Poll of troops in Iraq sees 72% support for withdrawal within a year

by Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes, Middle East Edition
WASHINGTON
Seventy-two percent of troops on the ground in Iraq think U.S. military forces should get out of the country within a year, according to a Zogby poll released Tuesday.

The survey of 944 troops, conducted in Iraq between Jan. 18 and Feb. 14, said that only 23 percent of servicemembers thought U.S. forces should stay “as long as they are needed.”

Of the 72 percent, 22 percent said troops should leave within the next six months, and 29 percent said they should withdraw “immediately.” Twenty-one percent said the U.S. military presence should end within a year; 5 percent weren’t sure.

But policy experts differ on exactly what those numbers mean.

Justin Logan, a foreign policy analyst for the Cato Institute, called the figure alarming, and a sign that the Bush administration and troops in Iraq see the goals and the progress of the war very differently.

The president has opposed any plans for a withdrawal date, saying troops will remain until Iraq’s security is assured. Logan sees so many troops wanting a clear time line as showing “an alarming disconnect” between the policy and its implementation.

But Loren Thompson, a military analyst with the Lexington Institute, said troops who say the U.S. should withdraw could be concerned for their own safety, or they could be optimistic about progress so far, or they could simply be opposed to the idea of operations in Iraq.

“You have to pick apart each servicemember’s thought process to understand what that means,” he said. “I think this is about personal circumstances, and not proof there is a higher rate of troops who desire departure.”

Defense Department officials declined to comment on the poll, saying they did not have details on how the survey was conducted.

John Zogby, CEO of the polling company, said the poll was funded through Le Moyne College’s Center for Peace and Global Studies, which received money for the project from an anonymous, anti-war activist, but neither the activist nor the school had input on the content of the poll.

Zogby said the survey was conducted face-to-face throughout Iraq, with permission from commanders. Despite the difficulty of polling in a war zone, he said, pollsters were pleased with the results.

“This is a credible and representative look at what the troops are saying,” he said. “Clearly there are those [in the U.S.] who will speak for the troops, so there is a real value in seeing what they are actually saying.”

The poll also shows that 42 percent of the troops surveyed are unsure of their mission in Iraq, and that 85 percent believe a major reason they were sent into war was “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the Sept. 11 attacks.” Ninety-three percent said finding and destroying weapons of mass destruction is not a reason for the ongoing military action.

“We were surprised by that, especially the 85 percent [figure],” Zogby said. “Clearly that is much higher than the consensus among the American public, and the public’s perception [on that topic] is much higher than the actual reality of the situation.”

In terms of current operations, 80 percent of those polled said they did not hold a negative view of all Iraqis because of the ongoing attacks against coalition military forces.

More than 43 percent of those polled said their equipment, such as Humvees, body armor and munitions, is adequate for the jobs facing them, while 30 percent said it is not.

Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C. and chairman of the Victory in Iraq Caucus, a group of 118 Republican lawmakers, said the poll does not diminish his opinion of the importance of the armed forces role in Iraq.

“Whatever the percentages are, I know 100 percent of our troops want to complete their mission over there,” he said. “My view is, whatever the poll results say, the bottom line is these are troops who will continue their mission, because they would rather fight the enemy overseas than at home.”

Of those surveyed, 75 percent have served multiple tours in Iraq, 63 percent were under 30 years old, and 75 percent were male.

Senator Feinstein's War Profiteering, by Joshua Frank

It happens all the time. If the antiwar movement takes on the Democrats for their bitter shortcomings, a few liberals are bound to criticize us for not hounding Bush instead. It doesn't even have to be an election year to get the progressives fired up. They just don't seem to get it. "How can you attack the Democrats when we have such a bulletproof administration ruling the roost in Washington?" somebody recently e-mailed me. "Don't you have something better to do than write this trash?!"

Well, not really. It's too cold in upstate New York right now to do anything other than fume over the liberal villains in Washington. "Why do I write about the putrid Democratic Party?" I responded, "I'll tell you, there's a reason this Republican administration is so damn bulletproof – nobody from the opposition party is taking aim and pulling the trigger."

And that's why the Dems are just as culpable in all that has transpired since Bush took office in 2000. They aren't just a part of the problem – the Democrats are the problem.

I mean, who is really all that surprised Bush and his boys wanted to conquer the Middle East? Not me. That's just what unreasonable neocons do: they stomp out the little guy, kill off the weak, and suffocate the voiceless. They only care about the girth of their wallets and the number of scalps they can tack above their mantles.

The Democrats aren't just letting the Republicans get away with murder, however: some of them are also reaping the benefits of the Bush wars. We constantly hear about Dick Cheney's ties to Halliburton and how his ex-company is making bundles off U.S. contracts in Iraq. But what we don't hear about is how Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her husband are also making tons of money off the "war on terror."

The wishy-washy senator now claims Bush misled her prior to the invasion of Iraq. I don't think she's being honest with us, though. There may have been other reasons she helped sell Bush's lies. According to the Center for Public Integrity, Feinstein's husband Richard Blum has racked in millions of dollars from Perini, a civil infrastructure construction company, of which the billionaire investor wields a 75 percent voting share.

In April 2003, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave $500 million to Perini to provide services for Iraq's Central Command. A month earlier in March 2003, Perini was awarded $25 million to design and construct a facility to support the Afghan National Army near Kabul. And in March 2004, Perini was awarded a hefty contract worth up to $500 million for "electrical power distribution and transmission" in southern Iraq.

Feinstein, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee as well as the Select Committee on Intelligence, is reaping the benefits of her husband's investments. The Democratic royal family recently purchased a $16.5 million mansion in the flush Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. It's a disgusting display of war profiteering, and just like Cheney, the leading Democrat should be called out for her offense.

And that's exactly why the Bush administration is so darn bulletproof. The Democratic leadership in Washington is just as crooked and just as callous.

Worldwide survey: war in Iraq has increased threat of terrorism

LONDON
The majority of those who responded to a 33-country survey believe that the U.S. and British military intervention in Iraq that began in March 2003 has increased the threat of terrorism in the world, according to a BBC poll published Tuesday.

Sixty percent of those surveyed believe that the invasion of Iraq has contributed to increasing the threat of terrorism in the world, while 12% believe the opposite, and 15% believe that nothing has changed since then, according to the poll, carried out by BBC Radio and reported by AFP.

The countries where respondents were most critical included China, where 85% of those surveyed believe that the terrorist threat is greater now; South Korea (84%); and Egypt (83%). In the UK, 77% of those surveyed share this opinion, as do 75% of Iraqis and 55% of U.S. Americans.

In Spain, 79% of respondents believe the threat is greater, and in France, 67% agree, while in Germany, it is 80%; Italy, 81%, and Russia, 58%.

Does it ever occur to ask: "Why is the USA so hated throughout the world?"

by Oscar Heck
The more I see pictures of Iraq, the more I cannot stop thinking about the criminality of the US government and of all those people who support it and encourage it. I don't need to make a list of those people who support Bush, we know who they are and they know who they are. People say things like, "We must support Bush because he is doing things in order to protect us from the evil of terrorism ... from the evil Islamic terrorists who hate us and who want to kill us ... from the evil Colombian narco-traffickers who hate us and who want to push drugs to our children ... from the evil people all over the world who hate us and who want to stop us from helping the world to be like us. Bush is protecting us and we must make sure that we are protected."

Does it ever occur to Bush supporters to ask the question, "Why are we so hated throughout the world?"

Of course not! It is ingrained in most people of the USA to assume that the USA is the best country in the world (the "holy land"), that they are the best, that their way of life is the best model for the world.

Such assumptions are completely erroneous and far from reality. Unfortunately, most people in the USA have no idea of the extent to which the US "way of life" is seen more as a cancer to the world than a "good thing."

After the USA invaded Iraq, the US government came up with some new labels: insurgents, insurgency, etc. ... blaming most of this type of activity on "evil" groups such as Al Qaeda. What most people do not realize is that most of the "insurgency" attacks against US (and ally) installations and operations in Iraq are simply attacks of revenge against those who participated in murdering innocent family members.

It has nothing to do with Al Qaeda or with "radical" Islam ... it has to do with revenge.

The other thing that people in our "western" world do not seem to realize is that many, if not most of the "insurgency" is probably perpetrated by the US government and by the US military itself and/or by US-friendly forces and US-backed mercenaries. I believe that it is the US military (and special forces) who are leading the insurgency campaign itself. It is exactly the same tactic which the US-financed Venezuelan opposition in Venezuela used in 2002 and 2003. They would hire mercenaries dressed as Chavistas (Chavez supporters) to shoot at pro-opposition rallies (their own people) in order to blame the massacres on Chavez.

When the Venezuelan US-financed opposition bombed the Colombian embassy in Chacaito (I was there at the time), the people who blew up the embassy made sure to scatter hundreds of pro-Chavez pamphlets around the building. The anti-Chavez media picked up on this immediately and publicly blamed Chavistas for the bombing and assassinations.

* It was later found out that these activities were carried out by the Venezuelan opposition ... it was also found out that most opposition groups were (and still are) being financed by the US government through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

If the US-financed Venezuelan opposition (whose leaders are members of Venezuela's elite) was capable of using such ruthless and subversive tactics in order to try to achieve their goals, then it is very easy to assume that the US military and the US government can do the same ... and even worse. If the Venezuelan opposition could so easily "sacrifice" (assassinate) some of its own people, then, hey, what's a few more dead US soldiers in Iraq?

* Why would the Venezuelan opposition shoot and kill its own followers ... and then blame radical Chavistas?

* Why would the US government want to blow up a major mosque in Iraq (the one with the golden dome, for example) ... and then say that it was blown up by some kind of radical Iraqi religious faction?

Because the US government, as in the case of the Venezuelan opposition, is ruthless.

* Because they want to create chaos, internal conflict, paranoia and fear.

The more chaos, the more internal conflict, the more fear and the more paranoia that can be created in Iraq, the more will be the requirement for the US military to remain present in Iraq. The more their presence is required, the more the US military will use bullets, missiles and bombs. The more missiles, bullets and bombs the US military uses, the more missiles, bombs and bullets the US government will need to buy. The more it purchases (from mostly US suppliers), the more it adds to the expenses which Iraq and the Iraqi people will owe the US government (while US firms profit from arms sales).

(Don't think that the US government is "helping" Iraq for free! The US military does not lose money. It is a profit-making enterprise, anchored deeply in US capitalism. They make profits, they do not lose money. I learned of this in Kuwait during the Gulf War.)

Eventually, when the Iraqi debt reaches a high enough level, most of the "insurgency" attacks will begin to slow ... and eventually disappear almost completely. At that point we will know that Iraq's debt to the USA is so high that it can never be paid back. At that time, the Iraqis will have to make deals with the US government, and in partial payment of their debts to the US government, they will have to "temporarily" hand over control of their natural resources, oil, gold, etc. and hand over partial control of Iraq to the US government and to other criminal institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF. "Temporary" will really mean "eternal" ... as is the case with almost any country which the USA has "helped."

For example, look at most of Central America and the complete social devastation which was left behind after the USA "helped" them. This is the kind of scenario which Chavez is trying to avoid at all cost. Venezuela does not need "help" from the criminal US government, and neither does the rest of Latin America ... and neither does the rest of the world. The "good guy" days of the USA are gone ... and probably, forever.

So, why are "Americans" so hated throughout the world?

Because most people throughout our world know exactly how the US government and its cronies and supporters operate and how they coerce and rob people of their territories, of their natural resources, and in consequence of their ability for self-sustainment and self-governance ... of their dignity. Whilst most people throughout the world are well aware of this, most people in the USA have absolutely no notion of how their own government behaves outside the USA.

Most people in the USA have no idea of how criminal the US government is outside US borders ... and how criminal it is perceived to be.

In general, the people of the USA are living in their own little Hollywoodian bubble ... far away from the realities which are soon to come slapping them in the face repeatedly and consistently for generations to come.

One of the most used tactics by the US government is embargoes.

Take for example the US embargo restricting Venezuelan airlines from entering US airspace (mid 1990's). I read one report where, at the time, the US government would consider lifting the embargo if the Venezuelan government hired US firms to "help" Venezuela set up safer and more efficient air transport operations.

Do you see my point?

Do you see the money-making tactic?

The coercion?

The deceit? .

.. just like the Venezuelan opposition. The arrogance?

Finally, every time you see (on TV) a new "insurgency" attack in Iraq, question yourself, "Is the perpetrator really and 'evil' terrorist, as we are led to believe, or is he/she a US-paid mercenary whose aim is to add to the chaos and to the fear factor in order to prolong this profitable war effort ... or is it an angry father whose wife and children were blown to bits by a US bomb while he was at work?"

* Imagine coming home from work and finding your little girl's severed arm a hundred feet from your house, still holding her Barbie doll.

* Imagine then running toward the location where your house once stood and ripping away your wife's severed head from a small group of vultures.

And then imagine finding half of your baby boy's bloated body lying in a pool of maggot-infested mud ... the maggots having a furious feast with his tongue and eyes.

Think of these images every time you eat, every time you drink, every time you think, every time you speak, every time you go to bed ... and every time you pray to your god.

Then imagine what you would think of the USA.

AbramoffJournal.blogspot.com

Detailing the shenanigans of the Republican Party.

Contributors:

Willow

and

toniD

No Questions on Military budget.

The President has submitted a military budget of $440 billion dollars, with request for more than an additional hundred billion for the Iraq war expected later. It is finally time to say that the Pentagon budget has slipped its leash and is out of control. Not in the sense that the country is splashing money around without accounting for it but that the military budget process has escaped from meaningful political review and oversight. The Republicans know their biggest appeal to the American voters is as guarantors of their security, which they interpret as giving the Pentagon whatever it asks for, even as deficits climb. The Democrats are terrified of being seen as soft on defense so they don’t even dare ask questions. In this climate of fear we operate more on momentum than careful analysis and Congress can’t say “No” to the Pentagon on anything.

It is hard to make sense of the spending. We already spend more than the average peacetime levels of the Cold War and we are approaching Cold War peaks. Ah, but we are told the world is a very dangerous place today and we are fighting a hot war right now. That is true, but we need some perspective, and that has to come from Congress.
We are fighting a poorly defined, and probably weakly organized, set of groups that clearly wants to do us harm. But compare the military challenge of the Cold War. During the Reagan Administration, the Pentagon published annually a report called “Soviet Military Power.” It was meant to be a sobering read, and it was. The Russians had vast tank armies west of Berlin ready to roll to Lisbon and nuclear armed Soviet submarines constantly prowled up and down both coasts.

The threat to the country today is real but the military part of the threat from al Qaeda and the rest of the world is
tiny compared to that from the old Soviet Union. If we are spending as much on the military today as we were during the Cold War, then at least one of three things must be true, either we are grossly overspending, or we are applying the wrong tool to the problem, or we are guilty of breathtaking inefficiencies.

What about the all-too-hot war in Iraq? The exact dollar cost of the Iraq war is hard to know, but the Iraq-specific “supplementals” the Administration has submitted to Congress since the war began have been between a quarter and a fifth the size of the rest of the military budget. Turn those numbers around and they imply that the country’s normal, peacetime, day-to-day military operations are financially equivalent to four or five simultaneous Iraq wars.
Several mistakes combine to create this unjustifiable budget.

First, military spending is at Cold War levels because we are still fighting the Cold War. The world has been turned on its head since the end of the Cold War, yet the relative allocation of resources among the three military Services has not changed more than a few percent. This might reflect an astonishing coincidence but it more likely reflects entrenched bureaucratic inertia. We hear the military is stretched thin but don’t be fooled, the Army is stretched thin, not the military. Many of the most expensive weapons in the pipeline were conceived during the Cold War and designed specifically to counter the old Soviet Union and are destined for the Navy and Air Force. There are a dozen examples but the most egregious is without doubt the Virginia-class submarine that, at two billion dollars each, is now being promoted in part as a way to intercept phone calls.

The U.S military budget is roughly the size of every other country’s spending combined and most of the other big spenders—Britain, France, and Japan among them—are our allies, not our enemies. So the Administration has created military requirements that it freely admits are unhinged from any real threats. The Pentagon calls this moving from “threat-based” to “capabilities-based” planning, on the theory that threats in today’s world change too quickly. But capabilities-based planning also means that, if Iran, North Korea, and China were taken over by Quakers tomorrow, our military budget would not go down by a nickel.

This is more than a question of wasting money.

The wrong spending can actually undermine our security. We are confused by our own euphemisms. We call the military budget the “defense” budget. Without question, the military is the cornerstone of our defense and we have learned that we must be ready for war to ensure peace but our defense requires more than military might.
Is our security increased more by buying an additional submarine or spending those billions of dollars on improved port security and building girls’ schools in Pakistan? Congress needs to make decisions about how much it wants to spend on defense and, of that amount, how much should go to the military. The Nation has to stop measuring its security by the size of the Pentagon’s budget.

Lies, Damn Lies and Poverty Statistics

by Christopher Moraff
How an archaic measurement keeps millions of poor Americans from being counted

Standing before the House rostrum on the night of January 31, President George W. Bush beamed as he recounted the state of the country’s economic health.

“Our economy is healthy,” the president declared during his State of the Union address. “Americans should not fear our economic future, because we intend to shape it.”

What shape Bush has in mind is clear. While the administrators of the president’s economic policies champion 11 consecutive quarters of GDP growth, Bush-mandated tax cuts ensure that the government will continue to make less while the rich and large corporations eagerly fill their coffers. In 2005, federal revenues were just 17.5 percent of GDP, 1 percent less than the previous 50-year average. By contrast, the Feb. 12, 2005 Economist reported that in 2004, after-tax corporate profits reached their highest level as a proportion of GDP in 75 years.

In the meantime, everyday Americans are spending more than they make. For the second straight year, personal savings have been in the red, a phenomenon that has only happened once before, at the height of the Great Depression. Research conducted by the Economic Policy Institute shows that the indebtedness of U.S. households has risen nearly 36 percent over the last four years. As a result, the gulf between the “haves” and “have nots” is reaching crisis proportions.

Compounding the crisis is an archaic method for determining America’s poverty rate, which is then used to formulate the funding of programs that alleviate poverty. When President Bush sat down with his advisors to draft his FY 2007 budget, it’s debatable whether he took the time to examine the national poverty statistics provided each year by the Census Bureaus. What’s not debatable is that the Census Bureau’s methodology is woefully inadequate.

The current method for measuring poverty in the United States was developed in 1963 by a young statistician for the Social Security Administration named Mollie Orshansky. Using data from a 1955 Department of Agriculture survey, Orshansky developed a set of thresholds that set a poverty line at three times the annual cost of feeding a family of three or more under Agriculture’s “low-cost budget.” She developed the thresholds purely for her own research and said at the time that her data’s limitations would yield a “conservative underestimate” of poverty.

At that, Orshansky’s work might well have passed into history. But on January 8, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson uttered the famous words: “This Administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.” It was a war Johnson intended to win, but missing was an official yardstick for gauging the problem and its ultimate resolve.

Not just any measure would do. Rather, the administration required a threshold that was sufficiently conservative to render eradication of poverty attainable—winning the war by moving up the finish line. Orshansky’s model fit the bill. But first, the Office of Economic Opportunity substituted the Agriculture Department’s “economy food plan,” which was still another 25 percent lower than the “low cost budget” originally chosen by Orshansky. Almost immediately, the new thresholds had an effect, and by 1968, the nation’s official poverty rate had dropped by more than 10 million.

Forty years later, with the War on Poverty no closer to being won, the Census still relies on the Orshansky Thresholds to calculate each year how many Americans live in poverty. That number then determines the nature and distribution of an array of federal policies and programs aimed at addressing the issue.

As critics have pointed out for decades, limitations of the Orshansky formula are manifold. For one, food doesn’t account for one-third of a family’s budget today, making it an unrealistic cost-of-living measure. The model also fails to take into account housing, transportation or health care—which together can amount to more than triple the average cost of food. Add in regional variations, childcare costs and the growth of single-parent families, and it’s fair to say that the Census Bureau is systematically undercounting the number of poor Americans.

Census data released this past August suggests that the number of Americans in poverty grew slightly in 2004 (the most recent year for which data is available) to 12.7 percent from the 12.5 percent recorded the previous year, representing about 37 million Americans. Since 2000, the number of people living in official poverty has increased by 5.4 million. But according to experts, that number vastly underestimates the real total. Duke University sociology professor David Brady puts it this way: “Each August we Americans tell ourselves a lie. The entire episode is profoundly dishonest.”

Brady says that based on his calculations the real number is closer to 18 percent—or 48 million Americans currently unable to afford the most basic necessities. Less conservative estimates have put the numbers of poor at 25 percent, or more than 70 million Americans.

Robert T. Michael, a renowned public policy scholar at the University of Chicago, explains the shortcomings: Orshansky “set a target level of income for a family of four at $3100 in 1963 based on evidence that she put together that basically was using 1955 data. That exact same number—augmented only by cost of living—is the official measurement of poverty today. If they’d done that at the time of Abraham Lincoln, you know, set a rate something like 100 years before, then we’d have a really low level of poverty today.”

What this means in real numbers is that the average poverty threshold for a family of four in 2004 was an annual income of $19,307. It was $15,067 for a family of three; $12,334 for a family of two; and $9,645 for individuals. “It’s really egregiously in error,” Michael says.

In 1992, at the prompting of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, the National Academy of Sciences formed a panel to examine the poverty thresholds. Michael was asked to chair the panel.

After three years of work, in 1995 the panel released its report, “Measuring Poverty: A New Approach,” which proposed a number of reforms, notably a change to a measure adjusted regionally that takes into account variations in the cost of housing. But nobody in the federal government seemed ready to budge.

“We’ve gotten some movement and a lot of attention,” Michael explains, “but it hasn’t changed anything because politicians are politicians.” He blames the interests of the states—which have become financially dependent on the status quo—and an unwillingness of any administration to accept such a drastic rise of poverty on their watch.

“If they wanted to change it, it would be pretty easy to do,” agrees Brady. “The real reason it hasn’t been changed is because of politics.”

India Hates the FuckTard As Well...

'Bush is not certainly welcome in India'

Left parties to protest Bush's India visit

Karnataka opposition to protest Bush visit

Muslims, Leftists to protest Bush visit

PSA to hold anti-Bush demos on March 2

Russia Dampens Hopes on Iran Nuclear Talks

...
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, called American and Russian nuclear arsenals a threat to the Middle East and called for them to dismantle their atomic weapons, although there was no indication he was making the demand part of Iran's negotiating position.
...

Free Range Feminist

Contributors:
Alice
nut-meg
Willow
toniD
Cathy in Seattle

This blog is maintained by some of the female bloggers at Majority Report Radio.

It will focus on women's issues.

Reports: Progress in Iran, Russia uranium talks

Russia and Iran reported progress Sunday on a Russian proposal for a joint uranium enrichment program, according to Russian news agencies.

According to the RIA-Novosti news agency, Iranian Vice President Golam Reza Agazadeh said negotiations on the agreement would resume soon in Moscow.

"We held talks with the Russian side on Russia's proposal yesterday and today. The talks saw good progress. Both sides are pleased with the talks," Agazadeh said.

He spoke at a news conference in Bushehr, Iran, where a Russian delegation toured Iran's nearly-complete nuclear power plant. Russia is aiding Iran in the plant's construction.

At the same news conference, the head of Russia's nuclear agency, Sergei Kiriyenko, said the talks -- which include negotiations for the completion of the Bushehr plant -- had further to go.

"Implementation of the proposal will give time and will increase confidence," Kiriyenko said. The two countries "have almost no organizational, technical or financial problems" relating to the proposal, he said, stressing that it "is just an element of a complex approach."

"More work is needed in the area," he said.

The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying that talks between the two countries would continue until the International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors meets on March 6.

Last week in Moscow, Russian and Iranian negotiators talked about Russia's offer to enrich uranium for Tehran on Russian soil -- an offer Russia says is contingent on Iran completely halting its nuclear enrichment program inside its borders.

However, Iran has said in the past it won't engage in any negotiations or agree to any deal that would deny its right to enrich uranium on its own soil.

Russia, one of Iran's largest trading partners, is trying to resolve the nuclear dispute that has triggered major international concerns -- particularly from the United States -- and avoid sanctions that could potentially be imposed by the United Nations Security Council.

The IAEA is expected to report Tehran to the Security Council since Iran ended its cooperation with the nuclear watchdog agency.

Iran insists its nuclear research program is meant for civilian purposes and to produce energy, but many Western countries fear the move is an effort to create nuclear weapons.

Iran restarted work at its Natanz facility February 13, according to a diplomat close to the IAEA. But earlier on Sunday, foreign ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi said the work that began at that time did not include uranium enrichment.

Laith Mushtaq, Al Jazeera Cameraman - Interviewed by Amy Goodman

AMY GOODMAN: Laith Mushtaq, you were the cameraman that Ahmed is describing, holding your camera. When did you get to Fallujah?

LAITH MUSHTAQ: We went to Fallujah, I think, it was the 3rd of April. We went to Fallujah, and we were able to enter Fallujah before it was completely besieged. After we entered the city and before the siege took place, our feeling has become more eminent of responsibility, because there was no press there in the city. First, my going to Fallujah was voluntarily on my part as a photographer, and we were asked who was willing to go to Fallujah, so I did that, because I'm keen to transfer and report and picture and photograph. And secondly, I was anxious to work with Mr. Ahmed Mansur, because he is a prominent journalist in the Arab world, and it was my first experience to work with him in Fallujah.

When we entered Fallujah and the siege started of Fallujah, we were doing some consultative meetings as a team, that we distribute the duties amongst ourselves, and how we will move and go around because we were in a very difficult situation. The area we were in was the closest to the U.S. forces, because we were besieged, and we were able to move only for one day during the daytime. And we left and photographed after the clashes, and we tried to take pictures of the aftermath rampage.

And the first shot I took with my camera and the first photo as, Ahmed remembers, it was for a human being fired or burned completely. He was a wounded person. His family were transferring him to a hospital, which was close to the U.S. forces position, and it had the Red Crescent symbol and the Red Cross, because they put him in a pickup, so they put him in the outside in the pickup, and that was under fire. And I saw this person, the wounded person is torched, fired, burned. Even smoke was coming out of him. I was unable to go and see that scenery.

I left him to go alone, and I stood far, and my sight was really bad and terrible because on that day, when we went to the hospital, there was a lot of children in the hospital that were wounded. Some children were brought, and their families were dead already. Their fathers and parents were not accompanying them. That day made a terrible shock to me and shocked me extremely. I covered many wars, but every time you cover a war and you see corpses and dead people and children, believe me, every children I looked at, I remember my younger daughter.

I'm sorry, but in the end, I am a human being, and I have children. Every time I look at a wounded girl or who lost her family or is killed, I always remember my own little daughter. And I remember that I have to be here to protect those children. I have to report this to the whole world, so that the killing of all these children will stop, and all these vulnerable and simple people. This feeling destroyed myself, destroyed me completely. And I was overwhelmed, and I tried to separate between my career and my humanity, but sometimes I could not do that.

...

AMY GOODMAN: We return to our interview with Al Jazeera's Ahmed Mansur and his cameraman Laith Mushtaq that we conducted in Doha, Qatar earlier this month. The two reported from inside Fallujah during the first U.S. siege of the city in April 2004, one of the bloodiest assaults of the occupation, 30 U.S. Marines and some 600 Iraqis killed. This is their first time speaking out about their experience in Fallujah. The interview is translated by Al Jazeera's Ali Matar. Laith Mushtaq, the cameraman, continues to tell the story.

LAITH MUSHTAQ: This was the first day. I stayed until the end of the siege of Fallujah. I left on the 10th, and I came back on the 12th, and I stayed inside the city. The 9th, which Ahmed spoke about, was similar to the day of judgment in Fallujah. It was a very harsh day, very hard, because we were coming out from a terrible experience of the two days of the siege. The first day of the siege -- the first two days, rather, we were unable to go even to the bathroom, because in Fallujah, the city is West Iraq, the bathroom is usually outside the rooms, so whenever we opened the door to go to the bathroom, we see the laser pointed at us, the sniper guns, and there's only 50 meters between us and them. Even some tapes, I photographed them from a window, and they were moving around in the street.

When we went to the hospital and reached the hospital, you cannot even imagine what my feeling was. First of all, I'm a human being. Second, I see corpses of children. I feel a responsibility, that a photographer or as a team, the only one here working, we are the only one who will write the history of what happened, and that's a great burden, and I was really tired. Ahmed was tired. The whole team was tired, but at the same time, who will photograph these people? And it was really amazing. The pictures come one after another.

I saw myself a lady -- I was sitting to smoke for a moment, and I saw an elderly lady coming with her children, going in a big truck to leave Fallujah or try to leave Fallujah. After a quarter of an hour, she came back as pieces, and even people, the -- when they opened the ambulance and I was photographing that, the minute the medics saw the body, they took us back stand from the gruesomeness of the scenery. One of them, I remember, was standing by. He said, in typical a Iraqi dialect, he said, "Be brave. Be honorable people. Imagine this is your mom. Will you leave her alone? Will you abandon her?" So people took her, and they tried to bury her.

The same day, I saw -- I'm sorry, after three days, it was the most difficult scene for me in my whole life. In Fallujah was the family of Hamiz. Hamiz is a person living in the neighborhood of al-Julan, which the U.S. forces tried to penetrate into it to go to the heart of the city. The family of Hamiz were gathered in the house of Hamiz, his sister and their family and their daughters. There was about four families in one place, children and ladies and women. Usually men leave to leave the -- some privacy for the children and the ladies. The planes bombed this house, as they did for the whole neighborhood, and they brought the corpses and bodies to the hospital. I went to the hospital. I could not see anything but like a sea of corpses of children and women, and mostly children, because peasants and farmers have usually a lot of children. So, these were scenes that are unbelievable, unimaginable.

I was taking photographs and forcing myself to photograph, while I was at the same time crying, because I used to move the camera from one picture of a child to the father Hamiz, who was still the only one left alone from that family. He was speaking with his children, and they had an infant, and the children was named Ahmed. He used to speak to him, so he used to use a nickname Hamudi as a nickname for Ahmed. So he used to talk to this child who was sleeping, and in his hand was a toy of a shape of a car. Half his head was gone. So he used to speak to him, "Come back, my beloved. Come to my lap. I am your father," and talking to the other daughter. I could not really find any one human being in one piece or intact. They were cut up. It's bombing of airplanes. You can imagine what could happen. It was a very saddening scene.

