
notget the 5 percent of the vote they need to enter parliament."

If every government that used "administrative resources" to gain
electoral advantage were to be expelled from the ranks of democratic nations, who
would be left? As for "biased media" – is this something that the
Western media, which "embedded" itself in the U.S. government's war propaganda
machine, have the right to lecture the Russians about?

The real complaint of Putin's Western critics is that the Russian
parties favored by Washington and its Euro-weenie satellites – Yabloko and the
Union of Right Forces – failed to get the 5 percent required to garner
seats in the Duma. The election was "free but not fair" – because they
didn't like the results.

USA-TAIWAN

WIRED: Bush Orders Taiwan to Forget about Freedom from China


Bush bluntly warned Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian against changing
the status quo with China in tough words delivered on Tuesday in a meeting
with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.Bush's comments were a warning to Chen not
to hold a referendum on the island alongside a March presidential
election, plans for which have sparked anger and fear in China that Taiwan is
creeping toward independence. 'We oppose any unilateral decision by
either China or Taiwan to change the status quo, and the comments and actions
made by the leader of Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make
decisions unilaterally to change the status quo, which we oppose,' Bush said,
seatedwith Wen in the Oval Office.


LA TIMES: Conservatives are 'Appalled' by Bush's Anti-Democracy Move on Taiwan

To conservatives, it was a shocking scene. Bush sat chatting chummily
in the Oval Office on Tuesday with the premier of communist China and
harshlyrebuked the democratically elected leader of the United States' old
friend and ally, Taiwan. 'The only word I can use is 'appalled'," said John
Tkacik, a China specialist at the conservative Heritage Foundation and
a staunch administration supporter. 'The spectacle of the American
president who just gave such an eloquent speech in Whitehall barely three weeks
ago, saying the global expansion of democracy is a pillar of American
foreign policy...' His voice trailed off in disbelief. 'This just simply belies
that.' Behind the jarring imagery, however, was a simple message. The
Bush administration believes that it cannot afford a political crisis that
could draw the United States into a war over Taiwan while it has its hands
more than full with Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea [as well as the 2004
campaign].

PRIVATISATION OF WAR

Village Voice: Rumsfeld Aims to Privatize the Military

WASHINGTON, D.C.—If Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has his way, the vaunted U.S. military of the future will be transformed into what amounts to corporate-owned units. The daffy secretary calls his plan "outsourcing." The intention, he claims, is to put the lid on money going into expanding of the army so it can be diverted to new technologies such as Rummy's favorite hobby, fighting wars from space.

MG: Corporations are Now Biggest Ally of the U.S. in Iraq


Private corporations have penetrated western warfare so deeply that
they are now the second biggest contributor to coalition forces in Iraq
after the Pentagon, a Guardian investigation has established. While the
official coalition figures list the British as the second largest contingent
with around 9 900 troops, they are narrowly outnumbered by the 10,000
private military contractors now on the ground. The investigation has also
discovered that the proportion of contracted security personnel in the
firing line is 10 times greater than during the first Gulf war. In
1991, for every private contractor, there were about 100 servicemen and
women; now there are 10. The private sector is so firmly embedded in combat,
occupation and peacekeeping duties that the phenomenon may have reached
the point of no return: the US military would struggle to wage war without
it.

GM-FOOD

i-sis: GM Crops Increase Pesticide Use

Proponents claim that GM crops substantially reduce pesticide use, but new evidence shows otherwise. Lim Li Ching reports.

A new report from Dr. Charles Benbrook, director of the Northwest Science and Environmental Policy Center, Idaho, concludes that the 550 million acres of GM corn, soybeans and cotton planted in the US since 1996 has increased pesticide use (herbicides and insecticides) by about 50 million pounds. Benbrook is a respected agricultural economist and was Executive Director of the US National Academy of Sciences Board on Agriculture from 1984 to 1990.

MIND CONTROL

Commercial Alert: PUSHING THE BRAIN'S "BUY BUTTON"

Commercial Alert and prominent psychology experts sent a letter
today to Emory University President James Wagner, requesting that
Emory stop conducting neuromarketing experiments on human subjects.
Neuromarketing is a controversial new field of marketing that maps
the brain's activation responses in order prod desires for
particular products. It seeks, in the words of Forbes magazine, to
"find a buy button inside the skull." According to the Commercial
Alert letter, this marketing technique "sounds like something that
could have happened in the former Soviet Union, for the purposes of
behavior control. Yet it is happening right here in America."

