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Editorial: Can Anything Be Done?
Paul Craig Roberts
08/27/06
Many readers have praised me for my courage in broaching taboo subjects and stating obvious truths. Others denounce me for "being unpatriotic and distrusting our government." One reader, Susan Hartman, wrote to me that I was obviously in the pay of Islamic Jihadists and that she had reported me to the FBI.
Despite the lack of evidence to support their belief, a number of readers remain confident that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that America narrowly missed being annihilated. These readers know for a fact that Hussein had WMD, because "the President would know, and he wouldn't lie."
In other words, whatever Bush says is true, and all who doubt him are unpatriotic. "You are with us or against us." The facts be damned. There are a large number of Susan Hartmans in the body politic.
A group of scientists, engineers, and university professors are trying to start a debate about the collapse of the three World Trade Center buildings. I reported one of their findings: There is an inconsistency between the speed with which the buildings collapsed and the "pancaking theory" used to explain the collapse. Another way of putting the problem is that there seems to be a massive energy deficit in the explanation that the buildings fell as a result of gravitational energy. There simply was not sufficient gravitational energy to produce the results.
For reporting a scientific finding, I was called a "conspiracy theorist." Only in America is scientific analysis seen as conspiracy theory and government lies as truth.
Applications of the laws of physics and scientific calculations can be reviewed and checked by other scientists. Scientists, like the rest of us, can make mistakes. However, questions raised about the collapse of the WTC buildings are not engaged but ignored.
The 9/11 scholars findings seem to be in sync with public opinion. Polls show that more than one-third and as much as one-half of the American public does not believe the government's 9/11 story.
The public doesn't believe the John F. Kennedy assassination story either. Nevertheless, experts who point out problems in the official story are still called "conspiracy theorists" even though a large percentage of the people share their doubts.
I think the reason so many Americans do not believe the Kennedy story told by the Warren Commission and the 9/11 story told by the 9/11 Commission is not because Americans are knowledgeable about ballistics or physics, or know how to do energy calculations, but because the stories contain too many unusual happenings, too many oddities.
In the Kennedy case doubts are raised by such things as an improbable bullet trajectory, the against-all-procedures absence of Secret Service agents from the rear and sides of Kennedy's limo, the inexplicable access of an unauthorized armed civilian, Jack Ruby, who was able to assassinate Oswald inside the jail before Oswald could be questioned. Online at http://www.insidebayarea.com/timesstar/localnews/ci_4213295 there is a report that two scientists, Pat Grant and Erik Randich, at the Forensic Science Center of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory have discredited the reliability of the "neutron activation" analysis, which was used to "prove" that all the recovered bullet fragments came from Oswald's shots. Courts no longer accept as evidence and the FBI no longer uses the analysis that was used to close the Oswald case.
Any one of these things would be an oddity. The combination of oddities becomes inexplicable, a statistical impossibility.
The same with the explanation of 9/11. Powerfully constructed buildings collapse when there is no source of the required energy to do the job. A large 757 hits the Pentagon but leaves a small hole, and there is no sign of wings, engines, tail or fuselage. Every air control and military procedure fails, and hijacked airliners are not intercepted by jet fighters. The alleged hijackers' names apparently are not on the passenger lists, and some of the alleged hijackers have been found alive and well in Saudi Arabia. Dr. Thomas R. Olmstead used the Freedom of Information Act to get a copy of the autopsy list of American Airlines flight 77, and he reports that there are no Arabic names on the list.
My point is a simple one. Attentive people, even if they are not scientifically literate, can sense when there are too many oddities for an explanation to be believable.
If deception is sensed, there is a receptive audience when experts or film makers speak. Denouncing inconvenient facts as "conspiracy theories" is a way of suppressing debate and investigation.
This itself is telling. If the official explanations are safe, their proponents should welcome the opportunity to show again and again that the explanations can stand all challenges. Instead, the second a challenge shows its head, it is branded a "conspiracy theory." That tells me that the official explanations can stand no challenge.
Don't ask me who killed Kennedy and why, and don't ask me who was behind the 9/11 attack or what brought the three WTC buildings down. My position is a simple one. The official accounts are too improbable to be believable.
I won't believe them until the government can explain where the energy came from to bring down the three WTC buildings. With the demise of the "single bullet" theory, there seems to be no verification of Oswald's magical shooting.
It seems to me that the real conspiracy theories are the explanations that are overweighted with improbabilities.
Readers ask me what can we do? We can do very little as we have lost control over our government. Elections, even if not stolen, change very little. Government got free of our control when we forgot the teaching of our Founding Fathers that government is always the greatest threat to our liberty.
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: Signs Economic Commentary
Donald Hunt
Signs of the Times
August 28, 2006
Gold closed at 631.60 dollars an ounce on Friday, up 3.2% from $612.00 at the previous Friday's close. The dollar closed at 0.7841 euros Friday, up 0.6% from 0.7797 for the week. The euro closed at 1.2753 dollars, compared to 1.2825 at the end of the previous week. Gold in euros, then, would be 495.37 euros an ounce, up 3.8% from 477.19 for the week. Oil closed at 72.51 dollars a barrel Friday, up 1.9% from $71.14 at the close of the previous Friday. Oil in euros would be 56.86 euros a barrel, up 2.5% from 55.47 for the week. The gold/oil ratio closed at 8.71 up 1.3% from 8.60 at the close of the previous week. In U.S. stocks, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 11,284.05 Friday, down 0.9% from 11,381.47 at the end of the week before, and the NASDAQ closed at 2140.29, down 1.1% from 2163.95 for the week. In U.S. interest rates, the yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury note closed at 4.79 on Friday, down six basis points from 4.85 at the end of the week before.
The downturn in the U.S. housing market has become undeniable recently, raising fears of a recession.
Housing weighs on the economy
by Chad Hudson
August 23, 2006
There was little surprise that the housing market remained weak in July. Existing homes sales fell 4% from June to an annual rate of 6.33 million in July. This was 12.5% lower than last year. This was the slowest rate of home sales since January 2004. The median price gained 0.9% from last year, the South was the only region to experience a year-over-year gain. The West had its second consecutive month of lower year-over-year prices. Sales in the West were 18% lower than last July. This was the seventh month of double-digit yearly decline for the West. Not only are fewer homes selling, but more are coming on the market. In July, the number of homes for sales jumped 118,000 to 3.856 million. Combined with slower sales, the number of months supply jumped to 7.3. This is two months longer than in January.
On Tuesday, Toll Brothers reported third quarter earnings of $1.07. This was slightly ahead of analysts estimates, but was 16% lower than a year ago. Similar to other homebuilders, Toll Brothers wrote off $23 million related to land. Excluding this charge earnings were down 9%. The homebuilder also revised its guidance for the full year to $4.41 to $4.63 from previous guidance of $4.69 to $5.16. Wall Street had already reduced its estimates to $4.40. The company didn't provide earnings guidance for 2007, but said that revenue would fall due to a 10-19% drop in deliveries and a 7% drop in the average selling price. Part of the drop in average selling price will be due to a shift to smaller homes. In response to a question whether or not the company felt the market was starting to bottom, it said, "but I don't see a turnaround in any of the markets specifically
Last week, Home Depot reported that the slowing housing market has adversely affected its outlook. On Monday, Lowe's echoed similar comments. Lowe's reported an 11% gain in second quarter earnings, which was inline with analysts' estimates. Same stores sales increased 3.3%, driven by a 4% gain in the average ticket. It also mentioned that promotional activity increased during the quarter. It was interesting that Lowe's noted that even as it saw evidence that customers cutback discretionary spending, it still had strong sales of high end items in some product lines. Similar to Home Depot last week, the home improvement retailer lowered its guidance for the second half of the year. Same store sales are expected to be flat to up 2% during the third quarter as "near-term pressures on the U.S. consumer have led to a more cautious outlook for the balance of the year."
Also playing a role in the housing market is a shift in psychology Just a year ago the media was hyping the housing boom highlighting investors that had switched from investing in the stock market to investing in residential housing. Today, there are an abundance of stories highlighting the bursting bubble. This week, the Wall Street Journal ran two such stories. The first highlighted the problems of "stated income" loans. The article mentioned a study done for the Mortgage Bankers Association by the Mortgage Asset Research Institute found that 60% of a sampling of 100 loans from one lender had income overstated by more than 50%. On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal highlighted one homeowner that placed her house on the market for its 2005 appraised values of $1.1 million. Long story short, she ended up selling it for $530,000. Over the weekend, Barron's noted that only 1% of WaMu's option ARMS were in negative amortization at the end of 2003. In 2004, it moved up to 21% and has jumped to 47% at the end of last year.
Yet, in spite of the recessionary signs, analysts still worry about inflation due to higher energy costs: a classic 1970s-style stagflation, a central bankers nightmare:
Global economic braintrust divided on Fed policy
Tim Ahmann and Ros Krasny
August 27, 2006
Central bankers and top academics departed here on Sunday after two days of discussions on how the global economic landscape is shifting.
But they said goodbye still divided on what is perhaps the biggest question hanging over the outlook -- whether an unfolding slowdown in the U.S. economy will curb U.S. inflation without further interest-rate rises from the Federal Reserve.
While Fed policy was not a primary focus of the formal discussions at the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank's annual Jackson Hole retreat, it was a hot topic on the sidelines.
"I think this is a time of a fair amount of uncertainty, because certainly there seems to be a shifting in the United States," IMF chief economist Raghuram Rajan said. "We're not quite sure if inflationary pressures are contained ... and we are also not sure how far and how quickly housing will slow."
After two years of steadily pushing benchmark borrowing costs higher, the U.S. central bank stepped to the sidelines at its last meeting on August 8, preferring to wait for more data shedding light on the outlook for growth and inflation.
A downturn in the U.S. housing market is seen cutting the wherewithal of U.S. consumers, who have been able to tap the equity fast rising home prices had provided to maintain their free-spending ways.
Former Brazilian central bank chief Arminio Fraga fretted that a slowdown in the United States, for years an engine supporting growth around the globe, could exact a big toll on economies elsewhere.
"Can the world make up for what is likely to be a slowdown in (U.S.) growth, maybe even a bigger slowdown than one expects at this point -- certainly a deeper slowdown than markets are pricing in?" Fraga asked conference participants.
DONE YET?
Financial markets are largely convinced the Fed is finished raising interest rates and look for U.S. policy-makers to lower credit costs next year.
Former White House economic adviser Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Business, suggested it might be wiser for the Fed to resume its credit-tightening course.
"It is a very difficult moment for the Fed to achieve both the desired fall in inflation and the soft landing in the real economy at the same time. It's easy to do one or the other; it's a little more difficult to do both," he said.
A similar debate appears to be unfolding at the Fed.
Richmond Federal Reserve Bank President Jeffrey Lacker voted against the majority of policy-makers at the central bank's August meeting, preferring to bump borrowing costs up another notch.
Analysts are keenly awaiting minutes of that session, which will be released on Tuesday, to see if his concerns were more widely shared.
TAKING A RISK
While oil prices have given a big boost to overall U.S. inflation, the Fed has kept its sights firmly set on ensuring other prices stay under wraps.
If they do, the energy-led rise in inflation should prove a one-off phenomenon.
"When your faced with a terms of trade shock, such as an oil shock, there's logic to allow inflation to rise above target," Harvard University professor and and former IMF chief economists Kenneth Rogoff said in what amounted to a defense of the Fed strategy.
In response, Bank of England chief economist Charles Bean said such an approach risked denting the central bank's inflation-fighting credibility, and urged erring on the side of caution.
"To me, the most important issue is not whether there is a theoretical case for such accommodation. Rather it is whether there are likely to be any adverse effects on inflation expectations and credibility from doing so," former IMF chief economists Kenneth Rogoff said in what amounted to a defense of the Fed strategy.
The experts are uncertain, but more data will be on the way this week:
Wall Street preps for more economic data
By Joe Bel Bruno
AP Business Writer
August 27, 2006
Wall Street will finally get the data it has craved to help get a better handle on the economy and whether it has pulled back further than policy-makers wanted. In the next five days, some two dozen economic reports will be released - including consumer confidence, job growth and manufacturing figures. Investors might even get a better clue about what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke thinks of interest rates when minutes from the last Fed meeting are released.
These readings might help give Wall Street the guidance it has been clamoring for, especially after last week's lackluster performance. But the real question is, how many people will be around to trade on the news - this is, after all, the last week of August.
"I looked up the word doldrums in the dictionary, and there's no coincidence it comes from the word dull," David Darst, chief investment strategist of Morgan Stanley's global wealth management group, said Friday. "You might see some kind of fluctuation next week with these reports, but people will come back to work after Labor Day and sort through everything that's gone on. That's when you'll see volume go up."
Indeed, this past week's volume was lethargic, and traders say expect to see more of the same in the coming days. Looking back to last August, the NYSE reported consolidated volume for the month of 43.33 billion shares - while it popped up to 46.37 billion in September and 51.37 billion in October.
Last week, the Dow ended down 0.86 percent, Nasdaq fell 1.09 percent, and the S&P 500 dropped 0.55 percent.
Stocks fell on concerns that the Fed might have gone too far by raising rates 17 straight times before pausing at its August meeting. While this means Bernanke is unlikely to initiate another hike, it also troubles Wall Street that the economy might have moderated too quickly.
The biggest fear is that consumer spending is eroding, and that could translate into lower corporate profits. Oil prices, which rose steadily last week, also are a major contributor to how much people spend.
ECONOMIC DATA
On Tuesday, investors hope to get some clues as the direction of consumer spending from the Conference Board's August consumer confidence index, and analysts are calling for a modest decline. The Federal Reserve minutes also come out that day.
On Wednesday, Wall Street will be reading the preliminary second-quarter gross domestic product numbers with interest to see if personal spending has slowed, and how business investment and government spending fared.
Consumers will also be in focus Wednesday, when the Commerce Department releases its personal income and personal spending reports for July. Also that day, the department will release its factory orders report for last month.
Perhaps the most important report this week comes out Friday, when the Labor Department releases its nonfarm payroll data for August. In July, the report showed slowing momentum and volatility in payroll growth, which is expected to continue.
The pace of business spending will also be measured on Friday when the Institute for Supply Management releases its survey of activity in the manufacturing sector, covering new orders, production, employment and inventories.
EARNINGS
Wall Street will have to get most of its direction from economic data since there is little in the way of corporate earnings reports. On Wednesday, TiVo Inc. kicks off the week with its second-quarter results, which are expected to come in at a 14 cent per share loss. It has traded between $4.56 and $9.49 over the past 52 weeks, closing Friday up 17 cents, or 2.2 percent, at $7.85.
On Thursday, tax preparation company H&R Block Inc. is expected to report a loss of 19 cents per share. It has traded between $19.80 and $27.94 over the past 52 weeks, closing Friday down $1.98, or 8.7 percent, at $20.81.
Also Thursday, food company H.J. Heinz Co. reports its results. Heinz closed up Friday 5 cents at $41.35, and has traded within a 52-week range of $33.35 and $44.15. And luxury jeweler Tiffany & Co., reports the same day, giving an inkling of how the well-heeled consumer is holding up. Shares were unchanged Friday at $30.80, near the bottom of its 52-week range of $29.63 and $43.80.
Last week we wrote about the strange dominance of neo-classical economics and its dependence on an impoverished model of human beings. We also pointed to Andrew Lobaczewski's work, Political Ponerology, in which he argues that systems based on impoverished views of human nature become more susceptible to takeover by psychopaths. In a similar vein, a movement in economics, begun in France at the turn of the millennium, has referred to neo-classical economics as "autistic economics." Like Lobaczewski, they choose to focus on the psychopathology of modes of thought that we take for granted, yet which contribute to the bad situation the world is in. These economists have argued for a 'post-autistic economics', one with a more fuller and more accurate view of human beings:
A Brief History of the Post-Autistic Economics Movement
Theories, scientific and otherwise, do not represent the world as it is but rather by highlighting certain aspects of it while leaving others in the dark. It may be the case that two theories highlight the same aspects of some corner of reality but offer different conclusions. In the last century, this type of situation preoccupied the philosophy of science. Post-Autistic Economics, however, addresses a different kind of situation: one where one theory, that illuminates a few facets of its domain rather well, wants to suppress other theories that would illuminate some of the many facets that it leaves in the dark. This theory is neoclassical economics. Because it has been so successful at sidelining other approaches, it also is called "mainstream economics".
From the 1960s onward, neoclassical economists have increasingly managed to block the employment of non-neoclassical economists in university economics departments and to deny them opportunities to publish in professional journals.
Note: this is what Lobaczewski would call the process of ponerization (a systematic yet subtle takeover of an institution by evil forces).
They also have narrowed the economics curriculum that universities offer students. At the same time they have increasingly formalized their theory, making it progressively irrelevant to understanding economic reality. And now they are even banishing economic history and the history of economic thought from the curriculum, these being places where the student might be exposed to non-neoclassical ideas. Why has this tragedy happened?
Many factors have contributed, but three especially. First, neoclassical economists have as a group deluded themselves into believing that all you need for an exact science is mathematics, and never mind about whether the symbols used refer quantitatively to the real world. What began as an indulgence became an addiction, leading to a collective fantasy of scientific achievement where in most cases none exists. To preserve their illusions, neoclassical economists have found it increasingly necessary to isolate themselves from non-believers.
Second, as Joseph Stiglitz has observed, economics has suffered "a triumph of ideology over science". Instead of regarding their theory as a tool in the pursuit of knowledge, neoclassical economists have made it the required viewpoint from which, at all times and in all places, to look at all economic phenomena. This is the position of neoliberalism.
Third, today's economies, including the societies in which they are embedded, are very different from those of the 19th century for which neoclassical economics was invented to describe. These differences become more pronounced every decade as new aspects of economic reality emerge, for example, consumer societies, corporate globalization, economic induced environmental disasters and impending ecological ones, the accelerating gap between the rich and poor, and the movement for equal-opportunity economies. Consequently neoclassical economics sheds light on an ever-smaller proportion of economic reality, leaving more and more of it in the dark for students permitted only the neoclassical viewpoint. This makes the neoclassical monopoly more outrageous and costly every year, requiring of it ever more desperate measures of defense, like eliminating economic history and history of economics from the curriculum.
But eventually reality overtakes time-warp worlds like mainstream economics and the Soviet Union. The moment and place of the tipping point, however, nearly always takes people by surprise. In June 2000, a few economics students in Paris circulated a petition calling for the reform of their economics curriculum. One doubts that any of those students in their wildest dreams anticipated the effect their initiative would have. Their petition was short, modest and restrained. Its first part, "We wish to escape from imaginary worlds", summarizes what they were protesting against.
Most of us have chosen to study economics so as to acquire a deep understanding of the economic phenomena with which the citizens of today are confronted. But the teaching that is offered, that is to say for the most part neoclassical theory or approaches derived from it, does not generally answer this expectation. Indeed, even when the theory legitimately detaches itself from contingencies in the first instance, it rarely carries out the necessary return to the facts. The empirical side (historical facts, functioning of institutions, study of the behaviors and strategies of the agents . . .) is almost nonexistent. Furthermore, this gap in the teaching, this disregard for concrete realities, poses an enormous problem for those who would like to render themselves useful to economic and social actors.
The students asked instead for a broad spectrum of analytical viewpoints.
Too often the lectures leave no place for reflection. Out of all the approaches to economic questions that exist, generally only one is presented to us. This approach is supposed to explain everything by means of a purely axiomatic process, as if this were THE economic truth. We do not accept this dogmatism. We want a pluralism of approaches, adapted to the complexity of the objects and to the uncertainty surrounding most of the big questions in economics (unemployment, inequalities, the place of financial markets, the advantages and disadvantages of free-trade, globalization, economic development, etc.)
The Parisian students' complaint about the narrowness of their economics education and their desire for a broadband approach to economics teaching that would enable them to connect constructively and comprehensively with the complex economic realities of their time hit a chord with French news media. Major newspapers and magazines gave extensive coverage to the students' struggle against the "autistic science". Economics students from all over France rushed to sign the petition. Meanwhile a growing number of French economists dared to speak out in support and even to launch a parallel petition of their own. Finally the French government stepped in. The Minister of Education set up a high level commission to investigate the students' complaints.
News of these events in France spread quickly via the Web and email around the world. The distinction drawn by the French students between what can be called narrowband and broadband approaches to economics, and their plea for the latter, found support from large numbers of economics students and economists in many countries. In June 2001, almost exactly a year after the French students had released their petition, 27 PhD candidates at Cambridge University in the UK launched their own, titled "Opening Up Economics". Besides reiterating the French students' call for a broadband approach to economics teaching, the Cambridge students also champion its application to economic research.
This debate is important because in our view the status quo is harmful in at least four respects. Firstly, it is harmful to students who are taught the 'tools' of mainstream economics without learning their domain of applicability. The source and evolution of these ideas is ignored, as is the existence and status of competing theories. Secondly, it disadvantages a society that ought to be benefiting from what economists can tell us about the world. Economics is a social science with enormous potential for making a difference through its impact on policy debates. In its present form its effectiveness in this arena is limited by the uncritical application of mainstream methods. Thirdly, progress towards a deeper understanding of many important aspects of economic life is being held back. By restricting research done in economics to that based on one approach only, the development of competing research programs is seriously hampered or prevented altogether. Fourth and finally, in the current situation an economist who does not do economics in the prescribed way finds it very difficult to get recognition for her research.
In August of the same year economics students from 17 countries who had gathered in the USA in Kansas City, released their International Open Letter to all economics departments calling on them to reform economics education and research by adopting the broadband approach. Their letter includes the following seven points.
1. A broader conception of human behavior. The definition of economic man as an autonomous rational optimizer is too narrow and does not allow for the roles of other determinants such as instinct, habit formation and gender, class and other social factors in shaping the economic psychology of social agents.
2. Recognition of culture. Economic activities, like all social phenomena, are necessarily embedded in culture, which includes all kinds of social, political and moral value-systems and institutions. These profoundly shape and guide human behavior by imposing obligations, enabling and disabling particular choices, and creating social or communal identities, all of which may impact on economic behavior.
3. Consideration of history. Economic reality is dynamic rather than static - and as economists we must investigate how and why things change over time and space. Realistic economic inquiry should focus on process rather than simply on ends.
4. A new theory of knowledge. The positive-vs.-normative dichotomy which has traditionally been used in the social sciences is problematic. The fact-value distinction can be transcended by the recognition that the investigator's values are inescapably involved in scientific inquiry and in making scientific statements, whether consciously or not. This acknowledgement enables a more sophisticated assessment of knowledge claims.
5. Empirical grounding. More effort must be made to substantiate theoretical claims with empirical evidence. The tendency to privilege theoretical tenets in the teaching of economics without reference to empirical observation cultivates doubt about the realism
of such explanations.
6. Expanded methods. Procedures such as participant observation, case studies and discourse analysis should be recognized as legitimate means of acquiring and analyzing data alongside econometrics and formal modeling. Observation of phenomena from different vantage points using various data-gathering techniques may offer new insights into phenomena and enhance our understanding of them.
7. Interdisciplinary dialogue. Economists should be aware of diverse schools of thought within economics, and should be aware of developments in other disciplines, particularly the social sciences.
In March 2003 economics students at Harvard launched their own petition, demanding from its economics department an introductory course that would have "better balance and coverage of a broader spectrum of views" and that would "not only teach students the accepted modes of thinking, but also challenge students to think critically and deeply about conventional truths."
Students have not been alone in mounting increasing pressure on the status quo. Thousands of economists from scores of countries have also in various forms taken up the cause for broadband economics under the banner "Post-Autistic Economics" and the slogan "sanity, humanity and science" The PAE movement is not about trying to replace neoclassical economics with another partial truth, but rather about reopening economics for free scientific inquiry, making it a pursuit where empiricism outranks a priorism and where critical thinking rules instead of ideology.
How does such a movement work in practice? Here's a good example:
Neoclassical economics regards competition as a state rather than as a process. It defines perfect competition as a market with a large number of firms with identical products, costs structures, production techniques and market information. But in real life competition is a process by which firms continually seek to re-establish the conditions of their own profitability. To compete in a market requires firms to seek out and exploit differences between them in production, technology, distribution, access to information and awareness of trends in consumption. These differences are the essential dimensions in which competition takes place. Once the neoclassical conception of competition becomes imbedded in the student's mind, appreciation of real-world competition, and hence the policies that might enhance it, becomes logically impossible.
Neoclassical economists love to talk about freedom of choice. But this is pure rhetoric, because they define rationality in a way that eliminates free choice from their conceptual space. By rationality they mean that an agent's choices are in conformity with an ordering or scale of preferences. The "rational" agent chooses among the alternatives available that one which is highest on his ranking. Rational behaviour simply means behaviour in accordance with some ordering of alternatives in terms of relative desirability. In order for this approach to have any predictive power, it must be assumed that the preferences do not change over some period of time. So the basic condition of neoclassical rationality is that individuals must forego choice in favour of some past reckoning, thereafter acting as automata. This conceptual elimination of freedom of choice, in both its everyday and philosophical meanings, gives neoclassical theory the hypothetical determinacy that its Newtonian inspired metaphysics require. No indeterminacy; no choice. No determinacy; no neoclassical model. This is far from just an academic matter, because society needs an economics that is able to address questions regarding freedom of choice.
No terms in neoclassical economics are more sacrosanct than rational choice and rationality. Everyone identifies with these words, because everyone wants to think of themselves as rational. But few people realize that economists give these words an ultra eccentric meaning.
Lobaczewski would call this a "conversive meaning."
Neoclassical economics begins with an a priori conception of markets and economies as determinate systems that by the action of individual agents alone tend toward an efficient and market-clearing equilibrium. This requires that the individual agents, like the bodies in Newton's system, behave in a prescribed manner. Neoclassicalists have deduced the particular pattern of behaviour that would make their imagined world logically possible, then named it "rational choice" or "rationality" and then declared that that is the way real people behave. But thankfully they don't. Everyday economic actors do many things that by the neoclassical meaning of "rational" are "irrational". Looking to the choices of other consumers as guides to what one might buy; buying a stock because you believe other people will be buying it and so increase its value, spending your money in a spirit of spontaneity rather than stopping to calculate the consequences and alternatives up to the limits of your cognitive powers; a taste for change, that is, buying something because you did not previously prefer it; these common consumer behaviours are all prohibited under the neoclassical notions of rational choice and rationality and so outside its scope of analysis.
These failings connect with another. Neoclassical economics is by its own axioms incapable of offering a coherent conceptualisation of the individual or economic agent. From where do the preferences that supposedly dictate the individual's choice come from? Not from interpersonal relations, because if individual demands were interdependent, they would not be additive and thus the market demand function - neoclassicalism's key analytical tool - would be undefined. And not from society, because neoclassicalism's Newtonian atomism translates as methodological individualism, meaning that society is to be explained in terms of individuals and never the other way around.
This leaves an awful lot in the dark. In the main, despite the neoclassical axioms, we all categorise and classify according to prevailing cultural norms. Likewise our tastes and preferences for this and that reflect the social conventions and institutions with which we interact. Consequently individual choice is unavoidably and inextricably bound up with historically and geographically given social worlds. An economics that has nothing to say about the formation of economic tastes and preferences is silly and irresponsible, especially in an age of consumer societies and in a world now threatened with climate-change or worse.
Once the pathological system of thought, such as neoclassical economics, is seen for what it is, and the conversive terms interpreted correctly, new horizons open:
Mainstream economics, and in consequence most policy dialogue, conflates two very different meanings of economic growth that are in common usage and with GNP mistakenly taken to be a measure of both. There is quantitative growth meaning an increase in the quantity of production and consumption, and there is qualitative growth meaning an improvement in well-being. For example, an epidemic may lead to growth of medical expenditure and hence increase GNP but not well-being. Pollution and congestion lead to huge expenditures to escape them (e.g., commuting from the suburbs, double glazing, air filters, security measures), the creation of new industries and an ever larger GNP but they also decrease well-being. Quantitative growth that causes negative qualitative growth is also called uneconomic growth. It is both a reality and a concept with which policy makers must come to terms, the sooner the better.
Closely related to these new anti-neoclassical concepts is another one, sustainable development. This refers to the physical scale of the economy relative to the ecosystem. Ecological economists view the economy as an open subsystem of the larger ecosystem which is finite, non-growing and, except for solar energy, materially closed. This point of view compels asking questions regarding scale. How large is the economic subsystem relative to the earth's ecosystem? What is its maximum possible size? What is its most desirable size in terms of human welfare? These questions, around which policy decisions will and must increasingly be made, are not found in standard economics textbooks. Neoclassical economics can not accommodate the concept of sustainable development because if adopted as a goal it requires that goods be valued in part by their contribution to that goal and not solely on their contribution to individual utility maximisation.
A look at the recent history of neoclassical economics and of the mathematical modes of analysis that underpin it, suggest that its hegemony today is no accident:
Following WWII, the United States increasingly came to determine (one might say dictate) the shape of economics worldwide, while within the United States the sources of influence became concentrated and circumscribed to an absurd degree. This state of affairs, which persists to the present day, was engineered in significant part by the US Department of Defense, especially its Navy and Air Force.3 Beginning in the 1950s it lavishly funded university research in mathematical economics. Military planners believed that game theory and linear programming had potential use for national defense. And although now it seems ridiculous, they held out the same hope for mathematical solutions of "general equilibrium", the theoretical core of Neoclassical economics. In 1954 Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu achieved for this mathematical puzzle a solution of sorts that has been the central show piece of academic economics ever since. Arrow's early research had been partly, in his words, "carried on at the RAND Corporation, a project of the United States Air Force."4 In the 1960s, official publications of the Department of Defense praised the Arrow-Debreu project for its "modeling of conflict and cooperation whether if be [for] combat or procurement contracts or exchange of information among dispersed decision nodes." In 1965, RAND created a fellowship program for economics graduate students at the Universities of California, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Chicago, Columbia and Princeton, and in addition provided postdoctoral funds for those who best fitted the mold. These seven economics departments along with MIT's, an institution long regarded by many as a branch of the Pentagon, have come to dominate economics globally to an astonishing extent. Two examples will show what I mean.
The American Economic Review (AER), the Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE), and the Journal of Political Economy (JPE), have long been regarded as the world's three most prestigious economics journals, the ones in which a publication adds the most value to an economist's CV and most helps an economics department's ranking and research funding.
A study has been made of the affiliation of the authors of full-length articles appearing in these journals from 1973 through 1978.5 For the QJE it found that the eight departments with the most articles were the seven favoured through RAND by the US Department of Defense plus MIT, and that this Big Eight accounted for 77.3 percent of the articles published. In the JPE all of the RAND Seven were in the top ten and together with MIT accounted for 63.1 percent of the articles published. In the AER the top eight contributing departments were again the RAND Seven plus MIT, which together accounted for 59.3 percent of the articles published. Even within this Big Eight there was an astonishing concentration of success. In the QJE, which is controlled by Harvard, 33.3 percent of the articles were by Harvard-affiliated authors. In the JPE, controlled by Chicago, 20.7 percent of the articles were by Chicago-affiliated authors. In the AER, nearly half of whose editorial board during these years was from, in rank order, Chicago, MIT and Harvard, 14.0, 10.7 and 7.1 percent of the articles were by authors from these departments respectively. About 70% of the board members were from the Big Eight and nearly 60 percent of the members of the nominating committees for officers.
Neoclassical economics is ideal for the pathocrats: it gives us "consumers" the illusion of freedom while convincing us to behave in ways that make our behavior easier to model. It also reduces our awareness of political alternatives, as the following account by Deborah Campbell of a rebellion at Harvard against the introductory economics class there taught by Martin Feldstein shows:
Sitting in an overcrowded cafe near Harvard Square, talking over the din of full-volume Fleetwood Mac and espresso fueled chatter, Gabe Katsh describes his disillusionment with economics teaching at Harvard University. The red-haired 21-year-old makes it clear that not all of Harvard's elite student body, who pay close to $40,000 a year, are the "rationally" self-interested beings that Harvard's most influential economics course pegs them as.
"I was disgusted with the way ideas were being presented in this class and I saw it as hypocritical - given that Harvard values critical thinking and the free marketplace of ideas - that they were then having this course which was extremely doctrinaire," says Katsh. "It only presented one side of the story when there are obviously others to be presented."
For two decades, Harvard's introductory economics class has been dominated by one man: Martin Feldstein. It was a New York Times article on Feldstein titled "Scholarly Mentor To Bush's Team," that lit the fire under the Harvard activist. Calling the Bush economic team a "Feldstein alumni club," the article declared that he had "built an empire of influence that is probably unmatched in his field." Not only that, but thousands of Harvard students "who have taken his, and only his, economics class during their Harvard years have gone on to become policy-makers and corporate executives," the article noted. "I really like it; I've been doing it for 18 years," Feldstein told the Times. "I think it changes the way they see the world."
