From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 1 12:52:40 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 12:52:40 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] 2010: U.S. To Wage War Throughout The World Message-ID: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16720 Global Research December 31, 2009 2010: U.S. To Wage War Throughout The World By Rick Rozoff - Stop NATO January 1 will usher in the last year of the first decade of a new millennium and ten consecutive years of the United States conducting war in the Greater Middle East. Beginning with the October 7, 2001 missile and bomb attacks on Afghanistan, American combat operations abroad have not ceased for a year, a month, a week or a day in the 21st century. The Afghan war, the U.S.'s first air and ground conflict in Asia since the disastrous wars in Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1960s and early 1970s and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's first land war and Asian campaign, began during the end of the 2001 war in Macedonia launched from NATO-occupied Kosovo, one in which the role of U.S. military personnel is still to be properly exposed [1] and addressed and which led to the displacement of almost 10 percent of the nation's population. In the first case Washington invaded a nation in the name of combating terrorism; in the second it abetted cross-border terrorism. Similarly, in 1991 the U.S. and its Western allies attacked Iraqi forces in Kuwait and launched devastating and deadly cruise missile attacks and bombing sorties inside Iraq in the name of preserving the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Kuwait, and in 1999 waged a 78-day bombing assault against Yugoslavia to override and fatally undermine the principles of territorial integrity and national sovereignty in the name of the casus belli of the day, so-called humanitarian intervention. Two years later humanitarian war, as abhorrent an oxymoron as the world has ever witnessed, gave way to the global war on terror(ism), with the U.S. and its NATO allies again reversing course but continuing to wage wars of aggression and "wars of opportunity" as they saw fit, contradictions and logic, precedents and international law notwithstanding. Several never fully acknowledged counterinsurgency campaigns, some ongoing - Colombia - and some new - Yemen - later, the U.S. invaded Iraq in March of 2003 with a "coalition of the willing" comprised mainly of Eastern European NATO candidate nations (now almost all full members of the world's only military bloc as a result of their service). The Pentagon has also deployed special forces and other troops to the Philippines and launched naval, helicopter and missile attacks inside Somalia as well as assisting the Ethiopian invasion of that nation in 2006. Washington also arms, trains and supports the armed forces of Djibouti in their border war with Eritrea. In fact Djibouti hosts the U.S.'s only permanent military installation in Africa to date [2], Camp Lemonier, a United States Naval Expeditionary Base and home to the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), placed under the new U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) when it was launched on October 1, 2008. The area of responsibility of the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa takes in the nations of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Yemen and as "areas of interest" the Comoros, Mauritius and Madagascar. That is, much of the western shores of the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, among the most geostrategically important parts of the world. [3] U.S. troops, aerial drones, warships, planes and helicopters are active throughout that vast tract of land and water. With senator and once almost vice president Joseph Lieberman's threat on December 27 that "Yemen will be tomorrow's war" [4] and former Southern Command chief and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley Clark's two days later that "Maybe we need to put some boots on the ground there," [5] it is evident that America's new war for the new year has already been identified. In fact in mid-December U.S. warplanes participated in the bombing of a village in northern Yemen that cost the lives of 120 civilians as well as wounding 44 more [6] and a week later "A US fighter jet...carried out multiple airstrikes on the home of a senior official in Yemen's northern rugged province of Sa'ada...." [7] The pretext for undertaking a war in Yemen in earnest is currently the serio-comic "attempted terrorist attack" by a young Nigerian national on a passenger airliner outside of Detroit on Christmas Day. The deadly U.S. bombing of the Yemeni village mentioned above occurred ten days earlier and moreover was in the north of the nation, although Washington claims al-Qaeda cells are operating in the other end of the country. [8] Asia, Africa and the Middle East are not the only battlegrounds where the Pentagon is active. On October 30 of 2009 the U.S. signed an agreement with the government of Colombia to acquire the essentially unlimited and unrestricted use of seven new military bases in the South American nation, including sites within immediate striking distance of both Venezuela and Ecuador. [9] American intelligence, special forces and other personnel will be complicit in ongoing counterinsurgency operations against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the nation's south as well as in rendering assistance to Washington's Colombian proxy for attacks inside Ecuador and Venezuela that will be portrayed as aimed at FARC forces in the two states. Targeting two linchpins of and ultimately the entire Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), Washington is laying the groundwork for a potential military conflagration in South and Central America and the Caribbean. After the U.S.-supported coup in Honduras on June 28, that nation has announced it will be the first ALBA member state to ever withdraw from the Alliance and the Pentagon will retain, perhaps expand, its military presence at the Soto Cano Air Base there. A few days ago "The Colombian government...announced it is building a new military base on its border with Venezuela and has activated six new airborne battalions" [10] and shortly afterward Dutch member of parliament Harry van Bommel "claimed that US spy planes are using an airbase on the Netherlands Antilles island of Cura?ao" [11] off the Venezuelan coast. In October a U.S. armed forces publication revealed that the Pentagon will spend $110 million to modernize and expand seven new military bases in Bulgaria and Romania, across the Black Sea from Russia, where it will station initial contingents of over 4,000 troops. [12] In early December the U.S. signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Poland, which borders the Russian Kaliningrad territory, that "allows for the United States military to station American troops and military equipment on Polish territory." [13] The U.S. military forces will operate Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) and Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) batteries as part of the Pentagon's global interceptor missile system. At approximately the same time President Obama pressured Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to base missile shield components in his country. "We discussed the continuing role that we can play as NATO allies in strengthening Turkey's profile within NATO and coordinating more effectively on critical issues like missile defense," [14] in the American leader's words. "Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has hinted his government does not view Tehran [Iran] as a potential missile threat for Turkey at this point. But analysts say if a joint NATO missile shield is developed, such a move could force Ankara to join the mechanism." [15] 2010 will see the first foreign troops deployed to Poland since the breakup of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 and the installation of the U.S's "stronger, swifter and smarter" (also Obama's words) interceptor missiles and radar facilities in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the South Caucasus. [16] U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan, site of the longest and most wide-scale war in the world, will top 100,000 early in 2010 and with another 50,000 plus troops from other NATO nations and assorted "vassals and tributaries" (Zbigniew Brzezinski) will represent the largest military deployment in any war zone in the world. American and NATO drone missile and helicopter gunship attacks in Pakistan will also increase, as will U.S. counterinsurgency operations in the Philippines and Somalia along with those in Yemen where CIA and Army special forces are already involved. U.S. military websites recently announced that there have been 3.3 million deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001 with 2 million U.S. service members sent to the two war zones. [17] In this still young millennium American soldiers have also deployed in the hundreds of thousands to new bases and conflict and post-conflict zones in Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Colombia, Djibouti, Georgia, Israel, Jordan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Mali, the Philippines, Romania, Uganda and Uzbekistan. In 2010 they will be sent abroad in even larger numbers to man airbases and missile sites, supervise and participate in counterinsurgency operations throughout the world against disparate rebel groups, many of them secular, and wage combat operations in South Asia and elsewhere. They will be stationed on warships and submarines equipped with cruise and long-range nuclear missiles and with aircraft carrier strike groups prowling the world's seas and oceans. They will construct and expand bases from Europe to Central and South Asia, Africa to South America, the Middle East to Oceania. With the exception of Guam and Vicenza in Italy, where the Pentagon is massively expanding existing installations, all the facilities in question are in nations and even regions of the world where the U.S. military has never before ensconced itself. Practically all the new encampments will be forward bases used for operations "down range," generally to the east and south of NATO-dominated Europe. U.S. military personnel will be assigned to the new Global Strike Command and for expanded patrols and war games in the Arctic Circle. They will serve under the Missile Defense Agency to consolidate a worldwide interceptor missile network that will facilitate a nuclear first strike capability and will extend that system into space, the final frontier in the drive to achieve military full spectrum dominance. American troops will continue to fan out to most all parts of the world. Everywhere, that is, except to their own nation's borders. Notes 1) Scott Taylor, Macedonia's Civil War: 'Made in the USA' Antiwar.com, August 20, 2001 http://www.antiwar.com/orig/taylor1.html 2) AFRICOM Year Two: Seizing The Helm Of The Entire World Stop NATO, October 22, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/africom-year-two-taking-the-helm-of-the-entire-world 3) Cold War Origins Of The Somalia Crisis And Control Of The Indian Ocean Stop NATO, May 3, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/cold-war-origins-of-the-somalia-crisis-and-control-of-the-indian-ocean 4) Fox News, December 27, 2009 5) Fox News, December 29, 2009 6) Press TV, December 16, 2009 7) Press TV, December 27, 2009 8) Yemen: Pentagon's War On The Arabian Peninsula Stop NATO, December 15, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/yemen-pentagons-war-on-the-arabian-peninsula 9) Rumors Of Coups And War: U.S., NATO Target Latin America Stop NATO, November 18, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/rumors-of-coups-and-war-u-s-nato-target-latin-america 10) BBC News, December 20, 2009 11) Radio Netherlands, December 22, 2009 12) Bulgaria, Romania: U.S., NATO Bases For War In The East Stop NATO, October 24, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/bulgaria-romania-u-s-nato-bases-for-war-in-the-east 13) Polish Radio, December 11, 2009 14) Hurriyet Daily News, December 30, 2009 15) Ibid 16) Black Sea, Caucasus: U.S. Moves Missile Shield South And East Stop NATO, September 19, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/283 U.S. Expands Global Missile Shield Into Middle East, Balkans Stop NATO, September 11, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/u-s-expands-global-missile-shield-into-middle-east-balkans 17) World's Sole Military Superpower's 2 Million-Troop, $1 Trillion Wars Stop NATO, December 21, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/21/worlds-sole-military-superpowers-2-million-troop-1-trillion-wa =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 1 13:34:08 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 13:34:08 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] CIA Agents assassinated in Afghanistan worked for "contractor" active in Venezuela, Cuba Message-ID: <69A3352D5F7D49BBACF6D8553DB7829F@agingCHS072729> http://www.chavezcode.com/2009/12/cia-agents-assassinated-in-afghanistan.html Postcards from the Revolution December 31, 2009 CIA Agents assassinated in Afghanistan worked for "contractor" active in Venezuela, Cuba By Eva Gollinger At least eight U.S. citizens were killed on a CIA operations base in Afghanistan this past Wednesday, December 30. A suicide bomber infiltrated Forward Operating Base Chapman located in the eastern province of Khost, which was a CIA center of operations and surveillance. Official sources in Washington have confirmed that the eight dead were all civilian employees and CIA contractors. Fifteen days ago, five U.S. citizens working for a U.S. government contractor, Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), were also killed in an explosion at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) office in Gardez. That same day, another bomb exploded outside the DAI offices in Kabul, although no serious injuries resulted. The December 15 incident received little attention, although it occurred just days after the detention of a DAI employee in Cuba, accused of subversion and distribution of illegal materials to counterrevolutionary groups. President and CEO of DAI, Jim Boomgard, issued a declaration on December 14 regarding the detention of a subcontractor from his company in Cuba, confirming that, "the detained individual was an employee of a program subcontractor, which was implementing a competitively issued subcontract to assist Cuban civil society organizations." The statement also emphasized the "new program" DAI is managing for the U.S. government in Cuba, the "Cuba Democracy and Contingency Planning Program". DAI was awarded a $40 million USD contract in 2008 to help the U.S. government "support the peaceful activities of a broad range of nonviolent organizations through competitively awarded grants and subcontracts" in Cuba. On December 15, DAI published a press release mourning "project personnel killed in Afghanistan". "DAI is deeply saddened to report the deaths of five staff associated with our projects in Afghanistan.On December 15, five employees of DAI's security subcontractor were killed by an explosion in the Gardez office of the Local Governance and Community Development (LGCD) Program, a USAID project implemented by DAI." DAI also runs a program in Khost where the December 30 suicide bombing occurred, although it has yet to be confirmed if the eight U.S. citizens killed were working for the major U.S. government contractor. From the operations base in Khost, the CIA remotely controls its selective assassination program against alleged Al Qaeda members in Pakistan and Afghanistan using drone (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) Predator planes. A high-level USAID official confirmed two weeks ago that the CIA uses USAID's name to issue contracts and funding to third parties in order to provide cover for clandestine operations. The official, a veteran of the U.S. government agency, stated that the CIA issues such contracts without USAID's full knowledge. Since June 2002, USAID has maintained an Office for Transition Initiatives (OTI) in Venezuela, through which it has channeled more than $50 million USD to groups and individuals opposed to President Hugo Ch?vez. The same contractor active in Afghanistan and connected with the CIA, Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), was awarded a multi-million dollar budget from USAID in Venezuela to "assist civil society and the transition to democracy". More than two thousand documents partially declassified from USAID regarding the agency's activities in Venezuela reveal the relationship between DAI and sectors of the Venezuelan opposition that have actively been involved in coup d'etats, violent demonstrations and other destabilization attempts against President Ch?vez. In Bolivia, USAID was expelled this year from two municipalities, Chapare and El Alto, after being accused of interventionism. In September 2009, President Evo Morales announced the termination of an official agreement with USAID allowing its operations in Bolivia, based on substantial evidence documenting the agency's funding of violent separtist groups seeking to destabilize the country. In 2005, USAID was also expelled from Eritrea and accused of being a "neo-colonialist" agency. Ethiopia, Russia and Belarus have ordered the expulsion of USAID and its contractors during the last five years. Development Alternatives, Inc. is one of the largest U.S. government contractors in the world. The company, with headquarters in Bethesda, MD, presently has a $50 million contract with USAID for operations in Afghanistan. In Latin America, DAI has operations and field offices in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Dominican Republic and Venezuela. This year, USAID/DAI's budget in Venezuela nears $15 million USD and its programs are oriented towards strengthening opposition parties, candidates and campaigns for the 2010 legislative elections. Just two weeks ago, President Ch?vez also denounced the illegal presence of U.S. drone planes in Venezuelan airspace. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 1 14:08:59 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 14:08:59 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Minnesota plan for future is riding on the rails Message-ID: <711D16713668459C8B3CED2C2458753A@agingCHS072729> <<. . . the plan envisions running trains from the Twin Cities to Albert Lea and Willmar in outlying Minnesota and to the Canadian city of Winnipeg.>> Star Tribune.com December 31, 2009 Minnesota plan for future is riding on the rails High-speed service to Chicago would anchor statewide passenger train service under a new plan. By Kevin Giles The most sweeping rail plan in Minnesota history envisions a high-speed train running to Chicago within five years and a network of passenger trains someday connecting the Twin Cities with Rochester, Duluth and several other cities. The Minnesota Department of Transportation plan, released Thursday, names several possible routes over which a high-speed train from the Twin Cities to Chicago would travel. Developing that route, the plan said, is an urgent first step to securing federal funding that could help build a comprehensive network of passenger trains. They could connect major train hubs in Minneapolis and St. Paul with Moorhead, Mankato and Eau Claire, Wis., within 20 years. After that, the plan envisions running trains from the Twin Cities to Albert Lea and Willmar in outlying Minnesota and to the Canadian city of Winnipeg. "It's an exciting time because I think the public is ready for trains," said Myra Peterson, a Washington County commissioner who's been a champion of statewide rail planning. "Every time that we have something that happens in the air like the Detroit incident, the traveling public is more convinced that we need a viable option." Minnesota's sudden leadership role in statewide rail planning will help in the race for federal money, said Tom Sorel, director of MnDOT. Passenger rail, largely erased from the American landscape 40 years ago, is undergoing a resurgence in popularity as billions of federal dollars come available. Minnesota's vision wouldn't come cheap, with general infrastructure costs through 2030 ranging from $6.2 billion to $9.5 billion. Those figures don't include detailed engineering costs for specific trains and routes. "They're not your grandfathers' trains anymore," is how Dan Krom, MnDOT's director of passenger rail, described new high-speed trains -- defined by national standards at 110 mph -- that someday could be running six times a day from the Twin Cities to Chicago. Commissioned by the Legislature last spring, Minnesota's first-ever comprehensive passenger rail and freight plan also projects that improved freight rail -- already transporting 30 percent of all freight in the state -- will serve to further reduce heavy truck traffic on highways. Route alternatives Much of the public debate so far has been over whether a proposed high-speed train to Chicago would follow the existing Amtrak "river route" through Washington and Dakota counties, or instead would run to the Twin Cities via Rochester. The new plan includes several other potential high-speed routes, including one along Interstate 94 from Eau Claire and another along the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi River, but the plan doesn't favor one over another. Routes would be subject to environmental review to further determine what works. "An alignment to Rochester is going to take work," Krom said, because no train has ever run from there to the Twin Cities. However, the plan calls for developing a high-speed Rochester train corridor to the Twin Cities whether that route eventually includes Chicago or not, he said. Rochester's advantage is that trains could run as fast as 150 mph, he said, while trains along the "river route" would run no faster than 110 mph and would be hampered by some "geographic issues" along the Mississippi River. "I was hopeful that there might have been even more direction provided by the plan," said Sen. Ann Lynch, DFL-Rochester, who wanted a stronger declaration of Rochester's importance as a true high-speed route. "There are corridors that clearly won't accommodate, now or in the future, true high-speed rail." Peterson of Washington County said she was confident that the river corridor would be chosen for the high-speed trains. Ridership to Chicago on the Amtrak trains that follow that route continues to grow, she said, and the state invested $6.5 million in safety improvements on the route in the past few years. "The only corridor that is shovel-ready and could have improvements within a few years is the river corridor," she said. "Every dollar we invest in the river corridor is a dollar invested in better freight movement, passenger rail and commuter rail." A faster train could trim the trip between the Twin Cities and Chicago to five and a half hours, from the current eight. New trains, Krom said, won't resemble current trains with their 1950s and 1960s technology, but instead would be roomier and brighter, with wireless computer connections, business class sections, and new "tilt" technology that would allow them to navigate curves without slowing. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 1 16:14:24 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 16:14:24 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Killed CIA agents organized drone attacks Message-ID: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/31/AR2009123100541.html CIA base attacked in Afghanistan supported airstrikes against al-Qaeda, Taliban By Joby Warrick and Pamela Constable Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, January 1, 2010; A01 The CIA base attacked by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan this week was at the heart of a covert program overseeing strikes by the agency's remote-controlled aircraft along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, officials familiar with the installation said Thursday. The assailant, wearing an explosives belt under his clothes, apparently was allowed to enter the small base after offering to become an informant, according to two former agency officials briefed on the attack. The CIA declined to comment on the circumstances behind the incident, and it was unclear whether the bomber chose the base because of its role in supporting CIA airstrikes against top al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders in the region. The blast early Wednesday evening in the eastern province of Khost killed seven CIA officers and contractors, including the base chief, and seriously wounded six others in what intelligence officials described as a devastating blow to one of the agency's key intelligence hubs for counterterrorism operations. It was the deadliest single day for the agency since eight CIA officers were killed in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. The CIA continued drone strikes Thursday. A security official in Pakistan confirmed that two militants were killed late in the day in what was described as a missile attack by a Predator drone in Pakistan's autonomous North Waziristan region, across the border from Khost. The official said the missile destroyed the home of a man believed to be linked to the extremist group Tehrik-e-Taliban. The CIA has consistently declined to acknowledge any participation in the ongoing campaign of airstrikes that killed more than 300 people in the past 12 months. U.S. intelligence officials vowed that the Wednesday attack would only increase the agency's resolve. "This attack will be avenged through successful, aggressive counterterrorism operations," said one official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The CIA deaths were formally acknowledged by the agency in a statement to employees Thursday by Director Leon E. Panetta, who said the heavy toll was a reminder of the "real danger" that confronts intelligence officers on the fronts of the two wars. CIA operatives in Afghanistan volunteer for the posting and spend a year or more on assignment. Many of the slain -- including the base chief, a mother of three young children -- were seasoned hands in the agency's counterterrorism operations. "Those who fell yesterday were far from home and close to the enemy, doing the hard work that must be done to protect our country from terrorism," Panetta said in his message to employees. "We owe them our deepest gratitude, and we pledge to them and their families that we will never cease fighting for the cause to which they dedicated their lives -- a safer America." Panetta said military doctors and nurses had saved the lives of gravely wounded officers, and he announced that flags at CIA headquarters in Langley would be flown at half-staff to honor the dead. As is customary, the CIA declined to identify the victims. Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair did not publicly comment on the deaths, but a spokesman said he sent an internal, classified message expressing his condolences. President Obama posted a letter to CIA employees honoring those killed, whom he called "part of a long line of patriots who have made great sacrifices for their fellow citizens, and for our way of life." 'Sloppy' screening U.S. personnel at the site of the attack, Forward Operating Base Chapman, are heavily involved in the selection of al-Qaeda and Taliban targets for drone aircraft strikes, according to two former intelligence officials who have visited the facility. The drones themselves are flown from separate bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Because of its location near a hotbed of insurgent activity, the base is also a center for recruiting and debriefing informants, the officials said, and it would not be unusual for local Afghans to be admitted to the facility for questioning. "There's still a lot to be learned about what happened. All the facts are not in," CIA spokesman George Little said. "The key lesson is that counterterrorism work is dangerous." A Taliban spokesman asserted responsibility Thursday for the bombing and said the bomber was an Afghan National Army officer who had joined insurgents in attacking the United States. That description could not be confirmed with U.S. military officials. But a U.S. military official in Afghanistan, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Afghan forces are posted at the base. Forward operating bases in Afghanistan depend on locals for security. But insurgents have frequently infiltrated the ranks of Afghan security forces as well as private firms hired to guard U.S. facilities or to perform more menial tasks. CIA officials on Thursday would not discuss what guard service they had at the base. Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, said that this week's attack once again shows that there "needs to be much better screening of people joining the Afghan security forces. . . . I know from visits in Afghan provinces this is done in a very sloppy way." The danger of infiltration, he added, could increase as the U.S. military seeks to develop "community defense forces." Severed communication Forward Operating Base Chapman is a former Afghan army installation and was used jointly by American and Afghan security forces during their military campaign against the Taliban beginning in 2001. In recent years, the base added an intelligence-gathering function and had a housing compound for U.S. intelligence officers. It was physically separate from the main U.S. military base nearby, Forward Operating Base Salerno. Senior Afghan civilian officials in Khost said that they knew little about what went on at Chapman and that since Wednesday's attack, they have been unable to reach anyone inside by phone. Afghan interpreters working on the base at the time have since been incommunicado, and those who were on leave that day have not been allowed back inside, according to Khost residents and officials reached by phone. A spokesman for the Afghan National Army in Kabul denied that the Khost attack was carried out by a member of the army, but the possibility highlights growing concerns in Afghanistan and Pakistan about whether it is possible to sustain the loyalty and unity of their respective armies. The Afghan army, a crucial element in the new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, is young, untested and ethnically diverse. It is being asked to fight fellow Muslims from the dominant Afghan tribe in an unpopular war on behalf of American forces and policies that many Afghans deeply resent. "This attack shows that the Taliban are getting good cooperation from the locals and that they have better intelligence than the Americans do," said Talat Masood, a Pakistani security analyst and retired general in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital. "It also raises the issue that has haunted the Afghan National Army from the beginning -- whether or not it is possible to build a unified army that can overcome ethnic loyalties in support of broader American goals." Staff writers Karen DeYoung, Walter Pincus and Peter Finn in Washington, correspondent Karin Brulliard in Islamabad and staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 1 19:04:42 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 19:04:42 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Supreme Court: Miami school can ban book on Cuba Message-ID: <5D4EC86710064F8EA02DD1EFAEE921A2@agingCHS072729> http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1116/p02s16-usju.html Supreme Court: Miami school can ban book on Cuba The Supreme Court Monday declined to hear a challenge to a Miami school board decision that removed a book about Cuba from public schools. The book was seen as presenting too cheery a view of life in Cuba. By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor from the November 16, 2009 edition School board members in Miami have won their battle to remove a children's book from the shelves of Miami-Dade school libraries because they said the book presented an inaccurate picture of life in Cuba. On Monday, the US Supreme Court declined to take up the case of "Vamos a Cuba" - the little book that sparked a big controversy over alleged censorship in Miami. The action lets stand a 2-1 ruling by the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals that the school board's decision to remove the book was not censorship in violation of the First Amendment. Instead, the Atlanta-based appeals court said the school board was seeking to remove the book because it contained substantial factual inaccuracies. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida had appealed to the high court to overturn the 11th Circuit decision. "It is a sad day for free speech in our great nation," said JoNel Newman, a lawyer with the ACLU of Florida. "This is a dangerous precedent, and a huge leap backwards in the battle against censorship. Aftershocks may be felt in public school libraries across the country." A federal judge had earlier found that the school board had engaged in unconstitutional censorship. "School board members intended by their removal of the books to deny school children access to ideas or points-of-view with which the school officials disagreed," US District Judge Alan Gold said. The judge issued an injunction blocking removal of the book. The appeals court ordered the injunction to be lifted, and it is this order that was upheld by the Supreme Court's action. Parents complained The underlying controversy arose in 2006, when the parent of a student at a Miami elementary school complained about the book. "As a former political prisoner in Cuba, I find the material to be untruthful" in a way that "aims to create an illusion and distort reality," wrote the student's father, Juan Amador. "Vamos a Cuba" and its English-language version "A Visit to Cuba" are part of a series of 24 books seeking to introduce young readers, aged four to eight, to other countries. Among the offending passages was this one: "People in Cuba eat, work, and go to school like you do." Critics of the book said it presented a distorted view of Cuba by suggesting the lives of children there are no different from those in the US. A more accurate portrayal would include the hardships of life in Cuba, they said. Those against a ban of "Vamos a Cuba" stressed that other books could be included on library shelves to offer a more rounded view of Cuba. They said removing and banning the book was censorship. The school district responded to the controversy by assembling two boards to review the complaint. The boards voted 7 to 1 and then 15 to 1 to keep the books in school libraries. The Miami-Dade School Board then took up the issue and voted 6 to 1 to replace the book. The board majority said the book was inaccurate and contained several omissions about life in Cuba under Fidel Castro. Correcting inaccuracy or censoring books? In its ruling, the appeals court embraced this view. Supposing the book series included one on North Korea, wrote Judge Ed Carnes in his decision. "Suppose the book stated: 'People in North Korea eat, work, and go to school like you do.' We probably could all agree that statement is factually inaccurate." "Would a school board be prohibited from removing the book on the ground that doing so would constitute viewpoint discrimination?," Judge Carnes asked. "Or because it promotes political orthodoxy to remove a book that makes a despised regime look better than the truth would? Would a school board's decision to remove that book from the shelves of its libraries amount to book banning? Would removing it be unconstitutional?" The dissenting judge on the appeals panel answered those questions with a yes. The correct response, he said, was to make more books on Cuba available to students, not fewer. Carnes argued that "Vamos a Cuba" is not content-neutral. Statements in a nonfiction book that "whitewash the problems of a country and make the life of its people appear to be better than it is are not content neutral any more than overt propaganda would be," he wrote. Once it is established that the book presents a false picture, Carnes said, the argument that the school board acted as ideological censors "collapses on itself." The ACLU disagrees. "The Miami-Dade School Board violated the right of school children to have access to the marketplace of ideas in their school libraries," said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida. "These books were removed under the guise of 'inaccuracies,' but the real reason they were removed was because the books ran afoul of the political orthodoxy of a majority of the school board members." He added, "If that is to become the new standard for censoring books from public library shelves, the ACLU may be immersed in censorship battles for years to come." =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 1 23:16:13 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 23:16:13 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] On Uranium Mining in Canada and Nunavut's Radioactive Issue Message-ID: <1D77526FE45D40B0BDBCCBE20601464A@agingCHS072729> >From Wikipedia: "Nunavut is the largest and newest federal territory of Canada; it was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999 via the Nunavut Act [5] and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, [6] though the actual boundaries had been established in 1993. "The creation of Nunavut - meaning "our land" in Inuktitut (the Inuit language) - resulted in the first major change to Canada's map since the incorporation of the new province of Newfoundland in 1949. "Nunavut comprises a major portion of Northern Canada, and most of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, making it the fourth-largest country subdivision in the world." Following a two-day public forum on uranium issues at Baker Lake in June 2007, the Nunavut Planning Commission gave the go-ahead for uranium exploration in Nunavut. Recently, a new NGO has been created in Nunavut to provide a much-needed forum for informed debate among the Inuit on the issues surrounding uranium mining. ================= http://www.ccnr.org/Baker_Lake_summary.pdf Speaker's Notes for the Nunavut Planning Commission Gordon Edwards, Ph.D. [Figure 1: A Model of the Uranium Atom] [Figure 2: A Monument to the Splitting of the Atom] Splitting the Uranium Atom -- Nuclear Fission Uranium is the heaviest metal that can be mined from the earth. Uranium was discovered about 200 years ago, but it had no practical use until the beginning of World War II. In 1938-39 scientists discovered that an atom of uranium can be broken into two or three pieces when struck by a fast-moving particle called a neutron. The splitting of a uranium atom releases energy. This process is called ??nuclear fission??, since the centre of an atom is called its nucleus. When a uranium atom splits it gives off more neutrons, which can then split more atoms, and so the energy level rapidly multiplies. When trillions of atoms are split almost simultaneously, the energy released is the power of the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb was the first practical use of uranium. Figure 1 shows a model of the uranium atom; it is on display at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. That is where the uranium explosive was prepared for the bomb that destroyed the city of Hiroshima. Much of the uranium needed for that bomb came from a mine at Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories. Figure 2 shows a Russian monument built to celebrate the splitting of the atom. The semicircles represent the energy that is released when the atom is split. The two small hemispheres represent the broken pieces of the uranium atom, called ??fission products??. These fragments of uranium atoms are in fact the atoms of new radioactive materials, most of which cannot be found in nature. There are over three hundred different kinds of fission products. They are much more radioactive than uranium, and are therefore much more harmful to living things. Fission products are scattered high in the air when an atomic bomb is exploded above ground; the solid varieties return to earth as radioactive fallout. The Inuit people received more radioactive fallout in their bodies than other Canadians because they ate the meat of the caribou who in turn ate contaminated lichen. Uranium is the only naturally-occurring material that can be used to make an atomic bomb. Plutonium is also used for this purpose, but it is man-made; in fact it is made from uranium. [Figure 3: Photo - Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity] [Figure 4: Radioactive materials lodge in the body] Atomic Radiation -- Radioactive materials In 1896 Henri Becquerel (Figure 3) discovered radioactivity. He found that a chunk of uranium ore gives off an invisible kind of light, now called ??atomic radiation??. One type of atomic radiation has great penetrating power, similar to X-rays; this type is called ??gamma radiation??. Less penetrating forms of atomic radiation also exist, called ??alpha?? and ??beta?? rays. Atomic radiation is harmful to living things because it damages cells and often makes them grow wrong. Atomic radiation is caused by the spontaneous disintegration of unstable atoms. Any material which gives off atomic radiation is said to be ??radioactive??. There are dozens of radioactive materials that exist in nature and hundreds more are created by man as fission products. One ??becquerel?? of radioactivity indicates that one atomic disintegration is taking place every second. Radioactivity is not the same thing as nuclear fission; unlike fission, it cannot be controlled. Scientists do not know how to speed up, slow down, start or stop radioactivity. By the 1930s it was well known that exposure to atomic radiation can cause many kinds of biological damage, including radiation burns, anemia (blood damage), cataracts (eye damage), cancer, leukemia, damage to unborn babies, and damage to the sperm and eggs of men and women. Thus radiation protection is very important. However, once radioactive materials enter the body, the damage is done internally and protection becomes difficult or impossible (Figure 4). Each radioactive material has its own characteristics, and each one behaves differently in the environment and in the body. Radium-226 behaves like calcium, so inside the body it goes to the bones, the teeth, and mother??s milk. Radon-222 is a gas; it is inhaled into the lungs. Cesium-137 resembles potassium; it goes into muscles. In these cases, the damage is done inside the body. The consensus of scientific knowledge is that any exposure to atomic radiation increases the risk of cancer and leukemia. There is no truly safe dose, but the risks are small when the doses are small. [Figure 5: Face of a CANDU nuclear reactor] [Figure 6: Construction of a ??Spent Fuel?? Pool] Nuclear-Generated Electricity -- High Level Radioactive Waste Until 1965, all of Canada??s uranium was sold to the military for use in nuclear weapons. Some was used directly in bombs, some was converted to plutonium for use in bombs. But since 1965 Canadian uranium has been sold only as fuel for nuclear reactors ?V not bombs. A nuclear reactor is a machine that controls the nuclear fission process. It produces a steady stream of heat (caused by the splitting of uranium atoms) and plutonium (an atom of plutonium is created when a uranium atom absorbs a neutron without splitting). In a CANDU power reactor uranium fuel bundles are inserted into hundreds of tubes (Figure 5) where they will undergo nuclear fission. The energy released is used to boil water, and the resulting steam is used to spin a giant wheel (??turbine??) so as to generate electricity. When uranium atoms are split, fission products are created; so the ??spent?? fuel is millions of times more radioactive than fresh uranium fuel. An unprotected man standing one metre from a used fuel bundle just out of the reactor would be killed in a less than a minute. Irradiated nuclear fuel must be cooled even after the reactor is completely shut down. The radioactivity of the fission products is so intense that the fuel, if not cooled, will overheat and melt at temperatures of thousands of degrees without the added heat of nuclear fission. This type of accident is called a meltdown. The overheated nuclear fuel can melt right through steel and concrete containment structures into the ground below, releasing radioactive materials in a cloud that can drift for thousands of miles. Reindeer in Lappland and sheep in northern England have been so contaminated due to a meltdown in Russia (Chernobyl) that they are still unfit for human consumption twenty years after the event. Even without a major accident, irradiated fuel remains dangerous for millions of years. It is so hot that it has to be cooled by circulating water in special ??pools?? (Figure 6) for at least 7 to 10 years after it has been removed from the reactor. Then it has to be stored somewhere safe for the next 10 million years, for it remains extremely toxic due to its radioactivity. And at any time in the future, plutonium can be extracted from the irradiated fuel and used for atomic bombs. India??s first atomic bomb, exploded in 1974, used plutonium from a Canadian nuclear research reactor. That reactor was a gift from the Canadian government. [Figure 7: Marie Curie found uranium decay products] [Figure 8: The Radioactive Decay Products of Uranium-238] Uranium Decay Products -- Radium, Polonium, and Radon In 1898, Marie Curie (Figure 7) discovered something surprising. After removing the uranium from the ore that contained it, she found that the residues were a lot more radioactive than the uranium itself. She reasoned that there must have been something in the rock besides uranium ?V some substance that is far more radioactive than uranium. After months of hard work, she found two new substances in the residues, previously unknown, that she named ??polonium?? and ??radium??. These substances are extremely radioactive. They give off both penetrating and non-penetrating forms of atomic radiation. Before long, one of Marie??s students discovered a radioactive gas that is given off by radium. This was yet another newly discovered radioactive material called ??radon??. It turns out that when a radioactive atom disintegrates and gives off atomic radiation, it becomes a completely different kind of atom, representing a new material altogether. This by-product material is called a ??decay product?? since it is produced as a result of atomic disintegration ?V a process commonly called ??radioactive decay??. In some cases a decay product is itself radioactive, and then, when its atoms decay they turn into yet another, different decay product. If that second decay product is also radioactive then you will get a third decay product, and possibly a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, and so on. Radium, polonium, and radon are three of the many decay products of uranium (Figure 8). [Figure 9: Young girls working as Radium Dial Painters] [Figure 10: Dene men displaying a 1931 gov't document] Radium -- From Priceless to Worthless Radium soon became the most valuable substance on earth. By the 1920s it was selling for $100 000 per gram. Radioactivity was regarded as magical, and radium was used not only for sensible purposes like shrinking cancerous tumours, but also for foolish things. Young women (Figure 9) were hired to paint watch faces with radium paint to make them glow in the dark. By the 1920s many of these women had developed severe anemia. Some died quickly. Others had gums that became badly infected and teeth that began falling out. Their jawbones grew soft and were quite easily broken. The dentist who reported these symptoms used the phrase ??radium jaw?? to describe the situation. The cause was obvious. By the late 1920s the radium dial painters began to show an epidemic of bone cancer. When their bodies were autopsied it was found that microscopic amounts of radium had been ingested by the girls and had distributed itself throughout their entire skeleton. Years later, many who didn??t get bone cancer developed cancers of the head from radium poisoning. In the 1930s the first radium mine was opened in Canada??s Northwest Territories on the eastern shore of Great Bear Lake. Men of the Sahtu Dene Indian nation were hired at a very low rate of pay to carry sacks of radium concentrates on their backs. They loaded the sacks on barges and often lay on them for 8 hours during the crossing so they could unload the sacks at the western end of the lake. They were never told that this work was dangerous. The Dene settlement of Deline is now known as the ??village of widows?? because so many men died of cancer years after handling the radioactive ore from the mine. In Figure 10, two Dene men display this excerpt from a 1931 Canadian government document: Recent investigations in the field of radium poisoning have led to the conclusion that precautions are necessary even in the handling of materials of low radioactivity. The ingestion of small amounts of radioactive dust or emanation [radon] over a long period of time will cause a build up of radioactive material in the body, which eventually may have serious consequences. Lung cancer, bone necrosis and rapid anemia are possible diseases due to deposition of radioactive substances in the cell tissue or bone structure of the body.?? [Canada, Department of Mines, 1931] This document was prepared to warn the scientists in Ottawa who had to handle samples of radioactive ore, but nobody warned the miners or the Dene men who carried the ore sacks. By the 1940s, radium had become worthless ?V a waste byproduct of uranium mining. There was no market for radium any more. Too many people had been killed by handling it. [Figure 11: Mr. Litvinenko was poisoned with Polonium-210] [Figure 12: Reindeer meat was contaminated with cesium-137] Polonium -- The Assassin's Choice Since the fall of 2006 there has been a lot of news coverage about the murder of the Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko (Figure 11). He was poisoned with a radioactive material, polonium-210 - a material that also occurs naturally as one of the uranium decay products. Polonium-210 is incredibly toxic. It is billions of times more deadly than cyanide, which is one of the fastest acting lethal poisons known. An amount of polonium-210 the size of a grain of sugar is enough to kill a thousand men in the manner that Litvinenko was killed. Polonium-210 gives off no penetrating radiation at all, so it can be safely carried in a sealed container and is impossible to detect as long as it is in a container. It gives off only alpha radiation, which can be stopped by a piece of paper, and has no radioactive decay products. When a polonium-210 atom disintegrates it turns into a non-radioactive atom of lead. But inside the body, polonium-210 is extremely damaging. Alpha radiation is harmless outside the body, but it is twenty times more damaging to living cells inside the body than the more penetrating types of atomic radiation such as gamma and beta radiation. Unlike radium, which concentrates in bones and teeth, polonium-210 attaches itself to the red blood cells, and is carried to all the soft organs of the body in turn. There it damages the liver, spleen, bone marrow, lymph nodes, thymus, gastrointestinal tract, and gonads. The Inuit have larger amounts of polonium-210 in their bodies than any other North American residents because of the lichen-caribou-human food chain. Since these measurements were never made before 1960, it is not possible to say how uranium mining in the Northwest Territories and Northern Saskatchewan may have contributed to the levels of polonium-210 in caribou meat and hence in the bodies of the Inuit people. Measurements of radioactivity in caribou meat began in 1960 primarily to investigate the high levels of cesium-137 deposited on lichen from the atmospheric testing of atom bombs in the American southwest. After Chernobyl, levels of cesium-137 went up in both reindeer and caribou herds (Figure 12). But the high levels of polonium-210 were a bit of a surprise. Exposure to alpha radiation at non-lethal levels was already well documented as a cancercausing agent. In the case of polonium-210 the number of organs at risk is especially large. But radiation-induced cancer generally takes decades to show itself, as the damage that is done to individual cells is multiplied and spread by the slow process of cell reproduction. [Figure 13: Navajo uranium miner with lung cancer] [Figure 14: radon gas as a delivery system for polonium] Radon Gas -- The Silent Killer Radon gas has been killing people for centuries. Whenever an underground mine is rich in uranium, a lot of radon gas is always found there too, since every atom of radon is created by the disintegration of a uranium atom; uranium becomes radium which then becomes radon. Radon is a colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas. It is eight times heavier than air, so it stays close to the ground. Inside the lungs, or suspended in stagnant air, radon gas rapidly disintegrates into three kinds of polonium isotopes and other radioactive solids (Figure 14). Radon gas is the second largest cause of lung cancer death after cigarette smoking. Tens of thousands of Americans die each year from inhaling radon gas in their own homes. The U.S. government urges citizens to test their homes for radon and take corrective action as needed. Every population of uranium miners that has been studied for a long enough period of time has shown a marked increase in lung cancer death rates caused by breathing radon on the job (Figure 13). Lung cancer takes decades to develop, so most of the lung cancers only show up after the miners have quit working. The British Columbia Medical Association has described this tragedy as ??a gradually flowering crop of radiation-induced lung cancers??. The nuclear industry and its regulatory agency have long underestimated the health effects of radon exposure (as well as other forms of radiation exposure). In 1980, the B.C. Medical Association wrote that the Canadian Atomic Energy Control Board was ??Unfit to Regulate?? because of its callous disregard of medical evidence regarding lung cancers from radon. In 1982, an independent scientific study concluded that levels of radon exposure considered ??acceptable?? by AECB could cause a quadrupling of lung cancers among uranium miners. Although radon is a gas . . . . . . in fact 85 % of the lung dose is from alpha-emitting polonium its byproducts are solids and lodge in the lungs . . . Radon Gas and its decay products (or ??progeny??) [Figure 15: Alpha radiation in an ape??s lung tissue] [Figure 16: Three types of atomic radiation] More About Alpha Radiation This photograph (Figure 15) shows the tracks made by alpha rays emitted from an invisibly small speck of radioactive material in the lung tissue of an ape, over a period of 48 hours. The star-like ??object?? in the photo is an optical illusion. It is a photographic record of the atomic disintegrations that have occurred over 48 hours; each ??spike?? is the track left by an individual alpha ray given off by the disintegration of a single radioactive atom. Notice that the tracks are very short, since alpha radiation is a non-penetrating form of atomic radiation. Nevertheless, it is estimated that up to 50 000 cells in the ape??s lung may be damaged by the rays shown here. If a few of those damaged cells are able to reproduce, they may grow into a cancerous tumour many years later. The invisible damage caused by alpha radiation is magnified by the natural processes of cell growth and reproduction. The alpha-emitting material in this ape??s lung is actually a tiny particle of plutonium, but the same type of damage is done by radon decay products in the lungs of uranium miners, by radium deposited in the bones of dial painters, or by polonium-210 in the soft tissues of Alexander Litvinenko, for all of these radioactive substances are alpha-emitting materials. More people have been killed by alpha radiation than by any other kind of radioactivity; indeed, alpha-emitting radioactive materials are among the deadliest poisons known. As previously stated, alpha radiation is about 20 times as ??biologically effective?? as beta radiation or gamma radiation or X-rays. If equal populations of people were exposed to the same amount of alpha radiation energy and beta radiation energy, the alpha radiation would be expected to cause 20 times as many cancers as the beta radiation would cause. Notice (Figure 8) that eight of the fourteen radioactive elements in the decay chain of uranium-238 are alpha emitters. So wherever uranium mining occurs, there is an enhanced long-term radiation risk because of the presence of so many different kinds of alpha emitters. This comment is not intended to dismiss or to minimize the dangers posed by exposures to beta and gamma radiation, which are also considerable. Scientists have observed that if a given dose of alpha radiation is spread out equally among a large population, so that each person receives only a small individual dose, the biological damage (number of cancers etc.) is greater than if that same total dose were given to a smaller population, with fewer people exposed to larger doses. Scientists have concluded that there is no such thing as a ??safe?? dose of radiation exposure. The biological damage is cumulative, and it depends upon the ??population dose?? ?V the sum of all individual doses. [Figure 17: 30-foot wall of radioactive uranium tailings in Ontario] [Figure 18: Airborne pathways for radioactive materials] Uranium Tailings -- Hazardous for 80 000 years To get uranium from a mine, the rock must first be dug out of the ground. Rocks that are more radioactive are classified as ore; those that are less radioactive are called waste rock. Waste rocks are often dangerously radioactive even though they do not qualify as ore. In the mill, the ore is crushed to a fine powder. Acids and other chemicals are used to separate the uranium from the sand-like residues, called ??uranium tailings??. As Marie Curie showed, the residues are much more radioactive than the uranium that is extracted. In fact, 85 % of the radioactivity in the ore ends up in the tailings; only 15 % is uranium. The radioactive materials left behind in the uranium tailings are among the deadliest poisons known to science: radium-226, that killed so many of the dial painters; polonium-210, that was used to poison Litvinenko; radon gas, which remains one of the deadliest cancer-causing agent ever encountered; as well as thorium-230, lead-210, and others. The danger posed by a radioactive substance is not indicated by its weight or its volume, but by its degree of radioactivity. Radioactivity is measured in ??becquerels??. The number of becquerels is the number of radioactive disintegrations that take place every second. When uranium ore has lain undisturbed for hundreds of millions of years, then all of the uranium decay products will have exactly the same radioactivity as uranium-238. For example, if a 10-kilogram rock contains 1000 becquerels of uranium (about one gram), it will also contain 1000 becquerels of radium-226, 1000 becquerels of polonium-210, 1000 becquerels of radon, and so on. The total radioactivity of the rock is 14 000 becquerels, since there are 14 different radioactive substances in the ??decay chain?? (Figure 8). Once the uranium has been removed (two varieties) the residues still have about 12 000 becquerels of radioactivity left. To make matters worse, most of the uranium decay products are constantly replenished by the on-going radioactive disintegration of thorium-230, which has a 76 000 year half-life. This means that only half of the atoms of thorium-230 will disintegrate in 76 000 years. Thus the amount of radium, polonium, and radon in the tailings will remain almost the same for thousands of years, and will only be reduced by half in about 80 000 years. So how does one keep millions of tons of radioactive sand out of the environment for 80 000 years? [Figure 19: Containment system for Elliot Lake tailings] [Figure 20: Side-view of the containment system with dykes] Safeguarding the Future This photograph (Figure 19) shows an elaborate containment system recently devised for the long-term storage of a large volume of uranium tailings in the Elliot Lake region of Ontario. Figure 20 illustrates the many levels of water cover separated by dykes and dams. The water helps to prevent the escape of radon gas into the atmosphere. Radon has a fourday half-life, meaning that half of the radon atoms will disintegrate in four days. The decay products of radon (the ??radon progeny?? ?V see Figure 4) are solid materials, including three varieties of polonium. If radon escapes into the air from the tailing pile, lead-210 and polonium-210 will be deposited on the vegetation and will find its way into caribou meat. The different water levels also allow for solid radioactive materials such as radium to be precipitated out, meaning that these solids will accumulate at the bottom of each pond and will not pass into the next level of water lower down, because of the presence of the dyke. But will these engineered structures succeed in preventing the spread of radioactive materials into the environment for the next 80 000 years? Will these structrues withstand freezing and thawing, floods and droughts, earthquakes and tornados ?V not to mention the natural deterioration of dykes and dams, the effects of burrowing animals and the root systems of plants, and the depradations of migrating herds, marauding teenagers, or the blundering of snowmobiles or heavy machinery in the distant future? The tailings shown above have been abandoned by the company that mined the uranium. The jobs are gone, the profits have been taken, the uranium has been extracted. The radioactive wastes remain behind as a perpetual legacy for future generations of people who received none of the benefits of the mining operation. Future generations will have to spend their own money to rebuild the dykes, and to maintain and monitor the water flows, or to suffer the consequences of large-scale and irreversible radioactive contamination. In the past, there have been over 30 tailings dam failures in the Elliot Lake area. In 1979, a massive state-of-the-art tailings dam experienced a catastrophic collapse at Churchrock, New Mexico. It was the second largest release of radioactive material into the environment, after Chernobyl. Cattle were slaughtered for many miles downstream due to radioactive contamination of the meat and the milk. No one knows how to clean up such a mess. Conclusion -- Leave It In The Ground? Many people around the world believe that uranium should be left in the ground because the dangers that it poses to the planet overshadow any good that it can do. This is, first and foremost, because of the intimate connection between uranium and nuclear weapons; and secondly because of the dangers of radioactive contamination of the environment. Without uranium, there could be no nuclear weapons of any description. Most nuclear weapons use plutonium as the primary nuclear explosive, but every atom of plutonium is created from an atom of uranium. Uranium is the essential raw material for all of them. Even if uranium is used for peaceful purposes ?V that is, as fuel for a nuclear reactor ?V the irradiated fuel (??spent fuel??) inevitably contains plutonium. That plutonium can be used to build nuclear weapons at any time in the future, even thousands of years after the nuclear reactor that produced the plutonium has been completely shut down and forgotten. >From this perspective, all extracted uranium ends up (after a number of years) either ?E in nuclear weapons; ?E as radioactive waste; ?E as plutonium; or ?E as depleted uranium. Many people, including myself, believe that the long-term danger to the planet caused by the spread of nuclear technology is greater than any benefit that uranium has to offer. Minimizing the Long-Term Environmental Impact But if uranium is to be mined, there are ways to minimize the long-term radiological impacts on the community that hosts the mining operation. Ideally, any mining company that wishes to extract uranium and take it away, should be required to take away the most significant radioactive waste byproducts as well. In other words, the company should not be allowed to extract the valuable commodity, uranium, without also taking direct control and ownership of the hazardous waste byproducts. There are at least two ways that this can be done. 1) The ore could be shipped away from the mine site to a mill that is far removed from the mining community. The extraction of uranium and the production of uranium tailings would then take place at that distant location. In the case of Baker Lake, this could be accomplished by requiring that the milling be done in Saskatchewan. 