Sections on today's Signs Page:
Signs Editorials
Editorial: Morality is in the Eye of the Oppressor
Jason Miller
5/15/06
We of the privileged *Caucasian race have been dancing without paying for centuries. And the piper is seriously pissed.
Rudyard Kipling encouraged America's fledgling empire when he wrote The White Man's Burden. However, by that time the Unites States had already committed genocide against the Native Americans, engulfed half of Mexico and turned Hawaii over to a handful of wealthy White plantation owners. White Americans were already "bearing the burden" of ruling those who were "half-devil and half-child".
In the early 20th Century, confidence in their moral superiority and Manifest Destiny spurred Americans to slaughter tens of thousands of civilians in the Philippines, prevent a sovereign nation from emerging in Cuba, and negate Puerto Rico the autonomy it had negotiated with Spain.
As one of the most brutal European imperialists, Spain played a significant role in the ongoing oppression of the Filipinos, Cubans and Puerto Ricans. When the United States defeated them in the Spanish-American War, they essentially sold the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico to their new masters in Washington.
Taking off the rose-colored glasses
Casting aside the history books written by the "superior" White race and viewing history through the lens of reality, one readily sees that European nations like Spain, Great Britain, France, and Portugal committed unspeakable atrocities against millions whose only "crime" was that they were born on the continents of Africa, North America, or South America.
"Brave and noble" pioneers and explorers like Columbus and Cortez came to the "New World" bearing gifts. Their hosts were "blessed" with "gifts" like Small Pox, servitude, and genocide. As they convinced themselves they were "civilizing the savages", the European invaders dehumanized their "converts". Human beings became tools for empire building, or if they impeded imperial expansion, little more than insects to be exterminated.
In the area of North America which eventually became the United States, one of the ultimate ironies occurred. Refugees from oppression in Western Europe became ruthless oppressors themselves. Victims became abusers as our ancestors nearly drove Native Americans to extinction.
Similar patterns emerged in Africa as various European nations carved up the Dark Continent like a juicy Thanksgiving Day bird. Humans and resources alike became subject to the will and whims of their colonial rulers.
Encountering a shortage of labor and an over-abundance of economic opportunities in the "New World", the "intrepid" imperialists were undaunted. They simply started capturing indigenous people from various tribes in Africa, selling them into slavery, and shipping them to the Americas. Valuable new commodity emerges. Labor shortage problem solved. One can't help but admire their ingenuity; that is if one suffers from anti-social personality disorder.
To summarize, our European and American ancestors raped, pillaged, plundered, enslaved, and nearly annihilated the "lesser beings" they encountered on several continents in their "glorious" bids to expand their empires.
Barren desert never looked so good....
After the invention of the internal combustion engine led to wide-spread use of automobiles, the Middle East became an area of particular interest to Europe and the United States. With the revelation that vast quantities of black gold oozed from their sand, the heretofore unappealing arid lands of the Arab and Persian "savages" suddenly became indispensable commodities.
Once again the "onus of domesticating the barbarians" was thrust upon the West. In the process of sharing their "enlightened values", the United States and their fellow imperialists in Europe have derived the "ancillary benefit" of exerting a great deal of control over the precious Middle Eastern oil. Assuaging their guilt for the Holocaust, they also "found" a homeland for the Jewish people. To this day we "noble" Americans are enabling genocide against the Palestinians to make this homeland possible.
The illusion of freedom and autonomy
While virtually all of the former colonies are now "autonomous" nations, Europe and the United States possess many means to continue exploiting the people and resources of the "developing world". Imperialism is alive and well in Africa, South America, Central America, and the Middle East.
So called free trade agreements perpetuate US and European multi-national corporations' virtually unfettered access to cheap labor and valuable raw materials. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund ensure powerful Western influence by deeply indebting impoverished nations. The debtors are then obliged to tailor their economic policies to benefit their Neoliberal masters, leaving a majority of their citizens miserably poor.
Utilizing direct and indirect military intervention, the Neocolonialists have long guaranteed the loyalty of their "subjects" by ousting leaders elected by the people and installing dictators friendly to Western interests.
Close call for the wealthy ruling elite
Consider one of many examples. With a long-standing tradition of constitutional rule and leaders elected by the vote of the people, Chileans made the "grave error" of electing Salvador Allende as their president in the early 1970's.
Allende suffered from the delusion that it would be just to nationalize industries and end years of multi-national corporate exploitation. In 1973, the zealous efforts of Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, the CIA, and telecommunications giant ITT bore fruit. Their three year campaign to destabilize the social, political, and economic conditions of Chile softened the beach-head for a bloody coup, which included the assasination of Allende. General Augusto Pinochet, America's man, took the helm.
Pinochet "rescued" the people of Chile by abolishing the minimum wage, crushing labor unions, lowering taxes and privatizing the pension system. It came as no great surprise that American multi-nationals like ITT were able to continue their plunder.
2100 murders, 1100 disappearances, and 28,000 torture victims later, Pinochet resigned in 1990. Since his arrest and detention in 1998, Pinochet has been stripped of his immunity as former head of state and indicted for crimes against humanity. There is hope for justice.
One of the better articulations of the indirect yet powerful Neocolonial rule imposed by the United States and Western Europe comes from a speech Salvador Allende made before the United Nations (as the Nixon Regime was covertly wreaking social, political, and economic havoc under his very nose):
Our economy could no longer tolerate the subordination implied by having more than eighty percent of its exports in the hands of a small group of large foreign companies that have always put their interests ahead of those of the countries where they make their profits...
These same firms exploited Chilean copper for many years, made more than four billion dollars in profit in the last forty-two years alone, while their initial investments were less than thirty million...My country, Chile would have been totally transformed by that four billion dollars...
We find ourselves opposed by forces that operate in the shadows, without a flag, with powerful weapons, from positions of great influence....We are potentially rich countries, yet we live in poverty. We go here and there, begging for credits and aid, yet we are great exporters of capital. It is a classic paradox of the capitalist economic system.
The coffee is brewing, can't you smell it?
Live in denial if you will, but we Caucasian descendents of Western imperialists living in Neocolonial nations owe a tremendous moral and fiscal debt to those whom our ancestors and governments have egregiously wronged. Our wealth and power insulates us to an extent, but those we have oppressed are beginning to extract their pound of flesh.
Significant numbers of "illegal" immigrants are evading detection and entering the United States. They are passing through the grossly immoral border our ancestors created after stealing the land comprising our nation from the Native Americans and from Mexico. Xenophobia, paranoia, and racism are again rearing their ugly heads as some White Americans clamor for the arrest and deportation of 11 million immigrants and the creation of an American version of the Iron Curtain.
Despite his assurances that he does not intend to militarize the Mexican border, George Bush's latest agenda for our southern boundary includes deploying 6,000 National Guard troops and adding prison beds for "illegal" immigrants. Not a whiff of militarization there.
Bush's discourse made it quite clear that despite the fact that he did not support mass deportation, the "illegals" who had established themselves in the United States would only be eligible for citizenship if they wrapped themselves in the American flag, steeped themselves in the lore of the Empire, and became fluent in English, the global language which is the key to self-actualizing and getting into heaven. Once the "illegals" reaching for the brass ring of American citizenship have sold their cultural souls, Bush wants to grace them with the opportunity to "get in line" behind those who won the lottery in their country of origin and obtained documents to enter the United States legally.
While Congress struggles to create an immigration bill to pacify the Decider, business interests hungry for cheap labor, and racist forces eager to expel non-Anglo individuals, the deportation sweep is already taking place. On 4/21, the federal government announced that it would treat employers hiring "illegals" like criminal organizations. They promptly arrested 1,000 undocumented immigrants at IFCO, a German container manufacturer with locations around the United States.
Here in the Kansas City area, immigration officials are tenaciously pursuing the deportation of a 31 year old Mexican named Myrna Dick. Myrna is married to an American and has a child with him.
Also in Kansas City, a law abiding 38 year old father of two has been victimized by anti-immigrant laws. Adam Hernandez lived in the United States for 26 years and is married to an American citizen. Last week our federal government deported him to his native Honduras because he stole a car when he was a teenager. Human compassion in action.
On 4/24 Missouri state senators voted to empower state troopers to enforce federal immigration laws. If you have brown skin and are in Missouri, you better be able to prove you are a "real American" or you may find yourself "south of the border".
Unabashed imperialists that they were, the Romans at least granted limited citizenship, and ultimately full citizenship, to those they conquered. America is content to simply exploit its foreign subjects as it bleeds its colonies dry of wealth and resources.
Interestingly, our fellow imperialists across the Atlantic are coping with their own influx of people they have abused for centuries.
Each year, tens of thousands of desperately poor Africans make a perilous journey of 2,000 miles or more to seek better lives in Western Europe. However, Europe is also in the throes of xenophobia. 4,000 victims of the fallout from the colonization of Africa have been detained by Spain so far in 2006. With increasingly zealous enforcement of immigration laws, Africans are forced to take more dangerous routes to enter Europe. At least 1300 have died at sea so far this year.
Many of the African migrants attempt to gain entrance to Europe through Morocco in North Africa. To counter what it claims to be a tide of millions of African immigrants, Morocco has militarized its border, built high fences and dug deep trenches. Despite these measures, tens of thousands of African migrants make it into Morocco. Many of them are unable to make it to Spain, their ultimate goal. They remain stranded in Morocco where most live in abject poverty.
Like their counterpart in the United States, the French National Assembly is now debating immigration legislation. They are considering severe restrictions on the entry of unskilled laborers from African nations. Several French human rights groups and churches have denounced this measure. They recognize that such laws would lead to a flood of educated African professionals immigrating to France. Those left behind in Africa would find their situations even more dire as their doctors and engineers left for greener pastures in France.
In South America, two indigenous leaders have risen to power through legitimate popular election. Following the lead of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales are boldly defying their Neocolonial masters. Much to the chagrin of Western imperialists in Washington and in the European Union, Chavez is committing such heinous acts as utilizing Venezuelan oil revenues to provide education, housing, medical care, and food to the poor. Morales recently nationalized Bolivia's vast fields of natural gas. Perhaps Allende has been given a second chance through a double reincarnation.
In a Homeric tragedy, the Middle East has been the epicenter of a maelstrom of venomous hatred, brutality, subjugation and war dating back to the Crusades. While instability and conflict have plagued the region for many years, the demand for oil has taken the unrest to new heights. Western support for brutal, tyrannical regimes, like that of the Shah, Saddam Hussein and a continuous parade of Israeli leaders, has fueled an intense and understandable hatred amongst many of the indigenous people in various Middle Eastern nations.
Committing egregious acts of terrorism and murder "justified" by the warped notion that military personnel simply cause "collateral damage" when they kill innocent civilians, the United States, Israel, and their European allies have triggered a violent backlash from the denizens of the Middle East. While the violence committed by both sides is abhorrent, the violent reprisals of the Iraqi Resistance and groups like Hamas represent a rational response to invasion, terrorism, murder of civilians, and acts of genocide committed by avaricious and powerful invaders.
Aside from the obvious moral imperatives, we have several pragmatic impetuses to change our malevolent ways and redeem ourselves. Our victims out-number us. They possess both the will and the means to do us grievous harm, both militarily and economically. The days of their meek submission are long past. Iraq, Iran, nuclear proliferation, oil addiction, a notable increase in the percentage of minorities in American and European populations, and fears of "homeland" attacks are painful reminders of the increasing inability of the Caucasian-dominated West to dominate the world as it once did.
How do we in the United States finally shoulder the real White man's burden?
If we implemented the following social and political policies/strategies, much of our debt would be repaid to those we have abused and exploited, our creditors whom we victimized would leave us alone, and humanity would no longer be on a path to self-destruction:
1. Slashing insanely bloated military budgets by at least 2/3 and using the savings to balance the budget, fund domestic social programs and to increase foreign aid. (It is delusional to believe that the US needs to account for over 50% of world military expenditures per year to protect 5% of the world's population).
2. Forgiving World Bank debt and closing the doors to both the World Bank and the IMF
3. Withdrawing US forces from the Middle East and closing many of the US military bases around the globe
4. Ceasing US military and financial aid to Israel
5. Ending the Cuban Embargo
6. Adhering to the Geneva Conventions by ending torture, rendition, and wars of aggression.
7. Adhering to decisions rendered by the UN
8. Banning the use of depleted uranium
9. Allowing the millions of "illegal" immigrants who have established stable residence the opportunity to earn citizenship
10. Putting a stop to our support of murderous tyrants like Pinochet, Marcos, Suharto, and Saddam Hussein
11. Placing severe restriction on the powers and rights of corporations
12. Summarily removing the members of the Bush Regime from office, arresting them, and extraditing them to the Hague for war crimes trials
13. Implementing tax increases on the wealthy and on corporate giants while eliminating the loopholes which often enable them to shift the tax burden onto the poor and middle class
14. Amending the US Constitution with a Separation of Business and State clause to stop the revolving door between corporate America and the government and to stop corporations from buying our leaders
15. Holding internationally-monitored elections to replace the current criminal regime. The elections would need to be publicly funded, include a Populist party to represent the middle class and poor (since Democrats and Republicans are de facto representatives of the rich), and ban the use of electronic voting machines.
16. Repealing the Patriot Act and restoring the Bill of Rights
17. Closing Guantanamo Bay, the torture facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the CIA's network of secret prisons
18. Ending the "separate and unequal" public education system by infusing more public money into predominately Black and Hispanic school districts
19. Creating a system of national health care which charges premiums based on financial capacity
20. Ending the "War on Drugs" which has failed miserably, has filled our prisons with non-violent offenders who committed the "crime" of self-destructive hedonism, and has been used as a tool of military intervention in Central and South America
21. Focusing more law enforcement resources on rehabilitation and education and less on punitive measures
22. Facilitating an equitable distribution of resources, land, and power between Jews and Palestinians in Israel
After enduring years of Caucasian hubris, arrogance, abuse, invasion, exploitation, state terrorism, and genocide, it is small wonder that some non-Anglos are enraged enough to commit acts of terror and many others are desperate enough to risk death by attempting entry into the US or Europe.
Odds are the de facto ruling class of the United States will not rush to implement my suggestions to satisfy our moral debt and inject more humanity into the world. Property, power and money move their worlds. Surrender of their precious imperial, racist, and plutocratic system is out of the question until they feel some serious pain. Given prevailing conditions in the world, that time may be closer than these Masters of the Earth believe.
I recently wrote that some Whites believe that we Caucasians represent the pinnacle of human evolution. A reader emailed me to ask what proof I had that we do not represent the pinnacle of human evolution. The answer is intuitively obvious to the casual observer. Highly evolved human beings registering at the top of humanity's scale would have willingly forged a sociopolitical system based on peace, economic justice, social justice, and universal human rights long ago.
I rest my case.
Now let's get to work on repaying our seriously past due balance.
*including the Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean sub-categories of the Caucasian race, loosely referred to as Whites
Jason Miller is a 39 year old sociopolitical essayist with a degree in liberal arts and an extensive self-education (derived from an insatiable appetite for reading). He is a member of Amnesty International and an avid supporter of Oxfam International and Human Rights Watch. He welcomes responses at willpowerful@hotmail.com or comments on his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: Solidarity Street Demonstrations To Demand US Keep Hands Off Venezuela and Cuba
by Stephen Lendman
Maybe it's just a coincidence that just days before an international expression of solidarity demanding the US keep its hands off Venezuela and Cuba, Rep. Dan Burton (a right wing Republican in good standing) introduced an anti-Venezuelan resolution in the US House of Representatives. His resolution on May 11 was just another step along the way in the Bush administration's fourth attempt to oust President Hugo Chavez as the democratically elected leader of the Venezuelan people. The resolution shows at least two things: that the US government's stated commitment to democracy is farcical and empty on its face and that any resemblance in it between the truth about the Chavez government's achievements in combatting drug trafficking and money laundering (and all else for that matter) and the malicious inaccuracies and misstatements of facts in the Burton resolution is in writing for all to see.
Of course, the whole notion of the US making a determined effort to eliminate so-called ellicit drugs is even more absurd as I've explained several times before in other writing. Dan Burton and his Republican cohorts know quite well that doing that would be counter to the real US policy of protecting the ellicit trade to guarantee the huge profits from it flow unobstructed into the US economy. The so-called "war on drugs" is really a war to keep the stuff flowing freely.
On May 20 the People Will Have Their Say
So in glorious and committed counterpoint to the shameless Burton resolution, large demonstrations will take place on the streets of Washington, DC and Los Angeles on May 20 demanding "US Hands Off Venezuela and Cuba." A broad coalition of progressive organizations and noted individuals have organized them including: Venezuela, Cuba and Latin America - oriented solidarity groups and other groups supporting and fighting for the rights of blacks, Latinos, women, immigrants and the civil rights of all people. In addition, prominent activist figures will also participate including Noam Chomsky, Cindy Sheehan and Danny Glover.
And on the same day, there will be similar international solidarity actions in Venezuela, Cuba, Columbia, Australia, Canada and other countries. These demonstrations around the world are historic as they reflect a growing movement to combat US imperial aims in Latin America, Central America and the Caribbean. It was in those regions that offshore US imperialism first took flight once it left the incubator of the lands it stole from its original native inhabitants whose only offense was having lived on them for the past 20 - 30,000 years. Poor Mexico paid the price first for its geographical sin (in the words of its former dictator Porfirio Diaz) of being "so far from God (and) so close to the US." That poor choice of its country's borders resulted in their ending up enclosing half their former territory. I guess the Mexicans never really wanted California and the rest it lost anyway.
On May 20, the voices of people yearning to be free from the yoke of a global criminal enterprise otherwise known as the United States of America will take to the streets in an expression of their commitment. These voices will resonate in solidarity against clear US aggressive and hostile intentions against Venezuela and Cuba aiming to crush their revolutions and the burgeoning one in Bolivia to keep them from spreading throughout the region. The stakes are very high on both sides. Call it a war between the rights of free people determined to remain so against a powerful and predatory neighbor that has other ideas and will ruthlessly pursue all means to achieve them. On May 20, the voices in the streets will have their say, . and the sound heard will be: no mas - no more, and they're willing to fight for it. It also happens to be the day the Bush administration intends to release its so-called "Commission for Assistance for a Free Cuba" report.
A little translation is in order. By assistance, Washington means new policy sanctions against the Castro government (the longest standing thorn in its side) and its commitment to be the sole authority to decide what economic, social and political priorities are best for that country. It doesn't matter what the Cuban people want. After all, they only live there, which in Washington - think means nothing.
It doesn't matter what the Venezuelan people want either, unless they're willing to forego all the benefits they now have and allow them to be replaced by the poverty and human misery they had before Hugo Chavez came into office and changed everything. Don't bank any time soon on that happening as the overwhelming majority of the Venezuelan people twice democratically elected Hugo Chavez as their president and want to keep him as their leader. And why wouldn't they. Before him, they were repressed and desperate, and now they're the beneficiary of his wonderful economic, political and social policies that have transformed their lives for the better. They're not about to give that up without a fight. But Washington policy makers may not understand that, and even if they do, are likely to take that fight to the people and try to prevail by any means possible, regardless of the consequences.
The One Threat Above All Others Washington Fears
Washington also fears another threat: the one it fears most above all others - a good example that may spread and become unstoppable, so it must be crushed and not allowed to advance further. It follows that it now views any collaboration between Venezuela and Cuba (and now a likely tripartite alliance with Bolivia) as unacceptable as the benefits from it to their people will only encourage a further spread of them to other nations that may want the same things. Any why not? When governments improve the lives of their people, why would they ever want or be willing to give up what they gained.
So the battle lines are now drawn, and the importance of what's at stake will play out in the streets around the world on May 20. Those demonstrations mark a significant first step beginning and hopefully a turning point that will lead to a mass movement of millions of working people inside the US and around the world unwilling any longer to accept being subjugated by US imperial rule. Hopefully they will follow on and build from the historic US nationwide street demonstrations fighting for the rights of immigrant workers demanding equity and justice and being willing to accept nothing less. It may be one new civil rights movement growing from another and mushrooming into a giant national and worldwide expression of the people here, throughout the region, and spreading everywhere fighting for the rights they deserve. An epochal struggle may have begun, and the path ahead for it is fraught with danger. It's the people against a powerful giant predator willing to accept nothing less than total global domination with no "outliers" going their own way allowed. Stay tuned. The people may have other ideas.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: Greg Palast on His New Book "Armed Madhouse"
Democracy Now
15/05/06
AMY GOODMAN: Investigative reporter Greg Palast joins us in the studio right
now. He has a brand new book. It's called Armed Madhouse, and the subtitle
is Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats, Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal
'08, No Child's Behind Left and Other Dispatches from the Frontlines of the
Class War. Welcome to Democracy Now!
GREG PALAST: Thanks, Amy, for getting the entire subtitle without choking.
There's a lot of ground to cover in the book.
AMY GOODMAN: There certainly is. And right now, Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan
president, who you recently met with and interviewed and we broadcast on Democracy
Now!, was in Vienna, offering to the poor of Europe cheap oil. Of course, the
deaths continue in Iraq, both U.S. soldiers and Iraqis. We have the spy scandal
that is unfolding here in the United States. Link them.
GREG PALAST: Yeah, that's why I wrote a book, because it does link the whole
thing together. I mean, I just got back from meeting with Chavez, as you know,
and you showed our interview a few weeks ago. He's offered the U.S. $50-a-barrel
oil. That's a third off of what we're paying right now. Now, you would think
our president would be down in Caracas kissing Hugo Chavez's behind and saying, "Thank
you, thank you for dropping the price of oil by a third, and let's make a deal," because
Chavez wants a deal.
But he's not doing that, our president, even though the high prices are costing
about a million jobs right now. And the reason he's not is that what Chavez
will not do is that Chavez will not return the money. It's not about petroleum,
it's about petrodollars, as I explain in the book. In other words, when George
Bush rides around King Abdullah in his little golf cart on the Crawford ranch,
he's not trying to get Abdullah's oil. Abdullah can't drink the stuff. He's
got to sell it to us and Japan. But Abdullah takes the money back from the
-- when you fill up your SUV, you give your money to Saudi Arabia, the big
oil companies, Saudi Arabia. But then he returns it the form of petrodollars,
and that is what is funding George Bush's mad spending spree.
We have a president who has racked up $2 trillion in extra debt, you know,
stone sober, apparently. And someone's got to pay for that. And basically we're
paying for it by effectively an oil tax, which is returned to us, because the
Gulf states and our other trading partners are now buying up $2 trillion in
U.S. Treasury bonds and debt. So, in other words, they're recycling the money
back and paying for George Bush's spending spree on ending inheritance taxes,
you know, several wars, etc.
Now, Hugo Chavez says, "I'll give you cheap oil, not only to the poor,
but to everyone. But I'm not giving you back the money. That money is going
to stay in Latin America to build our nations." And he just withdrew $20
billion out of the U.S. Federal Reserve. You have to understand, this is a
punch in the face of the U.S. administration, far more than withholding oil,
withholding and withdrawing petrodollars, as I explain in the book, and that's
why you have that little nice floater from -- balloon thrown out by Reverend
Robertson, Pat Robertson, saying "Hugo Chavez thinks we're trying to assassinate
him, and I think we ought to just go and do it," because they have got
to get that -- it's not that they need that oil, they need that oil money.