That's exactly Katsh's problem. As a freshman, he'd taken Ec 10, Feldstein's course. "I don't think I'm alone in thinking that Ec 10 presents itself as politically neutral, presents itself as a science, but really espouses a conservative political agenda and the ideas of this professor, who is a former Reagan advisor, and who is unabashedly Republican," he says. "I don't think I'm alone in wanting a class that presents a balanced viewpoint and is not trying to cover up its conservative political bias with economic jargon."
In his first year at Harvard, Katsh joined a student campaign to bring a living wage to Harvard support staff. Fellow students were sympathetic, but many said they couldn't support the campaign because, as they'd learned in Ec 10, raising wages would increase unemployment and hurt those it was designed to help. During a three-week sit-in at the Harvard president's office, students succeeded in raising workers' wages, though not to "living wage" standards.
After the living wage "victory," Harvard activists from Students for a Humane and Responsible Economics (SHARE) decided to stage an intervention. This time, they went after the source, leafleting Ec 10 classes with alternative readings. For a lecture on corporations, they handed out articles on corporate fraud. For a free trade lecture, they dispensed critiques of the WTO and IMF. Later, they issued a manifesto reminiscent of the French post-autistic revolt, and petitioned for an alternative class. Armed with 800 signatures, they appealed for a critical alternative to Ec 10. Turned down flat, they succeeded in introducing the course outside the economics department.
… Harvard President Lawrence Summers illustrates the kind of thinking that emerges from neoclassical economics. Summers is the same former chief economist of the World Bank who sparked international outrage after his infamous memo advocating pollution trading was leaked in the early 1990s. "Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCS [Less Developed Countries]?" the memo inquired. "I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.... I've always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted...."
Brazil's then-Secretary of the Environment, Jose Lutzenburger, replied: "Your reasoning is perfectly logical but totally insane.... Your thoughts [provide] a concrete example of the unbelievable alienation, reductionist thinking, social ruthlessness and the arrogant ignorance of many conventional 'economists' concerning the nature of the world we live in."
Summers later claimed the memo was intended ironically, while reports suggested it was written by an aide. In any case, Summers devoted his 2003/2004 prayer address at Harvard to a "moral" defense of sweatshop labor, calling it the "best alternative" for workers in low-wage countries.
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: Cuba Under Castro
by Stephen Lendman
Having just turned 80 on August 13 and undergone major surgery for what may have been stomach cancer at the end of July, a transitional time may be near in Cuba with Fidel Castro Ruz beginning to hand over power to his brother Raul and/or others in the months ahead. It passed without irony or mention of imperial arrogance in a brief front page comment in the August 19th issue of the Wall Street Journal that the US won't invade Cuba but a "dynastic succession" is not acceptable. It would have been too much to expect the Journal to have noted that same type succession happened in the US in 2000 and 2004 and in elections exposed and documented as badly tainted at least and likely stolen at worst on top of five arrogant Supreme Court Justices refusing to allow a proper recount of the disputed vote and, in effect, annulling the voice of the people and replacing it with their choice for president. It's called "democracy, American style." It also would have been too much to expect the WSJ to challenge the language it quoted asking what right does anyone in the Bush administration have to tell another nation what type succession policy is or is not acceptable.
No one can know for sure what lies ahead for Cuba or if Castro will even survive. But now beginning his ninth decade and clearly facing a long and difficult recovery, the Cuban leader may have no other choice than to step aside in handling the country's day to day affairs although his influence will always be felt as long as he's alive and lucid. When, not if, the time of transition arrives, an historic era will have passed for the Cuban people and the region. And, while it won't be easy for a successor replacing a 'legend," the history of just Israel and the US alone shows it can happen successfully. It likely will in Cuba as well because the great majority of people there won't tolerate a return to the ugly, repressive pre-Castro past even though most of them never lived through it.
Looking back, one thing for sure can be said about Fidel Castro. He's the longest serving political leader in the world having first gained power on January 1, 1959. For him and Cuba it marked the successful culmination of his quest to do so that began with his unsuccessful attack on the Moncada army post in Santiago de Cuba in July, 1953 for which he stood trial and was sentenced in October that year to serve 15 years in the Isle of Pines penitentiary. For his efforts and while in prison Castro fast became a legend which may or may not have helped him win amnesty and release in May, 1955 after which he first became a non-violent agitator against the US backed oppressive and corrupted Fulgencio Batista dictatorship. Because he was censored and banned from speaking publicly, that strategy got him nowhere and he was forced to leave Cuba for Mexico to plan what became his 26th of July Movement that would be the means to take by force what no opposition in Batista's Cuba could achieve politically. With few resources and little support, Castro and 82 of his followers returned to the Sierra Maestra Mountains in his country in December, 1956 to begin the revolution that would finally succeed when he and what grew to 800 loyal followers entered Havana on January 1, 1959. His small band of determined resistance guerilla fighters had defeated Batista's army of thousands and forced the Cuban dictator to flee the country. From that time forward, the rest, as they say, is history.
The "Liberation" of Cuba, US-Style
From the earliest days of Cuba under Castro, the US imposed harsh conditions on the island state and waged an unending undeclared war against it. It wanted to destabilize the government, kill Fidel Castro or at the least make life so intolerable for the Cuban people, they'd willingly allow themselves to be ruled again by the interests of capital and the dictates of so-called "free market" forces. That many-decade campaign of state-directed terror never worked and likely never will convince the great majority of the Cuban people to favor giving up the essential social gains they now have for a return to what they surely know was a repressive past. They understand if it ever happened, it would be a throwback not just to the days and ways of the hated Batista regime but also to the time US President McKinley "liberated" the island from Spain in an earlier war based on a lie. From that time forward until the Castro-led revolution, the US effectively ruled Cuba as a de facto colony and used it to serve the interests of wealth and power at the expense of the welfare of the people. In his time, McKinley promised to let the Cubans govern themselves after the Spanish-American war, but the dominant Republicans in the Congress had other ideas and were only willing to go along with the island's self-rule if under it the US was allowed "to veto any decision (the Cuban government) made."
One of the earliest examples of US dominance was the Platt Amendment the Congress passed in 1901 after the US "liberated" Cuba in 1898. This federal law ceded Guantanamo Bay to the US to be used as the naval base we've had ever since and granted the US the right to intervene in Cuban affairs whenever it deemed it necessary. Theodore Roosevelt later signed the original Guantanamo lease agreement the terms of which gave the US jurisdiction over the territory that can only be terminated by the mutual consent of both countries as long as annual rent payments are made. The US thus gave itself the right to occupy part of sovereign Cuban territory in perpetuity regardless of how the Cuban people feel about it. The Castro government clearly wants the US out and through the years made its views clear by refusing to cash every US lease payment check it got other than the first one right after the successful revolution.
The US Embargo on Cuba
Whatever one's view of Fidel Castro Ruz, it's clear the achievements of the Republica de Cuba under his rule for nearly 48 years have been remarkable. He managed to do it in spite of the oppressive partial embargo the US imposed on the island state in October, 1960 that became a total embargo 16 months later in February, 1962 when it was expanded to include everything except non-subsidized sales of food and medicines and a month later banned the import of all goods made from Cuban materials regardless of where they were made. The embargo was further tightened with the passage of the Cuban Democracy (Torricelli) Act in 1992 that legalized the encouragement of pro-US opposition groups to act forcefully against the Castro government. It was made still far worse in 1996 after the passage of the outrageous Helms-Burton Act that allows the US government the right to sue any corporation anywhere that does business with Cuba.
Today the US embargo remains in place but is under siege because of its unpopularity among sectors of the US business community that want access to the Cuban market. They include oil and agricultural interests that see the profit potential of trading with Cuba and want to end the restrictions on it now in place. For US oil companies there are potential Cuban oil reserves they want access to, and for agribusiness there's a significant Cuban market for their exports. As a result, the pressure is mounting on the Bush administration which up to now has been defiant in its opposition to Fidel Castro and remains hostile and punitive. But of late the action has been in the Congress with attempts to pass legislation and avoid a Bush veto to ease the current restrictions and allow some economic relations with Cuba that for decades have been banned. For now it's uncertain whether the demands of US business will win out over the fiercely unyielding Bush administration's anti-Castro foreign policy. This and past administrations have always resisted all outside pressure to change their multi-decade hostile policy stance that included ignoring over a dozen overwhelming UN General Assembly votes to end the embargo. In all those votes (excluding abstentions), it was nearly the entire world voting to end it and two or three nations wanting to keep it - the US, Israel and one or another Pacific island.
Travel and Other Restrictions On US Citizens
To destabilize the Castro government, the US for over 40 years has also imposed travel and other restrictions on its own citizens. After the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962, President Kennedy first imposed restrictions on travel to the island in February, 1963. Through the years, US laws have changed at times but have grown harsher under the current Bush administration. Technically no US citizen can legally travel to Cuba without a Treasury license to do so. Doing it otherwise will subject anyone caught to fines up to $10,000 and possibly much higher as well as up to 10 years in prison. Until 2001, the travel restrictions were loosely enforced with only 16 criminal prosecutions between 1983 and 1999. However, all that changed post-2001, and now anyone caught travelling illegally to Cuba stands a real risk of heavy fine and possible imprisonment in this time of USA Patriot Act justice and the fraudulent "war on terror."
For those US citizens allowed to travel to Cuba, there are further limitations on the amount of money they may spend there or send to the country in the case of remittances to immediate family members there or to a Cuban national living in a third country. Under US Treasury license authorization, a visitor is allowed to spend a maximum $50 per day for non-transportational expenses and an additional $50 per day for transportation expenses. It's also permissible for persons in the US 18 years of age or older to remit to an immediate family member in Cuba or a Cuban national in a third country a maximum $300 per household in any consecutive three month period.
These restrictions of movement and a citizen's right to use ones own financial resources freely likely violate two or more amendments to the US Constitution although nothing in the Constitution specifically guarantees the freedom to travel. At the time the Constitution was written, the right to travel freely was unquestioned and was unheard of before the Cold War began after WW 11. After that time limitations were imposed, but challenges to them were made all the way to the Supreme Court which ruled in 1967 that restricting freedom of movement was an infringement of a citizen's constitutional rights. Justice William Douglas said at the time that "Freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society, setting us apart.....it often makes other rights meaningful." On two other occasions in 1962 and 1984, the High Court ruled otherwise by narrow margins but only under "the weightiest conditions of national security" necessitated by the Cold War. It's quite likely a Bush-friendly majority on the present Court would uphold the harsher restrictions favored by the Bush administration and permit one more way for them to destroy our civil liberties.
And they no doubt would do it despite the fact that the right of free movement anywhere encroaches on the right to liberty which the Fifth Amendment specifically states citizens cannot be deprived of without the due process of law. This restriction also likely violates the First Amendment right of free expression and to be able to hear the speech of others, gather information and associate with others as we choose - activities that should be inviolate in a free and democratic society. In addition, the fact that freedom of travel was an unquestioned right when the Constitution was drafted is the reason for the Ninth Amendment which grants the states all other rights not specifically written into the Constitution. Any restrictions thus imposed and enforced in violation of constitutional law are a direct infringement of our sacred freedoms, fundamental rights and civil liberties and unless challenged and successfully reversed in the courts are dangerous steps toward a national security police state under which citizens and residents have no rights.
US restrictive laws also violate international law under Article 12 of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that guarantees everyone the right to leave any country, including one's own, and return to it. Article 13 of the non-binding Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees the same thing as does the 1975 US - Soviet Union Helsinki Agreement committing both nations to protecting the right of its citizens to move freely across borders. The US, especially since the advent of the current Bush administration, has shown its contempt for international and US constitutional law ruling instead by Executive Order to pursue whatever policies it wishes in a manner characteristic of a dictatorship and with no restraint put on it by the Congress or the courts.
The result is a gross infringement of our civil liberties that will likely become far worse in the wake of the Orwellian Real ID Act of 2005 passed by the US Congress to become effective in May, 2008. This law mandates that every US citizen and legal resident have a national ID card (in most cases a person's driver's license) that will contain on it the holder's vital personal information. It also requires the states to meet federal ID standards. A likely future requirement will be what now is mandated by mid-2007 for all newly issued and renewed passports - that they be embedded with a radio frequency identification (RFID) technology computer chip that will be able to track all the movements, activities and transactions of everyone having them. This is an Orwellian dream for any government wanting police state powers and will let US authorities know the names of all persons in the US travelling to Cuba or anywhere else in cases where they did it from third countries so as to remain anonymous. No longer, and with national ID cards mandatory by mid-2008, the tracking of all US citizens and legal residents will become even easier.
Nearly Forty-Eight Years Later and Looking Back - the Castro Revolution and His Government
Fidel Castro's revolution likely was born in March, 1952 after Fulgencio Batista seized power forcibly by coup d'etat after it was clear he had no chance of winning the presidential election that year in which he was running a distant third in the polls. Batista, with full backing from the US, instituted a brutal police state that served the interests of capital and turned the island into a casino and brothel. It was marked by severe corruption, little concern for social needs, and violent crackdowns against the people to maintain order. Fidel Castro wanted none of it. Despite being born into a wealthy Cuban farming family in 1926, being educated in private schools and later at the University of Havana to study law, Castro went his own way. He became politically active early on in 1947 and joined the Partido Ortodoxa Party of the Cuban People to campaign against government corruption and misrule and to demand reform. He also began a law practice in a small partnership after receiving his degree in 1950 devoting most of his time to representing the poor.
Castro wanted change in Cuba and no doubt learned back then if it couldn't come about politically it would have to happen by force. As events dictated, Castro came to power by the latter path when he became the country's Prime Minister in February, 1959 following the successful revolution he led. He's held on to it to this day. He kept his title of premier until 1976 when he became the President of the Council of State and Council of Ministers as chief of state and head of the Cuban government and ruling Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) that was formed in October, 1965. Under the 1976 Constitution, the Republica de Cuba vests all legislative power in the country's 619 member National Assembly of People's Power who serve five year terms. To be elected to it, those candidates must receive at least 50% of the eligible votes. At the executive level sits a 24 member Council of State that's elected by the Assembly and headed by an elected president and vice-president. The Council's President (currently Fidel Castro) is both Head of State and Head of Government. The Vice-President is his brother Raul. Executive and administrative power is vested in the Council of Ministers as recommended by the Head of State.
The PCC has governed Cuba since being formed and is Cuba's only legally recognized political party. While other political parties and opposition groups exist in the country, their activities are minimal and the state views them as mostly illegal. The Cuban Constitution allows free speech, but the opposition's rights are restricted under Article 62 that states: "None of the freedoms which are recognized for citizens can be exercised contrary to....the existence and objectives of the socialist state, or contrary to the decision of the Cuban people to build socialism and communism. Violations of this principle can be punished by law." That one party basis is how Cuba has been governed since Castro assumed power, and officially the Republica de Cuba is called a socialist state. It was inspired and guided by the principles of Jose Marti, Cuba's 19th century born greatest hero who believed freedom and justice for the people should be the cornerstones of any government and despotic regimes that abused human rights should be condemned.
Castro's Human Rights Record In A Climate of Continued US Efforts To Destabilize and Topple His Government and A Comparison to Hugo Chavez's Record in Venezuela
Castro's record as Cuba's leader is mixed at best as judged by the principles its "greatest hero" espoused. Unlike his ally and friend President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela who established a true participatory democracy by national referendum, Castro chose not to allow Cuba to be governed democratically. Instead he decided early on that he above all others would decide what was best for the Cuban people and little dissent would be allowed. The result is that while Cuba is a model state in delivering essential social services to be discussed in detail below, it comes at the expense of the freedom to oppose the ruling state authority. In the past, Amnesty International reported on the crackdown on dissent in Cuba and in recent years on the significant increase in what Amnesty calls the number of prisoners of conscience. The Cuban government claims only "foreign agents" whose activities endanger Cuban independence and security have been arrested, but Amnesty disagrees even while recognizing the threat to the island by the US and the harm done to it by years of an oppressive and unjustifiable embargo.
Amnesty was quite clear in its language stating: "The economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States against Cuba has served as an ongoing justification for Cuban state repression and has contributed to a climate in which human rights violations occur." Those violations include accusations of police state arrests, unfair trials, arbitrary imprisonments and the right to use capital punishment in cases of armed hijacking even after the Castro government placed a moratorium on the death penalty in 2001. While it's true what Amnesty reports, it's also important to note what it doesn't. No attention is paid to how for decades the US repeatedly tried to destabilize Cuba under Castro, isolate it in the region, destroy its economy, and failed in many attempts to assassinate the Cuban leader.
Hugo Chavez in Venezuela has also been a US target for elimination but charted a different course than Fidel Castro in spite of it since being elected President in December, 1998 and assuming office in February, 1999. From the start, Chavez and his Movement for the Fifth Republic Party (MVR) wanted and got his revolution by the ballot box. In fairness to Castro, he too preferred that way but found it impossible under the repressive dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Hugo Chavez had a more favorable climate and once elected sought to achieve what few other political leaders ever do - keep his promises to the people who elected him. In a nation of overwhelming poverty, he wanted to follow the vision of 19th century revolutionary hero Simon Bolivar and his spirit of Bolivarianism to free the Venezuelan people of what Bolivar called the imperial curse "to plague Latin America with misery in the name of liberty."
He did it with his own Bolivarian Revolution based on the principles of participatory democracy and social justice, convened a National Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution that reflected these principles, and allowed the Venezuelan people the right to vote it into binding law by national referendum which they did overwhelmingly in December, 1999. The new constitution which went into effect in December, 2000 established the legal foundation for Hugo Chavez to move ahead with the political, economic and social justice structural changes he wanted for his people. He wanted to lift them from poverty, guarantee them essential social services like free health care and education to the highest level, the right of free expression to include criticizing the President, and the fundamental principle of true participatory democracy so that the people have a say in how their country is governed.
Fidel Castro much earlier was a model for Hugo Chavez in how he established essential social services for the Cuban people like world-class free health care for all and free education through the university level. These will be discussed in detail below. But he failed by not fully permitting Cuba to be governed democratically with unrestricted free and fair elections, effective opposition parties, the right to speak freely, openly and critically of the President even though everyone holding political office in the country including the President and Vice-President must be elected to it.
The Castro government also imposes unfair travel restrictions on the movement of its people requiring them to obtain exit visas to leave the island. More recently these restrictions were relaxed somewhat but not entirely. They're still imposed on professionals with essential skills, and in the case of human rights activists who have the right to leave Cuba but not to return. These freedom of movement restrictions violate international law under Article 12 of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as already explained. Seeing that Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro appear to be good friends and allies, it's to be hoped the Cuban leader or his successor will see how successful the Chavez approach has been in Venezuela and one day wish to alter the Cuban state model to be in full accordance with the spirit and letter of Bolivarianism.
Nearly Five Decades of US-Directed Intimidation, Destabilization and Attempts to Overthrow the Castro Government
The US-directed terror campaign to oust Fidel Castro began under Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Kennedy with the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, continued with "The Cuban Project" (aka Operation Mongoose) in 1961 to "help Cuba overthrow the Communist regime" and Fidel Castro and aim "for a revolt which can take place in Cuba by October, 1962." It continued under the same and new names with many dozens of plots through the years to kill Castro including bizarre ones like using a poisoned wetsuit, poison pens, a pistol hidden in a camera (that almost worked), exploding cigars, explosive seashells in Castro's favorite diving places and a special hair removal powder to make the leader's beard fall out (maybe believing the latter scheme would remove Castro's power much like the biblical Sampson lost his physical strength after Delilah had his hair cut). In the mid-1990s, Noam Chomsky commented that "Cuba was the target of more international terrorism than probably the rest of the world combined, up until Nicaragua in the 1980s." And it was conducted by US-initiated state terrorism against the island state to remove a leader because he chose not to govern the way the US wished him to.
Besides the schemes listed above, the list of US terror tactics against Cuba is far too long to list in total here. They include US attacks on Cuban sugar mills by air, a 1960 blowing up of a Belgian ship in Havana harbor killing 100 sailors and dock workers, dynamiting stores, theaters, a Havana department store and burning down another one. In addition, there were dozens of attacks and bombings and over 600 known plans or attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro including the bizarre ones listed above. The CIA also conducted biological warfare against Cuba including introducing dangerous viruses to the island affecting sugar cane and other crops, African swine fever in 1971 that resulted in the need to slaughter half a million pigs, and hemorrhagic dengue fever that caused the deaths of at least 81 children in 1981. These incidents were later confirmed in declassified US documents.
It's also well remembered that Cubana flight 455 was terror-bombed in October, 1976 by former CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles that killed the 73 people on board. The plot was likely masterminded by Orlando Bosch who devoted his life to committing terrorist attacks against Cuba and trying to kill Fidel Castro. Now at age 80, he lives near Miami and was recently interviewed by Andy Robinson of La Vanguardia. He told Mr. Robinson he once nearly succeeded in killing Castro in 1971 in Chile (with a pistol hidden in a camera), but the assassins sent there to do it "chickened out and didn't shoot" even though they were standing meters away from the Cuban leader and easily could have done it.
Posada, too, was frank in at least one interview he gave to the New York Times. He said "The CIA taught us everything... explosives, how to kill, bomb, trained us in acts of sabotage." Posada, like Bosch, spent 40 years trying to overthrow the Castro government forcibly and was personally responsible for many acts of violence over that period. In April, 2005 he sought political asylum in the US, apparently won't get it as the Bush administration is seeking a "friendly" country to extradite him to while ignoring requests for extradition by Cuba and Venezuela to face charges of terrorism in both countries. Posada was also likely responsible for other terror-bombings of hotels later in the 1990s to destroy the Cuban tourist industry with the help of CIA financing to do it. It's also well known that CIA trained US based paramilitary groups like Alpha 66 and Brothers to the Rescue in Florida are free to operate from here where they're regarded as heros among Cuban reactionaries. They have no fear of prosecution or extradition to Cuba for their crimes against the island state.
With all the detail above and much more than this article can cover, it's easy to understand that the Cuban government or any other under such continued assault to destabilize and topple it would be on high alert at all times and would always have to take all necessary precautions to assure the security of the state, its leader and people. That's more true than ever today as the out-of-control Bush administration is committed to regime change on the island and set up a Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba to help achieve it. The Commission presented its Report to the President in July this year detailing its plan to return Cuba to its pre-Castro de facto colonial status and end the Castro socialist revolution and all the benefits it brought to the Cuban people. In a word, the Bush administration wants to do for Cuba what it did in "liberating" Iraq and Afghanistan and do it by force if necessary. It wants to re-privatize every publicly operated state enterprise and return the Cuban people to the status of serfs exploited by capital, set up a puppet government to administer the changeover, and have it all controlled by Washington and the corporate giants its beholden to.
Fidel Castro knows he's under threat and must take every measure to thwart it. To do otherwise would be foolish and irresponsible. Nonetheless, no leader or government should ever do this by denying its citizens and residents their civil liberties nor should the people anywhere allow them to be taken. Benjamin Franklin understood the danger and wisely explained that "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." And he likely also said those willing to make that sacrifice for security will lose both. So while all necessary precautions are fully justified and necessary against a dangerous and determined adversary or even in a time of war, under no circumstances should a free people ever be willing to give up what they always should be working for to secure and preserve.
Cuba As A Socialist State
In the early years of the Cuban revolution, the Castro government made a clean break with all vestiges of the world capitalist economy. It nationalized US industries like the public utilities, carried out land reform, closed down the Mafia-owned casinos and ended long-standing and systemic corruption. Fidel Castro intended to build a socialist state based on the principles of a largely state-owned, government directed planned economy. He did it and transformed the nation from one controlled mostly by US capital interests and the underworld to the current system in place under which most of the means of production are owned and operated by the state which employs most of the labor force.
But Cuba has been changing somewhat since the dissolution of the Soviet Union that provided it with large and vitally needed subsidies, supplied it with oil at low prices and provided a ready market for Cuban exports like a large portion of its annual sugar crop it no longer could sell to the US because of the economic embargo. Out of necessity to revive its economy that was severely affected in the early 1990s, the Castro government began to allow a limited amount of free enterprise. To increase its agricultural output and relieve food shortages, it changed its farm strategy to an emphasis on smaller-sized ones and shifted from state-owned to cooperative production allowing farmers the right to receive a certain percentage of the profits from their crop yields above a basic required level. The government's goal was to incentivize farmers to reach their maximum production potential and earn income for themselves by doing it. The Cuban government also began to allow commercial Agricultural Markets to be opened around the country as further incentive for farmers to produce more and privately be able to profit from seling the excess amount of it. These Markets have also been a tactical success in neutralizing the negative effects of the country's black market by making a more readily available supply of affordable food for the Cuban people able to avail themselves of it.
The government also introduced changes in the areas of small retail and light manufacturing enterprises loosening the restrictions on the right to operate them as private for-profit businesses. In addition, the government legalized the use of the US dollar and mounted a concerted effort to take advantage of the island's desirable Caribbean location to develop the country's tourism industry by encouraging offshore private investment. In 1995, the Cuban Constitution was changed to encourage it. It granted 100% ownership to foreign companies in joint ventures on the island - up from the 49% cap established in 1982. The change brought about a dramatic increase in joint venture agreements that jumped from 20 in 1991 to 398 in 2001 (substantially in the tourist sector). Cuba has benefitted from them all as a way to attract foreign capital, boost the economy, and provide jobs for the Cuban people. The results so far are significant as tourism experienced impressive growth in the last 15 years. The annual number of visitors to Cuba in 2004 was about 2 million or a six-fold increase since 1990 and the amount they spent increased eight-fold to nearly $2 billion. By the year 2000, private sector employment had grown to about 23% of the total labor force which was up from 8% in 1981. Over the same period, public sector employment dropped to about 77% of the total from the 92% level it was at in 1981.
Social Services under Castro
In delivering essential social services to the Cuban people, the Castro government has had its most notable and admirable successes. Its through them that the Castro revolution became firmly institutionalized in the hearts and minds of the great majority of the people who never before had a government providing for their essential needs they'll now never relinquish without a fight. Why should they. Article 50 of the Cuban Constitution adopted in 1976 and approved by 97% of the country's eligible voters at the time mandates that all Cubans are entitled to receive free medical, hospital and dental care including prophylactic services. The Constitution emphasizes public health, preventive care, health education, programs for periodic medical examinations, immunizations and other preventive measures. It guarantees that all Cubans will have their health protected, and in Article 43 it stipulates that all citizens have the same rights without regard to "color of skin, gender, religious belief, national origin and any distinction harmful to the dignity of man." The Constitution also provides for worker health and safety, help for the elderly and pregnant working women having the right to paid leave before and after birth to ensure maternal and infant health. In 1983, Cuba also adopted the Public Health Law that makes it a fundamental and permanent state obligation to assure, improve and protect the health of its citizens including the rehabilitation of persons suffering from physical or mental disabilities. These services are intended to restore patients to active, productive lives and improve their overall welfare.
In 1989, the World Health Organization (WHO) singled out the Cuban health care system as a "model for the world." It cited its extensive system of family doctors and sophisticated tertiary care facilities, emphasis on its nutritional safety net, its low infant mortality rate at 6 per 1,000 population that's equal to the average for the developed world and lower than the 7 per thousand for the US. Cuba also equals the US in life expectancy, has double the number of physicians per 1000 population than the US and an overall lower mortality rate. It also has the most complete infant immunization coverage in the developing world and an exemplary national health and nuitrition education program emphasizing the development and use of chemical-free, non-GMO, organically grown fresh produce which it hopes to have enough of in another decade to feed its entire population. And it accomplishes all this at a far lower cost per capita than its rich northern neighbor that spends the most per capita of any nation but doesn't care for over 46 million of its citizens who have no access to health care services and many millions more with far too little.
At the end of the 1990s, the WHO updated its findings on health care delivery in Cuba following the dissolution of the Soviet Union combined with the severities caused by the US embargo. It reported severe shortages of needed pharmaceuticals and medical supplies that constrained the ability of the Cuban government to service all the medical and health needs of its people fully. But the Castro government has always had to deal with hardships and shortages of essential goods and services and most often proved its ingenuity to handle adversity in innovative ways eventually devising solutions to deal with them. One way its done it is through government investment in and development of a world-class homegrown biotechnology industry done in the state-of-the-art research labs of the Cuban Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Center. Here Cuban scientists invented cholesterol-lowering drugs, detection tests for AIDS, a meningitis vaccine, remedies for hepatitis B, and other new pharmaceuticals. The Cuban people reap the benefit of these discoveries free of charge and the government earns needed foreign exchange reserves by exporting these products to ready world buyers for them outside the US.
The Cuban people have every reason to be proud of the quality and breath of their health care delivery system. It's world-class in stature as is the country's education system that's also totally free to all Cubans to the highest university level and shows Fidel Castro's commitment to the wisdom of Diogenes who said "The foundation of every state is the education of its youth." Castro offers these services not just to his own people but uses them to export as well to other nations needing them, particularly in the region, as a means of barter trade in return for essential products Cuba needs to import like oil from its ally Venezuela.
Just how good education is in Cuba is seen in a report on it by the Latin American Center for the Evaluation of the Quality of Education which is part of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It showed Cuban students achieved nearly double the scores in math and literature of any of the other 14 Latin American or Caribbean nations currently in the organization. It does it because the Castro government is committed to delivering first class education to all in the country and mandates the right to it for everyone in Article 51 of the Cuban Constitution.
It says: "Everybody has a right to education. This right is guaranteed by the extensive and free system of schools, part-time boarding schools, boarding schools and scholarships in all types and at all levels of education, by the free provision of school materials to every child and young person regardless of the economic situation of the family, and by the provision of courses suited to the student's aptitude, the requirements of society and the needs of economic and social development." The quality of teaching is also high, and class sizes are much lower in number than in the US, and they may get down as low as 15 on average to allow Cuban teachers more time to spend with their students than their US, Latin American and Caribbean counterparts.
Cuba has also virtually eliminated illiteracy (as has Venezuela with the help of thousands of Cuban teachers sent to the country) while in the US the Department of Education cites a functional illiteracy rate of 20% of the population. But that figure excludes a far higher percentage of the high-school educated population that can only read at an elementary school level and when seeking entrance to college must get remedial help to qualify. The same high percentage of US high school graduates also shows up on low-rated math skills, again requiring remedial help to advance to to the college level.
The Cuban education system is much different. It's not just the best in the hemisphere, but it's one that emphasizes breath as well as quality. All students receive education in math, reading, the sciences, arts, humanities, social responsibility, civics and participatory citizenship. The aim is to give all Cubans the skills they need to make them better and more productive citizens. Its done so they may contribute as adults to helping the nation improve and further develop its impressive programs in health, education, the sciences, ecology, agriculture and the arts.
The results are impressive, yet life is still hard for the average Cuban because of the US embargo against the country. It prevents many goods from entering, including essential ones like certain foodstuffs and drugs, that would ease conditions and make them more tolerable. It also makes many of those that do come in more costly because of the greater transportation cost to get them there from distant places like Europe.
Nonetheless, and in spite of the overwhelming obstacles it faces, the Castro government has been committed to serving the basic needs of the Cuban people and through the years has been innovative and unrelenting in finding ways to do it well. As a result, the government always managed to avoid a humanitarian disaster by maintaining in place the pillars of its social model that affirm a priority to human development and essential needs. Besides its world-class health care and education systems, Cubans are assured a nutritious food supply at affordable prices and availability of it free in schools, hospitals and homes for the elderly. The Cuban government also maintains a commitment to scientific research that will produce benefits for the people as well as attention to cultural development. And it's done it all and more in spite of the severe budgetary constraints under which it must function making the achievements all the more impressive.
Fidel Castro's commitment to his people was expressed in Law Number 49 passed one month after he assumed power. It stipulated that the government would provide social services to those needing them. The current law assures special assistance (including financial help) will be provided to the most vulnerable groups in need to include the elderly, persons unable to work and single mothers. The Constitution also mandates that all its citizens are to be treated equally under the law, removed restrictions on religious belief from the Constitution in the early 1990s allowing Cubans the right to freely express and practice their religious beliefs as long as they're not opposed to the socialist principles of the state, and commits the government to assuring all its people have the right to a job and access to sports and culture. As a result, the country has full employment and no homeless people on the streets which compares to its rich northern neighbor that has a considerable problem in both areas but does almost nothing to address them.
What May Lie Ahead For Cuba and Its People
A watershed moment may have arrived for Cuba with the July 31 announcement that Fidel Castro underwent major surgery for what may have been stomach cancer. In official post-operative statements by officials and Fidel himself, the surgery went well and recovery is proceeding normally although it may be long and uncertain. That certainly is true for a man who on August 13, turned 80. In the pictures released of the Cuban leader he looked fine but not feisty as he likely would have prior to his surgery. At this point, it's likely neither he nor his doctors are certain what his prognosis is, but they and the Cuban people know one thing for sure. All his life Fidel Castro has been an unrelenting committed fighter, and he's not likely to change now, especially as his life and welfare may hang in the balance.
