HELP IS IN HAITI NOW AS DEAD BUILDS

SHIFRA HOFFMAN OF ISRAEL NATIONAL RADIO CLAIMS OBAMA GOT AMERICA UNDER MARTIAL LAW.I WILL TRY TO GET STORIES ABOUT IT IF TRUE.IF TRUE OBAMA CAN USE THE ARMY ON ANYONE AND PUT THEM IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS AT WILL.OBAMA HAS TOTAL CONTROL OF AMERICA IF UNDER MARTIAL LAW.

An Orwellian world for Big Brother
Ken Craggs Online Journal Friday, January 15th, 2010
http://www.infowars.com/an-orwellian-world-for-big-brother/

The Council of Europe document Internet Governance and critical Internet resources states (p.7) that . . . the Internet of Things refers to the seamless connection of devices, sensors, objects, rooms, machines, vehicles, etc, through fixed and wireless networks. Connected sensors, devices and tags can interact with the environment and send the information to other objects through machine-to-machine communication . . . The Semantic Web promotes this synergy: even agents that where not expressly designed to work together can transfer data among themselves when the data come with semantics.Pachube (pronounced Patch-bay) is a platform that helps individuals and organisations connect to and build the ‘internet of things’ and enable buildings, interactive environments, networked energy meters, virtual worlds and sensor devices to talk and respond to each other. Pachube, according to the founder, Usman Haque, is a vision inspired by Dutch architect Constant Nieuwenhuys and his 1956 proposal for a visionary society, New Babylon.Around the world, a near invisible network of RFID wireless tags is being put on almost every type of consumer item. Wireless tags and sensors are being produced in their billions and are capable of being connected to the Internet in an instant. Yet this network is being built with little public knowledge or consent.IT company Hewlett Packard intends to create a Central Nervous System for the Earth (CeNSE), consisting of a trillion nanoscale sensors and actuators embedded in the environment and connected via an array of networks with computing systems, software and services to exchange their information among analysis engines, storage systems and end users. Ericsson, the Mobile telecommunications company, predicts that 50 billion devices will be wirelessly connected in 2020 and Cisco envisages the next generation of the Internet as having 1,000 times as many devices as the current Internet.Sense Networks collects billions of data points about people’s locations from cell phones, taxi cabs, cameras, GPS devices, WiFi positioning, cell tower triangulation, RFID and other sensors to locate people and help predict human behaviour on a macro scale. This is the original text of the CitySense proposal submitted to the NSF Computing Research Infrastructure program in 2006.

Tracking and locating people and objects which are constantly moving is said to have become more important to the daily routine of individuals, commercial organisations, the emergency services [and governments]. GlobalTag is the first wireless tracking device that incorporates GPS, RFID, Sensors and Satellite Communications. And the Viewpoint i2g can track assets and/or personnel whether they are indoors or out. ViewPoint integrates the interior positioning system (IPS) data of the ViewPoint system with data from global positioning system (GPS) sources. This integrated IPS and GPS information can be accessed from popular mapping services, including GoogleEarth and Microsoft Virtual Earth.Considering that the doors of a many cars can be locked and unlocked with a signal, how long will it be before similar technology is applied to the doors and windows of all buildings, including each and every home. Each building will probably have a receptor which receives a signal and activates the locking of doors and windows. The receptors on homes in a housing estate, for instance, could be switched on or off, via the Internet of Things, in a manner similar to the way that a telecommunications company can disconnect some landline telephones in a street while leaving the other landlines in that street connected. Sometime in the future, people with anti-social tendencies may end up being locked up in their own homes while their fridges, lights and other household appliances are controlled by Big Brother through the Internet of Things.A recent study for the European Commission entitled Towards a future Internet, stresses the view that much of the governance issues for the future Internet are related to political will and leadership . . . A balance must be struck between overregulation and under-regulation, a safe society and a surveillance society. The future Internet should not be designed for technocrats, governments and businesses, but for ordinary citizens, while protecting their security and privacy and limiting government surveillance and Orwellian-like control. The report goes on to conclude that the current Internet administration has limited transparency and that the Internet has become increasingly ubiquitous and grown to become a critical infrastructure, on both a technical and socio-economic level and that in the future, there will be multiple Internets, rather than the single Internet we have today.This article states that A new Internet ( GENI) could ultimately mean replacing networking equipment and rewriting software on computers, at a cost of billions of dollars. But any new network is likely to run parallel with the existing one for some time, with individuals and businesses gradually migrating over as they need more advanced applications.In 2002, W3C founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee raised what is known as Issue 25 regarding What to say in defense of principle that deep linking is not a legal act?. By the end of 2009, Issue 25 had still not been resolved. W3C members include the UK and US governments, so Issue 25 says a great deal about the true spirit of ‘Open Government’ when W3C are willing to go ahead with the semantic web and linking open data without firstly finding out if their activities are legal or illegal.