And if they can't get it, they have to eliminate Hugo Chavez.
AMY GOODMAN: Is the war in Iraq a war for oil?
GREG PALAST: Is the war in Iraq for oil? Yes, it's about the oil, but not
for the oil. In my investigations for Armed Madhouse, I ended up with a story
far more fascinating and difficult than I imagined. We didn't go in to grab
the oil. Just the opposite. We went in to control the oil and make sure we
didn't get it. It goes back to 1920, when the oil companies sat in a room in
Brussels in a hotel room, drew a red line around Iraq and said, "There'll
be no oil coming out of that nation." They have to suppress oil coming
out of Iraq. Otherwise, the price of oil will collapse, and OPEC and Saudi
Arabia will collapse.
And so, what I found, what I discovered that they're very unhappy about is
a 323-page plan, which was written by big oil, which is the secret but official
plan of the United States for Iraq's oil, written by the big oil companies
out of the James Baker Institute in coordination with a secret committee of
the Council on Foreign Relations. I know it sounds very conspiratorial, but
this is exactly how they do it. It's quite wild. And it's all about a plan
to control Iraq's oil and make sure that Iraq has a system, which, quote, "enhances
its relationship with OPEC." In other words, the whole idea is to maintain
the power of OPEC, which means maintain the power of Saudi Arabia.
And this is one of the reasons they absolutely hate Hugo Chavez. As you'll
see in next week's Harper's coming out, which is basically an excerpt from
the book, Hugo Chavez on June 1st is going to ask OPEC to officially recognize
that he has more oil than Saudi Arabia. This is a geopolitical earthquake.
And the inside documents from the U.S. Department of Energy, which we have
in the book and in Harper's, say, yeah, he's got more oil than Saudi Arabia.
AMY GOODMAN: And is it accessible?
GREG PALAST: That's the trick. It's accessible, but the price of oil -- it's
heavy oil, which means it costs about -- you need oil to be about $30 a barrel,
less than half of what it is now. Chavez says, "Cut a deal with me. Oil
will never drop below a minimum price, but we'll get off this insane world-destroying
$75 a barrel. I'll give you cheap oil, but you just put a floor under it." He
shook hands with Bill Clinton on the deal. And Bush came in and spit on his
hand, to say the least. He had the guy kidnapped back in 2002. Bush does not
-- you have to remember, he doesn't like cheap oil. When we talk about paying
$3-a-gallon gasoline, Bush's benefactors, donors and his own family collects
the $3 a gallon.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean?
GREG PALAST: Well, we're paying three bucks a gallon. ExxonMobil is collecting
$3 a gallon. There's a chapter called "Trillion-Dollar Babies." When
Bush came in, we had oil as low as $18 a barrel. It was like water. Bush has
successfully built up the price of oil from 18 bucks a barrel to over $70 a
barrel. That's the "mission accomplished." He didn't make a mistake
here. That's the "mission accomplished."
ExxonMobil, which after Enron is the biggest lifetime donor to the Bush campaigns,
its value of its reserves, of its oil reserves, because of the Bush wars and
Bush actions, has gone up by almost exactly $1 trillion in value. Just one
company. A trillion-dollar windfall to a single company. That's the Bush benefactors.
And you have to look at where's Bush make his money.
So, the problem that they have now is that Chavez is trying to supplant the
Saudis running OPEC, and we've got a president who basically is caught up in,
you know, these guys in bathrobes and crowns, these dictators of Saudi Arabia
in the Gulf. And that's what the Bush family is linked up to, and they are
not going to let them be supplanted by Chavez.
AMY GOODMAN: Greg Palast, when you open your book, Armed Madhouse -- most
people have a white space there, but you use every inch, and you have a secret
history of the war over oil in Iraq.
GREG PALAST: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: You have a chronology.
GREG PALAST: Yes. I had a big fight with my capitalist pig publisher to put
in this very fancy colorful front page to give you a chronology, the complexity
of these secret deals between the administration and big oil. We actually got
our hands on two different plans for Iraq's oil, a 101-page plan and a 323-page
plan, which is all about, in great detail, what we are going do with Iraq's
oil, and the number of Iraqis involved in writing this thing is exactly zero.
You know, and of course, the number of Americans who know that that's why we're
in Iraq, and we even know from -- in my research for Armed Madhouse, going
through this and getting this document, I now know what was in the discussions
between the oil companies, Ken Lay and Dick Cheney, in his bunker.
AMY GOODMAN: All right, what?
GREG PALAST: Well, and you'll see there, they were going over the oil maps
of Iraq, and the question was why was Ken Lay, you know, the kind of Al Capone
of electricity --
AMY GOODMAN: He's on trial right now, of course, in Houston.
GREG PALAST: -- who's on trial right now. The verdict is about to come down.
Why was he in the meeting with oil companies, looking over the maps of Iraq?
The answer is he was on this committee, drafting up the program for what to
do about Iraq. And they had to get rid of Saddam, because he was jerking the
oil markets up and down. I was very interested in why did we go into Iraq suddenly,
and the answer was he was destabilizing the oil markets. He was making it jump
up, making it jump down. And he had to go. And that's right in the documentation.
AMY GOODMAN: Plan B?
GREG PALAST: Plan B -- there are two plans. There was a neo-con plan, which
was 101 pages long. Now, they actually did want to break up OPEC and destroy
Saudi Arabia, but the Bush family wasn't going to let that happen, nor was
big oil. And you will see behind this all: James Baker and, of course, Dick
Cheney. You know, actually the interesting thing -- I was just realizing this
morning -- four years of investigation, Amy, you'll find in the book. You'll
see all the stuff about the hugger muggers between Cheney, big oil, Rumsfeld,
Jim Baker. Nowhere is there any discussion of George Bush. He was not in the
picture. He was not in the frame. Basically, there was no decision made or
even discussed with George Bush. He's the president who's not there.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Greg Palast. He has written a new book. It is
called Armed Madhouse, short title, extremely long subtitle, Who's Afraid of
Osama Wolf?, China Floats, Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's
Behind Left, and Other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War. Why "Armed
Madhouse"?
GREG PALAST: That's back to the Allen Ginsberg's Howl, my old teacher. He
said, "The soul should not die ungodly in an armed madhouse." It's
like we have a circus of -- it's like we have the asylum taken over by the
inmates, and they're quite dangerous. And so, we have to get out of it. So,
in a way, the idea is to kind of arm you with the information.
AMY GOODMAN: The scheme to steal '08?
GREG PALAST: Yeah. Well, for those who, you know, know my background, I came
to the U.S. attention when I broke a story that before the 2000 election, Jeb
Bush and Katherine Harris knocked off tens of thousands of black voters off
the voter rolls of Florida, and this is what gave the election to George Bush
in 2000. It was fixed by knocking off of these black voters. There's a chapter
in the new book --
AMY GOODMAN: You broke this on BBC.
GREG PALAST: Yeah, I broke this on BBC, and to get in the United States, we
got Michael Moore to put on a chicken suit and report it here as a joke. And
then, thank you very much, Amy, for bringing it across the water and breaking
through the electronic Berlin Wall. By the way, all of these stories are stories
developed out of BBC and Guardian that basically are blacked out, except for
here on Democracy Now! That's very important, because these are the stories
that they don't want you to have for good reason. And they don't want you to
have it, because -- I then followed up with 2004. Now, it's accepted 2000 pretty
much was fixed. Well, there's a chapter, "Kerry won." 2004 was fixed.
And the way it was done is that 3.6 million votes were cast and never counted
in the United States. That's very important to know. This isn't Greg Palast
conspiracy nut stuff.
AMY GOODMAN: Say the number again.
GREG PALAST: 3.6 million ballots cast, never counted. And that's because they
call these spoiled votes or rejected provisional ballots, 1.9 million so-called
provisional ballots, and then, most of those don't get counted. And so, whose
votes don't get counted? If it was random, it wouldn't matter. In other words,
if these were votes where the machine doesn't record it properly, hanging chads,
extra marks on a paper ballot, you had the wrong address on your absentee ballot,
etc.
Three million ballots. Whose ballots? If you're a black person, the chance
your ballot will be technically invalidated is 900% higher than if you're a
white voter. Hispanic voter, 500% higher than if you're a white voter. Native
Americans, it's like 2,000% higher than if you're a white voter. The overwhelming
majority -- and I went to the state of New Mexico, which supposedly Bush won
by 5,000 votes, 89% of the ballots were cast out of minority precincts that
were thrown away. Kerry won New Mexico. You go into the dumpster, and it's
black votes, 155,000 black votes that were chucked away in Ohio. Kerry won
those votes. He won Ohio.
AMY GOODMAN: '08?
GREG PALAST: And '08, so what's happening is there is no fix of the system.
In other words, just like black folk get bad schools and bad hospitals, they
get the bad voting machines, which are going to kill those votes. But they're
not satisfied with just letting the ballots be thrown away. They're going to
move it along. And one of the things I discovered is the Republican Party has
something called "caging lists," which came to our -- you know, just
like you had Friday, the way the Yes Men capture material by using false websites,
so through a false website we were able to capture Republican Party internal
missives, through georgebush.org.
And so, what happened was is that they sent us a bunch of lists of literally
tens of thousands of names of voters and addresses. We were wondering what
the heck this was. It turns out these were almost all African American voters,
who they were prepared to challenge in 2004, and they did, to say that these
people shouldn't vote, because their addresses are suspect. And you'll see
in the book that in the lists of thousands of black voters that they were challenging
over their address were thousands of black soldiers who were sent to Iraq;
go to Baghdad, and the Republican Party challenges your vote.
And that's the beginning, and because there's been really no action taken,
they're accelerating the system now. And the next thing that they're going
after is the Hispanic vote. So when we saw two million votes cast/not counted
in 2000, nearly four million votes cast/not counted in 2004, you're going see
that number massively increase in challenges to voters in 2008. And that's
what's going back to this database story with the National Security Agency.
AMY GOODMAN: We have 30 seconds.
GREG PALAST: So, you have to say, "Why are they collecting this data?" The
answer is 2008. It's ultimately all about the elections.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, this is part one. Greg Palast, I want to thank you for
being with us. You'll be traveling around the country, and you can go to our
website at democracynow.org. We will link to Greg's website, gregpalast.com.
Greg Palast's book is called Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China
Floats, Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left, and Other
Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War.
Comment on this Editorial
Homeland Security
US 'releases 9/11 Pentagon tape'
Tuesday, 16 May 2006, 17:42 GMT 18:42 UK
The US defence department is to release a video of the plane crashing into the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, legal rights group Judicial Watch has said.
The US was to release the previously unseen footage at 1300 (1700 GMT).
American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the US military headquarters, killing 184 people, after it was hijacked as part of an al-Qaeda plot.
The release of the video, taken from a Pentagon security camera, comes after a Freedom of Information Act request.
Judicial Watch said it would release the footage as soon as it could, but it was not clear when that would be.
'Conspiracy theories'
Stills released in 2002 showed the moment the hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon, killing 125 people in the building and 59 passengers and crew.
WHAT IS JUDICIAL WATCH?
Describes itself as a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation
Has repeatedly sued US government agencies to obtain information
Forced release of documents on subjects ranging from RU-486 "abortion pill" to lobbyist visits to White House
Special focus on monitoring illegal immigration and Hillary Clinton fundraising
Source: www.judicialwatch.org |
The crash came shortly after two other hijacked airlines were flown into the twin towers at the World Trade Center in New York.
Judicial Watch filed the freedom of information request in 2004, but the Pentagon refused to release the video because it was part of the investigation involving al-Qaeda plotter Zacarias Moussaoui, the group said.
Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit this February, arguing that there was "no legal basis" for the refusal.
Earlier this month Moussaoui was jailed for life for his role in the 2001 attacks.
Judicial Watch said it wanted to obtain the video because "it was very important to complete the public record" on the attacks.
"Finally, we hope that this video will put to rest the conspiracy theories involving American Airlines Flight 77," President Tom Fitton said.
Some theorists have questioned the official account of the Pentagon attack.
French author Thierry Meyssan alleged that Flight 77 did not crash into the Pentagon and suggested a truck bomb or missile caused the damage.
Such views are challenged by eye-witness testimony at the scene of an aircraft fitting the description of Flight 77 crashing into the site.
Comment: No surprises here. The Pentagon is releasing the same "video" that they released in 2002 to counter Thierry Meyssan's book, only then it was several frames. Now they have kindly added a small section before and after the explosion.
Do they really think this is going to fly? Well, it probably will for the wing nuts. They'll tell us that the visual proof has been established! But anyone with two neurons left firing can tell that this video doesn't provide any more "proof" than the still frames provided...and that was no proof at all!
Comment on this Article
Pentagon Releases Gitmo Detainees' Names
By ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press
May 16, 2006
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - The Pentagon gave The Associated Press on Monday the first list of everyone who has been held at Guantanamo Bay, more than four years after it opened the detention center in Cuba. But none of the most notorious terrorist suspects were included, raising questions about where America's most dangerous prisoners are being held.
The handover marks the first time that everyone who has been held at Guantanamo Bay in the Bush administration's war on terror has been identified, according to Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler. A total 201 of the names have never been disclosed by the Defense Department before.
"This list takes us one step closer to our goal of fully reporting who has been swept into U.S military custody in Guantanamo, and how they and their cases are being handled," said David Tomlin, the AP's assistant general counsel, adding that the Pentagon did not give all the information the AP sought in a Freedom of Information Act request.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the names of all detainees held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base were previously kept classified because of "the security operation as well as the intelligence operation that takes place down there."
In a briefing in Washington, he did not explain why the Pentagon did not contest the AP's request for the release of the names, as it did with previous Freedom of Information Act requests for prisoner information. Just last month, the Pentagon released 558 names of current and former detainees to AP.
The release will help lawyers and other advocates track who has been held at the base and find former detainees to help investigate allegations of abuse, said Priti Patel, an attorney for New York-based Human Rights First.
While the release of Guantanamo names is welcome, human rights groups also want to learn the identities of all those held in
Iraq,
Afghanistan and secret locations, Patel said.
"There's still much more in darkness," she said.
For example, the United States has not disclosed where it is holding Khalid Shaikh Mohammed or Ramzi Binalshibh, who allegedly plotted the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and other captured top al-Qaida figures. The list released Monday also does not specify what has happened to former Guantanamo Bay detainees.
The fate of some is documented. All British nationals held at Guantanamo Bay, for example, were transferred back to Britain. But what has become of dozens of other detainees was not known.
Some could be free. Others could be in secret U.S. detention centers, or in torture cells of prisons in other countries.
Jumana Musa, an official with Amnesty International's Washington office, said there have long been rumors that the
CIA has a secret prison at Guantanamo Bay, an isolated base along the Caribbean which Cuba granted to Washington by treaty a century ago.
But Peppler, in an e-mail to the AP, emphatically ruled that out.
"Absolutely not," Peppler said. "There are no other detention facilities other than those under DoD control in Guantanamo Bay.
The AP sought the names, photos and other details of current and former Guantanamo Bay detainees through a Freedom of Information Act request on Jan. 18. After the Pentagon didn't respond, the AP filed a lawsuit in March seeking compliance.
The Pentagon later agreed to turn over much of the information. Motions are pending in court for additional information, including the height and weight of the roughly 480 detainees still at Guantanamo Bay to assist with news coverage of a hunger strike.
The Pentagon refused to release that information, arguing that medical records are private. The military said the hunger strike began in August and has involved a maximum of 131 detainees.
The Pentagon also argued that releasing photos of current detainees would damage U.S. intelligence gathering. Releasing pictures would make it easier for al-Qaida to retaliate against detainees suspected of cooperating with interrogators, said Paul B. Rester, the director of the Joint Intelligence Group at Guantanamo. That would make it harder for the U.S. to collect intelligence, Rester said in a May 10 affidavit filed in response to the AP's Freedom of Information Act suit.
"No human intelligence sources interested in cooperating with the United States officials under any hope of anonymity will be willing to do so if their photographs and names are publicly released," he said.
The U.S. military says 759 detainees have been held at Guantanamo Bay since the detention center began taking prisoners in the U.S. war on terror in January 2002. About 275 have been released or transferred.
The U.S. has filed charges against 10 detainees.
The Pentagon says another 136 detainees at Guantanamo have been approved for release or transfer, but their departure in some cases has been delayed as Washington tries to persuade their home countries to accept them and receive assurances they won't be treated inhumanely.
In April, the Department of Defense released to the AP the names of 558 detainees who had a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, which determines whether they are "enemy combatants" who should be held.
That list, however, did not include about 200 detainees who were released or transferred before the Combatant Status Review Tribunals began in July 2004. Those names were among those listed Monday.
Comment: Gosh, where could these "notorious terrorist suspects" be? Secret prisons, perhaps? Or maybe the Bush administration really doesn't know where the big fish are since they never existed in the first place... Think about it: The Bush administration throws out some Arab name and claims that he is a bigwig in al-Qaeda, and that they have captured him. How do you know they are telling the truth? The image they show on the boob tube could be anyone, and we'd never know any better. They lied about WMD's in Iraq, so why wouldn't they also be perfectly willing to invent terrorists to boost their ratings??
Having said that, the secret prisons do seem to exist, and the torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was very real. They were just torturing average joes instead of Osama's alleged 3 million lieutenants.
Comment on this Article
10,000 US troops to be sent to Mexican border
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Tuesday May 16, 2006
The Guardian
George Bush, scrambling to hold on to an increasingly disaffected conservative Republican base, said last night that he was deploying thousands of troops on America's border with Mexico to crack down on illegal immigration.
With opinion polls charting a steep decline in support from the conservatives who have been the president's bedrock, Mr Bush promised to deploy as many as 6,000 national guard troops along the 2,000-mile frontier as part of a $1.9bn (£1.01bn) programme to seal off America's border. He also plans to increase the border patrol force.
"We do not yet have full control of the border and I am determined to change that," Mr Bush said in prepared remarks. "I am calling on Congress to provide funding for dramatic improvements in manpower and technology on the border."
Last night's address was intended to disarm conservative opposition to legislation coming before the Senate this week for a guest worker programme that would allow many of the 11 million illegal immigrants already in the US a chance at becoming citizens.
Mr Bush plans to follow up his address with a visit on Thursday to the border in Arizona to further press his case. He is also expected to call on immigrants to learn English if they want to gain US passports.
In addition to the national guard, which will play a supporting role to the border patrol forces, the plan unveiled by Mr Bush last night calls for an increase in detention centres for illegal immigrants.
The tough talk on border security was intended to reassure conservatives who have agitated for harsher treatment of illegal immigrants. But Mr Bush faced a delicate balancing act, reeling in his conservative base while not alienating the increasingly important Hispanic voting bloc. "We will fix the problems created by illegal immigration and we will deliver a system that is secure, orderly and fair," Mr Bush said.
Earlier yesterday Karl Rove, the White House adviser, reached out to both constituencies. In a speech to a conservative thinktank, he said: "We have got a border that is so porous, who knows whether that is simply an illegal immigrant looking to get a job in a landscaping company, or somebody who wants to do something worse?" But he went on to say a guest worker programme was a necessity.
Last night's speech marked the first phase of a concerted effort by the White House to shore up a conservative base whose support for Mr Bush has declined from 80% to 50%. But Democratic as well as Republican leaders lined up to express their doubts. "The national guard already is stretched to the limit by repeated tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as from providing disaster assistance in their own states," said Edward Kennedy, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts.
Although Mr Rove was upbeat yesterday about the Republicans' prospects in next November's elections, he admitted that Mr Bush's popularity had declined.
Asked about the Republican party's prospects in the midterm elections, Mr Rove said: "Look, we're in a sour time. Being in the middle of a war where people turn on their TV sets and see brave men and women dying is not something that makes people happy and optimistic and upbeat."
In an attempt to turn things around, Mr Bush will hold a signing ceremony at the White House for an extension of his tax cuts later this week. Next month Congress is expected to return to the controversial issue of gay rights, with a vote on a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriages.
Comment on this Article
Troops on the Canadian border? Well, maybe
Last Updated Tue, 16 May 2006 08:53:38 EDT
CBC News
U.S. President George Bush didn't mention Canada in his speech about new border security measures and immigration, but officials in his administration indicated sending National Guard troops to the Canadian border is a possibility.
Tightening security at the Mexican border will take "dramatic improvements in manpower and technology," Bush told a national television audience on Monday night. He called for 6,000 troops, new fences, cameras and unmanned aerial vehicles to stem the flood of illegal immigrants.
The National Guard would be deployed while thousands of border guards are trained.
"We do not yet have full control of the border and I am determined to change that," Bush said.
"The border should be open to trade and lawful immigration and shut to illegal immigrants as well as criminals, drug dealers and terrorists."
The plan would also create thousands of beds so more illegal immigrants can be detained at the border
And while Bush confined his televised comments to the Mexican border, the Canadian Press reported that administration officials said state governors on the northern frontier might ask for similar security measures.
Canada and the United States set out their security arrangements shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the "smart border agreement." It aims to co-ordinate security at the border while facilitating trade.
Concern has been raised in Ottawa about a U.S. plan to require a passport or special ID card at land crossings by Jan. 1, 2008. There are worries that it would hurt the tourism and commerce industries.
In his speech Monday, Bush also proposed a plan to give some of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States a chance at citizenship, without offering them blanket amnesty.
Reaction to the speech in Mexico was muted.
Late night newscasts buried the story, reporting on the latest drug-trafficking murders, worker protests and the upcoming hurricane season before mentioning Bush's speech.
Mexican President Vicente Fox phoned Bush on the weekend when he heard of the plan, and went public with his concerns about militarizing the border - something Bush explicitly said he didn't plan to do.
Tuesday morning, a Fox spokesman said Mexico might not like Bush's plan, but can do little more than protest.
On Monday night, the Mexican Foreign Ministry issued a statement declaring its concern about the quick troop deployment on the border, considering the slow pace of immigration legislation in Washington.
The ministry also promised that its consulates in the United States would increase their efforts to protect the rights of Mexican workers, whether they are in the country legally or not.
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants have taken to the streets across the United States in recent weeks to demand better treatment.
Angelica Salas of the Coalition for Immigrants' Rights said she is appalled by what she heard Monday night.
"We have gone in the millions out in the streets in a peaceful manner. And to have our president respond in a military manner is disgraceful," she said.
But others believe Bush should have sent more troops.
"The intention of the president is to give us the illusion of security by throwing a handful of national guardsmen on the border," said Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minutemen, a southern California-based group that organizes volunteer border patrols.
Comment on this Article
Passport plan may drive 'invisible wedge' between Canada and U.S.: Wilson
19:44:37 EDT May 15, 2006
NATHANIAL GRONWALD
NEW YORK (CP) - The United States must move carefully and consider the full range of possible economic consequences before tightening security at the U.S.-Canada border, Canadian Ambassador Michael Wilson said Monday.
In an address to the Canadian Association of New York, Wilson warned that the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, a law passed by the U.S. Congress requiring formal identification documents such as passports for travellers entering the United States, "threatens to drive an invisible wedge between our two peoples."
