QUITO, Ecuador, March 8 (Reuters) – Petroecuador said on Wednesday it expected to bring oil production to near normal levels in three or four days after troops fired tear gas to clear out strikers who have cut crude output at Ecuador’s state oil firm by nearly half.

Production was down to 96,360 barrels of oil per day — a slight improvement from earlier on Wednesday when the ongoing strike slashed output by nearly three-quarters. Petroecuador normally produces around 200,000 bpd.

Petroecuador said in a statement it expects production to rise to 190,000 bpd in about four days as troops gradually clear striking contract workers from its oil infrastructure and wells.
A company official said Petroecuador could hire replacement employees to start operations.

“It will be difficult because of the number of workers, but we can sign new contracts with the same sub-contracting companies and they can hire other workers,” Jaime Crow, head of Petroecuador production division, told Reuters.

The roughly 4,000 contract workers walked off the job to demand full-time jobs and delayed payments. Strike leaders vowed to continue with the protest.

“Neither Petroecuador nor the government has given us an answer to our demands,” said Luis Ubidia, a union leader, by telephone. “The strike will continue for the moment.”

The strike is the latest dispute to hit Ecuador’s oil industry and embattled President Alfredo Palacio. Last month, protesters forced a cut in exports after briefly shutting two pipelines to demand a bigger share of oil revenues.
alertnet.org

LAGOS, Nigeria – A Nigerian militant group holding three foreign oil workers hostage said its fighters clashed Wednesday with army troops in this West African nation’s oil-rich delta region.

The militants said in an e-mailed statement that one of their vessels was attacked on the Escravos River by four Nigerian navy patrol boats, sparking a 45-minute gunbattle they claimed left seven government soldiers dead.

The reported skirmish could not be independently confirmed and military officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

“The Nigerian government and military should note that we have sufficient firepower in that vicinity to repel any attack,” the militants said.

Ethnic Ijaw militants took nine foreign oil workers hostage Feb. 18 and released six of them last week. The remaining three include two Americans and a Briton.

The militant Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta claims to be fighting to win a greater share of oil wealth on behalf of the Niger Delta’s impoverished inhabitants, who have remained poor despite the fact that most of Nigeria’s oil is being pumped from the swampy region. The government characterizes the militants as criminals and oil thieves.
thestate.com

A UN expert has said that East Jerusalem is undergoing major changes because of a new wall through Palestinian neighbourhoods aimed at reducing the number of Palestinians in the city.

John Dugard, special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, said in a report to the UN Human Rights Commission on Wednesday that the Israeli-built separation wall was causing major humanitarian problems.

“The character of East Jerusalem is undergoing a major change as a result of the construction of the wall through Palestinian neighbourhoods,” Dugard said.

“The clear purpose of the wall in the Jerusalem area is to reduce the number of Palestinians in the city by transferring them to the West Bank.

“This causes major humanitarian problems: Families are separated and access to hospitals, schools and the workplace are denied.”

Dugard recalled that the wall between Israel and Palestinian territories – described by Israel as a security measure – had gone ahead despite a 2004 ruling by the International Court of Justice.

The report to the UN was immediately condemned by the Israeli UN envoy to the UN rights panel, who said the document was pursuing “manifest political ends”.

Meanwhile, a report by the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, said the Israeli army had increased the number of roadblocks and barriers in the West Bank by 25% since last summer.

The number of road obstacles rose to 471 in January, from 376 last August at the time of Israel’s Gaza pullout, OCHA said, and they tightened travel restrictions for Palestinians and made it harder for them to reach properties, markets and medical services.
aljazeera.net

The two state solution, a cruel joke
Israel’s current delusional, myopic policies in the occupied territories will render its people even more profoundly insecure, for a state cannot live in peace and security by denying it to others.

The interminable torment inflicted on the Palestinian people by Zionism is in the active phase of yet another disastrous historical culmination. The Palestinians’ role in this karmic dialectic is as the obscenely oppressed victims who progressively lose land, life, and livelihood. 1948 represents the mega catastrophe, preceded by decades of unrelenting militant Zionist intrusion protected by the reigning colonial power of the time. 1967 was of much lesser proportions in terms of its collective consequences, but the decades since have led to that singular Zionist goal supported by the superpower of the day: dispossession of Palestine.

