BAUCHI, Nigeria (Reuters) – Islamic courts in Nigeria sentenced two women to death by stoning for having sex out of wedlock, but two men whom they said they slept with were acquitted for lack of evidence, authorities said on Tuesday.

Both sentences, which were passed within the last month in the northern state of Bauchi, have to be confirmed by the state governor before being carried out, and they are open to appeal.

Nobody has been lawfully stoned to death in Nigeria since 12 northern states introduced Islamic Sharia law in 2000, because all such sentences have been overturned on appeal.

Hajara Ibrahim, a 29-year-old woman, was sentenced on Oct. 5 by an Islamic Sharia court in the Tafawa Balewa area of the state, having confessed to having sex with 35-year-old Dauda Sani and becoming pregnant, the court said in a statement.

“The court has however handed the woman convict to her guardian to take care of her until she delivers the baby before the sentence will be executed by stoning her to death according to the provisions of the Sharia penal code,” the court said.

“There is no evidence to link him with the allegation and consequently the court acquitted him for lack of evidence.”

Full Article: Reuters

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – Violence in Haiti’s capital has claimed at least 46 lives, with hospital records showing Tuesday that 17 victims were killed this week. The United States accused supporters of an ousted president of trying to destabilize the interim government.

Port-au-Prince has been beset by gunbattles and beheadings since a Sept. 30 demonstration marking the 1991 coup that first overthrew President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In February, the former priest fled the country again after a three-week revolt led by a street gang and former soldiers.

Tensions still are simmering with Aristide supporters demanding his return and an end to the “invasion” by foreign troops. U.S. Marines arrived in Haiti the day Aristide left and were replaced by U.N. peacekeepers sent in June to stabilize the country.

Full Article: Guardian UK

“Marines arrived the day Aristide left” is newspeak for COUP

Equipment and materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons have disappeared from Iraq, the UN’s nuclear watchdog warned yesterday.

Satellite imagery and investigations of nuclear sites in Iraq have caused alarm at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The agency found that in some cases entire buildings housing high-precision nuclear equipment had been dismantled; equipment that could be used to make a bomb, such as high-strength aluminium, had vanished from open storage areas, the agency said.

In a report to the UN security council yesterday, the IAEA’s director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, said the agency “continues to be concerned about the widespread and apparently systematic dismantlement that has taken place at sites previously relevant to Iraq’s nuclear programme and sites previously subject to ongoing monitoring and verification by the agency”.

Guardian UK

CBS/AP) Sen. Mark Dayton said Tuesday he is closing his Washington office because of a classified intelligence report that made him fear for the safety of his staff.

Dayton, D-Minn., said the office will be closed while Congress is in recess through Election Day, with his staff working out of his Minnesota office and in Senate space off Capitol Hill.

“I take this step out of extreme, but necessary, precaution to protect the lives and safety of my Senate staff and my Minnesota constituents, who might otherwise be visiting my Senate office in the next three weeks,” he said on a call with reporters.

“I feel compelled to do so because I will not be here in Washington to share what I consider to be an unacceptably greater risk to their safety,” he said.

Full Article: cbsnews.com

by Robert Fisk
I am writing a book about our need to escape from history–or rather about our inability to escape the effects of the decisions taken by our fathers and grandfathers. My father was a soldier in the First World War or, as it says on the back of his campaign medal, “The Great War for Civilisation”–which is the title I’ve chosen for my book. In the space of just 17 months after my father’s war ended, the victors had drawn the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and most of the Middle East. And I have spent all my professional life watching the people inside those borders burn.

I once sat down with old Malcolm Macdonald, Britain’s former colonial secretary, to discuss his handover of the Irish treaty ports to De Valera before the Second World War, thus depriving Britain of three great harbours during the Battle of the Atlantic. It was a step which earned Macdonald the undying contempt of Winston Churchill. Inevitably, though, we ended up talking about his vain attempts to solve the “Palestine problem” in the 1930s. In the Commons, Churchill angrily condemned Macdonald for restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine. I still have my notes of what Macdonald said to me.

“We have a terrific argument in House of Commons, and when we met in the division lobby afterwards, Churchill accused me of being pro-Arab. He said that Arabs were savages and that they ate nothing but camel dung. I could see that it was no good trying to persuade him to change his views. So I suddenly told him that I wished I had a son. He asked me why, and I said I was reading a book called My Early Life by Winston Churchill, and that I would want any son of mine to live that life. At this point, tears appeared in Churchill’s eyes and he put his arms round me, saying, ‘Malcolm, Malcolm.’ The next day a package arrived for me from Churchill containing a signed copy of his latest volume of the life of Marlborough.”