Still, Cuba seems certain to be approaching a critical moment in its post-Batista history. It now must address the issue of succession, its commitment to its socialist principles and how it will relate to the rest of the world, especially the US that's totally committed to regime change in the island state and a return of the country to its oppressive former rule by the interests of capital. What may unfold ahead is anyone's guess so here's one to consider. Before the Castro revolution, the Cuban people had only known decades of exploitation, repression and no attention paid to the most basic of human social needs. But since Fidel Castro came to power they've gotten them, and it hardly seems likely they'll ever willingly give them up without a fight. The US may be planning to return the Cuban state to its ugly past, but the best guess ventured here is it won't happen because Cubans won't allow it to. The great majority of them support Fidel Castro and all he's done for them. They know he won't rule the island forever, and if now is the time for him to step aside, they expect and no doubt will get a new leader as fully committed to serving them as the man who more than any other leader in the past half century is a living legend. Alive or passed on, Fidel Castro will be a great symbol and hero to the Cuban people. They're not likely ever to want to let his legacy die.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blogspot at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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Editorial: The myth of Manifest Destiny, Take Two
Rodrigue Tremblay
August 28, 2006
"In the field of world policy I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor--the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the right of others."
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US president, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933
"Politically speaking, tribal nationalism always insists that its own people is surrounded by "a world of enemies", "one against all", that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man."
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
"Where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control."
Lord Acton (1834-1902)
In March 1885, John Fiske wrote an essay for the magazine Harper's, called "Manifest Destiny", in which he contended that the so-called "English race" was destined to dominate the entire world during the coming 20th Century. Then, according to this hubristic theory, there would be a millennium of peace and prosperity. However, it is the expansionist editor John L. O'Sullivan, who in 1845 coined the famous expression when he wrote of "our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions."
Such scary thinking was echoed half a century later by German fascists who thought their fascist Reich would last a millennium and that they could control the world. It would seem that delusional imperialists often think they have discovered the "millennium" magic recipe for dominance. They cloak their insane ambitions in notions of German or American Exceptionalism. Fundamentally, any 'Exceptionalism' among peoples is deeply rooted in racism and the self-serving hatred of "the other". Imperial nazi Germany was race-conscious and it went on extermining people because they were of the 'wrong' race and were declared "Untermensch" (undermen). More than fifty million people died to dispel these dangerous myths.
When religious excesses reinforce ideology and imperialist instincts, things can get even more hallucinatory. For some, the "divine doctrine" of Manifest Destiny originates in the sanctimonious conviction that the Christian 'God' intended the world to be under the control of white European or American Christians. It is the old colonialist idea that dark-skinned people in foreign lands are unable to govern themselves and need external intervention. For example, according to Puritan millennialism, or the theory of Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic racial superiority, some religious Americans, in the 19th Century, saw themselves in their delusion as some sort of a "New Israel", and they persuaded themselves that they should fight savages for the sake of a higher Christian civilization. According to this racial theory of history, popular in late 19th Century America and in early 20th Century Germany, the Teutonic nations [are destined] "to carry the political civilization of the modern world into those parts of the world inhabited by unpolitical and barbaric races", as explained by historian John Burgess.
In 1886, a period fertile with delusional authors, Josiah Strong published a book titled "Our Country", in which he opined that the English speaking peoples have the "mission" of evangelizing the world. A few years later, Brooks Adams published a similar ethno-centric theory of history in a book titled "The Law of Civilization and Decay", whose main thesis was that nations oscillate historically between barbarism and civilization. In a surprising development, the author then went on to extoll barbarism, arguing that barbarism was necessary to develop empires and subjugate colonies. Adams went on to envisage the emergence of an Anglo-Saxon alliance between the U.S. and Great Britain that would dominate the world.
Such eccentric ideas are not inconsequential, for sooner or later opportunistic politicians think of using them as stepping-stones to power. For instance, an imperialist American politician, Theodore Roosevelt, wrote a book in 1889 titled "The Winning of the West" in which he said: (The 1864 slaying of several hundred Cheyenne women and children was) "on the whole as righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the frontier." For this politician drunk with millennium ideas, the extermination or genocide of the Indians was done to advance "civilization".
When he became president after the assassination of William McKinley, in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt applied his racial theories of civilization in the Philippines, where the United States fought a nationalist insurgency for fourteen years, not unlike what mission-bound George W. Bush is doing today in Iraq. Maybe not surprisingly, the American Protestant missionary press was most supportive of the brutal Philippines war (1899-1913), a war that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Of course, in the realm of genocide, Adolf Hitler outdid all millennium imperialists when he undertook, in the 1930's, to exterminate the Jews and Gypsies in Germany, and in many parts of Europe. It took a world war to stop this insane fool.
At the beginning of the 21st Century, a similar wind of folly blows in certain quarters.
In Israel, for instance, religion-based "manifest destiny" thinking is widespread. For instance, the popularly accepted theory of Zionism is based, to a large extent, on the self-serving myth of the "chosen" people. The judaist Bible is supposed to have given present day Israelis a godly right to all of Arab territory in Palestine. This myth is then used to justify the building and expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on Arab lands, in Gaza and the West Bank.
One can also better understand the causes of perpetual war in the Middle East when it is known that according to Halacha (Jewish religious law), the term "human beings" according to Halacha refers solely to Jews. Indeed, a decisive majority of Talmudic sages view goyim (the derogatory Hebrew term for non-Jews) as either animals or sub-humans. With such extremist views, it is understandable that some Orthodox rabbis in Israel consider that international conventions, such as the 4th Geneva Convention which outlaws the deliberate killing of civilians and the destruction of civilian homes and property, are part of "Christian morality" and are not binding on Israel.
In the U.S., the powerful neo-conservative movement is also driven by a sense of moral superiority and by an apology of imperialism for the "good cause".
The cause this time that conceals more down to earth interests is the spread of democratic universalism, especially in the oil-rich Middle East. Irving Kristol, one of the original neocons, advanced the idea that America needs a 21st century version of democratic Manifest Destiny. For him and his cohort of Neocons, just as it was Manifest Destiny for the United States to reach the Pacific Ocean in the 19th Century, so it is today's American Manifest Destiny to control oil-rich regions like the Middle East, under the pretexts of spreading 'democracy' or fighting terrorism around the world. Thus is constructed the intellectual foundation for building a ruthless and plutocratic empire under the guise of spreading a 'one-size-fits-all' democracy.
The shaky assumption behind such thinking is that people, and especially Americans, will not see the fundamental contradiction of wanting to impose democracy through undemocratic means (i.e. using military power to spread democracy). Nevertheless, for neocon missionaries, it is legitimate to use force to convert the world to some sort of American supervised 'democracy'. -This is the new religion. This is, of course, a hoax; in a democracy, power originates from the people, not from armed foreign invaders, and the law, not force, regulates the interactions between individuals and between nations. In fact, imperialism is the very antithesis of democracy.
Nevertheless, with such open-ended patronizing and condescending hubris, there lies the seeds of many imperialistic wars to come, -wars that may suit the agendas of some powerful special interests. Indeed, the new neocon theological version of Manifest Destiny is also a theology of permanent war. As such, these old theories in new clothes represent the gravest danger to world peace. And since George W. Bush subscribes to this flawed ancient geopolitical theory, the world should pay special attention.
As for Bush Jr. himself, indeed, while protesting that the U.S. has no plan to stay long in Iraq, after the so-called "liberation" he illegally engineered on his own in the spring of 2003, he takes great care to stress that the decision of when to remove US troops from Iraq will rest with "future presidents and future governments in Iraq", not with him. This is understandable since his administration is currently busy building a Middle Ages-type fortress in Baghdad, disguised as an embassy. This new Carcassonne fort will have a 15-foot thick perimeter wall and will be spread over a 104-acre site. The Pentagon is also busy building 14 permanent American military bases in occupied Iraq, capable of hosting 50,000 American soldiers and their families. Some temporary expedition! -As General Anthony Zinni, former US Middle East commander, has put it, there could not be a more "stupid" provocation to the Muslim world than building permanent military American bases in a Middle East Arab country. This is a sure guarantee of decades of war and unrest. -In a repetition, one hundred years apart, of the Philippine invasion, U.S. war commanders now think some level of American forces will be 'needed' in Iraq until 2016. "Plus ça change, plus c'est pareil."
Such duplicity does not escape the attention of the world, even though many Americans keep their heads buried deep in the sand, and refuse to face the reality and consequences of their "imperial" government. A recent poll taken in Great Britain, for example, found that Britons have never had a lower opinion of the leadership of the United States than presently. Indeed, a June 26-28, 2006 survey found that only 12 per cent of Britons trust the Bush-Cheney administration to act wisely on the global stage. This is half the number who had faith in the post-Nixon Vietnam-scarred White House of 1975. Today, a large majority of the British see America as "a cruel, vulgar, arrogant society, riven by class and racism, crime-ridden, obsessed with money and led by an incompetent hypocrite." -Let's keep in mind that Tony Blair's Britain is supposed to be George W. Bush's staunchest ally. It is therefore reasonable to believe that America's reputation in other countries, under Bush II, is probably much lower.
Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@ yahoo.com.
He is the author of the book 'The New American Empire'.
Visit his blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's Website:www.thenewamericanempire.com/
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Enduring Freedom
BULLOCK'S HUSBAND SEZ: Everyone in Iraq knows Bush is a d**khead
25 August 06
Hollywood star SANDRA BULLOCK's husband JESSE JAMES has launched a scathing verbal attack on US President GEORGE W BUSH, calling the leader "a d**khead". The motorcycle maker visited American soldiers outside Baghdad, Iraq - and is convinced the majority of the US military agree with him. James says, "Everyone in Iraq knows Bush is a d**khead. He's the boss' kid. "Everybody I know who has a successful business who has a kid - the kid is always a f**khead. Have you ever noticed that?"
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Dozens die in fresh Iraq violence
BBC News
Twenty-five Iraqi soldiers have died in clashes with Shia militiamen in southern Iraq, hospital sources say.
The fighting broke out on Sunday night after troops conducted raids against a splinter group of Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi Army in the city of Diwaniya.
In the capital Baghdad, at least 14 people were killed in a suicide car bombing by Iraq's interior ministry.
The violence comes a day after at least 47 people were killed in a series of insurgency attacks across Iraq.
A spokesman for the Diwaniya general hospital said 34 bodies had been brought in - 25 Iraqi soldiers, seven civilians and two militiamen. He said at least 70 people were injured.
Local leaders are quoted as saying the gunmen in Diwaniya have split from the from the Mehdi Army after rejecting a call from their radical leader to take part in Iraq's political peace process.
In Baghdad, dozens of people were injured in the mid-morning blast outside the interior ministry.
The ministry complex has been frequently targeted in the past and is heavily guarded. At least eight policemen are reported to be among the fatalities.
'Improved security'
Insurgents have carried out almost daily attacks against Iraqi and coalition targets since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Thousands of Iraqis have died in apparently sectarian attacks in the past four months alone.
The bloodshed undermines Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's claim on Sunday that the security situation in Iraq was improving.
"The violence is on the decrease, and our security ability is increasing," Mr Maliki told CNN.
The bomber struck as UK Defence Minister Des Browne was in Baghdad for talks with Iraqi officials.
After meeting Iraqi Defence Minister Abdul-Qader Mohammed Jassim al-Mifarji, Mr Browne said Iraq was moving forward.
"Each time I come, I see more progress," he said.
Meanwhile, five US soldiers were killed in two separate bomb attacks in Iraq on Sunday afternoon, the US military said.
Four soldiers died when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle north of Baghdad, a military statement said.
A fifth soldier was killed when a roadside bomb struck his vehicle in the west of the capital.
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Dancers Land in Iraq. Marines Offer No Resistance.
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
The New York Times
August 27, 2006
HADITHA DAM, Iraq - One by one, the marines took the stage for one of the most coveted photo opportunities of the war. Tanea sat on a knee of an eager marine while Laurie rested on the other.
Hands on their miniskirted hips, Amber and Renee posed at each side. Dani stood behind and held the marine's rifle as the camera snapped the photo. Some of the young marines who lined up for the memento were so mesmerized by the experience that they had to be reminded not to leave their weapons behind.
The Haditha Dam is in a hostile stretch of the Euphrates River 140 miles northwest of Baghdad where the marines do battle with insurgents in the oppressive heat. But for a few hours this summer, the chow hall inside the dam was transformed into a theater for five shapely dancers who seemed to embody many a young marine's fantasy.
It was all part of a program to keep up morale in a war that is more dangerous than ever. There is a long history of providing entertainment for troops in war zones, including performances by attractive starlets. Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell toured with Bob Hope in Korea, who delighted troops during four conflicts. Raquel Welch and Ann-Margret performed in Vietnam.
But at Haditha Dam, the marines have the Purrfect Angelz, as the dancers are known. Their tours, which organizers say are paid for by the military, have occasionally stirred some controversy. During the group's 2005 visit to Baghdad, a female Air Force officer complained that the dancers' wardrobes and routines encouraged insensitive attitudes toward women in the military.
On the group's third tour of Iraq, there were no complaints from the boisterous crowd of male marines at the dam or the solitary soldier in the audience from Azerbaijan, who mistook the Oklahoma-born Tanea for a Russian. A small group of Iraqi Army officers who are being trained by the marines were so enthusiastic they all but rushed the stage and filled their digital cameras with this sampling of American culture.
Sgt. Dale Gooden, 31, a Marine reservist from Jacksonville, Fla., who is assigned to the dam security unit, saw the show as a sign that the American public had not forgotten about the troops. The most impressive part of the show, he said, was "just the fact that they came out here to see us."
Certainly, Haditha Dam seems an unlikely venue. The 10-story hydroelectric dam, which was built in the 1980's, was captured in the opening weeks of the American-led invasion. The secret Delta Force destroyed much of the Iraqi defenses near the dam, while Army Rangers swooped in later to seize the structure.
The Americans said the dam had to be taken to prevent Saddam Hussein from destroying it as part of a scorched-earth policy, though there is no indication that Mr. Hussein ever had such a plan. It was a firefight at the dam, in fact, that initially put it at risk. After discovering that the poorly maintained dam was damaged in the fighting, a sergeant in an Army civil affairs unit flew to the site and worked with the Iraqi engineers to keep the dam functioning.
During a multimillion-dollar repair project by the Army Corps of Engineers, the dam's turbines were rehabilitated. In addition to generating electricity, the dam also serves as a headquarters for the Marine battalion that is charged with securing the Haditha area and is home to a small contingent of troops from Azerbaijan who are helping the marines guard the structure.
For the Purrfect Angelz, it was a stop on a tour that also took them to bases like Al Qaim and Taji. The dancers, former cheerleaders, calendar models and aspiring actresses, have an active schedule in the United States, much of which consists of events for motorcycle riders. By design, the routines at Haditha are a bit tamer than the biker fare.
"We want to make it more about talent than being risqué," Tanea Brooks said. "We are not going to boost every part of the morale." Her credits include a three-year stint as a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, a role in a country music video, "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" by Trace Adkins, and a turn as quarterback for the New York Euphoria, one of the teams that established the Lingerie Football League, in which models played football dressed in underwear.
But for marines who deploy for seven months at a stretch, are forbidden to consume alcohol, have no real opportunities for social interaction with the Iraqi population and routinely travel down roads seeded by roadside bombs, the performance was exciting enough. "Servicemen are our best audience," said Ms. Brooks, who gave her age as "21 forever." "They are so appreciative. We love touring for them. They always get excited."
[David Chavez, the president of Pro Sports MVP, which organized the tour, said that it was paid for by the military and that the expenses consisted of travel costs and small stipends. A Pentagon spokesman said he had no immediate information on what the tour cost or the financial arrangements.]
A recent show began with an entreaty by a diligent sergeant who saw the event as an opportunity to appeal to the marines to re-enlist. He was loudly shouted down. An announcer who was traveling with the dance group told the marines not to pay attention to news media reports that the American public did not support the war. The nation, she said, was solidly behind them.
Then the dancers, in revealing outfits, energetically performed dance routines that were more rousing than most Super Bowl halftime acts - wardrobe malfunctions notwithstanding - but far less provocative than Las Vegas shows. At one point, one of the Angelz sang Lee Greenwood's song "God Bless the USA," a veritable anthem for many of the troops.
The event wound up with the photo and autograph session. Then it was on to the next stop.
The troops' verdict on the tour seemed to be summed up by an e-mail message that an Army captain later sent the dancers from the base at Taji. He thanked them for helping to "make us forget about our jobs for a little while."
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Car bombs and shootings kill around 60 in Iraq
By Ross Colvin
Reuters
Sun Aug 27, 2006
BAGHDAD - A spate of car bombings and shootings across
Iraq killed about 60 people on Sunday, but Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said violence was on the decrease and that the country would never slide into a civil war.
A top government official said Maliki planned to reshuffle his coalition cabinet just 100 days after it was formed because he wanted to root out disloyal or poorly performing ministers and rally factions behind his national reconciliation plan.
The deputy premier also told Reuters Iraq hoped its plans to attract investment and create jobs could stem a descent into civil war and that foreign leaders should back a U.N. economic package next month or face disaster for the entire Middle East.
Car bombs exploded in Baghdad, the town of Khallis north of the capital, the northern oil city of Kirkuk and Basra in the Shi'ite south, a day after Maliki secured a pledge from tribal leaders to help stamp out sectarian violence and defeat insurgents.
"Violence has decreased and our security ability is increasing. We are not in civil war and will never be in civil war," Maliki told CNN in a recorded interview on Sunday.
"What you see is an atmosphere of reconciliation."
In Khallis, a religiously mixed town, gunmen stormed a market and cafe, killing 16 people and wounding 25, police said.
In one of the worst attacks of the day, a bomb blew apart a minibus in a busy commercial road in central Baghdad, killing nine people and sending black smoke billowing into the air.
The minibus blast followed a car bomb attack on Iraq's best-selling newspaper, the government-owned al-Sabah, that killed two employees and badly damaged the building.
Editor-in-chief Falah al-Meshaal said the newspaper, part of the U.S.-funded Iraqi Media Network that Sunni insurgents have attacked before, would be published as normal on Monday.
In potentially oil rich Basra, where Maliki has imposed a state of emergency to deal with increasing violence fueled by tensions between rival Shi'ite Muslim factions, seven people were killed by a motorcycle bomb in a market, officials said.
British troops are under mounting pressure in the southern oil hub. But London's new envoy to Iraq insisted on Sunday that, despite his predecessor's leaked view this month that civil war was a strong possibility, he was "optimistic" such an outcome could be avoided if Maliki could rally Iraqis behind him.
TORTURE SIGNS
Police said 20 bodies had been found in parts of Baghdad on Saturday. Some bore signs of torture and most had been killed by gunshots to the head, a typical feature of the sectarian bloodshed between Iraq's Shi'ite majority and Sunni Arabs.
Thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops have launched a major operation in Baghdad to pacify the capital. Violence claimed the lives of over 3,000 Iraqis in July, many of them in Baghdad.
Maliki won support for his reconciliation plan from the tribal leaders gathered in Baghdad on Saturday, but it is unclear how influential they will be among Iraqis increasingly turning to religious leaders for guidance.
No major Sunni guerrilla group has signed up to Maliki's plan and much of the violence now gripping the capital is the work of smaller groups on both sides of the Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian divide. Sunnis say it is fueled by militias linked to parties within the prime minister's Shi'ite-dominated coalition.
Maliki's planned cabinet reshuffle would partly involve the political movement of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia has clashed repeatedly in recent weeks with U.S. and Iraqi forces, several political sources said.
A key player in the government, Sadr denies his militia runs some sectarian death squads.
"There will be a government reshuffle. There will be some changes in a number of cabinet portfolios," Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, the most senior Kurdish official in the cabinet, told Reuters in an interview.
Salih, the government's economy supremo, said the need to clamp down on sectarian and ethnic violence would not distract him from working to develop Iraq's vast potential oil wealth. Restoring prosperity could help rein in the killing, he said.
"Undeniably security has to rank at the top," said Salih, the most senior ethnic Kurd in the cabinet. "But does that mean at the expense of the economy and services? You cannot. All these things are inter-related.."
Salih said success in Iraq would have good consequences for the region and the rest of the world.
"God forbid, failure in Iraq will be disastrous for everybody, not just for the people of Iraq," he said.
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End of the Beginning
M.J. Akbar
Arab News
27/08/2006
WASHINGTON - On Friday, Aug. 25, the Washington Post published a startling story from its Baghdad bureau. I can do no better than to quote its opening paragraph: "British troops abandoned a major base in southern Iraq on Thursday and prepared to wage guerrilla warfare along the Iranian border to combat weapons smuggling, a move that anti-American cleric Moqtada Sadr called the first expulsion of US-led coalition forces from an Iraqi urban center. 'This is the first Iraqi city that has kicked out the occupier!' trumpeted a message from Sadr's office that played on car-mounted speakers in Amarah. 'We have to celebrate this occasion!'"
They did. They celebrated a holiday and thanked God. There was an exploding mine wherever I looked in that opening paragraph. The British Army was going to abandon a base to undertake "guerrilla" operations? Against insurgents who thrived in the shadows? Weren't the British supposed to be the heroes and role models who had won the war in the south while the Americans were swatting moles all over the rest of Iraq?
Details painted the larger picture. Local resentment had boiled into anger when British soldiers entered a mosque to make arrests. Insurgents, clearly loyal to Sadr, began shelling the British base, Camp Abu Naji, which had 1,200 soldiers and was on the border of Iran. In simple language, the British withdrew from the camp, which was looted when they left, so clearly the withdrawal was less than orderly. The decision may have been encouraged by the fact that "the 2nd Battalion of the Iraqi Army's 4th Brigade mutinied".
In the British military dictionary this was called "repositioning". In the Arabic military dictionary this is called "defeat".
The story went on to say that local Arabs of Amarah called on Sadr's soldiers all day to congratulate them on their victory. And just in case you were wondering, Moqtada Sadr was one of the leaders who were instrumental in the formation of the present government in Baghdad.
Are you confused enough, or would you like some more information?
The only stark, non-confusing facts on the Post page were in the list of American dead that was placed just beside the story, based on a Pentagon notification. There were seven more American names, bringing the total of American deaths to 2,617. On the Op-Ed page, columnist David Ignatius reported from Baghdad that in July more than 1,500 Iraqis had died in Baghdad alone. He added, however, that tough action by the Americans had led to a marked improvement. Far fewer Iraqis were dying.
The British retreat from Amarah is not the beginning of the end. That would be an exaggeration. But, as was remarked of a different war, this does seem to be the end of the beginning.
It is an assessment that suits Washington as much as Baghdad. You get a strong sense that the beginning that George Bush made, along with Tony Blair, five years ago in Afghanistan and three years ago in Iraq has come to an end, and they do not know which way to turn. Bush and Blair look deflated. Their faces are tense, not intense.
The question was always dominant, but is now consuming America: Why are American troops in Iraq? What precisely is their mission statement? Surely America has not made this huge investment in men, money and national credibility in order to become the policeman of a chaotic Baghdad?
Bush's answers change as regularly as the seasons. He now thrusts his jaw in the vague direction of television cameras and asserts that American troops will never leave Iraq under his watch, that he will never cut and run. Why? Because the job is not finished. What is the job? If he does not kill terrorists in Iraq, he says, they will come to America to kill Americans.
Unfortunately, where Bush sees terror, most Americans see quicksand.
This narrative cannot be propelled even by the discovery of plots by British intelligence. The 9/11 Commission has now debunked one of the key arguments that took Bush to Iraq, by clearly stating that there was no link between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. Bush has responded with an unbelievable assertion, that he never said so. Certainly Dick Cheney did, when he alleged that Mohammad Atta had met an Iraqi intelligence agent. You can perhaps get away skating on such thin ice when the voter gives you the benefit of the doubt. It was benefit of doubt that re-elected Bush. But now the doubts have multiplied, and the benefit is streaming in the opposite direction.
Bush still has loyalists who sincerely believe that he did not lie before his Iraq misadventure; but they now concede that he was misled. The distinction is not going to be very clear to the thousands upon thousands of young men, both Iraqi and American, who have died because Bush was either deceived, or he deceived the world. The difference is going to be lost on those Iraqis who were tortured and raped and killed during this war without a mission, as America's finest journalists are revealing in news reports and books of chilling horror, like the just-published bestseller, Fiasco. Inevitably, the price of war has reached the American middle class: Through daily images on television, through a deficit that has crossed $5 trillion, through gas prices that have jumped and house prices that have dropped. The middle class has kept Bush and the Republicans in power, and there are increasing signs that it is no longer buying the Bush narrative.
For five years Bush and Blair have rather enjoyed their leap into history. Suddenly, in the last few weeks, the politics of the rebound has reached their doorstep. Blair might have the easier journey as he exits that doorstep, for the parliamentary system has sufficient flexibility for change. By next summer, unless he is blessed by extraordinary luck, Blair will be an ex-prime minister. Bush will not be ex-president till January 2009, but by next summer he just might be wishing that America had a parliamentary system and he could retire to his ranch. If the Democrats win even one of the two Houses of Congress this November, they will start impeachment proceedings against Bush for misleading America into the septic morass of a war without horizons.
When the objective keeps changing, so does the definition of victory. American soldiers have been more confused than clear in the various campaigns of Iraq, since no one knows who is an enemy and who is a friend.
America is beginning to recognize the price, but the greater cost will of course be borne by Iraq and the region. The war that has been restarted is one without either boundaries or mercy, since the fire that is heating this cauldron is wild. All we need is a few more noble intentions, like the current favorite of some American policymakers: To divide Iraq into three independent nations, for Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.
The day a Kurdistan begins to look possible, Syria, Iran and Turkey will send their armies to smash the thought. They will not be squeamish about the blood they will shed. The Kurds are living so far in a zone of calm, but it is the calm of a dead sea.
What options does Bush have? The best option is the most obvious. All the nations of the region, who are staring at a growing disaster, need to sit at a table to discuss what can be saved from this wreck. America needs to be at this table as well, along with France and Russia, and Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. America can bomb rock and sand, draw blood each day from the shadows and comfort itself with passing lullabies, but will not bring peace. Peace will come through collective will and this can only be determined when nation-profiling ends, and diplomacy begins.
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Bush's Iraq 'palace'
TheAge.com.au
August 26, 2006
THE plans are a state secret, so just where the Starbucks and Krispy Kreme stores will be is a mystery. But as the concrete hulks of a huge 21-building complex rise from the ashes of Saddam's Baghdad, Washington is sending a clear message to Iraqis: "We're here to stay."
It's being built in the Middle East, but George W's palace, as the locals have dubbed the new US embassy, is designed as a suburb of Washington.
An army of more than 3500 diplomatic and support staff will have their own sports centre, beauty parlour and swimming pool. Each of the six residential blocks will contain more than 600 apartments.
The prime 25-hectare site was a steal - it was a gift from the Iraqi Government. And if the five-metre-thick perimeter walls don't keep the locals at bay, then the built-in surface-to-air missile station should.
Guarded by a dozen gangly cranes, the site in the heart of the Green Zone is floodlit by night and is so removed from Iraqi reality that its entire construction force is foreign.
After almost four years, the Americans still can't turn on the lights for the Iraqis, but that won't be a problem for the embassy staffers. The same with the toilets - they will always flush on command. All services for the biggest embassy in the world will operate independently from the rattletrap utilities of the Iraqi capital.
Scheduled for completion next June, this is the only US reconstruction project in Iraq that is on track. Costing more than $US600 million ($A787 million), the fortress is bigger than the Vatican. It dwarfs the edifices of Saddam's wildest dreams and irritates the hell out of ordinary Iraqis.
On a recent visit to the real Baghdad - outside the Green Zone - a deepening sectarian separation was evident. Abu Zaman, a Shiite trucker who often updates The Age on life in the capital, had some personal news: "My daughter is upset because I blocked her wedding plans," he said. "He was a nice boy - rich and a good job - but he was a Sunni."
Making fake identity papers is a thriving business as Shiites and Sunnis attempt to blur their allegiances in a city where a name can be a death sentence. Men called Ali, Jaafar and Haider are almost certainly Shiites. Omar, Marwan and Khalid are Sunni names.
Shiite taxi driver Salwan al-Robian was unlucky. Earlier this month he used false papers to get through a Sunni checkpoint south of Baghdad. His companions told The Age that he gave himself away by invoking the name of Imam Ali, the Shiite saint, when he exclaimed his good fortune in surviving the roadblock. The Sunni gunman heard him and he was dragged off. His family recovered his body from the Tigris River a few days later.
Sunni graffiti artists daub city walls with slogans such as "Shiite families out" and "Shiite dogs". Meanwhile, Shiite men roar with laughter at DVDs of comics mocking Sunnis.
In Baghdad, all roads lead to the morgue. This building to the north of the city comes from the pages of Dante.
It reveals the unvarnished truth about this deepening conflict. The body count rises steadily: more than 1800 mutilated corpses were trucked in from across the capital in July, a significant increase on the June toll of almost 1600. Across the country, almost 3200 Iraqis died violent deaths in June.
Coping with this flood of suicide-bombing and mass-murder victims is an impossible task for morgue staff. In the stifling summer, the police try to get out before sunrise to gather corpses from the killers' favourite dumping spots before the broiling heat of the day.
At the morgue, the bodies are divided along sectarian lines. The viciousness of the killings is sickening. Sunni victims of Shiite violence usually have holes drilled in their heads and joints and are found near the Shiite slums of Sadr City. Shiite victims of Sunni violence are often shot in the head or decapitated and usually they are dragged from the tepid waters of the Tigris.
Up to 200 bodies are delivered to the morgue each day. Sometimes there is the dignity of a body bag, but often body parts are delivered in banana boxes discarded at city bazaars. The Iraqi Government threatens the morgue staff with reprisals if they reveal information to reporters because the statistics are such devastating indicators of the Government's - and the United States' - failure. But one of the doctors agreed to talk to The Age as long as his name was not published. "It just gets worse, especially in this heat," he said.
"The bodies have been in the sun for so long that they fall apart in our hands, just like that. It's a nightmare. At home I can't say anything about it to my family. And how can we believe it'll get any better? We don't have enough doctors to do the autopsies and we're getting more and more bodies every day."
After almost four years of trying to build Washington's democracy beachhead in the Middle East, US defence officials now concede that the violence in Iraq is at its worst - in terms of body count, public support and the ease with which Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias exploit gaps in the American forces.
At most critical points the Americans have misread the social, tribal, political and military landscape and they have wrong-footed themselves by denying evolving realities that were all too apparent.
Distrust of Washington in all of the Iraqi factions has robbed the US of what it believed was an easily won regional trump card: control of Baghdad. Iraq is a democracy in name only. The elected Parliament doesn't function and, even though they mouth support for the niceties of the democratic process, it is hard not to conclude that Iraqi leaders have more faith in achieving their goals by letting the violence run than by taking part in any US-managed national dialogue.
The dynamic has changed. Sunnis who campaigned for US forces to leave Iraq now insist they remain here to protect the Sunnis because the Shiite majority has a taste for blood.
Shiites who welcomed the Americans now declare the US to be an enemy bent on robbing them of their long-held dream of controlling the country.
It's remarkable that George Bush has reportedly waited until now to vent his frustration at the failure of the Iraqis "to appreciate the sacrifice the US has made in Iraq". Ironically, about the same time as the August 14 White House meeting at which the President wondered aloud about the ability of yet another Iraqi government to turn the tide of violence, a Baghdad factory owner was mimicking the American leader for the benefit of The Age: "We give them Pepsi, the internet and mobile phones and they're still not happy. What more do they want?"
The combined forces of the US and the Iraqi Government number more than 400,000, but the country remains a lawless jungle. The Americans say they kill or capture more than 500 insurgents a week and they are defusing twice as many roadside bombs now as they were in January. But Iraqi and other agencies estimate that the death toll since the March 2003 invasion stands at 50,000 or more - the proportional equivalent of about 570,000 Americans.
In a country trying to rebuild itself, there is another disturbing development: more than 40 per cent of its professional classes have fled since the invasion. That includes an estimated 12,000 doctors.
The US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants estimates that close to 900,000 Iraqis have fled since 2003. Iraqi Airways has more than doubled flights to Damascus, bus services on the treacherous desert route to Jordan have gone from two to 50 a day, and taxi fares to Amman have increased from $US200 to $US750.
As statistics cry failure on so many fronts, Washington's stated plan for US forces in Iraq to "stand down as the new Iraqi forces stand up" is being shredded daily, along with the lives of innocent civilians. Much of the terror on the streets of Baghdad is organised by private militias that have infiltrated the Iraqi security forces.
These militias are operated by the key parties in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's administration - his government would fall without the political support of one of the worst offenders, the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army.
