The Mt. Diablo Peace & Justice Center

A Circle in a Spiral

2006-09-01T12:24:00.000-07:00

OpEdNews.com
August 31, 2006
A Circle in a Spiral
By Missy Comley Beattie

'War, like a slash-and-burn fire, never dies. It simply hops from one field to the next, burning everything in its wake.' Home Front: Viet Nam and Families at War, by Willard D. Gray

When my nephew Chase called his grandparents from Iraq, he would ask my mother, "Gigi, what kind of car do you think I should buy when I come home?" She believes that he was trying to assuage her fears--the worst of which arrived August 7, 2005, when my sister Laura delivered the news from our brother Mark who simply couldn't tell our parents. The Marines had come to him in the middle of the night with the message that no family should have to bear. George Bush has said during a recent press conference that our troops will remain in Iraq as long as he is president, a statement denying the mounting sentiment against the war. Soon after, an announcement was made that thousands of Marines in the Individual Ready Reserve have been ordered back to active duty. If Chase had returned home in October, uninjured from his first tour, he could be in Iraq now. Some from his battalion are.

"Maybe we didn't try hard enough to talk him out of enlisting," my mother says over and over. "What if" is something else we ponder.

And, of course, there's the abyss of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Would the experience of war have changed Chase? How could it not? I am half way through the powerful book Home Front: Viet Nam and Families at War sent by its author, Willard Gray, who began corresponding after reading some of my articles. Gray's work is a tour of duty and dedication to the truth of military combat. He tells the stories of 12 families forever changed by the experience of Viet Nam, families who either lost a loved one to death or to a war that has never left their lives. If a son, husband, father, daughter, wife, mother (It is estimated that about 7,500 women served in Viet Nam) returned alive, he or she brought the horrors of warfare home, suffering and portioning out pain to those desperate to recover what was there before war. Some committed suicide after years of self-medicating; others were diagnosed with illnesses that resulted from Agent Orange exposure. Regardless of the symptoms, physical, psychological, or a combination of the two, war was the genesis.

Take Frank Hayes. His family watched and participated in the battles he fought after returning from Viet Nam. Gray, writing about Frank's son Joe, says, 'He talks about alcohol and rage, abuse and defiance. He talks about no ground beneath him. About spiritual free-fall. He talks about chaos.'In the book, Frank is quoted, '...every day is a struggle to suppress memories and keep anger down.'Gray writes about Frank:

Viet Nam has left him with a healthy skepticism of the U.S. government, especially its actions abroad. He's not adverse to the occasional conspiracy theory. He makes no bones when it comes to his own country's hypocrisy.

'In America,' he pontificates, 'everything is backward. The Christians are screaming for war. The priests are molesting the flock. Dissent is an act of cowardice. Conformists call themselves patriots.'

Willard Gray, himself, is a casualty of the Viet Nam War. His oldest son served more than two years as a Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC) trained medic and came home a completely changed man. Plus, Gray is a casualty of another conflict--World War II, having joined the Army in 1944 with the promise of life-time health care.

That promise was a lie:
More precisely, they, along with the other branches of the service, under the direction of the original War Department (later designated the Department of Defense), made promises they would not be able to keep except as Congress legislated.

Congress sees fit to change the law by legislation. It is the only authority with the power to insure such promises, and it has done so in a very profound way in the instance of military retirees. In the mid-1990s, after enduring years of marginal and partial health care, Korean War vets and old-timers from World War II like myself were simply cut off, victims of budget cuts by the same legislators who regularly invoked, and still invoke, the mantra of "support our troops." On attaining age 65 and no longer subject to recall to active duty, we were told to make do with Medicare. Medicare did not even exist when I retired.

Continuing, Gray writes:

From the late Richard Nixon to George W. Bush, presidential hopefuls have been promising to make good on America's debt to its retirees only to balk later, citing, as always, budget constraints.I've paid upwards of $155,000.00 over the years in health insurance and supplements alone. This was my money which my family could have used. This is money I thought I had earned in combat and in peacetime. Medicare Part B (which didn't even exist when I retired), Civilian Health and Medical Program for the Uniformed Services (CHAMPUS), TRICARE--I've outlived enough programs and acronyms to know a lemon when I taste one.

Patriotism, the trump card of the cynical and self-serving or refuge for the scoundrel, is a hollow word to those of us who gave our best only to be forgotten by an ungrateful nation.The tragicomedy plays out the same with each new generation. A threat is perceived. A call to arms is issued. And mortal sacrifice is demanded from the healthy young, to whom we promise veneration and dignified care in the years to come. When the threat is gone and the healthy young have served their country, we turn to other things. When the young grow old and need a return on their investment more desperately than ever, the same country that gratefully accepted their collective sacrifice denies them.

While reading Gray's words, I cannot help but substitute Iraq for Viet Nam. It is what I did when I read Howard Zinn's chapter about Viet Nam in his book, A People's History of the United States. And as I do this, I see our troops, returning from the long war that was packaged as a 'cakewalk.' Their families will be so happy to have them safe at home. But they will bring the anguish of war back with them and dispense this excruciating pain to those they love. Some will receive treatment if it's available. Others will remain psychologically locked in Iraq for the rest of their lives. Any loud noise will be a trigger. A gentle touch may elicit violence.

Rep. John Murtha has told us that 'war sears the soul.' Willard Gray says the same. Each family in Gray's book is testimony to this truth. Read it and cry for what we lost in Viet Nam. For the almost 60,000 dead troops, those who returned scarred by what they did and saw, and the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who perished or were injured. Read it and cry that our leaders have forgotten this war that was supposed to teach us a lesson.

And imagine Iraq--the recapitulation of a horror we have just begun to see--an epic tragedy perpetrated in our names.

Authors Bio: Missy Beattie lives in New York City. She's written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. An outspoken critic of the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, she's a member of Gold Star Families for Peace. She completed a novel last year, but since the death of her nephew, Marine Lance Cpl. Chase J. Comley, in Iraq on August 6,'05, she has been writing political articles.

Soldiers Die, CEO's Prosper

2006-09-01T12:20:00.000-07:00

Soldiers Die, CEO's Prosper
By Derrick Jackson
Boston Globe

More than 2,600 US soldiers have died in Iraq. July's toll for Iraqi civilians was 3,500, the deadliest month of the US occupation. Iraq's civil war is on pace to kill 25,000 to 30,000 civilians by year's end. If you add in the tens of thousands of deaths from the 2003 invasion (we do not know the exact number because the Pentagon won't comment), researchers will inevitably say that the body count has crossed 100,000.

All of this madness to stop a madman, Saddam Hussein.

The litany of US mistakes and excessive force has the Pentagon commissioning at least two secret strategy studies in Afghanistan and Iraq. "This is a struggle for the soul of the Army," said Colonel Peter Mansoor, the head of the Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center.

Just as odorous, a mountain of corporate cash grows next to the piles of bodies. In this bizarre war where Iraqi civilians fear both suicide bombers and the United States, the biggest sacrifice that President Bush asked of American civilians was to get on a plane and show those terrorists a thing or two by going to Disney World.

Defense contractors took that request to a logical extreme. They built their own fantasy land.

There is no evidence of a contractor having a soul in the 13th annual Executive Excess CEO survey by the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank, and the Boston-based United for a Fair Economy. The report found that 34 defense CEOs have been paid nearly $1 billion since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

As soldiers have died in displaying personal patriotism, the pay gap between soldiers and defense CEOs has exploded. Before 9/11, the gap between CEOs of publicly traded companies and army privates was already a galling 190 to 1. Today, it is 308 to 1. The average army private makes $25,000 a year. The average defense CEO makes $7.7 million.

"Did this surprise us? No, because we've been watching since Sept. 11," said Betsy Leondar-Wright, communications director for United for a Fair Economy. "While the rest of us were worrying about terrorism and mourning the people who died, the CEOs were maneuvering their companies to take advantage of fear and changing oil supply, not just for competition but for personal enrichment."

The top profiteers after 9/11 were the CEOs of United Technologies ($200 million), General Dynamics ($65 million), Lockheed Martin ($50 million), and Halliburton ($49 million). Other firms where CEO pay the last four years added up to $25 million to $45 million were Textron, Engineered Support Systems, Computer Sciences, Alliant Techsystems, Armor Holding, Boeing, Health Net, ITT Industries, Northrop Grumman, Oshkosh Truck, URS, and Raytheon.

While Army privates died overseas earning $25,000 a year, David Brooks, the disgraced former CEO of body-armor maker DHB, made $192 million in stock sales in 2004. He staged a reported $10 million bat mitzvah for his daughter. The 2005 pay package for Halliburton CEO David Lesar, head of the firm that most symbolizes the occupation's waste, overcharges, and ghost charges on no-bid contracts, was $26 million, according to the report's analysis of federal Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

"Those examples take the cake, especially because it's all related to their government contracts, which is money straight out of the taxpayer's pocket," Leondar-Wright said.

The Executive Excess report, with the help of the Wall Street Journal's 2006 survey of executive compensation, made similar observations of oil executives as their firms enjoy record profits during war. The pay gap between the average oil and gas CEO and the average oil worker is 518 to 1. The general national CEO to worker gap is 411 to 1. The report said that the typical oil construction laborer would have to work 4,279 years to match the $95 million pay last year for Valero Energy CEO William Greehey.

This is so out of line that the authors of the Executive Excess report recommend wartime pay restraints for defense CEOs and a permanent congressional watchdog panel for contract fraud and waste. Companies that cannot adhere to restraints should be ineligible for contracts, they said.

The report said "democracies decay when one segment of society flourishes at another's expense." Leondar-Wright said, "It is now at the point where we have lost any sense of proportion. There is no sense of shared sacrifice, no sense that we're all in this together." Spreading democracy to Iraq is far-fetched when defense and oil CEOs speed its decay at home. They are all in it for themselves, at our expense.

100,000 Unexploded Cluster Bombs Haunt Lebanon

2006-09-01T12:16:00.000-07:00

Video: 100,000 Unexploded Cluster Bombs Haunt Lebanon
09/01/2006 @ 11:18 am
Filed by David Edwards
Raw Story

The United Nations reports that there may be up to 100,000 unexploded cluster bombs scattered throughout southern Lebanon.

Israel is expected to provided maps of bombed areas to facilitate locating the cluster bombs. Even with Israel's maps, the UN Mine Clearing Center estimates that it will take over a year to clean up the unexploded ordinance.

Although cluster bombs are often referred to by the military and the media as "laser-guided precision weapons," their targeting is not precise. The bombs can indiscriminately affect an area several kilometers square. Many smaller, grenade-sized "bomblets" released from each cluster bomb aggravate the destruction.

International law forbids the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas. Jan Egeland, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, expresses disappointment with what the UN's clearing teams are finding on the ground. "They are shocked," he says, "by seeing how many unexploded bombs, grenades, mines, and especially cluster bomb bomblets there are."

Egeland estimates around 100,000 such objects are littered on the surface, most from Israeli forces in the final days of the war. He questions the use of numerous cluster bombs prior to the ceasefire, and wonders why so many were left unexploded.

Dr. Paul Cornish of the Royal Institute of International Affairs concludes that Israel's late bombing offensive was meant to turn the entire region of Lebanon into a "no-go zone," denying southern Lebanon to Hezbollah and/or returning Lebanese civilians.

The U.S. State Department is investigating if Israel improperly used American-made cluster bombs in civilian areas. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan suspended bomb shipments for 6 years due to similar abuses.

The following video report was produced by ITN and first broadcast by UK Channel 4 on August 31, 2006.

NSA Update: New State Department Releases on the "Future of Iraq" Project

2006-09-01T12:13:00.000-07:00

National Security Archive Update, September 1, 2006
New State Department Releases on the "Future of Iraq" Project
New Documents Provide Details on Budgets, Interagency Coordination and Working Group Progress
Posting Includes State's 13-Volume Study Previously Released Under FOIA

For more information contact:Farrah Hassen or Malcolm Byrne626/347-8214, 202/994-7000
http://www.nsarchive.org

Washington, DC, 1 September 2006 - The National Security Archive is today posting State Department documents from 2002 tracing the inception of the "Future of Iraq Project," alongside the final, mammoth 13-volume study, previously obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

"The Future of Iraq Project" was one of the most comprehensive U.S. government planning efforts for raising that country out of the ashes of combat and establishing a functioning democracy. The "Future of Iraq" study, released earlier this year to the National Security Archive and other requesters under the FOIA, remains the single most important documentary record for understanding U.S. reconstruction planning.The new materials complement previous postings on the Archive's site relating to the United States' complex relationship with Iraq during the years leading up to the 2003 invasion.

The documents posted today were culled from 124 documents released in full and 77 with excisions from State's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. These materials provide a behind-the-scenes look at the formation of 17 working groups consisting of "free" Iraqis and experts, 14 of which met throughout 2002 and early 2003 to plan for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.Follow the link below to read the documents and analysis from the National Security Archive.

NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals.

Hezbollah: Learning from it's Mistakes

2006-08-28T12:17:00.001-07:00

Learning from Its Mistakes
Charles Glass
The London Review of Books

In his memoir, Not So Wild a Dream, the famous CBS correspondent Eric Sevareid recalled watching the execution of six Nazi collaborators in the newly liberated city of Grenoble in 1944.
When the police van arrived and the six who were to die stepped out, a tremendous and awful cry arose from the crowd. The six young men walked firmly to the iron posts, and as their hands were tied behind the shafts they held their bare heads upright, one or two with closed eyes, the others staring over the line of the buildings and the crowd into the lowering clouds . . . There was the jarring, metallic noise of rifle bolts and then the sharp report. The six young men slid slowly to their knees, their heads falling to one side. An officer ran with frantic haste from one to the other, giving the coup de grâce with a revolver, and one of the victims was seen to work his mouth as though trying to say something to the executioner. As the last shot was fired, the terrible, savage cry rose again from the crowd. Mothers with babies rushed forward to look on the bodies at close range, and small boys ran from one to the other spitting upon the bodies. The crowd dispersed, men and women laughing and shouting at one another. Barbarous?

Such events were part of what the French described as the épuration – the purification or purging of France after four years of German occupation. The number of French men and women killed by the Resistance or kangaroo courts is usually put at ten thousand. Camus called this ‘human justice with all its defects’. The American forces that liberated France tolerated local vengeance against those who had worked for a brutal occupier. Thousands of French people, encouraged by a government in Vichy that they believed to be legitimate, had collaborated. Many, like the Milices, fascist gangs armed by Vichy, went further and killed Frenchmen. When Vichy’s foreign sponsors withdrew and its government fell, the killing began. Accounts were settled with similar violence in other provinces of the former Third Reich – countries which, along with Britain and the United States, we now think of as the civilised world.

From 1978 to 2000 Israel occupied slices of Lebanon from their common border right up to Beirut and back again. To reduce the burden on its own forces, the Israelis created a species of Milice in the form of the locally recruited South Lebanon Army – first under Major Saad Haddad, who had broken from the Lebanese army in 1976 with a few hundred men, and later under General Antoine Lahad. Both were Christians, and their troops – armed, trained, fed and clothed by Israel – were mainly Shia Muslims from the south. About a third of the force, which grew to almost 10,000, were Christians. Some joined because they resented the Palestinians’ armed presence in south Lebanon. Others enlisted because they needed the money: the region has always been Lebanon’s poorest. The SLA had a reputation for cruelty, confirmed when its torture chambers at Khiam were opened after the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, and for a high rate of desertions.

As Israel pulled back from Beirut, the high-water mark reached during its 1982 invasion, its share of Lebanon contracted further and further. Having seized 3560 square kilometres, about a third of the country, containing around 800 towns and villages, Israel found itself in 1985 with only 500 square kilometres and 61 villages, mostly deserted. Hizbullah, which led the resistance that had forced the Israelis to abandon most of their conquest, demanded the unconditional return of all Lebanese territory. Its attacks intensified, resulting in a loss of IDF soldiers that became unpalatable to most Israelis. The Israeli army placed the SLA between itself and Hizbullah so that it could pay the price that Israel had decided it could not afford. Hizbullah kidnapped SLA men, and the SLA and Israelis kidnapped Shias. The two sides killed each other, as well as many civilians, and blood feuds were born. On 17 May 1999, Israelis elected Ehud Barak on the strength of his promise to reverse Ariel Sharon’s Lebanon adventure, which had by then cost around a thousand Israeli lives.

Barak announced that Israel would pull out in an orderly fashion in July 2000, provided that Lebanon agreed to certain conditions. The Lebanese government, urged by Hizbullah, rejected these conditions and demanded full Israeli withdrawal in accordance with UN Resolutions 425 and 426 of 1978. Barak abandoned Lebanon two months ahead of schedule, suddenly and without advance warning, on 23 May 2000. His SLA clients and other Lebanese who had worked for the occupation over the previous 22 years were caught off guard. A few escaped into Israel, but most remained. UN personnel made urgent appeals for help to avert a massacre by Hizbullah. Hizbullah went in, but nothing happened.

The deputy secretary-general and co-founder of Hizbullah, Sheikh Naim Qassem, wrote a fascinating if partisan account of the creation and rise of Hizbullah. His version of the events in 2000 is, however, borne out by eyewitnesses from other Lebanese sects – including some who stood to lose their lives – and the UN. ‘It is no secret that some young combatants, as well as some of the region’s citizens, had a desire for vengeance – especially those who were aware of what collaborators and their families had inflicted on the mujahedin and their next of kin across the occupied villages,’ Qassem wrote in Hizbullah: The Story from Within. ‘Resistance leadership issued a strict warning forbidding any such action and vowing to discipline those who took it whatever the justifications.’ Hizbullah captured Israeli weapons, which it is now using against Israel, and turned over SLA militiamen to the government without murdering any of them. Barbarous?

Naim Qassem called the liberation of south Lebanon ‘the grandest and most important victory over Israel since it commenced its occupation [of Palestine] fifty years before – a liberation that was achieved at the hands of the weakest of nations, of a resistance operating through the most modest of means, not at the hands of armies with powerful military arsenals.’ But what impressed most Lebanese as much as Hizbullah’s victory over Israel was its refusal to murder collaborators – a triumph over the tribalism that has plagued and divided Lebanese society since its founding. Christians I knew in the Lebanese army admitted that their own side would have committed atrocities. Hizbullah may have been playing politics in Lebanon, but it refused to play Lebanese politics. What it sought in south Lebanon was not revenge, but votes. In the interval between its founding in 1982 and the victory of 2000, Hizbullah had become – as well as an armed force – a sophisticated and successful political party. It jettisoned its early rhetoric about making Lebanon an Islamic republic, and spoke of Christians, Muslims and Druze living in harmony. When it put up candidates for parliament, some of those on its electoral list were Christians. It won 14 seats.

Like Israel’s previous enemies, Hizbullah relies on the weapons of the weak: car bombs, ambushes, occasional flurries of small rockets and suicide bombers. The difference is that it uses them intelligently, in conjunction with an uncompromising political programme. Against Israel’s thousand dead on the Lebanese field, Hizbullah gave up 1276 ‘martyrs’. That is the closest any Arab group has ever come to parity in casualties with Israel. The PLO usually lost hundreds of dead commandos to Israel’s tens, and Hamas has seen most of its leaders assassinated and thousands of its cadres captured with little to show for it. Hizbullah’s achievement, perhaps ironically for a religious party headed by men in turbans, is that it belongs to the modern age. It videotaped its ambushes of Israeli convoys for broadcast the same evening. It captured Israeli soldiers and made Israel give up hundreds of prisoners to get them back. It used stage-set cardboard boulders that blew up when Israeli patrols passed. It flew drones over Israel to take reconnaissance photographs – just as the Israelis did in Lebanon. It had a website that was short on traditional Arab bombast and long on facts. If Israelis had faced an enemy like Hizbullah in 1948, the outcome of its War of Independence might have been different. Israel, whose military respect Hizbullah, is well aware of this.

That is why, having failed to eliminate Hizbullah while it occupied Lebanon, Israel is trying to destroy it now. Hizbullah’s unpardonable sin in Israel’s view is its military success. Israel may portray Hizbullah as the cat’s-paw of Syria and Iran, but its support base is Lebanese. Moreover, it does one thing that Syria and Iran do not: it fights for the Palestinians. On 12 July Hizbullah attacked an Israeli army unit, capturing two soldiers. It said it would negotiate indirectly to exchange them for Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners in Israel, as it has done in the past. It made clear that its attack was in support of the Palestinians under siege in Gaza after the capture of another Israeli soldier a week earlier. The whole Arab world had remained silent when Israel reoccupied the Gaza settlements and bombed the territory. Hizbullah’s response humiliated the Arab regimes, most of which condemned its actions, as much as it humiliated Israel. No one need have been surprised. Hizbullah has a long history of supporting the Palestinians. Many of its original fighters were trained by the PLO in the 1970s when the Shias had no militias of their own. Hizbullah risked the anger of Syria in 1986 when it sided against another Shia group which was attacking Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut. Hizbullah has never abandoned the Palestinian cause. Its capture last month of the two Israeli soldiers sent a message to Israel that it could not attack Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank without expecting a reaction.

On this occasion Israel, which regards its treatment of Palestinians under occupation as an internal affair in which neither the UN nor the Arab countries have any right to interfere, calibrated its response in such a way that it could not win. Instead of doing a quiet deal with Hizbullah to free its soldiers, it launched an all-out assault on Lebanon. Reports indicate that Israel has already dropped a greater tonnage of bombs on the country than it did during Sharon’s invasion in 1982. The stated purpose was to force a significant portion of the Lebanese to demand that the government disarm Hizbullah once and for all. That failed to happen. Israel’s massive destruction of Lebanon has had the effect of improving Hizbullah’s standing in the country. Its popularity had been low since last year, when it alone refused to demand the evacuation of the Syrian army after the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Hizbullah sensed that Washington was orchestrating the anti-Syrian campaign for its own – rather than Lebanon’s – benefit.

Syria had, after all, helped found Hizbullah after Israel’s invasion – and encouraged it to face down and defeat the occupation, as well as to drive the Americans from Lebanon. Syria in turn allowed Iran, whose religious leaders gave direction to Hizbullah and whose Revolutionary Guards provided valuable tactical instruction, to send weapons through its territory to Lebanon. Hizbullah’s leaders nevertheless have sufficiently strong support to assert their independence of both sponsors whenever their interests or philosophies clash. (I have first-hand, if minor, experience of this. When Hizbullah kidnapped me in full view of a Syrian army checkpoint in 1987, Syria insisted that I be released to show that Syrian control of Lebanon could not be flouted. Hizbullah, unfortunately, ignored the request.) Despite occasional Syrian pressure, Hizbullah has refused to go into combat against any other Lebanese militia. It remained aloof from the civil war and concentrated on defeating Israel and its SLA surrogates.

Hizbullah’s unspectacular showing in the first post-Syrian parliamentary elections was largely due to changes in electoral law but may also be traced in part to its perceived pro-Syrian stance. Now, Israel has rescued Hizbullah and made its secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, not only the most popular man in Lebanon – but in the whole Arab world. An opinion poll commissioned by the Beirut Centre for Research and Information found that 80 per cent of Lebanese Christians supported Hizbullah; the figure for other communities was even higher. It was not insignificant that, when false reports came in that Hizbullah had sunk a second Israeli warship, the area that fired the loudest celebratory shots in the air was Ashrafieh, the heart of Christian East Beirut. Unlike in 1982, when it could rely on some of the Christian militias, Israel now has no friends in Lebanon.

Israel misjudged Lebanon’s response to its assaults, just as Hizbullah misjudged Israeli opinion. Firing its rockets into Israel did not, as it may have planned, divide Israelis and make them call for an end to the war. Israelis, like the Lebanese, rallied to their fighters in a contest that is taking on life and death proportions for both countries. Unlike Israel, which has repeatedly played out the same failed scenario in Lebanon since its first attack on Beirut in 1968, Hizbullah has a history of learning from its mistakes. Seeing the Israeli response to his rocket bombardment of Haifa and Netanya in the north, Nasrallah has not carried out his threat to send rockets as far as Tel Aviv. He now says he will do this only if Israel targets the centre of Beirut.

If the UN had any power, or the United States exercised its power responsibly, there would have been an unconditional ceasefire weeks ago and an exchange of prisoners. The Middle East could then have awaited the next crisis. Crises will inevitably recur until the Palestine problem is solved. But Lebanon would not have been demolished, hundreds of people would not have died and the hatred between Lebanese and Israelis would not have become so bitter.

On 31 July, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said: ‘This is a unique opportunity to change the rules in Lebanon.’ Yet Israel itself is playing by the same old unsuccessful rules. It is ordering Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah or face destruction, just as in 1975 it demanded the dismantling of the PLO. Then, many Lebanese fought the PLO and destroyed the country from within. Now, they reason, better war than another civil war: better that the Israelis kill us than that we kill ourselves. What else can Israel do to them? It has bombed comprehensively, destroyed the country’s expensively restored infrastructure, laid siege to it and sent its troops back in. Israel still insists that it will destroy Hizbullah in a few weeks, although it did not manage to do so between 1982 and 2000 when it had thousands of troops on the ground and a local proxy force to help it. What is its secret weapon this time?

3 August
Charles Glass has recently published two books on the Middle East, The Northern Front and The Tribes Triumphant, and is writing a book set in France during the German occupation.
copyright © LRB Ltd, 1997-2006

Hurricane Expert Threatened for Pre-Katrina Warnings

2006-08-28T12:17:00.000-07:00

HURRICANE EXPERT THREATENED FOR PRE-KATRINA WARNINGS
A Greg Palast special investigation for Democracy Now!
Monday, August 28. From New Orleans.

DON'T blame the Lady. Katrina killed no one in this town. In fact, Katrina missed the city completely, going wide to the east. It wasn't the hurricane that drowned, suffocated, de-hydrated and starved 1,500 people that week. The killing was done by a deadly duo: a failed emergency evacuation plan combined with faulty levees. Behind these twin failures lies a tale of cronyism, profiteering and willful incompetence that takes us right to the steps of the White House.

Here's the story you haven't been told. And the man who revealed it to me, Dr. Ivor van Heerden, is putting his job on the line to tell it.

Van Heerden isn't the typical whistleblower I usually deal with. This is no minor player. He's the Deputy Director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center. He's the top banana in the field -- no one knew more about how to save New Orleans from a hurricane's devastation. And no one was a bigger target of an official and corporate campaign to bury the information.

Here's what happened. Right after Katrina swamped the city, I called Washington to get a copy of the evacuation plan. Funny thing about the murderously failed plan for the evacuation of New Orleans: no one can find it. That's right. It's missing. Maybe it got wet and sank in the flood. Whatever: no one can find it. That's real bad. Here's the key thing about a successful emergency evacuation plan: you have to have copies of it. Lots of copies -- in fire houses and in hospitals and in the hands of every first responder.

Secret evacuation plans don't work. I know, I worked on the hurricane evacuation plan for Long Island New York, an elaborate multi-volume dossier. Specifically, I'm talking about the plan that was written, or supposed to have been written two years ago by a company called, "Innovative Emergency Management." Weird thing about IEM, their founder Madhu Beriwal, had no known experience in hurricane evacuations. She did, however, have a lot of experience in donating to Republicans. IEM and FEMA did begin a draft of a plan. The plan was that, when a hurricane hit, everyone in the Crescent City would simply get the hell out in their cars.

Apparently, the IEM/FEMA crew didn't know that 127,000 people in the city didn't have cars. But Dr. van Heerden knew that. It was his calculation. LSU knew where these no-car people were -- they mapped it -- and how to get them out. Dr. van Heerden offered this life-saving info to FEMA. They wouldn't touch it. Then, a state official told him to shut up, back off or there would be consequences for van Heerden's position. This official now works for IEM. So I asked him what happened as a result of making no plans for those without wheels, a lot of them elderly and most of them poor. "Fifteen-hundred of them drowned. That's the bottom line." The professor, who'd been talking to me in technicalities, changed to a somber tone. "They're still finding corpses."

Van Heerden is supposed to keep his mouth shut. He won't. The deaths weigh on him. "I wasn't going to listen to those sort of threats, to let them shut me down." Van Heerden had other disturbing news.

The Hurricane Center's computer models showed the federal government had built the levees around the city a foot-and-a-half too short. After Katrina, the Hurricane Center analyzed the flooding and found that, had the levees had just that extra 18 inches, they would have been "overtopped" for only an hour and a half, not four hours. In that case, the levees would have held, and the city would have been saved. He had taken the warning about the levees all the way to George Bush's doorstep. "I myself briefed senior officials including somebody from the White House." The response: the university's trustees threatened his job.

While in Baton Rouge, I dropped in on the headquarters of IEM, the evacuation contractors. The assistant to the CEO insisted they had "a lot of experience with evacuation" -- but couldn't name a single city they'd planned for when they got the Big Easy contract. And still, they couldn't produce the plan. An IEM press release in June 2004 boasted legendary expert James Lee Witt as a member of their team. That was impressive. It was also a lie. In fact, Witt had nothing to do with it. When I asked IEM point blank if Witt's name was used as a fraudulent hook to get the contract, their spokeswoman said, weirdly, "We'll get back to you on that."

Back at LSU, van Heerden astonished me with the most serious charge of all. While showing me huge maps of the flooding, he told me the White House had withheld the information that, in fact, the levees were about to burst and by Tuesday at dawn the city, and more than a thousand people, would drown. Van Heerden said, "FEMA knew on Monday at 11 o'clock that the levees had breached… They took video. By midnight on Monday the White House knew. But none of us knew ...I was at the State Emergency Operations Center." Because the hurricane had missed the city that Monday night, evacuation effectively stopped, assuming the city had survived.

It's been a full year now, and 73,000 New Orleanians remain in FEMA trailers and another 200,000, more than half the city's former residents, remain in temporary refuges. "The City That Care Forgot" -- that's their official slogan -- lost a higher percentage of homes than Berlin lost in World War II. It would be more accurate to call it, "The City That Bush Forgot." Should they come home? Rebuild? Is it safe? Team Bush assures them there's nothing to worry about: FEMA won't respond to van Heerden's revelations. However, the Bush Administration has hired a consulting firm to fix the failed evacuation plan. The contractor? A Baton Rouge company named "Innovative Emergency Management." IEM.
******
Watch this special investigative report about Katrina on Democracy Now! this morning or hear it on your local Pacifica or NPR station. You can also download it at DemocracyNow.org. And catch the one-hour special report, "Who Drowned New Orleans?" on LinkTV, with Greg Palast in New Orleans plus an exclusive interview with Amy Goodman. (Get it on Direct TV channel 375 and Dish TV channel 9410. Or check your cable listing at LinkTV.com.) And for more on IEM and Katrina, read Greg Palast's new NYT bestseller, "Armed Madhouse" (Penguin 2006).

Watada Hearing Succeeds in Placing War on Trial

2006-08-27T18:03:00.000-07:00

Watada hearing succeeds in placing war on trial

Aug. 18 news: Sides stake claims to law, The Olympian; Hearing puts war on trial, Seattle Post-Intelligencer; Putting the war on trial, Time/CNN; Watada expresses no regrets, Star-Bulletin/AP; Friends and Family of Lt. Watada media advisory below.

(Ft. Lewis, WA) – Yesterday, the defense for Lt. Watada has succeeded in placing the war in Iraq on trial.

“We appreciated the opportunity to lay the groundwork to prove that the war in Iraq is illegal and that Lt. Watada, coming to this conclusion after much research, was duty bound to refuse to participate,” Eric Seitz, civilian counsel for Lt. Watada said. “This case is really about the duty of individual soldiers to look at the facts and fulfill their obligation to national and international law,” he said.

The Article 32 hearing closed today at 2:00 p.m. Investigating Officer Lieutenant Colonel Mark Keith will release a recommendation within the next few days regarding whether to refer Lt. Watada for court-martial and for which charges.

Despite frequent objections from the prosecution, LTC Keith allowed the defense to present evidence about the illegality of the war in Iraq. Approximately three hours of the four-hour hearing were devoted to testimony by former United Nations Undersecretary Denis Halliday, Army Colonel Ann Wright (ret.), who resigned in March 2003 to protest the invasion of Iraq, and University of Illinois Professor Francis Boyle, an international law expert.

The defense submitted documents into evidence including an amicus brief filled by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Charter of the United Nations, The War Crimes Act, a German high court ruling in favor of a soldier who refused to participate in the Iraq war, and letters of support from organizations and prominent individuals, including Representative Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii.

Two journalists who the prosecution intends to subpoena as witnesses for the court-martial, should it occur, did not appear at the Article 32 hearing, for which the prosecution lacks subpoena powers.

Bible Thumpers Abandon GOP

2006-08-27T17:57:00.000-07:00

From Capitol Hill Blue
Politics
Bible thumpers abandon GOP
By Staff and Wire Reports
Aug 24, 2006, 18:08

Religious fanatics, the cornerstone of Republican support, are jumping off the GOP's sinking ship.

The number of people who consider the Republican Party friendly to religion has dipped below half in the last year, with sharp declines among white evangelicals and white Catholics.
But even with defection of Bible thumpers, the GOP remains far more closely tied to religion than the Democratic Party.

The number of people who consider the GOP friendly to religion dropped from 55 percent to 47 percent — with a 14-point drop among white evangelical conservatives and an 11-point drop among white Catholics, according to the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Only a fourth, 26 percent, considered the Democratic Party friendly to religion — about the same as last year.

Religious voters have been a key voting bloc in recent elections with the most devout Protestant, Catholic and evangelical voters leaning strongly toward Republicans.

"The Republicans had done a good job of mobilizing those two groups in 2004 and that may be cooling a bit now," said Scott Keeter of the Pew Research Center said, referring to white evangelicals and white Catholics.

Bush got 78 percent of the white evangelical vote and 56 percent of the white Catholic vote in 2004, according to exit polls.

The survey found that about four in 10 Christians identify themselves as "born again" Christians or evangelicals, while a third describe themselves as "progressive Christians." The conservative Christians are a far more unified group politically than the progressives, however.
The poll of 2,003 adults was conducted July 6-19 in cooperation with the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
___
Associated Press Writers Will Lester and Donna De La Cruz in Washington contributed to this report.
___
On the Internet:
Pew Research Center: http://www.people-press.org
Jean Schmidt for Congress: http://jeanschmidt.com/
© Copyright 2005 Capitol Hill Blue

Gullible Americans

2006-08-27T17:50:00.000-07:00

Gullible Americans
By Paul Craig Roberts
08/14/06

"Information Clearing House" --I was in China when a July Harris Poll reported that 50 percent of Americans still believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when Bush invaded that country, and that 64 percent of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein had strong links with Al Qaeda.

The Chinese leaders and intellectuals with whom I was meeting were incredulous. How could a majority of the population in an allegedly free country with an allegedly free press be so totally misinformed?

The only answer I could give the Chinese is that Americans would have been the perfect population for Mao and the Gang of Four, because Americans believe anything their government tells them.

Americans never check any facts. Who do you know, for example, who has even read the Report of the 9/11 Commission, much less checked the alleged facts reported in that document. I can answer for you. You don’t know anyone who has read the report or checked the facts.

The two co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission Report, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, have just released a new book, “Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission.” Kean and Hamilton reveal that the commission suppressed the fact that Muslim ire toward the US is due to US support for Israel’s persecution and dispossession of the Palestinians, not to our “freedom and democracy” as Bush propagandistically claims. Kean and Hamilton also reveal that the US military committed perjury and lied about its failure to intercept the hijacked airliners. The commission even debated referring the military’s lies to the Justice Department for criminal investigation. Why should we assume that these admissions are the only coverups and lies in the 9/11 Commission Report?

How do you know that 9/11 was a Muslim terrorist plot? How do you know that three World Trade Center buildings collapsed because two were hit by airliners? You only “know” because the government gave you the explanation of what you saw on TV. (Did you even know that three WTC buildings collapsed?)

I still remember the enlightenment I experienced as a student in Russian Studies when I learned that the Czarist secret police would set off bombs and then blame those whom they wanted to arrest..

When Hitler seized dictatorial power in 1933, he told the Germans that his new powers were made necessary by a communist terrorist attack on the Reichstag. When Hitler started World War II by invading Poland, he told the Germans that Poland had crossed the frontier and attacked Germany.

Governments lie all the time--especially governments staffed by neoconservatives whose intellectual godfather, Leo Strauss, taught them that it is permissible to deceive the public in order to achieve their agenda.

Some readers will write to me to say that they saw a TV documentary or read a magazine article verifying the government’s explanation of 9/11. But, of course, these Americans did not check the facts either--and neither did the people who made the documentary and wrote the magazine article.

Scientists and engineers, such as Clemson University Professor of Engineering Dr. Judy Woods and BYU Professor of Physics Dr. Steven Jones, have raised compelling questions about the official account of the collapse of the three WTC buildings. The basic problem for the government's account is that the buildings are known to have fallen at free fall speed, a fact that is inconsistent with the government's "pancaking" theory in which debris from above collapsed the floors below. If the buildings actually "pancaked," then each floor below would have offered resistance to the floors above, and the elapsed time would have been much longer. These experts have also calculated that the buildings did not have sufficient gravitational energy to accommodate the government's theory of the collapse. It is certainly a known and non-controversial fact among physicists and engineers that the only way buildings can collapse at free fall speed into their own footprints is by engineered demolition. Explosives are used to remove the support of floors below before the debris from above arrives. Otherwise, resistance is encountered and the time required for fall increases. Engineered demolition also explains the symmetrical collapse of the buildings into their own foot prints. As it is otherwise improbable for every point in floors below to weaken uniformly, "pancaking" would result in asymmetrical collapse as some elements of the floor would give sooner than others.