Today, we are witness to an unfolding disaster of gigantic proportions in what is left of historic Palestine and its people. The Israeli goal under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his successors, short of another 1948 or 1967-like event that would provide cover for further mass expulsions, is the complete political and social annihilation of Palestinian will and society, leaving it fragmented, pauperized, disoriented, and demoralized, severely dividing it along geographical, local, factional, and ideological fault lines, destroying its social cohesion, its demographic and geographic continuity, its national identity, its nationalist response.

Death of two boys in airstrike stirs anger in Gaza, soul-searching in Israel
An Israeli missile obliterated a vehicle in crowded Gaza City, killing two Palestinian militants inside — a common sight these days. But the attack also killed three boys, provoking grief and rage among Palestinians and criticism from Israelis.

Second Historic Mission to Iran
Anti-Zionist Orthodox Rabbis visited Iran

A delegation of of Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jewish Rabbis visited the Islamic Republic of Iran, March 2006, where they met with clerics, Imams, and Government Officials.

“…Orthodox Jews the world over, are saddened by the hysteria which has greeted the recent stated desire of the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to see a world free of Zionism. This desire is nothing more than a yearning for a better, more peaceful world. It is a hope that with the elimination of Zionism, Jews and Muslims will live in harmony as they have throughout the ages, in Palestine and throughout the world.”

The race to save hundreds of thousands of Pakistani earthquake survivors from the harsh Himalayan winter has been won, the United Nations said yesterday.

“There has been no second wave of deaths, no massive population movement down the mountains, no severe malnutrition, and no outbreak of epidemics,” said Jamie McGoldrick, the deputy humanitarian aid coordinator in Islamabad.

Five months ago yesterday about 87,000 people died when a 7.6 magnitude quake shook Kashmir and North-West Frontier province. Another 1,300 died in Indian-occupied Kashmir.

But fears of a second wave of deaths were averted by a milder than expected winter and a helicopter-led aid effort. By this week an international air fleet, including US and British military helicopters, had flown more than 27,400 trips ferrying food, tents and medicine.
guardian.co.uk

RAWALPINDI: President Musharraf presented the US Commander Gen John P Abizaid intelligence information on a conspiracy some Afghan government leaders hatched against Pakistan.

Musharraf called for greater coordination and sharing of actionable intelligence in real time to achieve desired objectives of catching “big fish”. The US Central Command chief called on the president here on Wednesday.

The US general flew in Rawalpindi as a follow-up to US President Bush visit to Pakistan for sharing intelligence information on al-Qaeda suspects and the mini-crisis emerged following the unsubstantiated and non-sense charges hurled on Pakistan by the Afghan government of President Karzai.

The president told the US commander that the Afghan information was outdated, as only real time information could help nab “big fish.” General Abizaid’s meeting with President Musharraf lasted for nearly two hours. Abizaid is expected to share the information and perceptions of Pakistani leaders with the Afghan government leaders.

Following Bush visit, relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan became strained when the Karzai government leaked information to the press, levelling allegations on Pakistan for not acting against terrorists.

President Musharraf termed all these charges rubbish and non-sense and called the US leaders for greater coordination and sharing an actionable intelligence in real time to achieve the objectives.
jang.com.pk

The fourth session of the General Conference of Arab Parties here Tuesday voiced support for Iran’s right to acquire peaceful nuclear technology.

Secretary-General of the Congress of Arab Parties Abdul Aziz al-Seyyed told reporters at a press conference held at the end of the three-day session that Iran was being targeted by big powers because it was a regional power with policies that did not please these powers.

Arab countries treat Iran as a Muslim brother state, the official said, and added that Arab states desired good relations with members of the Islamic world. “And that is why we are trying to establish sustainable relations with Iran.”
irna.ir

Sabotage not ruled out after Iran pipeline blaze
TEHRAN (AFP) – A crude oil pipeline in Iran’s restive southwestern province of Khuzestan has been hit by a fire, state media said, with officials not ruling out the possibility of sabotage.

Local oil official Abdolreza Asadi said the pipeline linking the city of Ahvaz to a refinery in Abadan was ablaze overnight Tuesday, with Ahvaz fire chief Abdol Hamid Talebzadeh saying the “major fire” was put out after 10 hours.

