The Voice of the White House

Washington , D.C. , January 13, 2008 : “Some news of interest for those who prefer to drive rather than take the disintegrating national airlines with their long waits, lack of food, smelly passenger cabins and so on. That’s right, kids, just take a car and don’t worry about being spied on by retired child molesters or S&M freaks with second jobs.  Right now we have in place in some states. viz  Maryland , Virginia, Pennsylvania , Indiana , Illinois , California and parts of Michigan , a wonderful program designed to give a visual surveillance of all traffic on American highways.

This is called Operation ARGUS and was started by the crazy and disgraced Admiral Poindexter. It is a project controlled by both the Pentagon and the Department of Transportation and is a growing plan to conduct a permanent surveillance of all motor vehicles using the Federal Highway system ( small county roads and farm tracks are not included in this…currently)

Operation ARGUS consists of having unmanned video cameras installed over all Federal highways and toll roads. These cameras work 24/7 to video all passing vehicles, trucks, private cars and busses. The information is passed to a central data bank and entered into it for governmental use. This material may be shown, upon  request of any authorized law enforcement agency to include private investigative and credit agencies licensed to work with Federal law enforcement information on any user of the road systems under surveillance.

Provisions are made, according to the operating plans, to notify local law enforcement immediately if any driver attempts to obscure their license plate number and instructs them to at once to “apprehend and identify” the vehicle or vehicles involved. This program, once put on ice, was eagerly revived by the Bush administration, with the specific approval of the President and to date, has cost the American taxpayers over eight billion dollars. In addition to the states now under permanent surveillance, additional states to be added within the next three years will include: North and Souith Carolina , Florida , Mississippi , Washington , Oregon and Colorado .

Legislation, expected to pass in Congress without comment, makes it a Federal crime to attempt to damage or in any way interfere with these surveillance devices

It should be noted that many of these spy cameras are hidden on billboards, leased by the government, or other common highway features.

This is not just a project, dear hearts, but an actuality. Also, another project now in full swing, is to have Federal surveillance over all ATM security cameras that record visits to cash machines. Pictures of the users as well as their cash withdrawals are all forwarded to Federal law enforcement agencies. This program has been in operation since 2005 and the highway spying program has been in operation since July of 2006.

Happy trails, friends!”

Is Bush Losing Control of the Military? Navy report undermines Bush's efforts to isolate Iran

January 11. 2008

by Chris Gelken

OhmyNews

TEHRAN — The U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet has released a statement saying it cannot say with any certainty that threats to blow up its vessels actually came from Iranian Navy speedboats in Sunday's Straits of Hormuz incident.

The revelation tacitly supports the Iranian version of events, in that it was a normal challenge by Iranian naval officials for the American vessels to identify themselves, and at no time was there any serious danger of an escalation or any hostile action.

According to the commander of the Iranian naval forces, the patrol boats were on a regular patrol when they challenged the three American vessels to identify themselves and declare any helicopter activity in the area.

The U.S. quickly released a video showing Iranian speedboats in close proximity to the warships, with audio that the Iranians claimed was fake.

On Thursday the Iranian Navy released its own footage, taken on board one of the speedboats, showing a radio operator making clear requests in English for identification and activity reports. One of the American vessels can be heard to reply; "This is coalition warship 73, I am operating in international waters."

Shortly after the challenge and the response, the Iranian speedboats left the area.

The incident came as President George W. Bush began his first ever visit to Israel , where he frequently cited the Hormuz incident as further evidence of Iran 's belligerence.

The latest U.S. Navy report, however, appears to suggest quite the opposite, and undermines current efforts by Bush to isolate Iran and build an anti-Tehran alliance among its Arab neighbors.

But the question is: Did the naval commanders deliberately rob their Commander-in-Chief of a timely stick to beat the Iranians with?

"There may have been tendency among the command levels to assume that those radio messages came from the Iranian boats, and their initial reports were based on their assumptions rather on what their equipment actually told them," said Carl Osgood, a Washington-based writer and political analyst.

"I think one possible reason why the admission was made is because there is concern in the American military command about going to war by accident," he said.

There is resistance among the highest levels of the United States military against a war against Iran , Osgood said, "and that could be a source, or a source, of that admission."

He pointed out that Admiral William Fallon, head of the U.S. Central Command, had expressed his opposition to escalating tension with Iran .