Scientific evidence is a tough thing for the American public to handle, and the government knows it. The government can rely on people dismissing things that they cannot understand as "conspiracy theory." But if you are inclined to try to make up your own mind, you can find Dr. Jones' and Dr. Woods’ papers, which have been formally presented to their peers at scientific meetings, on line at http://www.st911.org/

Experts have also pointed out that the buildings' massive steel skeletons comprised a massive heat sink that wicked away the heat from the limited, short-lived fires, thus preventing a heat buildup. Experts also point out that the short-lived, scattered, low-intensity fires could barely reach half the melting point of steel even if they burned all day instead of merely an hour.

Don't ask me to tell you what happened on 9/11. All I know is that the official account of the buildings' collapse is improbable.

Now we are being told another improbable tale. Muslim terrorists in London and Pakistan were caught plotting to commit mass murder by smuggling bottles of explosive liquids on board airliners in hand luggage. Baby formula, shampoo and water bottles allegedly contained the tools of suicide bombers.

How do we know about this plot? Well, the police learned it from an “Islamic militant arrested near the Afghan-Pakistan border several weeks ago.” And how did someone so far away know what British-born people in London were plotting?

Do you really believe that Western and Israeli intelligence services, which were too incompetent to prevent the 9/11 attack, can uncover a London plot by capturing a person on the Afghan border in Pakistan? Why would “an Islamic militant” rat on such a plot even if he knew of it?
More probable explanations of the “plot” are readily available. According to the August 11 Wayne Madsen Report, informed sources in the UK report that “the Tony Blair government, under siege by a Labor Party revolt, cleverly cooked up a new ‘terror’ scare to avert the public’s eyes away from Blair’s increasing political woes. British law enforcement, neocon and intelligence operatives in the US, Israel, and Britain, and Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire cooked up the terrorist plot, liberally borrowing from the failed 1995 ‘Oplan Bjinka’ plot by Pakistan- and Philippines-based terrorist Ramzi Ahmad Yousef to crash 11 trans-Pacific airliners bound from Asia to the US.”

There are other plausible explanations. For example, our puppet in Pakistan decided to arrest some people who were a threat to him. With Bush’s commitment to “building democracy in the Middle East,” our puppet can’t arrest his political enemies without cause, so he lays the blame on a plot.

Any testimony against Muslim plotters by “an Islamic militant” is certain to have been bought and paid for.

Or consider this explanation. Under the Nuremberg standard, Bush and Blair are war criminals. Bush is so worried that he will be held accountable that he has sent his attorney general to consult with the Republican Congress to work out legislation to protect Bush retroactively from his violations of the Geneva Conventions.

Tony Blair is in more danger of finding himself in the dock. Britain is signatory to a treaty that, if justice is done, will place Blair before the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

What better justification for the two war criminals’ illegal actions than the need to foil dastardly plots by Muslims recruited in sting operations by Western intelligence services? The more Bush and Blair can convince their publics that terrorist danger abounds, the less likely Bush and Blair are ever to be held accountable for their crimes.

But surely, some readers might object, our great moral leaders wouldn’t do something political like that!

They most certainly would. As Joshua Micah Marshall wrote in the July 7 issue of Time magazine, the suspicion is “quite reasonable” that “the Bush Administration orchestrates its terror alerts and arrests to goose the GOP’s poll numbers.”

Joshua Micah Marshall proves his conclusion by examining the barrage of color-coded terror alerts, none of which were real, and, yes, it all fits with political needs.

And don’t forget the plot unearthed in Miami to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. Described by Vice President Cheney as a “very real threat,” the plot turned out to be nothing more than a few harmless whackos recruited by an FBI agent sent out to organize a sting.

There was also the “foiled plot” to blow up the Holland Tunnel and flood downtown New York City with sea water. Thinking New Orleans, the FBI invented this plot without realizing that New York City is above sea level. Of course, most Americans didn’t realize it either.

For six years the Bush regime has been able to count on the ignorant and naive American public to believe whatever tale that is told them. American gullibility has yet to fail the Bush regime.
The government has an endless number of conspiracy theories, but only people who question the government’s conspiracies are derided for “having a conspiracy theory.”

The implication is even worse if we assume that the explosive bottle plot is genuine. It means that America and Britain by their own aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by enabling Israel’s war crimes in Palestine and Lebanon, have created such hatred that Muslims, who identify with Bush’s, Blair’s, and Israel’s victims, are plotting retaliation.

But Bush is prepared. He has taught his untutored public that “they hate us for our freedom and democracy.”

Gentle reader, wise up. The entire world is laughing at you.

Iranian War Games: Exercises, Tests and Drills or Preparation and Mobilization for War?

2006-08-27T17:39:00.000-07:00

GlobalResearch.ca
Iranian War Games: Exercises, Tests, and Drills or Preparation and Mobilization for War?
By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
August 21, 2006

Geographic Scope of Iranian War Games
War games and military exercises are now well underway within Iran and its territory. The Iranian Armed Forces—the Regular Armed Forces and the Revolutionary Guards Corps—began the first stage of massive nationwide war games along border areas of the province of Sistan and Baluchistan1 in the southeast of Iran bordering the Gulf of Oman, Pakistan, and NATO garrisoned Afghanistan to the east on Saturday, August 19, 2006. These war games that are underway are to unfold and intensify over a five week period and possibly even last longer, meaning they will continue till the end of September and possibly overlap into October, 2006. It is worth noting that the Iranian war games are taking place within the window of time that has been predicted by analysts for the initiation of an American or of an American-led attack against Iran.

Although the momentous war games are planned to take place in 14 of the total 30 provinces of Iran—most of which are border provinces and simultaneously sensitive and geo-strategically vital positions bordering, some of the most volatile places in the world, adjacent to Anglo-American occupied Iraq, the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus (Armenia and the Republic of Azarbaijan), the Caspian Sea, Turkey, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan—there have been conflicting reports about the initial stage(s) of the multi-dimensioned war games. Chinese sources maintain that the initial stages of the multi-phased Iranian war games have already started in the “northeastern, northwestern, western and southern parts of Iran,”(2) meaning all the border provinces adjacent to U.S., American-led Coalition, and NATO forces—including Turkey, a NATO member and strategic Israeli ally—while Iranian and other Middle Eastern sources maintain that the first stages of the war games have been predominately inaugurated in southeast Iran.

Brigadier-General Mohammad-Reza Ashtiani, the deputy commander of the Iranian Army or Land Branch of the Regular Forces, has specifically accented at a press conference that ‘the war games will take place in the provinces of West Azarbaijan, East Azarbaijan, the Khorasans(3), Kurdistan, and the province of Sistan and Baluchestan’(4)—all of these are Iranian border provinces that would be frontlines in any possible war between Iran and the United States and have been experiencing disturbing episodes of terrorist attacks, kidnappings, violence, and recent instability(5)—which Iran has held the United States, Britain, and Israel responsible for.

Timing of War Games: The link between Iranian maneuvers and important Dates for the Iranian Nuclear Energy Program
The war games are code-named “Blow of Zolfaqar” after the legendary sword of Imam Ali Al-Talib, which is a historical symbol of power and courage for Iranians. The military manoeuvres are also being held at a time when pilgrims will also be gathering in neighbouring Iraq, where emotions will be running high, to mark the martyrdom of one of Ali’s descendents, Musa Al-Kadhim, but what is more considerable is that these war games and military manoeuvres come during an anticipated moment in international relations when tensions are high and nearing a pivotal point or possible climax in the Middle East between Iran and the United States. The Iranian war games are significant in themselves in demonstrating Iranian determination for consolidating Iran’s international status, but are even more momentous in light of the recent Israeli attacks—which have been reported to be the diagrammed template for a broader assault on Iran by Seymour Hersh(6)—on Lebanon, the candid refusal of Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program(7), and the nearing of a United Nations Security Council deadline which Iran has rejected as internationally illegal and baseless. It must also be noted that neither the United States nor Israel have ruled out any possibility of resorting to aggression against Iran or attempting to exercise any military attacks and aerial assaults on Iran in regards to the Iranian Nuclear Energy Program and the Iranian refusal to back down from Iran’s legitimate rights to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

It is also being reported that the latest anti-aircraft or air defence systems are being tested by the Iranian military in preparation of any possible aerial attacks or threats against Iran or Iranian installations—Israel’s name has been already mentioned as a candidate in regards to the Israeli defeat in Lebanon(8). In fact, according to Fars News Agency, the Commanding Officer of the Land Branch (Army) of the Regular Forces, Brigadier-General Mohammad Hassan Dadras has asserted that the Iranian military has managed to raise the defensive capabilities of its various forces to such a high level that no air force is capable of ‘offensively confronting’ the Iranian military within Iran or the ‘geographic extent adjacent to Iranian borders.’ Brigadier-General Dadras also showcased the capabilities of Iran’s missile force and units(9) in addition to saying that Iranian missile units will become more operational as the war games progress in their phases.(10)

During the second phase of the unfolding military exercises the Iranian military test-fired surface-to-surface missiles from Kashan in coordination with other military movements.(11) It must be noted that Kashan is a city which is strategically located in a central position where it can provide air defence(s) for both Iranian nuclear facilities/installations and the Iranian capital. The city is probably part of a central air defence grid in note of its location in the western central Iranian province of Isfahan, near the skirt of the Zagros Mountains, in close proximity to the various nuclear energy complexes(12)—including the Isfahan Uranium Conversation Facility—in Isfahan, Natanz, Arak, and south of the Iranian capital and metropolis nerve centre, Tehran.

The last time Iran held war games of such a calibre was after Iran declared that Iranian scientists and engineers had successfully enriched uranium and Iran had joined the nuclear technology club, in late April 2006, during which the Iranian military televised and tested a stealth hybrid flying boat, a radar-evading missile with multiple warheads, a rocket-torpedo and a deadly anti-ship missile that cannot be jammed. The April 2006 war games in the waters of the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman directed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and held in coordination with the Iranian Regular Forces market yet another tense period of turbulence in the building tensions between Iran and the United States and their tussle over the Iranian Nuclear Energy Program and, even more importantly, the broader scheme of the ultimate course of the development and strategic direction of the Middle East.

Is Iran Gearing up for an Attack?
Senior Iranian officials in the government and the Iranian defence establishment have repeatedly rejected any probability of American military strikes against Iran and ruled out any such attempts as foolish or suicidal in conjunction with Iranian military manoeuvres and strategy, but have simultaneously asserted that Iran is fully confident and prepared to defend itself against any military aggression directed against its territory, installations, and sovereignty. According to IRNA, the official news agency of Iran, “various units of air-support army Chinook helicopters, unmanned planes, parachutists, electronic war units and special forces are participating in the manoeuvre,” and “commandos, parachutists, mobile shoulder-firing units, electronic war forces and rapid reaction units enjoying high combat capability will demonstrate their readiness [to combat any possible attacks] during the [Blow of Zolfaqar] war games.”(13)
Iranian Regular Force commander Brigadier General Kiumars Heydari has acted as a media liaisons officer and spokesmen for the Iranian war games. Brigadier General Heydari has asserted that the “main objective of this exercise is to adopt new tactics and use new equipment able to cope with possible threats” and that Iran has “been vigilant to what has happened in the world [i.e., the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, the continued occupation of Afghanistan] and we [the Iranian military] have invested in both modern tactics and equipment.”(14)

Participating in the war games, so far, from the Iranian Regular Forces—which are a under a separate command structure from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards(15)—are twelve land (army) divisions along with the Iranian Air Force, Iranian Naval Forces, and Iranian Missile units, which are all involved as complimentary mechanisms of the military exercise(s), which were initiated in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan. (16)

Iran has been very conscious for a long time of the hostile American-led forces encircling Iran and on its borders in the occupied territories of its neighbours, Iraq and Afghanistan, and stationed in bases in other Iranian neighbours. It has also reported that the Interior Ministry of Iran also has simultaneously planned to boost border security and all border patrols under the premise of combating smuggling and narcotics trafficking. 17 Military manoeuvres and war games can be multi-faceted and could easily serve many purposes such as being masked military mobilization and formation for an expected attack under the pretext of training and testing. It seems that the materialization of an escalating level of alert and defensive mobilization of the Iranian Armed Forces is taking place as an inevitable and anticipated showdown over the fate of the Iranian Nuclear Energy Program is drawing nearer and with it are coupled the fates of Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, the Persian Gulf, the direction of Central Asia, he strategic balance in the Caucasus, and so much more…
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES
1 Mehr News Agency (MNA), August 19, 2006
Zolfaqar war games underway in southeastern Iran
http://www.mehrnews.ir/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=368965
2 People’s Daily, August 19, 2006
Roundup: Iran launches large-scale military exercise
http://english.people.com.cn/200608/19/eng20060819_294919.html
3 There are three provinces named Khorasans; North Khorasan, South Khorasan, and Razavi Khorasan. All Khorasans where all once part of one province, Khorasan, which was historically the largest province of Iran. Khorasan was divided into 3 provinces in September, 2004.
4 Payvand, August 17, 2006
Iran Army to launch War Games
http://www.payvand.com/news/06/aug/1188.html
5 Explosions in Khuzestan, British and U.S. troops operating in Iran, Jundallah (a mysterious new group) attacks on Iranian troops and security in Baluchistan, ethic incitement, terrorism, etc.
1. BBC News, June
Iran Seizes UK vessels and crew
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3826179.stm
2. BBC News, January 23, 2004
Iran accuses UK of bombing link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4646864.stm
3. Global Policy Forum, February 23, 2006 (from Financial Times)
U.S. Marines Probe Tension’s Among Iran’s Minorities
http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/intervention/iran/general/2006/0224marinesiran.htm
*British troops (SAS) have also been arrested in Basra, Iraq dressed as Arabs carrying explosives:
Global Research,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=AKL20050930&articleId=1024
6 The New Yorker, August 21, 2006, but posted before the aforesaid date
Watching Lebanon: Washington’s interests in Israel’s war
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060821fa_fact
7 IRNA, August 20, 2006
Asefi: Enrichment suspensions not on Iran's agenda
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-22/0608203110121410.htm
8 Reuters (India), August 19, 2006
Iran ready for Israeli action after Lebanon war: Army
http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-08-19T234909Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-264185-1.xml&archived=False
9Fars News Agency, August 20, 2006
Surface-to-Surface Missiles Launched
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8505290333
10Fars News Agency, August 19, 2006
No Air Force capable of confronting Iranian Army
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8505280544
11IranMania, April 20, 2006
Iran test Tactical Missiles during War Games
http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=45153&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs

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The Truth About the "Terror Plot"...and the New "Pseudo-Terrorism"

2006-08-27T17:38:00.000-07:00

OpEdNews.com
August 22, 2006
The Truth about the "Terror Plot".... and the new "psuedo-terrorism"
By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

I am disappointed to say that so far there has been very little serious critical discussion, grounded in factual analysis, of the alleged "Terror Plot" foiled on the morning of Wednesday, 10th August 2006. Except for a few noteworthy comment pieces, such as Craig Murray's critical speculations published by the Guardian last Friday, the mainstream media has largely subserviently parroted the official claims of the British and American governments. This is a shame, because inspection of the facts raises serious problems for the 10/8 official narrative.

No Imminent Plot
On the basis of the "Terror Plot", Prime Minister Tony Blair is planning "to push through 90-day detention without charge for terror suspects." Home Secretary Dr. John Reid has ordered the draft of new anti-terror legislation that would suspend key parts of the Human Rights 1998, to facilitate the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects in the UK without charge or trial. The law is planned to apply also to British citizens. And since 10th August, Britain was on its highest "critical" state of alert, which indicates the threat of an imminent terrorist attack on UK interests. Only in the last few days was it lowered back down to "severe".

The stark truth is that the "Terror Plot" narrative has been thoroughly, hopelessly, politicized. There was never any evidence of an imminent plot. A senior British official involved in the investigation told NBC News on 14th August that:"In contrast to previous reports... an attack was not imminent, [and] the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports."

If British security officials knew that an attack was not imminent, the decision to raise the alert level to critical, indicating an imminent threat, was unjustified by the available intelligence -- this was, in other words, a political decision.

Other British officials told NBC News that many of the suspects had been under surveillance for more than a year, since before the 7th July 2005 terrorist attacks. "British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence" -- as it was clearly lacking. But: "American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner." An American official also confirmed the disagreement over timing.

Brits Opposed Arrest and Torture of Key Informant
The NBC News report further reveals, citing British security sources, that British police did not want to yet arrest Rashid Rauf, the alleged mastermind, al-Qaeda facilitator and key informant on the details of the plot: "British security was concerned that Rauf be taken into custody 'in circumstances where there was due process,' according to the official, so that he could be tried in British courts. Ultimately, this official says, Rauf was arrested over the objections of the British.

"However, the arrest of Rashid Rauf is at the crux of the case, as it purportedly triggered the ensuing wave of arrests, with Rauf providing in-depth details of the plot to his interrogators in Pakistan. Among the details attributed to Rauf is the idea that the plotters intended to mix a "sports drink" with a gel-like "peroxide-based paste" to create a chemical explosive that "could be ignited with an MP3 player or cell phone."

The problem is that several Pakistani newspapers reported on 13th August that "Rauf had 'broken' under interrogation." The reports were described by a Pakistani human rights group "as confirmation that he had been tortured." According to the Guardian, "Asma Jehangir, of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said that it was obvious how the information had been obtained. 'I don't deduce, I know -- torture,' she said. 'There is simply no doubt about that, no doubt at all.'"

That most of the details about the plot came from Rauf, who has been tortured and "broken" while under interrogation in Pakistan, raises serious questions about the credibility of the story being promoted by the British and American governments.

Torture Precedents: the "Ricin Plot"
The revelation bears hallmarks of a familiar pattern. It is now well-known that the interrogation of terror suspects using torture was responsible for the production of the false "Ricin Plot" narrative. In much the same way as Pakistan has done now, Algerian security services alerted the British in January 2003 to the alleged plot after interrogating and torturing a former British resident Mohammed Meguerba. We now know there was no plot. Police officials repeatedly claimed they had found plastic tubs of ricin -- but these claims were false. Four of the defendants were acquitted of terrorism and four others had the cases against them abandoned. Only Kamal Bourgass was convicted, but not in connection with the "Ricin Plot", rather for murdering Special Branch Detective Constable Stephen Oake during a raid. Indeed, the "rendition" of terror suspects orchestrated by Britain, the United States, and other western states, attempts to institutionalize and legitimize torture as a means for the production of fundamentally compromised information used by western states to manipulate domestic public opinion.

It is perhaps not all that surprising then to learn that, according to a Daily Mail headline, the Pakistanis have found "no evidence against 'terror mastermind'", despite two weeks of interrogation under torture and forensic combing of Rauf's home and computer. The plot "may not have been as serious, or as far advanced, as the authorities initially claimed", observes the Mail somewhat sheepishly, and belatedly. "Analysts suspect Pakistani authorities exaggerated Rauf's role to appear 'tough on terrorism' and impress Britain and America." I wonder if the paucity of evidence has something to do with why, as the Independent on Sunday reported: "Both Britain and Pakistan say the question of Mr Rauf's possible extradition [to the UK] is some way off." Indeed. A spokesman for Pakistani's Interior Ministry gave some helpful elaboration, telling the Mail that extradition "is not under consideration."The extradition to Britain of the alleged chief mastermind of a plot to kill thousands of Americans and British citizens by simultaneously blowing up multiple civilian airliners has, in other words, been ruled out indefinitely.

Er, Still No Evidence...
All the evidence now suggests that the Americans wanted immediate arrests without proper evidence. It seems, there was no imminent necessity of such immediate action, nor was there sufficient evidence of an imminent plot, other than the claims of an informant under torture. There are only two further possibilities. Either there was no real evidence of any plot at all; or these premature arrests could have seriously compromised a long-term surveillance operation against suspects who may have been involved in a wider network involved in terrorist-related activity, an operation that has now been scuppered -- meaning that we may never know for sure what they were actually planning.Meanwhile, reports of material evidence in the UK have been unnervingly threadbare. Only eleven out of the 24 suspects arrested over the alleged airliner bomb plot have been charged, largely it seems on the basis of police findings of "bomb-making equipment and martyrdom videos". Out of the other thirteen, two have been released without charge. But the "bomb-making equipment" discovery of "chemicals" and "electrical components" is ambiguous at best, especially given that police descriptions of the alleged bomb construction plan is to mix a sports drink with a peroxide-based household gel (the chemicals), and detonate the mixture with an MP3 player or mobile phone (electrical components). If possession of such items makes you a terror suspect in possession of potential bomb-making equipment, then we are all terror suspects. As Craig Murray observes:"Let me fess up here. I have just checked, and our flat contains nail polish remover, sports drinks, and a variety of household cleaning products. Also MP3 players and mobile phones. So the authorities could announce -- as they have whispered to the media in this case -- that potential ingredients of a liquid bomb, and potential timing devices, have been discovered. It rather lowers the bar doesn't it?"

Yes -- clearly, it lowers the bar to potentially include millions of perfectly normal British citizens. The police story is also, simply, scientifically absurd, as Murray further notes: "The idea that high explosive can be made quickly in a plane toilet by mixing at room temperature some nail polish remover, bleach, and Red Bull and giving it a quick stir, is nonsense." Citing US chemistry experts, Washington-based information security journalist Thomas C. Greene similarly concludes that "... the fabled binary liquid explosive -- that is, the sudden mixing of hydrogen peroxide and acetone with sulfuric acid to create a plane-killing explosion, is out of the question... But the Hollywood myth of binary liquid explosives now moves governments and drives public policy. We have reacted to a movie plot."

CIA, MI6 and ISI
A report by Asia Times Pakistan Bureau Chief Syed Shahzad citing Pakistani intelligence sources confirms that the British-born Pakistanis arrested in Lahore and Karachi were active members of al-Muhajiroun, the banned UK-based extremist Islamist group currently directed by Omar Bakri Mohammed from Lebanon. Moreover, they had been penetrated by Pakistani intelligence services. "I can tell you with surety", said one Pakistani source, "that the boys [recently] arrested in Pakistan have long been identified by the Pakistani establishment." They had come to Pakistan and "interacted with a few officials of the Pakistani army" with a view to stage a coup against the Musharraf regime. Omar Bakri has repeatedly issued fatawas calling for the assassination of Musharraf. In fact:"Pakistani intelligence -- coming from a strong military background -- penetrated deep into them... The closeness of the Pakistani intelligence with some boys with a Muhajiroun background was a known fact, but at what stage it turned out to be their 'London terror plot', we are completely in the dark.

However, I safely make a conjecture that those highly motivated boys were exploited by agents provocateurs. A religious Muslim youth in his early 20s is undoubtedly full of hatred against the US, and if somebody would guide them to carry out any attack on US interests, there would be a strong chance that they would go for that. And I think this is exactly what happened... they were basically [en]trapped."

I have no doubt that these individuals could have been associated with extremist groups. But while it may be possible they were involved in terrorist-related activity, it is now indisputable that there was no evidence of an imminent plot, and the specific claims about the details were obtained from an informant under torture. We should therefore be very cautious in accepting the "Terror Plot" official narrative, as there is clearly a continuing danger of political interference compromising ongoing intelligence investigations for political expedience.But the deep involvement of the Pakistani ISI in penetrating the very group that was subsequently arrested and tortured, raises serious questions about what was going on. Moreover, the Asia Times also notes that the Pakistani intelligence operation against these groups was coordinated on the initiative of the CIA and MI6. Indeed, MI6 had also ensured that a deep undercover British intelligence operative had "infiltrated the group, giving the authorities intelligence on the alleged plan", according to several US government sources.

The revelation that the arrestees were associated with al-Muhajiroun also raises serious intelligence issues. Omar Bakri Mohammed, the leader of the group, which recently operated under the names of the Saved Sect and al-Ghuraaba, was recruited by MI6 in the mid-1990s to recruit British Muslims to fight in Kosovo. Despite being implicated in the 7/7 London bombings, the British government exiled him to Lebanon where he resides safely outside of British jurisdiction, and thus effectively immune from investigation and prosecution. One inevitably wonders about the nature of Bakri's corrupt relationship with British intelligence services today.

P2OG: Stimulating Reactions
So what were the CIA, MI6 and ISI doing? Given the disturbing context here, in which the entire "Terror Plot" narrative has obviously been deeply politicized and to some extent even fabricated, a balanced analysis needs to account precisely for the stated new "counter-terror" strategies of western intelligence services. In August 2002, a report by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board revealed the latest strategic thinking about creating a new US secret counterintelligence organization -- the Proactive Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG) -- which would, among other things, conduct highly clandestine operations to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, by infiltrating them or provoking them into action in order to facilitate targeting them. In January 2005, Seymour Hersh revealed in the New Yorker that the P2OG strategy had been activated:"Under Rumsfeld's new approach, I was told, US military operatives would be permitted to pose abroad as corrupt foreign businessmen seeking to buy contraband items that could be used in nuclear-weapons systems. In some cases, according to the Pentagon advisers, local citizens could be recruited and asked to join up with guerrillas or terrorists. This could potentially involve organizing and carrying out combat operations, or even terrorist activities."

Hersh refers to a series of articles by John Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California, and a RAND terrorism consultant, where he elaborates on this strategy of "countering terror" with Pseudo-Terror. "When conventional military operations and bombing failed to defeat the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya in the 1950s," muses professor Arquilla, "the British formed teams of friendly Kikuyu tribesmen who went about pretending to be terrorists. These 'pseudo gangs', as they were called, swiftly threw the Mau Mau on the defensive, either by befriending and then ambushing bands of fighters or by guiding bombers to the terrorists' camps." He goes on to advocate that western intelligence services should use the British case as a model for creating new "pseudo gang" terrorist groups, purportedly to undermine "real" terror networks. "What worked in Kenya a half-century ago has a wonderful chance of undermining trust and recruitment among today's terror networks. Forming new pseudo gangs should not be difficult." He then confidently observes about John Walker Lindh, the young American lad who joined the Taliban before 9/11: "If a confused young man from Marin County can join up with Al Qaeda, think what professional operatives might do."Hmmm....I'm thinking about it, and I'm looking at the deep intelligence penetration of al-Qaeda affiliated networks like al-Muhajiroun by the CIA, MI6 and ISI, and unfortunately I'm not experiencing the same sense of elation as Arquilla. Is the 10/8 "Terror Plot" connected to the post-9/11 P2OG strategy?

Whatever happened on 10/8, it is not the majestic "success story" that it has been painted by the British and American governments. It is symptomatic of something far worse, the mechanics of which will never be truly understood in the absence of a full-scale independent public inquiry focusing on the 7th July bombings, but including associated British and western "security" policies which see Psuedo-Terrorism as a legitimate tool of statecraft.

Authors Website: www.independentinquiry.co.uk

Authors Bio: Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is the author of The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (London: Duckworth, 2006). He teaches courses in International Relations at the School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, where he is doing his PhD studying imperialism and genocide. Since 9/11, he has authored three other books revealing the realpolitik behind the rhetoric of the "War on Terror", The War on Freedom, Behind the War on Terror and The War on Truth. In summer 2005, he testified as an expert witness in US Congress about his research on international terrorism

Tarnishing the Aura of Giuliani on 9/11

2006-08-24T12:09:00.000-07:00

Published on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 by the Long Island, NY Newsday
Tarnishing the Aura of Giuliani on 9/11
by Ellis Henican

It's the unexamined question of 9/11: What if Rudy Giuliani wasn't quite the hero everybody thought?

For nearly five years now, we've all lived in the glow of "America's mayor," that soot-covered father figure who rose to meet the greatest challenge of all. Rudy standing firm in the terror aftermath. Rudy guiding a rattled city back to its feet.

There was no denying this much in those early days of confusion: New York's grim-faced mayor looked a whole lot more in charge than America's deer-in-the-headlights president.

But what if Rudy's take-charge image was mostly a load of bravado and PR? What if the actual decisions he made -- before, during and after the terror attacks -- were directly responsible for the city's inability to deal effectively with crucial aspects of the crisis?

Well, it's about time someone opened that impolite inquiry.

Hold on tight, now! One of the most carefully guarded myths of 9/11 is about to be shattered for good.

"Grand Illusion," the book is called. "The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11." It is written by Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice and Dan Collins of CBS.com, two of New York's shrewdest investigative reporters. Published this week by HarperCollins, "Grand Illusion" will forever alter how the world sees Rudy Giuliani's place in America's deadliest terror attacks. You can bet national political reporters will be combing though these chapters as the 2008 presidential campaign season revs up.

With dozens of exclusive and previously unreleased interviews, Barrett and Collins show how the ambitious ex-mayor has spent recent years revising his own truth of 9/11 -- and profiting handsomely from it. Casting himself as a prescient terror hawk who wisely prepared his city for the inevitable, Giuliani in fact ignored repeated warnings from the experts, including his own commissioners and aides.

Instead of confronting the looming danger, they tell how he grew increasingly distracted by pet projects, political turf wars and an extraordinarily messy personal life.
Slowly, the little decisions added up.

Equipping the police and fire departments with incompatible radios from a politically wired vendor. Overruling the warnings of his subordinates and installing the city's emergency-command center inside the World Trade Center -- "the only bunker ever built in the clouds."

"The facts -- depressing but unavoidable -- were that Giuliani had allowed the city to meet the disaster of September 11 unprepared in a myriad of ways," Barrett and Collins write.

When the planes finally hit, the mayor was great on camera, the authors say -- but not so great marshaling a coordinated city response.

Instead of directing his own confused troops, Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik was serving as Rudy's personal bodyguard.

So who was actually in charge in the crucial early hours?

"I don't know who was directing," current police commissioner Ray Kelly told Barrett and Collins. "I literally don't."

Barrett and Collins got exclusive access to some eye-popping 9/11 Commission interviews that have never been publicly aired before and weren't supposed to be for another three years. And they convinced quite a few of the central players to talk on the record, amazingly frankly.

Number two cop Louis Anemone recalled how he tried to get the mayor interested in a citywide anti-terror plan as early as 1998. "Rudy glazed over," Anemone said. "We never had any discussion about security at the World Trade Center. We never even had a drill or exercise there. ... There was just a lack of recognition of the problem at City Hall."

It was probably inevitable, Collins and Barrett conclude, that America would go looking for a ready-made hero at such a difficult time. "The disaster had been so complete that there were remarkably few candidates for the role," they write. Bush's undisclosed-location fly-around "was hardly the stuff of legend."

By contrast, the authors say, Giuliani "embodied the resolve of the nation." His "quick response and personal fearlessness ... provided a clean and reassuring narrative. ... When he assured New York that things would come out all right, he was blessedly believable."
That was almost five years ago.

Then a couple of journalists began to dig.

Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.
###

Amnesty International Alleges Israeli War Crimes

2006-08-24T11:57:00.000-07:00

From the Baltimore Sun
Amnesty International alleges Israeli war crimes
By Joel GreenbergAugust 24, 2006

JERUSALEM -- In a report released yesterday, Amnesty International accused Israel of committing war crimes during its recent campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, saying it broke international law by deliberately causing extensive destruction to the country's infrastructure."

Many of the violations examined in this report are war crimes that give rise to individual criminal responsibility," the human rights group said."They include directly attacking civilian objects and carrying out indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks. People against whom there is prima facie evidence of responsibility for the commission of these crimes are subject to criminal accountability anywhere in the world."

An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman rejected the findings, asserting that the sites struck in Lebanon were legitimate military targets under international law because they were used by Hezbollah fighters who operated from civilian areas and who, he said, used civilians as shields.

The report, based on a field visit to Lebanon and interviews with victims and officials, does not address Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel, which Amnesty International said would be dealt with separately. The group called on the United Nations to investigate actions by both sides in the conflict, "with a view to holding individuals responsible for crimes under international law."

The report says that four weeks of Israeli artillery and aerial bombardment in Lebanon caused "destruction on a catastrophic scale." The attacks, which included more than 7,000 airstrikes and 2,500 naval bombardments, killed an estimated 1,183 people, about a third of them children, and led to displacement of nearly 1 million people, according to the report.

Shelling and bombardment of villages in southern Lebanon targeted houses but also supermarkets and gas stations, whose destruction played a crucial role in forcing residents to leave.

The report cites U.N. figures showing that in several villages more than half the houses were destroyed, with 80 percent demolished in Taibe and Ghanduriya. In Bint Jbail, a scene of heavy fighting, "every building on the streets was destroyed, extensively damaged or beyond repair," the report said.Hospitals in many parts of Lebanon were damaged by shelling, particularly in the south, where two government hospitals were destroyed, according to the report.Along with airstrikes on bridges, roads, fuel depots and power plants, factories were also hit. The second-largest glassworks in the Middle East and a dairy plant, both in the Bekaa Valley, were destroyed.

Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said that according to international law, infrastructure used by enemy forces is a legitimate target and similar tactics were used in wars waged by the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well by NATO forces in Serbia."

Hezbollah was breaking international law and established rules of combat by deliberately using civilian infrastructure and using civilians as human shields for their military activities," Regev said, pointing to instances in which Hezbollah bunkers were built underneath homes and missiles were stored in civilian areas."

It was a serious challenge for us to be as surgical as humanly possible under very difficult circumstances," Regev said."As a matter of policy, we did not target civilian infrastructure that had not been hijacked by Hezbollah and used for military purposes," he said.

Joel Greenberg writes for the Chicago Tribune. Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun

"Conflict of Interest" May Undermine Wiretap Judgment

2006-08-24T11:55:00.000-07:00

New Standard News
‘Conflict of Interest’ May Undermine Wiretap Judgment
by Jessica Azulay

Aug. 23 – A new revelation of a judge's philanthropic background may undermine the legitimacy of the already-controversial ruling by a federal judge that found the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program unconstitutional.

In reviewing the financial disclosure forms of Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, the political-accountability group Judicial Watch discovered that she sits on the board of a foundation that gave tens of thousands of dollars to the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan. Last week, Diggs Taylor ruled in favor of the ACLU of Michigan in its case challenging the constitutionality of the NSA's warrentless spying program.

The website of the Community Foundation of Southeastern Michigan lists Diggs Taylor as the Secretary of the Board of Trustees and the group's annual reports have listed her as Secretary since at least 2002, The NewStandard has found.

The site also lists two grants awarded to the ACLU of Michigan totaling $45,000. It is not clear from the document when the grants were made, but the executive director of the Michigan ACLU told the New York Times that her group received the grants in 2002. Kary Moss said the group has received $125,000 from the Foundation since 1999, though all grants were for projects unrelated to the wiretapping challenge.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, told TNS the revelations mean "more questions need to be asked" because "in virtue of her work with the Community Foundation," it seems Diggs Taylor is a supporter of the plaintiff in the case. He said in cases like this, it is largely left up to judges to disclose anything that could constitute the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Judicial Watch, a conservative nonprofit organization, has been instrumental in providing public access to the financial disclosure forms of all federal judges. The group has created a searchable database of the forms, which can be accessed through its website. Judicial Watch is also the group that compelled the release of Secret Service logs detailing when disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff visited the White House.

© 2006 The NewStandard. All rights reserved. The NewStandard is a non-profit publisher that encourages noncommercial reproduction of its content. Reprints must prominently attribute the author and The NewStandard, hyperlink to http://newstandardnews.net (online) or display newstandardnews.net (print), and carry this notice. For more information or commercial reprint rights, please see the TNS reprint policy.

Marine Officer Considered Haditha Deaths "Normal"; Tortured Past

2006-08-20T21:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_9369.shtml
From Capitol Hill Blue
FUBAR
Marine officer considered Haditha deaths 'normal'
By Staff and Wire Reports
Aug 19, 2006, 06:16

The Marine officer in charge of troops suspected of killing 24 Iraqi men, women and children told investigators he did not initiate an inquiry into the carnage because he did not consider the deaths unusual, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

In a sworn statement given to military investigators in March, Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani said: "I thought it was very sad, very unfortunate, but at the time, I did not suspect any wrongdoing from my Marines." Chessani was commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Marines.

"I did not have any reason to believe that this was anything other than combat action," he added.

The Post said it obtained a copy of Chessani's statement.

Reached by telephone late Friday, Marine Lt. Col. Sean Gibson, a spokesman on the Haditha case, said he had not seen the report and could not comment.

The Marine Corps has been investigating whether its troops deliberately killed the Iraqis in Haditha. The Marines also are looking into whether efforts were made to cover up the incident.

Initially, the Marine Corps reported that 15 Iraqis had died in a roadside bombing or were caught in crossfire between Marines and insurgents. Survivors of the encounter and human rights groups, however, claimed that 24 Iraqi civilians had been deliberately shot to death by Marines.

The New York Times reported Thursday that military investigators have concluded that the Marines destroyed or withheld evidence.