At the same time, I say it honestly and frankly, that people were there feeling a lot of responsibility. I did not see the civilians with this high spirit. There was no armed people or military, but the people were really strong. I think that we, the people of the city -- I am from Baghdad and from a known family. We used to imagine that we, the people of the urban cities, are more cultured, more educated, and we have prestigious personality. I saw some examples of Fallujah, of the people present at the time, that I’m just a small student, in patience, in dealing in a cooperative manner. A woman leaves the city of Fallujah to cook some food for the wounded.

The scene that’s really amazing was one man, an elderly, he was -- his back was leaning forward. His job was, because of the targeting of the ambulances from the U.S. forces, whenever an ambulance goes to move the wounded, there was firing on the ambulances. He used to leave at night, and he's 65 years old. He used to go to the bodies and try to move the bodies. He may even spend a whole night to pull one wounded person, and he will move this body to put it in the car and to come to the middle of the city, according to Islamic traditions, that he will be wrapped in clothing and be buried as a sign of respect.

And by the way, as my colleague Ahmed said, the stadium of soccer became a graveyard, but at the same time, in Hay Nazzal, the neighborhood of Nazzal, which is adjacent to the area, people also were buried in their own homes, in the gardens of their houses. A man would leave to take a sneak peek to see a safe place that he can go into, and the sniper shoots him, and he falls dead. Nobody was daring to leave outside, so they would pull them from their legs and dig in the ground and bury them. Therefore, after the battle, many of the people of Fallujah dug again in their own houses and took the bodies to the graveyard.

I saw a child. I even forgot to tell you this, Mr. Ahmed. I saw a woman in the Hai [inaudible], or the industrial neighborhood, under the control of the U.S. forces, had an infant. She's breast-feeding him. The baby died maybe because he's sick or other reason. They were forbidden from leaving and to go to the city. She is the wife of a guard who used to work in one of the plants in the neighborhood. I even saw leftovers of food of the U.S. forces, and I photographed that. After that, when I was able to reach the area, her son died, and they asked to go to the heart of the city to bury him in a graveyard. They said, "No. You cannot leave this place. There are battles taking place." So they buried their own infant daughter in the plant. And I saw the hole that this child was buried in.

And another thing, when I left Fallujah, our office in Baghdad, our bureau in Baghdad, took an initiative to cover both sides, so the U.S. forces requested that a photographer and journalist go with the U.S. forces, with the besieging forces of Fallujah. I went for a rest for two days, so I went at night to that place. I was in the heart of the city, then with the U.S. forces outside the city, with the Marines besieging this place, so we went in a Chinook plane from the Green Zone, and we went to the camp, and the second day there was a press conference for the leader of that division besieging Fallujah. I think it's the First Division – First Infantry Division, and they had a press conference with some journalists from news agencies, Americans, Europeans and otherwise. So they were sitting, and he said literally, "We are making advances positively in the battlefield, and we accomplished victories to kill the terrorists and the fighters present in the city." And I had a journalist, so we asked him, "What about the civilians?" He said, "Oh, there isn't civilians. There's no civilians. The people whom you see their corpses on Al Jazeera TV and on the media, it is for fighters wearing civilian clothing."

I could not handle myself, and I said, "What about the child? Is he a fighter disguised in civilian clothes?" We asked him. So he really tried to assure us that there is no presence for the civilians. My lady, we did not take photographs. We could not report, except one just tiny piece. Even if I was an octopus taking photographs of what is happening around me, it was a terrible scene. I could not move between the neighborhoods anytime. We were unable to sleep. Believe me. The days that I spent over there, 40 days, and I had 55 hours of recording of what has taken place over there, so what has really gone out to the media is a very tiny portion of reality.

AMY GOODMAN: And did you get the video out while you were in Fallujah or when you left?

AHMED MANSUR: The photographs you took, Laith, did you take them after you left?

LAITH MUSHTAQ: No. We took those photographs inside Fallujah, and after the siege was over, we took our videotapes, and we went to our bureau.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to point out that after Donald Rumsfeld said that your reports were -- his words – "vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable. It's disgraceful what that station is doing." It was the next day, again, my colleague Jeremy Scahill pointed this out in a piece he did, according to the Daily Mirror, that Bush told Blair of his plan, quoting a source telling the Mirror, "He made clear he wanted to bomb Al Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. There’s no doubt what Bush wanted to do, and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." That quote in the Daily Mirror as this memo, the Downing Street memo that we haven't seen. Ahmed Mansour, I think when people heard the report of this memo that is yet to be published, reportedly some have seen a synopsis of it, we did not have the context of this period when this was said in the midst of April 2004, in the midst of the siege of Fallujah. Your thoughts, Ahmed Mansur?

AHMED MANSUR: Of course, until now, Al Jazeera requested from the British government to unveil or to publish this document so that we get the bottom of the information. There are many reports that have been pointed to Al Jazeera. There's an anger from the U.S. administration toward Al Jazeera. I cannot really go into the credibility of this document, because the administration of Al Jazeera requested the British government to unveil or uncover this issue or disclose it.

What I can say is that we did our duty as journalists. If this battle took place on the land of the U.S. and I was the one covering it and American civilians were vulnerable to killing, I would not have done any little than what I have done at Fallujah. This is our duty towards humanity in general, as journalists, to report the truth from any place that we are in, regardless of this place and the people therein, except that they are civilians. Our role was to present the truth to what is happening to the civilians. We did that with documents and pictures, and no one could deny this, but the whole world reported and transferred this truth and these facts, and as Laith said and as I did, this is just a slight portion of reality.

I want to say, why did the Americans refuse the entering of any journalists or medias or TV stations to Fallujah in the second battle and they only limited to those who are embedded with them? Is it professionalism that the journalists wear U.S. clothing and they go with them in the planes and tanks to cover this and report this? The battles have to be reported from both sides. We were among the civilians, and we reported, and they had embedded journalists with those who launched this attack from the U.S. forces who occupied Iraq, and they reported what they wanted. We were trying to create an equilibrium or a balance, so that the truth is not lost.

AMY GOODMAN: Laith Mushtaq, you also saw your friend shot off the roof? When was this?

LAITH MUSHTAQ: That happened in Karbala, the fifth month. After I left Fallujah by 15 days, there were still skirmishes between the Army of Mahdi in Karbala and the U.S. forces. There was negotiations but also skirmishes and attacks on a daily basis. The U.S. forces tried to advance toward the big mosque in the middle of Karbala, and the Army of Mahdi was trying to take refuge in that mosque, and they were surrounding it. The U.S. forces were advancing at night to annihilate completely the remnants of the Mahdi Army, and so the Mahdi forces used to come back during the daytime, and it was going back and forth. We were in a middle ground between the U.S. forces and the army of Mahdi, in a hotel, and I was with Abdel al-Dim, our journalist and reporter and with the engineers.

We were like a big team, and I had the assistant -- my assistant, who was a friend of mine named Rashid. We were every day, Amy, as a photographer in hot areas, hot spots. I used to go to the roof of the building every day at night to sit and try to listen, despite the darkness, to listen. Is there any voice or sound of advancement of some forces that maybe I can predict a battle so that I'm ready to take pictures? So I went to the roof, and there was a big explosion that happened near our hotel, and I heard artilleries or tanks moving toward the big mosque, so I went down to the room, and I informed the team that there is a battle coming up.

Everybody went up to the roof, and I was taking refuge by a small wall, and I was wearing shields, and I was taking photos, wearing my armor. I asked everybody to go down, because they may be targets, so everybody went down, but my assistant was standing behind me, maybe with half a meter only, and I was taking photographs. The area that I was picturing or photographing was very dark, so I tried to reduce the shutter of the speed of the camera, so to get a clear picture as much as possible, and I used to photograph, and at that time there was a bullet that just passed by near me, and even I photographed that shot.

So I used to talk to Rashid, telling him, "Rashid, I think they are firing against us." I did not know that Rashid had already fallen down. Rashid fell down, but I did not know that, and I kept taking photographs and pictures. After that, immediately, the wall in front of me, which I was taking protection with, it was fired upon extensively. That is, very highly intense, so I took refuge, and I laid down on the ground holding my camera and looking, and then I saw Rashid smoldered in blood, and there was extensive firing. I could not even shout and call the rest of the crew, our team, and for a moment, I felt I cannot do anything. I tried to advance, then I go back because of the firing. Red firing on the roof. And after that was lightened a little bit, I held his leg, and I shook it, and I said, "Rashid! Rashid!" And he did not answer me, so I went toward his face and saw three bullets in his head in those areas. He had five kids. The older is nine years old, the eldest.

After that, the rest of the crew came, and we could not take his body from the roof, because of the firing against us, until the next morning, so he stayed from 12:30 a.m. until 6:00 a.m., and we waited for daylight to come, and the U.S. forces maybe withdraw. We were afraid that they fire against us, because we had to stand up when we carry him. We stayed in the hotel, and the firing against the hotel was also continuous. The hotel was empty, so we divided ourselves. In each floor was one person. I was on the highest level, and underneath me one reporter and the one below that, the assistant, and there was a generator and electricity. We turned off the lights, and we were unable to move because the ladder connecting -- the ladder was made from glass, so anyone can see us from outside if they have special machines,

So I ask, I wonder why journalists are targeted? Why Mr. Ahmed Mansur is attacked for his reporting? Why such-and-such journalist is subject to arrest because of a specific reporting? My lady, Ahmed Mansur carries a pen and Laith Mushtaq carries a camera. We don't have guns – machine guns and artillery. When you see documentaries from the Second World War of besieging, Stalingrad, you come to the area, and the reporter, you said, "Oh, you used to be with Hitler or you were with the communists in Stalingrad?" The reporter is not part of this. He only reports what happens. Believe me, if we were there and we saw the U.S. forces planting roses in the streets, we will also report that. Believe me!

Carlyle eyes renewable energy, predicts IPOs

by Michael Flaherty and Siobhan Kennedy
FRANKFURT
The Carlyle Group is set to boost its investment in the renewable energy sector as demand from U.S. state entities is rising, the firm's founder and managing director, David Rubenstein, said on Wednesday.

"We intend to be much more active in the wind, power, solar energy, biomass and geothermal areas," Rubenstein said.

"We think it's an extremely attractive area in which to invest, particularly because many states in the U.S. now require that utilities buy a certain percentage of their energy from solar, biomass, geothermal or wind power sources," he told Reuters at a private equity conference in Frankfurt where he also predicted that some buyout firms would go public within the next several years.

To meet the energy demand, Carlyle, one of the world's largest private equity firms, is raising a fund that will invest in renewable energy infrastructure, sources familiar with the matter said.

Carlyle declined to comment on the fund. Rubenstein did, however, say the firm was set to launch a hedge fund within the next several weeks after announcing the move last year.

Soaring oil prices have prompted state and federal governments to explore alternative sources.

U.S. President George Bush in his State of the Union address outlined details of a federal initiative to provide a 22 percent increase in clean-energy research. The U.S. government's 2007 budget includes $44 million for wind energy research, a $5 million increase from the year before.

Investing in the current cycle of renewable energy interest has not taken off, with only a handful of firms actively pursuing opportunities.

J.P. Morgan Partners, the private equity arm of investment bank J.P. Morgan and rival bank Goldman Sachs are among companies investing in the projects.

CREDIT
Rubenstein was speaking at the annual Super Return conference in Germany, where private equity firms came under attack last year from a leading local politician, who branded them "locusts" who buy up companies and cut jobs.

Rubenstein said that charge was unfounded and encouraged German pension funds to invest in private equity funds.

"German political leaders and business leaders should encourage more German private equity firms to get started -- don't wait for the Americans to show up but support and encourage Germans to start their own funds and to do the same kind of things that the Americans are doing," Rubenstein said.

"They should also take a look at the facts about what is actually happening in the German economy as opposed to criticizing private equity people," Rubenstein said.

"We don't deserve all the credit for the German economy, clearly, but I think private equity people deserve some credit for trying to help get the German economy into the 21st century."

IPOS ON THE HORIZON

The buyout pioneer also predicted some private equity firms would look to go public within the next five years.

"Private equity firms are being beseiged by investment banks all the time to go public," he said, although he stressed that Carlyle would not be seeking a listing.

Others may be bought by an investment bank, he said.

He also warned that the current ripe conditions for buyouts -- huge funds, mountains of cheap debt, low interest rates and strong economic growth -- might not last forever.

"Right now we're operating as if the music's not going to stop playing and the music is going to stop. I am more concerned about this than any other issue," Rubenstein said.

He also cautioned about the rush of private equity funds to do ever-larger club style deals, where up to five or six firms get together to buy assets, piling on billions of dollars in debt as part of the process.

"It might be easy to buy into these ... when things are going good. I worry these deals don't look so smart when economies turn down," Rubenstein said.

Conason: Bush's strong support of the Dubai ports deal isn't so surprising in light of his family's many financial ties to Arab sheikdoms

To hear George W. Bush urge calm upon the nation is a refreshing change from his administration's habitual encouragement of fear for political advantage. No more color-coded terror alerts, election-timed warnings or partisan-tinged posturing will emanate from the White House, or at least not until Dubai Ports World has safely completed its takeover of several major American shipping terminals. The president's shift in tone is as remarkable as his threat to use his first veto in five years to protect the Dubai deal in the face of bipartisan congressional opposition.

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What seems worrisome even to some who might ultimately accept the Dubai ports deal is the "casual attitude" of the Bush administration in vetting the company, as Sen. Carl Levin put it. Considering the history of Bush entanglement with the oil despots of the Gulf, that lax indulgence was bad policy and worse politics.

For the president, his administration's lenience toward the Emirates recalls the unpleasant history of Harken Energy, the loser oil exploration firm that provided him with a handsome profit when he unloaded his shares during the summer of 1990. Years earlier, Harken had been rescued from bankruptcy by timely investments of millions of dollars from the scandal-ridden Bank of Credit and Commerce International, also known as the "bank of crooks and criminals." Although dominated by Saudi friends of Dubya's dad, BCCI was headquartered in the Emirates, specifically in Abu Dhabi.

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Consider the Carlyle Group, the huge, politically wired private equity firm that has employed both the president and his father -- and from which the members of the Bush family and their closest associates, such as former Secretary of State James Baker III, have profited handsomely in recent years. With its sole Middle East office headquartered in Dubai, Carlyle has managed to attract substantial funding from the UAE government, which controls most of the tiny nation's oil wealth and channels that money into foreign investments.

Iraq Veteran on US Bases in Bulgaria, by Val Todorov

The allies of Eastern Europe are nothing more than puppet governments under the control of US hegemony... The Pentagon sees a strategic advantage in using Bulgaria as a staging ground to deploy troops and equipment not only to Iraq, but possibly even Iran or Syria in the near future. In this case, Bulgaria would have more to fear than just terrorism. Bulgaria would then be a strategic target for conventional or nuclear strikes from neighboring enemies as well.

This interview was provoked by several articles on Indymedia Bulgaria under the heading "In the Periphery of Empire of Bases and Secret Prisons". The Iraq veteran J.D. Englehart was so kind to answer my questions about the plans for stationing of US military bases in Bulgaria. Seeing combat in Fallujah, he became an antiwar activist for Iraq Veterans Against War. He has given several interviews for the mainstream press and also to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! His blog Fight To Survive is well-known among the global antiwar movement.

J.D. knows firsthand not only the live of a soldier in Iraq but also on the US bases in Germany and Kosovo. He did visit even Bulgaria while stationed in Kosovo in 2003, so the Balkans with their specific mentality and special role in the Pentagon's plans are not an unfamiliar territory for him. Although the context of the questions and my previous articles are critical towards the US militarism in general and the plans for US military bases in Bulgaria in particular, I'd like to emphasize that I feel nothing but respect to J.D. Englehart and his friends from Iraq Veterans Against War. People like him are always welcome to our hospitable country. Unlike the military outposts of Empire.

First, would you introduce yourself?

I am J.D. Englehart, (Former) Specialist, 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. I joined the United States army just prior to September 11, 2001. After basic training in Ft. Knox, KY as a cavalry reconnaissance scout, I was stationed in Vilseck, Germany, just outside of Grafenwoehr Training Area. Throughout my service from 2001 to 2005, I was involved with Task Force Falcon IV - a Kosovo peace keeping mission - in 2003, and Operation Iraqi Freedom II during the year of February 2004 to February 2005. Upon being released from active duty in May 2005, I rejoined the civilian sector in the United States and am currently working as an activist for such groups as Iraq Veterans Against War, Veterans For Peace, SeptemberACTION, and various other affinity groups dedicated to ending war and oppression worldwide.

Chalmers Johnson wrote, "The Pentagon always imposes on countries in which it deploys our forces so-called Status of Forces Agreements, which usually exempt the US from cleaning up or paying for the environmental damage it causes". How would you comment?

I would have to agree with Chalmers Johnson's concern that US forces neglect the environmental responsibilities of a hosting country. I have seen both sides of the US military's behavior in regards to environmental concerns. For instance, while I was stationed at the enormous training ground in Grafenwoehr, Germany, our forces were held to very strict environmental protection guidelines. The restrictions that our forces abided by were largely enforced by local German environmental authorities. These agencies were highly efficient in ensuring that US forces were keeping a good, clean order in their country. For example, although our military equipment was not regulated for bad exhaust emissions, it was a German law that running equipment be turned off if not actually in the process of moving.

Furthermore, a US military regulation required that all military vehicles, while parked stationary, were to have a "drip-can" placed under any leaking parts of the vehicle. If in the event of an oil spill on the ground, German law required that US personnel dig the tainted soil, remove any contamination, and replace the damaged area with fresh soil. It is very common during field exercises to see German environmental authorities conducting inspections to see that US forces are engaged in clean environmental usage-ranging anywhere from proper equipment cleanups to the safe removal of all trash and garbage.

However, these strict environmental guidelines are only in place because a respected country such as Germany is the host nation. Where other US operations were held, such as the Czech Republic, Kosovo, and Iraq, I saw firsthand the environmental damage a war machine was capable of. In areas of Eastern Europe, where we conducted training missions and peace-keeping missions, it was more than common for our tanks and heavy track vehicles to rip and plow the earth, rendering once green and fertile farm lands into quagmires of soupy mud. Paved streets were also heavily damaged during tank movements, leaving craterous pot-holes in their wake. Road signs, fences, and even civilian vehicles were sometimes damaged as large equipment would traverse through narrow streets.

These countries had no environmental guidelines to abide by and thus oil spills, garbage accumulation, vehicle emissions and general wear-and-tear of the area were usually ignored. In Iraq it is still a common practice for US forces to traverse through farm fields in tanks and armored trucks, conduct deforestation of palm trees for tactical purposes, and burn garbage in huge piles on base camps (sending plumes of toxic smoke from used oil and plastics into the air).

In all fairness to the US military, however, its armed forces do attempt to keep its surroundings clean and free from pollution. The US army, for example, enforces strict standards on its troops in maintaining the cleanest surroundings as possible and respecting the host country's environment. Although these rules are set place internally, it is impossible to maintain a military with such industrial might as the US without running into environmental damage. Most of these missions are conducted in developing or 3rd world countries where such practices as environmental protection are simply not in place…

…which is why I believe the US Pentagon would jump at opportunities to erect bases in Eastern Europe. It's simply cost efficient. With an ever-growing spread of US imperialism across the globe and a fruitless war on terror, expenditures for such aggression is placing the American tax-payer in a difficult bind. Furthermore, as seen recently in Germany, many US bases are closing down and relocating due east to avoid the high costs that the German government places on the US presence. By placing bases in the Balkans, for example, the US could easily take advantage of the relaxed environmental laws and dispose of waste without paying the already subservient host countries high prices for waste disposal and environmental contamination. Money, in these cases, is always a concern. The bottom line is by having military bases in Eastern Europe the US can coerce desperate governments into an "anything goes" mentality while cheaply exploiting acres of beautiful countryside and townships through the use of landfills and training grounds.

He also wrote, "Once upon a time, you could trace the spread of imperialism by counting up colonies. America's version of the colony is the military base." Do you agree with that?

I certainly agree that one could gauge America's military empire by the vast number of overseas bases it has. The United States government seems inclined to spread western stylized capitalism across the globe. Military bases are needed by American empire to enforce US economic hegemony worldwide, as well as for strategic proximity to countries who wish to oppose its interests.

In my opinion, American overseas bases are undeniable proof of global empire. There are over 700 US bases in the world as well as thirteen naval task force units monitoring the waters outside US territory. And with the latest nuisance of the Bush administration, this worldwide stranglehold is being pursued to greater extents. Through wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, monetary backing of brutal dictatorships, the use of torturing and imprisoning at random, unwarranted surveillance of citizens, the proliferation of fear and misinformation, and complete disregard for the environment, Bush's agenda seems to be that of an Orwellian dystopia. This is not only greed and empire; this is ambitions for a totalitarian New World Order.

Do you know anything about keeping and using depleted uranium (DU) on the American bases?

Based off my experience in the army, I would have to conclude that anywhere US forces are, depleted uranium rounds and munitions can be found. Depleted uranium (DU) is a very common weapon in the US military arsenal. It is used specifically as an armor piercing warhead that can be fired by tanks, attack helicopters, fighter jets and cruise missiles.

In most cases, DU is not used on training grounds or firing ranges. However, as these rounds are very common in the US arsenal, the negligent usage of DU can occur. Recently at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, several environmental groups accused the US army of firing DU during training exercises. It was reported that"fifteen tail assemblies from spotting rounds made of D-38 uranium alloy, also called depleted uranium, were recovered in August by Zapata Engineering, a contractor hired by the military to clear the Schofield Barracks' range impact area of unexploded ordnance and scrap metal," according to a news release from the 25th Infantry Division. What this clean-up effort concludes is that DU was in fact used on a US installation, in the United States nonetheless. If such a round could be used so carelessly in the United States, one would have to wonder where else it is used and in what capacity?

Obviously, in war zones such as Iraq the use of DU is very frequent. While I was in Iraq, it was common knowledge that DU was fired at everything from insurgent bunkers to clay-brick buildings to cars and trucks. Since the initial ground war in March 2003 thousands of tons of DU rounds have been fired in Iraq, and are continuously being used today.

Depleted uranium rounds were also used during the US intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990's. Because of the longtime contaminating effects of DU, the health concerns of such usage are still a major issue. Even after these conflicts were over, US forces engaged in peace keeping missions built firing ranges to practice on. While there is not much evidence to prove whether or not DU rounds were fired on these ranges, the possibility of their usage may have occurred. What is important to realize is that wherever a US military base is built, depleted uranium rounds will follow. One would have to assume that not only are DU rounds stockpiled there, but could also be used for whatever reason the military deems necessary.

What do you think about the secret American jails in Eastern Europe and the practice of extraordinary rendition and torture?

The use of torture should be banned unconditionally. Not only is this atrocious practice completely inhumane, its use to extract information from suspects proves useless. A country such as the United States, who should be held to the highest standards of due process and human rights, should never stoop to the level of Saddam Hussein in order to wage war on terrorism. Torture in this sense is completely counter-productive. The unfortunate scandal of Abu Gharib not only placed US torture in the international spotlight, but was horribly detrimental in building relationships with Iraqi hearts and minds. The use of torture and extraordinary rendition will only lead to complete failure in the pretentious "War on Terrorism"; a war much better waged through diplomacy and humanitarian practices. Furthermore, any country that is willing to harbor US political gulags will most likely begin to see terrorist attacks themselves. This is the natural process of terrorism. Dr. Noam Chomsky once said, "The best way to stop terrorism is to stop participating in it."

What is your opinion about the war in Iraq and the role of the so called Allies from Eastern Europe?

I believe that the war in Iraq is wrong. I believe that the reasons which were stated by the Bush administration for invading Iraq were based on lies. Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Lie. Saddam Hussein was days away from launching a nuclear strike. Lie. Al Qaida was helping Saddam plan the attacks of September 11th. Lie. It was only after these false accusations were brought to light that the neo-conservatives in Washington opted to credit the war in Iraq to democracy in the Middle East. This concept of freedom and democracy has been force-fed to the American people in order to support a continued US occupation of Iraq. Although as of now 58% of Americans disapprove with the war in Iraq, the war rages on everyday.

But I believe the war in Iraq is wrong for a more simple reason: that being the unjustified and inane bloodshed happening everyday. Aside from coalition deaths, the real victims of this war are the Iraqi civilians, now estimated anywhere from 50 to 100 thousand. I would like to believe that this war is producing a democratic society for the Iraqis, but the facts simply prove otherwise. Already there is corruption and instability in their new democracy that shows no signs of improving. Iraqi insurgents, fighting against an illegal occupation, are predominately Iraqi, not foreign.

While I was in Iraq, our forces fought local farmers and shop-keeps who decided to take up arms against the occupier. The Iraqi insurgents have been fighting for three years now. Insurgent attacks are increasing dramatically. Insurgent attacks are better coordinated and constantly improving. The US military insists on using conventional methods in fighting a guerilla war, but seems to be losing. In the end, I believe the US will have no other option that to remove its forces from Iraq. This step should be taken immediately to prevent more senseless violence and more lives lost.

The real reasons for the occupation of Iraq can be debated all day, but I think the reasons are rather simple. War is money, oil is becoming scarce, and an empire needs to flex its muscle to remind other countries who is in charge. Again, a tyrannical New World Order.

The allies of Eastern Europe are nothing more than puppet governments under the control of US hegemony. It appears that these countries are involved with the war despite much opposition from their own people. However, these governments seem to jump at the opportunity to please the United States in order to receive fringe benefits in the form of trade agreements and monetary donations. This seems to be the case in Bulgaria, where US bases will be erected without properly weighing the pros and cons of such an action.

Having American bases on Bulgarian territory turns the country into a frontline in the USA War on Terror. Won't this increase the risk of terrorist attacks in Bulgaria?

I would say that having US military bases, either in the form of military installations or secret prisons, would make Bulgaria a very possible target for terrorist attacks. Bulgarian military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is already placing Bulgarian citizens in a potentially dangerous environment on their own soil. With the edition of US bases in Bulgaria, and its close proximity to Arab nations, Bulgarian citizens suddenly find themselves on the frontline in the "War on Terror".

One could even argue that the Pentagon sees a strategic advantage in using Bulgaria as a staging ground to deploy troops and equipment not only to Iraq, but possibly even Iran or Syria in the near future. In this case, Bulgaria would have more to fear than just terrorism. Bulgaria would then be a strategic target for conventional or nuclear strikes from neighboring enemies as well.

How would you comment on the culture of "anything goes" and sexual aggression at the US bases? "Between 1972 and 1995, U.S servicemen were implicated in 4,716 crimes, nearly one per day, according to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a conservative Japanese newspaper."

I think the main issue with sexual aggression in the military is that the military is inherently very aggressive. Soldiers, especially those in the combat arms field, are molded from the very beginning to be outwardly hostile. Soldiers are primarily trained in two frames of mind: To follow orders and destroy the enemy. Self-restraint and control are only enforced by redundant rules and regulations, usually amounting in a slap on the wrist for the accused.

During my time in the army, I happened to be in an all-male combat unit, so sexual assault against women was not a huge issue. However, this outward aggression could be seen through physical violence against rival units, or even against civilians outside of base. The leadership's handling of this type of behavior was one of "just don't get caught". I do remember several instances when male soldiers would suddenly be accused of domestically abusing their spouse, or single soldiers being charged for raping women, both female soldiers and civilians alike. While I do not know how many of these cases turned out, I do know that sometimes, if the guilty was a high ranking sergeant or officer, the case would end up swept under the rug. That is not to say that military law neglected all of these cases, especially if the case was full-blown public. However, based from hard-line statistics and the behavior of soldiers in general, one would have to assume that sexual aggression does happen.

One has to imagine the paradigm in which soldiers are bred and conformed; the environment in which soldiers live and participate socially. First of all, soldiers live amongst themselves much of the time. Since a majority of the military is male anyways, it is common for soldiers in concert with each other to behave lewd and aggressive. This may be viewed as "boys will be boys", especially when understanding that a soldier's society is much different than that in a civilian world. It almost compares to a football locker room or college frat-boy party.

The concept of womanhood is not always respected, and many soldiers stand strongly opposed to women in the military in the first place. When these types of soldiers are turned loose onto a night of drinking and partying in a civilian sector, the behaviors of military elitism, chauvinism, misogyny and general disrespect can easily occur. This problem compounds itself if a soldier feels that he is above civilian law. None of this should be viewed as an excuse to dismiss violent behavior, but in all actuality the real responsibility should be placed on the chain of command for tolerating it.

How would you comment on the rape of a 22-year-old woman at the US Navy's former Subic Bay base in Manila?

I am not going to comment on whether or not I think that the six US servicemen are guilty. I firmly believe that everyone deserves due process and is innocent until proven guilty. However, as I mentioned above, given the type of training soldiers receive and the social environments in which they live, it is very possible that sexual aggression could be a serious problem at Subic Bay. Of course, with the amount of evidence surrounding the case, the six accused should be tried under fair proceedings by both military and Filipino law. Under no circumstances should the accused be given immunity and dealt with solely by US jurisdiction. In any case, there seems to be a major problem with sexual aggression in the military today. There have been several thousand implications in the military since the '70s. That is a very hard fact to turn your back on. Serious investigations should be conducted and military leaders should be held responsible for ensuring fair and equitable treatment of not only service members, but also for civilians in host nations as well.

What do you think may the externalities of the US bases be for the hosting country?

Externalities in the economical sense? Some may say that having US bases in Bulgaria would boost the local economy. While it is true that in other areas of the world US bases are a staple of local economies, it doesn't mean that it will boost the economy of an entire country. In Germany for instance, towns whose businesses enjoy US presence do not necessarily suffer after a US pullout. However, when we began to dismantle bases in Kosovo, it left hundreds of Kosovars (employed by Halliburton) unemployed and with no job prospects. Of course much of this depends on a country's overall stability, but from what I can tell the only businesses who prosper from US presence are the ones who offer specific services to GI's.

I am not an economist. But when considering the interests of soldiers, I do have a good idea of what they want. For example, if you have a base in a small coastal town, the general entertainment sector will prosper greatly. These soldiers would most likely dump their hard-earned money into restaurants and food vendors, night clubs and bars, the black market - for various products, including prescription drugs and narcotics, - and even the prostitution racket. Spending dollars in Bulgaria will be a welcome change for soldiers where the exchange rate plays in their favor. This may encourage a soldier to spend more of his money.

Of course, one would have to consider that US bases will surely hire Bulgarian citizens for various tasks. This would include everything from technological services, carpentry, store clerks, base maintenance, and janitorial cleaning. Many jobs will be available to persons who are hired by defense contractors. Then again, wages will most likely reflect that of the local economy, and not in US dollars.

