A spokesman at the military hospital on the outskirts of Paris where Yasser Arafat is a patient today denied reports that the Palestinian leader had died.

The spokesman made a brief statement tonight shortly after a report on Israeli television, citing French medical sources, that stated that Mr Arafat was “clinically dead”.

“Mr Arafat is not dead,” Christian Estripeau, a spokesman for the Percy army teaching hospital in the suburb of Clamart, said.

Amid the confusion over the exact status of Mr Arafat’s condition, it was clear it had significantly worsened. One unconfirmed report said he was on a life support machine.

There were conflicting statements from Palestinian officials through the day about whether the 75-year-old was in a coma or not.

Mr Estripeau told reporters that Mr Arafat remained in the intensive care unit at the hospital where he was taken for emergency treatment yesterday.

Earlier, the prime minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker, told reporters on arrival at a European Union summit in Brussels: “[He] passed away 15 minutes ago.”

The US president, George Bush, reacting to the reports of Mr Arafat’s death, said: “My first reaction is God bless his soul … my second reaction is that we will continue to work for a free Palestinian state that’s at peace with Israel.”

But the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia denied reports that Mr Arafat was clinically dead. Mr Qureia said: “I have just spoken to the officials in Paris and they say the situation is still as it was. He is still in the intensive care unit.

A source close to the Palestinian leadership had earlier described Mr Arafat’s condition as “very, very grave”. Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian cabinet official, however, had said reports that Mr Arafat was in a coma were “baseless”. Mr Erekat said the leader’s wife, Suha, had described his condition as “stable but difficult”.

Israeli security chiefs and Palestinian leaders had earlier organised separate emergency meetings to discuss the 75-year-old’s failing health.

In the West Bank, an official said some of the Palestinian president’s powers had been handed over to his prime minister.

Mr Arafat, who has been ill for three weeks, was last week flown to hospital after briefly passing out at his headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

He was initially described as suffering from bad flu, with symptoms including vomiting and diarrhoea, and has been receiving treatment for a still unexplained blood and digestive disorder since last Friday.

Speculation in Israel has ranged from claims he is suffering from a viral infection to reports of stomach cancer.

Full Article:guardian.co.uk

So what’s the mystery illness? In this day and age it’s sort of ridiculous, this ‘still unexplained’ fatal disease. Did the Mossad slip a little something into his food or water or what?

by Simon Jeffery
Re-elected US president George Bush today said he intended to spend the “political capital” he earned campaigning for the White House.

In his first press conference since the election he acknowledged he had to “explain the decisions I make” but said he had every intention of following through with a second term agenda stretching from an overhaul of the tax system to “spreading freedom” in the Middle East.

“The people made it clear what they wanted,” he said. “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and I intend to spend it.”

Full Article: guardian.co.uk

Great.

by Giles Tremlett
Spain’s parliament yesterday petitioned the Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to remove the remaining symbols of General Francisco Franco’s dictatorship from public buildings.

A motion urged the government to “proceed with the removal, in the shortest possible time during this legislature, of the symbols of the Francoist dictatorship … that still survive on publicly owned buildings.”

The call is supported by all parties except the main opposition group, the conservative People’s party.

It was unclear exactly how the removal of the hundreds, if not thousands, of symbols of Francoism that still dot Spanish cities, towns and villages might be carried out.

Statues of the dictator can be found in Madrid and in the northern port city of Santander.

There are dozens of squares and streets dedicated to Franco, some of them using the names by which he was known to a generation of Spaniards: caudillo or generalisimo .

“Too many municipalities are host to fiestas, images or names that are counter to the spirit of our constitution,” a socialist deputy, Carlos González, said yesterday.

“Schools, parks and squares should not be allowed to bear the names of those who oppressed and violated human rights,” he said

Full Article: guardian.co.uk

by Amelia Gentleman
Hunters have shot dead the last female brown bear native to the Pyrenees, condemning the species to extinction and causing an “environmental catastrophe” for France, the government said.

Animal protection groups were last night concerned for the survival of the bear’s 10-month-old orphaned cub which escaped unharmed, but which was barely weaned.

His mother, affectionately known by game wardens as Cannelle (Cinnamon), was killed on Monday when a group of boar-hunters shot her in what they claim was self-defence.

