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Signs Editorials
Editorial: 20,000 Americans Demonstrate Against Their Government - Mainstream Media Is Silent
PhillyIMC.org
27/11/2006
On the eve of the celebration of Thanksgiving in the United States, and while thousands across the land battled each other for yet another nonsensical and highly expensive toy, I have returned from what I may characterize as one of the most emotionally and spiritually uplifting events
of my life, and of some 42+ years of activism of one sort or another.
I attended the annual School of the Americas rally in Fort Benning, Georgia, with my spiritual sister Susan Lyons. We flew in on Thursday, attended a number of workshops, sometimes together, sometimes separately, acted as part of the legal collective and as legal observers, and then together participated in the solemn procession in front of the gates of this School, which under its modern name of WHINSEC (Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) , continues to train the despots, satraps, torturers and paramilitary assassins of the Western Hemisphere. It is security cooperation, indeed; together, there is a cooperation in wholesale abuses of the human rights, freedoms and the very lives of anyone who threatens the 'security' (read financial wellbeing) of the powers that be. As just one example, 22 Colombians, mostly labor unionists, are assassinated each and every day under the aegis of our "Plan Colombia" by proud graduates of the
School, and with our weapons and our tax dollars.
This particular gathering was attended, on Sunday the 19th of November, by well over 22,000 people, including many young high school and college students, religious people, US American, Canadian and Latin Americans from all walks of life, ages, creeds, national origins, ethnicities. We heard
from survivors of torture, from young and old walking wounded who had lost children, siblings, parents and spouses or significant others; at times, during the procession, as the 'collective' from the stage would chant the name of yet another 20 day old or 20 year old or 97 year old 'desaparecido,' people would drop off the line and crumble to the ground to sob loudly, hands covering their faces, or would continue to weep while they stood as witnesses, and chanted, 'presente.'
It was so necessary to stand as a witness, and I could see why there is such a compulsion to cross the fence, despite the assurance of a minimum of three months of federal hard time for a puny governmental trespass infraction against a government which has committed such numerous and egregious
crimes against humanity. It is as if you would embrace all of these wounded brothers and sisters, and attempt to alleviate their pain, and our pain, and to share with them Donne's words that 'any man's death diminishes me because
I am involved in mankind.'
No man is an island, and 22,000+ of us gathered in a collective of grief,outrage, and a determination to close this school, and to close down the activities of empire, and to finally heal our planet. We are involved in mankind.
Words fail me. If we have not succeeded in closing them down by next November, I too will put my body on the line and say, PRESENTE, and say BASTA, and say, NUNCA MAS.
For now, I am grateful that I spent these days with these heroes of everyday life, that I was able to once again embrace that spirit that alleviates my despair at this modern life of greed and indifference. BASTA, BASTA, NUNCA
MAS. Close down the SOA and Guantánamo and the spirit that maintains them. NUNCA MAS. www.soaw.org.
I returned to the hospitality of yet another spiritual sister, Melissa Elliott, one of the Philadelphia Declare Peace 14, who provided Sue and I with a wonderful dinner and generous breakfast, as well as music and a warm bed, on the eve of our first hearing for civil disobedience as a result of declaring peace on September 25th in front of defeated Senator Santorum's office. Our next hearing date is December 11th, and we hope to see you there at a vigil for peace before or after our hearing. Special thanks as well to Paul Hetznecker, counselor extraordinaire, who has undertaken the defense of our group pro bono publico.
P.S. P.S. A postscript that I would like each of you to consider, as you share with family and friends. For those of us who hail from other places in the Américas, to hear the name of our continents used as a country name is
insulting... another sign of empire. Please consider in future using the term US America rather than America, and the term US Americans for Americans, unless, indeed, you are referring to Americans as those who inhabit our glorious continents.
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Editorial: MSNBC Poll: 94% believe Bush misled (lied to) the nation over Iraq
Signs of the Times
28/11/2006
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Editorial: No One Heard Malachi
Reuters
26/11/2006
 |
| Malachi Ritscher holds up a sign during an antiwar protest in Chicago
in this photo from April 2003. |
He carefully planned the details, mailed a copy of his apartment key to a
friend, created to-do lists for his family. On his Web site, the 52-year-old
experimental musician even penned his obituary.
At 6:30 a.m. on Nov. 3 Ritscher, a frequent anti-war protester,
stood by an off-ramp in downtown Chicago near a statue of a giant flame, set
up a video camera, doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire.
Aglow for the crush of morning commuters, his flaming body was supposed to
be a call to the nation, a symbol of his rage and discontent with the U.S.
war in Iraq.
"Here is the statement I want to make: if I am required to pay for your
barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world. I refuse to finance the mass
murder of innocent civilians, who did nothing to threaten our country," he
wrote in his suicide note. "... If one death can atone for anything, in
any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you,
I am ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country."
There was only one problem: No one was listening.
It took five days for the Cook County medical examiner to identify the charred-beyond-recognition
corpse. Meanwhile, Ritscher's suicide went largely unnoticed. It wasn't until
a reporter for an alternative weekly, the Chicago Reader, pieced the facts
together that word began to spread.
Soon, tributes - and questions - poured in to the paper's blogs.
Was this a man consumed by mental illness? Or was Ritscher a martyr driven
by rage over what he saw as an unjust war?
"This man killed himself in such a painful way, specifically to get our
attention on these things," said Jennifer Diaz, a 28-year-old graduate
student who never met him but has been researching his life. Now, she is organizing
protests and vigils in his name. "I'm not going to sit by and I can't
sit by and let this go unheard."
Ritscher's family disagrees about whether
he had severe mental problems.
In a statement, Ritscher's parents and siblings called him an intellectually
gifted man who suffered from bouts of depression. They stopped short of saying
he'd ever received a clinical diagnosis of mental illness.
"He believed in his actions, however extreme they were," his younger
brother, Paul Ritscher, wrote online. "He believed they could help to
open eyes, ears and hearts and to show everyone that a single man's actions,
by taking such extreme personal responsibility, can perhaps affect change in
the world."
Born in Dickinson, N.D., with the name Mark David, Ritscher dropped out of
high school, married at 17 and divorced 10 years later. Eventually, he would
change his name to match his son's and, coincidentally, a world-famous prophet.
At the end, he worked in building maintenance and was a fixture in Chicago's
experimental music scene.
He described himself as a renaissance man who'd amassed a collection of more
than 2,000 musical recordings from clubs in Chicago. He was a writer, philosopher
and photographer. He was an alcoholic who collected fossils, glass eyes, light
bulbs and snare drums. He paid $25 to become an ordained minister with the
Missionaries of the New Truth and operated a handful of Web sites protesting
the Iraq war.
A member of Mensa who claimed to be able to recite the infinite number Pi
to more than 1,000 decimal places, he titled his obituary "Out of Time." Friends,
who seemed surprised about his death, found themselves searching for answers.
Ritscher's death became even more enigmatic than his life.
Perhaps the most famous self-immolation occurred in 1963, when Buddhist monk
Thich Quang Duc burned himself at a Saigon intersection in protest against
the south Vietnamese regime. Another activist, Kathy Change, lit fire to herself
in 1996 at the University of Pennsylvania to protest the government and the
country's economic system.
Ritscher's death brought back memories for Anita King, a 48-year-old artist
from West Philadelphia who was Change's best friend.
"I think both of them, they just felt like their death could be the last
drop of blood shed," King said. "It was too hard for them. They had
too much of a conscious connection to the struggle to go on in their lives."
In the end, only Ritscher knew the motivations for his suicide. There is little
doubt, though, that he was satisfied with his choice.
"Without fear I go now to God," Ritscher wrote in the last sentence
of his suicide note. "Your future is what you will choose today."
Original
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Editorial: Israel Between Rhetoric And Reality Over Iran
By Abid Mustafa
28 November, 2006
Countercurrents.org
The recent American overtures to induct Iran in any political settlement over Iraq have immensely troubled the Israel. So perturbed has been the government in Tel Aviv that she has mounted a concerted campaign in America to keep alive the notion that Iran poses a grave danger to the US and must be thwarted at any cost. On 12/11/2006 The Jerusalem Post reported that an Israeli Self-Defence Force (IDF) spokesperson told the newspaper that "Only a military strike by the U.S. and its allies will stop Iran obtaining nuclear weapons." While Israeli Defence Minister Ephraim Sneth was more blunt about attacking Iran. He said, "I am not advocating an Israeli pre-emptive military action against Iran and I am aware of its possible repercussions. I consider it a last resort. But even the last resort is sometimes the only resort." The Israeli Prime Minister on his visit to Washington earlier this month said in an interview on NBC's "Today" show. "I know that America will not allow Iran to possess nuclear weapons because this is a danger to the whole Western world."
American think tanks also joined in the foray against Iran. In an opinion editorial piece in the Los Angeles Times, Joshua Muarvchik, resident scholar at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute said, "We must bomb Iran. The path of diplomacy and sanctions has led nowhere. Our options therefore are narrowed to two: we can prepare to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, or we can use force to prevent it. John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a military issues think-tank, said. "They are going to bomb WMD facilities next summer. It would be a limited military action to destroy their WMD capabilities."
Clearly uncertainty has permeated the corridors of power in Washington regarding Iran. On the one hand the Bush administration is prepared to entertain the idea that force against Iran cannot be ruled out. While at the same time the Bush administration is warming to the idea of reaching out to Iran to help US extricate itself from the quagmire in Iraq. The muddled signals stem from the ongoing conflict between the realists who are in ascendancy and the neoconservative who are in bitter retreat. The neoconservatives believe that America's strategic interests in the Middle East are intertwined with Israel's security. Therefore any of Israel's neighbours that pose a danger to Israel's security must be neutralised. This not only involves disarming the so called menacing country, but also dividing the country along ethnic and sectarian lines-a sort of Lebanonisation (term first used by Barnard Lewis the chief patron of the neocon movement) - where new countries curved out from the bloodshed perpetrated by the US Army pledge their allegiance to serve the American Empire. From Israel's perspective, the Muslim populace surrounding her borders must be kept busy in perpetual conflicts manufactured by exploiting ethnic and sectarian tensions, and thereby creating new countries that are weak and incapable of threatening Israel's security- this is commonly known as the Kivunim plan.
The desire to Lebanonise the Middle East came to the fore in US foreign policy with the emergence of the neoconservatives in the Bush administration. Their rise to power neatly fitted with Israeli aspirations and hence their respective interests converged. With the debacle in Iraq, the realists have regained the upperhand and are exerting their influence over all foreign policy matters-included in this revision is Iraq, Palestine and Iran. What this means for Israel's supporters inside the Bush administration is that time is running out for neconservatives likes of Bolton and Abrams and they will soon be replaced with realists. A more calibrated approach that is inclusive of the concerns expressed by America's allies will be adopted.
Thus the belligerent statements emanating from US and Israeli officials regarding Iran should not be interpreted as the manifestations of a hostile US policy towards Iran. Rather, it should be read as the vestige of a discredited neoconservative theory that is in its last throes. This was aptly summed up by US Foreign Secretary Rice who mentioned three reasons why the United States is currently unable to carry out a military operation against Iran: the wish to solve the crisis through peaceful means; concern that a military strike will be ineffective - that it would fail to completely destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities; and the lack of precise intelligence on the targets' locations.
Without US assistance, it is very unlikely that Israel would carry out such strikes. Leaving the military capability aside, there is another major factor that makes its difficult for Israel to contemplate military action against Iran. The Iraq war, the re-occupation of Palestinian territories and Hizbollah's stiff resistance has not made Israel any safer. On the contrary,
these events supported and engineered by the neoconservatives have not only shattered the myth of Israel's invincibility, but also exposed her population to perpetual insecurity.
Abid Mustafa is a political commentator who specialises in Muslim affairs
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Genocide, Always Genocide
Why Israel/Palestine peace treaty won't work
Posted by Evan Derkacz
November 27, 2006.
There are generally three camps on Israel/Palestine.
1. Palestinians are evil suicide bombers.
2. Israel is an evil state.
3. Aye yayay.
The latest Hudna, or peace treaty, between the nations has already been "broken," according to a headline in Ha'aretz: Day into truce, militants in Gaza fire rockets at Israel.
Of course it has. If it weren't so tragic there'd be humor in this game between rightwingers in each country. This game is why incremental peace plans have almost no chance of working. Until many people in each nation are given a palpable sense of change that they're loath to lose, they'll throw their support behind revenge factions.
Or: Both Hamas (and a variety of other militant orgs) and Likkud (and other parties) trade in fear and revenge -- much like the right wing in any nation. Peace treaties threaten their power and encourage violence as a means to retaining power and support. If the populations haven't been given any reason to withdraw their support (like a better standard of living, the withdrawal of troops and onerous and humiliating checkpoints, etc), they're unlikely to oppose revenge, a powerful currency for those who lose hope.
If Israel and Palestine want peace, Israel will have to give up the territories. Just leave. There will be bombings and attacks the very next day. There will be violence for some time, perhaps. But, as the justifications for those bombings is removed in the eyes of the world and as the Palestinian street begins to fear the loss of their newfound opportunity, they'll be the ones to take care of the violence.
Remove the demand and you'll end the supply.
Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.
Comment: What Evan doesn't consider is the idea that the "rockets" and "Palestinian violence" is probably promoted by Israel as a reason to NOT achieve peace. Israel doesn't want peace, it wants Palestine: ALL of it.
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Gaza Strip remains calm as ceasefire enters 3rd day
www.chinaview.cn 2006-11-28 20:28:30
GAZA, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- The Gaza Strip remained calm Tuesday as the ceasefire between the Palestinians and Israel entered its third day.
The calmness, however, came amid Palestinian demands for stopping Israeli actions in the West Bank and extending the fragile truce.
With the calmness prevails in the strip, Palestinian security sources said on Tuesday Rafah border crossing in southern Gaza Strip would be open for two days to allow entry of thousand of people stuck on both sides of the Palestinian-Egyptian terminal.
The crossing has been sealed off before travelers except for occasional openings since June 25 when militant groups captured an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid and dragged him into Gaza, sparking large-scale Israeli offensive.
On Sunday, following months of Israeli military operations, Israel and the Palestinians agreed on a ceasefire under it Israel withdrew forces from Gaza in exchange for stopping home-made rocket attacks against Israel.
Though the ceasefire has gone into effect, more than one Palestinian faction has threatened Gaza ceasefire would collapse if it was not extended to the West Bank.
Israeli troops arrested at least 10 Palestinians in West Bank cities on Tuesday morning, claiming they were wanted by the state of Israel.
Commenting on the situation, Hamas spokesman in Gaza Ismail Radwan said that "any Israeli breach of the partial ceasefire could endanger it."
But Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz has earlier said there was no ceasefire in the West Bank.
Comment: No ceasefire in the West Bank, and you can be certain that if more rockets are fired into Israel from Gaza, whether they do any damage or not, Israel will use that as an excuse to continue the killing there.
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DM: Israel would fiercely respond to violation of truce
www.chinaview.cn 2006-11-28 19:32:58
JERUSALEM, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz on Tuesday warned the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to enforce the cease-fire in Gaza Strip, saying that failure to do so could force a "fierce" Israeli response.
Peretz made the remarks one day after Qassam rockets were fired into Israel despite the truce that went into effect on Sunday.
In the wake of the Qassam rocket attacks launched from northern Gaza Strip Monday afternoon, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has altered its rules of engagement along the Israel-Gaza border, allowing troops to fire at rocket launchers.
Two rockets, the first being fired in over 24 hours, landed in open area in the western Negev Monday afternoon, causing no injuries. A group identifying itself as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the military wing of Fatah, claimed responsibility.
When the cease-fire first went into effect on Sunday, the Israeli forces were strictly forbidden from firing back. But as it became evident that the rocket fire was continuing, albeit on a smaller scale, the IDF changed the rules in order to prevent Israeli civilians from being harmed.
Peretz told the cabinet on Monday that security forces remain on alert. "The terror organizations need to understand that we're not in a time-out," said Peretz. "We are still prepared for various reaction situation on their part."
Peretz said he has instructed the IDF to establish liaison teams to assist PNA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in deploying forces at Qassam-launching sites in an effort to prevent rocket fire.
Israel and the Palestinian factions in Gaza officially began the cease-fire at 6 a.m. Sunday, following an agreement reached between Abbas and the Palestinian factions. Abbas called Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Saturday to inform him of the deal.
Comment: Notice how the Israeli's are always forced into their fierce responses. They convince the world that they really do want peace, but it is just that the Palestinians don't. This excuse coming when the facts state that Israel has a massively equipped army, backed by the United States, and the Palestinians have Qassam rockets that are ancient technology that have done hardly any damage.
But the equivilency is always there...until the press starts reporting on the damage and then any attack on Israel is seen as the horror of horrors while massacre after massacre of innocent Palestinian men, wmomen, and children are passed off as "mistakes" or "errors" on the part of the IDF.
Yeah, some balance.
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Palestinians Skeptical About Israel Holding to Ceasefire
Palestine News Network
28/11/2006
Bethlehem residents consider the new 'ceasefire' fragile to say the least. Hopes were not high from the beginning in the West Bank, as checkpoints, arrests, settlement and Wall activity, and invasions continued. And then the Israeli Central Command, which is the occupying administration in the central West Bank, said that the 'ceasefire' does not include the West Bank.
A gas station worker in Bethlehem, Abu Mustafa Kaid, commented to PNN on Monday that the 'ceasefire' is fragile and frequently violated by Israel. He cited arrests and continuing incursions into Palestinian cities, villages and camps in the West Bank, in addition to killing a young man and woman in the Jenin area.
Under the Israeli terms, killings, provocations of any kind, arrests, raids and incursions do not constitute a breach. Is this a move to further separate the Gaza Strip from the West Bank, or to quickly confiscate more of the West Bank while all eyes are on whether the Palestinian armed resistance in Gaza will respond?
A 60-year-old Bethlehem man, Ahmed Zayed, has asked about a specific time frame for the 'ceasefire,' and whether it is composed of coded items and documentation that Palestinians are not privy to. "We certainly have never been able to take the governments of Israel on their words. Experience with the occupation has time and again taught us this bitter lesson."
Zayed continued to speak with PNN on Monday. "The Israelis must be accountable to international parties present for all discussions on all subjects. It is not permissible that Israel may interpret the situation by taking what it wants and rejecting what is does not want. This has, unfortunately and without exaggeration, always been the Israeli way and it must finally end. The most glaring evidence of this is that Israeli military leaders talk of a truce that does not include the West Bank while the Israelis continue to commit arrests and assassinations, in addition to land confiscation, settlement expansion, and continual Wall building. Every point in those acts violates international law. The West Bank is a glaring example of Israel holding itself above the law while the international community is complicit by not standing up to Israel and its omni-present protector."
Hundreds of people from Bethlehem's Deheisha Refugee Camp walked in a funeral procession, while side-talk was dominated by the irony of a 'ceasefire' that only includes one sector of Palestine divided from all others. Sentiment was strong that there was no reason to once again agree to something that clearly serves the Israelis at the expense of the Palestinians.
Young Imad Abed Rabbo was among the mourners who told PNN, "Israel will seek to violate the agreement as evidenced by what happened in Bethlehem and Beit Sahour this morning when large forces entered and surrounded the houses, arrested people and fired indiscriminately. And this is in addition to the attacks in Jenin; the house to house searches, the arrests, and the usual indiscriminate fire. If you weren't already, it makes you question the intentions of Israel."
Abdul Karim Hammash, also from Deheisha Refugee Camp is a 50-year-old father. His son was sentenced to life in Israeli prison, accused of involvement with the armed resistance wing of Fateh, Al Aqsa Brigades. Armed resistance to occupation is entirely legitimate under international law, further making the term 'ceasefire' less than accurate as there are not two sides at war.
The father said that he hopes the 'ceasefire' is honored and successful. "What is involved here is a chance to get the prisoners out of the jails and have national security controls. That will mean a national unity government and a return of salaries. Unfortunately we are in the position to prove ourselves, instead of the other way around. For that we must be unified in our commitment in order to oblige the Israelis to abide, if and only if, all eyes of the international community are on them."
The International Court of Justice in the Hague did rule that the Wall in the West Bank was illegal, but Israel was not moved and Wall building continued unimpeded save for the Palestinian nonviolent resistance. Of the hundreds of United Nations resolutions and condemnations against Israel, just one in 1982 was honored. The Palestinian calls for international assistance, troops, witnesses, have gone unheeded for years.
University student Noha Abdel Hamid said, "The truce is by popular demand and in effect for a year. It must be preserved by us by abstaining from any violations, provided Israel does not exploit our willingness, which is no truce at all."
Comment: Palestinians have every right to be skeptical of the ceasefire, especially when there is evidence that undercover units of Israeli army intelligence are posing as "Palestinian fighters" and firing Qassam rockets into Israel in order to justify continued Zionist butchery:
Confusion in Palestinan Authority: Who Launched Qassam?
There has been general confusion in the Palestinian Authority after a Qassam rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip into the western Negev. One of the cells of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Fatah's military arm, has taken responsibility for the firing.
However, Abu Ahmad, one of the group's senior officials in the northern Gaza Strip, said to Ynet that he had no knowledge that his people carried out the shooting.
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21 Palestinian Civilians taken prisoner, three njured in morning Israeli army invasion of West Bank
IMEMC & Agencies
28 November 2006
The Israeli army conducted a number of invasions across West Bank cities, towns and villages and took prisoner 21 residents and injured another three on Tuesday morning.
In Siliat Al Harthia town, west of Jenin city in the northern West Bank, the Israeli army invaded on Tuesday at dawn, searched and ransacked a number of houses, forced families out of their homes and interrogated them on the spot, before taking with them 11 prisoners to unknown locations, local sources reported.
Among those arrested were Mohamed Zaiud, 45, and his brothers Yasser, 42, Adnan, 40, Mustafa, 38, and Khalid, 25.
Moreover, in Qabatia town, south of Jenin city, troops attacked the house of Nasser Saba'nah in an attmpt to take him prisoner. Troops surrounded the house and searched it but Saba'nah escaped. Army sources said that he is on what they call the Wanted List.
In Azion village, east of Jenin, Israeli forces leveled two homes and injured two residents on Tuesday morning. Troops and an army bulldozer invaded the village, leveled the houses of Majed Abu Hassan and Ahmad Abu Hassan, claiming that the two houses were built without permits. Soldiers fired sound bombs at the crowds of residents and injured two, medical sources reported.
Also on Tuesday at dawn, more than 15 Israeli army jeeps entered the city of Tulkarem, north of the West Bank, searched and ransacked a number of homes and also attacked and searched a car repair workshop. Soldiers took the owner of the workshop, Jihad Samara, 44, prisoner along with Wa'el Mihdawi, 24, who works in the shop, and Sami Sudok, the night guard of the workshop.
In the southern West Bank, in Al Arob refugee camp near Hebron city, the army took prisoner Isma'el Al Badawi, 17, and injured Mohamed Abu Daiah, 18. Troops opened fire and fired sound bombs during clashed with local school boys at the camp entrance leading to the injury of Abu Daiah after being hit by a sound bomb in the head, medical sources reported. Troops also managed to take Al Badawi prisoner during the clashes. Eyewitnesses said that the local boys started throwing stones at the army after the soldiers fired live rounds and sound bombs at them while going to school.
In the Bethlehem district, south of the West Bank, soldiers invaded the villages of Al Doha, Al Khader, Obadiyah, Taqua and the city of Bethlehem itself and took 6 prisoners on Tuesday morning. Hazim Salah, 28, was taken from Al Khader Village after troops searched his house; he was released from jail only two months ago after serving four years in Israeli administrative detention centers. While in the city of Bethlehem the army attacked residents' homes in Wadi Shaheen neighborhood in the city center, then took Munib Al Khateb to an unknown location.
Moreover, another force entered Obadiyah village to the east of Bethlehem and took Rami Hassasnah, 28, to an unknown location after ransacking his family house.
In the early dawn hours an Israeli jeep convoy stormed the village of Taqua south east of Bethlehem and took Ali Jibril, 31, and Rabi' Jibril, 21, to unknown locations after searching a number of houses in the village, their families reported.
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Israeli forces Murder Palestinian woman as she attempts to save man bleeding on her doorstep
Palestine News Network
28 November 2006
A woman in Jenin gave her life on Monday to save a young man. Israeli forces shot Mahmoud Abdul Razik Baker Nasser in front of Fatima Mahmoud Ahmed Shriem's northern West Bank home. The women of Qabatia Village, just to the south of Jenin, sang for Fatima as they walked in her funeral procession.
Fatima died trying to pull the young man, Mahmoud, to safety. Medical sources in Dr. Khaled Suleiman Memorial Hospital in Jenin said that she died from blood loss, not from the gunshots. Israeli forces kept the area under siege for hours. No one could leave their homes and ambulances could not reach the victims.
Her husband, Mahmoud Hafez, stood still after the mourners carrying his wife's body had taken their rest. He tried to control his tears, but they fell heavily. "Where is the 'calm,' the 'cease-fire,' when they continue to kill in cold blood, leaving bodies to slowly bleed to death."
The incident occurred during an Israeli invasion of the Jenin area village. A number of Israeli soldiers had broken into homes, using them as sniper towers. Members of the armed resistance from Qabatia tried to fend off the invaders, but to no avail.
A leader of the Salah Ed Deen Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad, said that this is one of the ambush tactics the Israelis have been re-employing as of late. "They hide inside a house and then open fire when no one knows they were there in the first place."
Fatima's husband said that his wife heard the sounds of a young man injured at the gate of their home. "She started screaming and rushed to save him. It was clear she was not a member of the armed resistance, so that cannot be the reason the Israelis use to explain this murder."
His words choked and he collapsed after saying, "The Israeli soldiers continued their shooting. They wouldn't stop."
Comment: This is what the psychopathic Zionists mean by "ceasefire": the deliberate murder of Palestinian women.
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Fighting For What?
WATCHDOG NATION - Hating Those Who Hate
by CLETUS NELSON
Today we send out a very interesting and troubling essay published first in the book Everything You Know Is Wrong. Despite its obvious value, we could not find it on Internet and had to scan the book. The pre-9/11 essay proves that the regime of Patriot Act did not land out of blue, but was carefully prepared by ADL and its satellites, the 'anti-hate' organisations. There is a direct link from Waco mass murder to Falluja, from spying on anti-Zionists to spying on everybody, from watchdogs of 1990s to Patriot Act of 2000s; and this is ADL that is behind the link.
Israel Shamir
Racial prejudice, like most social pathologies, is an irrational social force that has dogged our species since the origins of tribal society. While we can study it, observe it, and decry it, the dynamics which compel a man to despise his neighbor seemingly defy the cold logic of scientific inquiry. Yet, in a well-intentioned effort to solve this intractable problem, we now define racism as a political malevolence fomented by a far-reaching conspiracy of cultural terrorists. The chief adherents of this widely accepted theory are a select body of "experts" who earn their livings by interpreting the sinister permutations of the far right. We call them "watchdog groups," and this small minority of powerful anti-racist advocacy groups unwittingly shapes our collective perception of organized racism and anti-government dissent.
Typically, these organizations reside in the upper echelon of the nonprofit public policy milieu, which presents an onerous problemas their financial existence is closely tethered to the rise and fall of ethnic intolerance, one cannot help but question the objectivity of these renowned political soothsayers. Moreover, the marked dislike these modern-day demagogues display toward the subjects of their research further erodes their fayade of scholarly detachment. As political researcher Laird Wilcox remarks, "There is an anti-racism industry entrenched in the United States that has attracted bullying, moralizing fanatics, whose identity and livelihood depend upon growth and expansion of their particular kind of victimization.'"
While their passionate defenders will certainly object to such a charge by citing the threats posed by America's expanding political fringe, such protests fail to address the questionable methodology and often politically motivated criteria used by these media-savvy experts to classify unconventional social and religious movements. As we shall soon see, one needn't stockpile weapons or espouse reactionary beliefs to fall under the watchful eye of these formidable private surveillance networks. Indeed, imputing racist motives to alleged enemies of the State has become a notorious tactic among prominent watchdog groups such as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL), the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and other purveyors of fear. To our detriment, this unchallenged "information disease"2 has unleashed an unprecedented expansion of State power. With this uncomfortable thought in mind, it is imperative that conscientious civil libertarians rethink the real threat pose by the extremists in our midst and closely examine watchdog tactics.
REASSESSING THE FAR RIGHT
Despite their similar agendas, each of these organizations has a different method of promoting its central message. Spokesmen for the Seattle-based Northwest Coalition for Human Dignity (NWCHD) consider themselves experts in youth-related topics and primarily focus on issues ranging from racist skinhead gangs to the controversial "Black Metal" subculture. The SPLC and the Atlanta-based Center for Democratic Renewal (CDR) adeptly play upon Northern stereotypes of the deep South with tabloid-style headlines decrying the allegedly fearsome motives lurking behind rural political movements. Mark Pitcavage, the chief researcher for the Militia Watchdog Website, adopts an intellectual tone and employs a rich academil argot to decry militia conspiracy theories and their supposedly racist subtext. Yet there is one unifying theme that permeates watch dog literature: "Violent "hate groups" are metastasizing at unprecedented levels."
The motive behind this clever marketing strategy isn't difficult to fathom: Combating the dark forces of "hate" has become a perpetual money-making machine. By issuing teeth-chattering prediction of impending racial terror, the more visible anti-racist groups gain access to an endless supply of lucrative foundation grants and stream of donations from terrified constituents. Struggling at the lower end of the watchdog spectrum is the NWCHD, which never theless boasts a yearly budget of some $600,000. Further up the scale is the ADL, whose annual expenditures exceed $30 million. However, for sheer wealth, few can match the SPLC, which enjoy combined assets of over $136 million, with a yearly take of nearly $40 million.
These substantial sums beg an important question: How big a threat is the far right? When viewed objectively, the rising diversity of the nation's population coupled with public intolerance toward racial beliefs is greatly undermining the influence and popularity of organized racism. Even watchdog groups are coming to terms with this uncomfortable (yet reassuring) reality. "We are talking about a tiny number of Americans who are members of hate groups-I mean Infinitesimal," SPLC spokesman Mark Potok conceded in a 1999 Associated Press article.
Potok's assertion is echoed by Wilcox, who edits the wellresearched Guide to the American Right (now in its 24th edition) and Guide to the American Left (now in its 21st edition). Contradicting watchdog claims that hundreds of violent racist groups stalk the American political landscape, the Kansas academic asserts that "in terms of viable groups ie., groups that are objectively significant, are actually functioning and have more than a handful of real members.. .the actual figure is about 50." Out of a national population which now exceeds 280 million, Wilcox estimates that "the Ku Klux Klan are down to about 3,000 people," with an additional 1,500 - 2,000 members of organized fascist groups."