So there are pros and cons to this debate. Sure, money will be put into an economy, but who profits? I figure organized crime will surely profit more than the average person, but I could be wrong. Most likely, anyone involved with entertaining a soldier will see profits. But I do not see how a US bases (stationed in small towns, as will most likely happen) can lift the economy of an entire country. That being said, not every Bulgarian citizen will see more money or more jobs. The fact that US bases can stimulate an economy can be misleading if all the facts are not weighed properly.

What do you think about the global anti-war movement?

I think that the world peace movement is, while sometimes gaining ground still faced with major problems of enormous proportions. Our three biggest adversaries are never-ending war (obviously!), global neofascism, and perhaps the most dangerous…outright apathy!

When I returned home and involved myself in activism, it was apathy that seemed to be the most prevalent sickness in America. People have a hard time breaking out of their shells, their "comfort zones", when weighing consciousness on the problems that face humanity today. Most people become too involved with themselves, their friends and family, or their jobs to look on the horizon and see a dark and foreboding future. But this apathy is not just common in America. While traveling Europe, I noticed it there as well. So the apathy is not just a problem in my home, but in all social fabrics of the world.

I feel that the worldwide spread of ultra-capitalism is infecting human beings like a virus. It breeds gross consumerism, materialism, and a jaded sense of what is inherently important in our lives. As a result, our environment is being destroyed as our social consciousness is lobotomized. Future generations are spinning into a dark unknown while human blood continues to fill the void.

Apathy is the most dangerous villain we have to confront. Some individuals resort to it after they realize the world is fucked, but feel nothing can be done to prevent the growing catastrophe. When global antiwar demonstrations were held just prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it was an enormous voice of dissent that was completely ignored by the sadistic powers who orchestrate war. It was a serious blow for individuals who honestly care. However, just six years into the new millennium, it is now extremely important that we do not give up.

The pendulum now seems to be swinging the other way. The Bush administration is being exposed for the liars and criminals that they are. George Bush's impeachment is being openly discussed in America. While this may seem to be quite inefficient in light of the horrible travesties committed against humanity and true freedom, it is a huge step in the right direction. It means that people all over the world are beginning to awake from their slumber and place guilty parties responsible.

At this crucial time the antiwar movement has never been more important. Our solidarity must exceed national boundaries. We must continue to stand opposed to war and global oppression. Through peace and civil disobedience we can demand a more rational society. It is no longer a matter of fighting for a utopia of ideas, but rather a fight for survival as human beings.

Do you know who is Ken Nichols O'Keefe and what do you think about his struggle?

Ken O'Keefe is truly an amazing person and an icon in the struggle for human equality. His story is absolutely fascinating: An ex-marine and a combat veteran from the 1991 Gulf War. O'Keefe renounces his US citizenship and becomes a lawful citizen of a stateless World Government. Not only does he set a revolutionary example through ideas and wisdom, but he shows it in peaceful direct action. In addition to many other environmental and social actions in which he was instrumental, he also organized human shield demonstrations in Iraq (before the invasion) and relief works in Palestine. O'Keefe has been labeled "un-American" and accused of treason. He has been harassed by both domestic and international law for petty violations and renouncing his citizenship. He stands opposed to human oppression, environmental destruction, and belligerent racism. In short, Ken O'Keefe is the complete antithesis of everything that he is accused of and should instead be viewed as a leader for social change in the 21st century.

Thank you very much and you're always welcome to Bulgaria!

Truth About UAE Port Security Scandal Quietly Leaks Out

by David Sirota (story courtesy of ToniD)
The more you read about the UAE port security scandal, the more it becomes patently obvious this is about far more than just one deal with one company or one country. The harsh reaction from the Bush administration to the proposal to rescind the deal should be a red flag. This administration is unquestionably the most corporate-controlled administration in recent history, meaning its reactions are usually tied directly to the reactions of Corporate America. And the fact that the White House is ignoring its own security experts and reacting so negatively to Congress's opposition to the deal means this cuts to the much deeper issue of global trade policy - an issue that trumps all others for Big Money interests, even post-9/11 security.

In a previous post, I noted how the Bush administration is simultaneously negotiating a "free" trade agreement with the UAE - the country tied to the terrorists who attacked America on 9/11. The administration was negotiating this deal at the very same time it tried to quietly slip this port security deal under the radar. It's not surprising few in the media or the political system have mentioned that simple fact - as I note in my upcoming book Hostile Takeover, the political/media Establishment's devotion to "free" trade orthodoxy is well documented, and the Establishment's desire in this current scandal to make sure a discussion of trade policy never happens is obvious.

But as the coverage continues, the true motives of Bush's position are starting to slip out, almost inadvertently.

Look at the comment of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Remember, he is the guy whose only job is to protect America. He's not supposed to be thinking about anything else. Yet, just a few days ago, he said about the UAE deal that "We have to balance the paramount urgency of security against the fact that we still want to have a robust global trading system." Technically, of course, he's right - but the fact that the Homeland Security secretary is publicly lecturing Congress about the need to protect the "global trading system" and defending the UAE deal tells us a lot about how devoted to prioritizating the corporate agenda our government really is - even the government agencies whose only responsibilities are securing America.

Similarly, the New York Times today quotes a corporate consultant in London who says that Congress's concerns about a country tied to the 9/11 terrorists managing U.S. port security are "totally illogical." Why? Because, he says, "The location of the headquarters of a company in the age of globalism is irrelevant."

There it is in all its glory: the Establishment publicly pushing the idea that absolutely nothing should matter - not even security concerns - other than preserving the mobility of capital. And that is ultimately what "free" trade is really all about - creating all sorts of restrictive, protectionist rules that corporate interests want (like patent/copyright protections), but making sure that capital can freely move all over the world, without regard to any labor, human rights, environmental and - yes - security concerns. It was GE CEO Jack Welch, the well-known "free" trader, who famously said, "Ideally you'd have every plant you own on a barge."

And so any attempt to stop the UAE port security deal fundamentally threatens the Tom-Friedman-style "free" trade orthodoxy that says we must eliminate all barriers to trade - even those that protect national security. When you realize that, President Bush's threat to use the first veto of his presidency on the UAE port security issue suddenly becomes not so surprising. He is proudly defending what Jeff Faux calls "The Party of Davos" or John Perkins calls the "corporatocracy" - that is, the multinational interests who have bankrolled Bush's entire political career, and who desperately rely on the American government preserving a "free" trade system that subverts all other concerns to the corporate profit motive.

Again, the fact that this isn't being reported should not shock anyone. And you can rest assured that the usual cast of Establishment characters (including self-described "progressives") on the editorial pages and in Congress will soon begin a vehement defense of the "free" trade policies that created the rationale for this UAE port security deal and other shady business deals like it. Both parties have pushed this "free" trade nonsense over the last two decades, and both have been rewarded with huge piles of corporate cash. That bipartisan devotion to "free" trade largely continues to this day. Similarly, the major media in America are all owned by huge corporations with an interest in preserving the "free" trade system. But don't let the Establishment's silence on "free" trade's centrality in this scandal distract you. In America's corporate-owned political system, the truth is often found where things are quietest.

CHURCH OF SUBGENIUS WOMAN TO LOSE CHILD OVER SATIRICAL SHOW

Rachel Bevilacqua is a member of the church of the Subgenius (see subgenius.com), a satirical "art church"--I am too, and have been to these kinds of celebrations myself, to the dokstok version. She is in danger of losing custody of a boy because of events which took place there...satirical, arty wacky fun stuff, and her nudity there (it's in a remote country place). The kid wasn't there. Be sure to read the para starting, "The Judge, allegedly a very strict catholic"--I guess Jeff is her ex husband.

December 18, 2005, Rachel put Kohl on a flight to Rochester, New York to be picked up by Jeff for his Christmas visitation. This year Jeff was finally required to share half the transportation expenses. The visitation plan was for Kohl to be returned by Jeff to Rachel’s mother on January 2, 2006, so Kohl could spend time with his mother’s relatives before returning to Georgia on January 7, 2006.

Rachel would not see Kohl again until January 20, 2006, when she was allowed one brief overnight visit with Kohl at her mother’s house. Kohl was visibly changed, appearing closed and withdrawn and becoming emotional when the subject of his living arrangements was approached, even very gently, from any direction. He seemed afraid to talk about what was going on in his father’s house, or whether or not he wanted to live there.

On December 22, 2005, without informing Rachel, Jeff went to the Orleans County Courthouse and presented Judge Punch with a series of allegations about not being able to contact Rachel and needing an order of Temporary Sole Custody in order to prevent Kohl from being kidnapped. Judge Punch issued Jeff a Temporary Sole Custody order and allowed him to keep Kohl after his scheduled Christmas visitation. This was done without making any attempt to contact Rachel and discover whether Jeff’s allegations were true. Rachel did not even receive any paperwork from the court until January 9, 2006 — 17 days after Judge Punch entered the order of Temporary Sole Custody for Jeff.

On February 3, 2006, Judge Punch heard testimony in the case. Jeff entered into evidence 16 exhibits taken from the Internet, 12 of which are photographs of the SubGenius event, X-Day. Kohl has never attended X-Day and is not in any of the pictures. Rachel is depicted in many of these photos, often wearing skimpy costumes or completely nude, while participating in X-Day and Detroit Devival events.

The judge, allegedly a very strict Catholic, became outraged at the photos of the X-Day parody of Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ — especially the photo where Jesus [Steve Bevilacqua] is wearing clown makeup and carrying a crucifix with a pool-noodle dollar sign on it while being beaten by a crowd of SubGenii, including a topless woman with a “dildo”.

His Honor also strongly disapproved of the photos of Mary Magdalen [Rachel Bevilacqua] in a bondage dress and papier maché goat’s head. The judge repeatedly asked, “Why a goat? What’s so significant about a goat’s head?” When Rachel replied, “I just thought the word ‘goat’ was funny,” Judge Punch lost his temper completely, and began to shout abuse at Rachel, calling her a “pervert,” “mentally ill,” “lying,” and a participant in “sex orgies.” The judge ordered that Rachel is to have absolutely no contact with her son, not even in writing, because he felt the pictures of X-Day performance art were evidence enough to suspect “severe mental illness”. Rachel has had no contact with Kohl since that day, February 3, 2006.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

The ACLU and other watchdog groups have been contacted, but the wheels of justice turn slowly, especially in matters of judicial oversight. It is likely that the Bevilacqua family will need to raise approximately $50,000 to pursue their case through to an appeals court that will hopefully restore their son to them. Please help by donating whatever you can, or at least spreading the word to others who may be able to help. Any media exposure is welcome as well. Please PayPal all donations to Magdalen@subgenius.com, or send a check directly to:

Rachel Bevilacqua
c/o Francis C. Affronti, Esq.,
130D Linden Oaks, Rochester, NY 14625

Baghdad Embassy Bonanza

February 12th, 2006

Kuwait Company’s Secret Contract & Low-Wage Labor

by David Phinney, Special to CorpWatch

A controversial Kuwait-based construction firm accused of exploiting employees and coercing low-paid laborers to work in war-torn Iraq is now building the new $592-million U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Once completed, the compound will likely be the biggest, most fortified diplomatic compound in the world.

Some 900 workers live and work for First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting (FKTC) on the construction site of the massive project. Undoubtedly, they have been largely pulled from ranks of low-paid laborers flooding into Iraq from Asia's poorest countries to work under U.S. military and reconstruction projects.

Meanwhile, their boss, Wadih al-Absi jets back and forth to the United States, dreaming of magazine covers celebrating his rise to a global player in large-scale engineering and construction.

Raised in Beirut, he says he began his career much like the people he now employs-- as a laborer installing drywall. The Lebanese Christian escaped war in his home country in the late 1970s and moved to Kuwait. The Persian Gulf country welcomes, even recruits, expatriate blue-collar workers like al-Absi once was to do the grunt work and domestic chores in its booming, oil-rich economy. Today glitzy shopping malls, flashy cars and sprawling villas have become the norm and migrants make up the nearly two-thirds of this tiny desert state's 2.3 million population.

Building his own personal fortune, al-Absi, too, relies on migrant labor. His Kuwait City firm, co-owned by a member of one of Kuwait's richest and most powerful families, is one of the larger Middle East companies that collectively ship tens of thousands of cheap day laborers to Iraq's war zones where they are paid just dollars a day.

Fortune Favors a Few

American contractors witnessing the plight of some of these migrants at military camps around Iraq have openly complained that the Asians endure abysmal working conditions, live in cramped housing, eat poor food, and lack satisfactory medical care and safety gear.

Typically, these migrants work 12 hours a day, often seven days a week, and earn just dollars a day performing tasks considered unsuitable for US war fighters. They work construction, drive trucks, run laundries, clean latrines, pick up rubbish and operate stores, dining facilities and warehouses. Without them, and the "body shop" contractors that provide such laborers, the US and coalition military camps -- virtually small cities -- would shut down.

It can be a lucrative business, one that has helped trigger explosive growth of al-Absi's company where he acts as both general manager and co-owner.

Less than three years ago FKTC boasted $35 million in assets. Today, the firm has racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. contracts in Iraq, pushing the company well past the $1 billion mark. With 7,000 employees in Iraq, the company claims to be holding $800 million in construction and supply contracts directly with the Army for military camps, plus more than $300 million under Halliburton 's multibillion dollar contract to perform military logistics for the occupation forces in Iraq.

It's the kind of success that allows al-Absi to enjoy finely tailored suits with French cuff shirts, send his children to American universities and enjoy the fruits of being a newly-minted millionaire. "I love America," he says freely.

Meeting over a morning coffee last September at the posh Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, a legendary Georgetown retreat favored by pampered heads-of-state, Hollywood elite, the Rolling Stones and business executives, al-Absi's eyes widened as he talked about his company's greatest prize – the embassy.

The New Embassy

Indeed, the massive $592-million project may be the most lasting monument to the U.S. occupation in the war-torn nation. Located on a on a 104-acre site on the Tigris river where U.S. and coalition authorities are headquartered, the high-tech palatial compound is envisioned as a totally self-sustaining cluster of 21 buildings reinforced to 2.5 times usual standards. Some walls as said to be 15 feet thick or more. Scheduled for completion by June 2007, the installation is touted as not only the largest, but the most secure diplomatic embassy in the world.

The 1,000 or more U.S. government officials calling the new compound home will have access to a gym, swimming pool, barber and beauty shops, a food court and a commissary. In addition to the main embassy buildings, there will be a large-scale Maine barracks, a school, locker rooms, a warehouse, a vehicle maintenance garage, and six apartment buildings with a total of 619 one-bedroom units. Water, electricity and sewage treatment plants will all be independent from Baghdad's city utilities. The total site will be two-thirds the area of the National Mall in Washington, DC.

Unlike most of Iraq's reconstruction, the embassy is "on time and on budget," according to a December report to U.S. Senate Foreign Affairs Committee which calls the progress an "impressive" feat given that construction is taking place in a country besieged by war.

"Most major construction projects undertaken in Iraq since 2003 have not met these standards," writes Patrick Garvey, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations staff who traveled to Baghdad in November 2005.

With the embassy making a prestigious notch on the company's belt, First Kuwaiti will step onto the world stage, al-Absi beamed. "I dream about what it means," he said. "We have become a global company."

Despite this pride, al-Absi asked to keep the embassy contract a secret until the first floors were built. The dangers of an attack are just too serious, he said. Even his personal residence had been bombed in the past. "I am all for transparency, but this is Iraq," he said.

Despite the new embassy's importance, and its rare on-schedule progress, the State Department has also resisted publicizing the contract. It was only after weeks of inquiries, that it confirmed that FKTC had been selected to construct all but the most classified portion of the project. One day after the web site FedBizOpps posted a standard public notice for the first $370-million in FTKC contracts, it yanked the announcement. Department spokesman Justin Higgins cited security concerns.

Philippino & Nepali Workers

While safety is part of the reason for keeping a profile low, labor conditions for Iraq's migrant workers are nothing to boast about.

When first asked about mistreatment of FKTC's labor force last August, al Absi threatened to sue if the allegations were published. At the time, CorpWatch was investigating the claims of Ramil Autencio and other Philippinos working for FKTC in Tikrit in late 2003 and early 2004. They claimed they were overworked, served poor food, and received less salary than what was agreed to in their contracts.

Originally recruited for employment by MGM Worldwide Manpower in the Philippines, Autencio said he had planned to work at Crown Plaza Hotel in Kuwait for $450 a month. Then his recruitment contract was sold to FKTC when he reached Kuwait where he says he was "forcibly" pressured to work in Iraq.

More recently, an October 10 story in the Chicago Tribune reported on four-dozen other Nepalese workers waiting in Kuwait for jobs on American military bases in Iraq. In September 2004, after watching television reports that 12 Nepalese hostages in Iraq executed at the hands of insurgents, they changed their minds.

A FKTC manager in Kuwait handed the panicked workers an ultimatum, reports the Tribune: either travel to Iraq to fulfill their contracts and they would be released on the streets of Kuwait City to fend for themselves. Undoubtedly, none had the resources to find their way back to Nepal.

"The company was forcing them to go to Iraq," Lok Bahadur Thapa, the former acting Nepalese ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told the Tribune.

Al-Absi, who speaks excellent English occasionally peppered with bluntness of a construction worker, denies the allegations of ill-treatment and trafficking.

"It's bullshit," he said, after emailing electronic documents apparently signed by Autencio and others agreeing to work in Iraq. "Total bullshit."

But stories of mistreatment recently prompted the U.S. State Department to join forces with the Defense Department into possible labor trafficking by Middle East firms doing business in Iraq.

"Our people are investigating the issues," said State Department spokesman Justin Higgins after U.S. Ambassador John Miller, head of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking of Persons, left for the Middle East in late January.

When CorpWatch inquired last July about widespread complaints about the poor working conditions and possible coercion of low-paid Asian laborers in Iraq working under Halliburton 's logistics contract, the Army said an investigation was underway. That inquiry began and ended with the Army raising the issues with Halliburton "for them to address with appropriate action within the terms of the contract," said Army spokeswoman Melissa Bohan in an e-mail this month.

Secretive Contract

The contracts for building the largest, most-strongly fortified embassy in the world is a tale of fits and starts. From the Bush Administration's initial request for more than a billion dollars in emergency funding for the project to the selection of an inexperienced Kuwaiti firm to build it -- to even the small oversight effort is also a tale of secrecy.

Although White House had signaled Congress in early 2004 that it was planning a permanent embassy in Baghdad, it wasn't until spring 2005 that the Bush Administration formally pushed the funding request veiled as an emergency measure. The original proposal for $1.3 billion was almost three times the price of the new embassy in China.

Reeling from overcharges and costs around other Iraq contracts, Congress immediately cut the price tag for the new Baghdad project in half to $592 million and called for strict oversight. Wired with the most up-to-date technology and surveillance equipment, it will still be a super-bunker and the biggest US embassy every built.

Once funding was secured last spring, the U.S. State Department quietly put the project up for competition among seven competitors – including some of the most accomplished US engineering companies. Among the bidders, Framaco, Parsons, Fluor, and the Sandi Group have established track records for building secure embassies or large-scale construction projects.

But the award went to First Kuwaiti, a company with little experience in projects on the scale envisioned for the embassy.

"First Kuwaiti got the embassy job. [It] kinda surprised everyone that a foreign company would win," said an executive of one prominent firm in an email to another, both of whom bid against First Kuwaiti.

But publicly, the losing companies simply shrugged their shoulders and buttoned their lips.

"First Kuwaiti was the lowest bidder," said Gilles Kacha, senior vice president of Framaco. The New York-based firm won a "contractor of the year award" from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for its work on the interim Baghdad embassy, but lost in the competition for the new compound.

There may also be little reason for some of the losing competitors to complain. Some. including Framaco and The Sandi Group of Washington, DC. soon received other State Department contracts. The open-ended contracts call on the companies to work anywhere in Iraq when needed, including on the new embassy project.

The Sandi Group was given notice to prepare for some site clearing and for building temporary housing for the embassy workers, said Sandi's vice president for development, Muge Karsli. Then the order was abruptly suspended in January. "I was supposed to hear more from them in a week, but I didn't," she said matter-of-factly. "Now, it is on hold."

Bill Waldron is one contractor who will talk about the embassy project. He claims his Rocky Mountain Group lost more than $250,000 while preparing a bid to perform engineering oversight for First Kuwaiti and project inspection. Waldron said that his 25-year-old, veteran-owned Colorado company had already been given the word that his company would be the leading contender for the deal, which is why the firm spent so much effort on the proposal, including compiling a 2 inch thick file on the company's personnel experience in Iraq – experience that State Department contract officers said they were looking for.

Then the State Department put the job up for open bid three different times, each time with a new revision. The last solicitation was cancelled after the contracting officer went of vacation, according to Waldron.

Waldron's patience finally burst. Only after doggedly hounding the State Department for reasons why the competition had been cancelled did he find out what happened.

The contract was awarded without competition on an emergency basis to a Maryland company, Mil Vets, Waldron said. "We contacted Mil Vets and asked if they had any experience working in Iraq prior to being awarded the embassy project," Waldron said. "The answer was no."

A-Absi, for his part, views his embassy agreement as based on merit and it is the success of his company that draws fire from his critics.

First Kuwaiti never, ever got any job without offering the best value at the lowest price," he said. "People will never criticize someone who fails."

That, says al-Absi, is a price he is willing to pay.

Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'

Sept 2005
RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.

According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.

The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society.

It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution. Many conservative evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires atheism and amorality.

Many liberal Christians and believers of other faiths hold that religious belief is socially beneficial, believing that it helps to lower rates of violent crime, murder, suicide, sexual promiscuity and abortion. The benefits of religious belief to a society have been described as its “spiritual capital”. But the study claims that the devotion of many in the US may actually contribute to its ills.

The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: “Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world.

“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”

Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions.

He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.

The study concluded that the US was the world’s only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from “ uniquely high” adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates, the study suggested.

Mr Paul said: “The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America.”

He said that the disparity was even greater when the US was compared with other countries, including France, Japan and the Scandinavian countries. These nations had been the most successful in reducing murder rates, early mortality, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion, he added.

Mr Paul delayed releasing the study until now because of Hurricane Katrina. He said that the evidence accumulated by a number of different studies suggested that religion might actually contribute to social ills. “I suspect that Europeans are increasingly repelled by the poor societal performance of the Christian states,” he added.

He said that most Western nations would become more religious only if the theory of evolution could be overturned and the existence of God scientifically proven. Likewise, the theory of evolution would not enjoy majority support in the US unless there was a marked decline in religious belief, Mr Paul said.

“The non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator.

“The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.”

The rise of Hamas, by John Cherian

The Hamas victory in the Palestine elections, facilitated by the corruption in the Palestinian Authority run by the Fatah, promises a dramatic change in West Asian politics characterised by an Islamist upsurge.

THE resounding victory of Hamas in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections in the last week of January could be the precursor to dramatic political changes in the region. Already, several Arab commentators have compared the result to an electoral "tsunami", whose effects are yet to be felt. Hamas won 76 seats in the 132-member PLC. The ruling Fatah came second with 43 seats. The remaining seats went to leftist parties and independents, some of whom were supported by Hamas. Half of the 132 seats were contested in constituencies and the other half through "electoral lists". Hamas, which contested under the banner of "Change and Reform" in the electoral list, led the tally in both segments. About 77 per cent of the 1.34 Palestinian voters exercised their franchise in the January 25 elections.

Apparently, what helped Hamas most was the perceived inefficiency and corruption of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (P.A.). "We now have a vibrant democracy and contradictions in national relations that will bring the Palestinians to a new stage. I think these elections will have strategic, direct and indirect consequences on Palestinian and regional and international politics," Talal Awkal, a Palestinian analyst in Gaza, told the Arabic television channel Al Jazeera.

Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) led by Yasser Arafat, Palestinians have only witnessed growing misery and violence. As the Israeli state went about diluting the peace accord and increasing the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, the Palestinian leadership was virtually reduced to a mute spectator. As successive Israeli governments undermined the Palestinian economy, the P.A. increasingly became dependent on international donors for its survival.

To make matters worse, the P.A. administration's blatant cronyism and corruption played a big role in the alienation of the Palestinian people from the Fatah. In the last couple of years, the Fatah split. The militant Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed wing of the Fatah, has been openly siding with Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in the confrontation with Israel. In the elections, prominent PLO activists such as Hannan Ashrawi preferred to distance themselves from the Fatah. Hannan Ashrawi, who won a seat on the "Third Way List", said that she did not believe that "religion should be the basis of government" and hoped that Hamas would not set up a "theocracy". She said that Hamas won because of a variety of factors that included the mobilisation of "the angry vote and the rejection vote and the protest vote and, of course, the reform vote, and not necessarily all the ideological vote. Part of Hamas' victory was made by the Fatah".

In fact, it was a divided Opposition that gave Hamas such a sweeping victory. The divided Fatah and four other secular parties together won 55 per cent of the popular vote. According to pollsters, the most important issue before the voters was corruption and law and order.

However, it was the Israeli and the U.S. factor that contributed significantly to the Fatah's decline. The refusal of successive Israeli governments to implement the Oslo Accords and negotiate honestly with the P.A. impacted negatively on the latter's image. Hamas and other militant Palestinian organisations had rejected the Oslo Accords as a "betrayal" of Palestinian interests. Many in the Fatah also acknowledged that the Oslo Accords were fundamentally flawed.

The beginning of the second Palestinian intifada (uprising) five years ago and the rise of Ariel Sharon in Israeli politics complicated the situation for the Fatah-led P.A. The terrorist strike in the U.S. on September 11, 2001, further loaded the dice against the Palestinians. George W. Bush accepted his "good friend Ariel Sharon's position on Palestinian terrorism". Arafat's political credibility was further undercut when Sharon demolished his office and residence in Ramallah. Arafat died, virtually a prisoner, confined to a room and a half in his bombed-out presidential palace. The international community stood aside and watched.

After the death of Arafat in Paris under mysterious circumstances, the decline of the Fatah accelerated under the leadership of P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas was one of the main negotiators involved in the Oslo talks. Many Palestinians on the street view Abbas as an apparatchik with close links with the West. Immediately after the Hamas victory, many Fatah activists held rallies calling for the resignation of Abbas as P.A. President.

As the Fatah's monopoly over Palestinian decision-making started eroding, Hamas started filling the gap. Along with other militant groups such as Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and the Islamic Jihad, Hamas have been given credit by the public for expediting the withdrawal of the Israeli military from Gaza.

On the other hand, the construction of the separation wall in West Bank by the Israeli government, with the connivance of the Bush administration, did little to boost the Fatah's image among Palestinians. For instance, Qalqilya, a Palestinian city of more than 50,000, is today almost entirely surrounded by the wall. Before the construction of the wall started, the Fatah used to sweep the polls in Qalqilya. Today, it has become a Hamas bailiwick.

Hamas' victory is being justifiably interpreted as reflecting the determination of the Palestinian people to fight the Israeli occupation. Bush's open endorsement of Abbas' leadership did not help matters either. As the results showed, it only convinced many Palestinians to reject the Fatah.

The scale of the Hamas victory astounded not only pollsters but also the Israeli and United States security agencies. A "blame game" has already started within the Bush administration. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice professed shock at the outcome. "I've asked why nobody saw it coming. It says something about us not having a good enough pulse," she told mediapersons in Washington. The Bush administration had, in fact, rushed financial aid to the beleaguered Fatah-run P.A., weeks before the elections, in an effort to speed up development projects. But the help came too late and was too little to make any significant difference to the electoral outcome.

In the West Bank town of Hebron, an election banner shows an array of Hamas leaders, including Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (front row, left) and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi (front row, right), who were assassinated by Israel.

Israel too tried to stymie Hamas' electoral prospects. Before the elections, Israeli troops had launched operations in the West Bank and arrested top Hamas politicians. Months before the elections, the Israeli authorities tried to incarcerate all the candidates who filed their nominations on behalf of Hamas. Many analysts and experts in the region and outside have gone to the extent of asserting that the victory of the Islamist party in an internationally monitored election is the most important development in West Asia since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, led by Ayatollah Khomeini.

Meanwhile, the victory has been characterised in some sections of the Arab media as a definitive departure from the Oslo peace process. According to many commentators, the victory of Hamas signals the rejection of the notion that only Palestinians have to prove that they are not "terrorists", while Israeli acts of terror such as targeted assassinations of Palestinian leaders are rarely classified as "state-sponsored terrorism" by the international community.

At the same time, the victory of Hamas does not signal the rejection of the two-nation solution to the long-running problem. Recent polls have shown that the majority of Palestinians still support a two-state solution and are tired of the unending cycle of violence. Polls taken in the West Bank showed that 75 per cent of the population wanted Hamas to drop its call for the destruction of Israel.

Hamas, on its part, has observed a military truce with Israel for more than a year, despite grave provocations. Although the charter of Hamas states that the Israeli state is illegitimate, the organisation has in reality shown that it is quite flexible on the issue. The Hamas leadership has indicated that it is willing to extend the present truce with Israel provided the latter also does the same.

At the signing of the Oslo Accords in Washington in 1993, U.S. President Bill Clinton with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

The International Crisis Group (ICG), a respected think tank, has reported that the Hamas leadership has indicated that there is no religious prohibition against negotiating with Israel and "that the provisions in its charter for the destruction of Israel are not indelible". Senior Hamas leaders have said after the victory that they want peace. At the same time they have made it clear that they will not be duped into negotiating endlessly with Israel. They have said that the "Irish model" appeals to them. The only condition they attach is that Israel recognise Hamas as a political party.

Hamas, while reiterating its commitment to "resistance" against Israel, has signalled that it will like to confine itself to the domestic agenda and let Mahmoud Abbas continue with the negotiations with the occupying power. It is also well-known that the Israeli state had informal contacts with Hamas in the 1980s. At that time the secular PLO was the main enemy of the Zionist state and some key Israeli politicians and officials were not averse to propping up Hamas as a counter-weight to it.

Israel has, however, ruled out negotiations with Hamas saying that it would refuse to engage in dialogue with any Palestinian government that includes "armed anti-Israeli groups". The Israeli government got its cue from Bush, who was quick to announce that his government would not deal with any group that advocated violence against Israel. After the election results came, Hamas leaders said that they would not disarm their cadre but would prefer that they integrate into the national Palestinian security forces. Interestingly, following Hamas' string of victories in municipal council elections held in 2005, the Israeli government had no option but to cooperate with Mayors owing allegiance to the Islamists on day-to-day issues such as the supply of water and electricity.