Fallon told al-Jazeera television in September, "This constant drum beat of conflict is what strikes me, which is not helpful and not useful. I expect there will be no war and that is what we ought to be working for."

In February 2007, Fallon had expressed strong opposition to the deployment of a third carrier strike group in the Persian Gulf . According to an article written by respected analyst Gareth Porter and published in May 2007, Fallon had once confided that "there would be no war with Iran while I am head of Central Command."

The electronic warfare and signals intelligence teams on the American warships should, at the very least, have been able to instantly identify the direction and relative distance from source of each and every signal coming in. Therefore, it is fair to assume that they knew the Iranians were not responsible for the threats even as the first U.S. Navy reports of the incident were being released.

The U.S. Navy's subsequent admission would suggest that rather than being a correction to a report that was made in haste, in the heat of the moment; an order had come down the line to release the real facts of the incident, whether or not they damaged or contradicted statements being made by the President of the United States.

So is Bush, the Commander-in-Chief, losing control of the U.S. military? Perhaps, given the growing opposition in the armed forces to expanding the war, and the fact that Bush's rhetoric against Iran is frequently at odds with reality.

"What we have to keep in mind is the intention of the Bush administration, particularly from Vice President Dick Cheney that for at least the past two years their intention has been to trigger another war in the region, this time targeting Iran ," said Osgood, "and that's the background for this latest incident."

Osgood noted the historical precedents, such as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident that broadened America 's involvement in South East Asia and the Vietnam War.

"In the United States there is definitely a political faction that is very concerned that this administration is looking for any pretext for war, and it is one of the elements of an impeachment resolution that was introduced into the House a couple of months ago in November, calling for the impeachment and removal from office of Vice President Dick Cheney," Osgood said, "so there are political splits over the question of war with Iran."

Report: 121 veterans linked to killings

January 13, 2008

Yahoo News

NEW YORK - At least 121 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans have committed a killing or been charged in one in the United States after returning from combat, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The newspaper said it also logged 349 homicides involving all active-duty military personnel and new veterans in the six years since military action began in Afghanistan , and later Iraq . That represents an 89-percent increase over the previous six-year period, the newspaper said.

About three-quarters of those homicides involved Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, the newspaper said. The report did not illuminate the exact relationship between those cases and the 121 killings also mentioned in the report.

The newspaper said its research involved searching local news reports, examining police, court and military records and interviewing defendants, their lawyers and families, victims' families and military and law enforcement officials.

Defense Department representatives did not immediately respond to a telephone message early Sunday. The Times said the military agency declined to comment, saying it could not reproduce the paper's research.

A military spokesman, Lt. Col. Les Melnyk, questioned the report's premise and research methods, the newspaper said. He said it aggregated crimes ranging from involuntary manslaughter to murder, and he suggested the apparent increase in homicides involving military personnel and veterans in the wartime period might reflect only "an increase in awareness of military service by reporters since 9/11."

Neither the Pentagon nor the federal Justice Department track such killings, generally prosecuted in state civilian courts, according to the Times.

The 121 killings ranged from shootings and stabbings to bathtub drownings and fatal car crashes resulting from drunken driving, the newspaper said. All but one of those implicated was male.

About a third of the victims were girlfriends or relatives, including a 2-year-old girl slain by her 20-year-old father while he was recovering from wounds sustained in Iraq .

A quarter of the victims were military personnel. One was stabbed and set afire by fellow soldiers a day after they all returned from Iraq .

AP poll: Economy ties war as top issue

January 12, 2008

by Alan Fram

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The faltering economy has caught the Iraq war as people's top worry, a national poll suggests, with the rapid turnabout already showing up on the presidential campaign trail and in maneuvering between President Bush and Congress.

Twenty percent named the economy as the foremost problem in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Friday, virtually tying the 21 percent who cited the war. In October, the last time the survey posed the open-ended question about the country's top issue, the war came out on top by a 2-1 majority.

About equal proportions of Republicans, Democrats and independents in the new poll said the economy was their major worry, suggesting the issue looms as a potent one in both parties' presidential contests. It was also cited evenly across all levels of income, underscoring the variety of economic problems the country faces.