PR WWATCH

Observer: DRUG INDUSTRY SPINS MEDICAL JOURNALS THROUGH GHOSTWRITERS

"Hundreds of articles in medical journals claiming to be written by
academics or doctors have been penned by ghostwriters in the pay of
drug companies," the Observer reports. "The journals, bibles of the
profession, have huge influence on which drugs doctors prescribe
and the treatment hospitals provide. But The Observer has uncovered
evidence that many articles written by so-called independent
academics may have been penned by writers working for agencies
which receive huge sums from drug companies to plug their products.
Estimates suggest that almost half of all articles published in
journals are by ghostwriters. While doctors who have put their
names to the papers can be paid handsomely for 'lending' their
reputations, the ghostwriters remain hidden. They, and the
involvement of the pharmaceutical firms, are rarely revealed."
SOURCE: Observer (UK), December 7, 2003

IRAQI RESISTANCE

Spiegel: Blutiger Dienstag im Irak

Ein schwarzer Tag für die amerikanische Besatzungsmacht: Bei einem Selbstmordanschlag wurden 40 amerikanische Soldaten verletzt, drei US-Soldaten starben bei einem Unfall und drei Zivilisten bei einem Raketenangriff auf eine Moschee in Bagdad. Und dann stürzte bei Falludscha auch noch ein Hubschrauber ab.

JIHAD

Guardian: Jihad Has Worked - The World Is Now Split In Two

Osama bin Laden, two years and three months after the New York and Washington attacks that were part of his jihad against America, appears to be winning. He has lost his base in Afghanistan, as well as many colleagues and fighters, and his communications and finances have been disrupted. He may be buried under rubble in Afghanistan or, as Washington and London assume, be hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas. But from Kandahar to Baghdad, from Istanbul to Riyadh, blood is being shed in the name of Bin Laden's jihad.

On Saturday, a Taliban bomb went off in the bazaar in Kandahar, aimed at US soldiers but wounding 20 Afghan civilians. On the same day, US planes targeted a "known terrorist" in Ghazni, also in Afghanistan, killing nine children. The deaths of the children will not help the US win hearts and minds in Afghanistan, or elsewhere; indeed, they will alienate Muslim opinion worldwide.

There is a tendency in the west to play down - or ignore - the extent of Bin Laden's success. The US and UK governments regard mentioning it as disloyal or heretical. But look back on interviews by Bin Laden in the 1990s to see what he has achieved. He can tick off one of the four objectives he set himself, and, arguably, a second.

"CHECK IT"

IRAQI RESISTANCE

Google.News: 31 US Soldiers Wounded In Iraq Car-Bombing

BAGHDAD -- Thirty-one U.S. soldiers were wounded when a car bomb exploded at the entrance to their base in a northern Iraq town Tuesday, the U.S. Army said.

Major Trey Cate of the 101st Airborne said soldiers at the base in Tal Afar, west of the city of Mosul, fired on the vehicle when it failed to stop at an entry point. The vehicle then detonated, he said, adding that it appeared to be a suicide bombing.

IRAQ

Washington Post: South Korean engineers quit Iraq

BAGHDAD, Dec. 7 — A week after two of their colleagues were killed in
an ambush, the remaining contingent of 60 South Korean contract engineers
and technicians working for the U.S. government on a project north of the
capital has decided to leave the country.
IT IS THE largest known withdrawal of contractors over security
issues and follows a week of confrontations between the workers and
their managers that culminated with yelling and punches Sunday afternoon.
The decision by the men, who were working to fix electrical power lines, is
likely to delay one of Iraq’s most critical reconstruction projects.
The workers are subcontractors for the Washington Group International Inc.,
a construction firm based in Boise, Idaho, that has a $110 million
contract with the Army Corps of Engineers to repair sections of Iraq’s power
grid.