By contrast, the SPLC (which is considered an irrefutable source by the mainstream press) lists over 600 "hate groups" on its Website. Yet when closely scrutinized, this authoritative directory is quite suspect. Little or no information is provided beyond the name of a purported racist group and the city in which it is located. With no contact information or mailing'address, who can verify these individuals or groups even exist? Having closely examined this data, Wilcox asserts that "a large number" of organizations included on the SPLC's list "are either unconfirmed or consist of a single individual.".
In some instances, watchdog groups will even contradict previous data in order to promulgate a culturally constructed "rise" in white nationalism. One such example is a 1999 report issued by the NWCHD entitled "Hate by State." According to the widely publicized study, the state of Oregon is undergoing a "rise" in white nationalist activism substantiated by the presence of some thirteen hate groups. Among the groups listed are "patriot" folk singer Carl Klang (who apparently constitutes a one-man white supremacist group), the avowedly anti-racist Southern Oregon Militia (SaM), a record label, and other questionable entries. However, this alleged proliferation of racist beliefs in a state best known for its bottle-throwing anarchists and tie-dyed hippie subculture is at odds with data from the organization's precursor, the Coalition for Human Dignity (CHD). The CHD issued a similar report in 1990 which documented some three-dozen well-organized "skinhead," "Christian Identity," "Christian Patriot," and "Nazi" groups in the same locale." Based on these numbers-from 36 to thirteen-it would appear that Oregon is witnessing a marked decline in far-right political activism.
Due to the underlying ethical considerations, few reporters would dare cite a study commissioned by the Philip Morris Company for an article discussing the health risks of smoking. Yet when otherwise well-meaning reporters regurgitate this type of tendentious watchdog research, their journalistic efforts are no less compromised. In some cases, the publication of unsubstantiated watchdog misinformation has enduring consequences. A 1996 media blitz conducted by the Center for Democratic Renewal (COR) provides a cautionary tale as to the perils of publicizing watchdog allegations.
ANATOMY OF A HOAX
It was a dramatic tale straight out of a John Grisham screenplay. In the spring of 1996, a team of investigators affiliated with the CDR crisscrossed the South in order to examine a troubling series of church fires. Despite the allegedly malevolent presence of hostile red necks, corrupt small-town sheriffs, and indifferent townspeople, the dedicated researchers pressed on. By summer, the disturbing truth was revealed: Since 1990, scores of African-American churches had been set aflame as part of a racist conspiracy. JoAnn Watson, CDR's president, was unequivocal in denouncing the unspeakable attacks. "This is domestic terrorism," she announced to the press. "It is not an isolated phenomenon. It's an epidemic."" This "epidemic" would later appear some 2,200 times in the popular press and become an operative metaphor for America's growing racial disunity.
With the poll-conscious Clinton White House demanding immediate action, a full-scale task force was mobilized to catch the craven perpetrators behind this "conspiracy." However, when the investigation was completed in 1997, it painted a far different picture than the sinister tableau depicted by the COR. "We have not seen hard evidence to support the theory of a nationwide conspiracy," asserted Assistant Treasury Secretary James E. Johnson." Indeed, it was found that the fires occurred against a "backdrop of widespread arson against houses of religion of all kinds, including white churches, mosques and synagogues."" As skeptical reporters began to delve deeper into the facts, it would soon be revealed that the only "conspiracy" in evidence was hatched by the CDR and its allies.
Michael Fumento, a former attorney with the US Commission on Civil Rights and a notorious debunker of media myths, closely scrutinized the initial CDR report and found the document fraught with selective omissions and factual errors. After discussions with fire officials in several Southern states, Fumento learned that the CDR had "regularly ignored fires set by blacks and those that occurred in the early part of the decade, and labeled fires as arsons that were not - all in an apparent effort to make black church torchings appear to be an escalating phenomenon."'. Citing statistics from the National Fire Protection Association, Fumento noted that in actuality Americans were seeing a radical decline in the number of church arsons, from 1,420 in 1980 to just over 500 in 1994.
As the story unraveled, other publications began to question the CDR's dubious claims. But the damage was done, and the profits were in: The anti-hate group and its affiliate, the National Council of Churches (NCC), secured a multimillion dollar windfall in donations. To this day, many still believe in this malicious urban myth which subsequently unleashed a series of copycat crimes by opportunistic racists. Therein lies the ultimate irony of this disturbing saga: By disseminating this ill-founded claim, the CDR spread terror among black churchgoers, fostered fear and resentment among varying racial groups, and actually contributed to an upsurge in racially-motivated violence toward African-American places of worship. "That which the Ku Klux Klan can no longer do, a group established to fight the Klan has done for them," Fumento observed.
In the aftermath of this obvious hoax, the credibility of the press suffered little. Yet to discerning observers, this unsavory incident revealed the symbiotic relationship watchdog groups enjoy with sympathetic members of the media.
WHEN TRAGEDY STRIKES
The aforementioned sham illustrates the tendency among watchdog groups to divine racist subcurrents behind highly publicized events. Thus, when the Alfred P. Murrah building exploded in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on April 19, 1995, these high-profile nonprofits unleashed a sustained offensive against the nascent citizen militia movement. "We warned Attorney General Janet Reno six months before the Oklahoma City bombing that private militia groups posed a serious threat," bragged SPLC founder Morris Dees in a selfaggrandizing fundraising letter.18 "Our Militia Task Force," Dees continued, "has been able to provide critical information to federal and state agencies investigating the Oklahoma City Bombing."
Few bothered to question the accuracy of this "critical information," especially in light of the fact that militia groups have yet to be implicated in the 1995 blast. Indeed, following one of the most exhaustive investigations in FBI history, federal officials were unable to establish a direct link between citizen militias and the bombing plot. In fact, since 1999, FBI agents across the country have been involved in an innovative effort to build a trusting relationship with patriot and militia groups. "The idea we're pushing is that it's not a crime to be a member of the militia," FBI agent Bill Crowley remarked to the Associated Press." Among the agents taking part in the outreach program is Danny Defenbaugh, the former head of the Oklahoma City investigation. Nevertheless, in the wake of the OKC attack, the SPLC, ADL, and other groups, in concert with the media, waged a heated information war against allegedly racist patriot groups and their sympathizers.
With no shortage of experts available to validate the most lurid claims, reporters were uninterested in anyone willing to depart from their institutional bias against patriot groups. "The militias-whoever the fuck they are...are a ticking time bomb composed of paranoid lunatics," remarked a reporter from the Washington Post seeking an interview with writer and publisher Adam Parfrey after the OKC bombing. When Parfrey offered a more balanced (and less hysterical) assessment of this evolving political phenomenon, his observations fell on deaf ears.
The ensuing anti-militia crusade would crescendo with the passage of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, a repressive statute which relaxed laws governing the use of electronic surveillance, expanded the State's right to investigate politically suspect individuals or organizations, and implemented other Orwellian measures to ferret out alleged domestic terrorists.
In the years since this well-orchestrated campaign to demonize primarily law-abiding constitutional militias, watchdog groups have now come to embrace the federal government's highly dubious "lone wolf" theory, which ascribes responsibility for the mass murder to convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh and his confederate Terry Nichols. However, a substantial body of evidence has surfaced which ties an armed, well-organized hate group known as the Aryan Republican Army (ARA) to the blast. "It is now believed the ARA financed and helped to stage the bombing," reports Andrew Gumbel in a special investigation for the Independent of London." The marked silence emanating from the watchdog camp in regards to this grave development would suggest that their initial preoccupation with uncovering a far-flung rightist conspiracy behind the blast was far from sincere.
Four years later, the Columbine High School mass-shooting provided yet another avenue for watchdog advocates to cynically exploit yet another inexplicable act of violence. Within weeks of the highschool shootings, the NWCHD began placing a racially-charged spin on the highly-publicized murders. Citing "evidence of Hitler worship as a component of their motives," Coalition Research Director Robert Crawford inveighed in an editorial appearing in the Portland Oregonian that both Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris "were known to hate African-Americans and Hispanics and speak adoringly of Hitler."" Crawford further alleged that the two teenage gunmen had been poisoned by "Neo-Nazi" music.
While the murder of African-American student Isaiah Sholes provides a thin veneer of justification for this sweeping (and sensationalistic) version of events, the argument falls apart under close scrutiny. If the Columbine killings were an act of racial terror, why were the vast majority of the victims white, suburban teens? Moreover, even if it is conceded that there was a modicum of racism lurking behind Harris and Klebold's deadly attack on the Colorado school, it would seem their alleged "hate" wasn't limited by the confines of racial identity.
A Time magazine analysis of a series of videotapes made by Klebold and Harris prior to their murderous spree depicts the two teens assailing every racial group on the face of the earth. This sustained verbal bombast displayed an "ecumenical" hatred that often bordered on the self-referential, as the two denigrated various minority groups, along with Christians, whites, and Jews." There is also evidence which indicates that both Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had little interest in racism. One might even argue that Harris possessed the virulent anti-racism notorious among watchdog groups.
"Don't let me catch you making fun of someone just becasue [sic] they are a different color because I will come and break your fucking legs," the deceased shooter wrote on his Webpage prior to the killings." After investigating the adolescent killers, Salon reporter Dave Cullen asserted, "The biggest myths about the tragedy have to do with the question of who Harris and Klebold were really targeting in their rampage. Jocks, African-Americans and Christians have been widely described as their chief targets. Not a scrap of evidence supports that conclusion."" Further imperiling allegations of Nazi inclinations are Dylan Klebold's Jewish background, which would certainly undermine any purported affinity with National Socialism.
Although a prolonged sociological autopsy has severely undercut allegations of racist intent behind this disturbing incident of mass murder, the NWCHD (and later the SPLC) continued to propagate the misguided notion that the perpetrators were part of a highly organized crypto-fascist "Black-Metal" subculture. Yet there is utterly no evidence to prove the two youths were even remotely connected with the "extreme music" scene. In fact, Harris and Klebold enjoyed the German electronic group KMFDM, who consider their creative efforts a "statement against war, oppression, fascism and violence against others."'. Unfortunately, these types of inconvenient facts have never proved an obstacle to watchdog propaganda efforts.
DEFENDERS OF THE REGIME
While these vigilant defenders of "tolerance" will typically concede that racism permeates every stratum of society, rarely do these staunchly pro-law enforcement, pro-government groups ever address instances of State-sanctioned racism. If they are looking for examples of racial injustice, they need only review the tragic effects of the "War on Drugs," which has dealt a crippling blow to minority communities.
According to the Justice Policy Institute, the number of nonviolent offenders in American prisons has exploded due to the escalating Drug War. A recent study reports that the incarceration rate for African Americans has skyrocketed due to "increases in drug sentencing over the past two decades: At a bare minimum, 1.4 million African-America men - over 10 percent of the black male adult population - have lost the right to vote due to their brush with the criminal justice system'. To echo Fumento, even the most diabolical Klansman couldn't have dreamed of a more repressive policy to disproportionately punish minorities!
Obviously, taking on moribund Klan groups or cynically hyping another racist scare offers greater rewards than dealing with uncomfortable topics which threaten the legitimacy of the Beltway power elite. Indeed, in many instances watchdog groups have aided and abetted abuses of State power. The 1993 paramilitary siege of the Mt. Carmel religious complex in Waco, Texas, offers substantial evidence of watchdog complicity.
According to a report from the Committee for Waco Justice, the ADL worked in concert with federal officials by providing "precise documentation" on the Davidian "cult" and "how it operated in the past."" Although we can only speculate as to the nature of this intelligence, the inherent brutality of the initial raid conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and the subsequent tank assault which led to the tragic death of over six-dozen members of a multiracial spiritual community suggest that this questionable information was of an inflammatory nature.
The role of quasi-governmental watchdog groups didn't cease once bloodthirsty ATF agents cravenly raised their flag above the smoldering Mt. Carmel complex. As Washington officials braced for Congressional hearings and the possibility of answering a number of difficult questions regarding the alleged "disappearance" of key pieces of evidence, watchdog groups stepped forward to wholeheartedly endorse the law enforcement debacle.
"I am more concerned with the victims of militia terrorists than with FBI or ATF excesses," SPLC figurehead Morris Dees remarked glibly, while failing to articulate a single instance of militia-sponsored terrorism.'" Nevertheless, SPLC "experts" repeatedly attacked those willing to question the Justice Department's factually untenable (yet media-sanctified) "mass suicide" theory. Mark Pitcavage of Militia Watchdog similarly assailed the allegedly sinister agenda of determined Waco investigators. "These guys have ulterior motives," whined the pro-government activist to Salon magazine." Tragically, few reporters bothered to question the "ulterior motives" of these well-connected Waco apologists who played a crucial role in the ensuing cover-up, which continues to shroud this unprecedented atrocity.
Five years later, the SPLC would wage a similar attack against those who attended the 1999 World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle, Washington. In its quarterly publication, Intelligence Report, the Alabama watchdog group made the stark allegation that the protests were thoroughly infiltrated by the "hard-edged soldiers of Neo-Fascism." Providing utterly no credible evidence to substantiate this charge. the anonymous author asserted that the WTO protests represented a convergence of the far left and far right in America, made possible by the increasing willingness of avowed Nazi and racist groups to co-opt traditional leftist stances on issues such as economic inequality and global trade policy.
These well-calculated attacks display how watchdog groups have long departed from their once progressive beliefs in order to curry favor with the National Security State. The ADL has been at the forefront of this disquieting trend.
COINTELPRO REDUX
It has long been believed that controversial government counterinsurgency operations such as the FBI's COINTELPRO program were disbanded during the brief era of reform which occurred in the wake of the Watergate scandals. While it is true that federal guidelines which curtailed government spying on political groups were adopted in the late 1970s, watchdog groups have allowed law enforcement to effectively sidestep these administrative prohibitions. Indeed, operatives for the ADL have played a key role in spying on suspected political dissidents from across the political spectrum.
"By the mid-1980s, the ADL was swapping files with hundreds of 'official friends,' the organization's euphemism for US law enforcement and intelligence sources," writes Robert I. Friedman in the Village Voice. The organization doesn't limit itself to merely observing and identifying political dissidents-this human rights group frequently uses paid informants to infiltrate and gather information on various political factions.
In one instance during the 1980s, a Michigan ADL operative named James Mitchell Rosenberg penetrated the extreme right and became a leading member of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups. This shadowy agent provocateur even gave racially inflammatory speeches at white nationalist rallies until another organization, People Against Racist Terror (PART), spoke out about his involvement, which "crossed the line from collecting information which is vital and necessary in dealing with violenceprone racists, to acting as an initiator of racist organizing and proponent of racist violence."
Despite the progressive rhetoric which inundates ADL publications, the organization is no less dedicated to monitoring the other end of the political spectrum. The sheer scope of this counterintelligence effort was briefly brought to light in January 1993 when a San Francisco police investigation linked Roy Bullock, a self-admitted ADL spy, to Tom Gerard, an SFPD intelligence officer. Apparently Gerard had provided Bullock with access to confidential police files, and as the story unfolded, it was revealed that the seasoned ADL operative had subsequently compiled files on nearly 10,000 individuals and more than 950 political organizations. To the horror of the West Coast progressive community, it was learned that on behalf of the ADL, Bullock was covertly monitoring the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), and a surfeit of other left-leaning groups.'.
Yet one needn't traffic in the political milieu to gain the attention of police-connected ADL officials. The organization's adversarial and confrontational tactics leave anyone open to charges of race hatred and the possibility of arrest. In the fall of 1994, a Colorado ADL affiliate transformed a seemingly innocent neighborhood dispute into a scorched-earth campaign to jail and ruin a middle-class couple.
The escalating feud, which began over an alleged dog attack, reached its apex when William Quigley drove his car recklessly (and illegally) in a threatening manner toward his neighbor Candice Aronson. In retaliation, Mrs. Aronson and her husband, Mitchell, began recording the Quigleys' cellular phone conversations by listening to a police scanner. In a highly emotional conversation in which Dorothy Quigley vented her frustrations over the dispute, she made a number of grossly insensitive remarks, such as her sadness that the Aronsons hadn't been on a bus "blown up by terrorists."
Although Mrs. Quigley immediately regretted making these statements and, in the same conversation, admitted that her comments were "sick," the Aronsons grew alarmed and took steps to initiate legal proceedings against their neighbors.'. After contacting the ADL that October, the couple was encouraged by League officials to continue taping the phone calls (which is illegal under federal law). In December, the Aronsons filed a federal lawsuit against the Quigleys, and within days, the local District Attorney charged them with several counts of ethnic intimidation. As the controversy spun out of control, an ADL spokesman accused them of "perpetrating the worst anti-Semitic incident in the area since the slaying of Jewish talkshow host Alan Berg."
However, there was little evidence to back up this hyperbole. After closely examining the evidence, Jefferson County D.A. David Thomas sheepishly concluded that the entire episode was "a basic garden-variety neighborhood dispute" and "the ethnic part of it came as an outgrowth, not a cause of it." Indeed, this was far from a onesided affair. Reporter Eric Dexheimer notes that "both families volleyed verbal insults that would make a prison guard blush." Nevertheless, the ill-conceived prosecution conducted "under pressure from the ADL" had dire results for the Quigleys, who were publicly accused of conducting a virulent anti-Semitic campaign against their neighbors:'
Facing an uncertain financial future with their reputations effectively ruined, the Quigleys launched their own legal offensive, which ironically charged the League with defamation and other offenses. In April 2000, a jury agreed, declaring that ADL statements at a news conference and on talk radio were both defamatory and "not substantially true." They awarded the embattled husband and wife a judgement in excess of $10 million."
Although the Quigleys enjoyed their proverbial day in court, how many average citizens could afford to retain counsel in order to defend themselves against such charges? Moreover, it is unlikely that this ephemeral moment of justice will curtail the extralegal surveillance efforts of dossier-compiling watchdog advocates. In fact, the SPLC still brags of its "unique computer database," which is considered the "largest in the United States"" and contains flies on thousands of Americans accused in absentia of possessing political views deemed suspect. According to US News and World Report, on any given day "[f]ourteen researchers with the SPLC's 'Intelligence Project' spend long hours in front of computers, crossfiling data from press reports, hate-group literature, and web sites."
In essence, the SPLC constitutes a "virtual arm of the state.. .acting as an informant, a chronicler, and a clearinghouse for information to be placed at the disposal of federal agencies," remarks anti-war activist Justin Raimondo. While smaller organizations such as the NWCHD may lack the elaborate and sophisticated surveillance apparatus of their wealthier peers, coalition members are not above attending rightist functions in order to take down license plate numbers and "photo document" alleged thought criminals for possible use by law enforcement.47
This disquieting nexus between watchdogs and the State has become so pervasive that spokesmen for other watchdog groups are beginning to register their dissent. "If you claim to be a broadbased human rights group you should not have a backdoor relationship with police," comments John Foster "Chip" Berlet of Political Research Associates (PRA), a Massachusetts think tank which studies right-wing extremism".
A THREAT TO FREEDOM?
You will find almost no reporting on these disturbing issues in the mainstream press. Why? Watchdog groups are extremely aggressive in pressuring members of the media to toe the official line. Indeed, those who dare deviate from scripted watchdog propaganda run the risk of offending this highly intolerant and politically powerful lobby. Nevertheless, remaining silent will only serve to embolden these determined enemies of freedom. While a vast segment of the population may find it difficult to find common cause with militias, gun owners, and even outright racists, history tells us that it is the opinions which many may find objectionable that most deserve protection under the US Constitution. However, so long as the public believes that we are besieged by church-burning "conspiracies," anthrax-wielding militia terrorists, and metastasizing "hate groups," Americans will remain under the iron heel of the watchdog nation.
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Endnotes
1. Wilcox, Laird. The Watchdogs: A Close Look at Anti-Racist 'Watchdog" Groups. Olathe, KS: Editorial Research Services, 1999: 3.
2. The writer's use of this term is taken from Conway and Siegelman's Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change. (Philadelphia & New York: JB Lippincot & Company, 1978: 154.) The condition is described as a "sustained altered state of awareness" resulting in "narrowed or reduced awareness." A major symptom of this intellectually myopic state is the severe impairment of an "individual ability to question" -a cognitive lapse which has become prevalent among watchdog-friendly reporters!
3. 'Northwest Coalition for Human Dignity Cutting Staff: Seattle Gay News On-Line 23 Feb 2001.
4. Op. cit., Wilcox: 26.
5. Better Business Bureau Philanthropic Advisory Service, Charity Reports;Dec 2000 . The SPLC was rebuked by the Bureau for expending a mere 35 percent of its yearly take on actual program expenses.
6. Levinson, Arlene. "Hate Groups, Crimes Said Rare in the US." Associated Press 8 July 1999.-
7. Op cit., Wilcox: 49.
8. McCain, Robert Stacy. "Researcher Says Hate 'Fringe' Isn't as Crowded as Claimed." Washington Times 9 May 2000.
9. Op cit., Wilcox: 49.
10. Northwest Coalition for Human Dignity. "Hate by State." 1999: 5-6.
11. Coalition for Human Dignity. "Organized White Supremacists in Oregon." 1990: B.
12. "Rash of Church Fires Part of Racial Violence." Catholic World News 29 March 1996.
13. Fumento, Michael. "The Great Black Church Burning Hoax." consumeralert.org 9 July 1996.
14. Savage, David. "Probe Finds No Conspiracy in Church Arsons." Los Angeles Times 9 June 1997.
15. Booth, William. "In Church Fires, a Pattern but No Conspiracy." Washington Post 19 June 1996.
16. Op cit., Fumento.
17. Ibid.
18. SPLC fundraising letter dated 17 May 1995.
19. Hull, C. Bryson. "FBI Meets with Militia Groups." Associated Press 12 July 1999.
20. Parfrey, Adam. Cult Rapture. Los Angeles: Feral House, 1995: 346.
21.Gumbel, Andrew. "McVeigh 'Did Not Act Alone in Oklahoma Bombing." Independent (London) 11 May 2001.
22. Crawford, Robert. "Nec-Nazi Background Music to School Massacre." Oregonian (Portland) 13 May 1999.
23. Gibbs, Nancy, and Timothy Roche. "Special ReportlThe Columbine Tapes." Time 20 Dec 1999.
24. Eric Harris' Webpage ["HatePage"].
25. Cullen, Dave. "Inside the Columbine High Investigation." Salon 23 Sept 1999.
26. Bryson, Wyatt. "Columbine High School Massacre-The Web Connection." Rock Hill Herald (South Carolina) Online 21 April 1999.
27. Schiraldi, Vincent, Jason Ziedenberg, and John Irwin, PhD. "America's One Million Non Violent Prisoners." Justice Policy Institute 1999. <>.
28. "Poor Prescription: The Costs of Imprisoning Drug Offenders in the United States." Justice Policy Institute 2000. .
29. Moore, Carol, et al. "The Massacre of the Branch Davidians: A Study of Government Violations of Rights, Excessive Force and Cover-Up." Committee for Waco Justice 28 Jan 1994.
30. Grigg, William Norman. "SPLC's 'Extremist Cash Cow.'" New American 10 June 1996.
31. Elder, Sean. "Great Balls of Fire." Salon 9 Sept 1999.
32. "Neither Left Nor Right." Intelligence Report Winter 2000.
33. Friedman, Robert I. "How the ADL Turned the Notion of Human Rights on Its Head, Spying on Progressives and Funneling Information to Law Enforcement." Village Voice 11 May 1993.
34. Redden, Jim. Snitch Culture. Los Angeles: Feral House, 2001: 79.
35. Op cit., Friedman.
36. Op cit., Wilcox: 32.
37. Lane, George. "Charges of Bigotry Backfire." Denver Post 29 April 2000.
38. Janofsky, Michael. "Spat Leads to Huge a Award Against the Anti-Defamation League." New York Times 13 May 2000.
39.0p cit., Lane. 40. Dexheimer, Eric. "War of the Words: How an Eager DA Transformed a Neighborhood Spat Into a Headline Grabbing Hate Crime." Westword Online 9 August 1995.
40. Link
41. Op cit., Dexheimer.
42. Ibid.
43. Op cit., Lane.
44. SPLC mailing dated 7 Nov 1997.
45. Shapiro, Joseph P. "Hitting Before Hate Strikes." US News & World Report 6 Sept 1999.
46. Raimondo, Justin. "Behind the Headlines." Antiwar.com 3 Sept 1999.
47. Redden, Jim. "Good Guy Spies." Hustler April 1994.
48. Op cit., Shapiro.
Comment on this Article
Ten Fallacies About the Violence in Iraq
By John Tirman
AlterNet
November 28, 2006.
The distortions about the violence in Iraq persist even as the mayhem increases. Here are ten of the worst myths being spread in the media
The escalating violence in Iraq's civil war is now earning considerable attention as we pass yet another milestone -- U.S. occupation there, in two weeks, will exceed the length of the Second World War for America. While the news media have finally started to grapple with the colossal amount of killing, a number of misunderstandings persist. Some are willful deceptions. Let's look at a few of them:
1. The U.S. is a buffer against more violence. This is perhaps the most resilient conjecture that has no basis in fact.
Iraqis themselves do not believe it. In a State Department poll published in September, huge majorities say the U.S. is directly responsible for the violence. The upsurge of bloodshed in Baghdad seems to confirm the Iraqis' view, at least by inference. The much-publicized U.S. effort to bring troops to Baghdad to quell sectarian killing has accompanied a period of increased mortality in the city.
2. The killers do it to influence U.S. politics. This was the mantra of right-wing bloggers and cable blowhards like Bill O'Reilly, who asserted time and again before November 7 that the violence was a "Tet offensive" designed to tarnish Bush and convince Americans to vote for Democrats. This is American solipsism, at which the right wing excels. If anything, the violence has grown since November 7.
English-language sources have more than 1,000 dead since the Bush rejection at the polls. Bill, are the Iraqi fighters now aiming at the Iowa caucuses in '08?
3. The "Lancet" numbers are bogus. Since the only scientific survey of deaths in Iraq was published in The Lancet in early October, the discourse on Iraqi casualties has changed. But many in media and policy circles are still in denial about the scale of mayhem.
Anthony Cordesman, Fred Kaplan, and Michael O'Hanlon, among many others, fail to understand the method of the survey -- widely used and praised by leading epidemiologists -- which concluded that between 400,000 and 700,000 Iraqis have died in the conflict. One knowledegable commentator describes the Lancet survey as "flypaper for innumerates," and the deniers indeed look foolishly innumerate when they state that there was "no way" there could be more than 65,000 or 100,000 deaths. As soon as that bit of ignorance rolled off their lips, the Iraq Health Ministry admitted to 150,000 civilians killed by Sunni insurgents alone, which would be in the Lancet ballpark. Much other evidence suggests the Lancet numbers are about right. (See "The Human cost of the War in Iraq" here; fyi, I commissioned the study. More on this another time.)
4. Syria and Iran are behind the violence. There is no compelling reason why the two neighbors would foment large-scale violence that could spill over to threaten their regimes. Iran is in the driver's seat -- as everyone not blinded by neo-con fantasies knew in advance -- with its Shia cousins in power; Syria has its own regime stability problems and does not need the large influx of refugees or potential jihadis. That both are happy to make life hard for the U.S. is not a secret (call it their Monroe Doctrine). But are they organizing the extreme and destabilizing violence we've seen this year? Doubtful. And, there's very little evidence to support this piece of blame-someone-else.
5. The "Go Big" strategy of the Pentagon could work. The Pentagon apparently is about to forward three options to Bush for a retreat: "Go Big," meaning more troops for a short time, "Go Long," a gradual withdrawal while training Iraqis, and "Go Home," acknowledging defeat and getting out. Go Big is what McCain and Zinni and others are proposing, as if adding 20,000 or 30,000 troops will do the trick. The argument about more troops, which speaks also to the "incompetence dodge" (i.e., that the war wasn't wrong, just badly managed), has one problem: no one can convincing prove that modest increments in troop strength will change the security situation in Iraq (see #1 above). One would need 300,000 or more troops to have a chance of pacifying Iraq, and that is neither politically feasible or logistically possible, and is therefore a nonstarter. So is "Go Big."
6. Foreign fighters, especially jihadis, are fueling the violence. This was largely discredited but is making a comeback as Washington's search for scapegoats intensifies. By most estimates, including the Pentagon's, foreign fighters make up a small fraction of violent actors in Iraq -- perhaps 10 percent overall. (This is based on identifying people arrested as fighters.) Some of the more spectacular attacks have been carried out by al Qaeda or its imitators, but overall the violence is due to three forces: U.S. military, Iraqi Sunni Arab insurgents, and Shia militia, with minor parts played by Kurdish peshmerga in Kirkuk and the foreign bad boys.
7. If we do not defeat the violent actors there, they will follow us here. This is now the sole remaining justification for U.S. involvement in the war. If the numbers about foreign fighters are correct, then it is plainly wrong. The main anatgonists are Iraqis, and they will remain there to fight it out for many years. That does not mean we have not created many "terrorists" who would do us harm, as U.S. intelligence agencies assert, but killing them in Iraq is not a plausible option. It's too difficult; aggressive counterinsurgency creates more fighters the longer we stay and harder we try; and they might not be there.
8. The violence is about Sunni-Shia mutual loathing; a pox on both their houses. This is the emerging "moral clarity" of the right wing, that we gave it our best, we handed the tools of freedom to Iraqis, and they'd rather kill each other. That there was longstanding antagonism, stemming from decades of Sunni Arab domination and repression, is well known. But the truly horrifying scale of violence we see now took many months to brew, and is built on the violence begun by the U.S. military and the lack of economic stability, political participation, etc., that the occupation wrought. Equally as important, sectarian killing found its political justification in the constitution fashioned by U.S. advisers that essentially split the country into three factions, giving them a very solid set of incentives to go to war with each other.
9. The war is an Iraqi affair, and the best we can do now is train them to enforce security. This is the more upbeat version of #8, the "Go Long" strategy that sees training as a panacea. Despite three years of serious attempts, the U.S. training programs are bogged down by the sectarian violence itself, or by incompetence all round. No one who has looked at this carefully believes that training Iraqis is a near-term solution. It's a useful ruse as an exit strategy, blaming the victims for violence and failure.
10. Trust the same people who caused or endorsed the war to tell us what to do next. We know who they are: Bush, Cheney, McCain, and other cronies; the neo-cons now increasingly on the periphery of power but still bleating (Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle, Adelman, Lieberman), the liberal hawks, and the right-wing media (Krauthamer, Fox News, Glenn Beck, phalangist bloggers, et al). They say, "just finish the job." Just finish the job... at a human cost of how many more dead? How many lives ruined? How much more damage to U.S.-Arab relations? How much anti-Muslim racism fomented to justify the killing?
