"Weird" Sex Fantasies, And Why They're Good For You

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Brie Cadman
June 1, 2009 - Divine Caroline

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Having sexual fantasies is an absolutely normal, if not necessary, part of being a sexual being. It's not having them that is aberrant.

If you want to enliven your next dinner party, bring out this question: what was the subject of your last sexual fantasy?

Forks and jaws might drop, but only because almost everyone in attendance will be recreating the scene last played in their head, or claiming that they don't fantasize, or claiming to only fantasize about their partner. However, chances are everyone at the table (assuming you're not dining at a senior center) has erotic and illicit fantasies, and does so on a normal basis. But rarely, if ever, do we want to talk about it.

Titillating Taboo

Sexually fantasies are something we rarely discuss, even among good friends. Our deepest sexual thoughts are often considered too weird, perverse, or just plain wrong to be shared amongst polite company; fantasizing might indicate there is something wrong with our relationships, or worse, ourselves. But research indicates that having sexual fantasies is an absolutely normal, if not necessary, part of being a sexual being. It's not having them that is aberrant.

Large research studies indicate that almost everyone fantasizes and almost none of us talk about it. While researching his book, Who's Been Sleeping in Your Head: The Secret World of Sexual Fantasies, Brett Kahr, a psychologist based in the UK, anonymously surveyed 18,000 people in Britain and America. He asked them questions about the frequency and content of their fantasies and found that nine out of ten people have sexual fantasies. What's more, he believes the remaining tenth person has them too, but is too embarrassed to admit it.

Even those of us that admit to fantasizing are reluctant to discuss what it is that gets us going. Ninety-five percent of the research subjects had never detailed their fantasies to another person. While some fantasies might be better left undisclosed -- such as revealing to a new partner that you think about an ex while having sex with him -- we don't even talk about our imaginative sexual escapades with friends. Erotic fantasy is taboo.

Wine Me, Dine Me, 69 Me

Many people suffer shame and guilt about the perverse nature of their fantasies, even though what we think of as "perverse" may actually be quite common. Though a typical and unremarkable fantasy for both men and women is dreaming about sex with their current partner, Kahr also found that bondage, incest, sadomasochism, and voyeurism are also part of the varied fantasy life of "normal" people.

Shame regarding sexual fantasies may stem from earlier notions about the role of fantasy in our lives. In the 1900s, some psychoanalysts interpreted "kinky" sexual fantasies as being caused by "kinky" desires or wishes. Strange fantasies were often treated as pathology.

But we now know that fantasies are no more pathologic than masturbation. They allow us to think about doing something we would never actually do, or about things we've done before and would like to do again. (An ex-flame, for instance.) They allow us to sleep with celebrities. (You and me, Robert Downey Jr., just you and me.) Furthermore, fantasy may help our sex lives by increasing desire and arousal; those who fantasize frequently also tend to have more sex. And cerebral foreplay has certainly helped millions (billions? trillions?) of masturbations end in success.

Safe Sex

Kahr also found that sometimes fantasy is a way of putting a positive spin on a negative childhood memory. For instance, he describes a happily married woman whose fantasies help turn memories of sexual abuse by an older brother into an arousing experience. In this way, fantasy can be a coping mechanism. However, even if you fantasize about abuse, it doesn't necessarily mean you're a survivor of abuse or want it to happen. Women may fantasize about being dominated by a stranger, but we are able to control every one of their actions. Our minds are a safe place to try new and risky deeds without ever getting hurt. In the book, Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies, Michael Bader writes, "Safety is the concept that functions as the key to unlocking the meaning of our fantasies." Being bound and gagged by a dominating partner may not seem safe, but somewhere in the unconscious, submission is desired.

All this is somewhat reassuring. Rather than feeling guilty about thinking about another person while having sex with your partner, we can see it as a way to help spice up the sex, without committing any transgressions. Just keep it in your head.

Contractors Vie for Plum Work, Hacking for the United States

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Christopher Drew and John Markoff
May 31, 2009 - The New York Times

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The government's urgent push into cyberwarfare has set off a rush among the biggest military companies for billions of dollars in new defense contracts.

The exotic nature of the work, coupled with the deep recession, is enabling the companies to attract top young talent that once would have gone to Silicon Valley. And the race to develop weapons that defend against, or initiate, computer attacks has given rise to thousands of "hacker soldiers" within the Pentagon who can blend the new capabilities into the nation's war planning.

Nearly all of the largest military companies - including Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon - have major cyber contracts with the military and intelligence agencies.

The companies have been moving quickly to lock up the relatively small number of experts with the training and creativity to block the attacks and design countermeasures. They have been buying smaller firms, financing academic research and running advertisements for "cyberninjas" at a time when other industries are shedding workers.

The changes are manifesting themselves in highly classified laboratories, where computer geeks in their 20s like to joke that they are hackers with security clearances.

At a Raytheon facility here south of the Kennedy Space Center, a hub of innovation in an earlier era, rock music blares and empty cans of Mountain Dew pile up as engineers create tools to protect the Pentagon's computers and crack into the networks of countries that could become adversaries. Prizes like cappuccino machines and stacks of cash spur them on, and a gong heralds each major breakthrough.

The young engineers represent the new face of a war that President Obama described Friday as "one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation." The president said he would appoint a senior White House official to oversee the nation's cybersecurity strategies.

Computer experts say the government is behind the curve in sealing off its networks from threats that are growing more persistent and sophisticated, with thousands of intrusions each day from organized criminals and legions of hackers for nations including Russia and China.

"Everybody's attacking everybody," said Scott Chase, a 30-year-old computer engineer who helps run the Raytheon unit here.

Mr. Chase, who wears his hair in a ponytail, and Terry Gillette, a 53-year-old former rocket engineer, ran SI Government Solutions before selling the company to Raytheon last year as the boom in the military's cyberoperations accelerated.

The operation - tucked into several unmarked buildings behind an insurance office and a dentist's office - is doing some of the most cutting-edge work, both in identifying weaknesses in Pentagon networks and in creating weapons for potential attacks.

Daniel D. Allen, who oversees work on intelligence systems for Northrop Grumman, estimated that federal spending on computer security now totals $10 billion each year, including classified programs. That is just a fraction of the government's spending on weapons systems. But industry officials expect it to rise rapidly.

The military contractors are now in the enviable position of turning what they learned out of necessity - protecting the sensitive Pentagon data that sits on their own computers - into a lucrative business that could replace some of the revenue lost from cancellations of conventional weapons systems.

Executives at Lockheed Martin, which has long been the government's largest information-technology contractor, also see the demand for greater computer security spreading to energy and health care agencies and the rest of the nation's critical infrastructure. But for now, most companies remain focused on the national-security arena, where the hottest efforts involve anticipating how an enemy might attack and developing the resources to strike back.

Though even the existence of research on cyberweapons was once highly classified, the Air Force plans this year to award the first publicly announced contract for developing tools to break into enemy computers. The companies are also teaming up to build a National Cyber Range, a model of the Internet for testing advanced techniques.

Military experts said Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics, which have long been major players in the Pentagon's security efforts, are leading the push into offensive cyberwarfare, along with the Raytheon unit. This involves finding vulnerabilities in other countries' computer systems and developing software tools to exploit them, either to steal sensitive information or disable the networks.

Mr. Chase and Mr. Gillette said the Raytheon unit, which has about 100 employees, grew out of a company they started with friends at Florida Institute of Technology that concentrated on helping software makers find flaws in their own products. Over the last several years, their focus shifted to the military and intelligence agencies, which wanted to use their analytic tools to detect vulnerabilities and intrusions previously unnoticed.

Like other contractors, the Raytheon teams set up "honey pots," the equivalent of sting operations, to lure hackers into digital cul-de-sacs that mimic Pentagon Web sites. They then capture the attackers' codes and create defenses for them.

And since most of the world's computers run on the Windows or the Linux systems, their work has also provided a growing window into how to attack foreign networks in any cyberwar.

"It takes a nonconformist to excel at what we do," said Mr. Gillette, a tanned surfing aficionado who looks like a 1950s hipster in his T-shirts with rolled-up sleeves.

The company, which would allow interviews with other employees only on the condition that their last names not be used because of security concerns, hired one of its top young workers, Dustin, after he won two major hacking contests and dropped out of college. "I always approach it like a game, and it's been fun," said Dustin, now 22.

Another engineer, known as Jolly, joined Raytheon in April after earning a master's degree in computer security at DePaul University in Chicago. "You think defense contractors, and you think bureaucracy, and not necessarily a lot of interesting and challenging projects," he said.

The Pentagon's interest in cyberwarfare has reached "religious intensity," said Daniel T. Kuehl, a military historian at the National Defense University. And the changes carry through to soldiers being trained to defend and attack computer and wireless networks out on the battlefield.

That shift can be seen in the remaking of organizations like the Association of Old Crows, a professional group that includes contractors and military personnel.

The Old Crows have deep roots in what has long been known as electronic warfare - the use of radar and radio technologies for jamming and deception.

But the financing for electronic warfare had slowed recently, prompting the Old Crows to set up a broader information-operations branch last year and establish a new trade journal to focus on cyberwarfare.