A state television report said sabotage had not been ruled out and that an investigation was underway.

“The repair on the damaged pipeline has started and it will soon resume transporting oil,” Asadi said, adding that Iran’s biggest oil refinery at Abadan was in the meantime being fed by different pipelines.

In October last year, two major fires along oil and gas pipelines in Khuzestan were also reported and sabotage also deemed a possibility.

* BAGHDAD – A car bomb exploded near a mosque in New Baghdad on the eastern side of the city, killing three people and wounding 10 others, police said.
NEAR FALLUJA – Three bodies of unidentified civilians with gunshot wounds to the head, chest and limbs were found on a main road in a village just south of Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, a police official said.
BAGHDAD – Two civilians were killed and at least seven wounded when a car bomb apparently targeting Iraqi soldiers exploded in front of a hospital in central Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD – An Oil Ministry official said three of the 18 men found bound and strangled on Tuesday were employees of the state oil pipeline company in Dora in the south of the capital. There was still no information on the other 15 bodies.
BAGHDAD – Six civilians were killed and eight wounded when a roadside bomb went off near an Iraqi army patrol in western Baghdad, police and hospital officials said.
FALLUJA – A U.S. Marine was killed in combat on Wednesday in Anbar Province, the U.S. military said.
BAGHDAD – Gunmen killed two people employed in the Green Zone, home to the Iraqi government and foreign embassies. The two were on their way to work when they were attacked in the western Mansour district, police said.
alertnet.org

Daniel Pipes Finds Comfort in Muslims Killing Muslims
One of the abiding myths about the War on Iraq is that the neocons were too stupid to realize that they would confront an unrelenting, indigenous resistance to their occupation of Iraq. Unwittingly, the story line goes, they led the U.S. into a conflict which has now produced a civil war. But this simply does not fit the facts. The neocons clearly anticipated such an outcome before they launched their war as Stephen Zunes documents in Antiwar.com:

“Top analysts in the CIA and State Department, as well as large numbers of Middle East experts, warned that a U.S. invasion of Iraq could result in a violent ethnic and sectarian conflict. Even some of the war’s intellectual architects acknowledged as much: In a 1997 paper, prior to becoming major figures in the Bush foreign policy team, David Wurmser, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith predicted that a post-Saddam Iraq would likely be “ripped apart” by sectarianism and other cleavages but called on the United States to “expedite” such a collapse anyway.”

Yet the line persists that the neocons had no idea what they were getting into. This cannot be correct as they think a lot about what they do and they plan carefully. Not only is that charge absurd on the face of it, but it is arrogant on the part of those who level it. And it is the worst political mistake possible underestimating your adversary.

Now the neocons are beginning to advocate for civil war in Iraq quite openly. The clearest statement of this strategy as yet comes from pre-eminent neocon and ardent Zionist Daniel Pipes. In a recent piece in the Jerusalem Post, Pipes spills the beans. He writes:

“The bombing on February 22 of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, Iraq, was a tragedy, but it was not an American or a coalition tragedy. Iraq’s plight is neither a coalition responsibility nor a particular danger to the West. Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition’s responsibility, nor its burden. When Sunni terrorists target Shi’ites and vice versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy, but not a strategic one.”

“The Country Has Already Collapsed”
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Headlines from Iraq seem to be getting progressively worse. Not only are suicide attacks and bombings a daily occurrence, but particularly after the February attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra — a Shiite holy site — deadly sectarian violence has increased. Are we witnessing a country falling apart?

Marina Ottaway: At this point in Iraq, you do not have a central government — so you don’t have a legitimate authority running the country. You don’t have a government with the power to establish or maintain order. What you have is a nominal government that can only stay in power because the Americans are there. The government is supposed to have derived legitimacy from the constitution and the elections. But I think the government we end up with, won’t have much legitimacy either.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why not? After all, the Iraqis went to the polls and chose their representatives. That seems pretty legitimate, does it not?

Ottaway: It is now almost three months after the elections and there is still no government. The Iraqis continue postponing the opening of parliament because according to the constitution, after they open parliament, they only have two months to form the government. They don’t think they can form a government that quickly. A government that takes over five months to form is not a government that is going to have very much legitimacy in the end. The country has already collapsed. Now the challenge is figuring out a way to deal with this fact.

