Deporting Sharif may weaken Pakistan's President Musharraf

This is the "democracy" that our retarded president is spending billions of OUR dollars to keep propped up! Just another example of Bush's ignorance and miscalculation that is costing us too much money and making the U.S. LESS safe from terrorism. We all need to ask ourselves, on this anniversary of 9/11, if there is anything that this administration has done that has lead to greater security from terrorism? If you take the time to educate yourselves, you will find that the answer is a resounding 'NO'!!



Deporting Sharif may weaken Pakistan's President Musharraf

By Mian RidgeTue Sep 11, 5:00 AM ET

Only hours after he returned home Monday from seven years in exile, former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was arrested and deported to Saudi Arabia. Mr. Sharif had returned intending to challenge Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's troubled, US-backed military rule ahead of national elections due before Jan. 15.

President Musharraf's handling of Sharif's return reveals the difficulty with which a key figure in the US war on terror must navigate the narrowing gap between keeping his tenuous hold on power and permitting a return to free elections.

Despite his overtures toward a power-sharing deal with another former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, it seems certain that Sharif's arrest and deportation will only further weaken Musharraf, whose popularity has been in free fall in recent months.

"It is remarkable how Sharif's return has completely unnerved Musharraf's government," says Talat Masood, a leading analyst and retired Army general. "The state of terrible insecurity it has been thrown into shows how very fragile the state has become."

"Sharif's arrest and deportation is a disastrous development and extremely bad for the future of Pakistan. It's a flagrant violation of the Supreme Court order and shows the state is simply not prepared to listen to the law. It invites anarchy in the country," says Mr. Masood, referring to the Supreme Court's recent decision to allow Sharif to return from exile.

Since Musharraf tried, and failed, to sack Pakistan's Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry earlier this year, the military leader has faced mounting and unprecedented opposition within Pakistan: from the judiciary, from Islamic radicals and from the mainstream parties that have long argued that it is unconstitutional for the president to also be Army chief.

"In the short term Sharif's arrest may help Musharraf; in the long term it won't," says Hassan Askari Rizvi, an independent political analyst and former professor of Pakistan studies at Columbia University in New York.

"Sharif's supporters will go on building pressure. The opposition parties will go on agitating. Musharraf will face more criticism and his popularity will continue to decline. His problems are far from solved," says Dr. Rizvi.

Last week, the Supreme Court began hearing legal challenges, filed by Musharraf's opponents, to his dual role as president and Army chief.

Last month, the United States, which regards him as a key ally in the war against terrorism, forced him to back down from imposing a state of emergency.

His government is also under attack by militants who are believed to have masterminded last week's suicide bombings near the Army headquarters in the city of Rawalpindi that killed 25 people, including staff of the main intelligence agency.

Amid all this, by Oct. 15, Musharraf will try to get reelected by the national and provincial assemblies.

Nawaz Sharif: An unlikely heroSharif, who led Pakistan twice in the 1990s, was toppled in a bloodless coup by Musharraf in 1999 and sentenced to prison on charges of corruption that had long dogged his leadership. But his sentence was commuted in 2000 in a deal brokered by the Saudi royal family. On August 23, Pakistan's Supreme Court ruled that he could fly home.

Shortly after his plane touched down in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, after departing London on Sunday night, Sharif was arrested in the airport's VIP lounge over corruption and money laundering charges. A short while later, with tears in his eyes, he was unceremoniously plunked onto a plane to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Many believe Sharif's arrest and deportation will backfire on Musharraf.

"Sharif's popularity will surge now, because he will be seen as a symbol of resistance to Musharraf," says Rizvi.

Musharraf turned to Ms. Bhutto in the hope that a power-sharing deal would buy him some legitimacy and help him overcome constitutional hurdles to remaining in power.

As Bhutto entered talks with Musharraf, Sharif positioned himself as an independent defender of democracy who would never do business with a military leader. This, despite the fact that Sharif also rose to power with the support of a military ruler, General Zia ul-Huq.

Bhutto, meanwhile, needs Musharraf to drop the many pending corruption charges against her, allowing her to return and fight elections. She also wants Pakistani presidents stripped of the power to dismiss governments and for Musharraf to shed his Army uniform.

In return, her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) would help clear the way for him to run for reelection as president.

