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"You get America out of Iraq and
Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism."
- Cindy Sheehan |
P I C T U R E
O F T H E D A Y |
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©Pierre Paul Feyte |
AFP
22 Dec 2005
WASHINGTON - US President George W. Bush called 2005 "a good year for the American people," but cautioned that terrorists like those who carried out the September 11 attacks still posed a threat.
In brief remarks outside the White House as he headed to the Camp David presidential retreat for Christmas, Bush also pointed to elections in Iraq and in Afghanistan and said the US economy had grown stronger.
"This has been a year of strong progress toward a freer, more peaceful world and a prosperous America," he said. "It's been a good year for the American people."
Bush said a key priority in 2006 would be reconstruction efforts in the US Gulf Coast after the battering it received from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and another would be renewing a controversial package of anti-terrorism laws.
"It appears to me that the Congress understands we got to keep the Patriot Act in place, that we're still under threat, there's still an enemy that wants to harm us," he said.
The US Senate handed Bush a defeat overnight when they balked at the open-ended renewal of the law and only extended it by six months, citing civil liberties concerns amid a domestic spying controversy.
Bush had a special message of families of US soldiers overseas, telling them: "We stand with you and we pray with you for the safety of your loved one."
"We want to send our greetings to your loved one overseas and tell them how much we appreciate you serving for the cause of freedom and peace," he said.
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AFP
23 Dec 2005
President George W. Bush is ending the year with a series of setbacks in Congress, where his divided Republican majority has failed to deliver on many of his top legislative priorities.
On Thursday, the White House put a brave face on its failure to secure long-term renewal by the Congress of a controversial package of anti-terrorism powers known as the Patriot Act.
"I consider it a victory for the American people," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters after lawmakers chose not to extend the legislation indefinitely, as Bush had sought.
"These vital tools remain in place," said McClellan. "We're going to continue to work to get it reauthorized."
The House of Representatives voted on Thursday to renew the Patriot Act by one month, just one day after the Senate backed a six month extension. The Senate approved the one month extension late Thursday.
The White House had initially flatly refused to approve a short-term extension of the Patriot Act, portions of which were due to expire at the end of the year, but eventually bowed to the compromise.
Echoing recent statements by Bush, McClellan accused Democrats on Wednesday of trying to rack up points ahead of mid-term elections, in which Republicans could already be hindered by the corruption allegations faced by several party members, including Representative Tom DeLay of Texas.
In the economic realm, the administration narrowly avoided a rejection of its 40-billion-dollar budget cut plan on Wednesday.
By a 51-50 vote, senators adopted legislation to trim the federal deficit by nearly 40 billion, with Vice President Dick Cheney casting the tie-breaking vote in his role as president of the Senate.
Cheney had been called back to Washington early from a Middle East trip in the event he would be needed to cast such a vote.
The plan calls for cuts in health spending and student loans.
But another 453-billion-dollar bill to finance the US military was blocked by Democrats outraged by a provision -- which they say does not belong in a defense bill -- that would allow for oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Proponents of the measure fell four votes shy of securing the 60 votes needed to proceed to a vote on the bill.
Bush had earlier urged the Senate to pass the legislation, which includes 50 billion dollars in emergency funding for US military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"It's an obligation of every member of the United States Senate to provide necessary funding for our troops on the front lines so that we can fight and win the war on terror," Bush had said.
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By Carlos Fazio
Translated by Paula van de Werken
December 19, 2005
Since the attacks of September 11, George W. Bush has 'used lies in a systematic way to further his agenda.' According to this op-ed article from Mexico's La Jornada, 'Bush and his underlings are drowning in a swamp of lies' and 'Europe in unlikely to do anything to help.'
The president of the United States, George W. Bush, is a consummate liar. During all of his time as Commander in Chief, he has deceived the American people and the world. I refer specifically to the time after the attacks on the Twin Towers of New York, September 11, 2001.
Since then, he has used lies in a systematic way to further his agenda.
He lied again when he spoke at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a think tank in Washington DC [SEE VIDEO], last December 14, and where he admitted that the Intelligence that assured him that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction "was an error." Neither did Iraq have this type of armament, nor were the Iraqis the largest active military force in the world, nor was Saddam Hussein an international menace, and Bush knew this all along.
These false premises, which are really part of a scheme - a poisonous propaganda campaign promoted by the group of murderous, psychopathic fundamentalists that surround him (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Ashcroft, Ridge, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton), authorized by him (Bush), carried out by the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and which is designed to fabricate an internal consensus to invade and destroy Iraq, take control of their oil, get rich from the reconstruction, and change the map of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.
Bush's propaganda advisors know that wars are waged and then easily forgotten. They know that normally, an act of war of some magnitude requires a preliminary phase of propaganda in the form of an overwhelming media barrage. For this reason, before starting the neo-con wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq, the media was manipulated to divert attention from their real end game and to fool the people and justify scorched earth operations in two Arab countries.
On September 24, 2001, before the invasion of Afghanistan, a United States Army officer revealed to the Washington Post that a war of "Great Disinformation" was going to be waged to "lie to the press" and that they would put " strict new limits" on journalists. He also warned of a growing campaign to "assure the loyalty" (patriotism) of the journalists in Bush's crusade against the Taliban regime.
The next day, in a vague denial, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld himself explained that "there could be circumstances when it will be necessary to not tell the truth" to the media. Pressed as to whether or not in the "campaign of information operations," and as part of the psychological war against the enemy - the Pentagon could release false information, Rumsfeld answered: "I suppose that one should never says never."
When the aggression was consummated in February 2002, one heard that the Pentagon had set-up an office charged with deliberately spreading "false news" overseas by using the TV networks to hide the origin or official character of certain information. This was a new front in the battle - the information battle. This has since been confirmed by The New York Times (2/19/02), as a part of covert operations and psychological warfare from the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), designed by experts in military intelligence. The OSI was created by the Pentagon after September 11 to plant "black propaganda" (deliberate lies), disinformation and "white propaganda" (true and believable information favorable to the United States) with journalists and foreign media to influence international public opinion and governments, friends and enemies alike, within the framework of Washington's "War on Terror."
The OSI is under the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflicts. Among its functions are developing techniques of subterfuge, psychological warfare, the jamming of radio transmissions and attacks on computer networks, with the hoped-for-result of deceiving the enemy and influencing public opinion, both national and international.
For this reason, the comedy over a supposed Iraqi nuclear arsenal - that even now Bush regards as "responsible" and which he falsely attributes to an "Intelligence error" - was an "arrangement" in which he directly participated.
Lies form an instrumental part of imperial domination. The Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, lied in early December before departing on a damage-control-tour of Old Europe." when she denied the existence of secret CIA flights which transported kidnapped alleged terrorists, some of whom were assassinated and others tortured in a network of clandestine prisons established in more than 40 countries.
The current Director of the CIA, Porter Goss, lied when he insisted that his "organization doesn't torture," but simply uses "innovative methods."
As Noam Chomsky says, "the United States is truly a contemptible State," a criminal State that uses violence and State terrorism in world affairs. With the scandal of the CIA flights it is clear that the United States has violated sovereign air space and the laws of various European countries.
Bush and his underlings are drowning in a swamp of lies. But a compliant Europe in unlikely to do anything to help truth and justice prevail.
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By Huang Qing, Senior Editor
People's Daily, China
December 22, 2005
America's religious adherence to Western values blind it to the contradictions of its own behavior. According to this op-ed article from China's State-run People's Daily, 'The startling contrast between these much-trumpeted "values" and actual behavior is food for thought.'
For the West, democracy and freedom are "universal" values. This so-called "universality" refers to standards, or rules of the game, that apply to all circumstances and all scenarios. Elections, for example, are an important part of democracy, the results of which must be respected by both participants and outsiders.
Participants are to resign themselves to the result, even if they don't like it, and outsiders should hold their criticism; otherwise the game simply cannot go on.
A number of recent events, however, leave many people doubtful of the universality of these values. People have begun to realize the political, ideological and materialistic nature of these values.
On December 15, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) put in a strong showing during local Palestinian elections. On the next day, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution saying that Hamas should not be permitted to participate in Palestinian elections until it renounces violence. If the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) allows an armed group to participate in the political process, Washington will freeze or slash its financial support to Palestine. On Dec. 19, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana made it clear that if the Hamas should win future elections for the Palestinian legislative committee, the E.U. too, would consider halting financial support to the PNA.
Although the results went against the expectations of the United States, the E.U. and Israel, the election results reflect the social conditions and public will of Palestine. Up to now, no party has raised questions over the fairness of the polls. In the spirit of democracy, results of a fairly conducted election, whether one like the results or not, should be unconditionally accepted and respected. But Washington and the E.U. greatly disliked the results, hence the above-mentioned decision and comments to exert pressure.
From the perspective of universal democratic values, the behavior of the U.S. and E.U. is in no way democratic, whether their concerns are justified or not.
If their threats of economic sanctions constitute an element of democracy, then vote rigging and intimidation can also be counted as democratic.
Looked at in this way, democracy as a universal value has clear and inevitable limits, clashing with many powerful interests.
in Western political culture, there are two interpretations of democracy: realistic and religious.
Winston Churchill once said: "democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." This is a realistic interpretation. A classic behavior of present-day U.S. leaders, however, is to give abstract, absolute and religious interpretations to democracy and other Western values. In real life, however, Washington more often than not resorts to acts that violate or corrode such values.
Another case is the belief in "freedom." But ever since Washington launched its hunt for terrorists, exceptions to this value have been exposed one after another: "Detainee abuse," "secret prisons," and "intelligence gathering" all run counter to such universal values as freedom and human rights and, as a result, have caused tremendous controversy, both at home and abroad.
The startling contrast between these much-trumpeted "values" and actual behavior is food for thought on today's international political stage.
This comment by People's Daily senior editor Huang Qing is carried on the third page of People's Daily, Dec. 22, and is translated by People's Daily Online.
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by Sydney H. Schanberg
December 6th, 2005
Every time I try to wrap my mind around President Bush's Iraq war and his associated war against the press, I come back to the lies the president and his courtiers have endlessly told. And to how they conned and cowed much of the press into being their early accomplices.
Those offended by the jolt of the word "lies" can substitute a gentler synonym, such as "fictions" or "frauds" or "breaches of the national trust."
The lies haven't stopped. Vice President Dick Cheney lately accuses the "reprehensible" Democrats in Congress of twisting history when they point to the flagrant disinformation campaign that got us into the war. He is saying, in effect, that telling the truth about a lie-based presidency comforts the enemy and makes you a bad American. That might be so if anyone were revealing national-security secrets. But these senators and representatives whom the vice president would crush are merely—and very belatedly—calling attention to the untruths sown by his own tribe to concoct a war.
The press too was slow to question and reveal the lies. Most of America was slow. People were still in shock over the 9-11 terrorist attacks and didn't want to believe that their president would mislead them into the wrong war. The press, like many other Americans, was temporarily intimidated.
What was in the minds of the president and his political advisers? Many of them (who had never seen battle) seem to have believed that 9-11 was the opportunity they had been hoping for since the 1991 Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein, though defeated, was left in power by the first President Bush. But how did they imagine they could, by force of arms, create a world empire on a foundation of distortions and lies about a "grave and gathering danger" from Iraq? Maybe someday they'll give us a halfway credible insight into what they were thinking.
It is tempting to go back and recite all the falsehoods—and all the scorned opportunities to exhibit honest, American humility by acknowledging them. A handful will suffice.
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."—Cheney, August 26, 2002
"[He] has indeed stepped up his capacity to produce and deliver biological weapons. . . . He has reconstituted his nuclear program to develop a nuclear weapon."—Cheney, September 8, 2002
"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons—the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."—Bush, February 6, 2003
"We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."—Cheney, March 16, 2003 (three days before the start of the U.S. invasion)
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."—Bush, March 17, 2003 (two days before the invasion)
"We know where they [the weapons] are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."—Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003 (11 days after the war began)
It is now two years and eight months later, and none of these weapons or stockpiles or assembly lines or mobile labs have been found. The only explanation the White House has offered up is that it was given faulty intelligence. Many Americans believe that the Bush regime chose faulty, hyped intelligence because it believed it could not otherwise get either the public or Congress to approve the war.
The mainstream press is no longer timid. But it, too, has suffered some major credibility failures, the most scrutinized of them having occurred at two superior papers, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Responsible journalism— responsible to the public—needs to find its footing and spirit again.
The public itself is troubled, nervous, seeking diversion. Confidence in the government and other institutions is very wobbly. The Bush presidency tried—and is still seeking—to make radical changes in the nation's social-support structure but has failed to demonstrate it has the competence to make these changes work for the majority of Americans. Next to the war, reducing the taxes of the wealthy has been the signature act of this White House.
From the start of the Bush presidency in 2001, senior White House officials have been telling reporters, usually anonymously, that because journalists are reality based, they cannot understand or relate to the Bush administration, since it is pursuing a "bold," God-guided doctrine that intends to create its own reality. Iraq was clearly one of those bold ventures, and because the planning behind it was both flawed and unrealistic, the nation is now suffering psychologically and materially.
Many nonpartisan voices across the country have urged Bush to come forward and admit his mistakes, arguing that the public will respond to such honesty. But there is still no sign of any acknowledgment of error, hardly a hint of humility. The president's message, as recently as his we-will-never-cut-and-run speech November 30, remains: We will persevere until we have "complete victory," and we will not moderate our "bold" policies.
This adamantine stance is visible in virtually every corner of the Bush government. Here is a useful example, from a superb November 27 story by Adam Liptak of the Times. The story was about the rigid Bush policies concerning "enemy combatants" taken prisoner in the Iraq war, who have been allowed almost no legal rights, even those granted by the Geneva Conventions. Most of the prisoners are simply being held indefinitely without trial.
Liptak described a hearing last December before a federal judge in Washington, Joyce Hens Green. Using hypothetical questions, Green pressed a Justice Department official, Brian Boyle, for a clearer, more specific explanation of who could be detained as an enemy combatant under the government's definition.
The judge first asked if it would include "a little old lady in Switzerland who writes checks to what she thinks is a charitable organization that helps orphans in Afghanistan but really is a front to finance Al Qaeda activities."
She next asked: What about a resident of Dublin "who teaches English to the son of a person the CIA knows to be a member of Al Qaeda?"
Finally, "What about a Wall Street Journal reporter, working in Afghanistan, who knows the exact location of Osama bin Laden but does not reveal it to the United States government to protect her source?"
Boyle replied that the military could detain all three people as enemy combatants.
There is no compromise—or reality—in the "bold" Bush government. Only secrecy and prevarications.
(Almost forgot. Yes, the reporter in the third hypothetical should be shackled in the stocks for life—but for intentional stupidity, not as an enemy combatant.)
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by Andy Ostroy
22 Dec 2005
For weeks, President Bush declared he would not accept a short-term extension of the Patriot Act. Then in a bi-partisan manner last week, prompted by the startling front-page news that Bush repeatedly authorized illegal NSA spying on Americans domestically, the Senate filibustered to prevent the legislation from being renewed. The Senate pushed for an extension, allowing lawmakers time to negotiate stricter civil liberties protections, but the Bushies rejected, and instead went on the PR warpath against Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (NV), Sen. Hillary Clinton (NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (CA).
But Wednesday Bush backpedaled, as he's had to do so many times lately (Harriet Miers, McCain/torture, war mistakes). He blasted the Democratic leadership, choosing to deceive Americans yet again by ignoring the fact that this was a bi-partisan action.
"I appreciate the Senate for working to keep the existing Patriot Act in law through next July, despite boasts last week by the Democratic leader that he had blocked the Act," Bush said in a statement. "No one should be allowed to block the Patriot Act to score political points, and I am grateful the Senate rejected that approach."
But what's most appalling here is the fact that Bush has politicized this issue more than anyone, as evidenced by the above statement. The filibuster, and now the extension, is not about politics, at least to the Democrats. It's about stripping this president of the unlimited, unchecked power that the Busheviks so crave, and worse, have abused. It's about protecting Americans and foreigners from the political tyranny of this White House, which has co-opted the 9-11 tragedy to further its power/war-mongering self-interests.
Even as the Senate voted to literally save his ass on this issue, Bush hammered home the scare tactics and propaganda: "The senators obstructing the Patriot Act need to understand that the expiration of this vital law will endanger America and will leave us in a weaker position in the fight against brutal killers." The last time Bush peddled this extremist rhetoric we invaded a sovereign nation and killed tens of thousands of people, including 2100 U.S. soldiers. And the killing continues.
www.OstroyReport.blogspot.com
Andy Ostroy, theostroyreport@aol.com, a NYC-based 45-year-old entrepreneur and political commentator, is an aggressive counter to the Bush administration, the Republican Party and the powerful right wing media machine. Our mission is to do whatever possible to help Democrats take back the House and Senate in 2006 and win back the White House in '08. http://www.ostroyreport.blogspot.com/
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by Sydney H. Schanberg
December 20th, 2005
Most of the time these days, when I scour the "media" looking for a sign of hope about mankind, I inevitably trip over a discouraging spew of waste matter passing as news of importance. Historically, the name we give this offal is propaganda. Its spewers are often reporter-impersonators. The Defense Department, CIA, and White House have been hiring these performers in large numbers lately to spread the gospel of a puppeteer named Rove.
Some of the impersonation journalism actually comes from failed reporters who are still not admitting they embarrass the profession. Just the other day, I came across a story that said Judith My-WMD- Sources-Were- Wrong- It-Was- All- Their-Fault Miller was now on a cruise-ship gig in South America. The brief report said the former New York Times employee is lecturing unsuspecting tourists on why protecting the identity of rumor-mongering sources must be journalism's first commandment.
But most of the spew is government waste, like the latest string of road show speeches from President Bush, who confessed that all the "secret" intelligence that led him to invade Iraq was wrong, but then he said, Never mind, folks, the war was still the right thing to do, and anyway most of the critics of my war are "defeatists." That kind of sophistry was called horse manure back in the mill town where I grew up.
Though this hazardous propaganda does litter the press landscape and confuse many Americans, honest newspaper people and other disciplined reporters continue to produce a steady flow of principled journalism. Still, one is forced to wonder whether a populace bone-tired of bad news is even interested in separating the honest journalism from the fake; after all, the voters have twice elected the crowd who are producing the faux information—and whose radical policies have produced much of the bad news.
In any event, as a change of pace, I thought I'd take a reporter's walk through a few of the artifacts I came across this past week in the theater of the absurd that is the news business at the moment.
Robert Novak was back in the news. He's the Republican conduit who broke the cover of CIA operative Valerie Plame in a 2003 column, apparently as part of a White House effort to discredit her war-critic husband, Joe Wilson. This led to the still-running Plamegate investigation. Novak has never publicly revealed the source who passed him Plame's identity. He has also not been indicted. So far, that honor has fallen solely on I. Lewis Libby, who was Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and is now awaiting trial. (Also, the above-mentioned Judith Miller, then a New York Times reporter and now rusticated with a severance package, was found in contempt of court, a civil offense, and spent 85 days in jail for refusing to reveal her source, who turned out to be Libby.)
About Novak, it seems he was down in Raleigh, North Carolina, last week, giving a luncheon speech during which he suggested that people stop asking him to name his White House source and ask President Bush instead. Novak said: "I'm confident the president knows who the source is. I'd be amazed if he doesn't. So I say, don't bug me. Don't bug Bob Woodward. Bug the president as to whether he should reveal who the source is." (Coincidentally, a few days later, Novak announced that he was leaving his position as a political commentator on CNN for a similar role at Fox News, a more Republican-friendly setting.)
The White House said it was dumbfounded by Novak's claim that the president must know the source. "I don't know what he's basing it on," said spokesman Scott McClellan, who would say nothing more. (But if the president really doesn't know the source's identity, then his marionette strings are truly showing.)
The overarching story that encompasses all this misinformation is the government's propaganda machine. Multimillion-dollar contracts have been awarded to public relations companies in Washington to place stories in the Afghan and Iraqi press. The Rendon Group and the Lincoln Group are two of the companies working for the Pentagon. Both say they are forbidden by their contracts to talk about the details of their work. The Pentagon insists that all the stories they produce contain accurate information. No one can be surprised about propaganda efforts, since they've always been used in wars and occupations to counter adversarial or false information in the local press. But if the stories are factual, as the Pentagon says, why the secrecy?
The Bush administration—including Bush himself, Dick Cheney, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld—regularly accuse the press of failing to give a complete picture of what's taking place in Iraq. That's laughable—the laughter of the theater of the absurd. If they want us to enlarge the portrait of Iraq, then please open some doors and let us see the whole picture. And not just in Iraq, but on domestic policy as well. The Bush White House team has turned this presidency into the most sealed-off, secretive regime in American history.
I and many other career journalists have written often about the White House's war on the independent press. When a presidency sets up a huge public relations machine to create and promulgate a rosy, Potemkin village substitute for the actual gritty and sometimes lethal reality on the ground, then the press, to retain its credibility, is forced to push back hard and strip away the fantasy tableaux of Karl Rove and company.
The Bush circus train now is easy to describe—its crew members are still running an election campaign, with all the bells and whistles: the carefully selected audiences, the president's incessant stump speeches, the stage props, and the billboard-like slogans. This is more like a sales campaign for a new line of gas-guzzling SUVs than a competent government leadership team wrestling with matters of war and peace and the travails of ordinary people.
To this White House, apparently, everything is merely an issue of image, of getting a soothing message up on some giant screen. Example: His handlers, remember, took President Bush to devastated New Orleans, placed him in a historic square and framed him in messianic blue lights with his collar unbuttoned like a regular person. Then, in a nationwide television speech crafted to mask the shame of how his government had bungled the rescue and relief effort after the gargantuan Hurricane Katrina laid waste to the Gulf Coast, he promised the survivors that he would spare no expense to restore their dwellings and their towns and cities.
"We will do what it takes," he said. "We will stay as long as it takes . . . "
That was the night of September 15. Three months have passed, but major decisions about rebuilding are still stalled by vacillation and red tape. According to a Brookings Institution study published on December 7, more than $21 billion has been "allocated" to New Orleans alone, and $19 billion of that has been spent. Half has gone to "administration" and "general operations." Meanwhile, only one—yes, one—of New Orleans's 116 public schools is open. Two-thirds of the 276,000 applications for low-interest home-rebuilding loans—earmarked for low-income families—have yet to be reviewed. Worse, of those reviewed, more than 80 percent have been rejected, on the grounds that applicants' incomes or credit ratings were too low.
Protests from the hurricane victims have multiplied. What does the White House do? It announces that it will "allocate" another $1.5 billion to rebuild the breached levees. That should mute the protests from the legions of Gulf Coasters now living as refugees in trailer parks and motels. All aboard the Public Relations Express!
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December 19, 2005
Eric Margolis
WASHINGTON - Victory or defeat! So proclaimed President George W. Bush in his TV speech about Iraq last night.
Those who oppose Bush’s continued, $6.5 billion monthly war in Iraq are `defeatists.’ Withdrawal from Iraq would `damage US credibility around the world,’ warned the self-proclaimed `war president.’
What Bush is really worried about, of course, is his own credibility. He has repeatedly shown he cares nothing about what the rest of the world thinks about the US. Why start now?
It’s too bad George W. Bush evaded regular military service by hiding out in the Texas Air National Guard during war time. If Bush had any real military experience, he and his mentor, Dick Cheney, who was `too busy’ to do his military service during Vietnam, might have learned one of the basic laws of military science: only a fools and megalomaniacs say `no retreat.’
Retreat is as much a part of warfare as advance, and often an even more useful tactic. No general worth his stripes embarks on a battle or campaign without leaving open a secure line of retreat behind him. War is by nature uncertain and filled with nasty surprises.
The hallmark of a good commander is being able to quickly change plans when faced by unexpected adversity and withdraw, trading space for time, when his forces are in peril.
One of history’s greatest modern generals was Erich von Manstein who conducted a brilliant series of fighting withdrawals on the Eastern Front that are a classic of military art.
Two of the most egregious recent examples of the failure to retreat when military/political conditions demand it were Stalingrad and Kuwait. After the German Sixth Army was enveloped by vastly superior Soviet forces at Stalingrad in late 1942, Hitler refused his general’s pleas to break out. He thundered `no retreat’ and accused his generals who urged a retreat to the west of `defeatism.’
Hitler’s refusal to allow the Sixth Army to break out of encirclement and link up with advancing German forces condemned it to total destruction. Stalingrad marked the beginning of the end of Hitler’s dream of a thousand-year Reich. Hitler, who was wounded three times in World War I, was a good soldier and understood strategy. He refused to allow his Sixth Army to retreat because he feared it would undermine his authority and aura of invincibility. A dictator cannot afford to lose face by retreating.
Saddam Hussein faced the same problem in Kuwait in 1990-1991. Saddam invaded the US protectorate after its rulers had gravely insulted Iraq by demanding its war widows be sent to Kuwait’s harems in lieu of billions in loans for the Iran-Iraq War that bankrupt Baghdad owed the Kuwaitis.
Facing certain destruction from the US-led coalition, Saddam wanted to withdraw but feared doing so would fatally undermine his authority and lead to a coup. So he sat transfixed, hoping the Soviets would somehow rescue him from the jaws of disaster. In the end, Saddam’s armies in Kuwait were destroyed and Iraq submitted to siege.
Fools and megalomaniacs don’t know when to retreat. Just as the distant oil fields of the Caucasus lured Hitler ever east into the wastes of southern Russia and destruction, so Iraq’s oil treasure continues to mesmerize Bush, Cheney & Co. They clearly do not understand, or will not face the fact, that the US cannot afford to keep spending $6.5 billion a month on Iraq and $1 billion monthly in Afghanistan to prop up the little puppet regimes they have created.
The US Army and Marine Corps are being relentlessly ground down in both theaters, and now face not only a crisis of personnel replacements but the massive deterioration of their equipment, from boots to tanks, which is not being replaced.
Democracies are no good at waging long-term guerilla wars. Vietnam showed this to French and Americans, Angola to South Africans, and Lebanon to Israelis.
A majority of Americans no longer believe all the lies about Iraq being pumped out by the Bush White House. They squirm with embarrassment while watching Condoleeza Rice lie through her teeth to Europeans by claiming the US does not kidnap or torture suspects. And they look with concern at their phones, never sure these days of what anonymous federal agency or military group is bugging their calls.
Bush’s latest untruths - that the recent election in Iraq will defeat the Sunni resistance and lead to lasting democracy – are about as believable as Bill Clinton’s prevarications about his sex life.
Perhaps the most galling and persistent of Bush’s lies is the one he repeated last night: that failure to prove Saddam was a threat to world civilization was due to `wrong intelligence.’ Not wrong. No way. This column maintained for years Iraq had no strategic weapons and no links with al-Qaida. So did many veteran CIA officers. We looked at the available evidence and drew the only logical conclusion.
It was not `wrong intelligence.’ War against Iraq was the product of a farrago of lies, distortions and disinformation provided by foreign `allies’ and a domestic fifth column eager for the US to destroy Iraq, both eagerly abetted by the mainstream US media. Bush’s claims Iraq was behind 9/11 or about to attack the US with germ weapons released by drones were as lurid and outrageous as Dr Goebbel’s claims in 1939 that Poland was about to invade Germany. The president who made these ludicrous claims now asks us to believe him about Iraq.
Iraq’s US-engineered elections will more firmly entrench the Iranian-influenced Shia majority in power, marginalize the Sunnis and leave the Kurds virtually independent in all but name, and accelerate the dangerous ethnic division of Iraq.
In spite of the current election, Iraq remains a US colony. Washington controls Iraq’s police, inept sepoy army, and assorted death squads – all of whom serve for money, not out of commitment to the government. The US controls Iraq’s total finances. US firms have been given the right to pump and export Iraq’s oil – 90% of its national income.
The US controls Iraq’s secret police and all communications. American money fuels Iraq’s political parties and almost all of Iraq’s so-called media. Behind every Iraqi minister discreetly stands a group of US `advisors.’ Not since the Soviets occupied Afghanistan have we seen such a reversion to classical colonialism.
The real poll that counts in Iraq is a recent BBC poll that revealed that 65% of all Iraqis – Shia, Sunnis and Kurds, want the US out of Iraq.
Now, we learn in another stinging irony, that the US Army in Iraq has depleted its reserves of M-16 rifle ammo and is currently buying munitions from Israel. One may imagine the reaction in the Muslim World when it is learned that the US is using Israeli bullets to kill Iraqis.