President Jacques Chirac said: “The disappearance of a species is always a serious loss for biodiversity.” The environment minister, Serge Lepeltier, was to visit the site of the killing last night to launch an investigation into how the six experienced hunters had been allowed to organise a wild boar shoot in the area where the bear was living.

“It is an ecological catastrophe because this was the last female bear of the Pyrenean line,” he said.

Full Article:guardian.co.uk

LITTLE EGG HARBOR, N.J. — A National Guard F-16 fighter jet on a nighttime training mission Wednesday fired 25 rounds of ammunition that tore through an intermediate school. No one was injured.

The military is investigating the incident that damaged Little Egg Harbor Intermediate School shortly after 11 p.m.

Police were called to the area when a custodian heard what sounded like someone running across the roof of the school. The custodian was the only person in the school at the time.

Police Chief Mark Siino on Thursday said police officers noticed punctures in the roof. Ceiling tiles had fallen into classrooms and there were scratch marks in the asphalt outside the building.

The 2-inch long bullets are made of lead and do not explode, said Col. Brian Webster, commander of the 177th Fighter Wing of the New Jersey Air National Guard.

It was unclear why the shots were fired, Webster said.

nbc10.com

by Rootsie
Except for a minute or two over the last few days, I never doubted that George Bush would be re-elected, by fair means or foul (we’ll probably never know), to the office of President of the United States.

What I didn’t think about was how it would feel to be an American today. I could not bring myself to vote for John Kerry yesterday, writing in ‘Nobody’ instead. A pretty lame form of protest, I admit. But I couldn’t get with the liberal illusion that John Kerry would represent a better option for the world than Bush does.

This does nothing, however, to mitigate my disgust with the fact that some tens of millions of Americans voted for George Bush, enough so that if the election needed to be stolen, it was a doable thing. Enough for a ‘mandate’. People who voted for Kerry may have been foolish or naive or both, but at least they were appalled by Bush. What about all the folk who think he’s great?

I went outside my place of work today and a loud bunch of mostly young people were marching down the street, grieving really, wailing like Cassandra: ‘This is NOT MY President!.’ I could not agree more. People were shaking their heads and saying “my God what must the rest of the world think of us?.” I would say that shame is appropriate today.

It is one thing to speculate, as I have, that 4 more years of this lurid wickedness would ensure that Americans never fall asleep at the wheel again, that the world would mobilize in resistance. It is quite another to contemplate what’s waiting ’round the bend.

We know that the Bush administration is short on the ‘healing’ gene, and after all, Wall Street is rejoicing in the fact that the world is safe for four more years of shameless plunder, so there will be no attempts to limit casualties or minimize the million sorts of incivility and nastiness that will issue from the policies of this government. Maybe this is the final bottom of 1000 years of European stupidity, and its all uphill from here.

These thoughts don’t touch the grief, though. How much will be destroyed, how many will suffer and die for the foolish ignorance of Americans and their European cronies.

When the next attack comes, at least Americans won’t be asking why ‘they’ hate us so much. It will be obvious. The US government is in fact ‘them’, and probably in ways we couldn’t begin to imagine. Without a care in the world for ‘the American spirit,’ or ‘democracy’ or ‘family values,’ and certainly none for the lives of our sons and daughters. All are equally expendable in this freakish vision of ‘A New World Order.’

So no matter my cynicism about this whole election thing, it is a sad day. A fresh reminder.

by Cynthia McKinney and Catherine Austin Fitts
Something is rising from the ashes of September 11: the specter of questions that will haunt our country until answered.

Months after the release of the official 9/11 Commission Report – even as Congress moves to implement its proposals for a radical centralization of security forces – growing numbers of Americans are doubting their own government’s account of what really happened on September 11, and how.

From the first, the Bush Administration resisted investigation and disclosure. Families of September 11 victims were forced to lobby the administration and Congress for a full and independent inquiry. They fought for 14 months, blocked every step of the way by the White House.

The political games reached such a point that the survivors of the worst attack ever on American soil were forced to hold a candlelight vigil in front of the White House. A vigil for the truth.

The White House finally assented in December 2002 to the establishment of an independent commission, under former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean. Still, the administration pushed for a hand-picked panel, with a narrow focus on intelligence failures and recommendations.

