Eldar is a word of the Iberian language, a language that was spoken about 2.500 years ago in the Iberia - Spain, but that it goes back until the past of the megalithic cultures. Eldar means in this language "Epidemic", an epidemic that we consider that today  this extending in the musical world and in the culture

 

 

 

Silbury Hill is the largest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe. It was built over 4,000 years ago in the Neolithic period. Today part of the Avebury World Heritage Site, the monument’s purpose and significance for prehistoric people remains unknown.

The Guardian has reported that the work to prevent this ancient monument from collapsing has been completed. On 29 May 2000 a hole unexpectedly appeared on the top of Silbury Hill. A shaft had become open to a depth of 14 metres. Despite attempts to safeguard it, in December the top collapsed to leave a large crater, damaging important archaeological deposits.

The secret of Silbury Hill, the most enigmatic prehistoric monument in Europe, isn’t the monument but the monumental effort which went into building it, according to the archaeologist who has spent most of the last year slipping around on wet chalk deep in the heart of the hill.

On a sunny morning last week a local druid scattered Wiltshire grass and wild flower seed on the summit of Silbury, to mark what engineers and archaeologists devoutly hope is the completion of a project to prevent the 4,500 year old hill from collapsing - 10 months and £1m over budget.

Jim Leary, the archaeological director for English Heritage throughout the work, thinks he has solved a riddle which archaeologists have fretted over for centuries: why thousands of people piled up 35 million baskets of chalk into the largest artificial hill in Europe, now part of the Stonehenge World Heritage site. It wasn’t the final structure, but the staggering contribution of work which was important, he now believes, marking a site of immense but only guessable significance to the hunters and farmers of Bronze Age Wiltshire.

"We assume the building to be a process towards the final form or function, but this is a very modern and western way of looking at monuments. Instead I suggest that the act of construction was the ceremony, and the final form was the by-product."

Post excavation work will continue for years on the land snails and broken sarsen stones, wisps of still green grass and beetle wings taken from the heart of the hill. Nothing has been left behind except a cable to monitor movement - which they hope will lie idle. They hope that a job begun 4,500 years ago is complete, and no man will ever set foot inside Silbury Hill

Have a look at the photograph above. Has anyone considered that the hill was built as a representation of a pregnant womb? Perhaps our ancestors, aware that all life comes from the Earth, built the hill as a place to gather and attempt to conceive with the blessing of the Earth Mother? The search for archaeological remains would be fruitless - the most we could learn being about the methods of construction. As a symbol, of course, the significance of the hill to the continued survival of the tribe would be enormous.

 by Carl Schmitt

Liberalism has changed all political conceptions in a peculiar and systematic fashion. Like any other significant human movement liberalism too, as a historical force, has failed to elude the political. Its neutralizations and depoliticizations (of education, the economy, etc.) are, to be sure, of political significance. … But the question is whether a specific political idea can be derived from the pure and consequential concept of individualistic liberalism. This is to be denied.

The negation of the political, which is inherent in every consistent individualism, leads necessarily to a political practice of distrust toward all conceivable political forces and forms of state and government, but never produces on its own a positive theory of state, government, and politics. As a result, there exists a liberal policy in the form of a polemical antithesis against state, church, or other institutions which restrict individual freedom. There exists a liberal policy of trade, church and education, but absolutely no liberal politics, only a liberal critique of politics. The systematic theory of liberalism concerns almost solely the internal struggle against the power of the state. For the purpose of protecting individual freedom and private property, liberalism provides a series of methods for hindering and controlling the state’s and government’s power…

In a very systematic fashion liberal thought evades or ignores state and politics and moves instead in a typical always recurring polarity of two heterogeneous spheres, namely ethics and economics, intellect and trade, education and property. The critical distrust of state and politics is easily explained by the principles of a system whereby the individual must remain terminus a quo and terminus ad quem. In case of need, the political entity must demand the sacrifice of life. Such a demand is in no way justifiable by the individualism of liberal thought. No consistent individualism can entrust to someone other than to the individual himself the right to dispose of the physical life of the individual. … All liberal pathos turns against repression and lack of freedom. Every encroachment, every threat to individual freedom and private property and free competition is called repression and is eo ipso something evil. What this liberalism still admits of state, government and politics is confined to securing the conditions for liberty and eliminating infringements on freedom. …