In Basra, deep in the south, there is little Sunni insurgency activity. But there is much violence as Shiite militias and local warlords fight for turf and British and American officers accuse neighbouring Iran (Shiite) and Saudi Arabia (Sunni) of arming the factions.
The country's second-biggest city becomes more Islamicised by the day - music and
liquor shops have been bombed out of business, women are made to wear headscarves and board games are being outlawed.
Whatever the Americans have done in Iraq has usually been too little too late.
The June death in a US bombing raid of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Sunni insurgency leader and al-Qaeda point man in Iraq, was a victory - but his absence from the battlefield has failed to staunch the blood.
Zarqawi's stated objective was to foment unstoppable sectarian war.
In a sense, his work was done with the February bombing of a Shiite shrine at Samarra, north of Baghdad.
Unlike Mr Bush, Zarqawi could go to his grave rightly claiming: "Mission accomplished."
The two sides are dug in for the long haul. On one side, Sunni insurgency cells that now show great unity and common purpose have defeated a determined US counterinsurgency push to divide them.
On the other side, the Shiites use the resources of the US-trained and funded Iraqi security forces. A senior figure in Sadr's Mahdi Army told The Age: "We can get anything we need. We are a professional force ... and after the victory for Hezbollah in Lebanon we feel stronger and more powerful because we have seen what a Shiite force can achieve.
"We will fight the Sunni till they have a clean heart towards Shiites. But we have to fight the American too, because they are with the Sunni against us."
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Rumsfeld: Troops' families have no reason to be mad
August 27, 2006
Detroit Free Press
FAIRBANKS, Alaska -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld praised the work Saturday of members of an Army brigade whose one-year tour in Iraq was extended just as they prepared to return home, and said he saw no reason for the soldiers or their families to be angry with him.
"I don't put it in that context," he said. "These people are all volunteers. They all signed up. They all are there doing what they're doing because they want to do it. They're proud of what they do. They do it very, very well."
The Pentagon chief was meeting privately later Saturday with 172nd Stryker Brigade families at Ft. Wainwright, the unit's home base.
Rumsfeld's aides said they expected as many as 600 people to attend and to have a chance to ask questions.
Reporters who traveled with Rumsfeld from Washington, D.C., were not allowed at the session.
Asked why reporters would not be permitted to cover the event, Rumsfeld said he makes it a practice to make all family meetings private.
A newly formed Alaska chapter of the Military Families Speak Out group issued a statement in Fairbanks saying it would make a public call for the Bush administration to bring home the 172nd and all other U.S. troops. It quoted Jennifer Davis of Anchorage, whose husband belongs to the 172nd.
"I am totally frustrated, disappointed and heartbroken," she said in the statement. "Just when I thought we were going to be able to resume a 'normal' life and when I thought the nightmare was over, the nightmare was extended."
Rumsfeld said in the in-flight interview that the 172nd Brigade was an effective force during its nearly one-year deployment to the Mosul area in northern Iraq.
He said the soldiers performed well in the short time since they shifted to Baghdad as part of an effort by U.S. commanders to quell sectarian killings.
"They did a terrific job in Mosul and they're already doing an excellent job in Baghdad," said Rumsfeld, indicating that commanders chose to extend the 172nd Brigade in part because of their extensive experience in Iraq.
The brigade's tour was extended by up to 120 days, bringing them close to a Christmas return date.
Rumsfeld said he would make no promises that the full brigade would be back home by the holidays.
"I'd love to be Santa Claus. I'm not," he told reporters during the flight to Fairbanks.
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Saudi says 34 militants seized in al Qaeda swoop
Reuters
Sat Aug 26, 2006
RIYADH - Four militants arrested in the Saudi city of Jeddah this week were part of a group of 34 men rounded up in an effort to prevent a resurgence of al Qaeda violence, the Saudi interior ministry said on Saturday.
The four Islamist radicals surrendered on Monday after Saudi security forces besieged the building where they had an apartment in the Red Sea port.
"Security work led to the arrest of 34 people of different nationalities in Mecca, Medina, Riyadh and Jeddah because they belonged to the 'deviant group' and had links to escapees from the Malaz prison," a statement on official news agency SPA said.
Officials have said that two of the men arrested on Monday were among seven people who escaped from the Malaz detention center in Riyadh in June.
Saturday's statement said weapons and locally-made explosives were found in the Jeddah apartment.
"They were using the flat as a hide-out and as a factory for instruments of death and destruction," it said. It did not specify when the other 30 men were arrested but said they had been under surveillance in recent weeks.
Officials say more than 136 militants and 150 foreigners and Saudis, including security forces, have died in attacks and clashes with police since May 2003, when suicide bombers hit three Western housing compounds in Riyadh.
The violent campaign by supporters of al Qaeda leader
Osama bin Laden has ebbed in the face of toughened security measures.
King Abdullah said in comments published on Saturday that he had personally intervened to ensure that the lives of militants -- who he called "rascals," using an Arabic word normally used to refer to naughty children -- were spared in the Jeddah siege.
The comments in an interview with the Saudi daily Asharq al-Awsat suggested that Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, is increasingly confident that it has tamed the 3-year-old militant campaign to depose the U.S.-allied royals.
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Afghan 'suicide bombing kills 17'
BBC News
At least 17 people have been killed and many more injured in a suspected suicide bombing in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, officials say.
The blast ripped through a crowded bazaar in the town of Lashkar Gah.
A spokesman for the provincial governor told the Associated Press news agency that the bomber had blown himself up opposite a police station.
Helmand province has seen some of the worst of the violence that has killed hundreds in Afghanistan this year.
At least 47 people were wounded in the latest blast, six of them critically, Hanif Khan, a local hospital official, told the Associated Press news agency.
Shattered glass and blood-soaked turbans were scattered at the site of the bomb, AP quoted security guard Hayatullah Khan as saying.
Insurgency
Afghanistan is going through its bloodiest period since the fall of the Taleban in 2001.
Militants recently stepped up their insurgency against government and foreign forces in the south and east.
About 2,000 people, most of them militants, but also civilians, aid workers, Afghan forces and more than 90 foreign soldiers have been killed this year.
Last week, US-led forces killed seven men and a child in a raid in Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan.
The coalition forces said the men were suspected al-Qaeda members, but local people told the BBC that the men were tribal elders who had gathered to resolve a local dispute.
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Enduring Israel
Witnesses: Israel strikes Reuters car
AP
August 26, 2006
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Two missiles fired by Israeli aircraft early Sunday morning hit an armored car belonging to the Reuters news agency, moderately wounding two television cameramen and three bystanders, Palestinian witnesses and hospital officials said.
The Israeli army said it was checking the report.
According to witnesses, a Reuters cameraman and a freelance cameraman working for an Arabic network were standing outside the vehicle in the Shajaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza filming a nearby Israeli raid when the missiles hit the car.
The white sports utility vehicle was emblazoned with the Reuters logo and had "TV" written on it in English, Arabic and Hebrew, witnesses said.
The cameramen, along with three bystanders, were moderately injured with shrapnel wounds and all five were to undergo surgery, hospital officials said.
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Italy to send 1,000 troops to Lebanon
Reuters
Sat Aug 26, 2006
ROME - Italy will send its first 800 to 1,000 troops to Lebanon on Tuesday to join a U.N. peacekeeping force there, a defense ministry source said on Saturday.
Italy, which has committed up to 3,000 troops to the Lebanon mission, will send its first detachment by sea, in a convoy led by the aircraft carrier Garibaldi which will sail from the southern city of Brindisi and reach Lebanon on Friday.
European Union nations have agreed to provide more than half the 15,000 peacekeeping troops being assembled to secure a truce between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas.
Prime Minister Romano Prodi plans to hold a cabinet meeting on Monday to authorise the deployment of the troops. Italy will lead the force after the end of the French mandate at the end of February.
Prodi's office said in a statement that he and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan agreed in talks on Saturday that .".. the commitments in Lebanon must move ahead quickly, without forgetting the other political problems in the Middle East, starting with the Palestinian problem."
Prodi's government hopes a successful mission in Lebanon may pave the way for international peacekeepers to play a role in a broader Middle East peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
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Hezbollah: We did not expect war over soldiers' capture
28/08/2006
Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said he would not have ordered the capture of two Israeli soldiers if he had known it would lead to the Lebanon war.
Guerrillas from the Islamic militant group killed three Israeli soldiers and seized two more in a cross-border raid on July 12, which sparked 34 days of fighting that ended with a ceasefire on August 14.
"We did not think, even 1%, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude. You ask me, if I had known on July 11 ... that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not," he said in an interview with Lebanon's New TV station.
He also said Italy and the United Nations had made contacts to help mediate a prisoner swap with Israel, but did not specify whether they had contacted Hezbollah directly. He did not say in what capacity Italy had expressed interest - on its own or on Israel's behalf.
Nasrallah said Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri was in charge of the negotiations and the subject would be discussed during United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan's visit to Beirut today.
There had been "some contacts" to arrange a meeting between him and Annan, he said, but that was unlikely for security reasons.
"The Italians seem to be getting close and are trying to get into the subject. The United Nations is interested," Nasrallah said. "The Israelis have acknowledged that this (issue) is headed for negotiations and a (prisoners) exchange."
A senior Israeli government official would not comment on such contacts, saying only that Israel "does not negotiate with terrorists" and continued to demand the unconditional release of the two soldiers.
Israeli military officials said earlier this month that Israel was holding 13 Hezbollah prisoners and the bodies of dozens of guerrillas that it could swap for the two captive soldiers, but would not include any Palestinian prisoners in such a deal.
Meanwhile, 245 French soldiers arrived at Beirut's airport yesterday to help the Lebanese army rebuild bridges destroyed or damaged by Israeli air strikes.
The troops were separate from a French contribution of 2,000 soldiers to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, known as Unifil, which was being expanded to 15,000 members under the UN Security Council resolution that ended the Israel-Hezbollah war.
Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert had received assurances from Annan that new peacekeepers would be on the ground in Lebanon within a week, the prime minister's office said.
Nasrallah, whose whereabouts are unknown as he went into hiding on the first day of the war, said he did not believe a second bout of fighting would break out with Israel, even though he claimed more than half his group's rocket arsenal was still left.
"The current Israeli situation, and the available information tells us that we are not heading to another round," he said.
But he called any possible attacks on Israeli troops "legitimate" as long as even one Israeli soldier remained in Lebanon.
Comment: Hezbollah did not expect war, but Israel was planning for it for a long time.
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Israel's PR War
Der Spiegel
28/08/2006
Propaganda is part of every war, just like bombs and soldiers. Still, it's remarkable how professionally Israel deals with foreign journalists, catering conscientiously to all their needs. Lunch included.
The phone rings at 9 a.m. -- right on time. "Hello, this is the Government Press Office," pipes a woman's voice. "What are you planning to do today? Do you need an idea?" And then the suggestions just keep coming -- interview partners; a tour to the houses in Haifa that were struck by Katyusha rockets, complete with victim interviews. An expert will come along too, one who explains the nature of the rockets -- "in clean sound bites, if you want."
There's more on the plate. "The highlight is still to come," says the lady from Israel's press office, the GPO. "We can offer an interview in Naharya with the parents of the kidnapped soldiers," she says. She explains that the parents of Ehud Goldwasser, who has been held by Hezbollah since July 12, are waiting in a hotel. An interpreter? No need. "They speak good English, don't worry."
Many journalists come along, most of them by GPO bus. About 15 camera teams have set up their equipment. Twenty radio and print journalists are enjoying their coffee and the specially prepared sandwiches. Then the parents arrive. The father self-consciously steps up to the microphone. The desk in front of him bristles with microphones -- as if a politician were giving a press conference. He's sweating slightly; the veins on his forehead are bulging.
Shlomo Goldwasser doesn't have much to say -- not much more than the banal phrases security officials often teach parents so they stay on message. "They, my son's kidnappers, are responsible for Ehud's safety," Goldwasser says. "They are also responsible for returning him to us soon -- and unscathed." He says he can't think of anything else to tell us. He's a father, he says, not a politician.
"Please don't smile"
Goldwasser has barely finished speaking when a journalistic scrum erupts and cameramen start to shout. "Mr. Goldwasser, over here," one of them calls. "Please don't smile." Others want to hear childhood stories -- "It tugs on the viewers' heartstrings." Elsewhere, the man's wife has to leaf repeatedly through the family photo album. She responds to the orders given her like a robot and would presumably even start crying if she were told to do so. Fortunately no one makes such a request.
The disgraceful spectacle goes on for 90 minutes. The parents say they've got nothing to do with politics, nor with the war. They've been told appearances in public could save their son. And it's all organized and choreographed by the Israeli government's press office -- organized for foreign journalists, so that one of the reasons for the current war, the suffering of parents and civilians, receives the public attention it is due. But the parents, in this story, somehow come off only as extras.
Propaganda is a part of war -- especially when a state wants the world to see its decision to take up arms as justified and just. It's no different than the run up to the first Gulf War or the more recent war in Afghanistan -- or, more perfidiously, to the second US war against Iraq. Vast armies of public relations workers develop an emotionally charged image meant to provide media and public support for the conflict's architects. It's standard procedure -- public relations for war.
Not all the information circulated in such a controlled atmosphere, of course, is to be believed. But it's hard to criticize Israel for wanting to see victims of Hezbollah rockets -- 17 killed since the beginning of the war against the militant group -- in the media. Indeed it is precisely these victims that fuel the Israeli operations currently raging in southern Lebanon.
PR warriors take to the mountains
Still, Israel's support and supervision of foreign journalists seems downright excessive. As soon as you've received your press credentials from the GPO, you're bombarded with e-mails and phone calls. When covering other crisis regions, German reporters often have to make an effort to be extra nice and polite and have to search out interviewees and contacts themselves. Not here. In Israel, reporters are on an all-inclusive package trip -- and are well looked after.
Well-thought-out story ideas including transportation, lunch and selected military experts -- all these things are offered without ever having to be asked for. Many journalists happily accept the offer. For days, images of Israeli artillery units flickered on TV screens the world over -- one reason of course being that the PR warriors always took the camera teams to the frontlines around sunset. The soft, warm twilight is favored by camera men and photographers.
An e-mail that arrived on Wednesday is a good example. It offers no less than 11 news stories. The Israeli refugees, perhaps. Or the problems with Arab Israelis? A feature about how an entire village has been dispersed across Israel? A report on people who had to leave their houses? Former hostages? Or a village that has been shot at for decades? It's all available.
There's no need to go anywhere. "The contacts can be reached by phone," the woman from the press office says. "It's better to do it that way, especially for the radio." The organizers know exactly what the reporters want. Radio and TV journalists often have to go on air so often that they barely get a chance to leave the hotel. So when a Katyusha rocket strikes, an e-mail containing a list of eyewitnesses, complete with their mobile phone numbers, is more than welcome.
Language barriers are willingly breached as well. Every list includes eyewitnesses with different language profiles. There's plenty to choose from in an immigrant country like Israel: English, French, Spanish, Russian and of course several German speakers in every city. Laborious simultaneous translations are rendered superfluous by the service.
The Israeli public relations experts, though, have their work cut out for them. With public opinion turning against the Israelis following the bombing of the UN outpost in southern Lebanon, the country's use of excessive force is once again a major issue. And the war doesn't seem as though it will come to an end any time soon.
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Wake up, America! Israel is no friend of yours
Friday, August 25, 2006
Khalaf Ahmed Al Habtoor
While Us citizens benefit from the arab world, they don't know they're on the losing end with Israel
The so-called "special relationship" between the the US and Israeli governments is well known. It goes without saying that the vast majority of Americans wholeheartedly support their nation's love-fest with Israel. Most Americans feel an affinity with Israelis to the detriment of Arabs. How mistaken they are! The fact is that while Americans benefit hugely from the Arab world, little do they know they are on the losing end when it comes to Israel.
The US-Israel bond has become so incestuous that few Americans even question its value. Even fewer ask themselves what the US gets out of its financial, military and moral support of a foreign entity that their government believes can do no wrong. At the same time, they remain suspicious of the Muslim world.
The misguided post-September 11 policies promoted by the Bush administration have reinforced the anti-Arab, anti-Muslim stance of most Americans. A recent Gallop poll suggests four out of 10 Americans feel "prejudice" toward Muslims.
These attitudes are nothing short of a slap in the face to Arab nations that have invested trillions of dollars in the US economy and consider themselves Washington's strategic partners.
What the Arab world gives America:
In reality the Arab world is far more beneficial to the US than Israel. Here's why:
l Members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which are all Arab or Muslim (with the exception of Venezuela), exchange their oil for petrodollars, which means non-producing countries must keep vast sums of dollars in reserve, thus bolstering the dollar and the US economy.
l The Gulf supplies the US with approximately one-third of its total oil requirements or some 2.5 million barrels per day.
l The 22 Arab League member countries import more goods and services from the US than any other region, especially vehicles, machinery, equipment, building materials, chemicals, medicines and aircraft. Saudi Arabia alone buys more than Israel and Egypt combined.
l US sales of goods and services to the GCC have totaled more than $20 billion annually and "create or sustain more than half-a-million jobs in the United States," according to the American Business Council of the Gulf Countries.
l The GCC states invest billions of dollars annually in US acquisitions, property and bonds. Saudi Arabia alone invests an estimated 60 percent of its global investment in the US, according to Tanya C. Hsu, a senior analyst of Middle East political economy at the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy.
"This commitment has enabled the US to finance an ongoing trade deficit and produce new economic growth opportunities," Hsu says.
l Many Arab countries, in particular Jordan, Egypt and various GCC countries, are strategic partners of America within the region, hosting US bases and working closely with the American government in the "war on terror."
l Morocco and several GCC countries have signed up to free-trade agreements with the US which the US hopes will lead to a Middle East Free Trade Agreement (MEFTA).
l Over 50,000 American civilians live in the GCC, representing the largest US expatriate community in the world.
What Americans sacrifice for Israel
What about the American people? What are they obliged to sacrifice for the sake of maintaining America's favored relation with Israel?
First on the list is the official figure of $3 billion each year, which American taxpayers donate to Israeli coffers whether they like it or not.
This is split up into $1.2 billion in economic aid and $1.8 billion in military aid, two-thirds of which must be spent on American-made military hardware and planes.
In reality, Israel receives much more than that because there are extra sums, which according to The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs "are buried in the budgets of governments departments such as the Defense Department."
The US also gives Israel billions of dollars in loans and often writes off these amounts so that it can say with hand over heart honesty that Israel has never defaulted on a loan. It further guarantees loans to Israel to the tune of $2 billion annually.
By conservative estimates, by the end of a US citizen's life he or she will have contributed $25,000 in taxes to support Israel, which for some signifies an entire year's pay.
Since 1949, the US has given the Jewish state a whopping $140 billion or more. To put this in context, this represents almost one-and-a-half times the annual GDP of the United Arab Emirates, which in 2005 stood at $98.1 billion.
Is Israel grateful?
Are Israelis grateful for all this financial support? Do they feel loyalty to their kindly big brother across the ocean?
The answer is no. Many Israelis I've spoken to over the years feel positively hostile toward the US. They both resent having to rely on Washington's generosity as well as having to abide by its orders. This is anecdotal rather than science but the proof that Israel is deeply suspicious of the US is the fact that Israel continually spies on its number one ally.
Fox News, which is generally to be perceived as a propaganda arm of the Bush administration, detailed these spying activities in a four-part series hosted by one of its investigate reporters, Carl Cameron.
Cameron was told by investigators within the FBI and other intelligence agencies that to pursue or even suggest that Israel was spying on Americans is nothing less than "career suicide."
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
Cameron quotes a defense intelligence report explaining why Israel would want to spy on its ally. It reads:
"The Israelis are motivated by strong survival instincts which dictate every possible facet of their political and economical policies. It aggressively collects military and industrial technology and the US is a high-priority target."
Put simply, each US citizen pays an average of $25,000 in tax to Israel, which, in turn, is spying on his country. It's inconceivable that most ordinary Americans are even aware of Israeli treachery on such a large scale.
Israel's strategic worth
The question is: What does the American government get in return for its unerring devotion to Israel? From the US government's perspective Israel stands as the guardian of its strategic interests throughout the Middle East.
It uses Israel to stir up trouble throughout the region, fight its proxy wars, test out cutting-edge US-made weaponry, and create a regional demand for American fighter jets, helicopters, tanks and missiles.
In previous years, Israel has served its master well by shipping illegal arms to prop up pro-US Central American dictatorships, Apartheid South Africa and groups within the Arab world out to topple anti-American nationalist regimes.
In turn, the US is committed to fighting Israel's wars.
A former adviser to George W. Bush, Philip Zelikow, tells us the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction but was rather conducted to eliminate a growing threat to Israel.
The investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who first broke the Abu Ghraib scandal, quotes insider sources as saying the recent war between Israel and Lebanon was planned by Israel and the US last spring. This was to protect Israel from Hizbullah as a prelude to a possible US pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.
Americans should take note. Almost 2,000 American soldiers have died in Iraq, while billions of dollars have been spent maintaining America's occupation, not to make America safe, not to spread democracy, but to protect Israel.
Cheered on by the US government, Israel furthers regional disunity in the Arab world with some Arab government having signed peace treaties with Tel Aviv while others remain vehemently hostile.
A feuding Arab world allows minority groups within the region supported by the US to stir dissent so as to weaken Arab leaders. This is particularly true in Iraq where Shiites have been set against Sunnis.
In this way, the US gets to control the region's resources and ensure they don't fall into the hands of rising superpowers, such as China and India.
The Bush administration pays lip service to a Palestinian state but if there ever was a comprehensive peace process sealed between all the 22 members of the Arab League and Israel, eventually a united and prosperous Middle East that included Israel would have no further need for Washington.
So, just as Israel is no true friend to America, Washington is no friend to Israel. The difference between Israelis and Americans is this. Israelis are aware of the "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" game, while most Americans are not.
This is because Washington and the powerful pro-Israel lobby rely on media propaganda to indoctrinate the American people into believing that Israeli and US policies coincide.
The US government needs Americans to believe Israelis are the good guys, so they will happily open their purses to keep Israel armed to the teeth even if this means the US becomes a target for extremists prepared to use heinous methods to vent their genuine grievances.
"Why do they hate us?"
When it comes to Arabs and Muslims, a small percentage of which are seen on television burning US flags, Americans are fond of asking: "Why do they hate us?"
Until five years ago, the US was held up throughout the Arab world as a beacon of human rights and civil liberties; American technology and culture was admired, while Arab youth dreamt of studying and working in the US. This changed after September 11 when the Bush administration used this pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and began detaining Muslims without charge or trial.
To serve his own agenda, Bush wants us to believe extremist elements "hate democracy and freedom."
However, a 2004 Pentagon report placed on its Web site tackles this subject with rather more honesty. It reads:
"Muslims do not hate our freedom but rather they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights. Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy."
This is true. Arabs and Muslims are angered by American bias in favor of Israel highlighted each time the UN Security Council attempts to pass a resolution censuring Israel. On almost every occasion the US uses its power of veto and is often the lone dissenting voice.
It is time for the US to revert to the honest broker it once was and for the American people to reassess their country's relationship with Israel.
The day will certainly come when Americans will begin to question the US-Israel relationship and ask whether Israel is truly America's best friend or a state that only pretends to be as long as the US props it up financially, wages wars in its interest and turns a blind eye to its growing catalogue of war crimes.
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Hizbollah hints at talks on prisoner exchange
27 Aug 2006 22:01:40 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Gideon Long
The leader of Hizbollah said on Sunday that "contacts" had been made which might bring talks on an exchange of prisoners held by the Lebanese guerrilla group and Israel.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, speaking in a television interview, said also that if he had known Hizbollah's capture of Israeli soldiers would produce the 34-day war that ensued, he would never have sanctioned it.
Nasrallah told the privately owned Beirut television station New TV that Italy was trying to involve itself in contacts designed to bring a prisoner-swap, though he did not say how.
"The United Nations is interested and the negotiations would be through (Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih) Berri," Nasrallah said.
In Rome, the head of the defence committee of the Italian senate told Reuters he expected talks to begin this week.
Senator Sergio De Gregorio said two Israeli soldiers whose seizure on July 12 sparked a bitter war between Israel and Hizbollah were "still alive, fortunately", but did not discuss their condition.
Hizbollah is still holding the two soldiers and says it wants to exchange them for some of the thousands of Arab prisoners, including Lebanese, in Israeli jails.
Israeli newspaper reports have suggested the Jewish state might be prepared to negotiate.
Nearly 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 157 Israelis, mostly soldiers, died in the war, which ended with a U.N.-brokered truce on Aug. 14.
Nasrallah said the massive scale of Israel's response to the July 12 raid had taken Hizbollah by surprise. "If I had known that the operation to capture the soldiers would lead to this result, we would not have carried it out," he said.
Since the truce began, Lebanon has started the process of rebuilding and has received pledges of aid, including one for $230 million from Israel's principal ally, the United States.
But a senior U.S. legislator, speaking in Jerusalem on Sunday, said the aid would be released only if Lebanon agreed to the deployment of international troops on its border with Syria.
Tom Lantos, the top Democrat on the International Relations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, said he was putting a legal block on the money until Beirut agreed.
"It is very much my hope that I will be able to lift the hold when the reasons will no longer be present," Lantos said.
SYRIAN BORDER THREAT
Israel says U.N. troops must be deployed on Lebanon's border with Syria to prevent the smuggling of arms to Hizbollah, but Syria says such a move would be hostile and has threatened to close the border if it comes about.
That would effectively cut Lebanon off from the outside world as its only other land border is with Israel, which it does not recognise, and which has imposed on it an air and sea blockade.
The U.N. Security Council resolution which ended the war does not specifically call for U.N. troops to be sent to the 375 km (235 mile) Lebanese-Syrian border.
It asks the U.N. force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, to assist the government "at its request" in securing the country's borders and preventing arms smuggling.
Lantos urged the international community to "use all our available means to stiffen Lebanon's spine" and to persuade it to accept the deployment of UNIFIL troops to the border.
Aid reached Beirut from another quarter on Sunday -- some 245 French Foreign Legion engineers arrived to install bridges in the south to replace those damaged by Israeli air strikes.
Colonel Rene Lenfant, the officer in charge, said the mission was "a gift from France", separate from France's planned contribution to an expanded UNIFIL.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is due in Lebanon on Monday and is expected to discuss the expansion of the force and the Israeli blockade. He is then due to travel to Israel and to Iran and Syria -- Hizbollah's two main backers.
"Israel has not complied with the commitments required of it, first of all lifting the air, sea and land blockade," Lebanese President Emile Lahoud said in a statement.
Israeli operations since the truce, including a commando raid in the eastern Bekaa Valley "confirm once more Israel's hostile intent towards Lebanon," he said.
U.S. civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, also in the region, met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on Sunday, saying later that Syria could play a major role in facilitating a prisoner exchange.
Jackson used his clout as a non-establishment politician to negotiate the release of several U.S. prisoners abroad in the 1980s and 1990s. (Additional reporting by Reuters bureaux in Beirut, Jerusalem, Rome and Damascus)
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UN chief on Lebanon truce mission
BBC News
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, for talks aimed at shoring up the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
Mr Annan will meet Lebanese leaders for discussions on the planned deployment of 15,000 UN peacekeepers.
Last week, Mr Annan secured a pledge by EU countries to provide thousands of soldiers for the UN force.
The force was authorised under the UN-backed ceasefire which ended the four-week conflict earlier this month.
Following his visit to Lebanon, Mr Annan will also travel to Israel, the Palestinian territories, Syria and Iran.
Lebanese officials are expected to ask Mr Annan to urge Israel to lift its air and sea blockade of their country, imposed when the conflict erupted last month.
Israel meanwhile is looking for better guarantees that Hezbollah will not rearm and the return of two of its soldiers captured by Hezbollah on 12 July.
'Prisoner swap'
Mr Annan was greeted at Beirut airport by Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh.
The UN chief told reporters now was "a very critical time for Lebanon".
He said he would discuss with Lebanon's leaders "the measures we need to take to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and to underscore international solidarity".
The resolution was accepted by Lebanon and Israel as the basis for the ceasefire which ended the month-long conflict on 14 August.
Mr Annan will hold talks with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri and other politicians.
It is unclear if he will meet Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.
Mr Annan may be asked to help facilitate a prisoner exchange with Israel, as sought by Hezbollah.
Sheikh Nasrallah said on Sunday that "contacts" had begun about a prisoner swap, possibly involving Italy and Mr Berri, a Hezbollah ally.
Israel denied any negotiations on a prisoner exchange were under way, but Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has said the conflict will not be resolved without their return.
"So long as this issue with the two soldiers is not solved, the whole [ceasefire] thing is of little significance. Our sovereignty has been infringed and if this resolution does not make that good, then we still have this problem," Ms Livni said on a visit to Berlin.
Sheikh Nasrallah said he would not have ordered the soldiers' capture, which triggered Israel's blistering offensive, had he known it would lead to such a response.
More than 1,100 Lebanese and 159 Israelis died in the 34-day conflict which left much of southern Lebanon in ruins.
Arms issue
Unifil-2, a force of 15,000 soldiers, including 7,000 from European Union states to replace the existing small Unifil contingent, is due to be deployed to maintain the fragile ceasefire.
The Turkish cabinet agreed on Monday to join the peacekeeping force and the issue of deployment will be debated by parliament this week.
The UN hopes to have some of the troops on the ground within a week, although the EU says it will be two to three months before the whole force is deployed.
Israel has said it will not pull out of southern Lebanon until the UN force deploys in the area alongside the Lebanese army.
The BBC's Jill McGivering in Jerusalem says Israel wants better guarantees that Hezbollah will not rearm.
In practical terms, she says, Israel wants UN forces on Lebanon's border with Syria, stopping the flow of weapons, but that idea does not have support from anyone else.
Mr Annan has also made clear that UN troops will not be asked to disarm Hezbollah by force.
UN TROOP PLEDGES
France - leadership and 2,000 troops
Italy - 2,000 - 3,000 troops
Bangladesh - two battalions (up to 2,000 troops)
Malaysia - one battalion
Spain - one mechanised battalion
Indonesia - one battalion, an engineering company
Nepal - one battalion
Denmark - at least two ships
Poland - 500 troops
Finland - 250 troops
Belgium - 302 troops, later rising to 392
Germany - maritime and border patrols but no combat troops
Norway - 100 soldiers
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Israel air force chief to plan war on Iran
By Harry de Quetteville in Jerusalem
Telgraph.co.uk
27/08/2006
Israel has appointed a top general to oversee a war against Iran, prompting speculation that it is preparing for possible military action against Teheran's nuclear programme.
Maj Gen Elyezer Shkedy, Israel's air force chief, will be overall commander for the "Iran front", according to military sources spoken to by The Sunday Telegraph.
News of the appointment comes just days before a United Nations deadline expires for Iran to give up its nuclear programme, which Western governments fear will be used to produce atomic weapons. Despite Iran's offer last week to engage in "serious talks" on the matter, Israel fears even more than other Western nations that the offer is simply to buy time for Teheran to secure all the technology it needs to build the bomb.
"Israel is becoming extremely concerned now with what they see as Iran's delaying tactics," said the Israeli Iran expert Meir Javedanfar. "They [the planners] think negotiations are going nowhere and Iran is becoming a major danger for Israel.
"Now they are getting ready for living with a nuclear Iran or letting the military take care of it."
The prospect of Israel "living with" a nuclear Iran appears remote. Last week Giora Eiland, Israel's former national security adviser, told reporters that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, would "sacrifice half of Iran for the sake of eliminating Israel".
President Ahmadinejad "has a religious conviction that Israel's demise is essential to the restoration of Muslim glory, that the Zionist thorn in the heart of the Islamic nations must be removed," Mr Eiland said. Gen Shkedy, who was appointed to the role two months ago, will co-ordinate intelligence gathered by Israel's foreign spy agency Mossad and military sources, in order to draw up battle plans. Then, during any war with Iran, he will command the campaign from a "hotseat" in the Israel army's headquarters in Tel Aviv.
"It's natural that Shkedy is nominated to this role, because the air force is Israel's only force that can reach and sustain a military operation against Iran," said Uri Dromi, a former air force colonel and military analyst.
"Everyone is playing with dates and timeframes, but the list of options is becoming shorter," he added. "I think we have one year open [to launch military action]. Israel will have to decide."
Officially, Israel stresses that it does not want to take the lead in tackling Iran, and that a massive campaign of air strikes would be best led by America, which has forces in Iraq that are much closer to Iranian targets.
Gen Shkedy's appointment to the Iran command role was made by Israel's chief of staff Dan Halutz in the run-up to this summer's Lebanon war, but emerged only last week.
Gen Shkedy, 49, is the son of Holocaust survivors and has a picture in his office of an Israeli F15 flying over Auschwitz.
The father of three makes no bones about the Iranian threat to Israel. "Ahmadinejad is trying with all his might to reach a nuclear capability. There's no argument about his intentions," he said in an interview two months ago, about the time of his appointment.