Such a deal has been strongly encouraged by the United States and other Western allies in the hope that it would bring stability to Pakistan and help in the fight against terrorism. But it is more likely, say analysts, that US support for talks between Bhutto and Musharraf will only bolster opposition to Musharraf.

This is partly due to amplified anti-American sentiments following Pakistan's cooperation with the US after 9/11. While Bhutto has courted American approval of a pact with Musharraf, Sharif has been cheered in Pakistan for his perceived independence.

'Out of the loop' under MusharrafMasood, the analyst and retired Army general, says that opposition to Musharraf has become a more potent force in Pakistan than anti-Americanism.

"There's been a feeling against Musharraf that has been getting stronger for some time," he says. "People here, whether they are poor or middle class, complain they have no sense of participation in politics, that they feel completely out of the loop."

There was also, he added, some of "the old anti-incumbency factor at play" behind Musharraf's deep unpopularity.

Musharraf's party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, or PML-Q, which was stitched together from remnants of Sharif's party in 1999, has already suffered a raft of defections, and analysts say Sharif's treatment will spark more.

Observers also warn that anti-Musharraf demonstrations are likely to be met with considerable force.

On Sunday, police reportedly detained at least 2,000 members of his party in Pakistan, including its chairman. They blocked all roads into the airport using large vehicles and barbed wire, apparently to prevent the large welcome of which Sharif's party had boasted before his departure. Elsewhere in the city, they fired tear gas at Sharif supporters.

"Worryingly," says Masood, "it seems likely that the government will continue to use force to trample the opposition, as was evident before Sharif's arrival."

Let us not forget....

"God knows it did not cross our minds to attack the towers but after the situation became unbearable and we witnessed the injustice and tyranny of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, I thought about it. And the events that affected me directly were that of 1982 and the events that followed -- when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon, helped by the U.S. Sixth Fleet. As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me punish the unjust the same way (and) to destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women."

Osama bin Laden
Admitting responsibility for attacks on US on September 11, 2001, on videotape shown on Al Jazeera, October 29, 2004

'a long train of abuses and usurpations....'

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience [has] shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce [the people] under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."

- Thomas Jefferson: Declaration of Independence, 1776. ME 1:29, Papers 1:429

Judge strikes down part of Patriot Act

By Edith Honan

A provision of the Patriot Act that requires people who are formally contacted by the FBI for information to keep it a secret is unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled on Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero sided with the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the lawsuit and argued that an FBI letter requesting information -- called a National Security Letter -- is effectively a gag order but without the authorization of a judge.

The FBI tells people who receive the letters to keep them secret, but recipients can challenge the secrecy order in court under a 2006 congressional amendment to the NSL law.

The law says judges must defer to the FBI's view that secrecy is necessary, undermining the judiciary's check on the power of the executive branch, the ACLU said.

In a written ruling issued on Thursday, Marrero said the gag order violated the First Amendment guarantee of free speech and was unconstitutional.

Marrero based his ruling on the seriousness of the potential intrusion on privacy and on "the significant possibility of a chilling effect on speech and association -- particularly of expression that is critical of the government or its policies."

The U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan is considering an appeal, a spokeswoman said.

Government lawyers had argued that the FBI's need to ensure that targets remained unaware of an investigation outweighed the free speech rights of NSL recipients.

The ACLU brought the lawsuit on behalf of an unidentified Internet access company that received an NSL.

The company filed suit in April 2004. In September 2004 Marrero found the NSL gag violated free speech rights and struck it down as unconstitutional.

The government appealed the ruling, but Congress amended the NSL provision in its reauthorization of the Patriot Act last year before an appeals court could hear the case.

The revised NSL provision -- allowing the gag to be challenged in court -- was then sent back to Marrero.

APPEAL EXPECTED

The FBI dropped its demand for information from the Internet company a year ago, but the gag remained in place.

"The decision reaffirms that the courts have an important and constitutionally mandated role to play when national security policies infringe on First Amendment rights," said Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer who argued the case.

Marrero prohibited the Justice Department and the FBI from issuing NSLs but delayed enforcement for 90 days pending an expected appeal by the government or congressional action.

The ACLU says more than 143,000 NSLs were issued between 2003 and 2005.