RUSSIA

Stuff.nz: Putin party heads for triumph

MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin's allies are heading for overwhelming
electoral victory, crushing communist and liberal opponents in a parliamentary poll that could change the political landscape of Russia. The Communist Party called the polls a farce and accused the Kremlin of
fraud. Liberal party leaders, facing political oblivion, said the vote
concentrated too much power in the hands of the pro-Kremlin United
Russia and of nationalists. "We will have an entirely different political
picture in Russia," said Boris Nemtsov, whose pro-business Union of Right-Wing
Forces (SPS) may scrape only a few seats in the Duma lower house.

OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

Alternet: UN Assembly asks for court ruling on Israeli wall

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 8 (Reuters) - The U.N. General Assembly on Monday voted in favor of a Palestinian-initiated resolution asking the International Court of Justice whether Israel is legally obligated to tear down its separation barrier.

The vote was 90 to 8 with 74 abstentions, with the United States and Israel among those voting "no." The European Union and associated states abstained.

Arab nations asked for the emergency session after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan reported on Nov. 28 that building the barrier into the West Bank was causing serious harm to Palestinians. He said Israel had a right to defend its citizens but that duty should not contradict international law.

USA ARMY

LA TIMES: Four Returning Army Divisions to Reduce Readiness

Pentagon says it's taking 'a manageable risk' by giving battle-worn troops and equipment up to six months to be combat-ready again

WASHINGTON — Its equipment and troops battered from fighting in Iraq, the Army will allow four of its divisions returning from overseas to fall to readiness levels that would make them not fully combat-ready for as long as six months, a senior Army official said Friday.

The divisions — which together make up more than 100,000 soldiers, 40% of the Army's combat troops — are reeling from yearlong deployments fighting first a war, then a counterinsurgency, that have wreaked havoc with everything from tank treads to helicopter rotors to nerves.

By permitting the divisions to, in effect, drop their guard and recharge, the Pentagon is taking a calculated risk that it won't be forced to fight a war with a major adversary like North Korea on short notice. Not since the all-volunteer military was established in 1973 has the Army allowed so many of its units to fall to such low readiness levels.

"We have a nonnegotiable contract with the U.S. people that our Army will always be ready to fight and win its wars," said the senior Army official who briefed a small group of reporters on the plans Friday on condition of anonymity, after the Army's plan was disclosed in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. "But this is a fact of life. What we are seeing now is the operational tempo of our Army is going to require time to reset our equipment, reset our training, reset our soldiers so we can build this Army back up."

BUSINESS

NY TIMES: Is Wal-Mart good for America?


The annual celebration of the American consumer economy - the holiday
shopping season - is just underway, and Wal-Mart, the juggernaut of
retailing, already seems to have claimed its first victim. The corporate
owner of F.A.O. Schwarz stores said last week that it would file for
bankruptcy. Bemoaning the news, analysts explained that the F.A.O.
Schwarz formula of selling premium-priced toys in sumptuous surroundings could
not withstand the steady advance of Wal-Mart into the toy business. "Will
Wal-Mart Steal Christmas?" asked a Time magazine headline

USA: BUSH GANG

Reuter: Perle Failed To Disclose Financial Ties To Boeing

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pentagon adviser Richard Perle came under fire on Friday for failing to disclose financial ties to Boeing Co. , even while championing its bid for a controversial $20 billion-plus defense contract.

Perle co-wrote a guest column in The Wall Street Journal newspaper this summer praising the plan to lease then buy 100 modified refueling planes, a year after Boeing committed to invest up to $20 million in Trireme Partners, a New York venture capital fund in which Perle is a principal.

"If ever there were an argument that traditional business practices are ill-suited for defense 'transformation', the saga of the tanker-leasing proposal would count as People's Exhibit A," Perle and a colleague wrote in the Journal on Aug. 14.

"It stinks to high heaven," said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based federal budget watchdog group, of Perle's failure to disclose his ties to Boeing in the Wall Street Journal piece.

Boeing acknowledged in a recently released internal e-mail that it ghost-wrote several opinion pieces by prominent figures in favor of leasing tankers rather than buying them outright, as has been standard weapons-procurement policy. "Manche Journalisten und Kommentatoren sind nicht als Konzern-Nutten"

IRAQI RESISTANCE: SAMARRA

Independent: A bloody victory or dangerous fantasy? The true story of the battle of Samarra

Nearly a week has elapsed since the American military issued the
startling claim - puzzling even some within its own ranks - that its troops
killed 54 guerrillas during running gunfights in the Sunni town of Samarra.
Official versions described how dozens of Fedayeen guerrillas wearing
red or black chequered headscarves and dark shirts and trousers attacked
troops in the bloodiest engagement since the US-led occupation of Iraq last
April - and lost.