The career of Joel Harding, the director of the group's Information Operations Institute, exemplifies the increasing role that computing and the Internet are playing in the military.

A 20-year veteran of military intelligence, Mr. Harding shifted in 1996 into one of the earliest commands that studied government-sponsored computer hacker programs. After leaving the military, he took a job as an analyst at SAIC, a large contractor developing computer applications for military and intelligence agencies.

Mr. Harding estimates that there are now 3,000 to 5,000 information operations specialists in the military and 50,000 to 70,000 soldiers involved in general computer operations. Adding specialists in electronic warfare, deception and other areas could bring the total number of information operations personnel to as many as 88,700, he said.

Confirmed: Unreleased Torture Photos Did Show Rape and Sexual Assault

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The Pentagon lied when it said "None of the photos in question depict the images that are described in that article."

May 30, 2009 - Think Progress

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This week, the Daily Telegraph reported that the torture photos President Obama recently decided to withhold from the public depict "rape and sexual abuse." The Pentagon denied the report, saying, "None of the photos in question depict the images that are described in that article." But yesterday, Scott Horton reported that he has confirmed that the photos do, in fact, "depict sexually explicit acts," including "a government contractor engaged in an act of sodomy with a male prisoner and scenes of forced masturbation," as well as "penetration involving phosphorous sticks and brooms." Horton writes further:

A senior military officer familiar with the photos told me that they would likely provoke a storm of outrage if released. … Some show U.S. personnel engaged in sexual acts with prisoners and each other. In one, a female prisoner appears to have been forced to expose her breasts to be photographed. In another, a prisoner is suspended naked upside down from the top bunk of a bed in a stress position.

Still other withheld photographs have been circulating among U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq. One soldier showed them to me, including a photograph in which a male in a U.S. military uniform receives oral sex from a female prisoner.

Horton also obtained what he characterizes as "rarely seen Abu Ghraib torture photos," which can be viewed here:

Warning: They are graphic and disturbing!

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-29/torture-photos-depict-sex-rape/#gallery=298;page=1

Local Currencies Really Can Buy Happiness

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Matthew Cardinale
June 1, 2009 - Inter Press Service

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In the face of an economic system which seems to be premised on environmental harm and profit-driven growth, a handful of communities across the U.S. and the globe have begun experimenting with alternative forms of local currency as a pathway to sustainability.

Local currencies existing today in the U.S. include the Humboldt Community Currency in Eureka, California; Berkshares in the Massachusetts Berkshire region; Bay Bucks in Traverse City, Michigan; Ithaca Hours in Ithaca, New York; Cascadia Hours, Corvalis Hours, and RiverHours in Oregon; Equal Dollars in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Madison Hours in Madison, Wisconsin, according to the E. F. Schumacher Society, which runs Berkshares.

Canadian community currencies are located in Calgary, Alberta; Salt Spring Island, British Columbia; Tamworth, Toronto and the Madawaska Valley, both in Ontario, which is promoting a "usury-free dollar".

There are also community currencies in Tlaxpana, Mexico; and East Sussex and Devon, England; as well as a regional currency based in Basel, Switzerland, which can also be exchanged in parts of Germany and France.

What these currencies have in common is that they represent an effort to respond to the pressures of globalisation, like the advent of massive chain stores competing with local merchants.

People in Berkshire can go to one of five participating local banks to trade 95 cents for one Berkshare, at a five percent discount to the dollar. Then, they can spend Berkshares at over 400 participating local stores as a direct replacement for dollars, and thus save 5 cents with every Berkshare they spend.

Even though store owners lose the 5 cents whenever they trade Berkshares back for dollars at a bank - which they have to do to buy something that can't be produced locally - they are still typically happy with the loyal, local customers they keep instead of losing them to chains like Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and Barnes & Noble.

"Local currencies are part of what educate people about the importance of their small, independent businesses. It's bringing people off the Internet, back to Main Street, for the face-to-face exchanges. Once they're there, they like it," Susan Witt, founder of Berkshares, told IPS.

There are many ways having a local currency can help create a more sustainable economy, say leaders in the local currency movement.

First, because using a community currency forces people to buy locally, fewer goods have to be imported.

"By having economic transactions be so focused locally, that's definitely, for one thing, reducing use of fossil fuel. If it's a local farmer's market... food [is] produced 30 miles away instead of 3,000 miles away," said Steve Burke, executive director of Ithaca Hours, said.

Trade theorists might object that it is less efficient, or less productive, for diverse goods to be produced in many communities than it is for each community to specialise in producing one product for export, even factoring in transportation costs.

"Is it the real cost of transportation?" asked Susan Witt, founder of Berkshares. "Is the real cost and consequences of our dependence on fossil fuels to transport goods really factored into the cost? Is climate deterioration factored in? Is engaging in conflicts for limited supplies of fossil fuels?"

"Nor all the costs of unemployment in our local communities? Nor the hollowness of our life experiences? Nor the human costs in [other countries]... for maybe manufacturing practices that we would not ourselves allow in this country?" she wondered.

A second way in which community currencies support environmental sustainability is that they can lead to reduced consumption, Witt argues. Witt believes that people purchase more and more "stuff", not because they need it, but to fill a void that community currency can satisfy.

"You know the full story about the goods you purchase. You know how they were produced. You know the carpenter who made the table. You know who her children are. You realise buying the table is supporting that family," Witt said.

The products bought with local currency "link you to your neighbourhood, your place, the people of your place. They're not just stuff... they enrich your life the way that stuff would not. So you need less."

"One hand-knit wool sweater, coming from wool from sheep that graze on the hillside on the way to work, that satisfies you in a way four sweaters from unknown sources fails to do. You care for it in a different way," Witt said.

A third way in which community currency can lead to sustainable economy is communities can print the currency they need to issue interest-free, or non-profit loans. Allowing credit to be issued interest-free eliminates the need to service growing debts. High-interest debt owed by individuals, businesses, and governments to private banks is one of the main factors pushing economies to constantly grow at an exponential rate. As these entities struggle to service the interest on their debts with a total money supply that was mostly created through issuance of credit, more and more new debt must be created in order for the system to be stable.

Thus, because high-interest debt pushes the economy to constantly grow, it also pushes industrialisation into new markets, new products, and new technologies, which often lead to deforestation, air pollution, and the like.

By communities printing and issuing their own currency, in part through productive non-profit loans, the economy can function without the constant growth that is imperiling the environment.

There are at least two different models for how to organise and operate a local currency that local communities are using. One is used by Berkshares; the other was pioneered by the Ithaca Hour.

Founded in 1991, the Ithaca Hour is the oldest local currency to exist in the U.S. since local currencies disappeared in the 1900s. Numerous local currencies have since based their model on the Ithaca Hour.

Businesses become members in Ithaca Hours by purchasing a listing in the Ithaca Hours directory, and they receive two "hours" every year as part of their membership fee. Employees at these businesses then can accept hours instead of dollars for some of their wages. People can accept hours instead of dollars for services, like mowing a lawn, that they provide.

This, in addition to low-cost loans, is the primary way Ithaca Hours enter Ithaca's economy.

"There's a pretty fundamental difference between our model and the Berkshares model," Burke said. "They sell them. With ours, you can't buy them; you can only earn them."

They are called hours "to make a statement", Burke said. The founders "wanted to emphasise the relationship between time and money".

*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS and IFEJ - International Federation of Environmental Journalists -­ for Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org)

Everyone Should See 'Torturing Democracy'

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See 'Torturing Democracy' here:

http://torturingdemocracy.org/

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Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
May 30, 2009 - CommonDreams.org

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In all the recent debate over torture, many of our Beltway pundits and politicians have twisted themselves into verbal contortions to avoid using the word at all.

During his speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute last week -- immediately on the heels of President Obama's address at the National Archives -- former Vice President Dick Cheney used the euphemism "enhanced interrogation" a full dozen times.

Smothering the reality of torture in euphemism of course has a political value, enabling its defenders to diminish the horror and possible illegality. It also gives partisans the opening they need to divert our attention by turning the future of the prison at Guantanamo Bay into a "wedge issue," as noted on the front page of Sunday's New York Times.

According to the Times, "Armed with polling data that show a narrow majority of support for keeping the prison open and deep fear about the detainees, Republicans in Congress started laying plans even before the inauguration to make the debate over Guantanamo Bay a question of local community safety instead of one about national character and principles."

No political party would dare make torture a cornerstone of its rejuvenation if people really understood what it is. And lest we
forget, we're not just talking about waterboarding, itself a trivializing euphemism for drowning.

If we want to know what torture is, and what it does to human beings, we have to look at it squarely, without flinching. That's just what a powerful and important film, seen by far too few Americans, does. Torturing Democracy was written and produced by one of America's outstanding documentary reporters, Sherry Jones. (Excerpts from the film are being shown on the current edition of "Bill Moyers Journal" on PBS -- check local listings, or go to the program's website at PBS.org/Moyers, where you can be linked to the entire, 90-minute documentary.)

A longtime colleague, Sherry Jones and the film were honored this week with the prestigious RFK Journalism Award from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. Torturing Democracy was cited for its "meticulous reporting," and described as "the definitive broadcast account of a deeply troubling chapter in recent American history."