MySpace censorship

For the last 5 or 6 months I have had a series of photos on my MySpace profile showing 3 couples kissing - a gay male couple, a lesbian couple, and a heterosexual couple. When I checked my profile today I discovered that MySpace has replaced the photo of the gay male couple with one of their 'Terms of Service Violation' images. They did not, however, replace the heterosexual or lesbian couple images. None of these pictures show any 'nudity' and, from what I can read, do NOT violate MySpace policy. They are certainly not in the same league as some of the trashy shit you see on some people's profiles. The problem here is quite clearly that it was a picture of two MEN kissing.

I believe that this will be the final straw as far as my participation with MySpace. I will not tolerate this type of cowardly, homophobic censorship. I will be deleting my profile in the very near future. MySpace has been increasingly becoming a buggy, insecure tower of babel anyway, so it won't be hard to pull the plug on it.

Update: The censored picture has been returned to my profile and I will keep putting it back until MySpace deletes me. Fuck them and Rupert Murdoch!! I'll fight those bitches until they pull the plug on me!!! ;)

Johnny Rotten Interview

Johnny Rotten Praises Battling Bands, Trashes Internet Liars

By Eliot Van Buskirk 09.03.07 | 2:00 AM

John Lydon -- aka Johnny Rotten, the legendarily outrageous Sex Pistols singer -- is about to help judge Bodog Music Battle of the Bands, a hard-rocking older brother of American Idol that revises the talent show formula by featuring contestants who write music and play instruments.

During the show's upcoming live finale (Sept. 5 at 7 p.m. PST on Fuse TV), fans will text votes to pick a winner from three bands vying for the top prize -- a $1 million recording contract from the Bodog gambling site's music division.

Lydon recently spoke to Wired News about judging the show, the importance of live music, an apparent lack of innovation on the part of major labels, what went wrong with punk rock, and how the internet is full of liars. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity, but not profanity).

Wired News: What have you been looking for in these bands while judging the show?

John Lydon: Originality, humor and people that can actually cope with pressure. Not at all note-perfect musicality and perfection, but the ability to write a song and believe it and live it. In other words, genuine honesty, and isn't that a shock in the music business? There are three judges, and we all have very different opinions. A couple of bands were voted out very early that I felt shouldn't have been, even though they were young and possibly musically ill-equipped. That's exactly where I began, and I've never looked back.

WN: How do you think The Sex Pistols would have done in this contest?

Lydon: The Sex Pistols would never have turned up. We wouldn't have bothered with it in the first place. And ah, dude, you've got to look at the world differently then, it was a different time.... You'd get seen by playing live in pubs, clubs, bars or anywhere else you could scrounge a quick living. And guess what, we were underage. We weren't allowed to drink in these places, but we were certainly capable of having bottles thrown at us.

I grew up in a world of boo boys (soccer fans who boo games). No matter what we did, it wasn't good enough, and (we played to) generally an older crowd. We eventually brought our own crowd, and changed the world because of it. Generally, the hippie lot from the previous generation were a spiteful bunch of fuckers. They didn't want to share the world with us.

WN: These days, people seem to read only the news that applies to them, and culture is getting more fragmented. Do you think it's still possible for a band to come along and change the world the way the Sex Pistols did?

Lydon: It's a different world, but look: You have to do your part to try to introduce live music -- people who write their own songs being a bit above the rest, you know. Absolutely above the rest of it, because there ain't no Paris Hilton going on in any of this. So, if anyone sneers, or spears, at our little show here, they're doing it for all the wrong reasons. I've had to tolerate two examples this morning (of reporters) trying to compare this show with American Idol. The biggest, fucking most glaring difference is, look -- these people write their own songs. That's it, the end. Alright? It's not, like, clothes horses all trying to be Whitney Houston.

WN: An important distinction for sure. Why do you think people are so into live music these days? This contest is about live music, and last year, concert sales ...

Lydon: Look, if your culture means fuck all in this world, it has to be live!

WN: So it's a reaction to all the computer screens ...

Lydon: Which is utter nonsense. I mean, the genuine roots of culture is folk music. That means: Folk playing it, for folk, live. The so-called alleged "art" of the video -- well, the video has killed the radio star, but the video star killed the live musician, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If all of it, one way or another, is, hopefully, anything like a youth rebellion, believe me -- I'll be one of its major supporters. But there doesn't seem to be anything like that left. There just seems to be no general consensus of energy, of, "We've had enough, and here it is."