"The concern that has been expressed by a number of people to us a is whether we can meet the timelines that are set out in the legislation," said Wilson, Canada's ambassador to the United States.
The legislation will require everyone crossing U.S. borders, including U.S. citizens returning from Canada or Mexico, to carry either a passport or a special border crossing identification card beginning Jan. 1, 2008.
Wilson stressed Canada and the United States must work together in introducing new border identity cards to ensure "that they can be distributed in a way that people will be ready to take advantage of them when the time comes for implementation."
On his first visit to New York since being named ambassador, Wilson called upon the United States to undertake a careful analysis of the potential economic consequences of the passport initiative, warning of a possible "cooling effect" on cross-border travel and commerce.
Wilson's comments came ahead of a major speech to be delivered Monday night by U.S. President George W. Bush, who was announcing plans to beef up security at the U.S.-Mexico border, including the deployment National Guard troops.
Border security has become a major topic of discussion as the U.S. Congress debates ways to normalize the status of millions of illegal immigrants in the United States.
Despite anxiety in Mexico over the U.S. debate, Wilson told reporters he was not concerned about any new action from Bush.
Asked what he thought the implications for Canada would be in Bush's speech, Wilson said he didn't expect to hear anything that would be specifically directed at Canada. He cautioned reporters not to misinterpret any new initiatives announced by Bush as applying to both borders.
With oil and energy prices at record highs, Wilson talked up the potential that the oil sands in Alberta held in enhancing U.S. energy security.
The oil sands have the potential of achieving output levels of two billion barrels per day, he noted. "This supply is safe, secure and right next door, and subject to normal market conditions and not from some cartel or unstable regime."
Wilson assured the U.S. business community Prime Minister Stephen Harper would continue economic policies that contributed to Canada's strong economic performance. He urged the Canadians in the audience to pass this message on to their American colleagues.
"I think that it's an important message for you to take to people in the United States that there's a continuity here, there's a continuity that started from the '80s into the '90s now into this century, that speaks to the significance of good economic policies in Canada."
Comment on this Article
Bush and Blair: Two of a Kind
A dangerous shift of norms - 'There is no responsible use of torture'
By Brita Sydhoff
Le Monde diplomatique
May 2006
If the entertainment industry, not least Hollywood, reflects a prevailing state of mind in the United States and the West in general, torture may be steadily gaining acceptance as a means of extracting information from suspects.
Or is it just a coincidence that the entertainment industry increasingly appeals to its audience through scenes of torture and violence at just this time when politicians and intellectuals are arguing in favour of interrogation methods that amount to torture, as a countermeasure in the so-called war on terror? In an earlier season of the popular Fox television series 24, Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) agent Jack Bauer fought a radical Islamist plot to cause meltdown at US nuclear power plants.
The series is highly entertaining, but it is also a test of its audience's views on the ticking-bomb scenario: are they prepared to condone torture if thousands of innocent lives are at stake? Is it acceptable, for example, when a CTU agent tortures his colleague's husband with electric cables in an attempt to extract the information that could possibly prevent the meltdown?
The fact that 24 presents the enemies of the US as dehumanised beings who are willing to kill even their own children in their terrorist fight against a democratic society suggests that the upholders of law and life are left with no alternatives, so that torture becomes acceptable in extreme situations.
The series also gives the impression that torture is not always as bad as its reputation. In one scene a CTU director used a stun gun repeatedly against a female staff member who was assumed to have knowledge that could prevent the meltdown. What was her reaction when the director realised she was not involved in the plot? She was disappointed with her superior for mistrusting her, but then demanded a pay rise and went back to her desk. Just another bad day at work.
This presentation of what we can call the torture dilemma, combined with the minimisation of the effects of torture, make it necessary to reiterate two facts that are increasingly questioned in anti-terrorism provisions:
- The prohibition against torture in international law is absolute: nothing can justify torture. This principle is reflected in the United Nations Convention Against Torture amongst other international law instruments. The logic is that allowing torture in exceptional circumstances would open a Pandora's box and would lead to a situation in which states would be at liberty to respond to perceived extraordinary crises by diluting existing definitions of torture.
In the words of the British law lord, Lord Hope of Craigshead: "A single instance, if approved to meet the threat of international terrorism, would establish a principle with the power to grow and expand so that everything that falls within it would be regarded as acceptable."
The US detention camp at Guantánamo aptly illustrates the problem. The UN has recently criticised the US for using interrogation methods amounting to torture against detainees at the camp. The US government denies the charges, relying instead on its own interpretation of what constitutes torture, an interpretation that is far narrower than that of the UN convention, to which the US is a signatory.
- In the real world torture is even worse than its reputation. Torture is not only about the immediate pain; it is also about the all-encompassing fear associated with being completely at the mercy of one's torturers.
In most cases the actual physical and/or psychological abuse coupled with complete helplessness makes the victim's subsequent life a hell of depression, rage, anxiety, nightmares and feelings of guilt, which are a few of the common consequences of torture. The victim's family is heavily affected too. And all of this happens whether the victim is in fact "guilty" or not.
These two crucial factors - the slippery slope associated with questioning the absoluteness of the prohibition against torture, and the effects of torture in the real world - must be at the forefront of the debate at a time when leading democratic countries have implicitly and explicitly expressed reservations as to that absoluteness.
Any attempt to open a Pandora's box, in entertainment or the real world, should raise deep concern. Torture is not something you walk away from with a disappointed shrug, whether at the hands of your boss at the office, hooded thugs in a soundproof room at the back of the local police station, or foreign soldiers in the dungeons of Abu Ghraib. And it is no less torture when secret agents working for democratic governments use stun guns and electric cables to interrogate another human being than when the henchmen of dictatorships extract their victims' fingernails or burn them with irons.
Those who claim otherwise are playing a dangerous game, and contributing to a treacherous discourse that has developed in the context of the war on terror, a discourse that has caused a slow but unmistakable shift of norms and values to the point that it has become plausible to suggest that torture can be used in a responsible and morally sound fashion. It cannot.
In empirical terms, history does not give us one single example to support the claim that there can be such a thing as responsible use of torture. No torturing governments in the history of humanity, whether dictatorships or democracies, have limited their use of torture to indisputable ticking-bomb scenarios. If anything, the present US government's unclear policies on torture and the resulting abuses at detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan have confirmed the lesson that any opening, however small, that allows the use of torture will turn instantly into a festering gap, even when the perpetrator is a leading democracy.
The claim that there can be responsible use of torture ignores the fact that, even in theoretical terms, foolproof safeguards against mistakes (such as that of the stun gun incident in 24) are not possible. Nothing can establish beyond doubt that the guy in custody is the right guy. That the information leading to his arrest is 100% reliable. That he does not just look convincingly like the real guy. That he has not been set up.
The logical next step is to allow torture on the grounds of justified suspicion. And so it goes. Accept a shift of norms, however small and well argued, and you blow the lid off Pandora's box. Allow a little torture and no one will be entirely safe.
Comment on this Article
Bush Government Attempted To Cover Up Its Lies About Iraqi WMDs
The Associated Press
Sunday, May 14, 2006
A year after Bush administration claims about Iraqi ''bioweapons trailers'' were discredited by American experts, U.S. officials were still suppressing the findings, according to a senior member of the CIA-led inspection team.
At one point, former U.N. arms inspector Rod Barton says, a CIA officer told him it was ''politically not possible" to report that the White House claims were untrue. In the end, Barton says, he felt ''complicit in deceit."
Barton, an Australian biological weapons specialist, discusses the 2004 events in ''The Weapons Detective,'' a memoir of his years as an arms inspector, being published Monday in Australia.
Much sought after for his expertise, Barton served on the U.N. Iraq arms inspection teams of 1991-98 and 2002-03. After the U.S. invasion, he was an aide to chief U.S. inspector Charles Duelfer.
The Washington Post reported last month that a U.S. fact-finding mission confidentially advised Washington on May 27, 2003, that two trailers found in Iraq were not mobile units for making bioweapons, as had been suspected.
Two days later, President Bush still asserted the trailers were bioweapons labs, and other officials repeated that line for months afterward.
Comment on this Article
Italian Pay-off From Niger Forgery?
By Jeffrey Klein and Paolo Pontoniere
New America Media
05/15/06
Italian journalists and parliamentary investigators are hot on the trail of how pre-Iraq War Italian forged documents were delivered to the White House alleging that Saddam Hussein had obtained yellowcake uranium ore from Niger.
New links implicating Italian companies and individuals with then-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi now raise the question of whether Berlusconi received a payback as part of the deal -- namely, a Pentagon contract to build the U.S. president's special fleet of helicopters.
The yellowcake story in the United States has long been linked to the ongoing investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Plame's diplomat husband Joe Wilson had probed the Niger connection and concluded that the Bush administration was twisting intelligence reports to fit its case for war.
Two people -- Carlo Rossella and Giovanni Castellaneta -- are at the center of Italian inquiries into the transfer of the yellowcake dossier from the SISMI, the Italian intelligence agency, to the White House.
According to the influential Rome-based La Repubblica, Carlo Rossella -- at the time editor-in-chief of Berlusconi's Panorama, one of Italy's largest weeklies -- delivered the dossier in the autumn of 2002 to the U.S. Embassy in Rome. Rossella's actions were puzzling because its top investigative reporter, Elisabetta Burba, was in the midst of discounting the file as a gross falsification.
Besides directing Panorama, Rossella -- once a foreign policy advisor to Berlusconi -- had been considered a candidate to direct RAI, Italy's state broadcasting system.
A more direct connection to Berlusconi is Giovanni Castellaneta, current Italian ambassador to the United States and Berlusconi's former national security adviser.
According to La Repubblica, Nicola Pollari, the head of SISMI, tried to dispel the CIA's misgivings about the authenticity of the yellowcake papers and failed. Castellaneta then arranged for Pollari to bypass the CIA and meet directly with then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, Rice's chief deputy and currently national security advisor. The meeting took place on Sept. 9, 2002, in the White House, and has been confirmed by White House officials.
It was after this meeting that the story of the yellowcake uranium ore from Niger took off. In late September, CIA director George Tenet and Secretary of State Colin Powell cited the attempted yellowcake purchase from Niger in separate classified hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In advance of President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address, Hadley asked for the CIA's approval to include the Niger claim in the president's speech. Even though the CIA had explicitly excised the claim from a prior address given by the president and now repeated its misgivings to Hadley, Bush ended up saying in his speech that, "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Bush attributed this intelligence to the British government. No mention was made of any connections between the Italian and American governments.
What did the Berlusconi government get in return for providing the Bush administration with a convenient "smoking gun" to attack Iraq? At the end of the yellowcake trail may be the prestigious contract an Italian firm won to manufacture Marine One -- the fleet of presidential helicopters. In January 2005, the U.S. Navy awarded the contract for the construction of 23 new Marine One helicopters to AgustaWestland. Marketing itself as an Anglo-Italian firm, AgustaWestland is wholly owned by Finmeccanica, Italy's largest defense conglomerate.
The choice of AgustaWestland for Marine One surprised most industry observers because U.S.-based Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. was the heavy favorite. Sikorsky patented the first helicopter design in 1939 and built virtually every president's helicopter since 1957. President Eisenhower regularly flew in a Sikorsky to his Gettysburg farm, and the Sikorsky that Nixon boarded when he resigned from the White House is now being restored for permanent display at the Nixon Library.
Not only did Sikorsky lose, but it lost to a foreign firm that has no problems selling its helicopters to the United States' adversaries. (See side bar, "Choppers for Sale, to Everyone")
As with the yellowcake dossier, the key figure in the Marine One contract is Gianni Castellaneta. When the Pentagon put the Marine One contract out for bid, Castellaneta was deputy chair of Finmeccanica and national security advisor to Prime Minister Berlusconi. By the time the contract was awarded, Castellaneta had been appointed Italy's ambassador to the United States.
Castellaneta proudly told U.S. Italia Weekly, "At noon President Bush received me for the official delivery of credentials. He didn't make me wait a single day. An exceptional courtesy."
Castellaneta's role in obtaining the Marine One contract has never been examined before, but according to Affari Italiani, Italy's first online daily, and disarmo.org, an Italian arms control advocacy group, Castellaneta has long managed the most sensitive dossiers in U.S.-Italian bilateral relations.
When Ambassador Castellaneta was asked about his role, the embassy press officer, Luca Ferrari said, "In his capacity as ambassador, representing all of Italy in the United States, the ambassador does not care to speak any more about Finmeccanica."
"Castellaneta's double role as ambassador and corporate businessman has come under scrutiny at various junctures," says Carlo Bonini, an Italian journalist who has extensively investigated the yellowcake affair. "His duality has inspired animated debate in the Italian Parliament, but due to the absolute majority of seats held by Berlusconi, the matter could never be fully discussed."
With center-left opposition leader Romano Prodi taking the helm of Italy's new government, the newly reconfigured Parliament is expected to open a probe into the "Yellowcake One" affair. For Italians, the main question is whether Berlusconi personally profited from the helicopter deal. For Americans, the question is whether the Bush administration paid the Italians back for providing the false intelligence that helped justify launching the war in Iraq.
Comment on this Article
They did it their way - so they have no one to blame but themselves
Gary Younge
Monday May 15, 2006
The Guardian
"Only when we are all dead will the genius of this war finally become clear."
Bush and Blair are trying to offset the unpopularity of their chosen war by appealing to a verdict of history we will never hear
If democracy is supposed to represent the will of the people, then there is either something wrong with the democracies or something wrong with the people on both sides of the Atlantic. Less than two years ago George Bush was re-elected president of the United States. His pitch: "Stick with me, I have not done a thing wrong." His promise: "I will do more of the same." Six months later Tony Blair went to the polls with a similar message.
Both were elected. Both have since been as good their word. With the exception of Dick Cheney's poor marksmanship and John Prescott's priapism there have been no real surprises since then.
Yet both now find themselves wallowing at dismal levels of public support. Blair has the lowest approval rating of any Labour premier on record - dipping below Harold Wilson in 1968 during the post-devaluation crisis. Bush similarly keeps plumbing new depths - currently standing at just over half the level Clinton enjoyed in the midst of the Lewinsky scandal. If there were an election tomorrow, both would struggle.
On the domestic front, the route by which they got to this point and the time they have to recover differ. Blair has strayed too far from the core interests of the party he represents. Bush has stuck too closely to his. Bush must stay and face the music until January 2009, and no one knows who will replace him; Blair could go at any moment, and his heir apparent lives next door and is champing at the bit.
But both move into the twilight of their political careers with colleagues and commentators looking over their shoulders at potential successors, like social climbers at a cocktail party. From now on they are not fighting for their political lives - their days on that score are literally numbered, even if in Blair's case we are not sure quite what the number is - but for their political obituaries. In the time that remains, they are focused not on legislation but legacy.
The trouble is that the issue on which those legacies will be judged is the one where they have given themselves the least room for political manoeuvre and over which they now have the least day-to-day control: Iraq.
According to a morgue report, last month sectarian fighting claimed 1,100 Iraqi lives in Baghdad alone. Meanwhile, the death toll of US soldiers has risen to roughly three a day - back to the higher levels of last year. According to a Pew poll in March, half of Americans favour immediate troop withdrawal and less than a third approve of the way Bush is handling the war. In the UK, a Newsnight poll showed 60% believed that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake.
Both Bush and Blair staked their reputations on this war. They made their pledges to tough it out the hallmark of their leadership style. Yet the premises on which they entered it were false and the conduct of it remains flawed. Militarily, they are unable to move forward; politically, they are incapable of turning back. They are desperate for everyone to change the subject and yet are stuck with the subject they themselves chose.
"The diplomatic historian traces foreign affairs as if domestic affairs were offstage disturbances," writes Walter Karp in The Politics of War. "The historian of domestic politics treats the explosions of war as if they were offstage disturbances. Were that true, we would have to believe that presidents who faced a mounting sea of troubles at home have none the less conducted their foreign policy without the slightest regard for those troubles - that individual presidents were divided into watertight compartments, one labelled 'domestic' and the other 'foreign'."
The relationship between this foreign misadventure and these domestic mishaps is contextual rather than causal. Iraq has become a signifier for leaders who do not listen, politicians who mislead, and political priorities that are out of kilter with the public need. These are sentiments that transfer easily to gas prices and Hurricane Katrina in the US as much as to school reform and ID cards in Britain. The war "is like a fog that just envelops the entire political atmosphere", Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report told the Los Angeles Times. According to a CBS poll in April, almost two-thirds of Americans think Bush describes things in Iraq as better than they are. In the Newsnight poll, 52% of Britons said their opinion of Blair has gone down as a result of the war. More Americans rank the war as the most important issue facing the country than those who prioritise the economy, immigration and terrorism put together. But that is still only 27%.
These statistics are not coming from the same place. These two leaders sold different wars to different electorates. The Bush administration used the terrorist attacks in New York as the pretext for this war; terrorists used this war as the pretext for attacking London. The Bush administration responded to the attacks with a policy of pre-emptive strikes and regime change in which WMD were central but not crucial. In his post-9/11 speech, Blair promised to "reorder this world around us" but evoked Congo and Kyoto, not Iraq or Iran. Finally, most Americans supported the war until last year; bar a brief period at the outset, most Britons never did.
But, for all these differences, what the war exposed both in the UK and the US were democratic deficits that failed to check or balance the bellicose machismo of either man. In Britain the dislocation between public will and foreign policy was blatant. Somehow an issue of war and peace that raged through the country was marginalised in parliament and erased from the cabinet. In the US the public barely got a look in. A supine press and spineless Democrats ensured that no alternative arguments or strategies would emerge until it was too late. The people are not fickle but their democracies are dysfunctional.
As a result, both leaders got precisely what they wanted. Unchecked by political opposition at home, unfettered by international law abroad, unpersuaded by argument at home and abroad, like Sinatra they did it their way. And so, since they have no one else to blame and find themselves out of credit at the goodwill bank of public opinion, they reach for the arbiter of last resort: history.
Not the history that has passed. Not the history of Kenya or Vietnam which taught us that the suppression of a colonised people can only be sustained through barbarism. Certainly not the history in which Winston Churchill advocated gassing the Kurds and the US continued to support Saddam Hussein as an ally after the Halabja massacres.
In their desire for legacy, they seek not the history that records the past but a history of the future: an abstract verdict that we cannot argue with for the simple reason that it hasn't been made yet.
"History will prove the decision we made to be the right decision," said Bush in 2003.
"If we are wrong," argued Blair, "we will have destroyed a threat that, at its least, is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive."
Rebutted by the past and rejected in the present, their only hope is the future imperfect. Only when we are all dead will the genius of this war finally become clear.
Comment on this Article
Spies 'hid' bomber tape from MPs
05/15/06
The Times
Bugging revealed earlier plot
MI5 is being accused of a cover-up for failing to disclose to a parliamentary watchdog that it bugged the leader of the July 7 suicide bombers discussing the building of a bomb months before the London attacks.
MI5 had secret tape recordings of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the gang leader, talking about how to build the device and then leave the country because there would be a lot of police activity.
However, despite the recordings, MI5 allowed him to escape the net. Transcripts of the tapes were never shown to the parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC), which investigated the attacks.
The disclosures prompted allegations of a "whitewash" from politicians and victims of the attacks this weekend.
Last week the committee, whose members are appointed by Tony Blair and report to him, cleared MI5 of blame after it failed to thwart the attacks, which killed 52 innocent people and injured more than 700. It concluded that MI5 had no reason to suspect Khan of plotting attacks in Britain. He was regarded as "peripheral" to higher priorities.
The new evidence shows MI5 monitored Khan when he met suspects allegedly planning another, separate attack; that he had knowledge of the "late-stage discussions" of this plot; and that he was recorded having discussions with them about making a bomb and leaving the country. He was also recorded talking about his plans to wage jihad - holy war - and go to Al-Qaeda terrorist camps abroad.
Yesterday David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: "If this is true, it completely undermines the basis on which the ISC did its report."
Patrick Mercer, the Tory spokesman on homeland security, said: "Unless there is a proper independent inquiry, there is a danger of the committee's report being interpreted as a whitewash."
A committee member, who asked not to be named, admitted that it had not seen transcripts of MI5's recordings of Khan. Instead, it had taken evidence from senior security officials and accepted their judgment that there was no reason to regard Khan as a serious threat.
The MP said that if the transcripts showed Khan had been involved in discussions about bomb-making and another possible attack, the committee had been seriously misled. "If that is the case, it amounts to a scandal," said the source. "I would be outraged."
Rachel North, a survivor of the bomb at King's Cross, was shocked by the disclosure: "I am shaking with anger.
In the absence of an independent inquiry answering the public's questions, I had hoped that those who heard the evidence behind closed doors on our behalf would find out the answers for us.
"They did not find out nor tell us the whole truth, and I feel badly, desperately let down."
The disclosures will increase pressure for a public inquiry into the atrocity, with greater powers to demand evidence and interrogate witnesses.
The government also failed to address concerns about what MI5 knew when they were raised in unreported exchanges in the Commons last week. Davis referred to the existence of the tape recordings when he addressed John Reid, the home secretary.
"It seems that MI5 taped Mohammad Sidique Khan talking about his wish to fight in the jihad and saying his goodbyes to his family - a clear indication that he was intending a suicide mission . . . he was known to have attended late-stage discussions on planning another major terror attack. Again, I ask the home secretary whether that is true."
Reid said the questions were "legitimate" but failed to answer them.
Comment: Just last friday we had a parliamentary inquiry into the London bombings concluding that MI5 lacked the manpower to keep tabs on the bombers, today, that claim is shown to be a lie. A whitewash indeed. See here for friday's stories and our suggestion that the parliamentary committee's conclusion was completely unbelieveable.
Comment on this Article
Dixie Chicks, Valerie Plame & Bush
By Robert Parry
May 16, 2006
A politician's reaction to dissent is often the true test of a commitment to democracy. Great leaders not only tolerate criticism, but welcome disagreement as part of a fair competition of ideas leading to the best result for society.
Certainly, no one who truly cares about democracy favors punishing critics and demonizing dissenters. But just such hostility has been the calling card of George W. Bush and his backers over the past five years as they have subjected public critics to vilification, ridicule and retaliation.
While Bush doesn't always join personally in the attack-dog operations, he has a remarkable record of never calling off the dogs, letting his surrogates inflict the damage while he winks his approval. In some cases, however, such as the punishment of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, CIA officer Valerie Plame, Bush has actually gotten his hands dirty. [See below.]
The Bush-on-the-sidelines cases are illustrated by what happened to the Dixie Chicks, a three-woman country-western band that has faced three years of boycotts because lead singer, Natalie Maines, criticized Bush as he was stampeding the nation toward war with Iraq.
During a March 10, 2003, concert in London, Maines, a Texan, remarked, "we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas." Two days later - just a week before Bush launched the Iraq invasion - she added, "I feel the President is ignoring the opinions of many in the U.S. and alienating the rest of the world."
With war hysteria then sweeping America, the right-wing attack machine switched into high gear, organizing rallies to drive trucks over Dixie Chicks CDs and threatening country-western stations that played Dixie Chicks music. Maines later apologized, but it was too late to stop the group's songs from falling down the country music charts.