Unfortunately, as events demonstrate, the story is not yet history; the early chapters aren't even closed. Torture still is being defended as a matter of national security, although by law it is a war crime, with those who authorized and executed it liable for prosecution as war criminals. The war on terror sparked impatience with the rule of law -- and fostered the belief within our government that the commander-in-chief had the right to ignore it.

Torturing Democracy begins at 9/11 and recounts how the Bush White House and the Pentagon decided to make coercive detention and abusive interrogation the official U.S. policy on the war on terror. In sometimes graphic detail, the documentary describes the experiences of several of the men held in custody, including Shafiq Rasul, Moazzam Begg and Bisher al-Rawi, all of whom eventually were released. Charges never were filed against them and no reason was ever given for their
years in custody.

The documentary traces how tactics meant to train American troops to survive enemy interrogations -- the famous SERE program ("Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape") -- became the basis for many of the methods employed by the CIA and by interrogators at Guantanamo and in Iraq, including waterboarding (which inflicts on its victims the terror of imminent death), sleep and sensory deprivation, shackling, caging, painful stress positions and sexual humiliation.

"We have re-created our enemy's methodologies in Guantanamo," Malcolm Nance, former head of the Navy's SERE training program, says in Torturing Democracy. "It will hurt us for decades to come. Decades. Our people will all be subjected to these tactics, because we have authorized them for the world now. How it got to Guantanamo is a crime and somebody needs to figure out who did it, how they did it, who authorized them to do it... Because our servicemen will suffer for years."

In addition to its depiction of brutality, Torturing Democracy also credits the brave few who stood up to those in power and said, "No." In Washington, there were officials of conviction horrified by unfolding events, including Alberto Mora, the Navy's top civilian lawyer, Major General Thomas Romig, who served as Judge Advocate General of the US Army from 2001 to 2005 and Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Couch, a former senior prosecutor with the Office of Military Commissions.

Much has happened since the film's initial telecast on some public television stations last fall. Once classified memos from the Bush administration have been released that reveal more details of the harsh techniques used against detainees whose guilt or innocence is still to be decided.

President Obama has announced he will close Guantanamo by next January, with the specifics to come later in the summer. That was enough to set off hysteria among Democrats and Republicans alike who don't want the remaining 240 detainees on American soil -- even in a super maximum security prison, the kind already holding hundreds of terrorist suspects. The president also triggered criticism from constitutional and civil liberties lawyers when he suggested that some detainees may be held indefinitely, without due process.

But in an interview with Radio Free Europe this week, General David Petraeus, the man in charge of the military's Central Command, praised the Guantanamo closing, saying it "sends an important message to the world" and will help advance America's strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In another revealing and disturbing development, the former chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson, has suggested what is possibly as scandalous a deception as the false case Bush and Cheney made for invading Iraq. Colonel Wilkerson writes that in their zeal to prove a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein during the months leading up to the Iraq war, one suspect held in Egypt, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, was water tortured until he falsely told the interrogators what they wanted to hear.

That phony confession that Wilkerson says was wrung from a broken man who simply wanted the torture to stop was then used as evidence in Colin Powell's infamous address to the United Nations shortly before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Colin Powell says the CIA vetted everything in his speech and that Wilkerson's allegation is only speculation. We'll never know the full story -- al-Libi died three weeks ago in a Libyan prison. A suicide.

Or so they say.

No wonder so many Americans clamor for a truth commission that will get the facts and put them on the record, just as Torturing Democracy has done. Then we can judge for ourselves.

As the editors of the magazine The Christian Century wrote this week, "Convening a truth commission on torture would be embarrassing to the U.S. in the short term, but in the long run it would demonstrate the strength of American democracy and confirm the nation's adherence to the rule of law... Understandably, [the President] wants to turn the page on torture. But Americans should not turn the page until they know what is written on it."

http://torturingdemocracy.org/

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Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS.

The Main Result of the "War on Terror": The Destabilization of Pakistan

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Gary Leupp
May 30, 2009 - Smirking Chimp

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So far the principle result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan following the events of 9-11 has been the destabilization of Pakistan. That breakdown is peaking with the events in what AP calls the "Swat town" of Mingora---actually a city of 375,000 from which all but 20,000 have fled as government forces moved in, strafing it with gunships. We're talking urban guerrilla warfare, house-to-house fighting, not on the Afghan border but 50 miles away in the Swat Valley. We're talking about Pakistani troops fighting to reclaim the nearby Malam Jabba ski resort from the Tehreek-e-Taliban, who since last year have been using it as a training center and logistics base. We're talking about two million people fleeing the fighting in the valley and 160,000 in government refugee camps.

And of course, "collateral damage": As was reported in The News in Pakistan May 19:

Several persons, including women and children, were killed and a number of others sustained injuries when families fleeing the military operation in Swat's Matta town were shelled while crossing a mountainous path to reach Karo Darra in Dir Upper on Monday, eyewitnesses and official sources said. Eyewitnesses, who escaped the attack or were able to reach Wari town of Dir Upper in injured condition, said they were targeted by gunship helicopters. However, police officials said they might have been hit by a stray shell. Local people said they saw some 12 to 14 bodies on a mountain on the Swat side but could not go near to retrieve them or help the injured for fear of another aerial attack.

What a nightmare scenario for Pakistan.

We're talking about the Pakistani Army sometimes fighting over the last year to retake towns from Taliban forces in the Buner region of the North-West Frontier Province that are closer to the capital of Islamabad than the Afghan border. And while the Talibs apparently lack popular support, even among the Pashtuns (who are 15 % of the Pakistani population---26 million and 42% of the Afghan population---14 million) they have been able to inflict embarrassing defeats on the army.

Tehreek-i-Taliban leader Baitullah Mahsud, head of the militant forces in South Waziristan, established his credentials when his forces captured 300 Pakistani soldiers and traded them for about 30 imprisoned militants in the fall of 2007. Time and again the several (sometimes rival) "Taliban" forces, which did not exist before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan created them, have forced the government to negotiate terms. Most recently in February Islamabad agreed to the implementation of the Sharia in the Swat Valley in exchange for peace. The Taliban broke the agreement in April, or so the story goes, and the army claims it's killed 1,100 militants since.

But curiously as of Sunday it claimed to have killed only 10 Taliban, while boasting of seizing (according to AP) "a spot nicknamed 'bloody intersection' because militants routinely dumped the mutilated bodies of their victims there." On Monday I read of another four dead militants but the Taliban announced through a spokesman that they would maintain "aides" in place in the city, cease fire, and advise civilians to return. It appears most have retreated to other towns, including Buner and Daggar where fighting goes on now. This they can do under cover of the masses of refugees of course.

Now think of what has happened here. Whether or not this was Osama bin Laden's conscious plan, the local, ethnically-based, ideological movement most receptive to his own (i.e., the Taliban, or more precisely, multiple talibans on the Pakistan side of the border) has flourished since the U.S. attack upon Afghanistan in response to the 9-11 attacks. The imperialist response to 9-11 inflamed Pashtunistan. The toppling of the Taliban itself aroused indignation among many Pakistani as well as Afghan Pashtuns. Some militants fleeing east met with the traditional Pasthtunwali welcome, as they would under less stressful circumstances, and beyond that political sympathy.

The drone missile attacks, the civilian deaths, the contemptuous official denials, the repeated insults to national sovereignty, the connivance of the regime in power, have angered many, perhaps most, Pakistanis. While the Taliban has undergone a quiet resurgence in southern Afghanistan, leading U.S. generals to conclude that a military solution to the war is impossible, bands of religious "students" gathering around tribal leaders and warlords in Pakistan forming the umbrella "Movement of the Taliban" or Tehreek-e-Taliban under Mahsud have been able to generate this kind of chaos.

The Army had been deployed before against Indian forces. But the disproportionately Pashtun force had never confronted or been trained to confront fanatical Pashtun jihadis---particularly when the issue was the implementation of the Sharia. Not surprisingly it performed badly and Islamabad wound up cutting a deal in February to implement Islamic law in the Swat Valley. U.S. Defense Secretary Gates can criticize that judgment in stating, "We want to support [the Pakistanis]. We want to help them in any way we can. But it is important that they recognize the real threats to their country." And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can tell Congress, "I think the Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists [by making a peace deal in Swat]. Changing paradigms and mindsets is not easy, but I do believe there is an increasing awareness of not just the Pakistani government but the Pakistani people that this insurgency coming
closer and closer to major cities does pose such a threat."

It's easy to lecture about such things, to judge the actions of another government facing a crisis. But isn't it obvious that what Clinton has since at least April been calling Pakistan's "existential threat" wouldn't be closing in on the cities of that country had the U.S. not responded to 9-11 with the knee-jerk bombing of Afghanistan and the toppling of the Taliban? President Pervez Musharraf has recalled that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told him soon after 9-11 to "prepare to go back to the Stone Age" if he didn't cooperate with the U.S. in the war on terrorism. The existential threat to Pakistan was the Bush administration!

