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RAN has trumpeted new nuclear and military ambitions in the face of domestic political discord and stepped-up international talk of tightening sanctions.
Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, said Tehran had informed the United Nations' nuclear watchdog that it intended to build 10 nuclear fuel plants in the Persian calendar year starting next month and would begin producing 20 per cent enriched uranium to provide fuel for a Tehran medical reactor.
Until now, Iran has only produced reactor-grade 3.5 per cent enriched uranium and has managed to build only one functioning nuclear fuel plant.
''The 20 per cent enrichment begins on Tuesday under supervision of inspectors and observers from the International Atomic Energy Agency,'' Dr Salehi said in an interview on the website of the state-owned al-Alam television channel.
As of Monday morning, diplomats and arms inspectors in Vienna, home to the IAEA, had yet to receive anything in writing, an official in the Austrian capital said.
Western officials accuse Iran of failing to respond to a UN-backed offer to transfer the bulk of its low-enriched uranium abroad in exchange for fuel plates to power the ailing medical reactor. Iranian officials say they want to conduct the fuel exchange on their own soil, a condition the West has rejected.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's spokesman said Iran's pronouncements invited further international censure. Australia's Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, branded the move a ''serious provocation'' that ''risks testing the patience of the international community''.
Russia, a close ally of Iran, repeated its position that Iran should send its uranium abroad for higher enrichment as proposed in a UN-brokered deal. France holds the chair of the UN Security Council this month, potentially allowing it to organise support for new sanctions, although it would have to overcome Chinese reluctance and Russia's ambivalence.
Iranian military officials also announced plans to build military planes, aerial drones and anti-aircraft missiles in a flurry of pronouncements before annual commemorations of the 1979 Islamic Revolution tomorrow, when the growing opposition and security forces are expected to clash in Tehran and other cities.
The eight-month political crisis continues to divide the political establishment. The Fars news agency, close to the Revolutionary Guard, reported that government supporters coming to the capital from the provinces for the event had signed a petition demanding the arrest of opposition leaders Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister; Mehdi Karroubi, a former parliament speaker; and Mohammad Khatami, a former president.
Another official hinted at purges of security forces. ''Well-known intelligence and military elements were instrumental in the post-election sedition,'' said Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi, according to a news website.
International inspectors have concluded that Iran's nuclear program has been stagnant in the months since the domestic political crisis erupted following the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
A LONG-ANTICIPATED shake-up of skilled migration has split the education sector, with private colleges warning of catastrophe and public institutions praising the priority it gives to the smartest for permanent residency.
Immigration Minister Chris Evans yesterday announced an overhaul of Australia's independent skilled migration system to break the link between studying a trade in short supply and remaining in the country afterwards.
''This will make a permanent difference so that Australia is able to choose who migrates to this country, based on whether they're going to make a contribution,'' Senator Evans said.
''If they don't have the English-language skills, don't have the trade skills and can't get a job … they shouldn't be eligible for permanent residency.''
He said the ''perverse'' points system that currently rated a hospitality graduate from an Australian college above a Rhodes scholar from Oxford University would be reviewed.
Yesterday, tutors in private trade colleges teetering on collapse feared for their jobs. One hairdressing college in Sydney said enrolments for its $25,000 course could decline by half as a result of the changes.
''There's going to be a catastrophic effect on the employment of Australian workers,'' said a source who asked for anonymity.
THE State Government has lashed Opposition leader Ted Baillieu for "playing cheap politics'' after he said Victoria has serious racism problems.
Mr Baillieu is taking the fight to Premier John Brumby who denies that racism is a widespread problem in Victoria.
Mr Baillieu said the Brumby government's verbal assault is about attacking him and not the problem of racism.
"They have allowed a minority to dictate the interpretation of Victoria and that's not good enough,'' he said.
He admits there will always be some violence but the Brumby government's failure to act is driving away international students with enrolments from India down 45 per cent.
"We have a problem with violence in this state and we have a problem with a minority of people who are behaving in a racist way that is damaging lives and damaging families and damaging reputations,'' he said.
TOP US intelligence officials believe al-Qa'ida or associated groups are "certain" to attempt a further terrorist attack on the US in the next three to six months.
The director of US national intelligence, Dennis Blair, gave the dire warning in a Senate hearing yesterday as part of his annual threat assessment.
Questioned by senators, Mr Blair's view was shared by other officials present, including CIA director Leon Panetta and FBI director Robert Mueller.
Although indicating no specific information about a pending attack, the intelligence chiefs singled out the evolving tactics of al-Qa'ida as the most serious threat to the US.
"My greatest concern, and what keeps me awake at night, is that al-Qa'ida and its terrorist allies and affiliates could very well attack the United States," Mr Panetta told the Senate intelligence committee.
The testimony of intelligence chiefs follows heightened anxiety about the prospect of further attacks on US soil after the failed attempt to destroy a domestic airliner on Christmas Day shortly before its arrival in Detroit.
PRIVATE records of a Chinese-Australian businesswoman close to former defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon indicate he received substantial payments as part of a campaign to cultivate him as an agent of political and business influence.
The confidential papers of businesswoman Helen Liu contradict claims last year by Mr Fitzgibbon - and his father, former Labor MP Eric Fitzgibbon - that they had no financial or business relationship with Ms Liu.
Mr Fitzgibbon resigned from Cabinet last June after it was revealed his brother, NIB Health Funds chief Mark Fitzgibbon, had used his office to lobby for defence health contracts.
The minister's political standing had already been weakened by his failure to disclose that he had accepted two first-class flights to China bankrolled by Ms Liu, a wealthy entrepreneur with high-level political and military contacts in Beijing. He was also renting his Canberra residence from the Liu family.
The documents obtained by The Age show Ms Liu recorded her 1997-98 payment of 850,000 Chinese yuan - approximately $150,000 at the then current values - to Joel Fitzgibbon under the heading ''money paid including expenses and gifts''.
The same document shows Ms Liu recorded the establishment of a joint venture with the Fitzgibbon family, including reference to ''Eric (Fitzgibbon) as agent. Regular visits to China. $3 million for start up''.
In a letter to a senior Bank of China executive, Ms Liu wrote that Joel Fitzgibbon would become a cabinet minister when federal Labor won power, adding: ''The money we pay him is worthwhile.''
The Age can also reveal that the office of Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard was told in April last year by lawyers for a former business associate of Ms Liu that Mr Fitzgibbon may have had more extensive dealings with the businesswoman than acknowledged.
