>> SIX-WAY TALKS...IF YOU MEET THE BUDDHA KILL HIM!
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CIA Chief to Correct 'Misperceptions' on Iraq WMD

Feb 4, 4:49 PM (ET)

By Tabassum Zakaria
By Tabassum Zakaria
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - CIA Director George Tenet plans to try and correct what he considers "misperceptions" about prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in his first public appearance since fresh controversy erupted over the issue, an intelligence official said on Wednesday.

In a speech at Georgetown University on Thursday, Tenet will "correct some of the misperceptions and downright inaccuracies concerning what the intelligence community reported and did not report regarding Iraq," the U.S. intelligence official said on condition of anonymity.

"He will point out it is premature to reach conclusions," the official added.

The furor over whether Iraq possessed banned weapons before the U.S.-led war, flared again recently after former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said he believed there were no large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq.

Kay, who was appointed by Tenet, had led the hunt since June for evidence of banned weapons and an active program to build nuclear weapons -- the centerpiece for the U.S. decision to launch a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq last year.

After resigning in late January, Kay said the WMD search team had found probably 85 percent of what there was to found in Iraq.

His blunt comments that prewar intelligence on Iraq had been wrong bolstered calls for an independent inquiry and prompted the White House to agree to set up a commission to investigate the intelligence.

Tenet is expected to reject some of the criticisms that have been leveled at the intelligence agencies.

"People who have leaped to the conclusion that the intelligence was all wrong simply aren't right," the intelligence official said. "Those who say the search for WMD is 85 percent finished are 100 percent wrong."

Tenet plans to echo what other administration officials and congressional Republicans have been saying -- that it is premature to reach firm conclusions.

"He's going to make the point that in the search for WMD, there is still plenty of work that needs to be done on the ground before any conclusions should be reached," the intelligence official said.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended the war in testimony to congressional committees on Wednesday and held out the possibility that the team still hunting for banned weapons in Iraq eventually might find them.

He said the intelligence agencies had a "tough assignment" trying to crack closed societies and avoid surprises from threats that can emerge suddenly.

Rumsfeld noted that when the intelligence agencies fail "the world knows it. And when they succeed, as they often do to our country's great benefit, their accomplishments often have to remain secret."

Rumsfeld said he hoped Tenet would make some of the recent successes public "so that the impression that has and is being created of broad intelligence failures can be dispelled."

Tenet is expected to talk about the "difficulties and complexities" of intelligence work, where it is unusual to have a complete picture but fragments of information must be pieced together. He also plans to discuss proliferation issues in other countries, the intelligence official said.




>> 6WT

>> IF YOU MEET THE BUDDHA KILL HIM!!!!

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AP Exclusive: Kerry Blocked Law, Drew Cash
Wed Feb 4, 5:14 PM ET
By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - A Senate colleague was trying to close a loophole that allowed a major insurer to divert millions of federal dollars from the nation's most expensive construction project. John Kerry (news - web sites) stepped in and blocked the legislation.
Over the next two years, the insurer, American International Group, paid Kerry's way on a trip to Vermont and donated at least $30,000 to a tax-exempt group Kerry used to set up his presidential campaign. Company executives donated $18,000 to his Senate and presidential campaigns.
Were the two connected? Kerry says not.
But to some government watchdogs, the tale of the Massachusetts senator's 2000 intervention, detailed in documents obtained by The Associated Press, is a textbook case of the special interest politicking that Kerry rails against on the presidential trail.
"The idea that Kerry has not helped or benefited from a specific special interest, which he has said, is utterly absurd," said Charles Lewis, head of the Center for Public Integrity that just published a book on political donations to the presidential candidates.
"Anyone who gets millions of dollars over time, and thousands of dollars from specific donors, knows there's a symbiotic relationship. He needs the donors' money. The donors need favors. Welcome to Washington. That is how it works."
The documents obtained by AP provide a window into Kerry's involvement in a two-decade-old highway and tunnel construction project in his home state of Massachusetts. Known as the "Big Dig," it had become infamous for its multibillion dollar cost overruns.
Kerry's office confirmed Wednesday that as member of the Senate Commerce Committee he persuaded committee chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., to drop a provision that would have stripped $150 million from the project and ended the insurance funding loophole.
The Massachusetts Democrat actually was angered by the loophole but didn't want money stripped from the project because it would hurt his constituents who needed the Boston project finished, spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said.
When the "AIG investment scheme (came) to light, John Kerry called for public hearings to investigate the parties involved and the legality of the investment practices. However, he firmly believed cutting funding for the Big Dig was not the answer," Cutter said.
Instead of McCain's bluntly worded legislation, Kerry asked for a committee hearing in May 2000. Kerry thanked McCain at the start of the hearing for dropping his legislation and an AIG executive was permitted to testify that he believed the company's work for the Big Dig was a good thing even though it was criticized by federal auditors.
"From the perspective of public and worker safety and cost control, AIG's insurance program has been a success," AIG executive Richard Thomas testified.
Asked why Kerry would subsequently accept a trip and money from AIG in 2001 and 2002 if he was angered by the investment scheme, Cutter replied: "Any contributions AIG made to the senator's campaign came years after the investigation. Throughout his career, John Kerry has stood up to special interests on behalf of average Americans. This case is no different."
The New York-based insurer, one of the world's largest, declined to comment on its donations to Kerry, simply stating, "AIG never requested any assistance from Senator Kerry concerning the insurance we provided the Big Dig."
The project has become a symbol of government contracting gone awry, known for its huge cost overruns that now total several billion dollars, and its admissions of mismanagement.
During the 1990s, Sens. Kerry and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., helped win new federal funding for the project as its costs skyrocketed and threatened to burden the state's government. In 1998, Kerry was credited with winning $100 million in new federal funding.
But in 1999, the Transportation Department uncovered a financing scheme in which the project had overpaid $129.8 million to AIG for worker compensation and liability insurance that wasn't needed, then had allowed the insurer to keep the money in a trust and invest it in the market. The government alleged AIG kept about half of the profits it made from the investments, providing the other half to the project.
Outraged by the revelations, McCain submitted legislation that would have stripped $150 million from the Big Dig and banned the practice of allowing an insurer to invest and profit from excessive premiums paid with government money.
"Any refunds of insurance premiums or reserve amounts, including interest, that exceed a project's liabilities shall be immediately returned to the federal government," McCain's legislation declared.
But Kerry and Kennedy intervened, and McCain withdrew the legislation in 2000 in favor of the hearing.
At that hearing, the Transportation's Department inspector general made a renewed plea for a permanent federal policy banning the overpayment of insurance premiums and subsequent investment for profit -- what McCain had proposed and Kerry helped kill.
"The policy is needed to ensure that projects do not attempt to draw down federal funds for investment purposes under the guise that they are needed to pay insurance claims. It is that simple," the inspector general told senators.
In September 2001, Kerry disclosed to the Senate ethics office that AIG had paid an estimated $540 in travel expenses to cover his costs for a speech in Burlington, Vt.
A few months later in December 2001, several AIG executives gave maximum $1,000 donations to Kerry's Senate campaign on the same day. The donations totaled $9,700 and were followed by several thousand dollars more over the next two years.
The next spring, AIG donated $10,000 to a new tax-exempt group Kerry formed, the Citizen Soldier Fund, to lay groundwork for his presidential campaign. Later in 2002, AIG gave two more donations of $10,000 each to the same group, making it one of the largest corporate donors to Kerry's group.
The insurer wasn't the only company connected to the Big Dig to donate to Kerry's new group. Two construction companies on the project -- Modern Continental Group and Jay Cashman Construction -- each donated $25,000, IRS records show.
Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., a Boston area lawmaker, credited Kerry for getting McCain's legislation blocked in favor of a hearing, saying Massachusetts lawmakers "were on the side of good government here but also concerned the language might go too far and put more of a burden on a Massachusetts project."

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That Was Then
Deficit reduction worked for Clinton, but circumstances were different in 1993. Today's Democrats mustn't think they can merely mimic him.
By Joseph E. Stiglitz
Issue Date: 2.1.04
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We live in an upside-down world where Republicans defend deficits and Democrats attack them. These are seemingly opposite views. But both have led, mistakenly, to cuts in social investment as well as to needlessly slow economic growth and high unemployment.
For years Republicans tried to slay Keynesian economics, the idea that in an economic downturn, one should run deficits. During the Clinton years, they even pushed for a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, which would have enshrined the principles of fiscal prudence (and precluded the Bush deficits). In those years, the Democrats were accused of being fiscally irresponsible because they sensibly believed that in times of recessions, a deficit was good policy.
All of this has changed. Ronald Reagan, of course, did run huge deficits, but that was supposedly a mistake. In his "voodoo" economics, tax cuts were supposed to somehow generate more tax revenues, so there was not supposed to be a deficit. Under George Bush Senior, taxes were raised to correct Reagan's error. But George W. Bush unabashedly defends huge, endless deficits.
As a form of economic stimulus, all deficits are not created equal. The economy may be temporarily booming, but Bush's tax cuts were not designed primarily to provide an effective stimulus but, rather, to reduce taxes, mainly on the wealthy, as an end in itself. But tax cuts for the poor, or better unemployment benefits, are far more effective in stimulating the economy. Public investment -- in, say, roads, airports, education or technology -- would have provided much more stimulus in the short run and enhanced America's productivity in the long run.
The new Republican economic logic also insists that prolonged deficits do not produce significant increases in interest rates. This logic defies the usual laws of supply and demand, in which an increase in demand (here the demand for funds by the government) leads to an increase in price (here the interest rate). Accordingly, by this logic even enormous and structural deficits do not adversely affect growth. This view is nonsense, but Democrats make a mistake when they respond by embracing the old Republican role of deficit hawks. In a downturn, tax revenues normally decrease, so deficits increase. During a recession, therefore, it makes sense to tolerate and even to increase these deficits, to stimulate economic activity and recovery.
But the new Democratic recipe is something along the lines of, "Reduce the deficit and economic prosperity will be restored." Emboldened by the seeming success of that formula in the early 1990s, and the seeming failure of the opposite strategy by Bush, many Democrats believe fiscal prudence will cure both the economy and their fiscal reputation. But, unfortunately, the wrong lessons have been drawn from both experiences.
Deficit reduction under Bill Clinton worked, both because of the peculiar circumstances of the time and because of the way it was carefully crafted. For a variety of reasons -- including regulatory mistakes that contributed to the economic recession in the first place -- banks had larger than normal portfolios of long-term government bonds. So the lowering of long-term interest rates -- which increases the price of long-term bonds -- effectively recapitalized the banking system, leading to new lending. Normally deficit reduction dampens the economy. But Clinton's carefully designed deficit reduction program was heavily backloaded (to bite after a strong recovery was well under way). Moreover, the 1993 tax increase was targeted at the rich. On both counts, aggregate demand in the short run was not reduced much.
Conversely, Bush's backloaded tax cuts, taking effect years down the road, lead the market to anticipate far larger deficits in the future, so medium- and long-term interest rates must rise relative to short-term treasury bills, partially undoing the Federal Reserve's original efforts to lower interest rates. The lesson: While deficit increases normally stimulate the economy, it is possible to design ones badly enough that they do not provide much stimulus. The economy may have a good quarter or two, but sooner or later the money markets will catch on and bid up rates. And with that, the nascent recovery may falter.
Today the economy is growing again, but it's not producing enough jobs. Bush's presidency will likely be the first since Herbert Hoover's with a net loss of jobs. The economy needs millions of new jobs just to keep up with the new entrants into the labor force. And it is not just that jobs are not being created; employed people are also working less. The United States is out of recession but still far from its potential. Huge amounts of resources are being wasted, and millions of people are suffering as a result.
Bush's defense is that he inherited a downturn; were it not for his tax cuts, he says, matters would have been even worse. That would be true, if Bush's tax cuts were our only choice. But they are not. Alternative policies would have helped more, making the downtown shallower and shorter and the recovery stronger. Indeed, it is hard to imagine such a large set of tax cuts that could have done less to stimulate the economy.
By early 2001, it was clear that the economy was facing a significant and potentially prolonged downturn. (This is not just a matter of Monday-morning quarterbacking; others and I wrote this at the time. I even tried to speak to Bush about it at a White House reception for Nobel laureates, but he was distinctly uninterested.)
We should have had tax cuts and expenditure increases targeted to where the money would be spent, and spent quickly: increased benefits for the unemployed, tax cuts for the poor, investment tax credits (just to those firms that make investments), and aid to the states and localities that would shortly be facing severe budgetary shortfalls, forcing cutbacks in expenditures or increases in taxes.
The badly designed tax cuts put an increasing burden on the Fed to keep the recovery going. But the Fed's rate cuts have worked mainly by inducing households to refinance their mortgages, taking on greater and cheaper debt. This has left the economy in a precarious position. The higher indebtedness may make a robust recovery all the more difficult, for normally as recovery sets in, interest rates rise. Debt burdens are manageable today only because of the low interest rates. There is a further risk that rising interest rates could not only squeeze consumption but also bring on a fall of real-estate prices, further dampening the recovery.
Had Bush's tax cuts been fairer and aimed more at stimulating the economy, the recovery would have occurred earlier and been far stronger; today the Fed would have had further room to maneuver, with fewer risks to our economic future.
Where does this leave the Democrats? The soaring Bush deficits are an easy target. They are a cause of concern. But the danger is that the Democrats will focus excessively on deficit reduction, thereby not only impairing the ability to maintain the economy at full employment but also reducing prospects for long-term growth. The simple fallacy is that government expenditures cause deficits, deficits force higher interest rates and higher interest rates crowd out private investment, which is the key to long-term growth. But much government expenditure also underwrites investment. And if public investment is starved, growth, too, can be impaired. Studies by the Council of Economic Advisers show that the returns on public investments, such as in education and research and development, are very high -- far higher than the returns on much private investment that was crowded out and certainly higher than the investments in the excess capacity of fiber optics, telecommunications and dot-coms.
The financial markets' focus on deficits is another piece of evidence of their shortsightedness -- and another example of the need for better accounting. One needs to look not just at liabilities (what the government owes) but at assets. A deficit in our infrastructure can be even more harmful than a financial one. And these public investments -- in education and in the environment -- are necessary for sustainable growth with equity.
Some say that Bush created the huge deficits to squeeze government, to force cuts in public investments and social programs. Democrats who focus excessively on deficit reduction are falling precisely into the trap, especially when political timidity impedes reversing the tax cuts.
It is true that increasing debt burdens -- both to government and to households -- have put our country's future at risk, a risk for which there is little compensating reward. Our looming problems -- inequality and an aging population with increasing demands on Social Security and Medicare -- have only been made worse. The cure will entail a far bolder program than just another bout of deficit reduction.
Joseph E. Stiglitz
Copyright ? 2004 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Joseph E. Stiglitz, "That Was Then," The American Prospect vol. 15 no. 2, February 1, 2004 . This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.