Speaking of the Soviets, this column has been noting for a long time how much the Bush Administration has come to resemble the Soviet Union of Chairman Leonid Brezhnev. The Taoists say, `you become what you hate.’
Look at Bush’s foreign wars `to advance the cause of democracy’ - (Brezhnev called his aggressions `the Soviet Union’s internationalist duty) the gelding of the US media into Soviet style sycophants; the expansion of political policing in the old USSR and in the new USA; the exhortations to nationalist flag waving and anti-Islamic racism in both empires.
Bush’s speech last night declaring `defeatism’ a major new sin was a final ironic touch. What could be more Soviet or Red Chinese-sounding than this piece of opprobrium.
How long will it be before `defeatism’ becomes a federal crime under the sinister Patriot Act?
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By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer
Dec 23 12:36 AM US/Eastern
FALLUJAH, Iraq - President Bush has authorized new cuts in U.S. combat troops in Iraq, below the 138,000 level that prevailed for most of this year, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Friday. Addressing U.S. troops at this former insurgent stronghold, Rumsfeld did not reveal the exact size of the troop cut, but Pentagon officials have said it could be as much as 7,000 combat troops.
Two army brigades that had been scheduled for combat tours - one from Fort Riley, Kan., the other now in Kuwait - will no longer deploy to Iraq. That will reduce the number of combat brigades in Iraq from 17 to 15.
"The effect of these adjustments will reduce forces in Iraq by the spring of 2006 below the current high of 160,000 during the (Iraqi) election period to below the 138,000 baseline that had existed before the most recent elections," Rumsfeld said.
Rumsfeld aides said details were to be provided later at the Pentagon.
Further reductions will be considered "at some point in 2006," after the new Iraqi government is in place and is prepared to discuss the future U.S. military presence, said Rumsfeld.
The Pentagon sent an extra 20,000 troops to Iraq to bolster security during the recent elections, and Rumsfeld has previously said those 20,000 would be withdrawn in January to return U.S. force levels to a 138,000 baseline.
Friday's announcement marks the first time Rumsfeld has said troop levels will dip below that baseline.
Bush is under growing pressure from two fronts to pare back the American force in Iraq: the Republican-run Congress and a public increasingly disenchanted with the war and its growing casualties, which have surpassed 2,100 U.S. war dead and 15,000 wounded.
The president, Rumsfeld and other Bush administration and military officials long have said that U.S. troop reductions would occur as the Iraqis show signs of being able to take control of their country. As evidence of progress, these officials in recent weeks have pointed to growing numbers of Iraqi troops they say are capable of lead combat roles.
The American force peaked at 192,000 during the March 2003 invasion; the monthly low was 109,000 in January 2004.
Earlier in Baghdad, Rumsfeld, on an unannounced trip to Iraq, was asked by reporters whether he had decided to hold back the deployment of the 1st Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division from Fort Riley, Kan., and the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Armored Division, now in Kuwait.
Rumsfeld would not answer directly, but then elaborated during his visit to Fallujah.
Upon his arrival in the Iraqi capital, Rumsfeld met with Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad.
It was Rumsfeld's 11th trip to Iraq since the war began.
For the first time since the insurgency took hold in Iraq in midsummer Rumsfeld was spending the night in the country. He previously had made Iraq day trips but spent the night in other countries in the region.
The issue of troops reductions came up earlier during Rumsfeld's visit to Afghanistan.
"Well, we're not going to withdraw precipitously. We're going to finish the important work that's being done there," he responded.
During Rumsfeld's stop in Afghanistan, military officials said they were making good progress toward eliminating the Taliban resistance and al-Qaida terrorists who continue sporadical violence against U.S. troops.
But some officers said the hostile forces were making some gains by acquiring more advanced weaponry, such as armor-piercing munitions, and improving their training and organization.
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By CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI
22 Dec 2005
CounterPunch.org
Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burned women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears. [Louis Brandeis, Whitney v. California]
It was another great week on the national scene. First it was George Bush showing his lack of scruples and then it was the New York Times belying its motto: "All the news that's fit to print". (The Times would probably explain that the question is what the meaning of "fit' is.)
The New York Times's contribution to the week was its acknowledgement that it learned before the 2004 election that George Bush was a law breaker yet chose to remain silent. The broken law was Mr. Bush's habit of repeatedly approving a policy that permits the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without obtaining a court order. Historically the N.S.A. has only conducted spying operations abroad.
When the White House learned what the paper had learned, it urged the paper not to publish the information lest terrorists learn that they were being scrutinized by the Bush administration. The administration did not suggest disclosure would affect the 2004 election although it might have since a number of those who voted for Mr. Bush might have voted for his opponent had they known of Mr. Bush's fondness for illegal spying. As Senator Chuck Hagel said: "If this is true, then it needs to stop. It's very clear in the law that the National Security Agency is prohibited from domestic spying, from spying on citizens of the United States unless there are extenuating circumstances." One way of stopping it would have been to vote for Senator Kerry. Had that happened Mr. Bush could have continued his spying as a private citizen, using one of the decoder rings he got as a child with a box top and $.25 instead of the N.S.A.
As offensive as news of the Times' self-censorship was, the week still belonged to George Bush. When asked by Jim Lehrer of "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" about the eavesdropping he said: "We do not discuss ongoing intelligence operations to protect the country. And the reason why is that there's an enemy that lurks, that would like to know exactly what we're trying to do to stop them." He went on to say it was being done to fulfill his obligation to "protect the civil liberties of the American people." By spying on thousand of citizens he is making those on whom he is not spying safer. Leaders of many third world countries would find that a compelling argument.
By the following morning Mr. Bush had a new answer to the question asked by Jim Lehrer the preceding day. He said the practice was a "vital tool in our war against terrorists" and said he had authorized the spying more than 30 times since the events of 9/11. He did not mention that by acknowledging the existence of the program he was contradicting the previous day's George Bush who said he did not want to help lurking terrorists by responding. When protecting his image competed with protecting the country, his image won out. Self interest also manifested itself in an interview with Fox News.
On July 9 Mr. Bush had been asked to comment on the investigation by special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, of his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove. He said he would not prejudge the investigation based on media reports and would not comment until the investigation was complete. When press secretary Scott McClellan was asked at a press conference about the president's opinion of Scooter Libby's guilt or innocence Mr. McClellan said the president had a policy of not talking about an investigation while it was ongoing. When Mr. Bush was asked to comment about Tom DeLay's indictment in an interview on Fox news, Mr. Bush assumed the comical pose of legal scholar and said without hesitation that he was sure Mr. DeLay was not guilty.
When Mr. McClellan was asked to contrast and explain this comment with the consistent refusal to comment about the Libby and Rove indictment and investigation while they were underway, Mr. McClellan explained that Mr. Bush's expression of an opinion about the innocence of Mr. DeLay was an exercise of "presidential prerogative."
Mr. Bush has a closet full of presidential prerogatives. Commenting or not commenting on ongoing investigations if he thinks he can influence their outcome is one. Spying on his subjects is another. Seeing what wonderful prerogatives a president has may awaken in some a wish to be president. In others it gives birth to the wish that we had a different one.
Christopher Brauchli is a lawyer in Boulder, Colorado. He can be reached at: Brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu or through his website: http://hraos.com/
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A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
21 Dec 2005
It may be the Holiday Season, but for the United States of America we're back to Lexington and Concord.
Dick Cheney has put it on the table as bluntly and thuggishly as a mobster setting down a crowbar. Cheney has said that he, Bush and Rumsfeld are out to seize as much power as they can in the name of a "robust" executive branch. It ain't no executive branch Cheney is after; it's a dictatorship.
As we've said before, call it the Franco regime, the Stalin regime, the Pinochet Regime, the Brezhnev regime, the Bush regime -- they are all the same in terms of dictatorial powers that deny democracy.
Is the American Constitution going to be put through the shredder until there is nothing left but strips of paper to throw out in the trash? Or are some patriotic heroes going to rescue America?
Right now the "Centrist Democrats" are still sitting back acting as if there's no immediate crisis. Their consultants warn them not to appear too radical! As if the dismembering of democracy by Cheney and Bush is not radical! As if the brazen seizure of illegal dictatorial powers is not radical! As if the conduct of an unnecessary war costing thousands of lives, fomenting a new generation of terrorists, and bankrupting America is not radical!
The Bush dictatorship -- and it has clearly and publicly crossed the threshold now -- is not going to tiptoe away. Dictatorships don't. They hang on until they are displaced from positions of power.
If the Democrats don't start yelling fire soon, we'll just be left with the burning hulk of what once was a great democracy. We are on the verge of irreversibly becoming just another dictatorship "ism."
The terrorists have an ally in Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. Cheney and Bush have accomplished what Osama never dreamed of achieving: bringing down the American democracy and replacing it with a dictatorship.
And what's more the Busheviks are totally inept at making the right strategic moves in actually confronting the threat of terrorism.
They are like all dictators, arrogant, elitist losers who seize permanent power because they could not hold onto it based on accomplishment -- because they only have a record of ruin to run on.
Meanwhile the John Kerrys of the world act as if they have all the time in the world to "win the next election." As if there were a chance of a fair one in a de facto dictatorship.
The satirist Jonathan Swift ("Gulliver's Travels") would tell us this. For the most part, we are left with a party composed of Democratic fools living in a political world of GOP knaves.
God help us all!
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Friday, December 23, 2005
(12-23) 03:54 PST WASHINGTON (AP)
The use of warrantless wiretaps on American citizens was never discussed when Congress authorized the White House to use force against al-Qaida after the Sept. 11 attacks, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said Friday.
In an article on the op-ed page of The Washington Post, Daschle also wrote that Congress explicitly denied a White House request for war-making authority in the United States.
"This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas ... but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens," Daschle wrote.
" The Bush administration now argues those powers were inherently contained in the resolution adopted by Congress — but at the time, the administration clearly felt they weren't or it wouldn't have tried to insert the additional language," the South Dakota Democrat wrote.
Daschle was Senate Majority Leader at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington. He is now a fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank.
The administration formally defended its domestic spying program in a letter to Congress late Thursday, saying the nation's security outweighs privacy concerns of individuals who are monitored.
In a letter to the chairs of the House and Senate intelligence committees, the Justice Department said President Bush authorized electronic surveillance without first obtaining a warrant in an effort to thwart terrorist acts against the United States.
"There is undeniably an important and legitimate privacy interest at stake with respect to the activities described by the president," wrote Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella. "That must be balanced, however, against the government's compelling interest in the security of the nation."
Bush has acknowledged he authorized such surveillance and repeatedly has defended it in recent days.
But Moschella's letter was the administration's first public notice to Congress about the program in which electronic surveillance was conducted without the approval of a secret court created to examine requests for wiretaps and searches in the most sensitive terrorism and espionage cases.
Moschella maintained that Bush acted legally when he authorized the National Security Agency to go around the court to conduct electronic surveillance of international communications into and out of the United States by suspects tied to al-Qaida or its affiliates.
Moschella relied on a Sept. 18, 2001, congressional resolution, known as the Authorization to Use Military Force, as primary legal justification for Bush's creation of a domestic spying program. The resolution "clearly contemplates action within the United States," Moschella wrote, and acknowledges Bush's power to prevent terrorism against the United States.
Congress adopted the resolution in the chaotic days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, authorizing the president to wage war against al-Qaida and other terrorist groups that pose a threat to the United States.
Moschella said the president's constitutional authority also includes power to order warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance inside the United States. He said that power has been affirmed by federal courts, including the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. The FISA court was created in 1978 after public outcry over government spying on anti-war and civil rights protesters.
The administration deliberately bypassed the FISA court, which requires the government to provide evidence that a terrorism or espionage suspect is "an agent of a foreign power."
Moschella said Bush's action was legal because the foreign intelligence law provides a "broad" exception if the spying is authorized by another statute. In this case, he said, Congress' authorization provided such authority.
He also maintained the NSA program is "consistent" with the Fourth Amendment — which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures — and civil liberties.
For searches to be reasonable under law, a warrant is needed, Moschella said. But, outside criminal investigations, he said, the Supreme Court has created exceptions where warrants are not needed.
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By Mark Leibovich
Washington Post
December 22, 2005
On the Thursday morning after his reelection in November 2004, President Bush bounded unexpectedly into the Roosevelt Room of the White House, where about 15 members of his communications team were celebrating. He just wanted to thank everyone for their hard work on the campaign, he said, before singling someone out.
"Is Scotty here? Where's Scotty?" Bush asked, half-grinning, according to two people who were in the meeting but asked not to be quoted by name because they were discussing a private event. Bush scanned the room for Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary.
"I want to especially thank Scotty," the president said, looking at his aide. "I want to thank Scotty for saying" -- and he paused for effect. . . .
" Nothing ."
At which point everyone laughed and the president left the room.
This is one of those quips that distill a certain essence of the game. In this era of on-message orthodoxy, the republic has evolved to where the leader of the free world can praise his most visible spokesman for saying nothing.
Those were considerably less embattled days for the Bush administration, which has since endured a difficult year. It's been "a perfect storm of bad news," says Mark McKinnon, the president's longtime advertising consultant, listing Hurricane Katrina, Iraq and the CIA leak investigation. McClellan, per his job description, has borne the daily brunt of it.
The weary White House frontman is an iconic Washington role, epitomized over the years by Nixon's Ron Ziegler during Watergate and Clinton's Mike McCurry during Monica. A ceremonial flak jacket hangs in the closet of McClellan's West Wing office, following in a tradition of previous tenants, beginning with Ford spokesman Ron Nessen. The press secretary delivers an administration's daily boilerplate and also serves as a storm wall, or "human piñata" in the words of Ari Fleischer, whom McClellan succeeded on July 15, 2003, the day after Robert Novak outed CIA analyst Valerie Plame in a column.
"It may not look like it," McClellan, 37, said from the podium after an especially tough week recently. "But there's a little flesh that's been taken out of me the last few days." This is as close as McClellan will flirt in the briefing room with conveying something beyond the preapproved white noise. Indeed, he has been credited -- or blamed -- for taking the craft of party-line discipline to new heights, or depths.
Bottled Up in a Message
Last Friday reporters battered McClellan over a New York Times report that the president had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without warrants on people in the United States. Over several minutes, McClellan emphasized that:
The president is doing all he can to protect the American people from terrorists (10 times);
The administration is committed to protecting civil liberties and upholding the Constitution (seven times);
Congress has an important oversight role, and the administration is committed to working with it on these difficult matters (five times); and
He would not discuss ongoing intelligence activities (five times).
It was all on live television and in the news conference transcripts, which are posted on the White House Web site and then e-mailed around, deconstructed, blogged about, picked over and scoured throughout a vast electronic briefing space. The words of White House spokesmen have never been so widely or quickly distributed.
"You can't make a mistake," says Marlin Fitzwater, White House press secretary in the first Bush administration, whom McClellan sought out for advice before he started the job. "So you just get into a routine of repeating the same thing over and over again."
"I would urge you not to confuse clarity with rigidity," says Nicolle Wallace, the White House communications director, who works closely with McClellan. "There is great clarity in the way the president wants us to communicate, and Scott embodies that."
When briefings get tense, McClellan's voice can become robotic, as if he's a hostage reading a statement. His body language can betray unease: He starts blinking rapidly and he clenches his shoulders as an interrogator unfurls a question.
"There's no question the dynamic of the briefing room has changed with live TV," says senior White House aide Dan Bartlett, who also works closely with McClellan. "When you have live cameras rolling, it makes for an even more stressful working environment. You're talking about difficult issues, and mistakes get compounded."
Colleagues (on-message) say McClellan has held up well in these difficult months. Others (off-message) say he's had a tough time, has lost hair, gained jowls and looks stressed, especially over the Plame case, which made a return to the briefing room Thursday after an absence of a few weeks.
It started when the president told Fox News's Brit Hume last week that he believed that Rep. Tom DeLay was not guilty of money-laundering charges in Texas. This undercut McClellan's vow that he would not comment on the Plame matter because it is an "ongoing investigation," something he has repeated hundreds of times in recent months. We join Thursday's episode in progress:
Reporter: "Why would that not apply to the same type of prosecution involving Congressman DeLay?"
McClellan: "I just told you we had a policy in place regarding this investigation, and you've heard me say before that we're not going to talk about it further while it's ongoing."
In a flurry of follow-ups, McClellan repeated that the White House had a policy on the Plame case (four times) and that the policy was not to comment (three times).
NBC's David Gregory broke in, declaring the administration to be "inconsistent," then "hypocritical."
"You have a policy for some investigations and not others, when it's a political ally who you need to get work done?" Gregory asked.
McClellan: "Call it presidential prerogative; he responded to that question. But the White House established a policy." He mentioned that the DeLay case is a "legal proceeding."
Gregory: "As is the Fitzgerald investigation. . . . As you've told us ad nauseam from the podium."
After more back-and-forth, McClellan said, "You can get all dramatic about it, but you know what our policy is."
Which ended that exchange.
"We've come to understand that no matter how we slice and dice something, Scott's going to stick to the recipe," says Ken Herman, White House correspondent for Cox News Service. "I can't think of any topic where on the sixth or seventh iteration of a question we get something different from the original answer. By somebody's measure, that's the definition of doing the job well. Certainly not ours."
As with most people who do regular televised battle with McClellan, Herman says McClellan is a nice guy, polite and friendly off-camera. "He seems to have the right temperament to be a punching bag," Herman says.
"Who knows, maybe he goes home at night and kicks his dog?"
The Thing
It should surprise no one that McClellan is an unexpansive interview subject. He toggles on and off the record, although the latter offerings are only slightly more revealing than the former.
Over lunch at the Occidental at the Willard Hotel, McClellan says that he is "honored" to serve George W. Bush, that he will "vigorously defend the president and his agenda," that "Washington can be an all-consuming town if you allow it to be," that there are "a lot of bright people working in the White House," that he has "great trust in the American people to make the right judgments" and that he's merely "part of a team."
And that: "It's a good team."
And that: "At the end of the day, this is about the president and his agenda."
The maitre d' addresses McClellan as "Mr. Secretary," which means he is either mistaking him for a Cabinet member or believes this is the appropriate way to address a press secretary.
"Sometimes the nature of this job will put you in a tough spot," McClellan says. He is speaking about the Plame investigation, which has been a source of great strain, according to people he has confided in privately, including several reporters.
He has anguished that his credibility has been harmed by his statements in 2003 that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby "have assured me they were not involved in this," this being the outing of Plame as a covert CIA agent.
Today Libby is under indictment, Rove's involvement has become apparent and McClellan's public statements haunt him. "His credibility is shot," the San Francisco Chronicle said in an editorial calling for McClellan's resignation.
Over lunch, McClellan will refer to the leak investigation as "the thing I can't talk about," "the thing that's put me in a tough spot," "the investigation" and simply "it." You can see McClellan's spine stiffen when the case is raised, his normally fast speaking style slowing to a grind.
He says, repeatedly, that he would like to say more about the investigation, and in time he will, "hopefully sooner rather than later."
Asked if he's spoken to Rove about Rove's assurances that he was not involved, McClellan says: "That's asking me to talk about it and I'm not gonna do it."
Asked if he was wrong in a 2003 briefing to characterize suggestions that Rove and Libby were involved as "ridiculous," McClellan says: "That's not something I can get into."
Asked why he himself has not hired a lawyer, McClellan says: "I'm not going to talk about it."
In the course of researching this story, the following Scotty fun facts were extracted:
McClellan's wife, the former Jill Martinez, volunteers part time in the White House. They were married in November 2003, live in Arlington, have no kids, no iPods, two cars, two dogs and three cats -- all of them rescued strays and none of which McClellan has ever kicked.
McClellan, a Methodist, is reading Rick Warren's bestseller, "The Purpose-Driven Life."
He was a varsity tennis player at the University of Texas, often wakes -- at 5 a.m. -- to a BBC radio broadcast, then switches to NPR, then alternates between news radio and country music for the 15-minute commute to work in his Chevy Tahoe.
From the podium, McClellan will often bring up his "close relationship" with the reporters who cover the White House. He keeps talking about the "trust" he's established and how they know each other "very well."
"I think this is an example of Scott talking in code," Gregory says.
Saying that Rove and Libby "assured me they were not involved" is different from saying "Rove and Libby were not involved," says Fitzwater. "Assured me" is a classic construction among spokesmen, he says.
"That's a signal that most press members can get. The press secretary vouches for the president every day. He does not vouch for the staff."
Ka-Blam! No Comment.
Several White House reporters say that as much as McClellan is liked personally, the administration has left him with no meaningful freedom from the podium beyond jackhammering that day's message and providing mundane updates. ("The president had a good discussion with a group of Senate Democrats and Republicans earlier today.") It has diminished the daily briefing to a playacting spectacle in which he recites lines while reporters play the part of exasperated inquisitors.
"He's a hostage to the message they put out," says Julie Mason, the White House reporter for the Houston Chronicle.
"The fate of a press secretary is always tied to events," says Mary Matalin, a White House adviser. "They're not good or bad on their own. By definition they are constrained to what the message is. It's such a limited lane, you can't strut your stuff there. But in such a limited lane, Scott is perfect."
McClellan was cautious from an early age. His mother, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, was a three-term mayor of Austin whose youngest son "went from diapers to shaving working on my campaigns," she says. As free-speaking as her son is tight-lipped, Strayhorn instilled in her four boys a sense that their transgressions could easily become public. "I remember my mom saying to me that what your friends do is one thing, but what you do could be on the front page of the paper," McClellan says.
Strayhorn says that her son required stitches many times as a child -- tree-climbing accidents, falls onto concrete and whatnot. And not once did she see him cry.
"I think he had eight stitch jobs before 2," Strayhorn says. "In this day and age, they'd probably call me an abusive mom," she continues, adding -- for the record -- that she is "not an abusive mom."
Strayhorn, now the Texas comptroller and a candidate for governor, describes her son as "one of the most focused people on Earth" and tells this story: McClellan once returned home after playing tennis and started telling her about his match when a fuse blew and the house went dark. But he kept talking, on-message, as if nothing had happened. "We were like, 'Uh, Scott, haven't you noticed that every light in the house just went off?' "
After graduating from UT, McClellan immersed himself in the family realm, Texas politics. (His brother Mark McClellan also works in the Bush administration, as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.) He ran three of his mother's campaigns for statewide office. Karen Hughes, who was communications director for Bush when he was governor, took notice of McClellan and made him a deputy communications director. He would eventually go to work as the traveling press secretary for Bush's presidential campaign in 2000.
McClellan's parents divorced when Scott was 10. His father, Barr McClellan -- who now resides in Buffalo and whom Scott says he speaks to infrequently -- published a book in 2003 claiming that Lyndon Johnson was behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
"I'm wondering if you agree with your father," McClellan was asked during one briefing in 2003.
"Thank you for the opportunity," McClellan replied. "But I'm not going to have any comment on it. Thanks."
* * *
As McClellan is leaving the Occidental, the maitre d' urges "Mr. Secretary" to tell "Mr. Bush" that he's doing a great job. Bush is in Minneapolis on this day, and McClellan is heading back to his office, assuring the reporter he just ate with that he said more than he usually does. It's not clear what exactly.
"I think I talked about how badly I wanted to talk about it," McClellan says by phone a few days later, referring to the thing he can't talk about.
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By RAY McGOVERN
Former CIA analyst
I'll say this for Vice President Dick Cheney: he puts it right out there, whether it is trying to ensure legal protection for those torturing prisoners, or insisting-as he did on Tuesday-that a wartime president "needs to have his powers unimpaired."
Supporters of this view are dredging up quotes from former officials like George H.W. Bush's attorney general William Barr who, according to the Washington Post, contends:
"The Constitution's intent when we're under attack from outside is to place maximum power in the president, and the other branches-and especially the courts-don't act as a check on the president's authority against the enemy."
So there we have it: the Bush administration contention that the president's power as commander in chief during wartime puts him above the law. Bush may bristle, as he did Monday, at a question from the press about "unchecked power," but that is plain English for it. Whether authorizing torture or wiretaps, he reserves the right to act irrespective of domestic or international law.
The question is whether Congress and the courts will acquiesce in this usurpation of their own powers, or whether there are still enough men and women in those branches of government determined to honor their oath to defend the Constitution of the United States "from all enemies, foreign and domestic."
Some hope can be seen in a recent remark by Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, who told reporters:
"I took an oath of office to the Constitution. I didn't take an oath of office to my party or to my president."
Two and a half years ago, when former ambassador Joseph Wilson exposed the president's mis-statement about Iraq seeking uranium in Africa, all the president's men and the woman were in high dudgeon over Wilson's op-ed expose in the New York Times. What infuriated them the most, I am convinced, was Wilson's pointed remark to Washingon Post reporters that the Iraq-Africa-uranium canard "begs the question regarding what else they are lying about." Quite a lot, we are finding out.
Other Abuses?
We need to ask a similar question. What undermining of our Constitution may be going on below the surface elsewhere in the intelligence community besides un-warranted eavesdropping on U.S. citizens?
Under last year's intelligence reform legislation, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte has under his aegis not only the entire CIA but also a major part of the FBI. Under existing law, the CIA has no police powers and its operatives are generally enjoined against collecting intelligence information on American citizens.
Since citizens' constitutional protections do not sit atop the list of CIA priorities and its focus is abroad, it pays those protections little heed. In contrast, FBI personnel, for judicial and other reasons, are trained to observe those protections scrupulously and to avoid going beyond what the law permits. That accounts, in part, for why FBI agents at the Guantanamo detention facility judged it necessary to report the abuses they witnessed. Would they have acted so responsibly had they been part of a wider, more disparate environment in which the strict guidelines reflecting the FBI's ethos were not universally observed?
It is an important question.
In my view, the need to protect the civil liberties of American citizens must trump other exigencies when rights embedded in the Constitution are at risk.
The reorganization dictated by the intelligence reform legislation cannot be permitted to blur or erode constitutional protections. That would be too high a price to pay for hoped-for efficiencies of integration and scale.
Rather, there is a continuing need for checks and balances and -- especially in law enforcement -- clear lines of demarcation within the executive branch as well as outside it.
Unfortunately, the structure and functions of the "oversight board" created by the intelligence legislation make a mockery of the 9/11 commission's insistence that an independent body be established to prevent infringement on civil liberties. Sadly, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board created by the new law has been gutted to such a degree that it has become little more than a powerless creature of the president.
This concern over endangering civil liberties is fact-based. In discussing it we are not in the subjunctive mood. No one seemed to notice, but on June 16, 2004, when CIA director Porter Goss was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he actually introduced legislation that would have given the president new authority to direct the CIA to conduct law-enforcement operations inside the United States -- including arresting American citizens. This legislation would have reversed the strict prohibition in the National Security Act of 1947 against such CIA activities. Thankfully, Goss's initiative got swamped by other legislation in the wake of the 9/11 commission report.
Hearings
I suspect that recent revelations about arguably illegal eavesdropping hardly scratch the surface. The point is that unless Congress receives a quick injection of courage and steps up to its oversight responsibility under the Constitution, many abuses are likely to continue undetected.
Will enough Republican senators honor their oath to defend the constitution? Our system of checks and balances hangs in the balance, so to speak. The president has thrown down the gauntlet by declaring he will continue to authorize unilaterally eavesdropping that, by law, requires a court order. Will senators pick up the gauntlet, or are they more likely to let it lie until early next year when this constitutional crisis, important as it is, may be eclipsed by fresh revelations of other abuses of power.
Is it fair to pin so much responsibility on Republican senators?
No, it's not fair. But that is the way it is. One looks in vain to the other side of the aisle for the courage that the times require. But what about Democrat senators-the gutsy Russ Feingold and the eloquent Robert Byrd? However courageous, they are not well positioned to affect the outcome of this constitutional crisis.
Rather, the Democratic Party has slender reeds to lean on -- take Sen. Jay Rockefeller, for example. Briefed on the illegal eavesdropping program, Rockefeller let Cheney intimidate him into silence. Sure, the congressman wrote a letter to Cheney (and kept a CYA copy, which he has now given the press). But when he got no answer, did it not occur to the ranking minority member of the Senate Intelligence Committee to ask to speak to Cheney's supervisor?
On Tuesday, Senate intelligence committee chair Pat Roberts ridiculed Rockefeller for "feigning helplessness." Roberts is certainly in position to know, since Rockefeller has made helplessness a career, and thus made Roberts' task easy. Sen. Rockefeller's obeisance to the chair is matched only by U.S. Marine Robert's "Semper Fi" to the party and the president. This is important, since the White House has already succeeded in ensuring that Roberts and Rockefeller will play leadership roles in any Senate investigation of the eavesdropping.