ALMOST 100 people are due to fly out of Christmas Island today as the Immigration Department juggles beds and tents at the increasingly crowded detention centre to accommodate another boatload of 171 asylum seekers.
Refugee groups said the situation was becoming ''unworkable'' as Christmas Island neared its capacity of 1848, with the arrival on Monday of 171 Afghans, including 39 children, pushing the number to 1801.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said yesterday Christmas Island remained ''the best place to accommodate people and there is still capacity there''. There were contingency plans to move asylum seekers to a centre in Darwin if necessary, he told ABC Radio.
However, opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said the centre was at unsustainable levels when he visited last week. He told radio station 2GB the government should look for an alternative offshore processing destination ''whether that's in another country or excised Australian territory''.
Mr Morrison would not rule out a Liberal government reintroducing a Pacific Solution and said that with the Nauru and Manus Island centres shut, another location would need to be found.
He also called for a review of the visa approval rate for Afghan asylum seekers, which he said was far higher than in Europe.
Oscar Wilde was fond of saying that people rather than principles move the age. In the case of banking reform, the problem is not one of principle (in the form of regulation) nor of principal (proprietary trading), but of profitability.
Financial institutions flap around desperately in a low-return environment like fish in oxygen-starved water. That is the source of the financial crisis, and better principles can be ameliorative at best.
That is why I am mildly disappointed in former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker. He is one of the wisest men I have ever
met, and his contribution to saving the American economy in the early 1980s ensures him an honored place in the history books. His valedictory contribution to world financial health may be a plan to limit risk in the banking system, which he previewed on February 1 on the op-ed page of the New York Times. What he says is sensible, balanced and wise - but not directly relevant to the problem at hand.
"The point of departure" for banking reform, Volcker writes, "is that adding further layers of risk to the inherent risks of essential commercial bank functions doesn't make sense, not when those risks arise from more speculative activities far better suited for other areas of the financial markets."
Volcker added: "The specific points at issue are ownership or sponsorship of hedge funds and private equity funds, and proprietary trading - that is, placing bank capital at risk in the search of speculative profit rather than in response to customer needs. Apart from the risks inherent in these activities, they also present virtually insolvable conflicts of interest with customer relationships, conflicts that simply cannot be escaped by an elaboration of so-called Chinese walls between different divisions of an institution."
He's right, but it's beside the point. What brought the banks down was not speculative bets in volatile markets but what appeared to be ultra-safe investments in the most conservative assets available, namely medium-term bonds rated Aaa/AAA by Moody's and Standard & Poor's, the major rating agencies.
The US Federal Reserve agreed to allow the banks to put on more leverage (that is, allocate less of their own capital against prospective losses) than they had in the past. But the Fed agreed to do this only for assets that were supposed to be virtually default-proof. The ratings agencies "sold their soul to the devil", as a Standard & Poor's analyst admitted in an e-mail later brought to light by a congressional investigation, in order to rubber-stamp riskier assets with the AAA label.
But that's because the banks couldn't find enough prime assets in which to invest and had to find subprime assets to replace them.
I documented this deterioration during 2006, as I tried to build a start-up research department at Cantor Fitzgerald, a second-tier brokerage firm. From a business standpoint, the effort fizzled, and I moved in 2007 to a credit derivatives hedge fund (we paid out our investors with profit in July 2008 and closed the doors just before Lehman Brothers went bankrupt). Some of the material below has appeared in my "Inner Workings" blog on Atimes.net, but it seems worth reviewing in context of the banking debate.
The intellectual effort of trying to establish the research department in 2006, though in vain, was rewarding. In a series of reports to Cantor Fitzgerald customers, I showed how global flows caused massive distortions in the pricing of American securities, and created demand for highly-levered structured instruments that (temporarily) provided higher returns.
There are two sides to every investment. One is the return you get; the other is the return you require. For pension funds, the hurdle rate for investments is the rate required to meet the contractual requirements of a defined-benefit pension scheme. If corporations fall behind, eventually they will have to dip into profits in order to make up the difference. Commercial banks pay a certain amount for money, and lend it out for profit. The benchmark for banks' cost of funds is the rate for interbank loans, or the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR). A few of the large banks have sufficient customer deposits to pay a rate lower than LIBOR on certificates of deposits, but that is a secondary matter.
The derivatives boom was in full flourish when I published my first research report for Cantor, on January 5, 2006. I wrote:
In CS Lewis's Screwtape Letters, an old devil gives practical advice to a novice demon. Diabolical amounts of leverage compressed credit spreads during 2005. Wrong as the market may be about inherent risk, it is likely to stay wrong, as the Fed backs off from aggressive tightening, the threatened curve inversion fails to materialize, absolute yield levels remain low, and investors enhance returns through leverage.
Investors are not piling into levered ... structures because they are complacent about credit risk. On the contrary, all the investors I know are scared to death. But as long as the average US pension fund requires returns of 8.75% to meet its long-term obligations, and the aggregate corporate bond index yields just over 5%, institutional investors will continue to pick up nickels on the slope of the volcano. Sponsorship of ever-more-esoteric structures is a failsafe symptom of yield dearth.
The insatiable hunger for savings instruments on the part of the world's aging savers was responsible, ultimately, for the great financial crisis. Huge foreign demand for US securities pushed the returns of prime securities down to levels that made them useless to most American investors, including pension funds which have fixed return targets averaging 9%, and banks funding at LIBOR (the interbank cost of funds). Once prime assets couldn't meet the requirements of investors, subprime assets were invented to provide higher returns.
The charts below are derived from my 2006 spreadsheets; I published versions of them in early 2006.
First, massive foreign inflows into the dollar drove US interest rates down. The change in custody holdings in the chart below is the Fed's holdings of Treasury securities on behalf of foreign central banks. The effect was most obvious in 2003, when massive Asian central bank intervention to hold the dollar up ballooned reserves. Asian central banks stopped their currencies from rising by purchasing dollars on the open market. In turn, they invested the dollars they bought into US Treasury securities. During the early part of the 2000s, the flood of Asian central bank purchases was big enough to depress the overall level of rates.
We observe in the graph below a nearly perfect inverse relationship between the change in foreign central banks' holdings of US Treasury securities (measured by the custody holdings for foreign central banks at the Federal Reserve) and the two-year Treasury yield:
Change in foreign central bank Treasury investments (custody holdings) vs 2-year Treasury yield:
In 2003, the Federal Reserve misinterpreted this phenomenon. Future Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and then Fed chairman Alan Greenspan fretted that the US economy might be in the grip of deflation and kept interest rates too low for too long. That contributed to the housing bubble. But something even pernicious was underway.