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Robert Rubin's Contested Legacy
The High Cost of Rubinomics
By Jeff Faux
Issue Date: 2.1.04
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In an Uncertain World: Tough Choices From Wall Street to Washington By Robert Rubin and Jacob Weisberg, Random House, 448 pages, $35.00
If a Democratic president gets to replace Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan when the latter's term is up in 2006, Bob Rubin is the odds-on favorite. He has the financial credentials: Goldman-Sachs, U.S. Treasury, CitiGroup. He raises money for Democrats. And he is credited with the one accomplishment of the Clinton era that all Democrats are proud of: eight years of peacetime economic growth that, by 2000, had produced something pretty close to full employment.
As Rubin tells the story in his new memoirs, he persuaded Clinton early on to make financial-market "confidence" the administration's chief economic priority. Key to the strategy was Greenspan, who was supposedly concerned that spiraling federal deficits would ignite inflation, forcing him to raise interest rates and thus choke off growth. Cut the deficit, argued Rubin, and Greenspan will let the economy live.
Clinton was an easy sell. He not only reduced the deficit but also went on to balance the budget, run a surplus and, by the end of his term, put the federal government on a path toward eliminating the entire national debt. Along the way, he embraced large parts of Wall Street's agenda: free trade, privatization and the deregulation of finance, energy and telecommunications. In turn, Greenspan kept rates low.
So Rubin's plan worked, but the cost was high. Hopes that the peace dividend from the end of the Cold War would finance major new programs in health care, education and other areas of public need were dashed. Social investments as a share of the country's national income actually declined over the Clinton years. Fights over free trade split the party and contributed to the loss of the House of Representatives, from which Democrats have still not recovered. And deregulation led to an orgy of irresponsible speculation and fraud that eventually left workers without pensions, small-scale shareholders with worthless paper and California -- among other places -- without the money to pay for basic services.
While the party lasted, Rubin and Greenspan were the toasts of Wall Street. They watched benignly (with an occasional "tut-tut" from the chairman) as mindless speculation overheated the stock market way beyond the boiling point of 1929. According to Greenspan, inflation was no longer a problem because the end of the era of coddling by big government had made workers more anxious about their jobs and less apt to demand higher wages. At the same time, he and Rubin kept anxiety from discomforting the markets by rolling out the safety net for financiers who bet wrong on Mexican bonds and the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund. Indeed, Rubin spent much of his term as treasury secretary shuttling from crisis to crisis, organizing, often brilliantly, rescue packages for capital-market failures around the world.
He missed some. Russia defaulted despite his best efforts. And neither he nor Greenspan faced the rising U.S. trade deficit that, by the end of his watch, made our high consumption economy perilously dependent on foreign lenders.
Still, more than 20 million jobs were created. At the end of the decade, people who 10 years earlier had been written off as "unemployable" were working, and, for a few quarters before the crash, employers were actually bidding up the wages of people making $7 an hour.
So, honest liberals might have different answers to the question, was the "trade off" worth it? But there is a prior question: Was it necessary?
Some deficit reduction was reasonable. After all, a fiscal deficit that was rising faster than income is ultimately unsustainable. But the Clinton-Rubin buy-in to a 19th-century Republican economic agenda was clearly over the top. As Clinton economists Joseph Stiglitz, Alan Blinder and Janet Yellen, among others, have pointed out, the sustained growth of the past decade was largely generated by a perfect storm of favorable factors, including the spread of Internet technology, low energy prices and a temporary slowdown in health-care costs.
The clearest answer came from Alan Greenspan himself. A few days after the election of George W. Bush, Greenspan endorsed Bush's massive tax cut, which not only wiped out the surplus the Democrats had so painfully built up but quickly put the government back in the red. It turns out that the ideologically conservative Greenspan had used the deficit scare as a way to stop Clinton from social spending. When the Republicans came back, Greenspan was happy to support what has now become the GOP tradition of cutting taxes for the rich, no matter what the fiscal consequences.
Some would argue that Rubin and Clinton had no other leverage to keep Greenspan from killing the recovery. But they clearly had more wiggle room. Wall Street's worry was that the deficit was out of control. The Clinton administration could have mollified financiers' fears by cutting the deficit to something like 2 percent of gross domestic product. That would have freed up additional revenue for desperately needed public investment, and Greenspan would have been on weak ground to throttle non-inflationary economic growth. Moreover, Clinton had control over the one thing that Greenspan desperately wanted: reappointment. Had the president been willing to discipline the chairman with some of the job anxiety that kept America's workers in line during the 1990s, a few dollars of that now tragically lost surplus might have been invested in things such as schools, hospitals and clean air.
Compared with what we have now, of course, we'd be happy to have Rubin back. And if the country lucks out next November, he -- and we -- may get another chance. So I'd be a lot more comfortable if his book had at least acknowledged that he helped Greenspan take us to the cleaners. The next Democratic administration should not be condemned to repeat the mistakes of the last one.
Jeff Faux
Copyright ? 2004 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Jeff Faux, "Robert Rubin's Contested Legacy," The American Prospect vol. 15 no. 2, February 1, 2004 . This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.



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Cyber Snoop
Somebody infiltrated Democratic electronic correspondence -- and let the world know about it. Now the case could turn into a full-blown e-gate. N.J. sens. tunnel for $4 billion
By Klaus Marre
New Jersey's two senators are pressing Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) to support the building of a third tunnel connection under the Hudson River to New York City at a cost of $4 billion.
Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D) and Jon Corzine (D) met Jan. 29 with Shelby, who chairs the Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury and General Government, to promote the merits of the project.
The project will come as a surprise to New York Sens. Charles Schumer (D) and Hillary Clinton (D), who have not been informed of their neighbors' intention.
Lautenberg said a rail tunnel into New York would be a "critical national asset," noting that rail service was the "only significantly functioning" means of transportation available "when the area was crippled" by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Shelby "understands the necessity" of the project, Lautenberg added.
He noted that the area gets "maximum use" out of the two existing tunnels and said he would "work with [Shelby] in every way possible to make this an ... effective, cost-efficient investment."
Lautenberg said that since his first stint in the Senate, when he also chaired the subcommittee, he and Shelby have had a good working relationship.
Following his meeting with the two New Jersey senators, Shelby said they were "working on funding for transit."
Virginia Davis, Shelby's spokeswoman, added that her boss "understands the importance of the priority to the senators, and moving forward he intends to consider the request carefully."
Lautenberg said he and Corzine are unified in their support for the project but added that they haven't talked to [Schumer and Clinton] about it yet. Schumer said he "had heard a few rumors but nothing concrete" about the tunnel project.
Building a rail tunnel would obviously require "a significant amount of money," Lautenberg said, but he is not looking at the price tag yet. Before that, he wants to see the design.
Corzine said the cost for the project would be $3.5 billion to $4 billion but the federal government would share the burden with the states and the Port Authority, which have to be "heavy workers" to secure the necessary funds.
He added that the tunnel would not be funded all at once. At present, the only money that needs to be found is for "initial engineering work," he said. Overall, Corzine estimates that the federal share would be about $1 billion.
Environmental impact studies and other preliminary research is already under way, Corzine confirmed.
An expensive regional project could face significant opposition, especially at a time when the national deficit is large and the White House and Republicans talk about curbing non-defense spending. But Lautenberg said he and Corzine would do "whatever we have to" to get the tunnel.
In its budget blueprint, the Bush administration proposes cutting the discretionary spending for the Department of Transportation by 3.9 percent, which includes cuts for railroad programs.
Lautenberg said the war in Iraq should not be fought at the expense of domestic priorities and Corzine stated that the "idea of balancing the budget on the back of transportation dollars is absurd."
Corzine argued that the project is not only important to his constituents but also to "the whole Eastern seaboard," adding that a mammoth construction project would create many jobs in the area.

