Stunning military victories made Israeli general Moshe Dayan an iconic figure on the international stage, but his reputation for looting antiquities is little known outside the country where his myth was born.

Across three decades until his death in 1981, Dayan, of the trademark eye patch, established a vast collection of antiquities acquired through illicit excavations. He also traded in archaeological finds in Israel and abroad, antiquities experts say.

“Moshe Dayan didn’t deal in archaeology. He dealt in antiquities plundering,” said Uzi Dahari, deputy director of the Israel Antiquities Authority. “He was a criminal. He knew he was breaking the law. He knew that all his activity was against the law, and he did it nevertheless.”

The Holy Land is a treasure trove for antiquities collectors „ and plunderers.

“There are 30,000 antiquities sites. Every hilltop has antiquities, and, of course, you can’t put guards on each hilltop,” said Amir Ganor, head of the robbery prevention unit at the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Various books and news reports have related how Dayan, aided by children, robbers, soldiers and military equipment, poached excavations for private gain.

The best known of Dayan’s “collecting expeditions” „ and one he wasn’t able to deny „ occurred near Tel Aviv in 1968. There, he was badly injured in a landslide while robbing a burial cave and hospitalized for three weeks, recalls Raz Kletter, an Israeli archaeologist who researched Dayan’s exploits for a 2003 article in the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures.

Nor did he limit his activities to Israel proper, taking advantage of his positions in the military to extend his trajectory to territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. Dayan served as defense minister from 1967 until 1974.

“Probably most of Dayan’s looting was done in areas conquered after 1967 and under his own military rule,” Kletter wrote. “There he faced no democratic institutions to oppose him.”

Dayan’s extensive collection, which he housed in his Tel Aviv-area home, included pottery, stone heads, ossuaries, Byzantine gravestones and Roman sarcophagi, antiquities experts said.

He also acknowledged having an ancient Egyptian stone slab ferried by Israeli military helicopter from Egypt’s Sinai desert during Israel’s 1956 Sinai war, which he commanded as military chief of staff, Kletter wrote in his article. That and other finds were later returned to the site “to avoid an international scandal,” Kletter noted.
sfgate.com

As instability in the Middle East threatens energy security, the West is turning to Western and Central Africa, which is emerging as an increasingly important player in global oil markets.

The region from the Gulf of Guinea to Sudan is becoming the subject of fierce competition by energy companies in a new scramble for Africa — for its high-quality, easily refinable oil.
mg.co.za

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court made it easier Thursday for police to barge into homes and seize evidence without knocking or waiting, a sign of the court’s new conservatism with Samuel Alito on board.

The court, on a 5-4 vote, said judges cannot throw out evidence collected by police who have search warrants but do not properly announce their arrival.

It was a significant rollback of earlier rulings protective of homeowners, even unsympathetic homeowners like Booker Hudson, who had a loaded gun next to him and cocaine rocks in his pocket when Detroit police entered his unlocked home in 1998 without knocking.

The court’s five-member conservative majority, anchored by new Chief Justice John Roberts and Alito, said that police blunders should not result in “a get-out-of-jail-free card” for defendants.

Dissenting justices predicted that police will now feel free to ignore previous court rulings requiring officers with search warrants to knock and announce themselves to avoid running afoul of the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches.

“The knock-and-announce rule is dead in the United States,” said David Moran, a Wayne State University professor who represented Hudson. “There are going to be a lot more doors knocked down. There are going to be a lot more people terrified and humiliated.”
news.yahoo.com

Judge Rules That U.S. Has Broad Powers to Detain Noncitizens Indefinitely

The reality behind the distorted version we generally receive, via the authorities and via the media, of U.S. war games and aggression is completely hidden in the massive rewriting of history. The true reasons for the war games before and while they are enacted is not for the people to see. The reality is that the United States has been heading in one direction only, for well over a century, that direction being a consolidation of power and world domination through whatever means are available, through lies and distortions, insidious propaganda and the shrill denunciation of ‘unpatriotic’ individuals. In fact, all independently thinking people are unpatriotic according to the powers that be.

The U.S. politicians and historians have always been superbly qualified to invent ‘acceptable’ pretexts for invading and killing civilians and rebels in countries that didn’t live up to the norms of desired cooperation with the United States. Which is to say that the countries that did not willingly let themselves be subjected to U.S. domination, to a subordinate role in the commercial dealings with ‘the greatest democracy in the world’, had to put up with the dire consequences of their insubordination. They either got invaded or they were forced to toe the line.
axisoflogic.com

Did the U.S. invade Iraq to tap its oil reserves or to make sure they stayed under the sand?