Banks borrow at LIBOR and lend at a margin above LIBOR. With the flood of global savings pouring into American markets, prime investments began to yield less than LIBOR for the first time. The most important instrument for commercial banks next to loans is mortgage-backed securities. Mortgages are complex instruments because homeowners can prepay their obligations if rates fall; what matters to banks in the return on such securities is the return after the cost of hedging for the effect of interest rate changes. By industry convention, this expected return is measured as an option-adjusted spread above LIBOR.
Shown below is the LIBOR option-adjusted spread (that is, the expected excess return over LIBOR after taking into account the value of embedded interest-rate options) for a typical agency pass-through - that's prime mortgages (guaranteed by a federal agency). This went from 80 basis points to zero between 2003 and 2005, as massive buying by Asian central banks and related agencies pushed down the expected return to levels never before seen.
For that matter, the interest on high yield debt, adjusted for "expected loss" (the average loss rate over the preceding 20 years) went to zero. And at the same time, the yield on speculative grade (high yield) bonds adjusted for long-term default rates also went to zero.
Expected return above LIBOR of mortgage-backed securities after hedging costs (LIBOR option-adjusted spread) vs high yield return adjusted for expected loss.
The sort of bonds that banks typically bought for their own portfolio were paying the cost of funds or less, which meant, simply, that the banks couldn't make a profit.
We can see how foreign inflows caused the collapse of agency spreads during 2003-2007. Below are reported net foreign purchases of securities issued by Federal agencies (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mainly), against the LIBOR spread of these securities. Foreign central banks were willing to buy these securities at LIBOR minus 20 basis points because they had cash burning a hole in their pockets and didn't need to worry about funding costs. But every other institution that funded at LIBOR watched spreads fall with dismay. They simply couldn't buy prime assets, given their own funding costs.
Yield of federal agency securities falls with higher foreign purchases.
As the funding costs of the federal agencies collapsed, they bought more mortgages, and as they bought more mortgages, LIBOR option-adjusted spread shrank, as per the second chart in the series. The close relationship between the LIBOR funding costs of the federal agencies and mortgage-backed securities is shown below.
Spread to cost of interbank funds of federal agency (government-sponsored enterprise) securities drives down expected return of mortgage-backed securities.
That's why investors went to subprime. Structured securities backed by subprime debt could be had with an undeserved AAA rating paying LIBOR +20 basis points or LIBOR +25. The likes of Citigroup vacuumed them up in huge quantities and stuck them in special investment vehicles with a paper-thin margin of capital to cover losses. AAAs weren't supposed to have any losses, so the Fed went along with it.
This created egregious mis-pricing of the whole credit market. I wrote on January 27, 2006, "We do not value pigs by the attractiveness of their physique, nor for the nobility of their character, but for their suitability for sausage. In a credit market dominated by the CDO (collateralized debt obligation) bid, the most valuable securities are the ones that offer the most yield relative to default rates projected by the models that rating agencies use to rate CDOs."
The financial crisis may have calmed down, but the sources of the crisis remain unchanged: the industrial world is unable to fund the greatest retirement wave in history at current returns. Everything that seems to offer yield turns almost instantly into a mini-bubble.
Banking reform doesn't address the problems of the banks today. The commercial and industrial loan book of American banks has fallen by 20% in the past year. They are earning less interest overall, and the delinquency rate on their remaining loans has tripled since 2007. They can't find mortgages to buy, given the continuing depression in the housing market. What they can buy is US Treasuries, and they are buying them in huge numbers.
Banks buy Treasuries to replace loans and other securities.
There is nothing wrong in principle with Paul Volcker's call for banking caution. But the problems of the banking system can't be separated from the larger economic picture. Without a way to match the aging savers of the industrial world with the young workers and entrepreneurs of the global south, banking problems will persist no matter what regulatory regime prevails.
The question of whether the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai earlier this month was carried out by Israel or not is insignificant with regards to the impact his demise will likely have on Hamas and its ability to continue smuggling long-range rockets into the Gaza Strip.
Mabhouh, 50, was found dead in his Dubai hotel on January 20. On Friday, Hamas announced the murder, which the group said was carried out by the Mossad, either by electrocution, suffocation or poison.
The timing of the assassination comes almost exactly two years after Hizbullah’s military commander Imad Mughniyeh was assassinated in a car bombing in Damascus in February 2008.
Then, too, fingers were pointed at the Mossad. Hizbullah and Iran have yet to find someone capable of effectively replacing Mughniyeh, who in addition to commanding Hizbullah forces was also the guerrilla group’s liaison to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Syria and Hamas.
Mabhouh appears to have played a similar role on behalf of Hamas. According to the few details known about him, Mabhouh helped establish the Izzadin Kassam in the Gaza Strip in the 1980s and was behind the kidnappings in the first intifada of two Israeli soldiers – Sgt. Avi Sasportas in February 1989 and Pvt. Ilan Sa’adon in May of that year, some of the first abductions carried out by the terror group. Both men were later found dead.
At one point Mabhouh fled Gaza and was reportedly based in Damascus, where he operated alongside Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal. During time he spent overseas, Mabhouh established strong ties in Sudan that he later used to smuggle weaponry from Iran to Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
One report claimed that he was behind the weapons convoy that Israel bombed during Operation Cast Lead and as it was making its way to Gaza through the Sudanese desert.
Mabhouh did, however, succeed in smuggling long-range rockets into Gaza. Proof of this came in late 2009, when Hamas test-fired a missile with a 60-km. range, capable of striking Tel Aviv and believed to have been manufactured in Iran.
Like the assassination of Mughniyeh, Mabhouh’s murder is another blow to the ‘axis of evil’ that threatens Israel and is led by Iran and continues on to Syria, to Hizbullah in Lebanon, and then to Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip. It also joins a long list of similar special operations that have taken place in recent years aimed on the one hand at hitting Iran and at the same time at maintaining Israeli deterrence in the region.
The list of operations can be traced back to the bombing of the Syrian reactor in September 2007 following the Second Lebanon War, a clear message to Iran regarding Israel’s determination and military capabilities; the assassination of Mughniyeh in 2008; the assassination of Gen. Muhammad Suleiman, Bashar Assad’s liaison to Hamas and Hizbullah and head of the Syrian nuclear program, that same year; and the bombing of the weapons convoy in Sudan that Mabhouh reportedly organized.
SCOTLAND'S justice secretary Kenny MacAskill showed more compassion to the Lockerbie bomber than to the families of his victims.