Page 13 of the EIFFEL Report states, We are beginning to cluster the world around us, but we are only at early stages. Newspapers were a mechanism for filtering, organizing and limiting information that otherwise would overwhelm us. With the demise of newspapers, what elements of the almost infinite flow of bits will bring order that is reflective of the human mind and human social structure? . . . In the current economic and political situation, no country can make decisions that will have only a local effect. There is no more isolation. Given that, one must consider the relationship between the Internet and governance. And perhaps even more importantly, the Internet may change forever governance of, by or for a people. Blogging and cell phone cameras that can transmit photos are having profound effects on the capability of individuals to constrain their governments at times when the governments may not want that.The Council of Europe document Internet Governance and critical Internet resources states (p.7) that . . . the Internet of Things refers to the seamless connection of devices, sensors, objects, rooms, machines, vehicles, etc, through fixed and wireless networks. Connected sensors, devices and tags can interact with the environment and send the information to other objects through machine-to-machine communication . . . The Semantic Web promotes this synergy: even agents that where not expressly designed to work together can transfer data among themselves when the data come with semantics.Pachube (pronounced Patch-bay) is a platform that helps individuals and organisations connect to and build the internet of things and enable buildings, interactive environments, networked energy meters, virtual worlds and sensor devices to talk and respond to each other. Pachube, according to the founder, Usman Haque, is a vision inspired by Dutch architect Constant Nieuwenhuys and his 1956 proposal for a visionary society, New Babylon.

Around the world, a near invisible network of RFID wireless tags is being put on almost every type of consumer item. Wireless tags and sensors are being produced in their billions and are capable of being connected to the Internet in an instant. Yet this network is being built with little public knowledge or consent.IT company Hewlett Packard intends to create a Central Nervous System for the Earth (CeNSE), consisting of a trillion nanoscale sensors and actuators embedded in the environment and connected via an array of networks with computing systems, software and services to exchange their information among analysis engines, storage systems and end users. Ericsson, the Mobile telecommunications company, predicts that 50 billion devices will be wirelessly connected in 2020 and Cisco envisages the next generation of the Internet as having 1,000 times as many devices as the current Internet.Sense Networks collects billions of data points about people’s locations from cell phones, taxi cabs, cameras, GPS devices, WiFi positioning, cell tower triangulation, RFID and other sensors to locate people and help predict human behaviour on a macro scale. This is the original text of the CitySense proposal submitted to the NSF Computing Research Infrastructure program in 2006.Tracking and locating people and objects which are constantly moving is said to have become more important to the daily routine of individuals, commercial organisations, the emergency services [and governments]. GlobalTag is the first wireless tracking device that incorporates GPS, RFID, Sensors and Satellite Communications. And the Viewpoint i2g can track assets and/or personnel whether they are indoors or out. ViewPoint integrates the interior positioning system (IPS) data of the ViewPoint system with data from global positioning system (GPS) sources. This integrated IPS and GPS information can be accessed from popular mapping services, including GoogleEarth and Microsoft Virtual Earth.Considering that the doors of a many cars can be locked and unlocked with a signal, how long will it be before similar technology is applied to the doors and windows of all buildings, including each and every home. Each building will probably have a receptor which receives a signal and activates the locking of doors and windows. The receptors on homes in a housing estate, for instance, could be switched on or off, via the Internet of Things, in a manner similar to the way that a telecommunications company can disconnect some landline telephones in a street while leaving the other landlines in that street connected. Sometime in the future, people with anti-social tendencies may end up being locked up in their own homes while their fridges, lights and other household appliances are controlled by Big Brother through the Internet of Things.

A recent study for the European Commission entitled Towards a future Internet, stresses the view that much of the governance issues for the future Internet are related to political will and leadership . . . A balance must be struck between overregulation and under-regulation, a safe society and a surveillance society. The future Internet should not be designed for technocrats, governments and businesses, but for ordinary citizens, while protecting their security and privacy and limiting government surveillance and Orwellian-like control. The report goes on to conclude that the current Internet administration has limited transparency and that the Internet has become increasingly ubiquitous and grown to become a critical infrastructure, on both a technical and socio-economic level and that in the future, there will be multiple Internets, rather than the single Internet we have today.This article states that A new Internet ( GENI) could ultimately mean replacing networking equipment and rewriting software on computers, at a cost of billions of dollars. But any new network is likely to run parallel with the existing one for some time, with individuals and businesses gradually migrating over as they need more advanced applications.In 2002, W3C founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee raised what is known as Issue 25 regarding What to say in defense of principle that deep linking is not a legal act?. By the end of 2009, Issue 25 had still not been resolved. W3C members include the UK and US governments, so Issue 25 says a great deal about the true spirit of Open Government when W3C are willing to go ahead with the semantic web and linking open data without firstly finding out if their activities are legal or illegal.Page 13 of the EIFFEL Report states, We are beginning to cluster the world around us, but we are only at early stages. Newspapers were a mechanism for filtering, organizing and limiting information that otherwise would overwhelm us. With the demise of newspapers, what elements of the almost infinite flow of bits will bring order that is reflective of the human mind and human social structure? . . . In the current economic and political situation, no country can make decisions that will have only a local effect. There is no more isolation. Given that, one must consider the relationship between the Internet and governance. And perhaps even more importantly, the Internet may change forever governance of, by or for a people. Blogging and cell phone cameras that can transmit photos are having profound effects on the capability of individuals to constrain their governments at times when the governments may not want that.

