UK taxi driver kills 12, wounds 25 in rampage

By SCOTT HEPPELL and JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer Scott Heppell And Jill Lawless, Associated Press Writer



SEASCALE, England – A taxi driver drove his vehicle on a shooting spree across a tranquil stretch of northwest England on Wednesday, methodically killing 12 people and wounding 25 others before turning the gun on himself, officials said. The rampage in the county of Cumbria was Britain's deadliest mass shooting since 1996 and it jolted a country where handguns are banned and multiple shootings rare.

The body of the suspected gunman, 52-year-old Derrick Bird, was found in woods near Boot, a hamlet popular with hikers and vacationers in England's hilly, scenic Lake District. Police said two weapons were recovered from the scene.

Eight of the wounded were in the hospital, with three of them in critical condition. In a sign of the scale of the tragedy, Queen Elizabeth II issued a message saying she was "deeply shocked" and shared in "the grief and horror of the whole country." She passed on her sympathy to the families of the victims.

The shootings had "shocked the people of Cumbria and around the country to the core," Police Deputy Chief Constable Stuart Hyde said.
Police said it was too early to say what the killer's motive was, or whether the shootings had been random. Some reports said Bird had quarreled with fellow cab drivers the night before the killings.
Peter Leder, a taxi driver who knew Bird, said he had seen the gunman Tuesday and didn't notice anything that was obviously amiss. But he was struck by Bird's departing words.

"When he left he said, 'See you Peter, but I won't see you again,'" Leder told Channel 4 News.
The first shootings were reported in the coastal town of Whitehaven, about 350 miles (560 kilometers) northwest of London. Witnesses said the dead there included two of Bird's fellow cabbies.
Police warned residents to stay indoors as they tracked the gunman's progress across the county. Witnesses described seeing the gunman driving around shooting from the window of his car.
Victims died in Seascale and Egremont, near Whitehaven, and in Gosforth, where a farmer's son was shot dead in a field. Workers at the nearby Sellafield nuclear processing plant were ordered to stay inside while the gunman was on the loose.

Hyde said there were 30 separate crime scenes. Many bodies remained on the ground late Wednesday, covered with sheets, awaiting the region's small and overstretched force of forensic officers.
Police would not discuss the identity of those killed, but local reports said Bird killed a 66-year-old woman near her home and a retired man who was out cycling.

A spokesman for the local health authority denied reports that Bird had tried to seek medical assistance Tuesday and said he was not known to their mental health services.
Barrie Walker, a doctor in Seascale who certified one of the deaths, told the BBC that victims had been shot in the face, apparently with a shotgun.

Lyn Edwards, 59, a youth worker in Seascale, said she saw a man who had been shot in his car.
"I could see a man screaming and I could see blood and there were two ladies helping him at the time," she said.

Deadly shootings are rare in Britain, where gun ownership is tightly restricted. In recent years, there have been fewer than 100 gun murders annually across the country.

Rules on gun ownership were tightened after two massacres in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1987, gun enthusiast Michael Ryan killed 16 people in the English town of Hungerford. In 1996, Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and a teacher at a primary school in Dunblane, Scotland.
About 600,000 people in Britain legally own a shotgun, most of them farmers and hunters in rural areas. Witnesses described Bird as using a shotgun or a rifle.

Prime Minister David Cameron said the government would do everything it could to help the affected region.
"When lives and communities are suddenly shattered in this way, our thoughts should be with all those caught up in these tragic events, especially the families and friends of those killed or injured," he told lawmakers in the House of Commons.

Local lawmaker Jamie Reed said people in the quiet area were in shock.
"This kind of thing doesn't happen in our part of the world," he told the BBC. "We have got one of the lowest, if not the lowest, crime rates in the country."
Glenda Pears, who runs L&G Taxis in Whitehaven, said one of the victims was another taxi driver who was a friend of Bird's.
"They used to stand together having a (laugh) on the rank," she said. "He was friends with everybody and used to stand and joke on Duke Street."

Sue Matthews, who works at A2B Taxis in Whitehaven, said Bird was self-employed, quiet and lived alone. Some reports said he was divorced and the father of two sons.
"I would say he was fairly popular. I would see him once a week out and about. He was known as 'Birdy,'" she said. "I can't believe he would do that — he was a quiet little fellow."
Emergency services were still working late Wednesday to identify all the dead and inform their families.
Rod Davies, landlord of Gosforth Hall Inn near one of the crime scenes, said residents were "used to 'neighbor's cat missing' stories making the news — not this sort of thing.
"There's a lot of fear. A lot of people are expecting to hear names of people they know."
___
Jill Lawless reported from London. Associated Press Writer Andrew Khouri also contributed to this report.