The Sun also reported that not enough research had been done leading up to the release.
MacAskill reportedly failed to secure assurances that Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi would not receive a hero's welcome home in Libya, The Sun revealed today citing a report to be published later this week.
The accusation of a botched release of the mass murderer is expected to be be part of a draft report by the Scottish Parliament's justice committee.
A committee source said, "It will make embarrassing reading for the Scottish government.
"After the outrage that the government's decision caused, it just wants to make the issue disappear."
Britain is facing a new Al Qaeda terror threat from suicide ‘body bombers’ with explosives surgically inserted inside them.
Until now, terrorists have attacked airlines, Underground trains and buses by secreting bombs in bags, shoes or underwear to avoid detection.
But an operation by MI5 has uncovered evidence that Al Qaeda is planning a new stage in its terror campaign by inserting ‘surgical bombs’ inside people for the first time.
New weapon: To avoid detection by airport body scanners (above), Al Qaeda are said to be planning to surgically insert explosives into suicide bombers' bodies
Security services believe the move has been prompted by the recent introduction at airports of body scanners, which are designed to catch terrorists before they board flights.
It is understood MI5 became aware of the threat after observing increasingly vocal internet ‘chatter’ on Arab websites this year.
The warning comes in the wake of the failed attempt by London-educated Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up an airliner approaching Detroit on Christmas Day.
One security source said: ‘If the terrorists are talking about this, we need to be ready and do all we can to counter the threat.’
A leading source added that male bombers would have the explosive secreted near their appendix or in their buttocks, while females would have the material placed inside their breasts in the same way as figure-enhancing implants.
Experts said the explosive PETN (Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate) would be placed in a plastic sachet inside the bomber’s body before the wound was stitched up like a normal operation incision and allowed to heal.
A shaped charge of 8oz of PETN can penetrate five inches of armour and would easily blow a large hole in an airliner.
Security sources said the explosives would be detonated by the bomber using a hypodermic syringe to inject TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide) through their skin into the explosives sachet.
PETN – the main ingredient of Semtex plastic explosive – was used by Richard Reid, the British Al Qaeda shoe-bomber, when he unsuccessfully tried to blow up American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami in December 2001.
In November, a Somali man who attempted to board a flight carrying a syringe, liquid and powdered chemicals was arrested before take-off.
The airliner had been due to fly from Somalia’s capital Mogadishu to Dubai.
The Somali was carrying a nearly identical package to that of Abdulmutallab, who tried to detonate it by injecting TATP from a syringe.
Abdulmutallab had stuffed explosives down his underpants as the Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam made its final descent to Detroit carrying 280 passengers.
But the detonator fluid set his clothes on fire rather than the device, and he was overpowered.
Security sources fear the body-bombers could pretend to be diabetics injecting themselves on airliners, Tubes or buses in order to prevent anyone stopping their suicide missions.
Companies such as Smiths Detection International UK, which is based in Watford, Hertfordshire, manufacture a range of luggage and body scanners designed to identify chemicals, explosives and drugs at airports and other passenger terminals around the world.
These include high-specification X-ray equipment that could identify body bombs.
But one source with expertise in the field said: ‘They can make as many pieces of security equipment as they like but there is no one magic answer that can spot every single potential terrorist passing through.’
Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, chairman of the Commons Counter-Terrorism Sub-Committee, said: ‘Our enemies are constantly evolving their techniques to try to defeat our methods of detection.
‘This is one of the most savage forms that extremists could use, and while we are redeveloping travel security we have got to take this new development into account.’
Senior Government security sources confirmed last night that they were aware of the new threat of body bombs, but were not prepared to make any official comment.
It is high time that we ceased indulging in theatrics and spoke the truth. We all desperately yearn for peace, and the vast majority of us do not wish to rule over Arabs. If we could convince ourselves that our neighbors would commit to peaceful coexistence, we would make major sacrifices. But alas, the prospects for a comprehensive settlement in the near future are virtually zero.
Since the Oslo Accords, we have remained in a state of denial, refusing to reconcile with the reality that the duplicitous leaders, then Yasser Arafat and today Mahmoud Abbas, rather than seeking to create an independent state, were utilizing terror and diplomacy to dismember the Jewish state in stages. We ignored the relevance of Arafat's repeated call to his people to heed the passage in the Koran relating to the prophet Muhammad consummating the Al Hudaibiya Treaty with the Koreishi Jews and subsequently reneging and killing them. The message clearly signaled that agreements with Jews and non-Muslims may be violated.
Our passion to achieve peace blinded successive governments into accepting the false premise that Palestinian leaders were peace partners, and repeatedly chant the idiotic mantra that the peace process was irreversible and that "peace in our time" was achievable. This cost the lives of thousands in terror attacks and generated successive wars. In conveying this charade to the world at large, we encouraged the false belief that our conflict with the Arabs was a struggle between two peoples to divide land. We maintained this nonsense even after Arafat and Abbas rebuffed Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, who had offered them virtually all the territory previously occupied by Jordan and Egypt.
The Palestinians polarized this further by insisting that the so-called Arab refugee right of return (a formula for the demise of the Jewish state) was a nonnegotiable component of any peace settlement. The Saudi peace plan, praised by the Americans and some foolish Israelis, incorporated this component. President Barack Obama was informed by the Saudis that until the Israelis accepted the plan in its entirety, he should not bother raising the issue with them.
TODAY, WE face the most intense international pressures we have ever experienced. Many European countries have forsaken us; the Obama administration has distanced itself and absorbed the false Palestinian narrative that the Holocaust was responsible for the creation of the State of Israel.
Obama has now been in office for 12 months and his negative approach and attempts to appease our enemies have backfired. There is a complete stalemate in relation to Iran. Israelis do not trust him. The intransigency of the Palestinians and their unwillingness to make any concessions has led to a breakdown in negotiations for which we are being blamed.
Despite the sweeping concessions offered by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his predecessors and the refusal of the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table, Obama alleged that Israel "still found it hard to make bold gestures" and offensively bracketed Hamas and Likud right-wingers as the principal obstacles to peace.
In fact, the Americans seem to have adopted the Palestinian approach hook, line and sinker. Having abandoned the principal of defensible borders and called on Israel to return to '67 lines and divide Jerusalem, they are urging that the delineation of future boundaries be dealt with first as a stand-alone issue. But they have yet to reject the Arab right of return.
Under the circumstances, we should be grateful to Abbas for refusing to negotiate. If the Palestinians demand further concessions without reciprocity, it would simply lead to additional confrontations and intensified global pressures.