The families demanded a full investigation, posing nearly 400 questions to the Kean Commission. The commissioners said they welcomed these queries. But their final report ignored most of the unanswered questions. Still posted on the website of the September 11 Family Steering Committee, these questions are a stark reminder of the Kean Commission’s failures.

Now these same questions have been submitted to the New York Attorney General. Last week, the New York City office of Eliot Spitzer received a citizens’ complaint to open a legal inquiry into crimes still unsolved, more than three years later.

So begins the haunting of the White House.

Driven by survivor families, independent researchers, journalists, and a growing number of ordinary citizens, an emergent “9/11 truth movement” has organized several public inquiries into the events of September 11 during the past year. As co-chairs of the first 9/11 Citizens’ Commission, held in New York City in September, we were entrusted with answering questions the Kean Commission ignored.

What did we hear? We heard evidence of specific advance warnings about the 9/11 attacks from overseas. We heard about the spiking of FBI terrorism investigations and the lack of response during the attacks by high officials, including George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and the acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers.

We heard about air toxicity at Ground Zero still afflicting firefighters, first responders, and New York residents – and how, in the days after September 11, the White House intervened to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from issuing a strong warning that the air in Lower Manhattan was unsafe to breathe.

We also learned that, although there was a stunning abandonment of standard procedure for hijackings and air defense on September 11, the 9/11 Commission Report fails to issue a call for official accountability. As Kean Commission members travel the country to promote the findings of their report, we know many people are standing up to ask them tough questions about these and many other open issues. But ordinary people lack the subpoena powers necessary for a full discovery of the facts. Citizens’ investigations can only go so far.

Some of those who testified before us in New York therefore explored the case for a grand-jury investigation. Possible charges included criminal negligence, failure to perform official duties, criminal facilitation, liability for accessorial conduct, conspiracy and obstruction of justice by high-ranking U.S. government officials.

These charges, now raised in the petition to the New York State Attorney General, may sound extreme. But they reflect a growing concern within the public. A Zogby International poll of New York City residents last August showed that 49 percent believe some high officials knew about the attacks in advance and “consciously failed” to take preventive action. 41 percent of state residents overall shared that view.

A full 66 percent of New York City residents in the survey agreed the case of 9/11 should be reopened by Congress – or by Eliot Spitzer. A Congressional inquiry that respects the pressing nature of these questions is long overdue.

And so now we have no recourse but to stand vigil in front of Eliot Spitzer’s office. Until the unanswered questions about 9/11 are laid to rest, by a truly independent investigation that does not declare legitimate avenues of inquiry off-limits, they will continue to haunt our country – and whoever sits in the White House next year.
fromthewilderness.com

Cynthia McKinney, a five-term U.S. Congresswoman from Georgia’s fourth district from 1993 to 2003, won this year’s primary as the Democratic nominee for her former seat and is favored in tomorrow’s election. Catherine Austin Fitts is a former Assistant Secretary of Housing under President George Bush Sr. and a former managing director and board member of Dillon, Read & Co. Inc.

The questions of the Family Steering Committee are online at http://www.911independentcommission.org/questions.html
The Complaint and Petition to Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is online at http://www.Justicefor911.org

by Mickey Z.
Liberals can understand everything but the people who don’t understand them.”
–Lenny Bruce

“Crying won’t help you…praying won’t do you no good.”
–“When the Levee Breaks,” –Led Zeppelin

So…it seems the shorter of the two rich straight white male Yale-educated war criminals won, huh? The rancher beat the windsurfer. George W. Bush finally knows what it feels like to win a presidential election and thus will remain the public face of the American Empire for a little while longer.

Wait…shhhh. If you listen carefully you can hear all those protestors dusting off their Hitler mustaches, Bush/Dick jokes, and “regime change begins at home” posters. Four more years for them, too. (Then again it was four more years for everyone on the planet…no matter who won.)

And what of the luminary Left who made it all look as easy as A-B-B?

So much for any delusions we might have had about the influence of Chomsky, Zinn, McMoore, Springsteen, and the rest. More people DID come out to vote in 2004 than in 2000…to vote Republican, that is. Vote or die? Time to run another marathon, P. Diddy. This publicity stunt was a dud.