Israel and its closest ally Washington evidently want to use the Hamas victory as a pretext to continue with their unilateralist policies. Israeli politicians cutting across the political divide are using ominous jargon. A former Israeli Army Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon has said the victory of Hamas has brought Iran to Israel's doorsteps. Many Palestinians fear that Israel may try to dismantle the P.A. completely and create the environment for a bigger conflict.

High-ranking Hamas delegation in Iran

The chief of the Palestinian Islamic resistance's (Hamas) Political Bureau, Khaled Mashaal, arrived here Sunday evening accompanied by a high-ranking delegation.

Speaking to reporters upon his arrival, Mashaal said he was in Tehran for consultations with Iranian officials and to brief them on current requirements of the Palestinian nation.

Hamas won a landslide victory in the January 25 parliamentary elections in Palestine, gaining 74 seats of the 132-member Palestinian Legislative Council.

Appreciating Tehran's "evident support" to the Palestinian cause, Mashaal said the Palestinian nation would continue its struggle for liberation of all occupied territories.

Stressing that liberation of holy Qods and repatriation of all Palestinian refugees to their homes were two of the basic rights of the Palestinian nation, the official stressed that the "Palestinians would keep up their struggle for recognition of their sovereign legitimate rights."

Mashaal, elucidating on the Palestinian struggle, said: "While peace is the message of the people of Palestine to the entire world, they seek one that would put an end to the occupation and would restore all their legitimate rights."

Declaring Hamas' recent victory in the parliamentary election as "a great triumph," Mashaal said Palestinians were proud of the democratic experience.

He said that he was currently on a regional tour with Iran as his first stop in order to consult with heads of Muslim and Arab states on the current needs of the Palestinian nation.

"The Palestinian nation is living under the yoke of Zionist occupiers and aggressors and for this reason it will always be in need of the all-out support of the Muslim and Arab world as well as those of international bodies for as long as this occupation continues," Mashaal stressed.

World War III or Bust: Implications of a US Attack on Iran

by Heather Wokusch

"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous... Having said that, all options are on the table." George W. Bush, February 2005

Witnessing the Bush administration’s drive for an attack on Iran is like being a passenger in a car with a raving drunk at the wheel. Reports of impending doom surfaced a year ago, but now it’s official: under orders from Vice President Cheney’s office, the Pentagon has developed “last resort” aerial-assault plans using long-distance B2 bombers and submarine-launched ballistic missiles with both conventional and nuclear weapons.

How ironic that the Pentagon proposes using nuclear weapons on the pretext of protecting the world from nuclear weapons. Ironic also that Iran has complied with its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, allowing inspectors to “go anywhere and see anything,” yet those pushing for an attack, the USA and Israel, have not.

The nuclear threat from Iran is hardly urgent. As the Washington Post reported in August 2005, the latest consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies is that “Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years.” The Institute for Science and International Security estimated that while Iran could have a bomb by 2009 at the earliest, the US intelligence community assumed technical difficulties would cause “significantly delay.” The director of Middle East Studies at Brown University and a specialist in Middle Eastern energy economics both called the State Department’s claims of a proliferation threat from Iran’s Bushehr reactor “demonstrably false,” concluding that “the physical evidence for a nuclear weapons program in Iran simply does not exist.”

So there’s no urgency - just a bad case of déjà vu all over again. The Bush administration is recycling its hype over Hussein’s supposed WMD threat into rhetoric about Iran, but look where the charade got us last time: tens of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, a country teetering on civil war and increased global terrorism.

Yet the stakes in Iran are arguably much higher.

Consider that many in the US and Iran seek religious salvation through a Middle Eastern blowout. “End times” Christian fundamentalists believe a cataclysmic Armageddon will enable the Messiah to reappear and transport them to heaven, leaving behind Muslims and other non-believers to face plagues and violent death. Iran’s new Shia Islam president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, subscribes to a competing version of the messianic comeback, whereby the skies turn to flames and blood flows in a final showdown of good and evil. The Hidden Imam returns, bringing world peace by establishing Islam as the global religion.

Both the US and Iran have presidents who arguably see themselves as divinely chosen and who covet their own country’s apocalypse-seeking fundamentalist voters. And into this tinderbox Bush proposes bringing nuclear weapons.

As expected, the usual suspects press for a US attack on Iran. Neo-cons who brought us the “cakewalk” of Iraq want to bomb the country. There’s also Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, busy coordinating the action plan against Iran, who just released the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review calling for US forces to “operate around the globe” in an infinite “long war.” One can assume Rumsfeld wants to bomb a lot of countries.

And there’s Israel, keen that no other country in the region gains access to nuclear weapons. In late 2002, former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Iran should be targeted “the day after” Iraq was subdued, and Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud Party, recently warned that if he wins the presidential race in March 2006, Israel will “do what we did in the past against Saddam’s reactor,” an obvious reference to the 1981 bombing of the Osirak nuclear facility in Iraq. It doesn’t help that Iran’s Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust a myth and said that Israel should be "wiped off the map."

In the eyes of the Bush administration, however, Iran’s worst transgression has less to do with nuclear ambitions or anti-Semitism than with the petro-euro oil bourse Tehran is slated to open in March 2006. Iran’s plan to allow oil trading in euros threatens to break the dollar’s monopoly as the global reserve currency, and since the greenback is severely overvalued due to huge trade deficits, the move could be devastating for the US economy.

So we remain pedal to the metal with Bush for an attack on Iran.

But what if the US does go ahead and launch an assault in the coming months? The Pentagon has already identified 450 strategic targets, some of which are underground and would require the use of nuclear weapons to destroy. What happens then?

You can bet that Iran would retaliate. Tehran promised a “crushing response” to any US or Israeli attack, and while the country – ironically - doesn’t possess nuclear weapons to scare off attackers, it does have other options. Iran boasts ground forces estimated at 800,000 personnel, as well as long-range missiles that could hit Israel and possibly even Europe. In addition, much of the world’s oil supply is transported through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow stretch of ocean which Iran borders to the north. In 1997, Iran’s deputy foreign minister warned that the country might close off that shipping route if ever threatened, and it wouldn’t be difficult. Just a few missiles or gunboats could bring down vessels and block the Strait, thereby threatening the global oil supply and shooting energy prices into the stratosphere.

An attack on Iran would also inflame tensions in the Middle East, especially provoking the Shiite Muslim populations. Considering that Shiites largely run the governments of Iran and Iraq and are a potent force in Saudi Arabia, that doesn’t bode well for calm in the region. It would incite the Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally of Iran’s, potentially sparking increased global terrorism. A Shiite rebellion in Iraq would further endanger US troops and push the country deeper into civil war.

Attacking Iran could also tip the scales towards a new geopolitical balance, one in which the US finds itself shut out by Russia, China, Iran, Muslim countries and the many others Bush has managed to offend during his period in office. Just last month, Russia snubbed Washington by announcing it would go ahead and honor a $700 million contract to arm Iran with surface-to-air missiles, slated to guard Iran’s nuclear facilities. And after being burned when the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority invalidated Hussein-era oil deals, China has snapped up strategic energy contracts across the world, including in Latin America, Canada and Iran. It can be assumed that China will not sit idly by and watch Tehran fall to the Americans.

Russia and China have developed strong ties recently, both with each other and with Iran. Each possesses nuclear weapons, and arguably more threatening to the US, each holds large reserves of US dollars which can be dumped in favor of euros. Bush crosses them at his nation’s peril.

Yet another danger is that an attack on Iran could set off a global arms race - if the US flaunts the non-proliferation treaty and goes nuclear, there would be little incentive for other countries to abide by global disarmament agreements either. Besides, the Bush administration’s message to its enemies has been very clear: if you possess WMD you’re safe, and if you don’t, you’re fair game. Iraq had no nuclear weapons and was invaded, Iran doesn’t as well and risks attack, yet that other “Axis of Evil” country, North Korea, reportedly does have nuclear weapons and is left alone. It’s also hard to justify striking Iran over its allegedly developing a secret nuclear weapons program, when India and Pakistan (and presumably Israel) did the same thing and remain on good terms with Washington.

The most horrific impact of a US assault on Iran, of course, would be the potentially catastrophic number of casualties. The Oxford Research Group predicted that up to 10,000 people would die if the US bombed Iran’s nuclear sites with conventional weapons, and that an attack on the Bushehr nuclear reactor could send a radioactive cloud over the Gulf. If the US uses nuclear weapons, such as earth-penetrating “bunker buster” bombs, radioactive fallout would become even more disastrous.

Given what’s at stake, few allies, apart from Israel, can be expected to support a US attack on Iran. While Jacques Chirac has blustered about using his nukes defensively, it’s doubtful that France would join an unprovoked assault, and even loyal allies, such as the UK, prefer going through the UN Security Council.

Which means the wildcard is Turkey. The nation shares a border with Iran, and according to Noam Chomsky, is heavily supported by the domestic Israeli lobby in Washington, permitting 12% of the Israeli air and tank force to be stationed in its territory. Turkey’s crucial role in an attack on Iran explains why there’s been a spurt of high-level US visitors to Ankara lately, including Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, FBI Director Robert Mueller and CIA Director Porter Goss. In fact, the German newspaper Der Spiegel reported in December 2005 that Goss had told the Turkish government it would be “informed of any possible air strikes against Iran a few hours before they happened” and that Turkey had been given a "green light" to attack camps of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Iran “on the day in question.”

It’s intriguing that both Valerie Plame (the CIA agent whose identity was leaked to the media after her husband criticized the Bush administration’s pre-invasion intelligence on Iraq) and Sibel Edmonds (the former FBI translator who turned whistleblower) have been linked to exposing intelligence breaches relating to Turkey, including potential nuclear trafficking. And now both women are effectively silenced.

The US public sees the issue of Iran as backburner, and has little eagerness for an attack on Iran at this time. A USA Today/CNN Gallup Poll from early February 2006 found that a full 86% of respondents favored either taking no action or using economic/diplomatic efforts towards Iran for now. Significantly, 69% said they were concerned “that the U.S. will be too quick to use military force in an attempt to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.”

And that begs the question: how can the US public be convinced to enter a potentially ugly and protracted war in Iran?

A domestic terrorist attack would do the trick. Just consider how long Congress went back and forth over reauthorizing Bush’s Patriot Act, but how quickly opposing senators capitulated following last week’s nerve-agent scare in a Senate building. The scare turned out to be a false alarm, but the Patriot Act got the support it needed.

Now consider the fact that former CIA Officer Philip Giraldi has said the Pentagon’s plans to attack Iran were drawn up “to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States.” Writing in The American Conservative in August 2005, Giraldi added, “As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States.”

Chew on that one a minute. The Pentagon’s plan should be used in response to a terrorist attack on the US, yet is not contingent upon Iran actually having been responsible. How outlandish is this scenario: another 9/11 hits the US, the administration says it has secret information implicating Iran, the US population demands retribution and bombs start dropping on Tehran.

That’s the worst-case scenario, but even the best case doesn’t look good. Let’s say the Bush administration chooses the UN Security Council over military power in dealing with Iran. That still leaves the proposed oil bourse, along with the economic fallout that will occur if OPEC countries snub the greenback in favor of petro-euros. At the very least, the dollar will drop and inflation could soar, so you’d think the administration would be busy tightening the nation’s collective belt. But no. The US trade deficit reached a record high of $725.8 billion in 2005, and Bush & Co.’s FY 2007 budget proposes increasing deficits by $192 billion over the next five years. The nation is hemorrhaging roughly $7 billion a month on military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and is expected to hit its debt ceiling of $8.184 trillion next month.

So the white-knuckle ride to war continues, with the administration’s goals in Iran very clear. Recklessly naïve and impetuous perhaps, but clear: stop the petro-euro oil bourse, take over Khuzestan Province (which borders Iraq and has 90% of Iran’s oil) and secure the Straits of Hormuz in the process. As US politician Newt Gingrich recently put it, Iranians cannot be trusted with nuclear technology, and they also "cannot be trusted with their oil."

But the Bush administration cannot be trusted with foreign policy. Its military adventurism has already proven disastrous across the globe. It’s incumbent upon each of us to do whatever we can to stop this race towards war.

Greens.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_party
This article is about the green parties around the world. It describes differences between green parties in a broader sense and "Green Parties" in a narrower sense. Formally organized political parties (and political movements) based on the Four Pillars of the Green Party and similar value systems are referred to as Green Parties (capitalized) in the rest of this article; on the other hand, green parties (lower case) includes parties that share only parts of this common value system. Discussed here are also the history of green parties, green movements, and the collaboration among them. For information about a specific Green party, see the links at the end of the article or the List of Green party issues.

Greens — supporters of Green Parties — generally view grassroots democracy, pacifism, and social justice causes — especially those related to the plight of indigenous peoples — as inherently related to ecology and human bodily health. Thriving natural ecoregions, preventing global climate change, and preserving other aspects of the natural environment (see environmentalism) are viewed as necessary to maintain human life.

Global Green Coordination
Global Greens Network
Global Greens Charter and Forums
Free Ingrid Betancourt!
Meso and South America
North America
Australia and New Zealand
Africa
Europe
Asia
Global Young Greens
Virtual Community of the Green Parties
Greens Around the World
Leftist Parties of the World
Yahoo's ``Political Parties > Green'' category
Otto's Global Greens Index

Experts: Iran years away from bomb

Iran may have an atomic bomb within two years, the authoritative Jane's Defense Weekly warned. That was in 1984, two decades ago.

Four years later, Iraq said Iran was at the nuclear threshold. In 1992, the CIA foresaw atomic arms in Iranian hands by 2000. Then U.S. officials pushed that back to 2003. And in 1997, Israel confidently predicted a new date -- 2005.

Iran's nuclear ambitions are again being predicted. But experts say the coming of any Iranian nuclear arms looks to be years away and that the past predictions underplayed the technological challenges.

Iran, which said it has begun enriching small amounts of uranium, denies its program is intended to produce anything beyond weaker fuel for civilian nuclear power plants.

The United Nations Security Council is expected to take up the issue next month, when skeptics may push for sanctions against Iran. But few specialists view a potential Iranian bomb as an imminent threat. In fact, the latest estimate from the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies sees no Iranian bomb before the next decade. Israeli defense experts agree, speaking of 2012.

"It's a very complicated process requiring precision from design and engineering to manufacture and installation, and there's a lot of room for problems," said Washington analyst Corey Hinderstein, who for a decade has tracked Iranian nuclear developments for the Institute for Science and International Security.

Enrichment occurs in centrifuges, into which uranium gas is fed. Each, with a few milligrams of gas, spins at up to 70,000 revolutions per minute, separating the heavier uranium-238 from the rarer U-235, the isotope whose nucleus can break apart to produce energy.

The mixture's content is gradually boosted to more than 3% U-235, the level needed for power generators. If extended, the process can produce 90% enriched uranium for bombs.

But centrifuges vibrate, shatter and fail regularly, because of imprecise machining, slight imbalances magnified at high speeds and imperfect bearings.

"A vast percentage of centrifuges have to be rejected in testing, up to 60% rejection," said Frank Barnaby, a former British weapons scientist now at the Oxford Research Group.

Iran plans to install 50,000 centrifuges in underground halls at Natanz, Iran. But fewer than half of the 1,140 machines Iran had assembled by 2004 were good enough, the UN nuclear agency has reported.

Hinderstein's institute suggests Iran could speed things up to produce enough bomb fuel for one weapon. Even then, the process would take the project into 2009.

And, asked Barnaby, "Who do you deter with just one weapon?"

Preval wins Haiti presidential elections

nterim government and election officials have announced that they have reached agreement to declare Rene Preval the winner of Haiti's presidential elections.

"We have reached a solution to the problem," said Max Mathurin, president of the Provisional Electoral Council. "We feel a huge satisfaction at having liberated the country from a truly difficult situation."

Earlier in the week, Brazil, whose military is leading the United Nations peacekeeping force in Haiti, said that the best way to ease election tensions in the Caribbean nation would be to declare former president Rene Preval the victor.

"Considering the existing climate in the country, that would be the best solution," President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's chief foreign relations advisor, Marco Aurelio Garcia, told reporters in Brasilia.

Garcia added that declaring Preval the winner would likely enjoy the unanimous support of the international community, since it would prevent a messy runoff vote from taking place. He said Brazil was worried about the situation in Haiti and that it "feared that the situation would deteriorate."

"We propose that the candidates recognise Preval's victory," Garcia said.

Garcia's remarks were made one day after Preval, a one-time ally of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and opposed by the wealthy elite, claimed that widespread fraud had prevented him from winning a first-round victory in last week's election.

Those allegations appeared to gain more legitimacy when hundreds of burned and still smoldering ballots, many cast for Preval, were later found at a garbage dump in Port-au-Prince.

Though the Haitian government has agreed to delay publishing the final results of the election to give Preval time to gather proof of his claims, protests continued to rage across the poor Caribbean country of 8.5 million people.

Haiti has been on tenterhooks since last week's vote as concerns swirled that election officials were manipulating the ballot to force Preval into a March 19 runoff.

UN report calls for closure of Guantánamo

A UN inquiry into conditions at Guantánamo Bay has called on Washington to shut down the prison, and says treatment of detainees in some cases amounts to torture, UN officials said yesterday.

The report also disputes the Bush administration's legal arguments for the prison, which was sited at the navy base in Cuba with the purpose of remaining outside the purview of the US courts, and says there has been insufficient legal process to decide whether detainees continued to pose a threat to the US.

The report, prepared by five envoys from the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and due for release tomorrow, is bound to deepen international criticism of the detention centre. Drafts of the report were leaked to the Los Angeles Times and the Telegraph newspapers, but UN envoys refused to comment yesterday.

During an 18-month investigation, the envoys interviewed freed prisoners, lawyers and doctors to collect information on the detainees, who have been held for the last four years without access to US judicial oversight. The envoys did not have access to the 500 prisoners who are still being held at the detention centre.

"We very, very carefully considered all of the arguments posed by the US government," Manfred Nowak, the UN special rapporteur on torture and one of the envoys, told the LA Times. "There are no conclusions that are easily drawn. But we concluded that the situation in several areas violates international law and conventions on human rights and torture."

The report lists techniques in use at Guantánamo that are banned under the UN's convention against torture, including prolonged periods of isolation, exposure to extremes of heat and cold, and humiliation, including forced shaving.

The UN report also focuses on a relatively new area of concern in Guantánamo - the resort to violent force-feeding to end a hunger strike by inmates. Guards at Guantánamo began force-feeding the protesters last August, strapping them on stretchers and inserting large tubes into their nasal passages, according to a lawyer for Kuwaiti detainees who has had contact with the UN envoys.

The effort to break the hunger strike has accelerated since the UN envoys produced their draft, with inmates strapped in restraint chairs for hours and fed laxatives so that they defecate on themselves.

"The government is not doing things to keep them alive. It is really conducting tactics to deprive them of the ability to be on hunger strike because the hunger strike is an embarrassment to them," said Thomas Wilner, an attorney at the Washington firm Shearman & Sterlin, who represents several Kuwaiti detainees.

The report adds to a body of evidence about mistreatment. A report by the International Committee of the Red Cross last year said interrogation techniques there were "tantamount to torture".

Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch, said: "This is going to solidify the already highly negative views around the world about what the United States is doing in Guantánamo, and since the Red Cross complaints are more than a year old, it will suggest to a lot of people around the world that the problems are not solved."

However, the report did not seem to carry weight in Washington. A White House spokesman said it was an al-Qaida tactic to complain of abuse, while the Pentagon does not comment on UN matters. But a Pentagon official yesterday insisted there had been no attempts to break a hunger strike with punitive measures. "All detainees at Guantánamo are being treated humanely and are being provided with excellent medical care," he said.

UN urges Haiti poll 'fraud' probe

The UN Security Council has called on Haiti's interim government fully to investigate claims of fraud in last week's presidential election.

The council also urged all Haitians to pursue any concerns over the electoral process "peacefully and legally".

It follows days of street protests, fuelled by the apparent discovery of charred ballot papers at a dump.

Front-runner Rene Preval has alleged that "massive fraud" probably denied him an outright victory in the vote.

He warned of more protests if partial results - which would require a run-off on 19 March if confirmed - were published as final.

Ransacked

Some of the charred ballots found in a dump north of the capital, Port-au-Prince, appeared to be marked in favour of Mr Preval, prompting outcry from his supporters at the scene.

Hundreds then marched past the US, Canadian and French embassies waving the papers and chanting "Look what they did with our votes", Reuters news agency reports.

Haiti's interim government has blocked publication of results from the presidential election until an inquiry into the fraud allegations is complete.

The UN Security Council called on the Haitian authorities "to fully investigate those charges".

In a statement read by US Ambassador John Bolton, council president for the month, it also urged "all Haitians with concerns or questions about possible post-electoral irregularities to pursue these peacefully and legally with the Haitian electoral authorities immediately".

The investigation is expected to include members of the government, the electoral commission and Mr Preval's party.

According to a UN spokesman, the ballots could have come from any of nine polling stations ransacked on election day.

Spokesman David Wimhurst said the ballots may have been placed at the dump to suggest fraud had taken place, the Associated Press news agency reports.

'Rigged' vote

The leader of the Organization of American States, Jose Miguel Insulza, is in Haiti to try to calm tensions.

He has urged countries not to withdraw their troops from the UN peacekeeping force in Haiti - a call made by one of the main opposition parties.

The UN Security Council has renewed the mandate of its peacekeeping force in Haiti for at least another six months.

The 9,500-strong mission was established in 2004 after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced out of power.

Mr Preval was once an ally of Mr Aristide and has inherited his following among the poor.

He insists he has won the vote but partial results suggest he is just short of the 50% needed to be elected outright.

His supporters allege the vote has been rigged by the Haitian elite, which is suspicious of Mr Preval's links to Mr Aristide.

BBC Americas analyst Simon Watts, reporting from Miami, says the Haitian authorities seem to be damned whatever they do.

He says they risk sparking more unrest if they conclude Mr Preval is short of a majority - but declaring him an outright winner could look like a fix.

Haiti - the poorest country in the Americas - is choosing a 129-member parliament as well as a new president.

Haiti bars release of poll result

Haiti's interim government has blocked publication of results from last week's presidential election until an inquiry into fraud allegations is completed.

Front-runner Rene Preval said "massive fraud" had probably denied him an outright victory in the vote.

He warned of more protests if partial results - which would require a run-off if confirmed - were published as final.

On Tuesday night, local TV showed what appeared to be hundreds of charred votes at a rubbish dump in the capital.

Many of the ballots appeared to be marked in favour of Mr Preval, prompting protests from his supporters at the scene.

Crowds later marched through the streets of the city, chanting Mr Preval's name and denouncing the alleged fraud.

According to a UN spokesman, the ballots could have come from any of nine polling stations ransacked on election day.

Spokesman David Wimhurst said the ballots may have been placed at the dump to suggest fraud had taken place, the Associated Press news agency reports.

The leader of the Organization of American States is due to visit Haiti on Wednesday to try to calm tensions.

Jose Miguel Insulza is expected to meet political leaders and members of the electoral commission.

The unrest in the country has led to the cancellation of commercial flights.

Former South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who spent four days in Haiti, was airlifted to the Dominican Republic in a military helicopter.

Street protests

Mr Preval was once an ally of ousted former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and has inherited his following among the poor.

He insists he has won the vote but partial results suggest he is just short of the 50% needed to be elected outright.

His supporters allege the vote has been rigged by the Haitian elite, which is suspicious of Mr Preval's links to Mr Aristide.

"We are convinced that either massive fraud or gross errors stain the [electoral] process," Mr Preval said on Tuesday, in his first public comments since the protests began.

He urged his supporters to continue demonstrating "but in respect of the rights of others".

"If they publish the results as they are now," Mr Preval said, "we will oppose them, the Haitian people will also oppose them, and there will be protests."

Following his comments, the government announced it would hold an inquiry into the fraud allegations.

The interim president's chief of staff is quoted as saying he expects the investigation, which will include members of the government, electoral commission and Mr Preval's party, to release its findings within three days.

"The government will play the role of referee in this commission," Michel Brunach told the AFP news agency.

Haiti - the poorest country in the Americas - is choosing a 129-member parliament as well as a new president.

Burning tyres

BBC Americas analyst Simon Watts, reporting from Miami, says the Haitian authorities seem to be damned whatever they do.

He says they risk sparking more unrest if they conclude Mr Preval is short of a majority - but declaring him an outright winner could look like a fix.

On Tuesday, barricades of burning tyres and branches remained on roads in Port-au-Prince.

The UN Security Council has renewed the mandate of its peacekeeping force in Haiti for at least another six months.

The 9,500-strong mission, established in 2004 after President Aristide was forced out of power, is under Brazilian command.

Haiti leader calls election “gigantic fraud”

The leading presidential candidate in Haiti’s presidential election Rene Preval, claimed Tuesday there was ''probably a gigantic fraud'' that would deny him a first-round victory and urged supporters to protest nonviolently adding he would contest the results.

“We're convinced that massive fraud and important errors have characterized this electoral process" Preval said in his first statement after the election, in which - according to the latest vote count - he has won a plurality but is still short of the absolute majority he needs to avoid a runoff.

Tens of thousands of Preval's backers, most of them from Haiti's majority poor have flooded the streets of the capital Port au Prince to peacefully protest what they called a rigged February 7 election. However white U.N. armored vehicles on Tuesday shoved aside some roadblocks of junked cars, old refrigerators and other debris that were laid across the streets of the capital on Monday.

But Mr. Preval, once a close associate of ousted president Jean Bertrand Aristide called on protestors to respect private property and avoid all forms of violence.

"Let us be intelligent in our strategy, because the whole world is watching us" he told the crowds warning that "we must be alert because people who want to tarnish our image may have infiltrated our ranks".

On Monday one person was killed and scores of vehicles were burned when demonstrators took to the streets to demand Preval be declared president-elect.

"We are not a party of violence, but of reconciliation," said the former president, who ruled the Western Hemisphere's poorest country from 1996-2001.

Preval did not provide details on the fraud claims. Elections were organized by a team of United Nations international experts and monitored by observers.

With 90.02% of cast ballots counted Mr. Preval is far ahead of all other 32 presidential candidates with 48.76%, but still short of the 50% plus 1 needed to win the election without the need of a run off.

Ironically, the former president has more votes at this stage than all the other candidates put together, given that 7.49% of the ballots counted so far have been declared null.

Haiti’s general election was held last Tuesday after having been postponed four times. In addition to the presidential race, 1,300 candidates were vying for 30 Senate seats and 99 lower house seats.

The elections were called by the interim government that was installed after a popular revolt led to the February 2004 resignation and flight into exile of former President Jean-Bertand Aristide, who is currently residing in South Africa.

Earlier Tuesday, the head of the United Nations mission in Haiti, Chilean Juan Gabriel Valdes, said that Preval had cooperated actively to ensure that the electoral process unfolded normally and without incidents.

"Haitians have to understand that these things happen and it's not that there's someone maliciously altering the results. The vote count has been technically correct and there have been no irregularities in the process", insisted Mr. Valdes.

Given the tense situation, Preval was called to Port-au-Prince from his hometown of Marmelade to meet with the ambassadors from United States, France, Canada and Brazil, plus Mr. Valdes, to discuss the situation.

Valdes said that "the Haitian issue is before the (U.N.) Security Council" so that the international community can discuss the matter, as proposed by Brazil.

U.S., Israel Discuss Ways To Make Hamas Fail

The United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again, according to Israeli officials and Western diplomats.

The intention is to starve the Palestinian Authority of money and international connections to the point where, some months from now, its president, Mahmoud Abbas, is compelled to call a new election. The hope is that Palestinians will be so unhappy with life under Hamas that they will return to office a reformed and chastened Fatah movement.

The officials also argue that a close look at the election results shows that Hamas won a smaller mandate than previously understood.

The officials and diplomats, who said this approach was being discussed at the highest levels of the State Department and the Israeli government, spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

They say Hamas will be given a choice: recognize Israel's right to exist, forswear violence and accept previous Palestinian-Israeli agreements - as called for by the United Nations and the West - or face isolation and collapse.

Opinion polls show that Hamas's promise to better the lives of the Palestinian people was the main reason it won. But the United States and Israel say Palestinian life will only get harder if Hamas does not meet those three demands. They say Hamas plans to build up its militias and increase violence and must be starved out of power.

The officials drafting the plan know that Hamas leaders have repeatedly rejected demands to change and do not expect Hamas to meet them. "The point is to put this choice on Hamas's shoulders," a senior Western diplomat said. "If they make the wrong choice, all the options lead in a bad direction."

The strategy has many risks, especially given that Hamas will try to secure needed support from the larger Islamic world, including its allies Syria and Iran, as well as from private donors.

It will blame Israel and the United States for its troubles, appeal to the world not to punish the Palestinian people for their free democratic choice, point to the real hardship that a lack of cash will produce and may very well resort to an open military confrontation with Israel, in a sense beginning a third intifada.

The officials said the destabilization plan centers largely on money. The Palestinian Authority has a monthly cash deficit of some $60 million to $70 million after it receives between $50 million and $55 million a month from Israel in taxes and customs duties collected by Israeli officials at the borders but owed to the Palestinians.

Israel says it will cut off those payments once Hamas takes power, and put the money in escrow. On top of that, some of the aid that the Palestinians currently receive will be stopped or reduced by the United States and European Union governments, which will be constrained by law or politics from providing money to an authority run by Hamas. The group is listed by Washington and the European Union as a terrorist organization.

Israel has other levers on the Palestinian Authority: controlling entrance and exit from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for people and goods, the number of workers who are allowed into Israel every day, and even the currency used in the Palestinian territories, which is the Israeli shekel.

Israeli military officials have discussed cutting Gaza off completely from the West Bank and making the Israeli-Gaza border an international one. They also say they will not allow Hamas members of the Palestinian parliament, some of whom are wanted by Israeli security forces, to travel freely between Gaza and the West Bank.

On Sunday, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced after a cabinet meeting that Israel would consider Hamas to be in power on the day the new parliament is sworn in: this Saturday.

So beginning next month, the Palestinian Authority will face a cash deficit of at least $110 million a month, or more than $1 billion a year, which it needs to pay full salaries to its 140,000 employees, who are the breadwinners for at least one-third of the Palestinian population.

The employment figure includes some 58,000 members of the security forces, most of which are affiliated with the defeated Fatah movement.