Ethical or moral pathos and materialist economic reality combine in every typical liberal manifestation and give every political concept a double face. Thus the political concept of battle in liberal thought becomes competition in the domain of economics and discussion in the intellectual realm. Instead of a clear distinction between the two different states, that of war and that of peace, there appears the dynamic of perpetual competition and perpetual discussion. The state turns into society: on the ethical-intellectual side into an ideological humanitarian conception of humanity, and on the other into an economic-technical system of production and traffic. The self-understood will to repel the enemy in a given battle situation turns into a rationally conceived social ideal or program, a tendency or an economic calculation. A politically united people becomes, on the one hand, a culturally interested public, and, on the other, partially an industrial concern and its employers, partially a mass of consumers. At the intellectual pole, government and power turns into propaganda and mass manipulation, and at the economic pole, control.

These dissolutions aim with great precision at subjugating state and politics, partially into an individualistic domain of private law and morality, partially into economic notions. In doing so they deprive state and politics of their specific meaning. Outside of the political liberalism not only recognizes with self-evident logic the autonomy of different human realms, but drives them toward specialization and even toward complete separation. That art is the daughter of freedom, that aesthetic value judgment is absolutely autonomous, that artistic genius is sovereign — all this is axiomatic of liberalism. In some countries a genuine liberal pathos came to the fore only when this autonomous freedom of art was endangered by moralistic apostles of tradition. Morality became autonomous vis-à-vis metaphysics and religion, science vis-à-vis religion, art and morality, etc. The most important example of such an autonomy is the validity of norms and laws of economics. That production and consumption, price formation and market have their own sphere and can be directed neither by ethics nor aesthetics, nor by religion, nor, least of all, by politics was considered one of the few truly unquestionable dogmas of this liberal age. With great passion political viewpoints were deprived of every validity and subjugated to the norms and orders of morality, law and economics. In the concrete reality of the political, no abstract orders or norms but always real human groupings and associations rule over the other human groupings. Politically, the rule of morality, law, and economics always assumes a concrete political meaning…

(According to liberal theorist Franz Oppenheimer) the economic way is declared to be reciprocity of production and consumption, therefore mutuality, equality, justice and freedom, and finally nothing less than the spiritual union of fellowship, brotherliness and justice. The political way appears on the other hand as a conquering power outside the domain of economics, namely, thievery, conquest, and crimes of all sorts. A hierarchical value system of the relation of state and society is maintained… But in actuality it is not permissible and neither moral nor psychological, least of all scientific, to simply define by moral disqualifications, by confronting the good, the just, and the peaceful with filthy, evil, rapacious, and criminal politics. With such methods one could just as well the other way around define politics as the sphere of honest rivalry and economics as a world of deception. The connection of politics with thievery, force and repression is, in the final analysis, no more precise than is the connection of economics with cunning and deception. Exchange and deception are often not far apart. A domination of men based on pure economics must appear a terrible deception if, by remaining nonpolitical, it thereby evades political responsibility and visibility. Exchange by no means precludes the possibility that one of the contractors experiences a disadvantage, and that a system of mutual contracts finally deteriorates into a system of the worst exploitation and repression. When the exploited and the repressed attempt to defend themselves in such a situation, they cannot do so by economic means.

Evidently, the possessor of economic power would consider every attempt change its power position by extra-economic means as violence and crime and will seek methods to hinder this. That ideal construction of a society based on exchange and mutual contracts and, eo ipso, peaceful and just is thereby eliminated. Unfortunately, also, userers and extortioners appeal to the inviolability of contracts and to the sentence pacta sunt servanda. The domain of exchange has its narrow limits and its specific categories, and not all things have an exchange value. No matter how large the financial bribe may be, there is no money equivalent for political freedom and political independence.

State and politics cannot be exterminated. The world will not become depoliticized with the aid of definitions and constructions, all of which circle the polarity of ethics and economics. Economic antagonism can become political, and the fact that an economic power position could arise proves the point that the point of the political may be reached from the economic as well as from any other domain. The often quoted phrase by Walter Rathenau, namely that the destiny today is not politics but economics, originated in this context. It would be more exact to say that politics continues to remain the destiny, but what has occurred is that economics has become political and thereby the destiny. It is also erroneous to believe that a political position founded on economic superiority is "essentially unwarlike," as Joseph Schumpeter says in his Zur Soziologie der Imperialismen. Essentially unwarlike is the terminology based on the essence of liberal ideology. An imperialism based on pure economic power will naturally attempt to sustain a worldwide condition which enables it to apply and manage, unmolested, its economic means, e.g., terminating credit, embargoing raw materials, destroying the currency of others, and so on. Every attempt of a people to withdraw itself from the effects of such "peaceful" methods is considered by this imperialism an extra-economic activity. Pure economic imperialism will also apply a stronger, but still economic, and therefore (according to this terminology) nonpolitical, essentially peaceful means of force. A 1921 League of Nations resolution enumerates as examples: economic sanctions and severance of the food supply from the civilian population. Finally, it has sufficient technical means to bring about violent death. Modern means of annihilation have been produced by enormous invests of capital and intelligence, surely to be used if necessary.