It’s not too early to say: Never again (now there’s a rallying cry if I’ve ever heard one). Never again should we endure “radical” support for anything that even looks like a Democrat..and that goes double for when Hillary runs against Rudy. (Keep your “small differences” and “ledge” to yourself in 2008…please.)

To everyone who did not lose their nerve, hit the panic button, or pull a flip-flop even JFK2 would never attempt, well, here we are.

Now what?

The Nuremberg Tribunal (1945-1946) proclaimed: “Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience … Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.”

Mind you, this is the Nuremberg Tribunal I’m quoting…not an anarchist collective or a dusty Thoreau tome. This is an edict borne of a population that chose to remain silent in the face of its government’s criminality. Lucy Gwin, editor of the essential disability rights zine Mouth, once told me she believed the greatest gift that could ever been given to the American people is the permission to disobey.

We should consider that permission long granted…

counterpunch.org

by Thomas Crampton
MIAMI The global implications of the U.S. election are undeniable, but international monitors at a polling station in southern Florida said Tuesday that voting procedures being used in the extremely close contest fell short in many ways of the best global practices.

The observers said they had less access to polls than in Kazakhstan, that the electronic voting had fewer fail-safes than in Venezuela, that the ballots were not so simple as in the Republic of Georgia and that no other country had such a complex national election system.

“To be honest, monitoring elections in Serbia a few months ago was much simpler,” said Konrad Olszewski, an election observer stationed in Miami by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

“They have one national election law and use the paper ballots I really prefer over any other system,” Olszewski said.

Olszewski, whose democratic experience began with Poland’s first free election in 1989, was one of 92 observers brought in by the Vienna-based organization, which was founded to maintain military security in Europe at the height of the cold war.

Two-member observer teams fanned out across 11 states and included citizens of 36 countries, ranging from Canada and Switzerland to Latvia, Kyrgyzstan, Slovenia and Belarus.

Formation of the U.S. election mission came after the State Department issued a standard letter on June 9 inviting the group to monitor the election. All 55 states in the organization have, since 1990, agreed to invite observation teams to their national elections. The decision to observe a U.S. presidential election for the first time was made because of changes prompted by controversy over the U.S. elections in 2000, involving George W. Bush and Al Gore.

“Our presence is not meant as a criticism,” said Ron Gould, Olszewski’s team partner and the former assistant chief electoral officer for Elections Canada. “We mainly want to assess changes taken since the 2000 election.”

Speaking as voting began at 7 a.m. in the Firefighter’s Memorial Hall for precincts 401 and 446 of Miami-Dade County, the observers drew sharp distinctions between U.S.-style elections and those conducted elsewhere around the world.

“Unlike almost every other country in the world, there is not one national election today,” said Gould, who has been involved in 90 election missions in 70 countries. “The decentralized system means that rules vary widely county by county, so there are actually more than 13,000 elections today.”

Variations in local election law not only make it difficult for election monitors to generalize on a national basis, but also prohibit the observers from entering polling stations at all in some states and counties. Such laws mean that no election observers from the organization are in Ohio, a swing state fraught with battles over voter intimidation and other polling issues.

Full Article:iht.com

by Edward Wong
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 2 – Insurgents blew up a northern oil export pipeline today, dealing a severe blow to the national economy, even as car bombs and gun battles across the country left at least 12 Iraqis dead, Iraqi officials said.

The sabotage of the northern oil pipeline forced a shutdown of crude oil exports to a port in Turkey, Iraqi officials said. The pipeline pumps out 400,000 barrels a day of crude oil and is the frequent target of sabotage. Hours after the explosion, firefighters were still battling a pipeline blaze near the city of Kirkuk, where pipelines run from oil fields west to the country’s largest refinery in Bayji and north to Turkey.

The attacks on oil pipelines, both near Kirkuk and around Basra in the south, where the oil fields are much more extensive, have had a devastating effect on the national economy. An Iraqi oil official in Baghdad told The Associated Press that the amount of crude oil in storage at the port of Ceyhan in Turkey was down to four million barrels, half of the port’s eight-million-barrel storage capacity. American and Iraqi officials are relying on steady oil exports to help revive the stagnant economy in a country where the unemployment rate hovers at 60 percent.

Full Article: nytimes.com