The Bush administration pressured Musharraf to deploy the Pakistan Army in border provinces where it had never been deployed and where its very presence was perceived as a provocation. The result was the September 2005 "peace agreement" in which the government agreed to halt military operations along the border and dismantle checkpoints in return for tribal leaders' commitment to end support for militancy and prevent cross-border incursions into Afghanistan. It was a face-saving defeat for the regime that drew U.S. criticism, as have all subsequent deals with the militants, which have in any case broken down, like the February deal in Swat.

The 2005 agreement followed the notorious Lal Masjid episode in Islamabad when the security forces stormed an important seminary and hotbed of Islamist activism. The khatib (prayer-leader) had been dismissed for issuing a fatwa stating no Pakistani Army officer could be given an Islamic burial if died fighting the Taliban, and then the mosque had risen up in general rebellion, sparking solidarity attacks on government forces by militants in North Waziristan and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The government was forced to back down.

That's been the pattern ever sense. Get tough on the "insurgents," with U.S. prodding, and funding, and threats of funding reduction and direct intervention. Then negotiate with tribal and religious leaders, recognizing locals' mistrust of outsiders, the Pakistani state, and its international backers which the mullahs may identify as U.S. imperialism and Zionism. And watch both carrot and stick policies fail as Pakistan's own homegrown Taliban insurgency swells alongside the recrudescent original next door.

Now, while the Pakistani Army is still struggling to take control of Mingora and the Taliban is regrouping, the insurgents have pulled off a brazen attack on the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) office compound in Lahore, in eastern Pakistan, on the border with India, killing about 30 and injuring 250. The irony here of course is that the Taliban was nurtured by the ISI in the 1990s and the attackers may well have known the location of ISI offices for that very reason.

Such terror has Bush's war on terror visited on Pakistan, with no end in sight. And Obama's war in "Af-Pak," reliant on a troop surge, more Predator drone attacks, and maybe some "divide and conquer" tactics, hold out little promise for relief. U.S. officials screw up their faces as if genuinely puzzled about while the Pakistanis aren't doing more---as if puzzled about why they don't understand that their existence is at stake. The fact is that they are the ones on the outside looking in, who do not understand that the interests of U.S. imperialism do not cause religious and national and ethnic sensibilities to disappear or make it possible for local leaders, even those on the imperialist payroll, to snap their fingers, crush local resistance and produce social peace. The interests of U.S. imperialism in this case, in the form of regime change in Afghanistan, and the way it was done, have antagonized much of the Pakistani population.

This is Washington's unwanted gift to Islamabad, for which Islamabad keeps getting paid and keeps paying.

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Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion, at Tufts University and author of numerous works on Japanese history.

Pyongyang shakes up pacifist Japan

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Kosuke Takahashi
May 30, 2009 - Asia Times

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TOKYO - An increasingly belligerent North Korea is reawaking hawkish sentiments in Japan, still one of the world's most powerful nations and equipped with ultra-modern weaponry.

Prompted by Pyongyang's recent provocations - including an underground nuclear test, short-range missile launches and a long-range missile test - normally pacifist Japan is considering acquiring the capability to make pre-emptive strikes to destroy enemy bases, such as those in North Korea.

More than a few government officials and lawmakers have reservations about making the leap, as it would be a huge departure from Japan's exclusively defense-oriented, post-World War II policy. The strong pacifism enshrined in the United Stated-imposed "peace constitution" would be a thing of the past.

The Japanese government, led by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), is applying the finishing touches to plans that would enable the Japanese military to to carry out pre-emptive strikes against enemy states as part of the new National Defense Program Guidelines for fiscal years 2010 to 2014, to be compiled by the end of this year.

The 12-page summary of proposals made by a subcommittee of the LDP's defense policy-making panel on May 26 argue that Japan could use sea-launched cruise missiles in pre-emptive strikes against a hostile nation's missile sites, having first detected launch preparations in that enemy state with surveillance satellites. The proposals are expected to be officially finalized on June 3.

Japan would not be forced to "just sit and wait for its own death", read the document obtained by Asia Times Online. Such measures would have to remain "within the scope of Japan's defense-only policy," it continued, stressing that the pre-emptive strikes could be used to prevent an imminent attack.

In response to a lawmaker's question as to whether Japan has right to launch pre-emptive strikes against missile sites after detecting launch preparations in an enemy state with a spy satellite, Prime Minister Taro Aso said: "As long as it is evident that there are no other measures, striking the enemy's missile bases is guaranteed under the Constitution. It falls within the scope of self-defense. It's different from pre-emptive attacks."

Aso pointed out that the right of self-defense is usually defined as the right to exercise certain forces for self-defense against imminent or real unlawful armed attacks. He stressed that the Japanese government has maintained this view as a basic standpoint.

Aso's remarks suggest that Japan's more assertive stance against North Korea would not require changes to Japan's pacifist constitution. He added, "... the Self-Defense Force [SDF] is unequipped to strike enemy bases" given its current capabilities.

"The nation's right of self-defense is a natural right, and the individual right of self-defense is certainly guaranteed under the Constitution," Japanese military analyst Toshiyuki Shikata told Asia Times Online. "But Japan requires some adjustment with the United States, or Japan's military ally."

Meanwhile, North Korea's Rodong Daily News on Friday carried a commentary branding Aso's and other leaders' recent remarks as revealing the bellicose design of Japan as it seeks to ignite a war of aggression with North Korea. Pyongyang vowed to "wipe out all Japanese militaristic invaders by launching merciless retaliatory attacks" on ground, sea and air assaults, the Rodong Daily News editorial boasted.

The LDP subcommittee's proposals also include changing the government's current interpretation of the Constitution which denies Japan the right to collective defense, preventing the SDF from protecting US warships in joint operations or from intercepting long-range ballistic missiles aimed at US targets.

The proposals also include developing an early warning satellite system to detect the launch of ballistic missiles, for which Japan currently relies on the US. Another proposal is to appoint an SDF officer to the post of secretary to the prime minister. This position has been avoided in the post-World War II period in order to prevent a the return of an unchecked military establishment.

Among other proposals is a bid to review Japan's so-called three principles of banning the export of weapons. Currently, the only exception is for Japanese companies to provide weapons to the US created through joint development projects. This applies solely to the ballistic missile defense (BMD) initiative. The revision of the three principles would allow Japan to export weapons to other nations.

The proposals also suggest establishing a basic law on national security and initiating a Japanese version of the US's National Security Council.

Satoru Miyamoto, research fellow in North Korean military affairs at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, told Asia Times Online on Friday, that the recent argument by the LDP and Aso was "nothing more than words on paper".

"Even if Japan succeeds in attacking enemy bases, it cannot defend itself from counterattacks," Miyamoto said. "Japan does not have such military capabilities. It's quite easy to start a war, but it's very difficult to end it."

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Kosuke Takahashi, a former staff writer at the Asahi Shimbun, is a freelance correspondent based in Tokyo.

Educating Ourselves to Oblivion

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May 28, 2009 - TomDispatch

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Can there be any doubt that education matters not just in how we view the world, but in what kind of world we create -- or simply accept? And can there be any doubt that, despite a massive educational infrastructure (admittedly now fraying badly), Americans remain remarkably poorly informed about the world? Last year, Rick Shenkman, the editor of the History News Network website, published a book (now out in paperback), Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter, excerpted at this site. Stupid enough (or ill-informed) was the answer.

Since Barack Obama's election, many readers wrote Shenkman asking him if he still believes that "the voters are uninformed. Didn't Obama's election mean they were pretty smart?" In a recent post, he answered regretfully in the negative and here's just a little of what he had to say:

"The highlights of the 2008 election included controversies over Obama's bowling score, his middle name Hussein, and Hillary's crying. These were not exactly issues of much weight at a time when the financial collapse of the country was happening before our eyes. And yet they drew extended media commentary… The media was to blame for the deplorable low quality of much of the campaign. But I am firmly convinced that you get the campaign you deserve…

"Take the question of Obama's religion. Millions of voters paid so little attention to the news that they were easily bamboozled into believing that Barack Hussein Obama was a Muslim. On the eve of the election, confusion reigned. Polls indicated that 7 percent of the voters in the key battleground states of Florida and Ohio and 23 percent in Texas believed that Obama was a Muslim. In addition, and worse, more than 40 percent in Florida and Ohio reported that they did not know what his religion was. The arithmetic is horrifying: 7 percent + 40 percent = a near majority guilty of gross ignorance.

"Americans did not come by their confusion by accident. A deliberate campaign was launched by Republicans to convince people that Obama's faith was in question. But what are we to make of voters who could be so easily bamboozled..."

It's sobering to consider just how many Americans can't sort out propaganda (or simply fiction) from fact in the media madness that passes for our "information age." It's no less sobering to consider a corollary possibility: that we get the society we deserve; that, in fact, our youth in college today are being prepared, as TomDispatch regular William Astore (who has taught at both the Air Force Academy and the Pennsylvania College of Technology) suggests, to enter a world in desperate shape, but not to challenge it.