The distortions about the violence in Iraq persist even as the mayhem increases. Yesterday there was a report about 100 widows a day being created in Iraq. A Times of London report from last summer notes that gravediggers in one Baghdad cemetery are handling 200 bodies daily, compared with 60 before the war. The situation of the displaced is becoming a humanitarian crisis that will soon rival the worst African cases; the middle and upper classes have fled, leaving the poor to cope. So the poor from the U.S. go to beat up the poor in Iraq, or stand by helplessly as the Iraqi poor ravage each other.
That is the harsh reality of violence in Iraq. A half million dead. More than two million displaced. No end in sight.
Beware the delusions.
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Robert Gates: A Cold War Bombthrower Becomes Iraq War Saviour
By Robert Parry
Consortium News
November 28, 2006.
Two decades ago, Robert Gates wanted to bomb Nicaragua, considered too extreme even by the Reagan administration. Now Official Washington is treating Gates as the returning Wise Man who will get us out of Iraq.
While in charge of the CIA's analytical division in the mid-1980s, Robert M. Gates made wildly erroneous predictions about the dangers posed by leftist-ruled Nicaragua and espoused policy prescriptions considered too extreme even by the Reagan administration, in one case advocating the U.S. bombing of Nicaragua.
Gates -- now President George W. Bush's nominee to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary -- expressed his alarmist views about Nicaragua and the need to bomb the country's military targets in a secret Dec. 14, 1984, memorandum to then-CIA Director William Casey.
The memo has new relevance today because Gates's private advice to Casey suggests that Gates was either more of an extremist ideologue than many in Washington believe or he was pandering to Casey's personal zealotry.
Either possibility raises questions about Gates's fitness to run the Pentagon at a time when many observers believe it needs strong doses of realism and independence to stand up to both a strong-willed President and influential neoconservative theorists who promoted the invasion of Iraq.
The Iraq War -- now exceeding the length of U.S. participation in World War II -- has been marked by politicized intelligence, over-reliance on force, fear of challenging the insider tough-guy talk, and lack of respect for international law -- all tendencies that Gates has demonstrated in his career.
Cold Warrior
In the 1980s, Gates was a Cold War hardliner prone to exaggerate the Soviet threat, which put him in the good graces of Reagan administration officials. They also rejected the growing evidence of a rapid Soviet decline in order to justify a massive U.S. military build-up and aggressive interventions in Third World conflicts.
Put in charge of the CIA's analytical division, which supposedly is dedicated to objective analysis, Gates instead pleased his boss Casey by taking an over-the-top view of the danger posed by Nicaragua, an impoverished Third World nation then ruled by leftist Sandinista revolutionaries who had ousted right-wing dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979.
Though Gates opens his December 1984 memo with the declaration that "it is time to talk absolutely straight about Nicaragua," he then ignores many relevant facts that get in the way of his thesis about the need to launch air strikes against Sandinista military targets and to overthrow the supposedly "Marxist-Leninist" regime.
For instance, Gates makes no mention of the fact that only a month earlier, the Sandinistas had won an election widely praised for its fairness by European and other international observers. But the Reagan administration had pressured pro-U.S. candidate Arturo Cruz into withdrawing when it became clear he would lose -- and then denounced the election as a "sham."
Without assessing whether the Sandinistas had any real commitment to democracy, Gates adopts the Reagan administration's favored position -- that Nicaragua's elected president Daniel Ortega was, in effect, a Soviet-style dictator.
"The Nicaraguan regime is steadily moving toward consolidation of a Marxist-Leninist government and the establishment of a permanent and well armed ally of the Soviet Union and Cuba on the mainland of the Western Hemisphere," Gates wrote to Casey.
The Gates assessment, however, turned out to be wrong. Rather than building a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship, the Sandinistas competed six years later in a robust presidential election -- even allowing the United States to pour in millions of dollars to help elect Washington's favored candidate, Violeta Chamorro.
The Sandinistas respected the election results, ceding power to Chamorro. The Sandinistas also have competed in subsequent elections with Ortega finally regaining the presidency in the latest election held in November 2006.
Aggressive Intent?
In the 1984 memo, Gates also promotes another right-wing canard of the era -- that Nicaragua's procurement of weapons was proof of its aggressive intentions, not an attempt at national self-defense.
Again, Gates ignores significant facts, including a history starting in 1980 of first the right-wing Argentine junta and then the United States financing and training a brutal counterrevolutionary movement, known as the contras.
By 1984, the contras had earned a reputation for rape, torture, murder and terrorism -- as they ravaged towns especially along Nicaragua's northern border. In 1983-84, the CIA also had used the cover of the contra war to plant mines in Nicaragua's harbors, an operation later condemned by the World Court.
But Gates offers none of this context in his five-page memo to Casey, a strong advocate of the contra cause. The memo makes no serious analytical attempt to gauge whether Nicaragua -- the target of aggression by a nearby superpower, the United States -- might have been trying to build up forces to deter more direct U.S. intervention.
Instead, Gates tells his boss what he wants to hear. "The Soviets and Cubans are turning Nicaragua into an armed camp with military forces far beyond its defensive needs and in a position to intimidate and coerce its neighbors," Gates wrote.
Gate also paints an apocalyptic vision of what might happen if the contras retreated to Honduras. According to Gates, the flight of the contras would touch off a new wave of refugees and destabilize the region.
"These unsettled political and military circumstances in Central America would undoubtedly result in renewed capital flight from Honduras and Guatemala and result in both new hardship and political instability throughout the region," Gates wrote.
This so-called "feet people" theme was another administration rationale for continuing the contra war against Nicaragua. But the truth was that right-wing "death squads" then operating in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras generated far more of a refugee flow than had followed the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua in 1979.
Bombing Is the Answer
After laying out his premises, Gates moves to his conclusion -- that there is no hope the Sandinistas will accept democracy, even if the contras were sustained in the field, and thus there was no choice but to oust the Sandinistas by force. Gates wrote:
It seems to me that the only way that we can prevent disaster in Central America is to acknowledge openly what some have argued privately: that the existence of a Marxist-Leninist regime in Nicaragua closely allied with the Soviet Union and Cuba is unacceptable to the United States and that the United States will do everything in its power short of invasion to put that regime out.
Hopes of causing the regime to reform itself for a more pluralistic government are essentially silly and hopeless. Moreover, few believe that all those weapons and the more to come are only for defense purposes.
Dressing up his recommendations as hardheaded realism, Gates added:
Once you accept that ridding the Continent of this regime is important to our national interest and must be our primary objective, the issue then becomes a stark one. You either acknowledge that you are willing to take all necessary measures (short of military invasion) to bring down that regime or you admit that you do not have the will to do anything about the problem and you make the best deal you can.
Casting aside all fictions, it is the latter course we are on. ... Any negotiated agreement simply will offer a cover for the consolidation of the regime and two or three years from now we will be in considerably worse shape than we are now."
Gates then calls for withdrawing diplomatic recognition of the Nicaraguan government, backing a government-in-exile, imposing an economic embargo on exports and imports "to maximize the economic dislocation of the regime," and launching "air strikes to destroy a considerable portion of Nicaragua's military buildup (focusing particularly on the tanks and the helicopters)."
In the memo, Gates depicts those who would do less as weaklings and fools, including some administration officials who favored focusing on arranging new covert aid to the contras.
"These are hard measures," Gates wrote about his recommendations. "They probably are politically unacceptable. But it is time to stop fooling ourselves about what is going to happen in Central America. Putting our heads in the sand will not prevent the events that I outlined at the beginning of this note. ...
"The fact is that the Western Hemisphere is the sphere of influence of the United States. If we have decided totally to abandon the Monroe Doctrine, if in the 1980's taking strong actions to protect our interests despite the hail of criticism is too difficult, then we ought to save political capital in Washington, acknowledge our helplessness and stop wasting everybody's time."
More than two decades later, as the Senate rushes to confirm Gates as Rumsfeld's successor, neither the Republicans nor Democrats are showing much inclination to review Gates's troubling record.
But the Nicaragua-bombing memo alone should give the senators pause. One could readily imagine Gates playing into George W. Bush's predilections on Iraq by presenting similar dichotomies between doing the wise but "politically unacceptable" thing by escalating the violence or "putting our heads in the sand" to negotiate some cowardly compromise.
What's less clear is whether Gates actually believed his hard-line rhetoric in 1984 or was just parroting what he thought his boss wanted to hear.
Some longtime Gates watchers at the CIA believe Gates is essentially a "chameleon" who adapts to the colorations of whatever political environment he finds himself in. His mild-mannered style also has led powerful mentors to see what they wish to see in him.
So, is Gates a closet ideologue who shares his real views only with like-minded individuals like Casey or is he a skilled apple-polisher who curries favor with those above him by leaving them little presents like the Nicaragua-bombing memo for Casey.
Getting It All Wrong
Another striking aspect of the Nicaragua memo is that it proves what many Gates critics have alleged over the years -- that he tossed aside the principles of objective analysis to position himself as a political/policy advocate.
Gates did that in the 1984 memo even while serving as the official responsible for protecting the integrity of the intelligence product. But Gates not only crossed the red line against entering the world of policy recommendations, he turned out to be wrong in virtually all his dire predictions.
None of his predictions proved true after the Reagan administration rejected Gates's extreme proposals. The Reagan administration did not create a Nicaraguan government-in-exile. Nor did it bomb Nicaragua's military targets. Instead, President Reagan ordered his subordinates to continue arranging financial and military support for the contras, an operation led by White House aide Oliver North.
Later, during George H.W. Bush's presidency, Secretary of State James Baker pushed a strategy of negotiations to resolve the bloody violence raging across Central America. Then, in 1990, the Bush I administration spent millions of dollars to support the Nicaraguan presidential candidacy of Violeta Chamorro against Daniel Ortega.
The Sandinistas permitted the elections to go forward despite the continued contra violence and despite the U.S. intervention in Nicaragua's internal politics. After Chamorro's victory, the Sandinistas accepted the outcome and went into opposition.
Despite Gates's apocalyptic vision, Nicaragua never hardened into a "Marxist-Leninist" dictatorship; it never used its military buildup against neighboring states; it turned out that hoping Nicaragua would become a pluralistic democracy wasn't "silly and hopeless"; Nicaragua even joined in regional peace negotiations that halted the political violence.
As it turned out Gates had favored policies to the right of Ronald Reagan -- and was proven wrong in judgment after judgment after judgment.
Yet now two decades later, after a stint as president of Texas A&M, Gates is returning to Washington as a respected Wise Man who will be trusted to guide the United States out of the bloody debacle in Iraq.
Thankful that George W. Bush's first Defense Secretary is on his way out, the U.S. Senate seems determined to trust in Bush's wisdom in choosing a replacement. The Senate also appears ready to trust in the judgment of Robert M. Gates to make the right decisions about the Iraq War.
Robert Parry's new book is Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq."
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Bush: sectarian violence in Iraq not civil war
www.chinaview.cn 2006-11-28 18:13:24
RIGA, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President George W. Bush said Tuesday in Tallinn, capital of Estonia, that the sectarian violence in Iraq was not civil war but an effort by Al Qaida extremists to disrupt the democratic progress, according to news reaching here.
Speaking at a news conference during a stopover in Estonia before heading to Latvia for a NATO summit, Bush said that the latest bombings in Iraq were part of a nine-month-old pattern of attacks by Al Qaida extremists aimed at fomenting sectarian violence by provoking retaliation.
Referring to Iran's nuclear issue, Bush said that the idea of a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable, urging the country to halt uranium enrichment.
If Iran was to be involved in fostering stability in neighboring Iraq, Bush said, "they ought to be involved in a constructive way."
And while the Iraqi government was free to talk to Iran about helping end the violence, U.S. conditions for direct talks with Tehran remained unchanged, Bush said.
Besides, the U.S. president also urged NATO countries to accept difficult assignments in Afghanistan, adding that members must provide the forces NATO military commanders require.
The NATO summit, at which Afghanistan and NATO's transformation are set to be top agendas, will be held on Nov. 28-29 in the Latvian capital Riga.
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Body of U.S. warplane pilot missing in Iraq
Reuters
28/11/2006
U.S. forces hunted for the body of an F-16 pilot who was killed on Monday when his warplane came down in a Sunni insurgent stronghold northwest of Baghdad.
The body of the pilot, who has not yet been identified, disappeared from the crash site before an American armored column arrived on the scene and sealed off the area.
Film taken by a local journalist shortly after the crash showed the bloodied and clearly dead body of what appeared to be a man in a flight suit wearing a parachute harness lying in a field strewn with the wreckage of the plane.
But the military said a rescue team did not find the body: "The pilot was not there when our forces arrived. At this time we do not have him," U.S. Air Force Captain Nathan Broshear told Reuters, adding that he could not confirm the pilot was dead.,
The U.S. Air Force said in a statement that fighter aircraft had spotted insurgents in the area of the crash site immediately after the warplane came down about 30 km (20 miles) northwest of Baghdad in the volatile Falluja area, where the anti-American Sunni insurgency is strong.
"The single-seat jet was in direct support of extensive Coalition ground combat operations when it crashed in an uninhabited field," it said.
Comment: The bodies of 655,000 Iraqi civilians, at least 300,000 of whom were killed by US troops since March 2003 (the rest killed by US-sponsored death squads), are also "missing" in Iraq. Do you hear much about that?
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Crowd stones Iraq PM as govt calls for calm
Reuters
November 26, 2006
Angry fellow Shi'ites stoned Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's motorcade in a Shi'ite stronghold of Baghdad on Sunday in a display of fury over a devastating car bomb that tore through their area.
Maliki was visiting the Sadr City slum to pay respects to some of the 202 victims of last week's devastating bombing.
"It's all your fault!" one man shouted as, in unprecedented scenes, a hostile crowd began to surge around the premier and then jeered as his armoured convoy edged through the throng away from a mourning ceremony.
The area is a base for the Mehdi Army militia led by Maliki's fellow Shi'ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr.
Though the violence was limited, it was a dramatic demonstration of the popular passions Maliki and his national unity government are trying to calm following Thursday's multiple car bombs in Sadr City -- the worst since the U.S. invasion -- and later revenge attacks.
On Sunday, a car bomb killed at least 6 people and wounded more than 20 in a market just south of Baghdad, police said.
On the third full day of a curfew on the capital, mortar bombs crashed down in various parts of Baghdad and residents reported isolated and mostly unexplained clashes.
The government has said traffic can circulate again from Monday morning but, after a series of high-level meetings, it again appealed for calm.
APPEAL FOR UNITY
"We are counting on you, a great nation," Shi'ite, Sunni and ethnic Kurdish leaders said in a joint statement. "Do not let those who are depriving you of security impinge on your unity.
"They want to drag you all into angry reactions.
"Those whose forefathers have lived together for thousands of years on this land as brothers ... come today so we can write our history, our present and the future, for our children and grandchildren, in forgiveness," the statement continued.
Maliki accused factions in the government itself of fuelling conflict. Three days before he meets President George W. Bush to talk about how to impose stability and start pulling out U.S. troops, he said the violence reflected a "political crisis".
Frustrated by deadlock in the national unity government over the past six months and harsher rhetoric between minority Sunnis and his fellow Shi'ite leaders, he said: "The ones who can stop a further deterioration and the bloodshed are the politicians."
But he added this could happen "only when they agree and all realise that there are no winners and losers in this battle."
"Let's be totally honest -- the security situation is a reflection of political disagreement," he said on television.
Iraqis -- and Maliki's sponsors in Washington -- are frustrated at his failure to improve either security or the economy since being appointed in April as a compromise candidate following months of wrangling within the dominant Shi'ite bloc.
Maliki's aides say he in turn is irritated by uncompromising language, and support for armed groups, among Sunni leaders and Shi'ite allies, like Sadr, on whom he depends for his position.
The U.S. and Iraqi governments have indicated the summit in Jordan will go ahead, despite a demand from Sadr, who wants an immediate U.S. withdrawal, that Maliki boycott the talks.
Comment: The crowd was partially correct; the blame does lie with the Iraq administration, but only because it is doing the bidding of the US and Israeli governments.
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China weighs Iran and Iraq risks for oil prize
By Jon Hemming
Reuters
27 Nov 06
TEHRAN, Nov 27 - Hungry for oil and gas, China may take on political risks in Iran and security risks in Iraq to get a foothold where Western firms fear to tread.
Iran and Iraq together have 19 percent of global oil reserves and some of the world's biggest undeveloped fields.
China already gets almost half its oil imports from the Middle East, giving it a strong strategic incentive to secure big oil field deals in the two regional neighbours.
In Iran, Chinese firms are "operating in an environment where there aren't a full range of competitors. They have the opportunity to get involved in super giant oil fields," said Ian Brown, head of the Middle East research team at Wood Mackenzie.
"In Iraq, whenever the time is ripe, it will be everyone and his dog competing and the chances of having a major share will be far less," Brown said.
Iran is heavily reliant on oil, which represents about 80 to 90 percent of its export earnings. But its aged and declining oil fields mean it needs increased investment just to keep output at the present level of around 4 million barrels a day.
So Iran needs access to foreign money and technology, but U.S. laws prohibit American firms from investing in the Islamic Republic. Washington can impose penalties on firms from other countries investing more than $20 million a year in oil and gas.
Contract disputes, delays, bureaucratic and political meddling, infrastructure problems and concessions oil firms say are unattractive have reduced foreign investment to a trickle.
The problem in Iraq is perhaps more intractable -- the daily toll of bombings, sectarian clashes and spiralling violence.
But Iraq has the third largest reserves in the world and only 10 percent of the country has been explored for oil.
Dozens of foreign oil companies have signed memoranda of understanding with Iraq, seen as a way of initiating relations with the new Baghdad government that could develop into real deals if and when stability is achieved.
But between April 2003 and June 2006, there were an estimated 315 attacks on Iraq's energy infrastructure and few foreign oil firms have started work on the ground.
OPPORTUNITIES
To escape its bind, Iran has dangled the prospect of huge energy deals with China, which may be willing to accept less lucrative deals to attain energy security and which traditionally does not link investment with politics.
This strategy, if successful, "would allow Iran to attract the investment, expertise and technology it desperately requires without undercutting its current domestic and political positions," said a report by consultancy PFC Energy.
For Iran, such deals might also help dissuade China from backing sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear programme.
While U.N. Security Council negotiations over Iran sanctions drag on, so do Tehran's talks with China's Sinopec <0386.HK> over its Yadavaran oil field, a rich prize which could be worth as much as $100 billion.
What is given may also be taken away.
"If China agrees with sanctions on Iran, not only the government of the Islamic Republic, but also the people of Iran, would consider China an enemy of Iran and this may affect its political and economic cooperation," wrote Hossein Shariatmadari, an adviser to Iran's supreme leader.
China has yet to nail its colours to the mast as the United States pushes for a tougher sanctions draft against Iran and Russia argues for the European text to be watered down.
"Russia is the key player for Iran in terms of thwarting U.N. sanctions," said Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.
China, he said "will come in behind Russia. If Russia accepts stronger sanctions, China will not object. China's relations with the U.S. are more important. Iran has to sell oil to someone and is not going to freeze China out of the market."
Before the 2003 Iraq war, China had agreed a $700-million deal with Saddam Hussein's government to develop the Ahdab oil field. Now that contract is being renegotiated and the new Iraqi government is keen to secure a deal with the Chinese.
"Their contacts with Iraq never stopped," said a senior Iraqi Oil Ministry official. "They are the most active firms of all. They are on the ground with us and ready to offer all kinds of help to develop the oil sector."
Chinese firms are ready to take a more relaxed view of the security risk to get in ahead of other international players.
"They are really competing with other companies to secure energy sources for themselves and so they are really assuming a higher risk and also even prepared to give better conditions," said Muhammad-Ali Zainy, senior energy economist and analyst at the British-based Centre for Global Energy Studies.
While Iraq is in such dire need of investment to repair the damage to its oil infrastructure from sanctions, war and looting, it is unlikely to fuss about the source.
"It is not wise to sideline anybody. The era of signing contracts based on our mood and relations is gone. The contracts will be given to those who are capable of doing the work," the Iraqi official said.
(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny in Baghdad)
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Shake, Rattle, and Roll
Volcano erupts near Goma, east Congo - expert
Mon 27 Nov 2006 4:26 PM ET
KINSHASA, Nov 27 (Reuters) - A volcano erupted on Monday near the eastern Congolese town of Goma, which was devastated by a volcanic eruption in 2002, but the latest eruption did not threaten the town, a senior vulcanologist at the scene said.
"This seems like a big eruption. It is on the northwest side. The lava will be flowing to the north and not the south, where the town is," Celestin Kasereka, head of Goma's volcano observatory, told Reuters by telephone.
Kasereka said the Nyamulagira volcano had begun to erupt at around 2000 GMT on Monday. Any lava flow would likely affect the Virunga national park, he said.
The Nyamulagira volcano erupted in July 2002, spewing lava 200 metres (600 feet) into the air.
The larger, neighbouring Nyiragongo volcano erupted in January 2002, pouring lava over much of Goma, sending hundreds of thousands of people fleeing for their lives, and compounding the misery of the border city then caught in the midst of a regional African war.
Kasereka and international peacekeepers stationed in the area said they could see a red glow reflected off the sky above the volcano.
"We will have to talk to the U.N. because we can't go and have a look yet due to the security situation," Kasereka said.
At least five people have been killed and dozens more injured since Saturday when soldiers loyal to a renegade general seized the town of Sake, just 20 km (13 miles) from Goma.
U.N. ground forces and helicopter gunships went into action against the rebels on Monday to prevent them advancing on the town.
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Northwest Las Vegas Residents Report Loud Boom
Nov 28, 2006 03:13 AM
Residents in the northwest part of the valley say they heard a large boom that was followed by several seconds of shaking Monday afternoon.
Channel 8 Eyewitness News received calls from people in the areas of Summerlin Parkway and Lone Mountain, and 215 and Cheyenne.
We have checked with local police and fire departments. While they are not reporting anything out of the ordinary, they are investigating.
The U.S. Geological Survey didn't report any earthquakes.
Channel 8 Eyewitness News will have more information as soon as it becomes available.
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Strange shaking felt in northwest part of valley
Nov 28, 2006 03:54 AM
t's a story that's generated a lot of calls to the police, fire department and to News 3. Residents in the northwest part of the valley say they felt shaking of some sort Monday afternoon.
However, what caused the ground to shake has yet to be determined. Many calls we received were from the Summerlin area and further north.
News 3 contacted Nellis Air Force Base. They said take offs and landing on the base are running normal, but say they too have received calls.
We even checked with an earthquake expert that says nothing has registered in the area. We will continue digging deeper and let you know when we find out more.
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Small 'tornado' batters Welsh village
BBC News
28/11/2006
A Ceredigion village has been hit overnight by what is being described as a small tornado.
A clean-up is under way after emergency services were called to Bow Street, north of Aberystwyth, at 0130 GMT.
More than 20 houses were affected with roofs and chimneys blown off, while electricity cables have been brought down and trees uprooted.
Residents said houses shook before the storm hit, sounding like a train crashing. No one has been injured.
A Dyfed-Powys Police spokesman said: "It was apparent that what is believed to be a tornado had struck parts of the village
"Commercial and residential premises, vehicles and caravans were damaged."
Kevin Walsh, the owner of a bungalow which had its chimney ripped off by high winds, said: "At quarter past one this morning I heard a rumble coming, didn't know what it was, and then it hit the house.
"The house shook, I heard a crash. I came outside and found the (chimney) stack here on the ground.
"It hit us first and then sliced a path through the village.
"Across the road there's a house there whose roof has been taken off. Further down another roof's been taken off. "
Wynford Davies, whose house is on the main road through the village, said: "There was an amazing bang at about 1.15am - it was like a train running out of control.
Upturned caravan
Caravan were upturned and trees were brought down
"Within about four minutes it had gone. I rushed outside to see the chimney had been taken off the roof and it was on the road."
He added he believed thousands of pounds worth of damage had been caused to his house.
Wayne Clarke who lives on the village's Maes Y Fechan estate said: "One of my bedroom windows was blown in but luckily no-one was in the room at the time.
"The only way I can describe the noise was it was like thunder. Tiles were blown off my roof, four of my neighbours' cars were damaged."
The main road through Bow Street - the A487 - was closed for four hours while the properties were made safe and the highways authority cleared debris
Council highways officer Andy Dunn said: "A number of cars have been damaged with falling debris.
"A caravan's been turned over, part of a roof's been taken off and I believe there's a few trees which have fallen across the railway line from Machynlleth to Aberystwyth."
British Transport Police said a railway bridge has been damaged and about half a mile of track through the village has been littered with debris.
It is thought the line between Aberystwyth and Borth could be closed for much of the day.
A spokesperson for the Met Office said it was too early to confirm whether it was a tornado that had hit the village.
A spokesperson said: "It's very difficult to tell at this stage - we really need to see the impact in the daylight.
"It often leaves a trail mark if it is a tornado. It's certainly a possibility."
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Meteor sighting in SA, Vic skies
Tuesday Nov 28 09:55 AEDT
In what sounds like a scene from the 70s movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, people in South Australia and western Victoria have deluged police and media with reports of a spectacular meteor sighting.
Police in SA said they took calls from just after 8pm (CST) on Monday from Renmark and Loxton in the Riverland, most Adelaide suburbs and then from people living south of the city, with reports of something looking like a fireball in the sky.
In Victoria, callers to ABC Radio, from Bendigo to Horsham in the state's north-west down to Colac in the south-west, reported seeing a bright green coloured object shooting westward in the sky.
"It was green like a meteorite or shooting star," he told ABC Radio.
"It was really pretty bright and you could see something else coming down as well, but what it was I don't know."
Monty from Kaniva, near the SA border, said the object was bright and appeared to have debris trailing behind it.
"It was before sunset and normally you only see those things in the dark," Monty said.
"The trail hung in the sky for at least 15 minutes afterward like a jet stream."
Allen at Colac said: "I was sitting at the Shell servo at Colac and I was looking to the north and you could see the green light with the tail thing behind it."
Brian, who owns a farm at Laanecoorie, west of Bendigo, said he and his wife were outside when they saw the comet-like object streak across the sky.
"We looked up and there was a green comet-like thing dropping out of the western sky," Brian said.
"It dropped over the trees at the back of our property and it was making a tail as it went down."
An SA Police spokesman said later that the Bureau of Meteorology confirmed the object was a meteor
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Lessons Learnt From Drought Deaths 40,000 Years Ago
by Staff Writers
Brisbane, Australia (SPX) Nov 28, 2006
Drought-stricken Australia should heed a warning from a new study that shows a series of massive droughts killed giant kangaroos and other "megafauna" in south-east Queensland 40,000 years ago, according to researchers from the Queensland University of Technology.
Scientists Dr Gilbert Price and Dr Gregory Webb believe understanding how the prehistoric big dry caused extinctions could help predict how and if animals battling current climate change will survive.
The QUT research into the giant Australian marsupials and reptiles and the impact of climate change will be published in the December issue of the Australian Journal of Earth Sciences.
Dr Price and Dr Webb studied the fossil-rich Darling Downs area of south-east Queensland with the help of palaeontologists from the Queensland Museum and an amateur local fossil hunter, Ian Sobbe.
Dr Price said what the team unearthed showed that giant kangaroos and other large wildlife that roamed the area in the late Pleistocene age were drought-stressed when they died.
"What makes this research so relevant to climate change theories today is that the profile of the fossil kangaroo populations is identical to that of a modern drought-stressed kangaroo mob," he said.
"It provides, for the first time, evidence which suggests that the megafauna kangaroos were greatly affected by a series of catastrophic droughts.
"These animals of the prehistoric Australian bush were the largest of their time and included gigantic wombats the size of cars, kangaroos that reached almost 2.5 metres tall, and massive emus and goannas.
"There's nothing we can do now to save these animals - they're all extinct.
"But if we can understand how those animals responded to the massive droughts and climate change events of the past, we might be able to go some way in predicting the effects of future climate changes and its impact on the way that we manage and conserve the precious habitats and wildlife of the Australian bush."
Dr Price said the layers of fossils in the dig area at the Darling Downs were not consistent with some theories that humans had wiped out megafauna.
"Some scientists believe in the 'blitzkrieg' megafauna extinction hypothesis which blames humans for over-hunting these giant marsupials," he said.
"If that was the case, these fossils dating back thousands of years would show the animals dying out at the same point in time. But they don't. These layers of fossils buried at a single site under the Darling Downs show a progressive, three-stage extinction over time that relates to periods of climate change."
Dr Webb said the research had unearthed indicators that the Darling Downs had been a semi-arid environment 40,000 years ago, rather than sub-tropical or tropical.
"Sedimentological information shows that the Darling Downs was experiencing repeating cycles of wet and dry conditions, resulting in droughts and periodic flash flooding from storms, during the time when the megafauna populations were declining," he said.
"The research found no evidence of humans being involved in the accumulation of fossils in the catchment at the time of deposition, but is perfectly consistent with their decline being caused by increasing aridity.
"So it's most likely that Australia's giant kangaroos and other megafauna in this area were driven to extinction by the hands of Mother Nature."
Dr Price, who received his PhD this year for his research, and Dr Webb are both researchers with QUT's School of Natural Resource Sciences and QUT's Institute of Sustainable Resources.
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Latin America Awakens!
Ecuador and the Contradictions of Chavismo
By NIKOLAS KOZLOFFNovember 27, 2006
It now looks as if Rafael Correa, a leftist candidate in Ecuador, has handily won his country's presidential election. As of Monday morning, with about 21 percent of the ballot counted, Correa had 65 percent compared to 35 percent for Alvaro Noboa, according to Ecuador's Supreme Electoral Tribunal. If Correa wins, he will preside over Ecuador for a four year term.
It's yet another feather in the cap for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who had long cultivated the aspiring leader's support. What's more, it's a stinging blow against the Bush administration which now must confront a much more unenviable political milieu in the region. Ecuador now joins other left leaning regimes such as Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Chile, all of which are sympathetic to Chavez.
Bush cannot dismiss the Correa victory as inconsequential: Ecuador is currently the second largest South American exporter of crude to the U.S. The small Andean country hosts the only U.S. military base in South America, where 400 troops are currently stationed. Correa opposes an extension of the U.S. lease at the air base in Manta, which serves as a staging ground for drug surveillance flights. The U.S. lease expires in 2009.
"If they want," Correa has said ironically, "we won't close the base in 2009, but the United States would have to allow us to have an Ecuadoran base in Miami in return."
It's no secret that Chavez and Correa had a personal rapport. During a short stint in 2005 as finance minister under the regime of Alfredo Palacio, Correa brokered a $300 million loan from Chavez. As a result of his diplomacy, Correa was forced out of the government. Allegedly, Correa pursued the loan deal behind Palacio's back. He later visited Chavez's home state of Barinas, where he met with the Venezuelan leader and spent the night with Chavez's parents.