? 2003 The Hill

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By Farai Chideya
Web Exclusive: 2.3.04
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When I was young and stupid -- say, three years ago -- I dated a guy heretofore known as The Control Freak. One day I noticed he'd left his e-mail account open. I felt a powerful urge to see if he'd treated his ex-girlfriend the way he treated me. I found out that he had.
Three things happened. One, I confessed. (I'm Catholic. I can't help it.) Two, I never read his e-mail again. And finally, despite my apologies, he lorded my indiscretion over me until we mercifully broke up. I can't say I blame him. Like many people who grew up in the computer era, I consider private e-mail a sacrosanct space, more like a diary than a daykeeper. Invading someone's e-mail is like sitting on that person's bed and flipping through his or her journals.
Which brings us to the curious case of Republicans infiltrating Democratic e-correspondence. Private, or supposedly private, Democratic memos were leaked to conservative media outlets The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and possibly radio and television host Sean Hannity. At issue is a computer system that allowed Republican staffers to read Democratic memos and correspondence without a password. Some of these staffers argued that they told the Democrats about the security breach in the summer of 2002. Others believe mum was the word before November 2003. In any case, the Republicans had more than a year of unfettered access to Democratic documents before this scandal became public.
And what a year it was. At issue is a series of Democratic strategy memos on controversial judicial appointments. A year ago, columnist Bob Novak detailed Democratic strategy for blocking conservative nominees to the federal bench. The descriptions in his column, including the Democratic characterization of blocked nominee Miguel Estrada as a "stealth right-wing zealot" who was "especially dangerous, because ... he is a Latino" were straight from the pilfered electronic files. In some accounts of the case, the content of the memos has become as much of an issue as the spying itself.
In a press conference, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch admitted that an investigation by federal prosecutors "revealed at least one current member of the Judiciary Committee staff had improperly accessed at least some of the documents referenced in the media reports and which have been posted on the Internet."
The staffer, Manuel Miranda, is on paid administrative leave. Reached by The Boston Globe, which broke the story, Miranda said, "There appears to have been no hacking, no stealing, and no violation of any Senate rule. Stealing assumes a property right and there is no property right to a government document. ... These documents are not covered under the Senate disclosure rule because they are not official business and, to the extent they were disclosed, they were disclosed inadvertently by negligent [Democratic] staff."
Nice try. Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes, "Each time the Republicans accessed the Democrats' files without authorization, they at a minimum violated the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 USC Sec.1030(a)(2)." That statute includes anyone who "intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains ... information from any department or agency of the United States."
Tien also rejects the reports that focus on the content of Democratic memos versus their theft. In describing this crime, he says, "It's pretty sleazy to blame the victim when you're the one exploiting the weakness in the first place. Good computer security is hard. Poor computer security is extremely common. ... I don't believe in double standards, so maybe we should think of all the companies and governments who have been hacked in the past few years because of poor security."
And what about the disputed Republican argument that they told Democrats about the problem a year ago? "It's as if they're saying `I told you the lock on your back door was broken -- if you didn't fix it, I should be able to walk right into your house and take what I want,'" says computer-privacy expert Mike Godwin, senior technology counsel at Public Knowledge.
It's been hard for this story to get much play in a time filled with talk of weapons of mass destruction (or the lack thereof), Democratic primaries, and presidential budget recommendations. But the continuing investigation could turn this case of file spying into a full-on electronic Watergate.
Senate Sergeant at Arms William Pickle is now turning over backup tapes of the Judiciary Committee computer to the Capitol police. This prompted a group of Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, including Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, to complain that the investigation could compromise their own e-privacy. "We strongly object to allowing anyone to read backup tapes or other electronic media from the Judiciary Committee server, the Exchange server or otherwise breach the privacy of our electronic files and communications," they wrote in a letter to Pickle. So far, their concerns have taken a back seat to the needs of the investigation.
In the end, Republican gains from scanning the memos may be far outweighed by disclosures from the spying case. After all, those who live by the sword -- or the mouse click -- can die by it as well.
Farai Chideya is the author of the forthcoming Trust: Reaching the 100 Million Missing Voters.
Farai Chideya
Copyright ? 2004 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Farai Chideya, "Cyber Snoop Somebody infiltrated Democratic electronic correspondence -- and let the world know about it. Now the case could turn into a full-blown e-gate.," The American Prospect Online, February 3, 2004. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.
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Leak staffer ousted
Frist aide forced out in an effort to assuage Dems
By Alexander Bolton
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-Tenn.) top aide on judicial nominees is expected to announce his resignation at the end of this week -- a sacrifice offered by the GOP leadership in hope of persuading the Democrats to wind down the fight over leaked Judiciary Committee memos.
The aide, Manuel Miranda, had spearheaded the Republican effort to push President Bush's judicial nominees through the Senate in the face of fierce Democratic opposition.
Miranda declined a request for comment. But The Hill has learned that he agreed to resign under pressure from Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). The Democrats have not agreed to scale back their demands for wide-ranging punishments following a full-blown leak inquiry.
patrick g. ryan
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist
Since switching from the Judiciary Committee to Frist's office in February last year, Miranda had overseen a multi-pronged strategy to confirm judges whom Democrats had blocked with filibusters and other procedural tactics.
Miranda helped galvanize the Senate Republican caucus and outside constituent
groups such as Hispanics and Catholics behind the nominees. In previous years, most of the Senate Republican caucus, apart from members of the Judiciary Committee, remained aloof from the fight.
The aide's departure signals that Senate Republican leaders will likely pull back from confrontation over Bush's judges. Last year's high-intensity battles included a GOP-staged 40-hour marathon debate on blocked nominees.
As an aide in Frist's office, Miranda was able to organize the Judiciary Committee with outside groups that communicated the Republican message on judges. Without the heft of Frist's office behind the campaign to confirm Bush's judges, the Senate Republican Conference, will have a tough time overcoming turf battles with the committee.
If they can tamp down the furor over the leaked memos, Republicans could focus on the content of the documents, which illustrate the influence outside groups such as the NAACP and People for the American Way have had on Democratic decisions to block nominees.
"It's capitulation to the old Democratic trick that if you catch us with our hands dirty, we'll blame Republicans for dirty tricks," said a GOP aide.
Miranda admitted to the sergeant at arms that he had read Democratic memos that a Republican staffer on the Judiciary Committee accessed through a glitch on the panel server. But it is unclear what rules if any Miranda broke. His defenders say that the files were openly available to Republicans through their desktop computers and that there is no such thing as a property right to a federal document.
Sergeant at Arms Bill Pickle's investigation of how internal Democratic memos were leaked to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times has halted the momentum Republicans built last year on judicial nominees. It has also generated bad publicity for Republicans.
Frist's staff told The Boston Globe two weeks ago that Miranda had been placed on paid leave pending the results of the investigation. But Miranda's fate may have been sealed by Pickle, who urged Frist chief of staff Lee Rawls to sack him, according to several Senate aides.
Miranda confronted Pickle in an e-mail last week.
"Do you think that it is appropriate to go to the GOP bicameral [retreat] today and lobby Frist staff and senators to have me fired, as I am told you have been doing? Do you think that will at all taint the report which you are soon to issue? Do you think it is proper?" Miranda demanded of the sergeant at arms.
Frist spokesman Bob Stevenson said no staff in the Majority Leader's office reported being lobbied by Pickle.
"I have no idea what he's referring to," said Stevenson in response to the allegation.
Democrats had threatened Hatch Monday to hold up the proceedings of the Judiciary Committee unless he agreed to schedule a briefing by Pickle for Republicans and Democrats on the the investigation's progress.
Pickle will reportedly participate in a senators-only briefing next Tuesday. His office's investigation, which has interviewed over 100 staffers and seized several computers, is expected to conclude soon.
Some GOP senators resent the way the controversy turned from Democratic to Republican impropriety.
"Right now I think that was pretty unfair," Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said of the probe's focus on Miranda. "I don't have the impression he did anything wrong and we just completely quit looking at was done and what was found [in the memos]. I don't know the details, but I would not be a friend in firing a highly qualified staffer."
"Miranda has really been the quarterback on the Republican side for much of the Senate activity on this," said Sean Rushton, the executive director of the Committee for a Fair Judiciary.
Republicans are also losing senior counsel Rena Comisac, who headed the Judiciary Committee's nominations team. She will start working at the Justice Department next Monday.
Responsibility for judicial nominees in the majority leader's office will now be assigned to Bill Wichterman, Frist's director of coalitions.
But some conservatives are worried that Wichterman, who handles a wide array of issues and coalitions, will not be able to devote the same specialized attention as Miranda did to judicial nominees.
? 2003 The Hill
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Bird's Eye
By Jon Entine
Let Them Eat Precaution
On cue, at last fall's World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun, self anointed "Green" activists showed up to protest the use of gene modification (G.M.) technology in agriculture. A bevy of teenagers outfitted as monarch butterflies flitted through what resembled a Halloween riot. Dotted amongst the chanting demonstrators was an assortment of human side dishes including walking "killer" tomatoes, a man dressed as a cluster of drippy purple grapes, and a woman in a strawberry costume topped with a fish head peddling T-shirts that warned of the weird and horrid mutants that will be created if "Corporate America" and the "multinationals" get their way.
It would all be so very entertaining--if there weren't so much at stake, largely for the very people in Africa and Asia for whom these protestors purport to speak. As Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, who split with environmental fundamentalists over their didactic rejection of genetic modification, writes in his piece beginning on page 24, "I cannot comprehend that anyone, let alone someone who fancies himself as progressive, would argue against pursuing research on putting a daffodil gene in rice that could boost its Vitamin A content and prevent a half million children from going blind each year. Yet, that's just what they're doing. They even oppose basic research."
What a disheartening turn in the genetics revolution. Fifty-one years ago this February, James Watson and Francis Crick hoisted pints of ale into the air at the Eagle Pub near Cambridge University and declared: "We have found the secret of life!" The two young scientists had finally identified the elegant, double-helix structure of the DNA molecule, which contains the chemical codes for all living things, animal and plant. The era of genetic science had begun. In 2004 we are just beginning to exploit its potential .We see the future in the promising screening procedures and therapies developed to treat hundreds of genetic disorders from breast cancer to sickle cell to cystic fibrosis. It enables crime scene investigators to clear the innocent and convict the real criminals.
But of most immediate importance, it is spreading the Green Revolution to the poorest corners of the globe. G.M. technology has led to the development of soybeans, wheat, and cotton that generate natural insecticides, making them more drought resistant, reducing the need for costly and environmentally harmful chemicals, and increasing yields. Researchers are perfecting ways to increase the vitamin content of staples like rice and bananas, which could dramatically cut malnutrition and lengthen life spans. Yet, for all its vast demonstrated value, this still-nascent technology, which promises further breakthroughs in fields such as plant-based pharmaceuticals, remains drastically underused, mired in controversy.
Some concerns are serious. There needs to be a vigorous discussion about the degree to which corporations should be allowed to patent and therefore control beneficial biotech products they develop. Monsanto, Novartis, and other firms maintain they need to recoup their research costs. There is an eminently reasonable concern over corporate control, but it has taken a backseat to sensational and often misleading allegations.
Consider the hyperbolic campaign against treating cows to increase milk yields. Organic activists allege that 90 percent of our milk supply is "contaminated" by being mixed with milk from cows treated with a protein supplement, recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST). A decade ago, farmers discovered that cows given supplements produce more milk for a longer time. That means less feed and fuel are needed than for other herds, which results in a host of environmental benefits. But the bio-fermentation process, which is similar to making beer and wine and doesn't change the milk, involves biotechnology, and has sparked an outrageous scare campaign.
There is simply no evidence that biotechnology poses greater risks than crossbreeding or gene-splicing, which have given us seedless grapes and the tangelo. Virtually every plant grown commercially for food or fiber is a product of crossbreeding, hybridization, or both. Using traditional breeding methods, about which there is absolutely no controversy, thousands of genes of often unknown function are moved into crops and animals. The new biotech tools allow breeders to select specific genes that produce desired traits and move them from one plant or animal to another.
Time and again, dire warnings have been unmasked as little more than hysteria-grams. Years of hammering away with misinformation have taken an enormous toll--polluting public opinion, profoundly altering the trajectory of biotechnology applications, and damaging the financial wherewithal of companies and university research projects.
Undercut by the mounting genetic evidence, anti-G.M. forces have cooked up a new tactic, invoking the lowest common denominator in fabricated scientific disputes: the "precautionary principle." They assert that "Trojan Horse" genes not subject to built-in checks and balances in nature could cause environmental havoc. They argue for a halt to all commercial uses of biotechnology. They politicize the issue by introducing into common usage the pejorative appellations "pollution" and "contamination" to describe the mixing of genetically modified seed or crops with conventional supplies. They claim to be acting on behalf of innocent but unaware consumers and the natural environment.
"Better safe than sorry" has nice a ring of moderation, but it's deceptive in this context. Recall the dozens of serious injuries and the death of a Seattle girl in 1997 from drinking unpasteurized, E. coli-laced juice made by Odwalla from apples that had fallen in "natural" fertilizer: dung. While there have been no documented health problems and no deaths or injuries linked to bioengineering, people die every year from eating "naturally" contaminated foods. If the precautionary principle were applied to "natural" foods, they would be stripped from the grocery shelves overnight.
Let's underscore what's going on here: Activists demonize biotechnology by exploiting a general wariness about science. This is not a scientific dispute, but an ideological and religious one: Don't tamper with nature. It's a romantic and superficially seductive message, but a blanket insinuation that nature is always benign or better is obviously hokum. The anti-biotech industry is stocked with scientific illiterates who worship the primitive over progress and confrontation over reform even if it means freezing the developing world out of the benefits that we take for granted.
Some mainstream environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club, and "ethical" investors, which could have taken the high road on a complex issue, instead stand with anti-science hardliners in arguing for mandatory labeling of products made with G.M. technology. More disclosure seems reasonable, but mandatory labeling is a disingenuous ploy designed to stigmatize biotech products with what amounts to a skull and crossbones. Michael Passoff, of anti-biotech group As You Sow, bragged about what would happen if the campaign succeeds. "We expect that [the food industry] won't want to risk alienating their customers with labeling, so they'll eventually decide not to use any bio-stuff at all," he chortled. In other words, G.M. products with proven health and environmental benefits would vaporize from the marketplace.