WN: Do you think there is anything punk rock about MP3s and digital music, or is it a totally different animal?

Lydon: It's a different animal, and it's a different world, but the two can get along. There's no need to say "no" to everything, but there's many a reason to say "yes" to most things. It's how you absorb them, and not the other way around.

WN: Here's a question from one of our readers, who said, "Nowadays, to express your feelings in public is common. It is crazy to be arrested (for criticizing) the queen."

Lydon: I like the royal family. I think it could be a fun institution. The trouble was, for a few years there, we had a Union Jack stolen from us. Nazism crept into Great Britain. We managed to kick that on its head, and the royal family made some stupid decisions about people like me. They turned their back on the working class, which, frankly, is their bread and butter. We're the true supporters of their institution, and were treated as though we didn't belong. Several statements were made to that end by the royal family, and it all ended a negative way.

In fact, to give you an example, I once did some charity work -- or tried to -- for the Prince Charles trust fund thingy, and the attitude I got off his people was revolting. They just looked down their noses at me. And I was really angry at a man whose work I've really loved and respected, John Cleese. Fawlty Towers was a masterpiece. But when he looked straight at me and had the nerve to ask some (inaudible) next to him, "What's that sort of person doing here?" That's when my stomach turns, do you know what I mean? Like, I'm not good enough even for charity. I've done no harm to no one. In fact, I think I've improved the world. I've opened things up into a lively open debate, which is what they should be, but oddly enough now it's taken me some 30 solid years of work to have to prove that open debate is not negative, it's actually a positive force. I'm misunderstood. I'm not criticizing just to be a cunt -- a vacant, at that. (Lydon sings, "We're so pretty....")

WN: In that spirit of open debate, another reader writes, "Johnny, don't you feel that the type of people who would enter a talent contest in the first place don't really have any talent? All they want is to be famous for fame's sake." What do you make of that?

Lydon: There was every possibility that that's the way this show would end up, in which case I'm the man to stop it! But no, some of these bands are genuinely enjoyable. You've got to be very wary of an audience out there that's jealous as fuck of any of them, of anyone who is on the TV for any reason at all. At least they entered a competition. What do the rest of these sad sacks who sit around criticizing at home do? When you can't join them, and you can't beat them, don't complain about them.

WN: Fair enough.

Lydon: You know what I mean? Be open-minded. Open up. Make room.

WN: I noticed that the battle of the bands site calls the entrants "the best indie bands in America."

Lydon: I wouldn't say these were the best indie bands in America; they're just the ones presented in this competition. The top prize is a million-dollar contract, but that could end up being a booby prize, because, as we know, all record company advances are immediately retractable. Alright? Whoever wins this competition is looking at a million-dollar debt within two seconds.

WN: Yeah, that is a booby prize.

Lydon: Here's how we'll tell if the winners have staying power or not: It's up to the audience. The final show is an audience decision. I'm trying to be as fair and as open as I possibly can, and I hope that is clearly understood. There is no vested interest coming from me at all.

WN: It strikes me that maybe Bodog Music could be a different sort of record company. I mean, they're trying crazy stuff like this ...

Lydon: They're trying, aren't they! For fucksake, who else is? I don't see Warner Bros. or the rest of them making any effort at all. They're just signing up endless rap bands, and we have heard that game, that malarkey. How many more rap acts do we need before we go, "Hang on, I've heard this before!"?

I'm not blowing my own trumpet here, but I made a rap song 20 years ago with Afrika Bambaataa. And I feel the same way about rock clichés or white reggae bands. I want to see a bit of originality. But at least within the confines of pop music, you can have a bit of fun. Pop music I have always loved best. But the more extreme, fascist-led examples of the music business, I tend to detest the most. Punk, when it started out -- we were open for everything from anyone all the time. It very, very quickly mellowed into this tragic misrepresentation of studded leather jackets and arseholes spitting left, right and center and being rude just for the sake of it. The wonderful world of Wallydom.