Amid increasing trade, job, housing, stock market and gasoline price woes, candidates from each party have started talking about how they would bolster the economy. The issue looms as the dominant one in the next presidential contest: Tuesday's Republican primary in Michigan , which had a 7.4 percent unemployment rate in November that is the nation's worst.

Even as signs of economic weakness in this country have grown in recent months, U.S. and Iraqi casualties in Iraq have been dropping since the summer. Though most in the U.S. remain against the war, growing numbers say they think President Bush's troop increase last year has been working, and politicians say the issue is raised with decreasing frequency by constituents.

"The lines are crossing now," said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster not working for a presidential candidate. "As Iraq becomes more stable and less violent, concern about Iraq is diminishing. It will still be an important issue, but the economy is filling the vacuum."

Economic concerns were voiced about evenly in most parts of the country in the AP-Ipsos survey. It was particularly high in the Rust Belt region of Michigan , Illinois , Indiana , Ohio and Wisconsin , states that are expected to be pivotal in the November election. About one in three there named the economy.

The poll offered another example of economic anxiety as an index measuring consumer confidence fell to its all-time low in the six years Ipsos has been measuring it. The RBC Cash Index dropped to 56.3 in early January, down from 65.9 in December.

The war was the top problem mentioned by three in 10 Democrats, about twice the number of Republicans who listed it. About one in five independents also put it as the top concern.

Health care was another important issue for Democrats, while Republicans also named morality, immigration and terrorism.

In exit polls of voters in last Tuesday's New Hampshire presidential primaries, people in both parties named the economy as their top concern, including 38 percent of Democrats and 31 percent of Republicans. Of those citing the economy, the most votes went to Hillary Rodham Clinton for Democrats and John McCain among Republicans — and each won their party's contest.

In the Jan. 3 Iowa presidential caucuses, the economy was tied with Iraq for most important issue among Democrats. Illegal immigration was the most mentioned by Republicans, followed by the economy. The winners in that state — Republican Mike Huckabee and Democrat Barack Obama — also got the most support among those chiefly worried about the economy.

On Capitol Hill, Democratic leaders are considering crafting legislation for stimulating the economy that might include tax rebates, longer unemployment benefits and more food stamps. Bush has said he is watching to see if federal steps will be needed, which officials have said might include tax rebates for individuals and tax breaks for business investment.

On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., wrote Bush saying they should try to agree quickly on a package. Still, a clash could well occur because there is a history of Democrats seeking more spending and narrower tax cuts than Republicans want.

The issues question in the AP-Ipsos poll was asked of 535 people in telephone interviews conducted from Jan. 7-9. Their responses had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.

Fraud US-Style: Fake Videos and Elections

January 11, 2008

by Stephen Lendman

Global Research

First the videos with bin Laden ones Exhibit A. He always seems to pop up strategically at well-timed moments, almost like we planned it that way. Evidence points that way.

Consider the one on Friday (September 7) before the sixth 9/11 anniversary in 2007. Digital image forensics expert, Neal Krawetz of Hactor Factor, said it was full of low quality visual and audio splices, a likely fake. Striking also was bin Laden's beard that was gray in recent images. In this video, it's black. In addition, the footage has him dressed in a white hat and shirt and yellow sweater, precisely his same attire on an October 29, 2004 video. In addition, the background, lighting, desk and camera angle are the same.

Krawetz noted that "if you overlay the 2007 and 2004 videos, bin Laden's face is the same (unaged). Only his beard is darker, and the picture contrast was adjusted. Most important are the edits showing obvious splices, at least six video ones in all. Even more audio ones were used that appear to be words and phrases spliced together making Krawetz suspect a vocal imitator was used.

Now the latest "incident" and video making headlines. They involve a supposed Persian Gulf confrontation between Iranian and US vessels in open waters. A subsequent Pentagon video shows small Iranian boats v. US warships in the Strait of Hormuz earlier this week. The Pentagon and major media reported a fleet of high-speed small craft charged at and threatened to blow up a three-ship convoy of US warships. George Bush called it a "dangerous" provocation and warned of "serious consequences" if there are further incidents.

Iran 's response came swiftly and called the Pentagon video and audio "fabricated." The incident was routine and something "normal that takes place every now and then for each party" to identify the other....Iran Navy units always put questions to passing vessels and warships at the Strait of Hormuz and they need to identify themselves. This is in accordance with the normal procedures." The Tehran spokesman said its Navy units "asked (the US ships) to identify themselves. They responded accordingly and continued on their (non-agressive) path."