Erich "Mancow" Muller Waterboarded, Admits It's Torture

Levin: Memos don't show what Cheney says they do

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Levin says ex-VP Cheney's claims that harsh interrogations worked are wrong

Ed Hornick
May 29, 2009 - CNN

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Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says former Vice President Dick Cheney's claims -- that classified CIA memos show enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding worked -- are wrong.

Former VP Dick Cheney has been a vocal defender of Bush-era interrogation techniques.

Levin, speaking at the Foreign Policy Association's annual dinner in New York on Wednesday, said an investigation by his committee into detainee abuse charges over the use of the techniques -- now deemed torture by the Obama administration -- "gives the lie to Mr. Cheney's claims."

The Michigan Democrat told the crowd that the two CIA documents that Cheney wants released "say nothing about numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of abusive techniques."

"I hope that the documents are declassified, so that people can judge for themselves what is fact, and what is fiction," he added.

Justice Department documents released in April showed that Bush administration lawyers authorized the use of techniques such as sleep deprivation, slapping, stress positions and waterboarding, which produces the sensation of drowning.

President Obama formally banned the techniques by issuing an executive order requiring that the U.S. Army field manual be used as the guide for terror interrogations. Watch Obama discuss the torture debate »

"I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture," he told a joint session of Congress in February.

Cheney, who has become a vocal public defender of the Bush administration's controversial interrogation policies, had asked the Obama administration to declassify the documents so there can be a more "honest debate" on the Bush administration's decision to use them on suspected terrorists.

He argued that those techniques provided valuable intelligence that saved American lives, but critics say they amounted to the illegal torture of prisoners in U.S. custody

On May 14, the CIA rejected the former vice president's request.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano, in a written statement, said the two documents Cheney requested are the subject of two pending lawsuits seeking the release of documents related to the interrogation program, and cannot be declassified.

A former State Department official has told CNN that the main purpose of the Bush-era interrogations was finding a link between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, said that the interrogation program began in April and May of 2002, and Cheney's office kept close tabs on the questioning.

"Its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al Qaeda," Wilkerson wrote in The Washington Note, an online political journal.

Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, said his accusation is based on information from current and former officials. He said he has been "relentlessly digging" since 2004, when Powell asked him to look into the scandal surrounding the treatment of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

Speaking before the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, on May 21, Cheney said only detainees of the "highest intelligence value" were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques. He said only three detainees were waterboarded.

Bush administration lawyers have said the interrogation tactics did not violate U.S. laws against torture as long as interrogators had no intent to cause "severe pain."

With thousands of lives potentially in the balance, Cheney argued, it didn't make sense to let high-value detainees "answer questions in their own good time."

Obama, speaking on the same day as Cheney, said his administration is trying to clean up "a mess" left behind by the Bush administration. He defended his plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, his ban on torture, the release of Bush-era interrogation memos and his objection to the release of prisoner photos.

Levin backed up Obama's "mess" claims, and said the enhanced interrogations have hurt America's image.

"Cheney's world view, which so dominated the Bush years and dishonored our nation, gained a little traction last week -- enough to persuade me to address it head-on here tonight," Levin said. "I do so because if the abusive interrogation techniques that he champions, the face of which were the pictures of abuse at Abu Ghraib, if they are once more seen as representative of America, our security will be severely set back."

On Thursday night, former President George W. Bush, who has remained virtually mum on the torture debate, said his administration's enhanced interrogation program was legal and garnered valuable information that prevented terrorist attacks.

Bush told an audience in Benton Harbor, Michigan, that after the September 11 attacks, "I vowed to take whatever steps that were necessary to protect you."

In his speech, Bush did not specifically refer to Obama's decision to halt the use of harsh interrogation techniques; he also didn't mention Cheney by name.

Bush described how he proceeded after the capture of terrorism suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in March 2003.

"The first thing you do is ask, 'What's legal?' " Bush said. " 'What do the lawyers say is possible?' I made the decision, within the law, to get information, so I can say to myself, 'I've done what it takes to do my duty to protect the American people.' I can tell you that the information we got saved lives."

The latest charge by Levin comes as another top Democrat -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- continues to defend claims that the CIA never briefed Congress on the specific interrogation methods, such as waterboarding, that were being used.

Pelosi told reporters in May that she was briefed by the CIA on such techniques once -- in September 2002, when she was the ranking Democrat on the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee -- and that she was told at the time that techniques such as waterboarding were not being used. She said she learned that waterboarding had been used after other lawmakers were briefed in 2003.

CIA spokesman George Little, however, said the agency's records indicate Pelosi was briefed on the techniques.

The claim by Pelosi, D-California, created a firestorm on Capitol Hill, with Republicans -- who have been mostly supportive of the Bush administration's policy -- blasting Pelosi and demanding she back up the allegation.

Pelosi has urged the CIA to release information on the meetings, though the CIA admits that no detailed memos, only outlines, exist.

Intervention

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Stephen Pizzo
May 29, 2009 - News For Real

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What's the right thing to do when a long-time friend becomes more trouble than you can tolerate?

What do you do when that friend returns your friendship only so long as you support everything he does, even the things you've repeatedly asked him not to do?

And, what's the right thing to do with a friend, like the one described, whose behavior and your support of it, poisons your relations with scores of other friends and potential friends?

This is the very question President Barack Obama is struggling with this month. And, if he gets it right, he will be the first post-war president ever to do so.

That friend, by the way, if you have not already guessed, is Israel.

Repeatedly we, and almost every other country on earth, have asked, even pleaded, with Israel to stop building settlements on Palestinian land and to stop expanding those already built.

And just as repeatedly one Israeli government after another have thumbed their nose at those pleadings.

Now, don't get me wrong. I've always supported Israel and Israel's right to exist, and still do. What I have never supported though is Israel right to use 5000-year old biblical title reports to expand beyond its 1967 borders in order to lay claim to real estate that does not belong to them.

Yet this naked thievery continues apace. Yes, I said thievery – a strong word indeed, and one that is certain to outrage my Jewish and Israeli friends. But, just as Americans had to accept the hard truth that "enhance interrogation techniques" really meant toture, I can no longer pretend that what Isreal calls "settlements" are anything but thievery.

Believe me, I understand all the arguments Israelis use to justify the unjustifiable; the holocaust, never again, hostile neighbors, terrorism, etc. But the strategic situation has changed remarkably since Israel's formative years. Israel is a nuclear-armed nation with the strongest and most efficient military in the region – as it has demonstrated to its hostile neighbor's chagrin more than once.

Should Israel's survival ever be really threatened she could wipe that threat away – once and for all – with the push of a button. Even Israel's most ardent foes have no illusions about that. Should they ever genuinely threaten Israel's existence, there'd be a holocaust, and this time it would not be the Jews on the receiving end.

As the years have passed it's become harder and harder to accept Israel's stated justifications for it's expansionist policies as anything other than cynical obfuscations. By expanding West Bank settlements and creating new ones Israel has been, piece by piece, preemptively dismembering any would-be Palestinian state.

And, by expanding these settlements Israel is also hoping they can push into the next century a loudly ticking demographic time bomb. Palestinian birth rates far outstrip the much slower Jewish population growth. Even within Israel's original borders, Israeli Arab voters will, at some point down the road, outnumber Jewish voters. What then? Disenfranchise any citizen with Israel who is not Jewish? Deport all non Jews? Create an system of apartheid for only true democracy in the Middle East?

None of those solutions are realistic or acceptable in modern times. So, by expanding settlements and establishing new ones, Israel hopes Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe and elsewhere can at least for the a while, hold off the day when Israeli Arabs become Israel's new voting majority.

Look, here's the bottom line. In the weeks ahead President Obama needs to make it perfectly clear that America's friendship with Israel is about to be rebalanced. We will still support Israel, but no longer on long-standing,"Israel, right or wrong," status quo. Like America, Israel faces very real dangers from very real foes. And both nations will continue facing those dangers for the foreseeable future. But that fact is not a greenlight to break the law or commit human rights offenses under cover of national security. We just got done learning that hard lesson here in America and nows the time to communicate it to our friends in the Middle East, including Isreal.

Now it's time to lay down the law for the other hooligan in this never-ending pissing match. Israel needs to:

• Stop all settlement construction and expansion. Dead stop. Not another nail, not another brick.

• Except for the large settlements right on or within stones throw of the West Bank/Israel border, Israel must begin dismantling of all settlements deeper within West Bank territories. Sure that's going to mean uprooting tens of thousands of Jewish "settlers," but the wages of sin are rarely pleasant.

• As for those settlements straddling that border, they can stay in Israeli hands, but only if Israel provides Palestinians an acre for acre swap for those lands. These in-kind lands must be adjacent to Palestinian lands on the West Bank border or Gaza.

• Israel must begin serious negotiations with Palestinians on the final status of the historically blood soaked "holy city" of Jerusalem. That final status must include a genuine possibility of Arab control of a portion of the traditionally Arab sector of Jerusalem.

Now none of this will be either easy or painless for Israel. In fact it could spark an armed rebellion from Israel rabid right wingers who, all the holocaust rhetoric aside, simply hate Arabs, all Arabs. Israel's right wingers are that regions equivalent of our southern crackers during the civil rights years of the 1960s, or Afrikaners during apartheid in South Africa. They can't be changed, only controlled and contained and, when they act out, imprisoned. (The exact same goes for members of Hamas and Hezbollah. Ignorant, racist, crackers, one and all.)