And yet at the moment, in this battle of the bands, we have this very fine punk band. They aren't the best players, but by god, unlike Green Day, this band actually really enjoy what they are doing.... That doesn't mean they're going to win or lose. But it kind of means they've won already, in their hearts and souls. Do you understand?

WN: Yes. I think I know which one you're talking about, is that Fall From Grace? They struck me as the one that really seems like a band, they cohere like a band.

Lydon: They do, don't they? I like that. But I've had to tear them down from time to time, because they chucked a song in there that really, really was half-hearted, and that's not to be tolerated. Like I said, I grew up in the school of hard knocks, and I had to get my wings, and no one gets to play the spoiled brat and squeak by on me.

WN: Fair enough.

Lydon: Unless there's serious bottom kissing.

WN: I can only imagine what you've had to put up with along those lines during this show.

Lydon: Anyone who's prepared to kiss my bum is well worth a million-dollar contract. I jest.

WN: What do you make of these MP3 blogs that are posting songs, sometimes without permission?

Lydon: I have one major problem with the internet: It's full of liars. There doesn't seem to be any way to answer to people lying about you. Some are good-natured -- mostly it isn't. Mostly it's vicious rumor, gossip and innuendo. I think that's a downscaling of humanity, and we're suffering because of it. It's a terrible thing to see your whole life altered before your very eyes on this stupid, ridiculous, electronic screen.

Swiss deportation policy draws criticism

Print Story: Swiss deportation policy draws criticism on Yahoo! News


Swiss deportation policy draws criticism

By FRANK JORDANS, Associated Press Writer

The campaign poster was blatant in its xenophobic symbolism: Three white sheep kicking out a black sheep over a caption that read "for more security." The message was not from a fringe force in Switzerland's political scene but from its largest party.

The nationalist Swiss People's Party is proposing a deportation policy that anti-racism campaigners say evokes Nazi-era practices. Under the plan, entire families would be expelled if their children are convicted of a violent crime, drug offenses or benefits fraud.

The party is trying to collect the 100,000 signatures needed to force a referendum on the issue. If approved in a referendum, the law would be the only one of its kind in Europe.

"We believe that parents are responsible for bringing up their children. If they can't do it properly, they will have to bear the consequences," Ueli Maurer, president of the People's Party, told The Associated Press.

Ronnie Bernheim of the Swiss Foundation against Racism and Anti-Semitism said the proposal was similar to the Nazi practice of "Sippenhaft" — or kin liability — whereby relatives of criminals were held responsible for his or her crimes and punished equally.

Similar practices occurred during Stalin's purges in the early days of the Soviet Union and the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution in China, when millions were persecuted for their alleged ideological failings.

"As soon as the first 10 families and their children have been expelled from the country, then things will get better at a stroke," said Maurer, whose party controls the Justice Ministry and shares power in an unwieldy coalition that includes all major parties.

He explained that his party has long campaigned to make deportation compulsory for convicted immigrants rather than an optional and rarely applied punishment.

The party claims foreigners — who make up about 20 percent of the population — are four times more likely to commit crimes than Swiss nationals.

Bernheim said the vast majority of Switzerland's immigrants are law-abiding and warned against generalizations.

"If you don't treat a complicated issue with the necessary nuance and care, then you won't do it justice," he said.

Commentators have expressed horror over the symbolism used by the People's Party to make its point.

"This way of thinking shows an obvious blood-and-soil mentality," read one editorial in the Zurich daily Tages-Anzeiger, calling for a broader public reaction against the campaign.

So far, however, there has been little popular backlash against the posters.

"We haven't had any complaints," said Maurer.

The city of Geneva — home to Switzerland's humanitarian traditions as well as the European headquarters of the United Nations and the U.N. Refugee Agency, or UNHCR — said the campaign was likely to stir up intolerance.

The UNHCR said the law would run contrary to the U.N. refugee convention, of which Switzerland is a signatory.

But observers say the People's Party's hardline stance on immigration could help it in the Oct. 21 national elections. In 2004, the party successfully campaigned for tighter immigration laws using the image of black hands reaching into a pot filled with Swiss passports.

"It's certainly no coincidence that the People's Party launched this initiative before the elections," said Oliver Geden, a political scientist at the Berlin Institute for International and Security Affairs.

He said provocative campaigns such as this had worked well for the party in the past.