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See Also Taxi driver 'warned of rampage' before shooting 12

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Under fire Israel to free activists

Facing mounting international outrage over its raid on an aid flotilla aiming to break its siege on Gaza, Israel has said it will expel all activists seized from the ships and dropped threats to prosecute some of them.
A spokesman for Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said on Tuesday that all activists - 682 people from 35 countries – "would be deported immediately" in an operation officials said they hoped to complete in 48 hours.

Nine activists were believed to have been killed when Israeli troops, using helicopters and fast dinghies, stormed the Mavi Marmara, the lead vessel of the six-ship convoy dubbed the Freedom Flotilla, on Monday.
The military said it opened fire in self defence when it encountered resistance from activists wielding metal rods and chairs, and released pictures which appeared to show a handful of soldiers being beaten and clubbed by dozens of activists.

GUNS POINTED

Activists' accounts of what happened began to emerge as the first 45 were deported on Tuesday.
Huseyin Tokalak, the captain of one of the seized ships, told a news conference in Istanbul that an Israeli navy ship threatened to sink his vessel before troops boarded and trained their guns on him and his crew.
"They pointed two guns to the head of each of us," Tokalak said.

After holding more than 10 hours of closed-door talks, the UN Security Council called for "a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to international standards".
It also condemned "those acts which resulted in the loss of ... civilians and many wounded", drawing a sharp response from Israel, which said its foreign minister complained in a telephone call with Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, that it was condemned unfairly for "defensive actions".
In Turkey, a visibly angry prime minister told parliamentary deputies that Israel should "definitely be punished" for its "bloody massacre" of the activists.

"The time has come for the international community to say 'enough'," said Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who demanded the immediate lifting of "the inhumane embargo on Gaza".
There were signs, however, that the long-term relationship Israel has had with Turkey – arguably its most important Muslim ally – would endure.

Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, spoke to his Turkish counterpart, Vecdi Gonul, on Tuesday, and they agreed the raid would not affect weapons deals – among them a planned delivery to Turkey of $183m in Israeli drones this summer - defence officials said on condition of anonymity.

RAFA BORDER OPENED

Amid the international condemnation, Egypt said it was opening the Rafah border it shares with Gaza for the first time in more than a year, to allow in humanitarian aid after a request from the governing Hamas Palestinian faction.

Egypt, in co-ordination with Israel, has rarely opened the border since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007 from forces loyal to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.
But Israel said it was ready to intercept another aid ship that organisers of the Freedom Flotilla planned to send to the Gaza Strip next week.

Netanyahu convened his security cabinet to debate what Israeli critics called a botched raid, and ministers said the naval blockade of 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip would continue.
"The opening of a sea route to Gaza would pose a tremendous risk to the security of our citizens. Therefore we continue a policy of a naval blockade," Netanyahu told his ministers.

Israel's security cabinet said in a statement that it "regrets the fact there were deaths in the incident, but lays full responsibility on those who took violent action that tangibly endangered the lives of Israeli soldiers".
It added: "Israel will continue to defend its citizens against the Hamas terror base," referring to Gaza.

NO US CONDEMNATION

The bloodshed on Monday also put Israel's tense ties with the US under further strain and placed under scrutiny the relationship between the allies.

Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught, reporting from Istanbul, said Erdogan, in his speech, "mentioned the unmentionable, saying that Israel acts because it has powerful friends".
The US has, thus far, refused to condemn the Israeli raid, with Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, telling reporters in Washington DC that "the situation from our perspective is very difficult and requires careful, thoughtful responses from all concerned".

In a telephone call with Erdogan, Barack Obama, the US president, expressed his condolences for those killed in the raid - four of them Turks - and reiterated US support for an impartial investigation "of the facts surrounding this tragedy", the White House said.

He also said it was important to find "better ways to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza without undermining Israel's security" the White House statement added.
 