On January 9 (according to Agence France-Presse - AFP), Iran 's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) accused Washington of fabricating footage of the incident it described as routine and non-confrontational. The country's state-run Al-Alam Arabic language international channel and English language Press-TV both quoted an IRGC spokesman with similar comments. This hardly needs elaborating. It's unimaginable that lightly armed small craft would challenge heavily armed warships from any nation, let alone likely nuclear-armed ones flying US flags. The very notion borders on the absurd. Imagining where this may lead, however, recall the August, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident. No further comment needed.

Now the January, 2008 election: dateline New Hampshire . Zogby International has a well-deserved reputation for accuracy. It's January 5 - 7 pre-election poll numbers showed Obama at 42% v. Clinton 's 29% - an impossible gap to close in a few days or even weeks. Yet magically it happened. Clinton miraculously snatched victory from certain defeat with 39% of the vote to Obama's 36% with the loser saying no more than "I am still fired up and ready to go." Where to he should ask after this type reversal with obvious grim signs for his hopes.

Consider final New Hampshire vote tallies for all candidates compared to Zogby's January 5 - 7 pre-election poll numbers. For Republican and Democrat candidates alike, they were dead-on right with one glaring exception. Something to ponder and question.

On the Republican side, something fishy happened as well to its one outlier - Ron Paul. The candidate's "war room" hand count showed he got 15% of the vote, but official counting gave him 8% and 9% in total when electronically tabulated votes were included. His web site said he scored 10% or better in every township and listed percentages for them all. They ranged from 34% to 10.25%. If these numbers are accurate, Paul got a minimum of 10% of New Hampshire 's vote for a third place finish.

Another disturbing report also emerged. The town of Sutton admitted it voided all Paul votes. He got 31, but none made the official tally. It was blamed on "human error" that might account for a slight variance but highly unlikely to erase his entire total. Yet it did and raises strong suspicions of fraud. Once  this information got out, other districts where Paul scored zero changed their final count adding votes for him never counted. Something clearly is rotten in New Hampshire . It doesn't say much for the process ahead, or past ones either for that matter.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at www.sj.lendman.blogspot.com.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7770

.New ID Rules May Complicate Air Travel

January 12, 2008

by Devlin Barrett

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - Millions of air travelers may find going through airport security much more complicated this spring, as the Bush administration heads toward a showdown with state governments over post-Sept. 11 rules for new driver's licenses. By May, the dispute could leave millions of people unable to use their licenses to board planes, but privacy advocates called that a hollow threat by federal officials.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who was unveiling final details of the REAL ID Act's rules on Friday, said that if states want their licenses to remain valid for air travel after May 2008, those states must seek a waiver indicating they want more time to comply with the legislation.

The deadline is an effort to get states to begin phasing in the REAL ID program. Citizens born after Dec. 1, 1964 , would have six years to get a new license; older Americans would have until 2017.

Chertoff said that for any state which doesn't seek such a waiver by May, residents of that state will have to use a passport or certain types of federal border-crossing cards if they want to avoid a vigorous secondary screening at airport security.

``The last thing I want to do is punish citizens of a state who would love to have a REAL ID license but can't get one,'' Chertoff said. ``But in the end, the rule is the rule as passed by Congress.''

The plan's chief critic, the American Civil Liberties Union, called Chertoff's deadline a bluff - and urged state governments to call him on it.

``Are they really prepared to shut those airports down? Which is what effectively would happen if the residents of those states are going to have to go through secondary scrutiny,'' said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's technology and liberty program. ``This is a scare tactic.''

So far, 17 states have passed legislation or resolutions objecting to the REAL ID Act's provisions, many due to concerns it will cost them too much to comply. The 17, according to the ACLU, are Arkansas , Colorado , Georgia , Hawaii , Idaho , Illinois , Maine , Missouri , Montana , Nebraska , Nevada , New Hampshire , North Dakota , Oklahoma , South Carolina , Tennessee and Washington .

Maine officials said Friday they were unsure if their own state law even allows them to ask for a waiver.

``It certainly seems to be an effort by the federal government to create compliance with REAL ID whether states have an interest in doing so or not,'' said Don Cookson, spokesman for the Maine secretary of state's office.