Initially, it appeared that since constitutional and legal considerations prevail on this issue, the hearings would be orchestrated and led by Senate judiciary committee chair Arlen Specter, who immediately expressed deep concern at the revelations about eavesdropping. That was a hopeful sign, even though the ranking Democrat on Judiciary, Patrick Leahy, fits the Rockefeller mold - as evidenced by Leahy's vote for arch-defender of unbridled presidential power Roberto Gonzales to be Attorney General.
From Republic to Empire
Let's hope history does not repeat itself. The constitution of ancient Rome was put in place in 510 BC, when the republicans overthrew the last of the Roman kings, Tarquin the Proud. As was the case 2300 years later in the newborn U.S.A., the introduction of constitutional order meant the rule of law and not of kings, providing liberty under law for every Roman citizen. That experiment lasted almost five centuries, until the Roman senators fell down on the job.
Although Cicero warned, with pointed eloquence, of the dangers to the Republic, in the end his warnings proved no match for strongmen like Julius Caesar and Gaeus Pompey. They wrapped themselves in republican virtue when it suited them, but they lacked any serious belief in the fundamental principles that had formed republican Rome. They and their followers believed in themselves, and in their own vision of what Rome should be, and in little else. Plutarch tells us that the increasingly glaring unequal distribution of wealth served to make the situation exceedingly volatile. Sound familiar?
And so the Republic died, and Cicero died with it, his severed head and hands nailed to the "rostra," the platform in the forum from which he had warned the Roman people. The vision of the strongmen led first to civil war and then to empire.
Republican senators, don't let it happen here.
Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
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Drew
Globalnewsmatrix.com
The top of the Drudge Report claims “CLINTON EXECUTIVE ORDER: SECRET SEARCH ON AMERICANS WITHOUT COURT ORDER…” It’s not true. Here’s the breakdown –
What Drudge says:
Clinton, February 9, 1995: “The Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order”
What Clinton actually signed:
Section 1. Pursuant to section 302(a)(1) [50 U.S.C. 1822(a)] of the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance] Act, the Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order, to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year, if the Attorney General makes the certifications required by that section.
That section requires the Attorney General to certify is the search will not involve “the premises, information, material, or property of a United States person.” That means U.S. citizens or anyone inside of the United States.
The entire controversy about Bush’s program is that, for the first time ever, allows warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens and other people inside of the United States. Clinton’s 1995 executive order did not authorize that.
Drudge pulls the same trick with Carter.
What Drudge says:
Jimmy Carter Signed Executive Order on May 23, 1979: “Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order.”
What Carter’s executive order actually says:
1-101. Pursuant to Section 102(a)(1) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1802(a)), the Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order, but only if the Attorney General makes the certifications required by that Section.
What the Attorney General has to certify under that section is that the surveillance will not contain “the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party.” So again, no U.S. persons are involved.
Comment: By now, anybody who does NOT know that Drudge is a shrill shill is sleeping.
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By Justin Raimondo
AntiWar.com
In defending his edict authorizing surveillance of phone calls and e-mails originating in the United States, President Bush reiterated legal arguments, long made by his intellectual Praetorians, that imbue the White House with wartime powers no different from those exercised by a Roman emperor. As Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer pointed out in the Washington Post the other day:
“Bush’s constitutional argument, in the eyes of some legal scholars and previous White House advisers, relies on extraordinary claims of presidential war-making power. Bush said yesterday that the lawfulness of his directives was affirmed by the attorney general and White House counsel, a list that omitted the legislative and judicial branches of government. On occasion the Bush administration has explicitly rejected the authority of courts and Congress to impose boundaries on the power of the commander in chief, describing the president’s war-making powers in legal briefs as ‘plenary’ – a term defined as ‘full,’ ‘complete,’ and ‘absolute.’”
The new presidential absolutism infuses not only Bush’s foreign policy, which asserts the “right” of the White House to make war on anyone, anywhere, anytime, and for any reason, but also, increasingly, his domestic policies.
The doctrine of wartime presidential supremacy has been dramatized, in recent days, in a series of disturbing developments on the home front: the utilization of ‘’national security letters’‘ by the FBI to snoop on thousands of U.S. citizens, the creation of a permanent database that amounts to an electronic “enemies list,” and just this past week the revelation that the National Security Agency is eavesdropping on phone calls and e-mails originating in the U.S. – without going to the FISA court that normally oversees such activities.
This doctrine of presidential supremacy is derived, in substance and style, from the unrestrained militarism of the regime. That we are now in a state of permanent war requires that our government undertake a perpetual war on what is left of our civil liberties.
Given the nature of this conflict with a formless, stateless enemy, more a concept than a combatant, there is no longer any division between the “home front” and the struggle against the worldwide Islamist insurgency, between domestic and foreign policy. We spy on Americans because we fight in Iraq, and, as time goes on, the converse will be true: we will continue the overseas battle in order for the regime to win the fight against its political opponents in the U.S. That the antiwar opposition, already demonized by neoconservative ideologues as ‘’appeasers’‘ and worse, will wind up being treated as “the enemy” should surprise no one.
Of course, the regime isn’t locking up its domestic opponents and ‘’renditioning’‘ them off to some godforsaken gulag quite yet. However, it is more and more treating opposition to its policies – or even discussion of its methods – as the equivalent of treason, and this story about how, in response to the NSA revelations, the president summoned the executive editor and the publisher of the New York Times to the Oval Office merely underscores how far we have gone in that direction.
The president went out of his way to denounce the Times piece as ‘’a shameful act,’‘ and this overbearing style is part and parcel of the developing tyranny. Lew Rockwell has posited the rise of what he calls ‘’red-state fascism,’‘ as have I, and we can see, from recent events, that this phenomenon is quickly congealing from a fluid potentiality into a hard reality.
All the elements of a new American fascism are in place: a regime that recognizes no restraints on its power, either moral or constitutional; the rise of a leader cult surrounding the president; and a foreign policy of relentless aggression. And make no mistake: it is this latter that makes all the rest of it possible.
Without the pretext of a wartime emergency, the neoconservative ideologues who seek to reconcile constitutional “originalism” with a legal and political doctrine of presidential hegemony that would have horrified the Founders would be relegated to the margins and considered harmless crackpots. Today, however, the crackpots are not only in power, they are going on the offensive – with much success.
Just how much success is evidenced by the complete inability and unwillingness of the Democrats to stand up against this systematic assault on our liberties at the most crucial point: that is, at the time it was initiated. This is underscored by the fact that Sen. Jay Rockefeller is coming out in public against the NSA eavesdropping only now that it is politically popular to do so. When it really counted, however, those few congressional Democrats who were let in on the secret unauthorized wiretaps, such as Rockefeller and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, said nothing. In the summer of 2003, Rockefeller wrote to Vice President Dick Cheney that, while expressing “concerns” about bypassing the FISA court, he refused to pass judgment: “As you know,” he wrote, “I am neither a technician or an attorney,” and he therefore felt “unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse” the NSA intercepts.
Could a wimpier “opposition” even be imagined? Rockefeller held this secret close to his chest for years, as did Pelosi.
These Weimar Democrats are gutless wonders, fully complicit in the regime’s assault on our liberties and the constitutional order. To anyone looking to the Democratic Party as the locus of an effective opposition to red-state fascism, I would strongly suggest that they are setting themselves up for a severe disappointment – and that they’d best look elsewhere.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
I apologize for the brevity of this column, but I’m still in Malaysia, for reasons I’ll go into later on this week. Suffice to say that the time difference has imposed certain difficulties, but I’m hoping to be home soon and back on my regular schedule.
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By William Rivers Pitt
21 December 2005
The framers of the Constitution devised an elaborate system of checks and balances to ensure our liberty by making sure that no person, institution or branch of government became so powerful that a tyranny could be established in the United States of America. Impeachment is one of the checks the framers gave the Congress to prevent the executive or judicial branches from becoming corrupt or tyrannical. - Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), Opening Statement, Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton, 10 December 1998
A long time ago - before the Iraq invasion, before the elections in '02 and '04, before all the unprecedented governmental violations of trust we have discovered and endured - I wrote something for a book.
"This is America," I wrote. "At bottom, America is a dream, an idea. You can take away all our roads, our crops, our people, our cities, our armies - you can take all of that away, and the idea will still be there as pure and great as anything conceived by the human mind. I do very much believe that the idea that is America stands as the last, best hope for this world. When used properly, it can work wonders. That idea, that dream, is in mortal peril. You can still have all our roads, our crops, our people, our cities, our armies - you can have all of that. But if you murder the idea that is America, you have murdered America itself in a way that ten thousand 9/11s could never do. No terrorist can destroy the ideals we hold dear. Only we can do that."
The breaking strain has been reached, and those ideals we hold so dear are indeed in mortal peril. The President of the United States of America has declared himself fully and completely above the law. The Constitution does not matter to him, nor do the Amendments. Laws passed to safeguard the American people from intrusive governmental invasion have been cast aside and ignored, simply because George W. Bush finds it meet to do so.
Intolerable. Impeachable.
As has been widely reported, Mr. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to spy on American citizens. He activated this program in 2002, and has since reauthorized the program thirty times. No one knows for sure exactly who in this country has unwittingly endured investigation by the powerful and secretive NSA. Cindy Sheehan? Patrick Fitzgerald? Joseph Wilson? Non-violent protest organizations? You? Me? No one knows, but the unanswered questions shake the existence of our democracy to its bones.
It is not enough that Mr. Bush blew through the Fourth Amendment, which defends the citizenry from unreasonable searches and seizures. It isn't enough that Mr. Bush blew through the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires a warrant from a special FISA court be obtained before such surveillance is undertaken. For the record, this special FISA court has granted more than 19,000 such warrants, and has denied exactly four.
The worst part of this whole mess is the simple fact that Mr. Bush does not see anything wrong in this. This administration has steadfastly adhered to the idea that the Executive branch is supreme, beyond the bounds of the justice system and further empowered because we are "at war."
Of course, Mr. Bush was careful to speak otherwise. For example, during a speech in Buffalo back in April of 2004, Bush said, "Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires - a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."
We're talking about getting a court order, he said. We value the Constitution, he said.
Lies.
Mr. Bush, in fact, brought the editors of the New York Times into the Oval Office to browbeat them into not running their story on these illegal NSA activities. "Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story - which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year - because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker," wrote columnist Jonathan Alter for Newsweek on Monday. "He insists he had 'legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force.' But the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law. And the post 9/11 congressional resolution authorizing 'all necessary force' in fighting terrorism was made in clear reference to military intervention. It did not scrap the Constitution and allow the president to do whatever he pleased in any area in the name of fighting terrorism."
Intolerable. Impeachable.
Even Attorney General Gonzales agrees with these sentiments. During his January 2005 confirmation hearings before Congress, Sen. Russ Feingold queried Gonzales on whether Mr. Bush has, "at least in theory, the authority to authorize violations of the criminal law under duly enacted statutes simply because he's commander in chief?" Gonzales replied, "Senator, this president is not - I - it is not the policy or the agenda of this president to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes."
Mr. Gonzales, it appears, did not get the memo.
Rep. John Conyers and the Democratic staff of the House Judiciary Committee have compiled a massively detailed, impeccably-researched report on the activities of this administration titled "The Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War." The report runs some 273 pages. A portion of the Executive Summary reads as follows:
In brief, we have found that there is substantial evidence the President, the Vice President and other high ranking members of the Bush Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war with Iraq; misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for such war; countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and other legal violations in Iraq; and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of their Administration.
There is a prima facie case that these actions by the President, Vice-President and other members of the Bush Administration violated a number of federal laws, including (1) Committing a Fraud against the United States; (2) Making False Statements to Congress; (3) The War Powers Resolution; (4) Misuse of Government Funds; (5) federal laws and international treaties prohibiting torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; (6) federal laws concerning retaliating against witnesses and other individuals; and (7) federal laws and regulations concerning leaking and other misuse of intelligence.
While these charges clearly rise to the level of impeachable misconduct, because the Bush Administration and the Republican-controlled Congress have blocked the ability of Members to obtain information directly from the Administration concerning these matters, more investigatory authority is needed before recommendations can be made regarding specific Articles of Impeachment. As a result, we recommend that Congress establish a select committee with subpoena authority to investigate the misconduct of the Bush Administration with regard to the Iraq war detailed in this Report and report to the Committee on the Judiciary on possible impeachable offenses.
This report was completed before the revelations of Bush-authorized domestic spying, and its release has added to the maelstrom. Upon issuance of the report, Rep. Conyers put forth three resolutions for consideration by the House of Representatives:
H.RES.635 : Creating a select committee to investigate the Administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.
H.RES.636 : Censuring President George W. Bush for failing to respond to requests for information concerning allegations that he and others in his Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war in Iraq, misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for the war, countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of persons in Iraq, and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of his Administration, for failing to adequately account for specific misstatements he made regarding the war, and for failing to comply with Executive Order 12958.
H.RES.637 : Censuring Vice President Richard B. Cheney for failing to respond to requests for information concerning allegations that he and others in the Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war in Iraq, misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for the war, countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of persons in Iraq, and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of the Administration and for failing to adequately account for specific misstatements he made regarding the war.
Columnist John Nichols offered an astute analysis of the meaning behind the Conyers report, the proffered resolutions, and their issuance on the heels of the NSA revelations. "The Conyers resolutions add a significant new twist to the debate about how to hold the administration to account," wrote Nichols. "Members of Congress have become increasingly aggressive in the criticism of the White House, with U.S. Senator Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, saying Monday, 'Americans have been stunned at the recent news of the abuses of power by an overzealous President. It has become apparent that this Administration has engaged in a consistent and unrelenting pattern of abuse against our Country's law-abiding citizens, and against our Constitution.'"
"Even Republicans," continued Nichols, "including Senate Judiciary Committee chair Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, are talking for the first time about mounting potentially serious investigations into abuses of power by the president. But Conyers is seeking to do much more than schedule a committee hearing, or even launch a formal inquiry. He is proposing that the Congress use all of the powers that are available to it to hold the president and vice president to account - up to and including the power to impeach the holders of the nation's most powerful positions and to remove them from office."
Many political pragmatists will tell you that impeachment is a pipe dream. If the God of the Righteous roared down from Heaven and denounced George W. Bush from the top of the Capitol dome, Republicans in Congress would denounce Him as a traitor, paint Him as standing against the troops, and accuse Him of aiding in the War on Christmas. In other words, the odds that enough Republican members of the House would turn against this administration and support impeachment are about as good as the odds of my cat winning next year's Kentucky Derby.
Even if the odds are defied and impeachment hearings are successfully undertaken, one must go many steps down the ladder to find an official worthy of the office. Impeach Bush and you get Cheney. Impeach Cheney and you get Dennis Hastert. Impeach Hastert and you get Ted Stevens, the 82-year-old Senator from Alaska who recently threatened to resign from the Senate if funding for his "Bridge to Nowhere" was stripped and delivered to aid in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Pragmatism is good, but hardly the point in this matter. We have gone far beyond consideration of the odds, of the smartest and safest course. This is not about Clintonian lies about sex, nor is it even about Nixonian spying on political appointees.
In the simplest terms, we now have a self-appointed dictator occupying the highest office of the land. Of course, the catch-all excuse for these reprehensible actions is that Bush is protecting our freedoms against the terrorists. But if our freedoms are destroyed, what is left to protect? If the rule of law no longer has meaning, why bother? If that which makes this nation good and great is burned out from within, there is nothing left to defend.
Calls for the impeachment of George W. Bush must be heeded, and the House must act. This must happen not because it is pragmatic, not because it stands a chance of succeeding. This must happen because the issues at hand demand it. If we as a nation do not impeach a sitting President for such a vast array of blatantly illegal activities, activities directed at the American people themselves, then as a nation of laws we have lost our way. We have no meaning. We are finished, and the ideals for which so many have served and fought and died are ashes.
Intolerable. Impeachable.
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.
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Jim Downey's Rants & Raves
20 Dec 2005
President Bush has admitted that he has authorized the use of surveillance upon American citizens and residents. He has argued that he has the authority to do so, that he has balanced the need to spy on us and our civil liberties. Unfortunately, his claims do not withstand scrutiny.
Firstly, the spying upon Americans without probable cause, due process and a warrant supported by evidence and sworn before a competent magistrate violates the 1st, 4th, 5th, 9th and 14th Amendments of the US Constitution. It is essential to the argument to understand that the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights does not create the rights of citizens, but places our government in the position of GUARANTEEING these inherent and INALIENABLE rights. Infringing upon these rights in any manner is unlawful, unconstitutional, immoral and evil.
The 1st Amendment guarantees our right to associate and communicate unimpeded by state and federal government. Merely communicating overseas is not grounds for monitoring, marking, flagging or otherwise recording the communications of US citizens. Current law allows for the presentation of evidence of criminal or terrorist activities as probable cause to issue a wiretap order. There is absolutely no legitimate reason for this administration to circumvent the rights guaranteed by this amendment.
The 4th Amendment guarantees the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. The US courts have held that a wiretap is an unreasonable search unless it is executed upon a valid warrant. The US congress has held such as being so unreasonable that it has passed the following laws that guarantee limits upon the execution of surveillance, investigation and record keeping by use of communication, telecommunication and records (including dossiers and case files):
— The Telecommunications Privacy Act of 1984 (TPA)
— The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA)
— The Privacy Act of 1974
— The Wire And Electronic Communications Interception And Interception Of Oral Communications
— The Wireless Telecommunications Privacy Act of 2000
— The Freedom of Information Act
(see footnotes)
So, not only has Mr. Bush violated the Constitution, his oath or office, but also (at a minimum) six federal laws. In so doing, he has violated his duties and obligations as the chief executive officer of this great nation and should be impeached. However, like his father before him, George W. Bush has wrapped himself in a cloak of patriotism, protectionism and fascism in the name of national interests and security. He has lied, misled and/or relied upon inappropriate intelligence DATA to engage in an improper invasion of a sovereign nation, violated the UN Charter (which is part and parcel of our Constitution by law), has circumvented our fundamental rights, and portrays himself as our great protector. Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Franco, Khomeini, the Saudi Royal Family and the Taliban all made the same claims of protection, but even Mr. Bush has recognized their actions as contrary to fundamental liberties, democracy and basic human rights.
The 5th Amendment guarantees the right of due process. The acts of spying on American citizens and residents without application, review, approval and issuance of a warrant is, without a doubt, a complete negation and circumvention of due process. There can be no excuse for such an end-run around due process. Such circumvention of due process is a breach of the highest magnitude of our fundamental liberties.
The 9th Amendment limits all members of government, including the president, from exceeding the powers and authority provided by the Constitution. These limits include any and all efforts to usurp, circumvent and/or by-pass the rights of US citizens and residents. The 9th Amendment specifically reserves all rights not specifically assigned elsewhere to the state governments and the PEOPLE. Mr. Bush’s claims that he has authority to spy upon US citizens and residents by virtue of an executive order betrays his “anything I want to do” agenda and his fascist demeanor.
The 14th Amendment, in the first section, applies all federal protections and obligations under the Constitution to state governments (equal protection) and specifically reasserts the obligation of due process.
It is unconscionable that anyone holding the highest political office of our nation would cast aside so many provisions of our Constitution, especially those that were specifically included by amending the original structure to prevent autocratic and/or authoritarian abuses.
Violation of our Constitution is treason. It is so not only in principle, but also by the words of the oath taken by each officer of the government, military and high office. The oath of office includes specific regard for defending the Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic. Once again, George W. Bush has violated that oath, violated the Constitution, violated federal laws, and made himself an enemy of freedom and civil rights. Mr. Bush should resign in shame and disgrace. In the alternative, our House of Representatives should bring about an immediate impeachment proceeding, and the Senate should convict. Should Mr. Bush not resign, and should congress fail to impeach and convict, then we should rise up against such abuses… even to the point of militant overthrow of the current administration.
Mr. Bush has offered lame excuses, ridicule and denial as his only defense for his actions. He expects us to trust him. But his record of hypocrisy provides categorical evidence that he cannot be trusted. While he is advocating for liberty, freedom and democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, he is eroding and usurping civil liberties here in the US… the supposed bedrock of freedom in our world. We cannot be advocating for freedom elsewhere while aborting freedom here. We cannot be advocating freedom and liberty in Iraq, under extreme lack of security, while we abandon liberties here in the name of security. But that is the hypocrisy that Mr. Bush is shoveling upon us.
Mr. Bush has appealed for us to trust his judgment regarding the protection of our civil liberties. Our fundamental form of government does not call for such trust because our forefathers and framers knew that men, left unchecked and balanced, are subject to corruption of power. It is exactly because of the corrupting nature of power that our government was built upon a system of checks and balances, of guaranteed rights and liberties, and of due process. Mr. Bush’s judgment has removed many of the checks and balances, deliberately set aside the guaranteed rights, and ignored due process. He has done so not only by spying upon us, but also by circumventing the provisions of the Geneva Conventions, denying prisoners access to fundamental legal representations, invading a country without legal right, using a process of “rendition” to circumvent rules against torture, advocating for torture as a tool of interrogation, and… well, we can’t really be sure of what else, can we?
While Mr. Bush proclaims his religious fervor, his actions are anything but moral by any standard, not even the Christianity he professes. He proclaims that he understands his role, but does not act within the scope and limits of that role. He makes excuses and expects us to live with his breach of office, law and trust. We cannot trust Mr. Bush… or anyone in his inner circle.
Beyond the fact that we cannot trust Mr. Bush is his admission (finally) that he relied upon poor intelligence to bring us into the invasion of Iraq. It was his job to make sure that the intelligence he received was accurate to the highest degree. The facts are in… we know that Mr. Bush pushed an agenda of invasion despite being advised that the intelligence he used was suspect and potentially useless. Several agencies and foreign sources provided this feedback to his administration. We are thusly faced with the reality that either Mr. Bush, and his entire administration, and the entire intelligence infrastructure, is completely incompetent, or that Mr. Bush and others conspired to push forward an agenda of war mongering to meet their own needs and desires. It is unfathomable that the entire intelligence infrastructure universally failed. It is unbelievable that there was no voice of reason among all the leaders advising Mr. Bush… So we can only conclude that Mr. Bush is an outright liar and pushed his agenda regardless of the dangers for our nation, the dangers of war, and the tragedies of our losses.
Bush lied… and our troops have died.
Bush lied… and his administration spied.
Bush lied… and our liberties were denied.
Bush lied… and freedoms were circumscribed.
Bush lied… and our laws he did not abide.
Face it… Bush does nothing without having first lied.
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http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v2n1/byrne.html
http://personalinfomediary.com/ECPAof1986_info.htm
www.usdoj.gov/foia/privstat.htm
www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sup_01_18_10_I_20_119.html
www.govrecords.org/hr-348-eh-to-authorize-the-construction-of-a-monument-3.html
www.usdoj.gov/04foia/
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by John Kelley
21 Dec 2005
“The price good people pay for their indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” Plato
“People can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they’re being attacked and denounce the pacifists for a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” Herman Goering, Nazi leader who created the Gestapo, sentenced to death at Nuremberg for war crimes.
We should not be talking just of impeachment, that is not strong enough action to send a message to tyrants in the world. Given the Downing Street Memo showing that the current administration knowingly constructed intelligence to create justification for going to war it is appropriate for the world to examine whether officials of the United States and Great Britain should be tried for war crimes.
Justification for War
There were three reasons given for the Bush Doctrine of Pre-emptive War; 1) Saddam had weapons of mass destruction with which he threatened his neighbors and the U.S., 2) Saddam supported and was connected to al-Qaeda and 3) he was a ruthless tyrant. It is now clear to any thinking citizen (Bush apologists are not thinking citizens) that the President and other neo conservatives in the United States Government lied to the American public in order to gain support to launch a war of aggression against Iraq for ideological and economic motives.
Of the three justifications there is no doubt about the last. That alone ignores the fact that we do not invade countries because their leaders are tyrants, in fact we have supported many including Saddam in the past. Even conservative George Will was forced to state in a June 23 editorial “But unless one is prepared to postulate a U.S. right, perhaps even a duty, to militarily dismantle any tyranny, it is unacceptable to argue that Saddam’s mass graves and torture chambers suffice as retrospective justifications for pre-emptive war.” Lets look at what the postulation of that U.S. duty would mean.
Indeed, if that were ample justification, we would be invading Uzbekistan (in case you don’t know Uzbekistan is one of the coalition of the willing, our allies in the invasion), who according to NickWalsh in an article in the May 26th London Guardian states “Independent human rights groups estimate that there are more than 600 politically motivated arrests a year in Uzbekistan, and 6,500 political prisoners, some tortured to death. According to a forensic report commissioned by the British embassy, in August two prisoners were even boiled to death.”
There are any number of countries that imprison, torture and kill political dissidents including China who has most favored trade status with the U.S. North Korea who says they fully intend to produce nuclear weapons and sell them to terrorists is ignored. Liberia, a long term ally during the Cold War, where all parties, the government, the rebels, neighboring countries and the citizens caught in the middle are begged the U.S. for a small peace keeping force, only to have George W. fiddle while the country went in to self destruct. We allow and encourage chaos in Haiti. We also seem to have curiously found new mutual respect for the genocidal government of Sudan as “allies against terrorism” since the discovery of oil in the disputed territories. So much for invasion as a weapon to produce democracy and freedom for other peoples of the world.
Weapons of Mass Destruction
Let’s look at just a few of the statements made by Bush and his aides about the justification of the “imminent threat” of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons over the last year to justify the war.
August 26, 2002 – Vice President Cheney – “simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction… What he wants is time, and more time to husband his resources to invest in his ongoing chemical and biological weapons program, and to gain possession of nuclear weapons.”
September 12, 2002 – President Bush to the UN General Assembly – “ Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons… Iraq has made several attempts to buy high –strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon.”
September 19, 2002 – Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld – “(Iraq) amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, sarin and mustard gas.”
October 7, 2002 - President Bush in Cincinnati – “It (Iraq) possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons… And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons.”
January 7, 2003 – Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at a press briefing – “There is no doubt in my mind but that they currently have chemical and biological weapons.”
January 9, 2003 – White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer in his daily press briefing – “We know for a fact that there are weapons (of mass destruction) there (in Iraq).”
March 16, 2003 – Vice President Richard Cheney on “Meet The Press” – “We believe he (Saddam Hussein) has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. El Baradei (head of the U.N. International Commission on Nuclear Weapons) frankly is wrong.”
March 17, 2003 – President Bush in his weekly address to the nation – “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves not doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”
March 21, 2003 – White House Secretary Ari Fleischer in his daily briefing – “Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly… all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for what ever duration it takes.”
March 24, 2003 – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on “Face The Nation” – “We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they’re weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established.”
March 30, 2003 – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on ABC’s “This Week” - “We know where they (weapons of mass destruction) are, they are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad.”
This does not include the now infamous 16 words in the President’s State of the Union message or numerous statements made by other members of the administration such as Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell and others. In addition the President made fourteen statements that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction while campaigning in 2002 and eleven statements that Saddam was connected to Al Quedda between October 10th and November 4th, 2002. No accusation of a tie between Saddam and Al Quedda has ever been substantiated. What is clear, is that there was a full court press by the administration to convince the American people to support going to war in Iraq.
Evidence to the Contrary
Lets look at some specific accusations and the truth behind them in the now infamous State of the Union message urging war.
Statement from the President’s State of theUnion Address
The United Nations concluded in 1999 that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax -- enough doses to kill several million people. He hasn't accounted for that material. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed it.
The United Nations concluded that Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin -- enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure. He hadn't accounted for that material. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed it.
Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. In such quantities, these chemical agents could also kill untold thousands. He's not accounted for these materials. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them.
U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them -- despite Iraq's recent declaration denying their existence. Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited munitions. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed them.
This a serious distortion of the United Nations information. The United Nations concluded that Saddam could have produced the above quantities of weapons by 1991 if he had been allowed to continue to manufacture chemical and biological weapons at full capacity (doubtful given the lack of facilities and materials). This was presented by the President as if it were a current threat.
The reason we knew that Saddam had these weapons was that we sold them to him during the Reagan Administration to use against Iran, a deal sealed by Donald Rumsfeld. The old joke is that we know they have them, because we have the receipts! The reality is that most of these were used (in violation of international law) at our urging to contain the Iranians, destroyed in the 1991 war or deteriorated because of their instability to a point they were no longer viable. Saddam’s inability to produce proof of their destruction was not a surprise to arms inspectors.