"This... nuclear weaponry can come to constitute an existential threat to Israel and the rest of the world. My job is to maximise our capabilities in every respect. Beyond that, in this case, the less said the better."
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Four dead in Israeli raid in Gaza
BBC News
August 28, 2006
Four members of a security force of the governing Palestinian movement Hamas have been killed by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian officials say the men died in a strike by a pilotless Israeli aircraft on the outskirts of Gaza City.
Israeli officials said two men had been killed in an exchange of fire and other gunmen were targeted from the air.
The deaths bring to eight the number of Palestinians killed during an Israeli incursion which began on Saturday.
Reports say the Hamas militants killed on Monday belonged to a special forces unit of the Palestinian interior ministry, which is controlled by Hamas.
The Israeli army said it entered the Shijaia neighbourhood, a Hamas stronghold, to hunt for explosives used by militants to attack patrols moving along the nearby border fence.
More than 200 Palestinians, many of them civilians, have died since Israel launched a wide offensive in Gaza two months ago, after militants captured an Israeli soldier.
One Israeli soldier has been killed in the offensive, after being shot accidentally by fire from his own side.
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Hezbollah technology supplied by Britain not Iran or Syria
UK Times
26/08/2006
AN URGENT investigation was launched last night after Israel accused Britain of indirectly supplying Hezbollah terrorists with military night-vision equipment that helped them to target Israeli soldiers in Lebanon.
The equipment was found by Israeli troops in Hezbollah command bunkers in southern Lebanon. Each set was stamped "made in Britain".
The Israelis made representations to the Foreign Office after it was revealed that Britain had sold 250 night-vision systems to Iran in 2003 for use against drug smugglers.
Foreign Office officials said early indications seemed to suggest that the night-vision equipment found by the Israelis was not part of the batch sold in 2003 to Iran. However, thorough checks were being made to compare serial numbers on the equipment found in the Hezbollah bunkers with those on the ones exported legitimately to Iran.
The Iranians are the prime sponsor of Hezbollah, and the Israeli authorities are demanding to know whether the equipment sold to Iran three years ago ended up in the hands of Hezbollah, which killed 117 Israeli soldiers during the month-long clashes in Lebanon.
A Department of Trade and Industry official said night-vision equipment of military specification required an export licence. The investigation will look into whether any British company might have breached export regulations.
The batch of 250 night-vision systems were given a special export licence in 2003 because they were intended to be used by Iranian police trying to stem the flow of heroin and opium from Afghanistan into Iran. Although there is what amounts to an arms embargo against Iran, aimed principally at stopping the export of equipment that could benefit Tehran's suspected nuclear weapons programme, the request for night-vision equipment was approved in recognition of the counter-narcotics work.
When the export was agreed, Mike O'Brien, then Junior Minister at the Foreign Office, told the Commons: "The goods are for the use on the Iran-Afghanistan border against heroin smugglers." He said there was "no risk of these goods being diverted for use by the Iranian military".
If any of the equipment has been diverted to Hezbollah, it would be a serious embarrassment for the Government. Hezbollah's "external security", the military wing of the militant organisation, is proscribed as a terrorist group. The Government has also made clear its support for Israel's struggle with Hezbollah and has approved the transit of bunker-busting bombs and missiles for the Israelis from the US through British airports.
Liam Fox, the Shadow Defence Secretary, said: "If this turns out to be true, and Iran supplied backing for Hezbollah, it will have consequences for any future military exports to Iran. And it points the finger all the more strongly at Iranian involvement in destabilising the Middle East."
One set of the equipment was found by Israeli forces in the southern Lebanon village of Mis-a-Jebel on August 10, in a house belonging to a 60-year-old man whose four sons are all Hezbollah fighters.
One was described as a Thermo-vision 1000 LR system with a serial number 155010, part number 193960. Other equipment, including radios also thought to be British, and sophisticated recording and monitoring devices, were found.
Israeli commanders had complained that night-time operations in the border region had been hampered by the ability of Hezbollah fighters to observe and counter their moves. In more than six days of fighting around the village of Mis-a-Jebel, the Israelis lost six soldiers and 20 more were injured.
Lieutenant-Colonel Olivier Radowicz, an Israeli commander, said: "The night-vision unit was used to observe the movement of troops. You can also record what you are watching. Then it is connected to a computer. You can obtain a perfect intelligence picture in real time. It is then connected to firing systems."
Comment: It is common practice for the CIA and MI6 to sell weapons and equipment to both sides in a conflict, especially when the conflict is strategically useful. For example, destabilization and destruction in the middle east can be used to increase profits for government-sponsored arms corporations, as well as weakening official enemies, and opening the back-door for a form of imperial conquest in the guise of "democracy", "free trade" and "reconstruction".
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The Fear Factor
The Liquid Bomb Hoax: The Larger Implications
by James Petras
August 25, 2006
www.dissidentvoice.org
The charges leveled by the British, US and Pakistani regimes that they uncovered a major bomb plot directed against nine US airlines is based on the flimsiest of evidence, which would be thrown out of any court, worthy of its name.
An analysis of the current state of the investigation raises a series of questions regarding the governments' claims of a bomb plot concocted by 24 Brits of Pakistani origin.
The arrests were followed by the search for evidence, as the August 12, 2006 Financial Times states: "The police set about the mammoth task of gathering evidence of the alleged terrorist bomb plot yesterday." (FT, August 12/, 2006) In other words, the arrests and charges took place without sufficient evidence -- a peculiar method of operation -- which reverses normal investigatory procedures in which arrests follow the "monumental task of gathering evidence." If the arrests were made without prior accumulation of evidence, what were the bases of the arrests?
The government search of financial records and transfers turned up no money trail despite the freezing of accounts. The police search revealed limited amounts of savings, as one would expect from young workers, students and employees from low-income immigrant families.
The British government, backed by Washington, claimed that the Pakistani government's arrest of two British-Pakistanis provided "critical evidence" in uncovering the plot and identifying the alleged terrorist. No Western judicial hearing would accept evidence procured by the Pakistani intelligence services that are notorious for their use of torture in extracting 'confessions'. The Pakistani dictatorship's evidence is based on a supposed encounter between a relative of one of the suspects and an Al Qaeda operative on the Afghan border. According to the Pakistani police, the Al Qaeda agent provided the relative and thus the accused with the bomb-making information and operative instructions. The transmission of bomb-making information does not require a trip half-way around the world, least of all to a frontier under military siege by US led forces on one side and the Pakistani military on the other. Moreover it is extremely dubious that Al Qaeda agents in the mountains of Afghanistan have any detailed knowledge of specific British airline security, procedures or conditions of operations in London. Lacking substantive evidence, Pakistani intelligence and their British counterparts touched all the propaganda buttons: A clandestine meeting with Al Qaeda, bomb-making information exchanges on the Pakistani-Afghan border, Pakistani-Brits with Islamic friends, family and terrorist connections in England . . .
US intelligence claimed, and London repeated, that sums of money had been wired from Pakistan to allow the plotters to buy airline tickets. Yet air tickets were found in only one residence (and the airline and itinerary were not stated by the police). None of the other suspects possessed plane tickets and some did not even have passports. In other words, the most preliminary moves in the so-called bomb plot had not been taken by the accused. No terrorist plot to bomb airplanes exists when the alleged conspirators are lacking travel funds, documents and tickets. It is not credible to argue that the alleged conspirators depended on instructions from distant handlers ignorant of the basic ground level conditions.
Initially the British and US authorities claimed that the explosive device was a "liquid bomb," yet no liquid or non-liquid bomb was discovered on the premises or persons of any of the accused. Nor has any evidence been produced as to the capability of any of the suspects in making, moving or detonating the "liquid bomb" -- a very volatile solution if handled by unskilled operatives. No evidence has been presented on the nature of the specific liquid bomb question, or any spoken discussion or written documents about the liquid bomb, which would implicate any of the suspects. No bottle, liquid or chemical formula has been found among any of the suspects. Nor have any of the ingredients that go into making the "liquid bomb" been uncovered. Nor has any evidence been presented as to where the liquid was supposed to come from (the source) or whether it was purchased locally or overseas.
When the liquid bomb story was ridiculed into obscurity, British Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clark claimed that, "bomb making equipment including chemicals and electric components had been found," (BBC News, 8/21/2006)
Once again there is no mention of what "electronic components" and "chemicals" were found, in whose home or office and if they might be related to non-bomb making activities. Were these so-called new bomb-making items owned by a specific person or group of persons, and if so were they known by the parties implicated to be part of a bombing plot. Moreover, when and why have the authorities switched from the liquid bombs to identifying old fashion electronic detonators? Is there any evidence -- documents or taped discussions -- that link these electronic detonators and chemicals with the specific plot to "blow up 9 US bound airliners"?
Instead of providing relevant facts clearing up basic questions of names, dates, weapons, and travel dates, Commissioner Clark gives the press a laundry list of items that could be found in millions of homes and the large number of buildings searched (69 so far). If stair climbing earns promotions, Clark should be nominated for a knighthood. According to Clark the police discovered more than 400 computers, 200 mobile telephones, 8,000 computer media items (items as catastrophic as memory sticks, CDs and DVDs); police removed 6,000 gigabytes of data from the seized computers (150 from each computer) and a few video recordings. One presumes, in the absence of any qualitative data demonstrating that the suspects were in fact preparing bombs in order to destroy nine US airliners, that Commissioner Clark is seeking public sympathy for his minions' enormous capacity to lift and remove electronic equipment from one site to another in up to 69 buildings. This is a notable achievement if we are talking about a moving company and not a high-powered police investigation of an event of "catastrophic consequences."
Some of the suspects were arrested because they have traveled to Pakistan at the beginning of the school year holidays. British and US authorities forget to mention that tens of thousands of Pakistani ex-pats return to visit family at precisely that time of year.
The wise guys on Wall Street and The City of London never took the liquid bomb plot seriously: At no point did the Market respond, nose-dive, crash or panic. The announced plot to bomb airlines was ignored by all Big Players on the US and London stock markets. In fact, petrol prices dropped slightly. In contrast to 9/11 and the Madrid and London bombings (to which this plot is compared) the stock market 'makers' were not impressed by the governments' claims of a 'major catastrophe.' George Bush or Tony Blair, who were informed and discussed the "liquid bomb plot" several days beforehand, didn't even skip a day of their vacations, in response to the catastrophic threat.
And each and every claim and piece of 'evidence' put forth by the police and the Blair and Bush security authorities runs a cropper. Some of the alleged suspects are released, and new equally paltry 'evidence' is breathlessly presented: two tape recordings of "martyr messages" were found in the computer of one suspect, which, we are told, foretold a planned terrorist attack. The Clark team claimed with great aplomb that they found one or a few martyr videotapes, without clarifying the fact that the videos were not made by the suspects but viewed by them. Many people the world over pay homage to suicide martyrs to a great variety of political causes. Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan visits a shrine dedicated to World War II military dead -- including kamikaze suicide pilots, defying Chinese and Korean protests. Millions of US citizens and politicians pay homage to the war heroes in Arlington cemetery each year, some of whom deliberately sacrificed their lives in order to defend their comrades, their flag and the justice of their cause. It should be of no surprise that Asians, Muslims and others should collect videos of anti-Israeli or anti-occupation martyrs. In none of the above cases where people honor martyrs is there any police attempt to link the reverent observer with future suicide bomb plots -- except if they are Muslims. Hero worship of fallen fighters is a normal everyday phenomenon -- and is certainly no evidence that the idolaters are engaged in murderous activity.
A "martyr message" is neither a plot, conspiracy nor action, it is only an expression of free speech -- one might add, 'internal speech' (between the speaker and his computer) which might at some future time become public speech. Are we to make private dialogue a terrorist offense?
As the legal time limit expires on the holding of suspects without charges, the British authorities released two suspects, charged eleven, and eleven others continue to be held without charges, probably because there is no basis for proceeding further. As the number of accused plotters thin out in England, Clark and company have deflected attention to a world-wide plot with links to Spain, Italy, the Middle East and elsewhere. Apparently the logic here is that a wider net compensates for the large holes. In the case at hand, of the eleven who have been remanded to trial, only eight have been charged with conspiracy to prepare acts of terrorism; the other three are accused of "not disclosing information" (or being informers . . . of what?) and "possessing articles useful to a person preparing acts of terrorism." (BBC News, 8/21/06) Since no bombs have been found and no plans of action have been revealed, we are left with the vague charge of 'conspiracy', which can mean a hostile private discussion directed against US and British subjects by several like-thinking individuals. The reason that it appears that ideas and not actions are in question is because the police have not turned up any weapons or specific measures to enter into the locus of attack (air tickets to board planes, passports and so on). How can suspects be charged with failing to disclose information, when the police lack any concrete information pertaining to the alleged bomb plot. The fact that the police are further diluting their charges against three more plotters is indicative of the flimsy basis of their original arrests and public claims. To charge a 17 year-old-boy with "possessing articles useful to a person preparing acts of terrorism" is so open-ended as to be laughable: Did the article have other uses for the boy or for his family (like a box cutter). Did he 'possess' written articles because they were informative or fascinating to a young person? Since he still possessed the article, he had not passed these articles to any person making bombs. Did he know of any specific plans to make bombs or any bomb-makers? The charges could implicate anyone possessing and reading a good spy novel or science fiction thriller in which bomb making is discussed. The eleven have already pleaded innocent; the trial will begin in due time. The government and mass media have already convicted the accused in the electronic and print media. Panic has been sown. Fear and hysterical anger is present in the long security lines at airports and train stations . . . Asian men quietly saying prayers are being pulled off of airplanes and planes diverted or airports evacuated.
The bomb plot hoax has caused enormous losses (in the hundreds of millions of dollars) to the airlines, business people, oil companies, duty free shops, tourist agencies, resorts and hotels, not to speak of the tremendous inconvenience and health related problems of millions of stranded and stressed travelers. The restrictions on laptop computers, travel bags, accessories, special foods and liquid medicines have added to the 'costs' of traveling.
Clearly the decision to cook up the phony bomb plot was not motivated by economic interests, but domestic political reasons. The Blair administration, already highly unpopular for supporting Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was under attack for his unconditional support for Israel's invasion of Lebanon, his refusal to call for an immediate ceasefire and his unstinting support for Bush's servility to US Zionist lobbies. Even within the Labor party over a hundred backbenchers were speaking out against his policies, while even junior cabinet ministers such as Prescott stated that Boss Bush's foreign policy smelled of the barnyard. Bush was not yet cornered by his colleagues in the same way as Blair, but unpopularity was threatening to lead his Republican party to congressional defeat and possible loss of a majority of seats.
According to top security officials in England, Bush and Blair were "knowledgeable" about the investigation into a possible "liquid bomb" plot. We know that Blair gave the go-ahead for the arrests, even as the authorities must have told him they lacked the evidence and at best it was premature. Some reports from British police insiders claim that the Bush Administration pushed Blair for early arrests and the announcement of the 'liquid bomb' plot. Security officials then launched a massive, all-out 'terror propaganda' campaign designed to capture the attention and support of the public with the total support of the mass media. The security-mass media campaign served its objective -- Bush's popularity increased, Blair avoided censure and both continued on their vacations.
The bomb plot political ploy fits the previous political pattern of sacrificing capitalist economic interests to serve domestic political and ideological positions. Foreign policy failures lead to domestic political crimes, just as domestic policy crises lead to aggressive military expansion.
The criminal frame-up of young Muslim-South Asian British citizens by the British security officials was specifically designed to cover up for the failed Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and the Anglo-American backing for Israel's destructive but failed invasion of Lebanon. Blair's "liquid bombers" plot sacrificed a multiplicity of British capitalist interests in order to retain political offices and stave off an unceremonious early exit from power. The costs of failed militarism are borne by citizens and businesses.
In an analogous fashion Bush and his Zioncon and other militarists exploited the events of 9/11 to pursue a militarist multi-war strategy in Southwest Asia and the Middle East. With time and scientific research, the official version of the events of 9/11 have come under serious questioning -- both regarding the collapse of one of the towers in New York, as well as the explosions in the Pentagon. The events of 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq sacrificed major US economic interests: Losses in New York, tourism, airline industry and massive physical destruction; losses in terms of a major increase in oil prices and instability, increasing the costs to US, European and Asian consumers and industries.
Likewise the Israeli military invasion of Gaza and Lebanon, backed by the US and Great Britain, were economically costly destroying property, investments and markets, while raising the level of mass anti-imperial opposition.
In other words, the politics of US, British and Israeli (and by extension World Zionist) militarism has been at the expense of strategic sectors of the civilian economy. These losses to key economic sectors require the civilian-militarists to resort to domestic political crimes (phony bomb plots and frame-up trials) to distract the public from their costly and failed policies and to tighten political control. On both counts, the civilian militarists and the Zioncons are losing ground. The "liquid bomb" plot is unraveling, Israel is in turmoil, the Zioncons are preaching to the converted, and the US is, as always, the United States: The Democratic civilian militarists are capitalizing on the failures of their incumbent colleagues.
James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50-year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books). His latest book is, The Power of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press, 2006). He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu.
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Environmentalist's remark about dam starts FBI "terror" probe
By JIM SUHR
Associated Press
Sat Aug 26, 2006
ST. LOUIS - Jim Bensman thought his suggestion during a public hearing was harmless enough: Instead of building a channel so migratory fish could go around a dam on the Mississippi River, just get rid of the dam.
Instead, the environmental activist found himself in hot water, drawing FBI scrutiny to see whether he had any terrorist intentions.
The case "shows just how easy it is to be labeled a suspected terrorist," he says.
It all started on July 25 in Alton, Ill., when the Army Corps of Engineers invited public discussion about options for improving fish movement at the nearby Melvin Price Locks and Dam, considered a major impediment to roughly three dozen species that migrate upstream.
During the 90-minute hearing that included on the agenda whether to build a fish channel, Bensman says, he reiterated he's no fan of dams, contending they're environmentally destructive and amount to billions of dollars in corporate welfare for boating interests.
He urged that the dam be torn out. He said he never mentioned blowing the dam up, though the corps' presentation of possible options included a picture of a dam being dynamited.
The next day, however, a local newspaper reported that Bensman "said he would like to see the dam blown up and resents paying taxes to fix dam problems when it is barge companies that profit from the dam."
Workers at the corps' St. Louis office "took a dim view (of the article) and questioned if it was a potential threat," and a security manager forwarded the clipping to the FBI, said corps spokesman Alan Dooley.
Within days, the FBI had Bensman on the phone, asking whether he was any threat.
"To think I'm a terrorist is utterly ridiculous," Bensman, 46, said from his home in Alton, just north of St. Louis. "How could any reasonable person think a terrorist is going to come to a public meeting held by the Army Corps, let them know who they are and announce their terror plot? It just doesn't make sense to me."
Dooley isn't offering apologies, casting the agency's deferral to the FBI as a judgment call.
"I don't want to dispute anything with Jim at this point," Dooley said. "We're not going to debate whether this is oversensitivity or undersensitivity."
Dooley noted that when it comes to determining security threats "there's probably a lower threshold after 9/11."
Marshall Stone, a supervisory special agent with the FBI office in Springfield, Ill., acknowledged that the corps had asked his agency to review Bensman's remarks. He wouldn't discuss the status of the inquiry, to avoid casting "a negative cloud" on Bensman if the review uncovers nothing.
Bensman is affiliated with the Sierra Club and the forest-protection group Heartwood, and his environmental activism is well-known around much of the Midwest. He has railed against logging and gone to bat for bats, woodpeckers and, lately, migratory fish in the Mississippi.
"They all know me, and I'm a thorn in their side," Bensman says of the Corps of Engineers. "I'm one of their biggest critics, and I'm sure I drive a lot of them crazy. But the First Amendment gives me a right to publicly speak out."
That's not the issue, Dooley said: "The issue was the (newspaper) report and not a matter of judgment about how well you do or don't know Mr. Bensman."
Bensman said his reaction when an FBI agent quizzed him about the newspaper article was that the case was "absurd."
"I told him, 'How could you possible think this is a terroristic threat? Don't you have something more to worry about?'" Bensman said. "He said: 'We have to investigate everything.'"
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US Terror Paranoia Taking Comic Proportions
By Foreign News Desk
Sunday, August 27, 2006
zaman.com
The rise in terrorism paranoia that reignited following the "second 9/11 plan" claimed to have been targeted against Britain has reached comic proportions.
Pronunciation of the word "bomb" in American airports can lead to arrest and flight delays. Different versions of this paranoia have created a "comedy-like terror panic," which delayed seven U.S.-bound flights in just one day.
Another plane was forced to land after it was discovered that the mirror in one of the lavatories was not properly secured, and in another event, passengers were made to wait in an airport for hours because of the panic caused by a screaming child that refused to get on a plane.
A false bomb threat forced another plane to land urgently and the discovery of an unclaimed knife in an empty seat caused "terror paranoia" on another flight.
Another example of this "Dark comedy" occurred on a Continental Airlines flight from Argentina to the United States. A 21-year-old university student was arrested when sniffer dogs discovered dynamite in the student's baggage.
It was later revealed that the student had taken the dynamite as a souvenir from a Bolivian mine.
It was reported that the American student may be charged with carrying explosives.
In another incident, a passenger argued with the staff on a U.S. Airways plane bound for the American city of Charlotte from Phoenix. The plane was forced to land in Oklahoma City and the passenger in question was removed from the plane and taken into custody.
An American Airlines flight from Britain to Chicago was also rerouted and forced to land in Bangor due to an undisclosed security concern.
One of the most bizarre events in the U.S. occurred on a Continental Airlines flight from Corpus Christi, Texas to Bakersfield, California.
When staff discovered that the lavatory mirror had been removed, the plane rerouted and landed in El Paso, where passengers were questioned. The questioning yielded no results.
A knife accidentally left on a U.S. Airways flight from Philadelphia to Bradley caused major panic, although nobody was arrested in this incident.
FBI agents, considering the knife evidence, questioned passengers and assessed in a statement released after conducting their investigation that there was no danger.
Following a bomb threat on a flight from New York to Dublin, the flight was forced to land to another airport in western Ireland; however, no explosive device was found on the plane that had been immediately evacuated.
In yet another incident, a child refusing to board a United Airlines flight to Chicago caused a scene delaying the flight for hours, unnerving the other passengers.
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The War on Terror
T Stokes
August 23, 2006
Some years ago small arms training played an essential part in the development of each young conscripts military skills.
At the time large numbers of houses in London were being demolished to make way for the building of new tower blocks.
Blocks of terraced housing, due for demolition, would be sealed off with high wire mesh fencing. This was then used as a military training ground to teach young conscripts the finer points of counter-insurgency and urban warfare.
Fighting street-by-street and house-to-house, the conscripts were trained to storm each building and clean out any pockets of resistance inside. All of which was intended to be part of the Cold War urban defence techniques to be used if and when the Soviet Union ever invaded.
There were two distinct methods used, for entering an enemy occupied building, ( E.O.B ).
The first and most professional was to take the occupants alive for questioning. But if they needed to be silenced, because of what they knew or because they tried to send a message to others, conscripts were trained to kill in situ.
Yet this was only the final step in series of many more steps in what was otherwise called the “backgrounding”. In this, many weeks may have gone into phone taps, letter and email interception, searches would have been done to see how many were in the house and a record kept of their business, politics and religion, and to asses if the occupants would be armed, and if so what with.
Long distance microphones would have allowed surveillance teams to listen in on conversations in the household in the run-up to the E.O.B.
These would be kept for expert analysis, and in some cases sound beam mikes were pointed at windows to record all conversation among the occupants.
The police raid - by 250 officers - of a house in Forest Gate, bore certain hallmarks which indicate the true nature of the operation.
* The occupants were not expecting a raid and were therefore unprepared.
* To make a “kill” usually involves one or two officers breaking in, the less men obtaining entry the better. This is because on entering a strange house at night it has often happened that – disorientated by the dark, new surroundings – members of the raiding party end up shooting each other rather than their target quarry.
* The optimum technique is to gain a silent entry, then to get to where the occupants are sleeping before they are fully awake and can defend themselves, or destroy evidence.
* The mass entry technique is usually only done to intimidate and perhaps wound occupants. But to take them alive, there is no way 250 men would have been involved unless it was a staged propaganda exercise or a show of brute strength.
* In the Forest Gate fiasco, the raiding party made so many breaches of firearms legislation that another agenda was obviously in play with new instructions, but from whom?
When the police at Forest Gate got in they were kind enough to wake the occupants by breaking a window in dead of night – this could only have been done to alert the occupants and draw them out – so that when a half naked Muslim lad appeared at the top of the stairs, they shot him without warning.
To make matters worse the police even had the audacity to initially claim that his own brother had shot him.
The police also said that child porn was found on a computer in the house.
However this is a standard slur used by our intelligence services to silence and discredit those who might cause problems. For instance one whistleblower, a senior naval officer, committed suicide recently because he was threatened with prosecution for this.
Later a computer expert revealed he had spent virtually a whole day putting this stuff on the man’s desktop.
* The Brazillian lad who was shot on the underground last year, was followed by a team of policemen for several stations then at a quiet spot was shot 8 times in the head,
The pretence that he may have been carrying a bomb did not stack up at all as he was observed in light clothing.
If they had wanted to they could have followed their own gun regulations that state that a wounded man is open to interrogation while a dead man obviously is not.
The lies told over this were laughable, and yet no one is deemed responsible:
Who briefed the policemen to act in this manner and then protected them after they effectively murdered an innocent man?
The truth is we have another set of rules in operation here. The police were told according to a senior source I am in contact with, to shoot both lads, to “make an example of them” but most of all to show that “police can and will shoot whom they want, whenever they want”.
This after Norfolk farmer Tony Martin shot two burglars one night in his home, and subsequently served a long prison sentence for protecting his own property. In contrast however, policemen who shoot dead innocents without warning, are answerable to no one.
Russian mafia sources say Tony Blair has made it so easy to bring in foreign nationals. So much so that that we now have an immigrant population that has doubled in 8 years.
There are those educated sources in the Russian mafia who say this is not just incompetence and negligence, but part of a determined Illuminati plot to undermine and destroy the British as a nation, as was the plan for Germany in two world wars.
In closing, it’s worth noting that Reuters has just reported a twelfth suspect held for alleged involvement in a plot to bomb US bound air flights has been charged.
Umair Hussain, 24, was charged with failing to give information that could have prevented a terrorist attack, police said. He is due to appear in a London court on Friday.
Note the vague nature of the charge. Hussain isn’t charged with any specific offence, just with failing to give “information that could have prevented a terrorist attack”: a broad indictment that with clever legal sophistry could be tailored to fit any number of possible scenarios.
But essentially it is a small detail in a much bigger plan that is taking place before our very eyes: one that was first outlined over one hundred years ago. Flood Western Europe with immigrants from a variety of backgrounds and religions, then set one group against the other in the name of the “War on Terror”.
In essence: divide and rule.
We sleepwalk into W.W.III at our peril.
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Israeli-style air security may head west
BLOOMBERG
August 27, 2006
Eleanor Schwartz is 78 and has trouble walking. Yet every time the Neponsit, N.Y., resident flies on El Al Israel Airlines Ltd., security agents at John F. Kennedy International Airport go through her medications and question her for several minutes.
"I've been to Israel 44 times in the last 20 years, but they still check us very carefully," Schwartz says.
Such scrutiny may no longer be limited to El Al. In the aftermath of this month's U.K. terror arrests, the airline known for intensive passenger screening and on-board anti-missile defenses is becoming a model for Western aviation authorities. The U.S. Transportation Security Administration says it wants to boost training in behavior-identification and interrogation techniques, and European aviation officials say they plan to share more data on passengers among allies.
El Al's methods, previously rejected by airlines and civil libertarians as costly, intrusive and corrosive to a free society, now are winning support because of public fear that the $25 billion spent in the U.S. and Europe on aviation security since Sept. 11 hasn't gone far enough to protect passengers.
"It can't just be technology," says Gerry Leone, the former U.S. prosecutor who handled the 2002 case in Boston against "shoe bomber" Richard Reid. "There have to be observations made and people who are well-trained to know what combinations of things should lead to increased scrutiny."
Opponents including Muslim groups and the American Civil Liberties Union are wary of expanding government powers or opening the door to racial profiling, while airlines want to avoid significant delays and higher costs. Also, some El Al measures may not work on a larger scale.
Still, to a degree not seen since 2001, the foiled U.K. plot to blow up U.S.-bound airliners is forcing Western nations to decide what realistically can be done to secure travel. Some fliers say it is time to trade privacy for more security.
"I wouldn't have an issue with a 10-to-15-minute, very personal interview," says Dave Taylor, 44, who has flown 195,000 miles this year as marketing chief for LANDesk Software, based in Salt Lake City. "I'd feel very comfortable knowing everybody on the plane has answered the same questions."
In the U.S., TSA spokeswoman Jennifer Peppin says the agency has been experimenting since June 2003 with its first behavior-based screening programs. Surveillance teams question people at a dozen airports, including Boston's Logan International and Washington's Dulles International.
The gold standard for safety is El Al, which hasn't had a hijacking since 1968. The airline declines to discuss specific security measures. El Al Chairman Israel Borovich said Aug. 10 on Bloomberg TV that Israel's compulsory military service means El Al employees are better prepared for security-related tasks.
"Many of our employees have to do reserve duty," he said. "Many of our pilots are serving in the military. That's part of the way of life in Israel."
Internal security
Security is coordinated by the Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service, which runs a criminal background check on each passenger, says Isaac Yeffet, who headed El Al's global security from 1977 to 1984 and now runs a security consulting firm in Cliffside Park, N.J. Security agents at the airport scan the data before questioning passengers, Yeffet says.
"They say by the time you get to the airport they've got you in the computer," says Rita Perlmutter, 72, a retired librarian from Boynton Beach, Fla., who is used to showing El Al security agents in the U.S. and Israel pictures of her Israeli grandchildren when questioned about her twice-yearly visits.
Borovich estimated El Al's security bill at $100 million a year, which amounts to $76.92 per trip by its 1.3 million passengers. Half is paid by the Israeli government.
By contrast, the TSA spent $4.58 billion on aviation security, or just $6.21 per trip by 737 million passengers, in fiscal 2005.
Book an El Al flight, and it's easy to see where the money goes. Travelers might be stopped four times by different security officers asking where they were born, where they stayed and the names of any new friends they made. Officers might even flip through a travel diary or make an international phone call for corroboration. El Al uses its own security agents and scanning machines at airports in the U.S. and Europe, not just Israel.
Perlmutter says she once was questioned further after visiting Morocco, Turkey and Jordan.
Sometimes, the interviewers compare notes to check for inconsistencies. They are trained to spot characteristics that make someone suspect, including the purchase of tickets outside one's home city.
Foreigners always get more scrutiny than Israeli citizens, says Anat Naim, 25, who worked as a screener at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv for two years.
'Pull everything out'
"All foreign travelers are investigated and go through strict luggage inspection," she says. "If somebody's really suspicious, you pull everything and his mother out of the suitcase."
Bags are run through scanners that check for potentially explosive chemicals.
Sometimes, luggage is cut open, with the airline offering reimbursement if necessary.
Then, there are the in-flight precautions: Each flight has an armed undercover air marshal; two bulletproof cockpit doors, one of which must be closed at all times; and anti-missile systems.
Since Sept. 11, the U.S. has strengthened cockpit doors on planes and has awarded at least $90 million in contracts to test anti-missile systems. Equipping all 6,800 U.S. commercial airliners with such missile defenses would cost $11 billion, according to a 2005 Rand Corp. study.
Israel developed its multilayered system after deciding that no single technology is guaranteed to stop a terrorist, says Rafi Rahav, a security consultant who worked for the Shin Bet and now runs a private investigation company in Ra'anana, Israel.
Questioning has at times succeeded where detection machines haven't, including the 1986 arrest in London of a pregnant Irishwoman about to board an El Al flight while unknowingly carrying plastic explosives planted by her Jordanian-born boyfriend.
"She was innocent and she looked it, too - but the interrogation was the key issue," Rahav says.
In the U.S., small teams of TSA screeners walk around Logan and Dulles, among others, trying to find people who look nervous. The program - dubbed Screening Passengers by Observation Technique, or SPOT - was first used by state police at Logan.
They consulted with psychiatrists to develop a behavioral profile. In addition to obvious things like someone sweating excessively on a cool day, the teams look for people whose facial expressions are deemed to be hiding an emotion. The teams haven't caught any terrorists though they have detained several people with outstanding criminal warrants, TSA spokeswoman Peppin says.
The agency wants to expand the program and replace contractors who collect identification at airport checkpoints with staff trained in interrogation and behavior identification, Peppin says.
U.K. authorities have charged eight people with conspiracy to murder and held four others on related charges this month in connection with the alleged plot to blow up planes using liquid explosives in drink containers.