EARTH DESTROYED WITH THE EARTH

GENESIS 6:11-13
11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.(WORLD TERRORISM,MURDERS)(HAMAS IN HEBREW IS VIOLENCE)
12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence (TERRORISM)(HAMAS) through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

EARTHQUAKES

MATTHEW 24:7-8
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

MARK 13:8
8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:(ETHNIC GROUP AGAINST ETHNIC GROUP) and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.

LUKE 21:11
11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.

Haiti by the numbers: Damage, help on giant scale By The Associated Press – Sat Jan 16, 12:17 pm ET

People in Haiti needing help: 3 million. Bodies collected for disposal so far: 9,000. Number of people being fed daily by the United Nation's World Food Program: 8,000.
The numbers behind the outpouring of earthquake assistance are giant. But they are dwarfed by the statistics indicating the scope of the disaster in Haiti, the number of victims and their deep poverty.The level of need is going to be significantly higher than many previous disasters, said Dr. Michael VanRooyen, director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.Here are some numbers, with the proviso that figures are estimates that are constantly changing.

THE DEAD

Current death estimates: The Red Cross says 45,000 to 50,000 people have died. The Pan American Health Organization puts the number between 50,000 and 100,000.Bodies collected for disposal so far: 9,000. An additional 7,000 corpses were reportedly placed in a mass grave.People needing help: 3 million.Percent of buildings damaged or destroyed: Up to 50 percent.Hospitals or health facilities in Haiti damaged, forced to close: eight.Patients treated by Doctors Without Borders initially: more than 1,500.Search-and-rescue teams on ground or en route Friday: 38.

Homeless people in Port-au-Prince: at least 300,000.Water needed daily: 6 to 12 million gallons (enough to fill 18 Olympic sized swimming pools a day).Kate Conradt, chief spokeswoman for Save the Children, said that the challenge ahead cannot be overcome in a few days or weeks.This is a long-term disaster,she said in a telephone interview from Port-au-Prince.Helping Haiti is going to take far more than we ever could imagine,VanRooyen said.So in response, the world has opened its wallets.

THE MONEY

United Nations Emergency appeal for aid: $550 million. United States pledge of aid: $100 million. European Commission's initial spending: 3 million Euros. Total pledge of aid by governments around world: $400 million. Number of governments that have sent aid so far: more than 20. International Red Cross' initial emergency appeal goal: $10 million. Amount of money raised by Save The Children: $7 million. Amount of money pledged by George Soros: $4 million. Amount of money raised by the Salvation Army and some other charities: more than $3 million.

HELP THAT'S ALREADY THERE OR COMING

Number of people being fed daily by U.N.'s World Food Program: 8,000. Number of people a day WFP hopes to feed within 15 days: 1 million. Number of people a day WFP hopes to feed within one month: 2 million. Amount of food salvaged by WFP in damaged Haitian warehouse being distributed: 6,000 tons (out of a total of 15,000 tons stored before the earthquake). Meals prepared and freeze dried by the Salvation Army in Kansas and Iowa to ship to Haiti: 1.28 million, weighing nearly 200,000 pounds.

Number of trucks carrying bottled water being trucked in from neighboring Dominican Republic: 13. UNICEF initial shipment of rehydration liquids, water-purification tables, hygiene kits and tents: enough for 10,000 people. Size of Doctors Without Borders initial relief package: 25 tons. International Red Cross pre-positioned relief supplies: enough for 3,000 families. Plane of Red Cross supplies sent Thursday: 40 tons. Body bags sent by Red Cross on Thursday: 3,000. We are seeing overwhelming need within the city and increasingly desperate conditions, Conradt said.We visited two camps today with 5,000 people and only four latrines total. We were told that the number of people there doubles at night, but during the day they are looking out for food, water and family members.

Camps like that are all over Port-au-Prince. And this is a country that before Tuesday's earthquake was the poorest in the Western Hemisphere and one of the poorest worldwide. More than half of Haiti's 9 million people live on less than $1 a day, even before the earthquake, according to the United Nation's World Food Program. The World Bank said the average Haitian lives on just $1,180 a year. Nearly half of Haiti's population is hungry and only half had access to safe drinking water before the earthquake, according to the World Food Program. Nearly 60 percent of Haiti's children under 5 are anemic.