"It is necessary to overcome all the fallacies of neoliberalism," Correa has declared. Borrowing one of Chavez's favorite slogans, Correa says he also supports so-called "socialism for the twenty first century."
Correa: "Whipping" Ecuador's Politicians, and the U.S., into Shape
Unlike Chavez, Correa does not come from a military background but grew up in a middle class family; the young politician also dresses impeccably. He got his doctorate in economics from the University of Illinois and is a follower of left wing economist and Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz.
To his credit, Correa spent a year volunteering in a highland town called Zumbahua and speaks Quichua, an indigenous language. Natives from Zumbahua remember Correa as a man who walked two or three hours to remote villages in a poncho and broken shoes to give classes.
Correa pursued an amusing campaign. During rallies, he would bounce on stage to his campaign anthem, set to the tune of Twisted Sister's "We're Not Going to Take It." As the music blared, Correa would break out a brown leather belt, which he would flex along to the music.
For Correa, the belt became the chief slogan of his campaign: "Dale Correa." In Spanish, the phrase means "Give Them the Belt." Correa promised to use that belt to whip Ecuador's politicians into shape.
Correa campaigned on pledges to prioritize social spending over repaying debt. He has even stated that the Andean country might want to default. He also declared that he would renegotiate contracts with foreign oil producers doing business in the country. Correa says he wants to increase funds for the poor and opposes a free trade deal with the U.S.
"We are not against the international economy," Correa has stated, "but we will not negotiate a treaty under unequal terms with the United States."
Correa, too, has nothing but contempt for George Bush.
When he was recently asked about Chavez's "devil" diatribe against the U.S. president at the United Nations, Correa remarked amusingly, "Calling Bush the devil offends the devil. Bush is a tremendously dimwitted President who has done great damage to the world" [after he was defeated by Noboa in the first round of voting Correa toned down his rhetoric, stating that his comments about Bush were "imprudent" and that Ecuador would like to continue its strong tries to the United States]
Noboa Plays the Chavez Card
In an effort to scare voters, Alvaro Noboa, a banana magnate in Ecuador, sought to label Correa as a Chavez puppet. Noboa, in an allusion to Chavez's military background, labeled his adversary "Colonel Correa."
Correa, the Noboa campaign charged, was being financed by Venezuela. In a bombastic tirade, Noboa even declared, "the Chavez-Correa duo has played dirty in an effort to conquer Ecuador and submit it to slavery." If he were elected, Noboa promised, he would break relations with Caracas.
Correa denied that his campaign was financed by Chavez and in a biting aside declared that his friendship with the Venezuelan leader was as legitimate as President Bush's friendship with the bin Laden family.
"They have pursued the most immoral and dirty campaign against me in an effort to link me with communism, terrorism, and Chavismo," Correa explained. "The only thing left is for them to say that Bin Laden was financing me."
Chavez, perhaps fearing that any statement on his part might tilt the election in favor of Noboa, initially remained silent as regards the Ecuadoran election. But at last the effusive Chavez could no longer constrain himself and broke his silence.
The Venezuelan leader accused Noboa of baiting him in an effort to gain the "applause" of the United States. Chavez furthermore expressed doubts about the veracity of the voting result in the first presidential run off in October, in which Correa came in second. In his own inflammatory broadside, Chavez accused Noboa of being "an exploiter of child labor" on his banana plantations and a "fundamentalist of the extreme right."
In Ecuador, Chavez said, "there are also strange things going on. A gentleman who is the richest man in Ecuador; the king of bananas, who exploits his workers, who exploits children and puts them to work, who doesn't pay them loans, suddenly appears in first place in the first [electoral] round."
The Noboa campaign, in an escalating war of words, shot back that the Venezuelan Ambassador should be expelled from Ecuador due to Chavez's meddling.
Ecuadoran Indigenous Peoples and Chavez
Judging from the early electoral returns, Ecuadoran voters, many of whom are indigenous, disregarded Noboa's fire and brimstone rhetoric. Indians, who account for 40% of Ecuador's population of 13 million, are a potent political force in the country. Correa has capitalized on indigenous support. He represents Alianza País, a coalition that garnered the support of indigenous and social movements which brought down the government of Lucio Gutierrez in April 2005.
What does the Correa win mean for Chavez's wider hemispheric ambitions?
As I explain in my book, Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the U.S. (recently released by St. Martin's Press), Chavez has long sought to cultivate ties to Ecuador's indigenous peoples. Ecuadoran Indians have long feared that their traditional lands were being exploited to serve a rapacious United States intent on corporate expansion. U.S. missionaries have fueled the resentment. According to indigenous activists, the missionaries hastened the penetration of U.S. corporations. A key example, according to Huaorani Indians, was the petroleum industry which worked with the missionaries to open up traditional lands.
Chavez has done much to cultivate the support of indigenous peoples. He plays up his own indigenous roots, for example. He also expelled the Protestant New Tribes Mission from Venezuela, which he said was collaborating with the CIA.
"We don't want the New Tribes here," Chavez declared. "Enough colonialism! 500 years is enough!"
In opposing the missionaries, Chavez has echoed the agenda of Ecuador's indigenous peoples, who called for the expulsion of North American missionaries from their country. CONAIE, Ecuador's indigenous federation, in fact endorses many of Chavez's positions such as an end to U.S. militarization in the region and an end to neo liberal economic policies. CONAIE, like Rafael Correa, wants Ecuador to terminate the U.S. lease at the Manta military base. CONAIE, as well as the movement's political wing Patchakutik, has backed Chavez. CONAIE in fact has condemned the "fascist" opposition in Venezuela and derided U.S. interventionism.
Chavez has not only cultivated political ties with hemispheric leaders but also with social movements from below. In an innovative move, Chavez has sponsored something called the Bolivarian Congress of Peoples in Caracas. CONAIE officials attended the Congress, as did Humberto Cholango, president of the Kichwa Confederation of Ecuador. Cholango remarked at the time, "no one can stop this [Bolivarian] Revolution in Venezuela, we will keep on defeating the Creole oligarchies and the Yankeesthe time has come for South America to rise up to defeat the empireLong live the triumph of the Venezuelan people."
Cholango is an important link in the future Chavez-Correa alliance. His Kichwa Confederation has backed Correa. In a communiqué, the Confederation wrote, "We will not let Noboa, who owns 120 companies and made his fortune by exploiting children in his companies, take control of the country to deliver water, deserts, oil, mines, forests and biodiversity to big private transnational corporations."
Ecuadoran Oriente: Area of Conflict
Chavez has exchanged oil for political influence throughout the region in such countries as Nicaragua, as I explained in my earlier Counterpunch column [see "A New Kind of Oil Diplomacy: In Nicaragua, a Chavez Wave?, November 7, 2006]. In Ecuador, Chavez may opt for a similar strategy but here the Venezuelan leader has to watch out for pitfalls that could reveal serious contradictions within his movement.
With a Correa administration in place, Chavez will be in an advantageous position to advance his plans for hemispheric energy integration. Ecuador's state oil company Petroecuador has been involved in longstanding negotiations with Venezuela to refine its crude. Ecuador is also interested in acquiring Venezuelan diesel and gasoline to cover its own internal demand. Ecuador's growing energy ties with Venezuela have been applauded by important figures such as Luis Macas, long associated with the CONAIE.
The dilemma for Ecuador is that, while oil represents about a quarter of the country's GDP, many disadvantaged communities have been unhappy with development. The north eastern section of Ecuador, the "Oriente," has long been the scene of serious social unrest. I know something about the social and environmental conflicts in the area, having written a couple of articles about the Huorani Indians for the Ecuadoran magazine 15 Dias and the Quito daily Hoy.
In 1992, having just completed a reporting internship at WBAI radio in New York, I headed to Quito. At that time, North American as well as Ecuadoran environmental groups were concerned about Maxus Corporation, a Texas-based energy company. The influential company had the support of the government, the press, and North American Protestant missionaries. The Huaorani had just traveled to Quito, where they had carried out a protest in front of Maxus headquarters.
The Indians demanded that Maxus halt its construction of a highway in block 16, which fell in their traditional homeland. I flew out to the Amazon and interviewed the Indians who were living in deplorable health and sanitary conditions. In my articles, I dissected Maxus' unconvincing propaganda and warned about imminent environmental problems.
Venezuelan Involvement in the Ecuadoran Oil Industry?
I left Ecuador in late 1993, and not surprisingly the unrest continued. In 2002, the government declared a state of emergency following protests in Sucumbios and Orellana provinces. Protesters hit the streets, demanding greater investment in their communities. Indigenous peoples in the area had long felt that they had not adequately shared in the benefits of oil development. The military used teargas to break up protests which blocked oil wells.
In August 2005 the disturbances continued, with an oil strike hitting Orellana and Sucumbios. At that time, Chavez came to the aid of Ecuadoran president Alfredo Palacios by agreeing to send Venezuelan crude to the Andean nation. At the time, Chavez expressed sympathy with Ecuador "because we [Venezuela] have already passed through this type of thing with the oil sabotage [the oil lock out in 2002-3 encouraged by the Venezuelan opposition]."
Early this year, Petroecuador was forced to suspend exports when protesters, unhappy about longstanding environmental damage, demanded the departure of U.S. oil company Oxy and took over a pumping station vital to the functioning of a pipeline. Protesters, led by local politicians from the Amazon province of Napo, demanded that the government pay them funds for infrastructure projects in local communities.
In March, the government put three provinces under military control when workers initiated a strike for unpaid wages and improved working conditions. At one point, the government declared a state of emergency in Napo, when protesters demanded that the oil companies invest more of their profits in the area.
Guadalupe Llori, the prefect of Orellana, remarked "If we are treated like animals we are going to react like animals. We could join the workers and demand the government respect our rights." Petroecuador technicians and troops finally took control of oil facilities and cleared strikers from vital sites.
In May, Petroecuador took over oil wells belonging to Oxy's block 15 oil concession; the Ecuadoran state wants the Venezuelan state company PdVSA to refine 75% of the 100,000 barrels per day within the old concession. According to the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal, Ecuador is considering Venezuela as a possible partner in the fields formerly operated by Oxy.
Chavismo and Its Hemispheric Contradictions
If PdVSA had a presence in block 15, this would lead to a potential problem for Chavez. Having proclaimed its support for social and environmental justice, as well as indigenous rights, Venezuela would now be operating in an area long marked by social unrest and discrimination of indigenous peoples.
In the short term, Chavez may take some pride in the fact that Bush received another black eye in South America; what's more Venezuela can now count on Correa's support as well as the indigenous movement. But in the long term, Chavez could run the risk of alienating many of his supporters if Venezuela is perceived to be an accomplice in misguided development schemes.
In the coming years, will Chavez maintain his political support amongst disadvantaged peoples throughout the hemisphere, or will his popularity be tarnished by oil diplomacy? Up to now, Chavez has certainly used oil as an effective geopolitical instrument, but it may prove his Achilles Heel if he is not careful.
Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the U.S. (St. Martin's Press).
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Ecuadorean Elections: Correa's Most Surprising, Most Important Victory
COHA Director Dr. Larry Birns
November 27th, 2006
The Council on Hemispheric Affairs
The astonishing comeback of Rafael Correa from what appeared to be a definitive first round defeat marks one of the most extraordinary reversals of the political fate of a South American leader within memory. Correa's victory also represents a significant triumph for the average Ecuadorean who refused to be beguiled by Álvaro Noboa's well-fueled, so-called populist, but splash-dash campaign. In a poor country like Ecuador, Noboa's unparalleled expenditure of money - some of it handed out personally by him - was a hardly-concealed effort to buy an election. Meanwhile, Correa ran an issue-oriented campaign centered on alleviating the dead-end plight of the nation's poor.
As important as any other aspect of the presidential race was that its outcome represented a stinging defeat for Washington's Latin American policy, which already had hit rock bottom throughout the Bush presidency. Key U.S. policies like free trade, privatization and market integration, anti-drug trafficking, increased regional military presence, and the pursuit of isolating Cuba and Venezuela, were being challenged and dismissed as being irrelevant.
The White House has touted recent elections in Mexico and Peru as a sharp defeat for the "Pink Tide" movement of left-leaning governments in the Americas (Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Uruguay, Argentina and, to an extent, Chile). But the more recent victories of leftist candidates Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua (after a blatant intervention scheme led by U.S. Ambassador in Managua Paul Trivelli), and now Rafael Correa in Ecuador, represent a humiliating rebuke for Washington's chief goals.
Another major winner in yesterday's vote was Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Although Chavez was somewhat restrained in getting involved in the Ecuadorian race, the same was certainly not true about Correa, who made repeated complimentary references to the Venezuelan president throughout his campaign.
In Mexico and Peru, Chavez had played the role of poison pill, fatal in his ability to inadvertently strike dead his electoral allies in other countries through guilt by association. In Ecuador, to the contrary, he proved to be an imposing plus factor in Correa's victory, a fact that cannot make the State Department's Nicholas Burns, a key administration functioning when it comes to Chavez bashing, other than completely frustrated.
The Correa victory is much more meaningful because his campaign was pegged in favor of an autonomous path of development, including a more muscular Latin American definition of its sovereignty than was the case with Daniel Ortega's win in Nicaragua. Ortega's victory was much more muddied by his two-tier policy of presenting himself as both a friend of business, the Church, and Washington's free trade policies, while at other times projecting himself as a prospective candidate of Pink Tide dissent, and that his victory should be seen as a challenge to U.S. hegemony.
But there was nothing ambiguous about Correa's victory, which must be seen as yet another piece of evidence that the U.S. continues to pay a heavy price for the near fatal damage done to its good name throughout the hemisphere by Otto Reich and Roger Noriega, during their archly controversial reigns as State Department's assistant Secretaries for Western Hemispheric affairs. The arrogance that the two displayed to Latin America's opposition to the Iraq war and an insistence that their brand of raw ideological extremism be disseminated throughout the continent alienated many of Washington's closest allies.
During his tenure, Secretary of State Powell yielded to hard core White House partisans in reluctantly accepting Reich and Noriega to serve under him. The fact that they at all times had an independent and politicized access to the top tiers of the administration through their Miami connections, allowed them to advance a rightwing agenda outside of the State Department's formal chain of command. This process continued with Secretary Rice's ascension to the State Department, but with even more gusto, since her congruency with the spirit of Reich's and Noriega's view of the region, if not their antagonistic style, was not in doubt. Particularly, policy regarding Venezuela and Cuba has continued almost unmodified under Thomas Shannon, who is the first career foreign service officer in the Bush administration to head up the Western Hemispheric Bureau. Shannon, unfortunately, mainly followed the substance if not the style featured in the Bush administration's first term.
As an extension of the Bush administration's Opera Bouffe approach to Cuban policy, one can only point to the shameless antics of head of the U.S. Interest Section in Havana, Michael Parmly, whose talents seem to lie in the direction of low theater and whose juvenile pranks emanating from his base in the Cuban capital cannot possibly be confused with professional diplomacy. In addition, the conduct of U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua Paul Trivelli, who repeatedly has intervened in the internal affairs of Nicaragua, acting as the major domo in efforts to unify the conservative opposition to the eventually victorious, Daniel Ortega, reflected Washington's traditional scorn for Latin America's self-dignity.
The importance of the Correa triumph can be found both within and outside of Ecuador and deserves being dealt with in each arena. Opposing Washington's free trade model as well as not renewing the lease of the Manta air base were among his specific pledges. By not fulfilling his platform, he will risk being ousted by the indigenous population as was the case with the country's last democratically-elected president, Lucio Gutierrez.
What the Correa victory will mean for the future of Latin America's ties to Washington and what role the Pink Tide movement will have for the hemisphere is of the utmost importance. Initially, the Correa victory will provide renewed momentum to the moderate leftist, New Deal-style leadership, which characterizes most of South America. After setbacks in Colombia, Mexico and Peru, the Pink Tide grouping seemed to have lost its spirit, not counting the more radical initiatives being put forth by Venezuela and Bolivia. Because of Washington's preoccupation with Iraq and the mid-term elections, Latin American countries were able to pluralize their relationship with other parts of the world and think globally, not just hemispherically. As a result, we may be witnessing a decline in the centrality of a hemispheric orientation as represented by the OAS and an increase in importance of outward looking associations like the Ibero-America Summit and the budding Brazil-South Africa-India and China ties. Because of timing and the immense achievement of overcoming his enormous first round deficit, Correa's electoral victory may be one of the most important hemispheric political events witnessed in the past several years.
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An Affront to the People of Oaxaca
By Nancy Davies
Commentary from Oaxaca
November 27, 2006
There was scarcely time for the blood to dry on the pavement, or for the teams of street cleaners to eliminate signs of ash and broken glass, when the Popular Assembly of the Peoples' of Oaxaca (APPO) called for its next meeting on Sunday morning, the day when Ulises Ruiz declared that the struggle was over.
Saturday had seen the historic center of Oaxaca erupt into war, with Oaxaqueños fighting the police forces of the federal, state and city governments, plus unknown numbers of PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) loyalists who wore civilian clothes. According to an article in Noticias on November 25, and repeated in La Jornada, more than 200 ministerial police (Policía Ministerial de la Procuraduría General de Justicia de Oaxaca, PGJO) in Oaxaca are more or less "out of control." They are allegedly the ones responsible for the lightning-strike detentions of members of the APPO and members of other organizations who oppose Ulises Ruiz. They are commanded by the Oaxaca government.
Sources, claims Noticias, indicate that the federal government has taken control only of the Municipal and State police, but not of the ministerial agents assigned to the city of Oaxaca. Thus they don't discount the possibility that violence was committed by them during the march of Saturday, November 18.
The federal government investigators agreed there is a state of ungovernability in Oaxaca which "cannot be solved by police actions, but only by obtaining and administering justice, social development, infrastructure and education; but in this moment the conditions are not there and the capacity to do these things is not there because the social justice demands of the APPO, and the organizations that belong to it, have been fully validated."
On Sunday morning, in the stunned silence as a result from the previous night, the governor called for a support rally in Llano Park. With helicopters circling overhead, about 200 people turned out to celebrate his "victory." A victory that included, according to his government, 149 arrests. According to La Jornada, there are about thirty-eight wounded, and possibly three dead. Those arrested in Oaxaca have been consistently subjected to torture, according to the Human Rights Network. The number of those disappeared is not clear. The number of vehicles burned add up to more than a dozen. Buildings burned include offices of Foreign Relations located on Pino Suarez Street and the Superior Tribunal of Justice building located on Juarez Avenue.
Photo: D.R. 2006 John Gibler
The confrontations erupted in different parts of the city after a peaceful march of protest from the government buildings of Santa Maria Coyotepec to the historic center. The APPO announced that because of the risk of violence, more than 200 of their state councilors would function as human shields for security during the march itself. The purpose of the march was to demand the departure of the governor Ulises Ruiz and the withdrawal of the federal forces from the state.
The APPO plan, to encircle the Federal Preventive Police (PFP in its Spanish initials) occupying the center zocalo, was carried out about five o'clock, with the APPO supporters standing a block or two away from the PFP lines. The PFP stationed shooters on "friendly" rooftops, and during the day had been searching the backpacks and handbags of person trying to enter the zocalo. Many entrances were simply blocked to foot traffic.
At about 5:00 the PFP began to react to the protesters. In my opinion, there were some young people present who wanted to go beyond verbal insults and attack the PFP so as to drive them from the zocalo. Furthermore, there is no doubt that some of the protagonists were infiltrators who sparked the physical fighting. During this time the APPO, by way of radio broadcasts. was asking for a pacific and calm protest. Given that there had been sexual abuse of Oaxaca women by police the day before, and that the numbers of the PFP had increased, it did seem inevitable that confrontation would erupt. By 2:00 the usually busy pedestrian streets were deserted, and virtually all the shops surrounding the zocalo were locked.
After about an hour of the show-down, the PFP began to shoot at the demonstrators. The state ministerial police and the PFP began moving into some specific areas such as the Llano Park, Crespo Street, the Abastos Center, and other points. In this sweep they arrested approximately forty, including twenty women. Several were wounded. There were no warrants or official causes for arrests other than possible affiliation with the APPO or with barricades.
The PFP together with state police had been waging this ongoing detention against the members of the social movement in Oaxaca. Vans carrying police in civilian clothes, as well as other PFP forces, were carrying out massive detentions in several places in the city, including in front of the University, against citizens who were not carrying identification.
Photo: D.R. 2006 Tiros
In a related side-note, a PFP guard requested identification from a friend of mine, who is eighty-one years old, when he went shopping. He produced his senior identification card and was permitted to pass. He carried no bag or backpack. The challenge, though illegal, was permitted.
Battles were waged up and down the seven or eight blocks to the north and south of the zocalo, until they reached the ADO bus station on the main street of Niños y Heroes de Chapultepec. Ironically, the bus station was crowded with tourists trying to flee the embattled city while the Government forces were dedicating themselves to making the city once again "safe" for the business and tourist industries. The teargas followed them to the bus station.
At the same time, the esplanade of Santo Domingo church was cleared and burned of APPO tents and tables.
In the face of the overwhelming attacks, the APPO decided to retreat from the field, which happened around 10:00 PM, with the now-famous "La Doctora" of Radio Universidad assuring her listeners that the shame fell on the government, not the people, who struggle with dignity for their rights. Many people took refuge in friendly homes and were able to avoid the police sweeps.
Meanwhile, blockades had been placed on the super-highway Cuacnopalan-Oaxaca, in the municipality of Nochixtlán, located about 80 kilometers from the state capital, and in the toll booth of Huitzo, some 25 kilometers away, to try to impede the entrance of APPO sympathizers into the city. It is difficult to say how many people were prevented from arriving. For those already in the city, the so-called Radio Ciudadana was broadcasting advice to government followers to throw hot water and muriatic acid from their roofs onto APPO sympathizers. The radio broadcasters have been identified as Alexis and Marco Tulio, who affiliated with the PRI.
Photo: D.R. 2006 Tiros
"Be careful," Radio Universidad explained, "there are many PFP who are electrifying the wires on the roads. The PFP are in unmarked vans. This is the seventh mega-march, bring your placards, your slogans, be ready but don't fall into provocations."
Marches have occurred almost daily in the past week. Maintaining a steady drumbeat, although not a loud one, women marched against the sexual assault of a woman by the PFP. Students marched against the presence of the PFP in Oaxaca, and more students from the Technological Institute of Oaxaca protested the detention and the torture of their peer, Eliuth Amni Martínez Sánchez, suffered at the hands of the federal agents during the confrontation on Monday, November 20. Martinez Sanchez was located in Tlocolula Prison, thrown onto the floor of a cell in, missing one fingernail, with a severe head wound, a broken nose and a broken kneecap. The lawyers who found him obtained his transfer to a hospital. Thereafter, students from the Technological Institute demanded that the Institute honor its commitment to close down if violence against students continued. The Institute is now closed.
Another personal aside: a young friend who is a medical student stopped by to say hello today during the strange silence of the morning. When the battle erupted, he had sensibly gone home to stay out of trouble, although, he told me, that he thought he identified people from Mexico City who were UNAM porros. No proof of that.
In any case, as we chatted, he told me he will serve his obligatory public service year as a new doctor in a little town in the mountains.
"And what," I asked him, "happens with a new doctor when there's an unexpected emergency? I've seen those mountain 'clinics,' which seem to consist of nothing more than a cement-block room."
"We are instructed to send special cases down to the city," he replied.
I asked, "And how is that done? Is there a helicopter ambulance?" He laughed.
"Well, how about an ambulance? I know some of those towns are seven or eight hours away."
Photo: D.R. 2006 John Gibler
"The patient has to find a private car to take him down to the public hospital," he told me. That ended our conversation.
Sunday night, the time of writing this commentary, the radio is announcing that there is a possibility of another battle and to defend the barricades around Radio Universidad, whose signal has been steadily interrupted by government blocking.
At this time Radio Universidad is saying that there has been an attack on the medical team at the Siete Principes area (the medical school area). Last night, the voice of "La Doctora" announced that the PFP and state police had entered the hospital dressed as medical doctors, and then were able to arrest patients. The radio is also announcing a march for Monday morning to protest the situation.
Not spoken is that only a week remains before the inauguration of Felipe Calderon as the president of Mexico. Today a meeting of member APPO states took place in Mexico City.
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Attacks continue in Oaxaca: Radio Universidad may be next
by danielsan
Monday Nov 27th, 2006 3:28 PM
Radio Universidad, 1400 AM and http://radio.indymedia.org:8000/appo.mp3.m3u, has announced once again that it is expecting an attack (as of 4:45 PM).
The 4:45 transmission said that Ministerial Police have a warrant to enter the campus and search the station backed up by the PFP. The signal was then blocked yet again by la canción that has been overriding the AM broadcast for more than three weeks. The song is audible in the webcast as well, in addition to the sound of low-flying helicopters.
The barricade at Cinco Señores is now being reinforced and broadcasters are uncertain of what will happen next. Earlier in the week, a PFP spokesperson declared that the very same police force was out of control, but they seem to be cooperating nonetheless.
The station has continued to broadcast from the campus of the UABJO despite the occupation of Oaxaca City by federal police, and students and APPO adherents won a significant street battle shortly after the arrival of the troops in order to maintain both the campus and the signal.
They are calling for water, vinegar, gasoline, glass bottles, fireworks, and cola (to counter the effects of tear gas) in order to defend 'the voice of truth.' The webstream and the AM broadcast are both unstable due to interference.
They are also advising (all) women to avoid the city center and the PFP lines because of escalating male violence against women. See earlier post http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/11/20/18331444.php with information about a sexual assault perpetrated by the PFP last week (2.7 MB MP3 file called 'gender war').
Since Saturday night's street battle, the PFP has occupied Santo Domingo, the plaza APPO occupied after they were forcibly removed from the central Zócalo. Today tanks and police lines had replaced the tents set up by Campesino groups, Human Rights organizations, and TV monitors showing (and selling) video footage of the PFP occupation, the battle to defend the radio, the initial June 14 eviction/massacre...
(x)Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (URO) has asked for huge increases in the budget for 2007, including huge expenditures explicitly for guns and tanks in order to reestablish his power in the state he can barely set foot in for the protests that explode whenever his helicopters fly him in. The PFP have begun, for the first time, to patrol the city. Houses have been searched and the numbers of arrested and disappeared is growing as more and more people tell what they saw Saturday night. State police have recently been visible (in uniform) for the first time in months.
Please continue to monitor the situation in Oaxaca.
http://radio.indymedia.org:8000/appo.mp3.m3u
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Europe on the March
German vote seals EU membership for Bulgaria, Romania next year
Turkish Press
24 November 2006
Bulgaria and Romania have cleared the last hurdle to joining the EU next year, the European Commission announced, after the German parliament ratified their entry into the club.
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Europe drafts resolution to impose sanctions on Iran
PARIS, Nov 28, 2006 (AFP)
France, Germany and Britain have drawn up a draft UN resolution outlining possible sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme, the foreign ministry in Paris said Tuesday.
"The proposals of the three European nations have been transmitted to the Russians, Chinese and Americans in the hope that the concerns of all parties have been taken care of," said spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei.
"The general philosophy of the text remains to target Iran's nuclear and missile programmes, as well as the institutions that are running them and the individuals in charge," he said.
"We shall see how the European project is received," Mattei said, stressing the "need for caution in this matter".
If Moscow, Beijing and Washington give their agreement, the matter will return to the Security Council, he said.
World powers have been debating a draft UN resolution that would impose limited sanctions on Iran over its failure to comply with an earlier UN resolution on halting uranium enrichment.
Mattei said contacts were taking place both within the framework of the Security Council and among the six global powers - Britain, Germany, France, Russia, China and the United States.
Until now, Russia and China had considered the European proposals for trade and economic sanctions against Iran too tough, while the United States felt they did not go far enough.
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Rwanda's shaken French enclave fears worst
KIGALI, Nov 28, 2006 (AFP)
Rwanda's tiny French community anxiously fretted Tuesday about their future after the abrupt cut in ties between Rwanda and France, and a surge in anti-French sentiment over the 1994 genocide.
Speaking in hushed tones and refusing telephone interviews, a handful of the some 230 French citizens remaining in Rwanda clung to a sliver of hope that relations might return to normal.
But the enclave remains isolated after the expulsion of all French diplomats and state employees, and faces the prospect of more anti-France demonstrations like one that took place Monday outside the empty embassy.
Many were gloomy. "What will we do about our papers? Renewing passports?" asked one French woman, who like all those interviewed by AFP demanded anonymity citing fears of retribution.
Most in the community of missionaries, aid workers and businesspersons wondered if they would be able to weather the storm of anti-French anger that some fear could rise to the level of that in Ivory Coast.
"For us this is a sad affair," said one Frenchman, who has lived in Rwanda for less than a year. "We don't feel directly threatened or in danger, but there is tension."
He noted that the situation was not as grave as in Ivory Coast where rampaging mobs attacked French citizens, businesses and other interests in November 2004, forcing the evacuation of some 8,000 expatriates.
"The authorities are controlling the people and seem not to want the situation to get out of hand, but perhaps one day we private French citizens will have to leave," he said.
Kigali on Friday severed diplomatic and cultural relations with France and gave French diplomats and state employees 72 hours to leave Rwanda as a major row over the events leading up to the genocide boiled over.
The breaking point came when France's top anti-terrorism judge said Rwandan President Paul Kagame should face trial for the assassination of his predecessor and issued arrest warrants for nine of his close aides.
Within days of Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière's announcement, 25,000 Rwandans rallied to denounce him and the alleged French complicity in the genocide in which some 800,000 people - mainly minority Tutsis - were killed.
Police dispersed Monday's protest outside the embassy, but with Kagame and senior Rwandan officials continuing to denounce France for being anti-Rwandan and involved in the genocide, the French community here is in a quandary.
Foreign Minister Charles Murigande says only French government employees are affected by the expulsion order.
"Only those working in government departments, be it the cultural center or the French school, should pack their bags and go," he told a Belgian newspaper. "But a Frenchman who sells bread or wine can stay."
Still, many are fearful that Rwandans venting anger may not always make that distinction.
During Monday's protest by a group of genocide survivors, marchers chanted anti-French slogans such as: "Who brought you misery? A Frenchman!"
Some in the French community believe the animosity is based in part on language, with the English-speaking Kagame - who fought against the francophone government in the former Belgian colony - convinced of French duplicity.
"There is a rivalry between francophone and anglophone Rwandans," said a cleric. "The anglophones, who came from Uganda like President Kagame, are fuelling the anti-French sentiment."
"For anglophones, France is the enemy that supported the Habyarimana regime," he said, referring to the former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana whose death touched off the genocide and which French judge Brugiuère is investigating.