The call for labeling, even absent evidence of problems, has nonetheless resonated strongly in Europe, where scares involving mad cow disease and dioxin-contaminated feed have rattled the public. Supermarket chains have yanked G.M. products. The European Union has had an unofficial moratorium on new bioengineered seeds and food for five years, and will not lift the embargo until it is assured that the U.S. won't resist its labeling rules. Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries support mandatory labeling of G.M.-derived foods.
The ideological crosswinds have spawned regulatory bodies, global protests, litigation, Internet campaigns, and an international humanitarian crisis over whether people in famine stricken countries should starve rather than eat crops grown using biotechnology. The "earth firsters" are directly responsible for spooking Zambia into rejecting donations of G.M. grain that would have helped feed its desperately starving population.
There are certainly valid concerns that need to be addressed if genetic modification is to get a fair shot in the marketplace. However, in the current atmosphere, rational policy initiatives and coordinated international trade policies are extremely difficult. What is lacking in Europe, and increasingly in the U.S., is a public discussion about the existing and potential benefits of biotechnology. Let's hope this issue of TAE furthers that discussion.
BIRD'S EYE guest author Jon Entine is an adjunct fellow at AEI and scholar in residence at Miami University of Ohio. His book on the genetics of Biblical ancestry will come out this year. Karl Zinsmeister has been re-embedded with the 82nd Airborne in Iraq; his reporting will appear in our next issue. This installment of TAE was commissioned by Karl Zinsmeister and edited by Karina Rollins and Daniel Kennelly.
Published in Biotech Bounty March 2004
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Battle for Biotech Progress
By Patrick Moore
I was raised in the tiny fishing and logging village of Winter Harbour on the northwest tip of Vancouver Island, where salmon spawned in the streams of the adjoining Pacific rainforest. In school I discovered ecology, and realized that through science I could gain insight into the natural beauties I had known as a child. In the late 1960s I was transformed into a radical environmental activist. A rag-tag group of activists and I sailed a leaky old halibut boat across the North Pacific to block the last hydrogen bomb tests under President Nixon. In the process I co-founded Greenpeace.
By the mid 1980s my interest was in "sustainable development" that would take environmental ideas and incorporate them into the traditional social and economic values that govern public policy and our daily behavior. Every morning, 6 billion people wake up with real needs for food, energy, and materials. The challenge is to provide for those needs in ways that reduce negative impact on the environment while also being socially acceptable and technically and economically feasible. Compromise and cooperation among environmentalists, the government, industry, and academia are essential for sustainability.
Not all my former colleagues saw things that way, however. Many environmentalists rejected consensus politics and sustainable development in favor of continued confrontation, ever-increasing extremism, and left-wing politics. At the beginning of the modern environmental movement, Ayn Rand published Return of the Primitive, which contained an essay by Peter Schwartz titled "The Anti- Industrial Revolution." In it, he warned that the new movement's agenda was anti-science, anti-technology, and anti-human. At the time, he didn't get a lot of attention from the mainstream media or the public. Environmentalists were often able to produce arguments that sounded reasonable, while doing good deeds like saving whales and making the air and water cleaner.
But now the chickens have come home to roost. The environmentalists' campaign against biotechnology in general, and genetic engineering in particular, has clearly exposed their intellectual and moral bankruptcy. By adopting a zero tolerance policy toward a technology with so many potential benefits for humankind and the environment, they have lived up to Schwartz's predictions. They have alienated themselves from scientists, intellectuals, and internationalists. It seems inevitable that the media and the public will, in time, see the insanity of their position. As my friend Klaus Ammann likes to hope, "maybe biotech will be the Waterloo for Greenpeace and their allies." Then again, maybe that's just wishful thinking.
On October 15, 2001 I found myself sitting in my office in Vancouver after Greenpeace activists in Paris successfully prevented me from speaking via videoconference to 400 delegates of the European Seed Association. The Greenpeacers chained themselves to the seats in the Cine Cite Bercy auditorium and threatened to shout down the speakers. The venue was hastily shifted elsewhere, but the videoconferencing equipment couldn't be set up at the new location, leading to the cancellation of my keynote presentation.
The issue, in this case, was the application of biotechnology to agriculture and genetic modification. The conference in Paris was a meeting of delegates from seed companies, biotechnology companies, and government agencies involved in regulation throughout Europe. Surely these are topics covered by the rules of free speech.
Had those rules not been violated, I would have told the assembled that the accusations of "Frankenstein food" and "killer tomatoes" are as much a fantasy as the Hollywood movies they are borrowed from. I would have argued that, if adding a daffodil gene to rice in order to produce a genetically modified strain of rice can prevent half a million children from going blind each year, then we should move forward carefully to develop it. I would have told them that Greenpeace policy on genetics lacks any respect for logic or science.
In 2001, the European Commission released the results of 81 scientific studies on genetically modified organisms conducted by over 400 research teams at a cost of U.S. $65 million. The studies, which covered all areas of concern, have "not shown any new risks to human health or the environment, beyond the usual uncertainties of conventional plant breeding. Indeed, the use of more precise technology and the greater regulatory scrutiny probably make them even safer than conventional plants and foods." Clearly my former Greenpeace colleagues are either not reading the morning paper or simply don't care about the truth. And they choose to silence by force those of us who do care about it.
The campaign of fear now waged against genetic modification is based largely on fantasy and a complete lack of respect for science and logic. In the balance it is clear that the real benefits of genetic modification far outweigh the hypothetical and sometimes contrived risks claimed by its detractors.
The programs of genetic research and development now under way in labs and field stations around the world are entirely about benefiting society and the environment. Their purpose is to improve nutrition, to reduce the use of synthetic chemicals, to increase the productivity of our farmlands and forests, and to improve human health. Those who have adopted a zero tolerance attitude towards genetic modification threaten to deny these many benefits by playing on fear of the unknown and fear of change.
The case of "Golden Rice" provides a clear illustration of this. Hundreds of millions of people in Asia and Africa suffer from Vitamin A deficiency. Among them, half a million children lose their eyesight each year, and millions more suffer from lesser symptoms. Golden Rice has the potential to greatly reduce the suffering, because it contains the gene that makes daffodils yellow, infusing the rice with beta-carotene, the precursor to Vitamin A. Ingo Potrykus, the Swiss co-inventor of Golden Rice, has said that a commercial variety is now available for planting, but that it will be at least five years before Golden Rice will be able to work its way through the byzantine regulatory system that has been set up as a result of the activists' campaign of misinformation and speculation. So the risk of not allowing farmers in Africa and Asia to grow Golden Rice is that another 2.5 million children will probably go blind.
What is the risk of allowing this humanitarian intervention to be planted? What possible risk could there be from a daffodil gene in a rice paddy? Yet Greenpeace activists threaten to rip the G.M. rice out of the fields if farmers dare to plant it. They have done everything they can to discredit the scientists and the technology, claiming that it would take nine kilos of rice per day to deliver sufficient Vitamin A. Potrykus has demonstrated that only 100 grams of Golden Rice would provide 50 percent of the daily need.
Golden Rice is not the only example of civilization being held hostage by activists. Since its introduction to Chinese agriculture in 1996, G.M. cotton has grown to occupy one third of the total area planted in what is northern China's most important cash crop. This particular variety, called Bt cotton, has been modified to resist the cotton bollworm, its most destructive pest worldwide.
On June 3, 2002 Greenpeace issued a media release announcing the publication of a report on the "adverse environmental impacts of Bt cotton in China." In typical Greenpeace hyperbole, we were advised that "farmers growing this crop are now finding themselves engulfed in Bt-resistant superbugs, emerging secondary pests, diminishing natural enemies, destabilized insect ecology," and that farmers are "forced to continue the use of chemical pesticides."
Let's examine these allegations one at a time:
* Bt-Resistant Superbugs: There is not a single example or shred of evidence in the Greenpeace report of actual bollworm resistance to Bt cotton in the field. There is evidence from lab studies in which bollworms were force-fed Bt cotton leaves, but any scientist knows that this kind of experiment will eventually result in selection for resistance. Greenpeace, however, is claiming selection for resistance has actually happened to farmers in the field. According to Professors Shirong Jia and Yufa Peng of the Chinese National GMO Biosafety Committee, "no resistance of cotton bollworm to Bt has been discovered yet after five years of Bt cotton planting. Resistant insect strains have been obtained in laboratories but not in field conditions." So much for the superbugs.
* Emerging Secondary Pests: Greenpeace points out that there are more aphids, spiders, and other secondary insect pests in fields of Bt cotton than in conventional cotton.This is called an "adverse" impact in their report. The fact is, because Bt cotton requires much less chemical pesticide than conventional cotton, these other insects can survive better in Bt cotton fields. For the scientifically literate, this reduction of impact on non-target insects is actually considered one of the environmental benefits of G.M. crops. How Greenpeace figures this is "adverse" is beyond comprehension.
* Diminishing Natural Enemies: The Greenpeace media release states that there are fewer of the bollworm's natural predators and parasites in Bt cotton fields compared to conventional cotton, and calls this an "adverse impact." Again, a careful read of the report comes up with no evidence for this claim. And again, according to Professors Jia and Peng, "as of today, there are no adverse impacts reported on natural parasitic enemies in the Bt cotton fields." And after all, isn't it a bit obvious that if using Bt cotton reduces bollworm populations, that bollworm parasite populations will also be reduced? Will Greenpeace now embark on an international campaign to "save the bollworm parasites"?
* Destabilized Insect Ecology: This one is a hoot. To speak of "insect ecology" in a monoculture cotton field that was sprayed with chemicals up to 17 times a year before the introduction of Bt cotton is ridiculous. The main impact of Bt cotton has been to reduce chemical pesticide use and therefore to reduce impacts on non-target species.
* Farmers Forced to Continue Using Chemical Pesticides: This claim gets the Most Misleading and Dishonest Award. No, Bt resistance does not provide 100 percent protection. Because secondary pests sometimes need to be controlled, farmers using Bt cotton usually use some pesticides during the growing cycle. Professors Jia and Peng sum it up this way: "The greatest environmental impact of Bt cotton was...a significant reduction (70-80 percent) of the chemical pesticide use. It is known that pesticides used in cotton production in China are estimated to be 25 percent of the total amount of pesticides used in all the crops. By using Bt cotton in 2000 in Shandong province alone, the reduction of pesticide use was 1,500 tons. It not only reduced the environmental pollution, but also reduced the rate of harmful accidents to humans and animals caused by the overuse of pesticides."
The Greenpeace report is a classic example of the use of agenda-based "science" to support misinformation and distortion of the truth. Once again, Greenpeace demonstrates that its zero tolerance policy on genetic modification can only be supported by distortions and false interpretations of data--in other words, junk science.
A hunger strike led by Greenpeace finally ended in Manila on May 22 after 29 days. Activists were protesting the introduction of Bt corn into the southern Philippines. In order to whip up media attention, activists have spread scare stories that G.M. corn "would result in millions of dead bodies, sick children, cancer clusters and deformities." Thankfully, the government did not give in to these fools and stood by its decision, based on three years of consultation and field trials, to allow farmers to plant Bt corn. Already there are indications of higher yield and improved incomes to farmers who chose to use the Bt corn.
For six years, anti-biotech activists managed to prevent the introduction of G.M. crops in India. This was largely the work of Vandana Shiva, the Oxford-educated daughter of a wealthy Indian family, who has campaigned relentlessly to "protect" poor farmers from the ravages of multinational seed companies. In 2002, she was given the Hero of the Planet award by Time magazine for "defending traditional agricultural practices."
Read: poverty and ignorance. It looked like Shiva would win the G.M. debate until 2001, when unknown persons illegally planted 25,000 acres of Bt cotton in Gujarat. The cotton bollworm infestation was particularly bad that year, and there was soon a 25,000 acre plot of beautiful green cotton in a sea of brown. The local authorities were notified and decided that the illegal cotton must be burned. This was too much for the farmers, who could now clearly see the benefits of the Bt variety. In a classic march to city hall with pitchforks in hand, the farmers protested and won the day. Bt cotton was approved for planting in March 2002. One hopes the poverty-stricken cotton farmers of India will become wealthier and deprive Vandana Shiva of her parasitical practice.
Until recently the situation in Brazil was far from promising. A panel of three judges managed to block approval of any G.M. crops there. Meanwhile, the soybean farmers in the south of the country have been quietly smuggling G.M. soybean seeds across the border from Argentina, where they are legal. The fact that Brazil was officially G.M.-free has allowed European countries to import Brazilian soybeans despite the E.U. moratorium on the import of G.M. crops. But recently things have changed.
With the election of President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva of the Workers Party in 2002, the Green elements within the party pressed the government to enforce the ban on genetically modified organisms. There was something ironic about a "workers party" enforcing a policy that will damage farmers who have come to enjoy the benefits of biotechnology. In the end, the Brazilian farmers rebelled like those in India. In 2003 the government relented and allowed G.M. soybeans to be planted. The soybean farmers of southern Brazil have become prosperous, bringing benefits to the environment and their local communities.
Surely there is some way to break through the misinformation and hysteria and provide a more balanced picture to the public. Surely if reasonable people saw the choice between the risk of a daffodil gene in a rice plant versus the certainty of millions of blind children, they would descend on Greenpeace offices around the world and demand to have their money back. How is it that these charlatans continue to stymie progress on so many fronts when their arguments are nothing more than wild, scary speculation?
The main reason for the failure to win the debate decisively is the failure of supporters of G.M. technology to act decisively. The activists are playing hardball while the biotech side soft-pedals the health and environmental benefits of this new technology. Biotech companies and their associations use soft images and calm language, apparently to lull the public into making pleasant associations with G.M. products. How can that strategy possibly hope to counter the Frankenfood fears and superweed scares drummed up by Greenpeace and so many others?
Just from a brief scan of the Monsanto, Syngenta, and Council for Biotechnology Web sites, it is clear that these companies and organizations are trying to project positive, clean, and calming thoughts. This is all well and good, but it is no way to turn the tide. Stronger medicine is needed. Imagine an advertising campaign that showed graphic images of blind children in Africa, explained Vitamin A deficiency, introduced Golden Rice, and demonstrated how Greenpeace's actions are preventing the delivery of this cure. Imagine another ad that showed impoverished Indian cotton farmers, explained Bt cotton, and presented the statistics for increased yield, reduced pesticide use, and better lives for farmers--followed by the clear statement that activists are to blame for the delayed adoption of the technology.
How about an ad that graphically portrays the soil erosion and stream siltation caused by conventional farming versus the soil conservation made possible by using G.M. soybeans? And another one that shows workers applying pesticides without protection in a developing country versus the greatly reduced applications possible with Bt corn and cotton? What if all these ads were hosted by a well-known and trusted personality? Wouldn't this change public perspectives? The biotechnology sector needs to ramp up its communications program, and to get a lot more aggressive in explaining the issues to the public through the media. Nothing less will turn the tide in the battle for the minds, and hearts, of people around the world.
Patrick Moore is chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies, an environmental consulting agency.
Published in Biotech Bounty March 2004