For the application of such means, a new and essentially pacifist vocabulary has been created. War is condemned but executions, sanctions, punitive expeditions, pacifications, protection of treaties, international police, and measures to assure peace remain. The adversary is thus no longer called an enemy but a disturber of the peace and is thereby designated to be an outlaw of humanity. A war waged to protect or expand economic power must, with the aid of propaganda, turn into a crusade and into the last war of humanity. This is implicit in the polarity of ethics and economics, a polarity astonishingly systematic and consistent. But this allegedly non-political and apparently even apolitical system serves existing or newly emerging friend-and-enemy groupings and cannot escape the logic of the political

 By John Laughland

An article written in December 2007 and published online in January 2008 has just attracted the attention of the spokesman for Islam, Integration and Extremism in the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The article is by the Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Mustafa Ceric, and two things are remarkable about it at first sight. The first is its title, “The challenge of a single Muslim authority in Europe” (more on this in a moment); the second is the place of publication.
 
The article, which can be read online here, advocates the creation of a single global authority to regulate the religious and civil life of Muslims all over the world. It argues that the best place to start constructing such an authority is Europe itself.
 
The journal which has published this piece is European View, the journal of something called the Centre for European Studies, a mouthpiece of the European People’s Party (EPP), the parliamentary body in the European Parliament grouped around the German Christian Democrats. There is no doubt about the political affiliation of the journal: its editor, for instance, has an EPP e-mail address.
 
According to Kristina Köhler, the CDU spokesman on such matters, the article advocates extremism. On 12 May, she told Die Welt that the author was arguing that all Muslims in Europe should live under a common political and spiritual leader and under sharia law, and that the state should guarantee this parallel jurisdiction by treaty. “This would mean a European caliphate,” she said.
 
Ceric makes no bones about the fact that Muslims must obey shariah law. “The Islamic convenant, the shari’ah, is perpetual, it is not negotiable and it is not terminable,” he writes. According to him, “a European Muslim imamate” should be established “as a way of institutionalising Islam in Europe”. (By ‘imamate’ he means the application of shariah law in practice.) The author says that the two great strands of Islam, Sunnism and Shiism, should unite “with the objective of creating a global Muslim authority”. Ceric argues that Europe is specifically the best place to start creating such a global authority. He writes,

It is not enough that Europe recognises the presence of Islam on its territory. Muslims deserve more than that. They deserve that their presence be legalised in the sense of creating a political and economic climate in which European Muslims can represent themselves through the institutions that should have both governmental support and public acceptance.

This is the part of his text which Köhler attacks as implying “a parallel jurisdiction” and she is right. In a sense, we should not be surprised that such a call should come from a Bosnian. Bosnia precisely did have such parallel jurisdictions under Ottomon rule, with courts for Muslims and courts for non-Muslims. To some extent, the paraphernalia of minority rights, which became a centrepiece of the 1974 Yugoslav constitution and which continues to bedevil Bosnian politics to this day, is a hangover from that period: both stand in marked contrast to the English and French traditions of centralised statehood.
 
But what is really striking about the article – and what the Christian Democrat official naturally overlooks – is that the rise of a Muslim political identity (and even perhaps of a Muslim parallel jurisdiction of the kind which the Archbishop of Canterbury seemed to call in a recent and very controversial speech) is precisely made more likely by the weakening of national identity caused, in part, by the anti-national pan-European ideology of which the German CDU is one of the main propagators.
 