"With the Bruguière affair, they have the impression that France is still fighting them," the cleric said, adding that many Rwandans believe the arrest warrants are a cover for hiding France's complicity in the genocide.
The judge is investigating the downing of Habyarimana's plane on April 6, 1994 and accuses Kagame, then a rebel leader, of orchestrating it. Several French crew members were killed in the incident, prompting the French inquiry.
Kagame, who has always denied any role in the incident, has called the judge's allegations "rubbish."
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Europe must shoulder more NATO duties: Chirac
LONDON, Nov 28, 2006 (AFP)
French President Jacques Chirac on Tuesday said the creation of a "contact group" of countries surrounding Afghanistan, the principal countries involved, and relevant international organisations, was "necessary" to support NATO's mission in the country.
His article comes as NATO opens a two-day summit in the Latvian capital of Riga, and Chirac also argued that Europe must shoulder an increasing burden within NATO as France was reportedly to loosen its caveats on troops in Afghanistan.
Writing in The Guardian, Chirac said the establishment of such a group was "necessary to give our forces the means to succeed in their mission in support of the Afghan authorities, and refocus the alliance on military operations."
"The Europeans have relied on their American allies for too long," Chirac wrote in the British daily.
"They have to shoulder their share of the burden by making a national defence effort commensurate with their ambitions for NATO and also for the EU."
He said that NATO should take into account the reality of the European Union's defence capabilities, as most of the EU's member states are also members of NATO.
"We are seeing European defence and NATO complementing each other to the benefit of both. Where Europe is better placed to act for geographical or historical reasons, or because of the nature of the action, the EU is taking on its share of the responsibilities as it should."
Chirac continued: "This development calls for a more substantive political and strategic dialogue between the US and the EU ... It probably also implies closer relations between NATO and the EU."
He said that, in particular, "the possibility of EU members consulting between themselves within the alliance" should be considered.
Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported that Chirac will announce a loosening of caveats on French troops in Afghanistan that prevent them from entering the fierce fighting in the south of the country.
According to an unnamed senior French official, Chirac will say that in future, French troops could be deployed around the country when needed to help their NATO allies, instead of the present situation where they are confined to the area around the capital of Kabul.
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Chirac, Bush speak ahead of NATO summit
PARIS, Nov 28, 2006 (AFP)
The French and US presidents discussed NATO engagement in Afghanistan and the situation in the Middle East during a telephone conversation Monday, ahead of a key NATO summit in Riga, the French and US presidencies said.
"The discussion permitted an exchange of views on questions that will be addressed during the NATO summit in Riga, and particularly our joint engagement in Afghanistan," French presidential spokesman Jérome Bonnafont said of talks between French President Jacques Chirac and his counterpart, George W. Bush.
In particular, the discussions touched on Chirac's proposal to create a contact group on Afghanistan, gathering the main troop contributors, surrounding countries and top international organizations.
The two leaders also "brought up the situation in the Middle East and notably the Israeli-Palestinian situation and international action toward Lebanon," Bonnafont said.
Gordon Johndroe, the spokesman of the US National Security Council, who arrived in Tallinn before Bush, said: "The leaders agreed on the need for the international community to support the (Fuad) Siniora Government, including with financial assistance. They discussed the upcoming donor conference that France will host on Lebanon."
The US and France have cooperated closely to support Siniora's embattled pro-Western government and bring an end to Syrian interference in Lebanese affairs.
Bush is expected to urge European allies for more support in Afghanistan, during the Tuesday-Wednesday NATO summit in Latvia's capital.
The US president left Washington Monday for an international tour that first takes him to Estonia, Latvia and finally to Jordan, where he meets with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
France and the US clashed over the US-led war in Iraq three years ago, but transatlantic ties have since been on the mend.
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The Lobby (that doesn't exist)
Zionist Occupied Government Of America
Xymphora
27/11/2006
Nancy Pelosi's no dummy. She's been outed as a crazed Zionist, so she can hardly go around placing other crazed Zionists in positions of power in order to finalize the Zionist Occupation Government. Total Israeli control over America can't be allowed to be that obvious. Thus the head-fake over Murtha. By pretending to support John Murtha as majority leader, she managed to have crazed Zionist Steny Hoyer installed without a hint of Pelosi fingerprints on the maneuver.
The American media bought the trick hook, line and sinker, describing the whole mess as a great embarrassment to her. Ha! A crazed Zionist would hardly want a staunch anti-Iraq-war guy like Murtha in power, even though Americans clearly voted for an anti-war position. Who cares what the voters want, if Israel wants something different? In one of the most bizarre instances in modern American political skullduggery, Murtha was disqualified because he was swiftboated as an alleged bribe recipient, on the basis of a videotape showing him refusing a bribe. In all the confusion Hoyer slid in, and nobody noticed the feint.Now we're seeing the same game played with respect to the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The obvious choice is Jane Harman, another rabid Zionist, but Pelosi has to keep her distance. The mainstream media is again cooperating, by inventing some kind of dissent between Harman and Pelosi, although no one quite seems to be able to put their finger on it. Of course, the topper is that Harman is under investigation for conspiring with AIPAC to have wealthy donors 'encourage' Pelosi to have Harman reappointed as the top Democrat on the committee, the position that now gives her dibs on the chairmanship! The idea that these two are enemies, instead of joined-at-the-hip Zionists, is some kind of joke. To further the joke, Pelosi is reportedly considering Alcee Hastings for the job, a guy who was offered and accepted a bribe while he was a judge! The joke alternative will fall away, and Harman will end up in place, as was always intended. The conspirators are taking all possible efforts to appoint Harman while making it seem that Pelosi had nothing to do with it.
Don't forget Rahm Emanuel, and Hillary and Schumer in the Senate, and the key Senate swing vote held by ultra-Zionist Lieberman. How interested do you think (Jewish) Henry Waxman will be in investigating the causes of a war for Israel? The ZOG is being installed piece by piece, and the United States is doomed to sink with Israel.
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Hagee preaches support for Israel
Last modified Tue., November 14, 2006 - 01:04 AM
Originally created Tuesday, November 14, 2006
By JEFF BRUMLEY, The Times-Union
Christians must strengthen their spiritual bond with the Jewish people and the United States must take action against Iran's nuclear program to save Israel from annihilation, televangelist and End Times preacher John Hagee told a mostly Christian audience Monday night in Jacksonville.
Hagee's sermon capped an evening of Israeli-American patriotic and religious music and speeches from the pulpit during a "Night to Honor Israel" at New Life Christian Fellowship.
The fundraising event drew about 3,500 cheering, Bible-waving supporters of Israel and criticism from a leading Palestinian-American in Jacksonville.
"We must act out against Iran before it becomes a nuclear Holocaust," Hagee said to roaring applause, "and I hope and pray there's enough courage in Washington to do the job."
He repeatedly quoted biblical passages, including a verse in which God says he will bless those who support Israel and curse those who oppose it.
"If a line has to be drawn in America, draw it around Christians and Jews because we are one," Hagee said.
The gathering was a fundraiser designed to generate aid for an Israeli town that has suffered recent rocket attacks. At least $65,000 was raised in the collection, church spokeswoman Melodee Nobles said.
That concern for an Israeli town, coupled with a lack of concern for communities in Palestine or Lebanon, is upsetting to many from the region, said Sam Farhat, a Palestinian Christian and Jacksonville businessman.
Hagee and his followers aren't true Christians because their hearts go out only to Israel, said Farhat, former president of the local Ramallah-American Club and National Federation of Ramallah, Palestine.
"They have no empathy for the humanity of others," Farhat told the Times-Union by telephone.
Hagee is the founder and senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio. His television and radio programs are broadcast around the world.
Earlier this year he launched Christians United For Israel, an interdenominational organization focused on providing financial and political support to Israel.
Hagee is a leader in the American Christian Zionist movement that sees Israel's continued existence as the fulfilment of biblical prophecy and central to the unfolding of Christian End Times theology.
He was joined on the program by a number of First Coast religious leaders, including a Ponte Vedra Beach rabbi and the cantor of a Mandarin Jewish temple.
Yitschak Ben Gad, consul general of Israel to Florida and Puerto Rico, also spoke.
"When I see this wonderful crowd ... I know that Israel is not alone," he said.
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Zelikow Resigns As Rice's "Aid"
NY Times
28/11/2006
Two months ago, the State Department's counselor, Philip D.
Zelikow, offered an oblique criticism of the administration's failure to push strongly for an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan in the Middle East.
In a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Mr. Zelikow, an intellectual known for peppering his statements with historical references, said progress on the Arab-Israeli dispute was a "sine qua non" in order to get moderate Arabs "to cooperate actively with the United States on a lot of other things that we care about."
A State Department spokesman was quick to distance the department officially from Mr. Zelikow's remarks, which ruffled the feathers of American Jewish groups and Israeli officials. But the administration may soon be doing what Mr. Zelikow advised, starting a renewed push for a Middle East peace initiative, in part to shore up support in the Arab world for providing help in Iraq.
If it works, the architect of the plan will not be around to see its conclusion. On Monday, the 52-year-old Mr. Zelikow, after 19 months serving as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's in-house contrarian and advocate for realpolitik in American diplomacy, submitted his resignation, effective Jan. 2. He said that he would return to the University of Virginia, where he has an endowed chair as a history professor.
In his resignation letter, Mr. Zelikow cited "some truly riveting obligations to college bursars" for his children's tuition and said he would remain available to help the administration where he could. While Mr. Zelikow, in an interview, maintained that he was not leaving his post because of any disgruntlement, one administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the subject publicly noted that Mr. Zelikow had been frustrated with the pace of the administration's diplomatic efforts on the Middle East, Iran and North Korea.
Whatever the reason for Mr. Zelikow's departure, in losing him Ms. Rice is losing not only one of her most trusted advisers, but also one of the few people in the State Department willing to speak with candor during closed-door meetings on American diplomatic efforts.
Some of his ideas have become policy; he had called for closing down secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency a year before the Supreme Court decision that prodded the Bush administration to empty them. The United States offered North Korea a chance to negotiate a permanent peace treaty, as Mr. Zelikow had advised, and he, along with Ms. Rice, was one of the backers of the Iran initiative, in which President Bush offered to reverse three decades of American policy against direct talks with Iran if it suspended uranium enrichment. Neither North Korea nor Iran has responded positively to the initiatives, but America's allies applauded them.
"I appreciate Philip's dedicated service in this time of historic change and we will miss his counsel at the State Department," Ms. Rice said in a statement.
Mr. Zelikow and Ms. Rice are co-authors of a book about Germany's reunification, "Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft" (Harvard University Press, 1995). The book is a study in realpolitik, examining - and admiring - the tempered, carefully managed American response to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In the interview on Monday, Mr. Zelikow disputed suggestions that he was more of a political realist than an ideologue, calling it a "false dichotomy."
"I think the issue of ideals is important, but ideals that are not practically attainable" end up hurting more than helping, he said. "You don't end up strengthening your ideals when you fail to attain them."
Comment: While Zelikow was neck-deep in the 9/11 cover up in his position as Executive director of the 9/11 Whitewash Commission, he did have the presence of mind to make it clear what exactly the Iraq invasion was all about:
"Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 -- it's the threat against Israel," Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organization.
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'Anti-Jewish' Turkish film pulled from US theaters
By TOM TUGEND
Jerusalem Post
27 Nov 06
A Turkish film featuring a venal, bloodstained Jewish doctor has been withdrawn from screening in the United States.
In Valley of the Wolves: Iraq, American actor Gary Busey portrays a Jewish doctor in the American army who cuts out the organs of Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison and sells them to wealthy clients in New York, London and Tel Aviv.
The film, a blockbuster hit in its native country, had been scheduled to open Friday at two theaters in Los Angeles and one in San Francisco.
In early November, however, Valley of the Wolves was quietly dropped from the theaters' advance schedules.
Gregory Gardner of Luminous Velocity Releasing, a company involved in distributing the film in the United States, said that the Turkish producer, Pana Films, had withdrawn the movie without explanation.
Attempts to obtain further information from American or Turkish sources were unsuccessful, but a protest filed by the Anti-Defamation League may have played a role in the cancellation.
In an October 19 letter to Nabi Sensoy, Turkey's ambassador to the US, ADL leaders expressed concern at "the incendiary anti-Jewish and anti-American themes and characters in the film" and pointed to previous inquiries about the wide availability of anti-Semitic publications in Turkey.
The letter was signed by ADL national chair Barbara B. Balser and national director Abraham Foxman, who did not receive a reply from the ambassador.
The movie's Busey character, listed in the credits only as "The Doctor" but clearly identified as Jewish, isn't even the chief villain. That distinction goes to another American actor, Billy Zane, who plays a rogue American officer and self-professed "peacekeeper sent by God."
In one scene, he and his men shoot up an Iraqi wedding party, killing the groom in the presence of the bride and a little boy in front of his mother.
Valley of the Wolves was shown at the Berlin Film Festival and has played in theaters in Germany, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Bosnia. The film and its Jewish doctor sparked some controversy in Germany.
According to one Turkish diplomat, who spoke unofficially and requested anonymity, the film became a hit in Turkey because it is a spinoff from the country's top-rated TV series of the same title, though the television show's villains are local mafiosos and militant ultra-nationalists.
The movie is also seen by Turks as payback for the 1978 film Midnight Express, in which some Americans and Britons are caught trying to leave Turkey with a stash of hashish, thrown into a hellish prison and viciously mistreated.
One Turkish newspaper wrote, Valley of the Wolves is our revenge for Midnight Express.
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All You Know Is Wrong
Interview with David Ray Griffin
Whole Life Times
This is a longer version of the exclusive CE interview that appears in the September issue of WLT.
If you had to distill the most compelling elements of the collapse of the two World Trade Center towers right now, what points are most disturbing?
There are two big ones: One is simply that steel frame, high-rise buildings have never collapsed because of fire, or fire and externally induced damage. Secondly, all such collapses have been caused by explosives and these collapses have at least 10 characteristics of the particular kind of controlled demolition known as controlled implosion, where the building falls basically straight down. When you go through those 10 characteristics, not a single one of them can be accounted for by the official theory, the fire plus impact theory. And then if you said, well okay, let's say it's never happened before and it would be very unlikely but let's say there's one chance in a hundred, let's be very generous-that one of them could have occurred. But that all 10 of them could have occurred in the same building and then in two buildings, you're talking about chances one in a trillion or something like that, so the chance is essentially zero that it could have happened by the official theory.
How could those towers have collapsed into a pile of rubble only a few stories high, when the core of each tower consisted of 47 massive steel columns? You've got these 47 columns that go from the sub basements to the top. How could those all have just collapsed into a pile of rubble?
The 9/11 Commission settled that easily. They said the core of each building consisted of a hollow steel shaft that just had elevators and stairwells in it. You can't get a bigger lie. The unique thing about the towers when they were built was their unique structure of just having the core thing and then the perimeter columns and then trusses that connected the core to the outside, so you've got this tremendous amount of space with no pillars whatsoever. So any book you would read about the WTC would talk about those things and they just denied their existence. I mean, it's just audacious that the press won't report on those huge lies.
But wouldn't the administration have realized that people are going to investigate this? We're not a nation of dummies.
We are a nation that is very poorly informed by its mainstream media, a nation that has had drilled into it that we are America the Good, we make mistakes but we're never deliberately evil. We've had drilled into us that people who believe in conspiracy theories are idiots, so we wouldn't want to be one of those. But most importantly we're a nation with a controlled press, a corporately controlled press. We do not have free press. And in fact, if you want to say that the definition of a free press is one that is not controlled by religion, one can say ours is, because we really have a religion of capitalism-we like to call it free enterprise-and that's what controls our press, so we do not have a free press any more than the Soviet Union had a free press.
They'll just say, "He holds the ridiculous theory that explosions planted by our own government brought the building down" but they never say, "Now what's the evidence?" And they would certainly never bring me or Jim Hoffman or Jim Fetzer on to NBC or ABC or CBS or to say what is the evidence for that.
Building 7 was 47 stories high and not hit by an airplane. Do we know why it collapsed?
It's still not covered, even by the 9/11 Commission Report. Building 7 was the least covered of the buildings that collapsed and the least understood, but the most glaring example of potential complicity by the administration.
It is the most obvious because with the Towers, one can think that somehow the planes hitting them caused them to weaken and fall down but with Building 7, it would be the first building in history that was ever brought down entirely by fire alone. And so it's obviously the biggest embarrassment for the government, so the 9/11 Commission handled Building 7 by simply not mentioning that it collapsed. This should have been a world-shaking event that would have led all insurance companies around the world to say, now we know, steel framed high rise buildings can totally collapse because of fire alone, so we've got to up our premiums greatly. But they didn't even mention this historic event. Now we come to the NIST Commission, the National Institute for Standards and Technology, have put out a report claiming that they have given an explanation of why the World Trade Center towers collapsed. It's completely bogus but I won't go into that, I'll just say, they have not yet released their report about Building 7 because obviously they know they don't have a plausible story to tell.
FEMA could not explain it either?
FEMA did the first investigation, and they came up with a scenario in which maybe timbers from one of the towers came over and set the diesel fuel on fire and turned Building 7 into Towering Inferno. Of course the photographs show that there were fires on only two or three floors of the 47-story building at most. But nevertheless, they say maybe this is what happened, but then at the end of all that they said, the best possible explanation we could give has a very low probability of occurrence. So in other words, they admit they couldn't explain it.
Wasn't the collapse captured on video and didn't it in fact look like a controlled demolition?
It was even more obviously a case of controlled implosion than the Towers, because the Towers, the collapse had to begin near the top where the planes had hit because that was going to be the story. But Building 7 was just a traditional controlled implosion, where it starts from the bottom and the walls fold in on themselves and it collapses into a very tiny pile of rubble. And so to show you what lack of confidence NIST has in its report, a fellow named Ed Haas, who has a muckraker report that you can find on Google, called up the spokesman for NIST, named Michael Newman, and said, you know you've got all these physicists who reject the official story and they believe that it was an inside job, why don't we settle all this by having a debate on national television, between some of these scientists and your NIST scientists? And Newman said no NIST scientist is going to debate. And he's reiterated that. So he has said nobody from NIST will ever debate their report. In other words, they will not defend it in public, even though it's a taxpayer supported project and they should be demanded to report it. So that shows you how flimsy the official story is. And they still have not issued a report on it. They will not debate their report on the Towers. Obviously, they're not going to defend their debate on Building 7-they won't even issue it, just hope the public forgets about it. Because the press does not keep reminding people that Building 7 did collapse and it's a total mystery.
What was your first major tip-off that something might be inaccurate in the reporting of the events of that day?
Mainly I was focusing on the question of, "Why no interceptions?" Why, with the most sophisticated air defense system in the world, nobody scrambled to stop these planes from flying into the various targets. We have standard operating procedures that evidently work flawlessly about 100 times a year, where planes are scrambled and there are interceptions made within 10 to 15 minutes of the first sign there's anything wrong (the three standard signs are they lose radio contact, the transponder goes off or the plane deviates from its course). If they can't get it corrected within about a minute they contact the military, and the military calls NORAD and has them scramble a couple of fighters from the closest airbase that has fighters on alert-these are all over the country and these planes can go very fast and so normally it only takes about 10 or 15 minutes. And here, 20 minutes, 40 minutes with the Pentagon-nothing happened. So that was the first evidence I focused on that suggested it wasn't just a matter of foreknowledge but was actual complicity in the attacks, ordering a stand down (not taking action). Because the other evidence that I looked at early on was all the evidence of foreknowledge and of actual interference with investigations.
You suggested that the FBI had repeated warnings from multiple sources that there was going to be an attack on the World Trade Center, which they systematically ignored.
That was part of it. Some of them were that explicit. Others were simply where they were investigating Osama Bin Laden, or members of Al Qaeda, people who were taking flying lessons and so on, various kinds of investigations where FBI members trying to do their jobs got stopped by FBI headquarters. And then after 9/11 the stories about not really going after Bin Laden.
Was it the British press that suggested we deliberately allowed Bin Laden to escape?
One of their mainstream newspapers concluded that the so-called Battle of Tora Bora was just a farce.
Why didn't the Pentagon collapse when it, too, was hit by an airplane?
A question you might ask about the Pentagon is, it was allegedly hit by an airplane about the same size as the one that hit each of the towers-why did the seismic measurements not register? You get a definite impact registration when each of the towers is hit. But when the Pentagon is hit, nothing. Whatever hit the Pentagon did not really shake the earth. Those seismic reports are available for anybody who wants them, so if you Google "9/11 seismic reports," you would find it.
Pictures we've seen show a hole in the Pentagon just a couple of feet off the ground going through several layers of the building. It seems hardly large enough to have been made by a Boeing 757.
It's between the first and the second floor, so it means that the aircraft itself had to be extremely low to the ground, If that hole was, as some people say, simply the hole punched by the nose of a Boeing 757, the engines would have been digging into the grass, but there is no damage to the grass whatsoever.
Also, with the force of a Boeing 757, the enormous weight of that going several hundred miles an hour, even a reinforced Pentagon façade would have been much more destroyed than all the photos and eyewitnesses say.
And if it was a 757, the tail, which would go up about 40 feet off the ground, surely would have made some sort of dent, visible mark, above that hole we saw in the façade before the building collapsed.
There are no marks on the side where the wings would have hit, and those would have been very powerful. So it seems like a combination of the amount of damage done to the Pentagon and very little debris-no large, plane-sized things outside, no wings, no engines, no tail, no fuselage, so they had to be inside, and yet when the people inside were interviewed, the fire chief and then the head of the building renovation, both of them said they hadn't seen any big pieces of airplane.
What about luggage or body parts?
I've seen descriptions of people who were on the scene and saw body parts, but I don't know if anybody walking through would have been able to distinguish passengers from people working in the Pentagon. I've never heard any testimony about luggage.
The Pentagon is one of the best-defended buildings in America. Wouldn't there have been security cameras trained on it that would have captured the plane or whatever it was that hit?
I'm sure many cameras did capture the aircraft that hit the Pentagon. But if by hypothesis it was not a 757, the Pentagon is not going to release those videos, and that's one of the questions we've asked. We know there was a video camera on the Citgo gas station across the highway, and we know that the FBI swooped in within five minutes. You would almost think they had known in advance! You would think the FBI would think, "Oh my God, for the first time in history, the Pentagon has been hit, what's happened here!" but they had the presence of mind to go over there and get the video.
There have been efforts under the Freedom of Information Act to get that. And also there's another story that one of the hotels had workers who were actually watching the video and the FBI came in and took it away. So we know at least there were at least two and likely a lot more. That's one of the many, many, many pieces of evidence that suggest that the Pentagon was not hit by a Boeing 757.
If it wasn't hit by a 757, what did hit it? And if Flight 77 didn't hit it, where did it go and what happened to those passengers?
That's what we need an investigation for. We need somebody with subpoena power and the power to get people to identify those above them who are responsible, and talk about what really happened. They have to be more afraid of prison than of losing their job or getting shot or getting "accidented." As to what really hit it, there's contradictory evidence-some evidence suggests a missile, some suggests a rather small airplane that might have been a guided aircraft, like a Global Hawk, something fairly light that when it hit the Pentagon it would have shattered into fairly small pieces, because we do have witnesses.
Prior to whatever hit the Pentagon hitting it, was there an internal explosion?
That's what it's starting to look like, that there was an explosion and subsequently something did strike it from the outside. So it's starting to look like all three things may be true: there was an explosion, there was a small plane, and the small plane shot a missile into the Pentagon. That would account for this hole that went through to the C Ring.
If they'd just release the tapes, they could end this speculation. It's astonishing that mainstream news media isn't looking at this.
More Americans get the news from NBC than from any other outlet. You've got NBC, CNBC, MSNBC. And who owns NBC? General Electric. Who is making billions of dollars off the War on Terror?
What about Flight 93, reported to have crashed in Shanksville, Penn.?
This is the thing I know the least about. Some people speculate that, to watch the glorified movie of it, you know, "Let's roll" where all the passengers roll up to the front, they take control of the plane, and somehow in the process of wresting it away from whoever was flying it, it then proceeds to crash into the Pennsylvania countryside. Now there's another school of thought that says that the American military deliberately shot it down for reasons that we don't fully understand. So I'm confused about this.
There are actually three schools of thought-another one says that when the people showed up at the so-called crash site, there was no evidence of a plane. So it's a big mystery what happened. In my books, I have provided an enormous amount of material that the plane was indeed shot down by the US military. And there is even an envoy from Washington who was speaking to the Canadians trying to get them to join more thoroughly into what we call the Missile Defense Program, in other words the weaponization of space. And he said you should be very proud of your Canadian participation in NORAD because when Flight 93 was shot down by the military it was a Canadian who was in charge of NORAD at that stage. So we have testimony that a Washington insider has said that it was shot down.
What do you think about the film United 93?
The movie follows the official version. But there are different versions of the official version. One was that the passengers brought it down, one was that when the terrorists saw that the passengers were going to get control of it, they deliberately grounded it, so you do have those two official versions. But one thing that people need to be alerted to who have seen the movie, in the movie these people are having these rather long cell phone conversations with people back home, right? Where they're interacting with them. If you read the actual transcripts that have been provided, they're not interactive like that, they're all one-way things that anybody could have said, it's more like "Hi Mom, we're at the back of the plane, we're getting ready to do something, gotta go now, bye." They do not have conversations where the people would really know I was talking to my son or my husband or my wife. And we have very good evidence that that's not the case in the famous case of Mark Bingham, who says, "Hi Mom, this is Mark Bingham." What person has ever talked to his mother and used his last name? That's so absurd!
A story came out a few years ago that showed that they have now perfected voice morphing. So they can take a recording of somebody and then make that person utter certain sentences. So I forget the, I think it was one that they had Colin Powell and it had him uttering a statement such as, some absurd thing, "We just shot down a Russian satellite" or something like that. And it sounded to all the world like Colin Powell, nobody could have detected that it was a made up thing. So all of those things were quite likely results of voice-morphing.
So if the military did shoot it down, why?
One possibility is that there was some truth to the story that the passengers were trying to get control and that they were afraid they were going to have live hijackers who might talk. That's one possible story. In the meantime we've become more skeptical that there were actually any Arab Muslim hijackers on these planes. Their names are not on the flight manifests. There are no Arab names on any of the flight manifests that have been released. We have no evidence that any of these guys were on the plane. So if that was the case with Flight 93, why would the military have shot it down? And there I just have to throw up my hands and say, this is why we need a real investigation to find out what really happened. So there are just lots of mysteries about Flight 93 and 77 and the Pentagon strikes. Just reading what we can learn from available information, we will never know the full truth, not even close to it. So our primary claim is not that we know the truth. The primary claim is that there are so many questions that demand a real, official investigation.
I have focused my attention on what we're certain of, that the official story is false. We're not certain of what happened to 93 or 77 or at the Pentagon and to some extent at the Towers.
What could be the motive of our leaders to orchestrate such events?
As soon as the Soviet Union imploded, these guys started thinking we could have a unipolar world instead of a bipolar world, and we could make it permanent. We could have the first borderless empire in history. We'll be greater than Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan or the Roman Empire or the British Empire. Pretty heady trip. And they were writing about this all through the '90s, and they formed this organization called Project for the New American Century, which is a unipolar, neocon organization, and laid out five conditions for doing this: You've got to have a tremendous increase in military spending; Second, the transformation of the military technologically, which really means the weaponization of space. Third, we need to get control of the world's oil, so Central Asia and the Middle East, and of course Iraq was in their sights from the time that Bush Sr. refused to go to Baghdad-they were writing letters to Clinton urging him to attack Baghdad. And clearly they had plans to attack Afghanistan prior to 9/11-that had developed at least in the summer of 2001.
Fourth, they wanted to revise the doctrine of pre-emptive strikes. According to international law up until then, you could not launch legally a pre-emptive strike on a country unless you had very good evidence that it was just about to launch a pre-emptive strike on you, and this strike had to be so imminent that there was no time to take it to the UN Security Council. So they said this was archaic, paying attention to international law, we should be able to attack any country we want to, basically.
The fifth requirement would be a kind of new Pearl Harbor that would get the American people ready to support these policies: the spending and be willing to accept pre-emptive strikes on other countries and so on. So 9/11 did all that. Gave them everything they wanted. We're talking about billions even trillions of dollars, when you put it in terms of decades of spending. That very day they increased military spending $40 billion, which is spending money. And by now we've upped it to over $200 billion. They don't even count what they spend on Iraq in the budget; that's just discretionary funds.
So you can't imagine stronger motivation. The two major motivations for war have always been the political motivation of imperial lust, just the desire to win in battle and rule over other people; and the dominant motivation of at least the kind of people who've gone into politics and the military. And then the other big motivation is economic, which in our day, partly is just lining their own pockets, partly it's keeping the military spending going which means funding all these corporations that build things for the military, such as General Electric, Halliburton obviously and then all the ones that produce military equipment, tanks and all that stuff. But also getting control of the world's resources as they're winding down. That's where the oil in particular, oil and natural gas, come in.
And Iraq has such huge reserves.
So did the Caspian Sea. So we've got two of the biggest reserves back to back like that. So for people to say no motivation, we had what would count as the strongest possible motivations for going to war, in terms of what has always motivated people to go to war in the past.
There has been talk that FDR had advance knowledge of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
There's a book called NATO's Secret Armies and it shows that during the Cold War, the CUIIA and NATO (which of course means the Pentagon) were funding and backing various attacks in Italy, France and Belgium to terrorize the population and then the left-wing would be blamed-the Communists or anarchists-because right after the war the Communists were very popular because they'd been the Resistance, and we were trying to put the right-wingers back in control. So we would arrange these attacks. There was a big expose of it in the '90s but you heard almost nothing about it in the US, whereas in Europe it's quite well-known that we did all that.
So you're saying that this is not the first time we've been involved in actions like this?
We have done it time and time again. We wouldn't be sitting on this property other than for a false flag operation we did to start the war with Mexico and stole half of Mexico from them, by claiming they had shed American blood on American soil. A Congressman named Abraham Lincoln said that was the sheerest deception on the part of President Polk, but he got away with it.
Is the "false flag" phenomenon a common practice?
I began my latest book, The Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11, with a whole chapter on "false flag" operations, and show that imperialists have regularly done this. The Chinese did it when they were ready to start taking over Manchuria. The Germans did it when they wanted to attack Poland... The burning of the Reichstadt was earlier, when they wanted to get rid of civil rights. But several years later when they were ready to attack Poland, they dressed some of their own troops in Polish uniforms and had them go over the border and then come back and attack. Then they got some German convicts, killed them and dressed them as Poles and left their bodies as proof that Poland attacked. So then the next day, Hitler could cite 21 border incidents.