To make matters even more complicated Israel's new leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, can best be described as Dick Cheney in yamaka. His power is derived through creating and maintaining fear – fear of Arabs, fear of terrorism. Now no one in their right mind would suggest that Israel is not Target One for every Middle Eastern terrorist, the USA being Target Two.

But neither the US or Israel face anything even close to an strategic threat from terrorism. Neither country is going to be defeated, occupied and taken over by al Qaida, et al. It just ain't gonna happen – ever. But like Dick Cheney, Netanyahu would have Israelis and the rest of the world believe that that's precisely the threat his nation faces. It worked for Cheney – if not for his nation. Because, when belligerency is peddled as the only alternative to death and destruction, belligerency becomes, not just policy, but policy married to patriotism. The last remaining element needed to create a full-blown disaster is an ambitious demagogue. (H. L. Mencken defined a demagogue as "one who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.")

Anyway, by now it should be clear to any sane person that, when it comes to Palestinians and Israelis there's never been a shortage of either demagogues or idiots to follow them. It's long past time for the rest of the world to draw red lines in the sand.

But this time it's gotta be TWO lines, not just one. There' has to be one clear line for Hamas and their ilk, and, for the first time, another clear line for Israel.

Because when a friend becomes self-destructive and more trouble than he's worth, there's really only two choices; desert your friend, or organize an intervention. Real friends intervene.

P.S. Okay, now you can email me and accuse me of being an anti-semite. (Which of course, I am not. I'm just fed up, right up to here, with both sides. I'm not anti-anything except anti-prick. So, an aside to both sides: Stop being such giant, swaggering, unrepentant pricks.)

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Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including "Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans," which was nominated for a Pulitzer.

If Iraq was a Mistake, Why are We Still There?

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Camillo Bica
May 29, 2009 - CommonDreams.org

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However one frames the debate, it is apparent to any fair minded and rational person that the invasion of Iraq, based as it was on misinformation at best, lies and deceptions at worst, was a mistake and should never have occurred. Certainly President Obama has made this claim on numerous occasions as well as many who had previously supported (and voted for) the war. After having acknowledged this fact, however, President Obama and others would have us forget the past as it serves, in their view, no practical purpose to rehash and moralize over things that cannot be undone. It will be the work of future historians, legal scholars, and philosophers, they argue, to untangle, interpret, and make judgments regarding the complex events and decisions that led to the invasion and characterize the occupation of Iraq. They warn that it is imperative at this crucial juncture that we deal with the matters at hand, that we act quickly and decisively in our national
interest to ensure that our Country remains safe, that our goals in Iraq and Afghanistan are achieved, and that our sacrifice in blood and treasure is not for naught.

What President Obama and others who advocate such a position fail to appreciate is that we live in a Nation that understands and accepts the importance of the Constitution and the rule of law, both moral and International. Accordingly, we determine our behavior, how we conduct ourselves as a Nation, not only by what is in our national interest but also by what is right, not only by what we CAN do, but also by what we OUGHT to do. This is what we stand for as a people, the values we hold sacred as a nation. Consequently, to focus exclusively on "practical considerations" – present conditions and problems – considered in isolation and apart from the causal chain of events that led to the situation as it exists today is morally and legally unacceptable and incoherent and counter to the principles and values we believe must guide and determine our future course of action not only in Iraq, but in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere in the world as
well.

By accepting that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a mistake we must accept all that such an admission entails. According to Just War Theory and International Law, the illegal and immoral use of violence and deadly force against a sovereign nation and its citizenry, constitutes aggression. Aggression is morally wrong and a war crime under International Law. Aggressors violate the rights of the aggressed to life, self-determination, and to live in a nation that enjoys political sovereignty and territorial integrity – sometimes referred to as the "rights of nations." Aggressors are Unjustifiable Combatants. The victims of aggression have the privilege to assert their rights – to act in self and national defense. As such, they are Justifiable Combatants. Consequently, our invasion and occupation of Iraq is aggression, members of our military are aggressors – Unjustifiable Combatants – and those that struggle against us, the
"insurgents," are Justifiable Combatants asserting their right of self and national defense.

This is the reality of our involvement in Iraq, a reality entailed and implied by a recognition that our invasion was a mistake and should never have occurred. The "fact" that we may have had good intentions does not alter the moral and legal value of our involvement. "Mistaken" aggression is no less aggression, no less a war crime. "Mistaken" aggressors are no less liable to be resisted – warred against in self and national defense.

Yet despite the realization that the invasion and occupation in Iraq is aggression and despite our economy bordering on collapse, President Obama, and many of our fellow citizens, argue that we cannot just stop the killing and destruction and walk away. One important reason, they offer, is national security. We must end the chaos created by our aggression and restore stability in Iraq to ensure that it does not become a training ground and sanctuary for terrorists who wish us harm. A second reason, interestingly enough, is a moral one. Paradoxically, we cannot stop the killing and destruction in Iraq because we recognize our moral culpability and responsibility for our aggression. That is, we cannot just abandon the Iraqi people to the endless civil war and sectarian violence that would "inevitably" occur in the power vacuum created by our departure. Consequently, we are morally obligated to continue the killing and the destruction in Iraq for at
least a few more years, in order to save the Iraqis from themselves and so they may enjoy the gift of freedom and democracy as recompense for our aggression. While the initial use of violence and deadly force against the Iraqi people may have been aggression, now, however, we are on solid moral and legal ground, as the continued killing and destruction entailed by our remaining, is humanitarian intervention. (General George Casey, the Army Chief of Staff, by the way, said recently that his strategic planning envisions combat troops remaining in Iraq and Afghanistan for as long as ten years).

This argument for the continued occupation of Iraq is clearly incoherent. It is as though our political leaders have accepted that the American public is incapable of rational thought and will accept any reason and justification for war as long as it is presented as furthering our national interest and feeds our national ego regarding our benevolence and moral superiority in the world.

It is time, therefore, long past time, that we show President Obama and the Congress that we will be duped no longer, that we are not a nation of sheep, and that we possess the ability to reason and think critically. It is time, therefore, long past time, that we accept the reality of what we have done and continue to do in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere in the world. We must stop the killing and the destruction now, not later. We must understand that bringing stability to the region is not about escalating violence, increasing the number of troops, or dropping more and larger bombs. Nor is it about searching out and destroying al Qaeda or the Taliban, or even capturing or killing bin Laden. Rather, it is about inclusiveness, diplomacy, understanding and dialogue. It is about doing the difficult work of reconciliation and of addressing the grievances that nourish radicalism. Most important, I believe, should we at long last recognize that the
days of US unilateralism and imperialism are over and realize the necessity of involving and soliciting the assistance of area powers such as Iran, Russia, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, China and India, not only will the world be a better and safer place, but perhaps for the first time in many years, we will begin to live according to the principles and values that we claim characterize our nation and of which we are so proud.

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Camillo "Mac" Bica, Ph.D., is a professor of philosophy at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is a former Marine Corps Officer, Vietnam Veteran, long-time activist for peace and justice, and the Coordinator of the Long Island Chapter of Veterans for Peace.

Countries Destroying Cluster Bomb Stockpiles

A soldier from a bomb disposal unit inspects a dismantled CB-250k cluster bomb at the military base in Marandua May 7, 2009. Colombia destroyed its last 41 cluster bombs in accordance with the Oslo Pact, the army said on Thursday. (REUTERS/John Vizcaino)

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Cluster bombs destroyed before treaty ratification * Ratification likely this year, hopes U.S. will sign

Jonathan Lynn
May 29, 2009 - Reuters AlterNet

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GENEVA - Several of the 96 states that have so far signed a treaty to ban cluster bombs have started to destroy their stockpiles of the deadly weapons even before the treaty is ratified, an advocacy group said on Friday.

Supporters of the ban on the munitions that have killed or maimed tens of thousands of people said they hope the United States, which remains outside the pact along with Russia, China and other powers, will shortly sign up.

"Only a few years ago the destruction of these stockpiled cluster munitions would have been unthinkable, but there has been a sea change of opinion against this weapon," said Steve Goose of non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch.

"In an incredibly short period of time, many governments have moved from staunchly defending the need for cluster munitions to completely rejecting them," he said in a statement on the launch of a report on efforts to ban the weapons.

Goose said Spain had already completed the destruction of its stockpile, and Colombia was close to doing so. Canada and half a dozen European countries were also in the process.

The treaty was signed in Oslo last December by over 90 countries after a campaign to outlaw cluster bombs.

The bombs contain scores or hundreds of submunitions or "bomblets" that blanket wide areas and which may explode years later, posing lethal danger to civilians especially children.

Campaigners for the ban were pleased 35 former users, producers, stockpilers and exporters of the weapons, including Britain and France, have signed up.

Signatories include 20 members of the NATO alliance as well as countries where the weapons have been used, such as Afghanistan, Laos and Lebanon.

The treaty will come into force six months after it has been ratified by 30 countries.