Ceric himself sees the link between Europeanism and political Islam very clearly. After a few concluding sentences which border on the threatening – European society is still too “immature” to realise the advantage of a single Muslim authority, yet it will come whatever the European political establishment now thinks – he concludes with this sentence:

A single Muslim authority in Europe will come sooner or later because of need by young European Muslims who are capable of seeing their Islamic identity as prior to their ethnic or national identities and who are comfortable with their European identity coexisting with their Islamic upbringing. [my emphasis – jl]

Elsewhere in the piece, the author makes the link between Islam as a “universal” religion and Muslims as “global citizens”. There is, in other words, a specific link between the proposal, which amounts to the creation of a global caliphate although Ceric does not use this term, and the general cosmopolitan ideology of globalism of which European integration is a key part. To put it bluntly, the stronger national identities, the weaker Islamic identity – and vice-versa.
 
Robert Dreyfuss makes the point, in his arresting work Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, (New York: Henry Holt, 2005) that British and later American secret operatives deliberately supported pan-Islamic radicals in order to weaken nationalist leaders in the Arab world. The more such people were committed to the ummah, the less they would be interested in creating strong nation-states. Ceric seems to have the same view, since for him the need for a Muslim political authority rises as national identities weaken, whereas European “identity” is no threat to it at all. Could there be a clearer indictment of the suicidal nature of the EU’s project of dissolving national identity in Europe today?

 

A loyalist ceasefire in North is to be recognised, the Northern Ireland Secretary said today.

The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Red Hand Commando (RHC) will be despecifed, with any prisoners eligible for early release, Shaun Woodward added.

The Government ceased to recognise the UVF’s peace commitment in September 2005 following a feud.

However, dissident republican group Oglaigh na hEireann (ONH) has been proscribed after being found to be involved in terrorism.

Mr Woodward said: "Under legislation I am obliged to review the status of all specified and other paramilitary organisations and I have today laid an order before Parliament seeking approval to de-specify the UVF and RHC.

“Their statement of last May committed the organisation to assuming a non-military civilianised role. Government undertook to review the position at that time and we have now taken a careful look at the organisation’s position.

“In the light of this and in acknowledgement of their commitment and additional factors, I have therefore concluded that there are sufficient grounds to de-specify the UVF/RHC.”

The early release provisions apply to anybody convicted before the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which paved the way for political power-sharing in the occupied part of Ireland

The UVF has come under pressure to decommission its weapons

It said last May that it was putting its arms beyond reach – but not handing them over.

In September 2005 the Northern Ireland Office said it would no longer recognise its ceasefire after it was involved in running battles with the rival Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF).

Loyalists clashed with police following the re-routing of an Orange Order parade in Whiterock, West Belfast, that month.

The UVF had also been linked to four recent murders, related to its feud with the LVF.

Leader of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) Dawn Purvis welcomed today’s announcement.

“This is a recognition of the work carried out and progress made since the statement of intent of May last year.

“This is further evidence of Northern Ireland’s strides towards normality.”

The Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) has blamed Oglaigh na h’Eireann for the murder Andrew Burns, aged 27, of Strabane, County Tyrone, in February.

The organisation, which reports on paramilitary activity, said Strabane members of the specified dissident republican group were likely to have been responsible for his murder.

It reported that he had been a fellow recruit. His body was found with gunshot wounds near a church in Doneyloop, County Donegal.  

Trends in problem drug use in Ireland, 2001 - 2006 - 700% rise in cocaine users seeking initial treatment

A total of 68,754 cases* aged between 15 and 64 years were treated for problem drug use in Ireland between 2001 and 2006. The latest report from the Health Research Board (HRB) shows that almost one in five of these cases (18%) were being treated for the first time. In recent years, problem drug use has become a nationwide issue, rather than being confined largely to Dublin. Across Ireland, the main problem drugs reported by new cases were cannabis (41%), opiates (39%) and cocaine (9%). While the number of new cases reporting cocaine as their main problem drug was still relatively low, it increased considerably, from 43 in 2001 to 342 in 2006, reflecting trends in the 2002/3 and 2006/7 surveys of drug use in the general population.

The number of previously treated cases returning for treatment increased from 2,588 in 2001 to 2,781 in 2006. The number of cases returning for treatment is an indicator of the chronic nature of problem drug use and the level of demand for services into the future. The number of new cases also increased by a small margin, from 2,030 in 2001 to 2,228 in 2006, which reflects recent trends in problem use.

According to Dr Jean Long, Head of the Alcohol and Drug Research Unit at the HRB,
‘This relatively small increase in new cases nationally masks stark trends in HSE areas over the six-year period. For example; the number of new cases increased by 100% in the Western area, which includes Galway, Mayo and Roscommon’.