The Sept. 11 attacks were the main motivation for the changes: The hijacker-pilot who flew into the Pentagon, Hani Hanjour, had four driver's licenses and ID cards from three states.

The Homeland Security Department and other officials say the only way to ensure an ID is safe is to check it against secure government data; critics such as the ACLU say that creates a system that is more likely to be infiltrated and have its personal data pilfered.

Congress passed the REAL ID law in 2005, but the effort has been delayed by opposition from states worried about the cost and civil libertarians upset about what they believe are invasions of privacy. A key deadline would come in 2011, when federal authorities hope all states will be in compliance.

To make the plan more appealing to cost-conscious states, federal authorities drastically reduced the expected cost from $14.6 billion to $3.9 billion, a 73 percent decline, said Homeland Security officials familiar with the plan.

By 2014, anyone seeking to board an airplane or enter a federal building would have to present a REAL ID-compliant card, with the notable exception of those older than 50, Homeland Security officials said.

The over-50 exemption was created to give states more time to get everyone new licenses, and officials say the risk of someone in that age group being a terrorist, illegal immigrant or con artist is much less. By 2017, even those over 50 must have a REAL ID-compliant card to board a plane.

Among other details of the REAL ID plan:

-The traditional driver's license photograph would be taken at the beginning of the application instead of the end so that if someone is rejected for failure to prove identity and citizenship, the applicant's photo would be kept on file and checked if that person tried to con the system again.

-The cards will have three layers of security measures but will not contain microchips as some had expected. States will be able to choose from a menu which security measures they will put in their cards.

-After Social Security and immigration status checks become nationwide practice, officials plan to move on to more expansive security checks. State DMV offices would be required to verify birth certificates; check with other states to ensure an applicant doesn't have more than one license; and check with the State Department to verify applicants who use passports to get a driver's license.

TSA searches, detains 5 year old because his name was on no-fly list

January 9, 2008

by Cory Doctorow,

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/09/tsa-searches-detains.html

A five-year-old boy was taken into custody and thoroughly searched at Sea-Tac because his name is similar to a possible terrorist alias. As the Consumerist reports, "When his mother went to pick him up and hug him and comfort him during the proceedings, she was told not to touch him because he was a national security risk. They also had to frisk her again to make sure the little Dillinger hadn't passed anything dangerous weapons or materials to his mother when she hugged him."

It's a case of a mistaken identity for a 5-year-old boy from Normandy Park . He had trouble boarding a plane because someone with the same name is wanted by the federal government. Mimi Jung reports from Sea-Tac Airport .

You know, if you wanted to systematically discredit the idea of a Department of Homeland Security, if you wanted to make an utter mockery of aviation safety, you could not do a better job than this.

Fliers’ Data Left Exposed, Report Says

Official Overseeing TSA Site Had Worked for Contractor

January 12, 2008

by Del Quentin Wilber

Washington Post

A government Web site designed to help travelers remove their names from aviation watch lists was so riddled with security holes that hackers could easily have stolen personal information from scores of passengers, a congressional report concluded yesterday.

Thousands of people used the Web site, and as many as 247 submitted detailed personal information between October 2006 and last February, the report says. A spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, which established the site, said the agency was not aware of any travelers who used the site and became victims of identity theft.

Congressional investigators raised concerns about a conflict of interest in how the no-bid contract to create the Web site was awarded. The TSA employee who framed many of the contract's requirements and was in charge of overseeing the site was once employed by the firm that was awarded the contract -- Desyne Web Services, a small firm in Boston, Va. -- and socialized with members of the company, according to the report by the Democratic staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The TSA continues to use Desyne on various projects, the report said, and has awarded the company no-bid contracts worth about $500,000.

The report also found that the TSA conducted little oversight of the Web site.

"It is mindboggling that TSA would launch a Web site with so many security vulnerabilities," Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the committee, said in a statement. "The handling of this Web site goes against all good government contracting standards, reveals serious flaws in oversight, and potentially exposed travelers to identity theft."

Telephone messages left at Desyne were not returned yesterday. A TSA official said that the issues raised by the report were "old news" and that the problems had been addressed. "Things could and should have been done differently," said Christopher White, a TSA spokesman. "We have learned from those issues."