Racial profiling
Tim Wuerfel, president of the German pilots union Vereinigung Cockpit and a 737 pilot for Deutsche Lufthansa AG, says he doubts a liquids ban is enough.
"There are so many ways of bringing explosives on board," he says. "You'd have to focus on every aspect of a traveler's life, from electronics to who knows what. Then the question is whether we want to live that way."
Indeed, critics say stepped-up security might lead to racial profiling that can result in discrimination against an entire class of individuals.
"None of us would be safe," says Samina Sundas, founder of American Muslim Voice, a nonprofit group in Newark, Calif.
The ACLU sued Logan's operator, the Massachusetts Port Authority, after officers questioned the leader of the ACLU's Campaign Against Racial Profiling in 2003 and asked him to leave the airport. The leader, King Downing, is black.
"People need to be very skeptical before we adopt yet further incursions into basic rights," says Caroline Fredrickson, the ACLU's top lobbyist in Washington.
Airlines also worry about the waiting time and expense of additional security. An interviewing system as extensive as El Al's would require significant upgrades in the qualifications, training and pay of U.S. screeners. At El Al, screeners are often university graduates and speak two or three languages.
In the U.S., screeners start at $23,600 a year and can be high-school dropouts.
U.S. Coast Guard Admiral James Loy, who ran the TSA in 2002 and 2003, says he sat in on training sessions with Israeli screeners to see if their model would work in the U.S. While it might help, he couldn't imagine rolling it out across the U.S.
"I literally just could not have the same level of confidence in 541 airports worth of interviewers as opposed to two," he says.
An El Al-style security system might cripple the much larger U.S. airline industry. The U.S. fleet of 6,800 commercial airliners is almost 200 times bigger than El Al's 35.
Yeffet, the former El Al security chief, says a system like the Israeli carrier's undoubtedly would cost more. Yet he says it could be run efficiently, noting that El Al operates frequently between New York and Tel Aviv, among other cities.
Congress will debate airline security funding when it returns next month. The Senate approved a bill in July giving the TSA $6.1 billion in fiscal 2007, while the House awarded $6.3 billion. The larger figure would be a 7 percent increase.
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Just When You Thought You'd Seen Everything: Hoekstra's Hoax
By Ray McGovern
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 25 August 2006
Talk about chutzpah! I was suffering a bit from outrage fatigue yesterday but was shaken out of it as soon as I downloaded an unusually slick paper, "Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States," released this week by House intelligence committee chair, Pete Hoekstra.
No, not "Hoaxer." This is serious - very serious. The paper amounts to a pre-emptive strike on what's left of the Intelligence Community, usurping its prerogative to provide policymakers with estimates on front-burner issues - in this case, Iran's weapons of mass destruction and other threats. The Senate had already requested a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran. But Hoekstra is first out of the starting gate. Professional intelligence officers were "as a courtesy" invited to provide input to Hoekstra's report.
While you can't judge a book by its cover, you can glean insight these days from the titles given to National Intelligence Estimates and papers meant to supplant them. Remember "Iraq's Continuing Program for Weapons of Mass Destruction," the infamous NIE of October 1, 2002, by which Congress was misled into approving an unnecessary war? "Continuing" leaped out of the title, foreshadowing the one-sided thrust of an estimate ostensibly commissioned to determine whether WMD programs were "continuing," or whether they had been dead for ten years. (The latter turned out to be the case, but the title - and the cooked insides - provided the scare needed to get Congress aboard.)
æNow suddenly appears a pseudo-estimate titled "Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States." To wit, the challenge set before the Intelligence Community is to get religion, climb aboard, and "recognize" Iran as a strategic threat. But alas, the community has not yet been fully purged of recalcitrant intelligence analysts who reject a "faith-based" approach to intelligence and hang back from the altar call to revealed truth. Hence, the statutory intelligence agencies cannot be counted on to come to politically correct conclusions regarding the strategic threat from Iran.
Hoekstra to the Rescue
Pete Hoekstra apparently has set his sights on outstripping his Senate counterpart, Pat Roberts of Kansas, for first honors as intelligence partisan of the year. Roberts, who has torpedoed all attempts to complete the long-promised study on whether the George W. Bush administration played fast and loose with intelligence on Iraq, is a formidable competitor, but Hoekstra is moving up steadily on the right. Tellingly, his zeal (and that of FOX News) recently found him well ahead of even Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Citing an Army report that units had dug up corroded canisters of chemical agent dating back decades, Hoekstra and Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) insisted that weapons of mass destruction had indeed been found in Iraq. "We were right all the time!"
Shameless as Cheney and Rumsfeld have been in stretching the truth, not even they would go along with that one. No doubt they pledged to find more credible ways to shore up Santorum's flagging campaign to hang onto his Senate seat. One can understand the pressure on Santorum to find some deus ex machina to rescue his campaign. What was most remarkable was his ability to enlist the chair of the House intelligence committee in this charade and make him the laughingstock of Washington. Was Hoekstra unfamiliar with the donnybrook over the administration's fatuous claims of WMD in Iraq, and its eventual concession that there were none there? Where has he been?
As recently as May 4, in answer to a question after a speech in Atlanta, Rumsfeld conceded, "Apparently there were no weapons of mass destruction." Was Hoekstra so naive as to think he could pressure the administration into recanting its painful recantation and risk opening that still festering wound?
Undiminished Zeal
The snub by the administration has not affected Hoekstra's zeal to do its bidding, even if further embarrassment waits in the wings. He has violated all precedent in consenting to have his committee author this faux-National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, making it out to be a strategic threat. But a threat to whom? The answer leaps off the cover. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is pictured giving a Nazi-type salute behind a podium adorned with a wide poster (in English) "The world without Zionism." And atop the first page stands an Ahmadinejad quote: "The annihilation of the Zionist regime will come ... Israel must be wiped off the map ..."
The authors make a college try to persuade that Iran is also a threat to the US, but is singularly unpersuasive. Like Cheney's major speech of August 26, 2002, which provided the terms of reference and conclusions of the subsequent NIE of October 1, 2002, it merely asserts that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons and probably has offensive chemical and biological weapons programs and "the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the Middle East." The text then tacks on for good measure Iranian support for terrorist groups and support for the insurgency in Iraq.
The paper gives most space to the nuclear issue (shades of the "mushroom cloud" conjured up before Congress voted to authorize war on Iraq in October 2002). But the best it can do in conjuring up a threat that most see as 5 to 10 years out is that a nuclear-armed Iran might be emboldened to "advance its aggressive ambitions in and outside of the region ... [and] ... threaten US friends and allies." Stretching still further, the authors argue that Iran might think that a nuclear arsenal might protect it from retaliation and thus would be "more likely to use force against US forces and allies in the region." Last, but hardly least: "Israel would find it hard to live with a nuclear armed Iran and could take military action against Iranian nuclear facilities."
Principal Author
The Hoekstra-issued draft bears the fingerprints of one Frederick Fleitz - the principal drafter, according to press reports. Fleitz did his apprenticeship on politicization under John Bolton when the latter was Under Secretary of State, and became his principal aide and chief enforcer while on loan from the CIA. In this light, his behavior in trying to cook intelligence to the recipe of high policy is even more inexcusable. CIA analysts, particularly those on detail to policy departments, have no business playing the enforcer of policy judgments; they have no business conjuring up "intelligence around the policy."
Fleitz must have flunked Ethics and Intelligence Analysis 101. For he is the same official who "explained" to State Department's intelligence analyst Christian Westermann that it was "a political judgment as to how to interpret" data on Cuba's biological weapons program (which existed only in Bolton's mind) and that the intelligence community "should do as we asked."
But Iran Doesn't Need Electricity
The authors include this familiar canard: "Iran's claim that its nuclear program is for electricity production appears doubtful in light of its large oil and natural gas reserves." But back in 1976 - with Gerald Ford president, Dick Cheney his chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld secretary of defense, and Henry Kissinger national security adviser - the Ford administration bought the Shah's argument that Iran needed a nuclear program to meet its future energy requirements.
They persuaded the hesitant president to offer Iran a deal that would have meant at least $6.4 billion for US corporations like Westinghouse and General Electric, had not the Shah been unceremoniously ousted three years later. The offer included a reprocessing facility for a complete nuclear fuels cycle - essentially the same capability that the US, Israel, and other countries now insist Iran cannot be allowed to acquire. Cheney must have forgotten all this, when he noted early last year that the Iranians are "already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. Nobody can figure why they need nuclear as well to generate energy."
The Current Hype on Iran
Hoekstra's release of this paper is another sign pointing in the direction of a US attack on Iran. Tehran is now being blamed not only for inciting Hezbollah but also for sending improvised explosive devices (IEDs) into Iraq to kill or maim US forces. There is yet another, if more subtle, disquieting note about the paper. It bears the earmarks of a rushed job, with very little editorial scrubbing. There are misplaced modifiers, and verbs often do not take enough care to agree in number with their nouns.
One wag suggested that the president may have taken a direct hand in the drafting. My guess is even more troubling. It seems to me possible that the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal told Hoekstra to get the paper out sooner rather than later, as an aid to Americans in "recognizing Iran as a strategic threat."
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. A CIA analyst for 27 years, he is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
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Mideast bloggers fear for the future
By Steve Metcalf
BBC Monitoring
Bloggers in Israel and Lebanon have breathed a sigh of relief as the ceasefire takes effect - but it is a relief that is tempered with apprehension about the future.
David Lisbona from Haifa writes that while he has been able to go out jogging with his dog for the first time in a month, he is uncertain how far life will return to its earlier normality.
Many people in Haifa, he says, feel "a lot less secure" than they did before.
A contributor to Israelity says that she has yet to meet "even one blogger or friend" who is happy about the results of the war or the terms of the ceasefire.
A similar view is expressed by Dave Bender in Jerusalem . He is one of several bloggers who has picked up on a newspaper article that spoke of a nation "whose heart has been broken" by its failure.
Jameel at The Muqata , in a post after returning from a funeral, praises the bravery of Israel's soldiers.
But, he says, the war has been lost because of "petty politicians and stock-portfolio generals".
Lebanon tension
There is a sense of frustration and gloom among Lebanese blogging in English.
A post on From Beirut to the Beltway comments on the televised address by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah earlier this week.
"We are back where we started," it says, but with an "emboldened" Hezbollah playing on "sectarian sensitivities".
Raja of The Lebanese Bloggers addresses Nasrallah in a post headlined "ENOUGH!"
"You do not lead Lebanon. You cannot ever lead Lebanon," he says, with a number of other bloggers expressing similar sentiments.
The author of Anecdotes from a Banana Republic describes a tense atmosphere during a drive around Beirut.
She also worries about the "general consensus" that there will be a civil war within months.
Syria and Iran
Syrian President Assad's speech this week also attracts comment.
Mustafa at Beirut Spring is bemused by the speech, concluding that despite the "hardline" rhetoric, it was really meant to pave the way for holding talks with Israel.
The end of hostilities also coincided with the news that President Ahmadinejad of Iran had started his own weblog.
Israeli bloggers, such as Yael K, quickly spotted this and began circulating warnings that the site contained a virus, but later declared the site clean.
The pioneer of Persian blogging, Hossein Derakhshan, was initially sceptical about the presidential blog but later decided that it was a cause for celebration.
"We've made the Western phenomena of weblog so Iranian that even Ahamdinejad, the most radical anti-Western politician, has endorsed it," he wrote.
BBC Monitoring selects and translates news from radio, television, press, news agencies and the internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages. It is based in Caversham, UK, and has several bureaux abroad.
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They know all about you
Monday August 28, 2006
The Guardian
Every time you use an internet search engine, your inquiry is stored in a huge database. Would you like such personal information to become public knowledge? Yet for thousands of AOL customers, that nightmare has just become a reality. Andrew Brown reports on an incident that has exposed how much we divulge to Google & co
In March this year, a man with a passion for Portuguese football, living in a city in Florida, was drinking heavily because his wife was having an affair. He typed his troubles into the search window of his computer. "My wife doesnt love animore," he told the machine. He searched for "Stop your divorce" and "I want revenge to my wife" before turning to self-examination with "alchool withdrawl", "alchool withdrawl sintoms" (at 10 in the morning) and "disfunctional erection". On April 1 he was looking for a local medium who could "predict my futur".
But what could a psychic guess about him compared with what the world now knows? This story is one of hundreds, perhaps tens of thousands, revealed this month when AOL published the details of 23m searches made by 650,000 of its customers during a three-month period earlier in the year. The searches were actually carried out by Google - from which AOL buys in its search functions.
The gigantic database detailing these customers' search inquiries was available on an AOL research site for just a few hours before the company realised that substituting numbers for users' names did not really protect their identities enough. The company apologised for its mistake - and removed the database from the internet. The researcher who published the material has been sacked, as has his manager, and last week AOL's chief technology officer, Maureen Govern, resigned. But those few hours online were enough for the raw data files to be copied all over the internet, and there are now four or five sites where anyone can search through them using specialised software.
What was published by AOL represents only a tiny fraction of the accumulated knowledge warehoused within Google's records - but it has given all of us, as users, a dramatic and unsettling glimpse of how much, and in what intimate detail, the big search engines know about us.
The number of searches Google carries out is a secret, but comScore, an independent firm, reckons that the search engine performed 2.7bn searches by American users alone in July this year. Yahoo, its main rival, conducted around 1.8bn American searches in the same month; Microsoft's MSN around 800m and AOL 366m.
All of this information is stored. Google identifies every computer that connects to it with an implant (known as a cookie) which will not expire until 2038. If you also use Gmail, Google knows your email address - and, of course, keeps all your email searchable. If you sign up to have Google ads on a website, then the company knows your bank account details and home address, as well as all your searches. If you have a blog on the free blogger service, Google owns that. The company also knows, of course, the routes you have looked up on Google maps. Yahoo operates a similar range of services.
All this knowledge has been handed over quite freely by us as users. It is the foundation of Google's fortune because it allows the company to target very precisely the advertising it sends in our direction. Other companies have equally ambitious plans: an application lodged on August 10 with the US Patent & Trademark Office showed that Amazon is hoping to patent ways of interrogating a database that would record not just what its 59 million customers have bought - which it already knows - or what they would like to buy (which, with their wish lists, they tell the world) but their income, sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity. The company, of course, already knows who we are and where we live.
Even though the search logs that AOL released were made anonymous, by assigning a number to each user, it is not difficult in many cases to discover somebody's name from their search queries. And it is easy to follow exactly what users were thinking as they sat at their computers, in the apparent privacy of their own homes, since the time and date of every search is given.
On April 4, for instance, user 14162375, the melancholy Portuguese-American in Florida, seems to have passed out on the keyboard at 6.20pm, when he asked, suddenly, "llllfkkgjnnvjjfokrb" then "vvvvbmkmjk" and "vvglhkitopppfoppr". An hour later he had recovered enough to search for variations on his wife's name - he thought she might have moved to New England. On the evening of April 16, matters came to a head. "My cheating wife," he typed; and then, five times, "I want to kill myself," and then "I want to make my wife suffer," followed quickly by "Kill my wifes mistress," "My wifes ass," "A cheating wife". Two days after that he was back looking for audio surveillance and bugging equipment and four weeks later he seemed to have cheered up and was looking for motorcycle insurance.
The story stops abruptly there, at the end of May, because that is when the three months' worth of released AOL search records came to an end.
One of the first researchers to demonstrate that we will tell anything, however intimate, to a computer, was Joseph Weizenbaum of MIT, who in 1966 wrote a programme called "Eliza" that parodied non-directional psychotherapy. If the user typed anything in, Eliza would appear to ask a question based on that cue. In no time at all, unhappy students were telling the computer all their troubles as if there were a real and sympathetic person behind the screen. Stories and jokes about this circulated for decades, but the men most successful at turning this concept into a fortune were the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergei Brin. As users, we think that the Google search engine is a way of supplying us with information about what's on the web. But the flow of information is two way. We ask Google things that we would hesitate to ask anyone living. The price for the answers is that Google remembers it all.
Take user 11110859 of New York City, who fell in love and then was sorry. She was up early on March 7 to buy hip-hop clothes from G-Unit; by March 26, however, there was more excitement in her life. Searches on "losing your virginity" were followed by three weeks of frantic worry about whether she was pregnant: stuff she might have hesitated to tell her best friend or her mother is all quite clear from the Google searches. But by the end of April the pregnancy scare was over and had been replaced by a broken heart. Even before she had stopped asking "Can you still be pregnant even though your period came?" she was asking "Why do people hurt others" and this was the theme of almost all her questions throughout May, culminating on the afternoon of the 19th, when she asked "How to love someone who mistreated you?"; "What does Jesus say about loving your enemies?" "What does God mean when he says bless those who spitefully use you?" Then she spent a couple of days trying to buy Betty Boop postage stamps, and the next thing we know, she was asking first for directions to the New York prison on Rikers Island, then "What items are we allowed to bring at Rikers Island" and finally for "uncoated playing cards".
User 11110859 was not the only person interested in the prison but she seems to have been the youngest and, in some senses, the most innocent. User 3745417 laid out her thoughts in detail just as graphic: on March 6 she made eight searches on child molestation and similar phrases. A week later she was trying to find a prisoner in Rikers Island - nine searches in one evening - a subject she returned to at 9.30am on March 25, when she made another eight searches. Between March 27 and March 29 she made 34 successive searches for M&M chocolates in the early evening, followed on the 30th, at 10pm, by four searches for "Kid Party Games". By 10.15pm she was searching for "Whitney Houston"; then, in the course of the next hour, 29 searches on "black porn for women" and similar subjects.
By the end of April, she was looking for a legal aid lawyer in New York City, a swimsuit, a credit card and a holiday in the Bahamas.
These stories, with all the revealing information they contain, cannot always easily be tied to a specific individual, but sometimes they can. The social security number, with which all Americans are issued, conforms to a recognisable pattern which is easy to search for in the data that AOL released. So, too, are telephone numbers. On the internet, you can buy anything from anywhere, but there are some things, such as pet care, which people mainly buy locally, so it is easy to spot where they live. People often search for their own names, which can then be cross- referenced with the telephone book.
At least one person in the AOL group, a blameless grandmother in Alabama, was identified by the New York Times within days of the AOL data release. And though it may be hard to identify complete strangers, it is very much easier to recognise in the AOL data details of someone you may already know. A church lady in the midwest, whose quest for Christian quilted wall hangings was interspersed with inquiries about vibrators and arousing frigid wives, is probably easy for anyone in her congregation to identify.
This is knowledge beyond the dreams of any secret police in history. Earlier this year Google fought a lawsuit to keep a week's worth of random search data out of the hands of the US government, but other search companies have handed over their data without complaint and nobody has yet discovered what deals have been struck between search engines and the Chinese government. China is generally thought of as attempting to censor the internet, which it does; search engines that do business in China must censor their own results if they are to succeed. But the real power for a totalitarian government is no longer just censorship. It is to allow its citizens to search for anything they want - and then remember it.
No western government, so far as we know, has gone that far. But if one ever does, it will know where the information is kept that will tell it almost everything about almost everyone. This morning, as I logged in to Googletalk, to chat with my sister, the programme silently upgraded itself. "Would you like to show friends what music you're playing now?" it asked.
From spying on the wife to motorcycle insurance
This edited list of searches by Florida AOL user 14162375 shows what intimate details are held by internet databases
March
marriage counseling 2006-03-19 17:50:31
spy on the wife 2006-03-19 17:52:47
spy on the wife 2006-03-19 17:52:47
spy on the wife 2006-03-19 17:52:47
spy on the wife 2006-03-19 17:52:47
spy on the wife 2006-03-19 17:58:58
spy recorders 2006-03-19 18:02:34
signs of cheating 2006-03-19 18:05:52
videos 2006-03-20 17:56:16
postal service stamps 2006-03-21 09:27:46
tracking cell phone numbers 2006-03-21 11:00:13
divorce 2006-03-23 14:10:27
divorce lawyers 2006-03-24 00:38:47
cheating wives 2006-03-24 06:07:00
cheating wives 2006-03-24 06:07:00
divorce lawyers 2006-03-24 13:10:32
saving a marriege 2006-03-24 13:42:04
saving a marriege 2006-03-24 15:02:24
saving a marriege 2006-03-24 15:02:24
saving a marriege 2006-03-24 15:20:13
fitness gyms 2006-03-24 16:32:50
womes wellness 2006-03-24 16:35:33
hypertension 2006-03-24 17:07:33
e-cards 2006-03-26 23:40:56
saving a marriage 2006-03-26 23:50:11
saving a marriage 2006-03-26 23:50:11
saving a marriage 2006-03-26 23:50:11
sexual techiques 2006-03-27 10:39:27
greenting cards 2006-03-27 12:45:53
standar times 2006-03-27 23:09:25
news papers 2006-03-27 23:09:56
stop your divorce 2006-03-27 23:49:06
stop your divorce 2006-03-27 23:53:30
stop your divorce 2006-03-28 00:06:53
alchool withdrawl 2006-03-28 10:43:51
alchool withdrawl sintoms 2006-03-28 10:45:38
disfunctional erection 2006-03-28 10:46:46
cheating therapy 2006-03-30 16:49:56
women's urine blood 2006-03-30 18:21:16
spy from a distance 2006-03-31 21:11:29
spy from a distance 2006-03-31 21:11:29
spy from a distance 2006-03-31 21:15:55
spy from a distance 2006-03-31 21:15:56
listentrough walls 2006-03-31 21:16:22
listen through walls 2006-03-31 21:16:25
car sound recorder 2006-03-31 21:20:07
car conversation spy 2006-03-31 21:20:24
April
spy on wife 2006-03-31 21:21:29
phico card readers 2006-04-01 22:03:08
bruchas 2006-04-01 22:04:17
phyco card readers 2006-04-01 22:06:43
phyco card readers 2006-04-01 22:07:10
predict my futur 2006-04-01 22:20:24
psychic 2006-04-02 10:14:07
i want my wyfe back 2006-04-02 23:14:28
i want revenge to my wife 2006-04-02 23:27:54
i want revenge to my wife 2006-04-02 23:27:54
get revenge from a wife cheater 2006-04-02 23:41:22
munchies 2006-04-03 11:54:59
lisbon jobs 2006-04-03 11:58:20
divorce and kids 2006-04-03 12:19:46
llllfkkgjnnvjjfokrb 2006-04-03 18:20:11
vvvvbmkmjk 2006-04-03 18:20:36
vvglhkitopppfoppr 2006-04-03 18:22:04
www.whitepages 2006-04-06 06:14:07
my wife wants to leave me 2006-04-07 16:35:03
how do i get my wife love me again 2006-04-08 17:10:55
need help getting my wife back 2006-04-08 19:27:2
i need my wife to get back to me 2006-04-08 19:29:11
i need my wife to get back to me 2006-04-08 19:29:11
my wife doesnt love animore 2006-04-08 19:30:58
i still live whith my wife can i get her bach 2006-04-08 19:32:15
i want revenge towards my wife 2006-04-08 19:32:59
i want revenge towards my wife 2006-04-08 19:32:59
i want revenge towards my wife 2006-04-08 19:32:59
i want revenge towards my wife 2006-04-08 19:36:58
making my wife suffer as i do 2006-04-09 13:19:54
get my wife back 2006-04-09 14:03:28
avoid breaking up 2006-04-09 14:04:11
avoid breaking up 2006-04-09 14:04:11
stop breaking up 2006-04-09 15:10:47
get even with my wife 2006-04-09 15:15:16
husband revenge 2006-04-09 15:23:37
husband revenge 2006-04-09 15:23:37
husband revenge 2006-04-09 15:23:37
how to harm my wifes lover 2006-04-10 13:11:28
infidelity 2006-04-10 14:32:02
whow to talk on the phone with youor wife 2006-04-10 14:43:07
catch your wife aving an affair 2006-04-10 14:44:32
baby monitors 2006-04-15 17:15:31
baby monitors 2006-04-15 17:15:31
my cheating wife 2006-04-16 16:48:06
my cheating wife 2006-04-16 16:48:06
my cheating wife 2006-04-16 16:48:06
i want to kill myself 2006-04-16 19:55:51
kill my wifes mistress 2006-04-16 20:26:49
my wifes ass 2006-04-16 20:38:37
cheating wives 2006-04-18 16:45:12
recording home survellence 2006-04-18 16:54:43
recording home surveillance 2006-04-18 16:54:53
audio roome surveillance 2006-04-18 16:55:40
audio roome surveillance 2006-04-18 16:55:43
sore muscules 2006-04-23 17:32:00
sore muscles 2006-04-23 17:32:06
sore muscles 2006-04-23 17:32:06
sore muscles 2006-04-23 17:32:06
alcoolism 2006-04-24 08:10:53
men acting like winners 2006-04-25 16:02:09
make the infidelity suffer 2006-04-25 16:03:20
the portuguese mafia 2006-04-25 16:24:04
May
motorcycle inurance 2006-05-29 18:31:19
motorcycle insurance 2006-05-29 18:31:29
private eye 2006-05-30 21:12:07
video surveillance 2006-05-30 21:20:18
video surveillance 2006-05-30 21:21:05
video surveillance 2006-05-30 21:21:24
white pages 2006-05-31 05:55:41
- AOL user search history data, released by AOL, August 2006.
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USA! USA!
U.S. aid stirs Venezuela's suspicion
By IAN JAMES
Associated Press
August 26, 2006
CARACAS, Venezuela - The U.S. government is spending millions of dollars in the name of democracy in Venezuela - bankrolling human rights seminars, training emerging leaders, advising political parties and giving to charities. But the money is raising deep suspicions among supporters of President Hugo Chavez, in part because the U.S. has refused to name many of the groups it's supporting.
Details of the spending emerge in 1,600 pages of grant contracts obtained by The Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act request. The U.S. Agency for International Development released copies of 132 contracts in all, but whited out the names and other identifying details of nearly half the grantees.
U.S. officials insist the aid is aboveboard and politically neutral, and say the Chavez government would harass or prosecute the grant recipients if they were identified.
Chavez, however, believes the United States is campaigning - overtly and covertly - to undermine his leftist government, which has crusaded against U.S. influence in Latin America and elsewhere.
"The empire pays its lackeys, and it pays them well," he said recently, accusing some of his opponents of taking "gringo money."
While USAID oversees much of the public U.S. spending on Latin America, President Bush's government also has stepped up covert efforts in the region. This month, Washington named a career CIA agent as the "mission manager" to oversee U.S. intelligence on Cuba and Venezuela.
The Bush administration has an $80 million plan to hasten change in Cuba, where Chavez has sworn to help defend
Fidel Castro's communist system. The U.S. also is spending millions on pro-democracy work in Bolivia, where Bush has warned of "an erosion of democracy" since a Chavez ally, socialist Evo Morales, was elected president in December.
Chavez makes no distinction between the programs supported by U.S. funds and the secret effort he claims the CIA is pursuing to destabilize his government. And it appears a crackdown on the U.S. aid is looming as Chavez runs for re-election in December.
Venezuelan prosecutors have brought conspiracy charges against the leaders of Sumate, a U.S.-backed group that frequently points out perceived flaws in the voting system. The pro-Chavez National Assembly is preparing to require nonprofit groups to reveal their funding sources. And Chavez has threatened to expel U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield, whom he accuses of stirring up trouble with USAID donations to youth baseball teams and day-care centers.
Much of the spending is overseen by USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives, which also works in such "priority countries" as Iraq, Afghanistan, Bolivia and Haiti.
OTI says it has overseen more than $26 million for programs in Venezuela since 2002, when it began work here after a failed coup against Chavez. Much of it has gone toward more than 220 small grants as part of USAID's "Venezuela Confidence Building Initiative."
"It's a pro-democracy program to work with Venezuelans of any point of view," said Adolfo Franco, USAID's assistant administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean. "It's without political bias."
The USAID grants for 2004 and 2005 reviewed by AP include some charity projects - like $19,543 for baseball equipment that Brownfield delivered to a pro-Chavez neighborhood and $23,189 for chickens and coops at a poor school.
Others seem to promote good government, like $15,289 to publish a pocket guide on citizenship.
One recipient, the Development and Justice Consortium, held a workshop in a poor Caracas neighborhood on seeking accountability in local government. A neighborhood banner read "Chavez Forever," but teacher Antonio Quintin reminded students that "governments are only delegates."
Most attendees had no idea U.S. money paid for the class, and even die-hard Chavez supporters saw nothing subversive in it. "As long as it brings benefits, it doesn't matter where the funding comes from," said Ingrid Sanchez, 40, a member of a local planning council.
But other projects remain so vague as to raise concern among Chavistas, such as a $47,459 grant for a "democratic leadership campaign," $37,614 for citizen meetings to discuss a "shared vision" for society, or $56,124 to analyze Venezuela's new constitution of 1999. All went to unidentified recipients.
U.S. officials call the concerns baseless. They point to U.S.-funded programs meant to bridge the divide between Chavez's backers and opponents, such as conflict resolution workshops and public service announcements urging peaceful coexistence.
Much of the spending was for "in kind" aid - anything from snacks to airfare, rather than cash. And every grant requires the inclusion of people from across the political spectrum.
Even some pro-Chavez groups got support, said Russell Porter, an OTI official for Latin America.
Still, USAID said revealing more of their identities would be an "unwarranted invasion of personal privacy" that could endanger the recipients, saying some have been questioned for 12 hours at a time by the Venezuelan secret police.
"It's simply for the security of the recipient," Porter said. "The only thing we've held back are the names of the groups."
U.S. officials say they simply want to promote dialogue and strengthen Venezuela's "fragile democratic institutions."
But at the same time, Bush has repeatedly called Chavez a threat to democracy, and Chavez sympathizers find it hard to trust the U.S. government's motives.
"It's trying to implement regime change. There's no doubt about it. I think the U.S. government tries to mask it by saying it's a noble mission," said Eva Golinger, a Venezuelan-American lawyer who wrote "The Chavez Code: Cracking U.S. Intervention in Venezuela," a book that cites public documents to argue that Washington is systematically trying to overthrow Chavez.
Golinger sees parallels in past U.S. campaigns, partly covert, to aid government opponents in countries from Nicaragua to Ukraine. "It's too suspicious to have such a high level of secrecy," she said.
The U.S. State Department also has supported electoral observer missions and training for human rights activists as part of the $26 million spent since 2002.
In addition, the government-funded National Endowment for Democracy has awarded $2.9 million in pro-democracy grants for Venezuela since 2002, and the U.S.-funded International Republican Institute and National Democratic Institute have provided technical training to help restructure various Venezuelan political parties and supported training of electoral observers.
"It isn't designed to favor one party or another," said the National Democratic Institute's president, Ken Wollack. "All parties have participated."
But friction is mounting as Chavez seeks re-election. He holds a wide lead in the polls, and predicts the U.S. will try to discredit the December vote if he wins, with ammunition provided by U.S.-funded nonprofit groups.
Chavistas say their president has good reason to be concerned, given how quickly U.S. officials recognized his opponents during a short-lived coup in 2002. Immediately after Chavez was driven from power, the International Republican Institute's then president, George Folsom, issued a statement praising those who "rose up to defend democracy."
Chavez regained the presidency amid huge street protests, and the IRI's leadership later renounced Folsom's statement as contrary to the group's pro-democracy mission.
Still, all these efforts to influence another country's political process raise concerns outside Venezuela, too.
"It's very hard to accept an innocent directing of those funds," said Bill Monning, a law professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. "We would scream bloody murder if any outside force were interfering in our internal political system."
Sumate leader Maria Corina Machado, who met Bush at the White House last year, faces up to 16 years in prison if convicted of conspiracy for using $31,000 from the National Endowment for Democracy that she says went for voter education courses. Three other Sumate members also face charges.
Meanwhile, Venezuelan lawmakers recommended that Sumate be investigated for currency and tax law violations, and they've given initial approval, in a first reading, to a new law that would require non-governmental organizations to reveal their funding sources.
CIVICUS, a South Africa-based international group that supports citizen participation, says the proposed law will "endanger the existence of an independent civil society."
Russia adopted a similar law targeting human rights and pro-democracy groups this year after opposition leaders rose to power in the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. Critics say Venezuela's law would bring heavy-handed tactics, but Chavez supporters say they need to keep tabs on U.S. spending.
"They're promoting a U.S. agenda," Golinger said, "and that's the overall goal: to eventually get Chavez out of power."
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Diplomatic pouch standoff between US and Venezuela continues
Published: Sunday, August 27, 2006
Bylined to: Patrick J. O'Donoghue
VHeadline.com News Editor Patrick J. O'Donoghue writes: According to a report in Maracaibo broadsheet, Panorama, Interior and Justice (MIJ) Minister, Jesse Chacon states that a US military plane that arrived at (Caracas) Simon Bolivar international airport at Maiquetia on Wednesday was carrying arms and military material.
The Minister says that among the 20 cases loaded off on the plane, there was a case that contained explosive materials.