A UNSCOM paper from 1998, cited by former inspector Scott Ritter, declared: “Taking into consideration the conditions and the quality of CW-agents and munitions produced by Iraq at threat time, there is no possibility of weapons remaining from the Mid-1980’s” The same is true of biological toxins produced in the 1980’s. Botulism has a shelf life of about a year, while wet anthrax, the principal form produced by Iraq, has a relatively short life span as well.
A pentagon report by the Persian Gulf War Illnesses Task Force, April 2002 concluded that Iraqi production techniques were poor and the resulting toxins too diluted to be militarily effective. It declared: “We believe Iraq was largely cooperative in its latest declarations because many of its residual munitions were of little use- other than bolstering the credibility of Iraq’s declaration – because of chemical agent degradation and leakage problems.”
Bush’s figures all refer to information about Iraq prior to 1991. Neither the U.S. or Britain ever made the claim that Iraq had continued production of chemical or biological weapons in the period from 1991-98. Sites visited by U.N. Inspectors after November 2002 were consistent with Iraqi claims of production of agricultural chemicals or oil processing.
Two other reports by the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, the Defense Intelligence Agency, (DIA) concluded in 2002 made the following statements about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction:
1. “There is no reliable evidence on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or whether Iraq has – or will- establish its chemcial warfare agent production facilities”
2. “Iraq is assessed to possess biological agent stockpiles that may be weaponized and ready for use” but “The size of those stockpiles is uncertain and is subject to debate. The nature and condition of those stockpiles are unknown.”
In fact on June 6, 2003 Vice-Admiral Lowell Jacopy, the DIA Director confirmed that the DIA had no hard information on weapons, stockpiles or locations.
Statement from the President’s State of theUnion Address
The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.
It is now clear that claims that yellow cake uranium was being sought was known to be bogus for over a year before the President’s address after being investigated by Ambassador Donald Wilson at the request of Vice President Cheney. The claims about the high-strength aluminum tubes have never been taken seriously by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which Chairman El Baradei reported to the U.N. Security Council in January 2003 “to be consistent with reverse engineering of rockets” used for short range battlefield rocket launchers allowed under the U.N. rules. In spite of repeated statements by the administration about the presence of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons U.N. inspector Hans Blix’s requests for the location of those sites were refused.
Tony Blair is in deep trouble at home in Britain because of his inability to support claims he made about Iraq including the seeming out and out fabrication that Iraq would be able to use weapons of mass destruction on forty five minutes notice and the basing of some claims sourced from a graduate student’s thesis that was over 12 years old. The reality is that Saddam was the head of a nation that had it’s infrastructure and military largely destroyed in the first gulf war and ten years of sanctions. It had no air force and lacked control over large parts of its own territory including Kurdish areas and no-fly zones. He certainly lacked the ability to be a threat to even his neighbors let alone the U.S.
The Options
The administration expects us to believe one of three options. One, we have the most expensive, most incompetent intelligence system in the world. The CIA, DIA and the National Security Administration blew it, they just made a mistake over-amped the intelligence and gave it to an unwitting President. Two, Saddam was so sneaky that he hid all of the weapons before and during the invasion rather than use them against the invading Americans or; Three, Saddam was able to sneak them all out to Syria either of which would be proof of a totally incompetent American military and intelligence community.
The problem with these arguments is that forty years ago President John F. Kennedy was able to present U-2 photos that clearly demonstrated the Soviets were building missile silos in Cuba. The leaps in development of satellite photographic and listening capabilities have improved to the point where we can read a license plate number on a car and listen in on cell phone conversations anywhere in the world. Certainly Mossad, who has the best human intelligence in the world had agents in Iraq that could have pinpointed these weapons. Does anyone really believe that Saddam made the American Intelligence Agencies believe they had weapons they didn’t have for over 10 years? What would be his purpose for such a deception? Or maybe he was a brilliant strategist playing a shell game that fooled the best intelligence in the world.
There is a fourth option and the only rational one is that the President and his Neo Conservative and Military Industrial supporters lied to get support for a war of aggression. Hitler was identified as a megalomaniac because he believed he had a calling that was above the understanding of other men. Bush believes the same thing. In a statement to the new Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas reported in the June 25, 2003 Haaretz.com News Updates he said “God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, …”
The Costs
The costs of the war in economic terms to the U.S. taxpayer alone are likely to far exceed $300 billion dollars. Over 1500 American servicemen and women have been killed and 30,000 wounded so far, more then in the First Gulf War and that number is climbing each day. 15-20,000 Iraqi troops are estimated to have been killed plus another 10-15,000 wounded, many of which were half starved, under equipped and unwilling 15-year-old conscripts. The Doctors Without Borders says there has been at least 100,000 civilian deaths, two thirds women and children. American loss of prestige and credibility around the world has been severely undermined.
The Remedy
For the United States to put an end to this travesty and rejoin the rest of the world two things must take place:
1) The President and other administration officials who participated in this lie to justify this illegal war of aggression should be impeached and removed from office; 2) The President, his officials and war profiteers who supported these illegal acts should be brought before an international tribunal on war crimes and if found guilty sentenced to punishments up to and including hanging for their actions by the standards of international law.
Impeachment
On July 27, 1974 the first Article of Impeachment passed by the House Judiciary Committed read “Richard Nixon endeavor[ed]to be made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States.”
In the 1998 impeachment proceedings against William Jefferson Clinton it was said he: “has undermined the integrity of his office, has brought disrepute on the Presidency, has betrayed his trust as President, and has acted in a manner subversive of the rule of law and justice, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.”
If any of the allegations above are true then certainly these charges would be applicable and provable to justify the conviction and removal of the president and others in his administration who conspired to carry out this subterfuge on the citizens of the U.S. and the world.
War Crimes
It is now clear why the Bush administration in May of 2002 “unsigned” the 1998 Rome Statute to establish an International Criminal Court (ICC). The court seeks to create the world's first permanent tribunal to prosecute war crimes, genocide, and other crimes against humanity.
Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, John Bolton, asserted that Washington "does not intend to become a party to the (Rome Statute of the ICC)" and that it "has no legal obligations arising from its signature (to the treaty) on December 31, 2000." The administration fully intended to violate international law including wars of aggression and war crimes that include bans on using weapons of mass destruction such as fuel air bombs, cluster bombs and in the future nuclear weapons. The administration has violated the Charter of the United Nations, International Law and the Geneva Convention.
As a guide lets look at the most famous international war crimes trial ever conducted, the International Military Tribunal for Punishment of Major War Criminals of the European Axis known as the Nuremberg War-Crimes Trial held in 1945-46. The definitions of the crimes is as follows:
“The following acts, or any of them, are crimes coming within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for which there shall be individual responsibility:
(a) Crimes against Peace: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of he foregoing:
(b) War Crimes: namely, violations of the laws of customs of war. Such violations include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity:
(c) Crimes against Humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
The Nazis were indicted on four points:
1. Conspiracy to commit crimes against peace.
2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression.
3. War Crimes.
4. Crimes Against Humanity.
There is no doubt that key members of the administration including the President conspired to lie to the American people and are guilty of the first two points. It can easily be argued that they are guilty of points three and four based on their violations of previously signed treaties, the United Nations Charter, and the Geneva Convention. The administration used weapons of mass destruction including cluster bombs, fuel air bombs, kidnapped Afghan “enemy combatants”, denied them their rights under the Geneva Convention and plans on executing them. The rules for their trials so blatantly deny their basic rights that the head of the Trial Lawyers Association stated that attorney’s may refuse to be a party to them.
Bush’s Precedent
Bush’s own record on criminal behavior is a good stick to measure an appropriate punishment if found guilty. While Governor of Texas he approved the execution of more criminals then any Governor in history. He vetoed a bill to provide the indigent with defense calling it a “threat to public safety”, he opposed life without parole and legislation which would have ended the execution of people with IQ’s less than 65. Indeed when asked about an interview conducted with Karla Faye Tucker he pursed his lips mocking derisively with a whimper “Please don’t kill me”. Despite Bush’s characterization, Karla Fay Tucker was executed without ever pleading for her life.
George W. has a long record of ignoring international law. While Governor he refused to recognize international treaties requiring notification of a foreign prisoner’s right to consular assistance guaranteed by the Vienna Convention of Consular Relations. He has withdrawn from other international agreements without the consent of congress that were signed by previous presidents including those on ABM Treaty and Nuclear Testing giving the world a vision of future Bush adventures. This has made the word of U.S. Presidents worthless in the international community.
His own father approved the kidnapping of foreign nationals to be brought to the U.S. for trial or the invasion of a country if necessary (remember Manuel Noriega a former CIA informant of Bush Sr.). As a consequence he should expect no assistance from the American government in protecting him from an international decisions about his conduct. In International terms George W. and his neo cons are a blight on international progress towards a peaceful world.
World Precedent
Of those tried at Nuremberg three were acquitted but given prison sentences in other trials during denazification procedures ranging from 3-9 years. They included an ambassador, a banker and a journalist.
Twelve were sentenced to death including Nazi government officials, two military generals, and a leading propagandist and publisher of an anti-Semitic newspaper. Herman Goering, quoted at the beginning of this article, coward to the end, committed suicide before his sentence could be carried out.
Seven were given terms of up to life imprisonment including two Admirals, the Minister for Youth, the General Inspector for Buildings and Construction for Berlin, the Minister for Economic Affairs, Head of the Nazi Labor Front, and a diplomat.
Gustov von Krupp an industrialist and war profiteer was indicted but was physically unable to appear in court and the charges were dropped against him. An American Military Court sentenced his son Alfried Krupp to 12 years in prison and forfeiture of his private property.
Those sentenced to death were executed by hanging in the early morning of October 16, 1946 in Nuremberg Prison Gymnasium, cremated and their ashes strewn in an estuary of the Isar River. Those sentenced to prison terms were interned at Spandau Prison in Berlin. Rudolf Hess the last of the prisoners still in custody committed suicide in August 1987.
Maybe it is once again time for the world to let international criminals of any nation know of its will to rid itself of those whose greed and power seeking threaten the peace and safety of its citizens.
Sources Include:
George Will Column, Washington Post Writers Group, June 23, 2003
www.truemajority.com
Second Intelligence Report: “No Reliable Information” Iraqis Stockpiling Chemical Weapons
by David E. Kaplan and Mark Mazzetti June 13, 2003
Bush’s Claims on Iraqi Weapons- Lies in Pursuit of War
By Patrick Martin Feb. 1, 2003
Excerpts from the Presidents State of the Union Message
Pentagon Report Found “No Reliable Evidence of Iraq WMD”,
Andrew Buncombe in Washington, “The Independent” June 7, 2003
www.Uggabugga.com
Ted Rall: They Impeach Murderers, don’t they? June 13, 2003
Neocon-Nazi War Crimes, Schuyler Ebbets, June 27, 2003, www.thepeoplesvoice.org
Bush Misled US Into Iraq War – An Official Finding?, David Corn, “The Nation”, June 26, 2003
Charter of the International Military Tribunal
Charter of the United Nations General Assembly
www.mytown.ca/johnkelley
John Michael Kelley is a teacher, philosopher, writer, artist, political activist, singer of ballads, rebellious Irishman and agent for change who worries daily about the world he is leaving for his grandchildren.
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22 Dec 2005
By Kristen Breitweiser - a 9/11 Widow
huffingtonpost.com
Recently, President Bush has admitted to carrying out surveillance on U.S. citizens in the interest of national security. He unabashedly admits to doing it. He offers no apologies. With his bellicose swagger, he once again uses 9/11 as his justification for breaking our constitutional laws.
The President’s justification of 9/11 to carry out such surveillance begs a closer examination. President Bush should be stopped in his tracks with regard to his use of 9/11 scare tactics to circumvent constitutional laws that are meant to protect U.S. citizens. His justification for doing so – the inability to conduct surveillance on the 9/11 hijackers – is a red herring.
History will bear out the truth – our intelligence agencies held a treasure trove of intelligence on the 9/11 hijackers, intelligence that was gathered through their initially unencumbered surveillance. President Bush should busy himself by investigating why that information was then stymied and not capitalized upon to stop the 9/11 attacks.
MOUSSAOUI, FISA, and FBI SURVEILLANCE—MISUNDERSTANDING #1:
When it comes to the FBI and Zaccarias Moussaoui, one must understand that the FBI met all evidentiary standards to both apply for and be granted a FISA warrant. The information the FBI had to support their FISA request was two files on Moussaoui that were given to the FBI by the French and British intelligence services. Inexplicably, FBI lawyers and supervisors at FBI HQ “misunderstood” the evidentiary standards needed to apply for and receive a FISA warrant, and they refused the FISA request from the FBI agents in Minneapolis. Thus, the Moussaoui search warrant paperwork was never submitted to the FISA court. One need only read Colleen Rowley’s memorandum to confirm these facts.
Had FBI HQ not denied the FISA request, the FISA court would have issued the search warrant to search Moussaoui’s belongings. Whether gaining access to Moussaoui’s belongings would have stopped the 9/11 attacks remains unknown at this time. Hopefully, Moussaoui’s upcoming penalty phase hearing will reveal more information as to what the FBI/CIA/DOD/NSA already knew about Moussaoui during the summer of 2001 and whether getting the FISA warrant to search Moussaoui belongings would have even made a difference.
None of the FBI lawyers and/or supervisors responsible for this glaring error and “misjudgment” has been held accountable.
AL MIHDHAR/AL HAZMI & THE STATE DEPARTMENT—MISUNDERSTANDING #2:
When it comes to al Mihdhar and al Hazmi, the story is relatively the same—more “misunderstandings” that blocked surveillance and prevention of the 9/11 attacks. The official story is that the “Reno Wall” blocked the FBI from receiving vital information regarding al Mihdhar and al Hazmi. Allegedly, that vital information was contained in FBI files that pertained to the USS Cole bombing investigation. Both al Mihdhar and al Hazmi were connected to the Cole bombing and as such were investigated as part of the FBI’s Cole investigation.
If, in the summer of 2001, the FBI had been able to access their own criminal case files on the Cole investigation, they might have been able to stop al Mihdhar and al Hazmi before they carried out the 9/11 attacks. Because of the “misunderstanding” about sharing information between FBI intelligence and FBI criminal investigations (the Reno wall), vital information that would have helped the FBI locate al Mihdhar and al Hazmi was not shared within the FBI. As a result, Al Mihdhar and al Hazmi were not found by the FBI in time to prevent the 9/11 attacks. So goes the story, if only the “misunderstandings” about the Reno wall had not existed, the two 9/11 hijackers would have been stopped. This is patently false, because, the Reno wall did not prevent the FBI from capturing at least one of the 9/11 hijackers—Khalid al Mihdhar.
Evidence in the 9/11 Commission’s Final Report indicates that there was no “misunderstanding” of the Reno Wall. Quite the opposite from any misunderstanding, evidence from the State Department proves that al Mihdhar was:
1. Known by the FBI as an armed and dangerous terrorist participating in terrorist acts,
2. Identified as a potential witness in an FBI investigation, and yet,
3. Inexplicably, a mere 6 days before 9/11, listed and ordered to be an individual not to be detained if caught by government inspectors.
Page 42 of the Commission’s “Terrorist Travel” Supplement states the following:
August 31—a new listing for Mihdhar was placed in an INS and Customs lookout database, describing him as “armed and dangerous” and someone who must be referred to secondary inspection.
September 4—The State Department used its visa revocation authority under section 221(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to revoke Mihdhar’s visa under section 212 (A)(3)(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act for his participation in terrorist activities. (One of which is defined as airline hijackings)
September 5—INS entered the September 4 notice of revocation of Mihdhar’s visa into the INS lookout system. The State Department identified Mihdhar as a potential witness in an FBI investigation, and inspectors were told not to detain him.
For what FBI investigation was al Mihdhar a potential witness? Why was it first ordered to detain al Mihdhar because he was armed and dangerous and thereafter ordered to not detain him because he was a potential witness in an FBI investigation? Al Mihdhar was “armed and dangerous” and “participating in terrorist acts” that were defined as “airline hijackings” and using “weapons of mass destruction.” Who ordered his non-detainment a mere five days before 9/11? Perhaps current Secretary of State Rice (former National Security Advisor on 9/11) or her State Department counsel, Philip Zelikow, (former 9/11 Commission Staff Director) might have some answers?
ABLE DANGER—MISUNDERSTANDING #3:
When it comes to Able Danger and surveillance, one must look at the alleged history of Able Danger and know the facts. Able Danger was allegedly a special operation that included according to Congressman Curt Weldon both analysis (“data mining”) and action (“taking out cells”). The Able Danger team was allegedly tasked and created during the Clinton Administration—many months before the USS Cole bombing. Notably, at least two of the men who were allegedly identified as targets in the Able Danger operation were linked to the Cole Bombing and the 9/11 attacks—Khalid al Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi.
Immediately after the Cole bombing, one would assume that because of alleged existence of Able Danger and quite possibly CIA surveillance, our government would have definitely known who was responsible for the Cole attack—mostly because it is possible that Able Danger and the CIA were carrying out parallel surveillance on the terrorists who were involved in the Cole attack both before and after the Cole bombing.
It also quite possibly follows that after the Cole bombing our government had not only the “actionable intelligence” (compliments of the alleged Able Danger and possible CIA surveillance of al Qaeda) but also the moral justification (17 sailors dead) to “take out the cells.” This should have been carried out by the Able Danger operatives. Inexplicably, it was not done because Able Danger was allegedly shut down in May of 2001. Of the cells to be allegedly taken out—four members of the Brooklyn Cell went on to carry out the 9/11 attacks—Atta, Shehi, al Mihdhar, and al Hazmi. Who dismantled this aggressive project to combat terrorism and why?
The story is that Able Danger was allegedly dismantled in May 01 because it violated posse comitatus. With regard to Able Danger and its surveillance of terrorists within the borders of the United States, the alleged Able Danger cells were not U.S. citizens. Therefore, posse comitatus did not apply. Once again, lawyers “misunderstood” the law. They thought terrorists in the United States participating in terrorist acts were entitled to the same rights as U.S. citizens. Quite a “misunderstanding.” The result of their misunderstanding? Four of the 9/11 hijackers – members of the Brooklyn Cell – were not “taken out” and a mere four months later able to carry out the 9/11 attacks.
THE KING’S APPROACH
President Bush is using the intelligence community’s pre-9/11 “inability” to carry out surveillance on the hijackers as his reasoning for currently conducting surveillance on U.S. citizens. First of all none of the 9/11 terrorists were U.S. citizens. Moreover, no law past or present barred the intelligence community from stopping the 9/11 terrorists. Ultimately, what stopped the intelligence community from capturing or killing the 9/11 hijackers prior to the 9/11 attacks were the lawyers and supervisors who repeatedly “misunderstood” the very laws they were supposed to be the experts on.
One would have hoped that President Bush would have responded to these deadly “misunderstandings” and chain of events by firing the attorneys and supervisors for their incompetence and thereafter hiring new attorneys and supervisors who were smart enough to not misunderstand our nation’s laws.
Our President didn’t do that.
Apparently, he doesn’t grasp the significance of accountability. Rather, he took the simpleton’s approach. He just threw out/ignored/re-wrote all the laws (think Patriot Act and his current attempt to ignore the law with regard to surveillance on U.S. citizens because we are a nation at war). Because, as far as our President is concerned with no more confusing laws, there can be no more “misunderstandings” by incompetent supervisors and lawyers and, therefore, no more 9/11’s. Problem solved. Right?
Not so fast.
What if these were not “misunderstandings?”
What if these were purposeful decisions made with faulty judgment?
At a bare minimum, the State Department entry on September 5th regarding al Mihdhar discounts, discredits and debunks the Reno Wall misunderstanding and discounts, discredits, and debunks the 9/11 Commission’s story of why al Mihdhar was not found by the FBI in time to thwart the 9/11 attacks. How many other “misunderstandings” might be disproved during the upcoming Able Danger hearings? How many more “misunderstandings” might be disproved during the Moussaoui penalty phase hearing? What if they are all disproved?
Respectfully, President Bush, before you fecklessly dissolve our constitutional rights in the name of national security and invoke the failures of 9/11, the following questions should be answered:
1. Who ordered the alleged Able Danger special operation to be shut down in May 01? What were the reasons? The individuals involved in the operation have testified that it was not shut down for reasons of posse comitatus. What reasoning was responsible for shutting down a successful surveillance operation on terrorist cells planning terrorist activities within the United States a mere 5 months before 9/11?
2. Was any information gleaned in the alleged Able Danger operation used as the basis for the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing that mentioned “patterns of suspicious activities” by sleeper cells within the United States that indicated possible hijackings?
3. Why did the State Department order its agents to “not detain” al Mihdhar on September 5, 2001? Who is responsible for issuing that order?
4. Regarding the State Department entry on September 5, 2001, what FBI investigation was al Mihdhar thought to be a witness in?
5. At what time did the U.S. government have in its possession actionable intelligence regarding the identity of the terrorists who carried out the USS Cole bombing? Was that information gleaned from any alleged Able Danger analysts? When was it shared with the CIA? Was that the information used to justify the alleged “taking out of the cells” in the Able Danger operation between January 01 and May 01? If so, why did certain governmental officials in both the Clinton and Bush Administrations lie to the 9/11 Commission in stating that they did not have in their possession conclusive evidence linking al Qaeda to the bombing of the USS Cole until after the 9/11 attacks?
6. What is the interpretation of “taking out of cells”? Is it merely apprehension and detention or more severely elimination of the cells?
7. What countries were linked to the targets identified in the alleged Able Danger program? Was Iraq one of those countries?
8. Why was the Able Danger chart allegedly destroyed immediately after 9/11 (and prior to your decision to attack Iraq)? Who is responsible for the alleged destruction of this chart and other vital documents relating to this successful, cutting edge program? Who were the Congressional officials and Executive Branch officials present in this meeting? Are any of the targets allegedly contained on the Able Danger chart still within this country and planning or participating in terrorist acts?
9. In March 2001, an internal debate ignited at the Justice Department and the FBI over wiretap surveillance of certain terrorist groups. Prompted by questions from Royce C. Lamberth, the Chief Judge of the FISA court, the Justice Department opened an inquiry into Michael Resnick, an FBI official who coordinated the FISA acts applications. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Robert Mueller (then deputy Attorney General) ordered a full review of all foreign surveillance authorizations.
Justice Department and FBI officials have since acknowledged the existence of this internal investigation, and said that the inquiry forced officials to examine their monitoring of several suspected terrorist groups—including al Qaeda. And while senior FBI and Justice Department officials contend that the internal investigation did not affect their ability to monitor al Qaeda, other officials have acknowledged that the inquiry might have hampered electronic surveillance of terror groups pre-9/11.
Where is the final report of this inquiry? And, what effect did this investigation have on our nation’s ability to carry out surveillance on al Qaeda prior to 9/11? Perhaps, receiving such answers would eliminate your current need to circumvent constitutional law?
TWO QUICK ASIDES:
1. Regarding the 9/11 Commission’s comment that they did not include Able Danger in their report because it was “historically insignificant.” The 9/11 Commission had best read its own recommendations. The largest and most comprehensive one being the re-organization of our intelligence community with a DNI placed at the very top.
If Able Danger existed and was wrongfully terminated, going forward any future special operations akin to Able Danger run off of SOCOM (that would be the Pentagon) should be overseen by the DNI. Alarmingly, last summer, the 9/11 Commission specifically acquiesced to the removal of SOCOM (and other Department of Defense Commands) from the DNI’s jurisdiction.
Clearly, had a DNI existed prior to 9/11 and had jurisdiction over such special operations like Able Danger, perhaps Able Danger would not have been wrongfully shut down before bearing the fruits of its labor (i.e. taking out the cells). At a bare minimum, we would at least have one person to hold accountable (the DNI) for the wrongful termination of a program that would have prevented 9/11.
2. It has come to my attention that the one terrorist we currently have in custody and connected to the 9/11 attacks – Zacarias Moussaoui – is being tried for the death penalty because he lied to the FBI in August 2001 (his lie? in short, “i am not a terrorist. i am just interested in flying planes.”) So the argument goes, had Moussaoui not lied to the FBI, the FBI would have been able to thwart the 9/11 attacks. Did you get that? In other words, if Moussaoui told the truth to the FBI in August 2001 (said in effect, “yes, i am a terrorist and i am here to hijack planes and fly them into buildings), the FBI would have been able to prevent 9/11. But, since he didn’t we are putting him to death for his intentional withholding of information that would have prevented the attacks.
If this is to be the threshold to put an individual to death – the intentional withholding of information that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks – there are arguably many individuals (quite alarmingly some of whom are in our own government) who could meet that requirement and potentially be tried for death. Will the Moussaoui penalty phase hearing set such a precedent?
Given, it will be argued that Moussaoui had the mens rea – in other words, the state of mind to commit the act in that he knew that such withholding of information might necessarily cause the death of people. But, let me ask a question. If a former DCI made a decision to intentionally withhold information from the FBI – information about two known al Qaeda killers who had already participated in the USS Cole bombing that killed 17 sailors and were currently inside the United States planning terrorist acts, namely the 9/11 attacks – does that not meet the mens rea requirement? How could someone like a former DCI deny that his withholding of such information from the FBI about these two terrorists for 18 months would not likely contribute to at least one death? Such a DCI would have known by January 01 that 17 sailors had died compliments of these two killers—al Mihdhar and al Hazmi. Should such a DCI be tried for the death penalty, too?
Kristen Breitweiser found herself widowed at age thirty when her husband Ron died at Tower Two of the World Trade Center on September 11. Along with four other widows (nicknamed the “Jersey Girls”), Breitweiser fought tirelessly for the 9/11 Commission, in spite of initial opposition from President Bush, whom she voted for in 2000.
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by William Arkin
Washingtonpost.com
19 Dec 2005
"What has happened since the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks is as pernicious and as damaging as any abuse or panic or misstep of the past: We must pledge allegiance to a certain post 9/11 Order, abandon the rule of law, compromise our values, turn against our neighbors, enlist in a clash of civilizations, all in the name of defeating the terrorists.
"We are being asked to destroy our country in order to save it. ...
"The right answer is to challenge the presumption of a terrorist threat that is so potentially destructive that it demands we destroy ourselves to fight it."
Yesterday's New York Times editorial on National Security Agency spying in the United States refers to "your mail and your e-mail" and "your telephone conversations" being monitored.
The connotation of course is that the "you" is some New York Times reading Cappuccino drinking upper middle class Manhattan intellectual, that thousands if not tens of thousands of similar Americans are having their phones tapped and e-mails intercepted.
Come on. The government is not just repeating the targeting of political opponents a la J. Edgar Hoover or Richard Nixon. It is not picking out a Seymour Hersh or a Cindy Sheehan to find their links to foreign influences nor seeking to ruin their lives by developing incriminating evidence on them.
I know I sound like some Fox news watching, flag waiving, gun toting, Cappuccino hater defending the national security state.
The New York Times and the government may not want to say the obvious, that by and large, it is Muslims in America who are being monitored in the 9/11 Order. It is not the liberal or the literary in the back of the New York City taxicab that is the target. It is the driver.
If the government is going to find the next Mohamed Atta in our midst, it is going to do so, it thinks, through the intercepted phone call to uncle Mohamed in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. It is going to correlate the purchase, the airline ticket, the license plate at the Mosque.
What has happened since the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks is as pernicious and as damaging as any abuse or panic or misstep of the past: We must pledge allegiance to a certain post 9/11 Order, abandon the rule of law, compromise our values, turn against our neighbors, enlist in a clash of civilizations, all in the name of defeating the terrorists.
We are being asked to destroy our country in order to save it.
In October 2001, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to collect intelligence on U.S. persons -- citizens and residents -- suspected of having connections to al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday on NBC's Meet the Press, government counter-terrorism fighters complained about a "seam" between intelligence and law enforcement agencies that allowed al Qaeda to infiltrate. This is the central paradigm of the 9/11 Order: The government isn't to be held responsible for its incompetence and failure to protect Americans. It is the laws and the handcuffs placed on the government that is the problem.
Soon we all became agents of "actionable intelligence." On NBC's Meet the Press on Sept. 30, 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld introduced the term and referred to the measures the government was taking "so that, in fact, things can be done" against terrorist networks. Terrorist networks operating not just in Afghanistan or the Middle East, but also in Buffalo and Detroit.
Actionable intelligence is data: Intercepted phone calls and e-mails, credit card receipts, library transactions, web preferences, and associations. The 9/11 Order is all about the data.