So far seven countries -- Austria, Ireland, Laos, Mexico, Norway, Sierra Leone and the Vatican -- have ratified the treaty and Goose said he was confident the remainder of the 30 countries would follow suit by the end of the year.

Campaigners hope President Barack Obama will sign up the United States, which has already banned exports of the weapons and currently plans to ban them from 2018.

Of countries staying away, Brazil, which cites the economic benefit of producing and selling the weapons, has been a big disappointment, said Goose. (For a FACTBOX on cluster munitions click on [ID:LT581906]) (For the full report go to: http://www.lm.icbl.org/cm/2009

"Break her and you die"

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Republicans are battling each other over how to attack President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, because of fears that Hispanic voters will revolt against her opponents at the polls.

FoxNews
May 29, 2009

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President Obama announces Sonia Sotomayor, right, as his pick for Supreme Court justice Tuesday in Washington. (Reuters Photo)

Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee to replace Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court, is posing a conundrum for Republicans who are struggling to unite against a woman they presume will be a reliable vote for liberal causes.

The GOP doesn't want to give Sotomayer a free ride, because they believe she is a judicial activist who will legislate from the bench.

But they're also concerned that if they launch a no-holds barred attack on Sotomayor, the first Hispanic to be nominated to the court, they risk alienating a growing minority they want on their side in the voting booth.

The White House warned earlier this week that detractors should be careful as they scrutinize Sotomayor's  record and background.

"It is probably important for anybody involved in this debate to be exceedingly careful with the way in which they've decided to describe different aspects of this impending confirmation," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

Elected Republican officials have heeded that warning so far, holding fire as they continue to dig into the judge's past.

But two unelected Republican stalwarts, Rush Limbaugh and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, haven't been as restrained. They have labeled Sotomayor a "reverse racist" for saying in a speech in 2001 that she hopes a "wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Their comments have drawn pushback from Republican elected officials and other commentators.

"I think it's terrible. This is not the kind of tone that any of us want to set when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advice and consent," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told National Public Radio on  Thursday.

"Neither one of these men are elected Republican officials," Cornyn said. "I just don't think it's appropriate and I certainly don't endorse it. I think it's wrong."

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told CNN that he disagrees with Gingrich.

"Frankly, I think it is a little premature and early, because she hasn't had a chance to explain some of these comments that she has made," Hatch said.

"I think we have to be fair. I think we have to do what is normally done, and that is scrutinize the record, look at the opinions, the unwritten opinions, the articles, the speeches, the various comments that have been made and so forth, and do it fairly."

In her Wall Street Journal column on Friday, conservative commentator Peggy Noonan panned Gingrich for twittering that Sotomayor should withdraw because a white judicial nominee would have to if he made a similar statement on race.

"Does anyone believe that?" Noonan wrote. "[Gingrich] should rest his dancing thumbs, stop trying to position himself as the choice and voice of the base in 2012, and think."

She urged Republicans to act like grownups as they challenge Sotomayor's nomination, which she called a "brilliant political pick" because the GOP has struggled to attract and retain Hispanics and women, and because Sotomayor's rags-to-riches story is so moving.

"Politically she's like a beautiful doll containing a canister of poison gas: Break her and you die," Noonan wrote.

Noonan questioned the wisdom of critics who want to use an attack on Sotomayor as a way to excite the base.

"Excite the base? How about excite a moderate, or interest an independent?" she wrote. "How about gain the attention of people who aren't already on your side?"

Obama Wants $736 Million Colonial Fortress in Pakistan

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Critics say the White House wants to use the new "embassy" for "pushing the American agenda in Central Asia."

Jeremy Scahill - Rebel Reports

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Ah, good thing the US quest for violent global domination was brought to a screeching halt with the November presidential election. Without Obama's election, we'd still have an occupation of Iraq, mercenaries on the US payroll, torture of prisoners, an unending and worsening war that kills civilians in Afghanistan, regular airstrikes in Pakistan, killing civilians and an embassy the size of Vatican city in Baghdad, which was built in part on slave labor. Not to mention those crazy "Bush/Cheney" neocons running around trying to become the "CEOs" of foreign nations. Wow, glad that's all over. Whew! And, it's a really good thing Bush is no longer in power or else the US would come up with some crazy idea like building a colonial fortress in Pakistan to defend "US interests" in the region.

From McClatchy:

The White House has asked Congress for — and seems likely to receive — $736 million to build a new U.S. embassy in Islamabad, along with permanent housing for U.S. government civilians and new office space in the Pakistani capital.

The scale of the projects rivals the giant U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which was completed last year after construction delays at a cost of $740 million.

Other major projects are planned for Kabul, Afghanistan; and for the Pakistani cities of Lahore and Peshawar. In Peshawar, the U.S. government is negotiating the purchase of a five-star hotel that would house a new U.S. consulate.

In Pakistan, however, large parts of the population are hostile to the U.S. presence in the region — despite receiving billions of dollars in aid from Washington since 2001 — and anti-American groups and politicians are likely to seize on the expanded diplomatic presence in Islamabad as evidence of American "imperial designs."

"This is a replay of Baghdad," said Khurshid Ahmad, a member of Pakistan's upper house of parliament for Jamaat-e-Islami, one of the country's two main religious political parties. "This (Islamabad embassy) is more (space) than they should need. It's for the micro and macro management of Pakistan, and using Pakistan for pushing the American agenda in Central Asia."

White House Press Secretary Attacks ... British Media

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Jeremy Scahill
May 28, 2009 - Rebel Reports

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Hey Gibbs: Instead of attacking the 'British media' why don't you go after Gen. Taguba, who lost his job for confronting Bush-era torture?

Wow. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs is really embodying the idea that when the message is devastating, you attack the messenger. Except in this case, Gibbs is not even attacking the messenger, but rather the newspaper that quoted the messenger.

In a major story today, London's Daily Telegraph quoted Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba describing photos (that the Obama administration is fighting to keep secret), which allegedly depict U.S. personnel raping prisoners, other sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube. "These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency," Taguba said. Put that statement against this one from the president: In defending his decision to fight the ACLU in its efforts to have the photos publicly released, Obama said on May 13, "I want to emphasize that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational."

At the White House press briefing today, Gibbs lashed out -- not at Gen. Taguba, who made the allegation on the record, and not even specifically at the paper that quoted Taguba. Instead, Gibbs went after the entire British media, saying "I think if you do an even moderate Google search (heh) you're not gonna find many of these newspapers and 'truth' within say 25 words of each other:"

"I want to speak generally about some of reports I've witnessed over the past few years in the British media and in some ways I'm surprised it filtered down," Gibbs said. "Let's just say that if I wanted to look up, if I wanted to read a writeup today of how Manchester United fared last night in the Champions League Cup, I might open up a British newspaper… If I was looking for something that bordered on truthful news, I'm not sure that would be the first stack of clips I picked up."

No, instead perhaps Gibbs would pick up one of those stellar U.S. papers with spotless track records on "the truth." He could start with The New York Times, which was basically a conveyor belt for the lies of the Bush administration during the lead up to the Iraq war. Or he could turn to any number of U.S. lie factories masquerading as media outlets.

This is pathetic. Really. Hey, Gibbs, here's a suggestion: go after Gen. Taguba, a 34 year, decorated military veteran whose career was brought to an end for battling Rumsfeld and the torture machine at the Pentagon. Go after the General who last year (when Bush was still in power) called for prosecutions of the torturers. "There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to account," Taguba wrote in June 2008. Go after him, Gibbs. Call him a liar. Say he is a dirty propagandist that wants to hurt U.S. troops. Oh, right, you can't. Taguba actually agrees with Obama on this issue, as he told the lying, evil British media:

"I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them."

I'll wait to see if the Telegraph produces a tape of the interview (they should) or for Gen. Taguba to say he was misquoted before I would even mildly question the veracity of this story. Everything about it rings true to everything Sy Hersh has written, every torture document and photo we have seen thus far and every testimonial we have heard from those former military/intelligence and other government officials with the guts to speak out. As Raw Story pointed out today, this allegation of rape of prisoners is not new:

"The American public needs to understand, we're talking about rape and murder here," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), telling reporters in 2004 why the Abu Ghraib photos should not be released as former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld faced calls for his resignation. "We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience. We're talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges."

As for the Pentagon's statement today (reiterated by Gibbs as the official U.S. line on this story) that the Telegraph "demonstrated an inability to get the facts right," here is what I say: the Pentagon, whose personnel allegedly commited the torture described by Gen. Taguba, is not an independent observer here to say the least. In fact, the Pentagon has "demonstrated an inability to get the facts right."

Iraq Faces the Mother of all Corruption Scandals

People clamour for food in Baghdad - around 25 per cent of Iraqis live below the poverty line (Photo: the Independent)

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Allegations of kickbacks rock key government department as 1,000 officials face arrest and Trade Minister is forced to resign

Patrick Cockburn
May 29, 2009 - Independent/UK

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BAGHDAD - Iraq plans to arrest 1,000 officials for corruption after a scandal which has forced the resignation of the Trade Minister and is threatening the food supply of millions of Iraqis.