On April 24, 2003, with the Iraq War barely a month old, NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw asked Bush about the boycott of the Dixie Chicks. The President responded that the singers "can say what they want to say," but he added that his supporters then had an equal right to punish the singers for their comments.
"They shouldn't have their feelings hurt just because some people don't want to buy their records when they speak out," Bush said. "Freedom is a two-way street."
So, instead of encouraging a full-and-free debate, Bush made clear that he saw nothing wrong with his followers hurting Americans who disagree with him.
Pattern of Attack
Other celebrities who opposed the Iraq War, such as Sean Penn, got a similar treatment. Bush's supporters even gloated when Penn lost acting work because he had criticized the rush to war.
"Sean Penn is fired from an acting job and finds out that actions bring about consequences. Whoa, dude!" chortled pro-Bush MSNBC commentator Joe Scarborough.
Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, cited as justification for Penn's punishment the actor's comment during a pre-war trip to Iraq that "I cannot conceive of any reason why the American people and the world would not have shared with them the evidence that they [Bush administration officials] claim to have of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." [MSNBC transcript, May 18, 2003]
In other words, no matter how reasonable or accurate the concerns expressed by Bush's Iraq War critics, they could expect retaliation.
With Bush's quiet encouragement, his supporters also denigrated skeptical U.S. allies, such as France by pouring French wine into gutters and renaming "French fries" as "freedom fries."
Bush's backers even mocked U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix for not finding WMD in Iraq in the weeks before the U.S. invasion. CNBC's right-wing comic Dennis Miller likened Blix's U.N. inspectors to the cartoon character Scooby Doo, racing fruitlessly around Iraq in vans.
As it turned out, of course, the Iraq War critics were right. The problem wasn't the incompetence of Blix but the fact that Bush's claims about Iraq's WMD were false, as Bush's arms inspectors David Kay and Charles Duelfer concluded after the invasion.
But the critics never got any apologies or repair to the careers. As CBS's "60 Minutes" reported in a segment on May 14, 2006, the Dixie Chicks were still haunted by the pro-Bush boycott three years later.
"They have already paid a huge price for their outspokenness, and not just monetarily," said correspondent Steve Kroft. Sometimes, Iraq War supporters even turned to threats of violence.
During one tour, lead singer Maines was warned, "You will be shot dead at your show in Dallas," forcing her to perform there under tight police protection, said the group's banjo player, Emily Robison. In another incident, a shotgun was pointed at a radio station's van because it had the group's picture on the side, Robison said.
Though the Dixie Chicks are still shunned by many country-western stations, they have refused to back down. Indeed, one of their new songs - entitled "Not Ready to Make Nice" - takes on the hatred and intolerance they faced for voicing an opinion about Bush and the Iraq War.
As Kroft noted, "Not Ready to Make Nice" received favorable reviews and became one of the most downloaded country songs on the Internet, but it still "fizzled on the charts" as Bush supporters called up stations and demanded that it never be played.
Asked to explain why these tactics work, Maines said, "when you're in the corporate world, and when that's your livelihood, and when 100 people e-mail you that they'll never listen to your station again, you get scared of losing your job. And why did they need to stand up for us? They're not our friends. They're not our family. And they cave." [CBS's "60 Minutes," May 14, 2006]
The Plame Case
But what's most troubling is that this intolerance toward dissent is not simply overzealous Bush supporters acting out, but rather loyal followers who are getting their signals from the top levels of the Bush administration.
For instance, a new federal court filing by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney apparently instigated the campaign to punish former Ambassador Wilson for his criticism of the administration's claims that Iraq had sought enriched uranium from Africa.
After reading Wilson's July 6, 2003, opinion article in the New York Times, Cheney scrawled questions in the space above the article, according to the court filing. Cheney's questions would soon shape the hostile talking points that White House officials and their right-wing supporters would spread against Wilson and his CIA officer wife, Valerie Plame.
"Those annotations support the proposition that publication of the Wilson Op-Ed acutely focused the attention of the Vice President and the defendant - his chief of staff [I. Lewis Libby] - on Mr. Wilson, on the assertions made in his article, and on responding to these assertions," according to a May 12, 2006, filing by Fitzgerald.
Cheney's questions addressed the reasons why the CIA sent Wilson to Niger in 2002 to check out - and ultimately discredit - suspicions about Iraq allegedly seeking "yellowcake" uranium from Africa.
"Have they [CIA officials] done this sort of thing before?" Cheney wrote. "Send an Amb[assador] to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?"
Though Cheney did not write down Plame's name, his questions indicate that he was aware that she worked for the CIA and was in a position (dealing with WMD issues) to have a hand in her husband's assignment to check out the Niger reports.
Over the next several days, White House officials, including Libby and Bush's political adviser Karl Rove, allegedly disseminated information about Plame's CIA identity to journalists in the context of knocking down Wilson's critical article. In effect, the White House tried to cast Wilson's trip as a case of nepotism arranged by his wife.
On July 14, 2003, Plame was publicly identified as a CIA operative in a column by right-wing commentator Robert Novak, destroying her career at the CIA and forcing the spy agency to terminate the undercover operation that she had headed. A CIA complaint to the Justice Department prompted an investigation into the illegal exposure of a CIA officer.
Initially, when the investigation was still under the direct control of Attorney General John Ashcroft, Bush and other White House officials denied any knowledge about the leak. Bush pretended that he wanted to get to the bottom of the matter.
"If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is," Bush said on Sept. 30, 2003. "I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true."
Yet, even as Bush was professing his curiosity and calling for anyone with information to step forward, he was withholding the fact that he had authorized the declassification of some secrets about the Niger uranium issue and had ordered Cheney to arrange for those secrets to be given to reporters.
In other words, though Bush knew a great deal about how the anti-Wilson scheme got started - since he was involved in starting it - he uttered misleading public statements to conceal the White House role and possibly to signal to others that they should follow suit in denying knowledge.
Failed Cover-up
The cover-up might have worked, except in late 2003, Ashcroft recused himself because of a conflict of interest, and Fitzgerald - the U.S. Attorney in Chicago - was named as the special prosecutor. Fitzgerald pursued the investigation far more aggressively, even demanding that journalists testify about the White House leaks.
In October 2005, Fitzgerald indicted Libby on five counts of perjury, lying to investigators and obstruction of justice. In a court filing on April 5, 2006, Fitzgerald added that his investigation had uncovered government documents that "could be characterized as reflecting a plan to discredit, punish, or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson" because of his criticism of the administration's handling of the Niger evidence.
Beyond the actual Plame leak, the White House oversaw a public-relations strategy to denigrate Wilson. The Republican National Committee put out talking points ridiculing Wilson, and the Republican-run Senate Intelligence Committee made misleading claims about his honesty in a WMD report.
Rather than thank Wilson for undertaking a difficult fact-finding trip to Niger for no pay - and for reporting accurately about the dubious Iraq-Niger claims - the Bush administration sought to smear the former ambassador and, in so doing, destroyed his wife's career and the effectiveness of her undercover work on WMDs. Plame has since quit the CIA.
The common thread linking the Plame case to the attacks on the Dixie Chicks and other anti-war celebrities is Bush's all-consuming intolerance of dissent.
Rather than welcome contrary opinions and use them to refine his own thinking, Bush operates from the premise that his "gut" judgments are right and all they require is that the American people get in line behind him.
Bush then views any continued criticism as evidence of disloyalty. While Bush will tolerate people voicing disagreement, he feels they should pay a steep price, exacted by Bush's loyalists inside and outside the government.
So, when Bush's supporters malign his critics as "traitors" and spit out other hate-filled expressions bordering on exhortations to violence, Bush sees no obligation to rein in the intimidating rhetoric.
Instead, Bush almost seems to relish the punishments meted out to Americans who dissent.
Comment on this Article
Bush Spying on Americans
Federal official says US tracking calls made by ABC News, New York Times, Washington Post
RAW STORY
Monday May 15, 2006
ABC News' press office just sent out this release to news organizations, RAW STORY has learned. The story has been posted at the ABC NEWS blog (Read here).
ABC's Brian Ross and Richard Esposito Report:
A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources.
"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.
indication our phones were being tapped so the content of the conversation could be recorded.
A pattern of phone calls from a reporter, however, could provide valuable clues for leak investigators.
We do not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.
Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.
One former official was asked to sign a document stating he was not a confidential source for New York Times reporter James Risen.
Our reports on the CIA's secret prisons in Romania and Poland were known to have upset CIA officials.
People questioned by the FBI about leaks of intelligence information say the CIA was also disturbed by ABC News reports that revealed the use of CIA predator missiles inside Pakistan.
Under Bush Administration guidelines, it is not considered illegal for the government to keep track of numbers dialed by phone customers.
The official who warned ABC News said there was no
Comment: So the Bush government is listening in on newspaper reporters phone calls to make sure they are not planning on publishing stories about the Bush government listening in on American citizen's phone calls. There should be irony in there somewhere, but we can't find it.
Comment on this Article
Majority of Americans against phone record collection
AFP
Mon May 15, 2006
WASHINGTON - A majority of Americans disapprove of the government's attempt to collect millions of telephone records from ordinary citizens, an opinion poll showed.
The survey by USA Today newspaper and Gallup also showed around two-thirds of respondents were concerned that the program conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA) may signal other, undisclosed efforts to gather information on the general public.
By a margin of 51 percent to 43 percent, those polled disapproved of the program.
The existence of the program was first disclosed last Thursday by USA Today, which said the database compiled by the NSA following the September 11, 2001 attacks contained phone records of tens of millions of Americans provided by AT and T, Verizon and BellSouth.
Officials would not provide any details on how the records were used. But former government security experts and media reports indicated that its origin lay in US phone numbers found on Al-Qaeda suspects captured overseas.
Two-thirds of those surveyed were concerned that the database would identify innocent Americans as possible terrorism suspects.
Among Republicans and those who generally vote Republican, 71 percent approved of the NSA program, while among Democrats and Democratic "leaners," 73 percent disapproved.
Americans were split on whether the news media should report information about the government's secret methods to fight terrorism: 47 percent said "yes" and 49 percent said "no".
By a margin of 62 percent to 34 percent, those surveyed supported immediate congressional hearings to investigate the practice.
The poll of 809 adults conducted Friday and Saturday had a margin of error of plus or minus four percent.
Comment on this Article
Republican skepticism over NSA program widens
By Anne Broache
CNET News.com
May 15, 2006
WASHINGTON--A Republican senator on Monday questioned whether the federal government should be using its resources for large-scale data-mining efforts such as those associated with the National Security Agency's wiretapping program.
Speaking at a privacy seminar here at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, John Sununu of New Hampshire said the latest revelations that the nation's three biggest phone companies have delivered call records on potentially millions of Americans to the NSA raise concerns about the government's encroachment into private citizens' lives, even if the actions were legal.
"The important question is whether or not this is activity that we think will yield a good result and whether we think it's activity in which the federal government should be engaged," Sununu said.
Voicing similar concerns about the FBI data-mining system once known as Carnivore, Sununu deemed the value of such databases "certainly untested" and said they were potentially ripe for "misuse."
"That's the history of the federal government, is that once you create a tool, create a database, create a program, oftentimes it then begins to seek out new uses, new opportunities, new activities that weren't part of its original charter," he said.
When speaking about the NSA program, Sununu chose his words carefully, saying he didn't doubt the accuracy of the Bush administration's descriptions of the closely guarded program and even going so far as to say he believed the appropriate congressional leadership had been adequately briefed on the matter.
In that sense he seemed to take a more moderate stance than his colleague, Sen. Arlen Specter, who has been perhaps the most vocal Republican to question the Bush administration's actions. Public criticism of the program has been limited largely to Democrats.
Asked whether he expected Congress to take action against AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon Communications for reportedly turning over records to the feds, Sununu said he didn't think the companies themselves deserved the blame. (Specter, meanwhile, has vowed to call in the company executives for questioning.)
"Again, that's not because I think that the program is one that should receive support without question," Sununu said, "but because I understand that the federal government has a great deal of power, is viewed as being responsible in this area, and for a person in a position of responsibility to comply with that is understandable."
Sununu said he saw no reason to believe that the information had even been obtained illegally by the government, noting that they could have "easily" used National Security Letters under the Patriot Act to obtain phone records. The controversial NSLs compel communication service providers to provide records about individuals but do not require the use of a court warrant.
The real question, Sununu said, is, "Do you want (the government) to be creating these large, broad databases? Do you see a very specific value to doing so? That's where I begin to get queasy."
Comment on this Article
FBI checking reporters' phone records
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com
May 16, 2006 at 11:20 a.m.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation may be using National Security Letters, which where introduced in the USA Patriot Act, to gain access to phone records of reporters for ABC News, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.
ABC News reports that the FBI has acknowledged that it was seeking reporters' phone records to investigate leaks about secret prisons in Europe and warrantless wiretapping.
"It used to be very hard and complicated to do this, but it no longer is in the Bush administration," a senior federal official told ABC News "The Blotter" news blog.
ABC News explained that a National Security Letter (NSL) is "a version of an administrative subpoena and are not signed by a judge. Under the law, a phone company receiving a NSL for phone records must provide them and may not divulge to the customer that the records have been given to the government."
On Monday, ABC News reporters Brian Ross and Richard Esposito, who write "The Blotter," reported that a senior federal law enforcement official told ABC News that the FBI is tracking the phone numbers the two reporters call to reach confidential sources. The source told them in person that it was "time for you to get some new cell phones, quick."
Under Bush Administration guidelines, it is not considered illegal for the government to keep track of numbers dialed by phone customers. The official who warned ABC News said there was no indication our phones were being tapped so the content of the conversation could be recorded. A pattern of phone calls from a reporter, however, could provide valuable clues for leak investigators.
On Monday night, another federal source told Mr. Ross and Mr. Esposito that it was not that the FBI was "tracking" their calls. but that they were "backtracking." The Associated Press reported early Monday that the FBI said it does not "routinely" track calls made by and to reporters, but that it does check phone records of government employees as part of leak investigations.
The New York Sun reports that under "long standing" Justice Department provisions, a reporter must be notified within 90 days that his or her records have been obtained, and that subpoenas for the records must not be issued until after the department attempts to negotiate access with the reporter (subscription required).
Spokeswomen for ABC and the Times said their organizations had received no official notification of the effort to seek their phone records. The Washington Post did not respond to a call seeking comment for this article.
The executive director of the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press, Lucy Dalglish, said the government's reported acquisition of journalists' calling records was part of a pattern of intrusions on First Amendment rights by the Bush administration. "I'm ready to throw my arms up in the air," she said. "If there was a subpoena, they are supposed to be notified."
The Sun reports that by using NSLs, the Justice Department can "head off" court challenges that have been initiated by media organizations under the existing provisions.
In his Early Warning blog on national and homeland security for The Washington Post, William Arkin writes that it is "urban legend" that only the news media are making an issue of increased NSA surveillance, and that the majority of Americans "approve" because it protects them from terrorist attacks. He cites a new USA Today-CNN poll shows that a majority of Americans disapprove of the huge database of phone numbers being collected by the NSA, and that two-thirds of Americans also believe that the disclosure of this program shows that there are other, yet-undisclosed programs that are monitoring the general public.
Arkin says that all these activities revolve around two key questions: are these just "ingestion and digestion" designed to catch more terrorists, or are they the "the building blocks of a new seamless surveillance culture?"
The government's position is that if you are "innocent," you have nothing to hide. It is a new version of 'you are either with us or against us.' Massive monitoring is of course meant to find terrorists; I completely believe that this is not some 1960's enemies list politically motivated effort. But these post 9/11 programs signal a new and different problem.
People of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent and Muslims are potential terrorists, machine selected as "of interest." Throw in there callers and travelers to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, recipients of wire transfers, purchasers of fertilizer, flight school attendees. These are the new guilty until proven innocent. Innocent means of course mostly white, mostly Christian Americans who accept that the government knows best and that the national security state is only after the bad guys and would never apply its new found capacities in any illegitimate way.
In an interview with news site Salon.com, NSA historian Matthew Aid said he believes it is only a matter of time before we discover that cellphone and Internet companies also helped the government spy on Americans.
We should be terrified that Congress has not been doing its job and because all of the checks and balances put in place to prevent this have been deliberately obviated. In order to get this done, the NSA and White House went around all of the checks and balances. I'm convinced that 20 years from now we, as historians, will be looking back at this as one of the darkest eras in American history. And we're just beginning to sort of peel back the first layers of the onion. We're hoping against hope that it's not as bad as I suspect it will be, but reality sets in every time a new article is published and the first thing the Bush administration tries to do is quash the story. It's like the lawsuit brought by [the Electronic Frontier Foundation] against AT&T - the government's first reaction was to try to quash the lawsuit. That ought to be a warning sign that they're on to something.
Mr. Aid said he feels certain that when the complete story of the warrantless wiretapping and the collection of phone records becomes public, it will show that "key oversight functions - those functions that were put in place to protect the rights of Americans - were deliberately circumvented."
Meanwhile, National Journal's CongressDaily reported last week that Russell Tice, a former NSA employee who was also one of the sources who revealed the warrantless wiretapping story to The New York Times, is going to give Senate Armed Services Committee staffers more information Wednesday about the activities of the NSA during the tenure of Gen. Michael Hayden. He says some of the things he will tell the committee include the news that "not only do employees at the agency believe the activities they are being asked to perform are unlawful, but that what has been disclosed so far is only the tip of the iceberg."
[Tice] said he plans to tell the committee staffers the NSA conducted illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of US citizens while he was there with the knowledge of Hayden. ... "I think the people I talk to next week are going to be shocked when I tell them what I have to tell them. It's pretty hard to believe," Tice said. "I hope that they'll clean up the abuses and have some oversight into these programs, which doesn't exist right now." ...
Tice said his information is different from the Terrorist Surveillance Program that Bush acknowledged in December and from news accounts [last] week that the NSA has been secretly collecting phone call records of millions of Americans. "It's an angle that you haven't heard about yet," he said. ... He would not discuss with a reporter the details of his allegations, saying doing so would compromise classified information and put him at risk of going to jail. He said he "will not confirm or deny" if his allegations involve the illegal use of space systems and satellites.
The Associated Press reported Monday that a chief of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said that his agency needs to investigate if phone companies are violating federal communications law by giving phone records of customers to the NSA.
There is no doubt that protecting the security of the American people is our government's No. 1 responsibility," Commissioner Michael J. Copps, a Democrat, said in a statement. "But in a digital age where collecting, distributing and manipulating consumers' personal information is as easy as a click of a button, the privacy of our citizens must still matter."
Comment on this Article
Worst Day In History
Where is the global outcry at this continuing cruelty?
Ghada Karmi
Monday May 15, 2006
The Guardian
Nearly 60 years after most Palestinians were first forced from our homes, the killings and blockades carry on with impunity
Israel is 58 years old today. Israelis have already celebrated with barbecues and parties. And so they should, for they've pulled off an amazing stunt: the creation of a state for one people on the land of another - and at their massive expense - without incurring effective sanction. Some of those not celebrating, the Arab citizens of Israel, were also there, demonstrating to remind the world that Israel displaced 250,000 to take their land without compensation. Millions more Palestinians will demonstrate today in the refugee camps of Gaza, the West Bank and neighbouring Arab states against their expulsion by Israel. The world, however, is not listening, any more than it did in 1948, when most of Palestine's inhabitants were expelled to make way for Jewish immigrants.
My family was among those displaced and, though a child, I vividly remember the panic and misery of that flight from our home in Jerusalem on an April morning in 1948, with the scent of spring in the air. Palestine by then had become a raging battleground as Jews fought to seize our land in the wake of the 1947 UN partition resolution. My parents decided to evacuate us temporarily. "We will return," they insisted, "the world will not let such injustice happen!" They were wrong: the world let it happen and we never returned. Little comfort in knowing that we were among many others, that we did not end up in tents, that conflicts do such things. Our lives, our history and our future had been traduced. In those early days, I would wonder with anguish how the Jewish incomers who took over our house could sleep at night, seeing our belongings, family photos, children's toys. Subsequently, Israelis made much of the danger they faced from five Arab armies in the 1948-49 war, but in reality their forces were greater than all their opponents' combined, and the latter ill equipped and poorly trained.
Growing up in Britain, I got no sympathy but rather kept being told about the need to give Jews a state they could feel safe in. But at whose expense was this generosity? We Palestinians had no hand in the Holocaust, nor in persecuting Jews. But we were transformed from a peaceable agrarian people into a nation of beggars under occupation, refugees, exiles and second-class citizens of Israel. Worse still, we are now labelled terrorists, suicide bombers or Islamic extremists. Our crime? We were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And for that we have been repeatedly punished, most recently for electing the "wrong" government, headed by a party the west, not Palestinians, labels as terrorist.
I went to "Palestine" last month to see what 58 years of Israel had done. It was also springtime, but this was a shadow of the land I had known. I found a pathetically fragmented society, clinging to a fading dream of statehood against the odds. Israel's policies have broken up the Palestinian territories into ghettoes behind barriers and checkpoints. Gaza, supposedly liberated, is a big prison where, according to the World Bank, 75% are under the poverty line and a quarter of children are malnourished. Since January, Israel has kept the cargo crossings into Gaza closed most of the time. Flour ran out last month, and now medicines. The UN has warned of a humanitarian disaster. Now Israel is threatening to cut off fuel because of outstanding Palestinian debts, normally paid from Palestinian tax receipts, which Israel has illegally held back since January. The barrier wall, sealing off whole towns and villages, makes normal life impossible.
The new, democratically elected Palestinian government is paralysed because of Israeli and western sanctions. International aid to the Palestinians, $1bn annually, has been stopped; $70m donated by Arab states is blocked because banks, fearing international sanctions, refuse to transfer the funds. Money has run out for 150,000 public workers and their approximately 1 million dependants. I found deserted supermarkets and shopkeepers in despair. Armed men roam the streets full of anger at their loss of livelihood. Meanwhile, Israel's assault on the Palestinians continues. Last week the army killed nine and wounded 24. It mounted 38 incursions into Palestinian towns and arrested 61 people, including 11 children.
The Quartet powers have agreed a three-month emergency aid package. Because of the freeze on relations with Hamas, the aid will bypass the government, though how essential services can be run without a central administration is hard to imagine. Arab foreign ministers have warned of a breakdown in law and order if the Palestinian Authority collapses, but to no avail. The world's silence in the face of this cruelty is astonishing. There is no international outcry against a policy whose transparent objective is to goad the Palestinians into overthrowing the government they elected in favour of one more pliant to Israel's designs. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's plan is to draw Israel's border "unilaterally", annexing the large West Bank settlement blocs and keeping Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley. The roads connecting it to Israel will bisect Palestinian territory.
What remains, 58% at most, together with the Gaza prison, will form the "Palestinian state". Olmert will be in Washington soon, no doubt seeking a rubber stamp. The idea is presumably that the Palestinians - dispersed and powerless - will then no longer be in Israel's way. Anyone who believes this, as the west's unthinking support for Israel seems to suggest, knows nothing about history or the will of peoples to resist injustice. The Palestinians are no exception.