The government provides airlines with security watch lists that give the names of suspected terrorists, fugitives and others considered a "threat to aviation."

The lists have been frequently criticized, particularly since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 , heightened security concerns. Prominent Americans, including members of Congress, have been singled out for questioning and searches at airports because their names were similar to names on the lists.

TSA officials said they had taken steps to reduce the number of people whose names are on the no-fly list, who are not allowed to board planes. They took the same steps, they said, to reduce their "selectee" list. Passengers with names similar to those on the selectee list are subjected to extra screening and questioning at checkpoints.

The TSA created a redress procedure three years ago for innocent passengers ensnared by the lists. A flood of requests quickly swamped officials, and by 2006, the TSA began seeking bids from contractors to build, host and maintain "a secure Web-based system" to handle the requests, the committee report says.

TSA investigators later determined that the bid request was written in such a way that only one firm -- Desyne -- could win the contract, according to the report.

to the report, the primary author of the contract's requirements was Nicholas Panuzio, a TSA official who also was assigned an oversight role of the Web site. Panuzio "had a prior relationship with Desyne" that included having worked for the company for eight months several years earlier, the report says.

Panuzio had also known the company's owner since high school and "still met regularly with Desyne's owner and others for drinks and dinner," according to the report.

Panuzio could not be reached for comment yesterday.

The report said Panuzio reported the conflict of interest to the agency's chief counsel but not to the project's managers. The report did not say when the disclosure was made, and a TSA spokesman was unable to pinpoint a time.

TSA officials said that Panuzio did not profit from the contract, which was valued at $48,816. "A thorough review determined that no disciplinary action was necessary," said White, the spokesman.

A few months after the site was launched, Chris Soghoian, a graduate student at Indiana University discovered that it was not secure.

Soghoian told investigators that the site's appearance "was so poor that he first suspected it was a 'phishing' site," or one set up by hackers to imitate official sites to lure people into giving personal information that could then be stolen, the report found.

Soghoian posted his concerns in February on a blog then picked up by news outlets, including a http://washingtonpost.com security blog. The TSA quickly moved the site to a more secure government domain, at https://trip.dhs.gov.

Comment: The citizens of the United States pay the salaries of these penis-heads. Their checks should be gift wrapped. If we can ever get rid of the Republican crypto-Nazis, we should export these morons to South Africa where they will be immediately eaten by the natives. BH

Escalating ice loss found in Antarctica

January 14, 2008

by Marc Kaufman

Washington Post

WASHINGTON - Climatic changes appear to be destabilizing vast ice sheets of western Antarctica that had previously seemed relatively protected from global warming, researchers reported yesterday, raising the prospect of faster sea-level rise than current estimates.

While the overall loss is a tiny fraction of the miles-deep ice that covers much of Antarctica , scientists said the new finding is important because the continent holds about 90 percent of Earth's ice, and until now, large-scale ice loss there had been limited to the peninsula that juts out toward the tip of South America. In addition, researchers found that the rate of ice loss in the affected areas has accelerated over the past 10 years -- as it has on most glaciers and ice sheets around the world.

"Without doubt, Antarctica as a whole is now losing ice yearly, and each year it's losing more," said Eric Rignot, lead author of a paper published online in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The Antarctic ice sheet is shrinking despite land temperatures for the continent remaining essentially unchanged, except for the fast-warming peninsula.

The cause, Rignot said, may be changes in the flow of the warmer water of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current that circles much of the continent. Because of changed wind patterns and less-well-understood dynamics of the submerged current, its water is coming closer to land in some sectors and melting the edges of glaciers deep underwater.

"Something must be changing the ocean to trigger such changes," said Rignot, a senior scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We believe it is related to global climate forcing."

Rignot said the tonnage of yearly ice loss in Antarctica is approaching that of Greenland, where ice sheets are known to be melting rapidly in some parts and where ancient glaciers have been in retreat. He said the change in Antarctica could become considerably more dramatic because the continent's western shelf, an expanse of ice and snow roughly the size of Texas, is largely below sea level and has broad and flat expanses of ice that could move quickly. Much of Greenland 's ice flows through relatively narrow valleys in mountainous terrain, which slows its motion.

‘Frightening’ possibility

The new finding comes days after the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the group's next report should look at the "frightening" possibility that ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica could melt rapidly at the same time.