An ever larger and unleashed government vacuum cleaner sucks up the words and the actions and collects the material in giant databases.
The government tells us that plots have been uncovered and new attacks thwarted. They say that the old rules were too cumbersome, that they just couldn't wait the extra hours.
Tonight on ABC's "Nightline" Vice President Dick Cheney will make the precise argument that the new surveillance was necessitated by the old rules.
"It's the kind of capability if we'd had before 9/11 might have led us to be able to prevent 9/11," the Vice President says.
It is a giant fishing expedition as much as it is a highly targeted campaign. The hundreds of millions of intercepts and data points are massaged by the data miners and link analyzers and churned through banks of computers and dozens of new software programs in pursuit of the holy "connecting of the dots."
They just might track a license plate to a cave in Pakistan.
It's all here in the seams, in the dots, this actionable intelligence: ghost detainees, renditions, coalitions of the willing to torture, special authorities and special operations, warrantless surveillance, corners being cut and laws being broken.
"These are stateless networks of people who communicate, and communicate in much more fluid ways," Secretary Rice said yesterday.
Stateless networks of people in our midst. We are not safe and the government is doing God's work to protect us. That is the message.
The reasonable answer will be congressional hearings and government contrition and revised laws to continue the 9/11 Order.
The right answer is to challenge the presumption of a terrorist threat that is so potentially destructive that it demands we destroy ourselves to fight it. Terrorists will continue to exist, they will continue to live in our midst and there will be terrorist incidents, probably even terrible ones, in our future. If we just stopped providing ever more excuses for the America haters and the haters of democracy, that would be a far more effective counter-terrorism strategy.
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dlindorff
ThisCantBeHappening.net
22 Dec 2005
It's pretty obvious what the Bush administration was doing with that National Security Administration spying program.
Look at the facts:
The NSA has this awesome computer technology that allows it to use written and spoken keywords to monitor all telephone and internet communications (though it has been barred under law from using that ability on domestic communications since 1978).
When it wants to conduct a specific monitoring campaign against a target, it has the Federal Intelligence Surveillence Act (FISA) courts to turn to to seek a secret warrant--a process that is extremely fast, and if that's not fast enough, the attorney general can tap without a warrant for 72 hours, and then obtain one retroactively.
Add to this the fact that the FISA courts last year rejected exactly none of the nearly 2000 monitoring requests made by the government, and that it has only rejected such requests five times in its entire history, and you have a situation that should have made the most wire-tapping-obsessed fanatic happy.
And yet, Bush wasn't happy. We now learn (courtesy of a belated report in the New York Times which was withheld from publication for almost a year), that he instead issued a secret executive order to authorize the NSA, or elements within the NSA, to go outside that FISA warrant process to monitor domestic communications 18000 times over the past four years.
According to the Bush Administration and the head of the NSA, all those extra-legal taps were aimed at Al Qaeda suspects (the administration argument is that the Congressional authorization in September 2001 for the President to use force to pursue Al Qaeda gave him the authority he needed to justify the executive order on NSA warrantless domestic spying).
Does anyone really believe there are thousands of legitimate Al Qaeda targets to monitor in the U.S.? If so, just who is left for the U.S. to allegedly be hunting in Afghanistan? The entire Al Qaeda terrorist apparatus, and probably Hamas and the Red Army Faction, must have moved stateside to come up with those kinds of numbers!
No. History has made it all too obvious what has actually been going on: It’s Cointelpro all over again.
The administration saw that remarkable NSA monitoring apparatus just sitting there, and just couldn’t keep its prying hands off it. It has been using that equipment to monitor those same peace and anti-war groups that the ACLU has recently discovered it was infiltrating. The Rove political machine has no doubt also been using the NSA equipment for Nixonian Watergate-like monitoring of the political opposition (such as it is).
And who knows? With the kind of equipment that is in the hands of the NSA, maybe they’ve figured out ways to get into those Diebold voting machines, too.
The mind reels at the possibilities of an NSA run amok and in the hands of the Bush-Cheney cabal. No wonder one FISA judge has resigned in disgust.
The president and his backers are saying there’s nothing illegal here. After all, the president asked his appointed attorneys, including Attorney General Alberto “torture-is- just-fine” Gonzales, for an opinion, and they all said it was quite legal - just like Abu Ghraib.
By that standard, Bush might just as well ask his legal eagles if it's Constitutional for him to put sarin gas in the Capitol air ducts during a joint session of Congress, kill off the legislature, and rule by edict. If they say it passes muster, then by Bush’s Constitutional logic, he can just go ahead and do it.
Either that or we should insist that the subverting of the NSA for domestic, warrantless spying was an unconstitutional act of major proportions and call for the president's impeachment.
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December 23, 2005
CNN
ROME, Italy -- A judge has issued European arrest warrants for 22 purported CIA operatives in connection with the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric from a Milan street in 2003, a prosecutor said Friday.
Prosecutor Armando Spataro said the warrants allowed for the arrest of the suspects in any of the 25 EU member countries. Previously, Italy had issued arrest warrants for the 22 inside Italy.
Spataro has already sought the extradition of the 22 from the U.S. However, the request has remained with Justice Minister Roberto Castelli, who has sought more court documentation on the case before making any decision on whether to forward it to Washington, Spataro said.
Earlier this week, Premier Silvio Berlusconi, a top U.S. ally, suggested the government may not push the prosecutors' request with Washington saying, "I don't think there is any basis in the case."
Castelli, for his part, has also questioned Spataro's motives in the case, suggesting the prosecutor was a leftist militant and anti-American.
Milan's chief prosecutor responded by saying he fully supported Spataro, the investigation and its findings.
The 22 people allegedly were involved in the kidnapping of cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar.
The cleric, believed to belong to an Islamic terror group, was allegedly abducted on a Milan street on February 17, 2003, before being flown to Egypt, where he was reportedly tortured.
The operation was believed part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program in which terrorism suspects are transferred to third countries where some allegedly are subjected to torture.
Prosecutors say the cleric's abduction was a serious violation of Italian sovereignty, and that it had hindered Italian terrorism investigations.
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07:50:37 EST Dec 23, 2005
ROME (AP) - A Milan judge has issued European arrest warrants for 22 purported CIA operatives in connection with the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in 2003, a prosecutor said Friday.
Prosecutor Armando Spataro said the warrants allowed for the arrest of the suspects in any of the 25 European Union member countries. Previously, Italy had issued arrest warrants for the 22 inside Italy.
Spataro has already sought the extradition of the 22. However, the request has remained with Justice Minister Roberto Castelli, who has requested further court documentation on the case before making any decision on whether to pass it onto the United States, Spataro said.
Earlier this week, Premier Silvio Berlusconi suggested the government may not push the prosecutors' request with Washington saying, "I don't think there is any basis in the case."
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22 Dec 2005
Reuters
ROME - Italian magistrates have placed a U.S. marine under official investigation for murder over the killing of an Italian agent in Iraq earlier this year, judicial sources said on Thursday.
But the United States immediately said it considered the issue closed after a joint Italian-U.S. investigation, even though the two governments disagreed on the conclusion of that probe.
Intelligence officer Nicola Calipari was shot dead at an improvised U.S. checkpoint on a road near Baghdad in March as he was accompanying an Italian hostage to safety.
Italy and the United States held a joint inquiry into the incident, but they failed to agree joint conclusions and instead issued conflicting reports.
While the U.S. military exonerated its troops of any blame, Rome said nervous, inexperienced American soldiers and a badly executed road block were at the root of the shooting.
In the meantime, Italy's independent judiciary have pushed ahead with their own probe and have carried out forensic tests on the car Calipari was traveling in when he came under fire.
Placing someone under official investigation for an alleged crime does not imply guilt and does not mean the person will necessarily be charged.
"Mr. Calipari was a brave servant of the Italian people and his death is indeed a tragedy," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters. "But as for the investigation into the facts surrounding the matter, it's closed, as far as we're concerned."
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By MICHAEL LEONARDI
Rome, Italy
12 March 2005
Nicola Calipari was already 220 yards inside Baghdad Airport's security perimeter when he received an incoming call on his
cell phone. Calipari said "Yes?" and instantly recognised the positive identity trap. As Deputy Chief Calipari cursed & threw himself across Giuliana Sgrena to protect her, the kill team from Langley fired more than 300 bullets at their car.
Over the past several days I have tried to digest the media spectacle surrounding the assassination of Italian secret intelligence agent Nicola Calipari.
He was killed under a barrage of American bullets, shortly after the negotiated release of Giuliana Sgrena, the journalist from the Communist Italian daily, Il Manifesto, held captive for the previous month in Iraq. I am left feeling bloated with questions I am confident will never be answered by the criminal governments of both nations, Italy and the United States, where I am entitled, by birth, to citizenship.
An illegal war, fought under false premises, where countless civilians have been massacred and journalists threatened, targeted and even killed, either intentionally by American forces, or out of what Reporters Without Borders calls "criminal negligence" on the part of the American command, leaves much room for a cynical eye toward the recent acts played out on the Petrolarch's imperial stage.
Who were Giuliana Sgrena's captors? Why would they say that they did not want witnesses of the blood bath in Fallujah? How is it that these captors would have the same threatening attitude toward journalists as the occupying forces? What were the circumstances of her release? Why was her trip home abruptly halted by American gunfire? If the attack was deliberate, why was her life spared?
Could it be that it was the murdered secret service agent, Nicola Calipari, that was wanted dead? And, if so, by whom? Might it be just more trigger happy, gung-ho American soldiers shooting to kill as opposed to hinder, out of bloodlust, inexperience and fear? Was it a failure in communication between the Italian and American authorities? Or as the leader of the Italian Green Party, Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, put it, is it "just another victim of an absurd war"? Ultimately, these questions will be answered by half-truths and misinformation, but I would like to provide a framework as to why they are important in the these pages, which I am happy share with my eloquent friend and colleague Valentina Nicoli.
Major questions remain about the circumstances surrounding Giuliana Sgrena's capture and captivity.
Who was this group of hostage takers called former Saddam loyalists and criminals by the Italian media? They were the first to release the news of their abduction and subsequent video of Sgrena's plea for help to the international press agents from the Associated Press as opposed to Al Jazeerah and the usual channels such news releases and videos had gone through previously. It is clear that the Italian and United States governments did not want, in Iraq, a Communist journalist, opposed to the war, and working to expose such atrocities as the decimation of Fallujah to the Italian public and the world. The Italian government had tried to block Sgrena's attempts to enter Iraq and had dissuaded all Italians from going to the war zone after the execution of Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni and the hostage ordeal of the two Simonas, Torretta and Pari, who were also opposed to the war. But why would a legitimate part of the Iraqi resistance not want witness to the atrocities of the occupation by a sympathetic journalist? I have often met Muslims and Arabs here in Rome who, after discovering that I am American, quickly point to Fallujah as the primary example of American war atrocities. Fallujah is a story I know well from international media accounts by primarily non-embedded journalists.
In Sgrena's personal account, "My Truth," published in Il Manifesto on the 6th of March she describes the animosity of her captors toward her work:
'We don't want any outsiders here anymore,' my kidnappers would tell me. But I wanted to tell about the bloodbath in Fallujah from the words of the refugees. And the morning of my capture the refugees or some of there leaders would not listen to me. I had in front of me the accurate confirmation of the analysis of what the Iraqi society had become as a result of the war and they would throw their truth in my face: 'We don't want any outsiders here, why didn't you stay in your home? What can this interview do for us?'
Sgrena's account of her captors' behaviour describes an odd group. She talks of her confrontational attitude toward them during the early days of her captivity. She would ask "But why did you kidnap me, I am against the war?" To which her captors would respond, "Yes, because you go out and speak to the people. We would never kidnap a journalist that remains closed in a hotel and because you say you're against the war, you could be a spy." Sgrena describes her captors as seeming "quite a religious group, in continuous prayer over the Koran." But she then tells of the captor that seemed most religious congratulating her on the day of her release by shaking her hand, "a behaviour quite unusual for an Islamic fundamentalist." She goes onto detail how one of her captors came to her surprised and excited on the day of her release because the T.V. was showing European cities with large photos of Sgrena and also of Totti (the captain of the Rome soccer team). "He declared he was a fan of the Rome soccer team and was shocked that his favourite player went to play with "Liberate Giuliana" on his T-shirt. Funny that after holding a Roman hostage for over a month, he never mentioned he was a fan prior to the day of her release.
Giuliana Sgrena has said that she will not go back to Iraq. She, like many others have been dissuaded by the threat of kidnapping and by the American and coalition occupying forces and governments. Maybe it is out of frustration that her captors asked "What will this interview do for us?" because interviews and reports such as these have done nothing thus far to ease the suffering of the Iraqi people. The Petrolarchs continue their death march forward unencumbered by reports of torture, bloodbaths, the destruction of an entire city and countless deaths of civilians. Now with the Fallujah model set to be used to destroy other cities where the insurgency is strong, reports of the atrocities will be more difficult, if not impossible, to come by. So, while we will never know who Sgrena's captors were, they are helping to implement one of the Americans' goals from the beginning of the war, which was to have only embedded journalists reporting the onslaught.
According to Sgrena's account her captors told her that there would be Americans that didn't want her to escape the country. Although it's true that if the Americans wanted her dead they would have killed her, there is still strong reason for any non-embedded journalist to believe that they could be a target of the American military. Former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer stressed on 28 February 2003 the Pentagon's advice to the media to pull their journalists out of Baghdad before the war began. Asked whether this was a veiled threat to "non-imbedded" reporters, he said: "If the military says something, I strongly urge all journalists to heed it. It is in your own interests, and your family's interests. And I mean that." This quote seems to remove the veil, and should be viewed as a direct threat toward all journalists not authorized by the United States military command.
"Two Murders and a Lie," the investigation by Jean-Paul Mari of Reporters Without Borders, examines how this threat was first put into practice in Iraq on 8 April 2003 with the intentional targeting of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad by an American tank resulting in the murder of two international reporters, Taras Protsyuk of Poland/Ukraine and José Couso of Spain. At the time of this attack "Washington, the Pentagon, the US Central Command, (Centcom) in Doha (Kuwait), as well as London, the military hierarchy and anyone following the war out of professional duty knew that the Palestine Hotel had become a media centre, like the Commodore Hotel in Beirut or Sarajevo's Holiday Inn, adorned with satellite dishes and electronics installed by the world's major TV networks, written press and news and photo agencies." (Reporters Without Borders, 15 January 2004) "Two Murders and a Lie" further documents that the U.S. military command was given the exact GPS location of the hotel, and that as early as the day before the attack, the military command in Doha assured the AP that the Hotel would not be attacked.
The report concludes that US officials at first lied about what happened and then, in an official statement four months later, exonerated the US Army from any mistake or error of judgement. Reporters Without Borders has called for the reopening of the enquiry into who was really responsible for the US Army's "criminal negligence" in shooting at the Palestine Hotel.
It is inconceivable that the massive presence of journalists at the hotel for three weeks prior to the shelling, which was known by any T.V. viewer and by the Pentagon itself, could have passed unnoticed. Yet this presence was never mentioned to the troops in the field or marked on the maps used by artillery support soldiers. The question is whether this information was withheld deliberately, out of contempt or through negligence. (Reporters Without Borders, 15 January 2004)
Reporters Without Borders and the Iraqi Journalists Union have condemned the attack on the car carrying Giuliana Sgrena and Nicola Calipari. Reporters Without Borders, having plenty of experience with American deception and arrogance concerning their rules of engagement, has called for the United Nations to conduct an independent investigation into the tragedy.
It is a well known fact that the United States does not condone and claims, not to engage in negotiations with any group they choose to brandish as "terrorists." It is for this reason that Giuliana Sgrena has not ruled out, as no one should, the possibility that the Italians were intentionally ambushed by the Americans. During Condaleeza Rice's recent visit to Rome, she and Gianfranco Fini announced that they were doing all that was possible to secure Sgrena's release, apart from negotiating with terrorists. However, the Italian government, as a reflection of a society that generally holds human life as more sacred than that of its bloodthirsty American "friend", actively engages in negotiations and exchanges with hostage takers to secure their nationals release.
While the incongruence between the Italian and American versions of Nicola Calipari's murder, as outlined by my colleague, is striking in and of itself, the imperial arrogance and past actions of the American forces leave it well with in the realm of possibility that Nicola Calipari was intentionally targeted for assassination. Nicola Calipari had a stellar career as a secret intelligence agent working for Sismi, the Italian equivalent of the CIA, and was considered the most skilled Italian negotiater in the Middle East. The Italians are considered to have, quite possibly, the most skilled negotiating team in the region and the world. After refusing, as Miss Nicoli has detailed, a rescue attempt by U.S. special forces, calling this "too dangerous", the Italians, led by Mr. Calipari, chose to go the negotiation and ransom route. The Italian's strategy, due to the skilled work of Calipari, came to what seemed a successful conclusion with the negotiated release of Giuliana Sgrena.
Giuliana Sgrena wasn't the first Italian hostage to be liberated by the praised work of Nicola Calipari. As described by my colleague, he had also negotiated the freedom of Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, who, after their return to Italy, denounced the U.S. military as a brutal occupying force, called for the return of the 3,000 Italian troops stationed in Nassariya in southern Iraq, and heaped praise and words of support upon the Iraqi resistance fighters. It seems the last thing the Americans would want is an Italian negotiator working, against their wishes, to release journalists and human rights workers effectively exposing the atrocities of their illegal war. More insidiously, it seems that the Americans might view these actions by a junior partner in the Terror War as a punishable affront, using the murder of Calipari as a lesson to those wishing to play a small role on America's imperial stage.
While the car carrying Nicola Calipari was, according to the most recent reports, hit by between 8 and 10 rounds, he was killed by a direct shot in the temple. He was not the driver of the car, or sitting anywhere near the engine bloc, but was in fact sitting in the back seat next to Giuliana Sgrena. This might suggest a deliberate assassination. There have been numerous reports of trigger-happy American soldiers massacring countless Iraqi civilians with their brutal check point rules of engagement. They have the attitude that this is their world and nobody has the right to disturb their unwanted presence on Iraqi soil. This time it was coalition partners that were refusing to play by the Empire's rules and it seems that there is something more sinister to blame for this "tragic incident."
Michael Leonardi is a U.S. national from Toledo, Ohio with dual Italian/American citizenship living and working in Rome. He can be reached at: mikeleonardi@hotmail.com
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By Phil Stewart
July 19, 2005
ROME (Reuters) - For eavesdropping Italian investigators, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr was more than a dangerous terrorism suspect.
Monitored through wire taps and ambient listening devices, he was a walking, talking link to a larger threat in Europe and beyond -- who suddenly vanished on February 17, 2003. That's when prosecutors say CIA agents kidnapped Nasr and flew him to Egypt.
The cleric, also known as Abu Omar, says he was tortured in Egypt under questioning and refused to be an informant.
"The kidnapping of Abu Omar was not just illegal, having seriously violated Italian sovereignty, but it was also harmful and corrosive to the effectiveness of the overall fight against terrorism," said Milan Judge Guido Salvini, who has a standing arrest order for Nasr.
It is unclear what Egyptian authorities may have learned from the suspect. His lawyer in Egypt told Reuters that he has requested Nasr's release from custody.
Following this month's rush-hour transport bombings in London, Islamic militant groups are warning Italy may be next -- and the threats are being taken seriously in Rome.
Prosecutors say evidence from the Nasr investigation, and others like it, prove ongoing Islamic militant activity in Italy. That includes fundraising and recruiting suicide bombers to send abroad, as well as possible attacks inside the country.
Wiretap records suggest Nasr supported bombings like the one in London and knew plenty about militant groups in Europe, prosecutors say. Investigators can't help but wonder what they might have learned had Nasr been fully investigated in Italy.
DYING MARTYRS
Intelligence officials believe that Nasr, 42, fought in Afghanistan before arriving in Italy in 1997 and obtaining political refugee status. Investigators accuse him of ties to al Qaeda and recruiting combatants for Iraq.
Conversation intercepts, viewed by Reuters, show Nasr as more than a Muslim cleric in Milan. Prosecutors say he had contact with militants from Germany, Egypt and elsewhere. They point to computer files filled with jihad recruiting propaganda.
"The hope is that we all die martyrs," he told a Tunisian suspect, in an April 7, 2002 conversation inside a Milan mosque.
Another conversation on April 24, 2002, with an unidentified Egyptian man, also discussed militant attacks. Prosecutors believe that although the other man did most of the talking, it showed Nasr's awareness of such activity.
"So, are these attacks going to be carried out or not?" the man asks Nasr, who initially responds: "What?".
"Let me be clear, I want us to strike inside, outside ... in every country in the world," he said. Nasr responded, with a laugh, "Use your head!"
The conversation continues somewhat cryptically, and Nasr responds -- in a muddled context: "They'll do it. They'll do it.
Asked by whom, Nasr responds: "The brother in London."
The United States has declined to make any public comment about the Nasr case, even after a Milan judge ordered the June arrest of 13 Americans whom prosecutors say are tied to the CIA.
Rome denies authorising the kidnap and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on July 1 summoned the U.S. ambassador to Rome, Mel Sembler, to demand that Italy's sovereignty be respected.
Opposition politicians have cast doubt on the official line, questioning whether the CIA would have launched such a bold operation without at least informing their Italian counterparts.
INTELLIGENCE SHARING
The United States and Italy are close allies in foreign policy, and Berlusconi, who sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, has stressed the joint fight against terrorism remains strong.
But Italian officials complain that when it comes to intelligence sharing, Washington does not always return the favour. The Nasr case is one example. Prosecutors say that U.S. officials passed bad information to Italian police after the kidnap, saying Nasr had probably gone to fight overseas.
The issue of trust becomes increasingly important in the wake of the London bombings, with European nations seeking greater access to foreign intelligence information.
"The real problem is with the United States, there is a certain difficulty receiving information," former Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato told local media. "The Americans take an exclusive attitude, without respecting the criteria of the maximum collaboration with Western countries."
The United States is facing questions from other European countries, including Germany, over its transfers of militant suspects abroad. Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif said in May the United States had sent it as many as 70 suspects.
From court documents, it looks like Italian prosecutors were easily able to identify the CIA agents allegedly involved in the daylight abduction of Nasr.
Agents filled out registration forms at hotels, many presented frequent-client cards, like "Hilton Honors" and prosecutors even have one agent's United Airlines frequent flyer number, the documents show.
The big question in Italy is why Washington thought it was necessary to kidnap Nasr. Was Italy too slow to arrest him or too hesitant to react to the intercepts? What information did the CIA have?
Nasr, according to one account, was so important he was offered a deal by Egypt's interior minister -- be an informant and return to Italy. Nasr refused and said he was tortured with electric shock, and exposure to extreme noise and temperatures.
"I was very near death," Nasr told his wife in a 2004 call, intercepted by police, after being released briefly for medical reasons in Egypt. He was rearrested for recounting the ordeal.
Italian officials concede they may never know the whole truth, even though Judge Salvini started a judicial process aimed eventually at extraditing, or at least questioning, Nasr.
"The fact that he was kidnapped obviously damaged our investigation. That can't be denied," said one Italian legal source. "Who knows what we would have learned."
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By Associated Press
07/02/05
CHICAGO (AP) - A radical Egyptian cleric allegedly kidnapped from Italy by the CIA once provided the American spy agency with valuable information about Islamic militants in Albania, according to a published report.
The Chicago Tribune, citing the former second-ranking official of the Albanian intelligence service, reported in its Sunday editions that Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was a valuable source of information in the mid-1990s to the CIA about the close-knit community of Islamic fundamentalists living in exile in Albania, a formerly communist country in the Balkans.
Astrit Nasufi, the former Albanian intelligence officer, told the newspaper that the imam had been considered a credible source of information.
Last month, an Italian judge ordered the arrests of 13 CIA officers on allegations they secretly transported the imam to Egypt from Italy as part of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts - a rare public admonition by a close American ally. The warrant said the cleric was sent to Egypt and tortured.
Italian officials have said they had no prior knowledge of the Feb. 17, 2003, kidnapping of the 39-year-old cleric from a Milan street.
According to the Italian prosecutor's application for the 13 warrants for the CIA agents, when Abu Omar reached Cairo on a CIA-chartered aircraft, he was taken to Egypt's interior minister, the newspaper reported.
The document said that if the imam agreed to provide information to Egypt's intelligence service, Abu Omar "would have been set free and accompanied back to Italy," the Tribune reported.
The CIA has refused to comment on the case.
The newspaper said evidence gathered by Italian prosecutors "indicates that the abduction was a bold attempt to turn him (Omar) back into the informer he once was."
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Kim Willsher in Paris
Friday December 23, 2005
The Guardian
France's interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, has discovered that calling people louts and rabble and threatening to "clean them off the streets" has won him few friends in celebrity circles.
Mr Sarkozy, whose injudicious use of language was partly blamed for exacerbating the recent urban riots, is now being abandoned by his friends in high places. Worse still, many of them are lining up to publicly put the boot into the man who hopes to be president in 2007.
The tennis player turned pop star Yannick Noah, actor and comedian Jamel Debbouze, who starred in Amélie, rapper Joey Starr and film director Luc Besson - of Subway, Nikita, Big Blue and Leon fame - are among those attacking Mr Sarkozy, who has been compared to far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and Napoleon.
"Calling people racaille, I've not heard anything so violent since Le Pen and his hatred of anyone who is different," Besson told the film magazine Premier. In an interview with Paris Match, Noah - recently voted France's most popular personality - declared: "If Sarkozy succeeds [in 2007], then I'm off."
Even Debbouze, who had previously expressed qualified support for the minister, condemned him. The comic described the minister as "a bourgeois who arrives, cameras in tow, looks at the little rebels and tells them: 'I'm going to clean you out, you bunch of rabble'."
Until waves of rioting and urban violence broke out in France's grim high-rise city suburbs, Mr Sarkozy, a member of Jacques Chirac's right-of-centre government, appeared to be winning friends and influencing people across the political spectrum. His robust response to the terror threat was widely supported, and a tough new law that he sponsored, which increases surveillance options and lengthens detention periods for suspects, was adopted in parliament yesterday. Leftwing opponents had even congratulated him for his support of positive discrimination for France's mainly north African immigrant community, allowing the first legal rave party and campaigning for the end to the "double penalty" under which jailed immigrants were deported after serving their sentence.
Then he visited the notorious suburbs north of Paris - known as banlieues - and vowed: "The louts will disappear - we will clean this estate with a Kärcher." Kärcher is a make of high-pressure hose used to clean buildings. Some felt the minister, known for tough talking, had gone too far. The comedian Muriel Robin told a chatshow: "For a guy to use words like Kärcher makes me feel bad."
The former footballer Eric Cantona told the Observer: "It's not easy growing up in a bad neighbourhood. People look at you and treat you in a certain way. In France we are capable of celebrating a man like Napoleon, who brought back slavery. Today he has been replaced by a man who, for me, is Le Pen with a mask: Sarkozy."
Cantona is not the first to make the comparison with the Front National leader. The Aids campaign group Act-Up has pasted posters around Paris featuring Mr Sarkozy and the slogan "Vote Le Pen".
In his blog, director Matthieu Kassovitz, whose film La Haine (Hate) was set in the banlieues, said: "Like [George] Bush, Sarkozy is not defending an idea, he is responding to fears that he himself has put in peoples' heads." After he described the minister as a "little Napoleon in the making", Mr Sarkozy took the unusual step of replying, saying: "Apart from your caricaturist and provocative shots targeted at me, I'm responding to you personally because I believe in the virtue of debate and exchange." He invited the director to "continue the exchange".
In its editorial, Le Figaro said: "It's not a fashion, it's an epidemic. It's impossible to turn on the television or radio without hearing a singer, actor or sportsman railing against the interior minister." Despite this, the paper noted that opinion polls showed that many French people agreed with the minister. And it pointed out that Mr Sarkozy could still count on Gérard Depardieu for support. Whether that will sway the voters in 2007 is anyone's guess.
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22 Dec 2005
Reuters
HOUSTON - A U.S. judge on Thursday dismissed Pope Benedict from a civil lawsuit lodged against him and other Roman Catholic church officials that accused them of covering up sexual abuse of a minor by a seminary student.
In a written ruling, U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal agreed with a motion filed by the Vatican that Pope Benedict enjoyed "head-of-state immunity" in the case.
Three unnamed plaintiffs in the case have said church officials ignored their pleas to investigate Juan Carlos Patino-Arango, who they accused of sexual abuse, and that the clergy helped him leave the country.