Between 2001 and 2006 the numbers of new cases in other areas increased by the following percentages:

• 76% in the South Eastern area (Carlow, Kilkenny, Waterford, Wexford and Tipperary South),
• 57% in the Midland area (Offaly, Laois, Longford and Westmeath),
• 37% in the North Eastern area (Cavan, Louth, Meath and Monaghan), and
• 33% in the Mid-Western area (Clare, Limerick and Tipperary North).

The numbers of new cases decreased slightly in the East Coast area (of Dublin and Wicklow), the South Western area (part of Dublin and Wicklow and all of Kildare) and the Southern area (Cork and Kerry).

The main problem drug reported by new cases varied greatly by HSE region. Cases in Dublin North-East and Mid-Leinster reported opiates as their main problem drug, while cases in the South and West regions reported cannabis. Across all four regions, between 7% and 10% of new cases reported cocaine as the main problem drug indicating that cocaine use remained low, but is a nationwide problem.

‘Heroin remains the main problem drug reported by new cases in Dublin, in spite of a 31% decrease in the number of new opiate cases who lived in Dublin. This decrease indicates that the heroin epidemic has abated in this area. In contrast, there was a 96% increase in the number of new opiate cases outside Dublin. The latter finding, along with the number of opiate users who are waiting for methadone treatment, indicate that additional methadone treatment places are required outside Dublin,’ says Dr Long.

Treatment
Of the 5,191 cases who entered treatment for problem drug use in 2006, half (51%) received counselling, two in every five (39%) received methadone treatment, almost one in five (17%) got a brief intervention and one in seven attended medication-free therapy. In total, over the six years surveyed, 68,754 cases received treatment, the majority (68%) in outpatient settings.

‘In recent years there has been increased awareness of the growing drugs problem in Ireland and the need to have a combination of interventions in place. There has been a concentrated effort through the National Drugs Strategy to increase the volume and range of treatments. This has resulted in the introduction of 2,300 new methadone places and a greater emphasis on brief intervention, counselling, family therapy, aftercare and social reintegration. This is a welcome development, although we need a better balance in the range of treatment interventions available in different parts of Ireland,’ explains Dr Long.

Two other considerations for the provision of treatment are polydrug use (the use of more than one drug) and the increasing number of people of non-Irish nationality seeking treatment.

‘Almost three out of four new cases presenting for treatment used more than one drug, which increases the complexity of the case and is associated with poorer treatment outcomes,’ says Dr Long. In the West and South HSE regions, where cannabis was the main problem drug, the two most common additional drugs were alcohol and ecstasy. In the North East and Mid-Leinster HSE regions, the two most common drugs taken in addition to opiates were cannabis and cocaine.

‘We examined the association between main problem drugs and additional drugs among new cases and found that the additional problem drugs were linked with the main problem drug. For example, additional drugs used with cannabis and cocaine indicate their link with alcohol and other recreational drugs,’ she says. ‘The data in this paper clearly show an overlap between alcohol and other drug use, highlighting the need for an integrated approach to the management of substance misuse in Ireland,’ she explains.

As drug treatment interventions rely heavily on verbal communication, an increase in the number of new nationalities presenting for treatment points to the need for a multi-lingual approach to treatment provision.

Demographics

• In general, the profile of a typical drug user was that of a young male, with a low level of education, who was likely to be unemployed and, in a minority of cases, had no stable home.
• Almost one in five (18%) new cases presenting for treatment for problem drug use were under 18 years old.
• Figures indicate that at least half of treated drug users started using drugs when they were 15 years old.

‘These characteristics indicate the importance of accommodation, personal development and education and employment opportunities as part of the drug treatment and reintegration process. These factors were identified in the report of the Working Group on Drugs Rehabilitation and it is essential that the recommendations in this report are implemented,’ Dr Long concluded.

The data presented in this press release are taken from HRB Trends Series 2: Trends in treated problem drug use in Ireland, 2001 to 2006, which is available online in the publications section of the HRB website at www.hrb.ie.

A unified strategy to protect British minority languages such as Gaelic and Welsh has been called for.

Orkney-based expert Dr Donna Heddle said without one they would become "devalued and lost".

She was commenting ahead of a conference, Voices of the West, which will be held in Inverness in June.

Speakers at the event hosted by higher education institution, UHI, will include Ceri Sherlock, commissioning arts executive for BBC Wales.

Working together

The conference will look at the use of minority languages in education and broadcasting.