If a Hamas government is unable to pay workers, import goods, transfer money and receive significant amounts of outside aid, Mr. Abbas, the president, would have the authority to dissolve parliament and call new elections, the officials say, even though that power is not explicit in the Palestinian basic law.

The potential for an economic crisis is real. The Palestinian stock market has already fallen about 20 percent since the election on Jan. 25, and the Authority has exhausted its borrowing capacity with local banks.

Hamas gets up to $100,000 a month in cash from abroad, Israel and Western officials say. "But it's hard to move millions of dollars in suitcases," a Western official said.

The United States and the European Union in particular want any failure of Hamas in leadership to be judged as Hamas's failure, not one caused by Israel and the West.

The officials say much now depends on Abbas, the Fatah-affiliated president who called for the January elections, has four more years in office and is insistent that Hamas has a democratic right to govern.

Yet Abbas has also threatened to quit if he does not have a government that can carry out his fundamental policies - which include, he has said, negotiations with Israel toward a final peace treaty based on a permanent two-state solution. The United States and the European Union have strongly urged him to stay on the job and shoulder his responsibilities, the officials say.

Western diplomats say they expect Abbas to repeat those positions in his speech on Saturday when the new parliament is sworn in, laying the groundwork for a future confrontation with Hamas.

In preparation for a Hamas-led government, Abbas is also said to be insisting on reinforcing his position as commander in chief of all Palestinian forces, even though the prime minister and the interior minister also have control over them through a security council that the prime minister chairs.

On Monday the departing parliament made an effort to boost Abbas's powers by passing legislation giving him the authority to appoint a new constitutional court that can veto legislation deemed in violation of the Palestinians' basic law.

Abbas would appoint the nine judges to the new court without seeking parliamentary approval. Hamas immediately objected. "The parliament has no mandate and no authority to issue any new legislation," said a Hamas spokesman, Said Siyam, adding that Hamas would try to overturn the decisions once the new legislature convened on Saturday.

Hamas will control at least 74 seats of the 132-member parliament, and it is likely to have the support of six more members on key votes. But more than 10 percent of the new legislators are already in Israeli jails: 10 from Hamas, 3 from Fatah and one from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The United States and Fatah believe that the Hamas victory was far less sweeping than the seat total makes it appear, said Khalil Shikaki, a pollster and the director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.

In an interview in Ramallah, Shikaki said that if Fatah had forced members to withdraw their independent candidacies in constituencies where they split the votes with official Fatah candidates, it might have won the election. Half of the 132 seats were decided by a vote for a party list, and the other half by a separate vote for a local candidate.

Hamas won 44 percent of the popular vote but 56 percent of the seats, while Fatah won 42 percent of the popular vote but only 34 percent of the seats. The reason? "Fatah ran a lousy campaign," Shikaki said, and Abbas "did not force enough Fatah independents to pull out."

If only 76 "independent" Fatah candidates had not run, Shikaki said, Fatah would have won 33 seats and Hamas 33. In the districts, Hamas won an average of only 39 percent of the vote while winning 68 percent of the seats, Shikaki said.

"Fatah now is obsessed with undoing this election as soon as possible," he said. "Israel and Washington want to do it over too. The Palestinian Authority could collapse in six months."

New Hamas legislators were unimpressed. Farhat Asaad, a Hamas spokesman, and Nasser Abdaljawad, who won a seat in Salfit where two Fatah candidates split the vote, gave the United States "a year or two" to come around to the idea of dealing openly with Hamas.

Asaad, a former Israeli prisoner, said: "We hope it isn't U.S. policy. Because those who try to isolate us will be isolated in the region."

Hamas will move on two parallel fronts, he said: the first, to reform Palestinian political life, and the second, "to break the isolation of our government." If Hamas succeeds on both fronts, he said, "we will achieve a great thing for our people, a normal life with security and a state of law, where no one can abuse power."

Hamas will find the money it needs from the Muslim world, said Abdaljawad, who spent 12 years in jail and got a Ph.D. while there. Hamas will save money by ending corruption and providing efficiency. Hamas will break the Palestinian dependency on Israel, he said.

Asaad laughed and added: "First, I thank the United States that they have given us this weapon of democracy. But there is no way to retreat now. It's not possible for the U.S. and the world to turn its back on an elected democracy."

Intellpuke: "This is an excellent report by New York Times correspondent Steven Erlanger, reporting from Jerusalem. You can read it in context here.

Iran -- The Media Fall Into Line, by Media Lens

Writing in The Guardian last month, Timothy Garton Ash observed:
“Now we face the next big test of the west: after Iraq, Iran.”

Garton Ash thus blithely ignored the fact that every last scrap of evidence coming out of Iraq has pointed to only one conclusion -- that Iraq’s “big test” was in fact the West’s big lie. Iraq was offering a threat to precisely no one outside its own borders.

Nevertheless, Garton Ash warned: “we in Europe and the United States have to respond. But how?” (Timothy Garton Ash, “Let's make sure we do better with Iran than we did with Iraq,” The Guardian, January 12, 2006)

The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee joined the propaganda chorus demonizing Iran:
“Now the mad mullahs of Iran will soon have nuclear bombs, are we all doomed?... Do something, someone! But what and who?” (Toynbee, “No more fantasy diplomacy: cut a deal with the mullahs,” The Guardian, February 7, 2006)

Gerard Baker provided the answer in The Times of London:
“The unimaginable but ultimately inescapable truth is that we are going to have to get ready for war with Iran”. (Baker, “Prepare yourself for the unthinkable: war against Iran may be a necessity,” The Times, January 27, 2006)

Why might this be?
“If Iran gets safely and unmolested to nuclear status, it will be a threshold moment in the history of the world, up there with the Bolshevik Revolution and the coming of Hitler.”

Readers will recall near-identical propaganda ahead of the assault on Iraq. Baker continued with some fearsome predictions:

“Iran, of course, secure now behind its nuclear wall, will surely step up its campaign of terror around the world. It will become even more of a magnet and haven for terrorists... Imagine how much more our freedoms will be curtailed if our governments fear we are just one telephone call or e-mail, one plane journey or truckload away from another Hiroshima. ”

This is the same Gerard Baker who wrote in the Financial Times in February 2003 that “victory [in Iraq] will quickly vindicate US and British claims about the scale of the threat Saddam poses”.

Baker was positively gleeful:
“I cannot wait to hear what the French, Russians and Germans have to say when the conquering troops begin to uncover the death factories Mr. Hussein has been hiding from inspectors for 12 years . . . And do not be shocked if allied liberators discover all kinds of connections between Baghdad and terrorism around the world”. (Baker, “Defeating prejudice with persuasion,” Financial Times, February 20, 2003)

A year later, Baker had airbrushed his own justification for war from history:
Saddam Hussein asked for the benefit of the doubt. But that was not something a wise leader could possibly have given him. His actions had shown again and again the threat he represented. This threat lay not in vats of chemicals or nuclear centrifuges but in his ambitions.” (Baker, “Freedom from fear is a worthy goal,” Financial Times, March 18, 2004)

In his February 2003 article, Baker had predicted: “it will become clear, even to the most rabid of anti-Americans just how much better off Iraqi people will be without their current president. The lifting of the yoke of Saddam Hussein will be an act of humanity far greater than the unseating of the Taliban. (Baker, op. cit)

The New York Times’ Paul Krugman describes the current state of Iraq sans “yoke”:
"In fact, reconstruction has failed. Almost three years after the war began, oil production is well below prewar levels, Baghdad is getting only an average of 3.2 hours of electricity a day, and more than 60 percent of water and sanitation projects have been canceled. So now, having squandered billions in Iraqi oil revenue as well as American taxpayer dollars, we have told the Iraqis that from here on in it is their problem.” (Krugman, “State of delusion,” New York Times, February 3, 2006)

According to the Los Angeles Times, America's would-be Marshall Plan in Iraq “is drawing to a close this year“ with “much of its promise unmet and no plans to extend its funding”. (Cited, ibid)

Baker is a signatory to the Statement of Principles posted at the website of The Henry Jackson Society. Patrons include mild-mannered neoconservatives like former US assistant secretary of defense Richard Perle, William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, and James Woolsey, former director of the CIA. Other signatories include former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, Colonel Tim Collins, Oliver Kamm, Andrew Roberts and Jamie Shea.

The Society declares that it: “Supports a ‘forward strategy’ to assist those countries that are not yet liberal and democratic to become so. This would involve the full spectrum of our ‘carrot’ capacities, be they diplomatic, economic, cultural or political, but also, when necessary, those ‘sticks’ of the military domain.”

Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq know all about the “‘sticks’ of the military domain”.

Four of the Society’s eight “Principles” refer to military intervention and military power --another notes that, “only modern liberal democratic states are truly legitimate.”

Everyone else, we can presume, is fair game.

Ten Years From A Bomb
When officialdom targets a new “deadly threat,” journalists often embarrass themselves in their rush to be “on side.” The January 20, 2005, BBC 1 Lunchtime News saw diplomatic correspondent James Robbins declare that US relations with Iran were "looking very murky because of the nuclear threat.” (BBC1, 13:00 News, January 20, 2005)

Four days later, Robbins responded to Media Lens e-mailers:
“I accept that it would have been better to have said ‘alleged nuclear threat.’ I am sorry that my wording was not as precise as it could have been.” (E-mail to Media Lens, January 24, 2005)

Similarly, in a front-page article this week, The Guardian reported that Iran's foreign minister had threatened immediate retaliation over a move to refer its “nuclear weapons activities"” to the United Nations Security Council. A correction was printed in the paper two days later:

“We should have said ‘nuclear activities,’ not ‘nuclear weapons activities.’” (Corrections and clarifications, The Guardian, February 7, 2006)

Although Iran has removed the seals it put in place at its nuclear fuel research sites, experts say it is at least a decade away from being able to produce a nuclear bomb. Consider the current media hysteria in light of the basic facts below.

Atomic weapons can be produced in two ways -- either by using highly enriched uranium, or plutonium. Iran is known to have produced reconstituted uranium, “yellow cake,” at its conversion facility at Isfahan. However, according to a September 2005 report by The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), this material is contaminated and not currently useable. If Iran were able to overcome the problem of purification, it would then need to enrich the uranium.

Whereas uranium used in nuclear reactors requires only a small amount of enrichment, weapons-grade uranium must be highly enriched. This can be done using gas centrifuges, of which Iran has 164 installed at its plant at Natanz. But this constitutes just 20 per cent of the number required to produce a bomb. Frank Barnaby, of UK think tank The Oxford Research Group, comments:

"They don't currently have enough centrifuges working -- so far as we know -- to produce significant amounts of highly-enriched uranium or even enriched uranium. They would need a lot more." (Sarah Buckley and Paul Rincon, “Iran ‘years from nuclear bomb’,” www.bbc.co.uk, January 12, 2006)

Given these and other problems, the IISS believes it would take Iran at least a decade to produce enough high-grade uranium to make a single nuclear weapon. Dr Barnaby agrees:
“The CIA says 10 years to a bomb using highly enriched uranium and that is a reasonable and realistic figure in my opinion.”

Alternatively, Iran could use plutonium to produce a bomb. But the IISS notes that Iran would need to build a reprocessing plant suited to the fuel used in its Bushehr nuclear reactor -- an extremely challenging technical task. Iran is also constructing a heavy-water research reactor at Arak. But, again, this will not be ready until at least 2014, and probably later, according to the IISS.

The West’s hypocrisy and double standards could hardly be clearer but they are off the media agenda. The United States is estimated to be in possession of no less than 10,600 nuclear warheads. Its leading ally in the region, Israel, also has nuclear weapons, as do Russia, Pakistan, India and China. Britain has recently sold nuclear-capable bombers to India, while the United States has sold nuclear-capable bombers to Pakistan. Iran’s is indeed a “tough neighbourhood.”

The media never mention the military coup organized by Britain and the United States to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953 to secure the country’s oil. No mention is made of the massive military support subsequently sent to the Shah dictatorship before it was overthrown in 1979. Britain and America were thus directly responsible for a country that had the “highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture” which was “beyond belief.” It was a society in which “the entire population was subjected to a constant, all-pervasive terror,” according to Amnesty International. (Martin Ennals, Secretary General of Amnesty International, cited in an Amnesty Publication, Matchbox, Autumn 1976)

All of this is waved away as inconsequential by journalists. Objections to military action are usually raised on grounds of possible negative consequences for the West. The likely cost in lives to the Iranian people is rarely even discussed.

Last month, the journalist Felicity Arbuthnot described the cataclysm generated by the US-UK “liberation” of Iraq:
For Iraq watchers, the daily carnage of liberation, the searing, wailing grief of the bereaved, bombed, bereft, haunt. Neighborhoods, evocative ancient homes reduced to rubble by the ‘liberators’, the surviving, bewildered, standing on shattered bricks, mortar, toys, belongings, liberated even from home's secure warmth.

In the distorted horrors of today's Iraq, many never make it home: disappeared, kidnapped, shot by the occupying forces for driving, walking, and playing, in familiar venues. Iraqi lives are the earth's cheapest. ‘Government’' or occupying troops kill ‘insurgents’ (even if baby or toddler ‘insurgents’) and few questions are asked. (Felicity Arbuthnot, “Death of Humanity,” PalestineChronicle.com, January 18, 2006)

Despite even this, despite everything that has happened, Western journalists are once again falling obediently into line as the British and American governments begin the long, arduous process of demonizing another oil-rich target.

Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. The first Media Lens book, Guardians of Power: The Myth Of The Liberal Media, is now available (Pluto Books, London, 2006). Visit the Media Lens website (www.medialens.org) and consider supporting their invaluable work (www.medialens.org/donate.html).

John Zerzan: On the Origins of War

War is a staple of civilization. Its mass, rationalized, chronic presence has increased as civilization has spread and deepened. Among the specific reasons it doesn't go away is the desire to escape the horror of mass-industrial life. Mass society of course finds its reflection in mass soldiery and it has been this way from early civilization. In the age of hyper-developing technology, war is fed by new heights of dissociation and disembodiment. We are ever further from a grounding or leverage from which to oppose it (while too many accept paltry, symbolic "protest" gestures).

How did it come to be that war is "the proper work of man," in the words of Homer's Odysseus? We know that organized warfare advanced with early industry and complex social organization in general, but the question of origins predates even Homer's early Iron Age. The explicit archaeological/anthropological literature on the subject is surprisingly slight.

Civilization has always had a basic interest in holding its subjects captive by touting the necessity of official armed force. It is a prime ideological claim that without the state's monopoly on violence, we would be unprotected and insecure. After all, according to Hobbes, the human condition has been and will always be that of "a war of all against all." Modern voices, too, have argued that humans are innately aggressive and violent, and so need to be constrained by armed authority. Raymond Dart (e.g. Adventures with the Missing Link, 1959), Robert Ardrey (e.g. African Genesis, 1961), and Konrad Lorenz (e.g. On Aggression, 1966) are among the best known, but the evidence they put forth has been very largely discredited.

In the second half of the 20th century, this pessimistic view of human nature began to shift. Based on archaeological evidence, it is now a tenet of mainstream scholarship that pre-civilization humans lived in the absence of violence—more specifically, of organized violence.

Eibl-Eibesfeldt referred to the !Ko- Bushmen as not bellicose: "Their cultural ideal is peaceful coexistence, and they achieve this by avoiding conflict, that is by splitting up, and by emphasizing and encouraging the numerous patterns of bonding."1

An earlier judgment by W.J. Perry is generally accurate, if somewhat idealized: "Warfare, immorality, vice, polygyny, slavery, and the subjection of women seem to be absent among our gatherer-hunter ancestors."2

The current literature consistently reports that until the final stages of the Paleolithic Age—until just prior to the present 10,000-year era of domestication—there is no conclusive evidence that any tools or hunting weapons were used against humans at all.3 "Depictions of battle scenes, skirmishes and hand-to-hand combat are rare in hunter-gatherer art and when they do occur most often result from contact with agriculturalists or industrialized invaders," concludes Taçon and Chippindale's study of Australian rock art.4 When conflict began to emerge, encounters rarely lasted more than half an hour, and if a death occurred both parties would retire at once.5

The record of Native Americans in California is similar. Kroeber reported that their fighting was "notably bloodless. They even went so far as to take poorer arrows to war than they used in economic hunting."6 Wintu people of Northern California called off hostilities once someone was injured.7 "Most Californians were absolutely nonmilitary; they possessed next to none of the traits requisite for the military horizon, a condition that would have taxed their all but nonexistent social organization too much. Their societies made no provision for collective political action," in the view of Turney-High.8 Lorna Marshall described Kung! Bushmen as celebrating no valiant heroes or tales of battle. One of them remarked, "Fighting is very dangerous; someone might get killed!"9 George Bird Grinnell's "Coup and Scalp Among the Plains Indians"10 argues that counting coup (striking or touching an enemy with the hand or a small stick) was the highest point of (essentially nonviolent) bravery, whereas scalping was not valued.

The emergence of institutionalized warfare appears to be associated with domestication, and/ or a drastic change in a society's physical situation. it, this comes about "only where band peoples have been drawn into the warfare of horticulturalists or herders, or driven into an ever-diminishing territory."11 The first reliable archaeological evidence of warfare is that of fortified, pre-Biblical Jericho, c. 7500 B.C. In the early Neolithic a relatively sudden shift happened. What dynamic forces may have led people to adopt war as a social institution? To date, this question has not been explored in any depth by archaeologists.

Symbolic culture appears to have emerged in the Upper Paleolithic; by the Neolithic it was firmly established in human cultures everywhere. The symbolic has a way of effacing particularity, reducing human presence in its specific, nonmediated aspects. It is easier to direct violence against a faceless enemy who represents some officially defined evil or threat. Ritual is the earliest known form of purposive symbolic activity: symbolism acting in the world. Archaeological evidence suggests that there may be a link between ritual and the emergence of organized warfare. During the almost timeless era when humans were not interested in dominating their surroundings, certain places were special and came to be known as sacred sites. This was based on a spiritual and emotional kinship with the land, expressed in various forms of totemism or custodianship. Ritual begins to appear, but is not central to band or forager societies. Emma Blake observes, "Although the peoples of the Paleolithic practiced rituals, the richest material residues date from the Neolithic period onward, when sedentism and the domestication of plants and animals brought changes to the outlook and cosmology of people everywhere."12 It was in the Upper Paleolithic that certain strains and tensions caused by the development of specialization first became evident. Inequities can be measured by such evidence as differing amounts of goods at hearth sites in encampments; in response, ritual appears to have begun to play a greater social role. As many have noted, ritual in this context is a way of addressing deficiencies of cohesion or solidarity; it is a means of guaranteeing a social order that has become problematic. As Bruce Knauft saw, "ritual reinforces and puts beyond argument or question certain highly general propositions about the spiritual and human world…[and] predisposes deep-seated cognitive acceptance and behavioral compliance with these cosmological propositions."13 Ritual thus provides the original ideological glue for societies now in need of such legitimating assistance. Face-to-face solutions become ineffective as social solutions, when communities become complex and already partly stratified. The symbolic is a non-solution; in fact, it is a type of enforcer of relationships and world-views characterized by inequality and estrangement.

Ritual is itself a type of power, an early, pre-state form of politics. Among the Maring people of Papua New Guinea, for instance, the conventions of the ritual cycle specify duties or roles in the absence of explicitly political authorities. Sanctity is therefore a functional alternative to politics; sacred conventions, in effect, govern society.14 Ritualization is clearly an early strategic arena for the incorporation of power relations. Further, warfare can be a sacred undertaking, with militarism promoted ritually, blessing emergent social hierarchy. René Girard proposes that rituals of sacrifice are a necessary counter to endemic aggression and violence in society.15 Something nearer to the reverse is more the case: ritual legitimates and enacts violence. As Lienhardt said of the Dinka herders of Africa, to "make a feast or sacrifice often implies war."16 Ritual does not substitute for war, according to Arkush and Stanish: "warfare in all times and places has ritual elements."17 They see the dichotomy between "ritual battle" and "real war" to be false, summarizing that "archaeologists can expect destructive warfare and ritual to go hand in hand."18

It is not only among Apache groups, for example, that the most ritualized were the most agricultural,19 but that so often ritual has mainly to do with agriculture and warfare, which are often very closely linked.20 It is not uncommon to find warfare itself seen as a means of enhancing the fertility of cultivated ground. Ritual regulation of production and belligerence means that domestication has become the decisive factor. "The emergence of systematic warfare, fortifications, and weapons of destruction," says Hassan, "follows the path of agriculture."21 Ritual evolves into religious systems, the gods come forth, sacrifice is demanded.

"There is no doubt that all the inhabitants of the unseen world are greatly interested in human agriculture," notes anthropologist Verrier Elwin.22 Sacrifice is an excess of domestication, involving domesticated animals and occurring only in agricultural societies. Ritual killing, including human sacrifice, is unknown in non-domesticated cultures.23 Corn in the Americas tells a parallel story. An abrupt increase in corn agriculture brought with it the rapid elaboration of hierarchy and militarization in large parts of both continents.24 One instance among many is the northward intrusion of the Hohokams against the indigenous Ootams25 of southern Arizona, introducing agriculture and organized warfare. By about 1000 A.D. the farming of maize had become dominant throughout the Southwest, complete with year-round ritual observances, priesthoods, social conformity, human sacrifice, and cannibalism. 26 It is hardly an understatement to say, with Kroeber, that with maize agriculture, "all cultural values shifted."27

Horses are another instance of the close connection between domestication and war. First domesticated in the Ukraine around 3000 B.C., their objectification fed militarism directly. Almost from the very beginning they served as machines; most importantly, as war machines.28

The relatively harmless kinds of intergroup fighting described above gave way to systematic killing as domestication led to increasing competition for land.29 The drive for fresh land to be exploited is widely accepted as the leading specific cause of war throughout the course of civilization. Once-dominant feelings of gratitude toward a freely giving nature and knowledge of the crucial interdependence of all life are replaced by the ethos of domestication: humans versus the natural world. This enduring power struggle is the template for the wars it constantly engenders. There was awareness of the price exacted by the paradigm of control, as seen in the widespread practice of symbolic regulation or amelioration of domestication of animals in the early Neolithic. But such gestures do not alter the fundamental dynamic at work, any more than they preserve millions of years' worth of gatherer-hunters' practices that balanced population and subsistence.

Agricultural intensification meant more warfare. Submission to this pattern requires that all aspects of society form an integrated whole from which there is little or no escape. With domestication, division of labor now produces full-time specialists in coercion: for example, definitive evidence shows a soldier class established in the Near East by 4500 B.C. The Jivaro of Amazonia, for millennia a harmonious component of the biotic community, adopted domestication, and "have elaborated blood revenge and warfare to a point where these activities set the tone for the whole society."30 Organized violence becomes pervasive, mandatory, and normative.

Expressions of power are the essence of civilization, with its core principle of patriarchal rule. It may be that systematic male dominance is a by-product of war. The ritual subordination and devaluation of women is certainly advanced by warrior ideology, which increasingly emphasized "male" activities and downplayed women's roles.

The initiation of boys is a ritual designed to produce a certain type of man, an outcome that is not at all guaranteed by mere biological growth. When group cohesion can no longer be taken for granted, symbolic institutions are required—especially to further compliance with pursuits such as warfare. Lemmonier's judgment is that "male initiations... are connected by their very essence with war."31

Polygyny, the practice of one man taking multiple wives, is rare in gatherer-hunter bands, but is the norm for war-making village societies.32 Once again, domestication is the decisive factor. It is no coincidence that circumcision rituals by the Merida people of Madagascar culminated in aggressive military parades.33 There have been instances where women not only hunt but also go into combat (e.g. the Amazons of Dahomey; certain groups in Borneo), but it is clear that gender construction has tended toward a masculinist, militarist direction. With state formation, warriorship was a common requirement of citizenship, excluding women from political life.

War is not only ritualistic, usually with many ceremonial features; it is also a very formalized practice. Like ritual itself, war is performed via strictly prescribed movements, gestures, dress, and forms of speech. Soldiers are identical and structured in a standardized display. The formations of organized violence, with their columns and lines, are like agriculture and its rows: files on a grid.34 Control and discipline are thus served, returning to the theme of ritualized behavior, which is always an increased elaboration of authority.

Exchange between bands in the Paleolithic functioned less as trade (in the economic sense) than as exchange of information. Periodic intergroup gatherings offered marriage opportunities, and insured against resource shortfalls. There was no clear differentiation of social and economic spheres. Similarly, to apply our word "work" is misleading in the absence of production or commodities. While territoriality was part of forager-hunter activity, there is no evidence that it led to war.35

Domestication erects the rigid boundaries of surplus and private property, with concomitant possessiveness, enmity, and struggle for ownership. Even conscious mechanisms aimed at mitigating the new realities cannot remove their ever-present, dynamic force. In The Gift, Mauss portrayed exchange as peacefully resolved war, and war as the result of unsuccessful transactions; he saw the potlatch as a sort of sublimated warfare.36

Before domestication, boundaries were fluid. The freedom to leave one band for another was an integral part of forager life. The more or less forced integration demanded by complex societies provided a staging ground conducive to organized violence. In some places, chiefdoms arose from the suppression of smaller communities' independence. Protopolitical centralization was at times pushed forward in the Americas by tribes desperately trying to confederate to fight European invaders.

Ancient civilizations spread as a result of war, and it can be said that warfare is both a cause of statehood, and its result.

Not much has changed since war was first instituted, rooted in ritual and given full-growth potential by domestication. Marshall Sahlins first pointed out that increased work follows developments in symbolic culture. It's also the case that culture begets war, despite claims to the contrary. After all, the impersonal character of civilization grows with the ascendance of the symbolic. Symbols (e.g. national flags) allow our species to dehumanize our fellow-humans, thus enabling systematic intra-species carnage.

From Green Anarchy #21, Fall/Winter 2005-06. The footnotes and more articles in the !library at www.greenanarchy.org

Photographs From Iraq: January 26 - February 7, 2006

Wednesday, February 08 2006 @ 09:32 AM PST Contributed by: combat The Saddam Show resumes (briefly), U.S. freedomkeepers kill more civilians, American-funded and trained death squads kill more people in the most gruesome way possible, and Iraqi officials are accused of helping the oil sabotage movement. A gunfight between unknown persons in Baghdad wounded at least two people on the 26th. Same day, hundreds of people were released from Abu Ghraib, where they had been "detained" by the U.S. military for days, weeks, or months without charge, and dropped off at a bus station. The trial of old Saddam resumed on the 29th, much to the display of just about all interested parties. His co-defendent, the co-defedent's lawyer, the rest of the defense lawyers, and Saddam himself, respectively, were thrown or had stormed out inside of two hours. Same day in Basra, a reported 1500 people protested at the British consulate, pissed off over arrests the Brits have been making there lately. Again on the 29th, a car bomb detonated in an outdoor market, killing 10 people, in Iskandariyah. Abdul Razzaq al-Na'as, a prominent professor and 'political analyst' became the latest Iraqi academic to be gunned down in Baghdad, also on the 29th. The dilapidated theater of Habbaniyah Royal Air Force Base, presumably near the lake of the same name, in Iraq. Built by the British during their occupation of Iraq that peaked in 1920, it is now occupied by Americans. After their occupation "ended", the Brits held RAFB Habbaniyah at least until the second world war. U.S. soldiers called in an air strike on the Ramadi soccer stadium on the 30th, apparently too afraid to go fight the "insurgents" that were supposedly there themselves. 01 February, in Kabul, Afghanistan. Read this: "In the bombed remains of Kabul's Ministry of Energy, Nasir Salam, aged eight, skips through the mud, his jacket flapping in the wind, exposing his skinny ribs. He is running towards a vast mound of rubbish where children are playing with kites, one of Afghanistan's most popular pastimes, although the kites are composites of plastic bags and greasy lengths of string..." A mortar attack severely damaged one of Iraq's largest oil refineries on February 2nd. Later, the director of the installation and other officials were arrested and accused of planning the attack. On the same day, American helicopters opened fire on a neighborhood in Sadr City after someone took some pot shots at them, killing a young woman bystander, along with the people who (supposedly) shot at it, injuring numerous others and destroying houses. One of the injured from the helicopter attack. Also on the 2nd, a busy day, a U.S. patrol machine-gunned a minibus south of Baghdad, killing two people and wounding seven others, including this man. AP: "Local Iraqi police said the driver followed too close, not respecting patrol rules". At least a dozen people were killed on February 2nd when two carbombs exploded in an east Baghdad neighborhood that is predominately Shia. This picture is from two years ago this month, in Hilla. The guard is keeping watch over $58,800,000 in "reconstruction" money that the Pentagon had handed over to a Robert J. Stein, a man who already had a felony fraud conviction, and who embezzeled at least $2 million of it, and spent much of the rest on loaded contracts. Two Lieutant Colonels have also been indicted in the case.. February 4, American terrorists raided several houses in Ramadi, and kidnapped 10 people. Same day, 14 more bodies - of people who had been arrested by Iraqi police - were found in a drainage ditch in Baghdad. Signs of a grisly death - both chests seem to be sewed shut. Iraqi police restrain a man as he learns of the death of his brother, in Kirkuk, at the hands of "foreign security contractors" (i.e., mercenaries) during a "traffic dispute". Two people, Kurds, were killed - shot dead. February 7, 2006 Protests in Afghanistan, sparked by defamation of Mohammed, are looking more like an uprising. On February 7, hundreds of people attempted to storm the U.S. military installation in Qalat; they burned a few fuel tankers hauling gas to the base before Afghan police began to gun them down, killing three people (according to reports). U.S. soldiers also fired bullets, and "illumination rounds". News: The U.S. is pretty much abandoning all pretense of "rebuilding" Iraq after destroying the country with two invasions, a 12 year blockade, and a disastrous ongoing occupation. Congress has made clear it will not appropriate any more money (more than $18 billion has been doled out already, mostly to U.S. companies, and much of that has gone to provide mercanaries to protect those companies); only 49 of 136 water and sanitation projects are expected to be completed, along with 300 of 425 for electricity infrastructure. Meanwhile, the number of Iraqis living in "poverty", defined as living on less than $1 a day, has increased since the invasion to at least 20% of the population, and more than 4 million people have actually lost access to clean water since the invasion. American soldiers reportedly killed another journalist on January 24. Latest poll of Iraqis: 50% approve of attacks on U.S. troops, over 80% want a withdrawal timetable. Don't put too much stock in those numbers. 11 more people found tortured to death in Baghdad. Oil graft fuels the insurgency? U.S. soldiers reportedlykill two protesters in Afghanistan. PFI needs a new host. If you know of a website that would host this archive, as well as new additions, with FTP access available to the author, please reply here. Or if you have fancy webpage skills and would like to help develop a free-standing site, do the same. Photos from Iraq Archives: January 7 - 26 December 1 2005 - January 5, 2006 November 19 - December 3 November 6 - 17> October 27 - November 4> October 11 - 25 September 23 - October 10 September 5 - 20 August 23 - September 3 August 12 – 22 July 30 - August 10 July 15 – 29 July 1 – 14 June 13 – 28 May 27 – June 12 May 12-25 May 4 – 11 April 26 – May 3 April 13 - 24 March 28—April 10 March 21--27 March 12--20 March 1–11 February 21--28 February 11--20 February 3--10 January 25 – Feb 1 January 15--24 January 3--14 November 23--Dec 6 (2004) November 16 – 24 November 13–18 September 25--Nov 10 September 1-21 (some photos may be broken due to external sites moving images around) selected sources: Cryptome's Iraq-kill-maim.org, which has just started to archive AP photos from Iraq. High quality. Yahoo Iraq photos Getty Images> (type ‘Iraq’ and re-search) Crisis pictures (Defunct) TheNausea.com Dahr Jamail Please reply here if you know where more original Iraq photos, preferably with details, can be obtained.