World oil production today stands at more than twice the 15-billion a-year maximum projected by Shell Oil in 1956 — and reserves are climbing at a faster clip yet. That leaves the question, Why this war?

Did Dick Cheney send us in to seize the last dwindling supplies? Unlikely. Our world’s petroleum reserves have doubled in just twenty-five years — and it is in Shell’s and the rest of the industry’s interest that this doubling doesn’t happen again. The neo-cons were hell-bent on raising Iraq’s oil production. Big Oil’s interest was in suppressing production, that is, keeping Iraq to its OPEC quota or less. This raises the question, did the petroleum industry, which had a direct, if hidden, hand, in promoting invasion, cheerlead for a takeover of Iraq to prevent overproduction?

It wouldn’t be the first time. If oil is what we’re looking for, there are, indeed, extra helpings in Iraq. On paper, Iraq, at 112 billion proven barrels, has the second largest reserves in OPEC after Saudi Arabia. That does not make Saudi Arabia happy. Even more important is that Iraq has fewer than three thousand operating wells… compared to one million in Texas.

That makes the Saudis even unhappier. It would take a decade or more, but start drilling in Iraq and its reserves will about double, bringing it within gallons of Saudi Arabia’s own gargantuan pool. Should Iraq drill on that scale, the total, when combined with the Saudis’, will drown the oil market. That wouldn’t make the Texans too happy either. So Fadhil Chalabi’s plan for Iraq to pump 12 million barrels a day, a million more than Saudi Arabia, is not, to use Bob Ebel’s (Center fro Strategic and International Studies) terminology, “ridiculous” from a raw resource view, it is ridiculous politically. It would never be permitted. An international industry policy of suppressing Iraqi oil production has been in place since 1927. We need again to visit that imp called “history.”
alertnet.org

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — The U.S. military on Thursday revealed for the first time a photo of the man said to be the new leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.

The military said the picture showed Egyptian-born Abu Ayyub al-Masri, a senior al Qaeda in Iraq operative believed to have taken over the terror network after the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi last week.

The Defense Intelligence Agency declassified the photograph on Wednesday at the U.S. military’s request, said U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell at a news conference in Baghdad, adding that he had no idea how the DIA got the photo. (Watch why al-Masri is considered the new leader of al Qaeda in Iraq — 2:08)

Al-Masri “has been a terrorist since about 1982, beginning with his involvement in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was led by Zawahiri,” said Caldwell. Ayman al Zawahiri is al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s top deputy.

Caldwell described al-Masri as “an explosives expert, specializing in the construction of vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices.” He also said al-Masri spent time training with terrorists in Afghanistan starting in 1999.

After U.S. forces ousted Afghanistan’s Taliban regime in late 2001, al-Masri began to work with al-Zarqawi in Falluja “and then later became, we think, basically the emir of southern Iraq” for the group, Caldwell said.

Al-Masri’s “intimate knowledge” of the terrorist network will help al Qaeda in Iraq “regain some momentum if, in fact, he is the one that assumes the leadership role,” Caldwell said.

The military believes al-Masri is also known as Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, who was named last week as al-Zarqawi’s replacement on a Web site used by al Qaeda in Iraq, Caldwell said.

“We’ll continue to do further analysis,” Caldwell added, noting that a power struggle may still be under way inside al Qaeda in Iraq.
cnn.com

He looks like a Photo-Shopped Johnny Depp.

Beginning of the end for Zarqawi group, says Iraq
Iraqi and US officials claimed yesterday that they were close to breaking the back of al-Qaida in Iraq, after hundreds of raids in recent days yielded a trove of information about the group’s movements, bases and tactics, as well as more than 700 captives. Documents and computer equipment retrieved from the rubble where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi died last Wednesday indicated that the group was struggling to get new recruits and losing both members and weaponry to regular US raids.

Mowafaq al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser, said a memory stick, laptop and other documents had been found in the rubble of the house near Baquba after the US airstrike on Zarqawi, yielding “a huge treasure of information” about the terror network. One document suggested that the group’s best tactic to ease the pressure would be to foment war between the US and Iran.