Repeated visits to the scene, interviews with Iraqi civilians and US
soldiers, and close inspection of the battle damage by scores of
correspondents have failed to eliminate several troubling and crucial
questions. Where are the bodies? Did they exist? Or was this death toll
- as some suspect - a fabrication which was intended to generate positive
headlines for the US, after a disastrous weekend in which guerrilla
attacks killed 14 foreigners, including seven Spanish intelligence officers?

MEDICAL SCIENCE

Independent: Glaxo chief: Our drugs do not work on most patients

A senior executive with Britain's biggest drugs company has admitted that most prescription medicines do not work on most people who take them.

Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), said fewer than half of the patients prescribed some of the most expensive drugs actually derived any benefit from them.

It is an open secret within the drugs industry that most of its products are ineffective in most patients but this is the first time that such a senior drugs boss has gone public. His comments come days after it emerged that the NHS drugs bill has soared by nearly 50 per cent in three years, rising by £2.3bn a year to an annual cost to the taxpayer of £7.2bn. GSK announced last week that it had 20 or more new drugs under development that could each earn the company up to $1bn (£600m) a year.

GRAFFITI

BBC: French 'love' artist discovered

France has solved the mystery of the graffiti artist who has been covering the walls of its capital city with the word Amour, or Love, for months.
The word has been appearing up to 100 times a night only to be removed by Paris street cleaners the next evening.

Liberation newspaper finally located its author, unemployed artist Jean-Luc Duez, 54, through the internet

SCIENCE

Guardian: 'We Can Implant Entirely False Memories'

You were abducted by aliens, you saw Bugs Bunny at Disneyland,
and then you went up in a balloon. Didn't you?

Alan Alda had nothing against hard-boiled eggs until last spring. Then the actor, better known as Hawkeye from M*A*S*H, paid a visit to the University of California, Irvine. In his new guise as host of a science series on American TV, he was exploring the subject of memory. The researchers showed him round, and afterwards took him for a picnic in the park. By the time he came to leave, he had developed a dislike of hard-boiled eggs based on a memory of having made himself sick on them as a child - something that never happened.

Alda was the unwitting guinea pig of Elizabeth Loftus, a UCI psychologist who has been obsessed with the subject of memory and its unreliability since Richard Nixon was sworn in as president. Early on in her research, she would invite people into her lab, show them simulated traffic accidents, feed them false information and leading questions, and find that they subsequently recalled details of the scene differently - a finding that has since been replicated hundreds of times.

MEDIA WATCH USA

The Memory Hole: The US Terrorism Plot That the Media Ignores

In May 2003, white supremacists in Texas were caught with a sodium cyanide bomb, other bombs, illegal weapons, hate literature, fake I.D., and chemicals, including hydrochloric acid and nitric acid. In mid-November, three people pleaded guilty to related charges, while seized documents indicate that there are other co-conspirators at large. The feds have served "hundreds of subpoenas across the country," and the plot has been included in the President's daily intelligence briefings.

But most of us have never heard about it. The only media that saw fit to report about this terrorist plot within the US were a few newspapers and TV stations in Texas. The Web-based news outlet WorldNetDaily ran a story about it, but Google News shows that there hasn't been a word in the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, or any other big media outlet. Why have the media decided that this is a non-story? It's hard to say, but we can say with certainty that if Muslims had been caught with these weapons of mass destruction, fake I.D., gas masks, and books on making explosives, it would've been front-page news for days.

Below, we've collected every article about this ignored plot that we could find. All images come from CBS 11 in Dallas/Fort Worth.

IRAQ

Progressiv: Rigging Iraq's Elections

Ever since Bush was unable to unearth a single weapon of mass destruction in Iraq, he has shifted propaganda gears and talked more about how U.S. troops are installing democracy in Iraq.

But the truth of the matter is, Bush doesn't want any old democracy in Iraq.

He only wants a so-called democracy if he can pick the head of the new government .

That's why he's resisting the call from Iraq's leading Shiite cleric to hold popular elections in June.