Tapping the wire U.S. youth lack fervent protests, by Molly Riordan

Feb 9
On Feb. 1, Israeli police attempted to extradite thousands of illegal Jewish protesters from a West Bank settlement. There were several arrests and injuries. As the conflict escalated, a few hundred settlers holed up in nine houses that had been built on Palestinian land and designated for demolition. These protesters were mostly young people, ages 13 to 16.

Protest seems to be an inherent facet of adolescence. Not simply idealism or teen angst, rejection of authority and the status quo is the product of a blossoming, albeit sophomoric public consciousness. This coming-of-age ritual tends to present itself fervently throughout all corners of the world except among fearful U.S. youth.
In November 2005, young North African immigrant protests paralyzed the suburbs of Paris. For 12 days, the world watched and wondered how the young and disempowered could engulf the City of Light with red flames of burning cars.

Visible and volatile youth activism also seems to be a component of Latin-American political culture. In a major recent protest thousands of young Bolivians took to the streets in support of their newly elected president, Evo Morales. Morales is often compared to Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, another political leader with a young support base. In November, both men led thousands of anti-globalization activists, many of them young people, in an “anti-summit” near the convening Summit of the Americas.

Yet in the United States, such fervent youth activism is nowhere to be found. Staged “protests,” even large ones — marches on Washington and Times Square rallies — lack the fiery emotional investment we see in foreign demonstrations.

In addition, demonstrations are often represented as “violent.” In the case of the West Bank protests, demonstrators reportedly threw rocks at the armed militia, who later squelched their effort.

But regardless of how they’re portrayed, such protests simply don’t happen here. When our president, whom less than half of us approve of, spouts anti-terror rhetoric, we do nothing to extinguish it. Perhaps our immobility is not rooted in apathy, but in fear. This, combined with dismantled civil liberties, threatens our relatively peaceful, if not frustrated, political consciousness.

Like our peers around the world, we must be willing to pay a price to exercise our “freedoms.” Daring to voice dissent at the risk of retaliation has the double advantage of expressing concern and exposing an unjust system. Embracing the indignation of youth is the only way to realize its potential to incite change.

British soldiers beat defenceless Iraqi teenagers w/ video

http://astream.com/links/notw/together_300.asx
BRITISH troops are the best in the world—renowned for their professionalism as much as their bravery.
Facing an almost impossible task in Iraq they deserve nothing less than our total support.
But today is a black day for the Army.
The video we reproduce is shameful and justifiably it will send shockwaves round the globe.
Of course we do not publish this disturbing material in haste, but with regret. Yet publish we must.
Those responsible for the events we depict must be identified and brought to book.
Our troops simply cannot be allowed to behave in this way—how-ever bad the provocation.
Conduct
Remember the prophetic words of Lt Col Tim Collins on the eve of battle in Iraq.
Unless their conduct was of the highest, he warned his men, their deeds would follow them down through history, bringing shame on their uniforms and nation.
The winning of hearts and minds has been the central strategy in our Iraq campaign.
That's why there can be no cover-up for those whose savage behaviour has disgraced, and perhaps even endangered, their service colleagues.
Unhappily, this video record of brutality does nothing to help the battle on the troubled streets of Iraq.
But it must NOT be used to devalue the outstanding work being done by the men and women of the armed services. Duties carried out almost entirely with enviable self-control, honour, dignity and valour.
Freedoms
And before extremists seize upon the video for their own twisted agendas we say this:
It is our very way of life—with its cherished freedoms of speech and information—that enables us to reveal such disquieting scenes.
Now a full investigation is under way. We are confident the Ministry of Defence will identify and deal with the culprits.
We believe justice must be done swiftly.
But let us not allow the reckless actions of a rogue group of soldiers to become the legacy of our courageous men and women in Iraq.
That would be a grave injustice, however shocking the images may be.

A Call to all Americans of Goodness and Patriotism: A March on Washington

by Overthrow The Criminal Regime

It's time to really make our presence felt - to force to account those who have attempted to usurp the democracy and principles the American People truly hold dear, and brought us to the edge of Fascism - to bring an end to this Madness, before it brings about our own untimely end.

The time for talk is over. The time for trading messages back and forth in various chatrooms and for venting articulately on thousands of blogs has come to and end. It is now time, in the spirit of Gandhi, for active peaceful resistance to the criminal machinations of the illegal Bush regime. This July 4, in Washington DC, a call upon all concerned and patriotic Americans, liberals, conservatives, libertarians, socialists, grieving parents, brothers, sisters grandparents, war veterans, people of all faiths and backgrounds to come to Washington to march and if necessary peacefully occupy the Whitehouse until such time the crimes of the Bush adminstrations are investigated by the United States Congress. We can take back our country and our future if we have the will to act instead of waiting until it is too late. This is a leaderless resistance, we do not need to organize this, it is simple, all Americans who are tired of the lies and high treasonous crimes of the Bush adminstration need to converge upon Washington DC on July 4 2006 so we can force our Congress to act.

Do We Have To Arrest Bush & Company Ourselves?

Do we have to make citizens’ arrests of Bush & company? We have smoking gun after smoking gun and the criminals in charge of our nation do nothing. It is quite clear they are all (with few exceptions) in on the crimes.

We have TONS of EVIDENCE that both presidential elections have been stolen. That alone should be enough to arrest the people who have taken over our nation via electoral coup! But wait…there is more…lots more! We have EVIDENCE that there was inside involvement in 9/11…nothing happens. We have EVIDENCE that George W. Bush lied about the reasons for invading Iraq, about what he knew about the potential doom of Katrina in advance, and he knew (and may have been involved) about 9/11…nothing happens. We have testimony that Dick Cheney approved the leaking of top secret information…nothing happens. Do we have to arrest these criminals ourselves? Even if all the EVIDENCE is wrong it only proves that this administration is so incompetent that they should be removed from office for our own safety!

Congress is our enemy; the Justice Department has been compromised in the same way that Police Capt. Mark McCluskey was in the movie the Godfather. Our military have been so blinded with propaganda that they don’t realize that they have been mobilized in direct contradiction to the principles for which they believe they are fighting. Our local law enforcement has already taken steps to implement a fascist police state where they view peace groups as the enemy and they enforce the statutes that violate our Constitution. Do we have to carry out justice ourselves? Do we have to revert to the street justice of the wild west? Do we need to form a posse and arrest the criminals ourselves?

Is there not a single institution in our nation that can come in and stop this insanity? Will the people have to rise up and save themselves?

This whole nation has flipped. We are insane. The crimes are so egregious, so outrageous, so vile that people do not believe they are being conducted. They see, smell, feel, hear and taste the evidence yet they still find this reality to difficult to believe! What do we have to do to wake everyone up?

The Bush administration is built on two foundations. 1. Members of PNAC; a group who knew their radical agenda would not be accepted by Americans unless there was, in their own words, “a catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor!” 2. A group of experience criminals (a la Iran Contra), some of which were convicted of crimes related to subverting our political process. I speak of people who had a reason to permit, enable or conduct the events of 9/11 and I speak of people who have decades of experience operating illegal operations at the highest level of government for the purpose of subverting the democratic process. DON’T YOU PEOPLE FIND THIS DISTURBING IN THE LEAST?

Don’t you people realize that the EVIDENCE of all these crimes is right there in front of your face? Forget the media…they are the enemy and they should be first on our list when we clean house! Look at the EVIDENCE! It’s out there! I’ll pay for the handcuffs…where are all the deputies? Think about it!

NOTE TO CRITICS: This BLOG is not here to provide the EVIDENCE. The EVIDENCE is all around us but you can start by looking at the hundreds of pages and tens of thousands of links to the information that BACKS UP MY CLAIMS. You can start by looking at the main site… http://tvnewslies.org

No…this blog does not provide the evidence but it should encourage you to examine the evidence that is available all around us…starting with the main site. So don’t use that in your argument when you slam this post!

http://tvnewslies.org/blog/?p=291

Reclaiming the “Orange Revolution”
by Jordan Thornton
www.dissidentvoice.org
September 18, 2005

Time to Scrap the NPT, by Mike Whitney

“Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.”

-- Article 4 of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

There’s only one country that has ever used nuclear weapons.

There’s only one country that has used nuclear weapons on civilian population centers.

There’s only one country that has ever threatened to use nuclear weapons on non-nuclear countries.

There’s only one country that has over 10,000 nuclear weapons, many of which are on hair-trigger alert for enemies real or imagined.

There’s only one country that has developed a regime of low-yield, bunker-busting, “usable” nuclear weapons, suggesting that they could be legitimately used, not to deter aggression or to stave off an imminent threat, but simply to eliminate the “suspicion” of weapons programs.

There’s only one country that justifies unprovoked aggression (preemption) in its National Security doctrine, allowing it to attack any potential rival to its global dominance.

There’s only one country that currently occupies a Muslim nation of 25 million inhabitants without any proof the latter posed an imminent threat, had weapons systems, or had plans for territorial aggression.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
The purpose of the NPT (Nonproliferation Treaty) is to reduce or eliminate the development of nuclear weapons. If it is to have any meaning at all it must be directed at nations that not only have weapons, but that demonstrate a flagrant disregard for the international laws condemning their use. The IAEA should focus its attention on those states that have a clear record of territorial aggression, military intervention, or who consistently violate United Nations resolutions.

In its present form the IAEA and the NPT are utterly meaningless. Rather than leading the world towards nuclear disarmament, the agency and the treaty have simply ignored the misbehavior of the more powerful nations and humiliated the non-nuclear states with spurious accusations and threatening rhetoric.

The NPT was never intended to be a bludgeon for battering the weaker nations; nor was it set up as a de-facto apartheid system whereby the superpower and its allies can lord above the non-nuclear states coercing them to act according to their diktats. It was designed to curb the development of the world’s most lethal weapons, eventually consigning them to the ash heap.

The political maneuvering surrounding Iran’s “alleged” nuclear weapons programs demonstrates the irrelevance and hypocrisy of the current system. As yet, there is no concrete evidence that Iran is in non-compliance with the terms of the treaty. That hasn’t deterred the Bush administration from intimidating its allies and adversaries alike to assist them in dragging Iran before the Security Council. The Bush administration is asking the Security Council to enforce “additional protocols” which will preclude Iran from enriching uranium for use in electric power plants, a right that is clearly articulated in the NPT.

Article 4 section 2 states:
“All the Parties to the Treaty undertake to facilitate, and have the right to participate in, the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.”

Iran’s determination to enrich uranium is protected under international law and should not be abridged to accommodate the regional ambitions of the United States. By giving up its legal rights Iran would be undermining the fundamental principle that underscores all such agreements and tacitly accepting that the Bush administration alone has the final say-so on issues of global concern.

Why should Iran accept a standard for itself that is different than that for every other signatory of the NPT?

No nation should willingly accept being branded as a pariah without evidence of wrongdoing.

The fact that the United States is occupying the country next door and has yet to provide a coherent justification for the invasion is a poignant reminder of the irrelevance of both the United Nations and the IAEA. The two organizations have remained resolutely silent in the face of the massive incidents of human rights abuses, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. While Iran is roundly condemned by heads-of-state and the corporate media, the greatest crime of our generation continues into its third year without a word of reproach from the world body. The international community simply looks away in fear.

This alone should illustrate the ineffectiveness of the institutions that are designed to keep the peace.

If the ruling body at the IAEA is to have any relevance, it must direct its attention to the real threats of nuclear proliferation posed by those nations that consider nuclear weapons a privilege that should be limited to a certain group of elite states. If the IAEA cannot perform its duties in a neutral manner that respects the rights of all nations equally, it should disband and abolish the NPT without delay.

If the IAEA is uncertain about the real threats to regional peace, they should take note of the many recent polls that invariably list the same belligerent nations as the leading offenders. It is these countries that should be scrutinized most carefully.

It is not the purview of the IAEA to keep the weaker nations out of the nuclear club. That simply enables the stronger states to bully their enemies with threats of using their WMD. In fact, it’s plain to see that the current disparity in military power has created a perilous imbalance between nations that is rapidly spreading war throughout the world.

One only has to look at Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq or Kosovo to see the glaring failures of the unipolar model; where the military prowess of one country is so great it is emboldened to resolve its differences through conflagration. The NPT was not created to facilitate the imperial ambitions of the superpower, but to protect the innocent from the increasing likelihood of nuclear holocaust.

If the NPT cannot decrease the threat of nuclear war from conspicuously hostile nations, it should be abandoned altogether.

Posted by: P'd Off in New York at February 12, 2006 10:20 AM

US prepares military blitz against Iran's nuclear sites
By Philip Sherwell in Washington

(Filed: 12/02/2006)

Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites as a "last resort" to block Teheran's efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

Central Command and Strategic Command planners are identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation, the Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

They are reporting to the office of Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, as America updates plans for action if the diplomatic offensive fails to thwart the Islamic republic's nuclear bomb ambitions. Teheran claims that it is developing only a civilian energy programme.

"This is more than just the standard military contingency assessment," said a senior Pentagon adviser. "This has taken on much greater urgency in recent months."

The prospect of military action could put Washington at odds with Britain which fears that an attack would spark violence across the Middle East, reprisals in the West and may not cripple Teheran's nuclear programme. But the steady flow of disclosures about Iran's secret nuclear operations and the virulent anti-Israeli threats of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has prompted the fresh assessment of military options by Washington. The most likely strategy would involve aerial bombardment by long-distance B2 bombers, each armed with up to 40,000lb of precision weapons, including the latest bunker-busting devices. They would fly from bases in Missouri with mid-air refuelling.

The Bush administration has recently announced plans to add conventional ballistic missiles to the armoury of its nuclear Trident submarines within the next two years. If ready in time, they would also form part of the plan of attack.

Teheran has dispersed its nuclear plants, burying some deep underground, and has recently increased its air defences, but Pentagon planners believe that the raids could seriously set back Iran's nuclear programme.

Iran factfile

Iran was last weekend reported to the United Nations Security Council by the International Atomic Energy Agency for its banned nuclear activities. Teheran reacted by announcing that it would resume full-scale uranium enrichment - producing material that could arm nuclear devices.

The White House says that it wants a diplomatic solution to the stand-off, but President George W Bush has refused to rule out military action and reaffirmed last weekend that Iran's nuclear ambitions "will not be tolerated".

Sen John McCain, the Republican front-runner to succeed Mr Bush in 2008, has advocated military strikes as a last resort. He said recently: "There is only only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option and that is a nuclear-armed Iran."

Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat, has made the same case and Mr Bush is expected to be faced by the decision within two years.

By then, Iran will be close to acquiring the knowledge to make an atomic bomb, although the construction will take longer. The President will not want to be seen as leaving the White House having allowed Iran's ayatollahs to go atomic.

In Teheran yesterday, crowds celebrating the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution chanted "Nuclear technology is our inalienable right" and cheered Mr Ahmadinejad when he said that Iran may reconsider membership of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

He was defiant over possible economic sanctions.

EconomicEpiphany.blogspot.com

Where has all the money gone?

By Ed Harriman

07/07/05 "LRB" -- -- On 12 April 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Erbil in northern Iraq handed over $1.5 billion in cash to a local courier. The money, fresh $100 bills shrink-wrapped on pallets, which filled three Blackhawk helicopters, came from oil sales under the UN’s Oil for Food Programme, and had been entrusted by the UN Security Council to the Americans to be spent on behalf of the Iraqi people. The CPA didn’t properly check out the courier before handing over the cash, and, as a result, according to an audit report by the CPA’s inspector general, ‘there was an increased risk of the loss or theft of the cash.’ Paul Bremer, the American pro-consul in Baghdad until June last year, kept a slush fund of nearly $600 million cash for which there is no paperwork: $200 million of this was kept in a room in one of Saddam’s former palaces, and the US soldier in charge used to keep the key to the room in his backpack, which he left on his desk when he popped out for lunch. Again, this is Iraqi money, not US funds.

The ‘reconstruction’ of Iraq is the largest American-led occupation programme since the Marshall Plan. But there is a difference: the US government funded the Marshall Plan whereas Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer have made sure that the reconstruction of Iraq is paid for by the ‘liberated’ country, by the Iraqis themselves. There was $6 billion left over from the UN Oil for Food Programme, as well as sequestered and frozen assets, and revenue from resumed oil exports (at least $10 billion in the year following the invasion). Under Security Council Resolution 1483, passed on 22 May 2003, all of these funds were transferred into a new account held at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, called the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), so that they might be spent by the CPA ‘in a transparent manner . . . for the benefit of the Iraqi people’. Congress, it’s true, voted to spend $18.4 billion of US taxpayers’ money on the redevelopment of Iraq. But by 28 June last year, when Bremer left Baghdad two days early to avoid possible attack on the way to the airport, his CPA had spent up to $20 billion of Iraqi money, compared to $300 million of US funds.

The ‘financial irregularities’ described in audit reports carried out by agencies of the American government and auditors working for the international community collectively give a detailed insight into the mentality of the American occupation authorities and the way they operated, handing out truckloads of dollars for which neither they nor the recipients felt any need to be accountable. The auditors have so far referred more than a hundred contracts, involving billions of dollars paid to American personnel and corporations, for investigation and possible criminal prosecution. They have also discovered that $8.8 billion that passed through the new Iraqi government ministries in Baghdad while Bremer was in charge is unaccounted for, with little prospect of finding out where it went. A further $3.4 billion earmarked by Congress for Iraqi development has since been siphoned off to finance ‘security’.

That audit reports were commissioned at all owes a lot to Henry Waxman, a Democrat and ranking minority member of the House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform. Waxman voted in favour of the invasion of Iraq. But since the war he’s been demanding that the Bush administration account for its cost. Within six months of the invasion, Waxman’s committee had evidence that the Texas-based Halliburton corporation was being grossly overpaid by the American occupation authorities for the petrol it was importing into Iraq from Kuwait, at a profit of more than $150 million. Waxman and his assistants found that Halliburton was charging $2.64 a gallon for petrol for Iraqi civilians, while American forces were importing the same fuel for $1.57 a gallon.

Halliburton’s chairman, David Lesar, who took over from Dick Cheney in July 2000, robustly defended his firm. But Waxman raised another question: if Halliburton was being allowed to rip off the Iraqi people, was the Bush administration allowing it to milk the US government as well? Waxman’s committee instructed Congress’s General Accountability Office to look into Halliburton’s biggest contract in Iraq: providing virtually all back-up facilities – from meals to laundry soap – to American forces. LOGCAP (Logistics Civil Augmentation Programme) contracts like this one are a product of the new ‘slimmed down’ American military, the quartermaster’s equivalent of Rumsfeld’s ‘invasion lite’. Rather than have uniformed troops peel potatoes and scrub floors, base support services have been privatised and contracted out so that, the idea goes, soldiers can get on with the fighting. The contracts are paid on a cost-plus basis, which allows the contractor to charge for what it has spent, then add on a profit. LOGCAP contracts have not been put out to tender, but rather awarded to a few US firms, the largest being Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root.

The GAO report of July 2004 found that in the first nine months of the occupation, KBR was allowed a free hand in Iraq: a free hand, for example, to bill the Pentagon without worrying about spending limits or management oversight or paperwork. Millions of dollars’ worth of new equipment disappeared. KBR charged $73 million for motor caravans to house the 101st Airborne Division, twice as much as the army said it would cost to build barracks itself; KBR charged $88 million for three million meals for US troops that were never served. The GAO calculated that the army could have saved $31 million a year simply by doing business directly with the catering firms that KBR hired. In June 2004, the GAO continued, ‘by eliminating the use of LOGCAP and making the LOGCAP subcontractor the prime contractor, the command reduced meal costs by 43 per cent without a loss of service or quality.’

The GAO report makes clear that the Americans had given little thought as to how they might prevent looting and rebuild Iraqi society. They hadn’t even planned how they were going to provision the US forces staying on in Iraq: ‘the Army Central Command did not develop plans to use the [KBR] contract to support its military forces in Iraq until May 2003’ – a month after Saddam fell. Even then, this contract – with an estimated value of $3.894 billion – did not adequately provide for dining facilities, pest control, laundry services, morale, welfare and recreation, troop transportation or combat support services at the American bases hastily being built across Iraq. Stung by Waxman’s revelations about Halliburton’s petrol profiteering, and realising that KBR’s costs were spiralling out of control (LOGCAP costs in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan rose from a projected yearly total of $5.8 billion in September 2003 to $8.6 billion in January 2004), the army vice chief of staff ‘asked units to control costs and look for alternatives to the LOGCAP contract’. This was the first admission that the Pentagon could not afford the occupation on top of the war.

At the same time, the Pentagon’s own auditors, the Defense Contracts Audit Agency, went to Houston to have a look at KBR’s books. They were not happy with what they found:

Our examination disclosed several deficiencies in KBR’s billing system resulting in billings to the government that are not prepared in accordance with applicable laws and regulations and contract terms. We have also found system deficiencies resulting in material invoicing misstatements that are not prevented, detected and/or corrected in a timely manner.

They also found that ‘KBR also does not monitor the ongoing physical progress of subcontracts or the related costs and billings.’ When the auditors asked to see the files of payments to subcontractors to back up the invoices KBR submitted to the government, there weren’t any: ‘We found no such documents included in KBR’s subcontract files, nor did we find any log of subcontractor payments.’ So how did KBR work out its monthly invoices to the government for its whopping $3.9 billion contract? ‘The explanation begins with the costs on a spreadsheet with no indication of where or how these costs are accumulated.’ The auditors also wanted to know what happened to the money the government had paid for those three million non-existent meals:

Despite repeated requests over two months, KBR has not been able to provide an adequate explanation or adequate documentation for the payments to any DFAC [dining-hall] subcontractors. The limited documentation that has been provided shows, for example, that KBR has added ‘overage’ factors of 10 to 35 per cent to each bill for one of the subcontractors. We still do not have an adequate explanation of the ‘overage’ factor.

KBR’s response has been to tough it out. The company wrote to the auditors saying that its position regarding the meals ‘had been misquoted as well as misinterpreted’. The auditors, the corporation said, knew full well that KBR had ‘established a Tiger Team that is actively researching and analysing the facts and circumstances surrounding each of its DFAC subcontracts’. ‘Tiger Teams’ are in-house investigative units. KBR’s Tiger Team stayed at the five-star Kuwait Kempinski Hotel, where its members ran up a bill of more than $1 million. This outraged the army, whose troops were sleeping in tents at a cost of $1.39 a day. The army asked the Tiger Team to move into tents. It refused. As to how the Tiger Team ‘actively researched and analysed the facts’, we have the sworn testimony that a KBR employee gave to Congressman Waxman’s committee: ‘The Tiger Team looked at subcontracts with no invoice and no confirmation that the products contracted for were being used. Instead of investigating further, they would recommend extending the subcontract.’

The Pentagon auditors asked to see ‘evidence that KBR’s internal audit department is functionally and organisationally independent and sufficiently removed from management to ensure that it can conduct audits objectively and can report its findings, opinions and conclusions without fear of reprisal.’ KBR locked them out of its audit department. The auditors then asked who did KBR’s audits. Halliburton, KBR wrote back. The Pentagon auditors said that from then on KBR would have to submit all bills to them ‘for provisional approval prior to submission for payment’. Tough talk. But, despite all the threats to withhold payment, and with several lawsuits pending, KBR and Halliburton have now been paid more than $10 billion for quartermastering US forces in Iraq.

One of KBR’s contracts was for transporting supplies between American bases. Fleets of new Mercedes Benz trucks, costing $85,000 each, travelled up and down Iraq’s central highways every day, accompanied by armed US military escorts. If there were no goods to transport, KBR dispatched empty lorries anyway, and billed accordingly. The lorries didn’t carry replacement air and oil filters, essential when driving in the desert. They didn’t even carry spare tyres. If one broke down, it was abandoned and destroyed so no one else could use it, and left burning by the roadside. For fear of ambush, KBR drivers were told not to slow down. ‘The truck in front of the one I was riding ran a car with an Iraqi family of four off the road,’ a KBR employee told Waxman’s committee. ‘My driver said that was normal.’

American profligacy with Iraqi money has been, if anything, even worse. According to the CPA’s own rules, the authority ‘was expected to manage Iraqi funds in a transparent manner that fully met the CPA’s obligations under international law including Security Council Resolution 1483’. Despite repeated efforts, however, it was only in October 2003, six months after the fall of Saddam, that an International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB), with representatives from the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, was established to provide independent, international financial oversight of the CPA’s spending.

The IAMB then spent months trying to find auditors acceptable to the US. The Bahrain office of KPMG was finally appointed in April 2004. It was stonewalled. ‘KPMG has encountered resistance from CPA staff regarding the submission of information required to complete our procedures,’ they wrote in an interim report. ‘Staff have indicated . . . that co-operation with KPMG’s undertakings is given a low priority.’ KPMG had one meeting at the Iraqi Ministry of Finance; meetings at all the other ministries were repeatedly postponed. The auditors even had trouble getting passes for the Green Zone.

There was a good reason for the Americans to stall. At the end of June 2004, the CPA would be disbanded and Bremer would leave Iraq. The Bush administration wasn’t going to allow independent auditors to be in a position to publish a report into the financial propriety of its Iraqi administration while Bremer was still answerable to the press. The report was published in July. The auditors found that the CPA hadn’t kept accounts for the hundreds of millions of dollars of cash in its vault, had awarded contracts worth billions of dollars to American firms without tender, and had no idea what was happening to the money from the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) which was being spent by the interim Iraqi government ministries.

An Iraqi hospital administrator told me that, as he was about to sign a contract, the American army officer representing the CPA had crossed out the original price and doubled it. The Iraqi protested that the original price was enough. The American officer explained that the increase (more than $1 million) was his retirement package. Iraqis who were close to the Americans, had access to the Green Zone, or held prominent posts in the new government ministries, were also in a position to benefit enormously. Iraqi businessmen complain endlessly that they had to offer substantial bribes to Iraqi middlemen just to be allowed to bid for CPA contracts. Iraqi ministers’ relatives got top jobs and fat contracts.

Hard evidence comes from a further series of audits and reports carried out by the office of the CPA’s own inspector general (CPA-IG). Set up in January 2004, it reported to Congress. Its auditors, accountants and criminal investigators often found themselves sitting alone at cafeteria tables in the Green Zone, shunned by their compatriots. Their audit, published in July 2004, found that the American contracts officers in the CPA and the Iraqi ministries ‘did not ensure that . . . contract files contained all the required documents, a fair and reasonable price was paid for the services received, contractors were capable of meeting delivery schedules, or that contractors were paid in accordance with contract requirements’.

Pilfering was rife. Millions of dollars in cash went missing from the Iraqi Central Bank. Between $11 million and $26 million worth of Iraqi property sequestered by the CPA was unaccounted for. The payroll was padded with hundreds of ghost employees. Millions of dollars were paid to contractors for phantom work: $3,379,505 was billed, for example, for ‘personnel not in the field performing work’ and ‘other improper charges’ on a single oil pipeline repair contract. An Iraqi sports coach was paid $40,000 by the CPA. He gave it to a friend who gambled it away then wrote it off as a legitimate loss. ‘A complainant alleged that Iraqi Airlines was sold at a reduced price to an influential family with ties to the former regime. The investigation revealed that Iraqi Airlines was essentially dissolved, and there was no record of the transaction.’ Most of the 69 criminal investigations the CPA-IG instigated related to alleged ‘theft, fraud, waste, assault and extortion’. It also investigated ‘a number of other cases that, because of their sensitivity, cannot be included in this report’. At around this time, 19 billion new Iraqi dinars, worth about £6.5 million, were found on a plane in Lebanon which had been sent there by the American-appointed Iraqi interior minister.

The IAMB, meanwhile, discovered that Iraqi oil exports were unmetered. Neither the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organisation nor the American authorities could give a satisfactory explanation for this. ‘The only reason you wouldn’t monitor them is if you don’t want anyone else to know how much is going through,’ one petroleum executive told me. Officially, Iraq exported oil worth $10 billion in the first year of the American occupation. Christian Aid has estimated that oil worth up to an additional $4 billion may also have been exported and is unaccounted for. If this is correct, it would have created an off the books slush fund that both the Americans and their Iraqi allies could use with impunity to cover expenditures they would rather keep secret – among them the occupation costs, which were rising far beyond what the Bush administration could comfortably admit to Congress and the international community.

America’s situation in Iraq took a turn for the worse in April 2004, with the uprisings in Najaf and Fallujah, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and mass defections from the new Iraqi security forces. ‘At the beginning of April,’ one of the audits says, ‘the Iraqi National Guard force held steady at around 32,000 personnel. Between 9 and 16 April this number dropped to a low of 17,500.’ As for the police, ‘the Iraqi Ministry of Interior has decided to reduce the number of police officers to 89,000’ – from 120,000 – ‘by trimming from its rolls those who have proved to be unsuitable.’ At the same time, ‘recent attacks on the pipelines reduced exports in April to an average of 1.7 million barrels per day and 1.4 million barrels per day in May. The total could possibly be lower in June.’ That’s a million barrels per day fewer than under Saddam. Across Iraq, hospitals and schools were derelict, electricity was intermittent, and water supplies were polluted.