PEOPLE FROM ELSEWHERE

Americans in Haiti when earthquake struck: 45,000. Number of Americans evacuated from Haiti: 846. Number of Americans confirmed dead: six. Number of Canadians dead: four. Number of United Nations worker in Haiti when earthquake struck: 12,000. Number of UN workers confirmed dead: 37. Number of UN workers missing: 330.
Number of Dominicans dead: six. Number of Brazilians dead: 15. Number of Europeans dead: six. Number of staffers of Christian humanitarian agency World Vision: 370. U.S. troops there to help or possibly on their way: 10,000. Haitian Red Cross volunteers: 1,700. This report was compiled by Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein in Washington and Frank Jordans in Geneva. Edith Lederer at the United Nations in New York contributed. SOURCES: The Associated Press, United Nations, U.S. State Department, European Commission, International Red Cross, Save The Children, Salvation Army, other charities.

Haitians desperate for supplies; rescues continue By MICHELLE FAUL and MIKE MELIA, Associated Press Writers – JAN 17,10

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Rescuers pulled a dehydrated but otherwise uninjured woman from the ruins of a luxury hotel in the Haitian capital early Sunday, an event greeted with applause from onlookers witnessing rare good news in a city otherwise filled with corpses, rubble and desperation.It's a little miracle, the woman's husband, Reinhard Riedl, said after hearing she was alive in the wreckage.She's one tough cookie. She is indestructible.For many, though, the five days since the magnitude-7.0 quake hit have turned into an aching wait for the food, water and medical care slowly making its way from an overwhelmed airport rife with political squabbles. And while aid is reaching the country, growing impatience among the suffering has spawned some violence.Nobody knows how many died in Tuesday's quake. Haiti's government alone has already recovered 20,000 bodies — not counting those recovered by independent agencies or relatives themselves, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told The Associated Press.The Pan American Health Organization now says 50,000 to 100,000 people perished in the quake. Bellerive said 100,000 would seem to be the minimum.A U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman declared the quake the worst disaster the international organization has ever faced, since so much government and U.N. capacity in the country was demolished. In that way, Elisabeth Byrs said in Geneva, it's worse than the cataclysmic Asian tsunami of 2004: Everything is damaged.

Truckloads of corpses were being trundled to mass graves Saturday. Search teams also recovered the body of Tunisian diplomat Hedi Annabi, the United Nations chief of mission in Haiti, and other top U.N. officials who were killed when their headquarters collapsed.Experts have said rescue of people trapped beneath wreckage after three days is unlikely. But an American team pulled a woman alive from a collapsed university building where she had been trapped for 97 hours. Another crew got water to three survivors whose shouts could be heard deep in the pancaked ruins of a multistory supermarket.At the Hotel Montana, the son of co-owner Nadine Cardoso said he could hear her voice from the rubble, and the effort to pull her to safety began. Twelve hours later, with more than 20 friends and relatives of the prominent community member watching early Sunday, she was lowered from a hill of debris on a stretcher.The rescue was bittersweet for Cardoso's sister, because rescuers also told Gerthe Cardoso they had abandoned a search for her 7-year-old grandson after an aftershock closed a space where he was believed to be.Well, we can't have them both, she said after her sister was saved.Later Sunday. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was expected to arrive in Haiti to discuss aid delivery, which appeared to be speeding up.Florence Louis, seven months pregnant with two children, was one of thousands of Haitians who gathered at a gate at the Cite Soleil slum, where U.N. World Food Program workers handed out high-energy biscuits for the first time.It is enough because I didn't have anything at all, said Louis, 29, clutching four packets of biscuits.The Haitian government has established 14 distribution points for food and other supplies, and U.S. Army helicopters scouted locations for more. Aid groups opened five emergency health centers. Vital gear, such as water-purification units, was arriving from abroad.On a hillside golf course, perhaps 50,000 people were sleeping in a makeshift tent city overlooking the stricken capital. Paratroopers of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division flew there Saturday to set up a base for handing out water and food.