Chacon accuses the US government of violating the Vienna Convention and insists that of the 20 boxes, only four were declared as diplomatic pouches, while the rest, since they did not go through customs, should be considered contraband.
The US State Department has replied that Venezuela is violating the Vienna Convention, because all the diplomatic pouches were registered.
The US government is demanding an immediate explanation about the incident, while the Venezuelan government wants to know why normal custom control channels were ignored
So far both sides have been content at having a go at each other, refusing to end or clarify the conflict.
Chacon says the box containing material for the Venezuelan Air Force (FAV) was not delivered to an FAV official and taken out of the international airport without passing through arms-control authorities.
The Minister asks what was really inside the box, which is currently inside the US embassy in Caracas.
The US complains that everything brought on the plane was part of personal belongings of the new US Embassy Naval Attache, one David Brown ... his predecessor left Venezuela after accusations of spying were raised against him.
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49 dead in Comair plane that crashed after taking off from wrong runway
By JEFFREY McMURRAY
Associated Press
August 27, 2006
LEXINGTON, Ky. - A commuter jet was on the wrong runway when it crashed just after takeoff early Sunday and burst into flames, killing 49 people and leaving the lone survivor - a co-pilot - in critical condition, federal investigators said.
Preliminary data from the Comair Flight 5191's data records and the damage at the scene indicate the plane took off from Blue Grass Airport's shortest runway, a 3,500-foot-long strip not intended for commercial flights, National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersmann said.
"We will be looking into performance data, we will be looking at the weight of the aircraft, we will be looking at speeds, we will pull at that information off and we will be looking at all that," Hersmann said.
The Atlanta-bound plane was largely intact but in flames when rescuers reached it. A police officer burned his arms dragging the only survivor from the cracked cockpit, but the fire kept rescuers from reaching anyone else.
"They were taking off, so I'm sure they had a lot of fuel on board," Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn said. "Most of the injuries are going to be due to fire-related deaths."
The crash was the country's worst domestic airplane accident in nearly five years.
FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency had no indication that terrorism was involved in any way. Both flight recorders, which should help investigators determine what went wrong, were sent to Washington, D.C., for analysis.
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Texas Immigration Proposal Draws Protest
By ANABELLE GARAY
Associated Press
Aug 26, 2006
FARMERS BRANCH, Texas - Clutching American flags and signs that read "America was formed by immigrants," more than 300 protesters on Saturday denounced a city proposal that would prohibit landlords from leasing to illegal immigrants.
About two dozen counter-protesters staged a demonstration nearby.
The proposal by City Councilman Tim O'Hare would also make it tougher for illegal immigrants to work in the Dallas suburb, penalize businesses that employ undocumented workers and make English the city's official language.
Protesters branded the proposal a racist initiative that would single out Hispanics, who make up about 37 percent of the city's population, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures from 2000.
"If we're of a certain color, they're going to point their finger at us," said Jose Gomez, a 42-year-old naturalized citizen.
Organizers of the rally emphasized that immigrants, regardless of status, pay taxes when they shop, rent or buy a home in Farmers Branch.
Families with children and college students rallied in temperatures topping 100 degrees.
O'Hare, who was not seen at the rally, and a city spokesman did not immediately return calls to The Associated Press.
Counter-protesters carried signs reading "I place all persons in the USA illegally under citizen's arrest" and "Como se Dice illegal en Espanol?", which translates to "How do you say illegal in Spanish?"
Supporters of the proposal said the measure would address problems with health care, education and crime in the city.
"They're taking our jobs, our homes," said Debbie Rawlins, 48. "There's unemployment partly because of the Hispanics. The lady that took my job is Hispanic and she's bilingual."
City Council members heard from constituents earlier this week on whether Farmers Branch should approve the measures, but no decision was made.
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Not a Clue
by Charley Reese
LewRockwell.com
August 27, 2006
To get a better idea of what ails the world, let's use our imagination to transport ourselves into outer space. From there, we can look down on Earth not as an American or as a European, but as a disinterested alien.
We see a collection of sovereign nations - some large, some small, some powerful and some weak. We also see that some of the powerful nations do not respect the sovereignty of some of the others.
For example, by what right do the United States and the Europeans tell Iran it cannot enrich uranium? Other nations enrich uranium. Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and it grants the right to enrich uranium. Where does the United States get off telling the Iranians they can't do it?
Oh, the U.S. claims Iran wants to build nuclear weapons. Well, first and foremost, Iran denies that, and there is no proof to the contrary. But suppose Iran does want to build nuclear weapons. Why shouldn't it? We have nukes. The British, the French, the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians, the Pakistanis and the Israelis all have nuclear weapons. Why shouldn't Iran? For that matter, what right does anyone have to tell the North Koreans they can't have nukes and can't even test their missiles? Everybody else tests the missiles.
What you see is that the United States and some of the European states are still trying to run the world to suit them, even though formal colonialism has been a long time dead. President Bush seems to think that he has the right to engineer regime change in any country he chooses. The U.S. record on regime change is poor. One reason so many Iranians hate us is because we engineered a regime change in the 1950s that threw out their elected nationalist leader and replaced him with the Shah. A lot of Iranians were executed, tortured and imprisoned before the Iranian people could finally get rid of him.
What right do we have to tell Syria and Iran that they can't supply arms to Hezbollah? We supply arms to Israel. In fact, we are about the world's largest arms peddler. Mr. Bush calls Hezbollah a terrorist organization. The government of Lebanon and the European Union do not. Just because an American politician sticks a label on a group of people doesn't mean those people lose all of their rights.
I don't think the world will know peace until all the nations of the world agree to respect each other's sovereignty. That means no sanctions, no externally arranged coups, no invasions, no refusal to talk. We would do much better if we talked to the Iranians and North Koreans and, while acknowledging their right to nuclear technology, offered incentives - including a security guarantee - not to develop it. You know, of course, that the U.S. refuses to talk to the Iranians and the North Koreans and has refused their requests for security guarantees. Countries don't like to be "dissed" any more than individuals do.
I've been accused by some right-wingers of not liking America. As usual, they have it wrong. I love America, but I don't like this present administration one bit. I think the Bushies are a dangerous combination of ignorance and arrogance, and that they act in a reckless manner. They ignore what they should pay attention to and pay attention to what they should ignore.
Bush seems intent on pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran. If he persists, he will likely unleash a regional war, the consequences of which will be catastrophic.
What have you gotten for your $300 billion, your 2,600 dead, your 8,000 seriously maimed in Bush's ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Stability? Don't make me laugh. Security? America is hated in more parts of the world today than at any time in its history. What has Bush done right?
Before you resurrect the slogan "Stay the course," remember that one of the definitions of insanity is to keep doing the wrong thing. Let's face it, folks. We elected ourselves a disaster. Bush didn't understand the world when he was elected; he doesn't now; and when he goes home to Crawford, Texas, he will still be puzzled by it all.
Charley Reese [send him mail] has been a journalist for 49 years.
© 2006 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
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Hot and Cold
Russian scientist predicts global cooling
UPI
25 August 06
MOSCOW -- A Russian scientist predicts a period of global cooling in coming decades, followed by a warmer interval.
Khabibullo Abdusamatov expects a repeat of the period known as the Little Ice Age. During the 16th century, the Baltic Sea froze so hard that hotels were built on the ice for people crossing the sea in coaches.
The Little Ice Age is believed to have contributed to the end of the Norse colony in Greenland, which was founded during an interval of much warmer weather.
Abdusamatov and his colleagues at the Russian Academy of Sciences astronomical observatory said the prediction is based on measurement of solar emissions, Novosti reported. They expect the cooling to begin within a few years and to reach its peak between 2055 and 2060.
"The Kyoto initiatives to save the planet from the greenhouse effect should be put off until better times," he said. "The global temperature maximum has been reached on Earth, and Earth's global temperature will decline to a climatic minimum even without the Kyoto protocol."
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Global warming boost to glaciers
BBC
24 August 06
Global warming could be causing some glaciers to grow, a new study claims.
Researchers at Newcastle University looked at temperature trends in the western Himalaya over the past century.
They found warmer winters and cooler summers, combined with more snow and rainfall, could be causing some mountain glaciers to increase in size.
The findings are significant, because temperature and rain and snow trends in the area impact on water availability for more than 50 million Pakistanis.
Researchers focussed on the Upper Indus Basin, which is the mainstay of the national economy of Pakistan and has 170,000 sq km of irrigated land - an area two-thirds the size of the UK.
Dr Hayley Fowler, senior research associate at the university's school of civil engineering and geosciences, said: "Very little research of this kind has been carried out in this region and yet the findings from our work have implications for the water supplies of around 50 million people in Pakistan."
Water resources
Co-researcher David Archer added: "Our research is concerned with both climate change and the climate variability that is happening from year to year.
"Information on variability is more important for the management of the water system as it will help to forecast the inflow into reservoirs and allow for better planning of water use for irrigation.
"However, information on the impacts of climatic change is important for the longer term management of water resources and to help us understand what is happening in the mountains under global warming."
The findings are published in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate.
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One-third of China hurt by acid rain
By JOE McDONALD
Associated Press
Sun Aug 27, 2006
BEIJING - One-third of China's vast landmass is suffering from acid rain caused by its rapid industrial growth, while local leaders are failing to enforce environmental standards for fear of hurting business, said officials quoted Sunday by state media.
China's factories spewed out 25.5 million tons of sulphur dioxide - the chemical that causes acid rain - last year, up 27 percent from 2000, said Sheng Huaren, deputy chairman of the Standing Committee of parliament.
Sheng released a report Saturday that found pollution from factories and power plants was rising by 9 percent a year - an embarrassment for a government that promised this year to clean up China's air. The report said sulphur dioxide emissions were double safe levels.
"Increased sulphur dioxide emissions meant that one-third of China's territory was affected by acid rain, posing a major threat to soil and food safety," Sheng said, according to the Xinhua News Agency and newspapers.
Environmental protection has become a prominent issue in China following a string of industrial accidents that poisoned major rivers, forcing several cities to shut down their water systems.
Chinese cities are among the world's smoggiest following two decades of breakneck economic growth. The government says all of China's major rivers are dangerously polluted. Millions of people lack access to clean drinking water.
On Sunday, local officials said a tanker carrying 25 tons of caustic soda had fallen Friday into the Xuefeng River in China's northwest, poisoning a drinking water source for 100,000 people.
One person was killed in the accident, Xinhua said. Officials said the water quality had returned to normal by Sunday after the government dumped 10 tons of hydrochloric acid into the water to neutralize the caustic soda, also known as sodium hydroxide.
Premier Wen Jiabao publicly criticized officials in April after the government revealed it failed to meet most of its targets over the past five years in environmental areas ranging from containing pollution to stopping the loss of farmland. Wen said officials would be held personally responsible for future environmental disasters.
The government pledged this year to cut air pollution emissions by 10 percent by 2010.
Beijing plans to spend $175 billion on environmental protection over the next five years, up 60 percent from the previous five years, according to Mao Rupai, chairman of the parliament's environmental committee.
Lawmakers are considering raising fines for environmental violators in order to encourage companies to spend more on clean technology, Mao said at a news conference on Saturday.
Mao complained that local officials fail to enforce standards for fear of hurting businesses. He said some areas comply with as few as 30 percent of environmental regulations.
"It is true that in some areas, local governments focus more on economic development than on the environment," he said. "In the future, officials will be judged not just by their economic growth but by environmental protection as well."
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Bush Declares State of Emergency in Fla.
Monday August 28, 2006
Associated Press Writer
KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) - A hurricane watch was issued Sunday for the Florida Keys and Gov. Jeb Bush ordered a state of emergency in anticipation of Tropical Storm Ernesto.
Ernesto, which had strengthened into a hurricane for about 10 hours, weakened back into a tropical storm by late afternoon with top sustained winds of 60 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.
Still, the Miami-based hurricane center said the storm could reclaim its hurricane status before reaching the southeastern coast of Cuba on Monday morning.
"It certainly looks like it's going to impact a significant portion of Florida before it's all over,'' said Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center.
Florida has been hit by eight hurricanes in the past two years.
Officials in the Keys told tourists to postpone any immediate plans to travel there and ordered those already in the island chain to leave.
All travel trailers and recreational vehicles were ordered off the islands immediately. Residents were taking notice too: a Home Depot store in Key West was busy Sunday afternoon as customers shopped for generators and other storm-preparation equipment.
"We put up the storm shutters today and we're hitting the grocery store tomorrow,'' said Ben Cassis, who, along with his father-in-law, spent nearly $2,500 for a powerful generator Sunday.
The state of emergency directs counties to open their emergency management offices and activates the National Guard, among other things. Bush canceled a scheduled trip to New York on Monday, choosing to stay in Tallahassee and monitor storm developments.
Ernesto, the first hurricane of the Atlantic season, lashed Haiti and the Dominican Republic on Sunday. The storm was expected to arrive in southern Florida by early Tuesday, the National Hurricane Center said.
Tourists including Jim Rogers, of Lodi, N.J., made preparations Sunday to leave the low-lying Keys, which are connected to each other by just one highway, U.S. 1. Traffic leaving the Keys on the single evacuation route was steady but not heavy Sunday afternoon.
Rogers was part of a group of eight visiting Key Largo and had planned to stay in the Keys until Thursday or Friday. Rogers said the group now might go to Naples, but they were not going home.
"You don't know where to go. You don't know where it's going to blow,'' he said. "You don't want to be in Key West.''
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Strong quake strikes off Taiwan coast
Aug. 27, 2006, 8:48PM
2006 The Associated Press
TAIPEI, Taiwan - A strong earthquake struck off Taiwan's east coast Monday, the Central Weather Bureau said. No damage or injuries were immediately reported.
The magnitude-6.1 quake was centered under the Pacific Ocean 80 miles east of Suao in northeastern Taiwan, the weather bureau said.
Suao is a coastal city about 75 miles southeast of the capital of Taipei. The quake, which struck before dawn, was felt across the island but did not appear to cause major damage because of its distance, the bureau said.
Quakes frequently rattle the island, but most are minor and cause little or no damage. However, a magnitude-7.6 earthquake in central Taiwan in September 1999 killed more than 2,300 people.
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Rains kill scores in India desert
BBC News
Monsoon rains and floods have killed at least 135 people in the western Indian state of Rajasthan, say officials.
Tens of thousands of people have also been displaced by the swirling waters and are now living in relief tents.
Barmer is part of the Thar desert, which receives little rain and is prone to drought.
Stench
Officials say military helicopters have been dropping relief supplies to people stranded on sand dunes.
Naval boats are also being used to ferry people to safer places and deliver food packets and drinking water to those still cut off.
According to reports, the bodies of thousands of cattle can be seen floating in the flood waters and the stench in the area is unbearable.
Some reports say at least 50,000 animals have died.
Officials say more than 40 medical teams are distributing medicines in the affected area as the threat of an epidemic looms large.
The unprecedented floods have been caused by heavy showers over the past week.
Rail link suspended
Experts say the presence of gypsum below the sandy surface in Barmer district is preventing water from being absorbed into the ground, slowing down relief efforts.
A senior official, Lalit Panwar, told the BBC that after discussions with experts, the state government had decided to use powerful pumps to drain out the flood water.
The Munnabao-Khokrapar rail link between India and Pakistan has also been suspended as flood waters have washed away parts of the track.
A scientist in Jodhpur has told the Hindustan Times newspaper that such unusually heavy rainfall has not been recorded in the state for 200 years.
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I want off this rock!
Iran tests submarine-to-surface missile
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press
August 27, 2006
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran tested a new anti-ship missile fired by a submarine during war games Sunday, raising worries it could disrupt vital oil tanker traffic in the Gulf amid its standoff with the West over its suspect nuclear activities.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took a tough tone over the nuclear issue, saying his country's decision to pursue nuclear technology was irreversible.
His comments and the missile test came only days before a Thursday deadline imposed by the United Nations for Tehran to suspend the enrichment of uranium, a process the United States says the Iranians intend to use to build nuclear weapons. Enrichment can produce both reactor fuel and material for a warhead.
The Thaqeb, Farsi for Saturn is Iran's first missile that is fired from underwater and flies above the surface to hit its target, distinguishing it from a torpedo. A brief video showed the missile exiting the water and hitting a target less than a mile away.
While the missile showed some technological advances by Iran, its main importance seemed to be that it gives the country another means for targeting ships, along with the arsenal of torpedoes and other anti-ship missiles it already has.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is only aimed at generating electricity, has refused any immediate suspension and called the deadline illegal, though it says it is open to negotiations.
Ahmadinejad insisted Iran's nuclear program was peaceful and said he saw no reason to give it up.
"The great decision of the Iranian nation for progress and acquiring technology is a definite decision. There is no way back from this path," he said in a speech on national television after giving awards to 14 nuclear officials and scientists.
He said the United States should give up nuclear technology because it could not be trusted with it, having developed and used nuclear weapons.
Israel recently purchased two German-made Dolphin submarines capable of carrying nuclear warheads - clearly aiming to send a message to Tehran that it could strike back. The purchase beefs up Israel's deterrent power, since the subs can remain submerged for longer periods of time than the three nuclear arms-capable submarines already in Israel's fleet.
Israel is believed to have hundreds of warheads, the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East, but it has kept the information secret and refuses to confirm or deny the reports.
The test-firing of the new missile underlines a card Iran can play in the nuclear standoff with the West - the ability to disrupt oil tanker shipments in the Gulf, through which about two-fifths of the world's oil supplies pass.
Iran has given mixed signals over how it would retaliate if the confrontation with the United States escalates. The oil minister and other government officials have said Iran would never attack Gulf tankers - but the interior minister warned in March that all options for retaliation are open and noted Iran's strategic position over Gulf traffic.
The test took place during large-scale military exercises that Iran has been holding since Aug. 19. It was the latest in a series of new naval weapons Iran has unveiled this year to tout what it calls its new technological prowess in arms production.
The Iranian naval commander, Gen. Sajjad Kouchaki, said the Thaqeb could be fired from any vessel, not just submarines. He called it a "long-range" missile but did not specify how far it could fly, and it did not appear capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
He also said the Thaqeb could escape enemy radar - a claim Iran made about a number of weapons it unveiled during military maneuvers in April. Some outside experts have questioned whether the weapons, tested against Iranian radar, would really be undetectable to more advanced U.S. radar.
During the April maneuvers, Iran test-fired a new torpedo - the "Hoot," Farsi for "whale" - which is capable of moving at some 223 mph, up to four times faster than a normal torpedo. It also unveiled a new land-to-sea missile, the Kowsar, and a high-speed missile boat that skims above the water and is undetectable by radar.
Iran is known to have several submarines. It bought at least two diesel subs from Russia in the 1990s and has produced an unknown number of locally made ones. Last year, it announced it was building a new class of sub called the Ghadir, which it said was a stealth craft and could fire missiles and torpedoes. Nothing more is known about the craft.
Iran says the weaponry is intended to defend itself against the possibility of a U.S. attack. It has also expressed worry about Israeli threats to destroy its nuclear facilities.
Iran already is equipped with the Shahab-3 missile, which means "shooting star" in Farsi, and is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. An upgraded version of the ballistic missile has a range of more than 1,200 miles and can reach Israel and U.S. forces in the Middle East.
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Britain 'blocking peace deal' for Uganda
Xan Rice in Palabek Kal
Monday August 28, 2006
The Guardian
- UK backs court demand to prosecute rebel leaders
- Kampala seeks to end civil war by granting amnesty
Britain was last night accused of hindering attempts to end the 20-year civil war in northern Uganda by insisting that leading rebels be arrested and tried for war crimes.
In a bid to secure peace Uganda has promised full amnesty to senior Lord's Resistance Army commanders, whose brutal insurgency has caused tens of thousands of deaths and displaced more than 1.4 million people. The controversial offer helped kickstart negotiations in Juba, south Sudan. On Saturday President Yoweri Museveni's government and LRA representatives signed a truce hailed as a major step towards a permanent ceasefire.
But any conclusive deal is threatened by the continued absence from the talks of the LRA leader Joseph Kony and three of his top commanders. They fear arrest under warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has indicted them on charges including murder, rape and abducting and conscripting 25,000 children. Britain is strongly supporting the ICC's refusal to withdraw the warrants.
"It's clear that these warrants are impacting the chances of peace," said Zachary Lomo, the former head of the Refugee Law Project at Makerere University in Kampala, who called Britain's stance "unhelpful".
"This is a choice between letting more than a million people go home or maintaining the status quo in the hope of staging a largely symbolic trial."
His comments reflect the broad sentiment in northern Uganda, where the conflict has emptied most of the fertile countryside and left nearly 2 million people reliant on food aid.
Norbert Mao, a former MP and current chairman of Gulu district council, one of the worst affected areas, said Britain should encourage the withdrawal of the arrest warrants and drop its proposed UN security council resolution authorising its peacekeepers to hunt the rebel leaders. "We place a higher premium of peace and security than the sort of adversarial justice that the ICC proposes here," he said.
But the court's backers say that lifting the warrants, which were originally requested by the Ugandan government, would set a dangerous precedent.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We are absolutely clear that the warrants should be effected and the countries holding the indictees must transfer them to the ICC."
But analysts such as Mr Lomo say that the involvement of a self-interested mediator such as south Sudan, which wants the rebels off its soil, means the talks offer the best chance for peace since Kony took to the bush in 1986.
Palabek Kal houses 22,000 displaced people, but some are already starting to dream about going home. For Dick Akaye, 23, that would mean just an hour's walk to his abandoned village. After his father was murdered by LRA rebels in 1997, he fled here with his mother, who died soon after. A strong rebel presence around the camps means he has never been back to his village. "I just want to go home and farm. Life here is so difficult: there is disease, not enough food and no work."
A glance around the camps proves his point. Many of the children have distended bellies and patchy hair. It is not yet midday but yellow-eyed men sit around drinking homebrew. Society has clearly been ripped apart - and people are willing to forgive the rebels just for a chance of stitching it back together.
"We are traumatised and tired," said John Okema, the camp commandant, who said most people supported amnesty for Mr Kony. "If there is a chance at peace we must take it."
The agreement signed on Saturday gives LRA troops - many of them abducted as children - three weeks to assemble at designated points in south Sudan. After disarming, they will be given food and safe passage back to northern Uganda.
Backstory
Joseph Kony took to the bush in northern Uganda in 1986. A self-styled prophet, he established the Lord's Resistance Army with the aim of "spiritually cleansing" his Acholi people and taking revenge against the government. But attacks focused on civilians. The LRA swelled its ranks by abducting children from villages, and turning them into sex slaves, porters and soldiers. Suspected government sympathisers had their ears and lips hacked off.
Attempts by the Ugandan army to rout the rebels failed, as did numerous peace negotiations. Civilians were herded into camps by the government, while tens of thousands of children - "night commuters" - sought the safety of town centres to avoid abduction. For many years the LRA received a steady supply of weapons and support from the Sudanese government. The LRA has been forced to shift its main base to Garamba national park in Congo. It remains a potent fighting force of several thousand men.
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'Bin brother' fear over wheelie tag
Press Association
Sunday August 27, 2006
Half a million household wheelie bins have been secretly tagged with hidden electronic "bugs", it has been reported.
The tiny devices identify each bin so that records can be kept on the waste disposal habits of its owners, and up to 500,000 bins in council districts across England are thought to have already been fitted.
The move has raised fears that some local authorities may be planning to charge residents for the weight of rubbish they collect.
The devices carry a unique serial number which can be scanned when the bin is tipped into a refuse lorry.
Some lorries carry weighing equipment which collect how much rubbish is collected and link the information to the appropriate bin.
Areas where the devices are said to be in use include Crewe, Nantwich, Peterborough, South Norfolk, Woking and Devizes in Wiltshire.
German firm Deister, which has a base in Spalding, Lincolnshire, is one of several firms selling the technology.
A similar controversy also emerged in Ryde, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, earlier this week.
Residents accused the local authority of acting like "Big Brother" after workers suddenly began fitting the devices to the rims of an estimated 90,000 bins.
The devices use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology which have also been used to identify objects as diverse as animals, vehicles and expensive goods.
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10 Britons injured in Turkish bomb attacks
Lee Glendinning
Monday August 28, 2006
The Guardian
At least 22 people, including 10 Britons, were injured in four explosions across Turkey late last night, three at the popular coastal resort of Marmaris and one in the commercial capital Istanbul.
Three blasts happened in Marmaris, on the Turkish south-west coast, as many holidaymakers were milling around the streets enjoying local bars. The bomb in Istanbul was detonated in the city's commercial district.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said last night all 10 British nationals were hospitalised, four of them with serious injuries. "We have no further details in terms on the cause of the explosions or the location," it added.
It was not thought any of the Britons had suffered life-threatening injuries.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the blasts. Kurdish separatists, leftwing groups and Islamists have carried out bomb attacks in Turkey in the past - most recently in Adana, southern Turkey, where 13 people were injured, including five police officers, in a double bomb blast.
Witnesses in Marmaris said that at least one of the explosions appeared to be on one of the dolmuses - small vans that act as short-range buses in Turkey. One of the explosions was described as being near a fast food outlet and another near an airline office.
Danielle Pearson, a British woman holidaying in Marmaris, said the bomb she heard went off around 2am local time. "We were down the front in one of the bars and a bus exploded outside the local McDonalds," she told Sky News. "There were ambulances and police cars everywhere." Ms Pearson said the area had been busy with many tourists out enjoying themselves.
"The bomb just sounded like a gunshot," she said. "We've seen the remains of what was left ... the traffic was just going everywhere. It was really busy, a lot of people were just running everywhere. It was holiday makers walking about, people enjoying themselves."
Holidaymaker Rob Laughton was dining at Rover's Return restaurant in the centre of Marmaris with his wife Susan and friends when they heard a massive explosion. "We just saw the bus and bodies lying on the ground," he said. "We thought, we just don't want to be here. We just ran away."
Mr Laughton, 41, an assistant operations manager for a catering firm, and his wife, 46, had been on holiday in Marmaris for two-and-a-half weeks. The couple from Chiswick, west London, were staying in the Banu Beach hotel 10 minutes away from the centre of the resort where they witnessed the aftermath of the explosion. Mr Laughton said they had been only about 20 metres away from the bus.
Marmaris, a port city in south-west Turkey on the Mediterranean coast, is a popular resort town for British, west European and Russian tourists as well as Turks. The town, built around mountain slopes is also a major centre for sailing and boating.
Jill Thornton, of Consett, Co Durham, said her son Daniel, 19, had witnessed the aftermath of one of the explosions. He also told her at least one explosion took place on a bus in a busy area in the centre of Marmaris.
Mr Thornton was walking with his girlfriend Laura Stalker, 17, when he saw the explosion. His mother said he told her of reports that a second explosion had taken place on a bus travelling to the nearby fishing village of Icmeler.
"He has seen one of the buses which has blown up, but he had heard that there were three altogether," Mrs Thornton said. "He is only 19 and his girlfriend is only 17. I am panicking. His girlfriend was very upset."
Michael Grant, 39, who has been living in Marmaris for the past two and a half years, told of hearing the blasts. "They were loud, extremely loud, and then there were police and gendarmes and ambulances going to the scene," he said. "What we have heard from people coming from the area of the blasts is that it was supposed to be an attack by the PKK, the Kurdish national party.
The Foreign Office has set up a telephone helpline for concerned relatives on 020 7008 0000.
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Feet washed in apartheid apology
BBC News
A prominent South African clergyman and opponent of apartheid has told how an apartheid-era minister washed his feet in a gesture of contrition.
Rev Frank Chikane survived a murder attempt in the 1980s. He said he was grateful for the gesture made earlier this month by ex-minister Adriaan Vlok.
Other former detainees say Mr Vlok should have apologised personally to all victims of police abuse.
Mr Vlok testified to the post-apartheid truth commission and received amnesty.
Mr Vlok was security minister in the late 1980s, a period when emergency laws granted police sweeping powers of arrest and detention against anti-apartheid activists.
Rev Chikane, former head of the South African Council of Churches, told at the weekend how Mr Vlok had arrived at his office and given him a Bible with the words "I have sinned against the Lord and against you, please forgive me (John 13:15)" on its cover.
"He said 'I take you as a representative and an embodiment of all the other people I should be talking to,'" Rev Chikane said, quoted by the Pretoria News.
"He then asked for water ... he picked up a glass of water, opened his bag, pulled out a bowl, put the water in the bowl, took out the towel, said 'you must allow me to do this' and washed my feet in my office," Rev Chikane said.
Criticism
Mr Chikane, who was head of the South African Council of Churches during the state of emergency of the late 1980s, survived an assassination attempt when clothes impregnated with poison were placed in his suitcase while he was travelling.
Mr Vlok's symbolic apology has drawn some criticism.
Former activist Shirley Gunn, who was detained with her baby son for more than two months, described the foot-washing gesture as "provocative and insensitive".
"I still haven't got the truth out of (Mr Vlok) about what happened to me," Ms Gunn said.
"He can't just wash Frank Chikane's feet and think that that is the end of it ... he needs to apologise to his victims directly."
Current SACC General Secretary Eddie Makue commended Mr Vlok's gesture, but said it was no substitute for full disclosure.
"Many high-ranking members of the former government failed to participate unreservedly in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process," he said, quoted by the South African Press Association.
"As a result, we are left with many unanswered questions concerning responsibility for gross human rights violations during the apartheid years."
Rev Chikane is now director general of the South African president's office.
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Here, Kitty!
Operation Acoustic Kitty
Greg Bjerg
August 22nd, 2006
At the height of the Cold War, the US Central Intelligence Agency was willing to try just about anything to gain an advantage over the dreaded Communists. The agency considered using exploding cigars or seashells to remove Cuban leader Fidel Castro; they employed psychics to attempt "remote viewing" of Russian military secrets; and the CIA even put the Soviets on the business ends of clairvoyant minds to attempt mind-control.
One of the CIA's most bizarre Cold War efforts was Operation Acoustic Kitty.
In declassified documents from the CIA's super-secret Science and Technology Directorate, it was revealed that some Cold-War-era cats were surgically altered to become sophisticated bugging devices. The idea was that the cats would eavesdrop on Soviet conversations from park benches, windowsills and garbage containers. The cat was meant to just stroll up to the sensitive conversations, completely unnoticed. The clandestine cat's electrical internals would then capture and relay the audio to awaiting agents.
The project was funded and work began in 1961. Former CIA officer Victor Marchetti recounts the story of the Acoustic Kitty:
"They slit the cat open, put batteries in him, wired him up. The tail was used as an antenna. They made a monstrosity. They tested him and tested him. They found he would walk off the job when he got hungry, so they put another wire in to override that. Finally, they're ready. They took it out to a park bench and said, "Listen to those two guys. Don't listen to anything else - not the birds, no cat or dog - just those two guys!"
After several surgeries and intensive training, the cyborg cat was ready for its first field test. The CIA drove the cat to a Soviet compound on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, D.C., and let him out of a parked van across the street. The cat ambled into the road, and was struck by a taxi almost immediately. Five years of effort and over $15 million in spending were reduced to roadkill in an instant. Shorty after its demise a CIA operative returned to the accident site and put the cat's remains into a container to prevent the Soviets from getting their paws on the sensitive and expensive listening devices.
Operation Acoustic Kitty was completely abandoned in 1967, and declared an unadulterated failure. Possibly due to their embarrassing nature, the documents describing Acoustic Kitty remain partially censored even today. But one document does praise the Acoustic Kitty team for their efforts:
"The work done on this problem over the years reflects great credit on the personnel who guided it, particularly (censored), whose energy and imagination could be models for scientific pioneers."
While the memo says that the use of trained cats is possible, it also says that "the environmental and security factors in using this technique in a real foreign situation force us to conclude that for our (intelligence) purposes, it would not be practical."
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These men think they're about to change the world
Friday August 25, 2006
The Guardian
Heard the one about the two Irishmen who say they can produce limitless amounts of clean, free energy? Plenty of scientists have - but few are taking them seriously. Steve Boggan investigates
Do you remember that awful feeling as a child on Christmas Day when Santa left you the toy you wanted . . . without any batteries? This feeling comes to me as I meet Sean McCarthy and Richard Walshe, two men making the claim that they are about to change the world - for ever.
These dynamic and personable businessmen from Dublin insist that they have found a way of producing free, clean and limitless energy out of thin air. And they are so confident that they have thrown down the gauntlet to the scientific community in a bid to prove that they have rewritten the laws of physics. Last week, frustrated that they couldn't persuade scientists to take their work seriously, McCarthy, Walshe and the other 28 shareholders of Steorn, a privately owned technology research company, took out a full-page advertisement in the Economist. In it, they called upon scientists to form a 12-member jury to decide whether their free-energy system is real, hoaxed, imagined or incorrectly well-intentioned.