The most frustrating aspect is that there is little doubt that such negotiations are perceived by all Palestinians - the PA no less than Hamas - merely as phases in their ultimate objective of eliminating Jewish sovereignty in the region. Any differences between them are primarily tactical. At least Hamas openly proclaims its objectives. Its charter is viciously anti-Semitic and urges its followers to kill as many Jews as possible and wipe Israel off the map.
It is time to speak plainly and expose the fact that our "peace partner," the "moderate" PA, maintains a criminal culture of death and sanctifies the mass murderers within its midst.
Despite repeated exhortations to end anti-Semitic incitement, little has changed. The PA controlled TV, the media and the mosques continue pouring out hatred against the Jews. And from kindergarten onwards the PA educational system idolizes the shahid (the glorious martyr) or suicide bomber as role models.
While uttering endearing words about peaceful coexistence to the foreign media, Abbas proudly provides state pensions to families of suicide bombers.
In recent weeks, a major public square in Ramallah was named to commemorate the 50th birthday of Dalal Mugrabi, the female terrorist who murdered 37 civilians, including 10 children, on a bus in 1978. The allegedly "moderate" Prime Minister Salam Fayyad participated in the ceremony referring to Mugrabi as a "martyr."
The same "moderate" Fayyad personally paid a condolence call to the family of those who murdered Rabbi Meir Avshalom Chai, father of seven, last month. In public addresses, Abbas referred to these murderers, members of his own Fatah, as "martyrs executed cold-bloodedly by Israeli forces."
Yet the White House continues praising the moderation and leadership qualities of both Abbas and Fayyad.
The PA has yet to curb terrorist affiliates like the Aksa Martyrs Brigades and other armed Fatah militias which continue to engage in acts of terror. Yet we remain indifferent to the US- trained Palestinian security forces that are supplied with Israeli weapons which, as in the past, will probably ultimately be employed against us.
SO WHERE do we go from here? We must stop behaving like performers in an Alice in Wonderland pantomime. Netanyahu should cease pleading for negotiations with an Abbas who is unwilling (or powerless) to make any reciprocal concessions. He is aware that the PA in all likelihood will ultimately either merge with or be taken over by Hamas.
We must now proclaim explicitly that meaningful progress cannot be achieved in the absence of a genuine peace partner, and that we can no longer continue making unilateral concessions which only strengthen Palestinian intransigence. We should continue raising the living standards of the Palestinians and encourage the creation of a middle class in the hope that this will one day encourage them to pressure their leaders into choosing peace over war.
It is also important that our government tell people the truth. That will strengthen our position in the war of ideas and garner stronger support in the US. It may also encourage the Obama administration to desist from pressuring us to continue making unilateral concessions and ease our growing concern that, like Czechoslovakia in the 1930s, we are being offered as a sacrifice on the altar of appeasement.
Tomorrow many countries will mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, established by the UN in 2005. Yet at the same time, there is a movement afoot to proclaim another day to commemorate the victims of the Nazis - but in this new movement to commemorate them along with the victims of Stalinism. There is ground for deep concern about repeated attempts to equate the Nazi regime's genocidal policies, with the Holocaust at their center, with other murderous or oppressive actions, an equation that not only trivializes and relativizes the genocide of the Jews perpetrated by the Nazi regime, but is also a mendacious revision of recent world history.
The European Parliament passed a resolution (April 2, 2009) determining August 23, the date in 1939 on which the infamous Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement was signed between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, as a date of remembrance for victims of both regimes. To be politically correct, the Holocaust is explicitly excluded from this comparison. This follows a similar resolution passed by the Senate of the Czech Republic on June 3, 2008, which declared that the "crimes against humanity committed by the communist regimes throughout the continent must inform all European minds to the same extent [sic] as the Nazi regime's crimes did."
There can be no doubt as to the crimes of violent and often murderous oppression by the Soviet regime of and in the countries of Eastern Europe. In the Baltic states, occupied by the USSR in 1940-1941 and 1944-1989/91, for instance, tens of thousands of local residents were exiled, many of whom died, and most returned only much later, broken in body and mind, while thousands of others were imprisoned and were killed or died in prison. Local communists, and they were numerous, ruled these countries and blindly obeyed orders from Moscow, but did not plan the annihilation of any Eastern European national groups as such.
Among the exiled, tortured and killed people, Jews were much more numerous than their percentage in the population. This was brutal and murderous oppression, but not genocide either toward them or toward the other ethnic groups. It must be said, though, that a certain proportion of the persecuted in the immediate postwar era had in fact been Nazi collaborators. However, to compare this with the murder of many millions of Europeans by the Nazi regime is a distortion of history.
Moreover, if all victims are to be equally remembered, the exclusion of the Jews murdered in the Holocaust makes no sense; despite the statement to the contrary, they are implicitly included. It should be remembered that the so-called "Generalplan Ost," developed by Nazi Germany in 1941/1943, planned the annihilation "as such" - to use the terminology of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention - of the three Baltic nations, of Poles and of Czechs by forcible Germanization, expulsion and partial murder, after a German victory, and after the total annihilation of the Jews. The planned Nazi steps are obviously connected. Again, therefore, the statement that the Holocaust is excluded is, clearly, meaningless.
Of course, German postwar plans were not known to the future potential victims. The other nations were to be destroyed, "as such," but the Jews, were - all of them - to be annihilated, not only in Europe, but also everywhere on Earth (there is plenty of evidence for that). As far as the Soviets are concerned, with all their brutality, they did not plan anything similar.
THE EXAMPLE that I wish to present here is based on the official, English-language report by the Latvian Historical Commission regarding Soviet and Nazi crimes in Latvia (The Hidden and Forbidden History of Latvia under Soviet and Nazi Occupations, 1940-1991 - Selected Research of the Commission of the Historians of Latvia, Institute of the History of Latvia, vol. 14, Riga 2005). I choose Latvia because it is a democratic country that achieved independence from the Soviets by a wholly admirable unarmed rebellion that testifies to its democratic credentials.
There is no doubt that the three Baltic states were, before the war, under tremendous pressure from the two superpowers next door, Nazi Germany and the Stalinist USSR. In Latvia, there was traditional and radical opposition to Germans. German barons had ruled and oppressed Latvians for centuries. Latvian communists had been one of the main groups that propelled the Bolsheviks into power in 1917, but independent Latvia between the wars, rightly fearful of Soviet imperialism, had first developed a liberal government, and then had become an authoritarian state under the center-right dictatorship of Karlis Ulmanis (Lithuania and Estonia developed similarly, and by the 1930s had also become authoritarian, under Antanas Smetona and Konstantin Päts, respectively). There were home-grown pro-Nazi and pro-Soviet groups in Latvia, opposed by the Ulmanis regime.