· Dr Ghada Karmi is a research fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, Exeter University, and a former consultant to the Palestinian Authority
Comment on this Article
Israel at 58: A Failing Experiment
Ohmy news
16/05/2006
U.S. support is all that keeps State of Israel viable
One of Israel's founding Ministers of Education and Culture, Professor Ben-Zion Dinur (1954), said it most sharply. "In our country there is room only for the Jews. We shall say to the Arabs: Get out! If they don't agree, if they resist, we shall drive them out by force." (History of the Haganah.) With this theme as the explicit backdrop of a newly established state, it is no wonder that Israel, 58 years later, has had little chance of becoming a normal member of the state of nations
Individual Israeli achievements in fields like science and technology are impressive. However, for all modern intent and purpose, the State of Israel, as a state building model, is a failing experience -- ideologically, religiously, politically, socially and, if U.S. favorite nation status were removed, possibly economically as well. Without immediate and decisive intervention from the world community to stop the ongoing Israeli aggression on Palestinians, Israel's intransigence and U.S.-equipped regional hegemony will not only fuel another generation of Palestinians willing to sacrifice their lives to achieve their freedom and independence, but will also further jeopardize Israel's basic premise that explicit religious discrimination, namely a Jewish-only state, is an accepted basis for statehood in modern times.
In spite of the above comments by Israel's First Minister of Education (and reinforced by many other Israeli leaders), Israel was founded on the infamous fallacy that it was built on a "land with no people, for a people with no land." Israel has utterly failed to persuade the world, and more recently more of its own people, that this was a valid premise for statehood. Also, given the fact that historic Palestine was inhabited prior to Israel being created, Israel has been unable to ignore that this very same fallacy is a raw form of outright racism.
Israel expelled more than one half of the indigenous Palestinian population in 1948. Ever since, Israel has assumed a policy of civil discrimination, political imprisonment, torture, deportations, beatings, collective punishment, political assassinations, settlement building, economic dominance; the list is endless and intensified after the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem in 1967. For being an "empty" land, the complications that Palestinians posed to the implantation of a Western state in the midst of the Middle East were overwhelming.
Since its inception, Israel has arrogantly refused to address the most crucial prerequisite of its establishment as a conventional State -- accepting the Palestinians -- those people that just happened to be living in that "empty" land of Israel. The Palestinians -- those that were forcefully expelled from their homes in 1948, 1967, and more recently in 2001 -- have been living in squalid refugee camps throughout the region. The Palestinians -- those that did not flee Israel-proper in 1948 -- are today fourth-class Israeli citizens. The Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem that have lived under Israeli military occupation for 40 years, to the day, will continue to haunt the international community until justice is served and the Israeli occupation is ended, in its entirety.
After nearly six decades of conflict, and after a decade of Palestinian political recognition of Israel on part of their lands, the Israeli people choose to sustain the conflict and elected another of its most notorious war criminals, Ariel Sharon. Sharon was charged, as captain of the vanguard, to lead Israel into its sixth decade of conflict. Sharon's illness and incapacitation cut his personal involvement short, but his master plans are alive and well under the leadership of the recently elected Israel Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert.
Today, Israel seems determined more than ever to forcefully prove the original premise of its statehood: an Israel with moveable, unilaterally-defined borders and a Jewish-only population. Eleven Israeli Prime Ministers before Olmert, five of them after the signing of the Oslo agreements, failed. Prime Minister Olmert will fail as well. If Israel cannot produce a leader to move the country from a pariah state to a member state of the Middle East, no one will be to blame for the consequences, no matter how severe, but the Israeli people themselves.
This should not come as a surprise for Israelis who have studied their own history. Israel's founding Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, understood it well when he said,"Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we came here and stole their country. Why should they accept that?" (David Ben-Gurion quoted in The Jewish Paradox by Nahum Goldmann, former president of the World Jewish Congress.)
Similarly, it should be no surprise that past Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, rushed to sign the now-failed Oslo Peace Accords after calculating the historic ramifications of the political earthquake that took place when the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, politically recognized the State of Israel. Rabin paid for that signature with his life, which was taken by one of his own citizens, a fanatic Jewish student. This was as close as Israel has ever been in closing the last chapter of its establishment. It was totally in Israel's -- the occupying power's -- hands then, as it is today, to end the occupation of the Palestinians and start the bitter process of reconciliation.
 |  |
|
 Letter by Harry Truman recognizing the State of Israel. |
|
|
Every step of the way, as Israel further entrenched its illegal occupation of the Palestinians, it has been continuously rewarded by the United States of America. Israel has been propped up, financially and politically, by every single U.S. administration at the expense of internationally unconscious U.S. taxpayers, fully obedient to the direction of the far-reaching Israeli lobby and narrow commercial interests. What started as a U.S. strategic ally in one of the most sensitive spots in the world during a Cold War that marred common sense, has rapidly digressed into a liability in an age of globalization that the United States alone is spearheading.
While the Bush Administration continues to ignorantly turn a blind eye to Israel's blatant violations of international law and human rights, the United States runs the fear that the globalized world will start to question the moral authority inherent in the U.S.'s unfettered support of an Israel that publicly pursues a policy that only has the intransigence to move an entire region into long-term political and economic turmoil. Countries that have bought into the New World Order of Globalization should start to internalize the consequences to themselves, if the U.S., in a world it single-handily runs, chooses to defend the wrong side of history at its will.
Today, on the 58th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba (translated Catastrophe), Israel must choose between continuing an illegal occupation and preserving the self-defined, albeit discriminatory, nature of the State of Israel. To think that both can peacefully co-exist, or possibly even singly exist, is utter ignorance of history and human development. Also, for Israel to believe that the U.S. will continue to jeopardize its New World Order of Globalization for the sake of fulfilling an Israeli illusion of Palestinian submission is a miscalculation to the nth degree.
Comment on this Article
Palestinian Refugees - Ethnic Cleansing
May 15, 2006
Miftah.org
The Palestinian refugee problem arose not from a conflict in which, as claimed, the Zionist forces overcame overwhelming odds against the Arab armies and the Palestinian population voluntarily left, but from a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing, the results of which are apparent in the Palestinian refugee camps across the Arab world and in the Palestinian Diaspora. The policies, to a lesser extent, continue to this day in Jerusalem and across the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Zionist Policy sought to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine, a region already populated with a history stretching back thousand of years. The characterization of a land without a people for a people without a land created the myth of an empty waiting Palestine. Nothing could be further from the truth and this was evidenced in the atrocities of the 1948 War. Initially, Zionist policy was directed towards winning the acceptance of the British and other colonial powers.
In November 1917 while the territory was under British occupation, the British declared they would support the establishment in Palestine of 'a national home for the Jewish people' providing there were proper safeguards for 'the existing non-Jewish communities'. Thereby acceding to Zionist demands. It should be noted that the historic Jewish population in Palestine did not necessarily support these demands; one indigenous Jewish leader described Zionism as evil.
Terror and Dispossession: Jewish underground terrorist groups such as Haganah, Irgun and Stern had the mission to terrorize the Palestinian street, destroy villages and slaughter entire Palestinian families. 34 massacres were committed within a few months: Al-Abbasiyya, Beit Daras, Bir Al-Saba', Al-Kabri, Haifa, Qisarya... These attacks aimed to annihilate the entire Palestinian territory and population (so-called Plan D), 50% of the Palestinian villages were destroyed in 1948 and many cities were cleared from its Palestinian population: Aker, Bir Al-Saba', Bisan, Al-Lod, Al-Majdal, Nazareth, Haifa, Tiberias, Jaffa, West-Jerusalem...
Israeli forces killed an estimated 13,000 Palestinians. They forcibly evicted 737,166 Palestinians from the homes and land. 418 Palestinian villages were entirely depopulated and destroyed. The Palestinian populations in Aker, Bir Al-Saba', Haifa, Jaffa, Lydda, Al-Majdal, Al Ramla, Safad, Tiberias, and West Jerusalem were almost entirely removed. A conservative total, almost three-quarters of a million Palestinians were made refugees.
1967 War: the tragedy of the refugees continued in 1967 with the breaking out of the war, which created a new wave of refugees. That year Israel occupied the rest of the Palestinian territories and many Palestinians were uprooted for the second time: 15.000 fled from the West Bank, 38.000 fled from the Gaza Strip and 16.000 fled from the Golan Heights. They found shelter in surrounding countries, such as Jordan, Syria and Egypt.
Prohibition of return: the Jewish settlers took over all what was left from Palestinian facilities, such as schools, hospitals, houses and abandoned lands. Settlements were built on the remains of the destroyed villages and the properties of these villages were given to the newly arrived Jewish immigrants that settled in the empty Arab housing.
Following the establishment of Israel, it legislated in two areas, the first denied the Palestinians the right to return home and the second took away their homes and land. These laws continue to be in force.
Israel has legislated to deny Palestinians the opportunity to return to their homes. It has refused to offer adequate compensation or restitution, yet at the same time, Israel has discriminated in favour of Jews by allowing them to migrate to Israel without having established any previous connection with the country.
The Law of Return is a keystone of Israeli policy. Jews, regardless of their nationality, are offered Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return. The Law of Return is also open to those related by marriage or birth to a Jew, including the grandchildren of a Jew. In other words, a non-Jew may claim Israeli citizenship. 2,585,000 have invoked the Law or Return to migrate to Israel.
Palestinians, however, who may still have homes in what is now Israel, have been denied the right to return. The Law of Return directly discriminates against Palestinians even though under international law they the right to be repatriated.
The denial of the right of return is a continuing breach of Article 2 and Article 5(d) of Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. The continuing refusal by Israel to grant nationality to Palestinians who resided in Palestine prior to 1948 breaches Article 5(d)(iii). The failure to provide legal means to pursue compensation and restitution is a violation of Article 5(a) of the same treaty.
It is also a violation of Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.
Israel has passed a series of laws in which the property of Palestinians has been expropriated, in breach of international norms, and transferred to Jewish ownership.
Following the Nakba in 1948 Israel passed the Absentees' Property Law of 1950. This created an office known as the Custodian for Absentee Property, in which the legal and equitable title of absentee property was entirely divested from the property's Palestinian owners.
An absentee is set out in Section 1 of the statute: It is a national or citizen of Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Trans-Jordan, Iraq, or the Yemen, (Section 1(b)(1)(i)), or was in any part of Palestine or a neighbouring country, (Section 1(b)(1)(ii)); or a Palestinian citizen. (Section 1(b)(1)(iii)), and, who was absent from his property after 29 November 1947, (Section 1(b)(1)), and if a Palestinian had left for a neighbouring country (Section 1(b)(1)(iii)(a)) or in an area controlled by an enemy force of Israel (Section 1(b)(1)(iii)(b)).
An absentee could see the return of his property if he could prove he had left his place of residence only "for fear that the enemies of Israel might cause him harm", (Section 27(1)), or, "otherwise than by reason or of fear of military operations". (Section 27(2)). The law then excludes the majority of Palestinians and other nationals of neighbouring countries who had, it is commonly stated, fled in fear of attack from Israeli forces.
It has been estimated that some 75,000 "Present Absentees" (i.e. they were resident in what is now Israel but not residing at the temporarily absentee property) had their property confiscated by the Israeli Government.
Moreover, Palestinian institutions were also affected. Legal persons, including associations and corporations, were declared absentee and had their lands confiscated by the Custodian. The land expropriated under this legislation has been estimated at some 3.25 million dunums.
The Israeli Government introduced a second land law that had a similarly devastating impact on Palestinian landholding. The Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law 1953 permitted the confiscation of land for military purposes or for Jewish settlement. This expropriation is placed at 1,255,174 dunums.
Although compensation is supposed to be paid out, a very small proportion of funds have been disbursed for compensation. By the end of March 1998, 14,364 persons had claimed compensation. Settlements had been reached on 197,984 dunums of land. Payments were made of NIS 2,724,137 and 53,710 dunums in compensation.
The objective of the law is simple: to ensure that Palestinians have no entitlement to their former homes. Although there is no patent right to property in human rights law, the Absentee Property Law defies international law by confiscating property of third party nationals without adequate compensation. Moreover, state practice on the right of return, and the right to a standard of living in the International Bill of Human Rights would indicate that the Absentees' Property Law is contrary to the principles of international human rights law.
Today's Facts
Palestinians are the largest single group of refugees in the world. Their fate is one of the most complex issues still awaiting a solution in the context of the "final status" negotiations between PLO/PNA and Israel. So far, no progress has been made, which is largely due to the controversy over how to define a 'displaced' Palestinian. The fate of the 1948 refugees is widely ignored.
The work of UNRWA, the Agency of the United Nations charged with the welfare of the Palestine refugees has provided the humanitarian services essential to the welfare of the refugees, particularly in the fields of education, health, relief, services and employment opportunities.
Today over 3.5 million Palestinian refugees are registered with UNRWA, of these some 33% live inside one of the 59 UNRWA camps and 67% outside. Every year the population amount of refugees increases by almost 3%
The UNRWA definition of a 'Palestine refugee' was developed to meet a condition, not to satisfy a theory. It was elaborated for operational purposes to determine which persons were eligible for UNRWA assistance. Displaced persons are people who fled in 1967; they are not regarded as registered refugee by UNWRA, or as refugees by the United Nations' definition. But the word refugee should include those who left their land in 1948 & 1967 as well as the Palestinian living abroad and who need a special permission to come back and stay in their country
For the Israeli the term refugee, referring to the Arabs who fled, is wrongly applied; they were merely considered to be migrants who should have been absorbed by the neighboring Arab states in the same way that the newly created state of Israel absorbed more than 500,000 Jews from all over the Middle East
General Assembly Resolution 194 adopted in December 1948, although not defining the term 'Palestinian refugee', under this resolution the refugees and their descendants have a right to compensation and repatriation to their original homes and land, because they have suffered "loss of or damage to property, which, under principles of international law or in equity should be made good by the government or authorities responsible"
Since June 1967 the Israeli occupation authorities have expropriated at least 5.839.000 dunums (73% of the West Bank & Gaza territory): 5.473.000 in the West Bank (incl. East Jerusalem) and 366.000 dunums in the Gaza Strip. Today, on average 8.630 dunums of land are confiscated every month for the purpose of settlements
Comment on this Article
Palestine marks 'day of catastrophe'
Monday 15 May 2006
Palestinians have been marking the worst day in their history - the day of Israel's creation - determined to lift damaging economic sanctions and warning that Israeli unilateralism could kill a two-state solution.
The commemoration of the 58th anniversary of the "catastrophe" or Nakba in Arabic came as the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmud Abbas, was in Russia in an effort to shore up international financial and political support for his people.
"Our first priority is to lift the economic and political siege imposed on our people, then to end the occupation of our land once and for all, and to establish our independent Palestinian state," Abbas said in pre-recorded televised address.
The European Union and United States have cut direct aid to the Palestinian Authority since the Islamist movement Hamas formed a government in March.
Western powers want Hamas to recognise Israel's existence. Hamas says it will only do so if all Palestinian prisoners and seized territories are liberated and refugees allowed to return home.
Expulsion
About 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their land after the creation of Israel in 1948 and the ensuing Arab-Israeli war.
An additional 200,000 Palestinians underwent a similar fate during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Abbas, who was meeting the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, accused Israel of "using every excuse possible" to convince the world that there is no Palestinian negotiating partner.
He charged that Israel is making this up in order to go ahead with its plan to redraw its borders with the occupied West Bank and siphon off the largest Jewish settlements built on Arab land.
The plan, which the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has pledged to implement with or without agreement from the Palestinians, "will practically destroy the concept of a two-state solution" to the Middle East conflict, Abbas said
"The Israeli government must release Palestinian funds and refrain from implementing its unilateral plans, as this would destroy the prospects of a negotiated settlement for good, inflame the region and strengthen extremism."
Israel has stopped transferring import duties it collects on behlaf of the Palestinains worth $55 mllion a month.
Abbas' dire predictions came as a new survey indicated that 65% of Israelis and Palestinians believe no Middle East peace agreement is possible during Olmert's four-year term of office.
Palestinian MPs held a special session of parliament to mark Nakba Day which began with a minutes silence.
"Our first priority is to lift the economic and political siege imposed on our people, then to end the occupation of our land once and for all, and to establish our independent Palestinian state"
Aziz al-Dwaik, the Hamas speaker of parliament, said the killings of six Palestinians by Israeli soldiers in the northern West Bank on Sunday conformed to a pattern that stretched back to 1948.
"The Zionist occupation must be held fully responsible for all the things that have befallen the Palestinian people," he told the policymakers.
"What happened yesterday in Jenin illustrates how the Israelis are continuing the aggressions that we have seen from the Nakba until today."
Right of return
In Gaza City, several thousand protesters gathered outside the local branch of parliament with banners demanding the right of return, maps of historic Palestine, wooden keys to former homes, and flags.
"We will never abandon the right of return," they shouted, criticising Olmert's border project in the West Bank and standing around a refugee tent erected in protest outside parliament.
The fate of the original refugees and their descendants, who are scattered throughout the occupied territories, neighbouring Arab countries and other parts of the world, has been one of the thorniest issues of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Israel steadfastly opposes their right of return, aware that the demographics of the state could be overturned if all Palestinian refugees and their descendents move to modern-day Israel.
The UN estimates that there are more than six million Palestinian refugees in the world today, four million of which are registered with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), with a third of that number living in refugee camps.
Living conditions in neighbouring Arab countries vary a great deal, with Lebanon - where Palestinian refugees are banned from working in most jobs or owning property - being the worst example.
Studies and surveys have indicated, however, that far from all refugees worldwide would want to go back to their land or that of their ancestors.
The minority of Palestinians who stayed on their land when Israel was created are now described as Israeli-Arabs.
Comment on this Article
Boycott-squeezed Palestinians selling up
AFP
Sun May 14 2006
GAZA CITY (AFP) - "I've been sold 35 television sets already this morning. People don't have any more money and are selling everything they can," said Ihab Abu al-Nur, who runs a market stall in downtown Gaza City.
"The economic situation is very bad, government employees are not getting paid anymore. People come to sell but they don't buy anything," added the 20-year-old young trader, his dusty TV screens blaring out Egyptian films.
Attwah Abu Azem, 54, travelled up from the refugee camp of Deir al-Balah very early to sell his satellite dish. "Last week, I sold my television," said the father of 14. Unemployed for five years, he haggles hard for a good price.
"I want to sell what I have to feed my family, I don't have a choice," he added, exchanging jokes and pleasantries with bystanders. "Soon, I'll have to sell my children," he added.
Nur is furious with the Islamists of Hamas, blaming them for crushing Western aid cuts, an ensuing economic crisis and intermittent Israeli closures on the Gaza Strip -- imposed since the movement first took office in March.
The European Union, formerly the biggest donor to the
Palestinian Authority, and the United States have ended direct aid because of Hamas's refusal to recognise
Israel, renounce violence or abide by previous peace agreements.
Israel, refusing to deal with what it considers a terrorist outfit, has imposed its own sanctions, withholding around 60 million dollars a month in customs duties on imported goods owed to the Palestinian Authority.
As a result, none of the 160,000 civil servants and security personnel on the government payroll have been paid for two months, affecting the livelihoods of around one million people, or a quarter of all local Palestinians.
Last week, a
World Bank report warned that the Palestinian Authority may cease to function and security discipline collapse if government employees continue to go without salaries for much longer.
"It's Hamas who has destroyed everything. They promised us 'change and reform'. The only change I can see is that there is no more money, gas or petrol," said Nur, open about his allegiance to the former ruling
Fatah party.
His brother, Iyad, with his neatly trimmed beard, shakes his head in disapproval. "We will live and overcome everything. If need be, we won't eat anymore but we won't give way," he said, in defence of his beloved Hamas.
Be that as it may, Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas heads Sunday to Russia and the European parliament, on a desperate mission to woo back foreign aid into the empty coffers of the boycotted Hamas government.
His trip will seek to capitalise on agreement by the four sponsors of the stalled Middle East peace process to establish a temporary trust fund which would enable donors to supply aid without having to deal directly with Hamas.
In the market alleyways, stall holders shout themselves hoarse to attract business, as children elbow through with their wares such as chewing-gum and socks tucked under arm, amid the endless haggling between sellers and buyers.
In a Gaza hi-fi shop, 27-year-old Hussein Said waits desperately for a customer to cross the threshold. "I used not to be able to sit down for a minute ... Look around, it's empty," he said.
"People only come to the market for fun. They look, touch, ask the price and say goodbye," said Abdel Karim Chabli, outside his stall that sells DVDs and antiquated looking radios.
He blames Europe and the United States. "All this is the fault of the donor countries who cut aid," he said. "If they really wanted, they could put pressure on Israel to open the crossing points with the Gaza Strip".
The army admitted that Erez, the main crossing point, has been closed since March 11 to Palestinians seeking work in Israel, while the main export terminal at Karni has only been open 58 days since January 1 because of security fears.
Nevertheless a spokesman maintained that goods have been passing through alternative checkpoints at Sufa and Kerem Shalom, which straddles the Egyptian, Gazan and Israeli borders.
Comment on this Article
Abbas asks international community for immediate help
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-16 21:12:30
BRUSSELS, May 16 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday asked the international community to act immediately in order to prevent the Middle East from sliding into an abyss and a new cycle of conflict.
Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, Abbas said that refusing to help the Palestinians would only make a "deteriorating economic and social situation" worse, adding that this would have a negative impact on the world as a whole.
Abbas urged the European Union (EU) to give the new Hamas-led government the chance to adapt to international demands.
Western donors have suspended direct aid to the Palestinian government to pressure Hamas into renouncing violence and recognizing Israel.
The move has plunged the Palestinian Authority (PA) into a financial crisis.
"I reiterate that, based on the constitutional power granted tome by our basic law which entrusts negotiation responsibility in the hands of the PLO Executive Committee, its Chairman and its Negotiations Affairs Department, we remain fully committed to returning immediately to the negotiating table to reach an agreement that ends this long conflict," he added.
The president told the European legislators: "At this moment, as another difficult moment is open to dangerous possibilities, we seek and await for a leading European role."
"The Israeli policy to reject our extended hand to negotiate and give peace a chance increased the frustration of our people," he said.
"The frustration created by the practices of the Israeli occupation and the absence of a positive outlook for the peace process formed the background for the legislative elections that took place last January," he added.
Abbas reminded the audience "we were careful not to allow our national struggle to be diverted from its course and to protect its conformity with international law."
The president said that he had asked the new government to amend its platform in order to conform to the commitments. "We are in a continued dialogue that will take us to an expanded national dialogue in a few days. I hope that this will lead us to the required process of amendment."
"Our approach needs the support of the international community. The new government must be given the chance to adapt to the basic requirements of the international community," he asserted.
"Stopping assistance to the Palestinian Authority will exacerbate the deteriorating economic and social conditions, and will weaken the network of efficient and working government ministries, administrations and institutions that the countries of the European Union have played a vital role in building and developing." he added.
Abbas also called on the EU to help put pressure on Israel to release the millions of dollars in tax revenues that it is withholding from the PA.