After the initial frenzy among the waiting crowd, when helicopters could only hover and toss out their cargo, a second flight landed and soldiers passed out some 2,000 military-issue ready-to-eat meals to an orderly line of Haitians.But aid delivery was still bogged down by congestion at the Port-au-Prince airport, quake damage at the seaport, poor roads and the fear of looters and robbers. Many people are just fleeing to the countryside, they are looking for a place to stay and for food, said Enel Legrand, a 24-year-old Haitian volunteer aid worker. The airport congestion also touched off diplomatic rows between the U.S. military and other donor nations. France and Brazil both lodged official complaints that the U.S. military, in control of the international airport, had denied landing permission to relief flights from their countries. Haitian President Rene Preval, speaking with the AP, urged all to keep our cool and coordinate and not throw accusations.As relief teams grappled with on-the-ground obstacles, U.S. leadership promised Saturday to step up aid efforts. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited and pledged more American assistance. President Barack Obama met with former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton in Washington and urged Americans to donate to Haiti relief efforts. In Port-au-Prince, hundreds of Haitians simply dropped to their knees outside a warehouse when workers for the agency Food for the Poor announced they would distribute rice, beans and other supplies. They started praying right then and there,said project director Clement Belizaire. Children and the elderly were asked to step first into line, and some 1,500 people got food, soap and rubber sandals until supplies ran out, he said. Associated Press writers contributing to this story included Alfred De Montesquiou, Tamara Lush, Jennifer Kay and Kevin Maurer in Port-au-Prince; Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Bradley Brooks in Sao Paulo; Frank Jordans in Geneva, and Libby Quaid in Washington.

Scientists: Haiti must prepare for more massive quakes
by Mira Oberman – Sat Jan 16, 2:04 pm ET

CHICAGO (AFP) – Haiti and its neighbors must prepare themselves for more massive quakes after the devastating tremors this week increased pressure along a lengthy fault line, scientists warned Friday.Paul Mann, a senior research scientist at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin, warned that just because the rebuilding process had started people shouldn't assume the risk was over.

This relief of stress along this area near Port-au-Prince may have actually increased stress in the adjacent segments on the fault, he told AFP.Researchers have already begun to work on models to try to predict how the stress changes resulting from the 7.0-magnitude quake which struck Tuesday is affecting the adjacent segments of the fault.This fault system is hundreds of kilometers long and the segment that ruptured to form this ear quake is only 80 kilometers long, Mann said in a telephone interview.There are many more segments which are building up strain where there haven't been earthquakes for hundreds of years.Potentially any one of these segments could cause an earthquake similar to that which happened in Haiti.There are, thankfully, only two major population centers along the fault: Port-au-Prince and Kingston, Jamaica.But as demonstrated in the chaos which followed Tuesday's tremor, the impact of a quake of that magnitude can be paralyzing, Mann said.Adding to the danger is the fact that the segment which broke was not among those closest to Port-au-Prince.

And there is a second fault system in the north of Haiti which extends to the Dominican Republic which has not ruptured in 800 years and has built up sufficient pressure for a 7.5 magnitude quake.The question is when are those going to rupture, Mann said, adding that it is very difficult to predict whether or not that's going to happen next week or 100 years.Eric Calais, a French geophysicist who works at Purdue University in Indiana, is among those trying to assess the danger.He had warned Haitian officials years ago of dangerous pressure in the fault which caused this week's devastating quake, but little could be done to reinforce the desperately poor nation's weak buildings.The Haitian government is not to blame in this, Calais told AFP.They listened to us carefully and they knew what the hazard was. They were very concerned about it and they were taking steps. But it just happened too early.

Calais began researching the fault line in 2003 and soon took his initial findings to the Haitian government, even meeting with the prime minister.In March 2008 he and Mann presented a paper showing that the fault had built up sufficient pressure to cause a 7.2 magnitude quake.But they could not pinpoint when the quake might strike and the government was occupied with recovering from a series of four hurricanes which struck that year. While the government had begun work on an emergency response plan, little could be done to retrofit and strengthen key buildings such as hospitals, schools and government buildings from which rescue operations could be organized. It's a poor country, Calais said.Strengthening a building to resist a large earthquake can be as costly as replacing the building.The devastation will allow Haiti to rebuild stronger than before, Calais said, noting that there are relatively cheap engineering solutions that can be applied to ensure that new buildings will not collapse in the next quake. It's very important for Port-au-Prince to rebuild properly,he added.There are other segments of that fault that could rupture in the future.

Iraq reclaims a Jewish history it once shunned By REBECCA SANTANA, Associated Press Writer – Sun Jan 17, 12:16 am ET

BAGHDAD – It was seized from Jewish families and wound up soaking in sewage water in the basement of a secret police building. Rescued from the chaos that engulfed Baghdad as Saddam Hussein was toppled, it now sits in safekeeping in an office near Washington, D.C.Like this country's once great Jewish community, the Iraqi Jewish Archive of books, manuscripts, records and other materials has gone through turbulent times. Now another twist may be in store: Iraq wants it back.Iraqi officials say they will go to the U.S., possibly next month, to assess the materials found by U.S. troops and plan for their return after an absence of nearly seven years.Some Jewish authorities are skeptical, arguing that since most estimates put the number of Jews in Iraq at less than 10, the archive no longer belongs here. But to Saad Eskander, the director of the Iraq National Library and Archives, it is part of a larger effort to rescue the cultural history Iraq lost during the invasion, and to put Iraqis on a tentative path to coming to grips with their past.Iraqis must know that we are a diverse people, with different traditions, different religions, and we need to accept this diversity ... To show it to our people that Baghdad was always multiethnic, said Eskander.The archive was found in May 2003, when U.S. troops looking for weapons of mass destruction got a tip to check out the basement of a building of the Mukhabarat — Saddam's secret police. Passing a 2,000-pound unexploded bomb on their way into the building, they found a flooded basement.It was really quite disgusting, to be honest, because it was about chest-deep sewage water, said Richard Gonzales, the Army officer who led the team and has since retired.