2) If a mill is to be operated near the mine site, the mining company could be required to extract not only uranium, but also the other long-lived radioactive materials. In practice, this would mean that the uranium, thorium, and radium are all removed from the crushed ore, and taken into permanent custody by the mining company. If the thorium and radium are removed, the radiological hazard of the tailings will be dramatically diminished, and the radioactive half-life of the tailings will be reduced from thousands of years to just a couple of centuries. ================= http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/7547_nunavuts_radioactive_issue/ EDITORIAL: Nunavut December 28, 2009 - 6:48 am Nunavut's radioactive issue NUNATSIAQ NEWS If the Nunavut land claims agreement actually worked the way its starry-eyed backers promised it would work nearly 20 years ago, there would be no need in Nunavut for a independent lobby group to scrutinize uranium exploration and mining. But the public institutions and Inuit organizations set up to make the Nunavut land claims agreement work have so far failed in the performance of one of the land claim agreement's primary tasks. That task is to encourage the sustainable development of non-renewable resources: a form of economic development that serves human needs while, at the same time, ensuring the environmental damage caused by such development is kept to a minimum. Because of a long series of foolish blunders, most committed within the past 10 years or so, no reasonable person can now claim that the environmental protection system laid out within the land claims agreement is capable of inspiring public confidence. So it's no surprise that this past November, a small group of Nunavut residents formed an independent pressure group called Nunavummiut Makitagunarningit. This group's stated objectives include the promotion of things that the Nunavut land claim agreement is supposed to provide for: community consultation, the protection of various imputed rights and the dissemination of information. The Makitagunarningit group portray themselves as a source of "accurate information on uranium issues," but this claim is undercut by their rhetoric. This is an anti-uranium organization. Their ultimate goal, clearly, is not to spread "information" but to stop the development of uranium projects in Nunavut. The group also appears to act as an Arctic subsidiary of Mining Watch Canada, a well-known non-governmental organization based in Ottawa. This is good, but not because of the particular position this group holds on uranium mining. It's good because it demonstrates that Nunavut residents do not think with one mind on that and many other important public issues. It demonstrates that Nunavut residents are capable of thinking for themselves. This group also has the potential to do useful scrutiny of Nunavut's shoddy environmental protection system. For example, they're now raising questions about the behaviour of a company called Uravan Minerals Inc., which, they allege, is operating a exploration site without a licence and in defiance of the Nunavut Impact Review Board. Nunavut's various land claim bosses and the lawyer-consultant ventriloquists who do their thinking for them won't like all this, of course. But they brought it on themselves. Think back to 2007, when, in response to angry complaints from Kitikmeot business interests, Philippe di Pizzo was fired, without cause, as executive director of the Nunavut Water Board. The board's entire technical staff, representing nearly all its actual brain-power, quit in protest, crippling the organization. This happened because di Pizzo's staff rejected a water licence application from the Miramar Mining Corp., likely delaying the Doris North gold project. By caving in to powerful commercial and political interests who wanted the project to move ahead fast, water board members destroyed their organization's integrity. And they have yet to earn it back. Consider also the Kivalliq Inuit Association's spineless response to Areva Resources Canada, the company that hopes to turn the Kiggavik property near Baker Lake into a collection of open-pit uranium oxide mines by 2016. Instead of posing tough questions, the KIA gives them congratulatory plaques for "community involvement." It's no surprise that Areva is good at "community involvement." In 2008, the Areva group, which does business in about 100 countries, posted earnings of nearly $600 million US, based on global sales of roughly $18 billion. This is a company that can afford to buy all the public relations it needs. But it's unlikely even they believed the KIA could be suckered so easily. As for Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., this organization became a shareholder in a new uranium exploration firm, called the Kivalliq Energy Corp., in a 2008 deal that NTI struck with the Kaminak Gold Corp. If this project, still in its early stages, leads to a feasibility study, NTI has an option to buy 25 per cent of the company. Because of this glaring conflict of interest, NTI, therefore, possesses no credibility on any environmental or health issue related to uranium development. The organization cannot claim to represent Inuit interests on these issues with any degree of objectivity. So it's no surprise at all that there's now a new group out there whose members think they can do better. JB =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 1 23:24:19 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 23:24:19 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Uranium Weapons, Low-Level Radiation and Deformed Babies Message-ID: <772933C852664D94991ABA390295ED81@agingCHS072729> http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16726 Global Research January 1, 2010 Uranium Weapons, Low-Level Radiation and Deformed Babies by Paul Zimmerman A dramatic increase in the number of babies born with birth defects was recently reported by doctors working in Falluja, Iraq [1]. One of the proposed causes for this alarming situation is radiation exposure to the population produced by uranium weapons. The international radiation protection community dismisses this explanation as completely unreasonable because (1) the radiation dose to the population of Iraq was too low, and (2) no evidence of birth defects was reported among offspring born to survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This so-called scientific explanation is deeply disturbing, for it is out of touch with the current knowledge base. Abundant evidence exists which clearly demonstrates that birth defects are being induced by levels of radiation in the environment deemed safe by the radiation protection community. In light of this knowledge, uranium contamination cannot be summarily dismissed as a hazard to the unborn. The destruction of the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl produced a different type of radiation exposure from that portrayed for the atomic bomb. In Japan, victims were exposed to an instantaneous flash of gamma radiation and neutrons delivered from outside their bodies. In contrast, the Chernobyl accident scattered microscopic radioactive particles from the reactor's core throughout Europe which was then inhaled and ingested by the populace. In this situation, those contaminated began receiving ongoing, low-dose exposure internally. According to the current theory of radiation effects embraced by the radiation protection community, there is no qualitative difference in the two types of exposure. What matters is the total amount of energy delivered to the body. Thus, the health effects experienced by the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki can be considered to be representative of the health effects produced from any type of radiation exposure. In the case of birth defects, this assumption has been proven wrong. As a result of the external exposure in Japan, there was no increase in the incidence of birth defects among children whose parents were exposed to the bombings [2]. In contrast, radiation-induced birth defects have been documented in populations receiving low doses of internal contamination. In light of this contradiction, it's obvious that the accepted theory of radiation effects is in error and needs to be corrected. The information which follows will demonstrate the hazard to the unborn produced by radioactive material vented into the environment. 1. In the book Chernobyl: 20 Years On, a chapter is devoted to discussing the birth defects in children who, while gestating in the wombs of their mothers, were exposed to radioactivity released by the Chernobyl reactor [3]. The author provides an overview of dozens of studies which confirm that low levels of radiation present in many areas of Europe after Chernobyl were responsible for a wide variety of birth defects. These birth defects occurred where radiation exposure was judged by the radiation protection agencies to be too low to warrant concern. Fifteen studies were cited which demonstrated an increase in the incidence of a wide variety of congenital malformations. Other studies cited confirmed increases in the rate of stillbirths, infant deaths, spontaneous abortions, and low birthweight babies. An elevated incidence of Down's syndrome was also documented. In addition, an excess of a variety of other health defects were detected which included mental retardation and other mental disorders, diseases of the respiratory and circulatory systems, and asthma. In a separate chapter of the same book, Alexey Yablokov of the Russian Academy of Sciences provided a review of the extensive body of research conducted after Chernobyl. Regarding studies on birth defects, he cited an increased frequency of a number of congenital malformations which included cleft lip and/or palate ("hare lip"), doubling of the kidneys, polydactyly (extra fingers or toes), anomalies in the development of nervous and blood systems, amelia (limb reduction defects), anencephaly (defective development of the brain), spina bifida (incomplete closure of the spinal column), Down's syndrome, abnormal openings in the esophagus and anus, and multiple malformations occurring simultaneously [4]. 2. The wide range of birth defects produced by the Chernobyl accident cannot be accounted for by the data collected from the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is one compelling thread of evidence that something is amiss in the current field of radiation protection. But there is a further problem. The proposed threshold dose of radiation capable of interfering with the development of a fetus, again based on the research from Japan, is between fifty and one hundred times greater than what the radiation protection community insists was the typical exposure in the areas of Europe where the elevated frequency of birth defects was documented. How are we to make sense of these contradictions? Chromosome studies conducted in the contaminated regions provide the answer. In individuals exposed to ionizing radiation, peripheral lymphocytes, those lymphocytes which circulate in the blood, have an elevated occurrence of certain types of misshapen chromosomes [3,5]. Of particular interest are dicentric chromosomes which are produced when radiation breaks both strands of the DNA double helix in two neighboring chromosomes and the genetic material is then misrepaired. An increase in the relative frequency of these aberrantly shaped structures serve as a biological indicator of radiation exposure which is immune to lies and political propaganda. More specifically, the increased rate of these aberrations is proportional to the dose of radiation received. Thus, their frequency can be used to determine the true level of exposure in contaminated individuals. Studies of this type were conducted in Europe subsequent to the Chernobyl accident [3]. These studies demonstrated that the official dose estimates published by the radiation protection agencies were woefully in error, greatly underestimating the true level of exposure of people throughout Europe. This discrepancy casts further doubt on the scientific integrity of those organizations who are supposedly protecting the world from radioactive pollution. When combining the studies of chromosome aberrations with the studies of birth defects, the science speaks for itself: the population in many areas of Europe received much higher doses from Chernobyl than claimed and birth defects were induced by much smaller doses than suggested by current radiation protection science. 3. As the clouds of fallout from Chernobyl wafted around the planet, governments broadcast reassurances to their anxious citizens that there was no cause for concern, that doses to the public would be too low to produce detrimental health effects. Politically motivated, this advice was medically ill-conceived. What became evident after the accident was that children who received exposure to Chernobyl fallout, while still in the wombs of their mothers, experienced an elevated risk of developing leukemia by the time of their first birthday [6,7]. Relevant to this discussion is the fact that a gene mutation occurring in utero is one cause of infant leukemia [8,9].) In countries where unimpeachable data was collected for levels of fallout deposited in the environment, doses to the population, and the incidence of childhood leukemia, an unmistakable, uniform trend emerged: the studied population of children born during the 18-month period following the accident suffered increased rates of leukemia in their first year of life compared to children born prior to the accident or to those born subsequent to the accident after the level of possible maternal contamination had sufficiently diminished. This was confirmed in five separate studies conducted independently of one another: in Greece [9], Germany [10], Scotland [11], the United States [12], and Wales [13]. Again here is evidence that defects are being induced in fetuses that we are told by the radiation protection community are not possible. According to the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), these results provide unequivocal evidence that the risk model of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) for infant leukemia is in error by a factor of between 100-fold and 2000-fold, the latter figure allowing for a continued excess incidence of leukemia as the population of children studied continues to age [6]. 4. Other types of chromosome studies have been performed which demonstrate that radiation in the environment is producing damage to DNA that is being passed on to offspring. Minisatellites are identical short segments of DNA that repeat over and over again in a long array along a chromosome. These stretches of DNA do not code for the formation of any protein. What distinguishes these minisatellites is that they acquire spontaneous repeats through mutation at a known rate, which is 1,000 times higher than normal protein-coding genes. Dr. Yuri Dubrova, currently at the University of Leicester, first realized that these stretches of DNA could be used to detect radiation-induced genetic mutations by showing that their known rate of mutation had increased subsequent to exposure. Dubrova and his colleagues studied the rate of minisatellite mutations in families that had lived in the heavily polluted rural areas of the Mogilev district of Belarus after the Chernobyl meltdown [14]. They found the frequency of mutations being passed on by males to their descendants was nearly twice as high in the exposed families compared to the control group families. Among those exposed, the mutation rate was significantly greater in families with a higher parental dose. This finding was consistent with the hypothesis that radiation had induced mutations in the the reproductive germ cells of parents and then transmitted to their offspring. This was the first conclusive proof that radiation produced inheritable mutations in humans. Minisatellite DNA testing has also been performed on the children of Chernobyl "liquidators" i.e., those people who participated in post-accident cleanup operations. When the offspring of liquidators born after the accident were compared to their siblings born prior to the accident, a sevenfold increase in genetic damage was observed [15,16]. As reported by the ECRR, "for the loci measured, this finding defined an error of between 700-fold and 2,000-fold in the ICRP model for heritable genetic damage" [6]. The ECRR made this further observation: "It is remarkable that studies of the children of those exposed to external radiation at Hiroshima show little or no such effect, suggesting a fundamental difference in mechanism between the exposures [17]. The most likely difference is that it was the internal exposure to the Chernobyl liquidators that caused the effects". 5. In November 2009, Joseph Mangano of the Radiation and Public Health Project published a study of newborn hypothyroidism near the Indian Point nuclear reactors in Buchanan, New York [13]. Hypothyroidism is a disease characterized by an insufficient production of the hormone thyroxine. One cause of the disease is exposure to radioactive iodine which selectively destroys cells in the thyroid gland. Currently, the only environmental source of radioactive iodine is emissions from nuclear power plants. According to Mangano, four counties in New York state flank Indian Point and nearly all the residents of these counties live within 20 miles of the reactor complex. During the period 1997 to 2007, the rate of newborn hypothyroidism in the combined four-county population was 92.4% greater, or nearly double, the U.S. rate. The rate in each of the four counties separately was above the U.S. rate, and in two of the counties, the rate was more than double the national rate. In the period 2005-2007, the four county rate was 151.4% above the national rate. These finding were consistent with the fact that the local rate of thyroid cancer is 66% greater than the U.S. rate [14]. Mangano's study raises important questions regarding our common welfare. We live with assurances by government and industry that nuclear reactors are operating within guidelines sponsored by the radiation protection agencies. What radiation they emit are dismissed as too low to warrant concern. An yet, babies born to mothers living in proximity to Indian Point are suffering an increased rate of hypothyroidism. Either the reactor complex is emitting more radiation than publicly known, or once again, there is an error in the safety standards published by the radiation protection community. 6. Are weapons containing depleted uranium a cause for concern for producing birth defects? Given that uranium inside the human body targets the reproductive system, the elevated rate of birth defects in Iraq strongly suggests that DU exposure is involved. In experimental animals exposed to uranium compounds, uranium has been found to accumulate in the testes [20]. Among Gulf War veterans wounded by DU shrapnel, elevated levels of uranium have been found in their semen [21]. In light of this discovery, the Royal Society cautions that this raises "the possibility of adverse effects on the sperm from either the alpha-particles emanating from DU, chemical effects of uranium on the genetic material or the chemical toxicity of uranium [21]." In experiments on female rats, uranium was found to cross the placenta and become concentrated in the tissues of the fetus [20,21,22]. When DU pellets were implanted into pregnant female rats, a direct relation was observed between the amount of contamination in the mother and the amount of contamination in the placenta and the fetus [23,24]. Most importantly, once dissolved within the body, uranium's primary chemical form is the uranyl ion UO2++. This form of uranium has an affinity for DNA and binds strongly to it [25]. This fact alone is should be sufficient to halt the scattering of DU aerosols amidst populations. Internalized uranium targets human genetic material! Needless to say, this fact is totally ignored by the International Commission on Radiological Protection and related organizations when determining safe levels of exposure to uranium and assessing the risk posed by uranium for inducing birth defects. 7. In infants, hydrocephalus is a condition characterized by increased head size and atrophy of the brain. The frequency of this birth defect has increased dramatically in Iraq since the first Gulf War [26]. A small and admittedly incomplete study conducted in the United States lends credence to the hypothesis that DU exposure is the causative agent [26]. Rural and sparsely populated Socorro County is located downwind of a DU-weapons testing site, the Terminal Effects Research and Analysis division of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. On average, 250 births occur yearly in the county. An investigation by a community activist revealed that between 1984 and 1986, five infants were born with hydrocephalus. (The normal rate of hydrocephalus is one case in every 500 live births). According to the demonstrably incomplete State of New Mexico's passive birth defects registry, between 1984 and 1988, 19 infants were born statewide with the condition, three of these within Socorro county. Regardless of which accounting is correct, the results are disturbing given that Socorro contains less than 1% of the state's population. 8. To conclude, the current dogma regarding radiation effects cannot account for the increase in genetic malformations in populations exposed internally to low levels of radiation. Something is deeply wrong with the current science of radiation safety. Given this, statements by the radiation protection community regarding the impossibility that low levels of uranium can cause birth defects are suspect. Numerous studies demonstrate that uranium produces a wide range of birth defects in experimental animals [20,26]. Further, numerous in vitro and in vivo studies conducted in the last twenty years have proven that uranium is genotoxic (capable of damaging DNA), cytotoxic (poisonous to cells), and mutagenic (capable of inducing mutations) [27]. These effects are produced either by uranium's radioactivity or its chemistry or a synergistic interaction between the two. These findings lend plausibility to the idea that the observed increased incidence of deformed babies in Iraq is related to depleted uranium munitions [26]. Paul Zimmerman is the author of A Primer in the Art of Deception: The Cult of Nuclearists, Uranium Weapons and Fraudulent Science. A more technical, fully referenced presentation of the ideas presented in this article can be found within its pages. Excerpts, free to download, are available at www.du-deceptions.com. Notes [1] Chulov M. Huge Rise in Birth Defects in Falluja. guardian.co.uk. November 13, 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/13/falluja-cancer-children-birth-defects#history-byline [2] Nakamura N. Genetic Effects of Radiation in Atomic-bomb Survivors and Their Children: Past, Present and Future. Journal of Radiation Research. 2006; 47(Supplement):B67-B73. [3] Schmitz-Feurerhake I. Radiation-Induced Effects in Humans After in utero Exposure: Conclusions from Findings After the Chernobyl Accident. In C.C. Busby, A.V.Yablokov (eds.): Chernobyl: 20 Years On. European Committee on Radiation Risk. Aberystwyth, United Kingdom: Green Audit Press; 2006. [4] Yablokov A.V. The Chernobyl Catastrophe -- 20 Years After (a meta-review). In C.C. Busby, A.V. Yablokov (eds.): Chernobyl: 20 Years On. European Committee on Radiation Risk. Aberystwyth, United Kingdom: Green Audit Press; 2006. [5] Hoffmann W., Schmitz-Feuerhake I. How Radiation-specific is the Dicentric Assay? Journal of Exposure Analysis and Environmental Epidemiology. 1999; 2:113-133. [6] European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR). Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk: the Health Effects of Ionising Radiation Exposure at Low Doses for Radiation Protection Purposes. Regulators' Edition. Brussels; 2003. www.euradcom.org. [7] Low Level Radiation Campaign (LLRC). Infant Leukemia After Chernobyl. Radioactive Times: The Journal of the Low Level Radiation Campaign. 2005; 6(1):13. [8] Busby C.C. Very Low Dose Fetal Exposure to Chernobyl Contamination Resulted in Increases in Infant Leukemia in Europe and Raises Questions about Current Radiation Risk Models. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2009; 6:3105-3114. [9] Petridou E., Trichopoulos D., Dessypris N., Flytzani V., Haidas S., Kalmanti M.K., Koliouskas D., Kosmidis H., Piperolou F., Tzortzatou F. Infant Leukemia After In Utero Exposure to Radiation From Chernobyl. Nature. 1996; 382:352-353. [10] Michaelis J., Kaletsch U., Burkart W., Grosche B. Infant Leukemia After the Chernobyl Accident. Nature. 1997; 387:246. [11] Gibson B.E.S., Eden O.B., Barrett A., Stiller C.A., Draper G.J. Leukemia in Young Children in Scotland. Lancet. 1988; 2(8611):630. [12] Mangano J.J. Childhood Leukemia in the US May Have Risen Due to Fallout From Chernobyl. British Medical Journal. 1997; 314:1200. [13] Busby C, Scott Cato M. Increases in Leukemia in Infants in Wales and Scotland Following Chernobyl: Evidence for Errors in Statutory Risk Estimates. Energy and Environment. 2000; 11(2):127-139. [14] Dubrova Y.E., Nesterov V.N., Jeffreys A.J., et al. Further Evidence for Elevated Human Minisatellite Mutation Rate in Belarus Eight Years After the Chernobyl Accident. Mutation Research. 1997; 381:267-278. [15] Weinberg H.S., Korol A.B., Kiezhner V.M., Avavivi A., Fahima T., Nevo E., Shapiro S., Rennert G., Piatak O., Stepanova E.I., Skarskaja E. Very High Mutation Rate in Offspring of Chernobyl Accident Liquidators. Proceedings of the Royal Society. London. 2001; D, 266:1001-1005. [16] Dubrova Y.E., et al. Human Minisatellite Mutation Rate after the Chernobyl Accident. Nature. 1996; 380:683-686. [17] Satoh C., Kodaira M. Effects of Radiation on Children. Nature. 1996; 383:226. [18] Mangano J. Newborn Hypothyroidism Near the Indian Point Nuclear Plant. Radiation and Public Health Project. November 25, 2009. www.radiation.org [19] Mangano J. Geographic Variation in U.S. Thyroid Cancer Incidence and a Cluster Near Nuclear Reactors in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. International Journal of Health Services. 2009; 39(4):643-661. [20] Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). Toxicological Profile for Uranium. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; 1999. http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp150.html [21] Royal Society. Health Hazards of Depleted Uranium Munitions: Part II. London: Royal Society, March 2002. [22] Albina L., Belles M., Gomez M., Sanchez D.J., Domingo J.L. Influence of Maternal Stress on Uranium-Induced Developmental Toxicity in Rats. Experimental Biology and Medicine. 2003; 228( 9):1072-1077. [23] Arfsten D.P., Still K.R., Ritchie G.D. A Review of the Effects of Uranium and Depleted Uranium Exposure on Reproduction and Fetal Development. Toxicology and Industrial Health. 2001; 17:180-191. [24] Domingo J. Reproductive and Developmental Toxicity of Natural and Depleted Uranium: A Review. Reproductive Toxicology. 2001; 15:603-609. [25] Wu O., Cheng X., et al. Specific Metal Oligonucleotide Binding Studied By High Resolution Tandem Mass Spectrometry. Journal of Mass Spectrometry. 1996; 321(6) 669-675. [26] Hindin R., Brugge D., Panikkar B. Teratogenicity of Depleted Uranium Aerosols: A Review from an Epidemiological Perspective. Environmental Health. 2005; 26(4):17. [27] Zimmerman P. A Primer in the Art of Deception: The Cult of Nuclearists, Uranium Weapons and Fraudulent Science. 2009. www.du-deceptions.com =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 1 23:25:10 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 23:25:10 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Nuclear Hero's 'Crime' Was Making Us Safer Message-ID: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/01 Nuclear Hero's 'Crime' Was Making Us Safer by Daniel Ellsberg Friday, January 1, 2010 Los Angeles Times Mordechai Vanunu - my friend, my hero, my brother - has again been arrested in Israel on "suspicion" of the "crime" of "meeting with foreigners." I myself have been complicit in this offense, traveling twice to Israel for the express purpose of meeting with him, openly, and expressing support for the actions for which he was imprisoned for over eighteen years. His offense has been to defy openly and repeatedly ,conditions put on his freedom of movement and associations and speech after he had served his full sentence, restrictions on his human rights which were a direct carry-over from the British Mandate, colonial regulations in clear violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Such restrictions have no place in a nation evincing respect for a rule of law and fundamental human rights. His arrest and confinement are outrages and should be ended immediately. My perspective on Mordechai and his behavior was expressed as well as I could do it today in the following op-ed published in 2004 on the day of his release from prison. I can only say that I would be proud to be known as the American Vanunu: though my own possible sentence of 115 years for revealing state secrets was averted by disclosure of government misconduct against me which pales next to the Israeli misconduct in assaulting, drugging and kidnapping Vanunu in the process of bringing him to trial, let alone the eleven years of solitary confinement he was forced to endure. *** [Published 4/21/04 in the Los Angeles Times] Mordechai Vanunu is the preeminent hero of the nuclear era. He consciously risked all he had in life to warn his own country and the world of the true extent of the nuclear danger facing us. And he paid the full price, a burden in many ways worse than death, for his heroic act - for doing exactly what he should have done and what others should be doing. Vanunu's "crime" was committed in 1986, when he gave the London Sunday Times a series of photos he had taken within the Israeli nuclear weapons facility at Dimona, where he had worked as a technician. For that act - revealing that his country's program and stockpile were much larger than the CIA or others had estimated - Vanunu was kidnapped from the Rome airport by agents of the Israeli Mossad and secretly transported back for a closed trial in which he was sentenced to 18 years in prison. He spent the first 11 1/2 years in solitary confinement in a 6-by-9-foot cell, an unprecedented term of solitary under conditions that Amnesty International called "cruel, inhuman and degrading." Now, after serving his full term, he is due to be released today. But his "unfreedom" is to be continued by restrictions on his movements and his contacts: He cannot leave Israel, he will be confined to a single town, he cannot communicate with foreigners face to face or by phone, fax or e-mail (purely punitive conditions because any classified information that he may have possessed is by now nearly two decades old). The irony of all this is that no country in the world has a stronger stake than Israel in preventing nuclear proliferation, above all in the Middle East. Yet Israel's secret nuclear policies - to this day it does not acknowledge that it possesses such weapons - are shortsighted and self-destructive. They promote rather than block proliferation by encouraging the country's neighbors to develop their own, comparable weapons. This will not change without public mobilization and democratic pressure, which in turn demand public awareness and discussion. It was precisely this that Vanunu sought to stimulate. Not in Israel or in any other case - not that of the U.S., Russia, England, France, China, India or Pakistan - has the decision to become a nuclear weapons state ever been made democratically or even with the knowledge of the full Cabinet. It is likely that in an open discussion not one of these states could convince its own people or the rest of the world that it had a legitimate reason for possessing as many warheads as the several hundred that Israel allegedly has (far beyond any plausible requirement for deterrence). More Vanunus are urgently needed. That is true not only in Israel but in every nuclear weapons state, declared and undeclared. Can anyone fail to recognize the value to world security of a heroic Pakistani, Indian, Iraqi, Iranian or North Korean Vanunu making comparable revelations? And the world's need for such secret-telling is not limited to citizens of what nuclear weapons states presumptuously call rogue nations. Every nuclear weapons state has secret policies, aims, programs and plans that contradict its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the 1995 Declaration of Principles agreed to at the NPT Renewal Conference. Every official with knowledge of these violations could and should consider doing what Vanunu did. That is what I should have done in the early '60s based on what I knew about the secret nuclear planning and practices of the United States when I consulted at the Defense Department, on loan from the Rand Corp., on problems of nuclear command and control. I drafted the Secretary of Defense Guidance to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the general nuclear war plans, and the extreme dangers of our practices and plan were apparent to me. I now feel derelict for wrongfully keeping secret the documents in my safe revealing this catastrophically reckless posture. But I did not then have Vanunu's example to guide me. When I finally did have an example in front of me - that of young Americans who were choosing to go to prison rather than participate in what I too knew was a hopeless, immoral war - I was inspired in 1971 to turn over a top-secret history of presidential lies about the war in Vietnam to 19 newspapers. I regret only that I didn't do it earlier, before the bombs started falling. Vanunu should long since have been released from solitary and from prison, not because he has "suffered enough" but because what he did was the correct and courageous thing to do in the face of the foreseeable efforts to silence and punish him. The outrageous and illegal restrictions proposed to be inflicted on him when he finally steps out of prison after 18 years should be widely protested and rejected, not only because they violate his fundamental human rights but because the world needs to hear this man's voice. The cult and culture of secrecy in every nuclear weapons state have endangered humanity and continues to threaten its survival. Vanunu's challenge to that wrongful and dangerous secrecy must be joined worldwide. --- Daniel Ellsberg, a former State Department and Defense Department official, released the 'Pentagon Papers' to the press in 1971. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 2 19:32:49 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 19:32:49 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] 15 Most Heinous Climate Villains Message-ID: <4EF6B53DDDCC4D6986DEB3405008E14E@agingCHS072729> http://www.buffalobeast.com/?p=1237 The BEAST 15 Most Heinous Climate Villains Posted by admin On December - 29 - 2009 Some of the bastards responsible for subverting public understanding of climate change BY MICHAEL RODDY & IAN MURPHY THE SCIENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE IS PRETTY BASIC: humans dig up fossilized carbon to fuel power plants and internal combustion machines, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. Result: greenhouse effect global heating. Around 50% of all the species on the planet are predicted to become extinct by 2100 in the CO2-as-usual model. Our own species will face drought, famine, rising tides, soaring temperatures, calamity and chaos. Hundreds of millions will become climate refugees. Billions may die from starvation, genocide and war. We have precious little time to mitigate this looming global catastrophe. Those of us still denying the depressing facts are either tragically stupid or profoundly corrupt - or both. If there's anyone alive to write the history of corporate funded climate science denial, the following list of 15 Heinous Climate Villains will, by the sheer magnitude of death their lies wrought, make the infamous dictatorial monsters of the 20th century seem like incompetent children. Enjoy! 1) Don Blankenship, CEO Massey Energy Misdeeds: According to the EPA, Massey's mountaintop removal coal operation is filthier than a Tiger Woods text. When a West Virginia Circuit Court fined the energy giant $50 million, it wasn't a problem for Blankenship, because he owns the West Virginia Supreme Court. A few years earlier, he'd polluted the airwaves with $3 million in accusations that an incumbent State Supreme Court justice released sexual deviants, so that his man Brent Benjamin could be elected. The Massey-friendly court promptly heard the case and reversed the lower court's ruling. A few months later, Blankenship was caught partying in Monte Carlo with two bimbos and Ted Maynard, another sympathetic justice. Last summer, Don held a nightmarish pro-coal rally on a leveled mountaintop with fellow retards Sean Hannity and Ted "Suck my machine gun, Obama" Nugent. Corporate teat: Massey Energy is the fourth largest coal company in the US. Most egregious lie: "The Greeniacs are taking over the world." Comeuppance: The Greeniacs do take over the world, and use Blankenship to fertilize a rooftop garden. 2) George Will, Columnist Misdeeds: The errors Will has committed to print over the years are both more numerous and irresponsible than his bow tie collection, for which he also feels no remorse. He claimed in a February 2009 Washington Post column that "According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979." The Center responded: "We do not know where George Will is getting his information. global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979." Corporate teats: The Republican Party, a catchall for corporate polluters, his wife, rapacious swine in general, and anyone who cites Ronald Reagan to justify his massive carbon footprint. Most egregious lie: "So the column accurately reported what the Center had reported." Incredibly, the Post backed him up. Comeuppance: Locked in a large freezer, strapped to a chair directly under a ten-foot icicle and made to write a column. The room's climate is controlled by a computer program, which checks his column for scientific veracity. The temperature goes down when Will's right and up when he's wrong. He either freezes to death or the icicle falls and splits his head open. It's up to him. 3) James Inhofe, Senator from Oklahoma Misdeeds: Inhofe thinks that global warming is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind," yet somehow served as the Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee from '03 to '07. Once called Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton to testify as a key witness. Believes that "scientific consensus" on climate change is a conspiracy perpetrated by greedy scientists to score grant money. Went to Copenhagen as the leader of the Climate Truth Squad, earning big laughs from overseas reporters. Lifetime recipient of Twelve Dumbest Members of Congress award. Corporate teats: Seven figures from Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Conoco Phillips and anyone willing to pay for his "campaign expenses." Most egregious lie: "You know, God's still up there. We're now going through a cooling spell." Comeuppance: Locked in an outhouse and set on fire. 4) Steve Milloy, Fake Scientist Misdeeds: Founder of the aptly named junkscience.com and featured "junk science expert" on Fox News, Milloy believes science favoring tobacco or oil companies is "sound science," and the peer-reviewed stuff coming from nerds in lab coats is "junk science." Steve holds a Bachelor of Arts and a law degree; you almost have to admire his chutzpah. Corporate teats: Fox News, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Phillip Morris, Exxon Mobil and Monsanto. Most egregious lie: "It's time for sound science and common sense to be heard." Comeuppance: Forced to smoke 100 petroleum-dipped cigarettes by his mommy. 5) Fred Singer, University of Virginia Misdeeds: For the last 60 years, Singer's pimped his PhD credentials to any and every industry in need of phony science. He's slithered seamlessly from denying that smoking causes cancer to saying that DDT is harmless to "raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom'" of climate change. Glacier data he later attributed to his wife was denounced as "complete bullshit" by the Glacier Monitoring Service. Corporate teats: Exxon Mobil, Shell, Sun Oil, Competitive Enterprise Institute, American Petroleum Institute and the Heartland Institute. Most egregious lie: "55% of glaciers have gained mass in the last 30 years." Comeuppance: While addressing yet another denier conference in 2012, the pressure created by an undetected tumor in Singer's brain triggers an anomalous episode of schizophasia, causing his entire speech spews forth as an incoherent word salad. Instead of the audience stopping Singer and urging him to seek the immediate medical attention he so obviously needs, they offer him a thunderous standing ovation and an invitation to speak again next year. 6) Myron Ebell, Competitive Enterprise Institute Misdeeds: As head of CEI, Myron admits using the money his organization solicited from the DDT, cigarette and coal industries to conduct intentionally biased research that suits their bullshit PR goals. Corporate teats: Exxon Mobil, BP, Massey, Chevron and Southern. Most egregious lie: "CO2 increases will lead to more plant growth and prosperity. Everyone will be more comfortable, including humans." Comeuppance: Forced to live in a Bedouin camp in the Arabian Desert to prepare for a warming world. The Chieftain assigns Ebell to be the wife of his favorite camel. The camel defiles him, kicks in his teeth, spits in his face and then seeks an annulment. 7) Patrick Michaels, Cato Misdeeds: As a Senior Fellow at The Cato Institute and the Chief Editor of World Climate Report (an industry PR rag created by the evil coal trade group Western Fuels Association), Michaels is often touted as a climate expert in the mainstream media, though he has done no scientific research in 20 years. He lies about the wonders of "clean coal" so that the coal "families" can survive - you know, if black lung hasn't killed them already. Corporate teats: Cato, Western Fuels Association and the Kuwait Foundation for Advancement of Science. Most egregious lie: "It has been known since 1872 that as we emit more and more carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, each increment results in less and less warming." (He apparently forgot about feedback loops.) Comeuppance: Admits on hidden camera that there is no such thing as "clean coal" when we secretly replace his maid's cleaning supplies with coal; contracts black lung disease. 8) Sallie Baliunas, George C. Marshall Institute Misdeeds: As an astrophysicist and ruthless GOP housewife lookalike, Baliunas lends both credibility and aesthetic reassurance to the denier movement. Claimed in a 2003 paper that "The Medieval Warming Period was hotter than today." (Actually, it's hotter today than it's been for 400,000 years.) Her article in Climate Research was so riddled with errors, and so subverted the peer review process, the editor and half of the journal's editorial board resigned. This led to celebrity status in the denier world, where if research is published that makes top scientists throw up, it must be accurate. Corporate teats: George C. Marshall Institute, Exxon, Competitive Enterprise Institute, American Petroleum Institute and any far right group that needs a convention speaker who isn't senile and doesn't spit while talking. Most egregious lie: "If scientists and researchers were coming out releasing reports that global warming has little to do with man, and more to do with just how the planet works, there wouldn't be as much money to study it." Comeuppance: Made to "Wango Tango" with Ted Nugent for life. 9) Stephen McIntyre, Mathematician Misdeeds: Despite having no training or field experience in climate science, McIntyre runs the blog ClimateAudit.org, whose mission is to use arcane statistical analyses to break the "hockey stick" reconstruction of historical climate patterns. He recently claimed victory over the Briffa tree ring data controversy, but failed to note that there are at least 15 studies that don't need tree ring data to show the identical late 20th century hockey stick shape of rising temperatures and CO2 concentrations. Corporate teats: McIntyre lives in tar sands besotted Alberta as a "semiretired minerals consultant," and served as President of Northwest Exploration Co Ltd before they became CGX Energy, Inc. His funding sources are hidden, since the Alberta government is legally somewhere between Texas and Saudi Arabia, and transparency is not required. Most egregious lie: "I constructed a variation on the CRU data set, removing the 12 selected cores and replacing them with the 34 cores from the Schweingruber Yamal sample.." The echo chamber goes wild, but neither they nor McIntyre himself have any idea what he's talking about, since Climate Audit is all about masturbating to numbers. Even Briffa's tree ring work was later vindicated by something McIntyre never considered: further scientific research. Comeuppance: Sent to the Maldives, given cement shoes and used to mark the rising tide. 10) Marc Morano, Professional Douchebag Misdeeds: Morano is possibly the most embarrassing wingnut in all of Denierdom-a dishonor earned as an Inhofe staffer and producer for the Rush Limbaugh Show. Reporting for Cybercast News Service, he was the first source of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth lies about John Kerry in 2004 and John Murtha in 2006. It's no surprise that his blog (climatedepot.com) is primarily a vehicle for lies, smears and character assassination aimed at credible climate scientists. Corporate teats: Oil and coal companies, usually laundered through think tanks such as Cato, CEI, etc. Most egregious lie: "We can't afford action against climate change. It would damage our economy." Comeuppance: Sent to terraform Mars-without sufficient tools, food or oxygen. 11) Professor Roy Spencer, University of Alabama at Huntsville Misdeeds: Professor Spencer is skeptical of widely accepted Paleoclimate data, like the kind provided by 800,000 year old ice cores, because he believes God created the earth and sculpted man out of clay approximately 6,000 years ago. Even you can do better, Alabama. Corporate teats: Heartland Institute, George C. Marshall Institute, Republican Party, numerous lobbying firms and NASA. (Really? This idiot works at NASA? We're fucking doomed.) Most egregious lie: Spencer coauthored a roundly debunked scientific paper with fellow denier John Christie that "proved" the troposphere (the lowest part of the atmosphere) was cooling, despite satellite data to the contrary. Spencer apologized for the error, but the incident added to his legendary status among deniers. Comeuppance: The magical harp that Jesus gives him during the Rapture only plays "Wango Tango." 12) Richard Lindzen, MIT Misdeeds: The professor's predilection for citing bad data to try to refute widely accepted climate science is a black eye for the state of Massachusetts and research institutes everywhere. Lindzen thinks global warming is basically a "political" issue, and yet has not provided compelling scientific evidence for his contrarian views. When not writing comedy for his peers or the Wall Street Journal, Lindzen plays keynote speaker for any loony tune denial fest that will have him. Claims that water vapor is the main cause of global warming. Corporate teats: Heartland Institute, Cato Institute and the Annapolis Center, a think tank funded by ExxonMobil. Most egregious lie: "Global warming has been merely a device for implementing broader agendas." Comeuppance: Locked in a very hot sauna with a running automobile. 13) Bj?rn Lomborg, Economist Misdeeds: A serial liar, whose books have spawned a cottage industry for scientists who debunk them, Lomborg reluctantly admits that the earth is getting hotter, but insists that we'll like the warmer weather. He has opinions about many scientific issues, but is trained only in economics and game theory. His love of numbers and arguments does not extend to facts. Corporate teats: Denier conference speaking fees, book sales and Lord Monckton knows what else. Most egregious lie: "The Kangerlussuaq glacier is inconveniently growing." (Actually, this glacier lost 55 billion tons of ice from 2000 to 2006 alone, and loses several gigatons of ice annually.) Comeuppance: Dropped into the Sahara to do penance among climate refugees. Lomborg's Danish skin can't take the sun, so he's buried entirely in sand, save for a mouth hole. Incoherent shit streams continuously from the hole, so the natives assume it's a latrine. 14) Roger Pielke Jr., Political Scientist Misdeeds: It's telling that Pielke thinks his poli sci degree entitles him to have an opinion about all aspects of climate science. Specifically, it's telling us that he thinks we're idiots. Pielke constantly parrots fallacious claims about ice, ocean temperature and warming rates from whacked out websites like wattsupwiththat.com. Roger has been dubbed the Most Debunked Science Writer in the Blogosphere by Climate Progress, yet still appears in the media as a contrarian "expert." Corporate teat: The Breakthrough Institute, whose founders, like Fox News, stress "balance." Most egregious lie: "In the ongoing battle between climate scientists and skeptics, there will be disproportionate carnage, because the climate scientists have so much more to lose." Comeuppance: Having been denied access to a newly-green Siberia by the Russian Army, vultures circle Pielke as he roams aimlessly in search of food and water. Hyenas, an invasive species from drought stricken Africa, track his every move in anticipation. Too weak to continue, he collapses. As the scavengers close in, Pielke finally realizes the irony of the above quote and cries, "I get it now!" The hyenas laugh and rip him to shreds. 15) Lord Christopher Monckton, Viscount of Brenchley Misdeeds: Admired by Glenn Beck. His Lordship's hysterical condescension and anger flashes are classic examples of dangerous Royal inbreeding. Can be found at all the big denier fests, including Blankenship's nightmarish blasted mountaintop jamboree. Habitually confabulates his autobiography and fabricates scientific facts. Monckton recently called a gathering of activists in Copenhagen "Hitler Youth." Corporate teats: Heartland Institute, SPPI and Frontiers of Freedom-all recipients of oil money. Most egregious lie: "The right response to the non-problem of global warming is to have the courage to do nothing." Comeuppance: Climate refugees storm his castle in 2030 and pillage everything but Monckton's prized medieval pear of anguish, which he cleverly hides up his own ass. Unable to remove the excruciating device by himself, The Lord checks into the hospital. The doctors are brave enough to do nothing. ------------------------------- Michael Roddy graduated with honors from Berkeley, and has written numerous magazine articles and Congressional testimonies on environmental and construction issues. He currently owns and operates a small hotel energy management company, with offices in Seattle, Napa, and Yucca Valley, California. Mike can be reached at mike.greenframe at gmail.com. Illustrations by Ian Murphy =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 2 20:15:08 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 20:15:08 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Dirt can be good for children, say scientists Message-ID: <76CB48ADC01240C8BA1F24E164302B28@agingCHS072729> <> --A spokeswoman for Allergy UK http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8373690.stm Monday, 23 November 2009 Dirt can be good for children, say scientists Children should be allowed to get dirty, according to scientists who have found being too clean can impair the skin's ability to heal. Normal bacteria living on the skin trigger a pathway that helps prevent inflammation when we get hurt, the US team discovered. The bugs dampen down overactive immune responses that can cause cuts and grazes to swell, they say. Their work is published in the online edition of Nature Medicine. Experts said the findings provided an explanation for the "hygiene hypothesis", which holds that exposure to germs during early childhood primes the body against allergies. Many believe our obsession with cleanliness is to blame for the recent boom in allergies in developed countries. 'Good' bacteria Researchers from the School of Medicine at University of California, San Diego, found a common bacterial species, known as Staphylococci, blocked a vital step in a cascade of events that led to inflammation. By studying mice and human cells, they found the harmless bacteria did this by making a molecule called lipoteichoic acid or LTA, which acted on keratinocytes - the main cell types found in the outer layer of the skin. The LTA keeps the keratinocytes in check, stopping them from mounting an aggressive inflammatory response. Head of the research Professor Richard Gallo said: "The exciting implication of the work is that it provides a molecular basis to understand the hygiene hypothesis and has uncovered elements of the wound repair response that were previously unknown. "This may help us devise new therapeutic approaches for inflammatory skin diseases." The lobby group Parents Outloud said the work offered scientific support for its campaign to stop children being mollycoddled and over-sanitised. A spokeswoman for Allergy UK said there was a growing body of evidence that exposure to germs was a good thing. But she said more research was needed. "Rates of allergy have tripled in the UK in the last decade. One in three people now has some kind of allergy. "Some of this might be that people are better informed. But a lot of it is genetic as well as down to our environment," she said. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 2 20:33:31 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 20:33:31 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] US aid tied to purchase of arms Message-ID: <668DDAE624E14643A72C203DB582B813@agingCHS072729> http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-aid-tied-to-purchase-of-arms-20100101-llsb.html Sydney Morning Herald January 2, 2010 US aid tied to purchase of arms ANNE DAVIES HERALD CORRESPONDENT WASHINGTON: Just before Christmas, the US President, Barack Obama, signed into law one of his country's biggest aid pledges of the year. It was bound not for Africa or any of the many struggling countries on the World Bank's list. It was a deal for $US2.77 billion ($3 billion) to go to Israel in 2010 and a total of $US30 billion over the next decade. Israel is bound by the agreement to use 75 per cent of the aid to buy military hardware made in the US: in the crisis-racked US economy, those military factories are critical to many towns. For the first time the US is also providing $US500 million to the Palestinian Authority, including $US100 million to train security forces, under the strict proviso that the authority's leadership recognises Israel. For many years Israel has been the largest recipient of US foreign aid, followed by Egypt ($US1.75 billion), which also receives most of its assistance in tied military aid. The Congressional Research Service says that the US spent 17 per cent of its total aid budget - or $US5.1 billion - on military aid in 2008, of which $US4.7 billion was grants to enable governments to receive equipment from the US. The lion's share of political and strategic aid to Iraq and Afghanistan comes from separate funds and from the defence budget. Between 2003 and last year $US49 billion was poured into Iraq through the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund and the defence budget. The Afghanistan program over the same period consisted of $US11 billion in traditional foreign aid and another $US15 billion in defence funds. Under the Obama Administration, this year's aid budget has been increased by 10 per cent to nearly $US50 billion to support his counter-terrorism strategy. Assistance to Pakistan was recently tripled, with an additional $US1.5 billion a year for the next five years. The author of the bill, Senator John Kerry, said it would ''build a relationship with the people [of Pakistan] to show that what we want is a relationship that meets their interests and needs''. But officials at the US embassy in Islamabad have alleged that Pakistan has diverted elsewhere 70 per cent of the $US9 billion in military assistance paid since 2001. The Obama Administration is finding that other expensive fronts are emerging in the fight against terrorism, the latest being Yemen. In the 2010 fiscal year US development and security assistance to Yemen is expected to rise 56 per cent to $US63 million. But this does not include so-called 1206 Pentagon counter-terrorism funds. Last year Yemen received $US67 million of those, up from just $US5 million. After the events of the past week or so, countries like Yemen are highly likely to receive significantly more this year. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 2 21:04:51 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 21:04:51 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] [Review] Palin's "Going Rogue: An American Life" Message-ID: <17198DBD49B94736BDEE28BE8F05DD91@agingCHS072729> <> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/akmuckraker/attorney-of-palin-critic_b_368301.html Jeanne Devon ("AKMuckraker") Proprietor of The Mudflats Blog Posted: November 23, 2009 05:34 PM Attorney of Palin Critic Speaks Out By Donald Craig Mitchell Contributing writer to The Mudflats Last July in Fairbanks, with Todd smiling at her side and Piper sitting in her lap, Sarah Palin watched Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell take the oath to fill out her term in office as Governor of Alaska. Then she vanished. For the past four months the Forty-Ninth State has seen neither hide nor hair of the woman. No speeches at chambers of commerce luncheons. No sightings on the street. No Sarah cheering on the sideline at Wasilla Warriors girls basketball games. No Sarah sitting in the pew on Sunday worshiping at the ChangePoint and Anchorage Baptist Temple evangelical mega churches. She's been gone. Disappeared. It now turns out that while Alaskans were hunkering down for winter Sarah was in San Diego working for a woman named Lynn Vincent, the ghostwriter HarperCollins hired to cobble together Going Rogue: An American Life, Sarah's first person account of her it-only-would-happen-in-America rise from small town mayor to small state governor to Republican Vice Presidential candidate to popular culture icon. Since Tuesday when Going Rogue was released nationwide copies of the book have been flying off the shelves at Barnes & Noble in Boise and Grand Rapids and not flying off the shelves in San Francisco and Seattle. Since I already have enough to read, I had intended to give Going Rogue a pass until I had time this weekend to motor over to the Anchorage Barnes & Noble and give Ms. Vincent's word-smithing a skim. But on Monday I learned that I'm in the book. Not surprisingly, that piqued my interest. And then yesterday a friend lent me a copy. I've now read it. Here's the review. I usually begin reading a book that purports to be nonfiction by reading the index. But Going Rogue doesn't have one. So I started with the acknowledgments section at the back of the book. In the first paragraph Sarah explains to her readers: "I'm very glad this writing exercise is over. I love to write, but not about myself. I'm thankful now to have kept journals about Alaska and my friends and family ever since I was a little girl. That practice allowed an orderly compilation over the past weeks and let me summarily wrap up at least some of my life so far." Sarah then thanks thirty-seven people (all but four only by his or her first name so that none of the rest of us have a clue who they are) before she thanks Lynn Vincent "for her indispensable help in getting the words on paper." If all that is read quickly, it leaves the veneer impression that Sarah wrote her book. But if read carefully that's not what it says. "Help in getting the words on paper?" Too coy by half. Decide for yourself when you do your own skim at your own local Barnes & Noble. But start to finish Going Rogue reads to me like Sarah sitting on the sofa in Lynn Vincent's condo in San Diego, school girl diaries in her lap, talking hour after hour in her you-betcha patois into a computerized tape recorder like the ones court reporters use to record depositions. Then each afternoon when Sarah went off on her jog, Ms. Vincent would begin her real workday sitting at her computer editing and cut and pasting that day's transcript of Sarah's ramblings into a narrative. I can't prove that. But someone should ask Sarah if that's how she "wrote" Going Rogue. Lynn Vincent would be a more reliable source. But, no surprise, her contract with HarperCollins contains a non-disclosure provision. Adam Bellow, Sarah's editor at HarperCollins, also would know. But he for sure is not telling. At least until he has too much red wine during dinner at Elaine's some night and lets the secret slip. The book itself is a prosaic hagiography divided into three parts. Part one is Sarah's autobiography from her birth in Sandpoint, Idaho, to her selection by John McCain as his running mate. Part two is Sarah's story of her life on the road during the 2008 presidential campaign. Part three is a sanguinolent settling of accounts for the torment to which she was subjected in Alaska after the election - a torment so awful that it brought the operation of the entire executive branch of the government of the State of Alaska to a gridlocked halt and left Sarah no choice but to abandon her governorship in order to earn $5 million in four months talking into Lynn Vincent's tape recorder. If that three-part narrative has a unifying theme, the theme is that everything - and I mean everything - that has ever gone wrong for Sarah Palin was someone else's fault. Sarah's lackluster performance during her interview with Frank Murkowski when she somehow made the short-list of candidates to succeed Frank in the U.S. Senate? That was Frank and his Attorney General, my friend Gregg Renkes's, fault. The Troopergate scandal? Walt Monegan and the Democratic members of the Alaska Senate pulled that mean-spirited prank on a blameless Sarah. The nationally televised interview with Katie Couric that branded Sarah Palin as an ignorant and uneducated laughingstock? Katie sandbagged her. The fabulously disastrous Thanksgiving television interview when Governor Palin pardoned a turkey while in the background unpardoned turkeys were having their heads shoved down a funnel and their throats slit? Sandbagged again. That time by a local TV news cameraman. Don't take my word for it. Thumb through Going Rogue on your own. Page after page after page. It's always someone else's fault. When discussing George Herbert Walker and Barbara Bush, Richard Nixon is reported to have said that George was a nice guy. "But his wife. That woman knows how to hate." Since Dick meant that as a compliment, he would be impressed with Sarah's penchant for settling scores. Because scattered throughout its content Going Rogue contains an enemies list as long as the list the nation's Thirty-Seventh President and his henchmen compiled during the run-up to Watergate. Sarah trashes Nick Carney (the Wasilla city councilman who recruited Sarah into politics), John Stein (Sarah's predecessor as mayor of Wasilla), Anne Kilkenny (a Wasilla resident whose viral email educated the nation to Sarah's lackluster record as mayor), an unnamed City of Wasilla librarian, Frank Murkowski (Sarah's predecessor as Governor of Alaska), Gregg Renkes (Frank's Attorney General), Lyda Green (the former President of the Alaska Senate), Hollis French (the chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the Alaska Senate), Steve Schmidt (John McCain's campaign manager), an unnamed KTUU television cameraman, Walt Monegan (Sarah's Commissioner of Public Safety), Randy Ruedrich (the chairman of the Alaska Republican Party with whom Sarah worked at the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission), Bill Allen (the corpulent head of the oil field services company VECO, a odious scum bag whose reputation as the bag man for Big Oil in the state capitol had been a matter of common knowledge in Alaska for a generation when Sarah went with her hand out to Bill for the campaign contributions she used to launch her statewide political career), Mike Wooten (Sarah's ex-brother-in-law), unnamed executives of the Exxon-Mobil, British Petroleum, and Conoco-Phillips oil companies, Pete Rouse (a former Alaskan who was Senator Barack Obama's chief of staff), Rahm Emanuel (President Barack Obama's chief of staff), Kim Elton (a former member of the Alaska Senate who is Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar's Special Assistant for Alaska), unnamed members of the McCain campaign staff who prepped Sarah for her television debate with Joe Biden, John Bitney (Governor Palin's liaison to the Alaska Legislature), Levi Johnston (the hockey-playing, Playgirl modeling impregnator of Bristol Palin). That's not the complete list. There's no index and I'm tired of typing. Of all the individuals on the Going Rogue enemies list, the two firsts among equals are Andrew Halcro and Andree McLeod. Halcro is a former Republican member of the Alaska House of Representatives who ran as an independent candidate against Sarah Palin in the 2006 Alaska gubernatorial election. After the election he started a website that he used to become one of Governor Palin's most articulate and factually well-informed critics. It was Andrew Halcro who broke the story that Governor Palin had fired Walt Monegan, her Commissioner of Public Safety, because Walt had refused to fire Mike Wooten, Sarah's ex-brother-in-law, from his union job as an Alaska State Trooper. That news led to the Troopergate investigation of Sarah (and Todd) Palin's misuse of the Office of the Governor. In the Troopergate report that Sarah touts as clearing her of wrong-doing, the investigator, a former prosecutor with whom (unlike the Legislature's investigator) Sarah cooperated, implies that during his investigation either Walt Monegan committed criminal perjury or Sarah Palin committed criminal perjury. But the Legislature had no stomach during the remainder of Sarah's tenure as Governor to determine whether she was the felon. In Going Rogue Sarah describes Andrew Halcro as "a wealthy, effete young chap who had taken over his father's local Avis Rent A Car, and he starred in his own car commercial. He would go on to host a short-lived local radio show while blogging throughout the day, all of which were major steps up from a previous job as our limo driver at Todd's cousin's wedding." Andree McLeod is where I come in. I am an attorney by trade and an historian of modest reputation by avocation. In 1987 I briefly convinced an Alaska Superior Court that it was a violation of the U.S. and Alaska Constitutions for the State of Alaska to have a campaign finance system that allows individuals who are not eligible to vote for a candidate to influence the candidate's election by making campaign contributions. In 1998 I came within one vote of convincing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to uphold the constitutionality of an amendment to the Oregon Constitution that would have mandated a similar result. Over the years since, I have frequently represented individuals for a reduced fee or no fee in cases in which I think the public policy benefits merit my effort. For that reason, I was not surprised in September 2008 when a friend called to ask if I would have a cup of coffee with a woman named Andree McLeod. By that date, I had been active in Alaska's (small state) political life for thirty years. But my answer to that query was, "Who's Andree McLeod?" But I went for coffee and discovered that Andree McLeod is a quite amazing woman. Short, smart, politically committed, and tenaciously energetic, Andree McLeod is a Republican political activist of Armenian heritage who had once been a personal friend of Sarah Palin's, who Sarah had endorsed when Andree ran in the Republican primary for a seat in the Alaska House of Representatives. When I went to her home in east Anchorage to have my cup of coffee I found Andree sitting at her dining room table surrounded by two-foot-high stacks of paper print-outs of several thousand emails that the Office of the Governor had given to her in July in response to a request she had filed in June pursuant to the Alaska Public Records Act. The request had asked for emails that had been sent to or received by employees of the Office of the Governor who Andree suspected had been engaging in partisan - i.e., Alaska Republican Party - political activities during their public employee workdays. Andree submitted her public records request three months before anyone other than those of us in Alaska had ever heard of Sarah Palin. The reason I had been invited to meet with Andree was that one of the things she had discovered by reading the emails was that when Governor Palin assumed office she had set up a private back-channel email system so that she and her senior staff could communicate with each other about state business without the content of their communications being "captured" by State of Alaska computer servers, and hence being available for public inspection pursuant to the Alaska Public Records Act. The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other national media would later report that story. After researching the Alaska Public Records Act I concluded that, for reasons not worth detailing here, the private back-channel email system that Sarah had created was a violation of the Alaska Public Records Act. As a consequence, representing Andree McLeod, on October 1, 2008 I filed a lawsuit against Governor Palin in the Alaska Superior Court, the purpose of which is to obtain an order prohibiting state officials from using private email accounts to conduct state business. The month after the McCain-Palin ticket lost the presidential election, again representing Andree McLeod, on December 8, 2008 I filed a second lawsuit against Governor Palin when a further review of the emails that Andree had been given revealed that the Office of the Governor had given to Todd Palin, a private citizen who was an employee of British Petroleum, copies of emails that it was withholding from public inspection on the ground of deliberative process privilege. That litigation is ongoing. The legal questions of first impression that they present for decision are important enough that my expectation is that both lawsuits will end up in the Alaska Supreme Court. What does any of that have to do with me and Going Rogue? Prior to me agreeing to represent her in the two lawsuits above-described, Andree McLeod had begun filing what became a series of complaints against Sarah Palin with the State Personnel Board that alleged ethical transgressions unrelated to the lawsuits. Other Alaskans did the same thing. According to Going Rogue, those ethics complaints have driven Sarah Palin flat-out full-crank nuts. After trashing Andree McLeod at page 354 of Going Rogue Lynn Vincent aka Sarah Palin moves on to me. Here's what Lynn and Sarah say: We always suspected that someone was funding and directing Andree's efforts. During the spring of 2009, she was actually still begging my administration for a job and led others to believe she hadn't worked for a couple of years. Yet somehow she had enough time or money to turn harassment of the governor's office into a full-time vocation. Over time, the wording of her ethics complaints became more and more sophisticated, and we later found out why: prominent liberal attorney Don Mitchell was advising her. As early as September 2008, weeks before the presidential election, Mitchell had already detailed the ethics attack strategy in an article in the Huffington Post. Later he sat with Andree as her counsel at one of her hearings. I wish my late mother was still alive. Because I know how proud she would be that I made the Going Rogue enemies list and have been mentioned by name in a book whose first printing is 1.5 million copies. (Because he is not named, the mother of the KTUU cameraman who posed Sarah in front of the turkeys can take no such pride.) But my number is listed in the Anchorage telephone book. If that failed, Lynn and Sarah could have googled "Donald Craig Mitchell." And if that had failed, since Meg Stapleton, the increasingly strange combination of Sancho Panza and Odd Job who works for Sarah, and I have mutual friends, Meg could have found me quite easily. Had Lynn Vincent, Sarah, or Meg called me before Lynn had finished writing Going Rogue, I would have told her that in a single paragraph Lynn/Sarah got almost every one of their facts about me, other than that I am an attorney, wrong. While I probably once was, I haven't been a "prominent" attorney in Alaska in years. While I am a registered Democrat, my personal politics are hardly "liberal." To the extent anyone cares, I am a social libertarian who is an Eisenhower era deficit hawk who agrees with Teddy and Frank Roosevelt that the principal responsibility of government is to save capitalism from itself. And while during the presidential campaign several of my 'Governor Girl Reports' were posted by individuals other than me on the Huffington Post and Atlantic Monthly web sites, none of those musings "detailed an ethics attack strategy." But most importantly, not only have I never advised Andree regarding her ethics complaints, to the best of my recollection I have never read an Andree McLeod ethics complaint. Had Lynn, Sarah, or Meg called me, I also would have told them that neither Andree McLeod nor I have been paid a nickel by anyone for anything (although if I win either of my lawsuits I intend to send the Office of the Governor a bill for my attorneys fee, which under Alaska law I am permitted to do). It is true, however, that, as Going Rogue reports, because she asked me to, I did accompany Andree to her interview with Tim Petumenos, the former prosecutor the State Personnel Board hired to investigate both the complaint Sarah filed against herself regarding the Troopergate affair and a complaint Andree filed against Sarah and Frank Bailey, Sarah's Director of Boards and Commissions, for violating state civil service rules in order to give one of Sarah's campaign supporters a job for which he was not qualified. Again to the best of my recollection, I have never read either complaint. And if he is asked, I think Tim will say that during his interview with Andree I pretty much just sat there. It also is worth mentioning that the State Personnel Board found the ethics complaint that Andree McLeod filed against Frank Bailey meritorious. Why should anyone care about any of that? The reason they should care is that if Lynn Vincent aka Sarah Palin got as many of the facts, asserted and implied, about me in Going Rogue as wrong as she did, what does that say about the validity of the many other, much more important, "facts" in Sarah's book? It's fully fine by me that billions of federal tax dollars are being spent annually to invent an AIDS vaccine. But it is just as important to someday invent a Pinocchio serum. If the world had one, before a faux celebrity like Sarah Palin writes a book, doctors from the CDC could roll up the celebrity's sleeve and inject him or her with a jolt of the serum. And a serum also would have other important uses. For example, on page 214 of Going Rogue Lynn Vincent reports that when the McCain campaign vetted Sarah, she confessed to Steve Schmidt, the manager of the campaign, that "the one skeleton I'd kept hidden in my closet" (my emphasis) was that she had gotten a D in a college course. Had Sarah been shot up with Pinocchio serum prior to the vetting, the immediate growth of the length of her nose would have tipped off Schmidt that the more truthful answer to the one skeleton in the closet question would have been, as The National Enquirer subsequently reported with no push back from Team Sarah, "cuckolding Todd when he was working on the North Slope by hooking up with Brad Hanson, Todd's business partner in the Polaris snow machine sales business Brad and Todd owned in Wasilla." Once perfected, Pinocchio serum also would be useful to find out whether Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell really supports health care reform and, before the United States sends more troops there, whether Hamid Karsai really is committed to rooting out corruption in Afghanistan. But before a Pinocchio serum can be widely used, the FDA would need to conduct a clinical trial. Shooting up Sarah while she's still on her book tour would be a good first test of the potion's efficacy. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 3 10:38:54 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2010 10:38:54 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Three Approved GMOs Linked to Organ Damage Message-ID: <2C414D508B204ED0A9A40F12B31CBB01@agingCHS072729> http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/three-approved-gmos-linked-to-organ-damage/ Three Approved GMOs Linked to Organ Damage January 1, 2010 By Rady Ananda In what is being described as the first ever and most comprehensive study of the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers have linked organ damage with consumption of Monsanto's GM maize. All three varieties of GM corn, Mon 810, Mon 863 and NK 603, were approved for consumption by US, European and several other national food safety authorities. Made public by European authorities in 2005, Monsanto's confidential raw data of its 2002 feeding trials on rats that these researchers analyzed is the same data, ironically, that was used to approve them in different parts of the world. The Committee of Research and Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN) and Universities of Caen and Rouen studied Monsanto's 90-day feeding trials data of insecticide producing Mon 810, Mon 863 and Roundup? herbicide absorbing NK 603 varieties of GM maize. The data "clearly underlines adverse impacts on kidneys and liver, the dietary detoxifying organs, as well as different levels of damages to heart, adrenal glands, spleen and haematopoietic system," reported Gilles-Eric S?ralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen. Although different levels of adverse impact on vital organs were noticed between the three GMOs, the 2009 research shows specific effects associated with consumption of each GMO, differentiated by sex and dose. Their December 2009 study appears in the International Journal of Biological Sciences (IJBS) -- http://www.biolsci.org/v05p0706.htm#headingA11 --. This latest study conforms with a 2007 analysis -- http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/gp_briefing_seralini_study.pdf - - by CRIIGEN on Mon 863, published in Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, using the same data. Monsanto rejected the 2007 conclusions, stating: "The analyses conducted by these authors are not consistent with what has been traditionally accepted for use by regulatory toxicologists for analysis of rat toxicology data." [Also see Doull J, Gaylor D, Greim HA, et al. "Report of an expert panel on the reanalysis by S?ralini et al. (2007) of a 90-day study conducted by Monsanto in support of the safety of a genetically modified corn variety (MON 863)." Food Chem Toxicol. 2007; 45:2073-2085.] In an email to me, S?ralini explained that their study goes beyond Monsanto's analysis by exploring the sex-differentiated health effects on mammals, which Doull, et al. ignored: "Our study contradicts Monsanto conclusions because Monsanto systematically neglects significant health effects in mammals that are different in males and females eating GMOs, or not proportional to the dose. This is a very serious mistake, dramatic for public health. This is the major conclusion revealed by our work, the only careful reanalysis of Monsanto crude statistical data." Other problems with Monsanto's conclusions When testing for drug or pesticide safety, the standard protocol is to use three mammalian species. The subject studies only used rats, yet won GMO approval in more than a dozen nations. Chronic problems are rarely discovered in 90 days; most often such tests run for up to two years. Tests "lasting longer than three months give more chances to reveal metabolic, nervous, immune, hormonal or cancer diseases," wrote Seralini, et al. in their Doull rebuttal. [See "How Subchronic and Chronic Health Effects can be Neglected for GMOs, Pesticides or Chemicals." IJBS; 2009; 5(5):438-443.] Further, Monsanto's analysis compared unrelated feeding groups, muddying the results. The June 2009 rebuttal explains, "In order to isolate the effect of the GM transformation process from other variables, it is only valid to compare the GMO . with its isogenic -- http://www.isogenic.info/html/isogenic.html -- non-GM equivalent." The researchers conclude that the raw data from all three GMO studies reveal novel pesticide residues will be present in food and feed and may pose grave health risks to those consuming them. They have called for "an immediate ban on the import and cultivation of these GMOs and strongly recommend additional long-term (up to two years) and multi-generational animal feeding studies on at least three species to provide true scientifically valid data on the acute and chronic toxic effects of GM crops, feed and foods." Human health, of course, is of primary import to us, but ecological effects are also in play. Ninety-nine percent of GMO crops either tolerate or produce insecticide. This may be the reason we see bee colony collapse disorder and massive butterfly deaths. If GMOs are wiping out Earth's pollinators, they are far more disastrous than the threat they pose to humans and other mammals. Further Reading Health Risks of GM Foods, Jeffrey M. Smith http://www.seedsofdeception.com/Public/GeneticRoulette/HealthRisksofGMFoodsSummaryDebate/index.cfm Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops, Union of Concerned Scientists http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/food_and_agriculture/failure-to-yield.pdf Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use: The First Thirteen Years, The Organic Center http://www.organic-center.org/science.pest.php?action=view&report_id=159 =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 3 16:50:41 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2010 16:50:41 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Leading Climate Scientist James Hansen on Why He's Pleased the Copenhagen Summit Failed Message-ID: <79AB57743E4540FFB41264A4580B9BEC@agingCHS072729> http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/22/leading_climate_scientist_james_hansen_on Democracy Now December 22, 2009 Leading Climate Scientist James Hansen on Why He's Pleased the Copenhagen Summit Failed, "Cap and Fade," Climategate and More "Before the Kyoto Protocol, global emissions of carbon dioxide were going up one-and-a-half percent per year. After the accord, they went up three percent per year. That approach simply won't work." -- James Hansen We speak with the nation's leading climate scientist, James Hansen. He wasn't at the Copenhagen climate summit and explains why he thinks it's ultimately better for the planet that the talks collapsed. We also speak with with Dr. Hansen about his new book, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity, and much more. Guest: James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He also teaches at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and has published his first book, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity. AMY GOODMAN: We are just back from Copenhagen. Even as global criticism of the proceedings and final outcome of the two-week climate summit in Copenhagen continues to mount, the United Nations is trying to put a positive spin on the non-binding Copenhagen Accord. Speaking to reporters Monday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon insisted the accord was "quite a significant achievement." SECRETARY-GENERAL BAN KI-MOON: While I'm satisfied that we sealed a deal, I'm aware that the outcome of the Copenhagen conference, including the Copenhagen Accord, did not go as far as many would have hoped. Nonetheless, they represent a beginning, an essential beginning. We have taken an important step in the right direction. AMY GOODMAN: Today I'm joined by the scientist who first convinced the world to take notice of the looming problem of global warming back in the 1980s. Yes, I'm talking about the nation's leading climate scientist, James Hansen. But the outspoken director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies wasn't at Copenhagen. He decided to sit out the climate conference, saying it would be better for the planet if the summit ended in collapse. James Hansen also teaches at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. He's just out with his first book; it's called Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth [about] the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.. Welcome to Democracy Now! JAMES HANSEN: Thanks for having me. AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Hansen, start off with why you weren't at Copenhagen. I mean, this is your thing. It was the global warming summit of summits. JAMES HANSEN: Well, they were talking about having a cap-and-trade- with-offsets agreement, which is analogous to the Kyoto Protocol, which was disastrous. Before the Kyoto Protocol, global emissions of carbon dioxide were going up one-and-a-half percent per year. After the accord, they went up three percent per year. That approach simply won't work. And I'm actually quite pleased with what happened at Copenhagen, because now we have basically a blank slate. We have China and the United States talking to each other, and it's absolutely essential. Those are the two big players that have to come to an agreement. But it has to be an honest agreement, one which addresses the basic problem. And that is that fossil fuels are the cheapest source of energy on the planet. And unless we address that and put a price on the emissions, we can't solve the problem. AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go for a minute to a quote of Paul Krugman. Paul Krugman is the New York Times op-ed columnist. You had written a very interesting piece in the New York Times called "Cap and Fade." The Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said about your December 7th op-ed-his response was called "Unhelpful Hansen." And he said, "James Hansen is a great climate scientist. He was the first to warn about the climate crisis; I take what he says about coal, in particular, very seriously. "Unfortunately, while I defer to him on all matters climate, today's op-ed article suggests [that] he really hasn't made any effort to understand the economics of emissions control. And that's not a small matter, because he's now engaged in a misguided crusade against cap and trade, which is-let's face it-the only form of action against greenhouse gas emissions we have any chance of taking before catastrophe becomes inevitable." Your response? JAMES HANSEN: That's not right. In fact, I've talked with many economists, and the majority of them agree that the cap and trade with offsets is not the way to address the problem. You have to put an honest price on carbon, which is going to have to gradually rise over time. But what you need to do-and many people call that a tax, but in fact the way that it should be done is to give all of the money that's collected in a fee, that should be across the board on oil, gas and coal, collect that money at the mine or at the port of entry from the fossil fuel companies, and then distribute that to the public on a per capita basis to legal residents of the country. Then the person that does-that has less than average carbon emissions would actually make money from the process, and it would stimulate the economy. It would give the public the funds that they need in order to invest in low-carbon technologies. The next time they buy a vehicle, they should get a low-emission one. They should insulate their homes. Such actions. And those people who do that will come out ahead. That's-the economists agree that that's the way you should address the problem, with a price on carbon. Otherwise, the emissions will just continue to go up. AMY GOODMAN: Explain exactly what's meant by "cap and trade." JAMES HANSEN: Cap and trade, they attempt to put a cap on different sources of carbon dioxide emissions. They say there's a limit on how much a given industry in a country can emit. But the problem is that the emissions just go someplace else. That's what happened after Kyoto, and that's what would happen again, if-as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, they will be burned someplace. You know, the Europeans thought they actually reduced their emissions after Kyoto, but what happened was the products that had been made in their countries began to be made in other countries, which were burning the cheapest form of fossil fuel, so the total emissions actually increased. AMY GOODMAN: Let me play an excerpt of what the Australian scientist Tim Flannery says. He was speaking on Democracy Now! earlier this year in defense of cap and trade. TIM FLANNERY: Look, cap and trade, by itself, is not enough, but it is essential in terms of these international negotiations. And one way of showing that is to look at the alternatives. Just say the US went with a carbon tax. That would leave the President in a position where he'd be going to Copenhagen and saying, "Look, we've got a carbon tax, but we've got no idea really what it's going to do in terms of our emissions profile." So, countries would just say, "Well, what are you actually pledging to? What are you-how are you going to deal with your emissions?" You know, the only method, really, to allow countries to see transparently what other countries intend to do and then share the burden equally is through a cap-and-trade system. So it's not enough to deal with emissions overall, but it is an essential prerequisite for any global deal on climate change. AMY GOODMAN: The Australian scientist Tim Flannery. Dr. Hansen? JAMES HANSEN: Well, I guess I would turn Krugman's comment around and say Tim is a great biologist, but he hasn't looked at the data on emissions and the effect of a cap with offsets. In fact, it does not decrease emissions. And that's one reason, in my book, I say that I'm going to update the graphs every month and every year, just showing what's really happening, because, in fact, you have to actually decrease the emissions. And the only way that will happen is if the price of the fossil fuels is gradually rising so that the alternatives-energy efficiency, renewable energies, nuclear power, the things that can compete with fossil fuels-begin to be cost-competitive. That's the only way it will work. AMY GOODMAN: Well, let's go back for a minute and talk about what we are actually facing. I mean, it's amazing to come back from Copenhagen after two weeks there, where the entire discussion was about global warming, back to the US media, where there is almost no mention. It's more the politics of what did it mean for President Obama to swoop in, did he save the talks, did he collapse the talks, whatever. But actually, what the stakes are. You begin your book, Storms of My Grandchildren, by talking about a tipping point. What do you mean by that, Dr. Hansen? JAMES HANSEN: Well, there are tipping points in the climate system, where we can push the system beyond a point where the dynamics begins to take over. For example, in the case of an ice sheet, once it begins to disintegrate and slide into the ocean, you've passed the point where you can stop it. So that's what we have to avoid. Another tipping point is in the survival of species. As we begin to put pressure on species and move the climate zone so that some of the species can't survive because they can only live within certain climate parameters, because species depend upon each other, you can drive an ecosystem such that when some species go extinct, then the entire ecosystem will collapse. So you don't want to push the system that far. And these tipping points are not hypothetical. We know from the earth's history that these have happened in the past, especially when we've had large global warmings. We've driven more than half the species on the planet to extinction. And then, over hundreds of thousands and millions of years, new species come into being. But for any time scale that we can imagine, we would be leaving a much more desolate planet for our children and grandchildren and future generations. So we don't want to pass those tipping points. AMY GOODMAN: And how do you know that we are headed in that direction? JAMES HANSEN: Yeah. AMY GOODMAN: What, in your work, has told to this? JAMES HANSEN: Well, in the case, say, of the ice sheets and sea level, we see. We began in 2002 to get this spectacular data from the gravity satellite, which measures the gravitational field of the earth with such a high precision that you can get the mass of the Greenland ice sheet and the Antarctic ice sheets. And what we see is that in 2002 to 2005, we were losing mass from Greenland at a rate of about 150 cubic kilometers per year. Well, now that's doubled to about 300 cubic kilometers per year. And likewise, the mass loss from Antarctica has also doubled over that time period. So we can see that we're moving toward a tipping point where those ice sheets will begin to disintegrate more rapidly, and sea level will go up. And that's one of the bases, and others, for saying that a safe level of carbon dioxide is actually less than what we have now. It's- AMY GOODMAN: Which is? JAMES HANSEN: What we have now is 387 parts per million. But we're going to have to bring that down to 350 parts per million or less. And that's still possible, provided we phase out coal emissions over the next few decades. That's possible. We would also have to prohibit unconventional fossil fuels like tar sands and oil shale. But if you look at what governments are doing, the reason that you know that the kind of accords they're talking about are not going to work is because, look at what they're actually doing. The United States had just agreed to have a pipeline from the tar sands in Canada to the United States. AMY GOODMAN: In Alberta. JAMES HANSEN: Yeah, so they're planning on actually burning those tar sands, which we can't do. AMY GOODMAN: Explain how that works. What are the tar sands? I mean, this was a major issue in Copenhagen, and we played a number of pieces, especially indigenous people, for example, marching on the Canadian embassy- JAMES HANSEN: Yeah. AMY GOODMAN: -to try to stop the drilling. JAMES HANSEN: They're among the dirtiest fossil fuels on the planet. There's oil mixed in the ground with the sand. You have to cook that material to get oil to drip out of it. That takes a lot of energy to cook it. And then you end up with oil, which also has carbon. Then you burn the oil, and you get more carbon. So it's much more carbon-intensive than oil itself. AMY GOODMAN: We get more oil from Canada than anywhere else in the world, is that right? JAMES HANSEN: I'm not sure about that, but the plan is, in the long run. There's much more there in tar sands than even in Saudi Arabia. So the point is, we're going to have to move to the energy system beyond fossil fuels. We need to drive the economic system so that we move to a clean energy future. And there are many other advantages in doing that: cleaning up the atmosphere, cleaning up the ocean. You get-the mercury and arsenic and all these pollutants are coming from fossil fuels. So we need to get off this fossil fuel addiction. And the way you do that is to put a gradually rising price on the carbon emissions. AMY GOODMAN: How many times have you been arrested protesting now the issue of coal and mountaintop removal? JAMES HANSEN: A couple of times in West Virginia, with regard to the mountaintop removal, and in Boston, where we were sleeping out on the Boston Commons. But, yeah, trying to draw- AMY GOODMAN: So, how did you go from being the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies to getting arrested for these protests? JAMES HANSEN: Well, these protests are what we call civil resistance, in the same way that Gandhi did. We're trying to draw attention to the injustice, because this is really analogous. This is a moral issue, analogous to that faced by Lincoln with slavery or by Churchill with Nazism, because what we have here is a tremendous case of intergenerational injustice, because we are causing the problem, but our children and grandchildren are going to suffer the consequences. And our parents didn't know that they were causing a problem for future generations, but we do. The science has become very clear. And we're going to have to move to a clean energy future. And we could do that. And there would be many other advantages of doing it. Why don't we do it? Because of the special interests and because of the role of money in Washington. AMY GOODMAN: Now, you don't just protest outside of, you know, these companies that do mountaintop removal; you were protesting outside the Natural Resources Defense Council, the NRDC. JAMES HANSEN: Yeah. They and some other environmental organizations have become too much of the Washington scene, and they're trying to work on the terms that Washington now works on, in which the lobbyists are driving the legislation. We have to get the legislation designed in the public's interest, not in the interests of the people who have the money to influence the process. AMY GOODMAN: We're going to break and then come back. Our guest today is James Hansen. Storms of My [Grandchildren]: The Truth [about] the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity is his first book. He's the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, teaches at Columbia University. He's been arrested protesting coal mining and didn't go to Copenhagen, because he wanted those talks to collapse, felt they wouldn't save the planet. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute. AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Jim Hansen. Storms of My Grandchildren is his new book, The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity. I wanted to play for you, Dr. Hansen, the comment of the Prime Minister of Nepal. Days before the climate talks began in Copenhagen, cabinet ministers from Nepal held a cabinet meeting on Mount Everest, at the base, to send a message on the impact of global warming on the Himalayas. I spoke to the Nepalese Prime Minister in Copenhagen. PRIME MINISTER MADHAV KUMAR NEPAL: Global warming has its impact on the top of the mountain. And the snows are melting. Glaciers, many of the glaciers, Himalaya glaciers, has evaporated, has disappeared. Many glacial lakes are emerging, and many of the glacial lakes are the [inaudible]. So we have seen many landslides there and no regular land or rainfall there. Droughts and all these problems relating to the health of the people has been seen. And we have seen power plants that is damaging many of the villages. The natural calamities has been seen. And the impact on the mountainous region is much more in the downstream, where 1.3 billion of the population live in India, in Bangladesh. So the problem of Nepal is not only the problem of Nepal's people, rather the problem of at least 1.3 billion of population. AMY GOODMAN: That's the Nepali Prime Minister Nepal. That is his name. Your response to that, Dr. Jim Hansen? JAMES HANSEN: Well, yeah, we see the climate changes. It's at the top of the mountains. The glaciers all around the world are melting. And those glaciers are actually very important, because they provide fresh water for the major rivers of the world. During the dry season, the rivers, such as the Brahmaputra and the Ganges Rivers, more than half the water in the river is from melting glaciers. So once those glaciers are gone, it's a real problem. But the problems are also occurring at the other end of the rivers. The coastline of Bangladesh, for example, is going to be moving inward, and you're going to have hundreds of millions of people who will be refugees. So it's especially these poor nations around the world that will suffer from climate change. AMY GOODMAN: Last week I also caught up with the President of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed. Now, this is a low-lying island, the Maldives, at the frontline of climate change. And I asked him what a three degree Celsius rise in temperature, because the IFCCC, the climate change conference-apparently there was this document that we exposed on Democracy Now! with the French news organization Mediapart, saying that their plans, what they were putting forward, wouldn't actually increase the temperature by two degrees Celsius, but actually by three degrees. And I asked the Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed to describe what that would mean for his country. PRESIDENT MOHAMED NASHEED: That would mean that we won't be around. That would mean the death of us. And that's really not acceptable for us. We cannot survive with that kind of temperature rise. AMY GOODMAN: For people who don't understand climate change, which is probably most people in the United States, why wouldn't you be around? What would happen? PRESIDENT MOHAMED NASHEED: Sea levels would rise. We are just 1.5 meters above the water. And if we have sea levels rising to seventy, eighty centimeters, that's going to eat up most of our country. So we won't be around. AMY GOODMAN: Are you making preparations for a mass population removal to dry land? PRESIDENT MOHAMED NASHEED: Well, you know, we've been there in the middle of the Indian Ocean for the last 10,000 years, and we have a written history that goes back 2,000 years. I can move, but where would all the butterflies go, all the sounds go, all the culture go, all the color go? I don't think it really is a feasible option to move. It's going to be almost impossible for us to convince our people to move. AMY GOODMAN: That is the Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed. JAMES HANSEN: Yeah, yeah. That's exactly the problem. And that's what was happening in Copenhagen. The wealthy countries are trying to basically buy off these countries that will, in effect, disappear. It doesn't make sense. I mean, and the danger is that these countries will see this money-that's why the United States offered to promote $100 billion per year, which is imaginary money, because I don't think that's going to happen. The United States' share of that, based on our contribution to the carbon in the atmosphere, would be 27 percent, $27 billion per year. Do you think that our Congress is going to vote $27 billion per year to give these poor countries? It's not going to happen. What we-but that's the danger, that these poor countries will say, "Gee, that's a lot of money. Maybe we can get that." What we actually have to do is solve the problem, not pay people off. And that requires reducing the carbon emissions. AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about the East Anglia controversy, the University of East Anglia, that the climate deniers, the climate change deniers, are using. Explain what happened, actually, the discussion between the scientists, what is being called Climategate, in emails that hackers got a hold of, and how it's being used. JAMES HANSEN: Yeah, well, obviously, this discussion between some of the climate scientists revealed frustrations that they have with the contrarians who continually will nitpick about "Is the station data good?" or "Is that one not?" And what they should have done is release their full data immediately, because there's no question about the actual climate change. And by having-by this attempt to not be completely open, they opened themselves up to criticism. But, in fact, the climate record is not debated, and it's not debatable. If they give all the data, then they give the opportunity to somebody else to show, "Oh, it's really not warming." But, of course, they can't show that, because the evidence is all over the place that the climate really is changing. But unfortunately, this episode has been very confusing to the public, so now there are many in the United States, especially, who are skeptical about whether the climate change is real. So it's been a public relations disaster, but it doesn't change the science one iota. In fact, the science has become clearer and clearer over the last several years. AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about where the United States is versus Europe? I talked to people throughout Europe in Copenhagen. I mean, thousands of people came out. Whether you wanted those talks to collapse or not, the level of networking and of groups all over the world was truly remarkable that took place there largely outside of the Bella Center- JAMES HANSEN: Yeah. AMY GOODMAN: -but also inside, because in the last few days, civil society was really kept out of those talks. But they said the United States is years behind in just the discourse, because we are at the point of- JAMES HANSEN: Yeah. AMY GOODMAN: -if you even have a discussion in the US media, it's about whether global warming exists. JAMES HANSEN: Yeah. AMY GOODMAN: Whereas in Europe, it's about-the debates are about, well, what do we do? JAMES HANSEN: Yeah. AMY GOODMAN: I mean, carbon sequestration? Should there be cap and trade? What are the alternatives? That's where the debates lie there. Here, we're way behind. JAMES HANSEN: Yeah, and for a very good reason: because of the effectiveness of the industries that don't want to see change. They have had an enormous impact on the public's perception of the issue. AMY GOODMAN: Where do you see that with scientists, for example? We just did that piece on healthcare, the amount of money they're pouring in lobbying on healthcare. What is it in-on global warming legislation that didn't pass the Senate, $300,000 a day from coal, oil, gas? JAMES HANSEN: Well, yeah, there are more than two-and-a-half thousand energy lobbyists in Washington, so that's more than four per congressperson. And that's-unfortunately, the public just doesn't have that kind of representation. And it's also a fact that the industry influences the media, so that you always see this presented as if it's an either-there's one side and there's another side, as if they were equal. But, in fact, the science has become crystal clear. And we have the most authoritative scientific body in the world in the National Academy of Sciences. So all the President would need to do if he wants to make this issue clear to the public is ask the Academy to give him a clear report on this subject, and the answer would be very clear. AMY GOODMAN: The effect of the EPA now announcing that carbon, methane, that they are threats to public health? Can the EPA just start regulating regardless of Congress passing legislation? JAMES HANSEN: Well, they can. But then, when we have a new election and a different party comes to power, that their ability to do that might be changed. And so, that's why it's preferable to have laws written by Congress and signed by the President. But in the absence of that, EPA can get us moving in the right direction. And they are beginning to do that, for example, in vehicle efficiencies. AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the level of suppression of science in the United States. You personally experienced it. There was this expos? in the Times where you first were talking to Andrew Revkin and explaining what was happening under the Bush administration, and even before that, the suppression of your work when you testified before Congress to, what, Senator Al Gore at the time. JAMES HANSEN: Yeah. There are two major problems. One is that the public affairs offices of the science agencies are headed by political appointees, and they tend to try to control the information that goes from the science agencies to the public, if it is a politically sensitive topic. In many topics, maybe 99 percent, there's no interference. But when it becomes a sensitive issue, as it was with global warming, there is that tendency. So the solution to that would be to have professionals, career civil servants, head the public affairs offices. Otherwise, they are offices of propaganda. And it still-it doesn't matter which, whether it's Democrats or Republicans; as soon as there's an election, a change of the party in power, they replace the heads of these offices. So they're still offices of propaganda, in my opinion. The other thing is, is if a government scientist testifies to Congress, he has to first show his testimony to the White House. Doesn't make sense. Why should Congress not get the best opinion of the scientists? This is a power which is just taken by the executive branch, and the Congress has not objected to it. Again, it doesn't make sense, because the scientific-the scientists are paid by the public, so they shouldn't be under the control of the White House. They should be free to give the best scientific advice they can. AMY GOODMAN: You had a young man, twenty-four years old, named George Deutsch, put in charge of you as the top scientist over at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies under the Bush administration. It turned out he hadn't graduated from college, whatever. He was determining who you got to talk to in the media, what information you were putting out? He was- JAMES HANSEN: Well, that's the way the story came out in the New York Times. And it sounded as if this low-level person was responsible for the censorship. He was reporting to the highest level at NASA headquarters, the head of the public affairs offices. So, in fact, this was the problem I just described. It's the fact that the administration in power feels that it gets to control the information that goes to the public. It doesn't make sense in a democracy. A democracy doesn't work right if the public cannot be honestly informed. AMY GOODMAN: Do you feel your work is being suppressed now? You still work with NASA. JAMES HANSEN: No, I don't feel that it's being suppressed now. But the fundamental problem has not been solved, in that the heads of these offices are still political appointees. But I've been-ever since this issue became open during the Bush administration, I've been allowed to say what I want, because I think the bad publicity of any censorship is not worth it, so they're not trying to control what I say. AMY GOODMAN: You were reporting to the top people. It was not only the top people controlling what you had to say. You were meeting with Dick Cheney, the Vice President, you were meeting with Colin Powell, to warn them about global warming. What was their response? JAMES HANSEN: Well, yeah, I had the opportunity at the beginning of the Bush administration to speak to the energy climate task force, which was headed by Vice President Cheney and which had six cabinet members plus the EPA administrator and the national security adviser on it. But what I learned was-and we, I think, gave them a clear story about the dangers in continuing greenhouse gas emissions, but the decisions on what the policies were made were made a couple of weeks before they listened to the science stories, as I discuss in one of the chapters in my book. So the policies were based on other considerations rather than the scientific information. AMY GOODMAN: Finally, what do you think needs to happen right now? JAMES HANSEN: Yeah, what needs to happen right now-we have this great opportunity this spring, I would say, to have discussions in the House and Senate about what really needs to be done to solve this problem. And it's not cap and trade with offsets. We can prove that that's completely ineffectual. What we have to do is put a price on carbon, and the money that's collected needs to be given to the public, not used for boondoggles, like Congress is taking-plans to take the money from cap and trade that's collected in selling the permits to pollute and to use that money for things like clean coal or to give the money back to the polluters. That won't solve the problem. We have to give the money to the public. AMY GOODMAN: Do you see the Obama administration in any way going in this direction? JAMES HANSEN: I think it's possible. There were a couple of encouraging things in Copenhagen. For one thing, Al Gore made a clear statement that a carbon price is a better solution than cap and trade. And John Kerry also indicated that he had an open mind on that question. So that's why I say the discussions in the next few months are very important, because the way the United States goes is going to determine the way the world goes, I think. AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for being with us. Dr. James Hansen is our guest. He is author of Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity and one of the world's leading climatologists. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 3 17:29:44 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2010 17:29:44 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Has The Left Missed The Boat On Climate Change? Message-ID: <36228D1E26CB41679FFDC9950C8FC460@agingCHS072729> http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/23466 Znet December 24, 2009 Has The Left Missed The Boat On Climate Change? By Robin Hahnel Two Train Wrecks In Copenhagen Make no mistake about it, formal negotiations in Copenhagen ended in a train wreck that no spin doctor can put a good face on and was a huge setback for the prospects of averting climate change in an equitable way. Bill McKibben summarized it nicely in Mother Jones on the day the conference ended. "The President of the United States did several things today: (1) He blew up the United Nations. The idea that there is a world community that means something has disappeared tonight. (2) He formed a league of super-polluters, and would-be super polluters. China, the US, and India don't want anyone controlling their use of coal in any meaningful way. It is a coalition of foxes who will together govern the henhouse." Whereas Bush spurned international cooperation, Obama showed up and mouthed some pretty words. But one leads by example, and Obama led by very bad example. Instead of embracing a multilateral solution Obama undermined multilateralism by once again making clear the US will not commit to binding reductions under UN auspices as every other Annex-1 country has agreed to do, and then proceeded to lure major players into private discussions about voluntary arrangements in lieu of a comprehensive international treaty. Instead of acknowledging the principle of "differentiated responsibilities and capabilities" agreed to in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and implemented in Kyoto in 1997, Obama insisted that the US and China -- whose per capita emissions are one fifth as large as the US and per capita GDP is still less than one tenth as large as the US - be treated on similar terms. With no reason for anyone to believe he can get the Senate to ratify a treaty with binding reductions for the US, with no reason to believe he can secure a meaningful climate bill from the US Congress, with no reason to believe he would use his power to order significant reductions through the EPA if Congress balks, and with only his verbal offer to reduce US emissions by a measly 17% from 2005 levels by 2020, no wonder other country delegations followed Obama's bad lead and retrenched instead of offering to make further sacrifices in Copenhagen. And yes, the Chinese took the bait and helped the US paint them as "co-bad guy" by rejecting on-site inspections -- which were neither under discussion at Copenhagen, nor necessary to verify national emissions. Whether or not the blow Obama dealt to multilateral efforts to combat climate change through binding reductions consistent with "differentiated responsibilities and capabilities" in Copenhagen will prove fatal, remains to be seen. By January 31, 2010 MDCs, classified as "Annex-1 countries," are supposed to report how much they are willing to reduce their emissions, and a year from now there will be another meeting in Mexico City where at this moment it is anybody's guess what will or will not be agreed to. In Rio de Janeiro in 1992 countries agreed climate change was a serious international problem, but left every country to decide on a voluntary basis what it was willing to do. In Kyoto in 1997 countries admitted that voluntary reductions had proven almost completely ineffective. Economic theory proved correct in this regard: Because of the "free rider incentive problem" theory predicts it is only in the self-interest of a country to reduce its own emissions by the amount needed if the country can be assured that other countries will do likewise. Kyoto acknowledged this truth, provided the necessary guarantee to all Annex-1 countries, and in exchange every Annex-1 country except the US eventually ratified the treaty and committed to binding reductions. Kyoto also implemented the principle of "differentiated responsibilities and capabilities" agreed to in Rio by requiring binding emission reductions from Annex-1 countries while permitting LDCs, classified as "non-Annex-1" countries, to continue to address their own emissions on a voluntary basis for the time being. In other words, the Kyoto Protocol took us two huge steps forward: (1) It recognized the necessity of mutual commitment to binding targets in order to achieve necessary levels of global reduction. (2) It distributed the costs of averting climate change differently based on different responsibilities (cumulative emissions per capita) and different capabilities (GDP per capita.) Twelve years later in Copenhagen both of these steps forward have been placed in serious jeopardy. However, the train wreck in formal negotiations between country delegations overshadowed another train wreck that has been coming for some time. The divide between some on the Left who support putting a price on carbon emissions through a cap and trade treaty, and others on the Left who deny that putting a price on carbon is a necessary and important step forward, and denounce carbon markets as a "pretend solution" that diverts attention from "real solutions" was more visible than ever in Copenhagen. While the Left needn't agree on everything, when we contradict one another to the extent that Amy Goodman can't figure out what message to bring home from Copenhagen for her Democracy Now audience, the Left also has a problem. Has the Left missed the boat on climate change? What an outrageous insinuation! Has not the Left been a lonely voice of wisdom insisting that climate change, as well as other forms of environmental deterioration, cannot be avoided if we fail to replace the economics of competition and greed -- a.k.a. capitalism - with the economics of equitable cooperation - a.k.a. true eco-socialism? Are not we the ones who point out that capitalism is an economic way of life that has no future because it will soon destroy the biosphere? Are not we the ones who have explained why even a better regulated and more egalitarian capitalism would still mistreat the environment because: (1) Capitalist economies pollute too much because markets over produce goods whose production and/or consumption generate negative "externalities" like pollution. (2) Capitalist economies fail to protect the environment sufficiently because markets under supply "public goods" like environmental restoration. (3) Capitalist economies extract natural resources too fast because rates of profit for private owners are higher than the rate at which society should "discount" future compared to present benefits from using natural resources. (4) Markets for labor and consumer goods create "perverse incentives" which lure people to take too much of their productivity gains as individual consumption and too little as more environmentally friendly collective consumption and leisure time. And finally, (5) markets fail to generate information necessary to know how high corrective environmental taxes and subsidies should be, while spawning powerful political lobbies with interests in underestimating the size of necessary correctives. (See Robin Hahnel, "The Case Against Markets," Journal of Economic Issues (41, 4), December 2007: 1139-1159.) However, for all our wisdom about how the defining features of capitalism bear primary responsibility for turning humans into lemmings, I believe too many on the Left have made themselves irrelevant to responses to climate change in the here and now by failing to understand the importance of putting a significant price on carbon emissions, and by dismissing cap and trade policies out of hand because, in the words of the Durban Declaration of October 2004, they "commodify... the earth's carbon-cycling capacity into property to be bought and sold in a global market." Unfortunately, as long as the albatross of global capitalism remains around our necks our best chance to avert climate change is through an international cap and trade treaty that puts a significant price on carbon emissions, and our best chance to do this equitably is to preserve the Kyoto framework and fix the carbon market that is one of its central features. It is one thing to point out the ultimate absurdity of putting prices on different parts of a natural environment which is, in fact, a single interconnected ecosystem that all life, including human life, depends on. It is another thing when we live in a world driven by market forces to denounce those who work to increase the price of carbon emissions from its present price of zero to as close to its true social cost as is politically possible. Similarly, it is one thing to insist that nature should belong to no one and everyone but it is another thing to sit on the sidelines while giant corporations seize valuable property rights to store carbon in the upper atmosphere in the greatest wealth give-away in history, while ordinary citizens receive none because one does not believe the atmosphere should be commoditized. Further it is one thing to point out that it would be better to plan how to use and preserve the natural environment in a democratic, equitable, and effective way rather than leave those decisions to be made very poorly by market forces but it is another thing to ignore the fact that we socialists failed to replace capitalism with socialism in the twentieth century, which means that decisions about how to use the environment are actually made, and will continue to be made for some time, by market forces where a key price, the price of carbon emission, is completely out of whack. Finally, it is one thing to say: "I don't want things decided by market forces and private property rights," but it is quite another to say: "Even though things are being decided by market forces and property rights I don't care what those prices are or who gets new property rights." Prospects for human and other species do ultimately hinge on whether global capitalism is replaced by a completely different economic system -- a system with no elites to prey on their fellow humans and the natural environment, where the associated producers and consumers democratically plan and coordinate their own economic activities based on reasonably accurate information about the consequences of different alternatives. And the sooner this happens the safer and better off both humans and the environment will be. But when dealing with climate change it is irresponsible not to be realistic about time frames. Being realistic about time frames does not mean we must abandon our conviction that humans are capable of correcting our errors and forging new economic institutions to help us develop more democratic, equitable, and environmentally sustainable habits. Similarly being realistic about time frames does not mean we must cease or postpone our efforts to replace a dysfunctional system that commodifies everything but knows the value of nothing with an economic system that facilitates equitable cooperation and environmental stewardship. But being realistic about time frames does mean recognizing that the global economy will continue for some time to be dominated by giant corporations guided by the profit criterion and market forces -- while nature proceeds on its own schedule. As a self-proclaimed "market abolitionist" I understand why carbon trading is a bitter pill to swallow for all who abhor the commodification of everything, including the natural environment. But we socialists need to look to ourselves. Had we done our work well the human species would have abandoned capitalism and the false illusion that commodification is the solution to all economic problems long before we had damaged the environment to the point where we are perilously close to triggering cataclysmic climate change. Had participatory, democratic socialism replaced capitalism during the twentieth century -- as it should have - we would be in a position to respond to the threat of climate change very differently: Once scientists made us aware of the consequences of inaction we would have had well-tested institutions and procedures at our disposal for making efficient and equitable choices about where and how to reduce carbon emissions, and how to distribute the costs of reductions fairly between and within countries without resort to commodification. But the last time I checked, participatory eco-socialism had yet to replace global capitalism, and pretending it has does not yield effective policy responses in the world we live in. After denouncing cap and trade as a "pretend" solution, Climate Justice Action issued the following "non-negotiable demands" in advance of the Copenhagen meetings this month: (1) Leave fossil fuels in the ground. (2) Reassert peoples' and community control over production. (3) Relocalize food production. (4) Massively reduce overconsumption, particularly in the North. (5) Respect indigenous and forest peoples' rights. (6) Recognize the ecological and climate debt owed to the peoples of the South and make reparation. And Climate Justice Action went on to urge people to hope for a "Seattling" of Copenhagen. Turn Back From The Road To Nowhere The October 2004 Durban Declaration states: "As representatives of people's movements and independent organizations, we reject the claim that carbon trading will halt the climate crisis. History has seen attempts to commodify land, food, labor, forests, water, genes and ideas. Carbon trading follows in the footsteps of this history and turns the earth's carbon-cycling capacity into property to be bought or sold in a global market. Through this process of creating a new commodity -- carbon -- the Earth's ability and capacity to support a climate conducive to life and human societies is now passing into the same corporate hands that are destroying the climate.... We denounce the further delays in ending fossil fuel extraction that are being caused by corporate, government and United Nations' attempts to construct a `carbon market'." In their communiqu?s for Copenhagen last week Climate Justice Action not only denounced cap and trade and carbon markets as "pretend" solutions that divert attention from their "real" solutions I analyze below, they urged people to hope for a "Seattling" of Copenhagen on December 16. I was in Seattle and fully supported shutting down the World Trade Organization Ministerial Meetings that took place there in 1999 because the policies the WTO was created to compel countries to accept - some of which, like TRIPS and MAI, have nothing to do with trade at all - are antithetical to economic development, economic justice, and environmental protection. I helped organize protests to shut down the IMF meetings in Washington DC in April 2000 because the IMF has been even more responsible for spreading neoliberal economic misery -- twisting LDC arms to permit capital liberalization and then lowering the boom when financial crises ensue by requiring draconian conditionalities in exchange for bailout loans that serve the interests of wealthy international investors at the expense of the basic economic needs of LDC populations. At least for the foreseeable future the programs, policies, and governing structures of both organizations are beyond repair, and a majority of the world's inhabitants and the environment are better off the more we disrupt the IMF and WTO and reduce their power to do evil. However, the United Nations and the Conference of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP) are not the IMF or the WTO. Of course Leftists have justifiable criticisms of some UN governing structures, the Security Council chief among them, but as far as I know it is nationalistic, right wing American Firsters, not Leftists, who call for trashing the UN. Leftists have traditionally supported the UN, particularly against US exceptionalism, and called for reforms that would make the UN more democratic, strong, and effective. Moreover, unlike capital liberalization, trade liberalization, privatization, structural adjustment programs, TRIPS, MAI, and bailouts for international investors but austerity programs for stricken country populations, the UN sponsored Kyoto Protocol establishes a constructive framework for addressing climate change in an equitable way. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) sets the worthy target of reducing global emissions by whatever proves necessary to prevent average global temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees centigrade, and embraces the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities" as our guide for how to reach it. This is not to say that people should not protest at COP meetings. Nor am I questioning the tactics protesters use. Not nearly enough is being done and the clock is ticking. The more people who demonstrate, and the more committed, serious, and militant protesters are, the more likely we are to push our agendas forward. We should protest obstructionist behavior on the part of some government delegations attending these meetings. We should protest the lack of progress in securing a binding commitment from the US delegation and President. We should protest failure to secure deeper reductions from other LDC governments. We should protest attempts by any delegations to renege on the promise to address climate change fairly. If this is what Climate Justice Action means by "Seattling" Copenhagen, I have no objection. But anyone who thinks shutting down COP meetings in Copenhagen, or preventing the meetings from taking place in Mexico City next year, or derailing the Kyoto process in general will improve the chances of averting climate change in an effective and equitable way is dead wrong. We should continue to explain at every opportunity how and why capitalism is the major cause of climate change. Not technology per se, not population growth per se, not human greed per se, but the central pillars of capitalism are the underlying cause of climate change. Private ownership of the means of production and market forces make those who fight to protect the natural environment swim upstream against the current because they reward those who adopt environmentally destructive technologies and life styles and penalize those who attempt to develop new, sustainable habits. But we must distinguish between the true message that capitalism is the root source of the problem from the false message that pursuit of effective and fair policies to combat climate change is pointless as long as capitalism persists. Evaluating the predictable effects of alternative policy interventions in a market system to identify the most fair and efficient among them is not the same as endorsing the market system or claiming that the market system is capable of yielding fair and efficient outcomes. I have argued for more than twenty years that there is no role for markets in a desirable economy, that a truly democratic, fair, and sustainable non-market "participatory economy" is perfectly possible, and that we need to prioritize organizing systems of equitable and sustainable cooperation within capitalism right now rather than postpone these projects until after the capitalist system has been overthrown. And I continue to press these points at every opportunity. But most people do not yet live in a post-market economy, and those who ignore this unfortunate fact of life do so at the peril of curtailing climate change before it is too late. To be taken seriously Leftists must stop mindless trashing of carbon trading and belittling the importance of reducing the social costs of averting climate change. As I explain in Part 3, trading lowers the cost of reducing emissions which makes it easier to win political support for even lower caps; and trading can generate sizable flows of income from North to South. Yes, important changes in a post-Kyoto treaty are necessary to make a cap and trade treaty effective and equitable, and we must demand the kinds of changes I discuss in Part 3. What are we to make of Climate Justice Action's demands in Copenhagen? (1) Leave fossil fuels in the ground. Averting climate change means converting from fossil fuels to renewables by definition. So demanding to leave fossil fuels in the ground does no more than state the obvious. But it is hardly an answer to the question: What policy will best achieve the objective of keeping fossil fuels in the ground? Since urgency and dedication are a major part of what is required for success, "Keep the Oil in the Soil and the Coal in the Hole" campaigns which mobilize citizens to engage in mass protests and civil disobedience at mines and oil wells - but preferably at company headquarters if demonstrators want to display class consciousness -- are an important, positive catalyst. But heroic protest and civil disobedience are only one part of an effective program to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Unless governments are compelled to cap emissions by an international treaty, and unless governments implement domestic policies that reduce the demand for fossil fuels, demonstrators engaging in civil disobedience will be rounded up and arrested by armed police and military personnel to little avail. So just as it is counterproductive for mainstream environmental NGOs to criticize heroic demonstrators whose personal sacrifices do advance the cause, it is also counterproductive for those who "put their lives on the line" to criticize others who work tirelessly to secure an international treaty that is stronger and fairer, and domestic policies that reduce the demand for fossil fuels. (2) Reassert peoples' and community control over production. If this is not a demand that participatory eco-socialism be adopted, I don't know what it means. While the environment will remain at risk until the world is practicing participatory eco-socialism, and we should explain why at every opportunity, participatory socialism will only come about when we have built a majoritarian movement that wants it, led by a large minority who have already learned how to practice it effectively. Going to international meetings right now to "demand" this concession from leaders of capitalist governments assembled to address climate change only reveals how far we are from winning something that by its nature must be taken, not given. (3) Relocalize food production. Yes, of course this must be done, but how? What policies will best achieve this objective? Yes, of course relocalizing food production is called for, but if complete self-sufficiency in food is not the goal, how much relocalization is appropriate? Moreover, even if the optimal relocalization of food production were achieved, absent an international treaty to cap global emissions sufficiently and fairly, climate change would not be averted, nor would major global inequities be eliminated. (4) Massively reduce overconsumption, particularly in the North. Who could object to reducing overconsumption? And who would deny there is more overconsumption in the global north than the global south? But again, this only restates the obvious and provides no clue as to how best to accomplish this necessary goal. (5) Respect indigenous and forest peoples' rights. This is necessary because it is an egregious violation of human rights to fail to do so. And it is important to point out that a side benefit of securing indigenous rights is that native lands will invariably be better protected when they are more firmly under indigenous control. Moreover, demanding respect for indigenous rights at UN gatherings charged with averting climate change in equitable ways, attended by representatives of governments who violate indigenous rights, is quite appropriate. But expropriation has gone on too long and been too extensive for restoration of native lands to suffice as a cure for climate change absent other policies. (6) Recognize the ecological and climate debt owed to the peoples of the South and make reparation. This demand is just and UN sponsored meetings to avert climate change are the appropriate place to make it. However, that does not mean that insisting on the word "reparation" is a good choice. There is no need to "demand" that the UNFCCC recognize the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities" because it already does. Moreover, the UNFCCC has defined "differentiated responsibilities" to mean that the global South bears much less "responsibility" for causing climate change because its cumulative emissions per capita are miniscule compared to cumulative emissions per capita in the North; and the UNFCCC has defined "differentiated capabilities" to mean that income and wealth per capita in the South are much less than in the North. As a matter of fact the UNFCCC has even stipulated that achieving economic development and overcoming poverty must take priority in the South, and whatever role the South plays in averting climate change should not interfere with its ability to achieve its primary objective of economic development. In other words, we can either "demand" that the UNFCCC live up to its word and not abandon its own principles of fairness, or we can "demand" that the UNFCCC commit to a concept it has never agreed to discuss, as far as I am aware. It is also far from obvious that the concept of "reparations" is superior on moral or ideological grounds. Is petitioning for debts owed better than insisting on one's right to be treated fairly? In a world where what is deemed "politically possible" invariably falls so far short of what is necessary, fair, and humanly feasible, there is an important role for the kind of demands Climate Justice Action makes. But it is important to distinguish between demands for what amounts to system change that are not going to happen in the near future, and demands that could be won even without systemic change. And it is important to determine if there are demands that are achievable now that would substantially improve outcomes. A Way Forward What should Leftists do between now and the meetings of the Conference of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol in Mexico next year to get our own train as well as international negotiations back on track? We must begin by affirming how Kyoto put us on the right track, and insist that formal negotiations get back on the track that began in Rio and ran through Kyoto. (1) Climate change will not be averted unless countries mutually agree to binding reductions in an international treaty. Any illusion that voluntary actions on the part of countries, or even small groups of countries in consort, will secure reductions sufficient to avert climate change is pure fantasy. Theory predicts a voluntary approach will not work and the historical record between Rio and Kyoto confirms it. (2) Countries bear different responsibilities for causing climate change, countries have different capabilities to bear the costs of averting climate change, and efforts to mitigate climate change should reflect these "differential responsibilities and capabilities." Countries where the majority of citizens have yet to enjoy the benefits of economic development should not be expected to bear the same burdens as more developed countries to prevent climate change. If anything good came out of Copenhagen it is that the less developed countries made very clear they will not agree to any treaty that in effect requires them to give up hope of developing. But Kyoto was flawed in important ways, and we must demand key changes in a post Kyoto treaty. In short, using Copenhagen as a wakeup call to get Kyoto fixed and back on track is our best chance to combat climate change effectively and fairly in the foreseeable future. (1) Set a cap on global emissions at whatever level the scientific community tells us is necessary to stabilize carbon concentrations at 350 ppm. Kyoto set a cap on aggregate emissions in 2012 from Annex-1 signatories at 5.5% below their aggregate emissions in 1990. New scientific evidence indicates that global caps on emissions for 2020 and 2050 must be much lower if we are to stabilize atmospheric CO2 concentrations at a level that reduces the risk of cataclysmic climate change to an acceptable level. But why argue for a global cap based on a 350 parts per million target rather than a global carbon tax? In theory a carbon tax is the best approach because it does not create a new tradable commodity and market that can careen out of control. However, climate activists were not able to win consideration for a significant international carbon tax during the 1990s, and Annex-1 countries agreed to a cap on aggregate Annex-1 emissions for 2012 that, while insufficient, was a significant step. More importantly, at this juncture it is even more apparent that we can win much larger global reductions through caps than we can win through an international carbon tax. Recently an 80% reduction in global emissions - or more - by 2050 has come under serious consideration. Nobody knows how high a global carbon tax would have to be to achieve reductions this deep, but everybody knows that a tax of that magnitude is completely out of the question. In other words, it has turned out we could win much better deals in the form of caps than through carbon taxes. At one level this is completely irrational because an 80% reduction in global emissions will put a price on carbon just as high as a carbon tax high enough to yield an 80% reduction. On the other hand it is not so irrational if one stops to consider why many people, and therefore even some of their elected leaders, have come to the conclusion that they support a reduction in emissions on the order of 80% or more. The scientific community, in a truly remarkable display of virtual unanimity, is telling us that unless we reduce emissions by 80% or more by 2050 we run a significant risk of cataclysmic climate change. The scientific community is not qualified to recommend how high we would have to set a carbon tax to reduce the risk of cataclysmic climate change, and makes no attempt to do so. But sensible people are now willing to accept the advice that a unified scientific community can offer about the amount and pace of necessary global reductions to reduce the risk of cataclysmic climate change to an acceptable level. The fact is climate activists were getting nowhere as long as economists and politicians dominated the climate debate, and climate activists only started to move forward when the scientific community seized the microphone. In order to embrace the incredible coup the scientific community has pulled off we need to accept a program based on caps rather than taxes. (2) Cap emissions in all countries but give less developed countries much higher caps, including caps in excess of their present emissions for some years into the future, and place more stringent caps on more developed countries by whatever amount is necessary to achieve the global emission cap determined in #1. Much of the literature criticizing carbon trading consists of exposes of cases where certification and sales have taken place when credits were awarded for reductions that were not legitimate because the emission reductions were not "additional" to what would have occurred in any case, or the reductions credited indirectly permitted emissions to increase elsewhere in the country, a problem referred to as "leakage." But what many critics fail to understand is that if the seller of a bogus "certified emission reduction" (CER) is located within a country whose national emissions are capped this does not erode overall emission reductions as long as the seller's country is forced to comply with its national obligations under Kyoto. Suppose the CERs for a 100 ton reduction sold by a Canadian power company to a Japanese power company is completely bogus -- a pure hoax. Under Kyoto, Japan can now emit 100 tons more than it would have been permitted to otherwise. The Canadian power company, by assumption, will not emit any less than it would have in any case. However, the country of Canada will now be required to emit 100 tons less than it would have been required to otherwise because a source within Canada sold CERs for 100 tons to a source outside Canada, and therefore those responsible for verifying that Canada has met its Kyoto treaty obligations will add 100 tons to the reductions Canada is required to make. So global reductions will be exactly equal to the global reductions agreed to by Canada and Japan even if the CER is totally bogus, as long as the Canadian government is forced to meet its obligations under Kyoto. In other words, when sources in countries whose national emissions are capped sell bogus CERs to sources in other countries the effort to avert climate change is not "cheated." But if not the environment, then who has our devious Canadian power company cheated by accepting a handsome payment for doing nothing? When an apple seller cheats by selling a rotten apple it is the apple buyer who is cheated. However, in the case of CERs the Japanese power company got exactly what it wanted - credit for reducing 100 tons which allows it to emit 100 tons more than it could have otherwise. But if neither the environment nor the buyer of the bogus CERs were cheated by the Canadian power company scam, then who was cheated? Could this be one of those so-called crimes without victims? Unfortunately not. The Canadian power company has cheated its fellow Canadians. By selling bogus CERs it has forced Canada to reduce its emissions by 100 more tons than it would have had to otherwise. Somebody else in Canada is going to have to reduce their emissions by 100 more tons than they should have had to. It is other Canadians who are the victims when a source in Canada sells bogus CERs to someone in another country. Where critics of carbon trading have a valid point is when they argue that if a seller of a bogus CER is located in a country whose national emissions are not capped this diminishes global reductions and the goal of averting climate change is cheated. If the credit is legitimate - i.e. "additional" and without "leakage" -- then the global reduction target is not undermined and there is no problem. But if the credit sold from an uncapped country is not legitimate we have a problem. Moreover, there is every incentive for the seller of the credit to try to cheat, there is no incentive for the buyer of the credit to insist on its legitimacy, there is no incentive for the country where the buyer is located to care if the credit purchased is legitimate, and in the case of a country whose national emissions are not capped, there is no incentive for the government where the seller is located to make sure the credit is legitimate either. Of course this is why Kyoto gave the power to certify emissions reduction credits to the Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and did not rely on host governments of non-Annex-1 countries to monitor the legitimacy of requests for credits by sources in their national territories. But it is not easy to establish a hypothetical base line scenario and determine how much more a project reduced emissions than they would have fallen anyway, much less be sure the project did not indirectly allow for an increase in emissions somewhere else in the country. By capping emissions in all countries we guarantee that even if bogus projects are approved, or even if projects are awarded more CERs than they merit, the global emission target is not undermined in any case. In effect, by capping emissions in all countries we protect the integrity of the overall treaty objective from certification mistakes that are predictable. Critics will no doubt object that this is not fair. They will say it is not fair to cap emissions of poor countries who are least responsible for causing climate change and least able to bear the costs of curtailing climate change. Critics will argue this effectively prevents poor countries from developing and catching up with the developed economies. These arguments against capping emissions in every country are absolutely correct if the caps are equal for all countries. However, none of these arguments against capping emissions everywhere holds true if countries have different caps set according to their different "responsibilities and capabilities." Of course equally restrictive caps for all is unfair. But sensible people, and even sensible governments, understand this. The European Union has assigned lower caps to more developed member countries like Germany and France and higher caps to less developed members like Portugal and Ireland. Once it is understood that capping everyone does not mean the same cap for everyone it is apparent that equity can be achieved at the same time that erosion of global emission reductions resulting from failure to cap emissions in all countries is prevented. Moreover, there is no reason we cannot allow poor countries to increase emissions for some time, as long as the increase is capped. One excellent proposal for determining equitable caps for developed and developing countries alike is the Greenhouse Development Rights Framework proposed by Paul Baer, Tom Athanasiou, and Sivan Kartha. (The Right to Development in a Climate Constrained World: The Greenhouse Development Rights Framework. Berlin: Heinrich Boll Foundation, Christian Aid, EcoEquity, and the Stockholm Environmental Institute, 2007.) They address the complaint that while more people in lesser developed countries have failed to benefit from economic development than in more developed countries, nonetheless there are some poor people living in more developed countries who also should have a right to benefit from economic development and not have to bear the costs of preventing climate change. Moreover, there are some wealthy people in lesser developed countries who have enjoyed development and can afford to bear part of the cost of preventing climate change. These authors propose a practical way to measure the proportion of each country's residents who have already enjoyed the benefits of economic development, and therefore should be expected to bear some of the costs of preventing climate change, which can then be used to calculate a set of equitable caps for all countries. The principle of differential responsibilities and capabilities was implemented in Kyoto using a discrete variable to divide countries into two groups and requiring mandatory reductions from more developed countries while leaving lesser developed country emissions uncapped. This may well have been the best way to affirm an unwavering commitment to equity at the beginning. But the Greenhouse Development Rights Framework formula arguably implements the same principle better via a continuous variable that has the considerable advantage of permitting us to cap emissions in all countries, guarantee that any bogus trading cannot undermine planned global reductions, and thereby remove any obstacles to maximizing the flow of income from North to South that full trading yields. Of course the more we allow developing countries to increase emissions before reaching their caps, more stringent caps must be on industrialized countries in order to meet a given level of global reductions. Nobody is suggesting that reaching agreement on differential caps will be easy. But agreeing on differential caps for Annex-1 countries was not easy in Kyoto, yet agreement was reached. In any case, the answer is simple no matter how difficult negotiations may prove: Capping all countries is the only way to guarantee that we will meet our global emissions reduction goal. Capping all countries is the only way to reap the full efficiency gain possible from carbon trading and maximize the flow of payments from North to South without risking undermining the overall reduction target. And by varying the caps for countries with different responsibilities and capabilities sufficiently - including allowing emissions increases for some time in poorer countries - equity can be secured. (3) Cap national net emissions rather than national emissions. If the international treaty held governments responsible for national net emissions, governments would have an incentive to discourage activities that emit carbon and also have an incentive to encourage activities that increase carbon sequestration. The international treaty needn't dictate to governments how they go about doing this. Since conservation generally yields fewer net emissions than deforestation followed by replanting, national governments would be foolish not to make sure that conservation was also financially more attractive. (4) Give national governments the power to certify or refuse to certify emission reduction credits for sale by parties operating in their territories. As long as emissions from non-Annex-1 countries are not capped there is no choice but to give an international agency the power to review applications for CERs from applicants in those countries because there is no incentive for non-Annex-1 country governments to blow the whistle on bogus proposals for CERs by home country applicants. For this reason Kyoto had no choice but to create an international professional bureaucracy to play the role of sheriff. However, as hard working, honest, and professionally competent as the clean development mechanism (CDM) Executive Board and the Designated Operational Entities (DOEs) they work with may be, the CDM is still an international bureaucracy subject to the pressures all international bureaucracies respond to. In the end they have nothing at stake but their salaries and reputations. Meanwhile they are subject to political pressures from different sides. On the one hand, international environmental organizations concerned with preserving the integrity of global reductions apply political pressure on the CDM to tighten standards and deny certification to questionable projects. On the other hand, those who wish to sell or buy CERs, any governments who lobby for business interests operating in their territory, and those who favor the income flows from more developed countries to lesser developed countries which CER sales generate apply political pressure on the CDM to approve more projects and increase the volume of CER trading. The result has been suboptimal in two ways. While most projects approved have been legitimate, a troubling number of bogus projects have also been approved which has undermined planned global emissions reductions. Meanwhile those worried about the negative effects of bogus projects have succeeded in limiting application of the CDM mechanism by requiring Annex-1 countries to meet their reduction quotas "predominantly" from internal reductions, and by excluding certain categories of projects deemed too difficult to evaluate and monitor. This has led to a failure to minimize the global cost of achieving reductions and also limited the transfer of income from MCDs to less developed countries. However, once net emissions are capped in all countries, not only do mistaken awards of CERs no longer undermine the global reduction target, there is also a policeman available with a great deal to lose from mistaken awards, including awards for projects that increase sequestration. It is in the interest of country governments to keep private parties operating within their territories from selling more CERs in the international carbon market than the amount by which a project actually reduces emissions or increases sequestration above and beyond what would have occurred had the project not been undertaken because, as explained above, if country governments whose net emissions are capped fail to prevent this, it will be those governments or their citizens who will suffer the adverse consequences of having to cover the shortfall by reducing net emissions more than they would have had to otherwise. (5) Concentrate attention on the relatively easy task of measuring national net emissions and the crucial task of establishing effective penalties for non-compliance. Measuring national annual emissions is relatively easy based on readily available information about production levels and technologies in use. And yes, this means the fuss in Copenhagen over Chinese refusal to allow outsiders to engage in on site inspections was actually quite silly. Verifying national carbon emissions is not at all like verifying compliance with a non-proliferation nuclear weapons treaty where onsite inspections of nuclear energy programs play a critical role. Similarly, global information systems (GIS), international temperature and rainfall readings, and international biological maps now make it relatively easy to measure how much carbon is sequestered in the national territory of a country during a year. On the other hand, measuring how much an individual project decreased net emissions over its lifetime compared to what would have happened had the project not been undertaken is quite difficult because it requires establishing a hypothetical baseline and evaluating net emissions over multiple time periods. Much discussion about measuring and cheating confuses this crucial difference between what is easy to measure and what is difficult to measure. The international treaty needs only to measure annual, national, net emissions because that is what signatories commit to and must be held responsible for. That task is relatively easy and governments will have a difficult time claiming treaty monitors have made significant errors. What the international treaty organization needs to worry about instead of measurement problems, which for the treaty organization are minimal, is how to secure an agreement among signatories on an effective set of penalties for non-compliance, without which the entire exercise is pointless. Continuing to postpone discussion of how to enforce compliance guarantees that negotiations will not be taken seriously. The fact that most Annex-1 signatories will fail to meet their commitments under Kyoto in 2012 miserably proves that the issue of enforcement can no longer go ignored. If reduction or sequestration credits are to be traded between private parties operating in different countries as I propose, the amount by which net emissions have been decreased through the efforts of the seller must be measured. Yes, they must be measured, and certified, and the judgments about additionality, leakage, and permanence this requires can be quite difficult. But once net emissions are capped in all countries any errors in these measurements and certifications cannot prevent the treaty from achieving its global, net emission target -- provided national annual net emissions are measured accurately and treaty signatories are induced to live up to their commitments. In other words, if the treaty is fixed as I have outlined above, the fact that it is difficult to determine how many credits a seller should be awarded does not matter in the way critics believe. Mistakes in assigning reduction credits for individual projects merely benefit the seller at the expense of the seller's fellow citizens if the seller is awarded more credits that deserved, or benefit compatriots at the expense of the seller if fewer credits are awarded than deserved. While lesser developed country governments in particular may well appreciate help and advice in awarding CERs to applicants operating within their territory from a staff of experienced professionals whose salaries are paid by an international treaty organization, national governments should have the right to make decisions that affect only their own citizens, and once national, annual, net emissions are capped, governments will have every incentive to make accurate awards. (6) Once these five changes in Kyoto are made we can then hold our noses and support full carbon trading for three reasons. First, no matter how badly the carbon market functions, no matter how much an unregulated financial sector inserts carbon permits into its murky, toxic, financial soup, no matter how impossible it becomes to verify that what has been chopped up and divided, bought and sold, repurchased and resold, and packaged in a myriad different forms and combinations with dozens of other questionable assets are in fact real emission reductions rather than fakes; necessary global emission reductions guaranteed by #1, and a fair distribution of the costs of achieving those reductions guaranteed by #2 will not be undermined or compromised in any case. Second, full trading of emissions credits will produce a flow of income from North to South that far exceeds current aid flows or any reparation payments that are likely to be agreed to. Many Left critics fail to understand that carbon trading of legitimate CERs not only reduces the cost of compliance for more developed country sources and governments - which is good not bad because it makes it easier to lower their caps even further - it also provides a substantial benefit to lesser developed countries. Lesser developed country sellers of CERs and more developed country buyers of CERs divide the efficiency gain from reducing emissions in the lesser developed country rather than in the more developed country between them. The higher the price paid for CERs the more of the efficiency gain goes to lesser developed countries, the lower the price of CERs the more of the efficiency gain goes to more developed countries. But in either case the CDM generates a flow of income from North to South that would stop if the CDM were shut down, as many on the Left have called for. And third, emission trading will lower the global cost of achieving emission reductions considerably and thereby make it easier to win political approval from electorates in more developed countries for the deep level of reductions necessary. In short, this is why the Left should support an international treaty with mandatory caps rather than waste time we don't have trying to change course once again calling for an international carbon tax that would not be nearly high enough. This is why it is counterproductive to forego the benefits that trading emission credits brings in a world driven by market forces. And these are the changes in the Kyoto Protocol that would make it effective, fair, and well worth fighting for as we continue to work to convince more and more people to throw off the capitalist albatross that regrettably still hangs around our necks. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink 00 =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Mon Jan 4 11:14:00 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2010 11:14:00 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Viva Palestina aid convoy hours away from breaking Gaza siege Message-ID: Viva Palestina aid convoy hours away from breaking Gaza siege 4th January 2010 - Viva Palestina (http://www.vivapalestina.org/) The Viva Palestina international aid convoy is just hours away from breaking Israel's three and a half year siege of Gaza. Despite repeated obstructions from the Egyptian government, including its refusal to allow the convoy to land in the Egyptian port of Nuweiba, convoy members hope to be in Gaza tomorrow. 198 convoy vehicles, including ambulances and vans, were loaded on to a ferry in the Syrian port of Latakia on Saturday (2nd January) and have now docked and cleared customs at the Egyptian port of El Arish. Convoy members will fly to El Arish today from Latakia to pick up the vehicles and drive less than one hundred miles to Egypt's Rafah border crossing with Gaza. Since Israel imposed its near total blockade on Gaza in 2006, people, aid and vehicles have been blocked from entering the Strip. The convoy, jointly organised by Viva Palestina and Palestine Solidarity Campaign, will be taking in aid, including specialised medical equipment, and will also be leaving all its vehicles in Gaza. It had hoped to enter the Strip on 27th December 2009, to mark the first anniversary of the day Israel began its three weeks land, air and sea assault on Gaza, killing 1,400 Palestinians and destroying homes, farms and essential infrastructure. However, the convoy was forced to retrace its route through Jordan and Syria last week, after being refused permission to sail from Aqaba, Jordan to Nuweiba. Kevin Ovenden, convoy organiser, said: 'Despite all the difficulties, by land, by sea and by air, we are within 24hrs of breaking the siege of Gaza.' 'We now have every right to expect unhindered and safe passage into Gaza, but we call on all our friends internationally to stand ready to raise their voices if we face further unjustified delay.' For further information on the Viva Palestina Gaza aid convoy and updates visit www.vivapalestina.org Press information from Alice Howard on Tel: 07944 512 469 or via email: alice at vivapalestina.org =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 5 12:46:13 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2010 12:46:13 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Serial Catastrophes in Afghanistan threaten Obama Policy Message-ID: <7205EEBC63AD4B21B70D400F13F199A3@agingCHS072729> http://www.juancole.com/2010/01/serial-catastrophes-in-afghanistan.html Monday, January 04, 2010 Serial Catastrophes in Afghanistan threaten Obama Policy by Juan Cole You probably won't see it in most US news outlets, but on Monday morning in Kabul and Jalalabad, hundreds of university students demonstrated against US strikes this weekend that allegedly killed a number of civilians. I want to underline the irony that the students in Tehran University are protesting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, while students in these two Afghan cities are calling for Yankees to go home. Nangarhar University in Jalalabad only has a student body of about 3200, so 'hundreds' of students protesting there would be a significant proportion of the student body. The demonstrations could be a harbinger of things to come, but there was worse news. CIA field officers blown up, four US troops killed Sunday, and the rejection of most of the cabinet nominees by parliament, all signal rocky times ahead. The past two weeks have seen the situation in Afghanistan deteriorate palpably, raising significant questions about the viability of the Obama-McChrystal plan for the country. The chain of catastrophes has been reported in piecemeal fashion, but taken together these events are far more ominous than they might appear on the surface. First, the US military launched a raid in Kunar Province two days after Christmas on a village at night, in which President Hamid Karzai alleged that 10 civilians, some 8 of them schoolchildren, had been killed (some say dragged out of their beds and executed). The NYT reported the head of a Kabul delegation to the village saying,"They gathered eight school students from two compounds and put them in one room and shot them with small arms." (The spokesman is a former governor of Kunar and now a close adviser to President Hamid Karzai-- i.e. not exactly a pro-Taliban source). The charitable theory is that in a nighttime raid, US troops got disoriented and hit the wrong group of young men. The outraged Afghan public saw this raid as an atrocity, and on Wednesday December 30, they mounted street protests against the US in Jalalabad, an eastern Pashtun city, and Kabul. In Jalalabad, hundreds of university students blocked the main roads, and then marched in the streets, chanting "Death to Obama" and "Death to America," and burning Obama in effigy. (If they go on like that, the anti-imperialist Pashtun college students of Jalalabad may attract the support of Fox Cable News . . .) Even while the protests were taking place in Jalalabad and Kabul, a NATO missile strike on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province was alleged to have killed as many as 7 more civilians, some of them children. Now the Afghan public was really angry. Then on Thursday, all hell broke loose when a high-level Pashtun Jordanian asset who had been informing to the CIA on the location of important al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives detonated a vest bomb at FOB Chapman in Khost province, a CIA forward base. The attacker killed 7 field officers and one Jordanian intelligence operative detailed to the base. Those experienced field officers were on the front lines in the fight against al-Qaeda and their loss is a big blow to counter-terrorism. It is true that they had been drawn in to a campaign of assassination, but it is the president who gave them that task--unwisely, in my view. The use of a double agent not only to misinform but actually to kill the most experienced counter-terrorism officers in the region showed the sophistication of tactical thinking in the Afghan insurgency. The CIA's dependence on a double agent who finally openly betrayed them raises troubling questions about US strategy and tactics in the region. Such informants essentially direct CIA drone missile strikes. You could imagine Siraj Haqqani, leader of the Haqqani Network in Khost and over the border in Pakistan's North Waziristan, inserting such a double agent into FOB Chapman and then using the CIA. For instance, what if a middling member of the Haqqani network launched a challenge to Siraj's leadership and that of his ailing father, Jalaluddin (an old-time ally of Reagan who was warmly greeted in the White House in the 1980s)? Wouldn't it be easy enough just to have the double agent tell the CIA that the challenger is a really bad guy in cahoots with al-Qaeda? Boom. Drone strike kills Taliban leaders in North Waziristan. In this way, Siraj could have used the US to eliminate rivals and become more and more powerful. And how many double agents have given up a few Arab jihadis who had fallen out with the Haqqanis, but then deliberately followed this up with bad intel on some innocent village, making the name of the US mud among the Pashtuns? The drone strikes shouldn't be run by the CIA, and probably shouldn't be run at all. It could well be that savvy old-time Mujahidin trained in CIA tradecraft in the 1980s are having our young wet behind the ears field officers for lunch. In short, is the bombing at FOB Chapman the tip of an iceberg of misinformation, on which the Titanic of Obama's AfPak policy could well founder? Aljazeera English has video of these dramatic events leading up to the New Year, including the anti-US demonstrations, which looked big and significant to me on satellite television. [see video] A soldier of the Afghan army shot an American soldier, further raising suspicions between the two supposed partners. Then a Canadian unit and embedded journalist were blown up. There were more errant US strikes over the weekend, producing the demonstrations in Kabul and Jalalabad on Monday morning. Then there were two other pieces of information coming out in the past few days that suggest all is not well. First, a report on the Afghanistan Army threw cold water all over the idea that it could be enlarged and trained to provide security in the country any time soon. High desertion rates, illiteracy, working half days, refusal to stand and fight against the enemy, and other factors just made that prospect remote. But such training, and the substitution of the Afghan National Army for NATO and US forces is the centerpiece of the Obama-McChrystal plan. Finally, the Afghan parliament rejected 17 of the 24 nominees to the cabinet offered by President Karzai. The speaker of the House, Yunus Qanuni, supported Karzai's rival, Abdullah Abdullah, in August's presidential elections-- which many Afghans believe Karzai stole. This rejection was the Abdullah faction's chance to humiliate Karzai in revenge. Aljazeera English has video on the rejection of 70 percent of the cabinet, including the old time warlord of Herat, Ismail Khan, and a key women's affairs minister. [see video] But the step means that we go into the winter with 17 ministries headless. Having an increasingly competent Afghan government to partner with was another key element of the Obama plan. There is not one. So, the US is killing schoolchildren far too often, enraging the Afghan public. It has provoked a student protest movement against it in Jalalabad and Kabul. Its informants are double agents. Its supposed partner, the Afghan army, mostly doesn't actually exist and couldn't be depended on to show up to anything important; and that is when they aren't taking potshots at US troops; and there is no Afghan government as we go into 2010. President Obama may have a lot on his plate, but Afghanistan could make or break his presidency. If he doesn't view what has happened there while he was in Hawaii with alarm and begin thinking of alternative strategies, he could be in big trouble. End/ (Not Continueden) posted by Juan Cole @ 1/04/2010 01:26:00 AM =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 5 16:58:38 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2010 16:58:38 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Fw: URGENT HELP NEEDED NOW Breaking news from Viva Palestina, etc. Please act on the Breaking News now Message-ID: <086E99CA5E174EE0B05A6187FCB3B678@agingCHS072729> ----- Original Message ----- From: otherisr at actcom.co.il To: intl at mailman.gush-shalom.org Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 4:39 PM Subject: Fwd: URGENT HELP NEEDED NOW Breaking news from Viva Palestina, etc. Please act on the Breaking News now ----- Original Message ----- From: Ewa Jasiewicz (freelance) To: freelance at mailworks.org Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 11:29 PM Subject: [palglobal] Breaking news from Viva Palestina, Gaza anniversary week of events in London, Historical Cairo Declaration and eyewitness Gaza book by Sharyn Lock ****Breaking News - Viva Palestina convoy facing crisis point in Egypt - urgent action needed***** To all friends of Palestine Our situation is now at a crisis point! Riot has broken out in the port of Al- Arish. This late afternoon we were negotiating with a senior official from Cairo who left negotiations some two hours ago and did not return. Our negotiations with the official was regarding taking our aid vehicles into Gaza. He left two hours ago and did not come back. Egyptian authorities called over 2,000 riot police who then moved towards our camp at the port. We have now blocked the entrance to the port and we are now faced with riot police and water cannons and are determined to defend our vehicles and aid. The Egyptian authorities have by their stubbornness and hostility towards the convoy, brought us to a crisis point. We are now calling upon all friends of palestine to mount protests in person where possible, but by any means available to Egyptian representatives, consulates and Embassy?s and demand that the convoy are allowed a safe passage into Gaza tomorrow! Kevin Ovenden Viva Palestina Convoy Leader http://www.vivapalestina.org/ For further info also contact Caoimhe Butterly on the ground in Cairo Caoimhe Butterly, Ireland +96 2796837463 1) Palestine Memorial Week http://www.prc.org.uk/newsite/ 13th to 19th January 2010 in UK/Europe Marking the first anniversary of Israeli onslaught on Gaza Called by: The Palestinian Return Centre (PRC), Palestinian Forum in the UK, European Campaign to End Siege on Gaza, Islamic forum of Europe (IFE), Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS), Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), Islamic Human Rights Commission in Britain (IHRC), Student Council Goldsmith University and Action Palestine 1- Wednesday, 13th of January: Commemorating the First Anniversary of Gaza War. Venue, Friends House, London Euston from 6-30 PM to 9-30 PM. Speakers include: Clare Short MP, Baroness Jenny Tonge, Bob Marshall - Andrews MP, Jeremy Corbyn MP Ken Loach, Film Director and activist Lord Nazir Ahmed Majed al Zeer, PRC General Director Om Kamel Al kurd, From Occupied Jerusalem Sameh A. Habeeb, PRC representative and Witness from Gaza. Ewa Jasiewicz, Activist and Witness From Gaza Peter Eyre, Middle East Expert, Presentation on Gaza Recent conditions Arafat Madi, Head Of European Campaign To End Siege on Gaza Other speakers from the participating organizations. Short videos will be screened. 2- Thursday, 14th January: Launch of the biggest parliamentarian delegation to Gaza. On same day a movie will be screened, "To Shoot an Elephant", www.toshootanelephant.com at Goldsmiths University. No specific place for event yet. 3- Thursday, 14th January: Film screening at Goldsmith University, student Union from 3PM to 5 PM. "Unseen Gaza" or "101" will be screened. 4- Sunday, 17th January: 1 PM to 5 PM speakers will deliver speeches in English, Arabic, French and other languages. There will also be a gallery at Hyde Park, Speaker Corner. 5- Other events will be conducted by Sussex, Glasgow, Brighton and Manchester universities. Visit our website for the details later this week. 6- Dozens of other events and actions will be carried out by General Secretariat of Palestinian in Europe Conference. The events will commemorate the 1st anniversary of Gaza war as well as all Palestinian victims. Visit our website for the details later this week. Open to all and admission is free. Other actions within the week can be found on our website. Endorsed by, Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Friends of Al Aqsa, Labour Friends Of Palestine and the Middle East (LFPME), Free Palestine Movement (FPM) and International Solidarity Movement (ISM). For more information contact us on: info at prc.org.uk tel:02084530919 visit us on http://www.facebook.com/l/905f8;www.prc.org.uk 2) Gaza Rememberance Die-In at Trafalgar Square, January 16th, 1pm. 1417 is not just a number....see more at http://gaza1417.wordpress.com/ wear red and white. People will be given the names of people who died to hold. 3) Gaza Freedom Marchers issue the "Cairo Declaration" to end Israeli Apartheid For immediate release, January 1st 2010 Ziyaad Lunat ? 0191181340 (Egypt) (Cairo) Gaza Freedom Marchers approved today a declaration aimed at accelerating the global campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli Apartheid. Roughly 1400 activists from 43 countries converged in Cairo on their way to Gaza to join with Palestinians marching to break Israel's illegal siege. They were prevented from entering Gaza by the Egyptian authorities. As a result, the Freedom Marchers remained in Cairo. They staged a series of nonviolent actions aimed at pressuring the international community to end the siege as one step in the larger struggle to secure justice for Palestinians throughout historic Palestine. This declaration arose from those actions: End Israeli Apartheid Cairo Declaration January 1, 2010 We, international delegates meeting in Cairo during the Gaza Freedom March 2009 in collective response to an initiative from the South African delegation, state: In view of: o Israel's ongoing collective punishment of Palestinians through the illegal occupation and siege of Gaza; o the illegal occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the continued construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall and settlements; o the new Wall under construction by Egypt and the US which will tighten even further the siege of Gaza; o the contempt for Palestinian democracy shown by Israel, the US, Canada, the EU and others after the Palestinian elections of 2006; o the war crimes committed by Israel during the invasion of Gaza one year ago; o the continuing discrimination and repression faced by Palestinians within Israel; o and the continuing exile of millions of Palestinian refugees; o all of which oppressive acts are based ultimately on the Zionist ideology which underpins Israel; o in the knowledge that our own governments have given Israel direct economic, financial, military and diplomatic support and allowed it to behave with impunity; o and mindful of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (2007) We reaffirm our commitment to: Palestinian Self-Determination Ending the Occupation Equal Rights for All within historic Palestine The full Right of Return for Palestinian refugees We therefore reaffirm our commitment to the United Palestinian call of July 2005 for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) to compel Israel to comply with international law. To that end, we call for and wish to help initiate a global mass, democratic anti-apartheid movement to work in full consultation with Palestinian civil society to implement the Palestinian call for BDS. Mindful of the many strong similarities between apartheid Israel and the former apartheid regime in South Africa, we propose: 1) An international speaking tour in the first 6 months of 2010 by Palestinian and South African trade unionists and civil society activists, to be joined by trade unionists and activists committed to this programme within the countries toured, to take mass education on BDS directly to the trade union membership and wider public internationally; 2) Participation in the Israeli Apartheid Week in March 2010; 3) A systematic unified approach to the boycott of Israeli products, involving consumers, workers and their unions in the retail, warehousing, and transportation sectors; 4) Developing the Academic, Cultural and Sports boycott; 5) Campaigns to encourage divestment of trade union and other pension funds from companies directly implicated in the Occupation and/or the Israeli military industries; 6) Legal actions targeting the external recruitment of soldiers to serve in the Israeli military, and the prosecution of Israeli government war criminals; coordination of Citizen's Arrest Bureaux to identify, campaign and seek to prosecute Israeli war criminals; support for the Goldstone Report and the implementation of its recommendations; 7) Campaigns against charitable status of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). We appeal to organisations and individuals committed to this declaration to sign it and work with us to make it a reality. A full list of signatories is available here http://www.odsg.org/co/ 4) Gaza Beneath the Bombs - Sharyn Lock with Sarah Irving (Pluto Press) The Israeli offensive in Gaza was described by Amnesty international as '22 days of death and destruction'. Sharyn Lock's eyewitness account brings home the horror of life in Gaza beneath the bombs. Sharyn went to the Gaza strip with the Free Gaza Movement, thinking the greatest danger she faced was making it past the Israeli sea blockade in a fishing boat, but soon after her arrival Israel attacked Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants by land, air and sea. With others from the International Solidarity Movement, Sharyn volunteered with Palestinian ambulances, assisting them as they faced overwhelming civilian casualties. Her candid and dramatic blogs from Gaza gave the world an insight into the conflict that the mainstream media - unable to enter Gaza - couldn't provide. "Gaza: Beneath the Bombs" provides a view of Gaza difficult to glimpse from outside - of a people who face their oppression not only with courage but with humour. See below for an interview with Sharyn from Electronic Intifada: Blogging beneath the bombs http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10980.shtml Sharyn is on tour with her book - for more details see http://talestotell.wordpress.com/ dates so far below Thursday 14th January, 7-9pm Location: Manchester Presented by: Manchester Palestine Solidarity Campaign Venue: Cross Street Chapel Featuring: clips from ?Erased:Wiped off the Map?, film made during the Gaza attacks by Alberto from our ISM group Fri/Sat 22/23 January Location:Norwich Details to be confirmed Friday 29th January Location: Manchester Venue: greenroom Featuring: Single Cell Bands Sat 6th February Location: Hebden Bridge Venue: Trades Club Sat 13th? February Location: Worthing Details to be confirmed Thurs 25th February Location: Huddersfield Details to be confirmed Sat 13th? March Location: Brighton Venue: Cowley Club Details to be confirmed Sat 20 or 27th? March Location: Southampton ============================================ **** http://awalls.org **** new and improved web site http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/againstwall http://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/againstwall ============================================ -- To unsubscribe, send mail to intl-request at mailman.gush-shalom.org and write the word unsubscribe in the subject line. In some programs it is enough to use the following link: mailto:intl-request at mailman.gush-shalom.org?subject=unsubscribe --NB: IN CASE THE AUTOMATIC UNSUBSCRIBE FUNCTION FAILS: send it again but now to info at gush-shalom.org and we will do it manually If you got this forwarded and you want to subscribe, send mail to intl-request at mailman.gush-shalom.org and write the word subscribe in the subject line. ...or use the link mailto:intl-request at mailman.gush-shalom.org?subject=subscribe -- For assistance: info at gush-shalom.org From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 5 20:31:06 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2010 20:31:06 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Barack Obama, Interventionist and Ultimate Jihadi Hero Message-ID: <78102AA177FC4C3C8D5E7CD126DC4811@agingCHS072729> Antiwar.com December 30, 2009 Barack Obama, Interventionist and Ultimate Jihadi Hero Obama followed his predecessors' refusal to explain our Islamist enemies' motivation to Americans. This failure is completely attributable to the fact that Obama has aligned himself fully the Bush-Clinton-Bush legacy of interventionism in the Muslim world. By Michael Scheuer In his less-than-fifteen-minute, 28 December statement on the Detroit airliner attack and Iran, President Obama exhilarated America's Islamist foes and neatly encapsulated the U.S. governing elite's absolute inability to see that its full-bore interventionism is leading America to ruin. In his response to the al-Qaeda attack in Detroit, Obama echoed the identical analytic path blazed by his fellow interventionists George W. Bush and Bill Clinton: - The would-be bomber was a lone, extremist Muslim who was acting outside the tenets of his Islamic faith - the religion of peace - and was intent on slaughtering the innocent. - We - with our allies - will track down the bomber's colleagues wherever they are and bring them to justice. - We will do the tracking-down gently so as not to undermine our most deeply held values. (And instead of being an adult and quietly firing those who failed to stop the Detroit attacker, I will blame my subordinates, publicly humiliate U.S. intelligence services, terrorize Americans by alleging "catastrophic" and "systemic" failure, and publicly detail the holes in our security system.) Obama's prescription for defeating al-Qaeda and like-minded groups maintains continuity with the failed and stubbornly ignorant approach Washington has adhered to since bin Laden declared war on the United States in August, 1996. (Yes, August 1996 - we have been unsuccessfully fighting this enemy for 13.5 years.) If the history of America's al-Qaeda-fight proves anything, it is that - Al-Qaeda-ism is not outside the parameters of the Islamic faith. While not mainstream, the religious justification for fighting U.S. interventionism in the Islamic world is growing in acceptance among the 80 percent of the world's Muslims who deem U.S. foreign policy an attack on their faith. In addition, bin Laden's jihad has an extraordinarily strong positive resonance among always historically minded Muslims. Al-Qaeda's victories remind them of battles fought by the Prophet and Saladin which produced miraculous victories over far more powerful enemies - like a barely trained kid from Nigeria beating the greatest power the world has ever seen. - An obviously failing fight that is now approaching 14-year duration ought to be irrefutable evidence that Clinton's law-and-order-based strategy - even with Bush's spasms of vigorously applied military power - has not a prayer of succeeding. - Whether we do our tracking/arresting/killing ethically or brutally is irrelevant. Each al-Qaeda attack on the United States - successful or not - strengthens the hands of those politicians and bureaucrats who will curtail the civil liberties of Americans. The next successful al-Qaeda attack in the United States - because the U.S. military has no telling enemy targets left overseas - will yield civil-rights curtailments that will make President Bush look like Clarence Darrow. Besides flogging this dog-eared and bankrupt response to al-Qaeda, Obama likewise followed his predecessors' refusal to explain our Islamist enemies' motivation to Americans. This failure is completely attributable to the fact that Obama has aligned himself fully the Bush-Clinton-Bush legacy of interventionism in the Muslim world. - By bowing to the Saudi king, accepting the jailer Mubarak's hospitality, putting U.S. arms at the disposal of the dictator of Yemen (where, by the way, Senator Lieberman is panting for another U.S.