"Both Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheet are huge bodies of ice and snow, which are sitting on land," said Rajendra Pachauri, chief of the IPCC, the United Nations' scientific advisory group. "If, through a process of melting, they collapse and are submerged in the sea, then we really are talking about sea-level rises of several meters." (A meter is about a yard.) Last year, the IPCC tentatively estimated that sea levels would rise by eight inches to two feet by the end of the century, assuming no melting in West Antarctica .

The new Antarctic ice findings are based on mapping of 85 percent of the continent over the past decade using radar data from European, Japanese and Canadian weather satellites. Previous studies had detected the beginning of ice loss in West Antarctica and substantial loss along the peninsula, but the current research found significantly greater changes.

Rignot and his team found that East Antarctica , which holds a majority of the continent's ice, has not experienced the same kind of loss -- probably because most of the ice sits atop land rather than below sea level, as in the west. In several coastal areas of East Antarctica , however, small but similar losses have been detected, he said.

In all, snowfall and ice loss in East Antarctica have about equaled out over the past 10 years, leaving that part of the continent unchanged in terms of total ice. But in West Antarctica , the ice loss has increased by 59 percent over the past decade to about 132 billion metric tons a year, while the yearly loss along the peninsula has increased by 140 percent to 60 billion metric tons. Because the ice being lost is generally near the bottom of glaciers, the glacier moves faster into the water and thins further, as a result. Rignot said there has been evidence of ice loss going back as far as 40 years.

The new findings come as the Arctic is losing ice at a dramatic rate and glaciers are in retreat across the planet. At a recent annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, Ohio State University professor Lonnie Thompson delivered a keynote lecture that described a significant speed-up in the melting of high-altitude glaciers in tropical regions, including Peru, Tibet and Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya.

Thompson, who has studied the Quelccaya glacier in the Peruvian Andes for 30 years, said that for the first half of that period, it retreated on average 20 feet per year. For the past 15 years, he said, it has retreated an average of nearly 200 feet per year.

"The information from Antarctica is consistent with what we are seeing in all other areas with glaciers -- a melting or retreat that is occurring faster than predicted," he said. "Glaciers, and especially the high-elevation tropical glaciers, are a real canary in the coal mine. They're telling us that major climatic changes are occurring."

While the phenomenon of ice loss worldwide is well documented, the dynamics in the Antarctic are probably the least understood. Glaciers and ice sheets are sometimes miles deep, and researchers do not know what might be happening at the bottom of the ice -- but it clearly is being lost along the peninsula and West Antarctic coast.

Rignot theorizes that the warmer water of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current is the cause. Douglas Martinson, a senior research scientist fellow at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, has studied the issue and agrees.

Martinson said the current, which flows about 200 yards below the frigid surface water, began to warm significantly in the 1980s, and that warming in turn caused wind patterns to change in ways that ultimately brought more warm water to shore. The result has been an increased erosion of the glaciers and ice sheets.

Martinson said researchers do not have enough data to say for certain that the process was set in motion by global warming, but "that is clearly the most logical answer."

Pachauri, the IPCC's chief of climate science, will visit Antarctica this week with Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg to get a firsthand view of the situation.

"You can read as much as you want on these subjects, but it doesn't really enter your system. You don't really appreciate the enormity of what you have," Pachauri said.

Comment: Note the use of the phrase..,”by the end of the century.” This statement can usually be found in press releases from government-connected agencies. It is designed to sooth any public concerns because at this point, the rapidly-increasing melting of  glaciers and icecaps worldwide has already raised the sea levels by six inches in the last year alone. Given the known rate of current melting and the very well-known shrinking of glaciers and ice caps, there should be a nine foot rise in the world’s overall sea levels before the end of this decade, not the end of the century. If anyone lives in Bangladesh , the Maldives , Holland , the entire east coast of the United States or other low-lying properties, it might be advisable to move to higher ground. Of course the only time this will happen, given human nature, will be only  when water is flooding the living room and by then, the local real estate market will be under water. BH

Texas students suspended for refusing haircut

January 8, 2008

AFP

Four Texas teens were suspended from school Tuesday for refusing to get their hair cut over the Christmas break, school officials said.

The students had been warned that the district was cracking down on dress code violators after they repeatedly let their locks loose on school grounds.