No charges have been brought in the Haditha killings, and the official results of the Marine investigation have not been released. Chessani, who has been relieved of his duties, has not spoken publicly about the incident.

According to the Post, Chessani's statement was provided by a source "sympathetic" to the Marines involved in the case. The incident occurred in a dangerous area where insurgent attacks were common.

Because attacks were so common, Chessani told investigators he saw the incident as part of a "complex attack" staged by the enemy, according to the newspaper. "I did not see any cause for alarm," he said.

The Haditha case is among recent cases of alleged atrocities against Iraqi civilians. Five soldiers and a former solider have been charged with raping and killing a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killing her relatives in Mahmoudiya. Seven Marines and one Navy corpsman have been charged with premeditated murder in connection with the killing of an Iraqi man in Hamdania on April 26.

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press

Published on Sunday, August 20, 2006 by the Los Angeles Times
A Tortured Past: Documents Show Troops Who Reported Abuse in Vietnam were Discredited Even as the Military was Finding Evidence of Worse.
by Deborah Nelson and Nick Turse

In early 1973, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Creighton Abrams received some bad news from the service's chief of criminal investigations.

An internal inquiry had confirmed an officer's widely publicized charge that members of the 173rd Airborne Brigade had tortured detainees in Vietnam.

But there was a silver lining: Investigators had also compiled a 53-page catalog of alleged discrepancies in retired Lt. Col. Anthony B. Herbert's public accounts of his war experiences.

"This package … provides sufficient material to impeach this man's credibility; should this need arise, I volunteer for the task," wrote Col. Henry H. Tufts, commander of the Army's Criminal Investigation Division.

Now, declassified records show that while the Army was working energetically to discredit Herbert, military investigators were uncovering torture and mistreatment that went well beyond what he had described.

The abuses were not made public, and few of the wrongdoers were punished.

Tufts' agents found that military interrogators in the 173rd Airborne repeatedly beat prisoners, tortured them with electric shocks and forced water down their throats to simulate the sensation of drowning, the records show.

Soldiers in one unit told investigators that their captain approved of such methods and was sometimes present during torture sessions.

In one case, a detainee who had been beaten by interrogators suffered convulsions, lost consciousness and later died in his confinement cage.

Investigators identified 29 members of the 173rd Airborne as suspects in confirmed cases of torture. Fifteen of them admitted the acts. Yet only three were punished, records show. They received fines or reductions in rank. None served any prison time.

The accounts of torture and the Army's effort to discredit Herbert emerged from a review of a once-secret Pentagon archive.

The collection — about 9,000 pages — was compiled in the early 1970s by an Army task force that monitored war crimes investigations. The files, examined recently by the Los Angeles Times, include memos, case summaries, investigative reports and sworn witness statements.
Those and related records detail 141 instances of detainee and prisoner abuse in Vietnam, including 127 involving the 173rd Airborne.

The Army task force, created after journalist Seymour Hersh exposed the 1968 My Lai massacre, served to give military brass and the White House early warning about potentially damaging revelations.

The war crimes records were declassified in 1994 and moved to the National Archives in College Park, Md., where they went largely unnoticed.

The Times examined most of the files before officials removed them from the public shelves, saying they contained personal information that was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

Other records were taken by Tufts in the 1970s and donated after his death to the University of Michigan.

The two collections do not provide a complete accounting of prisoner abuse during the Vietnam War. They contain only cases reported to military authorities and flagged for special attention by the Army chief of staff's office or taken home by Tufts. But they represent the largest pool of such records to surface to date.

Retired Brig. Gen. John H. Johns, a Vietnam veteran who served on the task force, said the files provided important lessons for dealing with the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq.

"If we rationalize it as isolated acts, as we did in Vietnam and as we're doing with Abu Ghraib and similar atrocities, we'll never correct the problem," said Johns, 78.

A Supersoldier's Charges
A coal miner's son, Anthony Herbert was one of the most decorated U.S. soldiers of the Korean War. He went on to become an Army Ranger and a Ranger instructor.

In 1968, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and in early 1969 was awarded command of a battalion in the 173rd Airborne.

The brigade was based in Binh Dinh province in the central coastal region when Herbert arrived. Over the next two months, his unit reported more enemy contacts than any other battalion in the 173rd Airborne.

Then on April 4, 1969, Herbert was relieved of his command for allegedly unsatisfactory performance. He later told investigators from the Criminal Investigation Division that, before his removal, he had informed his superior of war crimes that he had witnessed.

Herbert recounted a series of atrocities.

He said South Vietnamese troops had executed detainees in the presence of an American military advisor in February 1969. One of the victims had her throat slit as her child clung to her pant leg, Herbert said. (Investigators later concluded that about eight detainees had been slain.)

The following month, U.S. and Vietnamese interrogators tortured a teenager or young woman by electric shock and subjected a male detainee to water torture, Herbert said. He said he also saw interrogators beat two Vietnamese women held in metal storage containers.

Herbert told the investigators that he had reported these incidents to Col. J. Ross Franklin. On learning of the allegations, then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. William C. Westmoreland ordered Tufts to create a task force to conduct the investigation.

Before it was finished, Herbert took matters into his own hands and brought charges against Franklin and his superior, Maj. Gen. John W. Barnes, in March 1971, saying they failed to investigate reports of war crimes.

As Army officials feared, the case received widespread coverage because of Herbert's distinguished combat career and Barnes' rank, and because Franklin had served on the commission investigating the My Lai massacre.

Herbert achieved celebrity status as the case played out in the media. He appeared on "The Dick Cavett Show," was interviewed by Playboy magazine and was featured in a New York Times Sunday magazine article titled: "How a Supersoldier Was Fired From His Command."

Barnes and Franklin denied that Herbert had reported war crimes to them. According to news reports at the time, Barnes told an investigator he removed Herbert as battalion commander because he was "a keg of dynamite" who was "completely oriented to killing mercilessly."

The Army dismissed the charges against Barnes and Franklin, and removed Herbert's negative performance review.

Nevertheless, Herbert continued to accuse military leaders of a coverup. The Army responded by releasing "fact sheets" that said the investigation had substantiated only seven of 21 allegations by Herbert and had found no evidence that his superiors knew about them or retaliated against him.

In February 1972, Army magazine said that Herbert's "eminence is undeserved" and devoted six pages to the fact sheets.

Herbert retired from the Army, citing harassment and strain on his family.

In January 1973, his memoir, "Soldier," hit the bookstores, and the Army's public information office scoured its pages for inconsistencies, records show.

Around the same time, the Army leaked internal reports on Herbert to CBS News, according to an Army memorandum. The TV news magazine "60 Minutes" aired a segment on Feb. 4, 1973, that attacked Herbert's claims of coverup and retaliation.

Unknown to the public, Army investigators probing Herbert's charges had learned that abuse of detainees by soldiers of the 173rd Airborne was much more extensive than he had alleged.

When contacted recently at his home in Colorado, Herbert declined to be quoted about the Army investigation, except to say: "If they'd really taken action about the bad apples and been honest about it … then they wouldn't be arguing about Abu Ghraib and different places today."

Earlier Reports
The problem centered on the brigade's 172nd Military Intelligence Detachment, known as the 172nd MI.

Reports that interrogators in the unit were torturing prisoners had begun to surface several years before Herbert first made his allegations.

Among the first to speak out was Peter N. Martinsen, an interrogator from another unit who had worked with members of the 172nd MI. Testifying at the International War Crimes Tribunal, an unofficial forum in Stockholm, in 1967, Martinsen said he had taken part in beatings, and witnessed the use of field telephones to shock prisoners.

Army investigators interviewed him in November 1968. He requested immunity, but the Army's office of the judge advocate general rejected the request, citing "the general nature of the allegation, Mr. Martinsen's attitude and his record," documents show.

Martinsen refused to give a statement. Efforts to reach him for comment for this article were unsuccessful.

Investigators marked his allegations "unsubstantiated" and closed their inquiry.
At the time of Martinsen's interview, Robert Stemme Jr. was serving in the 172nd MI's counterintelligence section. His job was to gather information about the enemy from friendly local sources, such as hamlet officials.

He did not conduct interrogations, he said in a recent interview, but he heard and saw them. Interrogations were conducted around the clock in a building about 10 yards from the tent where he slept, he said.

"My bed was maybe 30 feet from where all this stuff was going on. So I could hear this … all night long," Stemme told The Times. "It was pretty standard practice that people got slapped around or hit with things, or guns pointed at them, or whatever. Field telephones — all those things — were tools of the trade."

The telephones had hand cranks that could be turned to generate electricity and two wires that could be attached to sensitive parts of a prisoner's body. The shock could be intensified by wetting detainees and placing them in contact with metal objects.

In the spring of 1969, about a dozen members of the 172nd MI organized a letter-writing campaign to complain to higher-ups about the abuse, Stemme said.

"Next thing we know, we have this major coming up from IG's office who is Miranda-izing us and asks us if we're admitting to committing war crimes," Stemme said, referring to the inspector general. "It was all about us, when this was de facto command policy. It was really scary."

They decided as a group not to give any statements, he said.

Stemme returned to the United States in June 1969, and left the service in 1970. In April of that year, he spoke out about prisoner abuse at a news conference at the Greater Los Angeles Press Club. Martinsen and Frederick Brown, another former interrogator with the 172nd MI, joined him.

Army investigators contacted Stemme and Brown that summer. Brown told them that he and others "participated in water-rag and field telephone interrogations of detainees," according to an investigator's summary. Brown, who lives in Orange County, declined to be interviewed for this article.

Stemme met with Army agents in San Francisco. According to an agent's statement, Stemme described abuse of detainees by 11 members of his unit over 12 months beginning in June 1968.
Under oath, Stemme said he saw interrogators punch and kick prisoners, beat them with sticks, administer electrical shocks and urinate on them.

Records show that Stemme detailed specific instances of maltreatment, offering names and approximate dates. Yet a case summary produced by the Army chief of staff's office reported that investigators closed the investigation because Stemme "declined to provide any specific information concerning his allegations."

"I spent hours with these guys," said Stemme, now 63 and retired from his job as an investigator for the San Francisco public defender's office. "There was no reason for me to be reticent."

Interrogation Methods
Stemme identified former Staff Sgt. David Carmon as one of the interrogators who had tortured detainees.

Herbert also accused Carmon of subjecting a detainee to water torture. Herbert said he found Carmon involved in the torture of a Vietnamese man, pouring water onto a rag placed over the captive's nose and mouth.

This technique, called the "water rag," causes a drowning sensation and is banned under international law. Bush administration officials have come under pressure in recent years to explicitly denounce a similar method known as "water-boarding" as an interrogation technique.

In May, a Pentagon official told the United Nations Committee Against Torture that the revised Army Field Manual now specifically prohibited water-boarding. On Friday, a spokesman said the U.S. Army did not permit water-boarding — in past wars or as part of today's intelligence-gathering procedures.

When investigators questioned Carmon in December 1970, he admitted using the water rag on a detainee, records show.

"I held the suspect down, placed a cloth over his face and then poured water over the cloth, thus forcing water into his mouth. The suspect, after becoming choked on the water, confessed that he was a VC and stated he was a propaganda man," Carmon said, according to his sworn statement.

He admitted using electrical shock on detainees, the investigators' summary states.
Carmon also told investigators that in the fall of 1968, he took part in interrogating a captive who died soon afterward.

The man had been "beat and kicked," lost consciousness and suffered convulsions, according to summaries of statements given by members of the 172nd MI. A doctor was brought in to examine the detainee, identified as Nguyen Cong, and said there was nothing wrong with him, the records say.

Carmon said he and another member of the military intelligence team "slapped the Vietnamese and poured water on his face from a five-gallon can," according to the investigators' summary
Nguyen passed out "and was carried to the confinement cage where he was later found dead," according to a May 1971 Army report. The investigators' summary said the cause of death was listed in a hospital log as a ruptured spleen, probably due to malaria.

In a 1973 memo to Army Chief of Staff Abrams, Tufts said "maltreatment was not established as the cause of death."

Reached by e-mail in Ohio, Carmon told The Times that abuse of prisoners was widespread in Vietnam and was encouraged by officers.

"Nothing was sanctioned," he wrote, "but nothing was off-limits short of seriously injuring a prisoner."

In another e-mail, he described the electric shock technique:
"What I saw were leads hooked to the legs of a metal folding chair. It was primarily used with the mountain/country detainees that weren't familiar with electricity. They would [tell] them it would make them sterile or something to that nature. When you turned the phone crank, a light tickle of electricity would generally scare them into talking."

He added: "I am not ashamed of anything I did, and I would most likely conduct myself in the same manner if placed in a Vietnam-type situation again."

Part of a Pattern
Investigators contacted 31 members of the 172nd MI before submitting a report to headquarters that detailed a pattern of "cruelty and maltreatment" from March 1968 to October 1969.

The report said the evidence warranted formal charges against 22 interrogators, some on active duty at the time. It concluded not only that interrogators repeatedly abused prisoners, but that the unit's executive officer, Capt. Norman L. Bowers, had been present during some of the torture incidents.

Yet none of the interrogators nor Bowers was punished, records show. The three soldiers who were disciplined for mistreating detainees served in other units of the 173rd Airborne.
In an interview with The Times, Bowers said he had not witnessed or approved abuse of prisoners, contrary to what his subordinates said.

"It could likely happen, and I wasn't told about it," he said. "Mistreatment of prisoners is a very serious issue, and it's not something someone's going to bring to my attention."

Bowers, now 67 and living in Missouri, said the men may have falsely accused him in hopes of getting him removed because they were working long hours.

"There was a lot of stress on people," he said.

J. Ross Franklin, one of the two superiors whom Herbert accused of covering up war crimes, was deputy commander of the 173rd Airborne from December 1968 to June 1969.

In a recent interview, he said that he was not aware of the investigators' findings, and that no one had ever reported prisoner abuse to him.

"I didn't even know what water-boarding was," said Franklin, now 78 and living in Florida.

He said he did not recall the letter-writing campaign or the nighttime beatings that Stemme described. He said he was housed in an officers' area, in a structure with air-conditioning. "I really wouldn't hear much of anything, other than friendly 'arty' shooting once in a while," he said, referring to artillery.

He added: "Interrogators obviously are under pressure and encouraged to get information, and some of these guys are sadistic at heart. I wouldn't bet my soul that it didn't happen in the 173rd…. If the Army found it, I'd say it probably happened."

Times researcher Janet Lundblad contributed to this report.
(INFOBOX BELOW)

About this report
Deborah Nelson, who wrote these articles, is a former staff writer and Washington investigative editor for The Times. Nick Turse is a freelance journalist living in New Jersey.

This report is based in part on records of the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group, on file at the National Archives in College Park, Md. The collection includes 241 case summaries that chronicle more than 300 substantiated atrocities by U.S. forces and 500 unconfirmed allegations.

Turse came across the collection in 2002 while researching his doctoral dissertation for the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia University.

Turse and Nelson also reviewed Army inspector general records in the National Archives; FBI and Army Criminal Investigation Division records; documents shared by military veterans; and case files and related records in the Col. Henry Tufts Archive at the University of Michigan.
The reporters and Times photographer Damon Winter traveled to Vietnam in the spring to visit the sites of incidents described in Army records and to interview victims' relatives. Times researcher Janet Lundblad contributed to the report.

A selection of documents used in preparing this report, and previous articles on this topic, can be found at latimes.com/vietnam.

Copyright © 2006 Los Angeles Times
###

HRW: U.S. Senators Move to Stop Landmine Production

2006-08-18T21:32:00.000-07:00

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
U.S.: Senators Move to Stop Landmine Production

(Washington, D.C., August 1, 2006) – In introducing legislation against victim-activated landmines, U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy and Arlen Specter took a critical step today toward ensuring that the production of antipersonnel landmines does not resume in the United States, Human Rights Watch said. The Pentagon is expected to make a decision soon to produce a munition called “Spider” with a controversial feature that turns it into an antipersonnel mine.

“The United States shouldn’t be making and using weapons that can’t discriminate between a soldier and a civilian,” said Steve Goose, director of the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch.

“The U.S. should be moving closer to the community of nations that have banned antipersonnel mines, not farther away.”

The United States has not produced antipersonnel mines since 1997, exported them since 1992, or used them since 1991. However, the United States retains the right to produce antipersonnel mines and is not among the 151 countries that have joined the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which comprehensively prohibits the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of antipersonnel mines.

The U.S. currently stockpiles 10.4 million antipersonnel mines, the world’s third-biggest arsenal. The Victim-Activated Landmine Abolition Act of 2006 would prohibit the procurement of landmines or other weapons that are designed to be victim-activated.

In its standard mode, the Spider system is command-detonated, rather than victim-activated. The system has a soldier-operated control unit capable of monitoring up to 84 hand-emplaced munitions that deploy a web of tripwires across an area. When the tripwires are touched, the soldier decides if and when to detonate the munitions.

However, Spider contains a “battlefield override” feature that removes the man-in-the-loop and allows for activation by the victim. This feature turns Spider into an antipersonnel mine that would be prohibited by the Mine Ban Treaty.

The decision whether to produce Spider was scheduled to be taken by the Pentagon in December 2005, with the first units to be produced in March 2007. However, Congress delayed the decision by including a provision in the fiscal year 2006 defense appropriations bill, passed on 31 December, that requires the Secretary of the Army to conduct a review of new landmine technologies and report on the possible indiscriminate effects of these new systems before any production decision is made. It was the inclusion of the “battlefield override” feature in Spider that led Congress to request the study. The Pentagon has not yet provided the study to Congress.

A total of $301 million has been budgeted to produce 907 Spider systems, and another $11.8 million for continued research. On July 3, the Pentagon announced that Alliant Techsystems and Textron Systems had been awarded a $31 million contract for “low-rate initial production” of Spider “network command munitions,” but no mention was made of the battlefield override feature.

Thirty-eight countries have stopped the production of antipersonnel mines, including four that have not signed the Mine Ban Treaty: Egypt, Finland, Iraq and Israel. Apart from the U.S., there are 12 countries that continue to produce, or retain the right to produce, antipersonnel landmines: Burma, China, Cuba, India, Iran, North Korea, South Korea, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Singapore and Vietnam.

© Copyright 2003, Human Rights Watch
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New York, NY 10118-3299

USA

Actual total of dead American military personnel is now over 12,000: Secret DOD

2006-08-18T21:09:00.000-07:00

Harring Report: The National Young Men’s Meat Grinder

"The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed".
-George Orwell, ‘1984’

“Whether war is a necessary factor in the evolution of mankind may be disputed, but a fact which cannot be questioned is that, from the earliest records of man to the present age, war has been his dominant preoccupation. There has never been a period in human history altogether free from war, and seldom one of more than a generation which has not witnessed a major conflict: great wars flow and ebb almost as regularly as the tides. This becomes more noticeable when a civilization ages and begins to decay, as seemingly is happening to our world-wide industrial civilization. Whereas but a generation or two back, war was accepted as an instrument of policy, it has now become policy itself.”
-General J.F.C. Fuller, 1954

The Bush/Cheney Butcher’s Bill: Officially, 30 US Military Deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan from 1 August 2006 - 14 August 2006- Official Total of 2,791 US dead to date (and rising) The actual total of dead American military personnel is now over 12,000 and also rising and the number of seriously wounded is now ca 25,000

by Brian Harring, Domestic Intelligence Reporter brianharring@yahoo.com

Mr. President, why don’t you pull out…like your father should have?
Brian Harring

Note: There is excellent reason to believe that the Department of Defense is deliberately not reporting a significant number of the dead in Iraq. We have received copies of manifests from the MATS that show far more bodies shipped into Dover AFP than are reported officially. The actual death toll is in excess of 10,000. (See the official records at the end of this piece.) Given the officially acknowledged number of over 15,000 seriously wounded (and a published total of 25,000 wounded overall,), this elevated death toll is far more realistic than the current 2,000+ now being officially published. When our research is complete, and watertight, we will publish the results along with the sources.

In addition to the evident falsification of the death rolls, at least 5,500 American military personnel have deserted, most in Ireland but more have escaped to Canada and other European countries, none of whom are inclined to cooperate with vengeful American authorities. (See TBR News of 18 February for full coverage on the mass desertions). This means that of the 158,000 U.S. military shipped to Iraq, 26,000 deserted, were killed or seriously wounded. The DoD lists currently being very quietly circulated indicate over 12,000 dead, over 25,000 seriously wounded and a large number of suicides, forced hospitalization for ongoing drug usage and sales, murder of Iraqi civilians and fellow soldiers, rapes, courts martial and so on.

The government gets away with these huge lies because they claim, falsely, that only soldiers actually killed on the ground in Iraq are reported. The dying and critically wounded are listed as en route to military hospitals outside of the country and not reported on the daily postings. Anyone who dies just as the transport takes off from the Baghdad airport is not listed and neither are those who die in the US military hospitals. Their families are certainly notified that their son, husband, brother or lover was dead and the bodies, or what is left of them (refrigeration is very bad in Iraq what with constant power outages) are shipped home, to Dover AFB.

This, we note, was the overall policy until very recently. Since it became well known that many had died at Landstuhl, in Germany, the DoD began to list a very few soldiers who had died at other non-theater locations. These numbers are only for show and are pathetically small in relationship to the actual figures. You ought to realize that President Bush personally ordered that no pictures be taken of the coffined and flag-draped dead under any circumstances. He claims that this is to comfort the bereaved relatives but is designed to keep the huge number of arriving bodies secret. Any civilian, or military personnel, taking pictures will be jailed at once and prosecuted. Bush has never attended any kind of a memorial service for his dead soldiers and never will. He is terrified some parent might curse him in front of the press or, worse, attack him. As Bush is a terrible physical coward and in a constant state of denial, this is not a surprise.

Official Casualty List for August, 2006

1
The Department of Defense announced today the death of two Marines who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Lance Cpl. Anthony E. Butterfield, 19, of Clovis, Calif., Sgt. Christian B. Williams, 27, of Winter Haven, Fla. Both Marines died July 29 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. They were assigned to 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Twentynine Palms, Calif.

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Cpl. Phillip E. Baucus, 28, of Wolf Creek, Mont., died July 29 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Twentynine Palms, Calif.

2
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Pfc. Jason Hanson, 21, of Forks, Wash., died July 29 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Twentynine Palms, Calif.

3
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Sgt. Ryan D. Jopek, 20, of Merrill, Wis., died in Tikrit, Iraq on Aug. 2 of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his convoy. Jopek was assigned to the Army National Guard's 2nd Battalion, 127th Infantry Regiment, Waupun, Wis.
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Sgt. Dustin D. Laird, 23, of Martin, Tenn., died on Aug. 2 during combat operations in Rawah, Iraq. Laird was assigned to the Army National Guard 913th Engineer Company, 46th Engineer Battalion, Union City, Tenn.

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Cpl. Joseph A. Tomci, 21, of Stow, Ohio, died Aug. 2 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Spc. Hai Ming Hsia, 37, of New York, N.Y., died Aug. 1 during combat operations in Ar Ramadi, Iraq. Hsia was assigned to the 6th Infantry Regiment, 1st Armored Division, Baumholder, Germany.

4
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.Lance Cpl. Kurt E. Dechen, 24, of Springfield, Vt., died Aug. 3 from wounds received while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to 1st Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, while attached to Regimental Combat Team 5, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Sgt. George M. Ulloa Jr., 23, of Austin, Texas, died Aug. 3 from wounds suffered while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to 2nd Tank Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Sgt. Joshua A. Ford, 20, of Wayne, Neb., died on July 31 during combat operations in Al Numaniyah, Iraq. Ford was assigned to the Army National Guard 189th Transportation Company, 485th Corps Support Battalion, Norfolk, Neb.

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a sailor who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Petty Officer 2nd Class Marc A. Lee, 28, of Hood River, Ore., was killed on Aug. 2 during combat operations while on patrol in Ramadi, Iraq. Lee was an aviation ordnanceman and a member of a West Coast-based SEAL Team.

5
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Staff Sgt. Daniel A. Suplee, 39, of Ocala, Fla., died on Aug 3 at James A. Haley Veterans Hospital, Tampa, Fla., of injuries sustained on Apr 1 in Kabul, Afghanistan, when his HMMWV was involved in a traffic accident. Suplee was assigned to the National Guard 153rd Cavalry Squadron, Ocala, Fla.

6
The Department of Defense announced today the death of two soldiers who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. They died in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, on August 4, when an improvised explosive device detonated near their HMMWV while conducting combat operations. Both soldiers were assigned to the 1st Calvary Regiment, 1st Armored Division, Friedberg, Germany. Killed were: Staff Sgt. Clint J. Storey, 30, of Enid, Okla,.Sgt. Bradley H. Beste, 22, of Naperville, Ill.

7
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Sgt. Leroy Segura Jr., 23, of Clovis, N.M., died on Aug 4, in Habbaniyah, Iraq, of injuries suffered from a HMMWV accident. Segura was assigned to the 362nd Engineer Company, 54th Engineer Battalion, Fort Benning, Ga.

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Pfc. Brian J. Kubik, 20, of Harker Heights, Texas, died on Aug 5 in Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Landstuhl, Germany, of injuries suffered on Aug 2 when his unit encountered enemy small arms fire in Baghdad, Iraq. Kubik was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky.

8
The Department of Defense announced today the death of three soldiers, who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. They died in Baghdad, Iraq on Aug. 6, when an improvised explosive device detonated near their HMMWV while conducting a combat operations. All soldiers were assigned to the Army's 2nd Brigade Troop Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky. Killed were: Staff Sgt. Stephen A. Seale, 25, of Grafton, W.V.,Sgt. Carlton A. Clark, 22, of South Royalton, Vt. ,Spc. Jose Zamora, 24, of Sunland Park, N.M.

11
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Staff Sgt. Tracy L. Melvin, 31, of Seattle, Wash., died of injuries sustained on Aug. 6, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations in Ar Ramadi, Iraq. Melvin was assigned to the Army's 2nd Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, 1st Armored Division, Baumholder, Germany.

The Department of Defense announced today the death of two soldiers, who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Killed were: Sgt. Steven P. Mennemeyer, 26, of Granite City, Ill., Sgt. Jeffery S. Brown, 25, of Trinity Center, Calif. They were declared Duty Status Whereabouts Unknown on Aug. 8, when their UH-60 Blackhawk crashed into a lake in the vicinity of Korean Village in Rubtbah, Iraq. Their remains were recovered on Aug. 9 and 10, respectively. Both soldiers were assigned to the 82nd Medical Company (Air Ambulance), Fort Riley, Kan. This incident is under investigation

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine, who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Lance Cpl. Jeremy Z. Long, 18, of Sun Valley, Nev., died Aug. 10, while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Twentynine Palms, Calif.

14
The Department of Defense announced today the death of three soldiers who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. They died in Nangalam, Afghanistan on Aug. 11, when their platoon came in contact with enemy forces using rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire during combat operations. The soldiers were assigned to the Army 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), Fort Drum, N.Y. Killed were: Spc. Rogelio R. Garza, Jr., 26, of Corpus Christi, Texas, Pfc. Andrew R. Small, 19, of Wiscasset, Maine , Pfc. James P. White, Jr., 19, of Huber Heights, Ohio.

The Department of Defense announced today the death of three soldiers, who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. They died in Ar Ramadi, Iraq on Aug 9, when an improvised explosive device detonated near their HMMWV during combat operations. The soldiers were assigned to the Army's 1st Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment, 1st Armored Division, Friedberg, Germany. Killed were: 1st. Sgt. Aaron D. Jagger, 43, of Hillsdale, Mich., Spc. Ignacio Ramirez, 22, of Henderson, Nev.,Spc. Shane W. Woods, 23, of Palmer, Alaska

Lt. Ehren Watada's Speech: "Soldiers Can Choose to Stop Fighting"

2006-08-18T13:04:00.000-07:00

Ehren Watada
By Dahr Jamail
t r u t h o u t Perspective
Monday 14 August 2006

On Saturday night, I was lucky enough to be at the Veterans for Peace National Convention. For that night, Lt. Ehren Watada was able to give the following speech, which I've just received permission to post here. The speech was met with a powerful, standing ovation from the vets who've been there.

Lt. Ehren Watada, for those who don't already know, became the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse deployment to the unlawful war and occupation in Iraq. While doing this on June 22, 2006, Watada said, "As the order to take part in an illegal act is ultimately unlawful as well, I must refuse that order."

Just as Watada took the stage and began to speak, over 50 members of Iraq Veterans Against the War filed in behind him. Watada, surprised by this and obviously taken aback by the symbolic act, turned back to the audience, took some deep breaths, then gave this speech:

"Thank you everyone. Thank you all for your tremendous support. How honored and delighted I am to be in the same room with you tonight. I am deeply humbled by being in the company of such wonderful speakers.

You are all true American patriots. Although long since out of uniform, you continue to fight for the very same principles you once swore to uphold and defend. No one knows the devastation and suffering of war more than veterans - which is why we should always be the first to prevent it.

I wasn't entirely sure what to say tonight. I thought as a leader in general I should speak to motivate. Now I know that this isn't the military and surely there are many out there who outranked me at one point or another - and yes, I'm just a Lieutenant. And yet, I feel as though we are all citizens of this great country and what I have to say is not a matter of authority - but from one citizen to another. We have all seen this war tear apart our country over the past three years. It seems as though nothing we've done, from vigils to protests to letters to Congress, have had any effect in persuading the powers that be. Tonight I will speak to you on my ideas for a change of strategy. I am here tonight because I took a leap of faith. My action is not the first and it certainly will not be the last. Yet, on behalf of those who follow, I require your help - your sacrifice - and that of countless other Americans. I may fail. We may fail. But nothing we have tried has worked so far. It is time for change and the change starts with all of us.

I stand before you today, not as an expert - not as one who pretends to have all the answers. I am simply an American and a servant of the American people. My humble opinions today are just that. I realize that you may not agree with everything I have to say. However, I did not choose to be a leader for popularity. I did it to serve and make better the soldiers of this country. And I swore to carry out this charge honorably under the rule of law.

Today, I speak with you about a radical idea. It is one born from the very concept of the American soldier (or service member). It became instrumental in ending the Vietnam War - but it has been long since forgotten. The idea is this: that to stop an illegal and unjust war, the soldiers can choose to stop fighting it.

Now it is not an easy task for the soldier. For he or she must be aware that they are being used for ill-gain. They must hold themselves responsible for individual action. They must remember duty to the Constitution and the people supersedes the ideologies of their leadership. The soldier must be willing to face ostracism by their peers, worry over the survival of their families, and of course the loss of personal freedom. They must know that resisting an authoritarian government at home is equally important to fighting a foreign aggressor on the battlefield.

Finally, those wearing the uniform must know beyond any shadow of a doubt that by refusing immoral and illegal orders they will be supported by the people not with mere words but by action.

The American soldier must rise above the socialization that tells them authority should always be obeyed without question. Rank should be respected but never blindly followed. Awareness of the history of atrocities and destruction committed in the name of America - either through direct military intervention or by proxy war - is crucial. They must realize that this is a war not out of self-defense but by choice, for profit and imperialistic domination. WMD, ties to Al Qaeda, and ties to 9/11 never existed and never will. The soldier must know that our narrowly and questionably elected officials intentionally manipulated the evidence presented to Congress, the public, and the world to make the case for war. They must know that neither Congress nor this administration has the authority to violate the prohibition against pre-emptive war - an American law that still stands today. This same administration uses us for rampant violations of time-tested laws banning torture and degradation of prisoners of war. Though the American soldier wants to do right, the illegitimacy of the occupation itself, the policies of this administration, and rules of engagement of desperate field commanders will ultimately force them to be party to war crimes. They must know some of these facts, if not all, in order to act.
Mark Twain once remarked, "Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country …" By this, each and every American soldier, marine, airman, and sailor is responsible for their choices and their actions. The freedom to choose is only one that we can deny ourselves.

The oath we take swears allegiance not to one man but to a document of principles and laws designed to protect the people. Enlisting in the military does not relinquish one's right to seek the truth - neither does it excuse one from rational thought nor the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. "I was only following orders" is never an excuse.

The Nuremburg Trials showed America and the world that citizenry as well as soldiers have the unrelinquishable obligation to refuse complicity in war crimes perpetrated by their government. Widespread torture and inhumane treatment of detainees is a war crime. A war of aggression born through an unofficial policy of prevention is a crime against the peace. An occupation violating the very essence of international humanitarian law and sovereignty is a crime against humanity. These crimes are funded by our tax dollars. Should citizens choose to remain silent through self-imposed ignorance or choice, it makes them as culpable as the soldier in these crimes.

The Constitution is no mere document - neither is it old, out-dated, or irrelevant. It is the embodiment of all that Americans hold dear: truth, justice, and equality for all. It is the formula for a government of the people and by the people. It is a government that is transparent and accountable to whom they serve. It dictates a system of checks and balances and separation of powers to prevent the evil that is tyranny.

As strong as the Constitution is, it is not foolproof. It does not fully take into account the frailty of human nature. Profit, greed, and hunger for power can corrupt individuals as much as they can corrupt institutions. The founders of the Constitution could not have imagined how money would infect our political system. Neither could they believe a standing army would be used for profit and manifest destiny. Like any common dictatorship, soldiers would be ordered to commit acts of such heinous nature as to be deemed most ungentlemanly and unbecoming that of a free country.

The American soldier is not a mercenary. He or she does not simply fight wars for payment. Indeed, the state of the American soldier is worse than that of a mercenary. For a soldier-for-hire can walk away if they are disgusted by their employer's actions. Instead, especially when it comes to war, American soldiers become indentured servants whether they volunteer out of patriotism or are drafted through economic desperation. Does it matter what the soldier believes is morally right? If this is a war of necessity, why force men and women to fight? When it comes to a war of ideology, the lines between right and wrong are blurred. How tragic it is when the term Catch-22 defines the modern American military.

Aside from the reality of indentured servitude, the American soldier in theory is much nobler. Soldier or officer, when we swear our oath it is first and foremost to the Constitution and its protectorate, the people. If soldiers realized this war is contrary to what the Constitution extols - if they stood up and threw their weapons down - no President could ever initiate a war of choice again. When we say, "… Against all enemies foreign and domestic," what if elected leaders became the enemy? Whose orders do we follow? The answer is the conscience that lies in each soldier, each American, and each human being. Our duty to the Constitution is an obligation, not a choice.

The military, and especially the Army, is an institution of fraternity and close-knit camaraderie. Peer pressure exists to ensure cohesiveness but it stamps out individualism and individual thought. The idea of brotherhood is difficult to pull away from if the alternative is loneliness and isolation. If we want soldiers to choose the right but difficult path - they must know beyond any shadow of a doubt that they will be supported by Americans. To support the troops who resist, you must make your voices heard. If they see thousands supporting me, they will know. I have heard your support, as has Suzanne Swift, and Ricky Clousing - but many others have not. Increasingly, more soldiers are questioning what they are being asked to do. Yet, the majority lack awareness to the truth that is buried beneath the headlines. Many more see no alternative but to obey. We must show open-minded soldiers a choice and we must give them courage to act.

Three weeks ago, Sgt. Hernandez from the 172nd Stryker Brigade was killed, leaving behind a wife and two children. In an interview, his wife said he sacrificed his life so that his family could survive. I'm sure Sgt. Hernandez cherished the camaraderie of his brothers, but given a choice, I doubt he would put himself in a position to leave his family husbandless and fatherless. Yet that's the point, you see. People like Sgt. Hernandez don't have a choice. The choices are to fight in Iraq or let your family starve. Many soldiers don't refuse this war en mass because, like all of us,, they value their families over their own lives and perhaps their conscience. Who would willingly spend years in prison for principle and morality while denying their family sustenance?
I tell this to you because you must know that to stop this war, for the soldiers to stop fighting it, they must have the unconditional support of the people. I have seen this support with my own eyes. For me it was a leap of faith. For other soldiers, they do not have that luxury. They must know it and you must show it to them. Convince them that no matter how long they sit in prison, no matter how long this country takes to right itself, their families will have a roof over their heads, food in their stomachs, opportunities and education. This is a daunting task. It requires the sacrifice of all of us. Why must Canadians feed and house our fellow Americans who have chosen to do the right thing? We should be the ones taking care of our own. Are we that powerless - are we that unwilling to risk something for those who can truly end this war? How do you support the troops but not the war? By supporting those who can truly stop it; let them know that resistance to participate in an illegal war is not futile and not without a future.

I have broken no law but the code of silence and unquestioning loyalty. If I am guilty of any crime, it is that I learned too much and cared too deeply for the meaningless loss of my fellow soldiers and my fellow human beings. If I am to be punished it should be for following the rule of law over the immoral orders of one man. If I am to be punished it should be for not acting sooner. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period … was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people."

Now, I'm not a hero. I am a leader of men who said enough is enough. Those who called for war prior to the invasion compared diplomacy with Saddam to the compromises made with Hitler. I say, we compromise now by allowing a government that uses war as the first option instead of the last to act with impunity. Many have said this about the World Trade Towers, "Never Again." I agree. Never again will we allow those who threaten our way of life to reign free - be they terrorists or elected officials. The time to fight back is now - the time to stand up and be counted is today.