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Ricin Probe Links White House, S.C. Mail
Feb 4, 9:39 AM (ET)
By CURT ANDERSON
WASHINGTON (AP) - A new link is emerging between letters containing the poison ricin found in mail facilities that serve the White House and a South Carolina airport as federal investigators seek to identify the letter or parcel that may have carried ricin into a Senate mailroom.
A senior law enforcement official, speaking Tuesday on condition of anonymity, said investigators had established strong links between the South Carolina and White House letters. What remained unclear, the official said, was whether those letters were connected to the substance found in the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.
The letter found in October at a postal facility serving the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport - signed by someone who called himself "Fallen Angel" - and one found in November at a facility that processes mail for the White House both complained about new regulations requiring certain amounts of rest for truck drivers, the official said. Both also contained ricin.
Investigators said Tuesday they had not identified the letter or package that might have carried ricin into Frist's office. An initial check found no extortion, threat or complaint letter in the office, said a second law enforcement source also speaking on condition of anonymity.
There were no indications of involvement by foreign terrorists such as al-Qaida, which the FBI has said is interested in using ricin in an attack.
The powdery white substance was found on a machine that opens mail in Frist's office, authorities said. The area in the Tennessee senator's office was quarantined and stacks of mail were to be checked.
"We have an open mind about the source of this," said Terrance Gainer, chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, which is conducting the probe along with the FBI and the multi-agency joint terrorism task force based at the FBI's Washington field office.
Gainer said authorities were interviewing members of Frist's staff and others who had access to the mailroom. Although it was considered remotely possible that the ricin was physically planted in Frist's office, investigators were concentrating on mail as the likely source.
The package found in a South Carolina mail facility had a letter claiming the author could make more ricin and a threat to "start dumping" large quantities if his demands to stop the new trucking regulations were not met. The FBI offered a $100,000 reward in that case but no arrests have been made.
The White House letter, intercepted in November, contained nearly identical language but such weak amounts of ricin that it was not deemed a major health threat, said another law enforcement official. That letter's existence was not publicly disclosed before Tuesday.
At the Capitol, an FBI hazardous materials team was helping police isolate and examine the mail in Frist's office and will in the coming days collect other unopened mail in the Capitol complex, said FBI spokeswoman Debra Weierman. The FBI also will do forensic analysis at its laboratory in Quantico, Va., checking evidence for fingerprints, fibers, hair and the like.
The latest discovery comes as the FBI continues its 28-month-old investigation into the fall 2001 mailings of anthrax-laced letters to Senate and news media offices. Five people died and 17 were injured in that attack.
The anthrax investigation is ongoing, FBI spokesman Ed Cogswell said. Twenty-eight FBI agents and 12 postal inspectors are assigned full-time to the anthrax case, which has involved some 5,000 interviews and issuance of 4,000 subpoenas.
The FBI has focused recently on an intensive scientific effort to determine how the spores were made and narrow the possibilities in terms of who had the means to make them. Authorities have many theories on who might be responsible, ranging from al-Qaida terrorists to a disgruntled scientist to an expert who sought to expose U.S. vulnerabilities to bioweapons attacks.
The one man named a "person of interest" by authorities, Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, says he has nothing to do with the attacks and has sued the government for publicly identifying him. Hatfill is a former government scientist and bioweapons expert who once worked at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infections Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md.
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Revealed: the nationalities of Guantanamo
By John C. K. Daly
International Correspondent
Published 2/4/2004 5:42 PM
WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- At least 160 of the 650 detainees acknowledged by the Pentagon being held at the United States military base at Guantanamo, Cuba -- almost a quarter of the total -- are from Saudi Arabia, a special UPI survey can reveal.
In UPI's groundbreaking and detailed breakdown of the nationalities of the detainees, some arrested far from the 2001 battlefield of Afghanistan, the other top nationalities being held are Yemen with 85, Pakistan with 82, Jordan and Egypt, each with 30.
Afghans are the fourth largest nationality with 80 detainees, according to the detailed UPI survey that has now for the first time established the homelands of 95 percent of the total number of prisoners.
One member of the Bahraini royal family is among those detained, according to his lawyer Najeeb al-Nauimi of Doha, Qatar, who was Qatar's 1995-97 justice minister and has power of attorney from the parents of about 70 prisoners.
The Pentagon's own list of nationalities detained at Guantanamo may be flawed. Yemeni officials have told UPI they fear more than twice as many of their citizens are held than the Pentagon count.
Suspected terrorists are detained by U.S. forces at a number of points around the world, including Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and Bagram air force base outside Kabul. But Camp Delta, the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo, has attracted the most media attention and international protest.
Camp Delta was built at a cost of $9.7 million by Brown and Root Services, a subsidiary of Haliburton by contract workers from India and the Philippines. Camp Delta replaces Camp X-Ray, the first improvised detention center constructed in January 2002 to house individuals detained in Afghanistan.
The Pentagon has kept a very tight lid on material about the detainees; only the identities of those who choose to correspond via the Red Cross are known. The Defense Department has repeatedly declined to provide a breakdown of the detainees by nationality.
Sources close to the Pentagon have admitted to UPI that "sensitive diplomatic considerations" were behind the decision to keep the nationalities secret.
The large number of Saudi nationals at Guantanamo, now it has been made public, is likely to intensify concern in the U.S. Congress about the real state of the U.S.-Saudi relationship.
A DoD spokesperson told UPI Wednesday "such a list exists, but it is classified."
Drawing on a wide range of sources, UPI has tentatively determined the nationalities of 619 of Camp Delta's inmates from 38 countries.
Until the U.S. government is more forthcoming with information, the figures below remain incomplete.
Complicating the issue is the sporadic release of a number of detainees; in the wake of last week's release of three teenagers, another 87 detainees have been transferred pending release. In addition, four detained Saudis have been transferred to continue their imprisonment in Saudi Arabia.
There is a rough correlation between nations subjected to terrorism and the number of their citizens incarcerated in Guantanamo. That Camp Delta currently holds 80 or more Afghans is hardly surprising, as most of the detainees were captured there. However, Camp Delta also holds seven Arab men handed over to U.S. authorities in Bosnia, as well as five individuals arrested in Malawi last summer.
The magnitude of the Saudi presence in Camp Delta raises troubling questions about their presence in Afghanistan and whether the U.S. forces succeeded in capturing more than a fraction of those who might have been there.
Emphasizing the global metastasizing of terrorism, among the 85 Yemenis is an individual arrested in Sarajevo.
Yahya Alshawkani, Yemeni Embassy deputy chief of communication in Washington told UPI that his embassy kept in close touch with the U.S. authorities -- but questioned the accuracy of the Pentagon's own count. His government cites domestic reports that more than twice as many Yemenis were held as the Pentagon has told the Yemeni government.
When queried if the number 85 was accurate, Alshawkani replied, "We have been communicated 37 names by United States authorities. I think it is more than 37. Domestic reports indicate more than 70."
Asked to comment on the discrepancy Alshawkani said: "We were communicated names that they were sure that they were Yemenis, adding, "Perhaps the U.S. only passed on names of people they could positively identify." Alshawkani remarked that Yemen had already had "some preliminary discussion" about the Yemeni detainees; furthermore, "We were told some Yemenis would be released, but we are not sure how many."
Jordan, a close ally of the U.S. in its war on terror, has 30 of its citizens detained in Camp Delta, as does Egypt. Jordan has worked closely with the U.S. in the initial processing of prisoners, providing both interrogators and interpreters.
Morocco, site of an al-Qaida attack on a synagogue in April 2002 that killed 21 people, has 18 of its nationals in Guantanamo. Algeria, currently in the throes of a violent conflict between Islamists and the government, has 19 prisoners in Camp Delta, six of whom were arrested in Sarajevo.
Kuwait, liberated from Saddam Hussein by Operation Desert Storm in 1991 has 12 citizens in Guantanamo; the Kuwaiti government insists that all of its citizen were involved in charity and relief work. China also has at least 12 its citizens in Guantanamo, although they are all identified as ethnic Uighurs rather than Han Chinese. Next on the list are Tajikistan and Turkey with 11 citizens each. Tajikistan fought a bloody civil war in the aftermath of the collapse of communism in 1991 and fundamentalists maintain a strong presence there. Turkey last November was subjected to al-Qaida bombing attacks in Istanbul, which killed 62 people.
Nine British citizens of Muslim background are in Guantanamo; they have proven to be a political liability for Prime Minister Tony Blair, as calls have been made in Parliament for their repatriation.
Both Tunisia and Russia have eight of their nationals at Camp Delta; a Russian embassy spokesman was careful to point out however that the eight Russian citizens are not ethnic Russians. Rustam Akmerov, Ravil Gumarov, Timur Ishmuradov, Shamil Khadzhiev (originally identified as Almaz Sharipov), Rasul Kudaev, Ravil Mingazov, Ruslan Odigov and Airat Vakhitov are members of Russia's Muslim community. The Russian embassy nonetheless is quietly pursuing negotiations with Washington to extradite its citizens.
France and Bahrain both have seven each of their nationals at Gauntanamo. Highlighting the problems of identification, France only recently discovered its seventh national at Camp Delta. The Bahraini detainees include a member of the royal family.
Kazakhstan has been quietly lobbying Washington for the return of its citizens, as have Australia (2) and Canada (2.) Australian David Hicks is one of the most high profile prisoners in Camp Delta; a convert to Islam, Hicks fought as a jihadi in the Balkans before shipping out to Afghanistan.
There are reportedly at least two Chechens, two Uzbeks and two Syrians in Camp Delta. The Syrian detainees especially interest U.S. intelligence, as one of the four workers at Camp Delta under investigation for possibly aiding the prisoners, Air Force translator Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi is accused of trying to pass messages from the prisoners to Syria. There are also two Georgian and two Sudanese nationals in Guantanamo.
Bangladesh, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Iraq, Kenya, Libya, Mauritania, Qatar, Spain and Sweden all have a single citizen in Camp Delta.
The UPI survey was conducted by painstaking compilation and analysis of the press and media reports from countries all around the world along with interviews with foreign government officials and concludes that nationalities of 38 separate countries are represented in the U.S. military detention center.