"Our policy states that the hair (on male students) cannot extend beyond the collar in the back," said Kevin Stanford, superintendent of the Kerens Independent School District .

"What we were doing is allowing the students to bind their hair, but there was very inconsistent compliance."

After several complaints from parents in the small rural town south of Dallas , school officials decided to eliminate the hair-binding loophole.

Students were told to go to the barber over break or face the consequences.

"I don't know exactly what the students are going to - the ball's in their court," Stanford told AFP.

"Persistent insubordination could go as far as a disciplinary alternative school placement.   That's the worst case."

Strict dress codes are common in Texas , Stanford said, and have been upheld by challenges which went as far as the Texas Supreme Court.

Students at Kerens high school are also prohibited from

------wearing sleeveless shirts,

------excessively tight or baggy pants,

------mismatched socks, "disruptive hair styles"

------"unnatural" hair colors,  according to an 86-page student handbook. "The Kerens ISD dress code promotes the effective personal presentation skills which contribute significantly to successful living in adult society," the handbook explained. "The district's dress code is established to teach hygiene, instill discipline, prevent disruption, avoid safety hazards, and teach respect for authority."

FBI wiretaps dropped due to unpaid bills

January 10, 2008

by Lara James Jordan

AP

WASHINGTON - Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.

A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI's lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. In one office alone, unpaid costs for wiretaps from one phone company totaled $66,000.

In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation "was halted due to untimely payment," the audit found. FISA wiretaps are used in the government's most sensitive and secretive criminal and intelligence investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies.

"We also found that late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence," according to the audit by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.

More than half of 990 bills to pay for telecommunication surveillance in five unidentified FBI field offices were not paid on time, the report shows.

Assistant FBI Director John Miller said wiretaps were dropped only a few times because of the backed-up billing, which he said didn't significantly set back the investigations under way. He said the FBI "will not tolerate financial mismanagement, or worse," and is working to fix the problems.

"While in a few instances, late-payment of telephone bills resulted in interruptions of the timely delivery of surveillance results, these interruptions were temporary and in our assessment, none of those cases were significantly affected," Miller said in a statement Thursday evening.

The report released Thursday was a highly edited version of Fine's 87-page audit that the FBI deemed too sensitive to be viewed publicly. It focused on what the bureau admitted was an "antiquated" system to track money sent to its 56 field offices nationwide for undercover work. Generally, the money pays for rental cars, leases and surveillance, the audit noted.

The American Civil Liberties Union called on the FBI to release the entire, unedited audit. The group, which has been critical of some of the government's wiretapping programs, also took a swipe at telecommunication companies that allowed the eavesdropping — as long as they are getting paid.

"It seems the telecoms, who are claiming they were just being 'good patriots' when they allowed the government to spy on us without warrants, are more than willing to pull the plug on national security investigations when the government falls behind on its bills," said former FBI agent Michael German, the ACLU's national security policy counsel. "To put it bluntly, it sounds as though the telecoms believe it when the FBI says the warrant is in the mail but not when they say the check is in the mail."

The audit also found that some field offices paid for expenses on undercover cases that should have been financed by FBI headquarters. Out of 130 undercover payments examined, auditors found 14 cases of at least $6,000 each where field offices dipped into their own budgets to pay for work that should have been picked up by headquarters.

The faulty bookkeeping was blamed, in large part, on an FBI employee who pleaded guilty in June 2006 to stealing $25,000 for her own use, the audit noted.

"As demonstrated by the FBI employee who stole funds intended to support undercover activities, procedural controls by themselves have not ensured proper tracking and use of confidential case funds," it concluded.

Fine's report offered 16 recommendations to improve the FBI's tracking and management of the funding system, including its telecommunication costs. The FBI has agreed to follow 11 of the suggestions and one additional recommendation was found unnecessary. But it said that four "would be either unfeasible or too cost prohibitive." The recommendations were not specifically outlined in the edited version of the report.

Study: Northeast winters warming fast

January 12, 2008

by Michael Hill

Associated Press

ALBANY , N.Y. - Earlier blooms. Less snow to shovel. Unseasonable warm spells.

Signs that winters in the Northeast are losing their bite have been abundant in recent years and now researchers have nailed down numbers to show just how big the changes have been.