The church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly called the Holy Office of the Vatican, headed by Pope Benedict when he was a cardinal, played a central role in the conspiracy to conceal the abuse that occurred in 1995 and 1996, the plaintiffs said.
The Church has been hit by numerous lawsuits since the 2002 scandal in the United States when it was discovered that priests accused of molesting children were moved from parish to parish to hide the abuse.
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Philippe Gélie's Analysis*
Translated By Mike Goeden
December 15, 2005
In its persistent attachment to the death penalty, the United States is an anomaly among modern democracies. Denied a reprieve by the state's movie-actor governor, the recent execution of Stanley 'Tookie' Williams in California once again drew global attention to what may see as a barbaric anachronism. France's Le Figaro newspaper asks the obvious question: 'Why?'
Stanley "Tookie" Williams died at the stroke of midnight Tuesday. Sentenced for four counts of murder in 1981, the former gang member's execution was the United States' 1,003rd since the reinstitution of capital punishment in 1976. To end the year, another execution, that of John Nixon, 77, who was sentenced to death for murder in 1985, was planned yesterday [December 14, 2005]. The next execution is scheduled for January 12 in Florida.
Year in and year out, the United States puts to death some 60 inmates in this manner (59 in 2004, 60 in 2005). The figures may be falling compared to just a few years ago (98 in 1999, 85 in 2000), but the United States still finds itself in the company of countries with particularly troubling human rights records: According to Amnesty International, China executed 3,400 people last year, followed by Iran (159) and Vietnam (64). While more than 120 countries have abolished or established a moratorium on the death penalty, almost 3,400 prisoners await execution on Death Row in the United States, with 640 in California and 410 in Texas.
Why?
American history and culture play a major role in this continuing practice, which the other democracies view as an anomaly. The Americans continue to uphold the right to bear arms, basing their argument on the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which dates from the year 1791 and which stipulates that "a well regulated Militia [is] necessary to the security of a free State."
Similarly, the death penalty is well-anchored in a tradition of summary justice that finds its roots in the taming of the Western Frontier. As Thomas Smith of the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center reminds us, "a cattle thief [once caught] was promptly hanged." The evangelical Christians' literal interpretation of the Bible must also be taken into account. "They believe in sin and in punishment," Smith points out, "and death is a Biblical punishment."
Another key factor could be termed America's "small town democracy," by which representatives are delegated the authority to manage, rather than reform, the state. Most public offices are elected, from the school principal to the sheriff, and even, in some places, the judge. Representative democracy is present at all levels, but it is not intended to independently decide cultural debates such as abortion, gun control, euthanasia or the death penalty. The right to abortion was awarded by the Supreme Court in 1973 out of respect for the right to privacy, not in the form of a federal law based upon the findings of any ethics committee. Likewise, it is the Supreme Court which has set limits on the death penalty, by first reserving its application to murder charges (1977), and then by excluding mentally-retarded and under-age offenders (2002 and 2005).
The moratorium on the death penalty, from 1967 to 1977, was once again due to the intervention of the Court. The nine Supreme Court Justices ruled invalid federal and state measures which had permitted an extensive application of the death penalty, judging them "arbitrary and irregular" and in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments [cruel and unusual punishment and lack of due process]. In 1976, the Supreme Court upheld penal code reforms for the states of Georgia, Texas and Florida, which limited the death penalty to certain crimes and after duel process (separate court rulings on the defendant's guilt and on the punishment to be decided). Today, 38 of the 50 states include such measures among their legal arsenals.
If the death penalty is one day abolished in the United States, it will most likely be the result of a Supreme Court decision rather than an act of Congress. The judges, appointed for life, could rule that the death penalty constitutes a "cruel punishment," banned by the Eighth Amendment, or that it is being applied in an inconsistent manner (34% of Death Row inmates are Black). But that day has not yet arrived, and George W. Bush's recent Supreme Court nominations do not point in that direction. The power of the Justices explains why every nomination is the source of such political conflict. The conservatives chosen by Bush promise not to use their position on the court to "legislate," meaning reform. They share with the current Washington majority a singular attachment to national traditions and to a culture of individualism, which brings with it a strong belief in individual responsibility.
These "values" probably carry more weight than arguments citing the death penalty's effectiveness, which is in any case doubted by most experts. "The president is firmly in favor of the death penalty because he believes that, in the end, it saves lives," Scott McClellan, the president's Press Secretary, explained Monday. In reality, the South, which hands down the greatest number of death sentences, also suffers the highest murder rate (6.6 for every 100,000 inhabitants). Inversely, as the crime rate decreases, so too does popular support for capital punishment. It now stands at only 64% nationwide, compared to 80% twenty years ago. But American society remains violent and repressive, with a prison population of over 2 million, one of the highest incarceration rates in the world.
Tookie William's execution sparked a debate due to his notoriety. Did society have anything to gain, 24 years after the fact, from the death of this ex-criminal turned youth advocate of non-violence? So far, no stay of execution has been granted to reward an individual for repenting his crime, but only for "technical" reasons linked to the prisoner's trial or mental health. Tuesday, The Los Angeles Times was one of the rare newspapers to question this principle: "A civilized society doesn't kill for retribution and should certainly not continue doing so when it's become clear that the judicial system's margin of error is unacceptably high."
In most countries that once allowed the death penalty, its eventual abolition was not endorsed by a majority of the population. In the United States, there is little chance for this to happen. Opponents are therefore seeking the Holy Grail that would, they hope, shift the balance in their favor: the first formal proof of an innocent individual having been mistakenly executed.
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21 Dec 2005
PARIS - Spiderman wants justice. The French skyscraper climber who goes by the name of the comic book superhero climbed a 28-story building in Paris on Tuesday to protest what he said was unfair treatment by U.S. police.
Alain Robert was arrested in late November as he was about to climb a building in Houston, Texas, and charged with trespassing and possessing drugs. He was released on $1,500 bail.
A Houston police spokesman said two tablets found on Robert were believed to be the sedative Xanax, which the climber denies.
"I was only using prescription medication called Urbanyl, which is an anti-epileptic," Robert, 43, said after climbing the 308-foot Paris tower in approximately 20 minutes. "This is my way of issuing a denial."
Robert's next court appearance is scheduled on Jan. 4 in Houston but he says he will be in Mexico at the time, climbing.
Robert is known for climbing some of the world's tallest buildings with his bare hands and without a safety net. His more than 30 urban climbs include the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building and Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Towers.
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Reuters
21 Dec 2005
ROME - Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi sent his Swedish counterpart 24 bottles of Italian wine on Tuesday, saying it was to help him recover from having to drink British wine at a European Union summit last week.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair hosted the summit in Brussels and offered Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson and his other guests Welsh white wine and English red wine.
"(Persson) was so aghast at the English wines at the summit that I promised to send him some of our wines," Berlusconi told a group of foreign journalists, adding that he had dispatched 24 bottles of cabernet sauvignon.
"Up to 24 bottles is fine. More than that is corruption," Berlusconi joked.
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AFP
23 Dec 2005
Lech Kaczynski is set to be be sworn in as Poland's president, marking the start of an intriguing political double act with his identical twin brother Jaroslaw, who heads the minority ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party.
Although on paper the president's powers are limited, the fact that PiS won September's legislative elections to form a minority government puts most of the levers of power in the hands of the 56-year-old brothers.
When the party won 155 seats in the 460-seat Diet, Jaroslaw stood aside and appointed Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz as prime minister, so as to give brother Lech a clean run in subsequent presidential polls.
However, observers believe that Jaroslaw will exert a major influence behind the scenes.
Lech Kaczynski himself told AFP in a recent interview: "My brother has always pushed me to the fore. He prefers staying behind the front line, from where he can lead our political party."
The deeply Catholic new head of state will succeed social democrat Aleksander Kwasniewski, who took the post-communist state into the NATO alliance in 1999 and the European Union in 2004 during two five-year terms in office.
On the domestic front, the future president campaigned for a break with the corruption scandals that have blighted the Left's post-Communist administrations.
As a former justice minister and mayor of Warsaw, Lech Kaczynski showed his colours in anti-mafia operations and in the rigorous and sometimes repressive application of the law.
In his foreign policy, the new president hopes for even stronger ties with the United States.
And while speaking of reconciliation with Germany and Russia, he has also promised to staunchly defend Poland's interests against these two powerful neighbours, whom he deeply mistrusts.
As for outgoing president Kwasniewski, at 51 many analysts say he is not ready to take political retirement and expect him to attempt to relaunch the splintered left into a new, more powerful political force in Poland.
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AFP
23 Dec 2005
A decomposed body discovered in a Brussels canal a week ago is that of a Rwandan former minister indicted by a UN tribunal on charges of genocide, a family lawyer said.
The naked body was discovered by a passer-by in the Brussels-Charleroi canal in the heart of the Belgian capital, and was in such an advanced state of decomposition that investigators took five days to identify it.
"It's his (Juvenal Uwilingiyimana's) body," lawyer Sven Mary told AFP. "We have been informed by the investigating magistrate. We have not been given any information on the cause of death. We would like light shed on this."
Uwilingiyimana, who went missing in Belgium in November, had been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which sits in the Tanzanian town of Arusha, for an alleged part in the 1994 genocide.
The massacre saw some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus killed in a government-orchestrated extermination campaign.
The ICTR prosecutor's office in Arusha confirmed the death of the former minister on Thursday, according to the independent Hirondelle news agency.
The 54-year-old former trade minister, who ran Rwanda's national parks at the time of the genocide, was indicted on June 10 but the charge was only made public in November.
The ICTR issued an international arrest warrant in mid-August but did not act on it pending discussions with the prosecution.
The charges against Uwilingiyimana include genocide, incitement to commit genocide, complicity in genocide and murder.
He was, however, informed of the charges against him and agreed to cooperate with the court, meeting its investigators over the course of several recent weeks.
The last such meeting took place on November 18, three days before he vanished at dawn from his home in the Brussels suburb of Anderlecht, according to ICTR chief investigator Stephen Rapp.
Many in Brussels's Rwandan community believed Uwilingiyimana committed suicide because of the pressure of the inquiry, explained by the fact the body was found with neither clothing nor jewellery, a source close to the inquiry said.
Others suspect Hutu extremists had a hand in the murder, fearing the revelations he could make to genocide investigators, while some say it could have been a revenge attack by Tutsis.
Rapp said a letter purportedly written by Uwilingiyimana appeared on the Internet on November 21, saying that he would no longer cooperate with the prosecutor's office.
The letter accused investigators of intimidating Uwilingiyimana to force him to falsely incriminate other members of the Rwandan Hutu regime that orchestrated the 1994 slaughter, notably former first lady Agathe Kanziga.
The tribunal has convicted 22 people in connection with the genocide.
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By SALAH NASRAWI
Associated Press Writer
Dec 22, 2005
CAIRO, Egypt — The leader of Egypt's main Islamic opposition group said Thursday the Holocaust was a "myth," and he slammed Western governments for criticizing disclaimers of the Jewish genocide.
The comments by Muslim Brotherhood chief Mohammed Mahdi Akef made on the heels of his group's strong showing in Egyptian parliamentary elections echoed remarks made recently by Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which sparked international outrage.
"Western democracies have slammed all those who don't see eye to eye with the Zionists regarding the myth of the Holocaust," Akef wrote in a weekly article meant as a directive to the group's followers on its official Web site.
In Israel, the director of the Israeli branch of the Nazi watchdog group, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, warned, "There's no question that a very ugly wave of Holocaust denial is sweeping the Arab world."
"The problem is that so far in the Arab world, very few leaders are willing to tell their own people that they have to understand that the Holocaust did take place," Efraim Zuroff said.
Akef's hard-line rhetoric was in contrast to the moderate tone the Brotherhood took in November and December parliamentary elections, during which it played down its calls for implementing Shariah, or Islamic law, in Egypt and instead touted itself as a pro-democracy movement.
The outlawed Brotherhood surprised many with its election showing, winning 88 seats in the legislature about 20 percent of the body and establishing itself as the top opposition bloc.
In his article, Akef lashed out at the United States and other Western powers for what he described as a campaign against Islam.
"These words are meant to expose the false American rule which has become a nightmare of a new world order," Akef said.
"I am making these comments to all free people in the world, aiming to wake up the conscience in humanity. The sword of democracy is only unsheathed against those who raise the flag of Islam."
Similar comments by Ahmadinejad earlier this month sparked an international outcry. The Iranian president called the Holocaust in which an estimated 6 million Jews were killed a "myth" and said Europeans have used it to create a Jewish state in the heart of the Islamic world.
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By Donald Macintyre in Um al Neu'uman
23 December 2005
A Palestinian man, said to have been last seen in the custody of Israeli border police, died after being found wounded and comatose beside a mule to which he had apparently been tied and dragged along a dirt road.
Relatives of the man are seeking legal advice on whether they can secure the reopening of the investigation. They suspect the policemen detained him for seeking work in Um Touba, a Palestinian village inside Israel, without a permit, tied him to his own mule and drove it off at a gallop.
Police denied the family's version of events and said an investigation had been completed on 11 December and all border police in the area at the time had been "completely cleared" of acting in any way improperly.
The man, Mahmoud Shawawreh, 45, who had six children, left his home on his mule for the neighbouring village of Um Touba on the day of the incident. Relatives said he refused to join six other similarly detained men, including his brother Daoud, 50 in a journey by police van to a Jerusalem police station because he did not want to leave his mule behind.
Daoud Shawawreh said he left separately at about 7.30 am for the neighbouring village to begin work clearing a football field. He was stopped after admitting he did not have a permit. He said he and five other men had been told to get into a police van and were taken to the Talpiot police station. He was released at 11.30am and taken to the main Bethlehem checkpoint on the road from Jerusalem from where he took a taxi home.
He said that after being stopped by police and told to wait at the football field while they completed their tour of the village, he met his brother Mahmoud who had arrived with another man from his home in Um al Neu'uman. They had no permits either, and were told by police they would need to attend a police station.
Mr Shawawreh added: "One of the policemen in the van had Mahmoud's ID card and told Mahmoud to follow us with his mule to the police station. He said, 'I can't take it to that place. It's too far. A policeman who was with Mahmoud took the ID card from the guy in the van. When we left in the van I saw two border police Jeeps and two policemen with Mahmoud. There may have been more there, I don't know."
Mr Shawawreh said that at about 4pm a cousin, also called Mahmoud, told him his brother had been found unconscious and badly injured. "Mahmoud told me he had been with my other brother Jamal on the edge of Um Touba and had seen the mule and Jamal's son Mohammed, who was trying to hold it.
"Mahmoud recognised the mule and said to Mohammed where's your uncle. He pointed to the ground and said, 'There he is'. He was on the ground covered in blood and soil."
Mr Shawawreh said that after his brother's death in Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital five days later from his injuries, which included a fractured skull, a police investigator asked him whether he suspected that his brother had been killed. "I said, 'I don't know what happened to him. The last time I saw him he was with you. If you tied him to the mule I didn't see it'."
The incident came to light in a report in the daily Haaretz saying a man named Mohammed Hamdan saw the animal running and dragging something which looked from a distance like discarded metal. When the animal came closer he realised it was a wounded man. He stopped the animal and recognised Mahmoud Shawawreh, whom he knew well.
He told the newspaper he untied Mahmoud from the mule, and lay him on the ground, pushing his chest to help him breathe. He then called a local ambulance. Haaretz says its reporters spoke to another man in the Bethlehem area who who also claims to have been tied to a donkey in another incident.
Jamal Shawawreh said yesterday: "I saw [Mahmoud] on a dirt road in an area called Latun. I saw him covered with blood. The left side of his skull was smashed and part of the left side of his body as well.
He continued: I didn't recognise him at first. I don't know whether his injuries were from the pulling of the mule or whether he might have been beaten first."
Police said the first time border force was involved was after the man had been found and an ambulance called. Mickey Rosenfeld, the Israeli police spokes-man, said the injured man had been dragged by a donkey but added: "There was an internal investigation which cleared the border police of any involvement whatever in this individual's death."
He said that "once again" police had answered a summons for help and people had "taken advantage of them to try and get financial benefit or for whatever other reason".
The family refused to allow a post-mortem examination - as Palestinian families often do for religious reasons - but the Israeli human rights agency Btselem suggested the police should have insisted on one. The Israeli High Court ruled recently in a case involving a Jewish prisoner who died in mysterious circumstances that an autopsy should be held although his relatives had objected.
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28 October 2005
Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss
Neturei Karta International
Jews United Against Zionism
www.nkusa.org
Orthodox Jews the world over, are saddened by the hysteria which has greeted the recent stated desire of the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to see a world free of Zionism. This desire is nothing more than a yearning for a better, more peaceful world. It is a hope that with the elimination of Zionism, Jews and Muslims will live in harmony as they have throughout the ages, in Palestine and throughout the world.
It is a dangerous distortion, to see the President’s words, as indicative of anti-Jewish sentiments. The President was simply re-stating the beliefs and statements of Ayatollah Khomeini, who always emphasized and practiced the respect and protection of Jews and Judaism. The political ideology of Zionism alone was rejected. President Ahmadinejad stressed this distinction by referring only to Zionism, not Judaism or the Jewish people, regardless of whether they reside in Palestine or else were.
We concur!!… Orthodox Jews have always prayed and till today, continually pray for the speedy and peaceful dismantling of the Zionist state. As per the teachings of the Torah, the Jewish law, the Jewish people are required to be loyal, upstanding citizens, in all of the countries where-in they reside. They are expressly forbidden to have their own entity or state in any form or configuration, in this Heavenly decreed exile. Furthermore, the exemplification of one-self, with acts of compassion and goodness, is of the essence of Judaism. To subjugate and oppress a people, to steal their land, homes and orchards etc. is of the cardinal sins, of the basics crimes, forbidden by the Torah.
We have long stood together with the suffering Palestinian people in their struggle for self determination and respect. Based on our religious teachings, we believe it is impossible that any lasting peace can be achieved, for so long as the state of Israel exists. It is towards this goal of true reconciliation that religious Jews strive; via Palestinian statehood, so that we can once again reside in harmony and brotherhood.
May we merit to see the fruition of our prayers. Ultimately we pray for the day when all mankind will recognize the One G-g and serve Him in harmony. May this come upon us in the near future. Amen.
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Created: 23.12.2005 11:45 MSK (GMT 3), Updated: 11:46 MSK
MosNews
Iran is interested in developing military-technical cooperation with Russia, the country’s ambassador to Russia, Gholamreza Ansari, said on Friday.
“Until now, our cooperation has mostly been established in the sphere of trade,” the ambassador was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying. “But the Iranian government now wants to strengthen cooperation with Russia in the field of energy, in particular nuclear energy. We also intend to develop military-technical cooperation.”
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov earlier confirmed Russia’s intention to continue military-technical cooperation with Iran. He said that “Russia is supplying Iran with conventional armaments and military hardware such as armored vehicles and air defense equipment of a limited range. This is ordinary commercial trade and we are not going to end it.”
It was reported in the beginning of December that Russia had struck a deal to sell short-range, surface-to-air missiles to Iran. Ivanov said this did not change the balance of forces in the region.
The European Union has formally protested to Russia about the deal.
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By Bernd Debusmann
Dec 22 2005
Reuters
WASHINGTON - An unprecedented lawsuit stemming from the gruesome killing of four American civilians in
Iraq is slowly making its way through the U.S. legal system, closely watched by companies estimated to field up to 100,000 contractors alongside the U.S. military.
Lawyers and military experts say the case highlights legal gray zones, a lack of regulation and little oversight of a booming global industry believed to bring in more than $150 billion annually. Civilian military contractors now perform scores of functions once restricted to regular troops, and a trend toward "privatizing war" has been accelerating steadily.
The suit was brought by the families of four civilian contractors shot last year by Iraqi insurgents, who burned their bodies and hung the charred remains from a bridge across the Euphrates river in the city of Falluja.
The four -- Stephen Helveston, Mike Teague, Jerko Zovko and Wesley Batalona -- worked for Blackwater Security Consulting LLC, one of the companies fielding armed civilians in Iraq under contract with the Pentagon. All four had military experience and signed contracts assuming all risks and waiving their right to sue.
The suit against Blackwater says the company broke explicit terms of its contract with the men by sending them to escort a food convoy in unarmored cars, without heavy machine guns, proper briefings, advance notice or pre-mission reconnaissance, in teams that were understaffed and lacked even a map.
"Sending four men out on the security mission instead of the required six essentially took away the team's ability to defend itself," the suit says. "Not having one driver, one navigator and a rear-gunner with a 180 degree field of fire, the team never had a chance...the insurgents were literally able to walk up behind the vehicles and open fire upon them at close range."
Alleging wrongful death and fraud, the suit is the first of its kind in the U.S. The way it is resolved, experts say, could have major implications for the future of military contracting and result in more rules and regulations.
Blackwater, which declines comment on the suit, filed motions this week to have the case moved to a federal court from a state court in North Carolina where it originated in January. Blackwater's headquarters are in Moycock, North Carolina.
Marc Miles, an attorney for the families, said he expected the suit to come to trial next year.
WILD WEST
"This is an important case," said Jeffrey Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University in San Antonio. "While the volume of contractors pouring into Iraq has been enormous, there has been very little effort at regulation or standardizing training. It's the Wild West out there."
Addicott, a retired Special Forces officer, estimates that the number of civilian contractors in Iraq surpassed 100,000 this year. "That takes into account not only people specifically hired to provide armed security, but also those in transportation, construction, food services, housing, laundry etc. Americans and non-Americans."
Other experts agree with that estimate.
Despite the large sums of money and large numbers of civilians paid by the Department of Defense, the Pentagon does not have a precise tally of either. The estimate of contractors it gives - around 20,000 - dates back to a remark by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld almost two years ago.
Such estimates cover what is known as "arms-bearing contractors" who work for firms including Blackwater, Triple Canopy, Aegis Defense Services and Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI) - all run by retired military officers.
There are about 173,000 U.S. and allied troops now in Iraq, led by the United States with 155,000.
ARMY DEPENDS ON CIVILIAN CONTRACTORS
U.S. armed forces can no longer function without civilian contractors, neither in combat nor in the post-combat stability and reconstruction operations that the Pentagon last month declared a "core mission," experts say.
According to Peter Singer of Washington's Brookings Institution, private companies that sell warfare-linked services to governments represent "the corporate evolution of the age-old profession of mercenaries."
The firms involved bristle at the term "mercenary," which evokes images of white guns-for-hire working for African dictators and staging coups and countercoups on behalf of the highest bidder.
Civilian contractors say they provide protection and support personnel rather than war fighters, but the line is often thin. Some of the most advanced weapons systems used in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq were manned by civilians.
But while "mercenary" has been replaced by "private military firms" or "private military companies" - PMFs or PMCs -- there is no doubt that the driving force is money.
PMFs have operated in more than 100 countries. In 1990, revenues from their activities were estimated at around $55 billion, a sum thought to have tripled by this year.
OUTSOURCING
The government's rationale for outsourcing military services is that it saves cost and increases flexibility - similar to corporations which cut their work forces then outsource functions to contractors working without health or pension benefits.
There are no recent studies, however, on the long-term cost benefit of replacing regular troops with contractors.
The downsizing of the U.S. armed forces has been substantial and relentless - from 2.1 million when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and the Cold War ended to 1.4 million today. More cuts are under consideration.
One tricky consequence is the free-market competition between the military and the private sector for people who have been trained - often at considerable cost - by the military. PMFs pay up to 10 times more than the military for very similar functions.
Special Forces expertise is in particular demand, and operators can make more than $200,000 a year, a good part of it not subject to U.S. income taxes.
To counter the lure of private contractors, the army has begun to offer re-enlistment bonuses of $150,000 for special forces soldiers who agree to stay on an additional six years.
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By Saul Hudson
Dec 22 2005
Reuters
WASHINGTON - The United States has suspended publishing a lifestyle magazine aimed at improving America's image abroad among young Arabs, in a further sign of troubled U.S. public diplomacy efforts.
The State Department, which sponsors the $4.5 million annual publication and distribution throughout the Arab world of the Arabic-language magazine "Hi," said on Thursday it stopped the presses because it was unclear how widely it was read.
A series of studies in the United States have criticized U.S.-funded Arabic-langauge media, such as Radio Sawa and the satellite TV station Alhurra, for failing to attract a large audience.
U.S. officials made a push to boost America's image among Arabs and Muslims after the September 11, 2001 attacks. But the efforts have been hampered because many Arabs strenuously object to U.S. foreign policies, particularly over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the
Iraq war.
But Hi, which was launched in 2003 and had a monthly distribution of 55,000 copies in around 18 countries, aimed to overcome that obstacle and reach an audience directly by tapping into a growing phenomenon of young Arabs indulging in escapism through U.S. pop culture.
A December edition of the online version of Hi, which will continue despite the halt to print copies, combines features on cooking, soccer and family life in the Arab world with a focus on life in Texas.
But following recommendations from an independent advisory panel, the State Department said in a statement that it needed to collect data to see who was actually reading a magazine that competes with popular, glossy fashion publications.
"The review is part of a broader effort to develop a 'culture of measurement' and to evaluate regularly the effectiveness of the Department's public-diplomacy programs," the statement said.
An earlier campaign to promote a video highlighting Muslims in the United States was widely derided as ineffectual.
The magazine suspension comes after Karen Hughes, the new U.S. goodwill envoy, has struggled to improve America's image in the Middle East.
Hughes, who had been one of
President George W. Bush's closest aides before taking the senior State Department job, traveled throughout the Arab world in September.
But the fast-talking, confident Texan, who had no previous experience in foreign diplomacy, found the U.S. image a tough sell as some audiences balked at what they perceived as her cultural insensitivity.
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EDITORIAL
December 23, 2005
Arab News
American credibility has been ruined to such an extent, that Saddam Hussein is managing to turn his trial into a rehash of America's blunders in Iraq. According to this editorial from Saudi Arabia's Arab News, 'the deadly stupidity of the Bush Administration' has turned an event that could have been cathartic for the Iraqi people into a circus.
There can be little doubt that Washington hoped Saddam Hussein would be killed during their Iraq invasion. During the massive preliminary aerial bombardment, a Stealth bomber deliberately targeted a restaurant where it was believed the Iraqi dictator was eating. However when Saddam was pulled from an underground bolt hole near Tikrit, it became inevitable that the Iraqi leader would face his day in court and that he would use that platform to strike back at his enemies.
His trial in Baghdad cannot be easy listening for the White House. The connection has not been established, but it seems possible that last week’s admission by President Bush -that almost all the intelligence justifying the invasion was wrong - may have been an attempt to short-circuit Saddam's protests that he was overthrown on the basis of a lie.
In the event, yesterday the fallen dictator cleverly protested that he had been tortured and beaten by the Americans, and dismissed their denials as being as much a lie their pre-invasion intelligence. It really doesn't matter that Saddam is a ruthless politician who didn't hesitate to commit the most terrible crimes against his fellow countrymen, Iranians and Kuwaitis. The fact of the matter is that his charges about his own abuse bear consideration, simply because the Americans have been so economical with the truth throughout their Iraqi involvement.
The scandal of Abu Ghraib, the CIA's flights of “extreme rendition.” the gulag at Guantanamo Bay and the torrent of falsehoods that underpinned the attack on Iraq have cost Washington a great deal of credibility. It really doesn't matter that the U.S. acted to prosecute the perpetrators and fired the female general in charge of Abu Ghraib once the abuse of Iraqi detainees became known. This behavior should never have been allowed to happen in the first place. Indeed, it might not have, had decent minds in Washington thought through the challenge of bringing peace and stability to postwar Iraq.
The dismantling of the police and army and the woefully inept struggle to fill the vacuum that Saddam’s ouster created demonstrate the deadly stupidity of the Bush Administration. Washington was knocked off balance the minute Iraqis failed to unconditionally welcome them as liberators. They have been stumbling ever since.
Few people doubt that Saddam, as a fearsome dictator, was directly responsible for the terror under which his country was operated. But the man’s trial might have been cathartic for all Iraqis, by tabulating the horrors of his Baathist thugs and thus could have brought closure for a deeply violated society.
That, however, is not what is happening. Saddam has recovered his composure and is turning the legal process into his last hurrah, and the Americans have handed him all the ammunition with which to do this. Instead of being allowed to concentrate on the terrible charges against him and his co-defendants, the court is in danger of being turned into a circus in which Saddam rehashes the origins of the war.
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23 Dec 2005
AFP
Cambodia's opposition leader Sam Rainsy was sentenced in absentia to 18 months in prison for defaming the country's prime minister and national assembly president.