-waged war to defend Israel), Obama has reinforced Muslim perceptions that America wants them governed by tyrannical police states that will keep oil flowing to the west. - By making an IDF veteran his chief of staff, acquiescing to Israeli settlement expansion, and authorizing billions more in arms for Israel, Obama is convincing Muslims he intends to keep warbling that old American standard: "Israel, Israel Uber Alles." - By augmenting the U.S. military force in Afghanistan - in numbers sufficient to tread water and bleed but not to win - and sending the first new forces to southern Afghanistan where al-Qaeda forces are minimal, Obama has reinforced both the general Muslim belief that U.S. policy is meant to destroy Islam, not al-Qaeda, and bin Laden's certainty that the U.S. military is a paper tiger. Then there is Iran. Listening to Obama as he spoke gave the impression that he was eager to get the Detroit-attack stuff out of the way so he could rhetorically intervene in Iran's internal affairs. Joining with our allies - read other Western interventionists and pawns of Israel - Obama said he wanted to condemn the Tehran regime's at-times-lethal crackdown on opposition demonstrators. He said that Ahmadinejad and the ruling clerics were trampling on the "universal rights" of Iranians, and that such actions must stop. There are, of course, no universal political rights; this idea is the pipedream of Western secular intellectuals and interventionists, and is part and parcel of the interventionist nonsense Obama included in his Nobel speech about the "perfectibility" of the human condition through the efforts of "enlightened" men and women. Obama's mind is emerging as a mind filled with war-causing secular theology of the French Revolution. That revolution was all about enlightened leaders "perfecting" the common man for what the revolutionary elite deemed to be his own good, and using the vehicles of government edict, fanatic secularism, and force to do so. (Sounds a bit like the universal health-care plan, doesn't it?) The French Revolution went on to father Hitler, Stalin, the Khmer Rouge, and other mass-murdering regimes. In the American context, the revolution's impact has been the slow but increasingly complete replacement of the Founders' sturdy non-interventionism - which recognized the pivotal and necessary role religion plays in all polities - by our current bipartisan elite's obsession with interfering in other peoples' internal affairs, especially if those internal affairs are interwoven with religion. For Obama and most members of our governing elite, today's Iran fairly screams for Western intervention to break the mullahs' backs and install secularism; to destroy an Israeli foe and ensure AIPAC funds to continue to flow into their pockets; and to make them feel good about themselves, no matter the cost to Americans and their children. In a statement of less than a quarter-hour, then, Obama demonstrated how thoroughly he slicked Americans in the last presidential election. The "hope" he offered turns out to be not less but more war-causing interventionism framed by a secularist "moral compass" alien to most non-elite Americans; the "Yes we can" slogan has proven to refer to making Obama's Washington the agent of forced Westernization from the Congo to Afghanistan, and from Burma to Iran; and the president's much-touted "audacity" seems nothing more than Obama's brass in continuing to reassuringly chant the Bush-Clinton-Bush lie to Americans that Islamists attack us because of our way of life not because of our interventionism. And thus is how a great republic is being ruined by the littlest of arrogant and willful men. Michael Scheuer is a retired CIA employee who has criticized many of the common assumptions about the motives for Islamic terrorism =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Wed Jan 6 08:31:31 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 08:31:31 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Why do they hate US? An American World of War Message-ID: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175185/tomgram%3A_the_year_of_the_assassin/#more January 3, 2010 Tomgram: The Year of the Assassin By Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse [Note for TomDispatch Readers: We?re back for 2010! Many thanks to those of you who ended the year with a contribution to the site -- or purchased something off one of our Amazon links. Your generosity was startling and will help make this year a good and, I hope, expansive one for us. One small note about last year. In his final Bill Moyers Journal of 2009, Moyers offered his favorite book of the year: ?There's one book in particular I would put in everybody's stocking if I could. It's not new -- it was actually published three years ago. But I read it again this month, and found its message more relevant than ever.? It was Chalmers Johnson?s Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, and since Johnson has been such a mainstay of this site and it?s a book we?ve long recommended, we, at TomDispatch, took pride in the moment and didn?t want to let it pass without mention. Tom] An American World of War What to Watch for in 2010 By Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse According to the Chinese calendar, 2010 is the Year of the Tiger. We don?t name our years, but if we did, this one might prospectively be called the Year of the Assassin. We, of course, think of ourselves as something like the peaceable kingdom. After all, the shock of September 11, 2001 was that ?war? came to ?the homeland,? a mighty blow delivered against the very symbols of our economic, military, and -- had Flight 93 not gone down in a field in Pennsylvania -- political power. Since that day, however, war has been a stranger in our land. With the rarest of exceptions, like Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan?s massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, this country has remained a world without war or any kind of mobilization for war. No other major terrorist attacks, not even victory gardens, scrap-metal collecting, or rationing. And certainly no war tax to pay for our post-9/11 trillion-dollar ?expeditionary forces? sent into battle abroad. Had we the foresight to name them, the last few years domestically might have reflected a different kind of carnage -- 2006, the Year of the Subprime Mortgage; 2007, the Year of the Bonus; 2008, the Year of the Meltdown; 2009, the Year of the Bailout. And perhaps some would want to label 2010, prematurely or not, the Year of Recovery. Although our country delivers war regularly to distant lands in the name of our ?safety,? we don?t really consider ourselves at war (despite the endless talk of ?supporting our troops?), and the money that has simply poured into Pentagon coffers, and then into weaponry and conflicts is, with rare exceptions, never linked to economic distress in this country. And yet, if we are no nation of warriors, from the point of view of the rest of the world we are certainly the planet?s foremost war-makers. If money talks, then war may be what we care most about as a society and fund above all else, with the least possible discussion or debate. In fact, according to military expert William Hartung, the Pentagon budget has risen in every year of the new century, an unprecedented run in our history. We dominate the global arms trade, monopolizing almost 70% of the arms business in 2008, with Italy coming in a vanishingly distant second. We put more money into the funding of war, our armed forces, and the weaponry of war than the next 25 countries combined (and that?s without even including Iraq and Afghan war costs). We garrison the planet in a way no empire or nation in history has ever done. And we plan for the future, for ?the next war? -- on the ground, on the seas, and in space -- in a way that is surely unique. If our two major wars of the twenty-first century in Iraq and Afghanistan are any measure, we also get less bang for our buck than any nation in recent history. So, let?s pause a moment as the New Year begins and take stock of ourselves as what we truly are: the preeminent war-making machine on planet Earth. Let?s peer into the future, and consider just what the American way of war might have in store for us in 2010. Here are 10 questions, the answers to which might offer reasonable hints as to just how much U.S. war efforts are likely to intensify in the Greater Middle East, as well as Central and South Asia, in the year to come. 1. How busted will the largest defense budget in history be in 2010? Strange, isn?t it, that the debate about hundreds of billions of dollars in health-care costs in Congress can last almost a year, filled with turmoil and daily headlines, while a $636 billion defense budget can pass in a few days, as it did in late December, essentially without discussion and with nary a headline in sight? And in case you think that $636 billion is an honest figure, think again -- and not just because funding for the U.S. nuclear arsenal and actual ?homeland defense,? among other things most countries would chalk up as military costs, wasn?t included. If you want to put a finger to the winds of war in 2010, keep your eye on something else not included in that budget: the Obama administration?s upcoming supplemental funding request for the Afghan surge. In his West Point speech announcing his surge decision, the president spoke of sending 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan in 2010 at a cost of $30 billion. In news reports, that figure quickly morphed into ?$30-$40 billion,? none of it in the just-passed Pentagon budget. To fund his widening war, sometime in the first months of the New Year, the president will have to submit a supplemental budget to Congress -- something the Bush administration did repeatedly to pay for George W.?s wars, and something this president, while still a candidate, swore he wouldn?t do. Nonetheless, it will happen. So keep your eye on that $30 billion figure. Even that distinctly low-ball number is going to cause discomfort and opposition in the president?s party -- and yet there?s no way it will fully fund this year?s striking escalation of the war. The question is: How high will it go or, if the president doesn?t dare ask this Congress for more all at once, how will the extra funds be found? Keep your eye out, then, for hints of future supplemental budgets, because fighting the Afghan War (forget Iraq) over the next decade could prove a near trillion-dollar prospect. Neither battles won nor al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders killed will be the true measure of victory or defeat in the Afghan War. For Americans at home, even victory as modestly defined by this administration -- blunting the Taliban?s version of a surge -- could prove disastrous in terms of our financial capabilities. Guns and butter? That?s going to be a surefire no-go. So keep watching and asking: How busted could the U.S. be by 2011? 2. Will the U.S. Air Force be the final piece in the Afghan surge? As 2010 begins, almost everything is in surge mode in Afghanistan, including rising numbers of U.S. troops, private contractors, State Department employees, and new bases. In this period, only the U.S. Air Force (drones excepted) has stood down. Under orders from Afghan War commander General Stanley McChrystal, based on the new make-nice counterinsurgency strategy he?s implementing, air power is anything but surging. The use of the Air Force, even in close support of U.S. troops in situations in which Afghan civilians are anywhere nearby, has been severely restricted. There has already been grumbling about this in and around the military. If things don?t go well -- and quickly -- in the expanding war, expect frustration to grow and the pressure to rise to bring air power to bear. Already unnamed intelligence officials are leaking warnings that, with the Taliban insurgency expanding its reach, ?time is running out.? Counterinsurgency strategies are notorious for how long they take to bear fruit (if they do at all). When Americans are dying, maintaining a surge without a surge of air power is sure to be a test of will and patience (neither of which is an American strong suit). So keep your eye on the Air Force next year. If the planes start to fly more regularly and destructively, you?ll know that things aren?t looking up for General McChrystal and his campaign. 3. How big will the American presence in Pakistan be as 2010 ends? Let?s start with the fact that it?s already bigger than most of us imagine. Thanks to Nation magazine reporter Jeremy Scahill, we know that, from a base in Pakistan?s largest city, Karachi, officers of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, with the help of hired hands from the notorious private security contractor Xe (formerly Blackwater), ?plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, ?snatch and grabs? of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan.? Small numbers of U.S. Special Forces operatives have also reportedly been sent in to train Pakistan?s special forces. U.S. spies are in the country. U.S. missile- and bomb-armed drones, both CIA- and Air Force-controlled, have been conducting escalating operations in the country?s tribal borderlands. U.S. Special Operations forces have conducted at least four cross-border raids into Pakistan?s tribal borderlands unsanctioned by the Pakistani government or military (only one of which was publicly reported in this country). And the CIA and the State Department have been attempting (against some Pakistani resistance) to build up their personnel and facilities in-country. This, mind you, is only what we know in a situation in which secrecy is the order of the day and rumors fly. In the meantime, the Obama administration has been threatening to widen its drone war (and possibly other operations) to the powder-keg province of Baluchistan, where most of the Afghan Taliban?s leadership reportedly resides (evidently under Pakistani protection) and to the fighters of the Haqqani network, linked to both the Taliban and al-Qaeda, in the Pakistani border province of North Waziristan. Right now, these threats from Washington are clearly meant to motivate the Pakistani military to do the job instead. But as that is unlikely -- both groups are seen by its military as key players in the country?s future anti-Indian policies in Afghanistan -- they may not remain mere threats for long. Any such U.S. moves are only likely to widen the Af-Pak war and further destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan. In addition, the Pakistani military is not powerless vis-?-vis the U.S. For one thing, as Robert Dreyfuss of the Nation?s ?Dreyfuss Report? recently pointed out, it has a potential stranglehold on the tortuous U.S. supply lines into Afghanistan, already under attack by Taliban militants, that make the war there possible. Pakistan is the Catch-22 of Obama?s surge. As in the Vietnam War years, sanctuaries across the border ensure limited success in any escalating war effort, but going after those sanctuaries in a major way would be a war-widening move of genuine desperation. As with the Air Force in Afghanistan, watch Pakistan not just for spreading drone operations, but for the use of U.S. troops. If by year?s end Special Operations forces or U.S. troops are periodically on the ground in that country, don?t be shocked. However it may be explained, this will represent a dangerous failure of the first order. 4. How much smaller will the American presence in Iraq be? Barack Obama swept into office, in part, on a pledge to end the U.S. war in Iraq. Almost a year after he entered the White House, more than 100,000 U.S. troops are still deployed in that country (about the same number as in February 2004). Still, plans developed at the end of the Bush presidency, and later confirmed by President Obama, have set the U.S. on an apparent path of withdrawal. On this the president has been unambiguous. ?Let me say this as plainly as I can,? he told a military audience in February 2009. ?By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end... I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.? However, Robert Gates, his secretary of defense, has not been so unequivocal. While recently visiting Iraq, he disclosed that the U.S. Air Force would likely continue to operate in that country well into the future. He also said: ?I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see agreements between ourselves and the Iraqis that continues a train, equip, and advise role beyond the end of 2011.? For 2010, expect platitudes about withdrawal from the President and other administration spokespeople, while Defense Department officials and military commanders offer more ?pragmatic? (and realistic) assessments. Keep an eye out for signs this year of a coming non-withdrawal withdrawal in 2011. 5. What will the New Year mean for the Pentagon's base-building plans in our war zones? As the U.S. war in Afghanistan ramps up, look for American bases there to continue along last year?s path, becoming bigger, harder, more numerous, and more permanent-looking. As estimates of the time it will take to get the president?s extra boots on the ground in Afghanistan increase, look as well for the construction of more helipads, fuel pits, taxiways, and tarmac space on the forward operating bases sprouting especially across the southern parts of that country. These will be meant to speed the movement of surge troops into rural battle zones, while eschewing increasingly dangerous ground routes. In Iraq, expect the further consolidation of a small number of U.S. mega-bases as American troops pull back to ever fewer sites offering an ever lower profile in that country. Keep your eyes, in particular, on giant Balad Air Base and on Camp Victory outside Baghdad. These were built for the long term. If Washington doesn?t begin preparing to turn them over to the Iraqis, then start thinking 2012 and beyond. Elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region, look for the U.S. military to continue upgrading its many bases, while militarily working to strengthen the security forces of country after autocratic country, from Saudi Arabia to Qatar, in part to continue to rattle Iran?s cage. If those bases keep growing, don?t imagine us drawing down in the region any time soon. 6. Will the U.S. and Israel thwart the Iranian insurgency? Iran has long been under siege. A founding member of George W. Bush?s ?Axis of Evil,? the Islamic Republic was long on his administration?s hit list. It also found itself in the unenviable position of watching the American military occupy and garrison two bordering countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, while also building or bolstering bases in nearby Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. The Obama administration is now poised to increase key military aid to Iran?s nemesis, Israel, and the Pentagon has flooded allied regimes in the region with advanced weaponry. Years of saber-rattling and sanctions, encirclement and threats nonetheless seemed to have little palpable effect. In 2009, however, a disputed election brought Iranians into the streets and, months later, they?re still there. What foreign militarism couldn?t do, ordinary Iranians themselves now threaten to accomplish. In earlier street protests, young middle-class activists in Tehran chanting ?Where is our vote?" were beaten and martyred by security forces. Today, the protests continue and oppositional Iranians from all social strata are refusing to retreat while, when provoked, sometimes fighting back against the police or the regime?s fearsome Basiji militia, even inducing some of them to step aside or switch sides. A continuing cycle of ever-spreading arrests, protests, and violence in 2010 threatens to further destabilize the regime. How Washington reacts could, however, deeply affect what happens. The memory of the CIA?s toppling of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 is still alive in Iran. Any perceived U.S. interference could have grave results for the Iranian insurgency, as could Israeli actions. Recently, President Obama, evidently trying to bring the Chinese into line on the question of imposing fiercer sanctions, reportedly told China?s president that the United States could not restrain Israel from attacking Iran?s nuclear facilities much longer. Such an Israeli attack would certainly strengthen the current Iranian regime; so, undoubtedly, would pressure to increase potentially crippling sanctions on that country over its nuclear program. Either or both would help further cement the current tumultuous status quo in the Middle East. 7. Will Yemen become the fourth major front in Washington?s global war? George W. Bush unabashedly proclaimed himself a ?war president.? President Obama seems to be taking up the same mantle. Right now, the Obama administration?s war fronts include the inherited wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a not-so-covert war in Pakistan, and a potential new war in Yemen. (There are also rarely commented upon ongoing military actions in the Philippines and a U.S.-aided drug war in Colombia, as well as periodic strikes in Somalia.) Though the surge in Afghanistan and Pakistan was supposed to contain al-Qaeda there, the U.S. now finds itself focusing on yet another country and another of that organization?s morphing offspring. In 2002, a USA Today article about a targeted assassination in Yemen began: ?Opening up a visible new front in the war on terror, U.S. forces launched a pinpoint missile strike in Yemen...? Just over seven years later, following multiple U.S. cruise missiles launched into the country and targeted air strikes by the air force of the U.S.-aided Yemeni regime against ?suspected hide-outs of Al Qaeda,? the New York Times announced, ?In the midst of two unfinished major wars, the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen.? In the wake of a botched airplane terror attack by a single young Nigerian Muslim, and credit-taking by a group calling itself al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the usual cheery crew of U.S. war advocates are lining up behind the next potential front in the war on terror. (Senator Joseph Lieberman: "Iraq was yesterday's war. Afghanistan is today's war. If we don't act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow's war.") What began as a one-off Bush assassination effort now threatens to become another of Obama?s wars. The U.S. has not only sent Special Forces teams into the country, but is now pouring tens of millions of dollars into Yemen?s security forces in a dramatic move to significantly arm yet another Middle Eastern country. At the same time, U.S.-backed Saudi Arabia -- whose alliance with Washington ignited the current war with al-Qaeda -- is aiding the Yemeni forces in a war against Houthi rebels there. This is a witch?s brew of trouble. Keep your eye on Yemen (with an occasional side glance at Somalia, the failed state across the Gulf of Aden). Expect more funding, more trainers, more proxy warfare, and possibly a whole new conflict for 2010. 8. How brutal will the American way of war be in 2010? When it comes to war, American-style, the key word of 2009 was ?counterinsurgency? or COIN. Think of it as the kindly version of war the American way, a strategy based on ?clearing and holding? territory and ?protecting? the civilian population. Its value, as expounded by Afghan War commander McChrystal, lies not in killing the enemy but in winning over ?the people.? On paper, it sounds good, like a kinder, gentler version of war, but historically counterinsurgency operations have almost invariably gone into the ditch of brutality. So here?s one word you should keep your eyes out for in 2010: ?counterterrorism.? Consider it the dark underside of counterinsurgency. Instead of boots on the ground, it?s bullets to the head. General McChrystal was, until recently, a counterterrorism guy. He ran the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in Iraq and Afghanistan. His operatives were referred to, more or less politely, as ?manhunters.? Think: assassins. With McChrystal, a general who credits his large-scale assassination program for a great deal of the Iraq surge?s success in 2007, it was just a matter of time before counterterrorism -- which is just terrorism put in uniform and given an anodyne name -- was ramped up in Afghanistan (and undoubtedly Pakistan as well). Though the planes may still be grounded, the special ops guys who kick in doors in the middle of the night and have often been responsible for grievous civilian casualties will evidently be going at it full tilt. As 2009 ended, the news that black-ops forces were being loosed in a significant way was just hitting the press. So watch for that word ?counterterrorism.? If it proliferates, you?ll know that the expanding Afghan War is getting down and dirty in a big way. For Americans, 2010 could be the year of the assassin. 9. Where will the drones go in 2010? If there?s one thing to keep your eye on in the coming year, it might be the unmanned aerial vehicles -- drones -- flown secretly, in the case of the Air Force, from distant al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar and, in the case of the CIA, even more distantly out of Langley, Virginia. American drones are already in a widening air war in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, while Washington threatens to create an even wider one. Think of these robotic planes as the leading edge of global war, American-style. While ?hot pursuit? into Pakistan may still be forbidden to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the drones have long had a kind of hot-pursuit carte blanche in Pakistan?s tribal borderlands. Perhaps more important, they can, to steal a Star Trek line, boldly go where no man has gone before. Since the first drone assassination attack of the Global War on Terror -- in Yemen in 2002 -- in which several men, reputedly al-Qaeda militants, were incinerated inside a car, drones have been taking war into new territory. They have already struck in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and possibly Somalia. As the first robot terminators of our age, they symbolize the loosing of American war-making powers from the oversight of Congress and the American people. In principle, they have made borders (hence national sovereignty) increasingly insignificant as assassination attacks can be launched 24/7 against those we deem our enemies, on the basis of unknown intelligence or evidence. With our drones, there is little price to be paid if, as has regularly enough been the case, those enemies turn out not to be in the right place at the right time and others die in their stead. Globally, we have become the world?s leading state assassins -- a judge, jury, and executioner beyond the bounds of all accountability. In essence, those pilot-less planes turn us into a law of war unto ourselves. It?s a chilling development. Watch for it to spread in 2010, and keep an eye out for which countries, fielding their own drones, follow down the path we?re pioneering, for in our age all war-making developments invariably proliferate -- and fast. The Element of Surprise We know one thing: 2010 will be another year of war for the United States and, from assassination campaigns to new fronts in what is no longer called the Global War on Terror but is no less global or based on terror, it could get a lot uglier. The Obama administration may, from time to time, talk withdrawal, but across the Middle East and Central Asia, the Pentagon and its contractors are digging in. In the meantime, more money, not less, is being put into preparations and planning for future wars. As William Hartung points out, ?if the government?s current plans are carried out, there will be yearly increases in military spending for at least another decade.? When it comes to war, the only questions are: How wide? How much? Not: How long? Washington?s answer to that question has already been given, not in public pronouncements, but in that Pentagon budget and the planning that goes with it: forever and a day. Of course, only diamonds are forever. Sooner or later, like great imperial powers of the past, we, too, will find that the stress of fighting a continuous string of wars in distant lands in inhospitable climes tells on us. Whether we ?win? or not in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and now Yemen, we lose. Which brings us to our last question: 10. What will surprise us in 2010? It would be the height of hubris to imagine that we can truly see into the future, especially when it comes to war. It is, in fact, Washington?s hubris to believe itself in control of its own war-making destiny, whether via shock-and-awe tactics that are certain to work, a netcentric military-lite that can?t fail, or most recently, a force dedicated to a ?hearts and minds? counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan and, in the future, globally (under the ominous new acronym GCOIN). The essence of war is surprise. So, despite all those billions of dollars and the high-tech weaponry, and the nine areas discussed above, keep your eyes open for the unexpected and confounding, and in the meantime, welcome to the grim spectacle of war American-style as the second decade of the twenty-first century begins in turmoil. Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), an alternative history of the mad Bush years. Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com and the winner of a 2009 Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction as well as a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, In These Times, and regularly at TomDispatch. Turse is currently a fellow at New York University's Center for the United States and the Cold War. He is the author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (Metropolitan Books). His website is NickTurse.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From menecraj at shaw.ca Wed Jan 6 14:32:07 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 14:32:07 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] U.S. kicks hornet's nest in Yemen Message-ID: <7055E458BAC944BEB92139087C03F954@agingCHS072729> http://www.lfpress.com/comment/columnists/eric_margolis/2010/01/02/12324496-sun.html London Free Press January 2, 2010 U.S. kicks hornet's nest in Yemen By ERIC MARGOLIS Welcome to the Afghanistan of Arabia. Yemen, the likely source of the failed Christmas Day airliner bombing at Detroit, has just rudely intruded into the West's awareness. Sources there claim the attack by a young Nigerian was retaliation for extensive covert U.S. military operations in Yemen. I first explored Yemen in the mid-1970s. This magical land of fierce tribesmen was just then creeping into the 11th century. At the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula, mountainous, verdant Yemen was the Biblical land of the Queen of Sheba and originator of perfume. Sana'a, the walled capital, was straight out of Arabian Nights. At dusk, a ram's horn would sound and its gates would close for the night. Beyond lay warlike tribesmen who would slit your throat for a watch. Almost every man wore a curved tribal dagger in his belt and went heavily armed. There were no hotels, so I slept in the dining room of one of the palaces of the former ruler, Ahmed the Devil, who enjoyed nailing annoying people to his palace gate. Old Ahmed spent the rest of his time smoking hashish and cavorting with his well-stocked harem. In 1990, the former British colony of Aden joined North Yemen. A military dictator, Ali Saleh, has held power since 1978. Saleh's U.S.-backed regime is accused of extensive human rights violations and deep corruption. The 23 million people of the two Yemens have feuded for decades. Yemen also battled with neighbour Oman, a virtual colony of MI6, British intelligence. In a wonderful colonial punch-up, Britain's fabled SAS commandos in pink-painted jeeps (they blended perfectly with sand) battled Yemeni-backed nationalists known as the "Red Wolves of Radfan." I naturally fell in love with Yemen, despite getting caught in tribal gunfights in the north, being nearly kidnapped and falling dreadfully ill. At 4 p.m., every Yemeni would go off duty, sit in groups and chew the mild narcotic shrub qat for two hours while getting silly and swapping tall tales and jokes. Qat, Yemen's primary crop, curbs the appetite, so most lucky Yemenis are skinny. I saw tall, majestic Yemeni Jews proudly striding down the street dressed in flowing robes and turbans and sporting daggers, long beards and large silver stars of David around their necks -- a vision straight from the Old Testament. Today, turbulent Yemen has become a haven for anti-American militants. Osama bin Laden's father came from Yemen. The destroyer USS Cole was bombed in Aden harbour in 2000. The most prominent militant group is al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a fusion of local Yemeni and Saudi jihadists dedicated to replacing the Saudi monarchy and Yemeni military regime with an Islamic government. AQAP numbers around 100 men. It is not an organic part of Osama bin Laden's group but a like-minded local revolutionary group. Dirt poor Yemen has three civil wars going on and bitter fighting between Sunni and various Shia sects. Yemen's warlike tribes hate any outside authority, starting with their own government. Recently, the Saudis, backed by U.S. air power, CIA and special forces, intervened against Shia Houthi tribesmen along Yemen's undemarcated northern desert border. Just before the Detroit air incident, U.S. warplanes killed 50 to 100 Yemeni tribesmen fighting the American-backed regime. U.S. special forces, warplanes and killer drones have been active since 2001, assassinating Yemeni militants and anti- government tribal leaders. It was only a matter of time before Yemeni jihadists struck back at the U.S. Even Washington now admits that Yemen is the new hotbed of anti-western jihadist activity. Meanwhile, U.S. and NATO forces are supposedly in Afghanistan to fight al-Qaida -- which long ago decamped to Pakistan and Yemen. The U.S. is being drawn into turbulent Yemen just as it is also expanding military operations across the Red Sea in Somalia and southern Kenya. Britain, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are also getting involved in Yemen. Another hornet's nest kicked. Expect more nasty stings. eric.margolis at sunmedia.ca =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Wed Jan 6 14:34:35 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 14:34:35 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Obama's War On Yemen Message-ID: <816A120E56DA47E79D31B2CA15B42C26@agingCHS072729> http://www.countercurrents.org/lendman040110.htm Countercurrents.org 04 January, 2010 Obama's War On Yemen By Stephen Lendman Besides waging direct or proxy wars on multiple fronts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, the Philippines, Sudan, Eastern Congo, elsewhere in Africa, and likely to erupt almost anywhere at any time, Yemen is now a new front in America's "war on terror" under a president, who as a candidate, promised diplomacy, not conflict, if elected. In 2008, he told the Boston Globe that: "The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." None exists, yet he's done the opposite and much more. He: -- reinvented a "Cold War" with Russia; -- is encircling it and China with military bases, and proceeding with provocative plans to install interceptor missiles in Poland (for offense, not defense) and advanced tracking radar in the Czech Republic; -- escalated war in Afghanistan; -- appointed a hired gun assassin to lead it, General Stanley McChrystal, infamous for committing war crime atrocities as former head of the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC); -- authorized death squad assaults to pursue it, including extrajudicial assassinations, torture, and indiscriminate bombing of Afghan communities without regard for civilian lives; -- expanded the war into Pakistan and now to Yemen; -- is militarizing Latin America using Colombia and the Dutch islands of Aruba and Curazao to fly unmanned surveillance/attack drones over Venezuela and perhaps elsewhere in the region; -- plans to use Colombian insurgents to commit "false positive" border incidents blaming Venezuela as a pretext for a retaliatory attack, supported, of course, by Washington as a way to target and perhaps remove Hugo Chavez; -- failed to subvert Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's reelection; continues destabilization tactics for regime change; and may, preemptively without cause, attack Iran's nuclear facilities; -- ousted the democratically elected Honduran president, installing a fascist regime to replace him; -- supports the worst of Israeli war crimes and oppression against Palestinians; -- governs America under police state laws to resist unrest if it arises in the wake of outlandish administration policies; and according to some -- plans a major false flag US attack to enlist popular support, divert attention from the deepening economic crisis, and provide a pretext for new fronts in the "war on terror" with unlimited funding to pursue them at the expense of neglected homeland needs. Target Yemen Journalist Patrick Cockburn calls Yemen: "a dangerous place. Wonderfully beautiful, the mountainous north of the country is guerrilla paradise. The Yemenis are exceptionally hospitable....humorous, sociable and democratic, infinitely preferable as company to the arrogant ignorant playboys of the (rich regional) oil states." Sana'a is the capital, home to the central government and largest city, an ancient one dating back to the 6th century BC Sabaean dynasty. However, it's power is limited, given the strength of tribes, clans, and influential families in a society very much a gun culture and prone to direct action. On average, Yemenis own three guns per person in a nation of 21 million people, including one or more automatic weapons, like an AK-47 as well as heavier arms. Yemeni Professor Ahmed al-Kibsi once told a British reporter: "Just as you have your tie, the Yemeni will carry his gun," and isn't at all shy about using it. As a result, Cockburn says "Yemen has all the explosive ingredients of Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan," so entanglement there may become another quagmire, besides the others in the region already. "It is extraordinary to see the US begin to make the same mistakes in Yemen as it previously made in Afghanistan and Iraq" - overextending and getting too involved to exit. William Hartung, Arms and Security Initiative director at the New York-based New America Foundation, calls the Yemeni government one of the most unstable in the world, so weapons, training, and direct intervention may backfire if an anti-Washington regime replaces it. Cockburn says America doesn't "learn from past mistakes and instead....repeats them by fresh interventions in countries like Yemen." Perhaps not, however, since part of Washington's scheme is to keep fighting, divert people from more pressing issues at home, and enrich thousands of war profiteers with public money, leaving future generations with the bill. The UN says poverty in Yemen is widespread with about 45% of the population living on less than two dollars a day. The New York Times calls Yemen one of the world's oldest civilizations and poorest Middle East country (ignoring Occupied Palestine), "as well as a haven for Islamic jihadists:" to wit, the ubiquitous Al Qaeda, a 1980s CIA creation always trotted out whenever "war on terror" efforts need stoking and a convenient enemy to be blamed. According to The Times: "Yemen gained new attention in 2009 from American military officials, who are concerned about Al Qaeda's efforts to set up a regional base there." In December, US officials claimed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian citizen, traveled to Yemen, was trained by Al Qaeda, obtained explosive chemicals (PETN), and tried using them to blow up an Amsterdam-Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day. According to Webster Tarpley in a December 29 Russia Today interview, Abdulmutallab is a CIA "protected patsy (for the) provocation designed to facilitate US meddling in (Yemen's) civil war (pitting) the Saudi-backed central government against the Iranian-backed Shiite Houthi rebels," being bombed by US and Saudi air strikes. He was denied a UK entrance visa, wasn't on a No Fly List, paid cash for a one-way ticket to Detroit, checked no luggage, had a US visa but no passport, and was helped on board by a "well-dressed Indian" to facilitate what appears to be a Washington false flag plot using Abdulmutallab as a convenient dupe. The Wayne Madsen Report adds more calling the airliner incident a false flag operation "carried out by (the) intelligence tripartite grouping of CIA, Mossad, and India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW)." Earlier they "worked together along with former Afghan KHAD intelligence agents to assassinate former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto....to destabilize Pakistan" for planned balkanization, the same scheme planned for Afghanistan. Madsen added that Abdulmutallab's PETN "was weak (exploding like a fire cracker), technically deficient (and failed to go off properly)." What's at stake? At most, Yemen has four billion proved barrels of oil reserves and modest amounts of natural gas, hardly a reason for war. More important is its strategic location near the Horn of Africa on Saudi Arabia's southern border, the Red Sea, its Bab el- Mandeb strait (a key chokepoint separating Yemen from Eritrea through which three million barrels of oil pass daily), and the Gulf of Aden connection to the Indian Ocean. Tarpley believes Washington is: "play(ing) Iran against Saudi Arabia so as to weaken both the pro-Moscow Ahmadinejad government in Iran, and also those Saudi forces that are fed up with their status as a US protectorate. The US is openly now sponsoring a regroupment of Al Qaeda in Yemen, including by sending fighters direct from Guantanamo. The new CIA-promoted synthetic entity is Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsule (AQAP), a gaggle of US patsies, dupes, and fanatics which is claiming credit for the (Abdulmutallab) incident." Washington's usual tactics are at work: -- create a false flag incident; -- heighten fear through the complicit media; -- ride to the rescue with popular support; -- keep oil prices high; -- boost market opportunities for security equipment manufacturers; -- weaken civil liberties through new police state measures; -- erode Iranian and Russian influence; and -- gain greater control over the region's southern portion, the entire Middle East and all of Eurasia. Coming next may be another enlisted or unwitting stooge to take down an airliner, blame it on Iran, Yemeni rebels, or Al Qaeda and provide an excuse for greater intervention, mass slaughter and destruction in another country, then on to the next one as part of an offensive to expand regional war and destabilization toward the ultimate goal of global "full spectrum dominance. At Washington's behest, the Saudis began bombing and using tanks against Yemen in early November. So far, hundreds have been killed or wounded and thousands displaced. In addition, a rebel group called the Young Believers claims US jets launched multiple attacks in Yemen's northwest Sa'ada Province. Britain's Daily Telegraph also reports that US Special Forces (meaning death squads like in Afghanistan) are training Yemen's army, and likely operating covertly on their own. On December 29, Iran accused Washington, the UK, and other western countries of fomenting the week's anti-government protests. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ramin Hahmanparast claimed a complicit minority in the country was involved with outside support, saying: "This is intervention in our internal affairs. We strongly condemn it," after president Obama praised "the courage and the conviction of the Iranian people (and condemned the government's) iron fist of brutality." Iranians have long memories of US meddling. In 1953, CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin's cousin, engineered a successful coup ousting democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq (the country's most popular politician) after he nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company following a dispute about revenue sharing. Now it's all about terrorism, Islamic extremists, and the ubiquitous Al Qaeda as convenient excuses Washington uses to threaten or attack anywhere. It's no wonder that legitimate commentaries accuse America of fanning the flames of war with rhetoric, new troop deployments to Afghanistan, and General McChrystal naming the country's major insurgent group threats as the Qjetta Shura Taliban, the Haqqani Network (closely aligned with the Taliban), and the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG, linked to Afghanistan's Hezbi Islami Party) - the latter two former CIA assets in the 1980s, and the Taliban an ally before 9/11. They're now claimed to be active in Pakistan and mortal enemies in America's "war on terror," about to consume Yemen in Washington's fury, helped by headlines like the December 29 Times Online saying: "Hundreds of al-Qaeda militants planning attacks from Yemen," according to its Foreign Minister, Abu Bakr al-Qirbi, appealing for help to equip counterinsurgency forces. "Of course there are....al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen and some of their leaders," he said. "We realize the danger. They may actually plan attacks like the one we have just had in Detroit." On December 30, The New York Times published a Reuters report headlining, "US Seeks to Boost Yemen For Expanded Al Qaeda Fight," saying America plans: "to expand military and intelligence cooperation with the government of Yemen to step up a crackdown on al Qaeda militants believed to be behind a failed plot to blow up a US passenger jet," according to unnamed US officials. President Obama vowed "to use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle, and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us - whether they are from Afghanistan or Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, or anywhere where they are plotting attacks against the US homeland." Without elaborating, Pentagon spokesperson Bryan Whitman said "We are going to work with allies and partners to seek out terrorist activity, al Qaeda....This is not new." Increased US-Saudi attacks and military aid are part of the effort - up from $4.6 million in FY 2006 to $67 million in FY 2009, and according to the Wall Street Journal, citing an unnamed senior Pentagon official, to as much as $190 million in FY 2010. Included also are unknown black budget amounts, greater numbers of US Special Forces on the ground for training and covert death squad activities, and stepped up air attacks. Whitman explained that Yemen is now America's second largest recipient of overt counterterrorism aid, after Pakistan, a sign of the area's importance to Washington. US Special Forces operated there in 2002, and according to The New York Times, the CIA sent in many counterterrorism operatives in 2008 along with other US forces for overt and covert purposes. Reports in the US and foreign media suggest larger scale US-backed Yemeni attacks are imminent, and according to CNN, citing two unnamed senior US officials: "The US and Yemen are now looking at fresh targets for a potential retaliation strike. The effort is to see whether targets can be specifically linked to the airline incident and its planning....the agreement would allow the US to fly cruise missiles, fighter jets or unmanned armed drones against targets in Yemen with the consent of that government," that's, of course, gotten and will proceed with or without it. Inflammatory US media reports and commentaries now promote war by portraying Yemen as a hotbed of terrorism, citing ubiquitous Al Qaeda forces creating chaos throughout the country, and saying unless America acts, conditions will worsen and spread. According to The New York Times on December 27: Washington "has quietly opened (a) largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen," using CIA operatives and Special Operations commandos, according to an unnamed Agency official. Writers Eric Schmitt and Robert Worth call the country: "a refuge for jihadists, in part because (the) government welcomed returning Islamist fighters who had fought in Afghanistan during the 1980s. (These) militants have made much more focused efforts to build a base in Yemen in recent years, drawing recruits from throughout the region and mounting attacks more frequently on foreign embassies and other targets." Washington has close relations with Field Marshall Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's ruling despot. From 1978 - 1990, he was president of the Yemen Arab Republic, and since then headed the united Republic of Yemen. During the Cold War, America backed the Islamist regime in the North against southern secular nationalists aligned with the Soviets. In the country's 1994 civil war, former Yemeni Afghan fighters helped Saleh secure the power he still holds. Washington recruited him for its expanded regional wars. They cause great loss of lives, wider instability, an unsustainable expense, and leave vital homeland needs unmet, but are a bonanza for the war profiteers fueling them and others to follow for a sure-fire stream of blood money. What's Next? Up the ante in Afghanistan and Pakistan, entanglement in Yemen, then perhaps confront Iran with White House spokesman Robert Gibbs saying on November 27: "Our patience and that of the international community is limited, and time is running out. If Iran refuses to meet its obligations, then it will be responsible for its own growing isolation and consequences." Apparently a "package of consequences" are planned, according to another unnamed official. Air attacks may be one of them with New York Times support. On January 10, chief diplomatic correspondent, David Sanger, reported on US - Israeli talks over the past year about possibly striking Iran's nuclear sites as well covert sabotage efforts "to undermine electrical systems, computer systems and other networks on which Iran relies." Like Judith Miller's press agent role for the Pentagon in the run to the Iraq war, Sanger is a notorious Pentagon and State Department conduit, so his reports read more official propaganda than legitimate journalism - a longstanding Times pro-war, pro-business, anti-labor bias going back decades, and very evident now. On December 23, The Times gave Alan Kuperman, Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program director at the University of Texas, op-ed space to headline, "There's Only One Way to Stop Iran," and he doesn't suggest diplomacy. He says Obama should welcome Iran's rejection of his nuclear deal because it "did not require Iran to halt its enrichment program," even though it's in full compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) giving Washington and other nations no right to stop it. Yet Kuperman insists Iran will likely divert its surplus higher-enriched fuel to weapons, and President Ahmadinejad "initially embraced the deal because he realized it aided Iran's bomb program." However, "peaceful carrots and sticks cannot work, and an invasion would be foolhardy, (so Washington) faces a stark choice: military air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities or acquiescence to Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons." IAEA inspections show no proof of a secret nuclear weapons program, and former IAEA director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, said in February 2009 said "many other countries are enriching uranium without the world making any fuss about it." Five days before he retired on November 27, he told Reuters: "We have no indication that there are other undeclared facilities in Iran. I want to be very clear about that." He also urged patience because Iran posed no imminent threat, and said "people should stop threatening the use of force because that simply....creates a justification or pretext for countries....to go underground because (they're) threatened." He stressed that the IAEA found no evidence that Iranians had technology needed to assemble a nuclear warhead or that they're even trying. Kuperman isn't convinced and accuses Iran of "suppl(ying) terrorist groups in violation of international embargoes. (So, if it) acquire(s) a nuclear arsenal, the risks would simply to too great that it could become a neighborhood bully or provide terrorists with the ultimate weapon, an atomic bomb." Never mind that America's 2002 and 2006 National Security Strategy (NSS) and 2001 Nuclear Policy Review authorize the development of new type nuclear weapons, and the right to use them in first-strike preventive wars under the doctrine of "anticipatory self-defense." Iran threatens no one, but Kuperman recommends military strikes anyway, regardless of the law, whether they'll succeed, and no matter the potentially horrific consequences, including inflaming the whole region, disrupting oil supplies, harming world economies when they're most vulnerable, and making America more hated than ever. Still he says: "Postponing military action merely provides Iran a window to expand, disperse and harden its nuclear facilities against attack. The sooner the United States takes action, the better." In other words, two fronts aren't enough so add Yemen. Then make it a foursome with Iran, the sooner America does it the better, and The New York Times promotes this view after expressing caution in its January 3 editorial headlined, "No delusion of bombing Iran" and saying: "Fortunately, President-elect Barack Obama says his approach to Iran will include 'a new emphasis on respect and a new emphasis on being willing to talk....' " This approach "may or may not work," says The Times. "But it is a road that (should be tried and) should have been taken years ago." Not now apparently or earlier, in fact, as Times writers play an indispensable role feeding misinformation to the world and supporting imperial wars with the rest of the dominant media. They'll have plenty to say as a new Yemen front unfolds and maybe an Iran one to follow. Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen at sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to the Lendman News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Wed Jan 6 14:38:34 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 14:38:34 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] U.S. Intelligence Found Iran Nuke Document Was Forged Message-ID: <2FBA91DD139C464EB055D0D1B86E4748@agingCHS072729> http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49833 U.S. Intelligence Found Iran Nuke Document Was Forged By Gareth Porter* WASHINGTON, Dec 28 (IPS) - U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a "neutron initiator" for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency official. Philip Giraldi, who was a CIA counterterrorism official from 1976 to 1992, told IPS that intelligence sources say that the United States had nothing to do with forging the document, and that Israel is the primary suspect. The sources do not rule out a British role in the fabrication, however. The Times of London story published Dec. 14 did not identify the source of the document. But it quoted "an Asian intelligence source" - a term some news media have used for Israeli intelligence officials - as confirming that his government believes Iran was working on a neutron initiator as recently as 2007. The story of the purported Iranian document prompted a new round of expressions of U.S. and European support for tougher sanctions against Iran and reminders of Israel's threats to attack Iranian nuclear programme targets if diplomacy fails. U.S. news media reporting has left the impression that U.S. intelligence analysts have not made up their mind about the document's authenticity, although it has been widely reported that they have now had a full year to assess the issue. Giraldi's intelligence sources did not reveal all the reasons that led analysts to conclude that the purported Iran document had been fabricated by a foreign intelligence agency. But their suspicions of fraud were prompted in part by the source of the story, according to Giraldi. "The Rupert Murdoch chain has been used extensively to publish false intelligence from the Israelis and occasionally from the British government," Giraldi said. The Times is part of a Murdoch publishing empire that includes the Sunday Times, Fox News and the New York Post. All Murdoch-owned news media report on Iran with an aggressively pro-Israeli slant. The document itself also had a number of red flags suggesting possible or likely fraud. The subject of the two-page document which the Times published in English translation would be highly classified under any state's security system. Yet there is no confidentiality marking on the document, as can be seen from the photograph of the Farsi-language original published by the Times. The absence of security markings has been cited by the Iranian ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, as evidence that the "alleged studies" documents, which were supposedly purloined from an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons-related programme early in this decade, are forgeries. The document also lacks any information identifying either the issuing office or the intended recipients. The document refers cryptically to "the Centre", "the Institute", "the Committee", and the "neutron group". The document's extreme vagueness about the institutions does not appear to match the concreteness of the plans, which call for hiring eight individuals for different tasks for very specific numbers of hours for a four-year time frame. Including security markings and such identifying information in a document increases the likelihood of errors that would give the fraud away. The absence of any date on the document also conflicts with the specificity of much of the information. The Times reported that unidentified "foreign intelligence agencies" had dated the document to early 2007, but gave no reason for that judgment. An obvious motive for suggesting the early 2007 date is that it would discredit the U.S. intelligence community's November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran had discontinued unidentified work on nuclear weapons and had not resumed it as of the time of the estimate. Discrediting the NIE has been a major objective of the Israeli government for the past two years, and the British and French governments have supported the Israeli effort. The biggest reason for suspecting that the document is a fraud is its obvious effort to suggest past Iranian experiments related to a neutron initiator. After proposing experiments on detecting pulsed neutrons, the document refers to "locations where such experiments used to be conducted". That reference plays to the widespread assumption, which has been embraced by the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Iran had carried out experiments with Polonium-210 in the late 1980s, indicating an interest in neutron initiators. The IAEA referred in reports from 2004 through 2007 to its belief that the experiment with Polonium-210 had potential relevance to making "a neutron initiator in some designs of nuclear weapons". The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the political arm of the terrorist organisation Mujahedeen-e Khalq, claimed in February 2005 that Iran's research with Polonium-210 was continuing and that it was now close to producing a neutron initiator for a nuclear weapon. Sanger and Broad were so convinced that the Polonium-210 experiments proved Iran's interest in a neutron initiator that they referred in their story on the leaked document to both the IAEA reports on the experiments in the late 1980s and the claim by NCRI of continuing Iranian work on such a nuclear trigger. What Sanger and Broad failed to report, however, is that the IAEA has acknowledged that it was mistaken in its earlier assessment that the Polonium-210 experiments were related to a neutron initiator. After seeing the complete documentation on the original project, including complete copies of the reactor logbook for the entire period, the IAEA concluded in its Feb. 22, 2008 report that Iran's explanations that the Polonium-210 project was fundamental research with the eventual aim of possible application to radio isotope batteries was "consistent with the Agency's findings and with other information available to it". The IAEA report said the issue of Polonium-210 - and thus the earlier suspicion of an Iranian interest in using it as a neutron initiator for a nuclear weapon - was now considered "no longer outstanding". New York Times reporters David Sanger and William J. Broad reported U.S. intelligence officials as saying the intelligence analysts "have yet to authenticate the document". Sanger and Broad explained the failure to do so, however, as a result of excessive caution left over from the CIA's having failed to brand as a fabrication the document purporting to show an Iraqi effort to buy uranium in Niger. The Washington Post's Joby Warrick dismissed the possibility that the document might be found to be fraudulent. "There is no way to establish the authenticity or original source of the document...," wrote Warrick. But the line that the intelligence community had authenticated it evidently reflected the Barack Obama administration's desire to avoid undercutting a story that supports its efforts to get Russian and Chinese support for tougher sanctions against Iran. This is not the first time that Giraldi has been tipped off by his intelligence sources on forged documents. Giraldi identified the individual or office responsible for creating the two most notorious forged documents in recent U.S. intelligence history. In 2005, Giraldi identified Michael Ledeen, the extreme right-wing former consultant to the National Security Council and the Pentagon, as an author of the fabricated letter purporting to show Iraqi interest in purchasing uranium from Niger. That letter was used by the George W. Bush administration to bolster its false case that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons programme. Giraldi also identified officials in the "Office of Special Plans" who worked under Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith as having forged a letter purportedly written by Hussein's intelligence director, Tahir Jalail Habbush al-Tikriti, to Hussein himself referring to an Iraqi intelligence operation to arrange for an unidentified shipment from Niger. *Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006. (END/2009) =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Wed Jan 6 14:40:49 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 14:40:49 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Obama told China: I can't stop Israel strike on Iran indefinitely Message-ID: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1135730.html Haaretz 17/12/2009 Obama told China: I can't stop Israel strike on Iran indefinitely By Barak Ravid and Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz Correspondents U.S. President Barack Obama has warned his Chinese counterpart that the United States would not be able to keep Israel from attacking Iranian nuclear installations for much longer, senior officials in Jerusalem told Haaretz. They said Obama warned President Hu Jintao during the American's visit to Beijing a month ago as part of the U.S. attempt to convince the Chinese to support strict sanctions on Tehran if it does not accept Western proposals for its nuclear program. The Israeli officials, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the matter, said the United States had informed Israel on Obama's meetings in Beijing on Iran. They said Obama made it clear to Hu that at some point the United States would no longer be able to prevent Israel from acting as it saw fit in response to the perceived Iranian threat. After the Beijing summit, the U.S. administration thought the Chinese had understood the message; Beijing agreed to join the condemnation of Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency only a week after Obama's visit. But in the past two weeks the Chinese have maintained their hard stance regarding the West's wishes to impose sanctions on the Islamic Republic. The Israeli officials say the Americans now understand that the Chinese agreed to join the condemnation announcement only because Obama made a personal request to Hu, not as part of a policy change. The Chinese have even refused a Saudi-American initiative designed to end Chinese dependence on Iranian oil, which would allow China to agree to the sanctions, said the Israeli officials. Saudi Arabia, which is also very worried about the Iranian nuclear program and keen to advance international steps against Iran, offered to supply the Chinese the same quantity of oil the Iranians now provide, and at much cheaper prices. But China rejected the deal. Since Obama's visit, the Chinese have refused to join any measures to impose sanctions. The Israeli officials say the Chinese have been giving unclear answers and have not been responding to the claims by Western nations. Beijing has been making do with statements such as "the time has not yet arrived for sanctions." China's actions are particularly problematic because China will take over the presidency of the UN Security Council in January. Western diplomats say China would have no choice but to join in sanctions if Russia agrees to support them, but China could delay discussions and postpone any decision until February, when France becomes council president. The Israeli officials say Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is showing a greater willingness for sanctions on Iran, despite hesitations by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Wed Jan 6 16:56:56 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 16:56:56 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Rick Mercer on 'prorogue Harper' Message-ID: http://www.rickmercer.com/blog/index.cfm/2010/1/5/22-Days-of-Snow-Days RickMercer.com Days of Snow Days Posted At : January 5, 2010 5:35 PM There's a very good reason why the word prorogue doesn't come up that often in our society. Why would it? The word has absolutely no resonance with anyone in Canada because the notion that you can shut down anything for months at a time is a total fantasy. That's the thing about life; it's relentless. If you are an adult, and live in the real world, proroguing isn't on the agenda in much the same way levitating isn't. God knows I love the idea of proroguing. Everyone in Canada has lay in bed and prayed for the elusive snow day. The idea that while you slept the heavens opened up and dumped so much snow on the ground that the front door can't open and the school bus just can't come. We all remember snow days and that glorious feeling that the deadlines, the tests, the irritating people, the routine and the responsibilities could be avoided for one entire magnificent day with no consequences whatsoever. And if you didn't do your homework, or you were heading into what you knew was going to be a world of hurt, a snow day meant you dodged the bullet. But snow days happen to children. If you are an adult it doesn't matter how much snow falls you still have to get to work and you still have to shovel the walk. Snow days don't apply to adults unless you happen to be the prime minister of Canada, who with one phone call has the ability to give every member of parliament two months off. We elect these men and women to travel to Ottawa and represent us in the House of Commons. Well forget that notion. That is old fashioned and democratic. Welcome to Canada 2010 - we embark on a brand new decade as a country that has taxation without representation. It is ironic that while our parliament has been suspended we are a nation at war. On New Year's Eve we greeted the news that five Canadians were killed in a single day with sadness but not surprise. We are at war because ostensibly we are helping bring democracy to Afghanistan. How the mission is progressing is open for debate but this much is certain - at present there is a parliament in Afghanistan that it is very much open for business. Canada has no such institution. In Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai's government faces fierce opposition at every turn; many of his cabinet choices have been rejected in a secret ballot by the more than 200 parliamentarians that sit in the legislature. Simply closing parliament down and operating without their consent is not an option for Hamid Karzai; to do so would be blatantly undemocratic or at the very least downright Canadian. If Hamid Karzai suspended parliament on a whim we might be forced to ask why Canadians are dying to bring democracy to that country. Stephen Harper doesn't have that problem. The Parliament of Canada has been suspended for no other reason than the prime minister simply can't be bothered with the relentless checks and balances that democracy affords us. He doesn't want to have to stand in the House of Commons and hear anyone question him on any subject. I don't blame him. Parliament is filled with jackals, opportunists and boors. The problem is, like it or not, they were elected. I also don't blame the Prime Minister for wanting to keep his ministers out of the spotlight. This is a prime minister who could argue he is Canada's greenest PM simply because he's the only one who has gone out of his way to give potted plants key portfolios. The problem is he is the one who appointed Cabinet and like it or not they are supposed to be accountable. A minister's job is not to hide in their riding; it is to be accountable in Ottawa - or at least that was the promise. This prime minister has gone from the promise of an open, accessible and accountable government to a government that is simply closed. It is too bad that prorogation isn't something that our soldiers have in their arsenal. When faced with the order to head out on a foot patrol in the Panjwaii district of southern Afghanistan, to risk their lives to bring democracy to that place, wouldn't it be nice if they could simply prorogue and roll over and go back to sleep. Soldiers don't get that luxury. That is afforded only to the people who ultimately order them to walk down those dangerous dusty roads in the first place. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Wed Jan 6 19:25:17 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 19:25:17 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] William Blum: The Anti-Empire Report (January 2010) Message-ID: <1F700E6AB17A46B9A3E47061ECE6F6B9@agingCHS072729> http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer77.html The Anti-Empire Report January 6th, 2010 by William Blum www.killinghope.org =============== The American elite Lincoln Gordon died a few weeks ago at the age of 96. He had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard at the age of 19, received a doctorate from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, published his first book at 22, with dozens more to follow on government, economics, and foreign policy in Europe and Latin America. He joined the Harvard faculty at 23. Dr. Gordon was an executive on the War Production Board during World War II, a top administrator of Marshall Plan programs in postwar Europe, ambassador to Brazil, held other high positions at the State Department and the White House, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, economist at the Brookings Institution, president of Johns Hopkins University. President Lyndon B. Johnson praised Gordon's diplomatic service as "a rare combination of experience, idealism and practical judgment". You get the picture? Boy wonder, intellectual shining light, distinguished leader of men, outstanding American patriot. Abraham Lincoln Gordon was also Washington's on-site, and very active, director in Brazil of the military coup in 1964 which overthrew the moderately leftist government of Jo?o Goulart and condemned the people of Brazil to more than 20 years of an unspeakably brutal dictatorship. Human-rights campaigners have long maintained that Brazil's military regime originated the idea of the desaparecidos, "the disappeared", and exported torture methods across Latin America. In 2007, the Brazilian government published a 500-page book, "The Right to Memory and the Truth", which outlines the systematic torture, rape and disappearance of nearly 500 left-wing activists, and includes photos of corpses and torture victims. Currently, Brazilian President Luiz In?cio Lula da Silva is proposing a commission to investigate allegations of torture by the military during the 1964-1985 dictatorship. (When will the United States create a commission to investigate its own torture?) In a cable to Washington after the coup, Gordon stated - in a remark that might have had difficulty getting past the lips of even John Foster Dulles - that without the coup there could have been a "total loss to the West of all South American Republics". (It was actually the beginning of a series of fascistic anti-communist coups that trapped the southern half of South America in a decades-long nightmare, culminating in "Operation Condor", in which the various dictatorships, aided by the CIA, cooperated in hunting down and killing leftists.) Gordon later testified at a congressional hearing and while denying completely any connection to the coup in Brazil he stated that the coup was "the single most decisive victory of freedom in the mid-twentieth century." Listen to a phone conversation between President Johnson and Thomas Mann, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, April 3, 1964, two days after the coup: MANN: I hope you're as happy about Brazil as I am. LBJ: I am. MANN: I think that's the most important thing that's happened in the hemisphere in three years. LBJ: I hope they give us some credit instead of hell.1 So the next time you're faced with a boy wonder from Harvard, try to keep your adulation in check no matter what office the man attains, even - oh, just choosing a position at random - the presidency of the United States. Keep your eyes focused not on these "liberal" ... "best and brightest" who come and go, but on US foreign policy which remains the same decade after decade. There are dozens of Brazils and Lincoln Gordons in America's past. In its present. In its future. They're the diplomatic equivalent of the guys who ran Enron, AIG and Goldman Sachs. Of course, not all of our foreign policy officials are like that. Some are worse. And remember the words of convicted spy Alger Hiss: Prison was "a good corrective to three years at Harvard." =============== Mothers, don't let your children grow up to be Nobel Peace Prize winners In November I wrote: Question: How many countries do you have to be at war with to be disqualified from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize? Answer: Five. Barack Obama has waged war against only Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. He's holding off on Iran until he actually gets the prize. Well, on December 10 the president clutched the prize in his blood-stained hands. But then the Nobel Laureate surprised us. On December 17 the United States fired cruise missiles at people in ... not Iran, but Yemen, all "terrorists" of course, who were, needless to say, planning "an imminent attack against a U.S. asset".2 A week later the United States carried out another attack against "senior al-Qaeda operatives" in Yemen.3 Reports are that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Norway is now in conference to determine whether to raise the maximum number of wars allowed to ten. Given the committee's ignoble history, I imagine that Obama is taking part in the discussion. As is Henry Kissinger. The targets of these attacks in Yemen reportedly include fighters coming from Afghanistan and Iraq, confirmation of the warnings long given - even by the CIA and the Pentagon - that those US interventions were creating new anti-American terrorists. (That's anti-American foreign policy, not necessarily anything else American.) How long before the United States will be waging war in some other god-forsaken land against anti-American terrorists whose numbers include fighters from Yemen? Or Pakistan? Or Somalia? Or Palestine? Our blessed country is currently involved in so many bloody imperial adventures around the world that one needs a scorecard to keep up. Rick Rozoff of StopNATO has provided this for us in some detail.4 For this entire century, almost all these anti-American terrorists have been typically referred to as "al-Qaeda", as if you have to be a member of something called al-Qaeda to resent bombs falling on your house or wedding party; as if there's a precise and meaningful distinction between people retaliating against American terrorism while being a member of al-Qaeda and people retaliating against American terrorism while NOT being a member of al-Qaeda. However, there is not necessarily even such an animal as a "member of al-Qaeda", albeit there now exists "al-Qaeda in Iraq" and "al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula". Anti-American terrorists do know how to choose a name that attracts attention in the world media, that appears formidable, that scares Americans. Governments have learned to label their insurgents "al-Qaeda" to start the military aid flowing from Washington, just like they yelled "communist" during the Cold War. And from the perspective of those conducting the War on Terror, the bigger and more threatening the enemy, the better - more funding, greater prestige, enhanced career advancement. Just like with the creation of something called The International Communist Conspiracy. It's not just the American bombings, invasions and occupations that spur the terrorists on, but the American torture. Here's Bowe Robert Bergdahl, US soldier captured in Afghanistan, speaking on a video made by his Taliban captors: He said he had been well-treated, contrasting his fate to that of prisoners held in US military prisons, such as the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "I bear witness I was continuously treated as a human being, with dignity, and I had nobody deprive me of my clothes and take pictures of me naked. I had no dogs barking at me or biting me as my country has done to their Muslim prisoners in the jails that I have mentioned."5 Of course the Taliban provided the script, but what was the script based on? What inspired them to use such words and images, to make such references? =============== Cuba. Again. Still. Forever. More than 50 years now it is. The propaganda and hypocrisy of the American mainstream media seems endless and unwavering. They can not accept the fact that Cuban leaders are humane or rational. Here's the Washington Post of December 13 writing about an American arrested in Cuba: "The Cuban government has arrested an American citizen working on contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development who was distributing cellphones and laptop computers to Cuban activists. ... Under Cuban law ... a Cuban citizen or a foreign visitor can be arrested for nearly anything under the claim of 'dangerousness'." That sounds just awful, doesn't it? Imagine being subject to arrest for whatever someone may choose to label "dangerousness". But the exact same thing has happened repeatedly in the United States since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. We don't use the word "dangerousness". We speak of "national security". Or, more recently, "terrorism". Or "providing material support to terrorism". The arrested American works for Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), a US government contractor that provides services to the State Department, the Pentagon and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). In 2008, DAI was funded by the US Congress to "promote transition to democracy" in Cuba. Yes, Oh Happy Day!, we're bringing democracy to Cuba just as we're bringing it to Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2002, DAI was contracted by USAID to work in Venezuela and proceeded to fund the same groups that a few months earlier had worked to stage a coup - temporarily successful - against President Hugo Ch?vez. DAI performed other subversive work in Venezuela and has also been active in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other hotspots. "Subversive" is what Washington would label an organization like DAI if they behaved in the same way in the United States in behalf of a foreign government.6 The American mainstream media never makes its readers aware of the following (so I do so repeatedly): The United States is to the Cuban government like al-Qaeda is to the government in Washington, only much more powerful and much closer. Since the Cuban revolution, the United States and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon Cuba greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Cuban dissidents typically have had very close, indeed intimate, political and financial connections to American government agents. Would the US government ignore a group of Americans receiving funds or communication equipment from al-Qaeda and/or engaging in repeated meetings with known leaders of that organization? In the past few years, the American government has arrested a great many people in the US and abroad solely on the basis of alleged ties to al-Qaeda, with a lot less evidence to go by than Cuba has had with its dissidents' ties to the United States, evidence usually gathered by Cuban double agents. Virtually all of Cuba's "political prisoners" are such dissidents. The Washington Post story continued: "The Cuban government granted ordinary citizens the right to buy cellphones just last year." Period. What does one make of such a statement without further information? How could the Cuban government have been so insensitive to people's needs for so many years? Well, that must be just the way a "totalitarian" state behaves. But the fact is that because of the disintegration of the Soviet bloc, with a major loss to Cuba of its foreign trade, combined with the relentless US economic aggression, the Caribbean island was hit by a great energy shortage beginning in the 1990s, which caused repeated blackouts. Cuban authorities had no choice but to limit the sale of energy-hogging electrical devices such as cell phones; but once the country returned to energy sufficiency the restrictions were revoked. "Cubans who want to log on [to the Internet] often have to give their names to the government." What does that mean? Americans, thank God, can log onto the Internet without giving their names to the government. Their Internet Service Provider does it for them, furnishing their names to the government, along with their emails, when requested. "Access to some Web sites is restricted." Which ones? Why? More importantly, what information might a Cuban discover on the Internet that the government would not want him to know about? I can't imagine. Cubans are in constant touch with relatives in the US, by mail and in person. They get US television programs from Miami. International conferences on all manner of political, economic and social subjects are held regularly in Cuba. What does the American media think is the great secret being kept from the Cuban people by the nasty commie government? "Cuba has a nascent blogging community, led by the popular commentator Yoani S?nchez, who often writes about how she and her husband are followed and harassed by government agents because of her Web posts. S?nchez has repeatedly applied for permission to leave the country to accept journalism awards, so far unsuccessfully." According to a well-documented account7, S?nchez's tale of government abuse appears rather exaggerated. Moreover, she moved to Switzerland in 2002, lived there for two years, and then voluntarily returned to Cuba. On the other hand, in January 2006 I was invited to attend a book fair in Cuba, where one of my books, newly translated into Spanish, was being presented. However, the government of the United States would not give me permission to go. My application to travel to Cuba had also been rejected in 1998 by the Clinton administration. "'Counterrevolutionary activities', which include mild protests and critical writings, carry the risk of censure or arrest. Anti-government graffiti and speech are considered serious crimes." Raise your hand if you or someone you know of was ever arrested in the United States for taking part in a protest. And substitute "pro al-Qaeda" for "counterrevolutionary" and for "anti-government" and think of the thousands imprisoned the past eight years by the United States all over the world for ... for what? In most cases there's no clear answer. Or the answer is clear: (a) being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or (b) being turned in to collect a bounty offered by the United States, or (c) thought crimes. And whatever the reason for the imprisonment, they were likely tortured. Even the most fanatical anti-Castroites don't accuse Cuba of that. In the period of the Cuban revolution, since 1959, Cuba has had one of the very best records on human rights in the hemisphere. See my essay: "The United States, Cuba and this thing called Democracy".8 There's no case of anyone arrested in Cuba that compares in injustice and cruelty to the arrest in 1998 by the United States government of those who came to be known as the "Cuban Five", sentenced in Florida to exceedingly long prison terms for trying to stem terrorist acts against Cuba emanating from the US.9 It would be lovely if the Cuban government could trade their DAI prisoner for the five. Cuba, on several occasions, has proposed to Washington the exchange of a number of what the US regards as "political prisoners" in Cuba for the five Cubans held in the United States. So far the United States has not agreed to do so. =============== Notes 1.Michael Beschloss, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes 1963-1964 (New York, 1997), p.306. All other sources for this section on Gordon can be found in: Washington Post, December 22, 2009, obituary; The Guardian (London), August 31, 2007; William Blum, "Killing Hope", chapter 27 2.ABC News, December 17, 2009; Washington Post, December 19, 2009 3.Washington Post, December 25, 2009 4.Stop NATO, "2010: U.S. To Wage War Throughout The World", December 30, 2009. To get on the StopNATO mailing list write to r_rozoff at yahoo.com. To see back issues: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/ 5.Reuters, December 25, 2009 6.For more details on DAI, see Eva Golinger, "The Ch?vez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela" (2006) and her website, posting for December 31, 2009 7.Salim Lamrani, professor at Paris Descartes University, "The Contradictions of Cuban Blogger Yoani Sanchez", Monthly Review magazine, November 12, 2009 8.http://killinghope.org/bblum6/democ.htm 9.http://killinghope.org/bblum6/polpris.htm William Blum is the author of: .Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2 .Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower .West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir .Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website. To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6 [at] aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area. (Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite.) Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Wed Jan 6 20:12:06 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 20:12:06 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] George Monbiot: Earth itself has become disposable Message-ID: <0477C1D04EF44B1D85B76195A180A5AB@agingCHS072729> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/04/standard-of-living-spending-consumerism guardian.co.uk 4 January 2010 After this 60-year feeding frenzy, Earth itself has become disposable Consumerism has, as Huxley feared, changed all of us - we'd rather hop to a brave new world than rein in our spending George Monbiot Who said this? "All the evidence shows that beyond the sort of standard of living which Britain has now achieved, extra growth does not automatically translate into human welfare and happiness." Was it a) the boss of Greenpeace, b) the director of the New Economics Foundation, or c) an anarchist planning the next climate camp? None of the above: d) the former head of the Confederation of British Industry, who currently runs the Financial Services Authority. In an interview broadcast last Friday, Lord Turner brought the consumer society's most subversive observation into the mainstream. In our hearts most of us know it is true, but we live as if it were not. Progress is measured by the speed at which we destroy the conditions that sustain life. Governments are deemed to succeed or fail by how well they make money go round, regardless of whether it serves any useful purpose. They regard it as a sacred duty to encourage the country's most revolting spectacle: the annual feeding frenzy in which shoppers queue all night, then stampede into the shops, elbow, trample and sometimes fight to be the first to carry off some designer junk which will go into landfill before the sales next year. The madder the orgy, the greater the triumph of economic management. As the Guardian revealed today, the British government is now split over product placement in television programmes: if it implements the policy proposed by Ben Bradshaw, the culture secretary, plots will revolve around chocolates and cheeseburgers, and advertisements will be impossible to filter, perhaps even to detect. Bradshaw must know that this indoctrination won't make us happier, wiser, greener or leaner; but it will make the television companies ?140m a year. Though we know they aren't the same, we can't help conflating growth and wellbeing. Last week, for instance, the Guardian carried the headline "UK standard of living drops below 2005 level". But the story had nothing to do with our standard of living. Instead it reported that per capita gross domestic product is lower than it was in 2005. GDP is a measure of economic activity, not standard of living. But the terms are confused so often that journalists now treat them as synonyms. The low retail sales of previous months were recently described by this paper as "bleak" and "gloomy". High sales are always "good news", low sales are always "bad news", even if the product on offer is farmyard porn. I believe it's time that the Guardian challenged this biased reporting. Those who still wish to conflate welfare and GDP argue that high consumption by the wealthy improves the lot of the world's poor. Perhaps, but it's a very clumsy and inefficient instrument. After some 60 years of this feast, 800 million people remain permanently hungry. Full employment is a less likely prospect than it was before the frenzy began. In a new paper published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Sir Partha Dasgupta makes the point that the problem with gross domestic product is the gross bit. There are no deductions involved: all economic activity is accounted as if it were of positive value. Social harm is added to, not subtracted from, social good. A train crash which generates ?1bn worth of track repairs, medical bills and funeral costs is deemed by this measure to be as beneficial as an uninterrupted service which generates ?1bn in ticket sales. Most important, no deduction is made to account for the depreciation of natural capital: the overuse or degradation of soil, water, forests, fisheries and the atmosphere. Dasgupta shows that the total wealth of a nation can decline even as its GDP is growing. In Pakistan, for instance, his rough figures suggest that while GDP per capita grew by an average of 2.2% a year between 1970 and 2000, total wealth declined by 1.4%. Amazingly, there are still no official figures that seek to show trends in the actual wealth of nations. You can say all this without fear of punishment or persecution. But in its practical effects, consumerism is a totalitarian system: it permeates every aspect of our lives. Even our dissent from the system is packaged up and sold to us in the form of anti-consumption consumption, like the "I'm not a plastic bag", which was supposed to replace disposable carriers but was mostly used once or twice before it fell out of fashion, or like the lucrative new books on how to live without money. George Orwell and Aldous Huxley proposed different totalitarianisms: one sustained by fear, the other in part by greed. Huxley's nightmare has come closer to realisation. In the nurseries of the Brave New World, "the voices were adapting future demand to future industrial supply. 'I do love flying,' they whispered, 'I do love flying, I do love having new clothes . old clothes are beastly . We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending'". Underconsumption was considered "positively a crime against society". But there was no need to punish it. At first the authorities machine-gunned the Simple Lifers who tried to opt out, but that didn't work. Instead they used "the slower but infinitely surer methods" of conditioning: immersing people in advertising slogans from childhood. A totalitarianism driven by greed eventually becomes self-enforced. Let me give you an example of how far this self-enforcement has progressed. In a recent comment thread, a poster expressed an idea that I have now heard a few times. "We need to get off this tiny little world and out into the wider universe . if it takes the resources of the planet to get us out there, so be it. However we use them, however we utilise the energy of the sun and the mineral wealth of this world and the others of our planetary system, either we do use them to expand and explore other worlds, and become something greater than a mud-grubbing semi-sentient animal, or we die as a species." This is the consumer society taken to its logical extreme: the Earth itself becomes disposable. This idea appears to be more acceptable in some circles than any restraint on pointless spending. That we might hop, like the aliens in the film Independence Day, from one planet to another, consuming their resources then moving on, is considered by these people a more realistic and desirable prospect than changing the way in which we measure wealth. So how do we break this system? How do we pursue happiness and wellbeing rather than growth? I came back from the Copenhagen climate talks depressed for several reasons, but above all because, listening to the discussions at the citizens' summit, it struck me that we no longer have movements; we have thousands of people each clamouring to have their own visions adopted. We might come together for occasional rallies and marches, but as soon as we start discussing alternatives, solidarity is shattered by possessive individualism. Consumerism has changed all of us. Our challenge is now to fight a system we have internalised. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Thu Jan 7 11:17:53 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2010 11:17:53 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Suicide Claims More US Military Lives Than Afghan War Message-ID: <378DD1A0306C4E02BA0F60253D6CBDA7@agingCHS072729> http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16814 Global Research January 7, 2010 Suicide Claims More US Military Lives Than Afghan War by James Cogan American military personnel are continuing to take their own lives in unprecedented numbers, as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq drag on. By late November, at least 334 members of the armed forces had committed suicide in 2009, more than the 319 who were killed in Afghanistan or the 150 who died in Iraq. While a final figure is not available, the toll of military suicides last year was the worst since records began to be kept in 1980. The Army, National Guard and Army Reserve lost at least 211 personnel to suicide. More than half of those who took their lives had served in either Iraq or Afghanistan. The Army suicide rate of 20.2 per 100,000 personnel is higher than that registered among males aged 19 to 29, the gender age bracket with the highest rate among the general population. Before 2001, the Army rarely suffered 10 suicides per 100,000 soldiers. The Navy lost at least 47 active duty personnel in 2009, the Air Force 34 and the Marine Corp, which has been flung into some of the bloodiest fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, 42. The Marine suicide rate has soared since 2001 from 12 to at least 19.5 per 100,000. For every death, at least five members of the armed forces were hospitalised for attempting to take their life. According to the Navy Times, 2 percent of Army; 2.3 percent of Marines and 3 percent of Navy respondents to the military's own survey of 28,536 members from all branches reported they had attempted suicide at some point. The "Defense Survey of Health-Related Behaviors" also found "dangerous levels" of alcohol abuse and the illicit use of drugs such as pain killers by 12 percent of personnel. The trigger for a suicide attempt varied from case to case: relationship breakdowns, financial problems, substance abuse, tensions with other members of their unit, a traumatic event. What is clear, however, is that military service has seriously impacted on the physical and mental health of the victims. The suicide figures for serving personnel are only one indication. The most alarming statistics are those on mental illness related to the hundreds of thousands of veterans of the two wars who have left the military and sought to reintegrate into civilian life. While there is no exact figure, studies estimate that as many as 20 to 30 percent of veterans suffer some degree of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), hindering their ability to hold down jobs, maintain relationships, overcome substance abuse and, in some cases, maintain their will to live. The worsening economic conditions facing working people in the US are aggravating the difficulties. A survey last year found that at least 15 percent of former soldiers in the 20 to 24 age bracket were unemployed. An article by the Florida Today site on January 3 reported that 450 of the 800 homeless in Brevard County were Iraq or Afghanistan veterans. Shelters in California are reporting twice as many requests for assistance from new veterans compared with 2007. At the current rate, they will eventually outnumber the more than 100,000 homeless Vietnam vets. A study of veterans with PTSD published last August by the Journal of Traumatic Stress found that 47 percent had had suicidal thoughts before seeking treatment and 3 percent had attempted to kill themselves. The US Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) has been compelled to substantially upgrade its services. Since its 24-hour, seven-days a week suicide hotline was belatedly established in July 2007, it has counselled over 185,000 veterans or their families and claims to have prevented at least 5,000 suicides. It now has 400 counselors dedicated to suicide prevention though even the Pentagon admits far more are needed. People who served in either Iraq or Afghanistan make up a growing proportion of the 6,400 veterans that VA estimates take their own lives each year. A 2007 CBS study put the rate among male veterans aged 20 to 24 at four times the national average-more than 40 per 100,000 per year. The suicide estimates do not include the hundreds of young veterans who die each year in auto accidents, many of which are linked with excessive speed or driving under the influence and kill or injure others as well. In 2008, veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan were 75 percent more likely to die in an auto accident than non-veterans and 148 percent more likely to die in a motorcycle crash. Suicide statistics also do not count deaths that are classified as accidental drug-related overdoses. American society will continue to pay for the harm caused by the Iraq and Afghan wars for decades to come. There is a growing medical consensus that a significant factor in PTSD is actual physical damage to the brain. Developments in vehicle and body armour, combined with advances in medical treatment, have enabled thousands of soldiers to survive bomb blasts that might have taken their lives in earlier conflicts. They survive with trauma to their brain however. The Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury estimated in early 2009 that between 45,000 to 90,000 veterans of the two wars had been left with "severe and lasting symptoms" of brain injury. Overall, the Defense Department estimates that as many as 20 percent of veterans had suffered some degree of brain injury due to bomb blasts while in Iraq or Afghanistan-a staggering 360,000 men and women. James Cogan is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by James Cogan =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Thu Jan 7 17:39:17 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2010 17:39:17 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Bolivia Leader Calls Alternative Climate Meeting Message-ID: <4ED0535BCDAC4AF296730C8A9C6FB25B@agingCHS072729> http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/05/world/AP-Climate-Bolivia.html?_r=3 The New York Times January 5, 2010 Bolivia Leader Calls Alternative Climate Meeting By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) -- Bolivian President Evo Morales said Tuesday he's inviting activists, scientists and government officials from around the world to an alternative climate conference following the failure of a summit in Copenhagen to produce binding agreements. The leftist leader said the April 20-22 meeting in Cochabamba will include indigenous peoples, social movements, environmentalists and scientists as well as governments ''who want to work with their people.'' Morales said the meeting is meant partly to pressure industrialized nations to accept that they have a ''climate debt'' to poor countries and will work toward an international court on environmental crimes. Other topics will include a ''universal proposal for the rights of mother earth'' and the transfer of technology. Last month's 193-nation climate summit in Copenhagen agreed on creation of a fund to help poor nations but it was vague on how the money will be raised. Bolivia was one of five countries to block a consensus on accepting the Copenhagen Accord brokered by President Barack Obama, arguing that the deal was done in secret by a small group of countries. Lacking agreement by all 193 countries, the document was ''noted'' by the conference, giving it less moral and legal weight than if it had been formally adopted. In his speech to the assembly and in a press conference during the summit, Morales railed against capitalism and imperialism, which he said spawned the problem of climate change by ignoring the rights of nature and the rights of indigenous peoples. He denounced industrialized countries for pledging $10 billion a year to help countries meet the challenges of climate change, while spending ''trillions to fight unnecessary wars'' in Iraq and Afghanistan. On Tuesday, Morales called the Copenhagen summit ''a triumph of the people'' because ''the presidents came, proposed and went without hearing, but this time they could not impose their declaration.'' =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Thu Jan 7 20:08:56 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2010 20:08:56 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] The Electronic Book Burning Message-ID: http://www.evergreenreview.com/120/electronic-book-burning.html EVERGREEN REVIEW / Issue No. 120 / October 2009 The Electronic Book Burning by Alan Kaufman In the past few years I have witnessed in San Francisco a sudden epidemic of bookstore closings that has turned my city into a bookstore graveyard. Staceys, on Market Street, a once iconic, tasteful and sumptuous 85-year old book emporium rises like a reproach, vacant, unrented, a ghostly shell. Other bookstores that have closed doors in the Bay Area include both branches of Codys, all branches of Black Oak Books, as well as Ninth Avenue Books, Chelsea Books, Valencia Street Books, ReJoyce Books, Acorn Books... a long and tragic list. According to reports coming in from other parts of the country, the awful scene is reoccuring everywhere: venerable, much beloved bookstores closing and that portion of the populace who cherish books-an ever-shrinking minority-left baffled and bereft; a silent corporate Krystallnacht decimating the world of literacy. Accompanying this plague is a feel-good propaganda campaign that enjoys the collusion of the major media outlets, including such true hi-tech believers as the NY Times and NPR-print and broadcast venues that are themselves cheerily being rendered obsolete by the hi-tech rampage-and that in subtle ways positions the destruction of book culture like so: "books" in and of themselves are nothing, only another technology, like the Walkman or the laptop. What is sacred are the texts and those are being transferred to the Internet where they will attain a new kind of high-tech-assured immortality. Like dead souls leaving their earthly bodies the books are, in effect, going to a better place: the Kindle, the e-book, the web; hi-tech's version of Paradise. This massive deportation of literary texts to a new home in electronic heaven has about it an air of inevitability that makes its consummation seem all but certain, a veritable act of God. Google, the internet server, has taken upon itself to dare the entirety of world literature and those of its authors living, to prevent this inevitability. Thus, the choice is set before authors: consent or oppose. However, you cannot simply abstain. The subtle subtext underscoring these legal maneuvers is that one way or another, you must decide where you stand in all this; the internet appropriation of all the world's books is a given, so either get aboard or be left behind and forgotten. Some have chosen to oppose in the form of a mysterious lawsuit that one somehow belongs to if one is any sort of author, agent or publisher. Rumors abound as to the outcome of this lawsuit. Some claim that Google and the world's authors, living and dead, have reached a "settlement" but what it is no one seems to know for sure. Google has, apparently, the power to commune with authors in our dreams or even to contact and negotiate with deceased writers in the afterlife. The reports given over NPR or in the Times as to the lawsuit's outcome appear to conflict. The truth is, few have any idea what the suit is about or how they got involved in the first place. It is a lawsuit reminiscent of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce in Charles Dicken's 'Bleak House'-a boundless ever-extending spiderweb engulfing everything and everyone in its fine legalistic filigree. In tandem with this giant transfer operation is the astonishing shift in the complexion and fortunes of book culture and publishing itself-a development that indicates not only a rapid demise of the book as a cultural artifact and marketplace commodity but a concerted effort to promote its devaluation, even degradation, even by the chieftains of book publishing. For instance, in a recent article, Barnaull Nourrey, CEO of Hachette Livre, the French book publishing conglomerate that owns a big piece of American book publishing, including Time Warner Books (Random House and its affiliates is owned by Bertelsmann, the German publishing giant-Europeans now control most of American publishing) warned that unless E-Book reverses their recent decision to set the ceiling price for book downloads at $9.99, then hardcovers, which are the premise for much book publishing and even bookstores, will be dealt a death blow. In effect, it will precipitate the end of the book. One wonders why Nourrey cannot simply advise E- Book to go fuck itself and produce high-quality reasonably priced books, even if in smaller numbers. But the truth is, Nourrey, like Bertelsmann, like most American book publishers, are linked to twenty first century, late-stage hypercapitalist imperatives predicated entirely upon ceaseless expansion, the inherent belief in Darwinian obsolescence and succession as the lifeblood of successful economics and societal advance. Thus, publishers, like the technologists who slit their throats, are producers not of books but money, while books have become simply another vehicle, along with the Washing Machine and the iPod, for generating capital. Like any product, the book must run harder and faster in the marketplace or else fall and die. And the books are falling. Only the fittest now survive. While mid-list authors drop in the snow, blockbuster thrillers and middlebrow memoirs and diet books huff their way forward. Soon, though, they too will drop. The idea is for no one to be left standing. All physical books must go up the chimney stack. Such was the methodology of the SS who forced their prisoners to run naked races round and round the barracks yard in the Polish winter, a race that no one was meant to win. The book is fast becoming the despised Jew of our culture. Der Jude is now Der Book. Hi-tech propogandists tell us that the book is a tree-murdering, space-devouring, inferior form of technology; that society would simply be better-off altogether if we euthanized it even as we begin to carry around, like good little Aryans, whole libraries in our pockets, downloaded on the Uber-Kindle. Further, we are told that to assign to books a particular value above and beyond their clearly inferior utility as a medium for language is to mark oneself as an irrelevant social throwback. And then, goes the narrative, think of the extraordinary sleekness, efficiency and amplitude of a Kindle, where thousands of texts lie at your fingertips. Which teen or twenty something in their right mind is going to opt for paper over electronic texts? No one of course. That's just the way of evolution, goes the narrative. Publishers and readers, writers and agents, are well-advised to get with this truth or perish. As to the bookstore, it is like the synagogue under Hitler: the house of a doomed religion. And the paper book is its Torah and gravestone: a thing to burn, or use to pave the road to internet heaven. I know many writers who do not see anything wrong in any of this, who can without too much trouble foresee a career spent entirely in electronic media, who simply regard this development as the future and are not particularly disconcerted by the prospect of a world without books. To them, my sentiments and opinions may seem exaggerated, even silly, perhaps crazy. Maybe they are right. Perhaps I am crazy. Perhaps this is only a private complaint. For writing does not come easily to me. My books have been hardwon. What made it all seem worthwhile was the book, the physical item, a kind of sacred and appropriate temple for the text contained within. Had I been told from youth that my literary destination would be some 7 inch plastic gizmo containing my texts shuffling alongside thousands of other "texts" I would have spit in the face of such a profession and become instead a hit man or a rabbi. To me, the book is one of life's most sacred objects, a torah, a testament, something not only worth living for but as shown in Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451', something that is even worth dying for. And yet, though I have been willing to sacrifice everything for the books I have written, compiled or just read, though I have given the days of my life, my years, my youth and adulthood to the book, as both sacred object and text, I am now witness to the culture turning away en masse from the book. The world is moving to embrace the electronic media as its principle mode of expression. The human has opted for the machine, and its ghosts, over the haptic companionship and didactic embodiment of the physical book. And though this development seems inevitable yet I cannot and will not accept it. I will fight it. I will resist. For not only is this effort at consolidation of the world's literature into the hands of a single central repository a demoralizing cultural prospect but it is a move towards a new form of hi-tech totalitarianism. In a recent incident reported in the NY Times, when a publisher decided to withdraw two of its books from circulation as an electronic download, Kindle unilaterally eliminated the two volumes from the Kindles of every single user in the United States who had purchased the downloads. The implication couldn't have been more clear: the hi-techers can decide as they wish who gets to read what, and who dosen't. Appropriately, the two Kindle-deleted texts were George Orwell's '1984' and 'Animal Farm'. Not since the advent of Christianity has the world witnessed so sweeping a change in the very fabric of human existence. Behind the hi-tech revolution is an idea of Progress that in many regards resembles the premises of Christianity itself. The superseding of the new way over the old, of the New Testament over the Old Testament, the discrediting of the traditional as inferior or even evil, a sense of powerful excitement about the revolutionary, and of course, most importantly, the promise of heavenly immortality over the temporal limitations of the wasting physical body-the accursed haptic book versus the blessed Holy Ghostly Internet-all these earmark the hi-tech pogrom against the book. Heinrich Heine, the early 19th century German Jewish poet, wrote: ""Where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people." The advent of electronic media to first position in the modern chain of Being-a place once occupied by God-and later, after the Enlightenment, by humans-is no mere 9/11 upon our cultural assumptions. It is a catastrophe of holocaustal proportions. And its endgame is the disappearance of not just books but of all things human. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Thu Jan 7 20:51:04 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2010 20:51:04 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Europe's Lost Generation Message-ID: January 4, 2009 Walker's World: The Lost Generation By Martin Walker, UPI Editor Emeritus PARIS A specter is starting to haunt Europe. Youth unemployment is reaching record levels and the implications for social stability are alarming. Unemployment among those ages 15-24 is now averaging 20 percent across Europe, with an extraordinary peak of 43 percent in Spain. But it is above 20 percent even in prosperous Luxemburg, the country with the highest income per capita in the European Union. Youth unemployment is expected to surge even higher in June as a new class of school-leavers and fresh university graduates hits the sluggish labor markets. Youth unemployment grew dramatically last year, according to the latest figures from Eurostat, the EU statistical arm. Between January and October 2009 it soared from 18 percent to 24 percent in Ireland; from 12 percent to 18 percent in the Czech Republic; from 21 percent to 28 percent in Slovakia; from 18 percent to 28 percent in Finland; and from 17 percent to 24 percent in Denmark. Only Germany and Holland succeeded in keeping unemployment rates stable at not much more than 10 percent, with generous labor market subsidies, training programs and free higher education. But some of these measures run out this year, with governments hard put to find new money to continue them, particularly when there are no new jobs for the trainees once their courses finish. The obvious concern is the kind of youth unrest that has roiled the streets of Athens this winter, or the mass demonstrations that have become a regular feature of French life, or the kind of riots that swept through some of Britain's ethnic neighborhoods in the 1980s and 1990s. In the United Kingdom, the Prince's Trust (sponsored by the future King Charles) has identified a different kind of concern: the levels of drug and alcohol abuse and despair that are building a "lost generation." The impact of such an unskilled, inexperienced and pessimistic generation can affect labor markets, economic output and political life for decades as their children grow up in underprivileged homes. "The emotional effects on young people are profound, long term and can become irreversible. We must act now to prevent a lost generation of young people before it is too late," said Martina Milburn, the trust's chief executive, as she launched a report this week into Britain's 1 million young jobless. A poll commissioned by the trust found that one in 10 of those who had been out of work had turned to drug or alcohol abuse. And those without work or a place in higher education or in a training program were twice as likely to feel down, depressed, isolated or rejected. Young people "bore the brunt of the recession," Milburn added. "The result is a generation of undiscovered skills and talents. We must invest in these young people, rebuilding their self-esteem, to ensure that today's unemployed do not become tomorrow's unemployable." The trust, a charity, is seeking to raise $75 million this year to help steer unemployed youth into jobs or training programs. But at $1.50 per week for each of them, that will not achieve much. And the current financial straits of the British economy and government finances mean there is not much public money available for more education or training programs. The U.K. government's share of the economy is expected to hit 50 percent this year, well ahead of Germany. Youth unemployment in the United States is more than 19 percent and is expected to top 20 percent this year. But it is much higher among ethnic minorities, and levels of incarceration are traditionally very much higher in the United States than in Europe. The real alarm about youth unemployment is that there is little sign in Europe or the United States of much relief this year, as the bumpy recession proceeds at too slow a pace to get companies hiring again. Business investment late last year was 20 percent down on the already diminished levels of 2008. There is not much sign of new vigor in the European economies, where the credit crunch is hitting the ability of governments in Greece and Eastern Europe to borrow. Even the United Kingdom is worrying that its AAA credit rating may get marked down. It is a curious twilight period, with the recession theoretically over but not much recovery under way and stretched governments already wary of any more deficit spending. Even if youth unemployment does not translate into riots and crime, the real price could be paid in the years to come as a "lost generation" with little motivation, less training and few prospects -- and drug or alcohol dependency -- drags down the economy of the future. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 8 09:01:16 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2010 09:01:16 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] [Review] Footnotes in Gaza: A Graphic Novel Message-ID: Footnotes in Gaza: A Graphic Novel By Joe Sacco Metropolitan Books, 432 pages http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/eunice_wong_on_footnotes_in_gaza_20100108/ Posted on January 8, 2010 Eunice Wong on 'Footnotes in Gaza' Joe Sacco's latest volume of comic book journalism, "Footnotes in Gaza," is a detective story drawn from the Greek tragedy of Palestinian-Israeli history. It is a search for the truth about a bloody 50-year-old incident almost obliterated from historical memory. Rigorous journalism and moral and philosophical musings are wrangled into an explosive feast of a comic book. On Nov. 3 and Nov. 12, 1956, in the Gaza towns of Khan Yunis and Rafah, large-scale killings of Palestinian men-275 dead in Khan Yunis and 111 in Rafah, according to the United Nations-were carried out by invading Israeli troops. There is almost nothing written in English about these massacres. "This is the story of footnotes to a sideshow of a forgotten war," writes Sacco. Over a drawing of a crowd of Palestinian men, their hands up and their faces contorted, the text continues: "Well, like most footnotes, they dropped to the bottom of history's pages, where they barely hang on." Sacco interviews Palestinian survivors from 1956, jigsawing back and forth throughout the book between the present and the past. We follow him through the throng and press of Gaza City, loudspeakers blaring Islamic calls to worship over the traffic, through Israeli checkpoints where roaming vendors sell tea and where, for one shekel, kids will join carpools to make up the three-person minimum. He pulls us into the impoverished refugee towns of Khan Yunis, with its narrow alleyways of mud and corrugated zinc roofs held down by bricks and scrap, and Rafah, where Israeli bulldozers routinely destroy Palestinian homes. Adolescent Palestinian boys sing and shout on top of the mountains of wreckage the machines leave behind. In Khan Yunis and Rafah, Sacco chases down lead after lead. Portraits of the elderly survivors are drawn in small, neat rectangles. Their names are stenciled underneath. Old men re-enact the events of Nov. 3 or Nov. 12, 1956, the latter ominously remembered as the Day of the School. They pull themselves up out of their chairs, put their hands up, and turn to the wall. Many cry. Their weathered faces crumple in silent, close-up panels. A poignant meditation on the nature of memory emerges. What does history mean in a place where bombings and killings occur daily? "They could file last month's story today," Sacco writes of his fellow journalists. "Or last year's for that matter-and who'd know the difference?" But past and present, to the survivors, intersect with disturbing nearness and symmetry. Sacco often juxtaposes images from 1956 with those of modern Gaza. It is a simple but powerful technique that evokes the simultaneous layers of memory. Faris Barbakh tells Sacco of stumbling upon more than 100 bodies lying along a ruined castle wall when he was 14 years old. The following page is a panoramic drawing of the wall, the bodies "from the beginning of the wall to the end," and the boy standing before them. The facing page is the same site almost 50 years later, now a town square. Cars are parked where the bodies lay. Water towers have replaced the palm trees beyond the castle. The wall is plastered with posters and Arabic graffiti. Shoppers and schoolchildren populate the square. Barbakh, Sacco and his guide, Abed, stand where the aghast 14-year-old once stood. The effect is haunting. Sacco's black-and-white pen-and-ink drawings are photographic in their detail-down to the gap in Condoleezza Rice's teeth-but they have an imaginative scope and perspective that would be hard to duplicate in photographs. We are given a bird's-eye view of a sprawling line of firing squad victims, far below us, in a Khan Yunis street. The bodies are tiny and shattered, like smashed insects. The puddles of black blood pooling around them resemble a Rorschach inkblot. In other panels we are taken down the throats of women ululating in grief. And later Sacco places the reader directly in the terrified position of a Palestinian soldier in the moment of being identified to the Israelis by a collaborator. The collaborator's hand and index finger loom in the foreground, stabbing straight at you, the reader. His face is furrowed with fear. His wide eyes look over his shoulder and down along his arm. Behind him-and in front of you-are uniformed Israeli soldiers gripping machine guns, about to take you away. This is a position no photographer could capture. A photographer usually transforms viewers into observers. Sacco makes the reader a participant. [Click here for a Google Images collection of hundreds of Joe Sacco drawings mainly concerning the Middle East and Bosnia. Click here to see seven panels from "Footnotes in Gaza," at Amazon.com.] Sacco transmits the lives of the people of Gaza, and the backdrop of violence and rage, with an unexpected tenderness. His eye is open to the ordinary human qualities of every person he meets. They shop in the market, drink tea, crack bad jokes and worry about their children's futures. They condemn Israeli repression while complaining bitterly about the Palestinian militants who, they say, give the Israelis a pretext to assault civilians. They seek, even in the world's largest open-air prison, a normal life. As an Israeli bulldozer demolishes homes and with Palestinian militants shooting at the armored machine, foreign activists chanting through megaphones and camera crews and photographers darting about, Sacco notices a mild-looking man, with a receding, stubbled chin, crouching on the ground. He is tearing up vegetation and stuffing it into a sack. "It's for my sheep," he explains. A few pages later smirking teenage boys harangue Sacco for not being Muslim and for wasting time on history. The conversation soon shifts to the Israeli bulldozers. "Why is our country like this?" asks one boy, his face scarred with acne. "Because we're not close to God," answers another, his head down. "I ask what they think is the best way to resist," writes Sacco in a caption. "Get close to God." "With bombs." There is a silent panel, the four boys' tired, defeated faces stripped of bravado. And then one of them asks Sacco, "Do you like us?" Sacco's compassionate attention is a stark contrast to the cold utilitarianism of many reporters and the brutal efficiency of the war machine. Those who cannot see the human being, as Sacco does, embrace the doctrine of interchangeability: Almost everything-and everyone-can be replaced. The individual and the particular are swallowed up by the great broad strokes of policy, news stories and statistics. They miss what is most important-a quiet man scavenging for food to feed his animals, teenaged boys with acne who yearn to be accepted. The work of journalists, including Sacco, cannot be done without a steady supply of human anguish. The more appalling the stories the better. Sacco is painfully aware of the ambiguities of his motives. "He knows it's rubble that's brought me, too," Sacco writes of a Rafah man, his home about to be bulldozed, who refuses to talk to him. In a darkened home, Sacco and Abed press an old man to tell his story. He is reluctant-"It's very hard to talk about"-but finally relents, after four silent panels of weeping. "Okay, I'll tell you"-and the scene cuts to Sacco and Abed walking away from the house, beaming and satisfied. They look as though they have finished a very good meal. The old man stands brokenly in the doorway. Sacco's harshest judgments are reserved for himself. He is the hapless antihero of the book, drawn always without eyes behind his round wire glasses. Repeated images of himself, at one point, whirl and gesticulate as he expounds on atrocities to his friends, obviously enjoying the hardheaded grit of the subject. And then a volley of Israeli gunfire hits the building. He is instantly cowed. "Because I'm not under fire every day." His friends continue the conversation without him. He is the outsider. The final, merciless insight of the book is not about history, but about the voyeurs who come from industrialized zones of safety to watch. It is devastating. The conclusion of "Footnotes in Gaza" is a harrowing, textless sequence of an anonymous man's point of view on Nov. 12, 1956. It can be fully understood and its power fully realized only within the context of the oral testimonies Sacco has gathered. The stream of individual voices we have been hearing throughout the book converge in these last wordless pages. They are drawn in tight squares. What we see is obstructed and claustrophobic, sightless with panic and dread. "Can you imagine," as one witness had said many pages earlier, "that one who is very fearful can see anything?" The man whose eyes we look through has raised his hands. We see his hands as he would, at the periphery of the panels. Sometimes we look down with him at his foot stepping accidentally on a body. He runs with a huddled mass of men. We see the backs of their heads, their raised arms, their cringing forms. He approaches the school gate. Enters it. The final page is black. There is a sickening familiarity in the images of "Footnotes in Gaza"-terrified, brutalized men with their hands up, huddled together, herded in a column down the streets by helmeted, barking soldiers who shoot into the crowd. The chilling and recurring detail of shoes scattered in the street, lost by panicked, running men, recalls the horrific mountains of black leather shoes left behind in Nazi concentration camps. "As someone in Gaza told me, 'events are continuous,' " Sacco writes in his foreword. "[T]he past and present cannot be so easily disentangled; they are part of a remorseless continuum, a historical blur." The Palestinian-Israeli conflict seems, now, to be an eternal epic, reaching back into the murk of the last century. But how many years passed between the 6 million Jewish dead and 1956? Fifteen, 20? The Warsaw ghetto and Auschwitz-Birkenau were not abstract history lessons to those who pulled the triggers in Khan Yunis and Rafah. This is the shocking, "remorseless continuum" of human cruelty. The blind animal that is man, prey in the morning and predator at night, rises again and again to slaughter the helpless. It takes a poet and an artist-Joe Sacco is both-to call us back to our better nature. Eunice Wong is a professional actor based in New York City. She trained at the Juilliard School Drama Division, received the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Lead Actress and a Barrymore Award nomination for outstanding lead actress. Her writing has appeared often in Truthdig's Arts and Culture section. Orders: http://www.amazon.com/Footnotes-Gaza-Graphic-Joe-Sacco/dp/0805073477%3FSubscriptionId%3D1XWTFJ60BR6QZ1PW9FR2%26tag%3Dtruthdig-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0805073477 =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 9 16:36:09 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2010 16:36:09 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] U.S., NATO Expand Afghan War To Horn Of Africa And Indian Ocean Message-ID: <17202DECE6B14A848ACE014ABB5B26EE@agingCHS072729> www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16854 Global Research January 8, 2010 Stop NATO U.S., NATO Expand Afghan War To Horn Of Africa And Indian Ocean By Rick Rozoff In parallel with the escalation of the war in South Asia - counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and drone missile attacks in Pakistan - the United States and its NATO allies have laid the groundwork for increased naval, air and ground operations in the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden. During the past month the U.S. has carried out deadly military strikes in Yemen: Bombing raids in the north and cruise missile attacks in the south of the nation. Washington has been accused of killing scores of civilians in the attacks in both parts of the country, executed before the December 25 Northwest Airlines incident that has been used to justify the earlier U.S. actions ex post facto. And, ominously, that has been exploited to pound a steady drumbeat of demands for expanded and even more direct military intervention. The Pentagon's publicly disclosed military and security program for Yemen grew from $4.6 million in 2006 to $67 million last year. "That figure does not include covert, classified assistance that the United States has provided." [1] In addition, "Under a new classified cooperation agreement, the U.S. would be able to fly cruise missiles, fighter jets or unmanned armed drones against targets in the country, but would remain publicly silent on its