In 1939, as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Latvia came under Soviet influence; in 1940 it was occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union. One has to recognize that Latvian communists were quite influential locally, and that parts of the peasantry initially welcomed the division of land executed by the communist regime. Pro-communists in Latvia, under the leadership of Augusts Kirhensteins (just like Justas Paleckis in Lithuania) may not have been central figures in their society, but they were by no means marginal. There was, however, national oppression, political persecution, the introduction of Soviet-style one-party rule, and in June 1941, just before the German invasion, brutal deportations to Siberia took place.
Therefore, when the Germans attacked, in June 1941, most Latvians - just like their Baltic neighbors - sided with them. The Germans did not, as many had hoped, grant autonomy, never mind independence. Nevertheless, there was massive collaboration in the persecution and murder of the Jews in Lithuania and Latvia especially, and most Jews there were killed, under German supervision, by Lithuanians and Latvians. Baltic police battalions, recruited by the Germans, including Latvian ones, were a very important part of the German machine murdering Jews in Belarus, and even in Poland and the Ukraine. However, that did not change German colonialist policies towards the Baltic peoples, including Latvia, nor did the establishment of Latvian SS units, by conscription, late in the war, after the Jews had been, to all intents and purposes, annihilated.
THE infiltration of Australia's $16 billion foreign education sector by organised crime has been exposed in a confidential report to the Immigration Department showing nearly 40 per cent of detected fraud involving student visas last year was aimed at universities.Previously, the problem was thought to be confined mainly to the private vocational educational sector, with private colleges and language schools being the preferred target of people-smuggling operations.
But the report to Immigration by consultants Ernst & Young, obtained under Freedom of Information laws by The Australian, shows universities and vocational colleges are increasingly being exploited to place bogus students. The Ernst & Young report showed that in the 10 months to April last year, higher education accounted for 39 per cent of student visas refused where fraud was involved. But it was higher in the 12 months to June, where higher education accounted for more than half - 53 per cent - of such cases. "The majority of fraud risks stem from higher education and vocational education and training," the report found.
The result of the Jewish Agency's report released on Sunday showing global anti-Semitism spiraling out of control recalls the memorable line in the film Casablanca, in which police Captain Renault announces that Rick's Cafe must be closed because of illegal activity. "I'm shocked, shocked to discover that gambling is going on here!" says Renault while being handed the proceeds of his gambling wins.
While some observers of Jew-hatred in Western Europe are not shocked by the largest wave of anti-Semitism since the Hitler movement, many European governments, policy makers, and academics, however, tend to feign shock like Renault or simply cannot fathom that hatred of Israel is the most ubiquitous form of contemporary anti-Semitism.
As documented by the Jewish Agency report and the 2009 German University Bielefeld study, there is no shortage of hostile anti-Israeli acts and attitudes within such European countries as Sweden, Germany, Norway, the United Kingdom, France, Poland, Italy, Spain and Greece. The intense alliance between Hugo Chavez's populist leftist Venezuelan government and the Islamic Republic of Iran has opened the flood gates of anti-Semitism in Latin America.
Ballooning global anti-Semitism may contribute to a growing aliyah rate. According to the Jewish Agency, there was a 17 percent increase in 2009 aliyah compared to 2008. Across Europe, aliyah spiked from 2,402 to 2,600, and South American Jewry showed immigration rising from 1,078 to 1,230.
Last December, while speaking at the third annual Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism in Jerusalem, Dr. Daniel Pipes predicted that an "exodus" of Diaspora Jews in Europe could take place because European Jews are facing lethal anti-Semitism. According to Pipes, the migration could "replicate the post-World War II exodus of Jews from Muslim countries, where the Jewish population has collapsed from about a million in 1948 to 60,000 today."
The Jewish Agency study shows the obvious links between Diaspora Jews and Israel. While Nazi racial anti-Semitism has largely drifted into oblivion, European countries fail to see that the new outbreak of anti-Semitism revolves around turning Israel and Diaspora Jewry into a punching bag.
As the study highlighted, a broad-based coalition among left-wing and Islamic organizations is coupled with an understanding that chalks up violent attacks on Jews and Israeli as a justified byproduct of the Israel-Palestinian situation.
A telling example was the marriage of the German Left with Muslim organizations during Operation Cast Lead. While over 100,000 Germans participated in anti-Israeli rallies, where incitement to murder Jews and Israelis was chanted, the police instead seized Israeli flags for "provoking" anti-Israeli demonstrators. One young student in the gritty industrial city of Bochum was arrested and fined for waving an Israeli flag at a pro-Israel protest. The German Parliament ignored the explosion of anti-Semitism and did not open an investigation into the mass festivals of Israel hate.
Large European trade union federations, such as the Irish Trade Union Congress and the British Trades Union Congress, have spearheaded efforts to equate Israel with Nazi Germany and sponsor economic and cultural boycotts of the Jewish state. A 2008 Irish Trade Union report drew parallels between Israel's efforts to block weapons smuggling into Gaza and the Nazi creation of the Warsaw Ghetto.
While England and Germany have formed commissions to monitor anti-Semitism, one commission member in Germany urged a focus on extreme right-wing anti-Semitism instead of the dominant form of Jew-hatred - Islamic and leftist anti-Semitism.
The same holds true for President Shimon Peres's audience in the German Parliament. He is slated to speak on Wednesday, International Holocaust Day, to members of the German parliament, many of whom from the Left Party participated in pro-Hamas and pro-Hizbullah demonstrations, where calls for Israel's destruction were advocated. Eleven Left Party MPs voted against a parliamentary resolution equating opposition to the Jewish state with anti-Semitism.
The more than 100 members of the German-Israeli parliamentary group spanning the six major parties (Greens, Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, Christian Social Union, Free Democrats and Left) will also attend Peres's speech. While those MPs are supposed to advance the security of Israel, they have neither initiated a bill to ban their government's insurance coverage for firms active in Iran nor introduced legislation seeking to curtail the flourishing German-Iranian trade relationship. The chairman of the German-Israel parliamentary group, Jerzy Montag from the Green Party, has difficulty understanding that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism.