So, as they prepare to demonstrate this wonder of science to me at their modest offices near the Liffey, I feel all the excitement of Christmas Day. There is a test rig with wheels and cogs and four magnets meticulously aligned so as to create the maximum tension between their fields and one other magnet fixed to a point opposite. A motor rotates the wheel bearing the magnets and a computer takes 28,000 measurements a second. The magnets, naturally, act upon one another. And when it is all over, the computer tells us that almost three times the amount of energy has come out of the system as went in. In fact, this piece of equipment is 285% efficient.
That's a lot of "free energy" and, supposedly, a slap in the face for one of physics' most basic laws, the principle of conservation of energy: in an isolated system (the planet, say), energy can be neither created nor destroyed; it can only be converted from one form into another.
"We couldn't believe it at first, either," says McCarthy, chief executive of the company. He is a 40-year-old engineer born in Birmingham but brought up in Dublin. After a couple of decades in the oil industry, McCarthy, Walshe and two others set up Steorn as a technology and intellectual-property development company. "We did difficult things. If someone had an idea that they wanted to make work, we'd work on it with them, help them recruit staff and get them through to their first product."
Then, by chance, came their "discovery". They were called upon by the police to help gain forensic evidence against "skimmers" who cloned the cards of people using ATMs. Subsequently, when banks approached asking how they could prevent such fraud, Steorn advised that the best way was to catch the small number of people committing most of the crime. They came up with a system of 16 tiny CCTV cameras that could guarantee recording the identities of the perpetrators.
"We wanted the cameras to be independently powered, so we tried out small solar and ambient wind generators," says McCarthy. "We wanted to improve the performance of the wind generators - they were only about 60-70% efficient - so we experimented with certain generator configurations and then one day one of our guys [co-founder Mike Daly] came in and said: 'We have a problem. We appear to be getting out more than we're putting in.'"
That was three years ago. Since then, McCarthy says, the company has spent £2.7m developing the technology. Steorn has also gone into partnership with a European micro-generator company to develop prototypes.
In Steorn's theory, fixed magnets could act upon a moving magnet in such a way as to make it a virtual perpetual motion generator. In an electrical appliance - a computer, kettle, mobile phone or toy - that would provide all the power for its lifetime. Of course, free-energy cars, power plants and water-pumping systems could follow. A better world indeed.
But then that Christmas Day feeling kicks in; doubts about the power source. According to McCarthy and Walshe, the marketing manager, there have been no fewer than eight independent validations of their work conducted by electrical engineers and academics "with multiple PhDs" from world-class universities. But none of them will talk to me, even off the record. I am promised a diagram explaining how the system works, but then Steorn holds it back, saying its lawyers are concerned about intellectual property rights. And that European partner, the one with the moving, almost perpetual, prototypes? It won't talk to me either and Steorn has undertaken not to name it.
"It's the Pons-Fleischmann factor," says McCarthy, and he and Walshe look at each other darkly. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann were the last experts to excite the scientific community with free-energy claims when, in 1989, they reported producing a nuclear-fusion reaction at room temperature - what happens in the sun at millions of degrees centigrade. The subsequent controversy resulted in the scientists being pilloried, even though the scientific community remains divided to this day over claims of "low-energy nuclear reactions".
"No one in the scientific community wants to become embroiled in the kind of controversy that Pons and Fleishmann faced," says McCarthy. "With our challenge, we're hoping to provide a respectable public platform for serious evaluation of the technology. Then, perhaps, scientists will feel confident enough to challenge the conventional view."
Certainly, the Steorn team seems genuine and well-intentioned. Walshe says that if the technology is accepted it will be licensed to manufacturers, but given away to electrical and water projects in developing countries. And, until their claims have been assessed by the jury, McCarthy says they won't be accepting any investor offers. So if this is a hoax, it would appear not to be a money-making scheme; Walshe says the Economist ad alone cost £75,000.
"Before we went public, we realised that if we're wrong it could have a very adverse effect on our business, so we're not doing this lightly," says McCarthy. "We expected stick, and we're getting it already. We've had a lot of abusive emails and telephone calls -people telling us to watch our backs, that sort of thing. Someone even published my home address on a website."
The conspiracy theorists are, indeed, having a field day in a forum section set up by the company on its website, www.steorn.com.
"We've been accused of being a publicity stunt for the next Microsoft Xbox gaming system because some of the artwork on our website was similar to theirs," says Walshe. "Some people have said our offices don't exist and one accused us of simply being a call centre in Australia because one of our telephonists has an Australian accent. My favourite is the one that says we are a CIA or oil-industry front intended to discredit research into free and clean energy. In other words, our claims are deliberately false and when they are found out to be, it will be a blow for all free and clean research."
Steorn says it has seven patents pending on its technology, though it is difficult to see what can be patented; magnets already exist and so do the 360 degrees of a circle. Yet it is the positioning of the magnets that seems to be at the heart of this "new" energy. And, as McCarthy points out, the Patent Office rejects inventions that fly in the face of such fundamental principles as, say, the conservation of energy. Nevertheless, as of yesterday, almost 3,000 people claiming to be scientists had expressed an interest in sitting on the Steorn jury. The 12 best will be chosen at the end of the month and then testing will begin.
"We've been advised it could take between a week and 10 years," says McCarthy. "We don't have any doubts. We've conducted meticulous research and we're getting such phenomenal results - up to 400% efficiency - that small glitches and errors in testing can be ruled out. We really believe we've found something that can change the world."
The rest of us can only wait and see. In the meantime, I ask Martin Fleischmann, the cold-fusion scientist, now 79 and retired, what he thought of the Steorn project.
"I am actually a conventional scientist," he says, "but I do accept that the existing [quantum electro-dynamic] paradigm is not adequate. If what these men are saying turns out to be true, that would be proof that the paradigm was inadequate and we would have to come up with some new theory. But I don't think their claims are credible. No, I cannot see how the position of magnetic fields allows one to create energy."
With great charm, Dr Fleischmann wishes the Steorn team luck. And if their "free" energy can light up a developing-world village or the eyes of a child with a toy, then perhaps we all should.
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Ye gods! Ancient volcano could have blasted Atlantis myth
Posted 8/27/2006 10:01 PM ET
Dan Vergano
Little wonder the ancients believed in lightning-bolt-throwing gods and smoking monsters emerging from the underworld. As a new marine geology survey of an ancient volcano in the Aegean Sea reveals, they may have been justifiably cowed.
Not much is left of the Santorini Islands, among Greece's prettiest tourist sites. They encircle a massive volcanic crater, where more than 3,500 years ago one of the largest eruptions in recorded history took place. The blast entombed an ancient town, Akrotiri, and seemingly altered the course of world history. And now the survey indicates that the eruption was even more powerful than once believed.
"The Minoan eruption of the Santorini volcano has remained of great interest to geologists, historians, and archeologists because of its possible impact on the Minoan civilization in Crete," notes the survey in the August 22 Eos journal. The Minoans were major players in the Eastern Mediterranean from roughly 3,000 B.C. to 1550 B.C, when the ancient Greeks, the same guys who went on to besiege Troy, took over. The late Greek archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos in 1939 proposed that the eruption, a scant 70 miles away from Crete, caused the end of the Minoan civilization.
It was some blast, says vulcanologist Haraldur Sigurdsson of the University of Rhode Island, lead author of the Eos study. The total volume of material belched from the eruption was a mile-square pile of dirt stacked nine miles high, making the blast about 120 times more powerful than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, Sigurdsson says. The survey shows the Santorini Islands are surrounded by 530 square miles of volcanic rock on the ocean floor, in places close to the coast up to 260 feet thick.
The rock likely rode across the ocean waves at the time of the eruption, a superheated "pyroclastic" wave of light ash and pumice. In its extent, it exceeded the 1815 Tambora eruption that killed 36,000 in Indonesia, the study concludes, the previous record holder. Ash, pyroclastic flow and tsunami likely combined to similar, deadly effect in the Mediterranean, Sigurdsson says.
"This is extremely exciting news," says an expert on the Late Bronze Age Aegean, Eric Cline, who is currently chairman of the Classics department at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. "If the explosion were so much larger than previously thought, then we may have to look again at the potential impact that it had on Minoan Crete at the time, as well as upon Bronze Age civilizations as far away as Egypt, Turkey, and Mainland Greece."
The undersea survey also shows the nearby undersea volcano, Kolumbo, the largest of 20 volcanic cones around the islands, is still very much alive. An unexpected "widespread hydrothermal vent field was discovered on the floor of the Kolumbo submarine crater," the study says. Using robotic submersibles run by noted Titanic explorer, Robert Ballard, the team peeked 1,500 feet down into Kolumbo.
The floor of the crater is covered with bacterial mats, scattered among the vents, some of them belching 428-degree Fahrenheit steam. Sulfur-rich deposits of lead, iron and precious metals cover the vents.
The key issue for scholars in evaluating the volcano's effect is in resolving a dispute over the exact time of the eruption, Cline says. Some archaeologists, based on pottery and ancient Egyptian inscriptions, put the date at 1500 B.C. Experts in radiocarbon dating put it further back, to at least 1600 B.C. In April, a pair of new radiocarbon reports in Science magazine, one based on leaves and twigs buried in the eruption, overlapped to pin the date to between 1613 to 1627 B.C. Egyptologists such as Manfred Bietak of Austria's University of Vienna told Science they were unimpressed with the new dates however, so the debate continues.
Sigurdsson is convinced that the blast played a big role in the mythology of the ancient Greeks. "In my mind, personally, the mythology born out of this largest eruption must be responsible for the Atlantis legend," he says, referring to the lost continent of story and song. He also compares the event to the ancient poet Hesiod's work, The Theogony, which tells of the world's origins.
"The poem describes the battles between the gods and titans on Mount Olympus in language that nicely describes a volcanic eruption," Sigurdsson says. Stones are thrown, seas boil, smoke belches forth from the earth - all the stormy drama that mythology can muster. "Hesiod's ancestors lived to tell the tale after seeing something incredible happen in the sea and they interpreted a godly myth to explain what they had survived," he suggests.
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Austria kidnap girl mourns captor
BBC News
An Austrian teenager recovering after spending eight years in an underground cell is grieving for her captor.
Natascha Kampusch, 18, said Wolfgang Priklopil was "part of my life, that's why in a certain way I'm mourning him"
He killed himself by jumping in front of a train after her escape last week. It is still unclear why he abducted her as she was on her way to school.
"Give me time until I can tell my story myself," Ms Kampusch said in a statement read by her psychiatrist.
She said she understood the media "curiosity" about her life with the kidnapper, but insisted that she would not answer intimate questions.
She said she and Priklopil had eaten meals and watched television together, and had jointly done the housework.
Priklopil "was not my lord, although he wanted to be - I was just as strong", she added.
She is at a secure location with psychological carers, and police say she has not asked to see her parents again after a brief reunion.
In her statement on Monday, she said she realised "how shocking and worrying" her experience must seem to people.
But she said she did not feel that Priklopil had robbed her of her childhood.
Together they had furnished her room "adequately" soon after he had abducted her, Ms Kampusch said.
She is reported to have wept inconsolably when she was told the man she had to call "master" was dead.
Mother frustrated
Police suspect she may have been suffering from "Stockholm Syndrome" - a condition where some abductees gradually begin to sympathise with their captors.
Her parents, who separated after her abduction, have complained that they have not been told where she is staying.
Her mother Brigitta Sirny has pleaded to be allowed to see her. She asked in a newspaper interview on Sunday: "Why can I not see my child?"
Austrian police officer Gerhard Lang said the police were not banning contact with Ms Kampusch.
He said she had voluntarily gone to a "safe place" to receive psychological care and protection.
Ms Kampusch, said to be pale and to weigh less than she did as a 10-year-old, managed to flee her abductor on Wednesday after he moved away to take a phone call as she vacuumed his car, it has emerged.
Priklopil threw himself under a train within hours of her escape.
Photos released by police show the underground hiding place in his house, in Strasshof village outside Vienna, where he had purportedly kept her.
The pictures show a small, cluttered, windowless room with wash basin, toilet, bed and cupboards and narrow concrete stairs leading up to a trapdoor.
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Pope prepares to embrace theory of intelligent design
John Hooper in Rome
Monday August 28, 2006
The Guardian
Philosophers, scientists and other intellectuals close to Pope Benedict will gather at his summer palace outside Rome this week for intensive discussions that could herald a fundamental shift in the Vatican's view of evolution.
There have been growing signs the Pope is considering aligning his church more closely with the theory of "intelligent design" taught in some US states. Advocates of the theory argue that some features of the universe and nature are so complex that they must have been designed by a higher intelligence. Critics say it is a disguise for creationism.
A prominent anti-evolutionist and Roman Catholic scientist, Dominique Tassot, told the US National Catholic Reporter that this week's meeting was "to give a broader extension to the debate. Even if [the Pope] knows where he wants to go, and I believe he does, it will take time. Most Catholic intellectuals today are convinced that evolution is obviously true because most scientists say so." In 1996, in what was seen as a capitulation to scientific orthodoxy, John Paul II said Darwin's theories were "more than a hypothesis".
Last week, at a conference in Rimini, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Austria revealed that evolution and creation had been chosen as the subjects for this year's meeting of the Pope's Schülerkreis - a group consisting mainly of his former doctoral students that has been gathering annually since the late 1970s. Apart from Cardinal Schönborn, participants at the closed-door meeting will include the president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Peter Schuster; the conservative ethical philosopher Robert Spaemann; and Paul Elbrich, professor of philosophy at Munich University.
Last December, a US court sparked controversy when it ruled that intelligent design should not be taught alongside evolution theory. Cardinal Schönborn said: "The debate of recent months has undoubtedly motivated the Holy Father's choice." But he added that in the 1960s the then Joseph Ratzinger had "underlined emphatically the need to return to the topic of creation".
The Pope also raised the issue in the inaugural sermon of his pontificate, saying: "We are not the accidental product, without meaning, of evolution."
A few months later, Cardinal Schönborn, who is regarded as being close to Benedict, wrote an article for the New York Times backing moves to teach ID. He was attacked by Father George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory. On August 19, Fr Coyne was replaced without explanation. Vatican sources said the Pope's former astronomer, who has cancer, had asked to be replaced.
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If you ain't broke (yet), why fix it?
Fed helped fuel own inflation headache: Hubbard
By Ros Krasny
Reuters
Sat Aug 26, 2006
ACKSON HOLE, Wyoming - The Federal Reserve must act to head off high inflation that is "a present danger" to the U.S. economy, the White House's former top economic adviser said on Saturday, as he blamed the central bank for failing to act aggressively enough so far.
Glenn Hubbard, now dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Business, said the threat of high inflation partly reflects the central bank's leisurely two-year string of "measured" rate increases.
"I do believe policy had been too accommodative for too long. And now the question is, How do we deal with the current situation?" Hubbard told Reuters on the sidelines of the Kansas City Fed's annual Jackson Hole retreat.
Hubbard was chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers from 2001 to 2003. He was mentioned as a candidate to replace Alan Greenspan as Fed chairman, the job ultimately given to Ben Bernanke.
The policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee used 17 consecutive one-quarter percentage point rate hikes between June 2004 and June 2006 to raise benchmark interest rates to the current 5.25 percent from a low of 1 percent.
The U.S. central bank, under Bernanke's leadership since February, "still has enormous credibility with the public," which is helping to keep inflation expectations contained, Hubbard said.
But at this point, with economic growth being cut by a turndown in the housing market and the spillover effects of high energy prices, the Fed's job has become harder, he said.
"It is easier to tighten into strength than it is to tighten into weakness when you had a policy that was that accommodative," Hubbard said.
"It is a very difficult moment for the Fed to achieve both the desired fall in inflation and the soft landing in the real economy at the same time. It's easy to do one or the other; it's a little more difficult to do both."
Hubbard said the U.S. economy faced head winds from housing and energy, but seemed poised for a "soft landing" after years of solid growth.
"I still expect the economy to be able to grow in the 2.5 to possibly the 3 percent range by the time we get into next year," he said.
One risk to that outlook would be weakness in the capital goods sector at a time business spending has been seen as likely to pick up the slack as consumer spending softens, Hubbard said.
Something more certain is there likely will be limited relief from high energy prices, he said, because of strong growth in large emerging economies, decent growth in the United States and other industrial economies, and supply restrictions in many parts of the world.
"It's hard to see a lot of weakness in energy prices over the next year."
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Summer's end may be stormy for stocks
By Jennifer Coogan
Reuters
Sat Aug 26, 2006
NEW YORK - Wall Street's summer comes to a close next week with what could be a toxic mix for stocks: No major earnings, an overload of A-list economic data, a storm headed for the Gulf of Mexico and trading desks staffed with third-string dealers.
August payrolls and minutes from the Fed's last meeting may lead to choppy trading when plenty of market players will be on vacation during what for many is the last week of summer in the United States before schools reopen after the Labor Day holiday on September 4.
"If you think volume stunk this week, wait until you see next week," said Barry Ritholtz, fund manager at Ritholtz Capital Partners in New York.
"Volume has been really light, so whatever activity you see going on in the market, you have to take with a grain of salt. It's kind of like the kids are redecorating the living room and then, when the parents come back, they put it back the way it was."
Looming over the market is a mounting debate among strategists and economists over whether the United States is heading for a gradual economic slowdown, or a full-fledged recession, especially after weaker home sales this week.
"The slowdown in the housing market is bigger than people thought and the market is worried about the knock-off effect of the slowdown in consumer spending," said Kurt Karl, chief U.S. economist at Swiss Re New Markets in New York.
Investors will get a sense of how worried the consumer really is on Tuesday with the release of consumer confidence data, forecast to show a decline this month from July. The University of Michigan will release the final reading of its August consumer sentiment survey on Friday.
A snapshot of both ends of the retail spectrum will come on Thursday, with deep-discount chain Dollar General Corp. and luxury jewelry retailer Tiffany & Co. both set to report earnings.
WAGES AND WEATHER
The week's most widely watched indicator will be the August nonfarm payrolls report, due on Friday. Economists polled by Reuters forecast that 120,000 jobs were added in August, up from 113,000 in July.
With the Federal Reserve remaining vigilant about inflation, the market will be on the alert for any unexpected increase in average hourly earnings. The forecast calls for wages to go up 0.3 percent in August, after July's gain of 0.4 percent, the Reuters poll showed. The August unemployment rate is pegged at 4.7 percent, down from July's 4.8 percent.
Investors may get a sense of where the Fed stands on inflation and growth on Tuesday when minutes from the last
Federal Open Market Committee rate-setting meeting are released.
In addition to wages and inflation, the weather will be on Wall Street's watch list.
Bad weather brewing in the eastern Caribbean Sea could be dubbed Tropical Storm Ernesto later on Friday and could grow into a full-fledged hurricane by next week, forecasters said.
"The ghost of Katrina is arriving right on schedule in the form of the next Caribbean storm. That's going to be on people's minds," said Fred Dickson, market strategist and director of retail research at D.A. Davidson & Co. in Lake Oswego, Oregon. "It will play into oil concerns and whether there will be any interruption to transportation and industry in the Gulf Coast states."
Hurricane warnings could put the shares of insurers, oil producers and refiners in the spotlight next week.
"The good news is that it looks like insurance carriers will be less vulnerable this year" since they were able to raise rates and reduce their exposure to insured properties, Dickson said.
On Friday, both the Dow and the S&P 500 ended the session lower after the storm threatening the Gulf of Mexico sent crude oil prices higher. Traders were reluctant to have positions open over the weekend. The Nasdaq rose slightly.
The blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average ended on Friday at 11,284.05, down 20.41 points, or 0.18 percent. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index finished at 1,295.09, down 0.97 of a point, or 0.07 percent. The Nasdaq Composite Index closed at 2,140.29, up 3.18 points, or 0.15 percent.
For the week, all three major U.S. stock indexes fell. The Dow declined 0.9 percent, while the S&P 500 shed 0.6 percent for the week and the Nasdaq dropped 1.1 percent.
U.S. crude oil for October delivery rose 15 cents to settle on Friday at $72.51 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. For the week, the price of NYMEX October crude was up 0.6 percent.
Iran's dispute with major world powers over its nuclear ambitions will stay on Wall Street's radar screen in the coming week. The deadline is Thursday for a United Nations nuclear watchdog report that will certify whether Iran has stopped uranium enrichment-related activity or not.
"No one's been around as you've seen, the volume has been pretty light, and we're subject to more volatility that will continue into next week as well," said Tim Woolston, portfolio manager at Boston Advisors Inc.
Among the major economic indicators on tap are "preliminary" data, actually a second look, at second-quarter gross domestic product, on Wednesday, followed by August indexes from purchasing managers in the Chicago and New York areas, plus July factory orders -- all due on Thursday.
Those traders and strategists who aren't on the beach will be watching for key inflation data before Thursday's opening bell with the release of July personal income and consumption data. That report will include one of the Fed's favorite inflation measures, the core personal consumption expenditures index, or the core PCE index. It excludes volatile food and energy prices.
The Institute for Supply Management is scheduled to report its August reading on U.S. manufacturing activity on Friday. The ISM index is expected to edge higher. Domestic car and truck sales for August, which are expected to come in at a slower pace than July's sales, also will be out on Friday.
EARNINGS: TECH AND TAX PREP
A handful of earnings reports from technology companies are due next week, including telecommunications equipment makers ADC Telecommunications Inc. and Ciena Corp., as well as business software maker Novell Inc. and optical network equipment maker JDS Uniphase Corp.
H&R Block Inc. is expected to report earnings on Thursday. But the tax preparer already said this week it expects to take a charge for losses related to rising delinquencies by subprime mortgage customers, prompting a downgrade of the stock by UBS on Friday.
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U.S. management-led buyouts soar
By Caroline Humer
Reuters
Sat Aug 26, 2006
NEW YORK - Management-led buyouts are running more than eight times ahead of this time last year, buoyed by blockbuster deals at HCA Inc. and Kinder Morgan Inc., and more announcements are expected.
Private equity firms have raised tens of billions of dollars from investors, debt markets are still strong, and many managers see going private as an answer to an undervalued company stock.
"The money that the private equity funds have raised, have available and want to put to work -- that's a very strong driver of LBO (leveraged buyout) activity," said Morton Pierce, a partner at law firm Dewey Ballantine, adding that the ease of borrowing money has helped.
So far this year, $74.7 billion has been announced in U.S. management buyouts compared with $9.2 billion last year, accounting for more than 9 percent of U.S. merger and acquisition deals, up from 1.2 percent in the year earlier period. That growth also outpaces the growth in U.S. private equity and M&A overall, up 151 percent and 25 percent respectively this year.
Among this year's biggest deals are plans for the $21 billion purchase of health care company HCA by its founders as well as private equity funds Bain Capital, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co and Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity.
In addition, the founder of pipeline operator Kinder Morgan, Richard Kinder as well as co-founder Bill Morgan and board members Fayez Sarofim and Mike Morgan, joined with GS Capital Partners, AIG Global Asset Management Holdings, and the Carlyle Group and Riverstone Holdings.
And food service company Aramark Corp. said it to would go private in a $6.3 billion management buyout led by its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Joseph Neubauer as well as GS Capital Partners, CCMP Capital Advisors and J.P. Morgan Partners, Thomas H. Lee Partners and Warburg Pincus LLC.
Pierce said managers typically have a number of incentives to take part in buyouts, including a possible change of control payment.
"Management teams get roughly 10 percent of the ongoing entity so they have the ability to participate in the upside" after the company is private, Pierce said.
That can be easier to do if the company's stock has been underperforming the broader market.
But some critics say these management buyouts can tie the hands of shareholders and board as they face a "my way or the highway" situation; the CEO or the founder might leave if the deal does not go through and there is no guarantee the company will find another buyer.
"It's kind of a difficult position for shareholders to be in," said Chris Young, head of mergers and acquisitions research at ISS. "They are dealing with a counter party that has more negotiating leverage than the typical acquirer."
But, he said, courts look closely at the deals and the companies themselves work hard to treat their shareholders fairly by creating a special committee of the board that hires investment bankers and lawyers to examine the deal.
In addition, the boards typically use a "go-shop" period of one to several months during which they look for potential other buyers.
In HCA's case they have 50 days to shop the company around. Aramark spent more than three months reviewing its management's buyout offer. Kinder Morgan's special committee, which named Morgan Stanley and Blackstone as its advisors in June, has not provided any information about its review process.
WHITHER THE LBO
It would take several changes to reduce the flow of money to management buyouts. The debt markets, which have weathered rising rates, would have to tighten up first, which would make borrowing more difficult and costly.
In addition, if the stock market took off over an extended period of time or if some of the current large deals ended up as disasters, that could slow down deals.
"If, in fact, returns begin to tank because of problems with the acquisitions and so forth, the available additional money could be more limited, that could have an impact at some stage," said Wally Scott, professor of management at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
But so far, indications are few that private equity deals - and by extension management buyouts - are headed for a decline.
While deal makers have been watching the credit markets closely to see if there are signs of a retreat that would hurt the ability to finance large deals, that has not happened yet.
"I'm still hearing that it's a really robust fund-raising market," said David Breach, an M&A lawyer who focuses on private equity, based in the San Francisco office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP.
"I think as long as the finance markets hold up, we are likely to see other large transactions. The number of funds that are capable of doing these large deals has, if anything, expanded," Breach said.
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US housing slump fuels crash fears
Heather Stewart, economics correspondent
Sunday August 27, 2006
The Observer
Foundering American property market could spark global slowdown worse than dotcom collapse
The downturn in the US housing market will force businesses to slash 73,000 jobs a month in the new year and could be more damaging to the world economy than the dotcom crash, economists have warned.
After official figures last week showed that the number of new homes sold in July was 22 per cent lower than a year earlier, while prices were almost flat, fears are mounting that the 'orderly' housing slowdown predicted by the Federal Reserve will become a full-blown crash.
'Things do seem to be getting worse very quickly. Freefall is a strong word, but I think it's the right one to use here,' said Paul Ashworth, chief US economist at Capital Economics.
House prices have been rising at unprecedented double-digit rates in recent years, giving homeowners massive windfalls and supporting a wave of investment in new construction. However, the number of unsold new homes is now at a 10-year high.
Ashworth reckons 30 per cent of all the jobs created since the end of the last recession in 2001 - 1.4 million - have been in sectors related to the housing market boom, from construction to DIY stores. As the boom runs out of steam, Capital calculates that 73,000 jobs a month will be lost.
The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged for the first time in 18 meetings earlier this month, as chairman Ben Bernanke weighed the risks of high inflation and the threat to growth from the long-expected housing market crunch.
Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley, predicts that the property slowdown will shave at least 2 percentage points off GDP growth next year, taking the US perilously close to recession, as construction spending plummets and homeowners lose the cushion of extra wealth that comes from rapid price rises.
'For a wealth-dependent US economy, the bursting of another major asset bubble is likely to be a very big deal,' he said, warning that, with US fiscal and trade imbalances now larger than five years ago, the fallout for the rest of the world could be more devastating than the aftermath of the dotcom boom. 'A bursting of the property bubble poses equally serious risks for America's key trading partners and for the rest of an increasingly integrated global economy,' he added.
Anxieties about the fragile US housing sector come as analysts in the UK debate whether this month's rise in interest rates will dent prices here. Property website Hometrack will warn tomorrow that the so-called 'mini-boom' that has buoyed the market in London over the past few months will be snuffed out by higher mortgage costs.
Fionnuala Earley, group economist at Nationwide, said she believed the market could ride out the rate hike, but expects it to slow going into the new year. 'There are supportive factors: buy-to-let figures are strong, and immigration suggests there's going to be tenant demand, and there are property supply constraints,' she said. 'But if the MPC's raising rates, it's a warning shot, and people are going to think again about whether they should move and whether they should stretch themselves.'
Comment: See last weekend's Signs of the Times podcast with economic insider "john" for more on a possible impending global economic downturn.
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How do you feel?!
13 Cases of Plague Reported in U.S
By MIKE STOBBE
AP Medical Writer
25 August 06
ATLANTA - Thirteen cases of plague including two deaths have been reported in the western United States this year, the highest number of cases in 12 years, health officials said Friday.
Seven cases were reported in New Mexico, three in Colorado, two in California and one in Texas, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Two New Mexicans died _ a 54-year-old woman who grew ill in May and a 43-year-old woman who became sick in July.
On average, about seven people a year are diagnosed with plague, CDC officials said. Fourteen cases were reported in 1994.
It's treatable with antibiotics, but health officials stress the importance of prompt diagnosis to reduce the fatality rate.
Plague is transmitted through the bites of infected fleas, but people also can get it by direct contact with infected rodents, wildlife and pets. Most people become ill one to six days after being infected.
The increase probably stems from human encroachment into areas where infected rodents live, said Hannah Gould, a CDC epidemiologist who investigated some of the cases.
Plague takes three forms _ bubonic, septicemic and pneumonic. A common symptom of bubonic plague is painful swollen lymph nodes in the groin, armpit or neck. Other symptoms include fever, chills, and sometimes headache, vomiting, and diarrhea. Septicemic plague can involve fever, chills, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain.
Eight of the cases this year were bubonic and the other five were septicemic.
Most cases usually occur in May through September, Gould said.
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Outbreak of killer virus 'ignored'
John Aglionby in Rancasalak
Sunday August 27, 2006
The Observer
After bird flu in an Indonesian village goes unchecked for weeks, officials are accused of being unable to cope
If statistics are anything to go by, Umar bin Aup should be dead. Seven weeks ago in his village, Rancasalak on the south-western coast of Java, dozens of hens including some of his family's 14 birds started dying for reasons no one could explain. Then, in early August, after hundreds of fowl had succumbed and at least three people in the area had died in mysterious circumstances, Umar, 16, came down with a fever.
'A day later, I was finding it hard to breathe and then I started vomiting,' he told The Observer as he convalesced at home surrounded by his nine siblings. 'I hadn't been sick for three years so it was a surprise to me.'
It was only after Umar's health had deteriorated for four days that his father, Aup, took him to the nearest health centre, six miles away via bumpy unpaved roads and dirt tracks. After assessing the symptoms, Dr Heri Winarto asked if any birds had been dying in the area.
'On hearing the answer "hundreds", I strongly suspected it was bird flu, particularly since we'd had a similar case from a neighbouring village the day before,' he said. Two days later Umar tested positive for bird flu and was in an isolation room in the nearest hospital, 55 miles away in Garut.
In addition to the three who died and were buried before samples could be taken, two other people from the area tested positive for bird flu. Both have died. At least 10 other people have been treated with suspected bird flu.
That it took at least six weeks as well as the deaths of hundreds of hens and probably three people for the authorities to become aware of a massive bird flu outbreak in their midst demonstrates just how poorly the sprawling archipelago is coping with containing the disease, let alone stamping it out.
'To be honest, we were taken by surprise,' said Memo Hermawan, the deputy head of Garut district, which includes Rancasalak. 'We thought that there would never be an outbreak in such a remote area. Now we know better.'
Public awareness of what to do in an outbreak, particularly in remote areas, is almost non-existent. 'When birds started dying we just threw them in the nearest river or on the rubbish dump,' said Dede Andi, as he watched his 13-year-old son Gilang recover in hospital. 'I still don't really know what bird flu is except that it makes people sick.'
Of 64 confirmed human deaths from bird flu around the world this year, 35 have been in Indonesia. Last month, it overtook Vietnam as the country with the most deaths since the global outbreak began in 2003. But while Vietnam has not recorded a human death for more than 18 months, Indonesia's death toll is rising steadily.
It is likely to continue doing so for many months to come. Surveillance systems integrating animal and human health sectors have been established in only a few dozen of the more than 420 districts around the country.
By the end of the year, with international donor funding, this figure is expected to reach 150.
It is not just the tardiness in developing systems that raises doubts about the Indonesian government's commitment to fighting the disease. The proposed budget for next year is being cut by 15 per cent from this year's £29m. International experts estimate between three and five times that amount is needed if Indonesia is going to gain control of the epidemic by its stated goal of 2008.
'Unfortunately we've got various other issues that need our attention,' said Buyu Krisnamurthi, chief executive of the national bird flu commission. 'Just in the last few months there has been a massive earthquake in Yogyakarta, a tsunami in Pangandaran and there are many other illnesses.
'Bird flu is a global problem that needs global commitment and a global response. If the world is really concerned about bird flu in Indonesia it needs to contribute more.'
Amid the gloom, those involved in combating the disease are clutching at straws of hope. One is that despite 29 of Indonesia's 33 provinces having bird flu outbreaks at epidemic levels in poultry populations and human deaths showing no signs of slowing, the disease has yet to mutate into a form that could cause human-to-human transmission and thus a global pandemic.
But one Jakarta-based international expert warned that considering the level of ignorance in places such as Garut is still so high even after a significant outbreak then the worst-case scenario of a major human pandemic cannot be ruled out.
'We've been lucky here so far and considering everything that's going on - or rather not going on - we're going to have to continue to be lucky for months to come,' he said.
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