Dr Heddle, director of the Centre for Nordic Studies at Orkney College UHI, said: "Focussing on education and broadcasting allows us to look at minority languages at work."

She added: "This conference underlines the fact that we need to learn from each other and work together to produce a unified strategy, otherwise these languages will be devalued and lost.

"We will lose our tongues and without our tongues we cannot speak for ourselves."

Writer and broadcaster Carl MacDougall and J Derrick McClure, senior lecturer at the school of language and literature at the University of Aberdeen, will also be key note speakers.

The event will be held at Eden Court Theatre.

 

For decades the national dish has been a staple meal on the national carrier.

But now British Airways has taken beef off the menu for economy passengers amid concerns about its "religious restrictions".

The airline has instead switched to a fish pie or chicken dish option for the so-called "cattle class" passengers.

BA’s second-biggest long-haul market is to India, where the majority Hindu population do not eat beef because of their beliefs.

The decision to scrap the nation’s favourite fare was described as a "great shame" by the English Beef and Lamb Executive, formerly part of the Meat and Livestock Commission.

A spokesman said: "It is regrettable that Britain’s flag carrier is not proposing to serve Britain’s national dish.

"It is a meal we are rightly proud of. Roast beef and beefeaters are symbols or Britain used to promote tourism.

"Our beef is also much in demand overseas. It is predominately grass fed and highly praised for its flavour.

"It is obviously up to British Airways to decide what they serve on flights, but beef is an ideal meat for making into airline meals." A BA spokesman said the it stopped serving beef to economy class passengers last month.

He added: "We can only serve two options and beef and pork obviously have religious restrictions.

"We have to try to use two meals which appeal to as many customers as possible. This summer season we are offering customers in World Traveller on most longhaul flights a choice of chicken and tarragon or fish pie.

"We also look at trends from major supermarkets to see what types of meals are popular and fish pie style meals are selling well at the moment.

"These two meals proved popular in tasting tests and are also proving popular on board.

 

Catholic bishops have said the country has got more Catholic schools than it actually needs.

At the publication of a pastoral letter on education (download it here in pdf), the bishops have acknowledged that the population of Catholics here no longer warrants the current level of Catholic schools.

However, asked if the Church was prepared to cede schools, Bishop Leo O’Reilly of the Irish Bishop’s Conference said the provision of different types of school was a matter for the Department of Education.

92% of the country’s primary schools are managed by the Catholic Church, but the percentage of the population that identifies itself as Catholic is considerably lower.

Bishop of Killaloe Willie Walsh said the Catholic Church is shouldering the burden of the problems of the Irish education system.

Bishop Walsh, who is a member of the Bishops Education Commission, also said that he was unhappy about the action taken by some parents to enrol their children in a particular school to avoid integration.

He added that he felt long-term bad planning by the Department of Education had caused the current overcrowding problems in some schools.

He said the Catholic Church welcomes moves by other patrons with an interest in providing schools in Ireland.

 

The alleged leader of the Real IRA was lured into the eye of a garda surveillance unit by an FBI spy as officers followed his movements in the aftermath of the Omagh bombing, a court heard today.

A landmark civil case over the 1998 atrocity heard convicted terror boss Micheal McKevitt and David Rupert, who infiltrated the group, met at a Dundalk housing estate as officers watched on.

A member of the National Surveillance Unit told the groundbreaking case, which was hearing evidence at a District Court sitting in Dublin, that spotting McKevitt at a possible meeting was a good day’s work.
Detective Sergeant Thomas Finbarr Healey said he saw the pair talk for five minutes in the garden of a house in Oakland Park before bidding their last farewells on February 18 2001.
The garda, the first witness to give evidence since the case moved to the Dublin, said he recorded what he saw on hand-held recorder and copied them to a personal computer, but had not kept a copy of either.
He also told Kieran Vaughan QC, junior counsel for McKevitt, that he did not video or photograph the meeting as it was dark and that although he had 25 years’ experience, had paid no attention to what clothes the suspected terror boss was wearing as he knew his identity.

Mr Vaughan, who disputed the allegation, asked the officer if he had any evidence to support his testimony.

“Any time you got Michael McKevitt at a meeting was a good day’s work,” replied Mr Healey.
“You have my direct evidence, that’s all.”
Mr Healey told the court the men stood in the garden with an unidentified man before a car took the FBI agent away.
He said that looking back, he believed Rupert lured McKevitt outside for the gardaí.
“I think Mr Rupert was being very good and lured them out the door,” he said.
“I often wonder, did he create the opportunity for us? People don’t usually hang around and just talk.”