I'll end with one more Martin Luther King Jr. quote:
One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Thank you and bless you all."

The only thing Watada said that I would disagree with is that he claimed that he is not a hero. He is a leader, yet again, by taking this stance. And he may never know how many lives he has already touched.

Today, it is up to the anti-war movement to make sure his leadership touches as many soldiers' lives in Iraq as possible. Watada is making his stand. He needs continued support.

As he said, if more American soldiers in Iraq know that they, along with their families, will be supported if they stand up against this illegal occupation, countless more will follow, and this repulsive war will end.

Women's "Legal Personhood" and the 19th Amendment

2006-08-18T12:53:00.000-07:00

Celebrate August 26
Tue, Aug 15, 2006
http://www.times-standard.com/opinion/ci_4161096

Women's 'Legal Personhood' and the 19th Amendment
by David Cobb

This month marks the anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. Women and men alike should celebrate moving a step closer to a more just and democratic society.This Saturday, our local chapter of the League of Women Voters will be hosting a commemoration of the passage of the 19th Amendment, as well as celebrating their own 50th anniversary. Talk about staying power! I hope readers will attend the festivities at Clarke Museum at 1 p.m. to thank these folks for their local work helping to encourage informed and active participation of local citizens in our government. (Call 444-9252 for details).

But to truly honor the women's suffrage movement we must place their victory into context.

First, remember that voting was not the only right denied to women at that time. Most states also had laws to forbid women from owning property, holding patents, or even entering into legal contracts -- including California. As late as 1957, there were still 11 states that prohibited women from serving on juries. In many respects a woman was once legally treated as the property of her father or husband. Courts and judges routinely and consistently upheld and applied these oppressive laws.

But the 14th Amendment should have changed that, because it explicitly states that “no state shall deny any person equal protection of the law.” Many suffragists concluded that freed slaves and women now possessed a constitutionally protected right to vote. This is an imminently rational conclusion. Women are people, right?

Not according to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that women were not “persons” for purposes of the protections of the 14th Amendment (Minor vs. Happersett, 1875).

Eleven years later, in the case of Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886), the Supreme Court held that although a woman is not a legal person, a corporation is a person. So the court illegitimately granted corporations the legal rights and protections of the 14th Amendment while denying those protections to women.

Of course, the idea that a corporation is a person strains the limits of logic as surely as the notion that a woman is not a person. Stated simply, the Supreme Court was wrong.

Thankfully, women did not accept “settled law.” They took their cause to their local communities, to the streets, and to the court of public opinion.

And while rank-and-file members of both the Democratic and Republican parties supported the women's movement, the leadership of both parties originally opposed the effort. It took an alternative party (Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive Party) to become the first political party to publicly support women's suffrage -- proving again that when the people lead, the leaders will follow.

Thanks to the courage and persistence of “unreasonable women,” a women's suffrage constitutional amendment was proposed in 1898 -- and had to be re-introduced for the next 41 years before it passed.The women who agitated for the right to vote were scorned, mocked and ridiculed by the elites of their day. Just as today folks advocating for a clean environment, an end to the illegitimate and unjust occupation of Iraq, marriage equality for same-sex couples, and local control of our own local government are mocked and ridiculed by the right-wing.

So remember that today's “unreasonable and naive” progressive idea is tomorrow's celebration.

Happy anniversary, League of Women Voters of Humboldt County. And thanks.

David Cobb, Green Party candidate for president in 2004, works for Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County and is a POCLAD principal. He writes a weekly column for the Eureka Times-Standard, and can be reached at david@duhc.org

The Government's 9/11 Facade is Crumbling

2006-08-18T12:44:00.000-07:00

OpEdNews.com
August 10, 2006
The Government's 9/11 Facade is Crumbling
By John Perry

First things first:Any time two or more people are knowingly involved in the commission of a crime, there is, by definition, a conspiracy. This is not a theory, folks. It's a stone-cold, undeniable fact. So the real question about 9/11 is not whether there was a conspiracy, but indeed exactly who the conspirators are.

It really is this simple:

1) Either 19 guys with box cutters, led by a guy hiding in a cave in Afghanistan, were able to hijack four major airliners, fly them with expert precision (even though flight instructors say they could barely even fly Cessnas), avoid the most sophisticated air defense system in the history of the world and hit three of four targets in New York and Washington, killing nearly 3000 people and thus pulling off history's most spectacular terrorist attack, Or:

2) A rogue criminal element within our own government, with the means, motive and standing to benefit tremendously, both financially and politically, either helped to make it happen or fully orchestrated it themselves. By the way, about that guy hiding in the cave in Afghanistan that supposedly led the hijackers: In June of this year, when questioned about why Osama bin Laden's wanted poster did not mention the 9/11 attacks, an official from the FBI stated that they had "no hard evidence" of his involvement (Google "FBI no hard evidence").

9/11 Truth Movement Gaining Steam
Nineteenth century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said the following about truth:"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."Similarly, Gandhi said this:"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."

The importance of America and the world accepting and reacting accordingly to the horrible truth about 9/11 cannot be overstated. If you think it doesn't affect you because you didn't lose anybody on 9/11, or you don't have any loved ones (civilians or military) in the midst of George W. Bush's subsequent and utterly bogus "war on terror", I would urge you in the strongest possible terms to rethink your position. We must not only be concerned with exacting proper justice for the mass murder of 9/11. We must also be concerned with ending the tide of tyranny that has begun to wash over us as a result of that tragic day, threatening freedom, democracy, and the world as we know it. They who seek to rule us with an iron fist, pretending to protect us by destroying our liberty, must be told in no uncertain terms that we the people thoroughly reject their despotism, in favor of the constitutional democracy that our country has lived by for more than 200 years.

Thankfully, many more are beginning to awaken to the truth of 9/11, and that can only be good. But we have a long way to go. There are, as you might imagine, many websites dedicated to this issue. If I could recommend a single site to point people to in the effort to grow our movement, it would be Scholars for 9/11 Truth. Bookmark it and refer to it often. You will also reach many other sites from there. The single most influential voice of the 9/11 truth movement is unquestionably Alex Jones. Visit his sites here and here. In June of this year, Jones conducted a 9/11 symposium that was broadcast multiple times on CSPAN. Put 90 minutes aside and watch it here.

In addition to the Jones symposium and its multiple broadcasts on CSPAN, two national polls have recently come out (one just last week) that show very significant doubt of the "official story" of 9/11 among the American people, indicating rapid mainstream growth of the 9/11 truth movement.

A Scripps Howard / Ohio University poll, released last week, reveals that 36 percent of Americans now believe it is either "somewhat likely" or "very likely" that the government was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

Additionally, a Zogby International Poll, released in May, revealed that 42 percent of Americans believe that the (9/11 Commission and the government are "covering up").

These numbers might seem surprising, given the precious little positive exposure our movement has received from the mainstream media to this point (with the exception, of course, of the excellent coverage of the Jones 9/11 Symposium by CSPAN). But I believe what they actually reveal is that as people continue to witness things like the mountain of Bush lies that launched the disaster that is Iraq, his pathetic lack of any kind of coherent plan to get us out, warrantless wiretapping, secret examining of our banking records, bogus signing statements, his belief that he is above the law, and his obvious contempt for the Constitution ("Stop throwing the Constitution in my face...It's just a goddamned piece of paper"), they're putting two and two together, questioning everything, doing their homework and learning the truth for themselves.

Imagine where these poll numbers will go if the mainstream media really starts giving the truth movement some legitimate coverage. From the Zogby poll, incidentally, it's also very interesting to note that 43 percent were not aware of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 on 9/11. This was a 47-story building that did have small fires burning in various places, but was not hit by any airplane, nor by either of the falling twin towers, yet collapsed straight down, at free-fall speed, into its own footprint at around 5:30 that afternoon. There has never been an official explanation given for the collapse of building 7, and the 9/11 Commission completely ignored the collapse in its final report.

Is it not disturbing that a 47-story building became the third steel frame structure in history to completely collapse on its own, the first two being WTC towers 1 and 2 earlier that same day, and the 9/11 Commission didn't care enough to even comment on it? Many have burned for as long as several days, but no steel frame building anywhere in the world had ever collapsed due to fire before 9/11, and none have collapsed due to fire since 9/11.

Pentagon False Flag
As far as the Pentagon is concerned, there is no concrete evidence of a 757 crash. Something obviously did hit the building, of course, but photos indicate that it was something much smaller. A 757 is 155 feet long, 44 feet high (to the top of the rear stabilizer), with a 124 foot wingspan and two engines that are each 8 feet in diameter, each weighing 6 tons. The building is 71 feet tall.

The initial Pentagon impact (before the partial building collapse) left a round hole approximately 16 feet in diameter, with fully intact windows directly above and to each side. There was no initial damage to the building where the wings, engines or tail of a 757 would have hit. Whatever really did hit the Pentagon is no doubt seen clearly on the security videotapes that were confiscated from the nearby gas station and Sheraton National Hotel by the FBI within minutes of the impact on the morning of 9/11, which is why they have never been released. Doesn't it seem odd that our TV screens were plastered with thousands of images of planes flying into the World Trade Center in the first few days after 9/11, yet we have never been shown the full motion video of the Pentagon impact that is known to exist? What are they hiding?

The PNAC Factor
No story on this issue would be complete without mentioning the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neo-conservative, pro-war "think tank", hell bent on mobilizing America's massive military strength to serve their own worldwide imperial mission. PNAC counts among its membership such prominent people as Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secreatry Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney's former chief of staff Scooter Libby, Rumsfeld's former assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (who now heads the World Bank), and Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida and the president's brother.In September of 2000, PNAC issued a report called Rebuilding America's Defenses (you'll need a pdf file reader – get it free from Adobe), which is basically their war manifesto.

Wolfowitz is said to be the main architect of the manifesto, which is based on a document called "The Wolfowitz Doctrine", written in 1992 by then Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Wolfowitz and his then assistant Libby.Of course, PNAC couldn't initiate their plan without having people in very prominent positions in government to pull the right strings.

That's why Cheney, when tapped to lead the search for George W. Bush's vice presidential running mate for the 2000 election, chose himself. He then of course made sure his long time, war mongering, neocon friend Don Rumsfeld (they go back to the Nixon administration together) was inserted as the new Defense Secretary, another key position. Wolfowitz and Libby followed to fill their respective positions in the new Bush government. See my original article on 9/11 – "The Ugliest Truth", for details on the cozy little 35 year friendship between Rummy and Uncle Dick, as well as many links for you to explore regarding the truth about 9/11. The problem the PNAC had, even with all the right people in place, was that they couldn't launch a war and initiate their plan just because they wanted to. The people would never go for it, and Congress would never fund it. They needed an excuse. Indeed, this is something they themselves recognized. On page 51 of "Rebuilding America's Defenses" (again, issued in September of 2000, one year before 9/11), you will find the following quote: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."

So once again, I ask you:19 pissed off guys with boxcutters, whose only apparent benefit was the supposed 72 virgins waiting for them when they got to the other side, or a rogue criminal element within our own government, with the means, motive and standing to benefit tremendously, both financially and politically?

May the truth soon be revealed for the entire world to see.

Authors Website: www.johnperryonline.com

Authors Bio: John Perry is a radio personality, freelance writer and citizen activist. Reach him directly via his website, johnperryonline.com

Billions Face Water Shortage, Crisis Looms: Agency

2006-08-18T12:39:00.000-07:00

Published on Wednesday, August 16, 2006 by Reuters
Billions Face Water Shortages, Crisis Looms: Agency
by James Grubel

A third of the world is facing water shortages because of poor management of water resources and soaring water usage, driven mainly by agriculture, the International Water Management Institute said on Wednesday.

Water scarcity around the world was increasing faster than expected, with agriculture accounting for 80 percent of global water consumption, the world authority on fresh water management told a development conference in Canberra.

Globally, water usage had increased by six times in the past 100 years and would double again by 2050, driven mainly by irrigation and demands by agriculture, said Frank Rijsberman, the institute's director-general.

Billions of people in Asia and Africa already faced water shortages because of poor water management, he said.

"We will not run out of bottled water any time soon but some countries have already run out of water to produce their own food," he said.

"Without improvements in water productivity ... the consequences of this will be even more widespread water scarcity and rapidly increasing water prices."

The Sri Lanka-based institute, funded by international agricultural research organisations, is due to formally release its findings at a conference in Sweden later this month.

Rijsberman said water scarcity in Asia and Australia affected about 1.5 billion people and was caused by over-allocating water from rivers, while scarcity in Africa was caused by a lack of infrastructure to get the water to the people who need it.

"The water is there, the rainfall is there, but the infrastructure isn't there," Rijsberman told reporters.

He said more needed to be done to promote rain-fed agriculture and to increase water storage in Africa, where many people live with water scarcity.

THE PRICE IS NOT RIGHT
"Irrigation needs to be reinvented," said Rijsberman, adding irrigation in many countries was inefficient.

But scarcity problems could also be overcome by more efficient water use, recycling and better pricing of water, which in its bottled form was already rivaling the cost of oil.

Rising living standards in India and China would lead to increased demand for better food, which would take more water to produce, he said.

Rijsberman said the price of water would have to increase to meet an expected 50 percent increase in the amount of food the world will need in the next 20 years.

He said in Australia, five years into a drought, irrigation water costs less than five U.S. cents a cubic meter, compared to $1 to $2 per cubic meter for drinking tap water and $100 to $200 per cubic meter for bottled drinking water.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, whose constituency covers the mouth of Australia's longest river system, the Murray-Darling, said solving water problems was a pressing problem for the world.

"Improving the efficiency of agricultural production and water use is fundamentally important to improving economic growth, sustainability and reducing poverty," Downer said.

The Murray-Darling runs through Australia's main crop and food-growing region but water flows have dropped dramatically because of drought and large amounts of river water pumped out to irrigate cotton.

Downer said Australian researchers were working with counterparts in China to develop new irrigation methods for rice, while Australian aid programmes were working to improve water in the Mekong River through Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.

A report on global water by environment group WWF released on Wednesday warned that rich nations, like Australia, were not immune to the coming water crisis.

It said Sydney was using more water than could be replenished and Australia had among the highest water usage in the world.

Each day, urban Australians use an average of 300 litres of water each, compared with Europeans who consume about 200 litres, while people in sub-Saharan Africa existed on 10-20 litres a day, said the report.

Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited
###

NSA: How Many and Where Were the Nukes?

2006-08-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

How Many and Where Were the Nukes? What the U.S. Government No Longer Wants You to Know about Nuclear Weapons During the Cold War
Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 12:21 AM

National Security Archive Update, August 18, 2006
http://www.nsarchive.org
For more information: Dr. William Burr, Thomas Blanton, 202/994-7000Washington, DC

18 August 2006 - The Pentagon and the Energy Department have now stamped as national security secrets the long-public numbers of U.S. nuclear missiles during the Cold War, including data from the public reports of the Secretaries of Defense in 1967 and 1971, according to government documents posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive <http://www.nsarchive.org> .

Pentagon and Energy officials have now blacked out from previously public charts the numbers of Minuteman missiles (1,000), Titan II missiles (54), and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (656) in the historic U.S. Cold War arsenal, even though four Secretaries of Defense (McNamara, Laird, Richardson, Schlesinger) reported strategic force levels publicly in the 1960s and 1970s.

The security censors also have blacked out deployment information about U.S nuclear weapons in Great Britain and Germany that was declassified in 1999, as well as nuclear deployment arrangements with Canada, even though the Canadian government has declassified its side of the arrangement.

The reclassifications come in an environment of wide-ranging review of archival documents with nuclear weapons data that Congress authorized in the 1998 Kyl-Lott amendments. Under Kyl-Lott, the Energy Department has spent $22 million while surveying more than 200 million pages of released documents. Energy has reported to Congress that 6,640 pages have been withdrawn from public access (at a cost of $3,313 per page), but that the majority involves Formerly Restricted Data, which would include historic numbers and locations of weapons, rather than weapon systems design information (Restricted Data).

Documents posted today by the National Security Archive include:

* Recently released Defense Department, NSC, and State Department reports with excisions of numbers of nuclear missiles and bombers in the U.S. arsenals during the 1960s and 70s.
* Unclassified tables published in a report to Congress by Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird as excised by Pentagon reviewers.
* A "Compendium of Nuclear Weapons Arrangements" between the United States and foreign governments that was prepared in 1968 and recently released in a massively excised version under Defense Department and DOE guidelines.
* Canadian and U.S. government documents illustrating the public record nature of some information withheld from the 1968 "Compendium."

"It would be difficult to find better candidates for unjustifiable secrecy than decisions to classify the numbers of U.S. strategic weapons," remarked Archive senior analyst Dr. William Burr, who compiled today’s posting. "This problem, as well as the excessive secrecy for historical nuclear deployments, is unlikely to go away as long as security reviewers follow unrealistic guidelines."

"The government is reclassifying public data at the same time that government prosecutors are claiming the power to go after anybody who has 'unauthorized possession' of classified information," said Archive director Thomas Blanton. "What's really at risk is accountability in government."http://www.nsarchive.org

THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals.

Hizbullah Has Achieved What Arab States Only Dreamed of

2006-08-18T12:15:00.000-07:00

Published on Thursday, August 17, 2006 by the Guardian / UK
Hizbullah Has Achieved What Arab States Only Dreamed of
The sixth Arab-Israeli war, as some have called it, has ended in the first real setback for Israel's deterrent power
by David Hirst

(Note: David Hirst is the author of the classic book on Israel/Palestine called The Gun and the Olive Branch).

There was nothing new about the broad objective behind Israel's war on Lebanon: through the destruction of Hizbullah it was to wreak fundamental change in a strategic, political and military environment that it had come to regard as menacing to its future. Nothing new about its methods either: the use of massive violence not merely against its military adversary but against the civilians and the infrastructure of the country in which it operates. Or about its official justification: seizing upon one single act of "terrorist" violence from the other side as the opportunity to strike at the whole "terrorist" organisation that was responsible for it. Or about the international support, even outright collaboration, it enjoyed, although in the case of the US and Britain this support was unprecedented in its partisan degree and in the perception of the vast dimensions, nature and menace of the "enemy" against which Israel was waging war. For Condoleezza Rice the "root causes" of the Lebanese crisis lay not on the Israeli side but in the wider Arab and Muslim world: Hizbullah was but the cutting edge of "global terror", of the Islamic fanaticism that nurtured it, and of those states, Iran and Syria, that succour these forces for their own purposes, whether inspired by ideology or realpolitik.

Nor was there anything fundamentally unexpected about the Israeli campaign. For it grew out of very nature and dynamics of the Arab-Israeli conflict. For all the peace-seeking diplomacy it also engenders, that conflict remains what it was from the outset, one in which violence is always the ultimate arbiter. Ever since the 70s, when the Arab states lost the will and ability to fight classical wars, most of the violence has been confined to the main protagonists - Israelis and Palestinians. Basically, Israel seeks through violence to preserve all the gains, at Palestinian expense, that violence secured it in the first place, or at least as much of them as is consistent with its view of what would constitute a reasonable peaceful settlement. The Palestinians use violence in repeated attempts to wrest back enough of what they have lost, or simply to cause sufficient pain and alarm to make possible what, in their view, that settlement should entail. Most of the time violence has been low-level and attritional, but every now and then it escalates into something much larger.

What is new - and dramatically so - about this campaign is its outcome. Arabs soon dubbed this the sixth Arab-Israeli war, and for some of them - and indeed for some Israelis - it already ranks, in its strategic, psychological and political consequences, as perhaps the most significant since Israel's "war of independence" in 1948. For a state that relies for its survival not on the acceptance of its neighbours but on its repeatedly demonstrated ability to defeat and intimidate them by superior force of arms, it is vital to retain what it calls its "deterrent power". What, on July 12, made Hizbullah's seizure of two soldiers so unbearable was not that it was a "terrorist" act; it was that - allowed to pass without an appropriate response - it would have constituted a grievous blow to that "deterrent power". But with the extraordinary shortcomings of that response it has not only failed to repair its deterrent power, it has undermined it as never before.

Hizbullah achieved this in various ways. On the strictly military level, a small band of irregulars kept at bay one of the world's most powerful armies for over a month, and inflicted remarkable losses on it; the manner in which it did this - a combination of professional skills, ingenuity, intrepidity, meticulous preparation, masterful use of anti-tank missiles, brilliant organisation, labyrinthine underground defences - is only now fully coming to light. This was only possible because Hizbullah represented something else: the first non-state actor to single-handedly take on Israel in a full-scale war of this kind. Only such an actor could have secured the freedom of action to prepare for and conduct such a war. Yet it was Israel itself, through its earlier attempts to change its strategic environment by force, that did so much to create Hizbullah, just as, in Palestine, it did so much to create Hamas.

It is not just Hizbullah's performance in itself that has changed the balance of power at Israel's expense; it is the example it sets for the whole region. In his way Hassan Nasrallah is now an even more inspiring Arab hero than Nasser was; Hizbullah's achievement has had an electrifying impact on the Arab and Muslim masses that largely transcends the otherwise growing, region-wide Sunni-Shia divide; it will contribute to their further radicalisation and, if that is not appeased by the Arab regimes, to upheavals in the whole existing order. "Public opinion says to the regimes, 'If they are getting more on the battlefield than you are at the negotiating table, and you have so many more means at your disposal, then what the hell are you doing?' " says Mouin Rabbani of the International Crisis Group.

King Abdullah of Jordan, who - like Egypt and Saudi Arabia - made the mistake of publicly accusing Hizbullah of "uncalculated adventurism", and clearly hoped that Israel would punish it, admits that if things go on like this then new Hizbullahs will emerge, with his kingdom among the candidates for one.

Hizbullah has no intention of disarming, and it is improbable that anyone else can get it to do so. Never before, therefore, has Israel ended a war so persuaded that, sooner or later, it will only generate another. The only way to prevent that is to get Israel and the US to realise that those "root causes" out of which it grew lie on their side too. Israel may not have caused "global terror" and Islamic extremism, but with its own violence, especially that against civilians, it greatly inflames it. And Israel resorts to violence, at bottom, because it cannot achieve peace; and it cannot achieve that because the only peace it has ever offered falls so far short of what Arabs and Palestinians could ever accept. This is the conclusion a few Israelis, Europeans and even leading Americans are drawing. But there is no sign of the Israeli establishment or President Bush doing so. They should bear in mind, says Israeli commentator Nissim Kalderon, that "the difficult war imposed upon us obliges us to take greater risks for peace after the war. Because the risks of the coming missile war with the fundamentalists could be greater. Much greater."

David Hirst reported from the Middle East for the Guardian from 1963 to 2001.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
###

Top Chinese Diplomat Tells U.S. to "Shut Up" on Arms Spending

2006-08-18T12:11:00.000-07:00

Published on Thursday, August 17, 2006 by Agence France Presse
Top Chinese Diplomat Tells US to 'Shut up' on Arms Spending
by H. Josef Hebert

China's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, throwing diplomatic language to the wind, has told the United States in no uncertain terms to "shut up and keep quiet" on the subject of Beijing's growing military spending.

Interviewed for a BBC radio programme on the topic Thursday, Sha Zukang also said China would "do the business" and sacrifice its own people's lives if any nation supported a declaration of independence by Taiwan.

Responding to jitters within the Bush administration about Beijing's spiraling military budget, Sha said the United States itself accounts for half of the entire world's military spending.

"The China population is six times or five times that of the United States," he said. "Why blame China?... It's better for the US to shut up and keep quiet. It's much, much better."

His voice rising, Sha continued: "It's the US's sovereign right to do whatever they deem good for them -- but don't tell us what is good for China. Thank you very much!"

Sha was equally explicit on Taiwan declaring independence with US backing -- a prospect that the BBC programme, by former Beijing correspondent Carrie Gracie, called the motivating factor behind Chinese military spending.

"The moment Taiwan declares independence, supported by whoever, China will have no choice," he said.

"We will do the business through whatever means available to my government. Nobody should have any illusions on that. We will do the business at any cost."

He added: "It's not a matter of how big Taiwan is, but for China, one inch of the territory is more valuable than the life of our people. We will never concede on that."

China's rising military spending, which has grown by double digits for much of the last 15 years, has caused concern in the United States and amongst China's neighbors in Asia.

In March the National People's Congress (parliament), largely a rubber-stamp for decisions taken at the top level of the Chinese Communist Party, approved a 14.7-percent increase in military spending to 35 billion dollars (27 billion euros) this year.

Although this is paltry compared to the 419 billion dollar (325 billion euro) US defense budget in 2006, the Pentagon last year estimated that China's defense spending was two to three times the publicly announced figure.

In a speech in Beijing in July, Defence Minister Cao Gangchuan said modernization of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) remained a priority, the China News Service reported.
"The entire military must eye the historic destiny of China's military in the new century and new era and push forward the main line of a Chinese-style revolution in military affairs," he was quoted as saying.

He added: "We must unswervingly fulfill our sacred duty to defend state sovereignty, territorial integrity and security and never tolerate Taiwan independence and never permit Taiwan independence forces under any name or under any circumstances or form to split Taiwan from the motherland."

Copyright © 2006 AFP
###

Federal Judge Orders Halt to NSA Wiretapping

2006-08-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

Published on Thursday, August 17, 2006 by Reuters
Judge Orders Halt to NSA Wiretap Program
by Kevin Krolicki

DETROIT - A federal judge ordered the Bush administration on Thursday to halt the National Security Agency's program of domestic eavesdropping, saying it violated the U.S. Constitution.
The ruling marked a setback for the Bush administration, which has defended the program as an essential tool in its war on terrorism.

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor said the warrantless wiretapping under the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" violated free speech rights, protections against unreasonable searches and the constitutional check on the power of the presidency.

"There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution," Taylor said in a 44-page ruling.

The NSA program has been widely criticized by civil rights activists and raised concern among lawmakers, including some in President George W. Bush's own Republican Party, who say the president may have overstepped his powers by authorizing it.

The government had asked for the lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union to be thrown out, arguing that any court action on the case would jeopardize secrets in the war on terrorism.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment. The ACLU said it expected the Bush administration to seek an immediate stay on the federal court order pending an appeal before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"We think the program is unconstitutional and we are hopeful and confident that any district or appellate court who looks at it seriously will agree with that," said ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer.
Bush authorized the NSA program after the September 11 attacks on the United States, and it became public last year.

The program allows the government to eavesdrop on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens without obtaining a warrant, if those wiretaps are made to track suspected al Qaeda operatives.

But Taylor ruled that by skirting the process of obtaining warrants, the Bush administration had violated the terms of a 1978 surveillance law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.
FISA requires warrants for individual eavesdropping on suspects inside the United States.
Taylor said the government's arguments in support of the program appeared to imply that Bush's role as commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces gave him "the inherent power to violate not only the laws of the Congress but the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution itself."

Civil rights activists welcomed the decision.

"The ruling of the judge is not only a victory for the American Muslim community but a victory for the entire American population," said Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations for Michigan, which joined the ACLU as a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
"America is built on the principles of civil liberty and equal protection for all American citizens, regardless of ethnicity and race," he said.

The ACLU lawsuit was filed on behalf of scholars, attorneys, journalists and non-profit groups that regularly communicate with people in the Middle East and believe that their phone calls and e-mail had been intercepted by the U.S. government.

A similar suit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights is pending in federal court in New York. The judge in that case is set to hear arguments on September 5.

Additional reporting by Jui Chakravorty, Claudia Parsons in New York, Frances Kerry in Washington
© Reuters 2006
###

Chomsky Interview: Israel, the Holocaust, and Anti-Semitism

2006-08-15T22:23:00.000-07:00

Media with Conscience (MWC) - A Site Without Borders

Israel, the Holocaust, and Anti-Semitism
Noam Chomsky
Excerpted from Chronicles of Dissent, 1992

QUESTION: One of your books, The Fateful Triangle, focuses specifically on the Middle East, and I was wondering if you could talk about your position on a possible two-state solution to the Palestinian question.

CHOMSKY: I don't think that's the optimal solution, but it has been the realistic political settlement for some time. We have to begin with some fundamentals here. The real question is: there are plainly two national groups that claim the right of self-determination in what used to be Palestine, roughly the area now occupied by Israel minus the Golan Heights, which is part of Syria.

So there are two national groups which claim national self-determination. One group is the indigenous population, or what's left of it -- a lot of it's been expelled or driven out or fled. The other group is the Jewish settlers who came in, originally from Europe, later from other parts of the Middle East and some other places. So there are two groups, the indigenous population and the immigrants and their descendants. Both claim the right of national self-determination. Here we have to make a crucial decision: are we racists or aren't we? If we're not racists, then the indigenous population has the same rights of self-determination as the settlers who replaced them. Some might claim more, but let's say at least as much right. Hence if we are not racist, we will try to press for a solution which accords them -- we'll say they are human beings with equal rights, therefore they both merit the claim to national self-determination. I'm granting that the settlers have the same rights as the indigenous population; many do not find that obvious but let's grant it. Then there are a number of possibilities. One possibility is a democratic secular society. Virtually nobody is in favor of that. Some people say they are, but if you look closely they're not really. There are various models for multi-ethnic societies, say Switzerland or whatever. And maybe in the long run these might be the best idea, but they're unrealistic.
The only realistic political settlement, for the time being, in the past ten or twelve years, that would satisfy the right of self-determination for both national groups is a two-state settlement. Everybody knows what it would have to be: Israel within approximately the pre-June 1967 borders and a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and a return of the Golan Heights to Syria, or maybe some other arrangement. This would be associated with maybe demilitarized zones and international guarantees of some sort or another, but that's the framework of a possible political settlement. As I say, I don't think it's the best one, but that's the realistic one, very realistic. It's supported by most of the world. It's supported by Europe, by the Soviet Union, has been for a long time, by almost all the non-aligned countries, it's supported by all the major Arab states and has been for a long time, supported by the mainstream of the PLO and, again, has been for a long time, it's supported even by the American population, by about two to one according to the polls. But there are also people who oppose it. It's opposed by the rejection front in the Arab world, the minority elements of the PLO, Libya, a few others, minority rejectionist elements, but crucially it's opposed by the leaders of the rejection front, namely the United States and Israel. The United States and Israel adamantly oppose it. The United States will not consider it. Both political groupings in Israel reject it totally. They reject any right of national self-determination for the indigenous popula- tion in the former Palestine. They can have Jordan if they want, or the former Syria, or something, but not the area that they now hold under military occupation. In fact they're explicit about it. There are carefully fostered illusions here that the Labor Party is interested in compromise over the issue. But if you look closely, there's no meaningful compromise. The position of the Labor Party remains what was expressed by their representative, who is now President, Chaim Herzog, who said that "no one can be a partner with us in a land that has been holy to our people for 2000 years." That's the position. They're willing to make minor adjustments. They don't want to take care of the population in the West Bank, because there are too many Arabs; they don't want a lot of Arabs around, so what they would like to do is take the areas and the water and the resources they want from the West Bank but leave the population, either stateless or under Jordanian control. That's what's called a "compromise solution." It's a very cynical proposal, even worse in many respects than annexation. But that's called here compromise and the reason is that we are again educated elites in the United States and national discussion takes a strictly racist view of this. The Palestinians are not human, they do not deserve the rights that we accord automatically to the settlers who displaced them. That's the basis of articulate American discussion: pure, unadulterated racism. Again, that's not true of the population, as usual, but it is of the politically active and articulate parts of it and certainly the government. As long as the United States and Israel reject the political settlement, there can't be one.

There certainly have been very plausible opportunities for a political settlement over many years, in fact, just to mention a few which have disappeared from history because they're too inconvenient: in February 1971 President Sadat of Egypt offered a full peace treaty to Israel on the pre-June 67 borders. In accordance with official American policy, incidentally, but not operative policy, offering nothing to the Palestinians, he didn't even offer them a Palestinian state, nothing. Nevertheless Israel rejected it, and the United States backed them in that rejection. In January 1976 Syria, Jordan and Egypt, the so-called "confrontation states," made a proposal in the U.N. Security Council for a two-state settlement with international guarantees and territorial rights secured and so on. That was backed and even prepared by the PLO, supported by the Soviet Union and most of the world. It was vigorously opposed by Israel, which even boycotted the session, in fact, it bombed Lebanon in retaliation against the United Nations, killing about 50 people, no excuse at all, just a fit of anger, "We're going to kill anybody who gets in our way if you push this," and the United States vetoed it. There have been a series of such things ever since. The United States has always blocked them and Israel has always refused them, and that means there's no political settlement. Rather there is a state of permanent military confrontation. That's aside from what it means to the Palestinians, which is obvious and terrible; it's very bad for Israel. It's leading to their own destruction, in my view, certainly to their economic collapse and moral degeneration and probably, sooner or later, their physical destruction, because you can't have a state of military confrontation without a defeat sooner or later. It's leading the world very close to nuclear war, repeatedly. Every time we have an Arab-Israeli conflict -- and there will be more of them, as long as we maintain a military confrontation -- the Soviet Union and the United States come into confrontation. Both are involved. The Soviet Union is close by, it's not like Central America, it's a strategic region right near their border, they're involved; it's very far from us but it's a strategic region for us because of the oil nearby, primarily. So we're involved, the fleets come into confrontation, it's very close. In 1967 it came very close to nuclear war and it will again. So it's very dangerous, it's the most likely spot where a nuclear war would develop, but we are pursuing it, because we don't want a political settlement. The United States is intent on maintaining a military confrontation.

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A Shaky Cease-Fire Q&A

2006-08-15T22:18:00.000-07:00

From Capitol Hill Blue
FUBAR
A shaky cease-fire Q & A
By LISA HOFFMAN
Aug 15, 2006, 05:48

As a shaky ceasefire took effect Monday morning, Lebanese and Israeli officials met at the war-ravaged border between their two countries to set in motion a military disengagement and, perhaps, a measure of peace.

But so delicate is the situation, and so uncharted the road ahead, that a true end to more than a month of warfare between Israel's troops and Hezbollah guerilla fighters remains difficult to discern.

Even President Bush, as he cast the agreement as another step toward democracy in the region, reflected the unease that accompanied the hard-won ceasefire that, at least for now, has ended 34 days of bloody battle.

"We certainly hope the cease-fire holds," Bush said.

Here's a first look at what is known -- and unknown -- about the terms of the truce and its immediate future.

Q. What does the agreement actually say?

A. As such documents always are, the cease-fire pact is vague and provides, at best, a blueprint for its interpretation and enforcement. The devilish details remain to be hammered out by Israeli, Lebanese and United Nations officials.

For instance, Israel is to withdraw its soldiers at the "earliest possible" time, but only once the Lebanese army moves into southern Lebanon to begin carving out an 18-mile deep buffer zone between Israel and Hezbollah strongholds.

But Israel says it will not budge until a 15,000-person U.N. peacekeeping force arrives. The pact also bars only "offensive" actions by Israel _which that country is interpreting as allowing pre-emptive "defensive" air strikes against Hezbollah rocket launchers that appear ready to fire or to stop arms deliveries from Syria.

And Hezbollah, while formally agreeing to the truce, also insists that it retains the right to defend Lebanese soil from Israeli "occupiers" as long as they remain north of the border.

The agreement also requires the guerillas to disarm by surrendering their weapons to the Lebanese army, but does not authorize anyone to make Hezbollah do so. In fact, Lebanon's U.N. ambassador vowed that his government would not use force against them.

Q. What happens next?

A. All eyes now turn toward the Lebanese army, a rag-tag, undisciplined assemblage that all but certainly includes Hezbollah followers. Lebanese generals said 15,000 soldiers would arrive at the Litani river demarcation point within two or three days.

There they are likely to sit for an undetermined period of time, as a U.N. force is cobbled together and its duties decided. The foreign minister of France _ the country expected to command the 15,000 international peacekeepers _ said Monday that it was far too early to present a timetable for deployment.

For now, not only is it unknown which countries will contribute soldiers to the U.N. force, but also what powers the force will bring.

Though discussions with assorted nations were underway Monday, France still had not yet decided how many of its soldiers to send. Other countries that might sign up _ including China, Ghana, India, Ireland, Italy and Poland _ won't be asked to participate until France's commitment is sealed. One certainty: no U.S. forces will be included.

More important than the makeup of the force will be the "rules of engagement" it will follow. The ceasefire deal says the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, can take "all necessary action" to "fulfill its mission."

How those phrases are interpreted will determine whether the force will intervene to halt cross-border attacks or serve as a more passive watchdog. The latter describes the performance of previous UNIFIL observers first dispatched to southern Lebanon in 1978.

Q. What are the odds the truce will hold?

A. Don't bet the ranch. Modern Middle Eastern history is replete with ceasefires gone bad, particularly in Israeli-Arab conflicts.

U.N. diplomats say success will depend on the United States pressuring Israel to obey the deal it signed, and on war-weary Lebanese citizens and officials doing the same to Hezbollah.

But Lebanon's government will likely find Hezbollah, flush with the respect its undermanned force has drawn from the Arab world and beyond for its muscular resistance to Israel's pounding, little inclined to kowtow to Lebanese officials or anyone else.