“We believe this is the beginning of the end of al-Qaida in Iraq,” Mr Rubaie told a news conference in Baghdad. “We feel we know their locations, the names of their leaders, their whereabouts, their movements, through the documents we found during the last few days.”

More than 450 subsequent raids on suspected militant hideouts across Iraq have resulted in 104 insurgents being killed and 759 “anti-Iraqi elements” being captured, according to Major General William Caldwell, a spokesman for the multinational forces in Iraq. He added that the raids, a third of which were carried out by Iraqi forces working on their own, had turned up 28 significant arms caches.

A senior US military official in Iraq said US forces were now in possession of some of the best intelligence about the workings of the insurgency since the invasion in 2003. The finds included mobile phones, computer files, flash disks, letters, and policy documents.

“We are still studying the documents and items found since the killing of Zarqawia” said Barham Salih, Iraq’s deputy prime minister. “They reveal much about the scope of al-Qaida in Iraq and its network of relations.”

One document released publicly purported to shed light on the”broad policy guidelines” of al-Qaida in Iraq. It suggested it had sought to drive a wedge between the US and its Shia allies and draw America into a war with Iran.

A Haaretz inquiry reveals that the Israel Defense Forces has increased its use of home demolitions during West Bank arrest raids since a ban on the forced entry of Palestinian civilians into homes of barricaded fugitives.

When the High Court of Justice banned the “neighbor procedure” eight months ago, senior Israel Defense Forces officers warned that this would likely endanger soldiers’ lives. Haaretz has learned that new arrest procedures are not any more dangerous to soldiers, but that is because the IDF is using more aggressive tactics during the actual operations.

IDF sources say that the ban diminishes the tactical options of the officers. “The result is that very quickly we escalate in means, in other words, we use the bulldozers,” one officer says.

In early October 2005, the High Court justices accepted the petition of human rights organizations against the “neighbor procedure.” This tactic, employed hundreds of times in the territories during the first intifada, involved forcing the Palestinian neighbors of wanted militants to enter the homes of the barricaded fugitives in an effort to convince them to surrender, and consequently, also bring out information for the army on the conditions inside the home.

This forcing of Palestinian civilians to act as “agents” for the IDF drew intense public criticism, especially when a Palestinian from a village in the northern West Bank was shot and killed by his barricaded neighbor during the application of the “neighbor procedure.”

The High Court ban forced the army to adopt new arrest methods, which do not endanger soldiers’ lives as military sources had previously warned, says a senior IDF officer serving in the West Bank because “they take no chances. Not one of us will send a soldier to check a home in which it is known that a living, armed fugitive is barricaded, before we have carried out very aggressive action.”

It turns out that the end result of the decision is different from the original intention: both the army and human rights groups, who closely follow developments in the territories, agree that the risk to the lives of Palestinian civilians is greater today. Furthermore, the new procedures result in more extensive damage to Palestinian homes in the territories.
haaretz.com

Witnessing the Destruction of Gaza
On Tuesday, June 13, Israeli missile fire killed seven Palestinian civilians in Gaza City. Among the dead were two children. The strike follows an Israeli assault on a Gaza beach late last week which claimed the lives of seven family membersćincluding five children. In a report released on June 11, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights documented the killing of 14 Palestinians in a 24 hour period due to Israeli attacks. Since the start of the month, Israeli forces have killed more than 30 Palestinians. Apparently, “the most moral military in the world,” as Israeli leaders like to refer to it, has been slipping up lately.

The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there’s an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth, world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking said Tuesday.

Humans could have a permanent base on the moon in 20 years and a colony on Mars in the next 40 years, the British scientist told a news conference.

“We won’t find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system,” added Hawking, who came to Hong Kong to a rock star’s welcome Monday. Tickets for his lecture Wednesday were sold out.

Hawking said that if humans can avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that can continue without support from Earth.

“It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species,” Hawking said. “Life on Earth is at the ever- increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.”

The 64-year-old scientist _ author of the global best-seller “A Brief History of Time” _ uses a wheelchair and communicates with the help of a computer because he suffers from a neurological disorder called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

One of the best-known theoretical physicists of his generation, Hawking has done groundbreaking research on black holes and the origins of the universe, proposing that space and time have no beginning and no end.
breitbart.com

…I am called Marcos, and among the numerous personal flaws I bear, sometimes cynically and cockily, is that of being man, macho, male.

As such I must bear, and often flaunt, a series of archetypes, clich?s, proofs.