The troops found no WMD, but it was worth the trip. Books, photos and papers floated in the murky water. And not just any books, but Hebrew-language books, in a country that had been at war with Israel since 1948 and had once accused Jews of espionage and after a show trial hanged nine of them in a public square.The fact that the materials survived at all is remarkable, considering how much of Iraq's cultural heritage was looted or destroyed after the fall of Saddam — more than a quarter of the National Library's books and 60 percent of its collection of maps, photographs and records, Eskander said.Gonzales knew he had something significant on his hands but he didn't have enough people or tools to deal with it. So he went to Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi exile group whose discredited WMD claims had been the main justification for the invasion.Chalabi got him a pump and some manpower. The materials were pulled out of the basement, laid out to dry in the sun and packed in 27 metal trunks.Accumulated over the years were photos, parchments and cases to hold Torah scrolls; a Jewish religious book published in 1568; 50 copies of a children's primer in Hebrew and Arabic; books in Arabic and English, books printed in Baghdad, Warsaw and Venice — the lost heritage of what was once one of the largest Jewish communities in the Middle East, dating to the 6th century B.C.

Abraham of the Old Testament is believed to have come from the city of Ur, in what is modern-day Iraq, and despite periods of persecution, the community endured and thrived over centuries. But problems worsened when Iraq sided with Germany in World War II, and came to a head when Israel was created.By the early 1950s, Iraqi Jews were fleeing the country in droves. The few thousand who remained were harassed, too frightened to hold services, and their assets seized. In 1969, after Saddam's Baath party took power, came the hangings.The secret police are believed to have confiscated countless books and other archival material from the Jewish community.

Sometimes they would contact us when they had intelligence about such documents, Hebrew documents or books, said Kamil Jawad Ashour, the deputy director of the National Library.On one occasion I went with them to a house in Basra of a Jewish family where they confiscated some documents and books from them. And there was only an old woman there.After the 2003 invasion, Corine Wegener was working in Baghdad as an arts, monuments and archives officer — a rarity in the U.S. military — when she was asked to examine the materials from the basement.They were still damp, and that meant mold, a preservationist's nightmare. Only freezing stops mold, so a refrigerator truck was found and kept running 24 hours a day. I was out there three or four times a day with a food thermometer checking the temperature, Wegener said.

Agreement was reached, and later approved by the Iraqi Ministry of Culture, to move the archive to the U.S. for preservation. After being freeze-dried in Texas, the collection was taken to the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland. There the items were photographed, lightly cleaned, wrapped and boxed. NARA and the Center for Jewish History, a New York-based nonprofit group, are using the photos to catalog the collection. But to handle and digitize it, more preservation work would be needed. The archive was supposed to return to Iraq after two years. Until now, the Iraqis — focused more on surviving the day to day violence in the country — have never pushed for the archive's return. Doris Hamburg, who directs preservation projects at NARA, said it takes ages to repair damaged materials. Further work needs outside funding that has not materialized. But the archive's longer-than-anticipated stay in the U.S. has raised questions in Iraq, where public opinion tends to conflate Israel with Jews in general, and anything even tangentially related to either is suspect. I am afraid that there is pressure from some groups, both inside and outside the United States, in order to prevent the return of these Iraqi manuscripts to their original country, said Abdullah Hamid, the head of Iraq's National Center for Manuscripts and Documents. Hamburg denies any pressures and stresses Iraq can have the archive back whenever it wants, Iraqi officials at the National Library said they have no indication the Americans are trying to hold onto the archive. But Dov S. Zakheim, an Orthodox Jew who was a senior Department of Defense official under President George W. Bush warned that if the Iraqis were to claim the archive as their own, it would anger the Jewish community. It's not theirs. It's just not theirs, he said.Jews feel very strongly about their heritage.Mordechai Ben-Porat, who helped orchestrate a mass airlift of Jews leaving Iraq after Israel's establishment in 1948, says the archive should be in the museum dedicated to Iraqi Jews which he runs in Israel, where Jewish scholars can make use of the materials. The books belong to the majority of the Iraqi Jews, and they are not in Iraq. The books should be given to us, as the representatives of the Jews of Iraq, he said. However, he appeared resigned to the likelihood the archive would return to Iraq.