Sam Rainsy, who fled to France earlier this year, will be arrested as soon as he returns to Cambodia, judge Chiv Keng said following his conviction on two counts of defamation.
The case has been condemned by rights groups as a bid to silence critics.
"Sam Rainsy is a political party leader and a parliamentarian, so the suspect is very powerful and could confuse the public with his accusations," the judge said of the opposition leader's allegations against Prime Minister Hun Sen.
"His complaint was not only sent to the court, but to the media, the embassies and the royal palace. Releasing this information seriously affects the dignity and reputation of Prime Minister Hun Sen," he said.
Sam Rainsy accuses Hun Sen of involvement in a 1997 grenade attack on an anti-government rally that killed at least 19 people.
He also says National Assembly president Prince Norodom Ranariddh took millions of dollars in bribes in return for joining a coalition government with the premier's ruling Cambodian People's Party in 2004.
The government's biggest critic said he was not surprised by the verdict, arguing that Hun Sen's administration was trying to use the judiciary to destroy the opposition.
"How can you talk about democracy without an opposition? Cambodia is moving towards a dictatorship," he told AFP by phone from Paris.
"We have now reached a threshold level of repression and the people must react."
Sam Rainsy said he hoped the verdict, and the recent arrests of other government critics, would spur the impoverished country's donors into action.
"If the donors' behaviour is consistent with other situations that reached such a critical level, I expect there will be some reaction," he said.
Sam Rainsy was also fined around 14,000 dollars to be split between Hun Sen and Ranariddh, who filed one suit each, and the government. Chiv Keng said the opposition leader will face more jail time if he refuses to pay.
Neither Hun Sen nor Ranariddh appeared in court Thursday, which was under heavy security to stifle any opposition protests.
Sam Rainsy left for France after he and two other opposition lawmakers were stripped of their parliamentary immunity earlier this year. One of them, Cheam Channy, was sentenced to seven years in prison in August for organised crime and fraud.
Som Chandyna, Sam Rainsy's lawyer, said he did not know if his client would appeal the decision. The opposition leader said he was not coming back to Cambodia anytime soon but might return if he were pardoned by the king.
Sam Rainsy is the highest-ranking official to be caught so far in what critics call a government crackdown on dissent. Rights groups have condemned the increasing use of defamation suits against government opponents.
"Hun Sen's government is increasingly using legal action... to threaten and intimidate civil society figures, journalists, human rights defenders, and opposition political party members," Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.
Seven people, including a cousin of King Norodom Sihamoni, have recently been arrested or charged with defamation over a controversial border agreement with Vietnam.
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By BO-MI LIM
Associated Press
Dec 22, 10:07 PM (ET)
SEOUL, South Korea - South Korean researcher Hwang Woo-suk faked results of at least nine of 11 stem-cell lines he claimed to have created, a deliberate deception that has undermined the credibility of science, his university said Friday.
The announcement by Seoul National University of results so far in its investigation into Hwang's work were the first confirmation of allegations that have cast a shadow over his entire list of breakthroughs in cloning and stem-cell technology.
"This kind of error is a grave act that damages the foundation of science," the panel said.
In a May paper in the journal Science, Hwang claimed to have created 11 stem-cell lines matched to patients in an achievement that raised hopes of creating tailored therapies for hard-to-treat diseases. But one of his former collaborators last week said nine of the 11 cell lines were faked, prompting reviews by the journal and an expert panel at Seoul National University, where Hwang works.
The panel said Friday it found that "the laboratory data for 11 stem cell lines that were reported in the 2005 paper were all data made using two stem cell lines in total."
To create fake DNA results purporting to show a match, Hwang's team split cells from one patient into two test tubes for the analysis - rather than actually match cloned cells to a patient's original cells, the university said.
"Based on these facts, the data in the 2005 Science paper cannot be some error from a simple mistake, but cannot be but seen as a deliberate fabrication to make it look like 11 stem-cell lines using results from just two," the panel said.
"There is no way but that Professor Hwang has been involved," the university's dean of research affairs, Roe Jung-hye, told a news conference, adding that Hwang "somewhat admits to this,"
The panel said DNA tests expected to be completed within a few days would confirm if the remaining two stem-cell lines it had found were actually successfully cloned from a patient.
In light of the revelations, the panel said it would now also investigate Hwang's other landmark papers - which include another Science article in 2004 on the world's first cloned human embryos, and an August 2005 paper in the journal Nature on the first-ever cloned dog. The journals already are reviewing all the work.
Hwang, a veterinarian, has maintained his science is sound and that tests will prove his case.
However, he admitted last week to "fatal errors" in the May report and asked Science to withdraw the paper. He acknowledged that at the time of publication, his team had created only eight cell lines. But he said three more were created later.
The panel said Friday that it found was no records of two of the other stem-cell lines Hwang claims to have created. Four others died from contamination, and another three were in the nurturing stage and hadn't yet become full stem-cell lines.
Hwang's article this year had also been viewed as significant for his efficiency in cloning the stem-cell lines, claiming to use just 185 human eggs to create custom-made embryonic stem cells for the 11 patients.
But Roe said the investigation had "found that there have been a lot more eggs used than were reported" and were investigating the exact number.
The university is waiting to take action against Hwang until its investigation is complete, but Roe said: "It's hard for Professor Hwang to escape grave responsibility."
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By Meera Selva, Africa Correspondent
Published: 23 December 2005
An Ethiopian court has charged 131 politicians, journalists and activists with treason and genocide as the Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, continues to suppress all dissenting voices in the country.
Two campaigners for the Make Poverty History movement are among the defendants. Daniel Bereket, the head of policy for ActionAid in Ethiopia and Netsanet Demessie of the Organisation for Social Justice in Ethiopia, have been charged with two counts of treason. If found guilty, they could face life imprisonment.
ActionAid claims the men were arrested in November for doing their job as anti-poverty campaigners, and have done nothing illegal.
Brian Kagoro, head of policy for ActionAid Africa, said: "Neither Daniel nor Netsanet are anti-state. They may have been critical of the government's progress towards the Millennium Development Goals, but they are not political activists, and they are not members of the opposition."
Others charged include the leader of the opposition, Hailu Shawel, elected members of parliament and Ethiopian journalists.
Mr Zenawi, an ally of Tony Blair and a member of his Commission for Africa, has accused the defendants of causing the riots that spread through the capital, Addis Ababa, after the general election on 15 May.
Many of those charged have also been accused of genocide; the charge sheet claims members of the opposition party, the CUD, tried to isolate the Tigrayan people, who are supporters of Mr Zenawi's ruling party, the EPRDF. The charges relate to criticisms by the CUD about the ethnic composition of the ruling party, and a manifesto promise to change Ethiopia's constitution, which divides the country into ethnically determined regions, and replace it with a new national system.
Mr Zenawi has said he will leave it to the courts to decideif any guilty defendants are put to death or imprisoned for life. All those who appeared in court were denied bail and will appear again on 28 December.
Ethiopia has already attracted widespread condemnation for the way it has dealt with the aftermath of its general election, the third multi-party election in the country. The CUD accused the government of rigging elections and falsifying results. The protests led to rioting that left 42 people dead in June. Others died in clashes with security forces last month.
Human rights groups say police used live ammunition to disperse protesters.
Since the riots in June, Mr Meles has closed five newspapers, jailed their editors and arrested 40,000 people. Most of those taken into custody were held for a few weeks, but about 3,000 are still in detention. Two foreign radio stations, Voice of America and Deutsche Welle, were also taken off the air for broadcasting critical reports.
Britain has already frozen £50m of aid amid concerns about governance, and Lord Triesman, the Foreign Office minister responsible for Africa, said the UK was reviewing its entire £90m aid package to the country.
Mr Zenawi accused the CUD of fomenting the violence, and trying to overthrow the government with the riots.
His supporters also say many in the CUD leadership have only recently returned to Ethiopia after years of exile, and still receive funding from Ethiopians living overseas.
In a reference to Ukraine's dramatic change of government, Mr Zenawi said: "This is not your run-of-the-mill demonstration. This is an Orange Revolution gone wrong."
The EPRDF has also pointed out that many of the CUD leadership, including Mr Shawel, worked for the brutal Derg dictatorship, which was overthrown by Mr Zenawi's forces in 1991.
Before his arrest, Mr Shawel told The Independent: "I didn't come back for politics, I came back to live here and run my company. I changed my mind mid-stream after people approached me and appealed to me to get involved. Ethiopian culture is a gun culture.
"We have never had a change of government without the use of the gun, and we want to show that we don't need to use the gun any more to get change."
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By Matt Daily
22 Dec 2005
Reuters
HOUSTON (Reuters) - A Texas appeals court on Thursday rejected a bid by U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay to get a speedy trial on a money-laundering charge lodged against the powerful Republican lawmaker.
DeLay had sought an quick trial on the charge in the hopes that an acquittal would allow him to return to his post as U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader next month.
He gave up that post in September after he was indicted in Travis County, Texas on charges related to violations of campaign-finance laws.
DeLay's lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, said he would appeal the ruling from the three-judge panel and ask the state's highest criminal appeals court to dismiss the case.
"This gives us the opportunity to go over their heads," DeGuerin said.
In addition to the dismissal request, DeLay will ask that the case to be sent back to the state district court so a trial could begin soon.
A spokesman for DeLay said the congressman expected the case would be resolved in the coming weeks.
"Mr. DeLay remains confident that we can continue to move the legal schedule rapidly toward either dismissal or a trial sometime in January," spokesman Kevin Madden said in a statement.
The case will go to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which is widely seen as a bastion of conservative Republicans.
DeGuerin, who earlier had a lower-court judge removed from the case because of political work as a Democrat, said he did not believe the party affiliations on the high court would affect the outcome.
Earlier this month, District Judge Pat Priest dismissed conspiracy charges against DeLay and two co-defendants, saying the actions were not a crime at the time DeLay was charged with violating them.
The charges are part of a widening political scandal around DeLay, who has been linked to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the once-powerful Washington player now facing corruption charges.
Democrats have targeted DeLay, 58, as a key face in what they call a Republican-led "culture of corruption." Some early polls have suggested he could be vulnerable in next year's election.
The criminal case against DeLay and colleagues Jim Ellis and John Colyandro accuses the three of laundering $190,000 in corporate donations through the Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee (TRMPAC), by funneling money through the Republican National Committee for distribution to Republican candidates to the Texas Legislature in 2002.
Texas law forbids the use of corporate money in political campaigns.
DeLay has said the case was a Democratic plot to oust him from power because he succeeded in advancing a conservative political agenda.
TRMPAC helped Republicans take control of the state legislature in 2002 for the first time since the late 1800s. Under DeLay's guidance, the legislature redrew congressional districts to increase the number of Republicans elected to Congress from Texas.
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22 Dec 2005
Reuters
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Assisted-suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian lost his bid to win release from prison on the grounds he was dying, when Michigan's governor said on Thursday she would accept a state parole board's denial of his request.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm said she would follow the recommendation of the state's parole board, which voted 7-2 to deny the 77-year-old Kevorkian's wish to be pardoned or to have his 10- to 25-year sentence for second-degree murder commuted.
Kevorkian, a retired pathologist nicknamed "Dr. Death," is serving his sentence at the Thumb Correctional Facility in Lapeer, Michigan. He suffers from Hepatitis C and other illnesses and does not have long to live, his lawyer has said.
But the parole board ruled his health did not meet the criteria of having a terminal illness and having less than a year to live, the governor's spokeswoman, Heidi Hensen, said.
Kevorkian is eligible for parole on June 1, 2007, when he would be 79.
Kevorkian's fascination with dying brought him notoriety when he crusaded for the right of terminally ill people to get help committing suicide. He used a drug-delivery device he designed and built to help them do it, sometimes in the back of his rusty white 1968 Volkswagen.
Kevorkian thumbed his nose at prosecutors and opponents, and juries found him not guilty four times before he was convicted in 1999 of giving lethal injections to 52-year-old Thomas Youk, who had Lou Gehrig's disease. Kevorkian videotaped the procedure in which he delivered the shots to Youk himself, and the tape was shown on CBS's "60 Minutes."
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23 Dec 2005
AFP
"Initial investigation shows it was a gas explosion. We have to wait until the end of the rescue to see the cause," the official told AFP.
Local authorities were blocking access for journalists. There were some 400 police officers posted at the scene, state television station CCTV said.
A gas explosion inside a highway tunnel under construction killed 42 people and injured 11 others in southwest China's Sichuan province.
The explosion happened at 2:00 pm (0600 GMT) Thursday, less than 100 kilometers (62 miles) northwest of Chengdu, at an intersection of a highway being built to link the smaller cities of Dujiangyan and Wenchuan, the State Administration for Work Safety said on its website.
The exact number of casualties remains unclear, officials said.
"We're still trying to determine the exact number of victims. We're still carrying out the rescue work," an official at Sichuan's work safety office told AFP.
Thirty-one bodies were found during an overnight search at the blast site, bringing the confirmed death toll up to 42, the Xinhua news agency said, without giving details on how the other victims were discovered.
Most of the victims were construction workers, it said.
Rescuers Friday continued to search through the rubble while medical workers had arrived on the scene to treat the injured, officials and Xinhua said.
"We've found 42 bodies. We're mainly trying to find other victims and saving the injured now," the official said, adding that more than 50 rescuers were at the site.
Work safety authorities have launched an investigation into the cause of the accident.
"Initial investigation shows it was a gas explosion. We have to wait until the end of the rescue to see the cause," the official told AFP.
Local authorities were blocking access for journalists. There were some 400 police officers posted at the scene, state television station CCTV said.
The reports, however, did not give any details on how many people were working at the site at the time of the explosion.
The company constructing the tunnel was the state-owned China Railway Engineering Company's branch in Sichuan, Xinhua said.
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23 Dec 2005
AFP
Shell said Tuesday that unknown assailants had attacked its pipeline near the main oil city Port Harcourt resulting in a major spill and fire, and slashing production by about seven percent of Nigeria's total crude export.
The oil giant declared a state of "force majeure," Wednesday night, a legal term allowing a party to a contract legally to breach its terms, with a Shell spokesman telling AFP the explosion has resulted in a loss of 180,000 barrels of oil per day. ...
Nigerian President Olesegun Obasanjo declared a state of alert in the oil-rich Niger Delta after at least eight people were reported to have died in an explosion that set ablaze a pipeline, an official statement said.
"The president gave the order at a meeting with senior members of the nation's security and intelligence communities," the statement said.
"The meeting was called to review the security situation in the Niger Delta following two pipeline explosions in the region in the past few days."
The oil giant declared a state of "force majeure," Wednesday night, a legal term allowing a party to a contract legally to breach its terms, with a Shell spokesman telling AFP the explosion has resulted in a loss of 180,000 barrels of oil per day.
World oil prices extended gains on the developments, with New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in February, rising 14 cents to 58.70 dollars per barrel in pit trading.
In London, the price of Brent North Sea crude for February delivery climbed by 39 cents to 57.11 dollars per barrel in electronic trading.
Late on Thursday the company said it had been able to begin repair work on the 24-inch (60 centimetre) pipeline damaged in the explosion.
"We have commenced repairing works on the 24-inch pipeline," a company spokesman told AFP.
"For the other 28-inch pipeline, another fire-fighting team is on its way to fight the fire. We are now talking about two fire fronts with the refinery supply line which passes through that area. Another team has been sent to repair that line if possible," he said.
"Four lines are now involved including one gas line."
Shell said Tuesday that unknown assailants had attacked its pipeline near the main oil city Port Harcourt resulting in a major spill and fire, and slashing production by about seven percent of Nigeria's total crude export.
Preliminary investigations suggest the fire might have been caused by an explosion involving dynamite. To help curb the fire, Shell shut production from Diebu Creek and Nun River fields, and all land area facilities except Rumuekpe.
Shell officials declined to comment on whether lives were lost in the explosion, which impacted upon nearby communities.
But Thursday a police officer in Port Harcourt told AFP by telephone that at least eight people died in the blast.
"We don't yet have confirmation of their identity. It might be more. Investigations are going on, but as the explosion occurred in a very remote area, to go there is not easy at all," he said.
Analysts at the Sucden brokerage firm said "the situation is made worse as Shell has no official estimate of how long the outage will last".
Nigeria's multi-million dollar oil industry lies in the swamps of the Niger delta, an impoverished unruly region that is prone to regular outbreaks of political violence.
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date: 23 12, 2005
Bahrain News Agency
Jakarta, Dec. 23 (BNA) A moderate earthquake struck off Indonesia's eastern province of Maluku on Friday, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damages.
The quake, measuring 4.9 on the Richter scale, hit at 9:58 a.m., according to an officer from the national Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) in Jakarta. The quake's epicentre was 33 kilometres under the sea bed of the Maluku Sea, some 2,600 kilometres southeast of Jakarta, and there was no report it was felt on the mainland of the province.
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Published: Thursday, 22 December, 2005, 10:46 AM Doha Time
NICE, France: A small earthquake registering 3.3 on the Richter scale caused a shudder in France’s Alps region overnight but caused no damage nor casualties, officials said yesterday.
The epicentre was around 40km north of the French Riviera city of Nice, according to Sismalp seismic observatory in the Alpine town of Grenoble.
Minor quakes are relatively common in southeast France, with around two per year recorded at or above the 3.3 magnitude. – AFP
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By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
23 December 2005
Wal-Mart, the world's largest retail company, has suffered a potentially ominous legal setback, with a California jury awarding more than $200m (£115m) to thousands of employees who alleged they were illegally and systematically denied lunch-breaks.
The company has been fighting allegations for years, in and out of court, that it cuts corners to keep labour costs low. Yesterday's jury verdict in Oakland, near San Francisco, marked the first time that the company had been forced to go to trial and lost.
The suit was one of about 40 in the works nationwide alleging that the Arkansas-based retailer, which boasts a chain of mostly suburban superstores across the United States and beyond, routinely violates US labour laws - keeping workers off the clock so they are not credited for overtime, denying them lunch-breaks and other rests, and so on.
Wal-Mart is at the centre of a growing dispute over the economic desirability of the sort of superstore it has pioneered. While the chain, and others like it, provides affordable consumer goods and plentiful employment, especially in impoverished areas of the country that are badly in need of both, its critics complain that it earns its profits at the expense of both the communities where it takes up occupancy and its own underpaid employees.
While the surviving members of the founding Walton family are all multi-billionaires, almost half the children of company employees either have no health insurance or else rely on government-sponsored subsistence programmes to gain access to basic medical care, according to the company's own figures. An unknown number of employees relies on government food stamps to keep body and soul together month to month.
Labour unions have been complaining about Wal-Mart for years, and in the past few months have focused their organising efforts around a new documentary entitled Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, produced and directed by the prominent Hollywood liberal activist Robert Greenwald.
The film has been a considerable PR blow to the company, which has fought back via conservative think-tanks and its own media information machine to try to pour cold water on the film's most incendiary attacks and discredit the film-makers. A pro-Wal-Mart documentary has also made the rounds, albeit far less prominently.
In the wake of the California ruling, it now appears that the company's labour practices may prove to be its Achilles heel. It has already settled one class-action lawsuit in Colorado for $50m - a case that bears many similarities to the California one.
A judge in Missouri, meanwhile, has just granted class-action status to another suit originally filed in 2001. Although that case is still some distance away from trial, the judge's ruling accepted the plaintiffs' contention that whatever was going on was the result of a systematic policy dictated by Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.
In other parts of the country, Wal-Mart has fared better. Courts in Florida, Ohio, Texas, Louisiana and North Carolina have either refused to grant class-action status to plaintiffs in Wal-Mart cases or otherwise thrown the suits out.
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23 Dec 2005
Reuters
NEW YORK - The time-honored office tradition of whining at the water cooler just might get you fired, according to a newly compiled list of workplace horrors around the world.
Two workers who exceeded the official limit of two moans per employee at one unnamed German firm were fired this year. Several colleagues quit before their moans could be counted.
Their employer's strict policy tops a list compiled by Challenger, Gray and Christmas. The Chicago-based outplacement firm gave nine notable examples from hundreds of cases.
Most involve petty rules.
Workers at a DaimlerChrysler plant in Kokomo, Indiana, should drive a Chrysler model or they may find their car in Indianapolis, 50 miles away. That's because a rule limits parking space for non-Chrysler cars. Violators will be towed.
"These are things that make you go hmmm," Challenger spokesman James Pedderson said.
Such stories pour in throughout the year and Challenger plans to make the list an annual tradition, he said. The point is to encourage managers and their staff to communicate better.
Some of the worst stories involve discrimination against a worker's religion, ethnicity, or, less seriously, squirrels. A librarian lost her job for devoting too much time to saving a squirrel stuck in a ceiling.
"I think reason has to prevail in some of these instances," Pedderson said.
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By LAWRENCE MISHEL
and ROSS EISENBREY
Lawrence Mishel is president of the Economic Policy Institute and Ross Eisenbrey is EPI's policy directory.
1. Profits [Corporate] are up, but the wages and the incomes of average Americans are down.
2. More and more people are deeper and deeper in debt.
3. Job creation has not kept up with population growth, and the employment rate has fallen sharply.
4. Poverty is on the rise.
5. Rising health care costs are eroding families' already declining income.
1. Profits are up, but the wages and the incomes of average Americans are down.
* Inflation-adjusted hourly and weekly wages are still below where they were at the start of the recovery in November 2001. Yet, productivity-the growth of the economic pie-is up by 13.5%.
* Wage growth has been shortchanged because 35% of the growth of total income in the corporate sector has been distributed as corporate profits, far more than the 22% in previous periods.
* Consequently, median household income (inflation-adjusted) has fallen five years in a row and was 4% lower in 2004 than in 1999, falling from $46,129 to $44,389.
2. More and more people are deeper and deeper in debt.
* The indebtedness of U.S. households, after adjusting for inflation, has risen 35.7% over the last four years.
* The level of debt as a percent of after-tax income is the highest ever measured in our history. Mortgage and consumer debt is now 115% of after-tax income, twice the level of 30 years ago.
* The debt-service ratio (the percent of after-tax income that goes to pay off debts) is at an all-time high of 13.6%.
* The personal savings rate is negative for the first time since WWII.
3. Job creation has not kept up with population growth, and the employment rate has fallen sharply.
* The United States has only 1.3% more jobs today (excluding the effects of Hurricane Katrina) than in March 2001 (the start of the recession). Private sector jobs are up only 0.8%. At this stage of previous business cycles, jobs had grown by an average of 8.8% and never less than 6.0%.
* The unemployment rate is relatively low at 5%, but still higher than the 4% in 2000. Plus, the percent of the population that has a job has never recovered since the recession and is still 1.3% lower than in March 2001. If the employment rate had returned to pre-recession levels, 3 million more people would be employed.
* More than 3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost since January 2000.
4. Poverty is on the rise.
* The poverty rate rose from 11.7% in 2001 to 12.7% in 2004.
* The number of people living in poverty has increased by 5.4 million since 2000.
* More children are living in poverty: the child poverty rate increased from 16.3% in 2001 to 17.8% in 2004.
5. Rising health care costs are eroding families' already declining income.
* Households are spending more on health care. Family health costs rose 43-45% for married couples with children, single mothers, and young singles from 2000 to 2003.
* Employers are cutting back on health insurance. Last year, the percent of people with employer-provided health insurance fell for the fourth year in a row. Nearly 3.7 million fewer people had employer-provided insurance in 2004 than in 2000. Taking population growth into account, 11 million more people would have had employer-provided health insurance in 2004 if the coverage rate had remained at the 2000 level.
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By BART JANSEN, Washington D.C. Correspondent
MaineToday.com
Friday, December 23, 2005
WASHINGTON — Congress refused to boost emergency heating-oil assistance by $2 billion, in a blow to Northeastern states that had sought more funding to offset higher fuel prices. The vote means that the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program will receive a slightly smaller appropriation this winter than it did a year ago.
Because heating-oil prices spiked this year, the nearly $2.2 billion approved is about half the amount needed to buy the same amount of oil as last year, with 10 percent more applicants so far, according to advocacy groups.
"I am optimistic that we can come to a resolution allowing the opportunity to provide additional funds for this vital program," said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.
She and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., pledged to restore the $2 billion in January, as soon as the Senate finishes considering Judge Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court.
"It was a disappointment that we were not able to include additional LIHEAP funding as part of the final defense spending bill, but this fight is not over," Collins said.
Robert Greenstein, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, which studies congressional spending, said Frist doesn't speak for House leadership.
House leaders, who earlier added heating assistance to two controversial bills in order to lure support, could delay consideration until after the heating season is over, Greenstein said.
"They only want to provide LIHEAP to get something controversial approved," he said.
Nearly $2.2 billion was included in the spending bill for a variety of social programs that the Senate approved Wednesday by voice vote. That figure is the same as was appropriated a year earlier.
But part of the Defense Department spending bill, which was also approved Wednesday, called for a 1 percent across-the-board spending cut for programs, including the heating program.
Northeastern advocates have fought for months to boost heating assistance to $5.1 billion because of the higher costs. While falling short of that goal, the military spending bill had included an extra $2 billion, for a total of nearly $4.2 billion.
But the same Senate maneuver that prevented drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge also removed from the defense bill the $2 billion for heating aid and a variety of other provisions dealing with border security and agricultural issues.
The Senate voted 48-45 Wednesday to change the "enrollment" of the bill to accomplish those changes. Snowe and Collins both supported the move, as did Democratic Reps. Tom Allen and Mike Michaud by acquiescence Thursday.
The open question is why the heating-oil provision was cut in addition to Arctic drilling.
Legislative leaders argued that the provisions were linked because language in the bill paid for heating assistance out of future drilling revenue.
But drilling revenue wasn't projected to begin until 2008. Further, that language was separate from the provision for $2 billion in immediate, emergency spending.
Greenstein said he had heard two explanations. One is that Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, insisted on dropping heating oil in order to punish Northeastern lawmakers who opposed drilling.
Another is that House leaders insisted on postponing approval of heating assistance until it is needed to secure votes for controversial legislation. House leaders previously used heating assistance as a carrot to lure support for spending cuts and defense spending.
"Some people on the Hill are saying this is Ted Stevens' revenge," Greenstein said. "I am told that House leaders also objected."
Maine received about $31.8 million in federal heating aid last winter, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association.
The program helped 46,340 Maine households last winter, according to state figures. The program typically offers assistance to families earning 150 percent of the poverty level, making the cutoff $24,135 a year for a family of three.
Last year, the assistance totaled $480 per household, which bought about 275 gallons of heating oil. But higher prices will reduce the purchasing power this season, with applications already running 10 percent higher than last year, said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association.
"The supply situation is very, very tough right now," Wolfe said. "What we're looking at is a potential crisis in the program."
Maine Gov. John Baldacci secured commitments from legislative leaders to spend $5 million in January to supplement the federal funding.
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By SHIRLEY WON
Globeandmail.com
Friday, December 23, 2005
Ian Telfer seems to have the Midas touch.
When the chief executive officer of Goldcorp Inc. got a call Wednesday night from Barrick Gold Corp. about striking up a friendly, higher $10.4-billion (U.S.) deal to acquire Placer Dome Inc., he got on the blower to call a board meeting for yesterday at 1 a.m. Eastern time.
Goldcorp's board agreed by telephone to increase its offer to $1.485-billion to buy certain Placer assets from $1.35-billion, as part of Barrick's blockbuster deal that was announced yesterday.
"I was surprised that I got the call -- man, what a Merry Christmas," chuckled the 59-year-old CEO of Vancouver-based Goldcorp.
The acquisition of the Placer assets makes Goldcorp the third-largest North American gold producer, after Barrick and Newmont Mining Corp., and doubles its production to just over the key, two-million-ounce-a-year mark, Mr. Telfer said.
Such a production level could push Goldcorp's market capitalization on the stock market to between $6-billion and $10-billion, he added. "So you are now large enough that any [U.S.] mutual fund, pension fund or hedge fund could invest in you."
That has been Mr. Telfer's goal ever since Goldcorp took over Wheaton River Ltd. last February in a friendly share swap. Mr. Telfer, formerly CEO of Wheaton, became the boss at of Goldcorp, and has since been on an ambitious hunt for acquisitions.
But he never dreamed he could achieve that objective at one fell swoop, as part of Goldcorp's strategy to increase its assets in North and South America.
"I didn't envisage buying 13 or 14 per cent of a company the size of Placer," said the former accountant, who has a reputation as a canny deal maker. "You don't get those opportunities very often."