And in Israel, anger is building at the failure of Israeli forces to bring Hezbollah to its knees -- as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had promised to do. That, too, does not foretell a fertile environment for further concessions or much patience should Hezbollah test the limits of the pact.

In a speech to Israel's parliament Monday, Olmert insisted that Israel had won recognition from "the entire international community" that "the terror state in Lebanon must be annihilated."
But opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu said the fighting had ended without the return of kidnapped Israeli soldiers and the permanent disarming of Hezbollah -- which Olmert had said was the purpose of the fight.

"Unfortunately, there will be another round (in this war) because the government's just demands weren't met," Netanyahu told the Israeli Knesset Monday. "Right now we are in an interim period between wars."

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com)

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The UK Terror Plot: What's Really Going On?

2006-08-15T22:16:00.000-07:00

Published on Tuesday, August 15, 2006 by Craig Murray
The UK Terror plot: What's Really Going On?
by Craig Murray

I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine.

So this, I believe, is the true story.

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.
What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.

The gentleman being "interrogated" had fled the UK after being wanted for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago. That might be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might also be felt that factors other than political ones might be at play within these relationships. Much is also being made of large transfers of money outside the formal economy. Not in fact too unusual in the British Muslim community, but if this activity is criminal, there are many possibilities that have nothing to do with terrorism.

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.

We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil threatening us and complaining that "Some people don't get" the need to abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on, according to his own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and minutely direct the arrests. There could be no clearer evidence that our Police are now just a political tool. Like all the best nasty regimes, the knock on the door came in the middle of the night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a mother with a six week old baby.

For those who don't know, it is worth introducing Reid. A hardened Stalinist with a long term reputation for personal violence, at Stirling Univeristy he was the Communist Party's "Enforcer", (in days when the Communist Party ran Stirling University Students' Union, which it should not be forgotten was a business with a very substantial cash turnover). Reid was sent to beat up those who deviated from the Party line.

We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on to make a bomb or buy a plane ticket. Most of them do not fit the "Loner" profile you would expect - a tiny percentage of suicide bombers have happy marriages and young children. As they were all under surveillance, and certainly would have been on airport watch lists, there could have been little danger in letting them proceed closer to maturity - that is certainly what we would have done with the IRA.

In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply harrassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few - just over two per cent of arrests - who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered.

Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical.

Craig Murray was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004.
###

Israel's Verdict: We Lost the War

2006-08-15T22:13:00.000-07:00

Published on Tuesday, August 15, 2006 by the Independent / UK
Israel's Verdict: We Lost the War
by Donald Macintyre

Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, was obliged to admit "shortcomings" in the 34-day-old conflict in Lebanon yesterday as he launched what may prove a protracted fight for his own political survival.

Mr Olmert's admission in a stormy Knesset session came in the face of devastating poll figures showing a majority of the Israeli public believes none or only a very small part of the goals of the war had been achieved.

Adding insult to injury, the leader of Hizbollah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, crowed on television that his guerrillas had achieved a "strategic historic victory" over Israel.

The Prime Minister, who was repeatedly heckled by opposition MPs during his address, insisted the international commitments in Friday night's UN resolution would "change fundamentally" the balance of forces on the country's northern border.

But, facing his first major political crisis since winning the election five months ago, he acknowledged "the overall responsibility for this operation lies with me, the Prime Minister. I am not asking to share this with anyone." A number of Knesset members including the Israeli Arab Ahmed Tibi, a furious opponent of the war, were ejected from the chamber.

The opening of what is likely to prove a bitter post-mortem came as the two sides began an uneasy truce. The conflict is estimated to have cost well over 1,000 Lebanese lives as well as those of 156 Israelis - civilians and soldiers.

The fragility of the ceasefire was underlined by four incidents in which Israeli troops shot dead six Hizbollah fighters after the ceasefire began at 8am yesterday. The Israeli military insisted the incidents were within guidelines permitting troops to open fire when threatened and did not jeopardise the truce.

Promising that the government "will have to examine ourselves at all levels," Mr Olmert fought to pre-empt a probable campaign by the political right by declaring that Hizbollah had been dealt a "harsh blow". He added that the guerrilla group was no longer "a state within a state" or a "terrorist organisation that is allowed to act inside a state as an arm of the axis of evil", referring to Syria and Iran.

While refraining from a direct personal attack on Mr Olmert, Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right- wing Likud opposition, lost little time in declaring "there were many failures, failures in identifying the threat, failures in preparing to meet the threat, failures in the management of the war, failures in the management of the home front."

Critics from right and left were fortified by a Globes Smith poll showing, remarkably given the degree to which the army is embedded in Israeli society, that 52 per cent of electors believed the Israel Defence Forces had been unsuccessful in its Lebanon offensive as opposed to 44 per cent who believed it did well.

Mr Netanyahu also pointedly chose to attack unilateral withdrawals - the issue on which Mr Olmert fought his election in March. Mr Netanyahu said: "We left Lebanon to the last centimetre and they are firing. We left Gaza to the last centimetre and they are firing."

Meanwhile, the Hizbollah leader said he believes the Lebanese army and international troops are "incapable of protecting Lebanon". He also said it was the "wrong time" for a public discussion on disarming the guerrilla group.

At the eastern end of the northern border, heavy artillery barrages and repeated tank machine-gun fire continued yesterday up to the ceasefire deadline.

But as the artillery batteries fell silent and firing stopped, there was a final single explosion at about 8.05pm, sending a plume of grey smoke upwards before the uneasy calm began.

Amid a wave of angry civilian reactions in Israel after more than a month in which an estimated 3,500 rockets were fired into northern Israel, Sam Echahid, the manager of a local supermarket, was asked whether he thought the ceasefire would hold. He said: "I hope not. We haven't done anything yet."

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
###

As the 6am Ceasefire Takes Effect...the Real War Begins

2006-08-14T21:41:00.000-07:00

Published on Monday, August 14, 2006 by the Independent / UK
As the 6am Ceasefire Takes Effect...the Real War Begins
by Robert Fisk

The real war in Lebanon begins today. The world may believe - and Israel may believe - that the UN ceasefire due to come into effect at 6am today will mark the beginning of the end of the latest dirty war in Lebanon after up to 1,000 Lebanese civilians and more than 30 Israeli civilians have been killed. But the reality is quite different and will suffer no such self-delusion: the Israeli army, reeling under the Hizbollah's onslaught of the past 24 hours, is now facing the harshest guerrilla war in its history. And it is a war they may well lose.

In all, at least 39 - possibly 43 - Israeli soldiers have been killed in the past day as Hizbollah guerrillas, still launching missiles into Israel itself, have fought back against Israel's massive land invasion into Lebanon.

Israeli military authorities talked of "cleaning" and "mopping up" operations by their soldiers south of the Litani river but, to the Lebanese, it seems as if it is the Hizbollah that have been doing the "mopping up". By last night, the Israelis had not even been able to reach the dead crew of a helicopter - shot down on Saturday night - which crashed into a Lebanese valley.

Officially, Israel has now accepted the UN ceasefire that calls for an end to all Israeli offensive military operations and Hizbollah attacks, and the Hizbollah have stated that they will abide by the ceasefire - providing no Israeli troops remain inside Lebanon. But 10,000 Israeli soldiers - the Israelis even suggest 30,000, although no one in Beirut takes that seriously - have now entered the country and every one of them is a Hizbollah target.

From this morning, Hizbollah's operations will be directed solely against the invasion force. And the Israelis cannot afford to lose 40 men a day. Unable to shoot down the Israeli F-16 aircraft that have laid waste to much of Lebanon, the Hizbollah have, for years, prayed and longed and waited for the moment when they could attack the Israeli army on the ground.

Now they are set to put their long-planned campaign into operation. Thousands of their members remain alive and armed in the ruined hill villages of southern Lebanon for just this moment and, only hours after their leader, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, warned Israel on Saturday that his men were waiting for them on the banks of the Litani river, the Hizbollah sprang their trap, killing more than 20 Israeli soldiers in less than three hours.

Israel itself, according to reports from Washington and New York, had long planned its current campaign against Lebanon - provoked by Hizbollah's crossing of the Israeli frontier, its killing of three soldiers and seizure of two others on 12 July - but the Israelis appear to have taken no account of the guerrilla army's most obvious operational plan: that if they could endure days of air attacks, they would eventually force Israel's army to re-enter Lebanon on the ground and fight them on equal terms.

Hizbollah's laser-guided missiles - Iranian-made, just as most Israeli arms are US-made - appear to have caused havoc among Israeli troops on Saturday, and their downing of an Israeli helicopter was without precedent in their long war against Israel.

In theory, aid convoys will be able to move south today to the thousands of Lebanese Shia trapped in their villages but no one knows whether the Hizbollah will wait for several days - they, like the Israelis, are physically tired - to allow that help to reach the crushed towns.
Atrocities continue across Lebanon, the most recent being the attack on a convoy of cars carrying 600 Christian families from the southern town of Marjayoun. Led by soldiers of the Lebanese army, they trailed north on Saturday up the Bekaa valley only to be assaulted by Israeli aircraft. At least seven were killed, including the wife of the mayor, a Christian woman who was decapitated by a missile that hit her car.

In west Beirut yesterday, the Israeli air force destroyed eight apartment blocks in which six families were living. Twelve civilians were killed in southern Lebanon, including a mother, her children and their housemaid.

An Israeli was killed by Hizballoh's continued Katyusha fire across the border. The guerrilla army - "terrorists" to the Israelis and Americans but increasingly heroes across the Muslim world - have many dead to avenge, although their leadership seems less interested in exacting an eye for an eye and far more eager to strike at Israel's army.

At this fatal juncture in Middle East history - and no one should underestimate this moment's importance in the region - the Israeli army appears as impotent to protect its country as the Hizbollah clearly is to protect Lebanon.

But if the ceasefire collapses, as seems certain, neither the Israelis nor the Americans appear to have any plans to escape the consequences. The US saw this war as an opportunity to humble Hizbollah's Iranian and Syrian sponsors but already it seems as if the tables have been turned. The Israeli military appears to be efficient at destroying bridges, power stations, gas stations and apartment blocks - but signally inefficient in crushing the "terrorist" army they swore to liquidate.

"The Lebanese government is our address for every problem or violation of the [ceasefire] agreement," Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, said yesterday, as if realising the truce would not hold.

And that, of course, provides yet another excuse for Israel to attack the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon.

Far more worrying, however, are the vague terms of the UN Security Council's resolution on the multinational force supposed to occupy land between the Israeli border and the Litani river.
For if the Israelis and the Hizbollah are at war across the south over the coming weeks, what country will dare send its troops into the jungle that southern Lebanon will have become?
Tragically, and fatally for all involved, the real Lebanon war does indeed begin today.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
###

Middle East at a Crossroads

2006-08-12T18:27:00.000-07:00

Published on Friday, August 4, 2006 by MuseLetter / Energy Bulletin
Middle East at a Crossroads
By Richard Heinberg

At the fifth annual conference of ASPO (the Association for the Study of Peak Oil), held in July in Pisa, Italy, there were many excellent presentations, one of which I will report on at some length below. But the timing of the conference proved ominous. During two weeks of travel in Italy I had only occasional access to the Internet or to other news sources, and heard only sporadic reports on the unfolding crisis in Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon. Back home, I quickly caught up on the events.

The situation clearly requires comment, as it has enormous implications both for the world as a whole and for the small but growing community of people involved in preparations for Peak Oil. Mainstream reporting seems to miss much of the context of events and, when discussing the Middle East, the geopolitical struggle for control of energy resources nearly always forms much of that context.

Israel / Palestine / Hezbollah / Lebanon
It seems useful to start by recounting a timeline of the crisis, but that’s not as easy as it sounds. Where does one start? What incidents should be mentioned or not mentioned? The following is my best effort, but may strike some as incomplete or skewed.

In elections held last year, the Palestinian people voted in a Hamas government, which came to power in January. Israel and the US responded by refusing to recognize the new government’s legitimacy; since then, there has been a steady escalation of tensions between Israel and the Palestinian authority. On June 24 Israeli soldiers kidnapped a Palestinian doctor and his brother in Gaza and removed them to some unspecified detention facility. This would not be a particularly noteworthy event, except for the fact that on the following day militants in Gaza—perhaps in retaliation—kidnapped an Israeli soldier.

Israel responded with dramatically intensified attacks on Gaza.

Then, on July 12, Hezbollah—a political and military Shia Muslim organization based in Lebanon—captured two Israeli soldiers and killed six others. According to the official Israeli version of the story, this occurred during a cross-border raid by Hezbollah into northern Israel. However, early press accounts said that Israel had sent a commando force into southern Lebanon; these commandoes, operating near the village of Aitaa al-Chaab inside Lebanon’s southern territory, were then allegedly engaged by Hezbollah fighters, who struck an Israeli tank. In either case, over the next days and weeks Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, killing dozens and wounding many more, while Israel bombed southern Lebanon, using (according to some reports) chemical weapons and cluster bombs, killing hundreds and destroying roads, bridges, power stations, and other civilian infrastructure.

US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice traveled to Lebanon on July 23, but not to broker a ceasefire; instead she called a ceasefire “premature.” In Washington she had said that Israel should ignore calls for a ceasefire; en route to Beirut she honed the message: while there was an “urgent” need for peace, conditions had to be right. In Beirut Rice explained that those “right” conditions consisted essentially of the satisfaction of Israel’s goals in the conflict; she also called for the creation of “a new Middle East”—a phrase that can inspire little hope or comfort in the inhabitants of the region, given what the US has accomplished in Iraq during the past three years. While no one would say so, it was obvious to nearly everyone that the US was refusing to call for a ceasefire to give Israel time to conclude its operations.

On July 26, Israel bombed a UN observer post in Lebanon, killing four. Then, on July 30, Israeli bombs killed 54 civilians (mostly women and children) in Qana, raising such international outrage that Israel felt compelled to suspended most of its bombing campaign for 48 hours.

As of this writing, Rice is proposing a ceasefire to be implemented on condition of the banning of arms sales to Hezbollah, the moving of the Lebanese army to the southern region, and the creation of an international force as a backup. There is no mention, in this proposal for a “lasting” peace, of an Israeli pullback from Gaza or the release of hundreds of Lebanese prisoners. Meanwhile, Israel has commenced a large-scale ground offensive that seems likely to continue for at least a couple of weeks.

This is more or less what we know—given the differences in the versions being rehearsed by news outlets and government officials. But there is much that is even less clear: Why is this happening now? What are the motives of Israel, Hezbollah, and the US? And in what direction are the events headed? Hezbollah’s initial motive seems principally to have been to gain a couple of Israeli hostages to use as bargaining chips in exchange for Lebanese, Palestinian, and Hezbollah prisoners held in Israel. Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hussein Nasrallah, made it perfectly clear months prior to the commencement of the current hostilities that this was the plan. Secondarily, Hezbollah wishes to support the embattled Palestinians in Gaza. There are those who have suggested that Hezbollah was acting at the behest of Iran in order to deflect international attention from that nation’s nuclear research program (more on that below), but this suggestion seems far-fetched.

It would be a mistake to probe only Hezbollah’s motives in the conflict while assuming (as most American politicians and news outlets do) that Israel is merely responding self-defensively to a situation imposed upon it. First, there is the legitimate question as to whether Israel provoked the conflict through its own cross-border incursion; then there is an article published in the San Francisco Chronicle on July 21 (“Israel Set War Plan More than a Year Ago,” by Matthew Kalman), detailing how Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon was in fact planned months in advance, merely requiring a proximate trigger. If this is the case, then it is Israel’s motives that we should probe first and foremost. According to leftist international affairs commentator Pepe Escobar, in “The Spirit of Resistance” (Asia Times, July 26, www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HG26Ak02.html),
As far as Lebanon is concerned, Israel wants nothing less than a permanent buffer zone on its northern flank. And if Lebanon turns into an Iraq, even better—although the Lebanese have learned the hard way about sectarianism and won’t “Iraqify” their own country. Beirut will be rebuilt—again, and again the Hariri clan (with its dodgy deals with the US and the Saudis) will plunge Lebanon in further debt purgatory with regard to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, as the clan did in the previous reconstruction process. There’s also the all-important matter of the waters of the Litani River in southern Lebanon. Israel might as well prepare the terrain now for the eventual annexation of the Litani. Beyond Lebanon, Israel is mostly interested also in Syria. The motive: the all-important pipeline route from Kirkuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan, to Haifa. Enter Israel as a major player in Pipelineistan. So Israel wants to grab water (and territory) from Palestine, water (and territory) from Lebanon, and oil from Iraq. This all has to do with the inevitable—the 21st-century energy wars.

While the US is not a direct participant in the conflict, its own aims cannot be ignored. These, according to Escobar, include “cutting off Hezbollah from Lebanese society,” which would in turn “lead to a vulnerable Syria extricating itself from a close relationship with Iran.” In the short term, the United States would like Israel to wipe out Hezbollah, allow the Lebanese government to send its troops to the south of the country, ensure the safety of northern Israel, cut Syria’s influence down to size, and apply greater pressure on Hezbollah-supporting Iran. In the longer term, Washington apparently wants to redraw the political and ideological map of the Middle East in ways set forth in various neoconservative planning documents, regardless of the cost to locals.

Currently, between Israel and Hezbollah, it is unclear whose goals are being accomplished more fully—although on balance it would seem that Hezbollah has had the upper hand so far (this view appears to hold across the international political spectrum). Israel’s devastating attacks seem not to have turned Lebanese society against the militant organization; moreover, Hezbollah’s Viet Cong-style guerilla campaign appears to be succeeding, as merely to survive the sustained Israeli atttack can be counted a victory. As Israel’s ground assault continues, that assessment could change.

But what are the longer-term implications? Where is all of this headed? It may be impossible to assess the situation merely by reference to the current combatants; we must take into account the other trends in the region and how this conflict may play into them.Iran: Will the US Attack Before November?

At the ASPO conference a riveting presentation was delivered by Terence Ward, a writer (Searching for Hassan) who grew up in Iran and is currently a cross-cultural consultant for businesses, foundations, and governments in the Islamic World and the West. Ward believes that a US bombing attack on Tehran is nearly inevitable (a view that I put forward in MuseLetter #155, March 2005, “Onward to Iran”), and that it will have devastating consequences for the region and for the world.

He began by reminding the audience that there is no clear proof of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, and that what the US and Israel have pointed to as evidence falls short of what would be needed to publicly justify pre-emptive military action. The central question hanging over the proposals and counter-proposals involving the US, Iran, the UN Security Council, and other interested parties including Russia and China, is this: What if both the US and Iranian presidents seek confrontation and war?

Sure enough, on August 1 the US was able to obtain a UN Security Council resolution giving Iran 30 days to end its uranium enrichment program (otherwise permitted by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty)—which it seems unlikely to do. Events appear to have achieved a relentless, irrational momentum in a direction all too reminiscent of those in the weeks leading up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

Why would the US administration want confrontation with Iran? Perhaps that country represents an essential next step, following “regime change” in Iraq, in the project of remaking the Middle East. From a geopolitical point of view, Iran is located at the juncture of the Middle East and Central Asia. Not only are its own reserves of oil and gas considerable, but it controls access to the Persian Gulf. Iran is thus crucial to oil and gas transshipment routes to Europe, Japan, and the rest of the world.

Neoconservatives appear to believe that, as soon as the bombing commences, Iranians will rise up en masse to overthrow their humiliated rulers—just as they believed that the Iraqi people would welcome an American effort to completely reshape their country’s economy and political system following the invasion.

Ward speculates that Mr. Bush may bomb before the November elections in order to preserve his Republican majority in Congress. However, the US military is already under enormous strain, and would be unable to deal with likely chain reactions following an air attack; and the likely response of the American people is difficult to gauge.Why might the Iranian leaders want confrontation? Ward made the important point that the current Tehran regime is even less popular domestically than is its US counterpart among Americans. This is shown in the remarkable statistic that, according to a report by the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Culture and Guidance, less than two percent of the population attends Friday prayers regularly. Ahmadinejad, whose support comes almost entirely from the dwindling ranks of religious fundamentalists, is in power only because his opponent in the most recent election rendered himself utterly odious through blatant corruption.

Iranian hard-liners believe the US bombing will enrage and unite their people. Lacking a strong popular base, the Tehran regime has seized upon “nuclear nationalism” as a way of gaining legitimacy with the masses—just as Bush and company seized upon the issue of national security following 9/11. Ahmadinejad and his cohorts evidently believe that, in the event of an American attack, the Iranian people will rally behind their government, thus injecting new life into the Islamic revolution. In confronting the US and Israel, the hard-liners also expect to be propelled to the forefront of the radical Muslim world.

Iranian exiles, who number roughly two million, generally loathe the current regime and look forward to its collapse, yet fear a conflict with the US, according to Ward. They say the bombing will not only leave the country in ruins, but will play into the hands of the hard-liners.In discussing the likely scope of the air campaign, Ward foresees a bombing lasting two weeks, targeting 1,000 sites including sea ports, missile defense systems, military bases, airports, industries, and 20 nuclear facilities.

Iran’s response is not hard to guess. The nation has hundreds of undeclared dock and port facilities along its Persian Gulf coast. The Iranian Navy recently conducted exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, in which a thousand small Iranian boats simulated attacks on American ships. The Strait is the world’s only access point for millions of barrels per day of OPEC oil. The passage of tankers through this narrow waterway would almost certainly be interrupted for days, weeks, and perhaps months if hostilities erupted.

An attack on Tehran would also unleash an enormous backlash against the US in Shia areas of Iraq, possibly making the American presence in that country untenable. The Iranians’ capabilities in this regard have not been lost on US military leaders. According to Ward, from American military leaders’ perspective this is a mission from hell. The Pentagon brass are uncertain what targets to attack, because American and European intelligence agencies have found no specific evidence of clandestine activities or hidden facilities. Thus it would be virtually impossible to gain confirmation of the effectiveness of air strikes in eliminating Iran’s nuclear program. Recently, General Pace, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apparently forced the White House to agree not to use nuclear weapons in its planned bombing campaign. This rebellion by the military has infuriated the White House. Ward also provided a helpful perspective on the Shia-Sunni divide in Middle East. He noted that the bulk of oil reserves on the planet lie in Shia territory:

The Shia of Saudi Arabia would love to have the same control over their oil revenues as their Shia brothers in Iraq. Long oppressed by the Sunni Wahhabi rulers, these Shia go on pilgrimage to Iran and will react in subtle and overt ways if Iran is attacked. Bahrain is over 95% Shia and has experienced unrest before along the Shia/Sunni divide. Dubai is a large center of Persian-speakers and Iranian influence. Kuwait is also 30% Shia. In Aramco and KOC, the Shia vastly represent the local skilled labor force. An incident like the attempt on the Abqaiq collection stations by al-Qaeda operatives is not out of the question. Ward pointed out that the Saudi and Jordanian monarchies speak openly of a radical “Shia crescent” across the Middle East, and that both ruling families would support a US strike against Iran. The Shia-dominated government of Iraq strikes fear in the hearts of Saudi leaders because they know it emboldens Shias in the Saudi oil-rich Eastern Province of al-Hassa. It is the emergence of Iran as a regional power that is their principal concern, not Israel.Southern Lebanon is Shia majority, and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad is a member of the Alawite Shia sect. The alliance between Hezbollah and the Syrian regime is strong, and Iran has provided monetary and military assistance to Hezbollah for decades. Thus the current conflict in southern Lebanon carries a deep resonance across the region. Ward also notes:

Many Sunnis view the US and Shia cooperation in Iraq as a conspiracy against them—a “Wahhabi containment policy.” The profound conviction among much of the Arab world today, including the Saudi royal family, is that the U.S. plans to do the same to Saudi Arabia that they have engineered in Iraq. Like Iraq, the theory goes, Saudi Arabia would be divided into three parts. The moderate Hashemites of Jordan would regain their historic control of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina; autonomous Saudi Shia would control the oil-laden Eastern Province; and the Wahhabis would be left baking in the sands of the Nejad Desert. Thus the bombing of Iran could trigger wider chaos in the region, provoking not only temporary oil shortages and a global recession, but a wholesale reconfiguration of the Middle East in ways difficult to foresee.

Ward offered this helpful insider’s view of Iranian politics:

Iran’s clerical regime includes three pragmatic factional power blocs willing to engage in an opening to the USA: Mehdi Karroubi, Mostapha Moin, and Hashemi Rafsanjani, the Leader of the unelected Guardian Council. They all continue to openly criticize the President, who is increasingly viewed as a loose cannon. His Messianic claims have proved more controversial in Iran itself than in the West. Among the President’s critics, the “dealmaker” Rafsanjani may be a significant figure, for he represents the business class and the unelected clerics. These three factions, in contrast to Ahmedinejad, do not thrive on a siege mentality or on provoking a clash with the West. When hostilities eventually ceased, negotiations between the US and Iran would necessarily ensue. Why not pursue them now and bypass the intervening catastrophe?

Ward discussed a recent Trilateral Commission Report—Is There a Plan B?—prepared for the plenary meeting of the Trilateral Commission in Tokyo, which recommended US-Iran negotiations with the goal of creating a Regional Middle East Nuclear Council, which would engage all countries with nuclear weaponry: The United States, Russia, Israel, Iran, China, India, Pakistan, Japan, the UK and France. IAEA inspections would be accelerated, with open, transparent, unrestricted access in all countries. Israel would be provided with a comprehensive security package, and Iran would be offered explicit US security guarantees. Meanwhile the Middle East would be offered a modern Marshall Plan to provide Palestine, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey, Egypt and Algeria access to the WTO and World Bank funding. A regional Middle East Water Council would deal with the region’s most valuable resource. Potential members would include Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan. Finally, a Middle East Energy Council would deal with the region’s other valuable resources—oil and gas. Regional pipelines, oil security, technology-sharing, and reservoir depletion and monitoring would all be discussed. Such a council would include Saudia Arabia, the United Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, Iraq, and Iran. This plan has the potential to avert the looming conflict, but it is handicapped by conventional Western notions about the benefits of association with the World Bank and WTO.

Ward’s presentation was remarkable for its depiction of Bush and Ahmadinejad as two sides of the same coin. Both need external conflict to maintain domestic legitimacy, and both are right-wing hard-liners supported by religious fundamentalists; they are also unpopular at home and habitually rely on bravado to boost their image.There are those who maintain that a US attack on Iran is unlikely because the negative consequences for America would be severe and the benefits few or nonexistent. I recently made the acquaintance of an Air Force officer with a high-level security clearance who receives daily classified briefings; while being careful not to divulge secret information, he insisted that no bombing campaign is being seriously contemplated. I can only hope he’s right.

Iraq: This Is What Collapse Looks Like
The war between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and the growing hostilities between the US and Iran are of course unfolding in the context of the failed US occupation of Iraq. There, ethnic conflicts are deepening, a de facto civil war rages, and a partition of the country seems likely if not inevitable. Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani was recently forced to issue a fatwa denouncing the Israeli assault on southern Lebanon. Even the US-supported Iraqi president had to make statements critical of Israel while in Washington, embarrassing his official hosts. But any other attitude would have been unacceptable to his constituents. So far, the only thing to unite Baghdad’s parliament—consisting of Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds—is condemnation of Israel and the call for a ceasefire.

Fiery nationalist Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, whose rising influence now rivals that of Sistani, said at a recent Friday sermon in Kufa, “I will continue defending my Shi’ite and Sunni brothers, and I tell them that if we unite, we will defeat Israel without the use of weapons.” Were Muqtada’s Mehdi Army to join with the few thousand Sunni Arab guerrillas currently bedeviling US troops, Iraq would quickly become untenable for the Americans. Mr. Bush has repeatedly announced a “turning point” in the ongoing war—at the end of the invasion, with the capture of Saddam Hussein, with elections, with the formation of a government, and with the killing of reputed al Qaida leader al-Zarqawi. Now he has ordered an additional 5,000 troops to Baghdad to attempt to control the rapidly deteriorating situation there. This is not the sort of turning point he likes talking about.

A New Oil Regime in the Middle East?
There is considerable danger that the smoke and fire from these three geographic flashpoints—Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon—could converge in a larger regional conflagration. In light of all this potential for apocalyptic mayhem, a discussion of the oil business may seem almost frivolous. But it is important to remember that, historically, the drawing of borders in the Middle East; the establishment of British, French, and later US-backed puppet governments in these faux nations; and the rise of a radical Islamic fundamentalist movement to challenge the Western-backed regimes, have all been fueled by the wealth produced by oil, and by the need for oil on the part of importing countries.

For decades there was a petroleum status quo of sorts in the Middle East: the capacity for production exceeded demand, and OPEC worked to restrain exports in order to keep prices from collapsing; meanwhile big producers like Saudi Arabia served as the world’s petroleum bankers, maintaining the solvency of the system. On only one occasion—the embargo of 1973-74—did the swing producers withhold needed oil flows for political reasons, or cause prices to reach levels unacceptable to consumers (the other major post-1970 oil shocks, due to wars or revolutions, were beyond OPEC’s control). Now the status quo is crumbling—not so much for political reasons (though those are certainly imaginable, given the situations outlined above), but for reasons of geology.

Questions about the real size of Kuwait’s oil reserves have emerged in the Kuwaiti National Assembly, leading the opposition party to call for production cuts. Remarkably, Kuwait appears to be groping toward implementation of the Oil Depletion Protocol, without ever having heard of it. However, from the standpoint of nations that want to keep the oil flowing so the global industrial party can continue, this is bad news.

Even worse news, potentially, comes from Saudi Arabia, where oil flows have shrunk by some 400,000 barrels per day over the past few months, despite astronomic prices. No one knows for sure what is going on. The Saudis themselves say the production cuts are due to lack of demand, but this hardly seems plausible, unless the kingdom is only able to deliver unwanted heavy, sour crude to market—but even in that case, one would expect flows to increase, with a price discount factored in for resource quality. At the same time, the Saudis are hiring just about every spare drilling rig in the world, resulting in a dramatically falling rig count in the Gulf of Mexico—a place that would otherwise be seeing an increasing count, given the fact that Mexico’s giant Cantarell field is in now in steep decline, with dire implications for the nation’s economy.

Matthew Simmons (Twilight in the Desert) has been insisting for the past few years that Saudi production is close to peak and that Ghawar, the world’s biggest field, may be in decline. Now many others are speculating that this is the real reason for the falling production figures.What happens next? It depends on the real condition of Ghawar. Perhaps a heroic drilling campaign could result in a temporary bloom in production, lasting perhaps three years, followed by a swift, terminal collapse. On the other hand, it is possible that the field has been so thoroughly exploited already that we are seeing the irreversible, rapid decline. At the ASPO conference a well-connected industry insider who wishes not to be directly quoted told me that his own sources inside Saudi Arabia insist that production from Ghawar is now down to less than three million barrels per day, and that the Saudis are maintaining total production at only slowly dwindling levels by producing other fields at maximum rates. This, if true, would be a bombshell: most estimates give production from Ghawar at 5.5 Mb/d.

Disturbing Trajectory
While these events in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are not front-page news, they are in their way every bit as significant as the ongoing violence in Iraq and Lebanon, and the ritualistic war dance of the American and Iranian leaders. The Israel and Lebanon situation seems to be about religion, terrorism, and land; the US-Iran situation seems to be about nuclear proliferation. But if one looks beneath the surface, nearly everything of significance that happens in the Middle East is at least partly about oil. It may be pure coincidence that, just as the world’s biggest oil producers are reaching a historic turning point signaling the end of the energy regime that has held since the end of US production dominance in 1970, a war has erupted between Israel and a militant organization supported by a nation the US plans to attack anyway in order to maintain dominance of world oil supplies going forward.

History is full of such coincidences. But coincidence or not, it will be difficult to keep these unfolding realities from rebounding off one another, undermining attempts at a peaceful resolution.Some commentators speculate that we are seeing the slow-motion commencement of World War III (or IV or V, depending on who’s counting). I have no interest in fueling apocalyptic speculations. My strong wish is for a quick and peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Hezbollah-Lebanese conflict, a US stand-down from confrontation with Iran, and a speedy, voluntary US exit from Iraq.

In his talk at the ASPO conference, Terence Ward repeatedly said that America’s bombing of Iran would make the work of petroleum depletion analysts easier—presumably because skyrocketing oil prices would force everyone to acknowledge that Peak Oil is a reality. On this point I disagree. If the scenario Ward outlined comes to pass, the public’s attention will be fixated on military developments and casualties, with horrific news footage dominating nearly every moment of every television news broadcast. Oil prices will indeed soar and everyone will feel the economic pain from a crashing global economy—but few will look to geology as an explanation. Instead, they will point to the obvious proximate causes—attacks and counterattacks disrupting oil shipments, with speculators pushing prices even higher than they would otherwise go.We have many reasons to hope that events are not spinning out of control.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

UPDATE (Aug 5): Big discussion at The Oil Drum. -BA

Article found at : http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=18904Original article :

Senate Ratifies Net Treaty That May Limit Rights in U.S.

2006-08-12T18:22:00.000-07:00

New Standard News
Govt. Joins Net Treaty That May Limit Rights in U.S., Overseas
by Shreema Mehta

Aug. 11 – The US Senate last week ratified a treaty requiring participating countries to share citizens' personal digital data and aid each others' criminal investigations, an arrangement privacy advocates say will amount to increasing surveillance of Internet users and the enforcement of foreign laws in the United States.

Privacy groups are particularly concerned that if nations such as China, which cracks down on online political speech, sign the treaty, they could attempt to compel member states to monitor dissident activity, though US government officials emphasize that the treaty would not supersede constitutional protections.

The Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime treaty forces participating countries to legalize "certain investigative techniques" to enforce Internet laws against hacking or child-pornography sales. The required laws would allow law enforcement to seize stored computer data and intercept data being transmitted between computers.

Since US law already allows these techniques, the treaty will change little about electronic surveillance in the US, according to a report released by Senator Richard Lugar (R–Indiana), who chairs the Committee on Foreign Relations and supports the treaty.

The treaty, designed to help coordinate criminal investigations that may often cross national borders, will loosen privacy laws in European countries to the level of the US, said Danny O'Brien, a coordinator with the electronic privacy advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Advocates say the US does not have a proper "framework" of privacy protection laws like the European Union's data protection directive.

"Harmonization is often the excuse to ratchet up the powers of law enforcement," O'Brien said.
Governments participating in the treaty must also provide "mutual assistance" and share data that can aid in other countries' criminal investigations.

"In particular, it will enhance our ability to cooperate with foreign governments in fighting terrorism, computer hacking, money laundering and child pornography, among other crimes," said Lugar in a press statement announcing the ratification. "Given the global nature of the Internet, the only way we can combat these problems effectively is through cooperation with other governments."

In his report, Lugar argues that the treaty restricts the data that can flow from one country to another, since assistance is offered "only to the extent" that local laws allow.

"In the United States, that law is subject to close judicial supervision, and in no case will a foreign authority be able to obtain information on terms that are less restrictive than for US law enforcement," the report read.

But privacy groups say the treaty's language does not adequately spell out such safeguards.

"There are safeguards for political acts, [but] that's a very fairly limited exemption," O'Brien said. "There's a lot of other acts that one can do on the Internet that aren't political but are illegal in other countries," he said. For example, the treaty could result in a country like Germany asking the FBI or another police agency to monitor Nazi speech, which is a crime there but legal here, O'Brien said.

Advocates also caution that safeguards for political offense will not necessarily eliminate international monitoring of dissident acts, a threat that will become more real if countries with more-repressive governments such as China ratify the treaty.

He added that the treaty would lead to a general increase in electronic surveillance because governments will be able to compel Internet service providers to monitor the online activity of a subject of a criminal investigation without the suspect's knowledge.

The treaty says that countries must ensure their new freedom to collect data is subject to domestic laws that protect human rights and civil liberties, but privacy groups such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center say that language is vague compared to the detailed language giving law enforcement greater powers.

"The problem is that there are crimes that law enforcement commits as well… [Such as] crimes of repression, invasion of privacy," O'Brien said. While the treaty is aggressive in punishing individuals' crimes, the safeguards are too vague to offer protection against state crimes, he said.

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U.N. Resolution

2006-08-12T18:20:00.000-07:00

NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN
ICH
UN Resolution
By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth

08/07/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- If there were any remaining illusions about the purpose of Israel’s war against Lebanon, the draft United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a “cessation of major hostilities” published at the weekend should finally dispel them. This entirely one-sided document was drafted, noted the Hebrew-language media, with close Israeli involvement. The top adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, talked through the resolution with the US and French teams, while the Israeli Foreign Ministry had its man alongside John Bolton at the UN building in New York.

The only thing preventing Israeli officials from jumping up and down with glee, according Aluf Benn of the daily Haaretz newspaper, was the fear that “demonstrated Israeli enthusiasm for the draft could influence support among Security Council members, who could demand a change in wording that may adversely affect Israel.” So no celebration parties till the resolution is passed.

Instead, in a cynical ploy familiar from previous negotiating processes, Israel submitted to the US a list of requests for amendments to the resolution. When Israel agrees to forgo these amendments, it will, of course, be able to take credit for its flexibility and desire to compromise; Lebanon and Hizbullah, on the other hand, will be cast as villains, rejecting international peace-making efforts.