Comment on this Article
6 Palestinians Killed and 16 Others Wounded by Israeli Army in Qabatya and Jenin
Palestinian Center For Human Rights
16/05/2006
On Sunday, 14 May 2006, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) killed six Palestinians and wounded sixteen others, including seven children and a journalist, in Qabatya village and Jenin town in the north of the West Bank. According to Israeli media sources, the new Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz praised the attack. The Israeli defense minister's office said, "Peretz personally approved the operation last week, and closely followed its execution."
According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 14:30 on Sunday, 14 May 2006, IOF, IOF reinforced by two helicopters, moved into Qabatya village, southeast of Jenin. They besieged a 150-square-meter, two-storey house belonging to Mustafa 'Aaref Hamdan Ekmayel, where twenty individuals (four families) live, in the east of the village. They ordered, through megaphones, all those who were inside the house to surrender, threatening to demolish the house over them if they did not comply. A number of Palestinian gunmen exchanged fire with IOF. One of the gunmen, 23-year-old Tha'er Subhi Sadiq Hanaisha, was killed by several bullets to the chest and the head. His brother, 21-year-old Mujahed, hurried towards him and attempted to pull him away from the area, but IOF shot at him also. He was killed by several bullets to the chest. According to eyewitnesses, the younger brother was unarmed. When residents of the house went outside, IOF shelled the house and a bulldozer began to demolish it. At approximately 20:30, IOF withdrew from the area. Palestinian civilians and medical and civil defense crews moved to the area and started to remove the debris. They found the bodies of two Palestinians under the debris and evacuated them to Dr. Khalil Suleiman Hospital in Jenin. The two victims were identified as:
1. Elias Khairi Mohammed al-Ashqar, 28, from Baqa al-Sharqia village, hit by shrapnel throughout the body; and
2. Mo'tassem 'Ali Baheej Ja'ar, 24, from 'Allar village north of Tulkarm, hit by shrapnel throughout the body.
The two were members of the al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad.
During this attack, dozens of Palestinian children and young men gathered near Ekmayel's house and threw stones at IOF vehicles. Immediately, IOF fired at the stone throwers, killing 20-year-old Jihad 'Abdul Rahman 'Omar 'Assaf, with a live bullet to the head, and wounding 16 other civilians, including seven children and a journalist. IOF also arrested 17-year-old Mohye al-Din Mustafa Ekmayel.
Also, at approximately 14:30, an IOF undercover unit moved into al-Jabriyat neighborhood in the south of Jenin, traveling in a civilian car with a Palestinian registration plate. Soon after, at least fifteen IOF vehicles moved into the town to support the undercover unit. Members of the IOF undercover unit opened fire at 'Ali 'Omar Mohammed Jabbarin, 21, from al-Taiba village west of Jenin, killing him with several live bullets to the head, the neck, the chest and the hands. IOF left him bleeding and did not allow anyone to attend to him for 30 minutes. According to eyewitnesses, IOF willfully shot Jabbarin, while he was on duty guarding the headquarters of the Palestinian General Intelligence Services. Later, IOF besieged a house near the headquarters. They opened fire at the house and ordered its residents, through megaphones, to get out. When the residents got out, IOF checked their identity cards and searched the house. Before their withdrawal from the area at approximately 17:00, IOF arrested 'Essam, 'Allam and Akram Hassan Samoudi.
PCHR strongly condemns these appalling attacks and is gravely concerned over the escalation of IOF attacks in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). PCHR asserts that such crimes serve to perpetuate the cycle of mutual violence in the area. PCHR calls upon the international community to immediately intervene to stop such crimes, and reiterates its calls for the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 to meet their obligations to ensure protection for Palestinian civilians in the OPT.
Comment on this Article
Bush not to discuss further withdrawals with Israeli PM: report
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-16 20:31:09
JERUSALEM, May 16 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President George W. Bush will not discuss with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert details of his plan of further withdrawals from the West Bank during Olmert's coming visit to Washington next week, local newspaper the Jerusalem Post reported on Tuesday.
"There will be no maps and there will be no exchange of letters," U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley was quoted by the post as saying.
According to the report, Hadley made the remarks when he met representatives of Israel and the American Jewish community in the White House on Monday to discuss Olmert's forthcoming visit. During the meeting, the senior U.S. official told Jewish leaders that the purpose of Bush's meeting with the Israeli prime minister was simply "to get to know Olmert", said the report.
Hadley also said that any discussion about the details of Olmert's so-called convergence plan would be premature and that it was "only the beginning of the conversation" about Israel's future plans, said the post.
Regarding the issue of providing extra aid to Israel to finance the convergence plan, the post said, citing unnamed sources, that it will not be raised during Olmert's visit.
On Monday, the White House said in a statement that Bush would meet with Olmert on May 23 and that Bush "looks forward to discussing with the prime minister the strong bilateral relationship between the United States and Israel as well as a wide range of regional and international issues."
The visit will be Olmert's first trip overseas since his centrist Kadima party won the March 28 general elections.
Earlier, Olmert said that the aim of his meeting with Bush would be to secure international support for more pullouts from the West Bank, including financial assistance.
Olmert has vowed to set Israel's final borders by 2010 and that the convergence plan will be his government's priority, under which Israel will quit isolated settlements in the West Bank but keep bigger ones with or without the Palestinians' agreement. Israel withdrew from the entire Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank last summer, a move supported by Washington.
Comment on this Article
Weather or Not
2 Undersea Earthquakes Rock Indonesia
Staff and agencies
16 May, 2006
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Two undersea earthquakes rocked Indonesia's Sumatra island Monday, but caused no casualties or damage, an official said.
He said the second earthquake, of 5.4 magnitude, struck at 5:16 a.m. It was centered about 21 miles below the sea and 80 miles southwest of Bengkulu city on the southern Sumatra Island.
A 9.1-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra on Dec. 26, 2004, triggering a massive tsunami that left 216,000 people dead or missing in 12 countries around the Indian Ocean - three-quarters of them in nearby Aceh province.
Comment on this Article
Major earthquake rocks Pacific near Kermadec Islands
05.16.2006
AFX
WASHINGTON - A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of the Kermadec Islands, northeast of New Zealand, at 1039 GMT, the US Geological Survey reported on its website.
Comment on this Article
Indonesia Hit by Magnitude 6.9 Tremor; Local Tsunami Possible
May 16 (Bloomberg)
Indonesia today was hit by a magnitude 6.9 earthquake, which may generate a "destructive local tsunami,'' the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
The tremor struck shortly before 10:28 p.m. local time off the coast of northern Sumatra near the island of Nias, the U.S. Geological Survey, which monitors seismic events, said in a report on its Web site, putting the magnitude at 6.8.
"There is a very small possibility of a destructive local tsunami in the Indian Ocean,'' the Japanese agency said today in an e-mailed statement. It gave no further details.
Nias was one of the areas worst affected by the Dec. 26, 2004, earthquake and subsequent tsunami that destroyed coastal communities across the Indian Ocean and killed more than 200,000 people from Indonesia to Somalia.
The temblor struck at a depth of 1.9 kilometers, the USGS said. The epicenter was 269 kilometers (167 miles) southwest of Sibolga, on Sumatra, and 431 km south-southwest of Medan on the same island, the USGS said.
No tsunami threat exists in the Pacific, as a result of the quake, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said in a separate e- mailed bulletin.
An Indian Ocean tsunami warning network is due to be operational by July. Countries around the ocean are installing monitoring equipment, buoys and communication links that will be known as the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System.
Comment on this Article
Major Quake Rocks Islands Near New Zealand
May 16, 2006, 8:46AM
By RAY LILLEY Associated Press Writer
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A powerful earthquake hit deep under the South Pacific late Tuesday north of New Zealand, and it rocked a wide area of the country, but no damage or injuries were reported.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a bulletin saying the magnitude 7.4 quake had not generate a destructive Pacific-wide tsunami but warned it could spawn a small tsunami within 60 miles of its epicenter.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake hit at 10:39 p.m. (6:39 a.m. EDT) about 90 miles below the seabed, and was centered about 180 miles south-southwest of Raoul Island in the Kermadec island chain, which is 712 miles northeast of New Zealand's largest city, Auckland.
It came hours before countries around the Pacific rim were to test a tsunami warning system spanning the world's largest ocean.
The powerful quake, which New Zealand seismologists said registered at magnitude 7.5, rocked a wide area of the country _ but was unlikely to have caused damage, seismologist Ken Gledhill told The Associated Press.
"It has been felt very widely but is unlikely to have caused any damage in New Zealand," he said, adding that within half an hour more than 500 people had reported the quake's impact.
"It was too deep to have ruptured the sea floor," Gledhill said, adding a tsunami was unlikely "if that depth is correct."
A policeman in the east coast North Island town of Whakatane said he was sitting on a chair talking to the police communications center in the northern city of Auckland when it struck.
"Things started moving and I thought, 'this is a goodie,'" said Sgt. Andrew O'Reilly.
Wellington police inspector Peter Stokes said there were no immediate reports of injury or damage.
"We sure did feel it. Our building swayed a bit," he said.
Raoul Island was the center of a series of earthquakes during a volcanic eruption in March that killed a New Zealand Department of Conservation worker and forced the evacuation of the island.
Several conservation workers returned to the island last month to perform tasks like eradicating weeds, monitoring birds and preventing the arrival of unwanted pests such as rats.
There was no immediate word on whether they were affected by the quake.
The quake was felt as far south as Christchurch on South Island.
New Zealand is among more than two dozen countries taking part in the drill to test the Pacific warning system that has been in place since 1965.
During the exercise early Wednesday, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii will send out warnings about mock earthquakes off the Chilean coast and Luzon island in the northern Philippines that are powerful enough to set off a tsunami across the vast ocean.
Governments will test if and how fast they receive the warnings and how rapidly they are relayed through domestic emergency alert systems.
Comment on this Article
New England hit by worst floods in 70 years
Mon May 15, 2006
Reuters
The worst flooding in 70 years in Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire forced thousands of people from their homes on Monday after the heaviest rainfall in a decade.
Residents waded through waist-high water on washed out roads, some paddling to swamped homes in canoes, and meteorologists predicted more rain on Tuesday in all three New England states, which have declared states of emergency.
"I've never seen flooding like this before," said Faustino Melo, 40, a resident in the hard-hit Massachusetts city of Peabody, a suburb north of Boston whose downtown streets were submerged with floodwaters that rose as high as door handles.
Emergency crews steered boats along streets to help evacuate people, while National Guard soldiers set up checkpoints to block off roads. About 200,000 sand bags were used to hold back overflowing rivers across Massachusetts.
About 12 to 15 inches of rain has fallen since Friday, swelling the Merrimack River that runs through southern New Hampshire and Massachusetts more than 8 feet (2.4 meters) above flood stage -- its highest since 1936.
"It's bad now but we're expecting it to get much much worse," said Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency spokesman Peter Judge, citing weather forecasts for more rain on Monday night with several rivers still rising.
"Right now we're looking at all of the rivers, from the Charles River in the Boston area all the way north and east to the Merrimack River on the New Hampshire border. We expect all of those rivers to reach and exceed flood stage in the next 24 hours," Judge said.
THOUSANDS EVACUATED
Several thousand New Hampshire residents had been evacuated from homes and more than 600 roads in the state had been closed, the New Hampshire Bureau of Emergency Management said.
A bulging dam in Milton, New Hampshire on the Maine border was in danger of failing and could send a 10-foot (3-m) wall of water downstream, the National Weather Service said.
About a thousand people were evacuated from their homes in the Massachusetts' suburbs of Melrose, Haverhill, Lawrence and Peabody, where flooding caused sewage to back up into cellars and sinks, rescue workers said
Comment on this Article
3 major hurricanes to hit US this year: AccuWeather
Reuters
Mon May 15, 2006
NEW YORK - Three major hurricanes will strike the United States this year, with the storm-battered Gulf Coast most at risk in June and July, forecaster AccuWeather predicted Monday.
The outlook comes after a record-setting hurricane season in 2005 that devastated New Orleans and other coastal cities along the Gulf, and dealt a heavy blow to the U.S. oil industry that sent energy prices to record highs.
"The 2006 storm season will be a creeping threat," said AccuWeather Chief Forecaster Joe Bastardi. He projected that five hurricanes, three of them with winds over 110 miles per hour, would hit the U.S. coastline.
"Early in the season the Texas Gulf Coast faces the highest likelihood of a hurricane strike, possibly putting Gulf energy production in the line of fire," he said. "As early as July, and through much of the rest of the season, the highest level of risk shifts to the Carolinas."
At the tail-end of the season, the Northeast and southern Florida will be most at risk from storms, he said.
This year features fewer named storms than last year's record of 28, but will still be a season of above-average storm frequency, AccuWeather said in the press release.
Last year, there were eight tropical storm landfalls in the U.S., including two separate strikes by Katrina as the storm crossed the Florida peninsula and then plowed into the central Gulf Coast in late August. Four of these were major hurricanes - with winds over 110 mph: Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma.
Hurricane Katrina was the costliest storm on record, causing more than $80 billion in damage.
Comment on this Article
Feeling of 'doom' pervades Indonesian volcano zone
Last Updated Tue, 16 May 2006 09:55:36 EDT
CBC News
Streams of lava flowed down the sides of Mount Merapi on Tuesday as officials urged people living near the Indonesian volcano to leave the area.
"There's a real sense of imminent doom," Times of London reporter Nick Meo told CBC News in an interview from Yogyakarta Tuesday morning. "Authorities are saying an eruption could happen at any time."
The volcano was spewing rocks and hot ash four kilometres down the mountain's slope, although the clouds of smoke coming from the crater were smaller than they had appeared the day before, Meo said.
"Of course, we don't know whether this means volcanic activity is dying down or whether it's building toward a major eruption."
Scientists believe it's almost inevitable that the volcano's lava dome will collapse, causing a dangerous surge of gas and steam to pour out.
16,000 forced from homes so far
So far, about 16,000 Indonesians have fled the area.
However, efforts to move everyone from the vicinity of the 3,000-metre volcano are being hampered by the presence of an 80-year-old mystic who watches over Merapi.
The man, called Maridjan, makes offerings of rice and fruit to the spirits many Indonesians believe inhabit the sacred volcano.
"He says he's waiting for a vision from them [spirits] to say whether or not the eruption is going to happen," Meo said.
In the absence of such a vision, Maridjan says it's safe to continue living and working near the mountain.
President urges neighbours to flee
That flies in the face of advice from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who visited the area Monday to urge people to obey the warnings of emergency officials.
"I have learned a lot from past disasters including the [December 2004] tsunami, and from that I can draw that if we conduct very good preparations ... there will be a lot that we can save," Yudhoyono said, according to the Associated Press.
Seventy people died in Merapi's last eruption, in 1994. A much more deadly blast in 1930 claimed 1,300 lives.
The volcano is located about 450 kilometres east of Jakarta on the Indonesian island of Java.
Comment on this Article
Meteor shower sparks alarm
16may06
Herald Sun
SOUTH-east Queensland residents have been startled by a bright, green ball of streaking light that initially sparked fears of a plane crash.
A police spokeswoman said the suspected meteor was seen travelling east to west in the region from Bribie Island, across the Sunshine and Gold Coasts as far inland as Warwick.
She said a Warwick farmer alerted police about 6.30pm (AEST) of what he thought was a "fire ball" from a plane crashing on his property.
A search of the area found nothing.
Police were then inundated by sightings of a "green ball of light".
Andre Claydon of the Springbrook Observatory near the Gold Coast said he had received scores of sightings of what he thought was a meteor shower from across the region.
He said the meteor shower would have appeared much closer than it actually was.
"As it comes in through our atmosphere we get a magnification effect so it always looks a lot closer but it is probably 60 to 70km inside our atmosphere," he said on ABC Radio.
"I had a number of phone calls specifically from the eastern part of Australia regarding a meteor shower that has come through and broken up into a few pieces."
The Astronomical Association of Queensland's Peter Hall told ABC Radio: "It sounds like a meteor to me.
"Most of them are the size of a grain of sand but this one must have been larger."
Comment on this Article
Climate change a 'deadly threat'
BBC News
15/05/20006
The Christian Aid charity has warned that 184 million people in Africa alone could die as a result of climate change before the end of the century.
Climate-induced floods, famine, drought and conflict could reverse recent gains in reducing poverty, it says.
Its report says rich nations must aid poorer ones to adopt non-fossil-fuel energy sources such as solar power.
The report comes as almost 190 states gather in Bonn, Germany, to discuss climate change.
The Christian Aid report, entitled The Climate of Poverty: Facts, Fears and Hopes, says rich countries must end their dependence on fossil fuels and aid poorer nations to switch to wind, solar and wave energies.
"Climate change is taking place and will inevitably continue," the report says.
"Poor people will take the brunt, so we are calling on rich countries to help them adjust as the seas rise, the deserts expand, and floods and hurricanes become more frequent and intense."
The author of the report, John McGhie, said that for $50bn (£26bn) the whole of sub-Saharan Africa could be turned into a solar-generated economy.
"And $50bn is exactly the same amount as actually the continent would have to pay on extra fuel bills from oil," he said.
Kyoto Protocol
The report argues that economic growth can be stimulated through localised renewable energy.
However, critics argue developing countries should be left to concentrate on economic growth in whichever way they see fit.
Although scientists are divided on the impact of global warming, recent calculations suggest global temperatures could rise by three degrees by 2100.
Christian Aid says effects such as increased floods and droughts and a growth in areas infested by malaria-carrying mosquitoes could cause a huge rise in deaths.
The Kyoto Protocol on cutting carbon dioxide emissions, believed to be the key cause of global warming, expires in 2012 and does not require major developing nations to make reductions. In addition, the US has rejected it.
Christian Aid said developed nations must cut carbon dioxide emissions by two-thirds by 2050.
At the two-day dialogue on climate change in Bonn, developing nations are expected to urge richer countries to take a greater lead.
The poorer countries say the richer ones are mainly responsible for the situation today.
The Kyoto Protocol's supporter nations are supposed to reduce emissions by an average of 5.2% below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
The Bonn meeting is a precursor to talks from 17-25 May that will begin discussions on how to extend Kyoto to beyond 2012. Those talks could take several years.
Comment on this Article
Odds 'n Ends
Celestial Find at Ancient Andes Site
By Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff Writer
May 14, 2006
Archeologists working high in the Peruvian Andes have discovered the oldest known celestial observatory in the Americas - a 4,200-year-old structure marking the summer and winter solstices that is as old as the stone pillars of Stonehenge.
The observatory was built on the top of a 33-foot-tall pyramid with precise alignments and sightlines that provide an astronomical calendar for agriculture, archeologist Robert Benfer of the University of Missouri said.
The people who built the observatory - three millenniums before the emergence of the Incas - are a mystery, but they achieved a level of art and science that archeologists say they did not know existed in the region until at least 800 years later.
The people who built the observatory - three millenniums before the emergence of the Incas - are a mystery, but they achieved a level of art and science that archeologists say they did not know existed in the region until at least 800 years later.
Among the most impressive finds was a massive clay sculpture - an ancient version of the modern frowning "sad face" icon flanked by two animals. The disk, protected from looters beneath thousands of years of dirt and debris, marked the position of the winter solstice.
"It's really quite a shock to everyone ... to see sculptures of that sophistication coming out of a building of that time period," said archeologist Richard L. Burger of Yale University's Peabody Museum of Natural History, who was not involved in the discovery.
The find adds strong evidence to support the recent idea that a sophisticated civilization developed in South America in the pre-ceramic era, before the development of fired pottery sometime after 1500 BC.
Benfer's discovery "pushes the envelope of civilization farther south and inland from the coast, and adds the important dimension of astronomy to these ancient folks' way of life," said archeologist Michael Moseley of the University of Florida, a noted Peru expert.
The 20-acre site, called Buena Vista, is about 25 miles inland in the Rio Chillon Valley, just north of Lima. "It is on a totally barren, rock-covered hill looking down on a beautiful fertile valley," said Benfer, who presented the find last month in Puerto Rico at a meeting of the Society for American Archeology.
The site is remarkably well preserved, Benfer said, because it rains in the area only about once a year.
The name of the people who inhabited the region is unknown because writing did not emerge in the Americas for 2,000 more years. Some archeologists call them followers of the Kotosh religious tradition. Others call them late pre-ceramic cultures of the central coast. For brevity, most simply call them Andeans.
Benfer and archeologist Bernardino Ojeda of Peru's National Agrarian University have been working at Buena Vista for four years. The site contains ruins dating from 10,000 years ago to well into the ceramic era in the first millennium BC.
The large pyramid and a temple occupy about 2 acres near the center of the site. Radiocarbon dating of cotton and burned twigs found in the temple's offering pit place its use at about 2200 BC.
That is about 400 years after the first pyramid was built in Egypt and about the same time that the peoples who would become the Greeks were settling into the Mediterranean region.
The temple is built of rock that was covered with plaster and painted, although most of the white and red paint has long since flaked off.
Benfer calls it the Temple of the Fox because a drawing of a fox is carved inside a painted picture of another animal, probably a llama, beside each doorway. According to Andean myth, the fox taught people how to cultivate and irrigate plants.
As the team mapped out the site, Benfer observed that a person standing in the doorway of the temple and gazing through a small, flap-covered window behind the altar is aligned with a small head carved onto a notch of a distant hill. The line had an orientation of 114 degrees from true north, pointing southeast.
Benfer does not normally deal with archeoastronomy - the science of ancient astronomy - so he contacted a childhood friend, Larry Adkins of Tustin, and asked him what that angle signified.
Adkins, a physicist who is retired from Rockwell International and who now teaches astronomy at Cerritos College, told him 114 degrees pointed the way to sunrise on the Southern Hemisphere's summer solstice, Dec. 21, the longest day of the year.
"That really got the ball rolling," Adkins said.
The summer solstice marks planting time, as the Rio Chillon begins its annual flooding, fed by melting ice higher up in the Andes. The flooding deposits fresh soil on the land, fertilizing the crops and eliminating the need for manure from domestic animals.
"This was the beginning of flood-plain agriculture," Benfer said. He thinks fishermen from the coast originally moved to the site to grow cotton for use in making fishing nets.
The large frowning disk sits near the door to the temple. It is made of mud plaster and grass and covered with a fine surface of clay.
Benfer speculates that the sculpture represents Pacha Mamma, the most important god of the Andes. He acknowledges the difficulty of proving that, however, because the next known sculpture of the mother goddess does not appear until 800 BC.
"The disk would frown over the sunset on the winter solstice, the last day of harvest," Benfer said.
Alignments in the temple also pointed to the position at the summer solstice of a constellation known in Andean culture as the fox, Benfer said.
Unlike Western constellations, which are outlined by groupings of stars, some Andean constellations were made from dark areas in the sky that are gaps in the bright Milky Way.
Scientists once thought that the gaps represented a lack of stars, but astronomers now know that they are caused by large clouds of dust that block light from distant stars.
The so-called dark cloud constellation of the fox is well-known today in the region, but archeoastronomer Anthony Aveni of Colgate University doubted that it has maintained its shape for four millenniums.
"He has an alignment. That's neat," Aveni said. But the idea that the ancients were looking at the same constellation "is a bit of a leap for me."
Last summer, Benfer's team also partially excavated a second sculpture, that of a life-sized human figure playing a pipe. The figure is sitting with its legs sculpted in high relief and hanging over the edge of one of a series of short platforms that lead down to what appears to be another temple.