"The symbol of the black sheep was clearly intended to have a double meaning. On the one hand there's the familiar idea of the black sheep, but a lot of voters are also going to associate it with the notion of dark-skinned drug dealers," said Geden.

The party also has put forward a proposal to ban the building of minaret towers alongside mosques. And one of its leading figures, Justice Minister Christoph Blocher, said he wants to soften anti-racism laws because they prevent freedom of speech.

More than 1,800 Iraqis killed in August

By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer

Civilian deaths rose in August to their second-highest monthly level this year, according to figures compiled Saturday by The Associated Press. That raises questions about whether U.S. strategy is working days before Congress receives landmark reports that will decide the course of the war.

At least 81 American service members also died in Iraq during August — an increase of two over the previous month but well below the year's monthly high of 126 in May. American deaths surpassed the 80 mark during only two months of 2006.

U.S. military officials have insisted that the security plan launched early this year have brought a decrease in attacks on civilians and sectarian killings, especially in the Baghdad area, which was the focus of the new strategy.

The top American commander, Gen. David Petraeus, is expected to cite security improvements when he and Ambassador Ryan Crocker submit reports on progress toward stability and national reconciliation to Congress during the week of Sept. 10.

However, figures compiled by the AP from police reports nationwide show that at least 1,809 civilians were killed across the country last month compared with 1,760 in July. That brings to 27,564 the number of Iraqi civilians killed since AP began collecting data on April 28, 2005.

According to the AP count, civilian deaths reached a high point during the wave of sectarian bombings, kidnappings and killings at the end of last year — 2,172 in December and 1,967 in the previous month.

Crocker predicted Saturday there will be no "fundamental or quick change" in the American policy on Iraq and appealed for patience as Congress prepares to receive the reports.

Speaking in Arabic on Iraqi state television, he said the U.S. administration believes Iraqis have made tangible progress — which Congress has demanded as a condition for continued U.S. support.

"Since 2003, there has been a stable policy by the American administration and I don't think there will be a fundamental or quick change in the American policy or stand on Iraq," he said.

Crocker also said Iraqis "and the friends of Iraq" should show patience as the country grapples with its political and security crisis.

"After 35 years of injustice under Saddam Hussein, there are some problems since liberation and the problems of 40 years cannot be solved in a year or two. What is important is that there is progress," he said.

President Bush ordered nearly 30,000 additional troops to Iraq, and monthly death tolls began to decline after the new security plan was launched Feb. 14. But civilian death tolls have been creeping back toward levels approaching those during the worst of the sectarian slaughter.

AP figures show May was the deadliest month for Iraqi civilians this year, with 1,901 people killed in political or sectarian violence.

The August total included 520 people killed in quadruple suicide bombings on communities of Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking religious minority, near the Syrian border. The horrific attacks made Aug. 14 the deadliest day since the war began in March 2003.

Despite the high nationwide totals, Petraeus was quoted Friday as saying the troop increase has sharply reduced sectarian killings in Baghdad, which accounted for most of the deaths during the wave of Sunni-Shiite slaughter at the end of last year.

"If you look at Baghdad, which is hugely important because it is the center of everything in Iraq, you can see the density plot on ethno-sectarian deaths," Petraeus was quoted by The Australian newspaper.

"It's a bit macabre but some areas were literally on fire with hundreds of bodies every week and a total of 2,100 in the month of December '06, Iraq-wide. It is still much too high but we think in August in Baghdad it will be as little as one quarter of what it was," the newspaper quoted Petraeus as saying.

Petraeus gave no figures. An AP partial count of Baghdad deaths between Aug. 1 and Aug. 21 showed at least 508 civilians had been killed in the capital — compared with at least 1,772 civilians slain here during December.

Deaths went down in Baghdad during August in part due to a strict vehicle ban imposed on the city during a major Shiite religious ceremony. Violence dropped dramatically during the Aug. 8-12 ban.

Although American forces have been successful in curbing major suicide bombings, stopping small scale atrocities has proven more challenging.

On Saturday, gunmen stormed a house in the Dora district, seizing three women and a man. The gunmen killed two of the women about yards away and fled with the two other victims, a policeman said on condition of anonymity because he was not supposed to release the information.