U.S. Sets Plans to Aid Iraq in Civil War
The U.S. military will rely primarily on Iraq’s security forces to put down a civil war in that country if one breaks out, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told lawmakers yesterday.

Sectarian violence in Iraq has reached a level unprecedented since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and is now eclipsing the insurgency as the chief security threat there, said Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, who appeared with Rumsfeld.

“The plan is to prevent a civil war, and to the extent one were to occur, to have the . . . Iraqi security forces deal with it to the extent they’re able to,” Rumsfeld told the Senate Appropriations Committee when pressed to explain how the United States intended to respond should Iraq descend wholesale into internecine strife.

If civil war becomes reality, “it’s very clear that the Iraqi forces will handle it, but they’ll handle it with our help,” Abizaid said later when asked to elaborate on Rumsfeld’s remark.

Night-time knock on door heralds secret assassins
The cars may be back on the streets of Baghdad, but the shuttered homes of Street Number 60 provide a grim reminder that the sectarian violence that flared after the destruction of the Golden Mosque continues under cover of darkness.

Each house in this street in the southern neighbourhood of Dora once housed a family. Now most lie empty, their owners having fled after armed groups warned Shia in this predominately Sunni area to leave or die.

“It is like a gangster film,” said one resident too frightened of reprisals to give his name or even profession.

“Darkness comes and then people with masks set up checkpoints.

“There is a knock on the door and those who answer are either abused or killed.

“Those abused are not expected to wait to be warned twice. I see them pack their car and leave.”

Every day brings killings and kidnaps in Baghdad and no one knows the culprits.

It is the thread that links cars, carpets and cameras and is also responsible for three-course meals, bookshops and modern medicine.
The Islamic civilisation, according to the curators of a national exhibition that opened this week, has made an enormous but largely neglected contribution to the way we live in the west.

The project, 1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage of Our World, supported by the Home Office and the Department for Trade and Industry, uncovers the Islamic civilisation’s overlooked contribution to science, technology and art during the dark ages in European history.

It lifts the veil on hundreds of innovations – from kiosks and chess through to windmills and cryptography – that are often popularly associated with the western world but originate from Muslim scholarship and science.

Based on more than 3,000 peer-reviewed academic studies, the exhibition charts Islamic innovations during ten decades of “missing history” spanning from the 6th to the 16th century and covering an area stretching from China to southern Spain.
guardian.co.uk

None of this history has been ‘lost’ or ‘missing’ to Muslims, or to anybody else who cares enough to know.

“Susan’s case is a perfect example of the vicious cycle that develops when doctors prescribe drugs for unapproved uses. She was given Provigil to counter the sedating effects of Klonopin, which was prescribed to counter the side effects of Paxil.”

Many experts say the wide-spread epidemic of mental health problems in the US is man-made. The case of Susan Florence is a testament to this theory of man-made insanity.

While mania, psychosis, anxiety, agitation, hostility, depression, and confusion may be signs of mental illness, these same “symptoms” are referred to as side effects on the labels of the most commonly prescribed psychiatric medications used to treat mental illness.

Once Susan Florence was placed on medication, whenever she experienced a side effect from one drug, her doctor simply prescribed another until she ended up in a drug-induced frenzy for which it would have been impossible to distinguish which drug, or combination thereof, was causing the adverse reactions.
mediamonitors.net

NEW YORK A Gallup report released today reveals that more than half of all Americans, rejecting evolution theory and scientific evidence, agree with the statement, “God created man exactly how Bible describes it.”

Another 31% says that man did evolve, but “God guided.” Only 12% back evolution and say “God had no part.”

Gallup summarized it this way: “Surveys repeatedly show that a substantial portion of Americans do not believe that the theory of evolution best explains where life came from.” They are “not so quick to agree with the preponderance of scientific evidence.”

The report was written by the director of the The Gallup Poll, Frank Newport.

Breaking down the numbers, Gallup finds that Republican backing for what it calls “God created human beings in present form” stands at 57% with Democrats at 44%.

Support for this Bible view rises steadily with age: from 43% for those 18 to 29, to 59% for those 65 and older. It declines steadily with education, dropping from 58% for those with high school degrees to a still-substantial 25% with postgraduate degrees.
editorandpublisher.com