The reason for Israel’s barely concealed pleasure is that Hizbullah now faces an international diplomatic and public relations assault in place of the unsuccessful Israeli military one. Israel, and the United States, are trying to set a series of traps for Hizbullah -- and Lebanon too -- that will justify Israel’s reoccupation of south Lebanon, the further ethnic cleansing of the country, and a widening of the war to include Iran, and possibly Syria.

The clues were not hard to decode. The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, characterised the aim of the resolution as clarifying who is acting in good faith. “We're going to know who really did want to stop the violence and who didn't,” she said. Or, in other words, we are going to be able to blame Hizbullah for the hostilities because we have offered them terms of surrender we know they will never agree to.

The main sticking point for Hizbullah is to be found in the resolution’s requirement that it must stop fighting and begin a process of disarmament at a time when Israeli forces are still occupying Lebanese territory and when there may be a lengthy, if not interminable, wait for their replacement by international peacekeepers. Not only that, but the resolution allows Israel to continue its military operations for defensive purposes: Hizbullah only has to look to Gaza or the West Bank to see what Israel is likely to consider falling under the rubric of “defensive”.

Hizbullah has been stockpiling weapons since Israel’s withdrawal in May 2000 precisely to create a “balance of deterrence”, to make Israel more cautious about sating its demonstrated appetite for occupying its neighbours’ lands, particularly when the neighbour is a small country like Lebanon without a proper army and divided into many sectarian groups, some of which, for a price, may be willing to collaborate with Israel.

This time, however, as Israeli troops struggle back towards the Litani River and their initial goal of creating a “buffer zone” similar to the one they held on to for nearly two decades, the Lebanese are rallying behind Hizbullah, convinced that the Shiite militia is their only protection against Western machinations for a “new Middle East”.

Israel and Washington, however, may hope that, given time, they can break that national solidarity by provoking a civil war in Lebanon to deplete local energies, similar to Israel’s attempts at engineering feuds between Hamas and Fatah in the occupied Palestinian territories. Certainly, it is difficult to make sense otherwise of Israel’s bombing for the first time of Christian neighbourhoods in Beirut and what looks like the intended ethnic cleansing of Sunni Muslims from Sidon, which was leafletted by Israeli war planes at the weekend.

On the US-Israeli view, a nation of refugees living in an open-air prison cut off from the outside world and deprived of food and aid -- a more ambitious version of the Gaza model -- may eventually be persuaded to take their wrath out on their Shiite defenders.

Hizbullah understands that the proposal to bring in a force of international peacekeepers is another trap. Either the foreign troops will never arrive, because on these Israeli-imposed terms there can be no ceasefire, or, if they do arrive, they will quickly become a proxy occupation army. Israel will have its new South Lebanon Army, supplied direct this time from the UN and subsidised by the West. If Hizbullah fights, it will be killing foreign peacekeepers not Israeli soldiers.

But Israel knows the international force is almost certainly a non-starter, which seems to be the main reason it has now, belatedly, become so enthusiastic for it. Senior Israeli government officials were saying as much in the Hebrew-language media on Sunday.

Israel’s Justice Minister, the increasingly hawkish Haim Ramon, summed up the view from Tel Aviv: “Even if it is passed, it is doubtful that Hezbollah will honor the resolution and halt its fire. Therefore we have to continue fighting, continue hitting anyone we can hit in Hezbollah, and I assume that as long as that goes on, Israel's standing, diplomatically and militarily, will improve.”

Israel hopes it will be able to keep hitting Hizbullah harder -- at less cost to its troops and civilians, and with improved diplomatic standing -- because in the next phase, after the resolution is passed, the Shiite militia will find that one arm has been tied, figuratively speaking, behind its back.

Not only will Washington and Israel blame Hizbullah for refusing to agree to the ceasefire but they will seek to use any retaliation against Israeli “defensive” aggression -- including, presumably, further invasion -- as a pretext for widening the war and dragging in the real target of their belligerence: Iran.

This subterfuge was voiced at the weekend by Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, who told the BBC that if Hizbullah fired at Tel Aviv -- which it has threatened to do if Israel continues attacking Beirut -- this would be tantamount to an “act of war” that could only have been ordered by Iran. In other words, at some point soon Israel may stop blaming Hizbullah and turn its fire -- defensively, of course -- on Iran.

This linkage is being carefully prepared by Olmert. On Monday, according to the Hebrew-language press, he told some 50 government spokespeople what message to deliver to the foreign media: “Our enemy is not Hezbollah, but Iran, which employs Hezbollah as its agent.” According to Haaretz, he urged the spokespeople “not to be ashamed to express emotion and appeal to feelings”.

So in the coming days, in the wake of this US-Israeli concoction of an impossible peace, we are going to be hearing a lot more nonsense from Israel and the White House about Iran’s role in supposedly initiating and expanding this war, its desire to “wipe Israel off the map” and the nuclear weapons it is developing so that it can achieve its aim.

The capture of two Israeli soldiers on 12 July will be decoupled from Hizbullah’s domestic objectives. No one will talk of those soldiers as bargaining chips in the prisoner swap Hizbullah has been demanding; or as an attempt by Hizbullah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, to deflect US-inspired political pressure on him to disarm his militia and leave Lebanon defenceless to Israel’s long-planned invasion; or as a populist show of solidarity by Hizbullah with the oppressed Palestinians of Gaza.

Those real causes of hostilities will be ignored as more, mostly Lebanese, civilians die, and Israel and the US expand the theatre of war. Instead we will hear much of the rockets that are still landing in northern Israel and how they have been supplied by Iran. The fact that Hizbullah attacks followed rather precipitated Israel’s massive bombardment of Lebanon will be forgotten. Rockets fired by Hizbullah to stop Israeli aggression against Lebanon will be retold as an Iranian-inspired war to destroy the Jewish state. The nuclear-armed Goliath of Israel will, once again, be transformed into a plucky little David. Or at least such is the Israeli and US scenario.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His book, “Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State”, is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

NSA: Government Releases Detailed Information on 9/11 Crashes

2006-08-12T18:15:00.000-07:00

Government Releases Detailed Information on 9/11 Crashes
National Security Archive Update, August 11, 2006

Government Releases Detailed Information on 9/11 Crashes
Complete Air-Ground Transcripts of Hijacked 9/11 Flight Recordings Declassified
http://www.nsarchive.org
For more information contact:Barbara Elias - 202/994-7000Washington, DC

11 August 2006 - The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) this week released full transcripts of the air traffic control recordings from the four flights hijacked on September 11, 2001, and meticulous Flight Path Studies for three of the flights, in response to a Freedom of Information request by the National Security Archive. The studies, posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive, provide the most detailed technical information available to date related to the hijackings, and the transcripts of the aircraft-to-ground communications are the first complete government disclosure of each flight's air traffic control recordings.

The documents are cited extensively in the 9/11 Commission Report to establish key facts and basic timelines for each hijacked flight. The NTSB Web site references the documents but does not provide copies, claiming "the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 are under the jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Safety Board provided requested technical assistance to the FBI, and any material generated by the NTSB is under the control of the FBI. The Safety Board does not plan to issue a report or open a public docket."

The documents were released in their entirety to the National Security Archive and were received directly from the NTSB.

The transcripts provide additional details to the information summarized in the 9/11 Commission Report. For example, the NTSB transcript differs slightly from the Commission's text of the warning that United Airlines Flight 93 received only minutes before the hijackers attacked. At 9:23am, the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) shows a text message to Flight 93 reading: "BEWARE OF ANY COCKPIT INTROUSION [sic]. TWO AIRCRAFT IN NY, HIT TRADE CNTER BUILDS [sic]."

Five minutes later at 9:28am Flight 93 was sending the message "***(mayday)*** (hey get out of here) ***" as it was being hijacked.

The Flight Path Studies reconstruct the routes of American Airlines Flight 11, American Airlines Flight 77 and United Airlines Flight 175. Complied from recorded radar data and information from the Flight Data Recorders, the studies' illustrations of radar ground tracks, maps and altitude profiles provide graphic guides to each hijacking and were used by the NTSB to determine the takeover points where the hijackers gained control of the planes.In addition to the Flight Path Studies and Air Traffic Control Recording transcripts, the NTSB released a February 2002 "Specialist's Factual Report of Investigation" on United Airlines Flight 93 based on the flight's recovered digital data recorder -- the only surviving recorder from the hijacked planes on 9/11. The report provides graphic analysis of the data recovered from Flight 93 and its subsequent crash in Shanksville, PA. According to the report, the flight recorder functioned normally.

The National Security Archive has posted the released NTSB documents on its website: http://www.nsarchive.org .

THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals.

Open Letter to U.S. Media, and Specifically ABC and AP

2006-08-12T18:01:00.000-07:00

OpEdNews.com
August 6, 2006
By William Douglas
OPEN LETTER TO U.S. MEDIA, and specifically ABC and AP:

Dear ABC News and Associated Press,
In the Aug. 6 AP article, "9/ 11 Conspiracy Theorists Thriving" reprinted on abcnews.go.com

http://abcnews.go.com/us/wirestory?id=2279963 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/s/sept_11_conspiracies?site=ktvk§ion=home&template=default

THERE ARE SOME PROBLEMS WITH YOUR COVERAGE.

Below are identified three of those problems.

1)For example, in the 3rd paragraph you state:"Five years after the terrorist attacks, a community that believes widely discredited ideas about what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, persists and even thrives."

PROBLEM: the term "widely discredited" is a laughable slap at the 9/11 truth movement given the breaking news of:-- Wednesday, August 2, 2006 WASHINGTON (CNN)

-- A member of the 9/11 commission said Wednesday that panel members so distrusted testimony from Pentagon officials that they referred their concerns to the Pentagon's inspector general. "We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting,"Roemer told CNN. "We were not sure of the intent, whether it was to deceive the commission or merely part of the fumbling bureaucracy."

THE 9/11 TRUTH MOVEMENT was raising hell when testimony to the 9/11 Commission by the FAA and DOD conflicted, and the 9/11 truth community demanded answers THEN.

Where was the media, who should have been demanding answers THEN?

-- On C-SPAN's "Theories of 9/11", Steven Jones of BYU Physics Dept. announced that THERMATE traces werefound on WTC debris in analysis of the debris. Two independantly obtained samples BOTH contained thermate. As your article states, thermate is a patented explosive used for controlled demolition.

HAS AP OR ABC OR ANY MEDIA HAD ANY TRACES ANALYZED?IF NOT, WHY NOT?IF SO, AND YOU FOUND THERMATE, WHY ISN'T THIS A 6 INCH HEADLINE, AND NIGHTLY NEWS HEADLINE?

2) In the 6th paragraph you state:"Fetzer, a retired philosophy professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth, who maintains, among other claims, that some of the hijackers are still alive."

PROBLEM:Your statement leaves readers to believe that ONLY Fetzer believes this.

See BBC's article of Sunday, 23 September, 2001, 12:30GMT 13:30 UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1559151.stm

"Hijack 'suspects' alive and well

Another of the men named by the FBI as a hijacker inthe suicide attacks on Washington and New York hasturned up alive and well. The identities of four of the 19 suspects accused ofhaving carried out the attacks are now in doubt. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1559151.stm

WHY HAVE ABC AND AP NOT LOOKED INTO THIS HUGELYIMPORTANT STORY, AND DONE THEIR DUTY TO INFORM THEIRREADERS AND VIEWERS, AND ALSO TO DIG DEEPER INTO WHATTHIS MASSIVE DISCREPANCY IN THE OFFICIAL VERSION OF9/11 PORTENDS FOR ALL THE REST OF THEIR "THEORY" ??

3) In your article's 9th paragraph you state: "The standards and technology institute, and manymainstream scientists, won't debate conspiracytheorists, saying they don't want to lend themunwarranted credibility."PROBLEM:The "official story" that 19 ragtag hijackers whocould barely fly Cessnas, flying commercial jet liners with expert precision many experienced pilots say they couldn't accomplish, and fooling the US Air Force, NORAD, and the FAA so that in one and a half hours of flying these hijacked planes over some of the world's most protected airspace . . . with not one, not one .. . Air Force interceptor jet arriving until too late, and completely obliterating the first three steel reinforced skyscrapers in building engineering history with jet fuel (which doesn't approach the temperature required to melt steel) . . . IS A CONSPIRACY THEORY. IT'S AN OFFICIAL CONSPIRACY THEORY.

By the way, one of those buildings was not hit by aplane, so when your article says the buildings werebrought down by jet fuel, while ignoring building 7's fall . . . is shoddy journalism at best, and a cover up at worst.As the truth continues to unfold, media should andmust be held accountable for the horrid job they'vedone reporting on 9/11, but worse for their obviousattempts to obstruct public knowledge of crucialfacts.

Warm regards, and FOR GODSAKE, DO YOUR HOMEWORK in the future. You are supposed to be a professional media.

9/11 truth seeker, and faithful citizen.

For anyone who'd like to contact ABCnews.com, or Associated Press:

support@abcnews.go.com, info@ap.org

ABC NEWS CONTACTS:

support@abcnews.go.com

http://abc.go.com/site/contactus.html?cat=good%20morning%20america

ASSOCIATED PRESS CONTACT:

info@ap.org

Authors Bio: William E. Douglas, author of "The Amateur Parent - A Book on Life, Death, War & Peace, and Everything Else in the Universe."

You are Terrorists, We are Virtuous

2006-08-12T17:54:00.000-07:00

(Good description of the vicious cycle of war propaganda and its effect on citizens).

You are terrorists, we are virtuous. Yitzhak Laor on the IDF
LRB Vol. 28 No. 16 dated 17 August 2006 Yitzhak Laor
You are terrorists, we are virtuous
Yitzhak Laor on the IDF

As soon as the facts of the Bint Jbeil ambush, which ended with relatively high Israeli casualties (eight soldiers died there), became public, the press and television in Israel began marginalising any opinion that was critical of the war. The media also fell back on the kitsch to which Israelis grow accustomed from childhood: the most menacing army in the region is described here as if it is David against an Arab Goliath. Yet the Jewish Goliath has sent Lebanon back 20 years, and Israelis themselves even further: we now appear to be a lynch- mob culture, glued to our televisions, incited by a premier whose ‘leadership’ is being launched and legitimised with rivers of fire and destruction on both sides of the border. Mass psychology works best when you can pinpoint an institution or a phenomenon with which large numbers of people identify. Israelis identify with the IDF, and even after the deaths of many Lebanese children in Qana, they think that stopping the war without scoring a definitive victory would amount to defeat. This logic reveals our national psychosis, and it derives from our over-identification with Israeli military thinking.

In the melodramatic barrage fired off by the press, the army is assigned the dual role of hero and victim. And the enemy? In Hebrew broadcasts the formulations are always the same: on the one hand ‘we’, ‘ours’, ‘us’; on the other, Nasrallah and Hizbullah. There aren’t, it seems, any Lebanese in this war. So who is dying under Israeli fire? Hizbullah. And if we ask about the Lebanese? The answer is always that Israel has no quarrel with Lebanon. It’s yet another illustration of our unilateralism, the thundering Israeli battle-cry for years: no matter what happens around us, we have the power and therefore we can enforce the logic. If only Israelis could see the damage that’s been done by all these years of unilateral thinking. But we cannot, because the army – which has always been the core of the state – determines the shape of our lives and the nature of our memories, and wars like this one erase everything we thought we knew, creating a new version of history with which we can only concur. If the army wins, its success becomes part of ‘our heritage’. Israelis have assimilated the logic and the language of the IDF – and in the process, they have lost their memories. Is there a better way to understand why we have never learned from history? We have never been a match for the army, whose memory – the official Israeli memory – is hammered into place at the centre of our culture by an intelligentsia in the service of the IDF and the state.

The IDF is the most powerful institution in Israeli society, and one which we are discouraged from criticising. Few have studied the dominant role it plays in the Israeli economy. Even while they are still serving, our generals become friendly with the US companies that sell arms to Israel; they then retire, loaded with money, and become corporate executives. The IDF is the biggest customer for everything and anything in Israel. In addition, our high-tech industries are staffed by a mixture of military and ex-military who work closely with the Western military complex. The current war is the first to become a branding opportunity for one of our largest mobile phone companies, which is using it to run a huge promotional campaign. Israel’s second biggest bank, Bank Leumi, used inserts in the three largest newspapers to distribute bumper stickers saying: ‘Israel is powerful.’ The military and the universities are intimately linked too, with joint research projects and an array of army scholarships.

There is no institution in Israel that can approach the army’s ability to disseminate images and news or to shape a national political class and an academic elite or to produce memory, history, value, wealth, desire. This is the way identification becomes entrenched: not through dictatorship or draconian legislation, but by virtue of the fact that the country’s most powerful institution gets its hands on every citizen at the age of 18. The majority of Israelis identify with the army and the army reciprocates by consolidating our identity, especially when it is – or we are – waging war.

The IDF didn’t play any role in either of the Gulf wars and may not play a part in Bush’s pending war in Iran, but it is on permanent alert for the real war that is always just round the corner. Meanwhile, it harasses Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, to very destructive effect. (In July it killed 176 Palestinians, most of them from the same area in Gaza, in a ‘policing’ operation that included the destruction of houses and infrastructure.) They shoot. They abduct. They use F-16s against refugee camps, tanks against shacks and huts. For years they have operated in this way against gangs and groups of armed youths and children, and they call it a war, a ‘just war’, vital for our existence. The power of the army to produce meanings, values, desire is perfectly illustrated by its handling of the Palestinians, but it would not be possible without the support of the left in Israel.

The mainstream left has never seriously tried to oppose the military. The notion that we had no alternative but to attack Lebanon and that we cannot stop until we have finished the job: these are army-sponsored truths, decided by the military and articulated by state intellectuals and commentators. So are most other descriptions of the war, such as the Tel Aviv academic Yossef Gorni’s statement in Haaretz, that ‘this is our second war of independence.’ The same sort of nonsense was written by the same kind of people when the 2000 intifada began. That was also a war about our right to exist, our ‘second 1948’. These descriptions would not have stood a chance if Zionist left intellectuals – solemn purveyors of the ‘morality of war’ – hadn’t endorsed them.

Military thinking has become our only thinking. The wish for superiority has become the need to have the upper hand in every aspect of relations with our neighbours. The Arabs must be crippled, socially and economically, and smashed militarily, and of course they must then appear to us in the degraded state to which we’ve reduced them. Our usual way of looking at them is borrowed from our intelligence corps, who ‘translate’ them and interpret them, but cannot recognise them as human beings. Israelis long ago ceased to be distressed by images of sobbing women in white scarves, searching for the remains of their homes in the rubble left by our soldiers. We think of them much as we think of chickens or cats. We turn away without much trouble and consider the real issue: the enemy. The Katyusha missiles that have been hitting the north of the country are launched without ‘discrimination’, and in this sense Hizbullah is guilty of a war crime, but the recent volleys of Katyushas were a response to the frenzied assault on Lebanon. To the large majority of Israelis, however, all the Katyushas prove is what a good and necessary thing we have done by destroying our neighbours again: the enemy is indeed dangerous, it’s just as well we went to war. The thinking becomes circular and the prophecies self-fulfilling. Israelis are fond of saying: ‘The Middle East is a jungle, where only might speaks.’ See Qana, and Gaza, or Beirut.

Defenders of Israel and its leaders can always argue that the US and Britain behave similarly in Iraq. (It is true that Olmert and his colleagues would not have acted so shamelessly if the US had not been behind them. Had Bush told them to hold their fire, they wouldn’t have dared to move a single tank.) But there is a major difference. The US and Britain went to war in Iraq without public opinion behind them. Israel went to war in Lebanon, after a border incident which it exploited in order to destroy a country, with the overwhelming support of Israelis, including the members of what the European press calls the ‘peace camp’.

Amos Oz, on 20 July, when the destruction of Lebanon was already well underway, wrote in the Evening Standard: ‘This time, Israel is not invading Lebanon. It is defending itself from a daily harassment and bombardment of dozens of our towns and villages by attempting to smash Hizbullah wherever it lurks.’ Nothing here is distinguishable from Israeli state pronouncements. David Grossman wrote in the Guardian, again on 20 July, as if he were unaware of any bombardment in Lebanon: ‘There is no justification for the large-scale violence that Hizbullah unleashed this week, from Lebanese territory, on dozens of peaceful Israeli villages, towns and cities. No country in the world could remain silent and abandon its citizens when its neighbour strikes without any provocation.’ We can bomb, but if they respond they are responsible for both their suffering and ours. And it’s important to remember that ‘our suffering’ is that of poor people in the north who cannot leave their homes easily or quickly. ‘Our suffering’ is not that of the decision-makers or their friends in the media. Oz also wrote that ‘there can be no moral equation between Hizbullah and Israel. Hizbullah is targeting Israeli civilians wherever they are, while Israel is targeting mostly Hizbullah.’ At that time more than 300 Lebanese had been killed and 600 had been injured. Oz went on: ‘The Israeli peace movement should support Israel’s attempt at self-defence, pure and simple, as long as this operation targets mostly Hizbullah and spares, as much as possible, the lives of Lebanese civilians (this is not always an easy task, as Hizbullah missile-launchers often use Lebanese civilians as human sandbags).’

The truth behind this is that Israel must always be allowed to do as it likes even if this involves scorching its supremacy into Arab bodies. This supremacy is beyond discussion and it is simple to the point of madness. We have the right to abduct. You don’t. We have the right to arrest. You don’t. You are terrorists. We are virtuous. We have sovereignty. You don’t. We can ruin you. You cannot ruin us, even when you retaliate, because we are tied to the most powerful nation on earth. We are angels of death.

The Lebanese will not remember everything about this war. How many atrocities can a person keep in mind, how much helplessness can he or she admit, how many massacres can people tell their children about, how many terrorised escapes from burning houses, without becoming a slave to memory? Should a child keep a leaflet written by the IDF in Arabic, in which he is told to leave his home before it’s bombed? I cannot urge my Lebanese friends to remember the crimes my state and its army have committed in Lebanon.

Israelis, however, have no right to forget. Too many people here supported the war. It wasn’t just the nationalist religious settlers. It’s always easy to blame the usual suspects for our misdemeanours: the scapegoating of religious fanatics has allowed us to ignore the role of the army and its advocates within the Zionist left. This time we have seen just how strongly the ‘moderates’ are wedded to immoderation, even though they knew, before it even started, that this would be a war against suburbs and crowded areas of cities, small towns and defenceless villages. The model was our army’s recent actions in Gaza: Israeli moderates found these perfectly acceptable.

It was a mistake for those of us who are unhappy with our country’s policies to breathe a sigh of relief after the army withdrew from Lebanon in 2000. We thought that the names of Sabra and Shatila would do all the memorial work that needed to be done and that they would stand, metonymically, for the crimes committed in Lebanon by Israel. But, with the withdrawal from Gaza, many Israelis who should be opposing this war started to think of Ariel Sharon, the genius of Sabra and Shatila, as a champion of peace. The logic of unilateralism – of which Sharon was the embodiment – had at last prevailed: Israelis are the only people who count in the Middle East; we are the only ones who deserve to live here.

This time we must try harder to remember. We must remember the crimes of Olmert, and of our minister of justice, Haim Ramon, who championed the destruction of Lebanese villages after the ambush at Bint Jbeil, and of the army chief of staff, Dan Halutz. Their names should be submitted to The Hague so they can be held accountable.

Elections are a wholly inadequate form of accountability in Israel: the people we kill and maim and ruin cannot vote here. If we let our memories slacken now, the machine-memory will reassert control and write history for us. It will glide into the vacuum created by our negligence, with the civilised voice of Amos Oz easing its path, and insert its own version. And suddenly we will not be able to explain what we know, even to our own children.

In Israel there is still no proper history of our acts in Lebanon. Israelis in the peace camp used to carry posters with the figure ‘680’ on them – the number of Israelis who died during the 1982 invasion. Six hundred and eighty Israeli soldiers. How many members of that once sizeable peace camp protested about the tens of thousands of Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian casualties? Isn’t the failure of the peace camp a result of its inability to speak about the cheapness of Arab blood? General Udi Adam, one of the architects of the current war, has told Israelis that we shouldn’t count the dead. He meant this very seriously and Israelis should take him seriously. We should make it our business to count the dead in Lebanon and in Israel and, to the best of our abilities, to find out their names, all of them.

3 August
Yitzhak Laor lives in Tel Aviv.

Brutal U.S. Attack on Unarmed Afghans Captured by Photos

2006-08-12T17:50:00.000-07:00

Published on Tuesday, August 8, 2006 by the Independent / UK
Brutal US Attack on Unarmed Afghans Captured by Photos
by Tom Coghlan

Claims that US troops shot dead up to six unarmed Afghan civilians two months ago in Kabul have been given added credibility with a series of photographs offering visual evidence of military misconduct.

The pictures were taken by an Afghan passer-by on 29 May in Khair Kane, a district of north Kabul. The 20 photographs appear to show a group of unarmed Afghan civilians being killed by gunfire from an American Humvee.

The allegations made in Kabul follow other recent incidents in which US troops are alleged to have used disproportionate or reckless force against civilians, most notably in Haditha, Iraq, on 19 November 2005 when US troops allegedly killed 15 civilians.

The Kabul pictures were taken as American vehicles fled the scene of an accident in which several Afghans were killed and injured after a US Army truck lost control and hit a number of civilian vehicles. Shot from a hillside above where the original accident took place, they show a crowd of Afghans throwing stones at the American vehicles.

A sequence of pictures show US vehicles leaving at high speed as the crowd stones them. In one sequence, a clearly unarmed Afghan man is seen with an American Humvee in the background, then as part of a group of men throwing stones towards the Americans. Two frames later his lifeless body is on the ground, having apparently been shot in the chest.

Another picture shows the body of an 18-year-old mechanic named Maiwan. His family said he was also hit by bullets fired from a US Humvee towards the crowd. His brother Jawad, 19, said Maiwan died from wounds to his knee and chest. "We are not the sort of people to do anything against US forces," said Jawad. "Maiwan was quiet and friendly. My father loved him too much, more than the rest of us."

The photographer, Atif Ahmadzai, 34, said: "I thought at first they were firing into the air. I was on the hill taking the pictures and, as they fired towards me, I ducked. One bullet grazed my thigh. Two people were killed behind me." He said he saw six bodies in total.

The day after the rioting he took the pictures to the US embassy. "I told them,'Just look at the people in the pictures, they are all unarmed'," he said. A statement released by the US military said a US Army truck had suffered a brake failure, causing it to lose control and hit up to 13 Afghan civilian vehicles, killing one person. The statement said: "There are indications that at least one coalition military vehicle fired warning shots over the crowd." US forces have launched an investigation into the incident, the results of which are due to be published next week.

All the witnesses to the incident reported at least one US vehicle opened fire on the civilians. "I saw with my own eyes that the soldier fired on the people," said Nazir Akhmad, 32, who owns a petrol station near where the accident occurred. "Her gun was pointed in the air but then she brought it down and started firing. The first bullet killed a boy called Khaled."

The US military declined to comment yesterday on its investigation. The US spokesman, Col Tom Collins, said: "I can't comment on the results of the investigation but there is no doubt that our soldiers thought there was fire emanating from the crowd."

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
###

A "Pretext" War in Lebanon

2006-08-12T17:45:00.000-07:00

consortiumnews.com
A 'Pretext' War in Lebanon
By Robert Parry
August 9, 2006

Three days after the May 23 summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and U.S. President George W. Bush, a car bomb killed two officials of Islamic Jihad in the Lebanese city of Sidon.

Immediately, Lebanese officials, including Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, denounced the murder of brothers Nidal and Mahmoud Majzoub and pointed the finger at Israel as the prime suspect. On June 10, a man named Mahmoud Rafeh was arrested for the car bombing and, according to the Lebanese army, confessed that he was a Mossad agent.

Rafeh, a 59-year-old retired police officer, belonged to a “terror network working for the Israeli Mossad,” which had smuggled a booby-trapped door into Lebanon from Israel for use in the assassination, the Lebanese army said.

In retrospect, the Majzoub assassination looks to have been part of a larger U.S.-Israeli strategy – following the Olmert-Bush summit – to encourage a tit-for-tat escalation of violence that would ratchet up pressure on Palestinian and Lebanese militants – and through them their allies in Syria and Iran.

That violence also set the stage for the current Israeli-Lebanese war, which now has raged for almost one month and has claimed the lives of nearly 1,000 Lebanese and 100 Israelis.

A Year for War
According to Israeli sources, Olmert and Bush agreed at the May 23 summit to make 2006 the year for neutralizing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, while deferring a border settlement with the Palestinians until 2007.

Provoking a wider regional conflict also revived hopes among Bush’s neoconservative advisers that they might yet create a “new Middle East” that would be amenable to U.S. and Israeli desires and interests.

In this context, the Israeli-Lebanese war was a confrontation looking for a pretext, not an ad hoc response to Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12. That so-called “kidnapping” has been sold to the American people and many world leaders as the precipitating event for the conflict, but it now appears only to have been a trigger for a prearranged scheme.
Israeli sources indicate that Bush gave Olmert a green light for the conflict at the May 23 summit. The sources said Bush has even encouraged Israel to expand the war by attacking Syria, although Israeli leaders balked at that recommendation because they lacked an immediate justification.

One Israeli source said some Israeli officials considered Bush’s interest in an attack on Syria “nuts” since it would have been viewed by much of the world as an act of overt aggression. Bush, however, is said to still hold out hope that reactions by Syria or Iran – such as coming to the aid of Hezbollah – could open the door to a broader conflict.

In an article on July 30, the Jerusalem Post hinted at Bush’s continued interest in a wider war involving Syria. “Defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the US that America would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria,” the newspaper reported.

Bush pursued a similar “pretext” war strategy in 2003 when he sought a provocation by Iraq that would give legal cover for invading that country.

A leaked British document recounted an Oval Office meeting between Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair on Jan. 31, 2003. Even as Bush was publicly telling the American people that he viewed war with Iraq as a “last resort,” he had already made up his mind and was scheming to find excuses for justifying an attack on Iraq.

According to minutes written by Blair’s top foreign policy aide David Manning, “the U.S. was thinking of flying U-2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach.”

Regardless of whether a casus belli could be provoked, Bush already had “penciled in” March 10, 2003, as the start of the U.S. bombing of Iraq, according to the memo. “Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning,” Manning wrote.

As it turned out, Bush brushed aside Blair’s worries about the legality of an unprovoked invasion of Iraq and went ahead with the assault on March 19, 2003. Though Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein was ousted after a three-week U.S.-led assault, Iraqi insurgents have battled the American occupying army since then in a war that has claimed the lives of almost 2,600 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis.

New Ambitions
Many American observers believed that the disaster in Iraq would tamp down Bush’s ambition to remake the region. However, with Olmert’s ascension to power in Israel in 2006, Bush saw a kindred spirit who believed that military force was the only way to get Islamic adversaries to make necessary concessions.

After the May 23 meeting with Bush, Olmert declared that “this is a moment of truth” for addressing Iran’s alleged ambitions to build a nuclear bomb.

In a speech to a joint session of Congress on May 24, Olmert called the possibility of Iran building a nuclear weapon “an existential threat” to Israel, meaning that Israel believed its very existence was in danger.

Two days later, the car bomb killed the Majzoub brothers in Sidon and a new cycle of escalation began. In reaction to the assassinations, Islamic militants fired rockets into Israel, which, in turn, counter-attacked killing one Hezbollah fighter.

Tensions rose further when fighting between Israelis and Palestinians resumed in Gaza. On the night of June 23, Israeli commandos crossed into Gaza and seized Osama and Mustafa Abu Muamar, two sons of Hamas activist Ali Muamar. [BBC, June 24, 2006]

Early on the morning of June 24, Hamas militants snuck into Israel via a tunnel from Gaza and attacked an Israel patrol, killing two soldiers and capturing Corporal Gilad Shalit as a part of a demand for a prisoner exchange. Israel is reported to hold about 10,000 Palestinian prisoners.
On June 27, as these tensions mounted, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was still working to advance a possible peace settlement with Israel. Abbas coaxed the more radical Hamas, which controls the Palestinian parliament, into endorsing a document proposing a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Abbas’s success represented a potential breakthrough in a border settlement with Israel, since Hamas implicitly was accepting Israel as a neighbor next to an independent Palestinian state.
But the next day, June 28, Olmert sent the Israeli army crashing into Gaza to avenge the “kidnapping” of Shalit, a phrasing that the U.S. news media immediately adopted in blaming Hamas for instigating the crisis.

As the Israeli army overwhelmed scattered Palestinian resistance and began “detaining” – not “kidnapping” – Hamas legislators, tensions were also mounting on the Israeli-Lebanese border.
On July 12, Hezbollah forces attacked an Israeli border outpost, killing three soldiers and capturing – or “kidnapping” – two others, also seeking a prisoner exchange.

The July 12 incident opened up the floodgates of violence. Israel launched a broad air-and-ground offensive aimed at crushing Hezbollah by blasting apart its strongholds in south Lebanon and destroying much of Lebanon’s economic infrastructure, from roads to communications. Hezbollah launched hundreds of Katyusha rockets into northern Israel.

Besides the almost 1,000 Lebanese who have died, an estimated one million – or about one-fourth of Lebanon's population – were displaced from their homes. The Israeli death toll, both military and civilian, stood at about 100.

While many international leaders called for an immediate cease-fire to stop the bloodshed in July, Bush staunchly defended Israel’s actions as a legitimate act of self-defense against “terrorists.”

In an unguarded moment during the G-8 summit in Russia on July 17, Bush – speaking with his mouth full of food – told Blair “what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit.”

Not realizing that a nearby microphone was turned on, Bush also complained about suggestions for a cease-fire and an international peacekeeping force. “We’re not blaming Israel and we’re not blaming the Lebanese government,” Bush said, suggesting that the blame should fall on others, presumably Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.

Meanwhile, John Bolton, Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations, suggested that the United States would only accept a multilateral U.N. force if it had the capacity to take on Hezbollah's backers in Syria and Iran.

“The real problem is Hezbollah,” Bolton said. “Would it [a U.N. force] be empowered to deal with countries like Syria and Iran that support Hezbollah?” [NYT, July 18, 2006]

‘Cease-Fire’
By early August, as rage throughout the Middle East rose to a boil, the Bush administration finally put forth a cease-fire plan. But it read as if it were designed to further stir Arab anger and extend the conflict.

While demanding that Hezbollah stop fighting and effectively disarm, it would allow Israeli forces to remain in south Lebanon and only require Israel to cease “offensive” operations. A multinational force would then replace the Israeli army and police a buffer zone carved entirely out of south Lebanon.

Bush said his cease-fire goal was to strike at the “root cause” of the conflict, the existence of Hezbollah as an armed militia inside Lebanon.

“By taking these steps, it will prevent armed militias like Hezbollah and its Iranian and Syrian sponsors from sparking another crisis,” Bush said at an Aug. 7 news conference in Crawford, Texas.

“The loss of life on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border has been a great tragedy,” Bush said. “Millions of Lebanese civilians have been caught in the crossfire of military operations because of the unprovoked attack and kidnappings by Hezbollah. The humanitarian crisis in Lebanon is of deep concern to all Americans, and alleviating it will remain a priority of my government.”

But the reality appears to be quite different. Much as Bush told the American people that he considered war with Iraq “a last resort” long after he had decided to invade, Bush is now saying his goal is to relieve a humanitarian crisis when he actually hopes to expand the conflict and force a showdown with Syria and Iran.

While U.S. officials have been careful not to link the Lebanon conflict to any possible military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, they have spoken privately about using the current conflict to counter growing Iranian influence.

Only days after the Lebanon-Israel conflict began, Washington Post foreign policy analyst Robin Wright wrote that U.S. officials told her that “for the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East. …

“Whatever the outrage on the Arab streets, Washington believes it has strong behind-the-scenes support among key Arab leaders also nervous about the populist militants – with a tacit agreement that the timing is right to strike.” [Washington Post, July 16, 2006]

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

Syria's Warm Welcome to Lebanese

2006-08-12T17:41:00.000-07:00

Syria's warm welcome to Lebanese
By Jon Leyne
BBC News, Damascus

Lebanese have been streaming across the border into Syria
The Lebanese family is living in a tiny flat, in a poor quarter of Damascus. One of them has cancer. The rest have the usual problems of people in their situation - trauma, boredom and uncertainty.

The Syrians prefer to call them guests, but these are refugees by any other name.

Eight are squeezed into a two-room flat, alongside Munser Moalla's family of four.

"It's a crisis. We had to open our doors," he explained. "They are our families and our brothers, and they are most welcome. We have to do whatever we can."

It is a story repeated across Syria.

Nobody knows exactly how many Lebanese have fled here - estimates vary from 160,000 up to 300,000. But they seem to be everywhere. And they are continuing to stream in across the border.

'Rolls Royce' refugees
I visited one group - almost all Shia Muslims - staying at a half-finished Christian monastery, high up in the hills.

Outside Damascus, a few lucky ones were enjoying the luxury of the Norwegian ambassador's residence, complete with swimming pool.