Not only in regard to me and my sex, but also and above all in reference to woman, the female gender.

To those flaws which define me personally, someone might add the one we have as zapatistas, to wit, that of still not having lost the capacity for being astonished, for being amazed.
As zapatistas, sometimes we approach other voices which we know to be different, strange, and yet similar and appropriate.

Voices which astonish and amaze our ear with your light…and with your shadow.

Voices, for example, of women.

>From the collective which gives us face and name, journey and path, we go to great effort in choosing where to direct ear and heart.

And so now we are choosing to hear the voice of women who have no fear.

Can one listen to a light? And, if so, can one listen to a shadow?

And who else chooses, as we are today, to lend ear – and with it, thought and heart – in order to listen to those voices?

We choose. We choose to be here, to listen to and make echo for an injustice committed against women.

We choose to be fearless in order to listen to those who were not afraid to speak.

The brutality wielded by the bad Mexican governments in San Salvador Atenco on the 3rd and 4th of May, and which is still going on, to this very night, against the prisoners, especially the violence against women, is what summons us.

And not only that. Those bad governments are trying to sow fear through their actions, and, no, what is happening now is that they are sowing indignation and anger.

In a newspaper this morning, one of the individuals who, along with Vicente Fox and his cabinet, are priding themselves on “imposing the Rule of Law,” SeŠor PeŠa Nieto (alleged Governor of the State of Mexico), stated that what happened at Atenco had been planned.

If this were so, then those who were beaten, illegally detained, sexually attacked, raped, humiliated, then they planned, among other things, to be women.

We know, from the statements of those without fear who were detained, who are our compaŠeras, that they were attacked as women, their women’s bodies violated.

And we also know from their words that the violence visited upon their bodies brought pleasure to the policemen.

The woman’s body taken violently, usurped, attacked in order to obtain pleasure.

And the promise of that pleasure taken on those women’s bodies was the lagniappe which the police received along with the mandate to “impose peace and order” in Atenco.

Certainly according to the government they planned on having the body of a woman, and, they planned, with extreme depravity, that their bodies would be plunder for the “forces of law.”

SeŠor Fox, the federal leader of “change” and of the “Rule of Law,” clarified for us a few months ago that women are “two-legged washing machines” (partial disclaimer, revolving payment plans and go to the customer service department).

And it so happens that up above those machines of pleasure and of work, which are the bodies of women, include assembly instructions which the dominant system assigns them.

If a human being is born woman, she must travel throughout her life a path which has been built especially for her.

Being a girl. Being an adolescent. Being a young woman. Being an adult. Being mature. Being old.

And not just from menarche to menopause. Capitalism has discovered they can obtain objects of work and pleasure in infancy and in old age, and we have “Gobers Preciosos” and pedophile businessmen everywhere for the appropriation and administration of those objects.

Women, they say above, should travel through life begging pardon and asking permission for being, and in order to be, women.

And traveling a path full of barbed wire.

A path which must be traveled by crawling, with head and heart against the ground.

And, even so, despite following the assembly instructions, gathering scrapes, wounds, scars, blows, amputations, death.

And seeking the one responsible for those sorrows in oneself, because condemnation is also included in the crime of being women.
zmag.org

U.S. specialists are currently awaiting the White House’s next drug certification report, which is normally released in September, to see whether the Bush Administration will continue to use the document as a political tool rather than a piece of objective research. In the summer of 2005, Venezuelan officials suspended collaboration with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) over Caracas’ allegations that the U.S. agency had engaged in spying. In response, Washington decertified Venezuela as a cooperative anti-narcotics partner, and labeled it as one of two countries worldwide which “failed demonstrably to make substantial efforts” in the anti-drug campaign. However, the decision to blacklist Venezuela in the “war on drugs” was an unalloyed hoax. The Bush Administration’s accusation that Venezuela had failed to implement anti-drug measures drawn up by U.S. policymakers did Caracas an injustice. It was a judgment inspired more by political differences rather than a genuine critique based on legitimate drug-trafficking issues. In fact, the administration’s finding was little more than Washington sensing an opening to take another jab at Ch‡vez’s Venezuela for its insolent attitude. This is not surprising considering that the decertification process is so self-serving and political that it is held in low esteem worldwide because of its lack of transparency and its indifference to evidence which challenges the White House’s simplistic verdict against the leftist regime.
counterpunch.org