Copyright ? 2001-2004 United Press International

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>> MIDDLE EAST POST...

700 Syrian activists demand the government reforms
Syria, Politics, 2/4/2004
Intellectuals, writers and lawyers called on the Syrian authorities to introduce political reforms and lift the state of emergency which has been imposed on the country since 40 years and to abrogate laws related to this state of emergency.
A petition signed by 700 intellectuals, writers, and lawyers called for the abrogation of what is called the state of emergency which was announced on March 8, 1963 in Syria and led, according to the petition to a "situation which besieges the society and freezes its movement and put thousands of citizens in jails for reasons pertaining to their views or political stances."
The signatories of the petition stressed the need for abrogating "all emergency and extraordinary trials, and to halt all oppressive detention, and to release all political detainees and detainees of the opinions ,and to compensate for and restoring back dignity for those who are deprived from their civilian rights for political reasons."
The petition urged the government to return back the exiled to their homeland under legal guarantees, and open the file of missing and disclose their fate and settle their legal conditions, and compensate for their relatives and called for releasing freedom including the freedoms of founding parties and civilian societies.
The committees in charge of democratic freedoms and human rights in Syria intend to submit this petition to the Syrian authorities on the occasion of the Baath party assumption of the authority in Syria on March 8th, and these committees hope to get more than one million signatures from all parts of the world.
On the other hand, the activist in the committees of civil revival, Michael Kilo, said that the democratic political forces in Syria got more than 1000 signatures in Syria in solidarity with the opinion detainees, and indicated in particular to 8 opposition members who were detained in the Summer of 2001 and were sentenced to ten year imprisonment under the charge of "violating the constitution." Simultaneously, the civil revival committees welcomed the initiative of the Syrian government in releasing 122 political prisoners in Syria but indicated that it is "a late and not enough step," with the existence of 750 prisoners under detention.
Last Thursday and Saturday the Syrian authorities released 122 political detainees. Defense organizations for human rights said that most of them belong to the Muslim Brothers group, the Islamic liberation front, and Iraq's Baath Party, and have completed their imprisonment penalty or are ill.
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al-Ahram: European official welcomes Syria's ME peace initiative
Syria-European Union, Politics, 2/4/2004
Head of the Middle East and North Africa Department at the European Commission, Christian Leffler, welcomed Tuesday President Bashar al-Assad's call for the resumption of peace negotiations on the Syrian track from the point where it left off, asserting the EU' s desire for the resumption of peace negotiations on this track.
In a statement given to Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram published Tuesday, Leffler stressed the importance of achieving progress on the Syrian track regarding the peace process in the Middle East.
"The European Union could help in the resumption of the peace negotiations and in supporting the outcomes, but it couldn't alternate any of the sides" he added, pointing out to the Israeli negative statements in response to the Syrian call.
He praised Syria's commitment to the complete participation with the EU in Barcelona process, describing the partnership agreement between Syria and the European Union which will be achieved soon as a positive development that serves the European states as well as Syria.
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Egyptian judge to participate in International Court of Justice case on Israeli wall
Palestine-Israel, Politics, 2/4/2004
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has decided that one of its judges, a national of Egypt, will fully participate in deliberations on the legal consequences of the construction of a wall in the occupied Palestinian territory.
The Court's decision came in response to documents submitted by Israel, but judges, voting 13 to 1, decided last week that the country's concerns were "not such as to preclude Judge [Nabil] Elaraby from participating in the present case."
According to the ICJ, Israel contended that Judge Elaraby, both in his previous professional capacity and in an interview given by him in August 2001 to an Egyptian newspaper, had been "actively engaged in opposition to Israel including on matters which go directly to aspects of the question now before the Court."
In its Order, the Court found that the activities Israel referred to were performed in Judge Elaraby's capacity as a diplomatic representative of his country, most of them many years before the question of the construction of a wall in the occupied Palestinian territory arose.
The Court also noted that the question was not an issue in the Tenth Emergency Special Session of the General Assembly until after Judge Elaraby had ceased to participate in that Session as a representative of Egypt. It further observed that in the newspaper interview in question, Judge Elaraby expressed no opinion on the question put in the present case.
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Thomas Buergenthal of the United States noted that in the interview Judge Elaraby gave two months before his election to the Court in 2001, he expressed views bearing on the credibility and validity of arguments likely to be presented by the interested parties to this case and likely to affect its outcome. Judge Buergenthal added, however, that he has no doubts whatsoever about the personal integrity of Judge Elaraby for whom he has the highest regard.
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Freed German prisoners seeks Lebanese nationality
Lebanon-Germany, Local, 2/4/2004
The German Steven Smeirak, who was released by Israel last week in the course of exchanging prisoners with the Lebanese Hizbullah Party, started yesterday travel measures to Lebanon in his goal to get the Lebanese nationality.
German police sources said that the police and all security agencies are watching Smeirak closely after a visit he had made to the Lebanese embassy in Berlin.
Worthy mentioning that Smeirak who embraced Islam and joined the Hizbullah party in Lebanon was spending a ten- year imprisonment sentence in Israel under the charge of planning to carry out an attack against the Israeli forces in 1997.
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>> OUR FRIENDS IN ISRAEL....