The remaining 18 acres of the site have a variety of buildings, most of them from later cultures, that include a ceremonial center, stepped pyramids and what apparently was a residence center for elites. Most of those have been looted.
Oval houses that probably served as homes for families of commoners sit across a ravine from the main pyramid.
There were probably other buildings farther down the slopes, Benfer said, "but the Chillon River removes everything from time to time."
Evidence of pottery indicates that the site was inhabited for centuries, but it is not yet clear whether or how it was eventually abandoned.
"There were people in the valley at the time of the Spanish Conquest, but they were of several ethnic groups," Benfer said.
That suggests that the sophisticated civilization was eventually replaced by small bands of farmers who immigrated from various areas.
Comment on this Article
Looking for aliens on the Moon
16 May 2006
NewScientist.com
When astronauts return to the Moon, they should keep their eyes peeled for extraterrestrial artefacts - pieces of technology from alien civilisations that have wound up on the lunar surface either by chance or design.
So says Ian Crawford, a researcher from University of London's Birkbeck College in the UK. He told a SETI specialist meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) in London last week that although he considers such a find a long-shot, it is definitely worth bearing in mind.
"This is not a primary reason to go back to the Moon - there are very strong scientific reasons for going back. But if we go back to the Moon in the next 20 or 30 years, then amongst those things we might like to keep our eyes open for are alien artefacts," Crawford told New Scientist.
The focus of the RAS discussion was the history and status of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence - an endeavour that has largely relied so far on large radio telescopes listening for electromagnetic signals from other technological civilisations.
Little additional cost
Crawford thinks scientists will be keen for the next lunar astronauts to sift through the lunar soil in greater quantities and in more detail was possible during the Apollo era. So there would be little additional cost to remain open to the idea that alien material may exist within those upper metres of the moon's regolith.
Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, says the possibility of such an interesting payoff for little additional cost makes the idea of looking for artefacts worth considering.
"On the Moon, I think it's certainly worthwhile taking a couple hundred square feet or so of material and looking it over," he says. But SETI researchers "probably wouldn't bet their mortgages on finding anything".
Message in a bottle
Looking for small artefacts, or even probes or time capsules, in our solar system is not a new idea in the SETI community, Shostak notes. Indeed, our own civilisation has already taken this approach several times.
NASA's Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft carry metal plaques showing the spacecraft's time and place of origin. And the Voyager 1 and 2 probes carry gold-plated records (pictured) bearing messages, images and sounds depicting life on Earth for any extraterrestrials who might encounter them thousands of years from now.
In 2004, an engineer and a physicist published a paper in Nature suggesting that if extraterrestrials were not in a hurry, their best shot at making contact with other civilisations would not be with radio waves, but with an interstellar message in a bottle - a physical artefact to tell other intelligent life forms something about their existence.
Crawford says the moon would be a good target for such "inscribed matter", given its lack of geologic activity and airless environment. But if an intentional targeting of a relatively small body sounds a little too like 2001: A Space Odyssey, he says there is also a possibility first brought to his attention by a 1998 paper by Ukrainian astronomer Alexy Arkhipov.
This suggests that if enough space faring societies have existed, even if they never travelled beyond their own planetary systems, they may have produced enough space debris to make it possible that micron-sized particles could have reached our own solar system. And Crawford says such tiny material could have fallen to the moon, remaining there within the top 10 or 15 metres of regolith.
Excruciating detail
But several lunar experts describe the prospect of finding extraterrestrial artefacts on the moon as "far-fetched". Gary Lofgren, lunar curator in charge of the scientific preservation of the Apollo lunar samples at the Johnson Space Center in Houston says even if such extraterrestrial micron-sized particles are there, it would be incredibly difficult to find them, requiring special instrumentation that has never been sent to space before.
Apollo astronauts brought a total of 842 pounds (382 kilograms) of lunar material to Earth and researchers are still studying the samples today. Lofgren says: "People have gone through the samples in excruciating detail and haven't found anything that would suggest extraterrestrial activity."
In fact, he says, scientists have even been surprised by how little of the material has been assigned an origin off the moon - rocks from Earth or Mars thrown up by meteorite impacts, for example.
Still, Lofgren says, scientists will be eager to study new samples from the Moon, noting that the Apollo samples only cover six sites clustered around the equator. And he says, a discovery of material that cannot be explained by an origin and evolution within our solar system "would be an incredible find".
Scott Hubbard, former director of NASA's Ames Research Center and now a SETI Institute researcher says: "While nothing is impossible, I find the payoff from seeking a cometary in-fall in the Moon's permanently shadowed craters much more compelling than extraterrestrial civilisation artefacts."
Comment on this Article
Designer babies? Couples flock to US to choose next baby's sex
by Marc Lavine
AFP
Sun May 14, 2006
LOS ANGELES - Canadian Melissa Vatkin has joined thousands of couples flocking to the United States to cash in on the disputed luxury of being able to dictate the sex of their next baby.
Parents from around the world are forking out around 19,000 dollars for a groundbreaking gender selection treatment offered by only a handful of US clinics but banned in most countries.
The high-tech method of resolving the ancient question of "Would we prefer a boy or a girl?" has raised ethical concerns and fears that it could worsen an already worrying gender imbalance plaguing countries such as China and India.
But for couples like the Vatkins, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, which proponents boast gives parents a 99 percent certainty of delivering a baby of the sex of their choice, the procedure is a godsend.
"This treatment has allowed us to realise our dream," said 36-year-old Vatkin, who recently gave birth to her fourth child, a pre-selected girl.
"We were desperate to have another girl and our daughter really wanted a sister," said Vatkin, who also has a six-year-old daughter and two boys, aged four and two, with her husband Shawn, an oil company owner.
"It was important for us to balance our family," added the resident of British Columbia.
Family balancing is the refrain heard from most of the 2,000 couples who have sought the help of fertility expert Doctor Jeffrey Steinberg, who became a pioneer in the field of commercial gender selection about three years ago.
"Usually these couples have four of five children of one sex and desperately want one of the opposite sex, they want to balance their families in a way that works for them," Steinberg told AFP.
For more than two years, the Vatkins, children in tow, made the 2,100-kilometer (1,300-mile) pilgrimage from their home to Steinberg's Fertility Institute in Los Angeles in a bid to overcome their fertility problems and to ensure that when the baby did come, it would be a girl.
Other couples come from much further afield. More than 50 percent of the couples that come to Steinberg for help are from outside the United States.
Would-be parents from territories such as China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Germany, Britain and Canada are flocking to Steinberg's Los Angeles and Arizona clinics.
"They come from everywhere that it's banned by law," Steinberg said. "But in the United States we really guard and cherish reproductive choice and we are very reticent to allow the government to impinge on that."
Using techniques made possible by the discovery of the human genome, eggs are removed from the mother after she undergoes fertility treatment to multiply them and are fertilised with the would-be father's sperm in a laboratory dish.
One of the cells in each embryo is then removed to allow scientists to determine from its DNA whether the embryo is male or female, before one of the desired gender is implanted into the mother's womb to gestate.
But some bioethicists say the technique could aggravate gender imbalances in some communities and could be the start of a slide towards designer babies and cloning if parents are ever able to pre-select their children's hair colour or personal talents.
In countries such as China and India, boys are culturally favoured as first children, abortions of foetuses following amniocentesis gender tests and even infanticide have combined to see a huge decline in the birthrate of girls.
"In some places, the impact for sex ratios would be pretty dramatic if people had the complete power to chose the gender of their child," said Stamford University bioethicist David Magnus.
He however stressed that because PGD was an expensive and complex technique, it was unlikely to be widely used either in the developing world or even in the United States.
But there may be a risk of creating a culture of perfectly-planned "designer babies," he warned.
"With new technology, there are fears that we may be heading towards a future where only the poor are fat or bald, that we are heading towards creating a genetic underclass and genetic overclass," Magnus said.
The process also rings alarms bells among conservative Christians amid concerns over the fate of unused embryos left over in the process, since many believe human life begins when the embryo is formed.
But Steinberg dismisses the three-pronged criticism of the gender selection process.
He stresses that his clients mostly opt to keep fertilised eggs in his eggbank rather than discard them. He said the technique was more humane than the current trend of aborting foetuses or dumping female babies in India and China.
Overall, his clients were divided evenly over which sex they would prefer for the baby. Americans and Canadians favour girls, Indians and Chinese want boys, and Latin Americans are split down the middle.
Steinberg also denied that the technique was the start of a trend towards designer babies or even human cloning.
"We are not moving in the direction of designer babies or cloning at all," he said. "People have been warning of that slippery slope since the first in-vitro baby was born more than 25 years ago, but we haven't gone down it yet."
For the Vatkins, critics' fears are overplayed.
"This treatment really is miraculous for couples like us and especially for those who have, say, three girls and really want a boy," Melissa Vatkin said. "A lot of people don't agree, but then they shouldn't do it."
Comment on this Article
Ark's Quantum Quirks
Ark
Signs of the Times
May 16, 2006
Comment on this Article
Warning Issued That Bird Flu Virus May Have Mutated Into Highly Contagious Human Strain
Market Wire
05/15/2006
The recent news over the last few days of confirmed "clusters" being reported in Indonesia is posing the grim reality that the bird flu virus may have now mutated into a form that can be easily passed among humans. The current fatality rate for this particular strain of the H5N1 virus is 78% and appears to be somewhat Tamiflu resistant, which is different from the strain found in Turkey.
Once the virus has mutated, it will take 1 - 4 days before symptoms first appear because of what is known as the "incubation period." During this time frame of the initial mutation, the virus will have a chance to spread around the globe via airport travel, which will most likely result in simultaneous outbreaks around the world.
Some experts feel that this super-influenza virus will transform the world overnight into a situation resembling the New Orleans catastrophe. All deliveries to stores, restaurants and gas stations would immediately cease because people would either be too sick or too scared to attend their jobs. This would cause huge shortages in a matter of just a few days. People need to begin buying extra supplies today.
The best way to survive this super flu pandemic is to minimize contact with other people. This will require people to stay in their homes for an extended period of time. Without adequate food and water, this cannot be accomplished. In addition, if people wait too long before they begin buying extra supplies they may find that there are no supplies left to purchase.
If you would like more information on the quickly developing events, we would strongly encourage you to visit a very popular website that is attracting a lot of attention from around the world. This new website features a live discussion forum which allows people to post messages from around the world in real time conversation.
Comment on this Article
Bausch & Lomb Pulls Lens Solution
By BEN DOBBIN
AP Business Writer
May 15, 2006
ROCHESTER, N.Y. - Bausch & Lomb Inc. has permanently withdrawn a new-formula contact-lens cleaner viewed as the "potential root cause" of a far-flung outbreak of fungal eye infections known to cause blindness. Its stock, hit hard over the last month, rose nearly 13 percent.
The Food and Drug Administration said Monday that the eye-care company thinks ReNu with MoistureLoc's unique disinfecting and moisturizing agents "in certain unusual circumstances can increase the risk" of developing Fusarium keratitis, adding that the way some people used the solution may have contributed.
"Based on the understanding we have now, there are a large number of factors that sort of have to come together for this to come into play," said Dr. Daniel Schultz, director of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health. "That is what makes this more different than your average user-error scenarios."
The company suspended U.S. sales of MoistureLoc on April 13 after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was investigating a spike in infections in Americans using the product. The outbreak first surfaced in the Far East, leading to a halt in sales in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia on Feb. 18.
The fungus is commonly found in plant material and soil in tropical and subtropical areas, with strains often showing up in sinks, drains or bathrooms where people handle their lenses. Without treatment, which can last two to three months, the infection can scar the cornea and blind its victims.
The sharp rise in infections brought a flurry of product-liability lawsuits. One woman in Florida alleges the solution caused her to lose an eye, and at least eight other people underwent cornea transplants.
"Bausch & Lomb's top priority is the safety of our customers, and we want them to have complete confidence in our products," Chief Executive Ronald Zarrella said in announcing that MoistureLoc was being removed immediately from markets worldwide.
Extensive federal inspections of the Greenville, S.C., factory where MoistureLoc was made for U.S. and several Asian markets have not turned up evidence of "contamination, tampering, counterfeiting or sterility failure," Zarrella said.
"That leads us to conclude that some aspect of the MoistureLoc formula may be increasing the relative risk of Fusarium infection in unusual circumstances. We are continuing to investigate this link but, in the meantime, we're taking the most responsible action ... by discontinuing the MoistureLoc formula."
"At this time," the FDA added in a statement, "we recognize that Bausch & Lomb has proposed the formulation as the potential root cause of the increased relative risk of Fusarium keratitis."
Schultz said a monthlong investigation of the factory would likely find some manufacturing issues but he downplayed their significance.
Based on ways the solution is handled, its otherwise acceptable fungicidal properties "can deteriorate to the point where they no longer prevent the growth of this fungus in and around the (lens) case," Schultz said. Infections, he added, may involve contamination with "other material" that occurs in the environment.
The CDC said the number of confirmed cases of Fusarium keratitis in the United States has climbed to 122, most of them contact-lens wearers who reported using MoistureLoc.
The company stressed that the recall is limited to MoistureLoc and does not involve other solutions in its ReNu line, including the older and more widely used MultiPlus brand that some victims reported using.
Of the more than 30 million Americans who wear contact lenses, about 2.3 million use MoistureLoc, which was introduced in late 2004 and accounted for $100 million in global sales last year. Another 11 million people use the MultiPlus solution.
Bausch & Lomb shares, which peaked at $87.89 in July after more than two years of robust growth, had sunk 35 percent this year before jumping $5.64, or 12.7 percent, to close at $50.08 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Investors who had worried that "this was an issue not just for ReNu with MoistureLoc but for the entire ReNu family of products" were heartened "by the strength and conviction of the FDA statements in saying that they too thought the problem was limited to MoistureLoc," said Steve Hamill, an analyst with Piper Jaffray.
Some eye specialists theorized that MoistureLoc's new disinfectant, Alexidine, along with poor hygiene habits and other "real-world" factors, appear to have prompted the outbreak.
"It's very much like an airline accident in that there's a whole bunch of discrete factors that are all failing, any one of which would probably not be in and of itself serious, but in combination it becomes catastrophic," said Dr. Arthur Epstein, chairman of the American Optometric Association's contact lens and cornea section. "There has to be some failure in the solution doing its disinfecting job."
"In the end," he added, "this will result in much safer contact-lens care than we've ever had."
Bausch & Lomb also makes contact lenses, ophthalmic drugs and vision-correction surgical instruments, generates more than $2 billion in annual revenues and employs 12,400 people. The company has not issued guidance for 2006 and said it cannot estimate how the recall will affect results this year.
Comment on this Article
Bears Eat Monkey in Front of Zoo Visitors
AP
May 15, 2006
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Bears killed and ate a monkey in a Dutch zoo in front of horrified visitors, witnesses and the zoo said Monday. In the incident Sunday at the Beekse Bergen Safari Park, several Sloth bears chased the Barbary macaque into an electric fence, where it was stunned.
It recovered and fled onto a wooden structure, where one bear pursued and mauled it to death.
The park confirmed the killing in a statement, saying: "In an area where Sloth bears, great apes and Barbary macaques have coexisted peacefully for a long time, the harmony was temporarily disturbed during opening hours on Sunday."
"Of course the habitats here in the safari park are arranged in such a way that one animal almost never kills another, but they are and remain wild animals," it said.
Witness Marco Berelds posted a detailed report on the incident, including photos, on a Dutch Web site. He said one Sloth bear tried unsuccessfully to shake the monkey loose after it took refuge on the structure, built of crossing horizontal and vertical poles.
Ignoring attempts by keepers to distract it, the bear climbed onto a horizontal pole, and, standing stretched on two legs, "used its sharp canines to pull the macaque, which was shrieking and resisting, from its perch."
The bear then brought the animal to a concrete den, where three bears ate it.
The zoo said it "usually wasn't possible" for keepers to intervene when an animal killed another.
The park plans now to move the Barbary macaques - which are large monkeys but often inaccurately called "Barbary Apes" - to another part of the park, it said.
Comment on this Article
From Hugo With Love
Bush bans arms sales to Chávez
Ewen MacAskill in Washington and Duncan Campbell
Tuesday May 16, 2006
The Guardian
The US finally reacted to goading by the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, by slapping a full arms ban on the country last night, claiming it had failed to cooperate in the fight against terrorism.
Janelle Hironimus, a state department spokeswoman, said Venezuela had forged close relations with Iran and Cuba, both classified by the US as state sponsors of terrorism. She said: "Venezuela has publicly championed the Iraqi insurgency."
Mr Chávez, in London yesterday on a two-day private visit, dismissed suggestions that he supported terrorism. He told the Guardian: "Washington has said I am a modern-day Hitler." The Bush administration had accused him of terrorism because it was unhappy with his government's success, he said. "They are very concerned, that is why they say these things." He brushed aside the arms embargo, saying "this doesn't matter to us at all". Venezuela would not respond with punitive measures against the US, he said. The US was "an irrational empire" that "has a great capacity to do harm".
Among reasons given for the ban, the state department referred to Venezuela's "nearly total lack of cooperation with antiterrorist efforts over the past year" and claimed that it provided a safe haven for Colombian "narco-terrorists".
The US, according to the latest congressional figures, sold $8m (£4.25m) in arms to Venezuela in 2004, mainly pistols, rifles, ammunition and riot-control equipment, and $51m in the three years prior to that. But it will try to put the squeeze on other countries that have been engaged in arms sales to Venezuela worth billions.
Ms Hironimus said the arms ban would apply to new equipment and spare parts. She said Venezuela would feel the impact when it wanted to buy parts for its planes.
Relations between the US and Venezuela have deteriorated sharply since Mr Chávez became president. Mr Chávez has described Mr Bush as a "terrorist" and criticised the invasion of Iraq. He has claimed that the US may invade Venezuela, and that it has bought planes from Brazil, ships from Spain and helicopters and assault rifles from Russia.
When announcing the ban, the US made no mention of oil. It is a big importer of Venezuelan oil and cannot afford to cut off that supply. But the arms ban highlights the extent to which the US is being challenged by Venezuela and Bolivia. A string of elections in Latin America has tipped the balance towards leftwing or centrist governments.
Venezuela denies aiding Colombian terrorists and claims it has cooperated with the Colombian government. But the state department claims two Colombian guerrilla groups, Farc and the National Liberation Army, operate out of safe areas in Venezuela, which they use for rest and resupply "with little concern they will be pursued by Venezuelan security forces".
Ms Hironimus said: "Weapons and ammunitions from official Venezuelan stockpiles and facilities had turned up in the hands of Colombian-based terrorists.
The state department also referred to Venezuela's challenges to UN security council resolutions setting out steps countries had to take to stop weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.
Yesterday Mr Chávez met Labour MPs and union leaders and was a lunch guest of the London mayor, Ken Livingstone. Last night he was due to leave the UK for Algeria and Libya. At the weekend he was one of nearly 60 leaders who met in Vienna for a summit on relations between the EU and Latin-American and Caribbean countries. Tony Blair was also at the meeting but the two did not meet in London.
Comment: So for championing the Iraqi resistance, which is made up of ordinary Iraqis fighting an army and government that is illegally occupying their country, the U.S. claims that Chavez supports terrorism? Well if that is the definition of a terrorist then all freedom-loving people are terrorists.
Comment on this Article
Chavez ridicules Washington's weapons ban
Tue May 16, 2006
Reuters
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez accused the United States of "imperial abuse" on Tuesday after Washington banned U.S. arms sales to his country.
Already hostile relations between the two nations descended further as Chavez, who was speaking to the BBC during a visit to London, derided the United States as an "impotent empire" and said he would ignore the weapons ban.
"The North American empire is becoming a paper tiger," he said through an interpreter.
"If it's true that the empire is taking sanctions against us, firstly it's a confirmation of imperial abuse, of imperial desperation (and) secondly we will take no notice. It is an impotent empire."
Despite Venezuela's repeated assertions that it works against terrorism, and particularly militants in the Andean region, Washington accused it on Monday of being uncooperative in the U.S. war on terrorism.
The arms ban symbolically escalates a diplomatic crisis between Washington and oil-rich Venezuela and comes after years of friction between the two nations on issues ranging from trade to oil prices.
Chavez has spent the past few days in London meeting various figures from the British political left. He has not met British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whom he once criticised as "the main ally of Hitler" for his close ties with President Bush.
From London, Chavez was due to travel to Algeria, a close ally and fellow OPEC member, and then to Tripoli for talks with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on Tuesday.
Comment on this Article
Chavez: Imprison 'genocidal' Bush
Monday, May 15, 2006
CNN.com
(CNN) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has accused George W. Bush of committing genocide and said the U.S. president should be imprisoned by an international criminal court.
The leftist leader made his remarks on Monday at a joint news conference with London Mayor Ken Livingstone after a reporter for the BBC likened some comments of his to Bush's phrase, first delivered shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks, "You are either with us or against us in the fight against terror."
At that, Chavez erupted in anger about being "compared to the biggest genocide person alive, in the history of humanity, the president of the United States -- killer, genocidal, immoral -- who should be taken to prison by an international court. I don't know to what you are referring when you compare me to President Bush."
He added: "Have I invaded any country? Have Venezuelans invaded anything? Have we bombarded a city? Have we had a coup d'etat? Have we used the CIA to kill a president? Have we protected terrorists in Venezuela? That's Bush!"
The reporter then cited Chavez's critique of a previous question as "silly" for having motivated her question.
That original question, from CNN's Robin Oakley, asked whose decision it had been for Chavez not to include a visit with Prime Minister Tony Blair on his itinerary. During Chavez's first visit as head of state, five years ago, he was warmly received by Downing Street and Buckingham Palace.
Chavez derided the question as "silly" because, he said, the current visit is a private one, not a state visit.
He said he includes people with whom he disagrees among his friends, and cited Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, a conservative, as one of them.
Separately, Chavez warned that an attack against Iran would cost the world's oil consumers dearly.
"If there was an attack against Iran, the price could go to $100" per barrel from the current level of about $70, he said.
"It will lead also to greater destabilization."
Published reports have said the United States has drawn up plans to attack Iran if Tehran fails to abandon its nuclear program. U.S. officials have said there are no specific plans to do so.
No country, Chavez said, "has the right the prohibit a country from having nuclear energy." He said he is sure that the Iranians are not working on a nuclear weapon, as U.S. officials have claimed.
"The Iranians, like us, want peace," he said.
Either way, he predicted, the energy crisis will deepen. He described capitalism as "extreme individualism," which is using up the world's non-renewable energy reserves at an alarming pace.
He said the twin towers of the World Trade Center consumed more energy than do some entire countries in Africa.
In addition, the fact that 90 percent of vehicles carry no more than one person is "a stupid thing," he said.
"Our planet will not put up with this," he said. "We're all in peril."
On Saturday, Chavez said he wanted to provide cheap heating oil for low-income Europeans.
The Venezuelan leader worked out a similar deal to deliver discount heating oil this past winter to needy Americans in parts of the eastern United States.