Maurice Shohet of the World Organization of Jews from Iraq said the community would like the materials to be digitized so that everyone has access, and was worried the necessary preservation work could not be done in Iraq. If these documents go back to Iraq the way they are they will be lost forever, he said. Since Iraq has no diplomatic relations with Israel, Eskander thought it unlikely Israeli scholars would get visas to enter Iraq and study the archive. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said it was not involved in any move to bring the archive to Israel. Digitization to make them available on the Web would solve a lot of the problems, but would require extensive preservation work, which many worry is beyond Iraq's present capabilities.

But Iraqi officials stressed they have the expertise and will make preservation a priority. Down the hall from Eskander's office are experts, many trained in Europe, who are repairing documents similarly damaged during the invasion. Wegener said she was deeply torn about whether the collection should be removed from what at the time was an occupied country. But I firmly believed then, and I believe now, that if we did not, it would have been destroyed.All the same, the archive's long absence from Iraq has made it politically sensitive, Eskander said. It annoyed Iraqis a lot that the Americans who failed to protect Iraqi cultural treasures were devoting such care to the Jewish archive. Why, given its treatment of its Jewish population, would Iraq want the Jewish Archive back? Eskander, 48, can point to himself. He is a Faily, a member of a small Shiite-Kurdish minority persecuted under Saddam, and he wants Iraqis to know about such oppression and learn from it. In a country that has lost thousands of lives to sectarian violence since 2003, where Christian churches are bombed, and where people perceived as friendly to Israel often receive death threats, Eskander can point to the collection of Hebrew-language books he has in his office for safekeeping. Like the Iraqi Jewish Archive, these books were found tucked in the corner of another basement — that one dry. They are catalogued on the library's Web site and available for study. The American national archive did a great job, and we're grateful for their help. ... The idea now is that we will do it here in Baghdad,Eskander said.It's our cultural heritage.Associated Press writers Matti Friedman and Josef Federman in Jerusalem, and investigative researcher Randy Herschaft in New York, contributed to this report.
On the Net: http://www.iraqnla.org http://www.nara.gov

Pope to visit Rome synagogue amid Jewish anger by Gina Doggett – JAN 17,10

ROME (AFP) – Pope Benedict XVI was headed Sunday for Rome's main synagogue for a much-anticipated visit after angering many Jews by moving his wartime predecessor Pius XII further on the road to sainthood.A 500-strong press corps will record Benedict's third visit to a Jewish house of worship, which comes barely four weeks after he revived controversy over Pius XII, whom many Jews accuse of inaction over the Holocaust.The visit, announced in October, appeared at risk of being cancelled amid howls of protest over the papal decree bestowing the title venerable on the Nazi-era pope.The tension is in stark contrast to the warm welcome reserved for Benedict's predecessor John Paul II, who became the first modern pope to visit a synagogue -- the same imposing temple on Rome's River Tiber -- in 1986.A high-profile stayaway Sunday is the president of Italy's assembly of rabbis, Giuseppe Laras, who said Benedict had weakened ties between Catholics and Jews.Israel's ambassador to the Holy See will attend but remarked that Catholic anti-Judaism still exists.

Adding fuel to the fire, the head of the Roman Catholic Church on Friday urged Vatican doctrinal experts to speed rapprochement with a Catholic fraternity that includes a Holocaust-denying bishop, Richard Williamson.Renzo Gattegna, who heads the Union of Communities of Italian Jews, said:It cannot be denied that some decisions taken by the current pope in 2009 led to moments of tension and concern on the Jewish side.Gattegna listed the Pius XII and Williamson affairs as well as Benedict's decision to rehabilitate the Latin version of the Catholic Church's Good Friday mass, which contains a prayer for the conversion of the Jews.Cooler heads on both sides see the occasion as an important step along the way to reconciliation between the two faiths, a process that began in the 1960s with Vatican II.The 82-year-old German-born pope said Sunday during his weekly Angelus prayer: Despite the problems and difficulties, there is a climate of great respect and dialogue between the two faiths.Benedict stressed the belief in a single God, first of all, but also the protection of life and the family, the wish for social justice and peace.

The pope's host, Rome's Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, said last week that the visit was a sign that Benedict wanted to continue the dialogue.The director of Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano asserted Saturday that few Catholics had done as much as Benedict XVI to bring Christians and Jews together, hailing the pope's steps forward since a 1965 Vatican II declaration absolved Jews of blame for Jesus' death.
Participants are to include the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, the apostolic nuncio to Israel, Antonio Franco, and Oded Wiener, secretary general of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.Rome's Jewish community, the oldest in Europe, has some 15,000 members.While Pius XII was pope, the Nazis rounded up more than 1,000 Roman Jews for deportation on October 16, 1943. Only a handful returned from the death camps.Benedict is to place a wreath before a plaque commemorating this tragedy before going into the synagogue. He will also stop before another inscription marking a 1982 attack by Palestinian extremists that killed a two-year-old child and wounded 27 other people. In a speech, Benedict is expected to stress the common roots of the two faiths as he did during his trip to Israel in May 2009. Later he is to meet briefly with Rabbi Di Segni before planting an olive tree to mark his visit.