Dyslexia land
By Sara Leibovich-Dar
Last week, B., a 10th-grade student in a prestigious school in the center of the country received the certificate she had long coveted, declaring that she suffers from a learning disability (LD). B. doesn't like school, doesn't do homework or prepare for exams, and she is frequently absent. Her low grades reflect her attitude. The solution, which she herself initiated, was to undergo psychological testing, which found she has a learning disability. Her affluent parents had no trouble paying about NIS 2,000 for the diagnosis. As a student suffering from LD, B. will get more time in exams, her spelling mistakes in Hebrew and English will be ignored, and she will take a specially adapted exam in language. In the 12th-grade matriculation exams, she will be expected to know only two-thirds of the course material in each subject.
"I have so many spelling mistakes, and I get blackouts in exams," B. says. "The LD diagnosis will help me get better grades. It can easily get me 10 more points in English."
B.'s mother helped her obtain the certificate. "It's partly spoiling her," she says. "It makes life easier. But I wanted to make things easier for her. She gets really uptight before exams, and I thought that if there was a way I could help her, then why not? Only time will tell if I did a smart thing. I'm not completely at ease about it, but she really put pressure on us. We're always paving the way for them. Children these days cope less with pressure. She can fight, but when she gets stuck I enter the picture."
Obtaining an LD certificate through assessment has become fashionable in prestigious schools throughout the country, no less than wearing designer clothes, carrying a cell phone and working on state-of-the-art computers. The LD assessment process costs between NIS 1,200 and NIS 3,000. Dov Orbach, the chairman of the committee of high-school principals in Tel Aviv, says that in the affluent northern sections of the city, 40 percent of the students are identified as suffering from LD. Adds Dr. Yehudit Eldor, director of the LD unit in the Education Ministry: "We found one school in an established area where no fewer than 80 percent of the students were diagnosed with LD."
By comparison, the national average of students with LD, according to a memorandum of the director general of the Education Ministry in December 2003, is about 10 percent. In schools in less affluent areas, the rate drops to 1 percent, and in some schools in these areas there are no LD students at all.
"It's absurd," says Dr. Oren Lamm, a neuropsychologist and LD expert who teaches in the field of therapeutic aspects of education at the University of Haifa and is the LD assessor at Haifa's Technion-Institute of Technology. "People from a good socioeconomic background are ready to really make an effort in the race to the top. In the competition for the prestigious faculties at the Technion, two points can be decisive. To get those two points, the parents and the students will do everything. It's not fair and it's unreasonable and it discriminates against everyone else. People's fates are decided according to an unfair datum. Even rich people who don't believe in `winging it' cheat to ensure that their children will not compete in the universities with their hands tied behind their backs in unfair contests against candidates who obtained matriculation certificates by means of easier conditions."
Not long ago, Dr. Lamm relates, a boy was brought to him for assessment. "I told the parents he did not have LD. They got angry and complained about me to the Education Ministry. Things have become so absurd that parents want to acquire the diagnosis at any price and if it doesn't work, they get mad."
Unfair competition
"It's the most painful wound in the education system," says Dr. Michal Shany, who runs a testing institute and teaches in the same track as Dr. Lamm at the University of Haifa. "What's going on in Israel in this sphere is unexampled anywhere else in the world. It has crossed all reasonable limits. The phenomenon of pampered kids who do not suffer from LD, but who are too lazy to do their homework, undercuts equality. It's time for the parents who do not seek these exemptions to raise an outcry."
One mother who declined to obtain exemptions for her son, says, "It is very frustrating to see how in every exam, half the class is tested orally and gets an exemption from spelling, while my son studies hard and passes a regular exam, with all its pitfalls."
The number of youngsters diagnosed with LD has been rising steadily in recent years. In 1995, 58,000 students were allowed to have special testing privileges because of LD, in 1997 the number was 114,000, and in 2001 there was an exponential leap to 313,140.
These privileges or exemptions, which the Education Ministry calls "hakalot" (literally, "alleviations") are granted to students according to three LD levels. At the first level are students who may be slow in reading and writing, have organizational difficulties or attention and concentration disorders, make numerous spelling mistakes, write illegibly, find it difficult to recall details from memory, or suffer from defective visual processing. They are eligible for privileges such as 25 percent more time to complete exams, not being penalized for spelling mistakes, having the tester copy the exam (the student writes it first, then reads it to a tester who writes it out), and/or use of an expanded table of mathematical formulas.
The second level includes students who have a significant disparity between their ability to express themselves orally and in writing, have difficulty in using a dictionary and/or have serious problems writing in English. They are allowed to read out their written exam to a tester, or have the questions read out to them via a tape, using an electronic dictionary in English, and then to read their answers into a tape recorder.
At the third level are students with exceptional disabilities that prevent them from answering parts of exams, with a disparity of two whole grades between their ability to express themselves in writing and orally on a given test, serious attention disorders, and/or difficulties in quantitative comprehension. These students receive the biggest exemptions. Their exams are specially tailored to accommodate their difficulties, or they are examined orally.
Educators are aware of the particularly high rate of students with various levels of LD at prestigious schools around the country, but very few dare to do anything about it.
"If you are a child who lives in an established neighborhood and your parents are well-connected and have money and are ambitious enough, you will get exemptions on your matriculation exams," says Dr. Orbach, the principal of a high school in North Tel Aviv, where 30 percent of the students have been diagnosed with LD. "Meaningful exemptions have a dramatic impact on the grade. A student with grades of 85 who gets another few points thanks to the privileges [will be put] in a different place in terms of the competition to get into university."
At the Alliance School in Tel Aviv, one of the city's top institutions, the LD rate is 27 percent. "Maybe there is more awareness here," says the principal, Varda Kagan. "There is greater awareness of LD in the homes here."
Aren't you ignoring a situation that is illogical and generates inequality?
Kagan: "I thought this was more or less what was happening everywhere in the country. I didn't know there were such large differences. That really is something of a problem. I have to think about it."
The school's educational counselor, Laike Zmiri, finds nothing to think about. "Studies are harder now, and the children get sent to be tested. That's legitimate. That's how it is in most schools."
Well, actually not. Did you know that the LD rate in schools located in less affluent areas is far lower?
Zmiri: "Maybe the parents there aren't aware of it. Here, the parents are willing to make the effort."
At Leo Baeck High School in Haifa, which is linked to the (Reform) Movement for Progressive Judaism, many students are from affluent areas. About a quarter are defined as learning disabled. According to Danny Fessler, the school's principal and general manager, "that's because we are very sensitive and patient with children who have special needs, and make great efforts to help them in their studies."
Or is it also because children with rich parents organize themselves certificates so they can get study concessions?
Fessler: "True, the usual rate in the population is between 10 and 15 percent, but with us, the overwhelming majority have some sort of disability."
Similarly, Hezi Sagiv, principal of the high school in the affluent community of Omer, a suburb of Be'er Sheva, thinks that the fact that 20 percent of his students have learning disabilities is unrelated to excessive testing for LD among children from the rich families of the community. It's due, he says, "to the very ability to make diagnoses. More and more students are diagnosed [with LD], and that makes it possible for them to cope."
Are you aware of the fact that these are not always genuine difficulties?
Sagiv: "I don't shut my eyes, I am aware of the exploitation of this playing field, but if they don't have it coming to them, we don't give it to them. Last week I personally refused to approve a number of exemptions. I prefer to attack the problem from the positive side, by helping those who really have difficulties. I don't give in to parents. I have a credo."
So how is it, that even with your credo, the rate of LD students in your school is almost double the national average?
"Awareness of the problem has increased over the years. People care about their children's achievements, so there are more diagnoses, and I welcome that."
Dr. Yehuda Yaakobson, principal of a school in Ramat Hasharon, an upscale town near Tel Aviv, where the LD rate is 22 percent, says: "Everyone who was diagnosed [with LD] really has learning disabilities. Rich people might seem to have an advantage, but I wouldn't construe that to mean that they are buying assessments with money" to get privileges.
In established communities, ongoing LD assessment begins at an early age. Ilana Ganor, principal of the junior high in Kochav Yair - which, like Omer, is among Israel's 10 richest communities - says 15 percent of the school's students have been diagnosed with LD, "a very high proportion for junior highs. But what disturbs me even more is those who need diagnosis, but aren't able to get it. The excessive LD testing makes life hard for us, but the discrimination works not against those who have, but against those who don't have."
In the education system LD is a sensitive subject. Many officials prefer to be vague about it and refuse to furnish information, claiming that the number of LD students in the schools is classified. Publicizing data on the subject will constitute an invasion of privacy, they say. Others maintain that they don't know the data, even though there is not one school principal or director of a municipal education department who doesn't have them at his fingertips.
"The principals have a dilemma," Orbach explains. "On the one hand, they authorize the exemptions, while on the other hand, they are afraid the high number of students who get them will undermine the school's image."
The parents' task
R. is a top student in 10th grade at a prestigious school in the center of the country. A few weeks ago he received the results of his assessment, which will give him extra time in exams. "Half my friends got exemptions," he says, "and I wanted them, too. I noticed that in subjects where you have to write a lot in exams, I ran out of time. I didn't want to get to the matriculation exams and find myself in a situation where I didn't have enough time. I explained it to my parents, and we went to a psychologist. I explained to her why I need more time, and she said I deserve extra time because sometimes I get stuck pulling things out of my memory and in written expression."
In his case, though, the principal refused to accept the certificate. Nevertheless, R.'s mother is certain she did the right thing: "Something was bothering the boy. We checked, and we discovered that he was right. I am a teacher and I know the resistance to special privileges in the system. That is not the case with my son."
G., a 12th-grade student, also wanted extra assistance. After spending two years with his family in the United States, G., an excellent student, was declared to be suffering from LD in Arabic and in Hebrew language. He was given extra time in the exams in those subjects and allowed to do Arabic exams in Hebrew. "I could get along without the added time," he says, "but it really helps. After everyone else finishes, I have another 20 minutes. I would say that the time is worth another 10 points in exams. A friend of mine also asked for extra time and got it. There is no situation in which you will ask for extra time and won't get it."
G.'s mother: "He has a minor disability, really minimal, in grammar, and he also has problems with the pointing of Hebrew script [inserting vowels below the letters]. It's a minor problem, and not because he's spoiled. If he were spoiled, we would have got him the exemptions in Arabic in elementary school."
Parents today want their children to be the best, says Dr. Shany, the owner of a testing institute. "As far as Israeli parents are concerned, the child has to get 100 in all subjects, and if he gets 70 he immediately has LD. You can't imagine how many phone calls the testers get. It's not moral. There are some kids who know how to get the certificate: They read slowly so they will be diagnosed as slow and will get more time on exams. The ones who are truly affected, who truly suffer from LD, somehow get lost. They don't want all the privileges - they want to be like everyone else; it takes me years to persuade them to accept help. That's how I know there really is a problem here."
What parents should do, says Shany, is "demand that the child study, get him help and see that he's doing the work, and not look for solutions in the form of exemptions. In the end, a student who doesn't have a problem and gets them is weakened over time. These days parents are asking for privileges for children in elementary school. Why? Work on the kid's spelling mistakes. We should be thinking about how to strengthen the children, not how to organize a `bypass' track for them ... For many parents, getting an assessment is the norm. If you don't do it, you're not considered to be a good parent. This is not a real answer. I tell about 15 percent of those who come to me that they don't need diagnosis."
What's wrong if a student gets a bit of extra help in school, which might also spare the need for a private tutor?
Shany: "The system doesn't check thoroughly whether the `alleviations' really help. I am not aware of any study in Israel that examined the average matriculation grades of those who were granted them."
New guidelines
Many LD assessments are carried out by the staff of Nitzan, the Israel Association for the Advancement of Children and Adults with Learning Disabilities. About 5,000 families are members of the association, which has institutes throughout the country where 10,000 tests are carried out every year. Is it in Nitzan's interest to increase the number of those diagnosed with LD, so that families will join the association and thus increase its strength? According to Ofra Elul, the chairwoman of Nitzan and the mother of an LD child, Israel is one of the only countries in the world in which a parents' organization is helping to develop the area of LD assessment. "However," she adds, "we don't have any interest in there being more LD cases."
How do you cope with the phenomenon of LD "impostors," those who abuse the LD assessment and exemption eligibility process?
Elul: "They are harmful to us and they give LD a bad name. But that's a minor element. They are a small percentage who don't deserve to be taken into account, just as there's no reason to take into account people who cheat the National Insurance Institute or who apply for unemployment insurance even though they are not unemployed."
It doesn't seem to be so minor. What about the fact that in some schools 30 percent of the students are diagnosed as suffering from LD?
"It's very possible that they are children with a small deficiency, and if they are given extra time they are able to realize their potential. What's the harm in that?"
The Education Ministry refrains from taking harsh steps against students who abuse the system of exemptions, though the director-general's December 2003 memorandum did make an effort to address the phenomenon. In the past, the schools own pedagogical councils approved the granting of special privileges. However, according to the memorandum, the councils will henceforth approve only exemptions for students with LD of the first two levels. According to Orbach, this method will not be effective, "because in practice the pedagogical councils approve almost all of them." The third-level LD exemptions will have to be approved by a district committee, whose members will include the district director, a representative from the ministry's examinations unit, a psychologist, a senior educational counselor and the principal of the school in question.
It's obviously too soon to tell whether the new guidelines will change the situation. At any rate, the State Comptroller's report of April 2002 found that the Education Ministry's supervision in this area was defective. "A review should first be made of all the schools where there is a high rate of exemptions relative to the number of students," the report said, "and of schools where the number of the privileges relative to the number of those sitting for matriculation exams increased sharply on previous years."
An attempt to enact legislation to this effect, however, failed. The Education Ministry objected to a bill concerning the rights of students with learning disabilities in the regular education system, which stipulated, among other points, that the identification and exemptions committees would be "school-based." The bill did not get past first reading (of three). The ministry claimed that its implementation would cost the taxpayers about NIS 1 billion, although various experts cited a lower figure in appearances before the Knesset Education Committee.
Dr. Yehudit Eldor, the director of the LD unit in the Education Ministry, is convinced that the district exemptions committees will filter out the impostors and thus solve the problem.
Maybe harsh measures, such as filing complaints to the police about the so-called impostors, would reduce the phenomenon?
Eldor: "We will follow a path of learning and educating. Maybe the parents are not to blame. They want to go where their child will be able to get higher grades. That is human nature. It's a complex subject. I have stories from all directions. Parents also want to know why I am making things difficult, when their child really does have a learning disability."
Members of the Knesset's Education Committee have their own opinions on the subject of abuse of LD exemptions.
"The copying and the manipulating start in first grade and it reaches the Knesset," said the committee chairman, MK Ilan Shalgi (Shinui), during a discussion on the subject. MK Uri Ariel (National Union): "Maybe some sort of mechanism has to be found to punish those who break the law and pretend, although we already have laws about impostors." And MK Yossi Sarid noted, "I am basically against imposture in all spheres of life."
Only Ruth Kaplan, the deputy Knesset secretary and the chairwoman of the Leshem Association for the Advancement of Dyslexic Students in Higher Education, spoke sharply against the phenomenon: "I urge the committee, together with Leshem, to condemn in the sharpest possible way the phenomenon of posing as someone with LD. That is an immoral thing to do."
Dr. Bilha Noy, from the Education Ministry, explained to the MKs, however, that it is very difficult to tell impostors from children who have genuine LD.
The National Parents' Organization has also reacted to the phenomenon, albeit not particularly strongly. "Just three months ago I learned about a parent whose son received exemptions even though he does not have LD," says Erez Frankel, the chairman of the organization. "That is very, very ugly and has to be acted on by means of punishment and deterrence. As soon as I identify parents like that, I condemn and deplore them."
How did you condemn this particular parent?
Frankel: "I wrote him a very sharp letter and used some very nasty terms to describe him. When we spot an instance [of false exemptions] we go into action, not like the authorities who keep everything quiet so as not to give the educational institution a bad name."
Then why didn't you take action such as going to the police, for example?
"Because for me it was the first time. If I see that it's a recurring trend, I will ensure that it's transferred to an external body for handling."
For the universities it's already a recurring problem. "In the wake of the bad habits they acquired in the education system, many Technion students also ask for concessions," Dr. Lamm, who is in charge of assessment for the institute, says. "Here, the rate of LD students is between 1.5 and 3 percent. We are vigilant. If the subject were as unsupervised as it is in the education system, we would have 20 percent."
Indeed, in the country's state-budgeted universities and colleges, only 4 percent of the students are diagnosed as suffering from LD.
Food and diagnosis
Educators and officials in the less affluent sections of the country are very concerned. "I came to Yeruham five years ago from the center of the country," says Haim Eisner, principal of the ORT vocational school in the southern development town. "I noticed that LD children did not get special privileges, while children with money did get them. In my school I decided that we would be responsible in this regard. We raised money, and today most of our children are tested and we are above the national average, with 20 percent. But we are an exceptional case."
The same 20 percent rate of LD exists in 12th grade in Kiryat Gat's religious high school. "But that's because we have 310 Ethiopian students in the school, a good many of whom have concessions because of gaps and lacunae," says the school principal, Rahel Buchbout. "Our problem isn't excessive assessment, but the opposite. Thirty children whose parents are in a bad financial way didn't undergo diagnosis this year. The parents say, `Let them get whatever they get in the matriculation exams, but if we don't have enough to eat we can't waste money on diagnosis.'"
In fact, there are many schools where the LD fashion is unknown. The LD rate in the high school of Rahat, a Bedouin city in the Negev, is between 1 and 2 percent. "With the economic situation today, there aren't a lot of people with money to spend on diagnoses," says Suleiman al-Huzail, the principal. "You put out NIS 1,400, but you're not sure you'll get what you want, so people aren't willing to spend the money on it."
The principal of Rodman High School in Kiryat Yam, near Acre, says that 5 percent of the students in his school suffer from LD - "and I would imagine that that's the true situation, though it could also be that when parents have to cope with problems of subsistence, they don't deal with the level of the child in school."
According to Michael Greenberg, the principal of a boys' religious school in the southern town of Netivot, where 6 percent of the children have been diagnosed with LD, "rich parents in Netivot, who obtained certificates for their children, did so not because they simply want to make things easier for the children, but because the children really need it. Our situation here is very different. As I speak to you I see a certain child in my mind's eye. As early as seventh grade he was found to have serious problems with his writing ability. In ninth grade he has deficiencies that weren't treated in the past. We want to assess him. I don't even approach the parents, because they don't have money to buy the boy clothes. We teachers buy clothes for him, in the market. In some cases there is also no one to talk to. As far as the parents are concerned, the boy can remain an ignoramus. And then an assessment stipend from the Education Ministry is requested."
This year the Netivot school submitted 10 requests for such stipends. Only five of the children received them. "Sometimes we manage to organize a deal - we find a psychologist who will do the diagnosis for free or we get donations. Sometimes we don't manage to organize a deal and then the boy does the matriculation exams without exemptions, and either he ends up without a matriculation certificate or his grades are so low that they're hardly worth anything."
In the Arab city of Taibeh, northeast of Kfar Sava, 10 percent of the students have learning disabilities. "The phenomenon of students who get fake certificates is almost nonexistent here," says Abd al-Zabar Awada, director of the municipal education department, "though it's hard for us to ascertain the reliability of the certificate. When a psychologist signs, we don't challenge it."
Similarly, Maggie Shani, the principal of Tichon Hadash high school in Kiryat Gat, says she is unaware of the phenomenon of faking LD in her school. "We have 10 percent LD. We try to get assessments for free. Sometimes we get financial support for a particular student, and we transfer it from the funding for the annual school trip to that purpose. The trend you talk about isn't accepted here. The students want to be like everyone else, not the exceptions."
Avi Biton, the director of the education department in the southern development town of Ofakim, says that the LD rate there is 7 percent. "When I hear about 30 percent, warning lights start to go on. From my point of view, that is not a real figure - it's a problematic one. It's the mirror of the Israeli society. Like everything for the rich, you can buy that, too."n
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Police to question PM Sharon today
By Baruch Kra
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will be questioned by the police's International Investigations Unit today about his suspected role in the so-called Greek island affair.
Sharon will be asked, among other things, whether he was aware of the multimillion dollar contract his son Gilad signed with contractor David Appel. Police will want to know what Sharon understood from a conversation with Appel in which the Likud kingmaker and real estate tycoon told him that his son was going to earn a lot of money.
The investigators will arrive early this morning at Sharon's official residence in Jerusalem, led, as they were last time Sharon was questioned, by Deputy Commander Yohanan Danino, the commander of the International Investigations Unit. Danino will be accompanied by Chief Superintendents Avital Knoller and Gideon Gabai.
The team was sent to complete the interrogation of Sharon after Central District Attorney Rachel Sheaber, who is in charge of the case for the prosecution after replacing Anat Savidor, decided that there was important evidence that necessitated asking the prime minister additional questions before deciding whether to prepare an indictment against him.
Sharon will be asked to explain transcripts of conversations between him and Appel that were tape recorded by police, who are particularly suspicious of the proximity between Appel's promise of great wealth for Sharon's son and Sharon's efforts on Appel's behalf to get the Ginaton farmlands near Lod rezoned for residential purposes.
Sharon will also be asked about his efforts on Appel's behalf in the so-called Greek island affair, in which Appel was trying to win the Greek government's permission for a huge resort on an empty island off the coast of Greece. Sharon is suspected of helping to lobby the Greek government for that purpose, among other things, by granting his patronage to a meeting between the Greek deputy foreign minister and Appel's commercial representative in Greece, Norman Skolnick.
The Greek island case has become the symbol of a series of police probes into whether Appel assisted Sharon's 1999 Likud primaries campaign and paid off Sharon's son, Gilad, to bribe Sharon into using his influence - both as foreign minister and as the minister in charge of the Israel Lands Administration - to help Appel's real estate deals in Israel and the abortive Greek island resort plan. Appel provided Sharon with 30 to 40 activists and a headquarters in the 1999 campaign, and he paid Gilad, who had no business experience in either tourism or marketing, some $700,000 to market the nonexistent tourist resort, promising him twice that if Appel received permission from the Greek government to build the resort and more if the resort was actually built.
The Cyril Kern link is not far behind
During his final review of the material in the Greek island case, which will begin next week, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz will also study the evidentiary material in another probe now being conducted by the National Fraud Squad, regarding the shell companies that raised money for Ariel Sharon's primary campaign and the loan his son Gilad received from businessman Cyril Kern.
The Tel Aviv District Court is supposed to decide in the coming days whether court orders issued against Gilad Sharon oblige him to give the police banking records from Austria. If the court decides that is the case and the Supreme Court refuses to hear an appeal, Gilad will hand over the documents, according to his lawyer, Micha Fettman. Once the investigators have those documents, police will try to complete the puzzle to find out who actually financed the millions of dollars that were transferred from BAWAG, the Austrian bank, to Gilad Sharon's accounts in Israel.
Police believe that certain suspects in the case have already been preparing for the possibility that the documents will reach the detectives and have already prepared answers to the potential questions they might be asked. But even so, prosecutors and police believe that they will be able to reach the truth in the case, as much material has been gathered over the past year.