The Bush Administration fears that a direct election would bring a Shiite to power whom Washington might not be able to push around. That leader could align with Iran, or renationalize industries, or order the U.S. troops out. And Bush wants none of that.

RUSSIA

London Telegraph: Putin Takes Control Of
Parliament - Rules Like Czar

President Vladimir Putin took control of the Russian parliament last night, removing the last effective bastion of opposition to his rule and paving the way for him to assume Tsar-like power.

Exit polls last night gave United Russia, the president's party, 37 per cent of the vote, the Communists 15 per cent and Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democrats 12 per cent. Rodina, a new nationalist party, was predicted to have won nine per cent.

This would give Mr Putin's party and its allies about 58 per cent of the vote and return Russia to an era of single-party dominance after 12 years of vibrant, if corrupt, democracy.

"Schlimmer als Amerika ist Russland noch nicht. Mr. Bush und seine Republikanischen Freunde haben auch soviel Macht wie Putin"

FUNNY LINK OF THE DAY

Go to Google.com an enter: ""miserable failure" and see what happens.

NEW BOOK FEAT. FH451

CHECK: PEACE SIGNS THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT ILLUSTRATED



PREVIEW: PEACE SIGNS

BUY THE BOOK:
Spanish edition publisher:
http://www.ggili.com/

English edition publisher (February Release):
http://www.edition-olms.com

PRESS:
El Pais - 26 De Noviembre de 2003 [743KB JPG]
Avui - 4 Diciembre De 2003 [506KB PDF]
Barcelona.com
YAHOO NEWS SPAIN
YAHOO NEWS CATALANIA

SCIENCE

Reuters: No Doubts Global Warming Is Real Say US Experts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There can be no doubt that global warming is real and is being caused by people, two top U.S. government climate experts said.

Industrial emissions are a leading cause, they say -- contradicting critics, already in the minority, who argue that climate change could be caused by mostly natural forces.

"There is no doubt that the composition of the atmosphere is changing because of human activities, and today greenhouse gases are the largest human influence on global climate," wrote Thomas Karl, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center, and Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

USA: COINTELPRO

the Village Voice: J. Edgar Hoover Back at the 'New' FBI

If you go around telling people, "We're going to ferret out information on demonstrations," that deters people. People don't want their names and pictures in FBI files.
—American University constitutional law professor Herman Schwartz, commenting on FBI Intelligence Bulletin no. 89, October 15, 2003, "Tactics Used During Protests and Demonstrations"



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Americans of a certain age remember the FBI's counter-intelligence operation, COINTELPRO, which, during its years of operation from 1956 to 1971, surveilled, infiltrated, manipulated, and tried to provoke criminal activities by entirely lawful civil rights and anti-war demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights to oppose government policies.

In the 1970s, the Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities so exposed FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's relentless violations of the Bill of Rights, very much including the First Amendment, that Attorney General Edward Levi—the best constitutionalist in that office in our history—established new FBI guidelines to keep its agents within the bounds of the Constitution.

And Senator Frank Church of Idaho, chairman of that Select Committee on Intelligence Activities, pledged in 1975, "The American people need to be reassured that never again will an agency of the government be permitted to conduct a secret war against those citizens it considers a threat to the established order."

IRAQ: LIKE THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

NY TIMES: Tough New Tactics by U.S. Tighten Grip on Iraq Towns

As the guerrilla war against Iraqi insurgents intensifies, American soldiers have begun wrapping entire villages in barbed wire.

In selective cases, American soldiers are demolishing buildings thought to be used by Iraqi attackers. They have begun imprisoning the relatives of suspected guerrillas, in hopes of pressing the insurgents to turn themselves in.

The Americans embarked on their get-tough strategy in early November, goaded by what proved to be the deadliest month yet for American forces in Iraq, with 81 soldiers killed by hostile fire. The response they chose is beginning to echo the Israeli counterinsurgency campaign in the occupied territories.

Underlying the new strategy, the Americans say, is the conviction that only a tougher approach will quell the insurgency and that the new strategy must punish not only the guerrillas but also make clear to ordinary Iraqis the cost of not cooperating.

"You have to understand the Arab mind," Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. "The only thing they understand is force — force, pride and saving face."

"Was der Captain hier sagt ist uebelster Rassismus"