The American response to the militant insurgency and to the loss of their moral credentials at Abu Ghraib was a ‘hearts and minds’ campaign. Law-abiding Iraqis were to be shown respect and given buckets of money, while Bremer and the CPA prepared to hand over the management of Iraq to an interim government picked by the Americans. KBR’s lorry drivers were told not to run Iraqis off the road. And millions of dollars in cash – most of it Iraqi money – were handed out by American commanders in local communities across Iraq in an attempt to buy friends. ‘The Commanders’ Emergency Reconstruction Programme continues to be a very effective programme . . . which has built trust and support for the United States at grass roots level,’ the CPA-IG report said. ‘As of 19 June 2004, the local commanders have spent $364.6 million . . . on over 27,600 small projects . . . repairing and refurbishing water and sewer lines, cleaning up highways by removing waste and debris, transporting water to remote villages, purchasing equipment for local police stations, upgrading schools and clinics, purchasing school supplies, removing ordnance from public spaces . . .’ It was too little too late. With the concentration on big infrastructure projects and contracts for American corporate cronies and Iraqi businessmen ‘friends’, there had been little for ordinary Iraqis to benefit from or to take part in. Rumsfeld knew by the beginning of 2004 that his and Bremer’s management was in deep trouble. ‘Iraqis are puzzled; they truly don’t know what the US really intends for them. We haven’t communicated well. The “story” has not been believed,’ a Personnel Assessment Team reported to Rumsfeld on 11 February 2004. ‘We have in essence a pick-up organisation in place to design and execute the most demanding transformation in recent history.’

Read more at LINK

The funding of this war has a direct effect on our economy. Companies directly and indirectly involved in the Iraq war are making money and this shows on our Stock exchange, however, much of this money made by these corporations do not help the Iraqis nor the Americans.

And when it is stolen....everyone loses out except the thieves. And the thieves can have a friendly face if you are naieve!!

posted by toniD @ 2/12/2006 06:58:00 AM

DocuTicker.com

Docuticker is a daily update of new reports from government agencies, ngo's, think tanks, and other groups. DocuTicker is compiled by the librarians who bring you ResourceShelf.com.

Budget of the United States Government Fiscal Year 2007

Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists, and Full Text
Budget--United States--FY 2007
Source: OMB, White House (via ResourceShelf.com)
Just Released, Budget of the United States Government Fiscal Year 2007
See Also:
+ Analytical Perspectives, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2007 (PDF)
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+ Historical Tables, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2007 (PDF)
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+ Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2007—Appendix

USGovSucks.blogspot.com

The Military-Industrial-Corruption Complex: Political Science 101, by Butler Shaffer

If I were the chairman of a college political science department, there are two things I would immediately do: (1) drop the word “science,” as it does not apply to what is essentially a normative field of study; and (2) have the introductory course in this department be titled “Follow the Money.” “Constitutional government,” “checks and balances,” “democratic systems,” “political theory,” and other traditional course offerings, have no bearing on inquiries into the nature of modern government.

My wife and I watched the film Why We Fight, a wonderful exposé of the military-industrial-congressional complex. With Chalmers Johnson and Karen Kwiatkowski providing clear focus, the present War system is revealed for what it is: a racket for siphoning money from the pockets of gullible people willing to be convinced of the presence of ever-evolving bogeymen who pose a never-ending threat to their lives. These “threats” can, of course, only be repulsed by a strong government that (a) has sufficient police powers to detect their presence both at home and abroad, and (b) can generate weapons systems to “protect” Americans – and their hot tubs – from attack by these sinister forces. Boobus Americanus – like its cousin Boobus Britannia and other close relatives – has become so conditioned to both the concocted threats of the ogre du jour and to an omnipotent and omnipresent government scarecrow, that it is willing to surrender, without question, its wealth and liberty for the sake of “protection.”

To demonstrate the effectiveness of this shakedown racket, look at the Bush administration’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2007: $2.8 trillion in government spending, with $439 billion to be tossed into the national defense trough. This budget is twenty-eight times greater than the $99.9 billion budget proposed by President Kennedy, who did not want to be the first president to have a $100 billion budget!

Unfortunately, the budget will whiz through the collective sinecure of Congress with no substantial objection. The defense swindle has – by intention – metastasized into every state, thus assuring the support of senators and congressmen who do not wish to incur the wrath of “what have you done for me lately?” voters. There will, of course, be the token objections to fringe government programs (e.g., National Endowment for the Arts, Public Broadcasting, etc.) about which a few millions of dollars will be deleted in order to allow the congressional rubber-stamps to bleat to their constituents about “toughness” on government spending.

The conservatives will love this budget, as it promises major increases in defense spending while, at the same time, proposing cuts in Medicare and other welfare, foreign aid, and various other non-defense programs. I can imagine many conservative legislators urging even greater amounts for military spending, as if to confirm their super-patriotism. Those who resist such legal levels of looting – which will cost each American over $9,000 a year, or $36,000 for a family of four – will doubtless be condemned by Fox News tub-thumpers for being “terrorist sympathizers.”

The liberals will find no objections to such runaway spending, seeing it as the opportunity to raise the ante for programs they hope to shove down the throats of Americans upon their return to power.

For every Ron Paul struggling to revive even a modicum of integrity to a corrupt system, there will be one hundred congressional pimps working to insure their corporate clientele favored rooms in the beltway brothel. With numerous untold stories of military-industrial corruption inviting their inquiries, members of the established media can be counted upon to supply diversions. Like the purple smoke or multi-colored strings of silk used by magicians to distract their audiences, television newscasts will continue their in-depth reporting on missing teenagers and bridegrooms; tunnels used to smuggle marijuana into the United States from Mexico; unsolved murders; and chickens that can play the xylophone. For truths of a more significant nature, you must turn to either the Internet or documentary film-makers.

It has been suggested, by some, that political systems grew out of piracy, with brigands – tired of having to chase the lootees – establishing permanent ports through which tradesmen would have to pass and pay fees. It should be evident to any rational mind that, contrary to the view that governments were instituted to protect property, wealth preceded political agencies; otherwise there would have been nothing to steal or control.

The state exists for one purpose only: to forcibly extract from people money that could not have been obtained in the marketplace. Coercive power is desired for no greater end than to exercise decision-making authority over others concerning money, and the resources that can be exploited for monetary benefit. References to “freedom,” “democracy,” “constitutional principles,” the “proletariat,” the “general welfare,” “love of country,” the “fatherland,” “terrorism,” or any of an endless supply of bromides, are made for precisely the same reasons that underlie television commercials: to get you to part with your money. Beer ads promise you the “good life;” automobile commercials suggest that members of the opposite sex will fall in love with you if you are driving the new Belchfire 99X; even Viagra is peddled on behalf of the happiness of women!

If marijuana did not grow in the wild, but could be effectively monopolized by the pharmaceutical companies, do you think it would be legally opposed as a “controlled substance?” In much the same way that Donald Rumsfeld changed from being Saddam Hussein’s close buddy to his nemesis, can’t you imagine today’s self-righteous anti-drug warriors – at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry – shifting gears to plead for the rights of the desperately ill who need marijuana to extend their lives?

Steve Kubby – who suffers from adrenal cancer – now sits in a jail awaiting trial, deprived of the marijuana which, alone, can extend his life. What conservative voices – for whom “right-to-life” is their middle name – have demanded that the state stop depriving him of a substance that nature, itself, has provided? What liberals – who champion “choice” whenever it serves their programs – have arisen on behalf of this man whose only wrong was to have contracted cancer? But if the drug companies were able to control marijuana’s supply – and thus able to profit enormously from the sick and dying – don’t you think his case would be pleaded in both Congress and the media on behalf of “drug policy reform?”

I recall, not so many decades ago, the case that Republicans and other conservatives made to reform the inefficiencies of government by incorporating business principles into government agencies and programs. The assumption was that businessmen, accustomed to the rigors of marketplace competition, could weed wasteful practices from government. The notion was an absurd one, as any first-year student of economics could confirm: the state operates on the basis of commands, not transactions freely negotiated with market participants.

But the institutionalization of absurdity is what government is all about, and thus has been created the military-industrial-congressional-mercantilist complex of which President Eisenhower warned in his farewell address in 1962. Taxpayers now routinely fund the unwanted costs of doing business: constructing sports stadiums, providing research and development funding, and paying for the bankrupt retirement programs of many corporations. Private corporations now run government schools and other prisons, and even conduct wars.

Even many libertarians – who ought to have known better – have been suckered into the “privatization” racket. Privately owned schools, roads, parks, fire departments, security systems, and other alternatives to government systems, are to be encouraged and praised. But in the name of “privatization,” corporations have been brought in to manage state programs. To flesh out what this “partnership” between the business system and government entails, take a look at what the mainstream media has become: a platform from which government agencies propagandize the public in the name of “news.” Far too many print and broadcast outlets have become like RCA-Victor’s dog, who sits before a megaphone listening to “his master’s voice.”

If you would like further understanding of how Americans have the best government that money can buy, I urge you to see the Why We Fight film. On the other hand, if you prefer a mindset in which “never is heard a discouraging word,” turn your television to either CNN or Fox News: they might provide you with an update on the missing teenager on Aruba!

AbramoffJournal.blogspot.com - by ToniD and Willow

Detailing the shenanigans of the Republican Party

The Most Obscene Profits in American History - Bush's Energy Escapades, by Ralph Nader

DIt was, to use Yogi Berra's phrase-déjà vu all over again. George W. Bush's energy program in his State of the Union speech echoed the many similar promises made by his presidential predecessors going back to Ronald Reagan. Promises that were either vague or if specific, distant from realization. What irony to pledge to become energy independent, as we become ever more dependent on imported oil-imports are now reaching 60 percent of total US oil consumption.

"America is addicted to oil," exclaimed the President. No one more so than the President himself, a former oil industry executive who appointed over three dozen oil men like himself to high posts in his Administration-a regime marinated in oil.

The results have been, to say the least, oily. Talk as he has started to do about renewable forms of energy, his actions speak louder. Last year, Bush's energy bill passed with billions of dollars in new subsidies for gas and oil, as if a staggering price for $60 or $70 a barrel is not enough to provide incentives to profit-glutted oil companies to produce.

Before reaching his desk, Bush made sure that some of the legislation's provisions were cut out. The renewable portfolio standard that was to require electric companies to obtain a certain percentage of their fuel from renewable sources was dropped. Bush also rejected an "oil savings amendment" to reduce oil use. And, of course, he adamantly refused to support any higher federal standards for motor vehicle fuel efficiency which has reached its lowest dismal level since 1980. Going backward into the future-GM style!

Moreover, he never uses the onset of global warming as a reason for more fuel efficient vehicles-even as Alaska melts down in ice and permafrost more and more each year.

Unwilling to push the auto companies, presently subsidized by your tax dollars in a boondoggle joint program with Uncle Sam, George W. Bush turns his back on what specialists inside and outside the industry know. Namely, that, as MIT's Technology Review documented in November 2002, "if it chose to, Detroit could manufacture a 40-mpg SUV by the end of the decade." Using existing or readily available technology, cars could go to an average of 46 mpg, that is, from the present level of about 21 mpg.

Imagine if the auto companies started to move, during the first oil crises in the mid-Seventies. Your old vehicle would have reached the above-noted levels of efficiency, as the then U. S. Department of Transportation predicted could be the case.

Nice and warm in the White House, Mr. Bush did not throw his powerful lobbying crew late last year against the pouting reduction of the already inadequate low-income home fuel assistance program for impoverished Americans. This reduction occurred in retaliation to the Senate's defeat of Senator Ted Stevens' (Rep. Alaska) demand to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Drained long ago of any empathy, Bush did not even react to the stupendous profit reports last week by the big oil companies, led by Exxon Mobil corporation's $10.71 billion for the fourth quarter of 2005 and $36.13 billion for the entire year.

Mind you, Exxon did not make this profit through its own innovation or bold marketing expertise. It received an undeserved windfall born of cartel-determined supplies and growing demand, the customary special tax breaks, expanding taxpayer subsidies from Washington, and the gas guzzling motor vehicles that the stubborn auto giants deliver to the marketplace.

With his big business uber-allies mentality, Mr. Bush would not even go along with his fellow Republican, Senator Chuck Grassley's written request last November to the oil and gas moguls that they give 10 percent of their profits to help low-income Americans get through a cold winter.

Americans who do not qualify for low-income assistance are finding their budgets busted. David Harb of Redford, Michigan writes as a 58 year-old adult who stays home to take care of his elderly mother fulltime: "Regarding the prices of oil, natural gas and home heating costs, I am shocked, sickened & disgusted by their continually escalating utility bills that have gone through the roof and are driving the citizens, voters, taxpayers and homeowners of this state into bankruptcy and the poorhouse."

There needs to be a consumer uprising, with each gouged citizen pouring their demands on their members of Congress, on talk radio shows, newspaper editors and talking it up in their neighborhood. Nothing is faster and more credible than word of mouth between friends and relatives. At least make the oil giants give some of it back while the winter is here.

For more information, visit www.USPIRG.org.

Democrats.com Offers $1,000 Reward to Any Reporter Who Will Ask Follow-Up Question to Bush

The adamant denials by Blair and Bush were widely reported by the White House press corps. But a new "White House Memo," reported in the British media on Feb. 2, 2006, has just exposed both responses as lies.

Democrats.com is now offering $1,000 to any reporter who will directly ask Bush this question: "How can you claim you were trying to avoid war through the UN, when you told Prime Minister Blair on Jan. 31, 2003, that if you failed to get a resolution from the UN authorizing war, 'military action would follow anyway'?"

Read more:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/7594

Pressure the media to do its job: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/whitehousememo

THE SECRET TEAM: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World, by Leroy Fletcher Prouty

March 1997:

This 1997 edition of the book is available in its entirety on Len Osanic's rip-roaring 1997 CD-ROM, The Collected Works of Col. L. Fletcher Prouty along with ~600MB of 70+ articles, 100 images, 30 topics and 6 hours of audio material. Read all about it and how to order your own copy by going to: www.prouty.org

Here on ratical we will be hooking up the rest of the book in HTML and ASCII formats over the next 7 months. Each month will see the following chapters come online:

May: Chapters 3-6
June: Chapters 7-10
July: Chapters 11-15
August: Chapters 16-19
September: Chapters 20-23
October: Appendices I-III

The online copy of this book was made possible by the efforts and generosity of Len Osanic. We thank him for his support. Be sure to check out the details on the complete CD if you are interested in this book. There is a great deal to recommend it for anyone who wants to study the writings, interviews and perceptions of Colonel Prouty. The significance of Prouty's level and depth of first-hand experience of World War II and direct participation in the ensuing birth and rise of the National Security State is provided in great detail on The Collected Works CD.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Author's Note

Preface

Preface to the Second Edition

Preface: "THE SECRET TEAM II" 1997

PART I THE SECRET TEAM

Chapter 1 The "Secret Team" -- the Real Power Structure

Chapter 2 The Nature of Secret Team Activity: A Cuban Case Study

PART II THE CIA: HOW IT RUNS

Chapter 3 An Overview of the CIA

Section I. Intelligence versus Secret Operations

Section II. Origins of the Agency and
the Seeds of Secret Operations

Section III. A Simple Coup d'État to a Global Mechanism

Chapter 4 From the Word of the Law to the Interpretation:
President Kennedy Attempts to Put the CIA Under Control

Chapter 5 "Defense" as a National Military Philosophy,
the Natural Prey of the Intelligence Community

Chapter 6 "It Shall Be the Duty of the Agency: To Advise, to Coordinate,
to Correlate and Evaluate and Disseminate
and to Perform Services of Common Concern . . ."

Coordination of Intelligence -- the
Major Assigned Role of the CIA

Correlation, Evaluation and Dissemination of
Intelligence: Heart of the Profession

Services of Common Concern: An Attempt at Efficiency

Chapter 7 From the Pines of Maine to the Birches of Russia:
The Nature of Clandestine Operations

Chapter 8 CIA: "The Cover Story" Intelligence Agency
and the Real-Life Clandestine Operator

Chapter 9 The Coincidence of Crises

Chapter 10 The Dulles-Jackson-Correa Report in Action

PART III THE CIA: HOW IT IS ORGANIZED

Chapter 11 The Dulles Era Begins

Chapter 12 Personnel: The Chameleon Game

Chapter 13 Communications: The Web of the World

Chapter 14 Transportation: Anywhere in the World -- Now

Chapter 15 Logistics by Miracle

PART IV THE CIA: SOME EXAMPLES
THROUGHOUT THE WORLD

Chapter 16 Cold War: The Pyrrhic Gambit

Chapter 17 Mission Astray, Soviet Gamesmanship

Chapter 18 Defense, Containment, and Anti-Communism

Chapter 19 The New Doctrine: Special Forces and
the Penetration of the Mutual Security Program

Chapter 20 Khrushchev's Challenge: The U-2 Dilemma

Chapter 21 A Time of Covert Action: U-2 to Kennedy Inaugural

Chapter 22 Camelot: From the Bay of Pigs to Dallas, Texas

Chapter 23 Five Presidents: "Nightmares We Inherited"

APPENDICES:

I. Definition of Special Operations

II. Powers and Duties of the CIA

III. Training Under the Mutual Security Program

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Halliburton Detention Camps For Political Subversives

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | February 1 2006

In another shining example of modern day corporate fascism, it was announced recently that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root had been awarded a $385 million dollar contract by Homeland Security to construct detention and processing facilities in the event of a national emergency.

The language of the preamble to the agreement veils the program with talk of temporary migrant holding centers, but it is made clear that the camps will also be used "as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency."

Discussions of federal concentration camps is no longer the rhetoric of paranoid Internet conspiracy theorists, it is mainstream news.

Under the enemy combatant designation anyone at the behest of the US government, even if they are a US citizen, can be kidnapped and placed in an internment facility forever without trial. Jose Padilla, an American citizen, has spent over four years in a Navy brig and is only just now getting a trial.

In 2002, FEMA sought bids from major real estate and engineering firms to construct giant internment facilities in the case of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack or a natural disaster.

Okanogan County Commissioner Dave Schulz went public three years ago with his contention that his county was set to be a location for one of the camps.

Alex Jones has attended numerous military urban warfare training drills across the US where role players were used to simulate arresting American citizens and taking them to internment camps.

The move towards the database state in the US and the UK, where every offence is arrestable and DNA records of every suspect, even if later proven innocent, are permanently kept on record, is the only tool necessary to create a master list of 'subversives' that would be subject to internment in a manufactured time of national emergency.

The national ID card is also intended to be used for this purpose, just as the Nazis used early IBM computer punch card technology to catalogue lists of homosexuals, gypsies and Jews before the round-ups began.

Section 44 of the Terrorism Act in Britain enables police to obtain name and address details of anyone they choose, whether they are acting suspiciously or not. Those details remain on a database forever. To date, 119,000 names of political activists have been taken and this is a figure that will skyrocket once the post 7/7 figures are taken into account. At the height of the Iraq war protests, around a million people marched across the country. However, most of these people were taking part in a political protest for the first time and as a one off. Even if we take a figure of half, 500,000 people being politically active in Britain, that means that the government has already registered around a quarter of political activists in the UK.

In truth the number is probably above half because we are not factoring in those already on MI5 'subversive' lists and those listed after the 7/7 bombings, when the powers were used even more broadly.

Concurrently in the US, a new provision in the extended Patriot Act bill would allow Secret Service agents to arrest and jail protesters accused of breaching any security perimeter, even if the President or any other protected official isn't present. The definition of 'free speech zones' can be shifted around loosely and this would open the floodgates for protesters to be grabbed and hauled away in any circumstance at the whim of the Secret Service.

During the 2004 RNC protests, thousands of New Yorkers were arrested en masse in indiscriminate round-ups and taken to Pier 57 (pictured), a condemned, asbestos poisoned old bus depot, where they were imprisoned without charge for up to 24 hours or more.

The existence and development of internment camps are solely intended to be used to round up en masse and imprison 'political dissidents' (anyone who isn't prepared to lick government boots) after a simulated tactical nuke or biological attack on a major US or European city.

SsimplyLeftBehind.blogspot.com

From the Saturday New York Times, via BoingBoing. Props to Miss Cellania for catching this...

Halliburton Subsidiary Gets Contract to Add Temporary Immigration Detention Centers

By RACHEL L. SWARNS
Published: February 4, 2006
WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract worth up to $385 million for building temporary immigration detention centers to Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that has been criticized for overcharging the Pentagon for its work in Iraq.

KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space, company executives said. KBR, which announced the contract last month, had a similar contract with immigration agencies from 2000 to last year.

The contract with the Corps of Engineers runs one year, with four optional one-year extensions. Officials of the corps said that they had solicited bids and that KBR was the lone responder.

OK, as BoingBoing, points out, this should send a shiver down anyone's spine. After all, it's Halliburton, which reported a record net profit of $2.4 billion dollars last year and Dick Cheney's old company.

There is something to be said for the fact that a) these facilities have been contracted for since the Clinton administration (at least), and b) Halliburton was the sole bidder. All that noted, however...

Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, who has monitored the company, called the contract worrisome.

"With Halliburton's ever expanding track record of overcharging, it's hard to believe that the administration has decided to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars," Mr. Waxman said. "With each new contract, the need for real oversight grows."

Me? I just have one question: Is the fact that Halliburton was the sole bidder a function of the inability of anyone else to do this work, or is there something else afoot?

You know what I'm thinking: Maybe it's time Waxman asked that question.

Halliburton, Homeland Security, Henry Waxman, Dick Cheney

“This System is Going to Collapse Soon,” Warns Marcos, by Hermann Bellinghausen

“This is going to fall,” said Subcomandante Marcos, referring to the social and political system favored by capitalism in its most advanced stage. He said this with urgency. The “Other Campaign” proposes a new path, one that is “unprecedented” but will be the only way to avoid going down with the system.

Before speaking to thousands of people in Lerdo Park, “Delegate Zero” met this morning with more than a hundred adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, some of whom raised issues that had not been expressed until today. The Zapatista delegate responded to these questions analytically and controversially, especially towards the supposed inevitability of capitalism, and the idea that one must adapt oneself to it even when in struggle.

“We can build something else that is more inclusive. I say this because there is nothing more exclusive than an armed, insurgent political-military organization. Not just because of what it represents, but also because of the destination that is chosen. We had a feeling of duty toward all of you. If we were able to survive and then work for the progress of the indigenous community without interference from local and state governments, it was because of your support and the support of many people in this country.

“But with every show of support we heard the question: ‘and what about us?’ We felt that the task was too great for us, and at the same time this decay was happening in our national life. It is not true that capitalism is creating dependency in many peasant farmers or small businesses, believe me, it is not true. The opposite is true; capitalism’s advance means their total disappearance. And it is not that I am making this up or deducing it from some kind of academic analysis, although those exist, too, and demonstrate the same thing. It is the people themselves who say it. Peasant farmers are losing their lands because of capitalism, and capitalism can’t offer them anything except to make them disappear.” He spoke about the legal traps and reforms to the constitution that are directed towards stripping the peasants of their land and even causing their extinction.

In the case of science, “it’s not that the scientists depend on capitalism for their own work; it means renouncing the ethical values that make them follow that path. No one decides to become a scientist in order to destroy nature, but this is happening nonetheless. The ‘factory’ of scientific knowledge expropriates that knowledge from everyone and gives it a purpose that no one with ethics – I don’t just mean people of the Left or anti-capitalists – would want. Their knowledge is used to destroy and to kill.”

Cynicism “Light”
Marcos added that there are those who realize what is going on and those that don’t, and that there are people who, “realizing what is happening, conform.” This is where the Other Campaign comes in, “because there are those who can say, ‘yes, but who cares, because what can I do?’ and get a sort of cynicism ‘light.’ They don’t dare to admit that human ethical values are being diluted in exchange for comfort, for a check. I’m not saying such people are selling out; they have to work out their material needs.”

“The Other Campaign is showing that there are those who will not sell themselves. I’m also talking about those fighters, like those that were talking here about ’68, who went through all the experiments in political participation, who were offered a way to give in to the system, that old trick of telling them that they could do more from the inside. There were people who said no, who could have gone over to the other side but stayed. The Other Campaign is a space for those people.”

The meeting was held in the offices of the group Matraca, the Movement to Support Children and Home Workers. There, Delegate Zero’s arguments abounded: “There is an anticapitalist current right at the time when people are saying that capitalism can’t be changed. The definition ‘anticapitalist’ is important, although we could all argue about what the word really means. Some say, and argue theoretically, that it is impossible to transform capitalism, and that what we must do is humanize it. In fact, it’s the corpus of the electoral platform of a candidate who sits in the vanguard of the Other Campaign.”

The audience laughed, as just yesterday the PRD candidate [Andrés Manuel López Obrador] was in Jalapa. Marcos mentioned that “just before the Sixth Declaration, if you remember, the political class was fighting over the center. When the Sixth appeared, some began to say, ‘well, maybe I am of the left, but the moderate left.’ And there the spectrum began to open toward the left, but before that everyone was fighting for the center, and it is from the ‘impossible geometry of power’ that this “left but not left” movement begins. Right at the time when the Other Campaign found others who want that space.”

Marcos said: “Our intuition, which we now know to have been correct, was that there were people like us, who no only refused to conform to existing options, but felt it was their duty to build something else. And we can’t say how it will all turn out; all we can do is draw a general outline and see if anyone else is on the same channel, then offer them the chance to decide on the characteristics of this other effort.”

The Other Campaign, he added, “defines its enemy, not its adversary. You can agree on some things with an adversary, but not with an enemy. When the Other Campaign defines itself as anticapitalist, it says: ‘we fight for our survival by bringing about the death of what is in front of us.’ Not the death of a person, but of a system. The EZLN says ‘we recognize your struggle, as small or as individual as it may be,’ and we are committed to the fact that Other Campaign maintain that at all times. We are going to use our moral and ethical authority, which we have earned, to defend that position.”

“This thing that we are doing, compañeros, has no precedent. Not even the past history of solidarity with the Zapatista cause, as now we are not talking about solidarity with indigenous communities. Nor do the ‘respectable’ social struggles serve as a reference point, or the political struggles or any of that, because we are proposing to walk in a direction where there is no road. No one has even thought about whether it’s possible to travel there. Until today, the education we have received, the training, has been that everything is obtained from above, and that which doesn’t come from above is destined to fail. So, the question that we bring to you, which we have heard in the states we’ve visited, is: how many more defeats are we willing to take?”

The Problem Is That We Are Below

The Sixth Declaration, he said, “refuses to use other people’s language. We are speaking as we are, the Indian peoples of Mexico, who talk to others and say to them, with our hearts in our hands: ‘this is going to fall down.’ The house is going to collapse, and the problem is that we are right below the roof.”

People say, said Marcos, that he “is promoting abstention in the elections. No, compañeros, what has happened is that we have found an abstentionist movement that identifies with us, because it is sickened by the political class. And if in the past abstention was seen as apathy, the Other Campaign is discovering that it really comes from a lack of alternatives.”

“We are not opposed to those who fight for power; in fact, many political organizations that are with the Other Campaign intend to struggle for power. What we are proposing is that right now, instead of looking up – because everyone is telling us, look up, look up, or else we won’t know what to do – we are going to unite with all those people to see if we can build something else.

“We are seeing effervescence below that doesn’t put its faith in anything from above. There is a great social effervescence that is not looking toward electoral politics and that is making the political campaigns look innocuous. Neither Madrazo, nor Calderón, nor López Obrador is rising, and it is not our fault, it is because of what they have managed to build in all these years. That is not apathy. We are looking at an effervescent movement, one that could explode at anytime with no coordination, no support.”

Dismissing the debate over whether he is a moderate or radical anticapitalist, Marcos said that the Other Campaign’s proposal is not to coexist with the Right: “Don’t be fooled.” He said this in response to one young man who said that “we need to break down the walls because we are all human beings.” Marcos replied:

“No. We are all human beings, but some are sons of bitches and some aren’t. That is the truth. They built up their wealth on the misery, death and exploitation of others. What we want is to organize, speak and raise the consciousness of that sector in order to fight together. Because if we don’t, if we leave them alone, they are going to end up destroying everything. They have already demonstrated that. If we don’t do something now there won’t be anything left to struggle for,” Marcos concluded.

That night, Delegate Zero traveled to the town of Tomatlán, where he also met with adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle.

Illegal NSA Surveillance: There's Much More To It Than The Media Is Reporting, by Martin Abernathy

It's not just about tapping telephones and reading e-mails...

The *REAL* Illegal Electronic Surveillance Scandal

There is a much biggger scandal regarding the illegal electronic surveillance of American citizens than the 'mainstream' media is willing to discuss. Very few people are aware that since the Nixon administration (1973) the United States government has been conducting [illegal] electronic surveillance of American citizens by secretly installing "monitoring devices" *INSIDE* of people without their knowledge or consent, and in complete violation of various U.S. laws. These monitoring devices were manufactured by the NSA!

This may sound like science fiction, but unfortunately, it is very true. Using extremely advanced, top-secret [nano]technology, the U.S. goverment have been *injecting* tiny devices [about the size of an
uncooked grain of rice] into people. These devices are used to record EVERYTHING that the targeted person says, everything that those in proximity to the targeted person say [these moittoringdevices are
extremely sensitive and can clearly detect --and record-- a whisper from up to 1, 200 feet away]. The
devices also trackthe movements of those who have been targeted.

How does the government justify this outrageous violation of the U.S. Constitution and the human and civil rights of the American people? It's very easy:

1.) When the government wants to 'monitor' someone, they claim that they are conducting an
'investigation' [the people who are targeted are usually completely innocent of any crime -- people are generally targeted for POLITICAL reasons].

2.) Before FISA was passed by Congress in 1978, the government [the PRIMARY federal agency which was responsible for injecting these 'monitoring devices' into people was the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The DEA was SPECIFICALLY created to target dissidents and whistleblowers in *fabricated* 'drug investigations'] would simply GAS the home of the targeted person at night [usually around 3AM] and then enter the home WITHOUT A WARRANT and WITHOUT the CONSENT of the targetted person. The gas was used to ensure that the targeted person would not wake up during the process of injecting the monitoring device into him/her. The injections could be done very quickly, and the targetd person would awaken in the morning completely unaware of what had been done.

3.) After FISA was passed, the government started obtaining warrants from the 'Surveillance Court' to enter the homes of targeted people and install 'monitoring devices' in them. These warrants were usually based on FABRICATED evidence. Although the goverment began obtaining warrants, the fact is that there are not *any* laws which allow them to inject 'monitoring devices' into people ---- therefore, with or without a warrant, it is ILLEGAL [i.e. a crime].

These criminal acts against the American people have been occurring since 1973.

The United States government was sued in the late 1990s for illegally injecting a monitoring device into a man named Charles A. Schlund, III [from Glendale, Arizona].