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Labor in confusion
Shimon Peres was not precise on Tuesday when he told his Labor Party colleagues that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in announcing that he had ordered plans drawn up for evacuating settlements from Gaza, had "adopted the policies of Labor." Precision is important in this case, as it relates to how Labor should function as the main opposition party in the complex reality created by Sharon's declaration.
Sharon's statement could indeed have far-reaching political and diplomatic significance, even if he does not execute the plan, or even if he was never sincere about implementing it. Declarations that shatter conventions can be important merely because they are stated aloud. However, Sharon's statement about his readiness to unilaterally evacuate 17 settlements from Gaza plus a few isolated ones in the West Bank is hardly a reflection of Labor's policies. In fact, it is not even a thought-out policy of its own.
Sharon will evacuate Gaza - if he indeed does so - because he was forced to do so. He will also evacuate the settlements believing that doing so will make it easier for Israel to hold onto large swathes of the West Bank, with its many Jewish settlements. There is no place for negotiations with the Palestinians in such a narrow perspective, which is based on an illusion. Nor is there any room in such a perspective for a viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel.
Under such circumstances - in light of both the importance of Sharon's statement and its limitations - Labor must continue offering the public a political alternative with a broad horizon. Now, in particular, as Sharon is taking an initial and very partial step in the proper direction, Labor must stick to a policy for an overall comprehensive peace, predicated on two nations living as free peoples, side by side, for generations to come.
To fulfill its duty now as the opposition, the Labor Party should be presenting itself to the public as a convincing alternative to the country's leadership. But that seems to be beyond the party's depleted strength. On Tuesday, Labor's convention extended Shimon Peres's "temporary" term as chairman of the movement and, as he always insists on adding, its candidate for prime minister.
Peres indeed stands head and shoulders above the other personalities in the front ranks of the Labor Party. But there lies the rub. Leaving him in office evidently prevents natural processes from which new leadership forces could emerge in the party. Instead, Peres and the issue of his leadership has become a target for the slings and arrows of others who claim the crown.
And that is the party's loss. But more importantly, Israeli democracy is weakened because of Labor's inability to conduct a change of leadership and appear to the public as a convincing alternative.
It is entirely possible that in the wake of Sharon's declaration about leaving Gaza - and if things actually reach the operational stage - Labor will be called upon to decide whether and how to help Sharon implement his partial move. But that is still to come. Now, and in the foreseeable future, the opposition party's supreme purpose is to consistently present a clear and serious peace policy to the public.
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Analysis / Referendum won't solve all of Sharon's problems
By Yossi Verter, Haaretz Correspondent
When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told reporters in the Knesset dining room Wednesday that he had heard that morning about a bill for a referendum and that he likes the idea, it was a typical Sharonism, with that familiar, slight tone of amusement in his voice.
For the last two to three weeks, Sharon's office has been examining the legal and political ramifications of a referendum. The latest idea is for a "moral" referendum, which won't require legislation.
In any case, the results of the referendum are already known. As far as Sharon is concerned, it's pretty much a sure bet, without any political risk attached. Not only would a referendum highlight the massive public support for a Gaza withdrawal, it would also serve as an easy way out for several key Likud ministers who oppose the withdrawal and the unilateral disengagement, such as Benjamin Netanyahu, Silvan Shalom, Shaul Mofaz and Limor Livnat. After all, they'll be able to say, the people have spoken.
A referendum would also give the so-called "Rebels" in the Likud, some of whom are no more than publicity hounds, a good excuse to retract their threats against Sharon.
But the referendum is not a magic formula that will solve all of Sharon's political problems. The coalition parties on the right have vowed to quit after the government decides on evacuating the 21 settlements. A referendum held after that decision could be so shocking as to lead to a unity government, which is a very complicated matter mid-term, or to new elections - and on the way there's the decision by Attorney General Menachem Mazuz in the Sharon family affairs, which will determine if the prime minister even stays in office.
On his way to a referendum, the prime minister will also have to surmount some other hurdles: the trip to the U.S. and his conversation with President Bush about the disengagement plan; a mini-referendum among the Likud rank and file that Sharon is considering as the result of a proposal by Minister Yisrael Katz; and the Likud convention, which is due to meet at the end of the month for a series of votes on constitutional issues aimed at constraining Sharon from every direction.
Sharon associates are pulling out the stops to postpone the convention but even if it is delayed, it will take place, and Sharon could come out of it a battered and bruised prime minister and party leader.
The plethora of headlines provided by the prime minister in recent days at the rate of nearly one a day- the evacuation, another government, early elections, a referendum - is becoming reminiscent of his predecessor, Ehud Barak, in the twilight weeks and months of his administration.
Of course the flood of headlines has nothing to do with the investigations and the upcoming decision by Mazuz. Any such connection is made by the reader alone. Sharon simply suddenly regretted his three years of silence and decided to make it easier for Elhanan Tennenbaum, who was kidnapped during Barak's term, to feel at home.
A senior source close to Sharon said this week he is under the impression that while Sharon has crossed a Rubicon, he doesn't have clue what he will find on the other side, politically. Will he be able to get the evacuation through the Likud? What are the chances Labor would join his government and under what conditions?
Sharon is walking a tightrope, said the source, adding, if it was up to the prime minister, he'd rather do nothing until the end of his term in 2007. But Sharon understands that he cannot do that. He sees the economy straining, the terror, the American pressure, and the slipping numbers in the opinion polls.
Sharon, who is supposed to be questioned again Thursday, is "trying a political process in a legal proceeding," as one Likud wag put it and even if he really does mean to go ahead with the evacuation and turn his back on his native constituency, his beloved settlers, the timing casts a long shadow over it all.
He is suspected of trying to impress the liberal left, and the attorney general, to deter him from not only deposing a prime minister but halting a historic process. His ministers, meanwhile, grit their teeth, feeling exploited even if some agree in general with his idea.
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Iran to join preparations for second stage of prisoner swap
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi will begin a two-day visit to Beirut on Thursday to take part in the preparations for the second stage of the prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hezbollah.
Kharazi said earlier this week he was traveling to Lebanon to help set up a committee to find out what happened to four Iranian diplomats who went missing in 1982.
Iran accuses Israel of holding the diplomats; but Israel says they were last seen held by Christian falanges in Lebanon.
According to the prisoner swap agreement between Israel and Hezbollah, brokered by German mediator Ernst Uhrlau, two committees are to be formed; each will consist of representatives from Israel, Hezbollah, Iran and Germany.
One committee will try to trace the four Iranian diplomats, while the other will seek new information on missing Israel Air Force navigator Ron Arad.
Kharazi's involvement will allow Iran to pass on information about Arad to Israel through Hezbollah, while officially denying doing so, Israeli sources believe.
In the past, every time Israel demanded to get Arad back, the Iranians raised the issue of the four missing diplomats.
Now that the return of Arad or receiving information about him are being negotiated, Iran has a chance to follow the talks closely.
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EU criticizes separation fence in brief to Hague court
By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent
In its brief to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the European Union expresses grave criticism of Israel's separation fence and cites official European condemnations. The document, however, also voices reservations about raising the issue with the ICJ, noting that a legal discussion is not appropriate and will not serve to advance the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
Israel has welcomed and commended this stand on the part of the Europeans.
In its brief, France advises the tribunal not to deal with the separation fence, but adds that if the judges decide to go ahead, France's position is that the fence is illegal.
Switzerland and Sweden submitted briefs supporting the Palestinians' position against the fence. The Swedes did not relate to the question of whether or not the tribunal was empowered to deal with the issue.
Government sources in Jerusalem expressed satisfaction with the papers submitted by Britain and Germany that focused on their reservations about holding such a discussion in The Hague. Both the British and the Americans, however, made mention of their opposition to the route taken by the fence.
The defense minister's military adjutant, Brigadier General Mike Herzog, has completed his compilation of security data about the fence. Herzog heads the security team of the Israeli steering committee dealing with The Hague.
Herzog's document consists of three parts - an analysis of the background for setting up the fence, including data on Palestinian terror against Israel; an explanation of the structure of the fence and the considerations borne in mind when planning its route; and information about the success of the fence in the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank in preventing terror and crime.