Israel's decision to convene an inter-ministerial task force to combat global anti-Semitism will do little to stem international anti-Semitism. Observers in Europe note that mainstream Europeans view anti-Semitism as a Jewish problem to be remedied by Jews instead of a problem driven by non-Jews who are also responsible for the cure. That helps to explain the unsettling statistics in the Bielefeld and Jewish Agency report throwing the blame back on Jews.
The results of the Jewish Agency study reveal a mushrooming anti-Israeli atmosphere in Europe and South America that will probably spur new increases in aliyah rates. Yet European policy makers, academics and politicians should not express that they are"shocked, shocked" to discover that Jews will once again flee Europe for refuge in the Jewish state.
Anti-Semitic incidents in western Europe peaked to a level not seen since the close of World War II, according to numbers released by the Jewish Agency on Sunday, three days before the commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The data showed a spike in anti-Semitic violence during and after the IDF's Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip last winter.
During the first three months of 2009 - part of which included the IDF operation in Gaza - more anti-Semitic incidents (including anything from verbal threats to violent attacks) took place in western Europe than during all of 2008.
In France, 631 incidents occurred in the first half of 2009, compared with 431 in 2008. In Britain, some 600 anti-Semitic incidents took place during 2009.
In the Netherlands, some one hundred incidents were noted following the Gaza incursion, the same number as the country had witnessed the entire previous year.
Additionally, the agency data noted that election campaigns in Ukraine and Hungary gave way to public displays of anti-Semitism, which surfaced as tools for the competing political parties. In Ukraine, a story surfaced during that country's election campaign that Israel had brought 25,000 Ukrainian children to the Jewish state for the sole purpose of harvesting their organs.
Such stories also spurred the agency to warn of what they called the appearance of the "modern blood libel" - a concept that at its root began in European countries during the Middle Ages and ran the gamut from accusing Jews of using Christian children's blood for Pessah matzos, to outright charges of human sacrifice or cold-blooded murder.
The data, which was released as part of an annual report on global anti-Semitism, was presented during a press conference at the Jewish Agency's main offices in Jerusalem, and included comments from Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein, Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, the head of the agency's Task Force on anti-Semitism Amos Hermon, and agency spokesman Gil Litman.
"Classical anti-Semitism is changing, and it's been replaced with a new anti-Semitism, which takes its shape in the form of unbridled attacks against the idea of a Jewish state," Sharansky said at the start of the conference.
After describing initial disagreement over that assessment from those who accused the agency of "blurring the lines between legitimate criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism," Sharansky clarified the statement with a list of criteria that he said constituted illegitimate criticism of Israel.
"We've identified [such criteria] through a '3-D principle'," he said,"demonization, delegitimization and a double standard. And if you look at anti-Semitism throughout the ages, we see these principles at play as well - the demonization of Jews, the delegitimization of the Jews as a nation, and a double standard towards Jews as a people and a religion."
All three of those criteria, Sharansky added, were alive and well the world over, specifically in Europe.
Sharansky warned that beginning with the appearance of an article in the Swedish daily tabloid Aftonbladet in August, which accused IDF soldiers of harvesting organs from Palestinians during military operations, the "modern blood libel" was now returning, and recreating the same image of its original, medieval predecessor.
Sharansky also pointed to the Ukrainian story as evidence of the blood libel's return, along with an incident last week, in which an American man posted a video on Youtube accusing the IDF of harvesting organs from Haitian survivors of that country's catastrophic earthquake. The IDF has been in Haiti since the quake struck nearly two weeks ago, providing much-needed medical assistance to survivors.
The report went on to list Iran and Venezuela as the world's most anti-Semitic countries, and warned of the strengthening ties between extreme left-wing activists and Islamists, as well as more tolerance shown to Muslim acts of hate against Jews.
Although much of the press conference focused on the worrying data, Sharansky and his counterparts added that they were using the new information as an opportunity to step up vigilance in combating anti-Semitism.
While the bulk of the initiatives they announced included drawing on existing groups and individuals to make progress in the fight against anti-Semitism, Sharansky also presented a plan to augment the number of emissaries engaged in public diplomacy in large universities overseas. While there are currently 19 such emissaries, Sharansky said that he wanted that number to exceed 100.
Additionally, Sharansky said that creating new avenues for fighting anti-Semitism might not be the best method, while existing efforts could still be consolidated and better-integrated with one another.
"Anti-Semitism is a very old phenomenon," he said. "And so is the fight against it. We're not trying to create anything new here, but revamp the efforts we've already extended."
Why don’t we see demonstrations against Islamic dictatorships in London, Paris, Barcelona? Or demonstrations against the Burmese dictatorship? Why aren’t there demonstrations against the enslavement of millions of women who live without any legal protection? Why aren’t there demonstrations against the use of children as human bombs where there is conflict with Islam? Why has there been no leadership in support of the victims of Islamic dictatorship in Sudan? Why is there never any outrage against the acts of terrorism committed against Israel? Why is there no outcry by the European left against Islamic fanaticism? Why don’t they defend Israel’s right to exist? Why confuse support of the Palestinian cause with the defense of Palestinian terrorism? An finally, the million dollar question:Why is the left in Europe and around the world obsessed with the two most solid democracies, the United States and Israel, and not with the worst dictatorships on the planet? The two most solid democracies, who have suffered the bloodiest attacks of terrorism, and the left doesn’t care.
And then, to the concept of freedom. In every pro Palestinian European forum I hear the left yelling with fervor: “We want freedom for the people!” Not true. They are never concerned with freedom for the people of Syria or Yemen or Iran or Sudan, or other such nations. And they are never preoccupied when Hammas destroys freedom for the Palestinians. They are only concerned with using the concept of Palestinian freedom as a weapon against Israeli freedom. The resulting consequence of these ideological pathologies is the manipulation of the press.
AT yesterday's launch of Jasper and Abby and the Great Australia Day Kerfuffle, the book that can only enhance the burgeoning showbiz careers of the prime ministerial pets, Kevin Rudd inadvertently gave hope to lobbyists the nation over as he spoke of his co-author.
"A lot of people have asked,`Well, why did you [write the book]?' The first answer is: if you know Rhys Muldoon and he badgers you and badgers you and badgers you, it's very hard to say no. In fact, until you say yes he just keeps badgering you." So there you have it; if you want something from the PM, you'll need a lot of badgers. Possibly even more than you'd see at a Wind in the Willows convention. According to Muldoon, "Kevin and I were going to originally do an album of Nick Cave cover versions, it was going to be a record, but then we went, `No, let's actually make the book', and obviously Jasper and Abby are a couple of superstars and the stars just rose to the top and there they are on the cover." Still, you can only have so much fun when there's a pack of journos in the room but no booze, and inevitably one floated a not-strictly-relevant-to-the-topic question about "regulatory and financial structures for the financial services industry". Muldoon who, thanks to his long experience as a Play School host isn't afraid of a challenge, made a game offer: "Do you want me to take this one, Kevin? I can." Sadly, Rudd opted to field the question himself.