Case No: CIV98-1875PHX ROS, reassigned to RCB

His case was appealed all the way to the United States Supreme Court in May 2001, [the Supreme Court declined to hear his case].
++++++++++++++++
CHARLES AUGUST SCHLUND, III, AND RANDY D. LANG
Plaintiffs/Appellants

v. UNITED STATES, STATE OF ARIZONA, County of Maricopa , et al.,
Defendants/Appellees

00-1603

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

532 U.S. 1052; 121 S. Ct. 2194; 149 L. Ed. 2d 1025; 2001 U.S. LEXIS 4025; 69 U.S.L.W. 3748

May 29, 2001, Decided

PRIOR HISTORY: [*1] Reported below: 2000 U.S. App. LEXIS 33858. Table Reported below: 2000 U.S. App. LEXIS 38177.

JUDGES: Rehnquist, Stevens, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer.

OPINION: Petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied.
++++++++++++++++
To learn in great detail about the 'montoring devices' that have been injected into people without their knowledge or consent for more than thirty years, read the affidavit of Charles Schlund.

Use a *good* search engine to find it. You can search for:

"Schlund" + "affidavit"

"Schlund" + "DEA"

"Schlund" + "FBI"
**************************************************************************************
Martin F. Abernathy
Providence, RI 02903

Illegal NSA Surveillance: There's Much More To It Than The Media Is Reporting, by Martin Abernathy

It's not just about tapping telephones and reading e-mails...

The *REAL* Illegal Electronic Surveillance Scandal

There is a much biggger scandal regarding the illegal electronic surveillance of American citizens than the 'mainstream' media is willing to discuss. Very few people are aware that since the Nixon administration (1973) the United States government has been conducting [illegal] electronic surveillance of American citizens by secretly installing "monitoring devices" *INSIDE* of people without their knowledge or consent, and in complete violation of various U.S. laws. These monitoring devices were manufactured by the NSA!

This may sound like science fiction, but unfortunately, it is very true. Using extremely advanced, top-secret [nano]technology, the U.S. goverment have been *injecting* tiny devices [about the size of an
uncooked grain of rice] into people. These devices are used to record EVERYTHING that the targeted person says, everything that those in proximity to the targeted person say [these moittoringdevices are
extremely sensitive and can clearly detect --and record-- a whisper from up to 1, 200 feet away]. The
devices also trackthe movements of those who have been targeted.

How does the government justify this outrageous violation of the U.S. Constitution and the human and civil rights of the American people? It's very easy:

1.) When the government wants to 'monitor' someone, they claim that they are conducting an
'investigation' [the people who are targeted are usually completely innocent of any crime -- people are generally targeted for POLITICAL reasons].

2.) Before FISA was passed by Congress in 1978, the government [the PRIMARY federal agency which was responsible for injecting these 'monitoring devices' into people was the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The DEA was SPECIFICALLY created to target dissidents and whistleblowers in *fabricated* 'drug investigations'] would simply GAS the home of the targeted person at night [usually around 3AM] and then enter the home WITHOUT A WARRANT and WITHOUT the CONSENT of the targetted person. The gas was used to ensure that the targeted person would not wake up during the process of injecting the monitoring device into him/her. The injections could be done very quickly, and the targetd person would awaken in the morning completely unaware of what had been done.

3.) After FISA was passed, the government started obtaining warrants from the 'Surveillance Court' to enter the homes of targeted people and install 'monitoring devices' in them. These warrants were usually based on FABRICATED evidence. Although the goverment began obtaining warrants, the fact is that there are not *any* laws which allow them to inject 'monitoring devices' into people ---- therefore, with or without a warrant, it is ILLEGAL [i.e. a crime].

These criminal acts against the American people have been occurring since 1973.

The United States government was sued in the late 1990s for illegally injecting a monitoring device into a man named Charles A. Schlund, III [from Glendale, Arizona].

Case No: CIV98-1875PHX ROS, reassigned to RCB

His case was appealed all the way to the United States Supreme Court in May 2001, [the Supreme Court declined to hear his case].
++++++++++++++++
CHARLES AUGUST SCHLUND, III, AND RANDY D. LANG
Plaintiffs/Appellants

v. UNITED STATES, STATE OF ARIZONA, County of Maricopa , et al.,
Defendants/Appellees

00-1603

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

532 U.S. 1052; 121 S. Ct. 2194; 149 L. Ed. 2d 1025; 2001 U.S. LEXIS 4025; 69 U.S.L.W. 3748

May 29, 2001, Decided

PRIOR HISTORY: [*1] Reported below: 2000 U.S. App. LEXIS 33858. Table Reported below: 2000 U.S. App. LEXIS 38177.

JUDGES: Rehnquist, Stevens, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer.

OPINION: Petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied.
++++++++++++++++
To learn in great detail about the 'montoring devices' that have been injected into people without their knowledge or consent for more than thirty years, read the affidavit of Charles Schlund.

Use a *good* search engine to find it. You can search for:

"Schlund" + "affidavit"

"Schlund" + "DEA"

"Schlund" + "FBI"

**************************************************************************************

Martin F. Abernathy
Providence, RI 02903

Iran Ends Cooperation with IAEA

Tehran, Feb 5 (Prensa Latina) Iran put an end Sunday to its voluntary cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) after the UN nuclear watchdog voted, under pressure particularly from US, France, Germany and Britain, to take to the Security Council the Irani peaceful nuclear energy program.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad passed the order Saturday night for an end to Tehran´s voluntaryprotocols and other cooperation with the IAEA.

The IRNA official agency posted Sunday a letter of the Iranian President to the IAEA denouncing that after two years of voluntary cooperation the Board had voted under pressure of several countries.

That resolution written by the Europeans and backed by US demanded Iran to stop all the works regarding nuclear energy.

The decision was lacking of international legal justification and did not take into account our nations´ cooperation, wrote the Iranian leader.

The additional protocol that is in keeping with the framework of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty allowed the IAEA to make deep control of nuclear facilities.

Based on a law approved by the Parliament, Ahmadineyad ordered to implement research and development works and to begin the production of nuclear combustible with peaceful aims.

Teheran authorities have reiterated their program in this subject is aimed to develop the country and not to promote the arm race.

Radio show exposes the culture of cover-up in U.S. government, by Bill Conroy

The final interview in the House of Death mass-murder series aired on Pacifica Radio in New York is now available for your listening pleasure at this link.

The show features Sandalio Gonzalez, the former head of DEA’s El Paso field division. Gonzalez is the DEA official who blew the whistle on the U.S. government’s complicity in the mass murder of more than a dozen people in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso.

If you recall, a U.S. government informant, under the watch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents participated in the murders and nearly caused the death of a DEA agent and his family. After exposing these facts through an internal memo written to the head of ICE in El Paso and to U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton in San Antonio, Gonzalez was retaliated against, his career ruined, and the government’s complicity in the murders systematically covered up at highest levels of the U.S. Justice Department. (DEA is part of the Justice Department.)

Narco News has covered the House of Death murders and ensuing cover-up for nearly two years — unearthing hundreds of pages of government documents tracing the path of U.S. government’s deceit.

Tune into the Pacifica Radio show, which is hosted by former DEA agent Mike Levine, and hear the whole story from the source: Gonzalez, a veteran DEA agent who held a number of high-ranking positions in the agency over the course of his 27-year career. Then ask yourself why the cover-up is continuing.

Better yet, ask the new head of ICE, 36-year-old Julie Myers, who claims she is ready for the challenges of her new job, despite charges by critics claiming she is a crony appointment.

Myers was in San Antonio, Texas, yesterday for a press conference, her first public appearance since President Bush put her at the helm of ICE through a recess appointment – a means of circumventing Congressional approval and critics who challenged her qualifications for the post.

But Myers claims her critics are out of line.

From a story in yesterday’s San Antonio Express-News:

In an interview after Friday's news conference, Myers defended her credentials, saying the attacks against her have been unfair.

Before taking over ICE, she was an aide to Bush on personnel issues. She also was assistant secretary for export enforcement at the Commerce Department, overseeing 170 workers and a $25 million budget. She had been Chertoff's chief of staff while he directed the Justice Department's criminal division.

Myers started her career at a private law firm before becoming an assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Though she quickly moved from one job to another, Myers said each of her government positions provided plenty of grounding on immigration and customs law enforcement, the core of ICE's work.

"I've already handled many of the same things I'm now doing here at ICE," she said rapid-fire. "I've prosecuted immigration cases and dealt with complex narcotics violations."

By the way, ICE has some 15,000 employees and a budget of $4 billion. By comparison to the size of ICE, Myers’ job at Commerce would be similar to managing a Wal-Mart store.

More from the Express-News story:

Critics have said Myers might not have survived the confirmation process, arguing the job is way over her head and her rise smacks of nepotism.

Myers previously worked with the person who nominated her, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

She's married to John Wood, Chertoff's chief of staff. And she's the niece of Richard Myers, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Well, maybe asking Myers about the cover-up of her agency’s complicity in the House of Death mass murder in Mexico is a bit much to put on her right now. After all, she will need some time to spin the puffy news on top of ICE as she skates through the next few years to another crony appointment.

Her predecessor Michael Garcia, managed to navigate a similar smooth path through the ICE bureaucracy — also failing to investigate the House of Death cover-up, which occurred on his watch. For his fancy skating efforts, Garcia was rewarded with an appointment to the high-profile job of U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

That’s how the circle stays unbroken, how the cover-ups continue and how we all continue to get our regular fix of junk news from the media.

Then there are the whistleblowers, like Gonzalez, whose extensive leadership experience in DEA, ironically, would qualify him to run an agency like ICE. But you can’t have people like that in charge, because they wouldn’t circle the wagons to protect the other cronies. So these whistleblowers have to be ostracized, smeared and expelled from the club – particularly when they start bringing up touchy subjects such as the club’s complicity in covering up criminal conduct.

But this charade is transparent and tiring -- like a bad sit-com rerun. And though it takes time, eventually all bad shows get cancelled because the ratings fall off.

So, until that day arrives, why not switch the channel for a bit. Listen to Levine’s interview with DEA whistleblower Gonzalez and get a taste of what a good cop show is all about….

The Failure of Citizenship, by ICH

The Bush State of the Union address the other evening offered the same mediocrity we have come to expect from this illegitimate regime.

It was nothing less than fascism incarnate and it was palpably evil. Consider it a heaping helping of dung soup served on a silver platter. It was cloaked in language to create the illusion of substance and truth. Its message was received by corporate America, by the fat cats on Wall Street, and the congressional millionaires club with applause. The remaining eighty to ninety percent of the population—those of us left out in the cold and exploited—listened with disdain and incredulity to the sickening miasma that oozed through our speakers.

As Bush himself has stated, the elite are his political base. That much should be obvious. The wealthy have been handsomely rewarded for their loyalty since the little dictator’s first inaugural, while the rest of us receive a sadistic back hand to the face. Behind the customary lies and garish displays of nationalism, beyond the euphemisms of empty meanings, lie austere truths that must be brought to the public conscience. One wonders: What planet is this man from? Where is this America described by George Bush?

In Bush’s America, truth has been so distorted, so utterly turned on its head that America is no longer a real place. It is the packaging that contains fascism, skillfully concealing the horrid product within—George Bush’s Plutocratic America. It is place devoid of real meaning; a cesspool of sorrow and disgrace, the home of a demoralized and timorous majority. It is a place sharply divided by two classes—the predator class and the prey class. Upwards of eighty percent of the population are daily preyed upon by the wealthy minority and they do nothing about it. The ignorant even welcome the rape and contempt with a smile upon their face—grateful for the chains they wear, glad for the abuse they receive. This is nothing less than a modern form of slavery; it is a true master slave relationship.

Evidence that the rich are fleecing the poor abounds. The cost of insurance for a family of four rose seventy percent during the past six years. The insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industries are reaping enormous windfall profits at the public trough. High premiums combined with high deductibles render the cost of health care unattainable to millions of lower income families. Insurance companies can and do arbitrarily and capriciously drop drug coverage at their sole discretion. The robber barons might as well be holding guns to our heads.

Bush’s health insurance plan provides additional evidence of criminality coupled with a paucity of ethics. The plan removes every ceiling for limiting the cost of drugs. It provides the pharmaceutical industry carte blanche by prohibiting Medicare from bargaining with drug companies for lower prices. Who benefits? Private insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry—the very people who write the legislation!

Meanwhile, Exxon-Mobil reported record profits in 2005 of thirty-six billion dollars, even while increasing fuel costs fifteen percent. These are the highest profits ever recorded by a corporation. Venezuela’s Citgo oil should not be lumped in with the American oil companies that are driven solely by profit motives. Hugo Chavez’s Citgo is offering deep discounts on heating oil to the world’s poor (I put only Citgo gas in my car). This demonstrates a clear delineation between Capitalism and Socialism. Adding further insult to injury, the oil companies received four billion dollars in tax relief last year. How much did you get?

Despite the baroque words uttered by Bush, his every action speaks contempt for ordinary people living from pay check to pay check—Hurricane Katrina proved that beyond all doubt. With that familiar sickly smirk on his face, Bush and his ilk are not only stealing our treasure, they are distributing it to the wealthy even as they spit in the face of the poor and the middle class. How could anyone be more openly contemptuous of working class people? Why do we tolerate such abuse and, in so many cases, actually welcome it?

We are witnessing an all pervasive mediocrity in government that has come as a result of a spectacular failure of citizenship. We are a people that value ease and convenience over self education, sacrifice and truth. We do not demand evidence in support of our views. We believe what we are told; and we do what we are told by authority. We do not like to make trouble. Asking questions requires self examining critical thinking, a skill that is rapidly disappearing from our culture of fluff and ease. We want the kind of life where the decisions are made for us—a life that does not place demands upon us. We want to be entertained, not informed by burdensome truths that may assault our conscience and cause psychological injury. That is dangerous knowledge because it would dispel the myths about what America really is. It would force us to think differently about who we are as a people. We would see us as the rest of the world sees us.

George Bush’s Orwellian vision of America did not just happen. It is the result of the influx of enormous sums of money by the wealthiest people in the world. The return on this investment is that the financial and social interest of the very wealthy is represented at the expense of all others. If you are a republican of ordinary means and you think that George Bush is looking out for your social and economic interest, I feel sorry for you. You are a damned fool who is unwilling to confront the evidence, afraid to see what is really there. You are encouraging and cheering on the very ones who are raping you. Easily swayed by empty rhetoric, you do not examine the betrayal of rhetoric through hurtful policies. You are a pathetic specimen of humanity.

The long nightmare emerged from sinister minds lusting for unlimited wealth and unrestrained power. It was aided and abetted by the commercial media every step of the way—a media owned by the wealthiest corporations. All of us are complicit. We were not vigilant in protecting the Constitution and upholding our civil rights. Through pervasive apathy and indifference we prepared the ground for fascism to germinate and to flourish. Now we are reaping the bitter harvest that may last a century or more.

Thus we allow the most atrocious lies uttered by political and moral prostitutes to go unchallenged. These lies are endlessly recycled in the commercial media until they become ingrained in the public conscience as truth. Worse than burying our heads in the sand, we bury them up our collective ass. How do you like the view?

The disgraceful and cowardly capitulation of the Democrats to the neocons in the confirmation of Alito to the Supreme Court demonstrates that the system does not and cannot work for just purposes. There are no viable opposition parties to compete with the Republicrats. We must be the opposition with our bodies; and we must do everything in our power to disrupt and subvert the cesspool of corruption that boils and festers in the nation’s capitol, or it will consume us.

When will enough people with courage and conviction rise and fight? When will we drag the criminal Bush cabal kicking and screaming to the gallows? How much worse do things have to get? Let us stop kidding ourselves by trying to work the system, by trying to appear reasonable to authority. The fascists own the process that gives them power and wealth. Political reform is too weak to dislodge those whose tentacles are wrapped around the planet and injecting it with poison. Nothing short of filling the streets day after day with massive, unrelenting protests will dislodge the prostitutes from their seats of power. Massive rebellion is the only thing they have to fear.

Let us refuse to give this illegitimate government our cooperation. Let us disrupt and take possession of the economic engine that enslaves us. Nothing short of revolution will dislodge the fascist rulers from power. Either we fight or we passively accept what is coming.

If we continue to capitulate to our oppressors—the apostles of Plutocracy—let us remove the lines from the National Anthem: “The land of the free; and the home of the brave.” They will no longer apply here.

AIPAC espionage case points to larger spy scandal, by Justin Raimondo

“Phase two” of the investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence into how we got it wrong on Iraq has been delayed for quite some time, initially because of Sen. Pat Roberts’ outright blocking tactics, and now, apparently, due to a Pentagon internal investigation into the activities of former Deputy Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, who oversaw a key albeit little-known and highly secretive intelligence-gathering unit, the “Office of Special Plans.” A central figure in Washington’s neoconservative network, Feith resigned a year ago, just as suspicion was falling on him and his subordinates in a string of interconnected scandals: the WMD “intelligence” flap, Ahmed Chalabi’s connections to Iranian intelligence, and the AIPAC spy case.

Last May, I speculated that these matters might have something to do with Feith’s sudden resignation, and now it looks like I was right. Raw Story is reporting that “phase two” of the SSCI investigation is being held up by the Pentagon’s self-probe, while the senators await

“A report from the Pentagon inspector general as to Feith’s alleged role in manipulating prewar intelligence to support a case for War. Feith, who is also being probed by the FBI for his role in an Israeli spy case, resigned in January 2005…. One former intelligence source points to ‘a bigger can of worms’ that a Feith investigation may unravel, pointing to the Israeli spy case – in which Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin passed classified information to a pro-Israeli lobby – and to the Defense Department’s own inability to address security breaches.”

Feith is one of the more ideological neocons, with connections to the far-right wing of Israel’s Likud Party and the settler movement. He presided over a newly created team of intelligence analysts – the Office of Special Plans (OSP) – whose job it was to think up the War Party’s talking points. According to Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired Air Force officer and Pentagon analyst, Feith’s Office of Special Plans was created from a narrow range of neoconservative think tanks – most notably the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a think tank founded by AIPAC officials and long associated with Israel’s Washington lobby. Among the neocon activists who worked with the Near East and South Asia (NESA) bureau, we have one David Schenker, previously a WINEP research fellow, and Churchill expert Michael Makovsky, younger brother of senior WINEP fellow David Makovsky, formerly executive editor of the Jerusalem Post. It was a tightly knit little group, Kwiatkowski has testified:

“Career Pentagon analysts assigned to Rumsfeld’s office were generally excluded from what were ‘key areas of interest’ to Feith, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld, notably Israel, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. ‘In terms of Israel and Iraq, all primary staff work was conducted by political appointees; in the case of Israel, a desk officer appointee from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.’”

The Larry Franklin-AIPAC-WINEP connection strongly suggests that what we are dealing with here is not simply a domestic group that had somehow seized control of U.S. foreign policy in order to pursue their interventionist agenda, but a foreign-directed and assisted covert operation designed to subvert the institutional foundations of various key government agencies and hijack U.S. military might in order to serve the interests of a foreign power, i.e., Israel. This suspicion is particularly strong when it comes to Feith, who had his security clearance revoked in 1982. The charge: leaking information to the Israeli embassy.

Rumsfeld restored Feith’s clearance when the Bushies came to Washington and he was appointed a deputy at Defense, in charge of the policy shop where convicted spy Franklin worked. What is intriguing about the Franklin case is that much of the top-secret information and documentation that came into that fervent neocon’s possession was way above Franklin’s pay-grade. The big question, in the AIPAC spy case, is: who else in DoD was he working with?

One bright day last year, the FBI knocked on the door of the Pentagon and began administering lie-detector tests to DoD employees. Could that be what is holding up the Senate’s investigation into bogus Iraq “intelligence”? Is this why Feith and others have gotten themselves all lawyered-up?

Franklin is taking the fall for higher-ups, including Feith. As law enforcement agencies continue to investigate the circumstances – and government personnel – that surround the AIPAC spy case, the evidence clearly points in a disturbing direction. Come to think of it, an inordinately large number of neoconservatives working in government have had their security clearances revoked, and all for the same reason: passing classified information to Israel. The Franklin case underscores the vital role played by AIPAC as a conduit for funneling U.S. secrets to Tel Aviv, a fact that will come out at the trial – that is, if Franklin and the other two defendants, longtime AIPAC powerhouse lobbyist Steve Rosen, and Keith Weissman, AIPAC’s Iran specialist, have anything to say about it.

The AIPAC spy trial, scheduled for late April, already had the pro-Israel community plenty scared, and with good reason: in the interests of avoiding guilty verdicts, and possibly very long sentences, Rosen and Weissman will make the case that AIPAC was fully informed of their activities, and, far from disapproving, actively encouraged them to engage in illegal activities, i.e., espionage. Now that the connection to the Feith investigation is coming out, however, a real wave of fear must be sweeping through certain Washington circles. Franklin got 12 years: what will the feds dish out to the rest of the cabal?

There are two different approaches to the question of assigning responsibility for this disastrous War, both of which are valid. The first is to take the broad view and look for the culprits in the world of ideas. From this broad view, we can discern that any number of factors played a role in marching us off to war: the need for oil, the ideological preconceptions of the Bushies, the military-industrial complex, and, perhaps, Earth’s alignment with Pluto and Mars. Such arguments can never be decisively settled, and are fodder for endless scholarly dissertations ostensibly “proving” this theory or that.

What can be proved, however, is that specific individuals, working in concert, proceeded to engage in illegal activities, including espionage, obstruction of justice, and forgery, to name just a few, in the interests of involving us in a needless and increasingly costly War. The crimes of the War Party can be traced back to specific persons: in identifying them and detailing their actions and motives, we can begin to understand the reasons for the biggest strategic disaster in our history. Surely the story of how we were lied into War will be told by future historians in terms of the broad, inclusive approach favored by scholars, but in a sense a truer tale will told by Justice Department prosecutors in the clear, bloodless language of a legal indictment.

It is often said – I have said it myself – that a cabal of neocons took us into War, a view disdained by the War Party as a groundless “Conspiracy theory” that verges on anti-Semitism. Yet very few of these people have taken up the cudgels on behalf of the AIPAC defendants, and those few who did went silent soon after Franklin’s guilty plea. If there is no foreign-directed Conspiracy to spy on the U.S. and procure information for Israel, in addition to lobbying on behalf of Israel’s interests in the councils of government, then why has Franklin been sentenced to spend over a decade languishing behind bars?

However, I wouldn’t call it a “Conspiracy” because of the bad connotations of the word, and “cabal” is not quite right, either. We need something more specific, and I suggest camarilla. The invaluable Wikipedia defines the term as follows:

“A Camarilla is a group of courtiers or favorites that surround a king or ruler. Usually they do not hold any office or have any official authority and influence their ruler behind the scenes. Thus they also escape having to bear responsibility for the effects of their advice.”

This describes the neoconservatives to a tee. Taking responsibility for their past assurances that we would be greeted as “liberators” is the last thing any self-respecting neocon would think of doing. As former officials of the occupation start hawking their wares of disillusioned “idealism” and the Weekly Standard pushes the line that Iraq’s democratic revolution has been “betrayed” by the Bush administration, they’re trying to slither out of fault by claiming that their policies weren’t really followed by the sellouts in the Bush administration. The real value of camarilla, however, is that it throws the spotlight on their modus operandi.

Whispering in the ear of the king, this treasonous camarilla had access to power – which they used in a very specific, goal-oriented way. Their goal: secure Israel’s future. Their method: get U.S. troops into the Middle East, in part to distract fire away from Israeli targets, and in part to carry out a “democratization” process in the interests of making the region safe for Israel – or, at least, less hostile. Democracies, the neocons claim, never attack each other – a theory blown to bits not only by any honest examination of our own foreign policy, but by recent events in the occupied territories. The triumph of Hamas should put that old neocon talking point to rest beyond any hope of resuscitation.

The American people want to know who lied them into War and why. If it turns out that the lies were manufactured by a nest of spies rather than a noble-but-naïve band of misguided idealists, there will be hell to pay.

Dr. Tim

International Commission of Inquiry On Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration

On CNN National TV just now, there was someone described as a World Can't Wait activist who disrupted Rumsfeld's speech at the National Press Club in Washington DC, saying Rumsfield and Bush are committing crimes against humanity and that's why BUSH MUST STEP DOWN.

The International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration released its preliminary findings Thursday, Feb. 2, at the National Press Club in Washington DC. The Commission indicted the Bush regime on 5 counts:

1) Wars of Aggression,

2) Torture and Indefinite Detention,

3) Destruction of the Global Environment,

4) Attacks on Global Public Health and Reproductive Rights,

5) Knowing Failure to Protect Life During Hurricane Katrina.

*

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, former commander of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq testifies on how the abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody originated at the highest levels.

Panel of Jurists (l. to r.): Adjoa Aiyetoro, Dennis Brutus, Ajamu Sankofa, Ann Wright, and Abdeen Jabara

text of indictments

Participants included Harry Belefonte, Dr. Alan Berkman, Vanessa Brocato, Marjorie Cohn, Naina Dhingra, King Downing, Lindsey German, Ted Glick, Dahr Jamail, Janis Karpinski, C. Clark Kissinger, Chokwe Lumumba, Ray McGovern, Craig Murray, Barbara Olshansky, Michael Ratner, Scott Ritter, Jeremy Scahill, Ida Susser, David Swanson, Emma Lofton Woods, Beverly Wright, Daphne Wysham, and many others.

Click here to access audio files

Friday, January 20, at The Riverside Church
Saturday, January 21, at The Riverside Church
Sunday, Jan. 22, Columbia Univ. Law School
(views expressed in the Commission do not necessarily reflect the views of organizations providing a venue)

Initiated by the
Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience
and endorsed by: Center for Constitutional Rights, National Lawyers Guild, After Downing Street.Org and many others (see Charter)

International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity by the Bush Administration

305 West Broadway, #199, New York, NY 10013
PRESS CONTACT: Larry Everest 510-472-8484 COMMISSION OFFICE: 212-941-8086
@nion.us www.bushcommission.org

BUSH ADMINISTRATION GUILTY OF CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY SAYS COMMISSION OF INQUIRY; ACTIVIST CONFRONTS RUMSFELD WITH VERDICT, SAYS "STEP DOWN"

Today the Bush administration was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for invading Iraq, instituting torture and indefinite detention, attacking efforts to control global warming and for deliberately failing to prevent devastation and loss of life during Hurricane Katrina.

These findings were released at the National Press Club by the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity by the Bush Administration. The full text can be found at www.bushcommission.org.

Shortly after the findings were released, activist Heather Hurwitz confronted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with the Commission’s verdict during his press luncheon. Hurwitz, of World Can’t Wait-Drive Out the Bush Regime, declared Rumsfeld and the Bush administration were guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and that thousands were gathering Saturday, Feb. 4 in Washington to demand that they step down. www.worldcantwait.net

Ms. Hurwitz was quickly removed by security personnel. After she was led away, Rumsfeld joked, "We'll count her as undecided." When informed of Rumsfeld's comment, Hurwitz said, "war crimes and crimes against humanity are not joking matters. Rumsfeld’s attitude typifies this administration’s brazen immorality and lawlessness, and this is why it must step down."

Earlier, at the Commission’s press conference, Ajamu Sankofa, Executive Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility-NY and one of the panel of jurists stated, "The historical significance of this tribunal is that American citizens, civil society, is demonstrating courage to stand up and speak its definition of the truth against a wholly orchestrated system of deliberate deceptions."

"This commission is attempting to change the level of discourse," said Abdeen Jabara, another panelist and former President of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. "We want people to understand Iraq is not simply as a war of choice but an actual war of aggression from which flow certain legal consequences. Torture is often reported as 'abuse’ rather than torture. So we need to change the way these items are talked about for people to face the fact of what this government is doing."

"The Commission is incredibly important for the future of the United States and really the world, because it’s the people of America that are speaking to these very serious indictments," said panel member Ann Wright, a former US diplomat and retired US Army Reserve Colonel. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern added, "our German fore-bearers in the 1930s sat around, blamed their rulers, said 'maybe everything’s going to be alright.’ That is something we cannot do. I do not want my grandchildren asking me years from now, 'why didn’t you do something to stop all this?’"

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, former UK Ambassador Craig Murray, and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, were among the 44 witnesses presenting testimony at the Commission’s two sessions. The Commission will later issue detailed findings, accompanied by full documentation.

Wire Taps and the Writs of Assistance, by Matt Wilding

An argument against wire taps with historical ideological evidence.

In 1761, a Boston lawyer named James Otis made a lengthy speech in a British Royal Court against the Writs of Assistance, a British law that in essence allowed for general search and seizure of colonial property without probable cause. As many Bostonians watched on, a young John Adams among them, Otis argued passionately for the privacy rights of the people of Massachusetts. He lost.

Although the Writs of Assistance were not overturned, many including Adams and his sometimes friend Thomas Jefferson recognized later that this moment was the beginning of the American Revolution. While the War for Independence was an effect of the Revolution, the Revolution itself was one not of swords, but of ideas. It was a movement where people believed that the power of government should lie with the governed. Today that power is threatened.

In a frenzy of media coverage, the modern day fight against the modern day Writs of Assistance exists in the executive office’s controversial wire-tapping program. The Bush administration has put in a valiant effort to prove to Americans that no laws have been violated, and that any and all opposition to this kind of activity is purely partisan. Karl Rove went so far as to say “some important Democrats seem to disagree” with the executive office’s right to find out why a member of al-Qaeda is calling an American citizen. He failed to mention that many Republicans feel the same way. He also failed to mention how they established who was getting calls from the terrorist faction and who just had relatives overseas.

George W. Bush himself has also publicly defended himself. In a speech in Kansas today, Bush defended his wire-tapping program, echoing Rove’s testimony that if Americans are communicating with the enemy, he has the right to know why. It seemed to escape him that if he could prove that an American was communicating with a terrorist operative, he would have very little trouble acquiring a warrant to tap their phones. Perhaps it’s all the paperwork. Apparently he has opted instead to violate the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which states:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Although there is no mention of the telephone in this amendment, let us not be deceived. The means of communication at the time of writing was letters, and “papers” is listed among those things protected. It follows then that communications are protected from “unreasonable searches and seizures”. Luckily, proponents of the Bush administration have an answer for this, too. According to former NSA leader General Michael V. Hayden, these wiretaps are based on reason. As reported in today’s New York Times:

“The standard laid out by General Hayden – a ‘reasonable basis to believe’ – is lower than ‘probable cause,’ the standard used by the special court created by Cong