My father worshipped Churchill, and pleaded with a friend to ask Churchill to sign a book for him; which is why I have in my library today Marlborough: His Life and Times, with the words “Inscribed by Winston S Churchill 1948” in the great man’s own hand.

I still take the book out from time to time to look at that handwriting and to reflect that this was a man who sent our armies to Gallipoli, who shook hands with Michael Collins, who stood alone against Adolf Hitler, who campaigned for Zionism in Palestine and sent King Faisal to Iraq as a consolation prize for losing Syria to the French.

“The situation that confronted HM Government in Iraq at the beginning of 1921 was a most unsatisfactory one,” Churchill would write in his The World Crisis: The Aftermath, of the insurgency against British rule. His friend Gertrude Bell–and here I am indebted to HVF Winstone’s splendid and revised biography of Britain’s “oriental secretary” in Baghdad–was that same year trying to set up an “Arab government with British advisors” in Baghdad so that Britain’s army of occupation could leave Iraq.

“I don’t know what hanky panky the Allies are up to about the mandates,” she wrote, “but I am all on the side of the League of Nations in protesting that they must be made public … everyone from the Euphrates provinces says the people there won’t accept Sunni officials and the (provisional) Council goes on blandly appointing them … a Shia of Karbala (sic) has at last accepted the Ministry of Education …”

Bell attended Churchill’s famous–or infamous–Cairo conference where the British decided the future of most of the Middle East. TE Lawrence was there, of course, along with just about every Brit who thought he or she understood the region. “I’ll tell you about our conference,” Bell wrote to a friend in her jolly hockey-sticks way. “It has been wonderful. We covered more work in a fortnight than has been got through in a year. Mr Churchill was admirable …”

It quite takes the breath away; the British thought they could fix the Middle East in 14 days. And so we laid the borders of Iraq and laid out the future for what Churchill would, much later, refer to as the “hell disaster” of Palestine. I’ll always remember the way that Macdonald, talking to me in his Sevenoaks home 26 years ago, turned to me during our conversation. “In Palestine, I failed,” he said. “And that is why you are in Beirut today.”

And he was right, of course. Had we really “fixed” the Middle East, I wouldn’t have spent the last 29 years of my life travelling from one bloody war to another amid the lies and deceit of our leaders and the surrogates they appointed to rule over the Arabs. Had we really “fixed” the Middle East, Ken Bigley would not have been murdered in Iraq last week.

Can we escape? Can we one day say–both the West and the peoples of the Middle East–“Enough! Let us start again!” I fear we cannot. Our betrayals and our broken promises–to Jews as well as Arabs–have created a kind of irreversible disease, something that will not go away and cannot and will not be forgiven for generations.

Full Article: counterpunch.org

by Dexter Filkins
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 10 – Leaders of Iraq’s crucial Sunni Arab minority say they have failed to generate any enthusiasm for nationwide elections scheduled for January, and are so fearful of insurgent violence and threats that they can meet only in private to talk about how – or even whether – to take part.

The leaders among the Sunni Arabs, which had dominated Iraqi politics since the nation’s birth in 1920, also said in interviews here that many prospective Sunni voters were so suspicious of the American enterprise in Iraq, and so infuriated by the chaotic security situation in the Sunni-dominated areas, that they were likely to stay away from the polls in large numbers.

Sunni participation is crucial to the election. While a Sunni boycott remains far from certain and some Sunni leaders still hold out hope for a turnaround, American officials fear that if large numbers of Sunnis do not vote, the election will be regarded as illegitimate and may even feed the insurgency that has gripped much of the country.

While American military commanders say they intend to open up many predominantly Sunni areas now under the control of insurgents, some Sunni tribal and religious leaders say that so far the campaign appears to be having the opposite effect, alienating the people it is supposed to liberate.

Full Article: NY Times

ERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s Ariel Sharon has rejected his army’s request to scale back its Gaza offensive, seeking to avoid any show of weakness after deadly bombings hit Egyptian resorts crowded with Israelis, security sources said.

The prime minister decided a pullout from the besieged Jabalya refugee camp would encourage Palestinian militants to resume rocket fire into Israel and “send the wrong message” so soon after the Sinai bombings, a source said on Monday.