Mr Healey said that maybe McKevitt was trying to impress the visitor from the US and walked outside out of common courtesy and manners.

“He did lure him out,” he added again.
The bombing, the worst atrocity during the conflict in the north, killed 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins.
Hundreds more were injured when the Real IRA bombed the Co Tyrone town on a busy Saturday afternoon in August 1998.
The action, taken by six of the families affected, moved to Dublin under the Council Regulation (EC) No 1206/2001 of May 28 2001 on cooperation between the courts of the member states in the taking of evidence in civil or commercial matters.
Although nobody has been convicted for the atrocity, named on the lawsuit are McKevitt, the man said to be his number two, Liam Campbell, and Colm Murphy, Seamus McKenna and Seamus Daly.

All deny any involvement.

A Danish newspaper editor who received death threats and is facing criminal charges for commissioning cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad is accusing his American counterparts of undermining free speech by failing to republish the cartoons when the issue prompted riots in Muslim countries two years ago.

“It reads on the top of the New York Times, ‘All the News That’s Fit to Print,’ but it’s very hard to argue that this was not news on February 1, 2006,” the culture editor of Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten, Flemming Rose, said Wednesday night during a speech at Stanford University. Most American newspapers did not publish the cartoons, which include images of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban and of suicide bombers being greeted by the Muslim prophet in heaven.

“We might not have had the kind of ongoing crisis if more newspapers around the world would have published the cartoons at the same time because by doing so you would have drawn a clear line. … Instead, it was pretty unclear what people in liberal democracies thought of this issue.”Mr. Rose scoffed at a Washington Post editor’s claim that the cartoons were not needed. The Danish editor said the Times later indicated that its reporters abroad might have been endangered by publishing the cartoons, an explanation Mr. Rose said was “fair” but should have been made clear to readers more promptly.

Asked by The New York Sun whether he was let down by the American press, Mr. Rose said, “Absolutely. I felt it was really very disappointing. … If you look at the cartoons that have been published in the pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times and the New Yorker, I mean a lot of them are very offensive.”

The ground-breaking Omagh bomb civil action is making history again when it moves to Dublin — the first time a Northern Irish case sits outside its jurisdiction.

The £14m civil action being taken against five suspected bombers has been transferred to the Republic’s Four Courts in a move at the request of the plaintiffs, the families of six victims.

When Mr Justice Morgan sits in court today, it will mark the first time a British judge has gone to the Republic on judicial business.

The action itself has made history in that it is the first time in the UK, and probably anywhere, that citizens have taken alleged terrorists through the courts.

The judge will head a commission assisted by an Irish judge to take hearsay evidence from an FBI spy and from Garda officers protected by immunity.

A spokesman for the Northern Ireland Courts Service said: "We believe this is the first time that a judge is to take evidence on commission in another jurisdiction under the Rules of the Supreme Court (Northern Ireland) 1980."

Michael McKevitt, Liam Campbell, Colm Murphy, Seamus Daly and Seamus McKenna deny any part in the 1998 explosion that killed 29 people and unborn twins.

The trial is to stay in Dublin for four days and scheduled to return on May 27 for three days. Some 2,300 emails and other documents passed between the US trucker-turned-spy, David Rupert who infiltrated the Real IRA, and his security handlers will be read.

Applications to hear evidence from 50 Garda officers were lodged at Belfast High Court but it is thought not all will be called.

In a special ruling on taking the non-jury trial to Dublin, Judge Morgan said: "Although the rule clearly provides that a judge may take evidence on commission in another jurisdiction it is unusual for such a course to be followed."

 Quarter of asylum seekers ‘disappear’ after lodging claims

ALMOST one in four asylum seekers who came here since the beginning of the year has "disappeared".

An estimated 1,100 asylum claims have been lodged here in the first three months of the year.

But 250 of the claimants then "disappeared" and did not process their case further.

A senior immigration official said last night : "This is a massive number and it continues the trend that was evident throughout 2007 when 689 cases, or 17pc, were officially deemed withdrawn.

"It suggests that these claims were not genuine but were made only as a back-up by people who had other options.

"Apart from abusing the process and wasting time, this practice also slows down the development of genuine claims…."