Corruption at the Trade Ministry is an important issue in Iraq because the ministry is in charge of the food rationing system on which 60 per cent of Iraqis depend. Officials at the ministry, which spends billions of dollars buying rice, sugar, flour and other items, are notorious among Iraqis for importing food that is unfit for human consumption, for which they charge the state the full international price.

The scandal first erupted in April when police, entering the Trade Ministry in Baghdad to arrest 10 senior officials accused of corruption and embezzlement, were greeted with gunfire by the ministry's own guards. The shoot-out allowed several officials, including two brothers of the Trade Minister, Abdul Falah al-Sudany, time to escape out the back gate.

The political crisis over corruption has escalated after a video surfaced showing Trade Ministry officials at a party, apparently drinking alcohol, cavorting with prostitutes, and deriding the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki.

The voice of the man shooting the video, widely viewed and sent from phone to phone in Baghdad, is heard shouting to the dancing girls: "You before Maliki". Guests at the party who were captured on the video are said to include one of Mr Sudany's brothers and the ministry's spokesman.

"We have the video of Trade Ministry officials hosting a party that is unethical and out of control," said Sabah al-Saadi, the chairman of the Commission for Public Integrity. "This party represents the impact of nepotism on the government and wasting of funds by senior officials' family members."

Mr Sudany, who has not been charged and denies all wrongdoing, resigned on Sunday soon after his brother and aide Sabah Mohammed, who had earlier escaped from the police, was arrested with his bodyguards when his car was stopped at Samawa, 140 miles south of Baghdad. Security and police officials said cash, gold and identity cards were found in the car.

Iraq is deemed the third most corrupt country in the world after Burma and Somalia, out of 180 countries, according to the corruption index compiled by Transparency International.

Although it is an important oil producer, many Iraqis are on the edge of starvation; 20-25 per cent of Iraq's 27 million people live below the poverty line on less than $66 (£41) a month.

Amid claims that Mr Sudany's relatives had made millions out of kickbacks from sugar purchases, Mr Maliki visited the leaderless Trade Ministry this week saying that his office would take over its functions. A committee is to take charge of Iraq's large import programme for grain and foodstuffs. "We will not keep silent about corruption after this day and we will chase all the corrupt and bring them before the judiciary," Mr Maliki said.

The Integrity Commission says it issued 387 arrest warrants in April, including warrants for 51 officials who are department heads. In addition, it has 997 arrest warrants not yet issued and Mr Maliki has told the security forces to arrest all those named.

The committee in charge of food purchases will draw its members from the Prime Minister's office, the cabinet secretariat, the corruption watchdog and the audit department. "It will buy foodstuffs in a swift and proper manner and sign agreements with the world's big companies to buy essential foodstuffs without the use of intermediaries," Mr Maliki said.

Iraqis will be sceptical about the anti-corruption campaign until they see senior officials convicted and punished. It is not only the Trade Ministry which is corrupt but the entire government system. Officials have often purchased their jobs, which they see as a way of making money through bribery or payment for awarding jobs and contracts. The last anti-corruption boss in Iraq was forced to flee the country.

And supply of tainted goods is not confined to the Trade Ministry. Refugees living in Sadr City, the great Shia slum with a population of two million in east Baghdad, were expecting food and clothing from the Ministry of Displacement and Migration but when the shipment arrived, the refugees were enraged to discover that it consisted of scratchy thin grey woollen blankets smelling of mould which were useless in the torrid heat of the Iraqi summer. There were also an assortment of children's shoes and 25 boxes of canned tuna. Locals suspect that officials had pocketed most of the money intended to help them.

The breakdown of the rationing system, started in 1995 under Saddam Hussein, threatens millions of Iraqis with malnourishment. The rations consist of items sold for a small sum of money at retail outlets on production of a ration card. They include rice (3kg a person), sugar (2kg), flour (9kg), cooking oil (1.25kg), milk for adults (250 grams), tea (200g), beans, children's milk, soap, detergents and tomato paste.

A survey by the Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation found that 18 per cent of people had not received the full food ration for 13 months and 32 per cent had not received it for seven to 12 months. When rations do come, they are often of poor quality and Iraqis say that the tea supplied tastes disgusting.

Marijuana and Cocaine Should Be Legalized, Says Latin American Drugs Commission

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Duncan Campbell
May 28, 2009 - The Guardian/UK

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Marijuana and cocaine for personal use should be decriminalised because the "war on drugs" has been a disaster, according to some of Latin America's most powerful politicians and writers.

The current international policy on drugs encourages corruption and violence that is threatening democracy throughout the continent, according to the former president of Brazil, Fernando Enrique Cardoso, who is a co-president of the Latin American commission on drugs and democracy. As well as politicians, the commission includes the writers Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru, and Paulo Coelho of Brazil.

The election of Barack Obama has opened up the best opportunity for decades to address the failure of the "so-called drugs war", Cardoso told the Guardian today on a visit to London. He said he was hopeful that the international community would acknowledge that the time had come for a "paradigm shift" in the debate on drugs. "The war on drugs has failed in spite of enormous efforts in places like Colombia - the area of coca crops is not reducing," he said.

The current system of prohibition encouraged corruption among police officers, politicians and even judges. "It poisons the whole system, it undermines democracy," Cardoso said. "The war on drugs is based on repression ... How can people believe in democracy if the rule of law doesn't work?" Users should be offered treatment rather than jail, he said.

"The starting point has to be the United States," he said. "Now we have a new American administration, which is much more open-minded than before." He said he had held talks with the US state department in the later years of the Bush administration and found that, privately, many of the officials there shared his views.

Cardoso said that the changes would have to be co-ordinated. "We need an international convention, otherwise you will have different countries doing different things," he said. "But the climate is changing for the first time for many years. Even in the US, they recognise we are in deadlock now." Obama had already made it clear that the idea of a "war on drugs" was not workable. The need for change is urgent, said Cardoso, because of what is happening in Latin America. "There is a very grave situation in Mexico," he said. "More people are being killed there (through the drugs war) than in Iraq." He said that it was easier for former presidents who were no longer in office or running for election to speak out on such a controversial issue. He added that ending the war on drugs would be not be a signal that drugs were acceptable but a recognition that current policies had failed.

"You have to show that drugs are harmful, even light drugs, like marijuana - it is better not to use drugs - but tobacco is harmful also yet its use is being reduced by education," said Cardoso. He added that the vast quantities of money being used to enforce "repressive" policies on drugs could be put into treatment and education. Hundreds of thousands of people were being unnecessarily criminalised and sent to prison, "which are schools of crime."

The previous UN drugs policy that aimed to eliminate all drug use by this year was ill-conceived, he said. "You can never stop drugs use," he said, likening it to some of the failed policies in the past over HIV/Aids. "You can't have zero drugs any more than you can have a zero sex policy but you can have a safe sex policy." He said that Brazil's success in halting the HIV/Aids epidemic, which meant promoting the use of condoms in a Catholic country, was an example of how people's behaviour could be changed by education rather than repression.

Scientists identify new lethal virus in Africa

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Mike Stobbe
May 28, 2008 – Ap

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Scientists have identified a lethal new virus in Africa that causes bleeding like the dreaded Ebola virus. The so-called "Lujo" virus infected five people in Zambia and South Africa last fall. Four of them died, but a fifth survived, perhaps helped by a medicine recommended by the scientists.

It's not clear how the first person became infected, but the bug comes from a family of viruses found in rodents, said Dr. Ian Lipkin, a Columbia University epidemiologist involved in the discovery.

"This one is really, really aggressive" he said of the virus.

A paper on the virus by Lipkin and his collaborators was published online Thursday on in PLoS Pathogens.

The outbreak started in September, when a female travel agent who lives on the outskirts of Lusaka, Zambia, became ill with a fever-like illness that quickly grew much worse.

She was airlifted to Johannesburg, South Africa, where she died.

A paramedic in Lusaka who treated her also became sick, was transported to Johannesburg and died. The three others infected were health care workers in Johannesburg.

Investigators believe the virus spread from person to person through contact with infected body fluids.

"It's not a kind of virus like the flu that can spread widely," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which helped fund the research.

The name given to the virus — "Lujo" — stems from Lusaka and Johannesburg, the cities where it was first identified.

Investigators in Africa thought the illness might be Ebola, because some of the patients had bleeding in the gums and around needle injection sites, said Stuart Nichol, chief of the molecular biology lab in the CDC's Special Pathogens Branch. Other symptoms include include fever, shock, coma and organ failure.

Genetic extracts of blood and liver from the victims were tested at Columbia University in New York, and additional testing was done at CDC in Atlanta. Tests determined it belonged to the arenavirus family, and that it is distantly related to Lassa fever, another disease found in Africa.

The drug ribavirin, which is given to Lassa victims, was given to the fifth Lujo virus patient — a Johannesburg nurse. It's not clear if the medicine made a difference or if she just had a milder case of the disease, but she fully recovered, Nichol said.

The research is a startling example of how quickly scientists can now identify new viruses, Fauci said. Using genetic sequencing techniques, the virus was identified in a matter of a few days — a process that used to take weeks or longer.

Along with Fauci's institute, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and Google also helped fund the research.