He figured that boosting production to above two million ounces would mean smaller deals similar to a share swap this month to buy Quebec City-based Virginia Gold Mines Inc., ostensibly to acquire its Éléonore gold project. While it is generating encouraging drill results, the project has yet to translate into resources or reserves.
With the Placer deal, Mr. Telfer is excited about getting the Campbell mine in Northern Ontario because of the cost-cutting synergies that will be realized when it is combined with Goldcorp's nearby flagship Red Lake property. Placer this week also unveiled drilling results that confirmed that a high-grade gold zone at Red Lake extends onto the Campbell mine.
Goldcorp also acquired Placer's stakes in the Porcupine and Musselwhite joint ventures in Ontario. It would get its interest in the La Coipa gold and silver mine in Chile, and a 40-per-cent stake in the Pueblo Viejo project in the Dominican Republic.
Analyst David Stein at Sprott Securities Inc. is upbeat on Goldcorp's all-cash deal to buy the Placer assets, saying "it going to be high accretive to earnings and cash flow."
The Pueblo Viejo joint venture with Barrick also gives Goldcorp a "pretty big high-profile growth project in the pipeline," Mr. Stein added. "They will continue to have some growth, but their production will go immediately above two million ounces a year."
Every time Mr. Telfer does a deal "a few months later the gold price is $25 or $50 higher," he said. "The gold price -- as it has continued to go up -- has basically justified all their acquisitions that they have made" since his time at Wheaton. [...]
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By LAWRENCE MISHEL and ROSS EISENBREY
Counterpunch.org
December 23, 2005
1. Profits are up, but the wages and the incomes of average Americans are down.
* Inflation-adjusted hourly and weekly wages are still below where they were at the start of the recovery in November 2001. Yet, productivity-the growth of the economic pie-is up by 13.5%.
* Wage growth has been shortchanged because 35% of the growth of total income in the corporate sector has been distributed as corporate profits, far more than the 22% in previous periods.
* Consequently, median household income (inflation-adjusted) has fallen five years in a row and was 4% lower in 2004 than in 1999, falling from $46,129 to $44,389.
2. More and more people are deeper and deeper in debt.* The indebtedness of U.S. households, after adjusting for inflation, has risen 35.7% over the last four years.
* The level of debt as a percent of after-tax income is the highest ever measured in our history. Mortgage and consumer debt is now 115% of after-tax income, twice the level of 30 years ago.
* The debt-service ratio (the percent of after-tax income that goes to pay off debts) is at an all-time high of 13.6%.
* The personal savings rate is negative for the first time since WWII. 3. Job creation has not kept up with population growth, and the employment rate has fallen sharply.* The United States has only 1.3% more jobs today (excluding the effects of Hurricane Katrina) than in March 2001 (the start of the recession). Private sector jobs are up only 0.8%. At this stage of previous business cycles, jobs had grown by an average of 8.8% and never less than 6.0%.
* The unemployment rate is relatively low at 5%, but still higher than the 4% in 2000. Plus, the percent of the population that has a job has never recovered since the recession and is still 1.3% lower than in March 2001. If the employment rate had returned to pre-recession levels, 3 million more people would be employed.
* More than 3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost since January 2000. 4. Poverty is on the rise.* The poverty rate rose from 11.7% in 2001 to 12.7% in 2004.
* The number of people living in poverty has increased by 5.4 million since 2000.
* More children are living in poverty: the child poverty rate increased from 16.3% in 2001 to 17.8% in 2004. 5. Rising health care costs are eroding families' already declining income.
* Households are spending more on health care. Family health costs rose 43-45% for married couples with children, single mothers, and young singles from 2000 to 2003.
* Employers are cutting back on health insurance. Last year, the percent of people with employer-provided health insurance fell for the fourth year in a row. Nearly 3.7 million fewer people had employer-provided insurance in 2004 than in 2000. Taking population growth into account, 11 million more people would have had employer-provided health insurance in 2004 if the coverage rate had remained at the 2000 level. Lawrence Mishel is president of the Economic Policy Institute and Ross Eisenbrey is EPI's policy directory.
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AFP
December 22, 2005
PARIS, Dec 22 (AFP) - Exactly 20 years after it was founded by one of the country's best-loved comedians, France's 'Les Restos du Cœur' charity has grown into a national institution — this Christmas providing food once again for hundreds of thousands of the urban poor.
But what was originally intended as a one-off campaign to help the homeless is now offering long-term relief for whole new categories of deprivation.
"These days our beneficiaries range from the young to the very old. Many are mothers of families. Increasingly we are even seeing people coming who actually have jobs," said Dominique Lobjois, a member of the charity's national bureau in Paris.
"What they have in common is that they are having to choose what to spend their little money on: a roof over their head or food to eat. They do not have enough for both. It's different from Coluche's day but the scandal is just as serious," he said.
Coluche — real name Michel Colucci — died in a motorcycle accident at the age of 41 in early 1986, just months after launching his 'Restaurants of the Heart'.
An irreverent clown who honed his act on the cabaret circuit, the comic was also a sharp-spoken social critic and earned the adoration of millions for his humorous diatribes against the establishment. Earlier this year he was voted the fifth "greatest ever" French personality in a television poll.
Today Coluche's spirit still presides over the charity, just as his mischievous features beam down from posters in its 2,000 distribution centres and feeding points across the country.
"Without what Coluche gives me, I do not know how I would manage," said Jihan, a woman in her fifties collecting a basket of food from a centre in eastern Paris — apparently unaware that the great man is dead.
The Rue Erard centre typifies the charity's shift of emphasis towards families and the "sheltered" poor. While 'Les Restos du Cœur' does still provide hot meals for the down-and-out, the greater part of its work is issuing basic foodstuffs to the needy.
In Paris — where rents have rocketed in recent years — the demand is ever-growing.
A queue of people — mainly women and mainly of north or sub-Saharan African origin — snakes past a mountain of milk-packs (a gift of the European Union) and on presentation of a coupon baskets are held open to receive fresh fruit and vegetables, pasta and various tinned goods.
One of Coluche's greatest legacies was to win posthumously the EU's agreement to make available part of its massive surpluses. He also gave his name to a 1988 law under which private citizens get tax relief on charitable donations.
Today some 40 percent of the 'Les Restos du Cœur' budget comes from the public — and a further 20 percent from concert and record sales for an ad-hoc group of performers known as Les Enfoires. Including household names like Jean-Jacques Goldman and Johnny Hallyday, they meet once a year to raise money for the charity.
"I thank God we have 'Les Restos du Coeur' to raise our morale a little," said Djahel Hayat, a 32 year-old French woman of Algerian origin who -- after paying for accommodation -- lives with her two children on some ERU 500 a month.
"At least here there are people to help us, with a smile and a hello. It picks us up. Especially when you see that most of the people here are foreigners. Here we can forget the discrimination. Here we feel at home," she said.
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Lauren A. Colby
It is well known that the lung cancer rate in American Indians is very low. Like Asians, they seem to possess a genetic resistance to the disease. They also seem to have a lower incidence of psychopathy.
Check out the stats maps and THINK!
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Ker Than
LiveScience.com
Thu Dec 22, 4:00 PM ET
To recall memories, your brain travels back in time via the ultimate Google search, according to a new study in which scientists found they can monitor the activity and actually predict what you'll think of next.
The work bolsters the validity of a longstanding hypothesis that the human brain takes itself back to the state it was in when a memory was first formed.
The psychologist Endel Tulving dubbed this process "mental time travel."
How it works
Researchers analyzed brain scans of people as the test subjects watched pictures on a computer screen. The images were divided into three categories: celebrities like Jack Nicholson and Halle Berry, places like the Taj Mahal and the Grand Canyon, and everyday objects like tweezers and a pocket mirror.
To make sure the subjects were paying attention, they were asked a question about each image as it came up, like whether they liked a certain celebrity, how much they wanted to visit a certain place or how often they used a certain object.
Later, without any images and while their brains were still being scanned, the subjects were asked to recall as many of the images as they could.
The researchers found that the patterns of brain activity associated with each picture "reinstated" themselves seconds before the people could verbally recall the memories. On average, the time between beginning brain activity associated with the memory and the subjects verbally stating the memory was about 5.4 seconds.
"When you have an experience, that experience is represented as a pattern of cortical activity," explained Sean Polyn, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania and leader of the study. "The memory system, which we think lives in the hippocampus, forms a sort of summary representation of everything that's going on in your cortex."
Googling your brain
The process can be compared to the way web crawlers work to browse and catalogue web pages on the Internet. Web crawlers are automated programs that create copies of all visited pages. Search engines like Google then tag and index the pages.
In the same way, as we're trying to remember something, our brains dredge up the memory by first recalling a piece of it, scientists say.
When trying to remember a face you saw recently, for example, you might first think broadly about faces and then narrow your search from there, enlisting new details as you go, Polyn explained. It's like adding more and more specific keywords to a Google search, until finally you find what you want.
Scientists call this process "contextual reinstatement."
"The memories that came up would be hits and the ones that most match your queries would be the ones that came up first," Polyn told LiveScience.
Reading your mind
The researchers were even able to do a little mind-reading by watching the search in progress.
By comparing the brain scans of the subjects while they tried to remember the images they'd seen with those collected when they first viewed the images, the researchers were able to correctly conclude whether the people were going to remember a celebrity, place or object.
"We can see some evidence of what category the subject is trying to recall before they even say anything, so we think we're visualizing the search process itself," Polyn said.
A similar mind-reading effort was announced earlier this year, when researchers found they could predict where a patient would move his hand based on brain activity the instant prior.
Scientists think that contextual reinstatement is unique to memories that involve personal experiences, so-called "episodic" memories, but that similar processes might be at work in other forms of memory.
The study was detailed in the Dec. 23 issue of the journal Science.
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By Deborah Zabarenko
Reuters
Thu Dec 22, 2:05 PM ET
WASHINGTON - Two days after a U.S. judge struck down the teaching of intelligent design theory in a Pennsylvania public school, the journal Science on Thursday proclaimed evolution the breakthrough of 2005.
Wide-ranging research published this year, including a study that showed a mere 4 percent difference between human and chimpanzee DNA, built on Charles Darwin's landmark 1859 work "The Origin of Species" and the idea of natural selection, the journal's editors wrote.
"Amid this outpouring of results, 2005 stands out as a banner year for uncovering the intricacies of how evolution actually proceeds," they wrote. "Ironically, also this year, some segments of American society fought to dilute the teaching of even the basic facts of evolution."
The journal's editor in chief, Don Kennedy, acknowledged this was a reference to the rise of the theory of intelligent design, which holds that some aspects of nature are so complex that they must be the work of an unnamed creator rather than the result of random natural selection, as Darwin argued.
Opponents, including many scientists, argue it is a thinly disguised version of creationism -- a belief that the world was created by God as described in the Book of Genesis -- which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled may not be taught in public schools.
"I think what arouses the ire of scientists (about intelligent design) is ... the notion that it belongs in the same universe as scientific analysis," Kennedy said in a telephone interview.
"It's a hypothesis that's not testable, and one of the important recognition factors for science and scientific ideas is the notion of testability, that you can go out and do an experiment and learn from it and change your idea," said Kennedy. "That's just not possible with a notion that's as much a belief in spirituality as intelligent design is."
Intelligent design theory came under review in two U.S. states this year, with a federal judge in Pennsylvania on Tuesday banning the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in the Dover Area School District.
In Kansas, the state Board of Education approved public school standards that cast doubt on evolutionary theory.
Kennedy said Science picked evolution as the year's biggest breakthrough in part because it was a "hot topic," but stressed there was a wealth of research that justified the choice.
Other breakthroughs in the journal's Top 10 include research in planetary exploration, the molecular biology of flowers, the violent ways of neutron stars, the relationship between genetics and abnormal human behavior, the new field of cosmochemistry, a protein that controls the flow of potassium ions to cells, fresh evidence of global warming, an engineering approach to molecular biology and superconductivity.
Areas to watch for in 2006, according to Science, include the avian flu, ultra-high-energy cosmic rays and the possible sighting of the ivory-billed woodpecker, long presumed extinct but rediscovered in 2004.
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December 16, 2005
By Maurizio Molinari
Translated By Enrico Del Sero
La Stampa
Doctors call it hymenoplasty while marketing experts prefer "revirgination," but whatever one calls it, it is the newest trend in American plastic surgery, and it allows women to regain their virginity. It's as though nothing had happened until then. Clinics offering the plastic hymens (price ranges from $1,800 to $5,000) from New England to the Midwest to California, register an increasing number of women wanting to give their partners a new "first time" after years of cohabitation or marriage. Sometimes they do so to get their relationships out of trouble.
But according to "Esmeralda" - a magazine edited by Cuban-American Esmeralda Vanegas that promotes hymenoplasty in her clinic in Queens [NY] – there are many cases of women who, in order to win over a new partner and demonstrate to him that they really want to leave the past behind, gamble on presenting themselves as absolutely immaculate when the time for the full sexual act arrives. Then there are underage girls of Hispanic or Muslim origin who regret losing their virginity with the wrong person, and so opt for plastic surgery to convince their relatives and future husbands that nothing ever happened.
Older women often ask for specific operations: some want more than just a brand new hymen, and ask for additional attention, such as a narrowing of the vagina for their partners to enjoy deeper pleasure. Dr. Edward Jacobson of Greenwich, one of the exclusive cities in Connecticut, not only benefits from his local popularity, but looks outside of the domestic market, offering through his Web site "vaginal makeover" packages to non American patients, that includes airfare, limousine service and hotel accommodation.
American women seeking to regain their virginity are so numerous that the Ethics Committee of the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology last year tried to get a handle on the procedure by sending a letter to each of its members to warning them of the sanitary risks involved with a technique "ignored by medical literature," since the procedure is not mentioned in medicine literature of taught at American medical schools.
Being an unofficial medical practice, it represents a risk for patients, whose actual number cannot be worked out. It is basically a commercial phenomenon sought out by women and performed by an increasing number of plastic surgeons.
The discontent over this phenomenon has affected feminists and traditional Catholic and Muslim women alike, who are finally fighting together on the same front.
Ultraliberal women regret the triumph of greatest myth of chauvinist culture, while ultraconservatives fear a further weakening of the institution of virginity, and believe that this must be kept until a woman is married. Both the Democratic myth of an emancipated woman and the Republican hope of a revival of family values appear jeopardized by long lines of women booking revirgination operations.
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By Barnaby Feder
The New York Times
DECEMBER 21, 2005
Silver, one of humankind's first weapons against bacteria, is receiving new respect for its antiseptic powers thanks to the growing ability of researchers to tinker with its molecular structure.
Doctors prescribed silver to fight infections at least as far back as the days of ancient Greece and Egypt. Their knowledge was absorbed by Rome, where historians like Pliny the Elder reported that silver plasters caused wounds to close rapidly. More recently, in 1884, a German doctor named C.S.F. Crede demonstrated that putting a few drops of silver nitrate into the eyes of babies born to women with venereal disease virtually eliminated the high rates of blindness among such infants.
But silver's time-tested if poorly understood versatility as a disinfectant was overshadowed in the latter half of the 20th century by the rise of antibiotics.
Now, with more and more bacteria developing resistance to antibiotic drugs, some researchers and health care entrepreneurs have returned to silver for another look. This time around, they are armed with nanotechnology, a fast-developing collection of products and skills that helps researchers deploy silver compounds in ways that maximize the availability of silver ions - the element's most potent form. Scientists also now have a better understanding of the weaknesses of their microbial adversaries.
One of the urgent goals is to prevent bacterial infections that each year strike 2 million hospital patients in the United States and kill 90,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Such infections are usually treated with large doses of antibiotics and sometimes with repeat surgeries. They cost the U.S. health care system roughly $4.5 billion annually, and the challenge is growing with the spread of drug-resistant microbes.
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By RAY HENRY
Associated Press
Dec 22, 2005
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - It's a Charlie Brown Christmas for Rhode Island's official Christmas tree. The 18-foot Colorado blue spruce lost its needles and died after Statehouse workers dried it with commercial fans and sprayed it with a fire-retardant chemical. The workers were following the stringent new fire code enacted after a nightclub blaze in Rhode Island nearly three years ago killed 100 people.
The pathetic-looking tree was hustled out of the building Wednesday night.
Gov. Donald Carcieri sheepishly explained the tree's demise and suggested the state might get an artificial replacement next year.
"With the new fire code, we're supposed to spray it," he told WPRO-AM. "And apparently the spray killed it."
Rhode Island law designates Christmas trees as "flammable vegetation" and regulates their display in public buildings. Until recently, Christmas trees in public buildings had to be doused with fire retardant, said Tom Coffey, executive director of the Fire Safety Code Board of Appeal and Review.
The state lifted that requirement on Dec. 6, Coffey said, but that was too late for the Statehouse tree, which was put up Nov. 25.
Lawmakers overhauled the fire code after the February 2003 blaze at a West Warwick nightclub. At first, the code banned Christmas trees in public buildings, but tree farmers fought earlier this year to have that section removed in exchange for safeguards that include posting the tree's watering schedule nearby.
A properly watered tree is not a fire hazard, said Al Bettencourt, executive director of Rhode Island's Farm Bureau, who once tried proving the point on cable TV.
"First we tried to light it with matches — couldn't do it," he said. "Then we took out a 50,000-BTU blowtorch and we turned that onto the tree."
The pine crackled, he said, but never caught fire.
Bettencourt and a team of farmers rushed Thursday to get a replacement tree. The task proved complicated because the law also requires a fire marshal to be on hand when a tree destined for public display is cut down, to ensure freshness.
"This one will not be sprayed," promised Steve Kass, a spokesman for the governor.
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Dec 22, 2005
LOS ANGELES - Astronomers aided by the
Hubble Space Telescope have spied two more rings encircling Uranus, the first additions to the planet's ring system in nearly two decades.
The faint, dusty rings orbit outside of Uranus' previously known rings, but within the orbits of its large moons, said Mark Showalter, an astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., who made the discovery.
Details will appear online Friday in the journal Science. The discovery, announced Thursday, means scientists now believe the seventh planet from the sun possesses 13 rings.
In 1986, Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft to zip past Uranus and beam back thousands of images of its dazzling rings and numerous moons. It found two new rings in addition to the nine previously discovered from Earth.
Scientists peering through the Hubble Space Telescope made the latest ring discoveries in 2004. Then they went back to process hundreds of images taken by Voyager and found the rings in the pictures. Scientists speculate that the rings may not have been discovered during the spacecraft flyby because of their faintness.
The newly discovered rings are made up of short-lived, faint bands of dust grains that are constantly being replenished by erosion of larger space bodies. Scientist think the dust in the outermost ring is being supplied by the moon Mab, discovered in 2003.
Scientists also measured changes in the orbits of Uranus' inner moons since 1994. The new measurements suggest the moons are in a "random and chaotic" fashion, said Jack Lissauer of the
NASA Ames Research Center.
Because of the moons' instability, scientists think the satellites will collide with one another in the next few million years.
Uranus, four times the diameter of Earth, is one of the solar system's giant, gaseous planets that also include Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune.
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spaceweather.com
23 Dec 2005
If you get a telescope for Christmas, point it at Mars--fast! The red planet is receding from Earth at a speed of 30,000 mph and shrinking as it goes.
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spaceweather.com
23 Dec 2005
It's happening again: For the second time in less than a week, a sunspot is materializing before our very eyes. Just yesterday sunspot 838 was a barely-visible speck. Now it is wider than the planet Neptune.
Sometimes, the magnetic fields of fast-growing sunspots become unstable and explode. The magnetic field of sunspot 838, however, does not appear to harbor energy for strong flares. Stay tuned for updates.
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Dec 19 2005
CBC News
A couple in Central Newfoundland has had a close encounter with a mysterious object that appeared to fall from the sky at a high speed.
"I would say [it was] the size of a chicken, probably," says Joanne Knee, who says her experience on Friday afternoon reminded her of the story of Chicken Little.
Knee and her husband were driving from Gander to Carmanville when an object narrowly missed their truck.
She said the beige-coloured rock hit the ground so close to the truck that when it exploded, shards damaged the front grill and a signal light.
"It was such an explosion from it," she said.
"It was just [as] if someone had shot off a gun in the truck. It was just amazing."
Knee and her husband returned to the spot Saturday to find a pile of charcoal-like rock.
They picked up a sample, and after a little digging observed that a cylindrical piece of the material was lodged deep into the side of the road.
Knee said there was no sign of construction or of people working in the area.
Joe Hodych, who teaches earth sciences at Memorial University, said it is possible that the object came from space, and that he is anxious to see the sample.
"Meteorites are very rare. So most reports turn out not to be meteorites in the end," Hodych said.
"But they're extremely important to science."
Knee hopes someone like Hodych will analyze the rock.
However, Knee would like to keep at least a part of the rock as a souvenir.
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Dec 21, 2005
NEWS 6 NEWSBOX
What's being described as a big boom shook houses along the coast late Tuesday afternoon. Phone calls started pouring into the newsroom shortly after 4:00, with people questioning what the noise was. Now WECT has obtained a tape with the boom recorded on it.
Alex Markowski is a professor at UNC Wilmington and a sound engineer working at the Screen Gems Studio in Wilmington. Tuesday afternoon, during a recording session with a crew from the NBC series Surface, the low frequency waves from the boom picked up sound on Markowski's equipment.
The boom could be felt from Ogden to Carolina Beach and in some cases Brunswick County. Some people described it as a loud bang. Others say it was like several explosions. They say their windows rattled and homes shook under the force.
WECT called 911 centers around the area. There were no reports of any accidents or damage in relation to the bangs. Officials at the nuclear power plant didn't report any problems either. Right now, authorities are just not sure what caused the noise.
One theory is a natural phenomena called Seneca Guns. It's never been fully explained but people along the coast have talked about it for centuries. Some say the sound originates when chunks of the continental shelf drop into the Atlantic Ocean.
It doesn't just happen along the coast. In fact, the name comes from Seneca Lake in New York where the big booms have been heard for years.
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Created: 19.12.2005 11:39 MSK (GMT 3), Updated: 12:02 MSK
Komsomolskaya Pravda
Russian intelligence agencies have repeatedly stated that no UFOs have ever been spotted over Russian territory. However, witnesses from the general public continue to contradict these reports with stories of their personal encounters with the paranormal.
Moscow newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda has put together the most reliable of these reports and come up with a list of UFO sightings in Russia and other post-Soviet countries for 2005.
Crop Circles
This year 18 cases of crop circles have been reported in Russia’s regions — this is six cases more than last year and almost twice the number for 2003.
Mysterious signs were seen in all parts of the country — as far afield as the Komi Republic and the Far East, and as close to Moscow as the Voronezh and Novgorod regions. But just like last year, the southern Krasnodar region has had more crop circles than any other region.
Meanwhile, local people are not too thrilled by the unexplainable phenomena. In fact they are more troubled by ufologists who put up their tents in the fields, hoping to catch the unknown artists red-handed.
UFO Caught on Film at the Yenisei River
“This May I took visiting relatives out to see an ice drift on the Yenisei,” nurse Raisa Kireyeva from the town of Igarka says.
“We stopped at the bank, I was speaking and gesturing and my son was taking pictures. We neither heard nor saw anything suspicious or unusual, so we were totally shocked to see some object hanging in the air over my head when we had the photographs printed.”
The woman took the picture and the negative to the Eternal Frost Museum.
At first the experts were skeptical about the photograph... “We’ve had so many of them.” But after an examination they had to admit the strange object in the picture was neither a fake nor faulty film.
“We checked all the negatives,” the director of the Eternal Frost Museum’s department in Igarka, Alexander Toshchev, said.
“But even when we magnified the image many times, the ’saucer’ remained very distinct.”
Astronomers Prove Continuous Reports of UFOs Over the Crimea
For many years people have reported the UFOs they have spotted in the sky above the Crimea in Ukraine, in the seaside city of Yalta. Astronomers at Crimea’s Physical Astronomy Observatory decided to finally prove or disprove these reports.
The researchers indeed located a reddish ball that floated in the sky for about ten minutes, slowly changing its color from red to light yellow, and leaving a path of smoke in its wake.
The astronomers estimated the UFO was about 400 km away. So, in theory, the object could actually have been a secret flying device that the Turks were testing across the sea.
Extra Terrestrials Trim Russian Watermelons
This September bright luminous orange-colored objects, round in shape, became a familiar sight in the village of Yevseyevka in the Primorye region of Russia’s Far East. Enormous lights moved across the sky in the evenings, disappearing from view and then returning again.
The balls demonstrated strange ’behavior’: they froze for some time, started moving again, changed their path of motion, sent out rays of light towards one another and what’s more, each ball beamed bright lights towards the ground.
A local farmer conducted an experiment on Sept., 7. When the balls appeared in the dark sky, Yuri Galayev took his torch and signaled to one of the balls, turning the torch on and off. The ball responded immediately with identical signals.
The next morning when the Galayevs went to their watermelons field they noticed a weird pattern on one of the watermelons. They remembered the day before the pattern had not been there, and came to the conclusion it was a note from their night visitors.
The watermelon was taken to a well-known Primorye biologist and ufologist Valery Dvuzhilny.
“I studied the fruit, both the healthy and the impacted tissue,” Dvuzhilny said.
“This could not be done by insects, bacteria nor by some fungi — none of these could produce such a symmetrical pattern.”
The patterned watermelon is not an isolated case in the region. In September 2002 two watermelons with complicated pictograms on them were found in the field of farmer Nikolai Schislyayev.
“Well, let them draw, I don’t care as long as they don’t steal from the field,” the farmer said.
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23 Dec 2005
AP
PORTSMOUTH, R.I. - A clam that a Portsmouth couple thought was rotten turned out to hold a rare gem: a purple pearl that could be worth lots of money.
It happened earlier this month when Barbara Krensavage brought home about four dozen quahogs from a Newport seafood restaurant. Her husband, Thaddeus or "Ted," was shucking them when he came across one he thought was diseased. Upon closer inspection, the couple found the pearl.
"We're finding out there's only a handful on earth," Barbara Krensavage said. "We were excited, biting it and everything."
Some experts estimate that only 1 in 100,000 quahog clams contains a pearl, and 1 in 20 of those pearls is of gem quality. That puts the odds on the Krensavages' find at 1 in 2 million, according to The Providence Journal.
Antoinette Matlins, author of "The Pearl Book: the Definitive Buying Guide," said the Krensavages' pearl, perfectly round and about the size of a large pea, might be valued in the thousands of dollars, though she hasn't seen it. But that estimate could rise depending on the value of two purple quahog pearls featured in a $14 brooch bought five years ago by the partner of Newport antique dealer Alan Golash.
The brooch is included in the American Museum of Natural History's international pearl exhibit, now in Japan. The exhibition will move to Australia for much of 2006, and then to the Persian Gulf and London in 2007.
"You might sell something now for $20,000 or $25,000, which seems like a huge amount for a single pearl," Matlins said, "but then somebody might turn around and bid $1 million for the Alan Golash pearl. Then, the person who sold it for $20,000 or $25,000 would be kicking themselves."
The couple have set the gem in a gold ring — at least for now.
"If it's worth $10,000, we'll probably keep it, it'll be a family treasure," Ted Krensavage said. "But if it's worth more than a quarter million, we might put it up for auction."
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David Highfield
(KDKA)
Dec 21, 2005
Part of the mystery is that the ‘blue ice’ that has been reported is actually purple.
KDKA’ David Highfield reported the purple splotches in the snow on Monday night. The report sparked phone calls and e-mails from several other people claiming to also have ‘blue ice’ in their yards.
The FAA doesn't have the people to investigate each claim, but they are investigating the original case in Butler County.
The question is whether or not the purple splotches could be blue ice.
‘Blue ice’ is toilet waste that leaks from airplanes.
“It's highly unlikely,” said Nicole Begley, of the National Aviary. “I don't want to speculate on what it was, but it would take a rather large flock of fruit eating birds.
“Most of those fruit eating birds have moved on.”
Begley also said that there's not much fresh fruit left around and that birds don't normally defecate all at the same time while in flight.
“There was actually toilet paper inside that purple stuff,” said Stan Walchesky, of Jefferson Township. “I said this ain’t birds.”
“The risks of blue ice from a health perspective are relatively small,” said Dr. Bruce Dixon, of the Allegheny County Health Department.
Dr. Dixon says people can hose it off in better weather to prevent stains and that there's no reason to worry about your dogs.
“The issue is much more aesthetic,” Dr. Dixon said. “People don't like the idea of human excrement being dispersed throughout the air and landing on their property.
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SOTT
December 23, 2005
4D: Behind the Curtain
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