"I'd like to do the same here in Europe," he said Saturday evening at a gathering in Vienna of activists and representatives of social movements and non-governmental groups, according to Reuters. (Full story)
In Washington, the U.S. State Department on Monday added Venezuela to the list of countries "not fully cooperating" with counterterrorism efforts.
Comment on this Article
Chavez warns US over Iran policy
BBC News
15/05/2006
Mr Chavez, on a two-day trip to the UK, called for a socialist new world order and said nations were cowards for not standing up to the "American empire".
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has warned the US that any attack on Iran will have devastating consequences and send oil prices soaring.
Mr Chavez, on a two-day trip to the UK, called for a socialist new world order and said nations were cowards for not standing up to the "American empire".
The US has not ruled out military action against Iran over its nuclear programme but is pursuing diplomacy.
Hundreds of supporters gave Mr Chavez a rapturous welcome in north London.
Packed ballroom
The president told the meeting in Camden, hosted by Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, that a US military attack on Iran would lead to Tehran cutting off its oil supply.
"If the United States attacks Iran... oil could reach $100 (£52) a barrel or more," he said.
"Moreover, Iran has said it would attack Israel, and I know they have the wherewithal to do so.
"This would be a terrible escalation and I do not know where it would end and I do not know who would get out the first nuclear bomb or how many people would die. No-one would be safe from this madness."
Mr Chavez said the US "doesn't know what to do" in Iraq, which he called "the Vietnam of the 21st Century".
Jubilant supporters cheered him, many clad in Venezuela's red, blue and yellow and banging drums, while hundreds more were left outside the packed ballroom.
Mr Chavez said capitalism was a "destructive" system and that "socialism is the way forward".
Mr Chavez called unrestricted free trade "a trap by the world's most powerful so they can keep the weakest in slavery".
Britain and a number of other countries have criticised Mr Chavez's moves to exert greater control over his country's oil reserves - the world's fifth largest.
On Friday Prime Minister Tony Blair urged Venezuela to use its energy resources responsibly.
The president's trip has been described as a private one - he has made no request to see Mr Blair or any government officials.
On Monday Mr Chavez will have lunch with Mr Livingstone, and will deliver a lecture in the evening.
BBC Americas analyst James Painter says Mr Chavez's strategy for this trip is similar to the one he used when visiting the US in September last year. He does not meet government officials but rather appeals over their heads to appear as a man of the people.
He says Mr Chavez does not want a "European flank" opening that would support the critical comments made of his regime by the US.
Comment on this Article
Global Chessboard
French PM to battle no confidence motion
by Emma Charlton
AFP
May 16, 2006
PARIS - France's embattled Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was in the hot seat once again with parliament to vote on a no confidence motion tabled by the opposition Socialists over the Clearstream dirty tricks scandal.
Although the motion has no chance of succeeding -- the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) has a large overall majority -- Villepin and his government will have to fight off tough questioning in the National Assembly.
The debate is seen as an important test of support within the centre-right ranks for the prime minister, who has been under intense pressure to resign over the so-called Clearstream affair.
For weeks the scandal has dominated the national press, with a steady stream of revelations about money-laundering, spies, defence contracts and -- at the heart -- an alleged smear campaign against Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who is also the ruling party boss.
The government's popularity and international reputation have plunged amid reports that President Jacques Chirac and his ally Villepin ordered a spymaster to probe claims that Sarkozy had hidden offshore bank accounts.
The Socialists, whose hopes for next year's presidential election have soared as the centre-right sinks into crisis, charge that Villepin's divided government is no longer fit to rule.
After months of social upheaval -- from the suburban riots of November to the recent job law protests -- the Clearstream affair confirms that it is time to "turn the page on this regime of crises", the censure motion says.
Socialist leader Francois Hollande has called on lawmakers from both the left and the right to rally against "a government that has lost all credit".
With 354 out of 577 seats in the National Assembly, the UMP is certain to defeat the motion. Some commentators see as providing a much-needed chance for the party to pull together.
French voters are not quite ready for a government change, according to a CSA poll released Tuesday. It found that 47 percent want Villepin to hold on to his job, compared to 37 percent who think he should stand down.
But the greater fear for the government is that voters -- few of whom truly grasp the details of the torturous Clearstream affair -- risk simply writing off the entire centre-right ahead of next year's elections.
The right-wing Le Figaro newspaper warned in an editorial that the crisis was steadily boosting the chances of the Socialist frontrunner Segolene Royal as well as the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.
It said the prospect of a Socialist and a far-right candidate facing off in the presidential second round, leaving the centre-right high and dry, could "no longer be ruled out altogether".
Le Parisien newspaper said many in the centre-right saw the start of the football World Cup, which will draw attention away from politics when it kicks off on June 9, as the only way to limit the damage from the Clearstream affair.
A highly complex tale of espionage, defence deals and malicious libel, the Clearstream affair became public in mid-2004 when a judge investigating illegal commissions paid in the sale of warships to Taiwan received lists of alleged account-holders at the Clearstream bank of Luxembourg.
The list turned out to be bogus, and Sarkozy -- whose name appeared alongside those of several other politicians and business leaders -- believes he was the victim of a smear campaign ahead of the 2007 presidential election.
In a separate development, Imad Lahoud, a computer expert at the European defence company EADS suspected of playing a key role in the scandal, on Tuesday went on a leave of absence to defend himself.
Lahoud worked closely with EADS vice-president Jean-Louis Gergorin, a well-connected foreign affairs specialist who is suspected of having supplied the bogus Clearstream list, and who has also stood down to defend himself.
Comment on this Article
Australia may sue after grounding US helicopters
AFP
Mon May 15, 2006
SYDNEY - The Australian navy has grounded a one-billion dollar (750 million US dollar) fleet of US-built helicopters over safety concerns and may sue the contractors, the defence minister has said.
The navy ordered 11 of the anti-submarine and anti-shipping Super Seasprite helicopters but none of the 10 delivered since 2001 have been in full operational service due to technical problems.
Defence Minister Brendan Nelson said he had banned the Seasprites from flying and that the government was considering scrapping the fleet altogether.
"I have asked the department of defence to consider all options including, if appropriate, legal action against the contractors who have not fulfilled their obligations to Australia and to Australian taxpayers," Nelson said.
"We've been let down seriously by a number of contractors. We have had delays and essentially, as far as I am concerned, the software failures we faced in late March have been the straw that's broken the camel's back."
A spokesman for the minister said the problems involved flying at night, over water and in mists.
The helicopters were ordered from US defence supplier Kaman Aerospace, with sub-contractors involved in upgrading the used but refurbished airframes with high-tech electronic systems.
The government faced a choice of spending up to 200 million dollars to make the helicopters fully operational or paying another 1.5 billion dollars for a new fleet, The Australian newspaper quoted an unnamed defence source as saying.
Comment on this Article
Italy's Prodi finally on verge of gaining power
By Nelson Graves
Reuters
Tue May 16, 2006
ROME - Italy's new president began a day-long round of consultations with political leaders on Tuesday that will enable Prime Minister-in-waiting Romano Prodi to form a government and end a prolonged political vacuum.
The day after he was sworn in as Italy's first ex-communist president, Giorgio Napolitano started meeting a stream of politicians at the ornate Quirinale palace in the first of a series of steps that will end with Prodi taking power.
Napolitano was expected to ask the 66-year-old centre-left leader as early as Tuesday evening to form a government, with Prodi's swearing in and the announcement of his cabinet probably set for Wednesday, coalition leaders said.
"I will be ready," Prodi told reporters, saying he hoped Napolitano would offer him the mandate later on Tuesday.
But Prodi, the target of intense lobbying by his coalition's many parties for electoral spoils, still had not put the final touches on his cabinet choices.
Asked if a late-night meeting of coalition leaders on Monday had resolved residual problems, Prodi said: "The last ones, no, but the next to last ones, yes."
Prodi's path to power has been delayed, first by a recount of disputed ballots in the closest election in modern Italy, then by the transition between heads of state, whose limited powers include naming prime ministers and approving cabinets.
If all goes according to Prodi's wishes, his government will be set by Wednesday, he will win a confidence vote in the Senate by Friday and another one in the lower house early next week.
That would allow him to assume full power six weeks after the April 9-10 election that ousted Silvio Berlusconi after 5 years in office -- the longest stint in post-War Italy.
CORE PROBLEM
Prodi's wafer-thin majority -- by only 2 seats in the Senate -- has raised questions about how long he can keep a coalition bridging centrist Catholics and committed communists in power.
A poll in Corriere della Sera newspaper highlighted voters' contrasting views of Prodi, who is nicknamed "Professor," and Berlusconi, who has promised a combative opposition.
Prodi received high grades for competence and honesty -- but trailed Berlusconi in perceived leadership skills.
Prodi appeared finally to have decided on two deputy prime ministers -- Massimo D'Alema, chairman of the Democrats of the Left party who is tipped to be foreign minister as well, and Francesco Rutelli, leader of the centrist Margherita (Daisy) party.
But key ministries including interior, defense and justice were still up for grabs, newspapers said.
One of Prodi's biggest early challenges will be to contain Italy's budget deficit, which is well above the
European Union's ceiling, and stimulate an economy that failed to post any growth in two of the last three years.
Two debt ratings agencies have said they will downgrade their ratings unless Prodi quickly produces a strategy to improve the books and boost Italy's dwindling competitiveness.
Comment on this Article
Russia, China won't support UN attack on Iran
Last Updated Tue, 16 May 2006 12:21:07 EDT
CBC News
Russia and China won't support any resolution of the United Nations Security Council that could lead to military action against Iran, Russia's foreign minister said Tuesday.
The two countries agree that the Iranian nuclear issue should be resolved "through dialogue," Sergey Lavrov told reporters after meeting with Chinese officials in Beijing.
"Russia and China will not vote for the use of force in resolving this issue," Lavrov said.
Western countries have been pressuring Iran to stop developing nuclear technology, fearing Tehran plans to make atomic bombs.
The United States had hoped the Security Council would declare Iran's nuclear work a threat to world peace, allowing the UN to impose sanctions or possibly launch military action.
* FROM MAY 3, 2006: Iran close to having reactor quality uranium
As permanent members, either China or Russia could veto any Security Council resolution authorizing force against Iran.
Despite fierce criticism, Iran has repeatedly rejected calls to stop enriching uranium. It says it has the right to develop nuclear technology in order to generate electricity.
On Monday, the European Union offered to share the most sophisticated civilian nuclear technology with Iran if it stops its uranium enrichment program.
"China approves of the Europeans' important stance of striving to solve the Iran nuclear issue through peaceful negotiation," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao on Tuesday.
Liu suggested that Iran should look positively on the European efforts, and called on all sides to negotiate.
Comment on this Article
Iraq-mire
Iraq Sunnis accuse US of "atrocity" over raids
05/15/06
Reuters
BAGHDAD- Iraq's main Sunni religious grouping accused U.S. forces on Monday of killing 25 civilians in raids near Baghdad in the past two days, rejecting the U.S. account that only suspected insurgents had died.
"We hold the Iraqi government and the occupiers responsible for this brutal atrocity," the Muslim Clerics Association said in a statement.
The U.S. military earlier on Monday said its forces had killed more than 41 insurgents in and around the villages of Latifiya and Yusifiya, south of the capital, on Saturday and Sunday. It also said a U.S. helicopter was shot down, killing two soldiers.
Two separate U.S. statements on the air and ground raids did not mention any civilian deaths, but said several women and children were wounded.
The U.S. military says al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, uses the area as a staging ground for suicide attacks in Baghdad. It says he aims to incite a sectarian civil war between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunnis.
The Sunni association accused U.S. forces of attacking civilian houses and killing people as they tried to flee.
It said 25 people were killed in Latifiya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, on Saturday and Sunday. The U.S. military had said 15 "suspected terrorists" were killed in Latifiya and more than 25 in raids on Sunday in nearby Yusifiya.
"American and Iraqi forces on Saturday evening carried out a severe air strike in the area of Latifiya against houses with civilians," the statement said.
It said people ran away from their houses to seek protection but that U.S. forces followed them and killed them.
U.S. troops detained six people, including two women and a child, and returned on Monday and seized more people, it said. The military said it had detained eight suspects in Latifiya.
The area south of the capital, sometimes popularly called the "triangle of death", has been a stronghold of the Sunni Arab insurgency raging against U.S. and Iraqi forces.
Iraq's minority Sunnis dominated the country under Saddam Hussein but have seen their influence wane since he was overthrown by U.S. forces in 2003.
Comment: That U.S. troops regularly murder innocent Iraqi civilians should be obvious given that they are trained to see Iraqis as "rag heads" and little more than animals. It is equally obvious that official military sources will deny that they have killed civiilans and claim instead that they were "insurgents". It is also very likely that the reports of Iraqi civilians killed by US troops that actually reach the press are only a tiny proportion of the real number.
Comment on this Article
Back From Iraq
By Washington Post
05/14/06
Bad stuff happened in Iraq, stuff Adam Reuter doesn't want to talk about. Not with his friends, not with the line cooks in the burger joint where he worked when he first came home or the tenants in the apartment complex he manages now.
He doesn't even want to talk about it with his wife, who worried because he was jumping out of bed in the middle of the night.
But when he agrees to talk about the war -- really talk about it -- he goes right to how the insurgent crumpled after he pulled the trigger. How later, during the firefight, he ended up just a few feet from the corpse. Bullets buzzed by, and he was supposed to keep an eye on the alley, but he couldn't help but glance over.
"He just lay there," Reuter remembers. His eyes and mouth open. His whiskers a few days old. The bullet had gone in his neck cleanly, just to the right of his Adam's apple, but had come out ugly from the back of his head. He was maybe 25, a little older than Reuter. And his blood was pooling, thick and almost black in the darkness.
How can you describe what that was like? Who would understand it?
Nobody. So Reuter keeps his mouth shut. His army uniform is packed in a box in the garage. He hasn't looked at it in months. Instead, he kisses his baby boy every night. He gets on with his life, because that's what everyone else is doing.
At home in Newnan, Ga., there is no war.
"It doesn't cross their minds," Reuter said. "To them, everything is fine."
After three years, there are at least 550,000 veterans of the Iraq war. The Washington Post interviewed 100 of them -- many of whom were still in the service, others who weren't -- to hear about what their war was like and how the transition home has been.
Their answers were as varied as their experiences. But a constant theme through the interviews was that the American public is largely unaffected by the war, and, despite round-the-clock television and Internet exposure, doesn't understand what it's like.
You can't understand unless you were there .
It's a timeless refrain sounded by generation after generation of soldiers returning from combat. But what sets Iraq war veterans apart is not just the kind of war they are fighting but the mood of the country they are coming home to. It is not a United States unified behind the war effort, such as in World War II. There's no rationing, no sacrifice, no Rosie the Riveter urging, "We Can Do it!" Nor is it the country that protested Vietnam and derided many vets as baby killers.
The United States that Iraq veterans are returning to is relatively indifferent, many said. One that without fear of a draft seems more interested in the progression of "American Idol" than the bombings in Baghdad. Sure, there are the homecoming parades, the yellow-ribbon bumper stickers, the pats on the back -- they continue as troops arrive back home.
But for many vets, those moments of gratitude were short-lived or limited to close friends and family. Soon they were joined by bitter impressions of a society that seems to forget that it is living through the country's largest combat operation in more than 30 years.
When Army Reserve Warrant Officer Mark Rollings got home to Wylie, Tex., he didn't expect anyone to treat him any differently because he was a vet. But he couldn't help but notice that the only one to say anything about the newly installed Purple Heart license plate on his Chevy Blazer was the kid who changed his oil at the Wal-Mart.
"For having a global war on terrorism," he said, "everything looks like business as usual to me."
* * *
Coming home was like one big party.
They were welcomed with parades, with family members waving signs and flags and waiting with open arms. World War II vets greeted them at the airport, making sure to shake all of their hands. Thanking them. There were firetrucks on the tarmac, their lights twirling, a celebratory fountain spraying from their hoses.
"People cheering, handing me their cellphones and telling me to call my family," Army Capt. Fred Tanner remembered. "Random people coming up and shaking my hand."
Greg Seely came home on leave in October 2004 with 200 fellow soldiers. They were walking through the Atlanta airport, when, one by one, travelers dropped their bags and started clapping. Soon there was a spontaneous crescendo. The applause of strangers. A moment he will never forget.
"The media talked so much about how the American people don't support us," he said. "But they do."
People may not understand the war, but that doesn't mean they're not grateful, said Master Sgt. Shawn Peno of the Air National Guard. "The support, the comments," he said, "that's real."
They met generals and were thanked by congressmen. Some even shook hands with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and President Bush. Waitresses and gas station attendants refused their money.
Army Reservist Chris Bain threw out the first pitch of the Little League World Series.
On the airplane home, wearing his Navy uniform, Clint Davis sat in the same row as a 5-year-old boy who got out his crayons and drew a picture of the American flag. "It says, 'Thank you for fighting for our country,' " Davis said. "I'll hang it up on my refrigerator till I die."
They came home grateful for their country, for their freedom, for hot showers, flushing toilets and blissful quiet. When Chris Arndt's plane touched down, it was 3 in the morning. A slight drizzle was falling, and the air just felt different.
"You could smell the grass," the Army reservist said. "I hadn't smelled that smell for a year. It hit me and made me realize I was home."
* * *
When they were out of uniform, everything was different.
One day they were in a war zone. Then, suddenly, they weren't. Home for the first time in a year, Dan Ward woke up in his bed, went to the kitchen and fixed himself a bowl of cereal. And that's when the Marine Reservist realized: His war was over. It was almost surreal how something so familiar could seem so strange.
"Almost the most nerve-wracking thing was how normal it was when I came back," he said. "I'd been gone for 11 months, and it's like I've been gone for 11 hours. Then it hit me: This is so normal."
They came home driving scared, scanning the interstates and the back roads of their home towns, looking for bombs that weren't there. They got jumpy in crowded public places and let the war go little by little, like muscle spasms after an intense workout.
Jeramey James "Jay" Lopez was working under the hood of his car with his dad in New Mexico when one of the noisemakers designed to scare the birds out of the nearby pecan orchard went off. It sounded "just like a round coming out of a tank," he said. Lopez's head snapped up and smacked the inside of the hood.
"My dad put his hand on my back, and he just said, 'Son, you're okay. You're home.' "
They came home bent on making good on the promises they had made while fearing death. Army medic Ernesto Haibi, in the thick of the battle of Fallujah, vowed that after he got home he was going to fulfill a childhood dream:
"I told myself, if I get back without any more holes in me, I'm buying myself a piano and learning to play," he said. "You learn what you can live with and what you can live without. And you learn to appreciate the things that are necessary."
What was necessary, he decided, was being able to play "Isn't It Romantic?" -- the first song he learned on his new piano.
They came home haunted, carrying heavy memories that will take years to sort out. "I was taken out of my normal habitat and put in a crazy dream -- a nightmare, really," said Army Spec. Cheyenne Cannaday. "I think about it every day still, and I'm not sure if it's gonna go away."
Jon Powers came home and "swore I would never go back to Iraq until they build a Disney World in Baghdad." But then he thought about how he and his soldiers used to deliver toys and clothing to the orphanage. He thought about how the children had given them something back: a respite from the war. The soldiers would take off their gear, put down their weapons and join the children's soccer matches.
Not long after coming home, the former Army captain knew his work in Iraq was not finished. So he helped start a nonprofit, War Kids Relief, that helps Iraqi children. That's his new career.
Thousands came home wounded, scars fresh; some even with shrapnel in them. Kevin Whelan, who was wounded when a roadside bomb exploded next to his Humvee, has so much metal embedded under his skin that it set off a security detector at the airport. "In case it goes off," he warned the guard, "I do have shrapnel in me." The wand beeped as it passed over his shoulder.
Nearly 400 of them returned as amputees and had to learn to open doors with metal fingers, walk on prosthetic legs. Senior Airman Brian Kolfage came home to sad, strange stares and spontaneous charity. As he sat in a wheelchair after having lost both legs and his right arm when a mortar exploded outside his tent, a stranger handed him $250 in cash.
Another just stared at him and then "just started crying right in front of me."
* * *
The questions people ask about the war usually don't probe too far, the sort that can be satisfied with rote responses that keep the truth at a safe distance.
But sometimes, people push. What was it like?
"You just try to give a softball answer," said Garett Reppenhagen, who has been out of the Army for a year. "Yeah, it was horrible -- whatever. Or you don't answer the question. You say it was hot. You don't tell them what it's like to kill a man or to have one of your buddies blown up. You just don't go there."
But if they were not sated by the polite demurral and continued to press, he would go there, sparing no detail. Then he'd look up and see an expression that made him think they didn't really want to know after all.
"The look on their face: This is not the light conversation I want to hear at a party," he said.
Sometimes people would say maddening things, antagonistic things, even if they had never set foot in Iraq or been in combat. They didn't have to leave their spouses, miss the births of their children or see their best friend blown to pieces.
Civilians. After the war, they seemed so different, no matter how many war movies or how much CNN they had watched.
Sometimes, they'd ask something so crazy there just wasn't any way to respond, such as when a friend asked Monika Dyrcakz, "Did you go clubbing in Iraq?"
"Some people have no idea," she said.
Sometimes they said: I support the troops but not the war. Or: Do you think we should be over there?
Which is such a dumb question, Tanner, the Army captain, would think. Soldiers don't make those decisions. They do what they're told. They bitch and moan, sure. But when the call comes, they pack their bags and go, knowing they may not come back.
But Tanner doesn't say all that. Instead, he responds this way: "Oh, so you were over there? Because you said, ' We .' Because, I mean, I know I was over there."
* * *
But perhaps the worst is when they don't say anything at all and just go on living their lives, oblivious to the war.
Which is exactly what Army Capt. Tyler McIntyre was trying to explain to some family members while eating at an Italian restaurant when he was home on leave a couple of years ago.
He looked across the restaurant and saw everyone stuffing their faces with pasta and drinking wine. "And everyone's kind of just sitting there doing it," he said.
Which is really sort of extraordinary, he said. The country is at war. People are fighting at this very moment. Don't these people know what's going on? Don't they care?
No, he decided. They have no appreciation for their easy, gluttonous lives and don't deserve the freedom, prosperity and contentment he was fighting to protect.
He wanted to yell, "You don't know what you have! You don't appreciate it! You don't care!"
But he didn't. He kept his mouth shut. He was only home on leave. Soon, he would be going back to the war.
Comment: This story provides a great example of the nonsense that is the "support our troops" campaign. The people that drive around with that little sticker on their cars obviously care nothing and know less about the reality of war and what it is doing to their beloved "troops", to say nothing of the carnage that is being wrought amoung the innocent civilians of Iraq. "Support our troops" is a cry that comes directly from the White House and the Pentagon, it is a manipulation designed to ensure that American mothers and fathers continue to blindly feed their children into the gaping maw of the insatiable and bloodthirsty American military industrial complex, all the while thinking they are supporting "freedom and democracy". How many more families must be devastated by that knock on the door before they, as allegedly intelligent human beings, wake up and realise that they are being taken for a ride by their government, and a deadly one at that?
Comment on this Article
Remember, we need your help to collect information on what is going on in your part of the world!
Send your article suggestions to: sott(at)signs-of-the-times.org