The Syria population is so generous. They take them into their homes and give them anything they need

We found another group staying in the summer huts of a Young Pioneers camp. Families of six or more, squeezed into huts designed for just two or three children to take their holidays.

There are a few "Rolls Royce" refugees, who have fled in their smart limousines and found suites in luxury hotels.

Many more are packed into schools, universities, mosques - almost any building with some free floor space.

And huge numbers are staying with ordinary Syrian families, both rich, and often poor.

One charity called Syrian Public Relations put out an appeal for hosts by sending a text message to all Syrian mobile phone users. They were flooded with offers from 10,000 families.

Reem Jomah, who works for the organisation, says the response has made her proud to be Syrian.

"The word proud is not enough," she said. "Syrians have closed their houses and their shops and gone directly to the border to offer help."

Reassured
This outpouring of support comes despite the troubled history between Syria and Lebanon.
Only last year Syria was accused of being behind the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri. Syrian troops left after pressure from the United Nations.

Support for Hezbollah in Syria is strong
Syria has played an often unhelpful part in Lebanon's Byzantine religious and political make-up. But now, everyone in Syria insists they are helping regardless of whether they are Christians, Shia or Sunni Muslims.

Reem Jomah says the refugees who arrive at the border do not know what to expect.

Their first response to the welcome is to borrow a mobile phone in order to reassure the rest of their families it is safe to come into Syria.

"The Syria population is so generous," agreed Annette Rehrl of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. "They take them into their homes and give them anything they need."

Nervous and traumatised
For many of these refugees this is not the first time they have had to leave their homes. There are bitter memories of previous Israeli attacks, and almost universal support for Hezbollah.
One family was reluctant to leave their home again, until an Israeli bomb destroyed the house next door.

And many families are nervous and traumatised after days or weeks of attacks.

A Norwegian doctor looking after them described how they would leap out of their skins when there was any sudden noise, such as a door slamming.

What began as a crisis, has now become a long-term problem.

The host families are providing everything, including foods and medicines. But many cannot afford it. And the public buildings, the schools and universities will soon be needed by Syrians themselves.

All this, of course, is in addition to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees, not to mention the Palestinians who have been here for decades.

Unless peace is restored soon, this refugee crisis could join the already long list of festering Middle Eastern grievances.

ACLU: Prisoners Left Without Water, Ventilation After Hurricane Katrina

2006-08-12T17:34:00.000-07:00

ACLU: Prisoners Left Without Water, Ventilation After Hurricane Katrina
The Associated Press
08-11-2006

A report released Thursday describes Orleans Parish prisoners trapped in flooded cells, deprived of food and water for days, and calls the scene at the jail "some of the worst horrors of Hurricane Katrina."

The American Civil Liberties Union compiled the report through interviews with prisoners, Orleans Parish Prison deputies and staff, and through legal and public documents.

"Prisoners went days without food, water and ventilation, and deputies admit that they received no emergency training and were entirely unaware of any evacuation plan," the ACLU report said. "Even some prison guards were left locked in at their posts to fend for themselves, unable to provide assistance to prisoners in need."

Other deputies abandoned prisoners in locked cells, where some were standing in sewage-tainted water up to their chests, according to the report.

Tom Jawetz, litigation fellow for the ACLU's National Prison Project, said the sheriff's office was "completely unprepared for the storm."

"The Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals did more for its 263 stray pets than the sheriff did for the more than 6,500 men, women and children left in his care," Jawetz said.

A spokeswoman for Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman said the department had not seen the report and had no immediate comment.

Gusman has acknowledged that a loss of electricity and no working toilets created a foul atmosphere. He has denied, however, that prisoners were not fed. He said prisoners, his staff and their families had food from the prison, plus MREs supplied by the military.

There were no confirmed deaths at the prison, the report said, though it detailed stories of two inmates with health problems who died after being transferred out.

It took three days to evacuate inmates after the storm hit on Aug. 29, prison authorities have said. The prison has reopened but now holds only about 1,800 inmates. Others are incarcerated at 38 state and local lockups around Louisiana.

The report said the crowded conditions had contributed to the chaos. New Orleans had the highest incarceration rate before Katrina of any large U.S. city.

The National Prison Project urged President Bush to direct the Department of Justice to evaluate the jail's current evacuation plans to determine whether any meaningful improvements have been made over the past year.

The ACLU asked Congress to audit the jail's emergency preparedness plans. The civil rights group also is calling for a federal investigation into possible abuses at Louisiana correctional facilities during and after the storm.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

The New Frontier

2006-08-05T23:58:00.000-07:00

PeaceJournalism.Com
Posted on: 8/3/2006
The New Frontier
By Natylie Baldwin

As an unusually long and sweltering heat wave enveloped the traditionally mild San Francisco Bay Area, power outages knocked out air conditioning, and gas prices under $3.00 a gallon seemed like leisure suits or vinyl LPs, relics of a long forgotten era, those who have been warning of the consequences of global warming and the eventual decline of a fossil fuel-based life felt an awkward sense of vindication.

Though some progressive icons like Greg Palast still try to write the peak oil movement off using incomplete research and fallacious arguments, increasingly people are awakening to the limits of a system that is utterly dependent upon a finite substance; a substance that is becoming uneconomical and is destroying the earth’s life-support network.

The subject of peak oil broke ground last year when a bipartisan caucus devoted to it was formed in the House of Representatives (Roscoe Bartlett, R-MD and Tom Udall, D-NM). So far, the House Caucus has done little except give a few interesting speeches, but, as Gregory Greene, director of the mobilizing classic, End of Suburbia, observed, it may be too late for such “top-down remedies” to work anyhow: The U.S. dollar and economy are dependent on a reliable source of energy and there is not enough time to build nuclear power plants or implement other fuel alternatives on a large scale. Even if we could quickly build nuclear power plants, the recent heat wave and subsequent demand for electricity in France showed the ecological weaknesses of relying too much on nuclear power. So what are the alternatives? (1)

Greene is currently finishing a follow-up film called Escape from Suburbia. This new film looks at communities that have taken the initiative and are “re-localizing” -- preparing for a future with little fossil fuel by scaling down and redirecting focus and resources toward local self-sufficiency. Communities from the U.S., Canada, Europe, Cuba and the Middle East appear in the film, but it is the town of Willits, California that provides the most intriguing and advanced study of the effort to re-localize and form a sustainable and vitally democratic town in the U.S. “It was evident about five or six months ago that Willits was really serious [about localizing the economy] and a lot of people look to Willits for leadership.” (2)

The Willits Model
Jason Bradford, an academic with a Ph.D. in botany founded the Willits Economic Localization project, otherwise known as WELL. Brian Weller, who showed up at the first screening that Bradford hosted of The End of Suburbia, eventually became an instrumental participant in WELL. In the two years since then, Bradford and Weller have learned some interesting lessons about mobilizing a community to prepare for the inevitable changes ahead.

As more people showed up at successive screenings and called for action, the vulnerabilities that Willits would face in a time of decreasing access to inexpensive fossil fuel and the long-distance economic dependencies it has created, led to the realization that making the community more self-reliant was imperative. Subsequently, committees were formed to explore areas that were crucial to the survival and harmony of the community. Assessments were undertaken to determine what resources were available locally in terms of food, energy, and keeping essential services operating.

During a workshop in Oakland this past April, Bradford and Weller discussed how, by strategically pressing something other than the peak oil issue, they were able to get important community allies committed to their localization project. Local emergency personnel took notice when WELL’s resource assessments, designed to expose the problems Willits would face as a result of peak oil, showed that these same vulnerabilities would be present in a more traditional disaster, like a forest fire or earthquake. The local police and fire chiefs recognized that the community would be in big trouble if a major disaster disrupted supply routes for any length of time. They understood that local self-reliance was essential to maintaining water and food supplies and keeping hospitals and other public safety institutions functioning.

Participants from other locales made similar observations based on their own unique community experiences. One attendee from the coastal town of Pacifica, south of San Francisco, spoke of the months-long closure of Highway 1 due to Devil’s Slide and the adverse impact it was having on local residents and small businesses. These experiences provide a window into the kinds of challenges that could arise when a lack of cheap oil renders regular shipments of essential goods into communities an anachronism.

In addition to recruiting important community allies, WELL also got the Bank of Willits to agree to the creation of an Economic Localization Fund (ELF). The bank will finance projects that increase energy efficiency, build infrastructure for resource self-reliance and also keep money flowing within the local economy. WELL is also working with EcoCity Builders and the City of Willits to map and plan more sustainable development.

This kind of success, however, does not mean that WELL has not faced its share of difficulties. Though local self-sufficiency and sustainability are issues that refreshingly overcome the cultural rift between liberal and conservative, other challenges have emerged. For example, some people go into the project with high expectations and become impatient or disillusioned with the slow pace of change. Personality differences also require a delicate balancing act.

“In the beginning, we had a collection of innovators and activists whose nature is to think outside of the box and they are wary of too much control or structure. But once you want to start getting practical, it requires more discipline and organization. So it comes down to, how do you keep the innovators on board and also recruit organizers?” Weller said. He believes re-establishing trust is the key, and the way to do that is by knowing how to talk to different people in language they will listen to and having the goal be to build a workable alternative rather than merely being reactive.

For all their success, one stumbling block that Bradford concedes his group has encountered is in getting young people on board. “Most [youth] who grow up here really want to get out and see the world. They apparently have little commitment to place right after high school.”

Back in Metropolis
While youth flight may be a problem in a rural town like Willits, groups in more urban areas that are working on localization and sustainability issues are experiencing a more optimistic trend in getting youth into the movement. Aaron Lehmer, 34, of Bay Area Relocalize (BAR), an organization assisting communities with mapping local resources, noted that young people are heavily involved in dozens of local groups in the San Francisco Bay Area focusing on food security, renewable energy and peak oil issues. “Most of the people involved with BAR are between 25 and 35. Several say they’re involved in the peak oil/localization movement because they’re worried about their future and whether there will be a viable society for them to live in over the coming decades.”

One community in the East Bay that is making impressive strides toward greater sustainability and self-reliance, much of it due to the participation and creativity of youth, is West Oakland. The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, an NGO that has focused on issues affecting the poor and minority population of the Oakland area, has teamed up with the West Oakland Apollo Alliance to pilot three new projects aimed at creating a symbiosis between social justice needs and sustainable economic development under the banner of Reclaim the Future. The projects will include efforts to improve air quality by utilizing biodiesel fuel blends, building a green residential complex on the site of a formerly toxic yeast factory, and development of a program to train formerly incarcerated and low-income people with skills useful in the emerging green economy sectors. Their first Solutions Salon this past April was designed to educate the public and encourage dialogue on Reclaim the Future and drew crowds so large the event had to be moved at the last minute to a larger venue.

Another grassroots effort that is providing training and employment opportunities for youth in the context of a local green economy is People’s Grocery, which was founded in 2002 by three West Oakland residents who were concerned by the lack of access to healthy food and its negative effect on their community.

Contrary to many people’s preconceived notions, the Alameda County Public Health Department of Vital Statistics found that, between 1996 and 1998, “the number one cause of death in West Oakland was not violence, but heart disease.” The fact that there are 40 liquor stores in West Oakland and only one grocery store underscores the deeper problems of economic underdevelopment, neglect and exploitation that fuel food insecurity, poor health, and a lack of opportunities, especially for young people.

Several programs have been developed by People’s Grocery to comprehensively address these issues. The most visible is the Mobile Market, an organic grocery store on wheels that delivers produce grown by local farmers at affordable prices and offers nutrition education, all to the beat of a solar-powered sound system. Three urban gardens are being cultivated throughout Oakland using compost from scraps collected from local neighborhoods. Youth work in the gardens and participate in programs like Collards n Commerce which teach entrepreneurial skills in sustainable agriculture and food preparation. The organization even has plans to eventually open up a full-service grocery store.

According to Brahm Ahamadi, one of its founders, People’s Grocery has had considerable success in improving people’s diets and eating habits. They have also provided stable jobs to a small group of people and though the scale is not yet large, the ripple effects have been significant in that workers have received meaningful skills that have often paved the way toward better jobs. But it’s the sense of proactive participation in one’s own community that has been priceless.

“Young people are compelled to our organization because of our community-based nature. We are in and for and about West Oakland. This is very inspiring to many young people as their experience has been that few people care about West Oakland. Also, the vibrant and engaging nature of our youth staff is attractive to other youth who subsequently join.”

The tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina exposed the public to what many poor and minority communities like those in West Oakland already learned from hard experience long ago: that, regardless of one’s ideological opinions about whether it should, the government oftentimes cannot be relied upon to effectively help people in trouble. When the community comes together and uses its ingenuity to create solutions, things happen that could never be gotten from an impersonal and cumbersome bureaucracy.

The increased visibility of lower income and minority activists in the sustainability movement also offers a much needed challenge to the perception that environmentalism is a status symbol for affluent liberals who can afford to pay the boutique prices at Whole Foods and drive around in space-age hybrids.

Waking Up in the Burbs
The main theme running through The End of Suburbia is that residents of what we call the suburbs owe their very existence to cheap oil and, hence, have the most to lose in the future. So what is the attitude and level of awareness of peak oil in the suburbs where folks still have their creature comforts and $3.50 a gallon gas isn’t really hurting too much?

Time is one of the biggest issues that came up when talking to peak oil activists who live in the burbs. As Verdette Wilkins of Tracy, an attendee at the localization workshop in Oakland, observed with some irony, “So many people are busy commuting to and from [suburbia] that they are unable to attend local government hearings and their concerns go largely unaddressed.” Dennis Brumm, an organizer with San Francisco Oil Awareness (SFOA), which played a pivotal role in getting the SF Board of Supervisors to pass a resolution on peak oil in April (3), acknowledged that having the time to do the follow-up and attend meetings, especially during the day when the bureaucracy was doing business, was crucial to his group’s progress in working with local government.

Sally Sweetser, a member of Diablo Post Carbon Study Group in Walnut Creek, stated that she is seeing a gradual increase in interest in her area as more people attend local film screenings and show some inclination toward doing something. Several people who are involved in environmental and social justice issues in Contra Costa County have memories of people attempting to broach this topic as far back as the 1970s and no one wanted to listen. Now, with our nation bogged down in at least two protracted wars in the Middle East, high gas prices, and hotter temperatures, people are starting to understand that something is amiss and are more open to hearing about oil, in terms of oil peaking and its relationship to global warming and geopolitics.

Richard Abbott, who helped organize this year’s Earth Day celebration in Lafayette with a “Powering Down” theme, was taken aback by the number of people in this cozy, well-to-do town who were well informed about peak oil. Many were taking individual actions in their personal lives, typically in the form of more eco-friendly consumer choices or driving less. Some are even involved in various groups relating to the environment, but an intellectual grasp on abstract dangers is perhaps not enough to inspire people to get their hands dirty with a community garden or green roofs on buildings just yet.

Framing the Problem and the Solutions
Though re-localization advocates are attempting to translate their understanding of peak oil and its overwhelming implications into constructive action, this is no band of wide-eyed idealists. Nor do most of them see re-localization as a panacea but as one important aspect of the multi-faceted response that will be needed to address the complex problems ahead.

As Sally Sweetser admitted, “I am actually very pessimistic. I do not believe groups of people have the ability to change before the crisis changes them. But I do believe in local action and the ability of local communities to weather the storm.” Similar sentiments of cold, hard realism were echoed by several activists within the movement.

Brumm recounted one of his colleagues suggesting that the peak oil problem and how to address it should be approached as a “risk management” issue since it is not a problem that can be solved per se but only one in which the effects can be mitigated.

This is what makes peak oil a topic that politicians are reluctant to talk about. On May 19th, localization and sustainability advocates convened a meeting with local elected officials in Sonoma County in the North Bay Area to discuss peak oil and its potential ramifications.
At the Energy Vulnerability Summit, peak oilers learned some interesting insights into navigating the issue with public officials. The first point was to be careful about nomenclature. The term “peak oil” should not be used but instead euphemisms such as “energy vulnerability” or “energy security.” In the same vein, the term “local” was to be avoided. As mystifying as this initially sounds, it was speculated that since the ideology of corporate globalization is so deeply entrenched it is nearly impossible to challenge it head-on by emphasizing the local.

With the terrain so inhospitable, it was considered that if a local elected official shows some sympathy for the issue and makes some kind of effort, however insufficient it may seem, it is important that advocates not be condescending, angry, or patronizing (at least not publicly) since even a small gesture of support often means that an elected official may be sticking their neck out. “Don’t ever embarrass a public official,” Post Carbon Institute founder, Julian Darley, admonished localization activists at a San Francisco conference on May 20th.

Jason Bradford recalled a comparable experience while attending a conference on sustainability several years ago. During a Q and A session, Bradford asked one of the speakers about the oxymoron of “sustainable growth.” The speaker replied that his question was “ideological” and that if one was going to attempt to talk to public officials or business leaders about sustainability, and be taken seriously, the term “growth” had to be there.

“I can’t see how the physics of growth on a finite planet has anything to do with ideology, but I certainly learned a lot about what constraints are placed on people about what they are supposedly allowed to talk about,” Bradford stated in an email exchange this past May.

Instead of trying to work within what he saw as a dangerously outdated framework dictated by politicians and the corporate world, Bradford resolved that he would not compromise the truth about what he sees as an ecological and social emergency.

It was this realization that sparked his movement to Willits with its abundance of natural resources and pockets of nonconformity. The evolution of WELL, which was born out of the simple idea of screening the film The End of Suburbia, has inspired people throughout California and beyond to get their own communities to embark on the path of re-localizing as a step toward a sane and sustainable future. Bradford has no regrets about his conclusion for the need to speak plainly about the problem.

“I went into this with the commitment to tell the truth as best I could. This occasionally risks alienating people but I have never felt that my relationships with people have broken down. I think the success with WELL means that people need not be afraid to tell it like it is.” But he cautions that how you convey the truth is essential to getting people to accept it, “Speak with clarity and compassion, less with anger, and the message will be easier to transmit.”

1)“European Heat Wave Shows Limits of Nuclear Energy” by Julio Godoy. OneWorld.net. July 28, 2006. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0728-06.htm.

2)“Willits to Star in International Film: Town Plays Key Role in Localization Story” by Claudia Reed. The Willits News. March 1, 2006.

3)To download a copy of the resolution passed by the SF Board of Supervisors, to http://energybulletin.net/15086.html; to listen to an interview with Dennis Brumm on the process undertaken to get the resolution passed, go to http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/interviews/694.

Bio: Natylie Baldwin is a writer and activist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She writes on issues relating to the Middle East, human rights, peak oil, and sustainability. She can be reached at natyliesb@gmail.com.

Copyright peacejournalism.com

The Great Community of the Earth

2006-08-05T23:41:00.000-07:00

YES! Magazine Winter 2001 Issue: A New Culture Emerges
The Great Community of the Earth
by Thomas Berry

At a special event held during the UN Summit for Religious and Spiritual Leaders in August, Thomas Berry told these stories of our common dreams for the Earth

During these past two days much has been accomplished to advance the cause of peace by our discussions and simply by our being with each other. We have learned to trust and admire each other and to share with each other the traditions we represent.

This evening I suggest that we continue this presence to each other by looking beyond ourselves to the larger universe we live in. If it were convenient, I would suggest that we go outside this building, that we go beyond all the light and noise of the city and look up at the sky overarching the Earth. At this time in the evening we would see the stars begin to appear as the sun disappears over the horizon. The light of day gives way to the darkness of night. A stillness, a healing quiet comes over the landscape.

It’s a moment when some other world makes itself known, a numinous presence beyond human understanding. We experience the wonder of things as the vast realms of space overwhelm the limitations of our human minds. As the sky turns golden and the clouds reflect the blazing colors of evening, we participate for a moment in the forgiveness, the peace, the intimacy of all things with each other.

Parents hold their children more closely and tell them stories as they go off into dreamland, wonderful stories of times gone by, stories of the animals, of the good fairies, adventure stories of heroic wanderings through the wilderness, stories of dragons threatening to devour the people and of courageous persons who saved our world in perilous times.

These final thoughts of the day are continued in the minds of children as even in their sleep they begin to dream of their own future, dreams of the noble deeds that would give meaning to their lives. Whether awake or asleep, the world of wonder fills their minds, the world of beauty fills their imagination, the world of intimacy fills their emotions.

When we look back over our own lives, we realize that whatever of significance we have achieved in our own personal lives and in the larger cultural domain has been the fulfillment of thoughts and dreams that we had early in our lives, dreams that sustained us when we encountered difficulties through the years.

Beyond the dreams of our personal future, there are the shared dreams that give shape and form to each of our cultural traditions. Because this other world cannot be explained by any technical or scientific language, we present it by analogy and myth and story. Even beyond childhood, this is the world of the human mind.

So tonight, as we look up at the evening sky with the stars emerging faintly against the fading background of the sunset, we think of the mythic foundations of our future. We need to engage in a shared dream experience.

The experiences that we have spoken of as we look up at the starry sky at night and in the morning see the landscape revealed as the sun dawns over the Earth — these reveal a physical world but also a more profound world that cannot be bought with money, cannot be manufactured with technology, cannot be listed on the stock market, cannot be made in the chemical laboratory, cannot be reproduced with all our genetic engineering, cannot be sent by e-mail. These experiences require only that we follow the deepest feelings of the human soul.

What we look for is no longer the Pax Romana, the peace of imperial Rome, nor is it simply the Pax Humana, the peace among humans, but the Pax Gaia, the peace of earth and every being on the Earth. This is the original and the final peace, the peace granted by whatever power it is that brings our world into being. Within the universe, the planet Earth with all its wonder is the place for the meeting of the divine and the human.

As humans we are born of the Earth, nourished by the Earth, healed by the Earth. The natural world tells us: I will feed you, I will clothe you, I will shelter you, I will heal you. Only do not so devour me or use me that you destroy my capacity to mediate the divine and the human. For I offer you a communion with the divine. I offer you gifts that you can exchange with each other. I offer you flowers whereby you may express your reverence for the divine and your love for each other. In the vastness of the sea, in the snow-covered mountains, in the rivers flowing through the valleys, in the serenity of the landscape, and in the foreboding of the great storms that sweep over the land, in all these experiences I offer you inspiration for your music, for your art, your dance.

All these benefits the Earth gives to us, individually, in our communities, and throughout the entire Earth. Yet we cannot be fully nourished in the depths of our being if we try to isolate ourselves individually or if we seek to deprive others of their share by increasing our own, for the food that we eat nourishes us in both our souls and our bodies. To eat alone is to be starved in some part of our being.

We need to reflect that our individual delight in the song of the birds and the sound of the crickets and cicadas in the evening is enhanced, not diminished, when we listen together with our families and our friends. We experience an easing of the tensions that develop between us, for the songs that we hear draw us into the intimacy of the same psychic space. So it is with music. Our folk music as well as the symphonies of Mozart or Beethoven draw an unlimited number of persons into the same soulspace.

Perhaps our greatest resource for peace is in an awareness that we enrich ourselves when we share our possessions with others. We discover peace when we learn to esteem those goods whereby we benefit ourselves in proportion as we give them to others. The very structure and functioning of the universe and of the planet Earth reveal an indescribable diversity bound in an all-embracing unity. The heavens themselves are curved over the earth in an encompassing embrace.

Here I would recall the experience of Henry Thoreau, an American naturalist of the mid-19th century who lived a very simple life with few personal possessions. At one time he was attracted to purchase an especially beautiful bit of land with a pasture and a wooded area. He even made a deposit. But then he realized that it was not necessary to purchase the land because, he reasoned, he already possessed the land in its wonder and its beauty as he passed by each day. This intimacy with the land could not be taken away from him, no matter who owned the land in its physical reality. So indeed that same bit of land could be owned in its wonder and beauty by an unlimited number of persons, even though in its physical reality it might be owned by a single person.

Such was the argument of Mencius, the Chinese writer. He taught the emperor that he should open up the royal park for others, since it would be an even greater joy to have others present with him, just as at a musical concert each of us enjoys the music, not diminishing but increasing our own joy as we share it with others. So, too, in the Boddhisattva tradition of India there were those such as Shanti Deva, in the fifth century of our era, who took a vow to refuse beatitude itself until all living creatures were saved. For only when they participated in his joy could he be fully caught up in the delight of paradise.

It has taken these many centuries for us to meet with each other in the comprehensive manner that is now possible. While for the many long centuries we had fragments of information concerning each other, we can now come together, speak with each other, dine with each other. Above all we can tell our stories to each other.

Tonight we might recall the ancient law of hospitality whereby the wanderer was welcomed. So it was with Ulysses in his long voyage home after the Trojan war. When exhausted and driven ashore on occasion and surrounded by a people that he had never met before, he was consistently rested, invited to dine with the people of the place, and then in the quiet moment afterward was invited to tell his story. So it has been, I trust, with each of us in these past few days. To some extent we have been able to tell our stories to each other. Now a new phase in all our stories has begun, as we begin to shape the Great Story of all peoples. I would suggest that we see these early years of the 21st century as the period when we discover the great community of the Earth, a comprehensive community of all the living and non-living components of the planet. We are just discovering that the human project is itself a component of the Earth project, that our intimacy with the Earth is our way to intimacy with each other. Such are the foundations of our journey into the future.

From remarks made at the August 30, 2000, Thomas Berry Award and Lecture, sponsored by the Center for Respect of Life and Environment and the Forum on Religion and Ecology at the UN Millennium World Peace Summit for Religious and Spiritual Leaders. Thomas Berry is a cultural historian, author, and teacher of religion now living in the southern Appalachians. Illustrations by Ruth Richards.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=385

Bush Wants Wider War

2006-08-05T23:23:00.000-07:00

consortiumnews.com
Bush Wants Wider War
By Robert Parry
August 3, 2006

George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisers saw the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah as an opportunity to expand the conflict into Syria and possibly achieve a long-sought “regime change” in Damascus, but Israel’s leadership balked at the scheme, according to Israeli sources.
One Israeli source said Bush’s interest in spreading the war to Syria was considered “nuts” by some senior Israeli officials, although Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has generally shared Bush’s hard-line strategy against Islamic militants.

After rebuffing Bush’s suggestion about attacking Syria, the Israeli government settled on a strategy of mounting a major assault in southern Lebanon aimed at rooting out Hezbollah guerrillas who have been firing Katyusha rockets into northern Israel.

In an article on July 30, the Jerusalem Post hinted at the Israeli rejection of Bush’s suggestion of a wider war in Syria. “Defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the US that America would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria,” the newspaper reported.

On July 18, Consortiumnews.com reported that the Israel-Lebanon conflict had revived the Bush administration's neoconservative hopes that a new path had opened “to achieve a prized goal that otherwise appeared to be blocked for them – military assaults on Syria and Iran aimed at crippling those governments.”

The article went on to say:
After the fall of Baghdad in April 2003 – after only three weeks of fighting – the question posed by some Bush administration officials was whether the U.S. military should go “left or right,” to Syria or Iran. Some joked that “real men go to Tehran.”

According to the neocon strategy, “regime change” in Syria and Iran, in turn, would undermine Hezbollah, the Shiite militia that controls much of southern Lebanon, and would strengthen Israel’s hand in dictating peace terms to the Palestinians.

But the emergence of a powerful insurgency in Iraq – and a worsening situation for U.S. forces in Afghanistan – stilled the neoconservative dream of making George W. Bush a modern-day Alexander conquering the major cities of the Middle East, one after another.

Bush’s invasion of Iraq also unwittingly enhanced the power of Iran’s Shiite government by eliminating its chief counterweight, the Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein. With Iran’s Shiite allies in control of the Iraqi government and a Shiite-led government also in Syria, the region’s balance between the two rival Islamic sects was thrown out of whack.

The neocon dream of “regime change” in Syria and Iran never died, however. It stirred when Bush accused Syria of assisting Iraqi insurgents and when he insisted that Iran submit its nuclear research to strict international controls. The border conflict between Israel and Lebanon now has let Bush toughen his rhetoric again against Syria and Iran.

In an unguarded moment during the G-8 summit in Russia on July 17, Bush – speaking with his mouth full of food and annoyed by suggestions about United Nations peacekeepers – told British Prime Minister Tony Blair “what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit.”

Not realizing that a nearby microphone was turned on, Bush also complained about suggestions for a cease-fire and an international peacekeeping force. “We’re not blaming Israel and we’re not blaming the Lebanese government,” Bush said, suggesting that the blame should fall on others, presumably Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.

Meanwhile, John Bolton, Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations, suggested that the United States would only accept a multilateral U.N. force if it had the capacity to take on Hezbollah's backers in Syria and Iran.

“The real problem is Hezbollah,” Bolton said. “Would it [a U.N. force] be empowered to deal with countries like Syria and Iran that support Hezbollah?” [NYT, July 18, 2006]

Strategy Meetings
Though the immediate conflict between Israel and Hezbollah was touched off by a Hezbollah cross-border raid on July 12 that captured two Israeli soldiers, the longer-term U.S.-Israeli strategy can be traced back to the May 23, 2006, meetings between Olmert and Bush in Washington.

At those meetings, Olmert discussed with Bush Israel’s plans for revising its timetable for setting final border arrangements with the Palestinians, putting those plans on the back burner while moving the Iranian nuclear program to the front burner.

In effect, Olmert informed Bush that 2006 would be the year for stopping Iran’s progress toward a nuclear bomb and 2007 would be the year for redrawing Israel’s final borders. That schedule fit well with Bush’s priorities, which may require some dramatic foreign policy success before the November congressional elections.

At a joint press conference with Bush on May 23, Olmert said “this is a moment of truth” for addressing Iran’s alleged ambitions to build a nuclear bomb.

“The Iranian threat is not only a threat to Israel, it is a threat to the stability of the Middle East and the entire world,” Olmert said. “The international community cannot tolerate a situation where a regime with a radical ideology and a long tradition of irresponsible conduct becomes a nuclear weapons state.”

Olmert also said he was prepared to give the Palestinians some time to accept Israel’s conditions for renewed negotiations on West Bank borders, but – if Palestinian officials didn’t comply – Israel was prepared to act unilaterally.

The prime minister said Israel would “remove most of the [West Bank] settlements which are not part of the major Israeli population centers in Judea and Samaria. The settlements within the population centers would remain under Israeli control and become part of the state of Israel, as part of the final status agreement.”

In other words, Israel would annex some of the most desirable parts of the West Bank regardless of Palestinian objections. That meant the Israelis would need to soften up Hamas, the Islamic militants who won the last Palestinian elections, and their supporters in the Islamic world – especially Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.

In a speech to a joint session of Congress, Olmert added that the possibility of Iran building a nuclear weapon was “an existential threat” to Israel, meaning that Israel believed its very existence was in danger.

Nuclear Face-Off
Even before the May 23 meetings, Bush was eyeing a confrontation with Iran as part of his revised strategy for remaking the Middle East. Bush was staring down Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over demands Iran back off its nuclear research.

By spring 2006, Bush was reportedly weighing military options for bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities. But the President encountered resistance from senior levels of the U.S. military, which feared the consequences, including the harm that might come to more than 130,000 U.S. troops bogged down in neighboring Iraq.

There was also alarm among U.S. generals over the White House resistance to removing tactical nuclear weapons as an option against Iran.

As investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote in The New Yorker, a number of senior U.S. officers were troubled by administration war planners who believed “bunker-busting” tactical nuclear weapons, known as B61-11s, were the only way to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities buried deep underground.

“Every other option, in the view of the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a gap,” a former senior intelligence official told Hersh. “‘Decisive’ is the key word of the Air Force’s planning. It’s a tough decision. But we made it in Japan.”

This former official said the White House refused to remove the nuclear option from the plans despite objections from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Whenever anybody tries to get it out, they’re shouted down,” the ex-official said. [New Yorker, April 17, 2006]

By late April, however, the Joint Chiefs finally got the White House to agree that using nuclear weapons to destroy Iran’s uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, less than 200 miles south of Tehran, was politically unacceptable, Hersh reported.

“Bush and Cheney were dead serious about the nuclear planning,” one former senior intelligence official said.

But – even without the nuclear option – senior military officials still worried about a massive bombing campaign against Iran. Hersh wrote:

“Inside the Pentagon, senior commanders have increasingly challenged the President’s plans, according to active-duty and retired officers and officials. The generals and admirals have told the Administration that the bombing campaign will probably not succeed in destroying Iran’s nuclear program. They have also warned that an attack could lead to serious economic, political, and military consequences for the United States.”

Hersh quoted a retired four-star general as saying, “The system is starting to sense the end of the road, and they don’t want to be condemned by history. They want to be able to say, ‘We stood up.’ ” [New Yorker, July 10, 2006]

The most immediate concern of U.S. military leaders was that air strikes against Iran could prompt retaliation against American troops in Iraq. U.S. military trainers would be especially vulnerable since they work within Iraqi military and police units dominated by Shiites who are sympathetic to Iran.

Iran also could respond to a bombing campaign by cutting off oil supplies, sending world oil prices soaring and throwing the world economy into chaos.

Israel’s Arsenal
While the Joint Chiefs may have had success in getting the White House to remove the use of nuclear weapons from its list of options on Iran, the rising tensions between Israel and Iran may have put the nuclear option back on the table – since Israel has the largest and most sophisticated nuclear arsenal in the Middle East.

As Hersh reported, “The Israelis have insisted for years that Iran has a clandestine program to build a bomb, and will do so as soon as it can. Israeli officials have emphasized that their ‘redline’ is the moment Iran masters the nuclear fuel cycle, acquiring the technical ability to produce weapons-grade uranium.”

In spring 2006, Iran announced that it had enriched uranium to the 3.6 percent level sufficient for nuclear energy but well below the 90-percent level for making atomic bombs. The U.S. intelligence community believes that Iran is still years and possibly a decade away from the capability of building a nuclear bomb.

Still, Iran’s technological advance convinced some Israeli strategists that it was imperative to destroy Iran’s program now. Yet to do so, Israel faces the same need for devastating explosive power, thus raising the specter again of using a nuclear bomb.

One interpretation of the Lebanese-Israeli conflict is that Bush and Olmert seized on the Hezbollah raid as a pretext for a pre-planned escalation that will lead to bombing campaigns against Syria and Iran, justified by their backing of Hezbollah.

In that view, Bush found himself stymied by U.S. military objections to targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities outside any larger conflict. However, if the bombing of Iran develops as an outgrowth of a tit-for-tat expansion of a war in which Israel’s existence is at stake, strikes against Iranian targets would be more palatable to the American public.

The end game would be U.S.-Israeli aerial strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities with the goal of crippling its nuclear program and humiliating Ahmadinejad.

Strangling an Axis
While U.S. officials have been careful not to link the Lebanon conflict to any possible military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, they have spoken privately about using the current conflict to counter growing Iranian influence.

Washington Post foreign policy analyst Robin Wright wrote that U.S. officials told her that “for the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East. …

“Whatever the outrage on the Arab streets, Washington believes it has strong behind-the-scenes support among key Arab leaders also nervous about the populist militants – with a tacit agreement that the timing is right to strike.

“‘What is out there is concern among conservative Arab allies that there is a hegemonic Persian threat [running] through Damascus, through the southern suburbs of Beirut and to the Palestinians in Hamas,’ said a senior U.S. official.” [Washington Post, July 16, 2006]

Another school of thought holds that Iran may have encouraged the Hezbollah raid that sparked the Lebanese-Israeli conflict as a way to demonstrate the “asymmetrical warfare” that could be set in motion if the Bush administration attacks Iran.

But Hezbollah’s firing of rockets as far as the port city of Haifa, deep inside Israel, has touched off new fears among Israelis and their allies about the danger of more powerful missiles carrying unconventional warheads, possibly hitting heavily populated areas, such as Tel Aviv.
That fear of missile attacks by Islamic extremists dedicated to Israel’s destruction has caused Israel to start “dusting off it nukes,” one source told me.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

Rants from the Alphabet (T is for Tax and Spend)

2006-08-05T23:16:00.000-07:00

Daily Kos
Rants from the Alphabet ('T' is for 'Tax and Spend')
by George A. Polisner

"Tax and Spend" Liberals. We hear that every election cycle. I find it amusing. The role of government is to provide infrastructure and services to the people it (theoretically) represents. In order to fund these services, the government must raise money. Government raises money through taxation. Government provides services by allocating money and spending for those services. Calling an elected official a tax and spend liberal is idiotic. It would be like trying to denigrate someone by calling them a "breathe-in, breathe-out" conservative.
(the entire "ABC's of Corpocracy" series is available here)

Measuring Society
One of the most interesting measures of an entity(nation, state, city, village, family) is how its resources are allocated (both the process as well as the allocation). In America the government establishes a budget based upon our past debt, current needs and future vision for our country. We attempt to elect a government that will represent the will of "We the people" in the budget process. There are mandatory payments, and payments that are discretionary. Any money expended should satisfy any debt and serve to make America stronger for future generations. Once the budget requirements are determined, government raises money through taxation and/or borrowing funds.