The U.S. command expressed hope Saturday that an order by powerful Shiite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr stand down his Mahdi Army fighters for up to six months would curb attacks on civilians and allow American troops to step up the fight against al-Qaida.

"If implemented, al-Sadr's order holds the prospect of allowing coalition and Iraqi security forces to intensify their focus on al-Qaida in Iraq and on protecting the Iraqi population," the U.S. command said in a statement.

Sunni Arab leaders have accused the Mahdi Army for massacring thousands of Sunnis during the last three years and driving tens of thousands of others from their homes.

Many Shiites see the militia as their best protection against Sunni extremists, including al-Qaida, which have carried out similar attacks on Shiites.

However, Mahdi's credibility has been shaken by allegations of extortion, murder, robbery and other crimes committed by members who appear to be beyond the control of the youthful al-Sadr, who said he would use the six-month hiatus to restructure the force "in a way that helps honor the principles for which it was formed."

The U.S. maintains that some of the breakaway factions, which the Americans refer to as the "special groups," are receiving weapons, training and money from Iran, a charge the Iranians deny.

American troops have been stepping up operations against Shiite "special groups" in the Baghdad area, even though the command insists that al-Qaida, a Sunni group, remains the top priority in Iraq.

Leaflets scattered around Sadr City urged people to report on Shiite militants who are cooperating with the Iranians, providing a cell phone number and an e-mail address for people to make anonymous tips.

"The criminal Iraqis who work with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are toys under Persian control," read one of the leaflets, which pictured a puppet dancing on strings. "Iranian Revolutionary Guards are interfering in Iraq's affairs while Iraqis are dying."

IBM Stores Data on Single Atoms

New nanotech breakthroughs have enabled IBM to measure magnetic fields at an atomic level and to build transistor-like switches from a single molecule.

Ben Ames, IDG News Service

Friday, August 31, 2007 12:00 PM PDT

IBM Corp. has demonstrated how to perform certain computer functions on single atoms and molecules, a discovery that could someday lead to processors the size of a speck of dust, the company said Thursday.

Researchers at IBM's Almaden Research Center in California developed a technique for measuring magnetic anisotropy, a property of the magnetic field that gives it the ability to maintain a particular direction. Being able to measure magnetic anisotropy at the atomic level is a crucial step toward the magnet representing the ones or the zeroes used to store data in binary computer language.

In a second report, researchers at IBM's lab in Zurich, Switzerland, said they had used an individual molecule as an electric switch that could potentially replace the transistors used in modern chips. The company published both research reports in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

The new technologies are at least 10 years from being used for components in commercial products, but the discoveries will allow scientists to take a large step forward in their quest to replace silicon, said IBM spokesman Matthew McMahon.

To build faster, smaller chips, IBM and other chip vendors like Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. have shrunk the dimensions of chip features from 90 nanometers to 65nm in the current generation of chips and plan to continue to 45nm and 32nm in coming years. The problem is that wires built from silicon tend to leak more electricity at each step on that scale, and will eventually reach a limit where they are no longer useful.

"Across all our areas of nanotechnology research, we're trying to determine the new kinds of materials we can use in computing when silicon reaches its fundamental limits. The ultimate goal is molecular-level computers, but the interim products will probably be hybrids with current technology, using things like carbon nanotubes," McMahon said.

IBM defines nanotechnology as work done at a scale of 100nm or smaller. At that scale, scientists must use a tool called the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) to photograph and manipulate individual atoms, as they did in their latest research. Their next challenge is to find a way to make these laboratory demonstrations work at room temperature, he said.

Having measured the magnetic anisotropy of a single atom, "their next step is finding atoms that can do it at stable temperatures that are suitable for storage devices. If they can find that, it's still a decade out from commercialization," he said.

The Zurich researchers also developed a technique for using a molecule containing two hydrogen atoms as a switch, either on its own or with an adjacent molecule. They are now looking to apply the method to many other molecules, enabling the system to work as a collection of logic gates, the building blocks of microprocessors.

Even if the teams reach those goals, they must find a way to manufacture the systems on a large scale, instead of moving single atoms with the STM. One possibility is to use the process of self-assembly, where atoms under certain conditions will naturally form the desired shapes. In May, IBM said it had used that approach to insulate the wires on a chip by creating trillions of tiny, vacuum-filled holes around each one.