Just a few weeks after a young woman assaulted the pope in St Peter's Basilica on Christmas Eve, yanking the pope to the floor but not harming him, security was tight ahead of Sunday's synagogue visit. The route Benedict will take across the Tiber from the Vatican was to be determined at the last minute.

Israeli minister visits Abu Dhabi for first time By BARBARA SURK, Associated Press Writer – JAN 17,10

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Israel for the first time sent a Cabinet minister to the United Arab Emirates, a small Gulf country with which it doesn't have relations, to attend a conference on alternative energy.National Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau told The Associated Press on Sunday he did not meet with any Emirati officials while attending a conference of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), based in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi. The agency's activities are open to Israel because it is a member state.Landau said the Israeli delegation entered the country after special arrangements were made.They had to do it since they committed themselves to making it possible for all member states, with or without relations, to participate in the agency's activities, Landau said in a phone interview from Abu Dhabi.Last year the UAE denied entry to Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer to an international tournament in Dubai. The UAE officials said Peer was denied a visa because of anti-Israel sentiments in the Gulf state following last year's three-week war between Israel and Islamic militants in Gaza.The tournament was fined a record $300,000 for refusing Peer the entry. Last week the UAE authorities sent a written assurance to the World Tennis Association that all players who will qualify for the 2010 championships will be allowed into the country and welcome to play in Dubai.

On Sunday, an official with the UAE's Foreign Ministry told The Associated Press that allowing Israel Cabinet minister to participate in the agency's activities was part of obligations in hosting (the agency) in the UAE.The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press. He added, that Israel's participation in the international event in the oil-rich Abu Dhabi will have no implications or indications for bilateral links between the UAE and any other party.Israel only has diplomatic relations with two Arab countries, Egypt and Jordan.Last year, Mauritania and Qatar suspended contacts with Israel to protest the Gaza bloodshed. Mauritania, an Arab League member, had full diplomatic relations with Israel. Qatar, an energy-rich Gulf state had maintained low-level relations with the Jewish state by hosting an Israeli trade office in the capital Doha since 1996.IRENA was established a year ago with a mission to promote sustainable use of al forms of renewable energy. In June, Abu Dhabi was selected as the agency's headquarters.It's the first ever international organization based in the UAE.

Obama confident bank tax plan will pass Congress By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press Writer – Sat Jan 16, 5:25 pm ET

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama expressed confidence Saturday that lawmakers would approve his proposed tax on banks to recover bailout money, despite opposition from Republicans and the financial industry.Like clockwork, the banks and politicians who curry their favor are already trying to stop this fee from going into effect, he said, using his weekly radio and Internet addresses to promote the plan he announced this past week.The very same firms reaping billions of dollars in profits, and reportedly handing out more money in bonuses and compensation than ever before in history, are now pleading poverty. It's a sight to see.If banks can afford to pay out all those bonuses, he said, then they can repay taxpayers, too.We're not going to let Wall Street take the money and run. We're going to pass this fee into law, he said.Congress must approve the tax and that's not assured, given the immediate opposition from Republicans. Democrats also could lose their 60-vote majority in the Senate, with Democrat Martha Coakley in an unexpectedly close race against Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts to fill the seat held for decades by the late Democrat Edward M. Kennedy.Brown opposes Obama's bank tax. Obama planned to campaign in the state on Sunday.The White House's decision to use the address to speak about the proposed tax instead of the U.S. response to the suffering and devastation caused by the earthquake in Haiti suggested one line of attack Obama would use against Brown on Sunday.The proposed 0.15 percent tax would last at least 10 years and generate about $90 billion over the decade, according to administration estimates. It would apply to about 50 of the biggest banks, those with more than $50 billion in assets, and include many institutions that accepted no money from the $700financial industry bailout.Obama said that although the banks were facing a crisis of their own creation,the distasteful but necessary taxpayer-funded bailout prevented an even greater calamity for the country.

Most of the banks have returned the money they borrowed, and Obama said that was good news.But as far as I'm concerned, it's not good enough, he said.We want the taxpayers' money back, and we're going to collect every dime.Six of the biggest U.S. banks are on track to pay $150 billion in total executive compensation for 2009, slightly less than the record $164 billion in 2007 before the financial crisis struck, according to the New York state comptroller's office.Obama challenged those who say banks can't afford the tax without passing the costs on to shareholders and customers.That's hard to believe when there are reports that Wall Street is going to hand out more money in bonuses and compensation just this year than the cost of this fee over the next 10 years, he said.If the big financial firms can afford massive bonuses, they can afford to pay back the American people.On the Net:
Obama address: http://www.whitehouse.gov American Bankers Association: http://www.aba.com