And then we've got Operation Northwoods documented. This was what the Pentagon proposed to Kennedy, so we would have a pretext to attack Cuba. And they used that language. They said, "Operations to provide a pretext to attack Cuba." If it had been any president other than Kennedy, we probably would have done it.
A lot of people say the 9/11 Commission, which has endorsed the official account, was an impartial commission and can be believed. It was independent, there were Republicans and Democrats, and they did a deep and thorough investigation. Who are we, without their resources, to question their conclusions?
Who actually ran the Commission? People think it was kindly old chairman Thomas Kean, Gov. of New Jersey. These commissioners we saw on TV didn't do the work. The work was done by a staff of 75 people run by Philip Zelikow, Executive Director. He was essentially a member of the Bush/Cheney administration. He had been part of the National Security Council during the administration of the first president Bush. He and Condoleezza Rice were on that together. Then when the Republicans were out of power during the Clinton years, they wrote a book together. And you have to be very close to somebody both personally and ideologically to write a book together. Then when Rice was named national security adviser for the second president Bush, she brought Zelikow on to help with the transition to the new National Security Council. Then he was appointed by Pres. Bush to the president's foreign intelligence advisory board. After that then, he became chairman of the 9/11 Commission. So it was no different than if Condoleezza Rice or Dick Cheney had been running the Commission. But the press didn't tell us this about Zelikow. They would have a few mentions of it in the New York Times, about the families of the victims being unhappy with Philip Zelikow. But I never saw a story spell out how closely allied he was to the Bush Administration.
Now here's something I learned from the book Rise of the Vulcans by James Mann. I mentioned this, the new doctrine of pre-emption, which is really a doctrine of preventive warfare. But people don't understand, prevention sounds like a good thing, sounds better than pre-emption. So I call it the doctrine of preventive pre-emption warfare, which means that we see that some country may cause us trouble somewhere down the line-maybe five or 10 years from now-but we decide it would be easier to get rid of their weapons now than later, so we'll just go ahead and attack them now. That was the new doctrine that was signed into existence in a document called "National Security Strategy of United States of America 2002." And in the cover letter to that document the president himself says, "We can no longer wait until our enemies have gotten ready to attack us, we've got to act offensively." And who wrote that document? Philip Zelikow. Condoleezza Rice was in charge of writing that-that's her job as national security adviser. So she had evidently asked Philip Hoss, a subordinate to Colin Powell in the State Department, to write it. He wrote a first draft and she thought it wasn't bold enough, so she ordered it completely rewritten and had Zelikow come in and do the writing. She and Zelikow and Stephen Hadley were the three who primarily wrote it. So here you have a guy who [helps] write the document that on the basis of 9/11 says we can get this new doctrine of pre-emptive preventive warfare that neo-cons have been wanting-the guy who most turned 9/11 into the pretext for making this US official policy. And he is the one who is a year later brought on to be the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, which is supposed to see if the White House was complicit somehow-maybe just through incompetence or for deliberately allowing it to happen or ordering a stand down operation or whatever it is, was the White House somehow involved.
It's outrageous, and the press has never talked about it. That's what we're talking about, an unfree press that will not reveal even the most basic facts. You wouldn't have to argue any kind of complicity, you could say, "Isn't this an interesting fact: The fellow who was put in charge of the 9/11 Commission was the one who wrote this document which contains this new doctrine which is so central to the Bush administration that it's called the Bush Doctrine, this new doctrine of preventive warfare." There's always been a Nixon Doctrine, a Johnson Doctrine, a Carter Doctrine-this was the Bush Doctrine.
Zelikow decided which topics would be investigated, and which ones not. So they did not investigate any of the evidence about Bush administration complicity and show why they had motives for this. Our motives were much more powerful than Al Qaeda's-what were the Al Qaeda motives? They hated Americans, they hated our freedoms. Our way of life. So they would do this. It's comic book stuff. What the American people don't know is that basically Zelikow controlled the Commission, controlled what the reports were. And then when some things would leak through that he didn't want in the final report, he controlled the final report, so he just deleted it. So here's an example of a big thing that leaked through. Has to do with the Pentagon's claim and the 9/11 Commission Report's claim that nobody in the Pentagon knew that some aircraft was coming after them. And of course the official story is that here was Flight 77 coming back after them, and it went along for about 40 minutes, and gosh none of their radars picked that up. And so it's an incredible story on its face. But we have actual evidence that they did know something was coming to the Pentagon.
Norman Mineta, secretary of transportation, reports that he was told by Richard Clark to come to the White House. He got to the White House, went in, reported to Clark. Clark tells him he should just go on down to the underground bunker, the presidential emergency operation center, and the vice president's already down there. And so Mineta said he got down there about 9:20am. Well he hadn't been there very long before this young man comes in and says to the vice president that this aircraft is now 50 miles out. And pretty soon he comes back in and he says that now it's 30 miles out. And then he comes back in and says that now it's 10 miles out, do the orders still stand? And the vice president whips his head around and says that of course the orders still stand, has he heard anything differently? Then Tim Romer, commissioner, asked what time was this, how long it was after he got down there. He said it was about five or six minutes. So Romer asked if that would have been about 9:25 or 9:26? Yeah. Well then the official story is that of course the Pentagon was hit, about 9:37 or 9:38, there's a big gap in there so there's a problem, but nevertheless you have the testimony that something was coming towards Washington and that the vice president said yes, the orders still stand.
Now Mineta says he assumed the order was to shoot the aircraft down. But whatever it was, it was not shot down, and why would the young man have asked do the orders still stand if the order was to shoot it down? Of course we would shoot something down that's coming towards us. So the order must have been not to shoot it down. So it looked like we had testimony there given to the 9/11 Commission about a stand down ordered by the vice president. Don't shoot down the aircraft. Well what happened to that testimony? Disappears. Does not make it into the 9/11 Commission Report.
Furthermore, the 9/11 Commission says that Cheney didn't get down to the underground bunker until almost 10 o'clock, probably about 9:58, so of course they had to delete this whole exchange with Mineta and Romer, because when Mineta got down there at 9:20, Cheney was already there and obviously had been there for at least a few minutes because some conversation had already gone on. So that fits with what everybody else says, which is that Cheney went down there about 9:15. That's what Clark says, that's what the White House reporter says, that's what lots of people had said. Even Cheney said, shortly after the South Tower was hit-9:03-the Secret Service came, picked me up, carried me down bodily downstairs. Shortly thereafter couldn't have been 45 minutes later. So even Cheney had said on Tim Russert's show, that that had happened. The 9/11 Commission tells this obvious lie that he didn't get down there until 10. They do say he went downstairs earlier and then stayed at the end of the tunnel, watched TV for a while, talked to the president for a while, and so by the time he and his wife went down to the end of the hall it was 9:58, but they have him getting down to the downstairs at about, sometime after 9:30,and clearly we had all this testimony that he was already in the operations center by 9:15. So here's a blatant, obvious lie that somebody on the New York Times staff, somebody on the Washington Post staff has to know is a lie, and either they won't write a story about it or if they do write a story about it their editor won't let it run.
I've done quite a bit of reading about the press and people say that if you're going to be successful in the press you learn very early on what kind of stories will fly, what ones won't, and if you take a story of a certain type to your editor once or twice and it's turned down you know not to take that kind of story again. The editor doesn't have to say, "If you do this again I'll fire you." You get the message, this is futile, you're not going to get promoted, you're not going to get the plush jobs if you don't understand how things are done.
I have heard of people in the Pentagon. I know a guy who knows a guy who's still working in the Pentagon, who says, this guy tells me, it was no Boeing 757. So I ask the guy, can you get this guy to say this in public, and he says, absolutely not. He fears he will be killed if he said that. So there are people who fear for their lives, but I doubt it's newspaper reporters, it's more that they fear for their jobs or their reputation or whatever.
We always hear about people being "disappeared" in other countries. Do you believe it happens here as well? Are journalists at risk?
We had over 100 people who died mysteriously and just sometimes just before they were going to testify [regarding the Pres. Kennedy assassination]. Whether to the New Orleans jury or to the House select committee. But these were always people who had some particular inside information. Nobody who wrote a book about it was ever killed. They were speculating and they can be dismissed as conspiracy theorists. And they don't really have a firsthand knowledge. The only kind of news people who might be threatened are people who actually went out and interviewed somebody and got some of that direct inside information and were about to report. One or two people have died who were thought by some to have been related to 9/11.
What about the people in the press who got the military grade anthrax right after 9/11?
Yes, it did look like a warning shot. The president and the vice president asked Tom Daschle to have this innocuous investigation carried out only by the Joint Intelligence Commission. Daschle went along with it. Daschle was one of the ones who got anthraxed. Brokaw was another one. So it was a message to news reporters: don't do anything.
If you were to speak to the Christian community, what is a person's responsibility as a Christian or as a conscious spiritual being?
I really need to address the Christian community in particular because America is primarily a Christian nation and I'm a Christian theologian. I would say two things here. Christians should have motivation more than anyone else to look into 9/11, and if they agree it was an inside job, expose the truth. First of all because 9/11 from the beginning and still remains the pretext for all the things that we are doing and not doing in the world. It's the pretext for focusing on the so-called War on Terror rather than dealing with global warming, or the war on poverty or the health crisis, and all these other things, education... And it's the pretext for the attacks on Lebanon, anybody you can label a terrorist the United States gives you a free pass to attack them because they're kind of like the terrorists who attacked us and we've got to get rid of all the terrorists in the world. So it's the pretext for everything that has happened that has made the world a far more dangerous place than it was before 9/11. So just on a purely moral basis recognizing that 9/11 is the pretext for this, all Christians should say, well if there's one chance in a thousand that 9/11 was an inside job we need to know it, so I will read the evidence.
Secondly Christianity began as an anti-imperial religion. Jesus was crucified on a cross. The cross at that time was the Roman means of execution of people who were considered politically dangerous to the empire. So it was only the Romans that had the power to execute. We've had recently a movie that says it was the Jews who did it. No, the Jews did not, the Jewish authorities did not have the authority to crucify anybody, only the Romans could do it. So Jesus was crucified as a political threat to the empire. I have a whole chapter in the new book, which builds primarily on Richard Horsley's book called Jesus and Empire, so if nothing else I hope you will publicize this fact.
Christianity was anti-imperialistic during its first three centuries. Only in the fourth century did it start supporting empire, with Constantine.
Where do you pull an example from the Bible? What about, "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's"?
Right, a most misinterpreted passage. It was a trick question. The most volatile issue at the time and the reason people were crucified and groups were killed or slaughtered, is they refused to pay the tribute to Rome, that was the political issue. And so if Jesus had said, don't pay the tribute, that would have been grounds right there for execution, for rabble rousing. But on the other hand if he said, do pay it, then he's a collaborator. And so what does he say? He says, "Render unto God the things that are God's, render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." Well for a Jew in the first century, everything belongs to God, nothing belongs to Caesar. So it was a way of saying to his fellow Jews, of course don't pay it. It's got Caesar's picture on it, but that doesn't mean it belongs to Caesar. So that's been used and constantly quoted. If you read the chapter you'll see there are many illustrations and passages that once you understand the Roman occupation you see that Jesus was preaching what Horsley called an anti-imperial gospel.
And then the Book of Revelations, is a full-out anti-imperial book. The beast-that's Rome, all the imagery is Rome. And that's one of the earliest books of the New Testament, written before most of the gospels, so it shows you that early, before they had started to make their peace with empire as you get in the book of Luke. Luke acts much more friendly towards empire.
This is revolutionary stuff.
It is, and what we call the Peace Churches-the Quakers, the Mennonites, the Amish-they've always made this point that the fall of the church happened with Constantine, when he adopted Christianity and created the Holy Roman Empire, that was the ruin of the church. So they've always been anti-empire, and the mainstream churches, unfortunately, have not really taken a stand on this even after we've known better.
One good thing that may come out of all this is that churches may recover the original gospel and start to take it seriously.
Are there parts of the gospel that aren't in the Bible that support this position?
Sure. Elaine Pagels wrote a book several years ago in which she talked about the Gnostic Gospels, and she was focusing on the feminist issue and the rise of patriarchy and showed that some of the ones that didn't make it made women too equal. Now whether those gospels also had more of an anti-imperialist ring, to my knowledge she didn't focus on it because that wasn't the issue at the time, and I don't know anybody who's gone back and looked at that.
But in your mind you believe that Christ was preaching against the empire, because a lot of the evils of the world had sprung out of the expansion of empire.
Right, and he was preaching against the collaboration with the empire and the corruption of the temples. He was against, if one wants to say the Jews, the chief priests and rabbis of the temple. But these were not, they were outsiders who were brought in, they were Hellenistic Jews, so they were not people of the people, they lived in grand houses and were really stooges of the empire, and so he was preaching against them and against the money changers and that whole system of collaboration.
You have really synthesized a lot of information.
I've been working on this full time for three years. So sure, I've got an enormous amount of information. And I would issue a challenge to anybody who just wants to dismiss it a priori : Read my three books, write enough back to me to show me that you've read them and understood them, and then tell me you don't have any doubts about the official theory." I've thus far not run into anybody who's done that. I've run into people who've dismissed it without reading the books. I've run into a lot of people who've said, "I began your book convinced I was going to reject it." But if anybody will listen to an hour-long lecture, that's all it takes.
Do you ever have concerns for your safety?
I don't worry about that because there are two choices-they can either leave me alone or they can take me out. If they leave me alone I get to enjoy my old age and write my systematic theology. If they take me out, my 9/11 books rise to number one on the New York Times bestseller list. So it's a win/win situation.
David Ray Griffin has been dismissed as a conspiracy theorist, but as he points out, conspiracy is when two or three people conspire in secret to do something illegal or immoral, and our newspapers are full of conspiracies-local bank robberies, Enron defrauding its customers-so we're all conspiracy theorists. The question in this case is, which conspiracy has the best evidence to support it?
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The United States v. George Bush
By Elizabeth de la Vega
Tomdispatch.com
November 28, 2006
- What would the case against George Bush for intelligence fraud in the leadup to the war in Iraq look like? A former federal prosecutor lays out her case to an imaginary grand jury, and all she needs is the evidence available in the public record to make her case.
Following is an excerpt from Elizabeth de la Vega's new book, United States v. George W. Bush et al. (Seven Stories Press and Tomdispatch.com, 2006).
"Elizabeth de la Vega, appearing on behalf of the United States." That is a phrase I've uttered hundreds of times in twenty years as a federal prosecutor. I retired two years ago. So, obviously, I do not now speak for any U.S. Attorney's Office, nor do I represent the federal government. This should be apparent from the fact that I am proposing a hypothetical indictment of the President and his senior advisers -- not a smart move for any federal employee who wishes to remain employed. Lest anyone miss the import of this paragraph, let me emphasize that it is a disclaimer: I am writing as a private citizen.
Obviously, as a private citizen, I cannot simply draft and file an indictment. Nor can I convene a grand jury. Instead, in the following pages I intend to present a hypothetical indictment to a hypothetical grand jury. The defendants are President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell. The crime is tricking the nation into war -- in legal terms, conspiracy to defraud the United States. And all of you are invited to join the grand jury.
We will meet for seven days. On day one, I'll present the indictment in the morning and in the afternoon I will explain the applicable law. On days two through seven, we'll have witness testimony, presented in transcript form, with exhibits.
As is the practice in most grand jury presentations, the evidence will be presented in summary form, by federal agents -- except that these agents are hypothetical. (Any relationship to actual federal agents, living or deceased, is purely coincidental.)
On day seven, when the testimony is complete, I'll leave the room to allow the grand jury to vote.
If the indictment and grand jury are hypothetical, the evidence is not. I've prepared for this case, just as I would have done for any other case in my years as a prosecutor, by reviewing all of the available relevant information. In this case, such information consists of witness accounts, the defendants' speeches, public remarks, White House press briefings, interviews, congressional testimony, official documents, all public intelligence reports, and various summaries of intelligence, such as in the reports of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the 9/11 Commission. I've discarded any evidence, however compelling, that is uncorroborated.
Then, using a sophisticated system of documents piled on every surface in my dining room, I've organized and analyzed the reliable information chronologically, by topic, and by defendant. I've compared what the President and his advisers have said publicly to what they knew and said behind the scenes. Finally, I've presented the case through testimony that will, I hope, make sense and keep everybody awake.
After analyzing this evidence in light of the applicable law, I've determined that we already have more than enough information to allow a reasonable person to conclude that the President conducted a wide-ranging effort to deceive the American people and Congress into supporting a war against Iraq. In other words, in legal terms, there is probable cause to believe that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Powell violated Title 18, United States Code, Section 371, which prohibits conspiracies to defraud the United States. Probable cause is the standard of proof required for a grand jury to return an indictment. Consequently, we have more than sufficient evidence to warrant indictment of the President and his advisers.
Do I expect someone to promptly indict the President and his aides? No. I am aware of the political impediments and constitutional issues relating to the indictment of a sitting president. Do those impediments make this merely an empty exercise? Absolutely not.
I believe this presentation adds a singular perspective to the debate about the President's use of prewar intelligence: that of an experienced federal prosecutor. Certainly, scholars and experts such as Barbara Olshansky, David Lindorff, Michael Ratner, John Dean, and Elizabeth Holtzman have written brilliantly about the legal grounds for impeachment that arise from the President's misrepresentations about the grounds for an unprovoked invasion of Iraq. But for most Americans, the debate about White House officials' responsibility for false preinvasion statements remains fixed on, and polarized around, the wrong question: Did the President and his team lie about the grounds for war? For many, the suggestion that the President lied is heresy, more shocking than a Baptist minister announcing during vespers that he's a cross-dresser. For many others -- indeed, now the majority of Americans -- that the President lied to get his war is a given, although no less shocking.
So my goals are threefold. First, I want to explain that under the law that governs charges of conspiracy to defraud, the legal question is not whether the President lied. The question is not whether the President subjectively believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The legal question that must be answered is far more comprehensive: Did the President and his team defraud the country? After swearing to uphold the law of the land, did our highest government officials employ the universal techniques of fraudsters -- deliberate concealment, misrepresentations, false pretenses, half-truths -- to deceive Congress and the American people?
My second goal is to supplement the scholarly analyses already written, by moving beyond exposition, beyond theory, to the inside of the courtroom, or more precisely, the grand jury room. By presenting the President's conspiracy to defraud just as a prosecutor would present any fraud conspiracy, I hope to enable readers to consider the case in an uncharged atmosphere, applying criminal law to the evidence that they believe has been proved to the standard of probable cause, just as grand jurors would in any other case.
Why is it important to do this? Because whether the President and his senior officials conspired to defraud the United States about the grounds for war is, at least on one level, a legal question, but, without a shift in political will, there will never be any reasoned consideration of it as such. The President will not be held accountable for misrepresenting the prewar intelligence unless and until Congress conducts hearings similar to the Watergate hearings. As yet, however, we seem painfully incapable of reaching that point. We are like inept tennis partners, collectively letting the ball slip by in the no-man's-land between the service line and the baseline, or in this case, between the legal and the political.
Perhaps more important, however, is that, although the evidence of wrongdoing is overwhelming, the facts are so complicated -- far more so than those that prompted the Watergate hearings--that it's impossible to have a productive debate about them in the political sphere. Indeed, modern-day spin has vanquished substance so thoroughly that even the most well-grounded charge of deliberate deception is often considered more despicable than the deception itself.
One forum where that's not true is the courtroom. The court system is far from perfect, but there we at least expect that people will not substitute personal attacks for argument. We expect a reasoned exploration of fact versus fiction, honest mistake versus deliberate fraud. We also expect, and the law requires, that people hear all the evidence before deciding, thereby avoiding the rapid volley of sound bites that so regularly masquerades for debate on television. Hence, this hypothetical grand jury presentation: it is a vehicle to deliver a message.
My third goal is to send the message home -- to whomever will listen. And this is it:
The President has committed fraud.
It is a crime in the legal, not merely the colloquial, sense.
It is far worse than Enron.
It is not a victimless crime.
We cannot shrug our shoulders and walk away.
Why? Because We Are All Kitty Genovese's Neighbors
As an Assistant U. S. Attorney in Minneapolis, a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force in San Jose, and Chief of the San Jose Branch U.S. Attorney's Office, I prosecuted all manner of criminal cases. There were bank embezzlements, government frauds, violent takeover robberies, piloting a commercial passenger flight while under the influence -- the pilot had had twenty rum and (diet) Cokes and four hours' sleep before takeoff--and investment frauds, to name a few. Most were interesting; some downright loopy. One hapless fellow, for example, stole a truck filled with frozen turkeys and drove it across state lines to Wisconsin, thereby landing himself in federal prison rather than in county jail. For good measure, the following week -- before he'd been apprehended for the frozen-turkey heist -- he stole a truck filled with packaged frozen broccoli and drove it to Iowa.
Unquestionably, though, the most compelling cases were those that involved victims -- of violent crimes, robberies, or fraud. So I was not surprised to hear the lead Enron prosecutor's comment after the jury convicted former Enron CEOs Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling: "What inspired me," John Hueston said, "was just that, that I had spoken to so many employees, so many victims who lost their savings, people who pleaded with me and the other prosecutors to see justice done."
Thanks to Hueston and his team, the victims of the Enron fraud -- a $68 billion dollar crime that left 20,000 people without jobs, pensions, and life's savings -- have obtained some measure of justice. They will never be made whole, but at least the CEOs who orchestrated the fraud have been held accountable. In the case of the largest corporate fraud ever prosecuted in the United States, the system has worked, albeit imperfectly.
Thus far, however, in the case of the vastly broader and more devastating Iraq war fraud orchestrated by the CEO of the United States and his management team, the system has failed. And we are all victims of this fraud. George W. Bush exploited the vulnerability of an entire populace reeling from the September 11, 2001, attacks to manipulate them into supporting a war based on false pretenses. If the financial cost of the President's fraud is astronomical -- $340 billion in direct war costs alone as of August 2006 -- the human cost is incalculable, and far more profound: over 2,500 American soldiers killed and 19,000 wounded; possibly many more than 50,000 Iraqis killed; untold numbers of grieving Iraqi and American family members; hundreds of thousands of Iraqis homeless; and a million soldiers who have been sent to this war and will never be the same.
While we are all victims of the President's crime, we are also all bystanders. The crime is ongoing, happening right before our eyes, and we are all onlookers; we are all, in a sense, Kitty Genovese's neighbors.
As Malcolm Gladwell recounts in his book The Tipping Point, Kitty Genovese was viciously assaulted, stabbed three times, and finally killed, on the way to her Queens, New York, home one night in 1964. Thirty-eight neighbors heard or watched her ordeal, but no one called the police until the attack was essentially over. The murder was universally seen as a horrifying example of modern-day indifference to the plight of others. But, Gladwell explains, psychologists Bibb Latane and John Darley conducted experiments that led to a far different explanation: "When people are in a group ... responsibility for acting is diffused. They assume that someone else will make the call, or they assume that because no one else is acting, the apparent problem ... is not really a problem." Ironically, then, it was not that no one called to help Kitty Genovese "despite the fact that thirty-eight people heard her scream; it's that no one called because thirty-eight people heard her scream."
For over a year now, polls have shown that the majority of Americans believe President Bush deliberately misrepresented prewar intelligence. Executive branch officials who deliberately mislead Congress and the public intending to influence congressional action have committed a federal crime. That means that roughly 100 million Americans believe Bush has committed a crime, yet most, like Kitty Genovese's neighbors, are just passive bystanders--although not, I believe, due to indifference.
Indeed, many of us are just watching it happen because we feel powerless to stop it. Hundreds of thousands of people have, in effect, called 911, but not even Democrats in Congress have been willing to answer the phone. It is not that they don't have enough information; it is, our Democratic representatives say, because it is not good political strategy.
The proposition that it is not good political strategy to insist that government officials obey the law is highly debatable. More important, strategizing in the face of an ongoing crime is wrong. Ask any legislator whether he would strategize about possible political fallout before intervening to stop a crime that was occurring in front of his eyes and the response would be, "Of course not." But that is exactly what's happening right now.
So, consider this my 911 call. I'm calling on Democrats and Republicans to do the right thing. And I'm calling on everyone else to do whatever you can to convince Congress to do the right thing. I am not talking about bringing people to justice in the vengeful sense that President Bush employs. I am talking about effecting justice. I am talking, finally, about holding our highest government officials accountable for a complex and calculated program of false pretense, misleading statements, and material omissions -- a criminal betrayal of trust that is strikingly similar to, yet far worse than, the fraud committed by Enron's top officials.
Enron: Misleading Statements and Material Omissions
In July of 2002, President Bush stood before a snappy blue-and-white banner marked "Corporate Responsibility" and announced that he was opposed to fraud. With the enactment of the new Corporate Corruption Act, the President declared, there would "not be a different ethical standard for corporate America than the standard that applies to everyone else. The honesty you expect in your small businesses, or in your workplace ... will be expected and enforced in every corporate suite in this country." CEOs would now have to personally vouch for the truth of their public statements.
Bush's speech announcing a higher standard for CEOs was itself misleading. Hearing it, one might easily conclude that if the President hadn't pushed for this new law, corporate officers would be legally entitled to lie, cheat, and steal. Not true, of course. The new law, also called the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, did not suddenly, for the first time in United States history, require corporate officials to be truthful, forthright, and fair with the public. Such obligations have been inherent in criminal fraud and other statutes for years.
Indeed, the Enron prosecution did not involve the Sarbanes-Oxley Act at all. The main charge was conspiracy to defraud: that is, conspiring to deceive investors by manipulating financial data, making false and misleading statements, and deliberately omitting important facts, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371.
Manipulation of data, false and misleading statements, and material omissions -- sound familiar?
At trial, former Enron CEOs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling claimed they were not responsible for the deception because they had no idea what their underlings were doing. As the jury was instructed, however, anyone who makes representations intending that the public will rely on them, has an affirmative obligation to make sure that they are true and accurate. Representations made with reckless indifference to their truth are as false as outright lies.
After four months of complex testimony, the jury reached a simple conclusion: Lay and Skilling were responsible for what went on their company. As school principal Freddie Delgado put it: "I can't say that I don't know what my teachers were doing in the classroom. I am still responsible if a child gets lost."
In other words, the Enron jurors concluded that, legally, the desks of CEOs Lay and Skilling were the final repositories of the proverbial buck. Those jurors were average Americans -- office workers, educators, engineers, a nurse -- and they knew, even without the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, that CEOs should be held to the same standards of honesty and accountability that they would apply to themselves in their own lives. Faced with evidence that Lay and Skilling had repeatedly made public statements that were seriously undermined, if not flatly contradicted, by information and warnings they had received behind the scenes, the jury refused to allow them to avoid responsibility by blaming their subordinates.
Iraq: Misleading Statements and Material Omissions
The techniques of deception used by George W. Bush and his aides are identical to those used by Lay and Skilling. In his July 2002 speech announcing the signing of the Corporate Corruption Bill, the President said, "The only fair risks are [those] based on honest information." The President and his top advisers were acutely aware of the solemn risks posed by an invasion of Iraq, but instead of debating those risks honestly, they developed slogans, including the familiar "risks of inaction are greater than the risks of action" that simultaneously usurped and deflected counterarguments while providing no information whatsoever, honest or otherwise.
Such propaganda, cynical and craven as it is, might not qualify as criminal fraud, but the propaganda alone was insufficient to convince Congress and the American people to invest in the plan for war. To remedy this deficiency and close the deal, the President and his top aides made hundreds of representations, both general and specific, that were carefully crafted to manipulate public opinion. As we now know, many of those assertions were false and misleading. More important, we also now know that President Bush and his advisers had notice and direct knowledge that their representations were seriously undermined and in some key instances, disproved by information that was available to them. Consistently, the President and his aides knowingly conveyed false impressions, concealed important information, made deliberate misrepresentations, and professed certainty about facts that were speculative at best. Such is the definition of criminal fraud -- whether committed by the President of the United States or the CEO of a major corporation.
The only difference between the fraud committed by the Enron officers and the fraud committed by the President is that the latter was far more comprehensive and far more calculated. Even as President Bush stood center stage endorsing honesty that July four years ago, he and his company were setting the stage for another show. If the "only fair risks" speech was a perky Frank Capra clip, the White House's next production would be twenty-first-century H.G. Wells.
As of July 30, 2002, Bush had directed the creation of the White House Iraq Group, a public-relations operation whose sole purpose was to market the war. This team, collectively called WHIG, was co-chaired by the President's closest aides and long-term political consultants, Senior Adviser Karl Rove -- whom Bush has described as "the architect" of his 2004 reelection campaign -- and former Counselor to the President Karen Hughes.
By July 30, 2002, the White House Iraq Group had already begun fabricating an ominous scenario that blurred together the September 11 tragedy, mushroom clouds rising over American cities, and terrorists releasing strains of smallpox, interspersed with the shadowy face of a mad Iraqi dictator spring-loaded to attack the United States. They were collecting props -- anthrax vials and undated photos showing centrifuge components and unidentifiable buildings where something ominous might be happening, but we can't afford to wait to find out. They were writing the script: power phrases like "Grave and gathering danger" and "We can't afford to let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud," designed less to inform than to inflame. And, finally, Rove, Hughes, and company were scheduling appearances for the President's War Council members that would begin just a month later, in early September 2002.
It was to be a bravura performance by the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the National Security Adviser, and many supporting cast members. The production was so well done, in fact, that, like the radio audience terrified into hysteria by the infamous "War of the Worlds" broadcast of 1938, most of us were fooled. Admittedly, we resisted buying the duct tape and plastic sheeting; we may not have wrapped our heads in wet towels to ward off Martian gas like the 1938 radio audience. What happened, however, was much worse: because of Bush's fiction, we agreed to bomb people 8,000 miles away whose only "crime" was that they were oppressed by a violent and cruel dictator.
Undoubtedly, Americans were panicked by H. G. Wells's radio play in part because they were exhausted and nervous in those tough Depression years. But Orson Welles' breathless report of a Martian invasion was never intended to cause panic, nor was it ultimately harmful.
The President's elaborate production was, and still remains, an entirely different story. It was a deliberate effort to create a permanent state of fear in America. And to say it was harmful is like saying that it hurts to get hit by a Mack truck.
Federal sentencing guidelines recognize that one who defrauds a vulnerable victim, such as a salesman who falsely represents the curative benefits of an elixir to a cancer patient, has committed an even more serious crime than one who defrauds a person who is not so "particularly susceptible." The President knew that Americans were "particularly susceptible" in 2002. We were exhausted, and justifiably terrified, not only because of September 11 but also because of the anthrax murders and the random Washington, DC, sniper killings that coincided with the Bush-Cheney administration's push for war.