The Tax Part
As a society we need to be secure on a global scale so funds are allocated for defense and intelligence. We need security on a local level so we fund first-responders such as police, fire and paramedics. We need to support travel and commerce so we build roads, highways, rail systems and airports. In order to be strong we must have a well-educated society so we fund an education system. Not everyone in our society may be capable of productivity and so we fund basic social services to ensure everyone can live their lives with dignity and a reasonable quality of life. We want to be certain that future generations can experience the unique beauty of America, its mountains, beaches (or shores -if you live back east), lakes and forests, so we create a system of national parks and maintain them. Government must maintain a balance that encourages commerce and economic growth, yet also make sure that its people are protected from environmental harm and are treated fairly by corporations (at least until Reagan accelerated the marginalization of Unions and Bush eviscerated environmental protection and enforcement). We must raise a significant amount of money to pay for services. A large portion of this money is raised through taxation. Think of it as a membership fee we pay to belong to a society with abundant resources and sizable advantages so our families and communities can continue to enjoy abundance and advantage.

The Spend Part
Throughout time, society may prioritize the allocation differnently because of internal or external events. Late 18th century America would likely not allocate much for the space program or freeways. The thought of an EPA superfund, fighting communism and government backed faith-based initiatives would not have been a priority either. And although we attempt to elect officials to represent our will, there is never a guarantee that they will actually represent "We the People". They may decide that it requires a significant amount of money to run a successful campaign (election or re-election) and therefore will represent those that have significant power and influence instead of you and me. One need not look further than Abramoff, Delay or Cunningham for recent examples of our will being subverted by money and influence. So spending is complex. You have the changing will of the people. You have the seperate actions of Congress and the Executive Branch either or both of which may be vastly different than the needs or wants of society. And then you have the politics ("you vote to allocate money to my pork project and I'll vote for your stupid thing"). There is also always tension in any budget between items of long-term significance and short-term wants or needs.
How were your recent (2005) federal income tax dollars spent? (Source: National Priorities Project)

Of the $1000.00 you paid in taxes:
$285.00 goes to the military
$187.00 goes to pay the interest on the debt
$202.00 goes to health care
$66.00 goes to income security
$41.00 goes to education
$37.00 goes to benefits for veterans
$27.00 goes to nutrition spending
$20.00 goes to housing
$14.00 goes to environmental protection
$3.00 goes to job training
$116.00 goes to all other expenses

This means that between "defense" spending (which is increasing due to the continued occupation of Iraq) and interest on our debt (which is increasing because of the fiscal policies of the present government), 47.2%, nearly 1/2 of revenue raised through income taxation is spent on guns, tanks and interest. This is from the government that claims "Family Values" and "Compassionate Conservativism". The fiscal actions of the U.S. Government at present are neither compassionate or conservative.

Let's look at it a different way -from a family values perspective -imagine you are an American family of four, mom, dad and two children. Together mom and dad make $50,000 net per year. Here's what your household budget looks like if we apply the U.S. budget on a percentage basis to your household on a monthly basis:

Family Monthly Income: $4,200
$1,200 per month is spent on Guns and Ammo
$780 is spent on interest payments on your loans
$850 is spent on doctors, dentists and prescriptions
$85 is spent per child for a teacher, books and school supplies
$83 is spent on rent

This means that the Bush/Cheney government that pontificates the vision of "Family Values" spends most of our American family money on bombs and interest on rising debt. Is it any wonder that the American "family" is torn apart? The future for any society is the system of education, based upon the budget, do you still believe that this government is strengthening the American future? What would a fiscal conservative recommend if they saw the monthly budget depicted above? Would they recommend shifting some of the expenditure to reduce debt so that it wasn't the third highest payment in our family budget? I'll tell you what a true fiscal conservative wouldn't do. He or she wouldn't say "You've got too much income, you need to reduce it.". That is precisely what Bush/Cheney have done. By attempting to eliminate estate taxes altogether, reducing the income tax percentage on the highest bracket and slashing capital gains taxes. The claim is that this stimulates the American economy. What it actually does is accelerate the consolidation of wealth and power. This will perpetuate the trend to plunder our natural resources, sell off our national parks and preserves and diminish quality of life and opportunities for many generations of Americans.

Whether you are a conservative or liberal you should be very alarmed at the trend of this government to plunge America into deeper debt, ruin the environment and cause us to expend even more of our resources on defense as the world grows in its hatred of our barbaric policies, our lack of international treaty cooperation and our contempt for international bodies.

We need a government that will rise above corruption and represent the will of the American people. "We the People" want an America that is strong, fair and respected within the world community, that can lead by example and not by force. We want opportunity for all our youth (not just Paris Hilton or the Bush Twins) that extends beyond military service, prison or violent death on our streets. We want to take our children on a picnic near an unpolluted stream in a national or state park that is not owned by Chevron or Exxon. We must have a world-class system of education with small, safe classrooms and safe neighborhoods for all. We want fresh air and safe drinking water. We want to dream again of what is possible when humanity is working together at its best -toward the exploration of space and our oceans. We want cures for AIDS and cancer. We want an energy policy that is predicated on clean, renewable energy from the wind, the sun or hydrogen that is cheap and will not cause environmental or planetary harm. We need a government that will use our military judiciously and will equip them with the resources they need to be safe when they must go into harm's way. All of these things are within our grasp. As a people, and as important as many polarizing issues are to us, we must put our differences aside. While we continue to be divided across race, class, gender and religion our pockets are all being picked.

Tax and spend is the job of the government. It is also their job to represent the will of its people. And if they aren't going to do their job, let's find representatives that will. November 2006 is a good time to begin to put America on course. Just a few thoughts from my over-caffeinated alphabetic mind.

About the Author: Mr. Polisner founded alonovo.com in March of 2005. He has been working in most aspects of Information Technology since 1981 and was an early commercial adopter of the UNIX operating system. Prior to founding alonovo.com, George was a Director at Oracle Corporation. He is a frequent contributor to newspapers regarding political and economic policy and often appears as a guest on radio programs. In fact, when it comes to alonovo.com, it's pretty difficult to get him to stop talking.
--
- George A. Polisner - 602.494.5455

Requiem for the WTO?

2006-08-05T23:08:00.000-07:00

http://www.atimes.com

Requiem for the WTO
By Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA - Activists, who early on foretold the inevitable collapse of the Doha Round, are now predicting the beginning of the end for the World Trade Organization (WTO), which sponsored the failed negotiations.

"My sense is that it is a very mortally wounded organization at this point," said Walden Bello, executive director of Focus on the Global South and sociology professor at the University of the Philippines. Still, the first references to the Doha Round's doomed future did not come from the ranks of non-governmental organizations. It was Indian Commerce Minister Kamal Nath who said it was not yet dead, "but it is definitely between intensive care and the crematorium".

He was the first major participant to make such a comment on the negotiations that careened off the tracks July 25 when talks broke down among negotiators from Australia, Brazil, the United States, India, Japan and the European Union, which had met in an attempt to resolve differences that would revive the agenda of the WTO talks. Bello, meanwhile, observed, "the monopoly of decision-making being undertaken by the six countries was a very flawed process and it definitely showed why the WTO is not a democratic organization". Doha had been shadowed by dire predictions almost since its November 2001 launch in the capital of Qatar.

At that time, irreconcilable differences between the developing world and industrialized countries were already surfacing - principally regarding the opening up of trade in agriculture. Once the talks were obviously faltering, responses from non-governmental organizations to trade issues varied according to their degree of opposition to the WTO, although all agreed that the initiative would not end well.

"Oxfam fears that multilateralism will go further into crisis," said Celine Charveriat, head of that humanitarian organization's Make Trade Fair campaign.

Carin Smaller, Geneva office director for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), commented: "The current WTO system has been devastating for small-scale farmers all over developing countries and hasn't worked for family farmers in the US either. There is a fairly broad consensus that we have a system that is cracking at its seams."

Bello called the WTO "very weak at this point", noting the collapse of the third ministerial conference in Seattle (1999), the fifth in Cancun (2003) and now Doha. "It's very hard for an institution to survive such major collapses of its decision-making process," the Filipino academic said.

Indonesian activist Henry Saragih, of Via Campesina, said WTO director general Pascal Lamy has recognized that the multilateral institution is going through a rough hibernation. "I hope that it is in a coma with death as the only end," added Saragih, coordinator of the global alliance of peasants, landless workers and other rural-producer movements from 56 countries, including several European nations.

But the WTO does not look set to disappear any time soon, with close to 635 employees and a budget this year of 175 million Swiss francs (some US$141 million). Also, it still is responsible for administering established trade agreements.

The WTO Dispute Settlement Body, which resolves trade disagreements among its 149 member states, is likely to face an increased workload following the failure of the Doha negotiations, as observed last week by US trade representative Susan Schwab. Nevertheless, Bello believes the "WTO will continue to be there, just like the League of Nations continued to be there after it was no longer essentially functioning".

The League of Nations - the forerunner to the United Nations - was established in 1919 in Geneva. Its mission was to intervene in matters of international security and cooperation, as well as to arbitrate disputes. It dissolved in 1946 upon creation of the UN, following at least a decade of inaction, in which it failed to prevent World War II (1939-45).

With a "mortally wounded" WTO, developing countries need to understand that the organization "really doesn't work for them", Bello said. Furthermore, the Doha Development Round was really a misnomer, having nothing to do with development, emphasized the director of Focus on the Global South.

Another activist - Uruguay's Alberto Villarreal, of the Friends of the Earth environmental organization - welcomed the news of Doha's failure, because an agreement in these negotiations "would have meant greatly increased trade in forestry, fishing and mining products, with devastating environmental impacts". The rapid liberalization of agriculture proposed in the negotiations was also threatening to put even more pressure on the Earth, Villarreal said.

Bello's view is that developing countries should now work to roll back the Uruguay Round (1986-94), which gave rise to the WTO and incorporated agriculture in the multilateral trade system for the first time. For example, developing countries "should weaken, if not eliminate, the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement", also introduced in the Uruguay Round, he argued.

Along these lines, Villarreal supports trade agreements established "under the auspices of the UN, where trade interests are not put first". This requires an institution that would maintain an appropriate balance between environmental protection and other social interests and would not allow multinational corporations to dominate with their trade agenda, which inevitably occurs in WTO negotiations, the Uruguayan activist said. This is the time to halt negotiations and rethink multilateral institutions, particularly those involved in trade, he emphasized.

(Inter Press Service)

AFP: Cuba on Alert as Bush Calls for "Democracy" on the Island

2006-08-05T23:00:00.000-07:00

Aug 4, 2006
News / Stories

Cuba on alert as Bush calls for democracy on the island
04/08/2006

HAVANA (AFP) - Cuba is on heightened alert, wary of a possible invasion by US-based Cuban exiles, as US President George W. Bush called on islanders to push for democracy with strongman Fidel Castro sidelined by surgery.

While Fidel and his younger brother Raul have yet to appear in public since the elder Castro handed power to his sibling Monday, Bush said the United States was ready to help Cuba's transition to democracy.

"I urge the Cuban people to work for democratic change on the island," Bush said in his first statement since Fidel temporarily relinquished power to Raul while he recovers from surgery.
"We will support you in your effort to build a transitional government in Cuba committed to democracy, and we will take note of those, in the current Cuban regime, who obstruct your desire for a free Cuba," Bush said.

The US State Department earlier lashed out at the "imposition" of Raul Castro as interim president replacing the 79-year-old Fidel.

There was no immediate reaction from the Cuban government, but panelists on a government news show panned Bush's call.

The director of the Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) newspaper said that Bush had delivered "tin pot rhetoric" and "hollow blathering," while legislator Randy Alonso dismissed Bush's statement as "the epitome of delirium and dry inebriation."

While the island has largely been calm since the late Monday handover announcement, tension began to rise Thursday with announcements in the official media of "combat alerts" and reservists being called to military to duty.

"The means of combat are ready to defend us," announced the front page of the official newspaper Granma.

The news media, fully controlled by the government, called on Cubans to face "the threats of the empire and the terrorist mafia." The former refers to the United States, and the latter to the US-based Cuban exile community.

Calls from Cuban exiles in Florida for a popular uprising against the Communist regime have only exacerbated the sense of alert.

One group of Miami-based Cuban exiles is ready to defy a 44-year-old US embargo and is organizing a flotilla to sail to Cuba.

"We will do it when we reach the right moment," Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of the Democracy Movement, told AFP. Sanchez said the group has three ships as well as fishing boats, and are trying to obtain a cargo ship to sail to the island when "the regime begins to crack."

In Havana, Juan Jose Rabilero, the national coordinator of the Committee to Defend the Revolution, called on teams of party loyalists to "prevent illegal departures" of people trying to flee the island by sea.

The committees, neighborhood units that gather more than seven million people, were "called to defend the motherland," he said.

The atmosphere of tension is also fueled by Raul Castro's failure to make a public appearance. To fill the void, the Granma newspaper re-ran a July 1 statement by Raul about the legitimacy of Cuba's leadership.

Cuba's enemy, Raul said in reference to the United States, "knows that the special trust the people put in the main leader of a revolutionary government is not passed on as if it were an inheritance to those who in the future may hold the country's top leadership positions.

"There is only one commander-in-chief of the Cuban Revolution, and it is the Communist Party," he was quoted as saying in the front-page story.

For many Havana residents, no news from the man now wielding Cuba's power -- who leads the government, 50,000-man armed forces and Communist Party -- was not necessarily good news.

Regime watchers are not surprised by Raul taking his time, but the uncertainty helped fuel speculation over whether Cuba might move toward some kind of transition, stay the same, or even see the government take a harder line.

On the street, many people said they were not that familiar with Raul, who was seen as a hardliner early in the Communist regime but is now said to admire China's embrace of communism and capitalism. He led pragmatic reforms such as opening up to tourism.

Fidel Castro, who turns 80 on August 13, has been heard from only in a statement attributed to him late Tuesday, saying he was in "good spirits." He was last seen in public July 26.

The Revolution is Not Being Televised

2006-08-05T22:53:00.000-07:00

The Revolution Is Not Being Televised
By Stirling Newberry
t r u t h o u t Perspective
Friday 04 August 2006

The revolution is not being televised.

When Joe Lieberman and his supporters tried to raise a stink over a Huffington Post blog entry by FireDogLake's Jane Hamsher, it was clearly the move of a campaign in its death throes. Lieberman might win the primary, or the general election if forced to run as an independent, but he has lost the aura of invulnerability, coolness, and untouchability that has been his powerful weapon in pushing back any criticism of his go-it-alone approach to working with Republicans.

The reason for the sudden trogburst over the picture associated with Hamsher's post from the Washington Post and other outlets that picked up the story was in their email boxes: the latest Quinnipiac poll had challenger Ned Lamont up 54-41 over Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut race for the Democratic nomination, with the primary only days away on August 8th. That is an outside-the-margin-of-error lead, and would represent a crushing defeat of Lieberman and the Democratic beltway establishment, and for an entire system of politics. It would be a revolutionary moment, making it clear that change has arrived and is ready to win elections against entrenched incumbents. If Joe Lieberman is not safe, then almost no one is. Lieberman has geared up a massive Get Out the Vote operation, and has tried to duck under the filter with race-baiting fliers put on the windshields in African-American churches, the kind of hit and run politics that dare not show its face.

The Revolution of '06, should it continue to materialize, neither begins nor ends with the Lamont-Lieberman primary. Instead, the first battle was in Montana, where Tester defeated Morrison for the Democratic nomination to take on Conrad Burns. Burns, linked to the Abramoff scandal and facing declining approval numbers, is an eminently beatable Republican in Montana, where gasoline prices are a bread and butter issue in a state that is 630 miles long and dependent on agriculture, mining and other energy-intensive occupations for its economy.

One part of the revolution is that the deep-rooted paleo-politics of place and home - pressured by decades of cultural alienation, economic stagnation, and governmental neglect - is lashing out. Morrison lost, and Lieberman is in trouble, to no small degree because of the politics of place. Local bands of party loyalists organized both campaigns and are the bedrock that supports the foundation. But both candidates soared because they had access to an Internet-driven message medium. One that provided the raison d'être for the candidates - particularly in the Lamont campaign, which is based on a single simple assertion, namely that the Iraq war was, in the words of General Wesley Clark, "the greatest strategic blunder of the post-cold war era." Localities squeezed by inflation and stagnation understand on a gut level that the money for schools, doctors, roads and jobs has been poured into the sands of Iraq.

If Lexington-Concord was "the shot heard round the world" - the moment where a festering series of local rebellions became a Rebellion - then the Lamont campaigners on the ground and on the Internet are among the minutemen and Committees of Correspondence of this next American Revolution. But a message needs a messenger, and in the vast number of words written on the subject of Internet politics, this fundamental point is neglected. Partly it is because large traditional media outlets, protecting their economic interests, and right-wing-backed media outlets, pursuing their partisan advantage with typical disregard of the truth, have a desire to paint the entire enterprise as "far left protest politics." They want everyone to see hippies burning college offices and papier mâché puppets.

The reality is rather much the reverse: the people who have made best use of the Internet as a tool for political change are not exclusively on the left. In fact, the right wing has its Internet arm, which is tightly vertically integrated - anonymous right-wing operatives create fake news, such as the recent selectively edited clip that tried to imply that Congressman Dingell supported Hezbollah, then low level right-wing bloggers scream about it, then the well financed Michelle Malkins of this world pick it up, and finally it is funneled into the flagship of right-wing media, the Washington Times. If it is a pro-war stink, the Washington Post can be relied to take it up as well.

This, however, merely integrates the Internet into the old media stream, and the old tightly controlled message politics of broadcast. A campaign is a few people in a room coming up with slogans, and a large number of shills repeating them, hoping they will catch fire. The Lamont campaign is not driven by this same dynamic. It is tightly controlled within itself, but it does not tightly control the messages that surround the candidate. A fact which the flailing Lieberman campaign attempted to use to create a fake controversy.

In short, too few people have understood that the reason the message of a different kind of citizenship that creates a new politics has awaited messengers is because there are too many entrenched interests busy smearing any messenger who manages to rise to the forefront. This does not change the basic reality - the new politics has consistently selected politicians of a particular type, with a particular personality. The type is not the true outsider who comes in with completely radical notions about the system but, instead, the intellectual maverick who has risen within the system and who has succeeded by "thinking outside the box."

The cardinal examples are Howard Dean and Wesley Clark. Dean was a centrist governor from moderately conservative Vermont, Clark a NATO commander and US Army general who had retired after losing the support of his president. Each one had a resume that spoke, not of the intellectual maverick, but of the individual who avidly embraced the system. Dean was a medical doctor, Clark a top-of-his-class West Pointer. Each one rose through the system. Dean by being Lt. Governor, Clark by serving in Vietnam and rising through the officer ranks.

Publicly, both have a robust enthusiasm and "follow me" charisma which is often opaque to those who have not seen it. They are both team players, and demand team loyalty from those who follow them. They are both men who, despite a willingness to push the envelope, play very close to the chest with their personal ambitions, tactical intuitions and private thoughts. But what is only obvious from listening to the two men in more restricted settings is a wide-ranging and voracious willingness to examine every situation afresh, and seek solutions that fall outside conventional thinking. Not as outsiders, mind you, but as insiders who have mastered the game as it is, and are all too painfully aware of its limitations. To take examples: Dean's plan on school funding, and Clark's drive for non-lethal warfare both come from intimate knowledge of the failures of the current system and a desire to jump over the points of failure with which they have dealt first hand.

Lamont is an individual of this mold. His resume is not that of an outsider, but of an insider. His family is old, his money mingles inherited wealth with personal entrepreneurship. His public persona reeks of confidence. However it is the less visible Ned Lamont who has generated supporters, a willingness to examine the facts afresh, and from a firm knowledge of those facts and how the world actually operates, propose solutions that go beyond the carefully delineated boundaries of beltway politics. It may be Iraq that gets him to Washington, but it will be his matter of fact approach to progressivism that will rapidly link him to a wing of the party that sees change as preferable to the status quo.

And it is this that the new politics wants. Not radicals or radicalism, but individuals who understand the complexities of the system and who are capable of synthesizing solutions. There is something technocratic, and certainly meritocratic, about the approach. There is, contrary to the media depictions, a cool passion of the mind that unifies the messengers of the new political message. It is not a quality that is rooted in television or mass media of any kind, but instead in word of mouth, personal trust and face-to-face personal contact. Clinton can campaign for Lieberman, but the Clintonian suburban voter sees himself in Ned Lamont. The perception is growing that Lamont is the kind of calm, get-it-done man that Joseph Lieberman has played on television.

In this sense Lamont is in the mold of politicians like Jon Corzine, whose commitment to progressive ideas is not out of anger or outrage, but of a personal moral compass. This allows such politicians to simply act - as Corzine acted to deal with a budget crisis in New Jersey - without fanfare or drama-queen theatrics. Such politicians form the calm around which a much larger body of people find their center, and find that their energy is unleashed. This is at the heart of Howard Dean's "50 State strategy" - move the energy out from the DNC and out to every single state to manifest in its own way. When Dean came in, such a strategy was scoffed at, if even entertained at all. Now the question is not whether it can work, but whether it is working fast enough to take both houses of Congress this year.

Lamont has learned the lessons of the first wave of Internet candidates. He does not muse in public about what he will do, he does not become absorbed into the swirl around him, he does not let an utterance escape that can be misconstrued, edited for television and used to create a false impression. He has also selected individuals to associate himself with, such as his campaign manager Tom Swan, who are realistic, even pragmatic, in their ways of doing business.

And that is the reason that Lamont has become the latest messenger in a revolution that is shaking not only official Washington, but press outlets on both sides of the Atlantic. What Lamont represents is not merely a partisan interest group, or a change of faces in Washington, but a different way of doing business, a different way of running politics, and a different relationship with the voters. When Lamont became a serious challenger, the first message that Lieberman's proxies put forward was that primaries could be "highjacked" by extremists, and their first strategic decision was mount an insurgency against the Democratic nominee if Lieberman lost the primary. In the view of Joe Lieberman, and the establishment, primaries are mere formalities, and "the party" means the donors and the D-blah-blah-blah committees. Washington manufactures politics, and the public consumes it.

In this new world, politics is made everywhere, and it is the job of the people in the center to make politics work. It is all the difference in the world, and it is also an idea that does not reduce to a flag flying photo-op. But it is an idea that passes from hand to hand, from email to email, from local meeting to local meeting, from blog post to blog post, from personal contact to personal contact. It is a politics where people make their decisions as their private selves, and then act on those decisions, rather than trying to pilot the ship of state with one eye on the polls and another eye on the campaign bank account.

Top-down politics has led to a kind of personal executive supremacy visible in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Where power is top-down, power concentrates at the very top. In the UK, former members of parliament are already calling for a constitutional rearrangement in response to the almost royal use of power by Tony Blair in making war in Iraq. In the United States, this same Constitutional issue dominated the New York Times and its endorsement of Lamont. A politics that exists at the counter-poise of rapidly responding center and vastly energetic circumference does not want a unitary executive the way a politics that cantilevers a flattened-out bottom to support a swaying, dizzying pinnacle of power.

This too exists, not on television, but in the gut of "the people." Either the public feels comfortable living under a God-King executive, who alone has all of the facts and who alone can be the "decider" - or it does not. Lamont's demeanor shows that while he is in tight command of his campaign, he does not wish to be in command of all of the resources of the society. Contrast this with Lieberman's unapologetic stance on Iraq and his role as architect of the Department of Homeland Security - a vast, many-tentacled bureaucracy that reaches into people's underwear drawer, and peeks at what book is on their nightstand.

The new politics then is not the Internet, nor a "grass roots" revolt, but the merging of two classes of active people: one group of people who have bonds deep within their community, who have worked endless hours for their school committee, and been representatives and delegates to party conventions and national organizations, and the other, people who live in a virtual city, grasping and weaving through the gossamer strands of virtual connections, and turning them into real connections. This is why every successful Internet-fueled movement has had, as a key component, producing physical, face-to-face meetings and gatherings. One can list the numerous examples, from Meet-Up to Yearly Kos to the recently concluded "Democratic Reunion" drive by the DNC.

The new politics is about people who are driven by the same core set of values - integrity and connection and coherence of community - only one group began with in-person connections and has been searching for a way to reach out, and the other began from the world of words, rhetoric and fluid debate, and has been searching for a way in. This has created a new class of political operative, and dramatically expanded the reach of an old kind who was, previously, regarded as mere foot soldier in the top down world. These people are early movers in the campaigns of the future. It was Matt Stoller who helped light the Lamont bonfire; it was Draft Clark veteran Lowell Feld who helped launch the James Webb for Senate campaign; it is Tim Tagaris, not that long ago a political novice, who is now a key player on Lamont's Internet team. They are as yet not widely known, and there is as yet little honor for the prophet of this kind of political work, Joe Trippi of the Dean campaign, to whose book the title of this article refers.

They believe in confidence, competence, community and coherence - and it shows in how they campaign. They have a basic faith in this new world of Internetworking, a world where people find jobs, dates and houses on the Internet. These citizens of the netropolis believe in the new world, because it has created opportunities for them which are a matter of life and death. To take an example, one veteran of the Draft Clark movement recently began an online campaign to persuade Aetna to cover an experimental treatment for Tay-Sachs disease. Josh Margulies reached out to America to save democracy, and now he reaches out to save his son. Once upon a time, this would have been something handled by frantic appeals to a congressman or local politician. Instead, the new politics, instead of being a consumer of power, produces power by directly appealing to others, believing that the stories are out there, waiting to be threaded together into one narrative that makes a movement.

While there have been occasional articles about this new class of political player, as with the nature of the new kind of candidate, there has been a vast void of understanding as to what makes them successful in this new political environment. As with the candidates they support, the crucial quality is the ability to understand where the present political environment has reached a point of gridlock, and then the ability to leverage the very pressure that has brought about stalemate to burst out in a lateral direction with great, and unexpected, force. It is a pressure that journalists like Christopher Lydon, with decades in and covering politics, could feel and smell, but which the major outlets at first denied, and now decry, being dragged kicking and screaming into a world where politics is a conversation, and not an ad campaign.

That, then, is the real lesson of the Revolution of '06: namely, that it was there all along, and it is merely being unleashed this year to create its first wave of victories in electoral politics in the US. It has awaited messengers to carry its message, and with each passing battle, it grows more immune to the deceptive smear-driven attacks from the mass media world. These messengers are not starry-eyed dreamers, but instead people who began in the system as it is, and have crossed the aisle based on an intimate understanding of the failures of the old system. They have gathered around them a new breed of political operative on the Internet, and have made more effective an old breed that had been pushed aside by the old politics of the airwaves. This politics has faith in a different world, it values different kinds of politicians, and it is developing an increasingly cohesive political philosophy,

And while in 2004 this politics merely made a splash, in 2006, it has already won elections. But don't tell anyone, because the old politics still believes that if it isn't on television, it doesn't exist.

Chain of Deceit: From the Pentagon to the 9/11 Commission to the Public

2006-08-05T22:43:00.000-07:00

OpEdNews.com
August 3, 2006
Chain of Deceit: From the Pentagon to the 9/11 Commission to the Public
By Russ Wellen

-- Astonishing as it sounds, a conference featuring the 9/11 Scholars for Truth was aired on C-SPAN.

-- In his Washington Post article, "9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon," Dan Eggen reported, "Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public. . .""We to this day don't know why NORAD told us what they told us," Commission Chair Thomas H. Kean said. "It was just so far from the truth."

-- According to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll, "More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East."

Still more surprising, 16 percent think the collapse of the World Trade Towers was expedited by controlled demolition while 12 percent suspect the Pentagon was struck by a missile, not Flight 77.

Eye-opening as these results are, they're not unprecedented. According to Scripps/Howard, "The level of suspicion of U.S. official involvement in a 9/11 conspiracy was only slightly behind the 40 percent who suspect 'officials in the federal government were directly responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy.'"

Kean's colleague, 9/11 Commisssion vice chair Lee Hamilton, conceded the results of the poll. "A lot of people I've encountered believe the U.S. government was involved." But he remains unmoved. "Of course, we don't think the evidence leads that way at all."What Hamilton doesn't get is that he's only contributing to this monumental lack of faith in our own government. Just as when the commission blocked testimony about explosions by the likes of White House-honored 9/11 hero William Rodriguez.

Three decades before, when President Kennedy was killed, it was bad that enough the exuberant national mood he personified (one of his few accomplishments) was punctured. But the Warren Commission, no doubts in the interest of that our sainted "national unity," took the easy way out and refused to face the complexities of the case and their implications. Feeding the public facile explanations credible only to those with a vested interest in blocking the truth seeded our national disaffection with the government. It's since grown like a weed.

In the long run, the Warren Commission and 9/11 Commission have proven as injurious to the country as the crimes they were appointed to investigate. Sure, we'd be traumatized if we discovered that government figures colluded with the Mob to kill Kennedy. Or that some element of the government, whether sanctioned or rogue, facilitated fanatical Islamist's machinations by means of controlled detonations.But if parties were indicted and tried, it would go a long way toward restoring the public's faith in the government. Also, note to the powers that be: If conspirators were RICO'd to smithereens, it would strip conspiracists of their theories. Once proven, a theory morphs into a crime, and the theorist is back at square one looking for a new one to champion.Oh, for the halcyon days of yore, when conspiracy theorists were paranoid-schizophrenics, not respectable citizens like today.

Authors Bio: Russ Wellen, who frequently writes about nuclear terrorism, is an editor at Freezerbox.com.

All That's Given Up in the Name of Security

2006-08-05T22:29:00.000-07:00

Commentary
All that’s given up in the name of security
By Sibel Edmonds and William Weaver
Online Journal Guest Writers
Aug 1, 2006, 01:04

Three days ago we made available to the public news that one of our members, Russell Tice, a former NSA Senior Analyst, had been served with a subpoena asking him to appear before a federal grand jury regarding the criminal investigation of recent disclosures which involved NSA warrantless eavesdropping. Our announcement was followed up in both the main and alternative media, and started heated discussions among online activists. We have received e-mails and letters from people who expressed their support and solidarity with Mr. Tice and other patriotic public servants who have chosen to place our nation, its Constitution, its liberty, thus its public’s right to know, above their future security, careers and livelihood.

We have also received e-mails from individuals who argued against the public’s right to know when it comes to issues such as NSA warrantless eavesdropping or mass collection of citizens’ financial and other personal data by various intelligence and defense related agencies. They unite in their argument that any measure to protect us from the terrorists is welcomed and justified. One individual wrote: “so what if they are listening to our conversations. I have nothing to hide, so I don’t mind the government eavesdropping on my phone conversations. Only those engaged in evil deeds would worry about the government placing them under surveillance.” But how far can one let the government go based on this rationale? This issue is well articulated in Federalist, No. 51, “You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” How do we oblige our government to control itself?

You may ask how NSA eavesdropping affects you when you have nothing to hide. Let us try to explain why you should worry. Even if, as the government claims, this program is only looking for “terrorist activity,” still all your conversations have to be processed; have to be linked to other calls and sources of “possible” terrorist activity. All it takes is an innocent phone call to a friend, who has placed a call to a friend or relative, who has legitimate business or personal contacts in a foreign country where there may be “suspected terrorists.” You have just become a potential target of government investigation -- you may be a terrorist supporter, or even a terrorist. Remember “Six Degrees of Separation” (the theory that anyone on earth can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances with no more than five intermediaries)? The NSA program can easily mistakenly connect you to a terrorist. Furthermore, since the program is being conducted without judicial oversight and under no recognized process there is nothing to restrict how the information obtained under the program is being used.

But let us take things from the widely shared point of view of the individual quoted above; the view that there is nothing for honest people to fear from warrantless, presidentially-ordered surveillance. What other invasions of rights would such acquiescence to government authority inevitably lead to?

Our government will argue its right to break into your house and search it without warrant based on some tip, intelligence, or information that is considered classified, which you have no right or clearance to know about. It will argue that the search and the secrecy are necessary for reasons of “national security” and within the “inherent powers” of the executive branch, therefore not requiring congressional authorization or judicial oversight.

What is next in the name of national security? Will our government call out to all citizens in particular communities to turn in their weapons to law enforcement agencies? Perhaps it will cite the following reason for such call: “We already know that several Al Qaeda cells reside in the affected communities. Our intelligence agencies have received credible information concerning these cells’ intention to break into Americans’ homes to obtain firearms, since they do not want to risk detection by purchasing firearms from the market.” Would our compliant citizen quoted above be more than happy to give up his right under the Second Amendment for possible security promised to him by his government? When the agents show up at his door asking for his legally registered Colt, what will he do?

There are those well-meaning “conservative” Americans who have been led to believe that our nation’s security is somehow damaged when an employee of one of our “security” agencies comes forward to shed light on activities by our government that may be illegal, may be un-constitutional, and may be a danger to the nation’s security. These Americans have accepted too easily the government’s propaganda sold to them shrewdly packaged in a wrapping of fear of terror -- that if you expose any government action, however misguided or un-constitutional, then you are jeopardizing our security; you are aiding the terrorists. This quote from Benjamin Franklin sums it up well: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

What price our imagined security? If we now would allow the NSA to listen in to our most private conversations without objection, then when next the knock comes on our door, or our door is knocked down, in the interest of “national security” what will we say? Will we say, “Come on in and search me, my house and my family; after all, it is in the interest of ‘national security’ and we have nothing to hide”? Generations of Americans have fought and died so that we can today enjoy the precious fruits of their struggles -- the right to our privacy, the right to our freedom from government intrusion, the right to our freedom of speech, the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” the right to simply be left alone. Are we to become the generation that loses those freedoms, not only for ourselves, but for the generations that follow? And will it be us who lets it happen because of some misplaced belief that government “oppression” equals “national security”?

Since when did true conservatives agree to surrender their individual rights under the Constitution for the sake of some imagined temporary security? Since when have we become so afraid of some foreign terrorists that we shiver and hide under a blanket of imagined security offered up by those in power who feed on our fears? Since when have we forgotten the messages of the Founding Fathers, who understood so clearly that the greatest danger to our liberties is an oppressive government, not outside foreign forces? We should never fear those who are brave enough to speak out, but we should fear greatly those who would silence them.

We like to believe our nation is one that prizes individual liberty and freedom from authoritarian restraint, the dictates of hierarchy, or governmental limits. Throughout its history our nation’s soul has been based on anti-authoritarianism and fear of a large, tyrannical government. Our notion of liberty has been built upon a philosophy of limited government with the highest value placed on preservation of individual rights. Our nation’s political thought found its roots in the writings of John Locke, who stressed an insistence on imposing limits on authority, on governmental authority, in order to further individual rights and liberty. No wonder both liberal and republican traditions, although each in its own way and style, pride themselves in their eternal quest for ‘limited government.’

Our entire system of government and its institutions is grounded in an insistence that tyranny be combated and that individual liberty be protected from a potentially tyrannical government. The result is a suspicion of authority and an emphasis on limited government. Samuel Huntington, a well-known conservative Republican, states in American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony: “The distinctive aspect of the American Creed is its antigovernment character. Opposition to power, and suspicion of government as the most dangerous embodiment of power, are the central themes of American political thought.”

After 9/11 our president came out and warned us: “the terrorists are resolved to change the way of our lives. They hate our freedom and our way of life here.” Well, Mr. President, we have come a long way since that awful day. Our way of privacy in communicating on the phone and through our computers, our way of detaining and prosecuting people, our way of trusting our records with our librarians, our way of reading and discussing dissent, our way of treating our ally nations, our way of making it from the airport gates to the airplanes . . . simply, our way of life, has surely changed drastically in five years. But, Mr. President, we don’t have the terrorists to blame for this. We only have you and our three branches of government to blame.

© Copyright 2006, National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. Information in this release may be freely distributed and published provided that all such distributions make appropriate attribution to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition

Sibel Edmonds is the founder and director of National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC). Ms. Edmonds worked as a language specialist for the FBI. During her work with the bureau, she discovered and reported serious acts of security breaches, cover-ups, and intentional blocking of intelligence that had national security implications. After she reported these acts to FBI management, she was retaliated against by the FBI and ultimately fired in March 2002. Since that time, court proceedings on her case have been blocked by the assertion of “State Secret Privilege”; the Congress of the United States has been gagged and prevented from any discussion of her case through retroactive re-classification by the Department of Justice. Ms. Edmonds is fluent in Turkish, Farsi and Azerbaijani; and has a MA in Public Policy and International Commerce from George Mason University, and a BA in Criminal Justice and Psychology from George Washington University. PEN American Center awarded Ms. Edmonds the 2006 PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award.

Professor William Weaver is the senior advisor and a board member of National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. Mr. Weaver served in U.S. Army signals intelligence for eight years in Berlin and Augsburg, Germany, in the late 1970s and 1980s. He subsequently received his law degree and Ph.D. in politics from the University of Virginia, where he was on the editorial board of the Virginia Law Review. He is presently an Associate Professor of political science and an Associate in the Center for Law and Border Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso. He specializes in executive branch secrecy policy, governmental abuse, and law and bureaucracy. His articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, Political Science Quarterly, Virginia Law Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Organization and other journals. With co-author Robert Pallitto, his book Presidential Secrecy and the Law is forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University Press in the spring of 2007. His views and positions arising from his affiliation with the NSWBC do not reflect the sentiments of, or constitute and endorsement by, the University of Texas at El Paso.

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