Sharon’s order to keep up the massive 12-day-old campaign also appeared aimed at mollifying hard-liners before a parliamentary speech on Monday in which he will try to soften opposition to his plan to evacuate Gaza settlements next year.

If Sharon brings his “disengagement” plan to its first vote in parliament in coming weeks as he has promised, a key far-right coalition partner could bolt, forcing him to reshape his government or call early elections.

Sharon’s Gaza plan has been complicated by Palestinian rocket fire into border towns, which triggered Israel’s biggest offensive in the occupied strip in four years of conflict.

Israel has killed 92 Palestinians since sending tanks into northern Gaza, including Jabalya, a militant stronghold, after a Hamas rocket attack killed two toddlers in southern Israel. Three Israelis have also died since the raid began.

Army chief Moshe Yaalon asked Sharon on Sunday for permission to redeploy outside Jabalya, saying the army had driven back rocket crews and the longer troops stayed in the densely populated camp the greater the risk, sources said.

Despite low-key U.S. pressure to end the operation, Sharon ordered the army to press on, saying leaving Jabalya at this point could spur militants to resume the firing of makeshift Qassam missiles into the Jewish state. “He told the army to continue the operation at the same level,” a source said.

Full Article: Reuters

by Rachel Shabi
American authorities have shut down 20 independent media centres by seizing their British-based webservers.

On Thursday a court order was issued to Rackspace, an American-owned web hosting company in Uxbridge, Middlesex, forcing it to hand over two servers used by Indymedia, an international media network which covers of social justice issues and provides a “news-wire”, to which its users contribute.

The websites affected by the seizure span 17 countries.

It is unclear why, or to where, the servers have been taken. The FBI, speaking to the French AFP, acknowledged that a subpoena had been issued but said this was at the request of Italian and Swiss authorities.

“It is not an FBI operation,” said its spokesman, Joe Parris.

Guardian UK

by Michael McCarthy
The rate at which global warming gases are accumulating in the atmosphere has taken a sharp leap upwards, leading to fears that the devastating effects of climate change may hit the world even sooner than has been predicted.

Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2 ), the principal greenhouse gas, have made a sudden jump that cannot be explained by any corresponding jump in terrestrial emissions of CO2 from power stations and motor vehicles – because there has been none.

Some scientists think instead that the abrupt speed-up may be evidence of the long-feared climate change “feedback” mechanism, by which global warming causes alterations to the earth’s natural systems and then, in turn, causes the warming to increase even more rapidly than before.

Such a development would mean the worldwide droughts, agricultural failure, sea-level rise, increased weather turbulence and flooding all predicted as consequences of climate change would arrive on much shorter time-scales than present scenarios suggest, and the world would have much less time to co-ordinate its response.

Full Article: Independent UK

Well hell then let’s drill for oil in the North Pole. May as well take advantage of all that melted ice.

By Robin Marantz Henig

…Some critics worry that the more we find out about genetic differences among people of different racial groups, the more such information will be misinterpreted or abused. Already there are fears that the biological measures of racial differences might lead to pronouncements about inherent differences in such complex traits as intelligence, athletic ability, aggressiveness or susceptibility to addiction. Once such measures are given the imprimatur of science, especially genomic science, loathsome racist stereotypes can take on the sheen of received wisdom.

Imagine that you have heart failure. What can medicine do for you? It depends: are you white or black? If you’re white, your doctor may prescribe one of the drugs that seem to ease the symptoms, maybe a beta-blocker or an ACE inhibitor. And if you’re black, your doctor may still prescribe those drugs, but they might not really help.

That’s about to change. In the not-too-distant future, if you’re black and have heart failure, drug-company researchers predict you’ll be able to go to the doctor and walk out with a prescription tailor-made for you. Well, not tailor-made, exactly, but something that seems to work in people a lot like you. Well, not a lot like you, exactly, except that they’re black, too. In this not-too-distant future, if you’re black, your doctor will be able to prescribe BiDil, the first drug in America that’s being niche-marketed to people of a particular race — our first ethnic medicine.

BiDil, expected to be approved early next year by the Food and Drug Administration, is on the leading edge of the emerging field of race-based pharmacogenomics. It signals a shift in perception, a new approach to medicine that has at its core an idea at once familiar and incendiary: the assumption that there are biological differences among the races.

New York Times Magazine
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