President Bush and his White House Iraq Group did not merely exploit this fear; they magnified it. Worse yet, the President was the very person upon whom the public relied to protect it from danger and, one would hope, from omnipresent fear itself. Having used the authority of the Oval Office to make people more afraid, having created an even darker backdrop of fear, our highest officials exploited that reliance and the trust they enjoyed by virtue of their positions to sell something they knew the American public would not otherwise have bought. It was as if the cancer victim's trusted personal physician had convinced him that his disease was more advanced than it really was, and then used the same fraudulently heightened fear to manipulate him into buying a bogus cure-all.
In the language of criminal law, the President and his senior advisers have abused a position of trust to defraud the most vulnerable of victims. How would such a case be presented for prosecution? I invite you into the grand jury room to observe:
Ladies and Gentlemen, tomorrow begins our presentation in the case of United States v. George W. Bush et al. Please remember that you must decide the case based solely on the evidence that's presented and the applicable law, without regard to prejudice or sympathy. In other words, your politics, and any personal feelings you have toward the defendants -- positive or negative -- should have no bearing on your deliberations.
Excerpted from United States v. George W. Bush et al. by Elizabeth de la Vega, published December 1, 2006 by Seven Stories Press and Tomdispatch.com. Copyright 2006 Elizabeth de la Vega.
Elizabeth de la Vega is a former federal prosecutor with more than 20 years of experience. During her tenure, she was a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and Chief of the San Jose Branch of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California. She may be contacted at ElizabethdelaVega@Verizon.net.
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Don't Trust the News? - A new community of expert and amateur readers grades the news as it happens...
By Rory O'Connor
AlterNet
November 27, 2006
How can you be sure that the news you see and hear is true? Are there any journals and journalists that you can really trust and rely on? If so, how can you find them amidst the clangor and the clutter?
After all, we live in an age of media scams and scandals -- from blowing it up on "Dateline" NBC to making it up in the New York Times (and the Daily News and USA Today and the Boston Globe and the New Republic and so on, ad nauseum and seemingly ad infinitum...) and from Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" to O.J. Simpson's "If I Did It" show... from Fox News to faux news all the way to even phonier video 'news' releases... and from government-and-corporate-sponsored "opinion" commentary to paid Pentagon propaganda posing as authentic journalism to Disney's undocumented 911 "docudrama" -- wherever and whenever you look, examples of media make-believe abound.
So what's a citizen to do?
In recent years, a combination of factors -- including but not limited to the consolidation of mainstream media by huge multinational entertainment conglomerates, the concomitant spread of cable television's highly partisan and factually challenged opinions-as-news formats, the digital information revolution and its explosion of online media outlets, and the Defense Department's Rumsfeldian reliance on "Information Dominance" -- have combined to create a serious long-term problem for our democracy. To put it bluntly, many of us no longer feel we can trust the news media to deliver the information we need to function as fully informed democrats.
Enter NewsTrust, an online social news network aimed at helping people identify quality journalism -- or "news you can trust." This free, not-for-profit service offers the most trusted news of the day, as selected by community members using state-of-the-art media literacy tools. By filtering content available from online sources, establishing common metrics for evaluation, and accessing the "wisdom of the crowds" through social networking, the free, not-for-profit NewsTrust service offers one possible solution to the "News You Can Trust" conundrum. The website, where members rate the news online based on commonly accepted standards of journalistic quality, features news and analysis from hundreds of mainstream and independent news sources. This non-partisan community effort tracks news media worldwide and helps citizens make informed decisions about democracy across party lines.
At NewsTrust, anyone can submit stories and news sources for community consideration. Each is then researched and rated by panels of reviewers for balance, fairness and other basic journalistic principles. Some reviewers are paid practicing journalists, others students -- but most are simply "ordinary citizens" seeking trustworthy information. NewsTrust's voluminous research shows that "amateur'" citizen reviewers using the site's unique review tools are able to evaluate news as reliably as experienced professionals.
NewsTrust is the brainchild of former journalist and brilliant digital media pioneer Fabrice Florin. After cashing out of a company that delivered content to mobile devices, Florin had time and money on his hands. While seeking something "socially useful" to occupy his time, he soon determined that media and its discontents would be a good place to put his energy. In early 2005, Florin began his effort to jumpstart NewsTrust. One of his first calls was to this reporter.
A mutual friend had referred Florin, whom I did not know. He told me of his plan to create an online space devoted "simply to helping each other find good journalism online." He said that he has some early interest and a modicum of backing from MoveOn, the self-identified "progressive family of organizations" that claims 3.3 million members across America working together "to realize the progressive vision of our country's founders."
I told Florin that I liked his concept, but thought it would never work if it accepted funding and support solely from the likes of MoveOn. The key to NewsTrust's success, to my mind, was to ensure that the service was completely non-ideological and non-partisan -- both in fact and in perception. Aligning closely with any partisan group -- especially the controversial Moveon -- would doom the effort at its inception. Finally, I told Florin he would also have to reach out to conservatives and independents and make strenuous efforts to include them in the NewsTrust community.
In light of the fact that I had told him he would have to turn down tens of thousands of dollars in greatly needed funding to work with me, I assumed that would be the last time I ever heard from Florin. Instead, to my great surprise, he called back several weeks later and said he thought I was right, and agreed to accept my suggestion of soliciting support and involvement from beyond the "progressive" community. More surprisingly, he also said he had decided not to accept MoveOn's money -- despite the project's dire funding prospects -- because to do so would damage (if not kill) the entire project. (Full Disclosure: I decided on the spot to accept Florin's offer of becoming NewsTrust's first -- and unpaid -- Editorial Director, and immediately began volunteering my services to help make the project a reality.)
Of course, the lack of funding could also kill the project -- and almost did several times. Efforts to garner grants from foundations proved largely futile, as the recent collapse in support for the not-for-profit independent media sector continues unabated. The response from leading schools of journalism, where we believe NewsTrust could play a vital role, was tepid, as administrators grappled with a changing industry, changing curricula and their own constant funding crises. Discussions with industry giants such as Google and Yahoo yielded initial interest but ultimately a let's-wait-and-see-what-happens response. Meanwhile work on developing the project and the site continued -- and the related expenses continued to mount.
When the money first ran out, Florin and NewsTrust Director of Product Development David Fox, who manages all web and technical development aspects of the project, rolled up their sleeves and went to work, spending months literally hand-coding and personally programming the site. When the money ran out the second time, Florin reached into his personal account and donated the funds necessary to keep the project going. Although he's far from wealthy, he says it's all been worth it.
"I'm just an ordinary person who was concerned about what was happening in our society and starting looking for quality, trustworthy information," Florin says. "But it was extremely tough to do so."
So who you gonna trust? Now there's NewsTrust. "Our social news network features some of the best and worst news of the day, all based on ratings from people just like you and me," says Florin. "We review everything our members submit and rate it based on journalistic quality, rather than mere popularity (which many other sites rely on) or partisan ideology, which we frankly identify as part of the problem with the media today -- and certainly not part of any solution."
NewsTrust has been operating as a closed, private pilot site for months, but is opening its portal this week to the public-at-large. It is user-friendly, offering a range of tools and review possibilities - including a 'quick review' option for newbies and those pressed for time, and a longer, more detailed 'full review' for dedicated news fanatics who are poised to make significant contributions of time and energy. It already tracks ratings for hundreds of text-based news sources, from blogs to newspapers to wire services to magazines, and continually adds new sources based on member submissions. After going public, its utility and reach should grow exponentially, and if all goes well, NewsTrust is poised to scale and to expand its ratings eventually to include rich audio and video sources as well.
In its first year as a pilot project, NewsTrust has accomplished a lot, including:
* developing a host of new online review tools;
* recruiting an experienced management team;
* adding an accomplished board of advisers;
* conducting extensive research and assessing market demand through national online surveys;
* testing educational applications of the service; and
* exploring collaborations and partnerships with a range of stakeholders, including both established news providers and startups, as well as civic groups and academic institutions.
What happens next is up to you.
Filmmaker and journalist Rory O'Connor writes the Media Is A Plural blog.
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A Nazi in the United States Senate
By David Truskoff
28 November, 2006
In 1952 when I built my first house in Connecticut USA my Father came to visit me.
" Very nice house, "he said. (He was a proud member of the builders union) "But David why in Connecticut"
"What's wrong with Connecticut?"
"The people here are all crazy. They sent a Nazi to the United States Senate. A Nazi who supported and got rich from doing business with the madman Hitler."
My father lost many of his relatives in Byelorussia during the Nazi rampage in that country. Naturally he followed the war news very closely and that day he told me about Roosevelt passing the "Trading with the enemy act in 1942 and how the U.S. confiscated the Prescot Bush holdings in a Nazi banking group. Until then I had never heard about that and I could hardly believe it. How could voters, less than ten years after that horrible war send such a man to the U.S. Senate?
On November 8th 2006, following the U.S. elections I thought about my father. I remembered when he took me to Union City New Jersey, not far from where we lived to see the German American Bund march through the streets swastikas and all. "You should go to Hell," My father would shout at them along with some choice words in Russian.
Yes, I thought about that day because I could easily equate the Jewish community that sent Joe Lieberman back to the U.S. Senate with the German American Bund. They are the same kind of blind faith followers.
Almost the entire country voted against the war in Iraq, but Connecticut sent the leading warmonger and blind faith Israel supporter back to the senate. They knew who and what he was. They voted for him anyway just as they did in 1952 for Prescot Bush,the grandfather of our President. Most people the world over are only what the media makes them and the media in Connecticut supported Prescot Bush and recently. Lieberman.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia tells us that Prescot Bush came under fire in the Meuse-Argonne offensive. Controversially, Bush wrote home about receiving medals for heroic exploits. His letters were later published in Columbus newspapers, but were retracted a few weeks later when it was revealed that he, in fact, had not received such medals. The retraction was made in a cable in which Bush stated that his earlier letter had been written "in a spirit of fun" and was not intended for publication. Is lying passed down genetically?
Investigator John Loftus has said, "As a former federal prosecutor, I would make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker) and Averell Harriman [to be prosecuted] for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They remained on the boards of these companies knowing that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany."
Ben Aris in Berlin, and Duncan Campbell in Washington wrote for the Saturday September 25, 2004 issue of the The Guardian "New documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.
As a young man I wondered how in hell the German people ever let insane Nazism happen to their country. When I had German prisoners aboard our ship during the war, I asked them that question, They shook their heads and looked down. Later one rated man said, "It's a sickness. Someone tells you you are better than others and you like to hear it so you follow."
Simple enough. It is the fuel of all religion and politics. It is also the wind that keeps the wild fires of greed spreading.
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Spy vs Spy
Polonium detected at Berezovsky's office
Tuesday November 28, 2006
The Guardian
Detectives have found traces of polonium 210 at the London offices of the exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, it was revealed last night. Officers were searching 7 Down Street, Mayfair, after the discovery of the radioactive substance that killed Mr Berezovsky's friend and former employee, Alexander Litvinenko.
A uniformed officer and at least one plain clothes policeman were stationed inside the lobby of the property last night. Outside another 15 officers were on standby in two marked police vans and the area was cordoned off.
Sources confirmed that traces of polonium 210 had been found at the address. Mr Berezovsky, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, refused to comment yesterday on the revelations. "I don't want to comment anything about it," he told the Guardian. "I don't know anything about police at my office."
Mr Berezovsky, a former maths professor, made his millions in the 1990s when he bought stakes in the Russian car, oil and media industries, many of which he sold off for enormous profits. He lives with his fourth wife in a Surrey mansion but has an office at the Mayfair address.
Detectives were also searching the offices of a security and risk management company in Grosvenor Street, in the West End of London, where traces of polonium 210 have been found. A spokesman for the company, Erinys, said it had alerted police because Mr Litvinenko had visited its offices on a "totally unrelated" matter some time before he was admitted to hospital. He added: "None of our staff with whom he had contact have suffered any ill effects."
The development came as the Health Protection Agency (HPA) said three people had been referred for further radiation tests at a special clinic after contacting NHS Direct in the past few days. They were among 18 people referred to the HPA for possible further examination since the radiation alert was issued on Friday.
In the past four days around 500 people have contacted NHS Direct saying they were concerned they may have been contaminated after visiting the Piccadilly restaurant Itsu or the Millennium Hotel in Grosvenor Square on November 1, the day Mr Litvinenko first became ill.
Dr Pat Troop, the chief executive of the HPA, said people referred to the specialist clinic would undergo urine tests for radioactivity over the next couple of days. The decision to refer them for tests was taken on "a very precautionary basis", she stressed. Further tests might be carried out if police identified other locations of concern.
Dr Troop said the HPA had not precisely identified when and where Mr Litvinenko ingested the poison. Working out the time of poisoning on the basis of radioactivity found in his body was "not a precise calculation", she said.
In a statement to the House of Commons, the home secretary, John Reid, stressed that police had yet to open a murder inquiry. He warned against any speculation about the death and said the police were not yet saying that Mr Litvinenko had been unlawfully killed. "The police have been very careful in the words they have used; they are dealing with a suspicious death," he said. "We are not yet at the stage that there is definitely a third party involved."
Mr Reid's statement came in response to an urgent question from the shadow home secretary, David Davis, who said in the House of Commons that there were grounds to suspect that this was a "a particularly cruel, protracted and unpleasant assassination".
Mr Davis said the apparent use of polonium 210 raised "a number of issues" over how such material had been obtained, how it was transported and delivered undetected, and who had the knowledge to use it.
Mr Reid said there were 130 premises in England and Wales with a known use of polonium 210, each regulated and controlled by the Environment Agency. "There has been no recent report of the loss or theft of polonium 210 in England and Wales," he said.
Mr Reid drew back from Peter Hain's outspoken criticism of the Kremlin at the weekend. The Northern Ireland secretary had strained Britain's relations with Moscow further by accusing President Putin of "huge attacks" on liberty and democracy.
Tony Blair and President Putin are due to meet this week at the Nato summit in Riga, Latvia. A spokesman for Mr Blair said yesterday: "The prime minister and other ministers have repeatedly underlined our concerns about some aspects of human rights in Russia. In terms of this particular case, however, we do have to proceed carefully."
Mr Litvinenko, an ex-KGB officer and vocal opponent of Mr Putin, died last Thursday night. A large dose of alpha radiation from the isotope polonium 210 was found in his urine. A statement he composed before he died blamed Mr Putin, a claim denied by the Kremlin.
The inquest into the death is expected to open on Thursday at St Pancras coroner's court, north London. It will be adjourned until a later date. Dr Andrew Reid, London's inner north district coroner, has to decide if and when to conduct a postmortem examination.
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Litvinenko's Business Contact Denies Role in Poisoning Plot
Created: 24.11.2006 17:04 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:39 MSK
MosNews
Andrei Lugovoi, the former Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB) operative and the businessman now reported by the Western media to be linked to the poisoning and death in the UK of his former colleague Alexander Litvinenko, refuted those allegations in an exclusive interview to Russia Today.
"Since Alexander died in the hospital I would like to express my condolences and sympathy to his family. This is a great tragedy for Alexander's family and all who knew him. That's why my opinion corresponds to what I've just said," Lugovoi mentioned.
He described the nature of his relations with Litvinenko. "We knew each other about 10 years before he moved to London. We were just acquaintances and did not maintain any personal or business relations. We had a period where we did not see each other and roughly a year ago he called me from London and asked whether I would visit London and I accepted the invitation as I have certain interests in London.
"He proposed to meet as he had an offer to make that he said could interest me. We met and he helped to establish business relations with several respected British companies. I gave their names to the British embassy to make the situation as transparent as possible. Over the past 12 months we met each other solely to discuss business matters since I was conducting dialogue with the British companies interested in investments in Russia. We negotiated an agreement about certain consulting on the matters in Russia," Mr Lugovoi said.
He found nothing special in Litvinenko's behavior during the meeting on November 1. "There were no signs he was ill, he was quite optimistic and behaved as usual. I did not notice anything special which drew attention. The meeting on November 1 in a London Millennium Mayfair hotel was rather short - no longer than 20-30 min and was not confidential. It was on Litvinenko's initiative and I even asked to shift it to November 2. I was in London for a single purpose to show the city to my family. I was in the UK also with my two business partners Vyacheslav Sokolenko and Dmitry Kovtun to attend a football game CSKA vs Arsenal and to rest. That's it," the Russian businessman added.
He refrained from speculating on Litvinenko's death. "It's a complicated question. I'd be very careful with any statements since the subject is very sensitive. The investigation can actually answer the question of what really happened. There should be proper diagnostics and checks which either proves the poisoning or not. The developments around Alexander within the last three weeks as far as his health deterioration is concerned are very strange, but I'm really surprised with the hysterical attempts to link me up to the events around Alexander," Lugovoi pointed out.
He dismissed the allegations in the Western media concerning his involvement. "After November 1 I was in London for 2 more days and did not go away suddenly as it was reported in the Western media. Secondly, we agreed with Alexander to meet each other in November in Madrid, where I planned a vacation with my wife. As Alexander learnt it he told me he knows a Spanish businessman interested in establishing contacts in Russia. He asked me to meet that man.
"Litvinenko and I agreed to contact each other to discuss the details. I called him on November 7 and he told me he felt sick, as if he had been poisoned. And one more thing - he called me up in London on my mobile phone on November 2 at 20-00 and asked to postpone the planned meeting. Then he called me in the evening and we agreed to stay in touch.
On November 7 we had a phone conversation and he told me he had been unconscious for two days and then felt better and hopes to be discharged soon. His wife Marina was present during the conversation. We agreed to have a conversation in a week. I called him on November 13 after first publications where he claimed to have been poisoned and I declared my sympathy to him. I told him I will probably be in Spain in November, exactly November 23, but he replied his condition had deteriorated and he will not be able to meet me and perhaps we will meet in December. All the people around him knew we met on November 1 and had calm conversations on November 2, 7 and 13. Last time we agreed to call each other in a week," Lugovoi explained.
He said he demonstrated a transparent position on Litvinenko's case and continues to stay in contact with the UK authorities.
"I returned to Russia on November 20 late in the evening. My friends called me and told me my name is mentioned in connection with this case. I rushed to the office, looked through the Internet. Next day I contacted the UK embassy and asked for a meeting to clarify the situation and possibly help the investigation and demonstrate the transparency of my position taking into account the fact I have business interests in the UK and my partners there have business interests in Russia.
"We agreed to meet on Thursday at 2 pm. I was there with Dmitry Kovtun who purely by accident was present at the meeting with Litvinenko on November 1. We exchanged views with UK representatives and agreed to meet the British police and clarify the situation. We had another conversation today and I expect the information on the procedure - will it be in the UK or the police officials will come here. I will also seek the advice of my lawyer. Immediately after the meeting in the UK embassy I contacted the media to represent my view as I consider any statements before such a meeting incorrect. Now I'm free to comment and open for contact," Russian businessman concluded.
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Litvinenko's Italian Contact Taken Into Protective Custody in UK
Created: 28.11.2006 15:07 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 15:07 MSK
MosNews
The Italian contact who met with former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko the day he fell ill from radiation poisoning is under protective custody in London and undergoing medical tests, a legal source is quoted by Reuters news agency.
Mario Scaramella, who has advised an Italian parliamentary commission on Soviet-era espionage, is being checked to verify whether he too has been contaminated.
"He went to London and is under British protection. He is undergoing medical tests to determine his possible contamination," said the Rome-based source, who asked not to be named.
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The British Public is Being Taken for a Ride
Julian Evans
November 27, 2006
I hate seeing my country being taken for a sucker. But that, I fear, is exactly what it is being taken for with the unfortunate death of Alexander Litvinenko. As the case rolls on, and the media hysteria continues, more and more I feel what the situation is exposing is not the evilness of the Kremlin, but our own gullibility, the sloppiness of our media, the irresponsibility of our politicians, and the greed of our PR industry.
The British press has been amazingly one-sided in its coverage of the ex-spy's death.
I want to focus on one example. It's the cover story in this week's Spectator magazine. The cover had a caricature of president Putin and the headline 'The Long Arm of Putin'.
The story, written by Neil Barnett, doesn't even entertain any other theories than that the Kremlin is responsible for Litvinenko's poisoning. It is presented to the reader as an open-and-shut case.
Here is one typical paragraph. Barnett says that Litvinenko was poisoned with thallium, which "a well-placed security source" tells him "suggests a state actor, and one with a long-standing interest in assassination techniques". Barnett goes on: "Poisoning a British citizen on British soil demonstrates a new level of chutzpah even for the Putin regime (which, for the record, rejects any links to the attack as 'sheer nonsense')".
Firstly, Litvinenko wasn't poisoned with thallium. That suggestion came from John Henry, a toxicologist who was approached by the office of Boris Berezovsky to give his opinion on the case, and who readily did so, despite not yet having seen the test results of Litvinenko. He later withdrew his comments.
Nonetheless, Barnett's "well-placed security source" uses this faulty testimony to conclude that a state actor must be involved - in other words, the Kremlin. How well-placed a security source can he be if he doesn't even check his basic facts before immediately and publicly pointing the finger at Putin?
From this speculation based on faulty testimony, Barnett has already concluded that the Putin regime is responsible. He gets indignant over the fact the attack was on a British citizen, though he doesn't mention the strange coincidence that Litvinenko only became a British citizen on the very day he was poisoned.
Barnett makes no mention of the fact the Kremlin stands to lose a lot more than it gains from Litvinenko's killing. He does not mention that it occurred just as Putin was attending a sensitive and important EU-Russia summit in Helsinki, and that this summit was far more important to Russian national interests than some played-out ex-spy who had already said everything he had to say. He does not mention that Litvinenko's death was long, drawn-out and spectacular - in other words, guaranteed to attract maximum media attention, which is directly against the interests of the Russian government. He does not mention that Anna Politkovskaya's killing likewise coincided with another sensitive international visit of Putin's, which it likewise managed to sour. These are basic facts of the case, obvious points which cast doubt on the Kremlin's motive. But they are not mentioned at all.
He gets other basic facts wrong. He goes on the usual anti-Kremlin rant, blaming it for scaring foreign investors and undermining 'BP's contract in Sakhalin'. Anyone who covers Russia at all regularly knows it is Shell's contract in Sakhalin, not BP's. A trip to Barnett's website shows he has barely written on Russia in the last few years, and is basically a Balkans expert. Good for him - but in that case, how can he be so certain that the Kremlin is to blame, and that it isn't being set up?
Like many other British articles, Alexander Litvinenko becomes in Barnett's description a Stoic hero. Barnett pays tribute to the "boyish charm" of the man who by his own admission happily worked for the FSB recruiting killers and blackmailing businessmen before he jumped ship to work for Boris Berezovsky in the UK. How did he manage to conquer his fear to stand up to the FSB, asks Barnett gushingly. Simple - Boris Berezovsky offered to pay him more.
Berezovsky himself has become heroic in British media reports. He is, in Barnett's description, a "dissident oligarch", as if he was some kind of Solzhenitsyn, gracing our shores with his moral courage. Only the smarter journalists are beginning to notice how totally Litvinenko's death has been manipulated by Berezovsky - press briefings were handled by Alex Goldfarb, described as a "friend and human rights expert" by British press. Goldfarb is actually Berezovsky's right-hand man, which tells you all you need to know about his respect for human rights.
The press were also fully briefed by Lord Tim Bell, a British spin-doctor who has worked with Berezovsky for many years. He told the Financial Times that "anyone who knew his client knew he would be incapable of killing anyone". Anyone who is familiar with 1990s politics in Russia, and who has read the murdered journalist Paul Klebnikov's book about Berezovsky, Godfather of the Kremlin, knows what a ridiculous and disingenuous statement that is. What is Tim Bell doing working for Berezovsky? Is anybody's money good enough for him?
It's not just the media that appears happy to take the bait. Our own government has been joining the fray. This weekend, Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland minister, saw fit to wade in and throw mud at Putin, on British national TV, for "huge attacks on democracy", and the "extremely murky murder" of Anna Politkovskaya. If the murder is extremely murky, how does he know Putin ordered it? How can a British minister be so irresponsible as to accuse the president of Russia of murder, when he doesn't have any evidence, considering the huge investments British companies have made in Russia, and the huge importance of Russia as a trade and security partner?
The fact that Hain is himself fighting for his political career, as a British judge accused him this month of perverting the course of justice in his work as Northern Ireland secretary, is of course by-the-by - we'd much rather hear him talk about Russian internal politics than answer questions about that particular investigation.
Luckily, more experienced journalists, ones actually based in Russia, are making more sensible comments. Mark Franchetii, the seasoned Sunday Times correspondent here, wrote a piece quoting a senior Kremlin source who pointed the finger at Berezovsky. Catherine Belton likewise noted, in today's Moscow Times, that Litvinenko's death seemed highly stage-managed. I also spoke a senior editorial figure from Kommersant (I can't give his name because it was a social occasion and he didn't know I was a journalist) - he said he thought it was Berezovsky, and he'd been employed by Berezovsky for several years.
Like I said, the common sense and integrity of British journalism and British politicians are on trial here. We should be extremely careful we are not being taken for a ride, and taking our own public for a ride at the same time.
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Your Health
Chemo tied to temporary shrinking of brain: study
Last Updated: Monday, November 27, 2006 | 5:47 PM ET
CBC News
Women who had chemotherapy for breast cancer showed temporary shrinking in the regions of the brain responsible for memory and concentration, Japanese researchers say.
For years, cancer patients going through treatment have complained about short-term memory and concentration problems, such as forgetting where they put keys or the names of people they know well.
Although previous research suggested the treatments may leave patients with mild cognitive impairment, some doctors thought it might be caused by hormonal changes or the anxiety of having cancer.
In the latest study, published in Monday's issue of the journal Cancer, Dr. Masatoshi Inagaki at the National Cancer Centre Hospital East in Chiba and his colleagues used MRIs to compare brain structures in 51 cancer survivors who received chemotherapy to 54 who did not.
The experiment was repeated for 132 cancer survivors who had cancer surgery less than a year earlier. Of this group, 73 received chemo and the rest did not.
Within a year of surgery, sections of the brain involved in cognition - such as concentration, multitasking and memory - were smaller in the women who received chemotherapy than in those who didn't, the researchers said.
The good news is, the differences reversed themselves three years after surgery, the researchers found. The finding shows the brain is resilient and that the fog of chemotherapy eventually lifts.
There were no significant differences in brain structure between cancer survivors and healthy subjects, which suggests the disease itself does not affect brain structure.
Researchers don't know the mechanism behind chemobrain, said Dr. Jeanette Vardy, an oncologist at Toronto's Princess Margaret Hospital. The brain scans Vardy studies also show changes after chemotherapy, but the side-effect is mild, compared with the risk of not getting the treatment.
Doctors are starting to use different chemotherapy drugs that they hope will have less of an effect on the brain, Vardy said.
It's been three years since Judy Mirus, a yoga instructor in Edmonton, finished chemotherapy for her breast cancer. Mirus still has problems with spelling and remembering appointments, but said a little mental fog is not much of a price to pay for being alive.
"People set up their own ways of retraining themselves, and I think I've done that," Mirus said.
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Forget sitting upright to prevent back problems: radiologists
Last Updated: Monday, November 27, 2006 | 11:05 AM ET
CBC News
People who like to recline at the office have a new excuse for kicking back: it may be better for your back.
Researchers used a magnetic resonance imaging machine, or MRI, to study sitting postures and determine which is best for back health.
They concluded that sitting upright for hours places unnecessary strain on the back, leading to potentially chronic pain problems.
"A 135-degree body-thigh sitting posture was demonstrated to be the best biomechanical sitting position, as opposed to a 90-degree posture, which most people consider normal," said Waseem Bashir, author of the study and a clinical fellow in radiology at the University of Alberta Hospital.
"Sitting in a sound anatomic position is essential, since the strain put on the spine and its associated ligaments over time can lead to pain, deformity and chronic illness."
Bashir presented the study on Monday at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago. The team suggested people may prevent back problems by finding a chair that allows them to sit at 135 degrees.
Prevention instead of treatment
"This may be all that is necessary to prevent back pain, rather than trying to cure pain that has occurred over the long term due to bad postures," Bashir said. "Employers could also reduce problems by providing their staff with more appropriate seating, thereby saving on the cost of lost work hours."
Back pain is the most common cause of work-related disability in the United States, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
In a herniated disc, the doughnut-shaped soft tissue cushioning the vertebrae in the back protrudes, putting pressure on the spinal nerves, a condition that can be painful. A herniated disc is most common in the lower back.
People show a natural hollow in their back, but it disappears when seated. That can lead to the pain of a herniated disc.
Seated MRI
By showing disc deformity in people, the MRI study points to a convincing injury mechanism, said Prof. Stuart McGill, a professor of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo.
To identify poor seating postures, Bashir and his colleagues used a type of MRI machine that allows people to sit or stand while the images are taken. In traditional scanners, people lie flat, which may mask causes of pain that stem from different movements or postures.
In the experiment, 22 healthy volunteers in Scotland sat in three different positions:
A slouching position with the body hunched forward like in front of a video game console.
An upright 90-degree position.
A relaxed position reclining 135 degrees with feet on the floor.
Seating strategies
Researchers measured spinal angles and spinal disc movement from the different positions. Spinal disc movement occurs when weight-bearing strain is placed on the spine, causing a misalignment in the internal disc material.
The most disc movement was seen in the 90-degree sitting posture, and the least in the 135-degree posture, which suggests less strain is placed on the spinal discs, related muscles and tendons in the more relaxed position.
To prevent the back pain, McGill suggests finding a "sweet spot" that minimizes stress on the disc. Strategies include:
Varying positions, such as standing up when the phone rings.
Tilting the seat pan forward with the seat under the thigh and buttocks and the pelvis at the backrest.
Leaning back in the backrest the way bucket seats in cars tilt back for passengers.
Using a lumbar support.
Following a tailored exercise program.
Sitting at 135 degrees may help. But given the natural variation in the population, some people feel more stress when standing and others from sitting, meaning there is no one-size-fits-all solution, McGill said.
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CT scan: King Tut died of infection, not murdered
www.chinaview.cn 2006-11-28 14:11:14
BEIJING, Nov. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- Egypt's young King Tutankhamun was laid to rest more than 3,300 years ago and now scientist believe they have laid to rest the popular and sensational theory his enemies bludgeoned him to death.
CT scans reveal it was a festering leg would that could have led to the boy-king's death at age 19.
Dr. David Mininberg, a New York City physician with a degree in Middle Eastern Art is also an expert in ancient Egyptian medicine. He said the scans are proof Tutahkhamun was not the victim of a murder conspiracy.
"They finally lay to rest this rather loosely based conjecture about a murder plot," he explained. "I don't think that anyone who reads the findings as they are written can believe that any longer."