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Israeli 'nuclear offer' to S Africa

Israel offered to sell apartheid-era South Africa nuclear warheads in 1975, the UK's Guardian newspaper says quoting a forthcoming book. According to documents obtained by the newspaper, a secret meeting between the then-Israeli defence minister, Shimon Peres, and his South African counterpart, PW Botha, ended with an offer by Jerusalem for the sale of warheads "in three sizes". The Guardian claimedon Sunday that those "sizes" referred to conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons. The documents provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of "ambiguity" in neither confirming nor denying their existence. The classified documents surrounding the agreement between the countries and cited by the Guardian were uncovered by Sasha Polakow-Suransky, an American academic, during research for a book, the newspaper said. The defence ministers also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret. Sunday's report said that the documents were proof that Pretoria wanted the weapons to keep neighbouring states and other enemies from attacking them. The report also said Israeli authorities attempted to keep the South African government from declassifying the documents. Israeli denial A statement issued on Monday by the office of Peres, now Israel's president, rejected the newspaper's report. "There exists no basis in reality for the claims published this morning by The Guardian that in 1975 Israel negotiated with South Africa the exchange of nuclear weapons," it said. "Unfortunately, The Guardian elected to write its piece based on the selective interpretation of South African documents and not on concrete facts. "Israel has never negotiated the exchange of nuclear weapons with South Africa. There exists no Israeli document or Israeli signature on a document that such negotiations took place." However, Ian Black, Middle East editor of the Guardian, says the significance of the revelation is that it provides documentary proof that Israel was prepared to sell nuclear warheads to South Africa. "This shows that Israel was prepared to be a proliferator of nuclear weapons and encourage the spread of them around the world," he told Al Jazeera. "We have had definitive evidence since the 1980s that Israel certainly has nuclear weapons, but it's one thing to have weapons, this shows that Israel was going to sell weapons to another country. "Something that was previously known perhaps as a rumour or suspicion, has now been confirmed as fact - that the Israeli government had strong relations with the apartheid government and that Israel was planning to sell nuclear weapons." Documentary proof According to the Guardian, the minutes of the meeting on March 31, 1975, record that: "Minister Botha expressed interest in a limited number of units of Chalet subject to the correct payload being available." The document then records: "Minister Peres said the correct payload was available in three sizes. Minister Botha expressed his appreciation and said that he would ask for advice." in depth Factfile: The world's nuclear stockpile Inside Story: A world without atomic weapons Riz Khan: Global nuclear disarmament Israel's 'nuclear arsenal' Nuclear double standard Polakow-Suransky is also quoted as saying that Israel's offer to equip South Africa with atomic weapons was the result of the regime's need for a military deterrent and for potential strikes against neighbouring states. "South Africa's leaders yearned for a nuclear deterrent - which they believed would force the west to intervene on their behalf if Pretoria were ever seriously threatened - and the Israeli proposition put that goal within reach," the Guardian quoted Polakow-Suransky as writing in his book  published in the US this week, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's secret alliance with apartheid South Africa. But the alleged deal did not go through, according to Polakow-Suransky, although Israel did reportedly provide South Africa with 30 grams of tritium, the substance which provides thermonuclear weapons with a boost to their explosive power. The delivery, according to the Guardian, was enough to build several atomic bombs. Waldo Stumpf, a former chief executive officer of South Africa's Atomic Energy Commission, told Al Jazeera that Botha "was quite adamant that the South African nuclear weapons programme was there for political reasons and was never there for technical reasons". No surprise Allister Sparks, a political commentator and former editor of South Africa's Rand Daily Mail newspaper, told Al Jazeera that the confirmation of a relationship between Israel and the apartheid regime came as no surprise. "Israel will obviously come out and deny this evidence and label anyone who takes it seriously as being anti-Semites," he said, "but this makes it more difficult for Israel to hold the respect of the world." Documents show South Africa wanted missiles as a 'deterrent' [The Guardian]  The documents confirm accounts by Dieter Gerhardt, a former South African naval commander, jailed in 1983 for spying for the Soviet Union. After his release following the collapse of apartheid, Gerhardt said there was an agreement between Israel and South Africa called "Chalet", which involved an offer by Israel to arm eight Jericho missiles with "special warheads". According to the paper, Gerhardt said these were atomic bombs. But until now there has been no documentary evidence of the offer. The existence of Israel's nuclear weapons programme was revealed by Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunuto the Sunday Times in 1986. He provided photographs taken inside the Dimona nuclear site but provided no written documentation. Israeli 'pressure' According to the Guardian, Israel "pressured" the present South African government not to declassify documents obtained by Polakow-Suransky. "The Israeli defence ministry tried to block my access to the agreement on the grounds it was sensitive material, especially the signature and the date," he told the Guardian. "The South Africans didn't seem to care; they blacked out a few lines and handed it over to me. The ANC government is not so worried about protecting the dirty laundry of the apartheid regime's old allies." Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East, with around 200 warheads, but it has a policy of neither confirming nor denying that. It has refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or to allow international surveillance of Dimona in the southern Negev desert. View original source

How Bush's grandpa helped Hitler's rise to power!

Guardian Online

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time.
There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair.
But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.

Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him.

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Children behind Israeli bars

published in The Daily Star 01 June 2010

With a timid smile, 16 year-old N twiddles his thumbs as he tells me his frightening story. Israeli soldiers came to his house a year ago at dawn. He was blindfolded, handcuffed, and taken away without any explanation.

When the military jeep finally stopped, the soldiers took him to a room with chairs. They began cursing at him and using derogatory terms against his mother and female siblings. The soldiers then put sunglasses on N's eyes and a female headband on his head.

"They took pictures of me; they were laughing," he told me.

"Aren't you going to confess?" the soldiers kept asking him… "To what?" he would reply. "To throwing stones," they would say.

Afraid of ending up in jail, N refused to confess to the alleged offence."I kept telling them: I didn't do it. I didn't do anything," he recalled. But N's story was just beginning."There was a dog barking outside the room… The soldier told me he would bring it in to f**k me if I didn't confess… I was so scared… The guy then took out a stick; he whipped it forward and it got longer. He told his friends, who were looking on and laughing at me: "This boy doesn't want to talk. Let's pull down his pants so I can shove this stick up his a**."

"I tried to hold on to the chair; he kept poking me, groping my privates with the stick, trying to get me off the chair," N said while avoiding eye contact with me.

The Palestine Chapter of Defence for Children International (DCI) has collected 100 sworn affidavits this year of Palestinian children, under the age of 18, who said they were mistreated by their Israeli interrogators. Fourteen of them say they were either sexually abused or threatened with sexual assault, including rape, if they didn't confess to what their interrogators accused them of.

N is one of these children… His confession landed him a three-month sentence in an Israeli jail.

Because of the stigma attached, there are fears that many more children may have suffered similar abuse but have been afraid to come forward.

N kept telling me he felt awkward talking about his experience. "It feels bad to talk about this. I mean, what a thing to talk about… It's shameful," he told me.

So I asked this shy teenager why he mustered the courage to speak out. "I want justice," he said. "I wish these people could be tried in a court so that they don't do this to other guys."

HOWEVER THE DAILY STAR FORGOT or INTENTIONALLY MISSED THE FOLLOWING of the News and all the pictures

N told me that at prison, he met many boys who had suffered similar abuse.

Israeli forces arrest approximately 700 Palestinian minors every year. During interrogation, these minors are not allowed to have contact with their lawyers or families. Human rights organisations say the alleged abuses happen during this period of isolation.

"These practices are meant to break the children. In a way, when you break the spirit of these children, you're breaking the spirit of the nation," Rifaat Kassis, the director general of DCI, told me.

And it's because of the powerful impact sexual abuse has on these children that DCI has sounded the alarm at the highest possible international levels. The organisation has communicated affidavits to the Special UN Rapporteur on Torture, hoping to galvanise enough international pressure to bring these abuses to an end.

This step is a reflection of the stonewalling human rights organisations usually face from Israeli authorities.

"Most of the time, the Israelis, they just dismiss our allegations and say this is not correct, this is not true; so if this is the case, we challenge them to record these interrogations and let the interrogations happen with the lawyer," Kassis told me.

This time was no different. We tried to request a response from the Israeli army but all our requests were turned down. The army told us they would only comment if they had more specific details about these cases, which is a demand the children's lawyers say could jeopardise their clients.  

But after the report aired on Al Jazeera, the Israeli military issued a statement rejecting the allegations and the DCI report. The army also said its practices were consistent with international law; a claim hotly contested by all human rights organisations working in Israel and the Occupied West Bank.

The Israeli army's response to these allegations also proves what DCI admits: this is a long-term battle.

So is recovery - N still struggles with his experience

"I'll never forget his eyes; the way he looked at me," he said, referring to his interrogator.

N still has nightmares and struggles to curb the fear he feels when the army is on patrol nearby. 

But he's relatively lucky, having a supportive family that has encouraged him to talk about his experience. And N has received counselling from the torture victims' centre of the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association). 

Still, this is a frustrating battle, requiring endless patience.

The director general of DCI told me his organisation's petitions and campaigns within the Israeli military system have generally yielded very limited results, if at all. That's why these child rights advocates are hoping that outside pressure will eventually help prevent further instances of abuse and afford children like N the basic rights and protection they should be entitled to. 

The tormenting part of this battle, however, is knowing that until success is achieved, there is nothing these activists can do for the children now detained by Israeli soldiers on a regular basis.

They can only hope that counselling, after the fact, can help them recover. 

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This is how the ISRAELIS are treating our innocent CHILDREN??!!! This is what AMERICA is backing up!!!!