The top five countries of origin of asylum applications so far this year are Nigeria (26pc or 237 cases), Iraq (7pc), Congo (5pc), Somalia (4pc) and Pakistan (4pc).

The overall number of applications from January to March is down by 13pc on the corresponding period last year, when the lowest annual total for 10 years was recorded. The 2007 total of 3,985 represented a drop of 66pc on the 2002 figure. 

Twenty-five per cent of applicants "disappearing" is strongly indicative of how abused the asylum system is in this country and is a very good argument in favour of restricting asylum seekers’ movements to asylum centres while their applications are pending. If applicants truly fear for their lives and the lives of their families in whatever country they come from, they won’t mind being hosted at no expense to them in an asylum center for a couple of months

Israel, celebrating its 60th birthday last week, has proved to be an expensive ally for the United States.

Since its birth, Israel has received at least $114 billion from the US in direct foreign economic and military aid, says Shirl McArthur, a retired US diplomat who periodically updates his Israel cost estimates for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WREMA), a magazine often critical of US policy toward Israel.

That estimate, Mr. McArthur notes, is conservative. For instance, he has not factored inflation into that $114 billion cumulative sum. The late Washington economist Thomas Stauffer did that calculation several years ago. He found total official aid to Israel, up to 2002, came to $247 billion. He added other costs of US support of Israel (interest on debt, higher oil prices, etc.) to reach a highly controversial total of $1.6 trillion.

For comparison, the cost to the US of the Iraq war is running about $144 billion a year.

In March, a Memorandum of Understanding from the White House to Congress urged an additional $30 billion in military aid to Israel, a sum spread at about $3 billion a year through fiscal year 2018. Currently, Israel ranks as the top recipient of American foreign aid ($2.4 billion in 2007 by an official calculation) if reconstruction money for Iraq is excluded. Next are Egypt ($1.8 billion) and Afghanistan ($1 billion).

Up to now, the presidential candidates have largely ducked the question of what they would do to further peace between Israelis and the Palestinians.

"It’s quite remarkable it has not been raised," says Stephen Walt, coauthor of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," a controversial book published last year. "They have gotten a free pass on details for a peace process."

The Harvard University political science professor further criticizes the press for not questioning the candidates about what they would do to push forward a two-state solution to the decades-old struggle with its sizable cost to American taxpayers. Presumably a lever the US has in the dispute is to withhold the aid it gives to Israel and the far smaller amount ($73.5 million requested for fiscal 2008) given to the Palestinians.

"The presidential candidates make it a point never to talk about Middle East foreign aid," says McArthur.

Why the silence?

"Fear," says Paul Findley, a frequent critic of US foreign policy to Israel. He blames the Israeli lobby for contributing to his defeat in 1982 when running for reelection as a Republican congressional representative from Illinois.

None of the three remaining presidential candidates have uttered "even a syllable" of complaint about US policy toward Israel, rather a "paean of praise," Mr. Findley says. "This is a phenomenon without precedent in American history."

To Findley, the "most powerful instrument of intimidation" used by pro-Israel groups is the charge of "anti-Semitism." The meaning of that term has been expanded. It used to be applied to those hostile to a race or faith, that is, against Jews or Judaism. Now it’s often applied to critics of Israel or US-Israel policy, says Findley.

Considering the horrific history of the holocaust, politicians "run like rabbits" to avoid the charge of anti-Semitism, Findley adds.

Another fear of politicians involves the campaign contributions of pro-Israel political action committees (PACs). Last week WREMA reported that more than 20 of these PACs have contributed $1.1 million to Washington politicians in the 2007-08 election cycle. That amount is dwarfed by what the three presidential candidates have raised for their campaigns.

Since Israel now has a relatively prosperous per capita national income comparable to Cyprus or Slovenia, direct US economic aid to Israel has been replaced gradually by military aid. Since money is fungible, that would make little real economic difference to Israel as its government pays its high military bills. In fact, Congress allows Israel to use 26 percent of the aid it receives to buy arms outside the US, thereby helping build up its own weapons industry. "We are thus shooting ourselves [the US weapons industry] in the foot," charges Janet McMahon, managing editor of WREMA.

Professor Walt maintains he’s pro-Israel. The US refusal to put pressure on Israel to settle with the Palestinians on a two-state solution, he argues, is not helpful.

"Giving any country unconditional backing encourages irresponsible behavior," he says. It could lead to an apartheid state, or as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it, Israel facing "a South African-style struggle."