PORT-AU-PRINCE: Prayers of thanks and cries for help rose from Haiti's huddled homeless yesterday, the sixth day of a humanitarian crisis that was straining the world's ability to respond and igniting violence amid the rubble of Port-au-Prince.
Haitian police struggled to scatter hundreds of stone-throwing looters in the city's Old Market. Elsewhere downtown, amid the smoke from bonfires burning uncollected bodies, gunfire rang out and bands of machete-wielding young men roamed the streets, faces hidden by bandanas.
Aid groups complained of skewed priorities and a supply bottleneck at the US-controlled airport. The general in charge said the US military was "working aggressively" to speed up deliveries.
But anger mounted that other helping hands were slow in getting food and water to millions in need.
"The government is a joke. The UN is a joke," Jacqueline Thermiti, 71, said as she lay in the dust with dozens of dying elderly outside their destroyed nursing home. "We're a kilometre from the airport and we're going to die of hunger." Hours later, a frail resident of the home perished in the afternoon heat.
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Related Coverage
* Ban Ki-moon vows to speed up aid efforts The Australian, 14 hours ago
* Prayers amid the mass graves Herald Sun, 1 day ago
* Haiti toll as high as 200,000 Perth Now, 1 day ago
* Disaster 'like no other' Courier Mail, 1 day ago
* Aftershock interrupts Haiti quake rescue Adelaide Now, 2 days ago
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Water was delivered to more people around the capital, where an estimated 300,000 displaced were living outdoors. But food and medicine were still scarce.
Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said yesterday that government trucks had collected 70,000 dead for mass burial, though that figure includes only bodies collected in Port-au-Prince and nearby Leogane. There is no count for deaths in Jacmel, a hard-hit city on the southeastern coast.
To ease demands in the capital, Mr Bellerive said the government planned to begin helping Port-au-Prince residents relocate to areas untouched by the quake outside the destroyed capital. A reliable death toll may be weeks away, but the Pan American Health Organisation estimates 50,000 to 100,000 died in the 7.0-magnitude tremor, and Haitian officials believe the number is higher.
Lieutenant-General Ken Keen, who is running the US military relief operation, said 200,000 might be a possible "start point" for the death toll, but that it was too early to know. "Clearly, this is a disaster of epic proportions, and we've got a lot of work ahead of us," he said.
The crippled capital choked on the stench of death and shook with yet another aftershock yesterday. On the streets, people were still dying, survivors were on their knees praying for help, pregnant women were giving birth on the pavement, and the injured were showing up in wheelbarrows and on people's backs at hurriedly erected field hospitals. Authorities warned that looting and violence could spread.
Experts, meanwhile, warned that the window for finding additional survivors was closing fast, even as search and rescue teams continued working around the clock. About 70 people, most of them Haitian citizens, have been rescued since the earthquake struck last Wednesday.
One rescue yesterday took place at the collapsed UN mission headquarters in the capital, where rescuers freed a Danish worker from the rubble about 15 minutes after an emotional visit from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
"This is one of the most serious crises in decades," Mr Ban said. "The damage, destruction and loss of life are just overwhelming."
"I am here with a message of hope that help is on the way," Mr Ban told a group of men and boys shouting that they needed food, water and work. Mr Ban flew back to New York last night on a flight bearing the bodies of some of the 40 UN staffers killed when the UN mission in Port-au-Prince collapsed, in what has become the global body's worst tragedy.
Canada announced that donor countries would meet in Montreal on January 25 to discuss Haiti's reconstruction.
General Keen promised to redouble efforts after the US military distributed 70,000 bottles of water and 130,000 food rations on Sunday. President Barack Obama yesterday mobilised military reserves, particularly medical staff to work on hospital ships. Another 7500 military personnel were due to arrive today to join 5800 US forces already on the ground or in ships off Haiti.
The UN World Food Program was "pretty well on target to reach more than 60,000 people today", up from 40,000 the previous day, WFP spokesman David Orr said.
But the Geneva-based aid group Doctors Without Borders complained there was little sign of significant aid distribution.
The "major difficulty", it said, was the bottleneck at the airport, under US military control. It said a flight carrying its own inflatable hospital was denied landing clearance and it was being trucked overland from Santo Domingo, more than 300km away in the Dominican Republic, delaying its arrival by 24 hours.
French, Brazilian and other officials had complained about the US-run airport's refusal to allow their supply planes to land. A WFP official said that the Americans' priorities were out of sync, allowing too many US military flights and too few aid deliveries.
THE prayers were for peace and the security was tight as the Pope entered an Italian synagogue for the first time yesterday in an attempt to mend fences with the Jewish world.
However, the actions of the wartime pontiff Pius XII continued to be a bone of contention as Pope Benedict XVI claimed that many Italian Catholics, as well as the Vatican, had saved Jews during World War II "often in a hidden and discreet way".
Fifteen survivors of the Nazi camps attended yesterday's ceremony in Rome's main synagogue but others boycotted it, condemning Pius for failing to raise his voice in defence of "our brothers who were sent to the ovens of Auschwitz" and angry at Benedict's recent confirmation of his "heroic virtues" - a step toward his beatification.
In his synagogue speech, the German-born Pope, 82, urged Jews and Christians to "come together to strengthen the bonds which unite us and to continue to travel together along the path of reconciliation and fraternity".
Six days after the Port-au-Prince earthquake large areas of the city remain untouched by the global aid effort as bottlenecks continue to clog the airport and looting threatens to descend into wholesale violence.
Convoys of lorries headed for the city’s worst-hit areas last night but there were signs they had come too late to prevent another tragedy, with Haitians turning on each other.
Mobile water stations were mobbed by crowds who have lived without basic sanitation for nearly a week. By text message and word of mouth, reports spread of a woman decapitated for whatever she had been carrying near one of the few functioning markets. Police shot and killed a man suspected of looting. Where police failed to intervene, crowds resorted to lynching, leaving fresh bodies on streets just cleared of those left by the earthquake.
Some 70,000 bodies have been buried in mass graves and a state of emergency has been declared until the end of January, a Haitian government minister said.