Mininberg was not directly involved in the study but reviewed the paper prior to its presentation Monday at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, in Chicago.
Tutankhamun remains the most famous of the hundreds of royal mummies buried throughout Egypt because of the spectacular array of objects found in his intact tomb in 1922. Until now, perhaps, the reasons for his early death remained mysterious.
The fact his skull appeared to contain loose bone fragments led to the notion the young leader was bludgeoned to death by his enemies, then quickly entombed to hide the evidence.
A team led by radiologist Dr. Ashraf Selim of Cairo University's Kasr El Aini Teaching Hospital used high-tech CT scans to examine Tutankhamun's corpse in minute detail. The corpse had been cut into several pieces and was in a "critical stage of preservation," they wrote.
According to the researchers, Tutankhamun died at between 18 and 20 years of age and measured about 5-feet, 11-inches in height. They also concluded that the bone fragments found inside the pharaoh's skull came from the first vertebrae in his neck, not his cranium.
Some mishap, perhaps during a modern X-ray examination, probably explains the dislocated fragments, Selim's team concluded. The upper vertebrae may even have made their way into the skull 84 years ago, when a team led by British Egyptologist and Tut discoverer Howard Carter pried off the mummy's golden mask.
"I think this lays to rest the notion that the bone fragments in the head were caused pre-mortem, before his death," said Dr. Joseph Tashjian, a St. Paul, Minn., radiologist and member of the RSNA's public information committee. "It's pretty clear, looking at the images from this study, that they almost certainly came from the removal of the mask from the head. It definitely didn't occur either pre-mortem or even during the embalming period."
"The old theory, which was believed by very few people, has now been completely laid to rest by good scientific work rather than conjecture," Mininberg said.
If he was not bludgeoned to death, how did Tutankhamun die?
The CT scans show evidence of a major fracture to the thigh bone that could have occurred prior to the king's death. According to Selim's team, this wound may have led to a fatal infection.
The wound was still unhealed at the time of the pharaoh's death because "embalming fluid went into the fracture," noted Tashjian, who was not involved in the Tut research but has had prior experience scanning a long-dead mummy.
"I think the femur fracture probably is significant," Tashjian said. "Number one, it's not healed. Number two, femur fractures -- any long-bone fracture -- can have a number of complications, any of which can lead to death, either from infection or an embolism. It's an unusual way to die, from a fracture, but it does happen, even now."
However, a final answer on that score may never emerge, Mininberg said.
"The problem is that the soft tissue is changed by the mummification process, and there is no clear evidence of infection in the bone," he explained. "However, with a fracture as extensive as that was, it wouldn't be unheard of for it to become infected. That's a reasonable conjecture."
Although the why of Tutankhamun's death may have been answered, there's still the question of the curse upon anyone who disturbs his remains.
"While performing the CT scan of King Tut, we had several strange occurrences," Selim noted in a prepared statement. "The electricity suddenly went out, the CT scanner could not be started, and a team member became ill. If we weren't scientists, we might have become believers in the curse of the Pharoahs."
Comment: Ah, yes. The famous curse of King Tut. Did you know that it even has a link with the events of 9/11? To find out more, see the second edition of 9/11: The Ultimate Truth by Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Joe Quinn, out soon.
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Some U.S. states prohibit smoking around children
www.chinaview.cn 2006-11-28 23:09:16
WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- Starting Jan. 1, 2007, Texas will restrict smoking in foster parents' homes at all times and in cars when children are present, a U.S. newspaper reported Tuesday.
Texas is one of a number of U.S. states that have passed laws enforcing stricter restrictions on smoking.
Vermont, Washington and some other states and counties already prohibit foster parents from smoking around children in their homes and cars, the USA Today reported.
Arkansas and Louisiana passed laws this year forbidding anyone from smoking in cars carrying young children. Courts are ordering smoke-free environments in custody and visitation disputes.
"We are very rapidly moving to protect children from secondhand smoke," John Banzhaf, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, told the newspaper.
While health experts said that children exposed to secondhand smoke suffer an increased risk of respiratory ailments and sudden infant death syndrome, smokers' rights groups said secondhand smoke is not dangerous.
"If we don't reverse this, they'll be telling us what we can eat and what we can feed our children," said Gary Nolan, spokesman for The Smoker's Club, Inc.
Most smoking bans apply to workplaces and spots like bars and restaurants, but at least six states and some counties prohibit foster parents from smoking when foster children are present, the report said, quoting Kathleen Dachille, director of the Legal Resource Center for Tobacco Regulation, Litigation & Advocacy at the University of Maryland School of Law.
"There are times when it's appropriate to regulate what people can do in their home," Dachille said. "The state is responsible for that child."
Comment: And when are they going to ban the food additives in the American diet, the industrial pollution that poisons the environment, the use of pills that then get recycled into the water supply? The war on smoking is a diversion. For fifty years we've been told that all of our health problems come from smoking. What a fine way to pull our attention away from the real problems.
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British Fair Play
Police target "dangerous suspects" before they can offend
Times online
27/11/2006
Criminal profilers are drawing up a list of the 100 most dangerous murderers and rapists of the future even before they commit such crimes, The Times has learnt.
The highly controversial database will be used by police and other agencies to target suspects before they can carry out a serious offence. Pilot projects to identify the highest-risk future offenders have been operating in five London boroughs for the past two months.
The Soham murderer Ian Huntley and the serial rapist Richard Baker have been used as examples of the type of man police will identify.
However, the database will increase concerns at the growth of official surveillance and anxieties that innocent men are being singled out for offences they have no intention of committing.
Experts from the Metropolitan Police's Homicide Prevention Unit are creating psychological profiles of likely offenders to predict patterns of criminal behaviour. Statements from former partners, information from mental health workers and details of past complaints are being combined to identify the men considered most likely to commit serious violent crimes.
The list will draw comparisons with the Hollywood film Minority Report, in which suspects are locked up before they can commit a predicted crime.
Laura Richards, a senior criminal psychologist with the Homicide Prevention Unit, told The Times: "My vision is that we know across London who the top 100 people are. We need to know who we are targeting.
"It is trying to pick up Ian Huntley before he goes out and commits that murder. Then we have the opportunity to stop something turning into a lethal event."
The team is concentrating on reducing the risk of those with a history of domestic violence turning into murderers. About a quarter of murders are related to domestic violence.
"There are some pretty dangerous people out there, so you need these risk models to wheedle them out, separate the wheat from the chaff," she said. "If you add up all the information, it tells us which people are risky."
Ms Richards said that once an individual had been identified, police would decide whether to make moves towards an arrest, or to alert the relevant social services who could steer those targeted into "management programmes."
The project will be closely watched by the Home Office. However, civil liberties groups and human rights lawyers will be concerned at the plans to intervene in the lives of men before they actually commit a crime.
Details of the database emerged after Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, said that Britain had "sleepwalked" into a surveillance society.
Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, said yesterday: "It is quite right that the police should keep intelligence on suspected criminals, but it is obscene to suggest there should be a 'crime idol' list of those who might commit an offence.
"The police are systematically moving the boundaries as to where they can exercise their powers. The Minority Report syndrome is pushing the boundary of criminal intervention further into the general community."
There was also concern that the database would be ineffective if the authorities continued to fail to act on the information already available to them. Ray Wyre, a sexual crimes consultant, was supportive of the database but said that it would only work if police acted on the information.
"Of course you have to know your enemy, but it is what you do with the data that matters," he said
Comment: Are the British security forces now taking their cues from Hollywood?
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Now there's spy cameras at rubbish tips
Daily Mail
28/11/2006
Spy cameras are being installed at household rubbish dumps to check what residents are throwing away and to fine those breaking recycling rules.
The sophisticated CCTV systems are capable of reading and storing car number plates to identify who is using the dump, how often, and what they are disposing of.
But human rights groups condemned the surveillance as an 'unjustifiable' way of tracking people's movements.
The Big Brother-style tactics come as the Government puts pressure on local councils to cut the amount of rubbish sent to landfill sites. But the fear is that extra surveillance will only lead to more illegal fly-tipping.
The Mail on Sunday has already exposed the electronic 'bugs' secretly planted in hundreds of thousands of household wheelie bins.
Now sophisticated internet-controlled cameras are being installed at waste sites across the country. Officially they are to improve security, but council chiefs admit they will also monitor who is visiting the tips.
Several councils also say they will use camera evidence to mount prosecutions - raising fears more householders will be taken to court over what they throw away.
Cameras have been installed in Buckinghamshire, Croydon, Somerset, Dundee and Hertfordshire, and more councils are planning to follow suit after the £80million-a-year Waste and Resources Action Programme quango suggested they use CCTV to 'check vehicles visiting <\[>dumps] repeatedly'.
In Hertfordshire about 30 cameras have been installed at dumps, allowing council officials to check vehicle registration plates.
The county's assistant waste manager Mark Simpkins told a trade magazine: "The monitoring systems are invaluable. We use them to analyse...who is using the centre, what is being thrown away and how often." But last night his boss John Wood dismissed privacy concerns, saying: "I have not made the connection between our household waste sites and the wider debate about Big Brother."
However, local councillor Pat Whittaker said: "We have been campaigning for CCTV to guard against street robberies and anti-social behaviour - we do not need it at the local tip. These Big Brother tactics might discourage people from taking their rubbish for proper disposal."
Buckinghamshire and Somerset and County Councils have also installed number plate recognition systems at their dumps. Buckinghamshire council documents admit: "This may lead to investigation and possibly prosecution'.
Cameras have been imposed after the Government last year introduced a penalty of £150 a tonne on local authorities that dump too much waste in landfill sites.
Last night, Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights group Liberty, said: "CCTV should only be used to protect high security installations - not to monitor a dump.
"This whole area is very poorly regulated. When you install an automatic number plate recognition system you are tracking people's movements.
"You need proper justification before you track people. I don't see how it is proportionate to use that kind of surveillance in the context of a recycling centre."
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British National debt is three times higher than Government claims
Daily Mail
28/11/2006
Gordon Brown has been accused of covering up the true scale of Britain's national debt which research claims is three times higher than the Government admits.
A new study claims that public debt is a massive £1.3 trillion, equivalent to £53,000 for every household in the UK.
The figure is higher than Britain's Gross Domestic Product - meaning the nation's wealth would be outstripped by its debt.
The report for the respected Centre for Policy Studies think tank says the official Treasury figure of £487 billion wrongly excludes the cost of public sector pensions liabilities, the hidden costs of Labour's flagship Private Finance Initiative contracts and debts incurred by Network Rail.
When these are taken into account the total is £1,340 billion, which is 103.5 per cent of GDP.
The report will deepen concerns about the state of the public finances a week before Mr Brown's Pre-Budget Report.
It suggests the Mr Brown has already breached official rules dictating that public debt should not add up to more than 40 per cent of Britain's economy.
Authors Stephen Hammond, the Shadow Transport Minister, and Brooks Newmark, a Conservative member of the Treasury select committee, urged the Chancellor to come clean.
The MPs said: "The public has a right to know the true extent of the liabilities which future generations of taxpayers will have to meet.
"Action to control the debt that is being incurred for future generations cannot be taken without an honest assessment of its true extent and, in the Chancellor's words, by 'ensuring that fiscal decisions are fully transparent and accountable'."
According to the report, the extra costs include funding public sector pensions to the tune of £720 billion, with a further £90 billion earmarked for local government pensions.
Hidden costs of PFI, which the Government uses to deliver hospitals, schools and roads, are £25 billion, while Network Rail's debts are £18 billion.
Mr Brown is already under huge pressure to curb public spending or lift taxes in order to cut his borrowing.
Numbers released earlier this month suggested there is a growing risk he will breach deficit targets this year, despite stronger than expected economic growth.
Mr Newmark and Mr Hammond said their figure could be even higher because their estimate for gold-plated public sector pensions is conservative. The Government's own figure for liabilities is £460 billion, which is excluded from national debt figures.
But some studies say the bill could be as high as £1,025 billion.
The Government is also wildly understating the impact of PFI, under which private companies to raise the finance for public projects and to run them on the government's behalf. The firms are paid for their work over two decades or more.
But critics claim that the project is an elaborate way of keeping huge public spending commitments off the public books by claiming they belong to the private sector.
In addition, the debt of Network Rail, the publicly-owned operator of the country's rail infrastructure, should be officially recognised because it is guaranteed by the Government.
A Treasury spokesman said: "These are spurious calculations which do not meet the internationally-agreed standards used by the ONS to calculate the UK's actual debt position.
"The reality is that the UK not only has low levels of debt by historical standards but also compared to the rest of the G7."
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Spare a Dime?
Big banks expected to rack up big profits
Last Updated: Monday, November 27, 2006 | 3:09 PM ET
CBC News
Canada's big banks are poised to deliver a strong quarter of double-digit profit growth when they begin reporting their fourth-quarter results on Tuesday.
Bank of Montreal will kick off the earnings parade. Thomson Financial says its survey of analysts suggests BMO will report a 14-per-cent increase in earnings per share (EPS) - to $1.26 per share.
Royal Bank and National Bank report their Q4 financials on Thursday, while the rest of the big six banks release their financials next week.
Thomson Financial's survey suggests that all the banks will better their Q4 2005 performance, with Royal Bank leading the way.
In addition to higher earnings per share, several banks are expected to raise their dividends. Most banks pay out a third to half of their earnings as dividends to shareholders. At current prices, the banks' dividends now yield from 2.9 per cent to 3.5 per cent.
Steadily rising share prices and rising dividends have made bank stocks a favourite of many investors who like the steady income they can provide. Recent federal plans to bring in a new tax on income trusts as of 2011 has sparked even greater interest in the banking sector.
The TSX financial services index, which includes a broad selection of TSX-listed banks and insurance companies, is up more than 13 per cent so far this year and hit a record high just last week.
For all of 2005, Canada's big six banks posted profits of almost $12 billion. They've already made more than that in the first nine months of fiscal 2006.
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Fall in dollar calls for 'collective vigilance': Breton
PARIS, Nov 27, 2006 (AFP)
A recent slide in the dollar against the euro and other major currencies calls for "collective viglance", French Finance Minister Thierry Breton said Monday as the US currency hit a 20-month low point against the euro.
"The recent depreciation must trigger our broad collective vigilance," he told an economic seminar.
A fast appreciating euro is considered a threat to economic momentum in the 12-nation eurozone as it threatens make the bloc's exports more expensive and less attractive to foreign buyers.
Early on Monday, the euro soared briefly to a 20-month high point of 1.3179 dollars before falling back slightly.
Analysts have attributed the dollar's weakness to concern about a possible sustained slowdown in the US economy as well as to low trading volumes following the US Thanksgiving holiday week end.
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India: The Future?
Dalit girl burnt for identifying rapist
Hemender Sharma
CNN-IBN
Posted Sunday , November 26, 2006 at 14:30
Updated Sunday , November 26, 2006 at 17:46
Piparia (Madhya Pradesh): A 16-year-old Dalit girl, Asha Katiya, was burnt to death in Piparia after she allegedly refused to withdraw a rape case against an upper caste youth.
Asha was sleeping in her house when she was allegedly set afire on November 21.
The girl's family says an upper caste youth, who was accused of raping her four years ago is responsible for the heinous act. They allege he wanted her to retract her statement and had also been threatening her.
"My daughter was asleep when Chotte Singh entered the house. He'd earlier threatened us with dire consequences if we didn't turn hostile in the rape case pending against him," Asha's father, Ram Pratap says.
Before she died, Asha named Chhote Singh as the attacker but the police did not take the accused into custody immediately. It was only after locals pressurised the police that Singh was arrested.
"The victim identified the accused before dying. He's been arrested. If Asha's family had complained earlier, the tragedy could have been averted," Sub-divisional Officer, Piparia, Samar Verma says.
In the last few months, several incidents of violence and discrimination against Dalits have been reported from Madhya Pradesh. Recently, a group was allegedly paraded naked on donkeys in the Chatarpur district after they refused to give up their land to upper caste villagers.
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Caste atrocities in Karnataka
Divya Gandhi
Saturday, Nov 25, 2006
The Hindu
EIGHTY DALIT families from Kadkol in Karnataka's Bijapur district, The Hindu reported last month, were "punished" by caste Hindus of the village with social and economic boycott for drawing drinking water from the village tank to which they had been denied access for decades. For this "crime," the Dalits, mostly agricultural labour, were removed from work by their landlords, barred from ration shops, and even flourmills. The caste Hindus then began to use the tank to bathe their cattle, wash clothes, and even defecate. The Kadkol incident is only the latest story of atrocities against Dalits in Karnataka - one of 40 in the last seven months, according to media reports.
The Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (POA), extends more specific - and in certain cases more stringent - penalty for offences against the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes than the Indian Penal Code. The POA enumerates the forms of violence that constitute an 'atrocity' against Dalits and Adivasis by members of the "upper castes," whether acts of humiliation or bodily harm.
Commonly practised atrocities against Dalits such as forcing them to consume inedible substances, fouling water sources used by them, dispossessing them of their land, committing sexual offences against Dalit women, and denying them access to public spaces, among others, count as non-bailable offences under the Act. They are punishable with imprisonment for a minimum of six months, along with an appropriate compensation for the victim. The compensation is Rs.25,000 or more for victims of crimes such as insult and intimidation; Rs.50,000 for the victims of sexual abuse; and up to Rs.1 lakh for those affected by the fouling of water, and for the families of those murdered or incapacitated (Rs.2 lakh if an earning member was attacked).
In Kadkol, no arrests have been made yet for the denial of access to a public water tank and later for its fouling by caste Hindus, according to the Superintendent of Police in Bijapur (although three persons were arrested much later under the POA on charges of assault). Despite well-publicised protest meets by Dalits, the SP denies that a criminal case was even registered with the police on the issue of social boycott.
Between 2002 and 2006, the cases reported under the POA in Karnataka increased significantly, according to the records of the Additional Director-General of Police. The number of cases of atrocity reported in 2002 was 1,232, and 1,306 in 2005. In 2006, 1,056 cases have been reported so far. This reflects both the unchanging social prejudice and a growing awareness of the provisions of the Act among the victims. The Act has empowered them to challenge such acts.
Ravivarma Kumar, Senior Advocate and Chairman of the Karnataka State Backward Classes Commission, credits much of this growing awareness to the concerted efforts of Dalit rights groups of Karnataka.
What is immediately worrying, however, are these figures: For the approximately 1,200-1,300 cases reported every year over the last five years, convictions have been negligible - 24 in 2002 and just five in 2005. There have been no convictions so far in 2006. The number of acquittals has, however, fallen drastically - from 341 in 2002 to just one in 2006. This could have been read as a positive development if it meant that convictions were proportionately higher, which is not the case in Karnataka. Most of the registered cases are stuck midway between police investigations and trials pending in court.
A positive initiative of the State Government has been the revised Government Order of 2002 under which a victim of a caste atrocity receives full monetary compensation at the time the charge sheet is filed in court. Earlier, the compensation was paid in instalments staggered across the trial period, thus delaying the payments indefinitely.
Some of the highest reports of crime against Dalits in the last five years have been reported from Bangalore, Gulbarga, and Bellary districts. As for the nature of the crimes, murder rose from 25 cases in 2002 to 40 in 2005, and this year the figure already stands at 27. Reported cases of rape of Dalit women and girls were the highest last year in this five-year span, with 56 cases reported. This year the figure stands at 39, reflecting the continuing vulnerability of Dalit women. The crimes categorised as "grievous hurt" numbered 54 and cases of arson totalled six till October this year.
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Flashback: We're all Indians now
Siddhartha Deb
Sunday November 26, 2006
The Observer
It's already the world's largest democracy and within the next 30 years its economy will rival America's and its population outstrip China's. But what does that mean for the rest of us?
To the east of Delhi, across the sewage-filled Yamuna River, is a relatively new neighbourhood called Patparganj. I stayed there a decade ago when I first moved to Delhi from Kolkata, and one evening Ramesh, a young man I had just met, took me around on his scooter. I already had some sense of Patparganj as an expanse of concrete, a collection of middle-class flats with shops clustered around the ground floor and surrounded by high walls. I experienced a far more varied scene when I went to my newspaper office in Delhi, the bridge crossing the Yamuna as likely to carry an elephant proceeding at a stately pace as murderous buses with shrieking horns, the air-conditioned offices and shops of Connaught Place often hiding back alleys where unshaven men gathered to buy lottery tickets and pint bottles of whisky.
But Patparganj was an idea as much as a place, and I only grasped the extent of that idea when Ramesh drove away from the inhabited flats and the lamplit roads. As we entered an extended stretch of darkness, an endless wall appeared on the horizon. Ramesh parked his scooter and turned his headlight on the wall. Block upon block of flats stood before us, with vast courtyards and parking lots. Ramesh told me the flats had been built illegally, without the proper permits. Most didn't have electricity or water. The lifts didn't work. The sewage lines didn't lead anywhere. We saw not a single human being, although an occasional ground-floor unit appeared occupied, with the solitary flicker of a lantern at the window or a line of washing strung out on the balcony. Even Ramesh, a phlegmatic businessman, grew uneasy as he contemplated this vast necropolis where we seemed to have arrived through the twists of a disconcerting dream. It was 'unnatural', he said, and hastily turned around.
That was a decade ago, at the cusp of the great transformation of urban India, but the memory came back to me when I recently visited the Delhi suburb of Gurgaon. Gurgaon is about a 40-minute drive from the southern fringe of Delhi, along a highway that passes the palatial 'farmhouses' of industrialists and arms dealers, and then erupts in a proliferation of shopping malls, condominiums and office parks. The names of places (Beverly Hills and Manhattan Apartments), the security guards talking into the intercom before letting a visitor in and the global franchises at the malls are much more glossy than anything at Patparganj. But Gurgaon is the fulfilment of an idea that Patparganj had realised with only mixed success, an idea expressed by billboards advertising a 'modern lifestyle'. It involves a concerted effort by affluent Indians to dissociate themselves from the squalor, diversity and frustratingly unmodern nature of their country. Gurgaon is Patparganj with the lights on.
The news that comes out from India these days tends overwhelmingly to be about areas like Gurgaon. These places transfix the gaze of the west, appearing as floodlit expanses that have emerged from what was once considered an area of darkness. They bear the promise of India's being the second-fastest growing economy in the world, poised to overtake all European nations by 2020 and even the United States by 2040. But the new India represented so frequently in the western media is more than just the back office of the world or a promising destination for investments. If urban, professional India signifies the triumph of western capitalism in all its aspects, from business practices to consumer lifestyles, it also harbours ambitions that exceed the role envisaged for it by analysts at Goldman Sachs and the CIA.
Driven by an ambition that often expresses itself in breathtakingly literal forms, this India aims to be a superpower, to turn the present century into an Indian century in the same way the last century was an American one. The mother of all malls? Gurgaon plans a Mall of India that will be bigger than the Mall of America in Minneapolis. The world's tallest building? Noida, another suburb in Delhi, intends to overtake Malaysia and Dubai for that honour. India wants a permanent seat on the security council of the United Nations and its man as secretary-general. When an earthquake struck a remote part of Kashmir a year ago, it turned down foreign aid; when Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans last year, India offered an aircraft and medical personnel. Everything gets drafted into the service of its superpower aspirations, from beauty contests and Bollywood films to Indian novels written in English. And while new India has no great interest in the past, it does occasionally turn to its near-mythical antecedents, to the time when the long arm of Indic civilisation reached out to Java and China.
This is an aspect of India that the west will become even more familiar with in the years to come. Because as much as the west is in India, exporting its business models and outsourcing its service jobs, India is increasingly in the west. A sense of destiny has flowered in great parts of the Indian diaspora in Britain and the United States, among people who now add civilisational pride to their hard-won affluence. But it gathers even more impetus in the class of mobile professionals from India who make their presence felt increasingly in airports, hotels and in cyberspace. Like Americans in the past half-century, and like the Europeans before them, this class of Indians seem to believe that the good life at home is inextricably bound to a mission abroad to put itself at the centre of the world.
Yet the good life of the shopping malls and software companies, the sense of wellbeing that elite Indians call 'feelgood', is an attitude cultivated against the grain of a larger reality in the country. Away from the well-lit areas of Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai or Chennai (Madras), there is another India engaged in an entirely different set of struggles. The software industries and call centres in India employ more than 1m people, but agricultural India is still the largest sector in the country, with more than 400m people working in it. The Indian farmers, who once noisily invaded urban spaces and the parliament lawns with their buffaloes, are now left to die out of sight, drinking pesticide to escape debts and the plunging prices of their crops on the global market.
Between the farmers and the software workers fall other groups who have received none of the benefits of globalised India. These include the drivers and security guards I met while working on an article on the call centres, people who make 4,000 rupees (pounds 50) a month with no days off, and whose voices are distorted by rage when they have a chance to express their opinions. To them, one should add the migrant workers living in the shadows of the cities; the peasants displaced by big dams in central and western India; Muslims who suffer the increasing hostility of a resurgent Hindu chauvinism; tribals from India's northeastern states, Dalits (or the oppressed castes) and entire aboriginal populations, all discriminated against by the upper-caste Indians who control the levers of the economy. If one looks at the inequality in terms of numbers, the disturbing truth is that about 350m Indians still live on less than $1 a day; half the children are undernourished; 80 per cent of the population have no access to safe drinking water with more than 1m children dying every year from unsafe water.
In the eastern part of India, extending all the way into the hill states where I grew up, insurgency, crime and unemployment remain the main issues. Further to the south, in the states of Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh, ultra-left guerrillas have carved out a 'red corridor' in rural areas that are mired in caste and class hierarchies. Even largely prosperous states such as Gujarat, in the west, seem unable to combine economic growth with an inclusive social vision. Instead, wellbeing for the Hindu middle-class in Gujarat has meant steady violence against the Muslim minority, as in the killing of more than 2,000 Muslims in 2002.
This other India, complex, mutinous and often counter-intuitive to simple notions of progress, is likely to remain obscure even as affluent India dominates the headlines with its dream of global power. Ideas of unlimited expansion, infinite growth, perpetual consumption - all the fantasies of past gilded ages - may still exist in the west, but they come with at least a tinge of uneasiness. Indian extravagance, on the other hand, seems particularly attractive because it arrives with the apparent innocence of a latecomer to the party, someone who has woken up to the bounty of the world after a long Gandhian fast.
In contrast to this, the country where the majority live will demand a more thoughtful engagement from the west. This India will be revealed in times of natural disasters or sudden crises, and it will sometimes be depicted by individuals, Indians and others, unwilling to buy into the dominant myth of 'feelgood'. Because this other India is large, populous and diverse, it will be worth paying attention to, and over the years people in the west may come to see a reflection of their own hopes and fears in the struggle between the two Indias. They will find all the unresolved problems that affect them - the environment, consumption, work, health, immigrants, the state, corporations, terrorism - displayed on a greater scale in India. The responses that will take shape will often be violent, but sometimes, I hope, they will also be creative and humane. In that sense, we are all Indians now.
Siddhartha Deb was born in 1970 in northeastern India, a wet, mountainous region that forms the backdrop to his novels, The Point of Return and Surface. He has worked as a journalist in Kolkata and Delhi, has an MPhil in comparative literature from Columbia University, and is currently writer-in-residence at the New School for Social Research in New York. His interests as a writer reflect his mixed apprenticeship, and although neither an academic nor a journalist, Deb writes on ideas, politics, places and literature. His articles have appeared in the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Times Literary Supplement and New Statesman. Although he is attempting to begin his new book in New York, he fantasises about being able to retreat to the foothills of the Himalayas or to the banks of the Narmada river in central India to continue work on it.
India vs the world
- India has the world's third-largest mobile-phone market (more than 1m new users a week), second-largest small-car market (1m sold a year) and largest whisky market (sinking 60m cases a year)
- Thirty major UK firms, from Lloyds TSB to Virgin Trains, only use Indian call centres. Blood tests and CT and MRI scans are sent from UK, US and Middle East hospitals to India for diagnosis, and UK legal firms are starting to outsource work to Mumbai and Delhi
- India is now outsourcing its outsourcing. Giant IT firms Infosys, Wipro and TCS are building 'outsourcing campuses' in China, Vietnam and Romania to cope with demand
- In 2005, India welcomed 150,000 medical tourists who fly in to have procedures from liposuction to open-heart surgery, which can cost 5 per cent of the domestic price. Deals involving UK health insurers flying customers to India for treatment are expected soon - India's outbound tourist numbers were up 15 per cent last year, with 6.2m holidaying abroad. Some 700,000 will visit the UK this year
- India has the second fastest-growing major economy in the world (after China). The Indian stock market is up 200 per cent over the past five years, and it has the sixth-largest foreign currency reserve in the world: $167bn
- Indian firms spent more than $7bn acquiring 112 foreign companies between January and September this year. With Tata taking over Corus, three of the 10 largest steel companies in the world will be under Indian ownership
- India's textile industry is expected to export $50bn worth of goods by 2010. Indian fashion has taken flight this year, with a dozen domestic designers showing at international fashion weeks and 70 international buyers turning up for India Fashion Week last month. The domestic market is expanding at 11 per cent per year, now attracting Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Giorgio Armani stores
- More Indian than British films were released in the UK last year. Bollywood annually sells 1bn more tickets than Hollywood
- India is the second-largest contributor to UN peacekeeping forces, with 10,000 troops
India vs China
- The Asian giants became modern republics within a year of each other - China in 1949, India in 1950
- One is Communist, historically Buddhist and an independent nation for six millennia, the other democratic, predominantly Hindu and emerging from centuries of British colonialism
- India is just over a third the size of China, with a population of 1.1bn to its 1.3bn. It is estimated that India will be more populous than China within 30 years
- The world's largest democracy is important to the US as a regional counterweight to China - whose strength the Americans fear. Bush has announced a bill to accept India into the official nuclear club
- India has 115 nuclear warheads; estimates of China's arsenal range from 80 to 2,000
- China has just one recognised political party, India has at least 62
- China executed an estimated 10,000 people last year, while India hanged just one
- China monitors its 14m foreign tourists, India leaves its 4m free to roam
- Despite mass rural-urban migration, agriculture still provides a living for half of the Chinese and 60 per cent of Indians
- China's economy has grown tenfold since the late-Seventies, while India's spectacular growth started in the Nineties
- China's economy is the second largest in the world (India's is fourth), its per capita income is double India's ($6,800 to $3,400), and only 12 per cent (150m) of its population is below the poverty line, as opposed to 25 per cent (275m) in India
- Indian illiteracy and ill health is greater. But India's freer market perhaps explains its 23 billionaires to China's eight
- Indian culture exports better. Bollywood films dominate in the Middle East and North Africa and surprisingly Eastern Europe. India is also favourite for outsourcing thanks to its 350m English speakers.
Tom Templeton
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