role in the airstrikes." [2] On January 1 General David Petraeus, the chief of the Pentagon's Central Command, in charge of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as operations in Yemen and Pakistan, was in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and said of deepening military involvement in Yemen, "We have, it's well known, about $70 million in security assistance last year. That will more than double this coming year." [3] The following day Petraeus was in the capital of Yemen where he met with the country's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to discuss "continued U.S. support in rooting out the terrorist cells." [4] White House counterterrorism adviser (Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism) John Brennan briefed President Barack Obama on Petraeus' visit to Washington's new war theater and afterward stated "We have made Yemen a priority over the course of this year, and this is the latest in that effort." [5] The alleged terrorist cells in question are identified by U.S. and other Western governments as being affiliated with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). However, on January 4 CNN reported that "A senior U.S. official cited a rebellion by Huti [Houthi] tribes in the north, and secessionist activity in the southern tribal areas" as of concern to Washington. [6] The Houthis' confessional background is Shi'a and not Sunni Islam and the opposition forces in the south are led by the Yemeni Socialist Party, so attempts to link either with al-Qaeda are inaccurate, self-serving and dishonest. In both the north and south the United States, its NATO allies - Britain and France closed their embassies in Yemen earlier this week in unison with the U.S. - and Saudi Arabia are working in tandem to support the Saleh government in what over the past month has become a state of warfare against opposition forces in the country. Saudi Arabia has launched regular bombing raids and infantry and armored attacks in the north of the country and, according to Houthi rebel sources, been aided by U.S. warplanes in deadly attacks on villages. Houthi spokesmen have accused Riyadh of firing over a thousand missiles inside Yemen, and in late December the Saudi Defense Ministry acknowledged that its military casualties over the preceding month included 73 dead, 26 missing and 470 wounded. In short, a cross-border war on the Arabian peninsula. The West, though, has even larger plans for Yemen, ones which include integrating military operations from Northeast Africa to the Chinese border. Typical of recent statements by U.S. officials and their Western allies, last weekend British Prime Minister Gordon Brown disingenuously claimed that "The weakness of al Qaeda in Pakistan has forced them out of Pakistan and into Yemen and Somalia." [7] Brown told the BBC on January 3 "Yemen has been recognized, like Somalia, to be one of the areas we have got to not only keep an eye on, but we've got to do more. So it's strengthening counter-terrorism cooperation, it's working harder on intelligence efforts." [8] It is up to Mr. Brown to explain why, if al-Qaeda has been "forced out" of Pakistan, he is adding soldiers to the U.S. and NATO surge that will soon bring combined Western troop numbers to over 150,000 in Afghanistan while intensifying deadly attacks inside Pakistan itself. The British prime minister has also called for an international meeting on Yemen for later this month and announced that "The UK and the US have agreed to fund a counter-terrorism police unit in Yemen...." [9] In Western news reports, or rather rumor peddling, Yemeni rebels are accused of supplying weapons to Somali opposite numbers and the second are reported to have offered fighters to the former. In short the officially discarded but in fact revived and expanded "global war on terrorism" is now to be fought in a single theater of war that extends from the Red Sea to Pakistan. A joint endeavor by the Pentagon's Central and Africa Commands and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to build upon the consolidation of almost the entire European continent under NATO and Pentagon control and the ceding of the African continent to the new U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). (Except for Egypt, an individual Pentagon asset and NATO Mediterranean Dialogue partner.) In fact the Central Command was inaugurated by the Ronald Reagan administration in 1983 on the foundations of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF) that his predecessor Jimmy Carter activated three years before. [10] The latter developed out of the Rapid Deployment Forces (RDF) launched directly to counter developments in Afghanistan and Somalia in 1979 (an integral component of the Carter Doctrine) and was deliberately designed to establish military control of the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Sea and the Western Indian Ocean. Administrations may depart - George W. Bush and Tony Blair have left public office - and names may change - the global war on terror has been rechristened overseas contingency operations - but Washington's global geopolitical ambitions, limitless since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union in 1991, have only grown more universal and the military means employed for their realization more aggressive. The White House and its European allies have of late resuscitated and inflated the al-Qaeda specter to a degree not witnessed since the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001. Under the guise of protecting the American homeland from this shadowy and ubiquitous entity, the Pentagon is involved in military operations from West Africa to East Asia against among other decidedly non-Osama bin Laden-linked forces left-wing groups in Colombia, the Philippines and Yemen; Shi'a militias in Lebanon and Yemen; ethnic rebels in Mali and Niger; a Christian extremist rebellion in Uganda. Like the infamous 19th century grave robbers William Burke and William Hare, paid so well to provide cadavers to the Edinburgh Medical College that, running out of corpses to sell, created them, al-Qaeda is a dependable villain to be evoked as needed. Al-Shabaab fighters in Somalia can be conflated with pirates in the Gulf of Aden to provide the pretext for a permanent NATO and allied European Union naval presence in a nexus that includes the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea leading into the Persian Gulf and most of the eastern coast of Africa. The American component of the Greater Afghan War is Operation Enduring Freedom, which takes in Afghanistan, Cuba (Guantanamo Bay Naval Base), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Yemen. Djibouti, which hosts some 2,500 U.S. military personnel in the Pentagon's first permanent base in Africa, is also the headquarters of the U.S.'s Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), set up in 2001 several months before Operation Enduring Freedom and overlapping with it in many respects. The CJTF-HOA, based in the French military base of Camp Lemonier, was transferred from the Pentagon's Central Command to its Africa Command on October 1, 2008 when AFRICOM was formally activated. Its area of responsibility includes Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Yemen. Its areas of interest are Comoros, Mauritius, and Madagascar. The last three are, like Seychelles, island nations in the Indian Ocean. The U.S. expanded Camp Lemonier to five times its original size in 2006 and troops from all branches of the U.S. armed services "use the base when not working 'downrange' in countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia and Yemen." [11] In announcing recently that "Yemen has received military equipment from the United States to aid the government's fight against the al-Qaeda network in the south of the country," a German news agency added this background information: "Yemen, in the 1990s, welcomed back Arab fighters who left Afghanistan after the fall of the Soviet Union." [12] As with Afghanistan itself and other locations where the American military is fighting insurgent groups - the Philippines, Somalia and Yemen - the Pentagon is frequently confronting fighters funded, armed and trained by its own government in Pakistan from 1978-1992 under Operation Cyclone, the largest-ever CIA covert undertaking. A 2008 edition of U.S. News & World Report, a magazine that can hardly be accused of being unfriendly to the White House and the Pentagon, wrote of the war in Afghanistan that "two of the most dangerous players are violent Afghan Islamists named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, according to U.S. officials." [13] An assessment repeated in the August 30, 2009 Commander's Initial Assessment of General Stanley McChrystal, commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. The report, the basis for the White House increasing troop strength in the war theater to over 100,000, stated that "The major insurgent groups in order of their threat to the mission are: the Quetta Shura Taliban (05T), the Haqqani Network (HQN), and the Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin (HiG)." The U.S. News & World Report feature provided this background information: "[T]hese two warlords - currently at the top of America's list of most wanted men in Afghanistan - were once among America's most valued allies. In the 1980s, the CIA funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons and ammunition to help them battle the Soviet Army....Hekmatyar, then widely considered by Washington to be a reliable anti-Soviet rebel, was even flown to the United States by the CIA in 1985." "U.S. officials had an even higher opinion of Haqqani, who was considered the most effective rebel warlord....Haqqani was also one of the leading advocates of the so-called Arab Afghans, deftly organizing Arab volunteer fighters who came to wage jihad against the Soviet Union and helping to protect future al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden." [14] In the name of combating the very same bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the U.S. and its NATO allies are now, in addition to increasing combined military forces waging a war in Afghanistan now in its ninth year to over 150,000, more than the Soviet Union ever deployed to that nation: Intensifying deadly drone missile, helicopter gunship and commando attacks inside neighboring Pakistan. A recent government report in that nation tabulated that 708 people had been killed last year in CIA drone attacks alone. Only five of those were identified as al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects. [14] On January 6 at least thirteen more were killed in a missile attack in the Pakistani tribal agency of North Waziristan. Last month an American military newspaper reported that "A 1,000-strong Marine combat task force capable of rapidly deploying to hot spots could soon be at the disposal of the new U.S. Africa Command," which announcement came "just a few months after U.S. Special Forces staged a daring daylight raid deep inside southern Somalia" and after another Marine force "had already deployed in support of training missions in Uganda and Mali." [15] In late October of last year NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen was in the United Arab Emirates [UAE] to rally NATO's Istanbul Cooperation Initiative partners for a future confrontation with Iran. Addressing a conference on NATO-UAE Relations and Future Prospects of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, he expanded his mission to recruit the Persian Gulf monarchies for the ever-expanding Greater Afghan War. "We have a shared interest in helping countries like Afghanistan and Iraq to stand on their feet again, fostering stability in the Middle East...and preventing countries like Somalia and Sudan from slipping deeper into chaos." [16] Two months earlier it was reported that "About 75 U.S. military personnel and civilians will be headed to the Seychelles islands in the coming weeks to set up...Reaper operations, which could start in October or November. U.S. Africa Command is calling the Navy-led mission Ocean Look. "The U.S. will base the Reapers - to be used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance - at Seychelles' Mahe regional airport...." [17] The Reaper is the Pentagon's newest "hunter-killer" unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) which is equipped with fifteen times the firepower and travels at three times the speed of its Predator forerunner, used to devastating effect in Pakistan and Somalia. Last October Somali rebels claimed to have shot down an American drone and local "residents routinely report suspected US drones flying over [their city]. The drones are believed to be launched from warships in the Indian Ocean." [18] The permanent stationing of U.S. military forces in Seychelles is part of a pattern in recent years of basing American troops to man missile batteries, interceptor missile radar sites, air bases, counterinsurgency forward bases and other installations in countries where their presence would have been inconceivable even a few years ago: Afghanistan, Colombia, Bulgaria, Djibouti, Iraq, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Mali, Poland and Romania. A report of January 7 claims that the U.S. plans to establish an air base in Yemen in the Socotra archipelago in the Indian Ocean. [19] Later it was revealed that "In addition to the Reaper UAVs, the U.S. military is also considering basing Navy P-3 Orion patrol aircraft in the Seychelles for a limited time. Like the Reaper, the Orion can survey a large region...." [20] A Middle Eastern news source reported on this development as follows: "The United States is taking its military venture in Africa to new levels amid suspicions that Washington could be advancing yet another hidden agenda. "American operatives are expected to fly pilot-less surveillance aircraft over the Seychellois [Seychelles] territory from US ships off its coast, in what Washington claims are [deployments] meant to spy on Somali pirates....[S]imilar pretexts were used to justify the US invasion of Afghanistan, the missile attacks in Pakistan, and its waning military operations in Iraq....Washington has also started to equip Mali with USD 4.5 million worth of military vehicles and communications equipment, in what is reported to be an increasing US involvement in Africa." [21] It did not take long for the U.S. to put the Reapers into operation. In late October Associated Press reported "U.S. military surveillance drones are patrolling off Somalia's coast for the first time....U.S. military officials say unmanned drones called Reapers, stationed in the island nation of Seychelles, are patrolling the Indian Ocean. [22] "The developments come as the White House seeks grounds to establish a major military presence in Africa. "The US military says it has deployed its drones ['the size of a jet fighter'], capable of carrying missiles to patrol waters off Somalia...." [23] Washington's attempt to establish an Afghanistan-Pakistan-Somalia-Yemen connection is intimately connected with its plans for Africa as a whole. [24] On January 4 a U.S. military website published this update: "U.S. Africa Command has bolstered its anti-piracy forces with the recent addition of maritime patrol aircraft and more personnel in the Seychelles islands. "The Navy last month deployed three P-3 Orion aircraft from the Maine-based VP-26 Tridents, along with 112 sailors, to the Seychelles to patrol the waters off East Africa....Patrol Squadron 26's insignia, a skull over a compass and two bombs or torpedoes that form an X, resembles the Jolly Roger flag, which symbolizes piracy." [25] What sort of pirates the Pentagon is using as the pretext for its military buildup in the Horn of Africa and Eastern Africa as a whole was demonstrated last September when "Foreign troops in helicopters strafed a car...in a Somali town...killing two men and capturing two others who were wounded, witnesses said. U.S. military officials said American forces were involved in the raid." "Two U.S. military officials said forces from the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command were involved." [26] The Joint Special Operations Command was headed up by Stanley McChrystal from 2003 to 2008. He has moved on from overseeing counterinsurgency operations in Iraq during those years to assuming control over all U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan. A witness also reported that "the helicopters took off from a warship flying a French flag" [27] and a rebel source said "We are getting information that French army gunships attacked a car, destroying it completely and taking some of the passengers." [28] French military forces remain in the former colony of Djibouti where they train for operations not only in Afghanistan but in several former African possessions. Troops, warplanes and armored vehicles from NATO nations - under the flags of NATO itself, the European Union, France and the United States - have intervened in civil and cross-border conflicts across the entire width of Africa over the past few years: Somalia, Djibouti-Eritrea, Chad, the Central African Republic, the Darfur region of Sudan and the Ivory Coast; from the Horn of Africa to the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea. A report from last month provides some indication of the French role on the continent. Radio France Internationale described "French soldiers in Djibouti train[ing] for Afghanistan and keep[ing] an eye on Africa" with the following details: "Twelve special forces commandos arrived first" and "the army...storm[ed] the beach....The exercise, seen as crucial for battle preparedness in a region infamous for its fractious politics, included all the country's military sectors - sea, land and air. "As desert tanks zoomed onto the shore Mirage jets criss-crossed the open sky. Meanwhile, land troops were dispatched from the mouths of armoured personnel carriers and helicopters airlifted artillery guns onto the ground. "'It's a show of force. It shows what France is able to do militarily,' said one army officer. "In recent years French troops in Djibouti have been involved in a number of...military missions in Africa. They helped reinforce the UN brigade patrolling Cote d'Ivoire and last year provided logistical and tactical help to Djiboutian soldiers warding off an attack from neighbouring Eritrea. "For the time being, the first theatre of combat these troops will see is Afghanistan, where France is part of the Nato contingent. The mountainous, arid countryside closely resembles Djibouti's own undulating moonscape. "The troops taking part are a contingent of a 2,500-strong force based in Djibouti." [29] In addition to intermittent armed clashes between troops from Djibouti and Eritrea, in the past weeks reports have surfaced of deadly fighting within Eritrea and between that nation and neighboring Ethiopia. Djibouti and Ethiopia are the West's client regimes and military proxies in the Horn of Africa and, as is demonstrated above, the integration of the South Asian and Northeast African war fronts is proceeding rapidly. Starting in the autumn of 2008 NATO began what it calls counter-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia and further into the Gulf of Aden, often in league with comparable deployments by the European Union, with which it shares warships, commanders and "common strategic interests" under the Berlin Plus and other arrangements. [30] The NATO naval surveillance and interdiction operation in and near the Horn of Africa is an extension of its effective takeover of the entire Mediterranean Sea with Operation Active Endeavor [31] initiated in 2001 under the Alliance's Article 5 mutual military assistance clause and augmented by the blockade of Lebanon's Mediterranean coast by NATO nations' warships under UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) auspices that began after Israel's assault on the country in 2006. The latter's Maritime Task Force (MTF) "has hailed some 27,000 ships and referred nearly 400 suspicious vessels to Lebanese authorities for further inspection. "Thirteen countries - Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Turkey - have contributed naval units to the MTF." [32] The NATO and EU deployments in the Gulf of Aden are the first such naval operations in the region in both organizations' history and the EU's first in African coastal waters. The expansion of military presence into the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea gives NATO nations control of waterways ranging from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Strait of Hormuz. As veteran Indian diplomat and analyst M K Bhadrakumar described it in 2008, "By acting with lightning speed and without publicity, NATO surely created a fait accompli. "NATO's naval deployment in the Indian Ocean region is a historic move and a milestone in the alliance's transformation. Even at the height of the Cold War, the alliance didn't have a presence in the Indian Ocean. Such deployments almost always tend to be open-ended. "In 2007, a NATO naval force visited Seychelles in the Indian Ocean and Somalia and conducted exercises in the Indian Ocean and then re-entered the Mediterranean via the Red Sea in end-September." [33] He added: "US officials are on record that Africom and NATO envisage an institutional linkup in the downstream. "The overall US strategy is to incrementally bring NATO into Africa so that its future role in the Indian Ocean (and Middle East) region as the instrument of US global security agenda becomes optimal." [34] Last August the chief of AFRICOM, General William Ward, said that Somalia was "a central focus of the U.S. military on the continent." To indicate the scope of Pentagon plans in not only Somalia but the region, "General William Ward has pledged continued support to Somalia's transitional federal government....He made his remarks during a visit to Nairobi, Kenya, which is a key U.S. ally in the region. "When asked about U.S. warnings to Eritrea against its alleged support of al-Shabab, the U.S. general condemned any outside support for the Somali rebels." [35] U.S., British and other Western officials have been straining to establish (the most) tenuous connection between the so-called AfPak war front and the need for direct military intervention in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, as was seen earlier with the British prime minister's risible claim that NATO has been so successful in expelling alleged al-Qaeda elements from Pakistan that they have sought refuge in Somalia and Yemen. Rather than, more logically, in locations like Kashmir, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Similarly, Western governments are sparing no effort to fabricate or exaggerate links between the numerous armed conflicts in the Horn of Africa. Somali rebels are accused of supporting the government of Eritrea in its border conflict with Djibouti; they are also accused of offering fighters for the internal conflict in southern Yemen. In return, Yemeni rebels are accused of providing arms for Somalia's al-Shabaab fighters and hovering over it all is the implication that Iran is sponsoring Arab Shi'a forces in Yemen's north. There is a plethora of evidence, however, documenting genuine foreign intervention in the region: U.S. missile, bombing, helicopter and special forces attacks in Somalia and Yemen and coordination with the armies of Djibouti and Ethiopia in conflicts inside Somalia and with Eritrea. Saudi air and land assaults in Yemen with the resultant deaths of hundreds and displacement of thousands of civilians. French commando operations in Somalia and combat training in Djibouti for warfare in the area and beyond. The true outside forces engaged in military actions are ignored in the West in favor of unsubstantiated contentions that the region is being inflamed by the same adversaries the U.S. and NATO are waging war against on the Indian subcontinent and that the villains in and near the Horn of Africa are, in addition to being the local al-Qaeda franchise, inextricably linked and moreover somehow tied with piracy operations. Such are the tortured logic and far-fetched subterfuges used to prepare Western publics for an escalation of military intervention over 3,000 kilometers across the Indian Ocean from the Afghanistan-Pakistan war theater. NATO warships are bridging the two extremes. Last August the military bloc launched its second naval operation off the coast of Somalia the name of which, Ocean Shield, alone indicates the scope of the Alliance's objectives in the Africa-Asia-Middle East triangle. The mission includes military ships from Britain, Greece, Italy, Turkey and the U.S. and according to NATO "other countries are thinking of coming to reinforce the operation which could evolve at any moment." A NATO spokesman said at the time, "No timeframe has been set for this long-term operation, which will last as long as it's deemed necessary." [36] The European Union is conducting a complementary mission, Operation Atalanta, "which has six frigates and works with fleets from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the U.S.-led coalition" and "operates in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean...from Somali territorial waters east to 60 degrees longitude, which runs south from the eastern tip of Oman and 250 miles east of the Seychelles." [37] Rear Admiral Peter Hudson at the fleet's command center in Britain announced last month that the operation may expand its range even further, taking in most of the western Indian Ocean. Last September the commander of NATO's Maritime Group 2 in the Gulf of Aden met with officials of Somalia's Puntland autonomous region to plan operations. In mid-December NATO made a direct link between its South Asian war and its expansion into the Indian Ocean by announcing it was considering dispatching AWACS surveillance aircraft to the second location. "Commanders are seeking to back up a five-ship counterpiracy task force with one of the airborne warning and control system surveillance planes, possibly sharing it with the allied International Security Assistance Force fighting in Afghanistan." [38] On the first day of this year a Canadian news agency, in a feature titled "Canada to help defend Yemen from al-Qaida reinforcements," revealed that "A NATO spokeswoman said warships patrolling international shipping lanes through the Gulf of Aden, which separates Somalia from Yemen, were aware al-Shabab, an al-Qaida-inspired armed group based in Somalia, had announced plans to send fighters to Yemen" and as a result "A Canadian warship involved in NATO-led counter-piracy operations off Somalia's coast now has an additional task...." [39] Somalia and Yemen lie across from each other on either end of the Gulf of Aden where the Red Sea meets the Arabian Sea and the Mediterranean is connected with the Indian Ocean. An arc that effects the conjunction of three of the world's five most important continents. Territory too important for the United States, whose head of state last month proclaimed himself commander-in-chief of the world's sole military superpower, and what for the past decade has declared itself expeditionary and global NATO to leave untouched. Notes 1) Reuters, January 1, 2010 2) Russian Information Agency Novosti, December 30, 2009 3) Reuters, January 1, 2010 4) CNN, January 4, 2010 5) CNN, January 2, 2010 6) CNN, January 4, 2010 7) Agence France-Presse, January 4, 2010 8) Xinhua News Agency, January 4, 2010 9) Press TV, January 3, 2010 10) Cold War Origins Of The Somalia Crisis And Control Of The Indian Ocean Stop NATO, May 3, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/cold-war-origins-of-the-somalia-crisis-and-control-of-the-indian-ocean/ 11) Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa, April 17, 2009 12) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, January 1, 2010 13) U.S. News & World Report, July 11, 2008 14) Ibid 15) Stars And Stripes, December 16, 2009 16) Al Arabiya, November 1, 2009 17) Stars and Stripes, August 29, 2009 18) Press TV, October 19, 2009 19) Press TV, January 7, 2010 20) Voice of America News, September 2, 2009 21) Press TV, October 21, 2009 22) Associated Press, October 23, 2009 23) Press TV, October 25, 2009 24) AFRICOM: Pentagon Prepares Direct Military Intervention In Africa Stop NATO, August 24, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/africom-pentagons-prepares-direct-military-intervention-in-africa AFRICOM Year Two: Seizing The Helm Of The Entire World Stop NATO, October 22, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/africom-year-two-taking-the-helm-of-the-entire-world 25) Stars and Stripes, January 4, 2010 26) Associated Press, September 14, 2009 27) Ibid 28) Agence France-Presse, September 14, 2009 29) Radio France Internationale, December 11, 2009 30) NATO http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49217.htm 31) NATO http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_7932.htm 32) UN News Centre, August 31, 2009 33) Asian Times, October 20, 2008 34) Ibid 35) Voice of America News, August 21, 2009 36) Agence France-Presse, August 17, 2009 37) Bloomberg News, December 11, 2009 38) Bloomberg News, December 21, 2009 39) Canwest News Service, January 1, 2010 Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato Blog site: http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/ To subscribe, send an e-mail to: rwrozoff at yahoo.com or stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 9 17:58:29 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2010 17:58:29 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Ad in Ha'aretz, Jan. 8, 2010 Message-ID: <5824A198DB554D1698BC8432B3737D9C@agingCHS072729> Ad in Ha'aretz, Jan. 8, 2010 The government of Israel Wants to Conduct negotiations About the division Of the pizza And in the meantime It is eating The pizza Cheques to help us continue the ads - and the campaigns - to: Gush Shalom, P.O.Box 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033 weekly ads archive http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/weekly_ad =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 10 18:48:45 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2010 18:48:45 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Uri Avnery: The Quiet American Message-ID: <73158FC5A0A14D588FBF5E64F94FF0B6@agingCHS072729> http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1263069068/ Uri Avnery 9.1.10 The Quiet American THE QUIET AMERICAN was the hero of Graham Greene's novel about the first Vietnam War, the one fought by the French. He was a young and na?ve American, a professor's son, who had enjoyed a good education at Harvard, an idealist with all the best intentions. When he was sent to Vietnam, he wanted to help the natives to overcome the two evils as he saw them: French colonialism and Communism. Knowing absolutely nothing about the country in which he was acting, he caused a disaster. The book ends with a massacre, the outcome of his misguided efforts. He illustrated the old saying: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Since this book was written, 54 years have passed, but it seems that the Quiet American has not changed a bit. He is still an idealist (at least, in his own view of himself), still wants to bring redemption to foreign and far-away peoples about whom he knows nothing, still causes terrible disasters: in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now, it seems, in Yemen. THE IRAQI example is the simplest one. The American soldiers were sent there to overthrow the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein. There were, of course, also some less altruistic objectives, such as taking control of the Iraqi oil resources and stationing an American garrison in the heart of the Middle Eastern oil region. But for the American public, the adventure was presented as an idealistic enterprise to topple a bloody dictator, who was menacing the world with nuclear bombs. That was six years ago, and the war is still going on. Barack Obama, who opposed the war right from the start, promised to lead the Americans out of there. In the meantime, in spite of all the talking, no end is in sight. Why? Because the real decision-makers in Washington had no idea of the country which they wanted to liberate and help to live happily ever after. Iraq was from the beginning an artificial state. The British masters glued together several Ottoman provinces to suit their own colonial interests. They crowned a Sunni Arab as king over the Kurds, who are not Arab, and the Shiites, who are not Sunni. Only a succession of dictators, each of them more brutal than his predecessor, prevented the state from falling apart. The Washington planners were not interested in the history, demography or geography of the country which they entered with brutal force. The way it looked to them, it was quite simple: One had to topple the tyrant, establish democratic institutions on the American model, conduct free elections, and everything else would fall into place by itself. Contrary to their expectations, they were not received with flowers. Neither did they discover Saddam's terrible atom bomb. Like the proverbial elephant in the porcelain shop, they shattered everything, destroyed the country and got bogged in a swamp. After years of bloody military operations that led nowhere, they found a temporary remedy. To hell with idealism, to hell with the lofty aims, to hell with all military doctrines - they're now simply buying off the tribal chiefs, who constitute the reality of Iraq. The Quiet American has no idea how to get out. He knows that if he does, the country may well disintegrate in mutual bloodletting. TWO YEARS before entering the Iraqi swamp, the Americans invaded the Afghan quagmire. Why? Because an organization called al-Qaeda ("the basis") had claimed responsibility for the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York. Al-Qaeda's chiefs were in Afghanistan, their training camps were there. To the Americans, everything was clear - there was no need for second thoughts (neither, for that matter, for first thoughts.) If they had had any knowledge of the country they were about to invade, they might have, perhaps, hesitated. Afghanistan has always been a graveyard for invaders. Mighty empires had escaped from there with their tails between their legs. Unlike flat Iraq, Afghanistan is a country of mountains, a paradise for guerrillas. It is the home of several different peoples and uncounted tribes, each one fiercely jealous of its independence. The Washington planners were not really interested. For them, it seems, all countries are the same, and so are all societies. In Afghanistan, too, American-style democracy must be established, free and fair elections must be held, and hoppla - everything else will sort itself out. The elephant entered the shop without knocking and achieved a resounding victory. The Air Force pounded, the army conquered without problems, al-Qaeda disappeared like a ghost, the Taliban ("religious pupils") ran away. Women could again appear in the streets without covering their hair, girls could attend schools, the opium fields flourished again, and so did Washington's prot?g?s in Kabul. However - the war goes on, year after year, the number of American dead is rising inexorably. What for? Nobody knows. It seems as if the war has acquired a life of its own, without aim, without reason. An American could well ask himself: What the hell are we doing there? THE IMMEDIATE aim, the expulsion of al-Qaeda from Afghanistan, has ostensibly been achieved. Al-Qaeda is not there - if it ever really was there. I wrote once that al-Qaeda is an America invention and that Osama Bin-Laden has been sent by Hollywood's Central Casting to play the role. He is simply too good to be true. That was, of course, a bit of an exaggeration. But not altogether. The US is always in need of a world-wide enemy. In the past it was International Communism, whose agents were lurking behind every tree and under every floor tile. But, alas, the Soviet Union and its minions had collapsed, there was an urgent need for an enemy to fill the void. This was found in the shape of the world-wide jihad of al-Qaeda. The crushing of "World Terrorism" became the overriding American aim. That aim is nonsense. Terrorism is nothing but an instrument of war. It is used by organizations that are vastly different from each other, which are fighting in vastly different countries for vastly different objectives. A war on "International Terror" is like a war on "International Artillery" or "International Navy". A world-embracing movement led by Osama Bin-Laden just does not exist. Thanks to the Americans, al-Qaeda has become a prestige brand in the guerrilla market, much like McDonald's and Armani in the world of fast food and fashion. Every militant Islamist organization can appropriate the name for itself, even without a franchise from Bin-Laden. American client regimes, who used to brand all their local enemies as "communist" in order to procure the help of their patrons, now brand them as "al-Qaeda terrorists". Nobody knows where Bin-Laden is - if he is at all - and there is no proof of his being in Afghanistan. Some believe that he is in neighboring Pakistan. And even if he were hiding in Afghanistan - what justification is there for conducting a war and killing thousands of people in order to hunt down one person? Some say: OK, so there is no Bin-Laden. But the Taliban have to be prevented from coming back. Why, for god's sake? What business is it of the US who rules Afghanistan? One can loathe religious fanatics in general and the Taliban in particular - but is this a reason for an endless war? If the Afghans themselves prefer the Taliban to the opium dealers who are in power in Kabul, it is their business. It seems that they do, judging by the fact that the Taliban are again in control of most of the country. That is no good reason for a Vietnam-style war. But how do you get out? Obama does not know. During the election campaign he promised, with a candidate's foolhardiness, to enlarge the war there, as a compensation for leaving Iraq. Now he is stuck in both places - and in the near future, it seems, he will be stuck in a third war, too. DURING THE last few days, the name of Yemen has been cropping up more and more often. Yemen - a second Afghanistan, a third Vietnam. The elephant is raring to enter another shop. And this time, too, it doesn't care about the porcelain. I know very little about Yemen, but enough to understand that only a madman would want to be sucked in there. It is another artificial state, composed of two different parts - the country of Sanaa in the North and the (former British) South. Most of the country is mountainous terrain, ruled by bellicose tribes guarding their independence. Like Afghanistan, it is an ideal region for guerrilla warfare. There, too, is an organization that has adopted the grandiose name of "Al-Qaeda of the Arab Peninsula" (after the Yemenite militants united with their Saudi brothers). But its chiefs are interested in world revolution much less than in the intrigues and battles of the tribes among themselves and against the "central" government, a reality with a history of thousands of years. Only a complete fool would lay his head on this bed. The name Yemen means "country on the right". (If one looks towards Mecca from the West, Yemen is on the right side and Syria on the left.) The right side also connotes happiness, and the name of Yemen is connected to al-Yamana, an Arabic word for being happy. The Romans called it Arabia Felix ("Happy Arabia") because it was rich through trading in spices. (By the way, Obama may be interested to hear that another leader of a superpower, Caesar Augustus, once tried to invade Yemen and was trounced.) If the Quiet American, in his usual mixture of idealism and ignorance, decides to bring democracy and all the other goodies there, that will be the end of this happiness. The Americans will sink into another quagmire, tens of thousands of people will be killed, and it will all end in disaster. IT MAY well be that the problem is rooted - inter alia - in the architecture of Washington DC. This city is full of huge buildings populated with the ministries and other offices of the only superpower in the world. The people working there feel the tremendous might of their empire. They look upon the tribal chiefs of Afghanistan and Yemen as a rhinoceros looks down at the ants that rush around between its feet. The Rhino walks over them without noticing. But the ants survive. Altogether, the Quiet American resembles Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust, who defines himself as the force that "always wants the bad and always creates the good". Only the other way round. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 10 18:51:42 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2010 18:51:42 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Saul Landau: Naked Empire Message-ID: <0BF735E31E4D4BA7BD0EA35BAFE91172@agingCHS072729> http://www.counterpunch.org/landau01082010.html Weekend Edition January 8 - 10, 2010 Happy New Year ... Take to the Streets Naked Empire By SAUL LANDAU Millions of Americans drink "unhealthy" water; military suicides escalate; schools erode and health programs collapse. -- The New York Times The Senate passed a $626 billion "defense" budget without discussion. Since 1947, when the War Department became the Defense Department, Congress has allocated trillions of dollars, but all for offense and with dubious results: Korea (1950-53), Vietnam (1964-74), Iraq and Afghanistan. None of those countries attacked or threatened us. In Copenhagen, Obama reflected the denial mood of Congress, banks and corporations and offered platitudes to reduce global warming while admitting the perils of growing climate change. Raising unpleasant future scenarios signifies unacceptable political pessimism. The press, predictably, abdicated on all issues not connected to celebrity scandal. Last September, Fidel Castro said modern media's main message was "Buy this, buy that." After watching CNN International, a network whose founder, Ted Turner, attributed to Fidel the idea of fashioning a global news network, he called such "news" a purveyor of "universal disorientation." Mass confusion also derives from priorities. As unemployment grew and war raged, newspaper headlines and TV news shows featured Tiger Woods' women. Even George Orwell didn't imagine how incessant visual shock images and audio babble could combine with the blur of newsprint to immerse the public in depths of muddle. Misdirected U.S. residents also entered the second decade of the Century as victims because of scams and con jobs perpetrated by CEOs. Ruses perpetrated by the country's highest officials which led to the U.S. military's reduction of parts of Iraq and Afghanistan to rubble - with massive death and injury. The Century itself began with a sham election. Bush's presidential qualifications equaled mine as a religious icon painter. No matter. The Supreme Court established that democracy did not include counting votes in Florida. Shortly after, Bush's buddy and campaign contributor, ENRON chief "Kenny-Boy" Lay, stood naked as his company defrauded the public -- billions of dollars of losses hidden by fraudulent accounting - we learned the new meaning of "innovative." For six consecutive years Fortune named ENRON its "most innovative company." Some ENRON executives made billions by helping cause and then profit from a California power shortage; others guided creative accountants through courses in numerical book-cooking so as to create the fa?ade of profitability. Other monster-sized corporations with high ratings also collapsed (Adelphia and WorldCom) thanks to dubious profiteering and speculating by top executives. Despite warning signs that "prosperity" included phony accounting, Fed Chairs offered rosy predictions of an eternal housing boom. The U.S. economy would perpetually rise. The venerable Bernie Madoff assured clients, with phony assets statements, that they would enjoy ever larger fortunes by investing pension and endowment funds in his licensed ponzi scheme of $64 billion. Bernie's good times lasted more than a decade. Bush had done nothing of note until Osama's crew struck. Bush's National Security neo cons then pushed their aggressive agenda through a terrified Congress and an un-skeptical media. Invading Afghanistan would somehow retaliate for the 9/11 outrage, rid the country of the hated Taliban and, most importantly, capture the evil Osama bin Laden. Without fear or fact, neo con ideologues manipulated publics in the U.S. and England. In record time, we had a new war, and a hastily drafted Patriot Act to curtail our liberties for the purpose of stopping bin Laden, who wanted to curtail our freedom. After no opposition to war in Afghanistan emerged, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "conned" the media and Congress, with British collusion, into war in Iraq (see the film "In the Loop"). Over six plus years, hundreds of thousands died. Iraq's integrity got shattered. No weapons of mass destruction were found; nor ties between Saddam's Iraq's and Al-Qaeda. Bush and Blair shrugged: "It's a better world without Saddam." Relatives of the dead shouldn't complain because their loved ones died "for a better world." Scandal also struck religion - again. Ultra religious megapreacher Ted Haggard liked getting speed inserted into his stimulant-craving booty according to his masseuse who followed the drugged-up Ted's nether orifice with his own you know what. Like the fictional Elmer Gantry, Ted preached fidelity while imagining kinky scenarios. After his "outing," Ted "cured" "homoerotica" by spending two weeks in Christian rehab. Now happily reunited with wife and kids, Ted counsels others with similar "problems." In November 2008, Americans, recoiling from the Bush nightmare, voted for "hope" and "change." Obama then appointed the same old perpetrators as top economic bosses (Treasury Secretary Geithner and Economic Adviser-in-Chief Summers) and continued Bush's Afghan war with more troops. Our rotting infrastructure will somehow take care of itself and the unemployed and foreclosed should have faith. Happy New Year and Take to the Streets! Saul Landau's A BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD was published by CounterPunch / AK Press. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 10 19:59:11 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2010 19:59:11 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] US drone attacks 'undermine support for war': Zardari Message-ID: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100107/wl_sthasia_afp/pakistanunrestusdrone_20100107191415 Agence France Presse Jan 7, 2010 US drone attacks 'undermine support for war': Zardari ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Pakistan warned US senators Thursday that American drone attacks against militants on its territory undermined "the national consesus" that supported the war against militancy. President Asif Ali Zardari made the warning to a US delegation led by former US presidential candidate and Republican Senator John McCain one day after US missile attacks killed at least 13 militants on the Afghan border. McCain said Thursday in Kabul, the capital of neighbouring Afghanistan, that the use of such drone strikes against suspected Islamist militants in Pakistan was an effective part of US strategy and should continue. "The drone strikes are part of an overall set of tactics which make up the strategy for victory and they have been very effective," McCain told reporters during a brief trip to Afghanistan. But a statement issued late Thursday by the Pakistani government said Zardari had pointed out to the US delegation "that drone attacks on Pakistani territory undermined the national consensus" supporting the war on militancy. "The president underlined the need for the strategic long-term partnership between Pakistan and the United States to be based on mutual interest, respect and mutual trust," it added. Suspected US drone strikes have increasingly targeted North Waziristan, a stronghold for Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the Haqqani network, from where the militants launch attacks on 113,000 US and NATO troops fighting in Afghanistan. "(Zardari) urged the American delegation to persuade the US policy makers to give drone technology to Pakistan so that the militants could be targeted by Pakistan's national security forces themselves rather than by foreign troops, which raised questions of sovereignty," the release said. It added that Zadari had told the delegation that "the economic cost of the war against terror amounting to 35 billion US dollars for the last eight years has almost paralyzed Pakistan's economy." Washington has put Pakistan at the heart of a strategy for turning around the eight-year war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, hinging success on dismantling militant sanctuaries along the porous border. Pakistan is under increasing pressure to tackle militants who use its soil to launch attacks in Afghanistan and American officials have said that the highly secretive drone programme has eliminated some top fighters. The US attacks on Pakistani territory fuel anti-American sentiment in the nuclear-armed Muslim nation and the government publicly condemns the strikes. Analysts say, however, that the strikes have Islamabad's tacit approval. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 10 20:15:25 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2010 20:15:25 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] =?iso-8859-1?q?Bombs_Without_Borders=3B_Bernard_Kouch?= =?iso-8859-1?q?ner=27s_prescription_for_war?= Message-ID: <1B98571F2C5F428B95F32778BC8DEB94@agingCHS072729> http://amconmag.com/article/2010/jan/01/00032/ The American Conservative January 01, 2010 Issue Bombs Without Borders Bernard Kouchner's prescription for war By John Laughland The history of neoconservatism has been well documented as a trajectory from Left to Right and specifically from anti-Stalinist Left to pro-war and anti-conservative Right. The story is usually told about Americans because, of course, it is in the United States that the movement has become strongest. But the phenomenon has long existed in Europe, too. Just look at the foreign minister of France, Bernard Kouchner. Kouchner was appointed to one of France's highest offices of state in 2007 by the newly elected president, Nicolas Sarkozy. He had supported Sarkozy's Socialist opponent during the campaign, as he was a member of the Socialist Party and had served only in Socialist governments in the past. (His party duly expelled him for accepting the new job.) But Kouchner is not just an opportunist who jumped ship. He is a self-styled progressive who has systematically supported war, supposedly for humanitarian purposes, ever since the late 1960s. His partnership with the neocon Sarkozy was quite natural. In February of last year, however, Kouchner's reputation came under attack after Pierre Pean, a leading French investigative journalist, published an expose entitled Le Monde Selon K. Pean charged Kouchner with all sorts of political, ideological, and financial malfeasance. The book caused a sensation in Paris. Firing back, Kouchner suggested that Pean harbored an anti-Semitic hatred against him and rallied important friends to his defense, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Fashionable neocon litterateur Bernard Henri Levy called P?an "a dwarf." The sourness of the response was not surprising. Kouchner is well liked in France. He is one of that strange breed of politician that manages to cultivate the image of not really being a politician at all. Instead, he is widely credited as a doctor, his other profession, even though he has been in politics longer. Indeed, he has blended his two callings into one. Kouchner cut his medico-political teeth in Biafra, the province of Nigeria where a vicious war of secession broke out in 1967. Although a member of the Communist Party at the time, he remained strangely aloof from the events of May 1968, denouncing them as "an individualist revolution." In August of that year, the newly qualified doctor replied to a newspaper advertisement calling for medics to go to Biafra under the auspices of the Red Cross. He was there by the beginning of September, and this was to prove his baptism of fire. Kouchner and his colleagues did good work, but their sympathy for the victims of war quickly turned into active military support for the Biafran cause. An embargo on flights having been broken by Caritas and the Red Cross, planes carrying arms duly flew in from neighboring Gabon alongside the ones carrying medical supplies. In a highly unethical confusion of medicine and politics-one that was to form the cornerstone of Kouchner's career for decades to come-he and his Red Cross colleagues looked the other way, occasionally used the military planes themselves, and called for their hospital staff to be armed so they could better fight for Biafran independence. In other words, for Kouchner, neutral humanitarianism was rubbish. The war was a just cause that had to be fought for. In a semi-anonymous interview given to an African newspaper, "Dr. K." denounced the very concept of neutrality on which the Red Cross had operated ever since its creation more than 100 years previously. He called for the Geneva Conventions to be changed so that medics could take sides in war. At the end of 1968, Kouchner openly transformed his physician's role into an activist one when he created the Committee for the Fight Against the Genocide in Biafra. He denounced "the horrors of this conflict perpetrated by Lagos in league with imperialist powers." The French doctor's personal brand of atrocity propaganda was born. When Biafra fell to Nigerian forces in January 1970, Kouchner wrote an article replete with exaggerations and oversimplifications, saying that the Biafran "genocide" was the worst massacre in the world since the Holocaust. He was to reuse this simple formula on many occasions. The fact that his battle for Biafra coincided exactly with the geopolitical support de Gaulle's government was then giving to the Biafrans (against the support given to Nigeria by Britain and America) did not bother him. Nor did the fact that both sides were fighting for control of the oil reserves off the Nigerian coast. In his article, Kouchner-who had always admired de Gaulle's minister of culture, Andre Malraux, precisely because he had fought with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War-attacked the Left for having abandoned the concept of "a people's war" (la guerre populaire) and adopting what he denounced as a smug and morally disgraceful pacifism. It was the political militancy of those doctors who made friends during the Biafran war and who remained in touch once back in Paris that led to the creation of "Medecins Sans Frontieres" (Doctors Without Borders) in 1972. The idea was to create a "commando" of doctors who could travel at short notice to conflict zones. (Note the military metaphor of the sort that Kouchner was to use throughout his life, for instance, in his autobiographical Warriors of Peace.) While some of the members wanted to perform short urgent missions and others longer-term ones, Kouchner's position was the most radical of all. What mattered to him was the media. Kouchner loved nothing more than promoting a cause-and himself in the process. He eventually stormed out of MSF in 1979 and created a new association, Medecins du Monde (Doctors of the World) in 1980. Demographer Emmanuel Todd nicknamed Kouchner's new group "Soldiers Without Borders" in 2007, in an article wondering what sort of a physician systematically prefers war to peace. The bad blood between MSF and Kouchner has persisted for decades. In 2008, for instance, the man who had by then become French foreign minister said that French NGO's were keeping him informed about the situation in the Gaza Strip and affording him a channel of contact with Hamas. The claim instantly put the French organizations' work in jeopardy. The president of MSF issued a furious denial and returned a donation of 120,000 euros that it had just received from Kouchner's ministry. In spite of this, Kouchner has managed to maintain the illusion that he is still somehow connected to MSF. Nine years after he created Medecins du Monde, Kouchner was rewarded for his politico-humanitarian activism by being appointed secretary of state for humanitarian action in the government of the newly re-elected Socialist president Francois Mitterrand. Having served de Gaulle's policy in the past, Kouchner served the new regime with equal ease. He vocally supported the first Gulf War in 1991, in spite of its unpopularity in France, and he looked the other way as the Coalition bombed Iraq into a humanitarian catastrophe. He attacked in the press those "pacifists who are happy to accommodate the methods of the strongman of Baghdad, thereby comforting one of the bloodiest dictatorships on earth." He called for French foreign policy to be based on "morality" and denounced opponents of his policy as Communists, Greens, and even anti-Semites. He was the first to formulate the "right of intervention" in the war's aftermath and organized an airdrop of food and aid to the Iraqi Kurds. Like so many of Kouchner's stunts, this one was bitterly attacked, not only by his numerous rivals within government but by then honorary president of MSF, Xavier Emmanuelli, who wrote of his disgust at seeing genuine suffering transformed by Kouchner into a spectacle for domestic television consumption. In order to publicize the drops of food aid, journalists and heavy broadcasting equipment were transported to remote Kurdish villages so that the "generosity" could be filmed and beamed all over the world. The fact that fights broke out over the aid packages and that scores of people were killed when the drops fell on their heads or into minefields did not bother Kouchner. He later adorned the front cover of his book with a photograph of himself looking out of the window of a helicopter, apparently at Kurdistan, wearing the concerned expression of an Olympian humanitarian. In 1992, Kouchner took up the cause of Somalia. He organized a campaign in all of France's 74,000 schools in which every child was asked to bring a kilogram of rice to school for starving Somalis. The project was run with the Ministry of Education, the French railroad network SNCF, and the Post Office. When the rice was delivered to East Africa, Kouchner made sure the TV cameras were there. It was here that he staged one of his most notorious publicity stunts, when he rolled up his trousers and waded into the water to carry bags of rice onto the beach on his back. This was but the "humanitarian" curtain-raiser to what would become the disastrous U.S. expedition to Somalia, "Operation Restore Hope," which started the very day of the broadcast, Dec. 5, 1992. Not coincidentally, Kouchner also took a high-profile position on the Bosnian war, just as the United States and fashionable opinion were swinging behind the Muslim cause. In June 1992, three months into the war, Kouchner and Mitterrand flew to Sarajevo, a surprise visit that hugely strengthened Kouchner's position within the government. When the story about Serbian "concentration camps" broke in August, Kouchner was in his element: good versus evil based on ridiculous parallels with the Nazi Holocaust. In early 1993, Medecins du Monde spent an estimated $2 million on a publicity campaign demonizing the Serbs, using the controversial pictures of the Omarska camp taken by the British channel ITN and including posters showing pictures of Hitler and Milosevic in case anyone had missed the point. Kouchner was later to admit that the campaign he sponsored had been based on a lie. In Warriors of Peace, Kouchner recounts a conversation with the dying Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, who admitted in 2003 that the camps had not been "extermination camps" at all and that he had pretended otherwise in order to curry sympathy and military support from the West. But it was over the Rwanda genocide in 1994 that Kouchner started to make serious enemies in France. One of them was Pierre P?an. A veteran journalist who has written books on a wide range of subjects, including an excellent account of Fran?ois Mitterrand's youthful work for the Vichy government, P?an disagreed violently with the popular view of Rwanda. He did not deny that Hutus had killed Tutsis in large numbers, but he insisted that the reverse was also true. He further resented, like many others, the political instrumentalization of the genocide to blacken France's name. Pean produced a book on Rwanda and became an implacable opponent of the RPF regime in Kigali under President Paul Kagame. Pean branded Kagame a dictator and a mass murderer and noted that the Rwandan government had on several occasions formally accused France of complicity in the genocide. Diplomatic relations with France were broken off in 2006 when a French judge issued arrest warrants for members of Kagame's entourage on the basis that the president ordered the assassination of the two Hutu presidents (of Rwanda and Burundi) in April 1994, the event that all agree sparked the conflict. Following his close study of the Rwanda story, Pean turned his ire directly on Kouchner to produce Le Monde Selon K. It is easy to see why P?an's book caused a stir. His chapter on Kouchner and Rwanda is particularly effective and full of anger. With meticulous attention to detail and use of maps, P?an shows how Kouchner's claims to have visited a Tutsi massacre site in 1994 were precisely wrong: the killings in that particular village were in fact committed by Tutsis against Hutus. The great supporter of intervention had inverted victim and perpetrator. Unfortunately, P?an's work also descends into spitefulness. He dwells at length on Kouchner's influence trafficking, for which his wife is said to be the principal instrument. Surprisingly for a man who presents himself as a selfless humanitarian, Kouchner is in fact one half of France's most powerful power couple: Christine Ockrent, his wife, is one of the most influential TV journalists in France and head of the holding company that owns all the radio and TV channels that France broadcasts abroad. (Ironically, the charter of one of the channels in the group specifically forbids it from becoming the voice of the Foreign Ministry.) She is also a regular invitee to the meetings of the Bilderberg Group and the European Council on Foreign Relations, a very rare honor for a hack. Pean accuses Ockrent of being incompetent and of sacking journalists for political reasons. These claims are a little tendentious, and he mars them by prurient and irrelevant attacks on Ockrent's (admittedly enormous) income. He concludes his hatchet job by piling up allegations of simple cynicism on Kouchner's part. For instance, the great campaigner's company, B.K. Consulting, was paid 25,000 euros by the French oil company Total to produce a report supporting its construction projects in Burma, a country whose regime Kouchner had denounced in 1994 as "a narco-dictatorship." P?an also alleges that, when he became a member of the European Parliament in 1994, Kouchner deliberately registered his holiday house in Corsica as his permanent address so that he could cash in on extra travel expenses. Pean's attack on Kouchner is uneven and marred by some inaccuracies. But his argument is sound. Kouchner has for the last 40 years consistently supported war as the means to solve humanitarian problems. He is a virulent interventionist who denounces his opponents as accomplices of dictators. This no doubt explains the cover photograph of Pean's book. It shows Kouchner standing in a slightly strained posture of camaraderie with George W. Bush, each man with his arm clasped over the other's shoulder. Kouchner stares up admiringly at the man who embodies his political ideals-or perhaps the man whose ideals Kouchner invented. __________________________________________ John Laughland is director of studies at the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris, www.idc-europe.org. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Mon Jan 11 13:54:47 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 13:54:47 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] [Review] Afghan activist urges foreign troops to leave Message-ID: A Woman Among Warlords The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice By Malalai Joya, with Derrick O'Keefe Scribner, 229 pages, $33 http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/entertainment/books/afghan-activist-urges-foreign-troops-to-leave-81059872.html Winnipeg Free Press Jan. 9, 2010 Afghan activist urges foreign troops to leave The author of this compelling autobiography has been called one of the bravest women in Afghanistan, by media and politicians the globe over. The very basics of her story -- being a refugee in Iran, Pakistan and even in Afghanistan, having a parent hunted by rotating regimes, being female where that instantly means being second class -- could earn her the title. Add to it her chosen vocation -- women's rights activist, the youngest ever Afghan parliamentarian -- and her memoir offer heartbreaking insight into today's Afghanistan. Born just three days after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1978, Malalai Joya writes of how she and her homeland have known only war ever since. Joya does not use her real name, so precarious is her and her family's security, considering her chosen profession. She describes herself as a blend of Tajik, Pashtun, Hazara, Uzbek, Nooristani and Baluch ethnicities and says she refuses to honour the various ethnic differences that have been used as tools to create ethnic strife over the decades. In 2003, she called on the U.S.-installed government of Hamid Karzai to clean house and toss out the warlords, drug barons and cronies she alleged were within the ruling parliament. Though elected to the parliament based on those bold words, she was subsequently expelled, because, incredibly, it is illegal for a member of the parliament to criticize another. These days, Joya does not sleep in the same house twice, and has been the target of five assassination attempts since 2003. Even though she is cloaked by the anonymity of a burka -- the infamous man-mandated shroud -- she travels with six bodyguards headed by an uncle she trusts to keep her safe. Her own marriage had to be held in secret. This memoir, co-written by Vancouver-based writer and peace activist Derrick O'Keefe, reads like a very hard, long journey, more from content than writing style. It is difficult for the outside observer to distinguish and understand the complexities of Afghanistan in such a short book. Joya tries to explain some of the country's history as a battleground of superpowers, and how this subsequently ramped up tribal tensions until warlords and their fiefdoms led to the Taliban in all its extremism. She lays plain the details that so troubled her as a member of parliament -- lavish and well-attended banquets held by President Karzai, while the average Afghan survived on less than $2 a month. Perhaps somewhat alarming for Western governments with troops currently on the ground is Joya's belief that present-day Afghanistan would be better off without foreign troops. She states more than once that though a withdrawal of U.S., Canadian and British troops might very quickly result in the internecine fighting that led to the Taliban, that is actually preferable to foreign occupation in support of yet another corrupt regime. She steadfastly maintains that the average Afghan wants peace and democracy but will not get it from the current regime. She urges the U.S. to concentrate on nation building rather than increasing its military presence. Joya has a steadily increasing international profile and her book is in print around the world. In a promise to the very people who have survived the armies and regimes with her, she has pledged that all profits will go to humanitarian projects in her battered but beloved homeland. *Jackie Shymanski is a Winnipeg communications consultant and former CNN correspondent. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Mon Jan 11 21:52:14 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:52:14 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Economics and Limits to Growth: What's Sustainable? Message-ID: <0A3593017BDF445F8C5FADA169BAA4E6@agingCHS072729> [Just one comment, which is to point out what should be obvious: somewhere near 90% of the earth's population consume the equivalent amount of resources of the other 10%. The problem, in other words, is not "over-population" but rather runaway consumerism within affluent capitalist society.] [Please also consider clicking on the URL for the graphs! --rm] The Oil Drum January 4, 2010 Dennis Meadows - Economics and Limits to Growth: What's Sustainable? Posted by Gail the Actuary on January 4, 2010 - 10:27am Topic: Economics/Finance Tags: dennis meadows, limits to growth [list all tags] Dr. Dennis Meadows is one of the authors of the well-known 1972 book "Limits to Growth," plus two updates of the book. He has received a number of awards for his work, most recently the prestigious Japan Prize from the Science and Technology Foundation of Japan. Dr. Meadows recently gave a talk for the Population Institute. Both the presentation and a podcast of Dr. Meadows giving his talk can be downloaded from the Population Institute site. In this post, I summarize what I understand Dr. Meadows to be saying in that talk. Readers with time are encouraged to listen to the Podcast and look at the presentation themselves. Dr. Meadows did not cover all of his slides in his talk. This post relates only to those that he did cover. The number one take-away for me from this talk is The end of growth does not come from depletion, but from rising capital costs. In some ways, this is intuitive. When you put this statement together with the work I have been doing that shows that debt cannot continue rising in the face of peak oil, it makes this issue even more important. A second major take-away for me (besides the importance of population in the equation) is Changes in technology may delay the end of growth by a few years, but they do not avoid it, and do not avoid the decline. A third observation I found interesting is that the biggest stresses are likely to occur at the time when growth ceases--that is now--not, as is popularly believed, as the result of the decline itself. What follows is my summary of the presentation. The more technical parts are fairly close to a transcript. For precisely what was said, I recommend the recording itself, free from i-tunes. The application runs on MacIntosh machines. I am not certain about Windows. Slide 1 The reason I [Dr. Meadows] am giving this talk is because I think that there is the possibility of positive change. Much of the way that we conduct ourselves is based on habit. For example, we get into the habit of crossing our arms with our right hand (or left hand) on top. It is not that putting the right hand or left hand on top is better or worse. We have just developed a habit of crossing our arms in a particular way. If we are going to solve the population problem, we need to learn new habits. I am hopeful that like learning to cross our arms in a different way, we can inspire people to learn new habits that will limit population growth--something that is needed with finite resources. My [Dr. Meadows'] views regarding what is sustainable are different now than they were 40 years ago. At that time, I worked with others at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to build a simple computer model that might offer some insight into the impact of limits to growth. We did not expect the model to be predictive--only that the scenarios might provide a rough boundaries regarding what might happen in the future. In our reference scenario in 1972, we expected growth to continue for 40 to 80 more years. The major difference I see in looking at the situation now is that things seem to be developing more rapidly than we expected then. Slide 2 Let's start by looking at our reference scenario. The red line shows where we were when the model was first developed. I have blocked out the fourth quadrant of the chart, because the world situation is likely to be so different from the situation we modeled that the model is likely to be totally irrelevant. The area shaded in light blue represents the time period that might possibility be changed by the policies we implement today. Slide 3 In 1972, we expected another 40 to 80 years of growth in the various scenarios. While some of the scenarios we looked at ended in orderly decline, most of the scenarios we modeled ended in collapse. This likely outcome was later confirmed by William Catton in his book Overshoot. You will note I say that technology may delay the end of growth a few years, but it does not avoid the end of growth or the decline. I have worked in science and technology, and I have a scientific degree, so I am not saying this because I am unaware of what technology can do. When we put together models using phenomenally optimistic assumptions, it just moved the decline date back a few years. Social changes are essential for a better outcome. Take population for example. There are two ways population can decreased: 1. The birth rate can go down, or 2. The death rate can go up. A key factor to understand is that what are normally considered problems today--for example, climate change, energy shortages, and erosion, aren't really problems. Instead, they are symptoms of attempted infinite growth in a finite world. In some ways, the situation is like if you have a friend who has cancer, and because of the cancer he has a headache. It is not nice to have a headache, so you give your friend pain relievers, but you don't imagine you have cured the problem. The problem is cancer, and until you deal with the problem, there will be one or another manifestation, such as a head ache. We talk a lot about climate change today. I predict that in three or four years, we won't be talking about climate change. We will be talking about energy scarcity or food shortages or declining water supplies. This will occur not because we have dealt with climate, but because it is one of a large family of pressures which are going to mount until finally physical growth stops. Slide 4 [I do not believe that Dr. Meadows spoke directly about this slide, but I thought it was important for completeness.] Slide 5 World population has been rising rapidly, and in our models, continues to rise. Slide 7 World metal use is also rapidly increasing. Slide 9 We have now reached overshoot. According to Wackernagel's analysis, we passed global capacity in 1980, eight years after our book was published. We are now about 40% above carrying capacity, according to his analysis. In the early days, we had only models to tell us we were beyond carrying capacity. Now, we can look at the newspapers and get confirmation of the fact. Slide 10 Kevin Noone published this image in Nature showing various areas where overshoot may manifest itself. Except for ozone, we are not making much progress in keeping physical stresses in limits. Some sectors appear not to have problems, but that is only because we do not have the situations quantified. Slide 11 It was astonishing to me in 1972 that people could start from the assumption that there are no limits. It has been even more amazing to see the evolution to this thinking. Initially, the assumption was that people were just uninformed. The assumption was that if we can manage to give them the facts, they will change their opinion, and fall into line. Nothing I have seen in 40 years gives me support for that opinion. If you marshall enough facts to disprove an objection, then the critics will just find another objection. There are an infinite number of objections, so you are never going to come to the end of the process. The above slide shows the sequence of objections. Now that it is clear that markets will not fix the situation, the belief is that technology will be the solution. Technology doesn't deal well with limits either. There are thermodynamic proofs of this. Let me discuss some key assumptions in our model. William Catton mentions that there are three different ways we use space--one for extraction; one for activity; and one for basically dumping stuff. The first and third of these have costs associated with them. Slide 12 This is a generic curve, but I could show you empirically based versions of this curve for particular reserves. When you have 100% of a given resource, you can start to use it up, and you don't perceive any particular cost increase. It is only when you get past maybe 50%, 60% depletion that you start to see a radical rises in cost of extraction. We don't have time here, but I could explain why it behaves that way, and the reasons are not ones that can be changed by technology. Technology can shift the curve a little bit, but it can't alter the fact that well before you get to zero resource, the cost will become infinite. Slide 13 - (Above slide has been revised from that used in the original presentation, at the request of Dr. Meadows.) And there is an analogous curve for dumps, where we try to put stuff. As the fraction of the sink is slowly occupied to a greater and greater extent, the cost of dealing with the consequences of production goes up rapidly. Slide 14 Here is one particular example of the effect of these curves. It is the declining return on investment of energy. We built this country with energy that gave 70:1 to 100:1 energy payback. With domestic resources, we are now down to 10:1, 15:1 or 20:1 energy paybacks. You can see the trends are moving in a way which mean that well before the middle of the century, we will be dealing with energy resources that hardly break even. What you can do with 100:1 payback is enormously different than what you can do with a system that is generating only 2:1 or 3:1 payback. It is just that in the case of fossil fuels, we have used up many of the resources. In our book, we describe the consequences of declining energy return. I won't get into great detail here, except to point out a couple of important features of our model. Slide 15 Industrial growth occurs because of the positive feedback loop that occurs, depicted on the above chart. More capital gives you more output; more output permits more investment; and more investment lets you build up your capital stock. As long as investment exceeds depreciation, you have growth--exponential growth, and rapid rates of increase. Depending on how equitable society is, people, at least some people, get richer. However, as we start to draw down our resources and fill up our sinks, more and more of the capital has to be drawn off to provide for the other needs. Eventually, you get to the point where you can't sustain production around the industrial capital loop sufficiently to sustain growth. In our world model, it is the failure of model to produce enough output for capital reinvestment that tips you over into decline. We are moving now into that period. Slide 16 Some people now looking at our curves would imagine that the periods of greatest stress would be after the peak--once the declines have set in. I don't think that is true. Right now, around the globe, we (that is corporate, political, and religious leaders) are working as hard as we can to sustain growth. For growth to stop, negative pressure have to mount until they are strong enough to offset our positive pressures. That's the period that we are in now. So I anticipate the big stresses are the ones we are going to encounter over the next couple of decades. Slide 17 Let me give one very quick example in the two minutes that remain. Take CO2 concentration. Here again, we published this in 1972. You can see the red line and notice how quickly things accelerated after our book came out. No causal relationship there, but, on the other hand, it is pretty clear that no one paid any attention either. [Note by Gail: I wonder if the shift to debt based financing in this period helped "goose" growth.] Why is it doing this? Everyone in the world wants greenhouse gasses to go down, but, by and large, they keep going up. Not only in the United States, which didn't sign the Kyoto Accord, but in all of the countries that did sign the Kyoto Accord. Slide 18 Well, here we see the crucial role of population. The chart shows CO2 emissions as a function of four factors: 1. Number of people. 2. Number of units of capital per person, which is a surrogate for living standards. 3. The amount of energy required to build and operate that capital. 4. The fraction of that energy that comes from non-fossil sources. So far, our concern about climate change had manifested itself through efforts to improve efficiency and to implement alternative energy sources--the so-called technology options. I will just close by pointing out that as long as we ignore demographic and cultural issues, the growth in the first two factors will continue to offset all of the improvement we make in factors 3 and 4. And so until we can understand how to begin reducing the growth in the first two factors, climate change is a foregone conclusion. [Dr. Meadows finished with a little clapping game to show that actions speak louder than words with respect to reducing population growth. He did not finish all of his slides--which is why I have omitted some.] [Postscript by Gail. Dr. Meadows clearly sees capital somewhat differently than I have been looking at it. His model does not seem to incorporate debt. To me, it seems like debt allows resource developers effectively to obtain capital temporarily for nothing, by promising some of the future output of the positive feedback loop shown in Slide 15, including interest, back to lenders. When returns start slipping (because of the two forces Dr. Meadows mentions--higher resource extraction costs and higher costs of handling pollution sinks)--there is not enough money to pay back money lenders, and the system starts unraveling quickly, as we have recently been witnessing. I think that inequity in the sharing of the outputs of the resource loop shown in Slide 15 is helping the system to continue to provide the level of capital investment that is now being provided. If the outputs were being shared equally, we would find that workers would be benefiting proportionately with bankers, and rich countries would be benefiting proportionately with poor countries. Our children would have an equal chance at getting high-paying jobs that we who are parents of young adults have had. This inequity in sharing seems to me to play a big part in what funds for re-investment remain. The recent emphasis on renewables is in the direction of causing even higher capital needs. To the extent that this takes needed capital away from unglamorous parts of the system that are necessary for the system to survive, it could lead the system to fail earlier than it otherwise would.] =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Mon Jan 11 22:10:40 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:10:40 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Wall Street Will Be Back for More Message-ID: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/wall_street_will_be_back_for_more_20100110/ Chris Hedges' Columns Wall Street Will Be Back for More Posted on Jan 10, 2010 AP / Richard Drew By Chris Hedges Corporations, which control the levers of power in government and finance, promote and empower the psychologically maimed. Those who lack the capacity for empathy and who embrace the goals of the corporation-personal power and wealth-as the highest good succeed. Those who possess moral autonomy and individuality do not. And these corporate heads, isolated from the mass of Americans by insular corporate structures and vast personal fortunes, are no more attuned to the misery, rage and pain they cause than were the courtiers and perfumed fops who populated Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution. They play their games of high finance as if the rest of us do not exist. And it is a game that will kill us. These companies exist in a pathological world where identity and personal worth are determined solely by the perverted code of the corporation. The corporation decides who has value and who does not, who advances and who is left behind. It rewards the most compliant, craven and manipulative, and discards the losers who can't play the game, those who do not accumulate wealth or status fast enough, or who fail to fully subsume their individuality into the corporate collective. It dominates the internal and external lives of its employees, leaving them without time for family or solitude-without time for self-reflection-and drives them into a state of perpetual nervous exhaustion. It breaks them down, especially in their early years in the firm, a period in which they are humiliated and pressured to work such long hours that many will sleep under their desks. This hazing process, one that is common at corporate newspapers where I worked, including The New York Times, eliminates from the system most of those with backbone, fortitude and dignity. No one thinks in groups. And this is the point. The employees who advance are vacant and supine. They are skilled drones, often possessed of a peculiar kind of analytical intelligence and drive, but morally, emotionally and creatively crippled. Their intellect is narrow and inhibited. They rely on the corporation, as they once relied on their high-priced elite universities and their SAT scores, for validation. They demand that they not be treated as individuals but as members of the great collective of Goldman Sachs or AIG or Citibank. They talk together. They exchange information. They make deals. They compromise. They debate. But they do not think. They do not create. All capacity for intuition, for unstructured thought, for questions of meaning deemed impractical or frivolous by the firm, the qualities that always precede discovery and creation, are banished, as William H. Whyte observed in his book "The Organization Man." The iron goals of greater and greater profit, order and corporate conformity dominate their squalid belief systems. And by the time these corporate automatons are managing partners or government bureaucrats they cannot distinguish between right and wrong. They are deaf, dumb and blind to the common good. These deeply stunted and maladjusted individuals, from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to Robert Rubin to Lawrence Summers to the heads of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America, hold the fate of the nation in their hands. They have access to trillions of taxpayer dollars and are looting the U.S. Treasury to sustain reckless speculation. The financial and corporate system alone validates them. It defines them. It must be served. This is why e-mails from the New York Fed to AIG, telling the bailed-out insurer not to make public the overpaying of Wall Street firms with taxpayer money, were sent when Geithner was in charge of the government agency. These criminals sold the public investments they knew to be trash. They used campaign contributions and lobbyists to turn elected officials into stooges and gut oversight and regulation. They took over retirement savings and pensions and wiped them out. And then they seized some $13 trillion in taxpayer money so they could lend it to us with interest. It is circular theft. This is why we will endure another catastrophic financial collapse. This is why firms like Goldman Sachs are more dangerous to the nation than al-Qaida. "The psychology is about winning, and winning is marked by the level of compensation and bonuses and the power you have within the firm," Nomi Prins, the author of "It Takes a Pillage" and a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, told me by phone from California. "Every investment bank is like a mini-country. The political maneuvering and the differences between individuals who run certain areas and move up the ladder of the company are not necessarily decided by a vote. They move up depending on how close they are to the person [above them]. If that person moves up they move up with them. A certain set of loyalties get created. It is an intense competition all the time. You have trading and doing deals with clients, but the result is to push people up the ladder and to make money." How you make money and how you climb the ladder of the corporate structure are irrelevant. Success becomes its own morality. Those who do well in this environment possess the traits often exhibited by psychopaths-superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation, and the incapacity for remorse or guilt. They, like competitors on a reality television program, lie, cheat and betray to climb over those around them and advance. These demented individuals are admired and envied within the firm. They achieve heroic status. The lower-ranking employees are supposed to emulate them. And this makes Goldman Sachs and other speculative financial firms upscale lunatic asylums where the inmates wear Brooks Brothers suits and drink expensive chardonnay. Our problem is that the lunatics have been let out of the asylum. They have been empowered to cannibalize the government on behalf of the corporations that spawned them like mutant carp. These corporations don't make anything. They don't produce anything. They gamble and bet and speculate. And when they lose vast sums they raid the U.S. Treasury so they can go back and do it again. Never mind that $50 trillion in global wealth was erased between September 2007 and March 2009, including $7 trillion in the U.S. stock market and $6 trillion in the housing market. Never mind that the total amount of retirement and household wealth trashed was $7.5 trillion or that we saw $2 trillion in 401(k)s and individual retirement accounts evaporate. Never mind the $1.9 trillion in traditional defined-benefit plans and the $2.6 trillion in nonpension assets that went up in smoke. Never mind the job losses, the foreclosures and the 35 percent jump in personal and small-business bankruptcies. There are bundles of new money, taken again from us, to make deals and hand out outrageous bonuses. And when these trillions run out they will come back for more until our currency becomes junk. Not that any of these people have thought this through. They are too busy focused on the pathetic, little monuments they are building to themselves and the intricacies of court intrigue. "There are always internal conversations about taking credit for certain trades and deals," Prins said of her time at Goldman Sachs. "It is childish, except there is so much money at stake and so much power within the firm at stake. Power in the firm allows you to make money, but it also provides a certain status that everyone looks up to and covets. There can be a period of a month or two at the end of the year where closed-door conversations occur between managers and people who work for them about compensation. In these conversations they go something like: 'My group did that trade.' 'I did that trade.' 'No, that was my money.' 'No, that was my profit and loss.' 'That's my client.' 'I know the other group said that it was their client but actually I had the relationship first.' A lot of these petty conversations go back and forth. All of it to attain money and acquire power and influence within the firm." Those who advance in these institutions master the art of looking like they are doing more than they are actually doing. It does not matter who does the most. It matters who can take credit for doing the most. And that often means poaching someone else's work. Friendship becomes a meaningless word. So does compassion. So does honesty. So does truth. By any standard comprehensible within the tradition of Western civilization these people are illiterate. They cannot recognize the vital relationship between power and morality. They have forgotten, or never knew, that moral traditions are the product of civilization. Existence, for them, boils down to one overriding imperative-me, me, me. "The people who get the higher bonuses are not getting them because they are quietly doing whatever work they are supposed to do," said Prins, who also ran the international analytics group at Bear Stearns in London. "They are getting that money because they are constantly able to promote themselves." "The environment is very insular," Prins said. "It is all about what is happening in the firm. Who said what. Who is doing what. What did they say about you. How does it affect you. How does it affect your group. How does it affect the people above you and below you. It destroys individuality. You learn there is a certain way you are supposed to act to be successful. If you are not doing that, if you are fighting too hard to do something you believe is right, but your managers don't want to do, you defer. Or you fight and it gets marked as a stripe against you. You don't discuss interests that are counter to the firm's interests or the firm's positions." "You are not thinking whether it is ethical to dump a bunch of loans into the street or repackage them and re-rate them better," she said. "You are only thinking about getting the deal done. You don't think about how issuing certain securities or structuring certain deals will impact people [around you]." "When you are living, competing and winning in an environment where it is all about the money and the power, it creates a dividing line between you and the rest of the world," Prins said. "You do not bother to look over the dividing line. Your world is on your side of it and the rest of the world is on their side of it. You are not looking at people being kicked out of their homes and being foreclosed. You do not see the crying, the anger and the children in the street because [those in government] decided to give money to bail out Wall Street firms as opposed to renegotiate mortgage principals so people can continue to live their lives. You can be callous about it because it does not impact you. It is not something you notice. You might read about it. But you don't feel it, watch it or go through it. You are detached." Banks are continuing to have hemorrhaging in consumer portfolios including mortgage loans, auto loans, credit card loans and other loans. Bankruptcies are endemic. Toxic assets if properly assessed would mean that many of our largest banks are insolvent. But the profits from the trading revenues and bonuses have climbed back to near-record highs. The sick mentality of the game, the one that created the first worldwide meltdown, dominates the nervous systems of our elite the way cravings overtake heroin addicts. They can't think of anything else. They do not know how. No one goes to Wall Street to further the common good. People go to make money. And money, like power, is a potent narcotic. "You don't think you are doing anything wrong," Prins said. "You are working. You are making money. You are trying to have your bosses like you and pay you. You run things by legal [the company's legal department]. You run things by compliance. You don't believe you are committing a crime. You are just doing what you are doing." "We will have another crisis," she lamented. "I don't know when, but it is brewing. If you don't fundamentally change the foundation of the banking system you are piling on capital and time into something that is faulty. This does not result in decades of stability. They are banking on trading. Nothing has changed. The rest of the consumer economy is continuing to deteriorate. These losses go into banks. You gain on trading and lose on more solid practices. The foundation has not changed. The regulations are bullshit. The old assets are still crap. The new assets created off the old assets are still crap. The banks are still levering them and still doing the same practices they did before. We will have another liquidity crunch. Banks will again stop trusting their assets and each other. . The buying of complex assets will stop, although this time more quickly. People will remember what happened before. You will have a repeat of credit constricting between financial institutions. It is already constricted on the consumer side. The banking system will use up this federal capital and then go back for more." Chris Hedges, a former Middle East bureau chief of The New York Times, shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism. He has written nine books, including "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle" (2009). His column appears on Truthdig every Monday. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 12 10:35:55 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:35:55 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Never Mind the Facts, Let's Have a War... Message-ID: <612AB4ED932D413481D29666AF446102@agingCHS072729> http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16834 Global Research, January 8, 2010 Gulf Daily News - 2009-12-23 Never Mind the Facts, Let's Have a War... By Finian Cunningham A missile test-fired by Iran last week was reported on the BBC World Service as being "capable of striking Israel". The choice of words was not unusual. On previous occasions when Iran has test-fired a long-range rocket, the BBC and other western news media dutifully inform us that the said device is "capable of striking Israel". The well-worn phrase is so reliably heard in these news bulletins that its use betrays a coded script. The not-too subliminal implications are that Iran is: a) a hostile state; b) doing something illegal in test-firing a long-range missile; and c) gearing up to deliver on its alleged threat to wipe out the state of Israel. Within hours of these reports last week, the US government weighed in with the pious accusation that the test-firing "undermines Iran's claims of peaceful intentions". This is a propaganda system at work: the choice of words and framework of logic designed to condition people into accepting certain options. In this case, the pre-determined option is a unilateral military strike on Iran either by the US or Israel. In that event, it will of course be reported by the BBC and other western media as a "pre-emptive" military measure to "prevent" Iran from attacking western interests in the region. Reported too, no doubt, will be the "collateral damage" of civilian casualties - unfortunate victims in an otherwise "just cause" to bring a "hardline regime" to abide by "international norms". This is classic thought engineering that British political essayist George Orwell exposed so brilliantly - the official use of sanitised words to cover the sordid truth. So let's rewind and play back the news with some pertinent facts and context that are routinely omitted in western media reporting. Iran has test-fired a long-range missile - within its sovereign borders. The US and its western allies carry out such weapons testing all the time, as is their sovereign right. One of the US' allies, Israel, has a stockpile of nuclear weapons in contravention of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. This same ally has previously committed acts of aggression (war crimes) by launching air attacks on neighbouring countries. Israel, with overt approval from Washington, has repeatedly said that it is prepared to militarily strike Iran "soon", The US itself has warned several times that it reserves the right to use a military option in its relations with Iran. The US is waging illegal wars in three of Iran's neighbours: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. A dynamic of fear and distrust between Gulf countries is fuelling a regional arms race. This dynamic is being pushed by the US with, what should be, obvious self-serving interests (massive arms sales, geopolitical influence) that are instead disguised by its bogeyman illusion of Iran, which, unfortunately, Gulf states appear to buy into. All told, these facts actually do "undermine US claims of peaceful intentions". Here are some other facts that the western media curiously underplay. Iran is not at war with any country, although it is routinely accused in the western media, without supporting evidence, of covert subversion across the region. Iran is conducting a nuclear energy programme, which it has repeatedly said is for civilian power supply. After a decade of close monitoring by UN inspectors, which would never be permitted in its territory by the US or its western allies, the inspectors have reiterated that there is no evidence of Iran building a nuclear weapon. Nevertheless, this conclusion does not restrain Washington and London in their dogged assertion that Tehran is building nuclear weapons (cue more arms sales). Given these facts, the test-firing by Iran of a long-range missile is far from being a quasi-criminal act laden with hostile intentions. It is the action of a country that needs to show it can defend itself amid relentless provocations from proven and much more greatly armed aggressors, whose arsenal also includes a propaganda system that Nazi spinmeister Joseph Goebbels would have marvelled at. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 12 10:47:37 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:47:37 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Eight Years of Guantanamo: What's Changed? Message-ID: <6D8E83E44BB64C2D997E4E144EF312A1@agingCHS072729> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/11-0 CommonDreams.org January 11, 2010 Eight Years of Guantanamo: What's Changed? by Frida Berrigan The first 20 detainees arrived at Guantanamo's Camp X-Ray eight years ago, on January 11, 2002. Just over seven years later, President Barack Obama-on his second full day after taking office-issued an order to shut the prison within a year. His rhetoric was clear and decisive. "There is no time to lose," he said, remarking that the United States can fight terrorism without sacrificing "our values and our ideals." To that end he committed to real change: "I can say without exception or equivocation that the United States will not torture. Second, we will close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and determine how to deal with those who have been held there." That was January 22, 2009. But the Obama administration has failed to close the facility, where-by many accounts-inmates were harshly interrogated and even tortured, by its own deadline. Now there's talk that the prison will remain open at least through 2010. And the proposal to move detainees to a maximum security prison in Illinois superficially retires Guantanamo as a symbol, while retaining the legal problems it embodies. Equally troubling is the administration's expansion of detention facilities in Afghanistan that are almost impenetrable for lawyers and humanitarian groups. The "prolonged detention" without charge or trial that Obama plans for some inmates strips detained men of basic legal and human rights, more deeply corrupting American governance with the reckless assertion of the executive's near-limitless power. The barely foiled Christmas Day attack by a suicide bomber aboard a flight to Detroit exposed ongoing weaknesses in our multi-billion-dollar security apparatus. But its aftermath has revealed how our ideals continue to falter, as Obama's policies mirror those of his predecessor and fail to match his own high-minded rhetoric. The response to Flight 253 hasn't only been long lines, body scans at airports, and mea culpas from security agencies. There are also swift, loud and vicious proclamations from Republican leaders and conservative media that the only way to ensure security is to blast at our enemies and the rule of law with both barrels. Send "underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to Guantanamo and keep the prison open forever. Suspend plans for civilian trials of terror suspects. Revive "enhanced interrogations." Summarily execute al-Qaeda suspects. The Obama administration hasn't publicly challenged this nonsense. It has, however, already made a sad concession to this fear-mongering by suspending the release of all Yemeni men from Guantanamo, even those who have been cleared through the government's extensive Guantanamo Review Task Force. This decision, which condemns innocent men to months or years of more illegal detention, confirms a pattern of the Obama administration promising change but delivering more of the same. No less troublesome are a host of other Obama administration policies: the continued practice of rendition and operation of secret prisons; the planned use of use Bush-style military commissions to try some detainees; the expansion of the Bagram prison in Afghanistan and the denial of habeas rights to inmates there not captured on the Afghan battlefield; the repeated, tendentious use of the "state's secrets" defense to block lawsuits by former detainees seeking redress for their mistreatment; and the effective grant of immunity to those who designed, ordered, and executed torture policies under the Bush administration. In a worrisome sign of possible things to come, the Bush-appointed Judge Janice Rogers Brown recently asserted in an opinion rejecting the habeas petition of a man held at Guantanamo that the war against terrorism thrusts us into a new paradigm, "one that demands [that] new rules be written...War is a challenge to law, and the law must adjust." That's exactly the opposite of what must happen. The law needs our president as an authentic advocate-not just in words but in deeds-when times are "hard" and war rages. This is the case right now. To do anything else is to condemn this nation to a free fall into the "dark side" where Dick Cheney seems so comfortable. (c) 2010 Distributed by Minuteman Media Frida Berrigan [1] is a Senior Program Associate at the New America Foundation's Arms and Security Initiative [2] (ASI). She is a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus [3] and a contributing editor at In These Times. Weapons at War 2008: Beyond the Bush Legacy [4], co-authored by Berrigan and William D. Hartung, is an examination of U.S. weapons sales and military aid to developing nations, conflict zones, and nations where human rights are not safeguarded. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 12 10:57:19 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:57:19 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] IRAN: New Revelations Tear Holes in Nuclear Trigger Story Message-ID: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49889 IRAN: New Revelations Tear Holes in Nuclear Trigger Story Analysis by Gareth Porter* WASHINGTON, Jan 5, 2010 (IPS) - New revelations about two documents leaked to The Times of London to show that Iran is working on a "nuclear trigger" mechanism have further undermined the credibility of the document the newspaper had presented as evidence of a continuing Iranian nuclear weapons programme. A columnist for the Times has acknowledged that the two-page Persian language document published by The Times last month was not a photocopy of the original document but an expurgated and retyped version of the original. A translation of a second Persian language document also published by The Times, moreover, contradicts the claim by The Times that it shows the "nuclear trigger" document was written within an organisation run by an Iranian military scientist. Former Central Intelligence Agency official Philip Giraldi has said U.S. intelligence judges the "nuclear trigger" document to be a forgery, as IPS reported last week. The IPS story also pointed out that the document lacked both security markings and identification of either the issuing organisation or the recipient. The new revelations point to additional reasons why intelligence analysts would have been suspicious of the "nuclear trigger" document. On Dec. 14, The Times published what it explicitly represented as a photocopy of a complete Persian language document showing Iranian plans for testing a neutron initiator, a triggering device for a nuclear weapon, along with an English language translation. But in response to a reader who noted the absence of crucial information from the document, including security markings, Oliver Kamm, an online columnist for The Times, admitted Jan. 3 that the Persian language document published by The Times was "a retyped version of the relevant parts of that original document". Kamm wrote that the original document had "contained a lot of classified information" and was not published "because of the danger that it would alert Iranian authorities to the source of the leak". In offering the explanation of the intelligence agency that leaked the document to The Times, Kamm was also damaging the credibility of the document. A document that had been both edited and retyped could obviously have been doctored by adding material on a neutron initiator. The reason for such editing could not have been to excise "classified information", because, if the document were genuine, the Iranian government would already have the information. Furthermore there would have been ways of avoiding disclosure of the source of the leak that would not have required the release of an expurgated version of the document. The number of the copy of the document could have been blacked out, for example. The Times claimed in a separate story that the "nuclear trigger" document was written within the military technology development organisation run by Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. A second document, also published in Persian language by The Times, shows Fakhrizadeh's signature under the title, "Chief, Department of Development and Deployment of Advanced Technology", and includes a list of 12 "recipients" within that organisation, and is dated the Persian equivalent of Dec. 29, 2005 on the Western calendar, according to an English translation obtained by IPS. The Times reporter, Catherine Philp, wrote that the neutron initiator document "was drawn up within the Centre for Preparedness at the Institute of Applied Physics", which she identifies as "one of the organization's 12 departments". But the reference to a "Centre for Preparedness at the Institute of Applied Physics" is an obvious misreading of a chart given to The Times by the intelligence agency but not published by The Times. The chart, which can be found on the website of the Institute for Science and International Security, shows what are clearly two separate organisations relating to neutronics - a "Center for Preparedness" and an "Institute of Applied Physics" - under what the intelligence agency translated as the "Field for Expansion of Advance Technologies' Deployment". But George Maschke, a Persian language expert and former U.S. military intelligence officer, provided IPS with a translation of the list of the 12 recipients on the cover page document showing that it includes a "Centre for Preparedness and New Defense Technology" but not an "Institute of Applied Physics". International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports have referred to the Institute of Applied Physics as a stand-alone institution rather than part of Fakhrizadeh's organisation. The English translation of the document shows that none of the other five Centres and groups on the list of recipients is a plausible candidate to run a neutron-related experimentation programme, either. They include the chiefs of the Centre for Explosives and Impact Technology, the Centre for Manufacturing and Industrial Research, the Chemical and Metallurgical Groups of the Centre for Advanced Materials Research and Technology, and the Centre for New Aerospace Research and Design. Contrary to The Times story, moreover, the other five recipients on the list of 12 are not heads of "departments" but deputies to the director for various cross-cutting themes: finance and budget, plans and programmes, science, administration and human resources and audits and legal affairs. The absence of any organisation with an obvious expertise in atomic energy indicates Fakhrizadeh's Department of Development and Deployment of Advanced Technology is not the locus of a clandestine nuclear weapons programme. The nuclear weapons programmes of Israel, India and Pakistan prior to testing of an atomic bomb were all located within their respective atomic energy commissions. That organisational pattern reflects the fact that scientific expertise in nuclear physics and the different stages through which uranium must pass before being converted into a weapon is located overwhelmingly in the national atomic commissions. The Times story claimed a consensus among "Western intelligence agencies" that Fakhrizadeh's "Advanced Technology Development and Deployment Department" has inherited the same components as were present in the "Physics Research Centre" of the 1990s. It also asserts that the same components were present in the alleged nuclear weapons research programme that the mysterious cache of intelligence documents now called the "alleged studies" documents portrayed as being under Fakhrizadeh's control. Those claims were taken from the chart given to The Times by the unidentified intelligence agency. But the idea that Fakhrizadeh has been in charge of a covert nuclear weapons project can be traced directly to the fact that he helped procure or sought to procure dual-use items when he was head of the Physics Resource Center in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The items included vacuum equipment, magnets, a balancing machine, and a mass spectrometer, all of which might be used either in a nuclear programme or for non-nuclear and non-military purposes. The IAEA suggested in reports beginning in 2004 that Fakhrizadeh's interest in these dual-use items indicated a possible role in Iran's nuclear programme. That same year someone concocted a collection of documents - later dubbed "the alleged studies" documents - showing a purported Iranian nuclear weapons project, based on the premise that Fakhrizadeh was its chief. Iran insisted, however, that Fakhrizadeh had procured the technologies in question for non-military uses by various components of the Imam Hussein University, where he was a lecturer. And after reviewing documentation submitted by Iran and verifying some of its assertions by inspection on the spot, the IAEA concluded in its Feb. 22, 2008 report that Iran's explanation for Fakhrizadeh's role in obtaining the items had been truthful after all. But instead of questioning the authenticity of the "alleged studies" documents, IAEA Deputy Director for Safeguards Olli Heinonen highlighted Fakhrizadeh's role in Iran's alleged nuclear weapons work in a briefing for member states just three days after the publication of that correction. *Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006. (END) =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 12 11:23:16 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:23:16 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Labor activists of many countries meet to discuss economic crisis Message-ID: [from LaborExchange-N listserv - sorry, no URL] Labor activists of many countries meet to discuss economic crisis The Sixth Cuba/Venezuela/Mexico/North America Labor Conference By Bob McCubbin Tijuana, Mexico Published Dec 19, 2009 11:20 PM The Sixth Cuba/Venezuela/Mexico/North America Labor Conference opened here on Dec. 4 with an evening of solidarity with the Cuban Five, defenders of Cuba who are serving long sentences in U.S. jails. The weekend conference, which brought together union militants and social justice activists from Latin America, the Philippines, Canada and the U.S., focused on how the international capitalist crisis is affecting workers, including those forced to migrate to imperialist countries for survival after their local economies are destroyed. Ignacio Meneses from the U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange opened the Saturday morning session with a reflection on revolutionary Cuba's success, even during the darkest hours of the "special period" following the collapse of the Soviet Union, in maintaining its cordial relations with workers' organizations all over the world and refusing to reduce the many beneficial social programs enjoyed by its people. U.S., Puerto Rico There was great interest in the challenges facing workers in the U.S. The first speaker on the morning panel was Larry Holmes, a leader of the Bail Out the People Movement, which is mobilizing unions and social activists to demand a real jobs or income program. Holmes stressed the contributions of revolutionary Cuba to people of African descent in the U.S. and around the world. "No other people have played a stronger role in supporting Black people in the U.S.," he noted. Holmes emphasized the seriousness of the economic crisis in the U.S. and stressed the need to be in the streets, to push the unions into action and to embrace the unemployed, immigrant workers and the poor. Jos? Rivera of the Frente Amplio de Solidaridad y Lucha of Puerto Rico reported with pride that Puerto Rican workers had expressed their solidarity with the Mexican electrical workers recently fired by Mexican President Vicente Calder?n by holding a huge protest at the Mexican consulate in San Juan. He also described attempts by Puerto Rican Gov. Luis Fortu?o to impose neoliberal solutions for the economic crisis that include firing 30,000 workers. Some 50 organizations, including 18 unions, have responded to the call to fight back. Dramatic mass actions have included marches and the mass takeover of the San Juan banking district. "We are being called terrorists and they are threatening to use the Patriot Act against us," Rivera said. The workers' response, he suggested, must be a general strike. Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia Raymundo Navarro, director of foreign relations of the Confederation of Cuban Workers (CTC), estimated that the U.S.-imposed blockade has cost Cuba $96 billion. Fierce hurricanes have caused $10 billion in damages. A third difficulty is the world economic crisis. Navarro said that Cubans appreciate the difference in tone of the new U.S. administration, but it still demands concessions on Cuba's part. "We reject that," he emphasized. He enumerated six Cuban demands: the U.S. must lift the blockade, free the Cuban Five, eliminate Radio and TV Mart?, stop financing internal subversion, return Guant?namo to Cuban control and repeal the Cuban Adjustment Act. World market prices for nickel and sugar, important Cuban exports, are way down, while the prices of foods that Cuba must import are up. Nevertheless, "We graduated 186,000 students this year. We openly invite the imperialists and their bootlickers to find one student who didn't get a job," he concluded. Unemployment in Cuba is 1.8 percent despite the world economic crisis. Representing the Venezuelan workers' movement was union leader Rolando Sempr?n. He presented five Venezuelan baseball caps to Alicia Jrapko, director of the International Committee to Free the Five, asking that she pass them on to the five imprisoned Cuban heroes. Sempr?n spoke of Venezuela's countrywide literacy program undertaken with Cuba's assistance, the national health program, also undertaken with Cuban help, the national agenda in favor of women, and the strong solidarity between the people and the military. He reminded the audience that the overriding U.S. goal is seizure of Venezuelan oil and other natural resources. He cited the U.S. military presence in neighboring Colombia and internal subversion financed by the U.S. as major threats. A further problem is the continuing capitalist control of the major media. To get around this, there is strong government support for local, community-based media, mass use of inexpensive cell phones and a government-supported mass organization called Madres del Barrio of women in the working-class communities who do security and other community-based work. Two Colombian labor leaders with the country's national telephone union, ?scar Penagos Ortiz and Segundo Hern?ndez Ca??n, opened the next session. More than 3,800 union leaders and labor activists have been assassinated in Colombia since the mid 1980s. Penagos explained how Colombian society is presently ruled by criminals. President ?lvaro Uribe has been an open promoter of paramilitarism. The former chief of intelligence, now in prison, provided the paramilitaries with lists of progressives to kill. Drug trafficking and money laundering continue to be big business. The present U.S./Colombia military treaty is an agreement between the world's biggest drug producer and its biggest drug consumer. In addition to the use of seven new military bases, the treaty gives the U.S. control of Colombia's telecommunications network. The Colombian military has, in fact, become an appendage of the Pentagon. One of the new airbases under the control of the U.S. is so huge that three aircraft can lift off at the same time. Penagos proposed a May Day solidarity action by Venezuela and Ecuador on the border with Colombia where the imperialist puppets killed comandante Ra?l Reyes. He asked for a conference resolution rejecting the new military bases. Mexico, Honduras, Philippines Representing the Frente Amplia de Izquierda Social de M?xico, Gabriela Santos Romero stressed the need for national and international unity in support of the fired Mexican electrical workers. The moderator for the third session on Saturday was Cheryl LaBash, a key organizer with the U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange. Carlos Mej?a of the Frente Resistencia Hondure?a pointed out that a mere 21 percent of Honduran voters participated in the recent sham election on Nov. 29. At least 661 people had been murdered before the election, and four of his comrades were seized and disappeared on election day. Mej?a called for unity of all the anti-coup forces. Celina Ben?tez of the Coalici?n por la Paz en Honduras witnessed the Honduran election at first hand. "We were in Honduras, in part, to report human rights violations. I was also there to speak with the people. My life and the lives of my comrades were threatened." Ben?tez continued: "In the `80s I heard stories about El Salvador. Now I've seen it in Honduras." Kuusela Hilo, just returned from the Philippines, represented BAYAN-USA. She said that a Katrina-like situation exists there due to recent terrible natural disasters that have displaced more than 1 million people. Increased repression is being funded by U.S. imperialism, which views the Philippines, just as it does Colombia, as a strategic area and has poured in over $1 billion in military aid in the last 10 years. It also has troops permanently based there, in direct violation of Philippine sovereignty. Hilo also spoke of a recent massacre in Maguindanao, in the south of the country, where 64 civilians including 30 journalists were killed, and urged organizations present at the conference to send statements to the Arroyo government demanding justice for the victims. Clarence Thomas, speaking on behalf of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 and the Million Worker March Movement, urged that special attention be paid to the most oppressed workers, people of color and immigrants. He pointed out that support for May Day in the U.S. was reawakened by the most exploited sector of the working class, the immigrant workers. Labor, he insisted, must look beyond the scope of business unionism. The way forward for the working class, he emphasized, is for labor to become part of the vanguard for social justice. Service Employees International Union Local 721 activist Luz D?az noted that a Tijuana union leader had been kidnapped that very morning. Cristina V?zquez of Workers United, which affiliated this year with SEIU, gave special acknowledgment to the unionists who had come to the conference from other countries at great expense and sacrifice and often danger. Carmen Godinez of the CTC offered a short lesson on the history of ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, which aims to increase the independence of its member countries from the imperialist financial system. Created through the initiative of Hugo Ch?vez and Fidel Castro, it now counts nine nations of Latin America and the Caribbean as members. The Mexican labor-community front FAIS submitted two resolutions that were signed by attendees, one supporting electrical workers expelled from the utility by the current government so it could privatize electrical generation, and another protesting the abduction of a member of the health care union affiliated with FAIS that was mentioned earlier by Luz D?az. Immigrant workers The conference's Sunday session focused on issues pertaining to immigrant workers and their struggles. Ben Prado, a leader of Uni?n del Barrio, asserted the right of Indigenous people, in particular the Mexican people, to retake the land now known as the U.S. Southwest. He denounced the racist U.S. policy of Manifest Destiny that was used to wrest total control of the North American continent from its former inhabitants. Prado denounced the Democratic/Republican consensus in Washington, D.C., for super-exploitation of the most vulnerable workers. Migrating workers do the hardest work for the lowest pay. Prado described the horrific character of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, where families are broken up and children become wards of the state. "This is state terrorism," he emphasized. "The change that's happening in Latin America will be our guide. The re-election of Evo Morales in Bolivia is cause for great optimism." Gloria Salcedo of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional paid tribute to Bert Corona, a great labor leader and organizer of immigrant workers, as someone who taught workers how to struggle. She asserted the urgent need for legalization of undocumented workers and urged organizing for May 1. Teresa Gutierrez, representing the New York May 1 Coalition and the International Migrants' Alliance, noted the worldwide character of the migration nightmare: an estimated 350,000,000 working class people have been forced to leave their homes, due both to economic pressures and the environmental changes that are producing what is coming to be known as "climate migration." "The only thing we can count on is mobilizing in the streets. We need to organize in a new way because there is a crisis and they are trying to divide us, get us to fight each other. We have to raise the war and the sham election in Honduras. Threats against Cuba and Venezuela must be raised as well as the potential destruction of the planet. One day May Day will be a worldwide strike!" Joy de Guzman, representing the Global Council for International Migrants and the International League of Peoples Struggle, observed that, in common with all the peoples of Latin America, the Filipino people have a terrible historic legacy of colonization. "But really, it's imperialism," she noted. Filipino immigrant workers are scattered in 196 other countries and the remittances they send home constitute a very important part of the Filipino economy. "These workers face long hours, low wages, sexual abuse and all the other common features of super-exploitation. They need our help to challenge their exploitation." Mart?n L?pez Ortiz, speaking for the Frente Amplia de Izquierda Social, announced an ambitious project, already underway, for a Latin American sanctuary for workers in the Mexican state of Michoac?n. The sanctuary will run on an economy based on sharing rather than private profit. The workers of Michoac?n will no longer have to cross borders to survive and the sanctuary will welcome all migrant workers as an alternative to forced immigration. John Parker, Los Angeles organizer of the Bail Out the People Movement, spoke on the pressing issue of Black/Brown unity. "Superexploitation is an important basis for unity. Most immigrant workers maintain ties with family and friends in their home countries. Suppose the Spanish plans of colonial conquest had been revealed in advance to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. With modern communication, the situation for cooperation among workers of different nationalities is much more favorable today. "Right now, U.S. imperialism has its eyes on Africa, in particular the newly discovered oil deposits off the coast of Ghana and around the Horn of Africa. Already under Obama there is more U.S. military activity in Africa, sometimes involving 30 nations at a time. So we need unity with Native, Asian, Latino/a and white workers." Jos? Gonz?lez, representing the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations, observed, "I am a stranger in my own land." He came to the U.S. from Oaxaca, Mexico, out of necessity and was a farm worker for seven years. He recounted how hard crossing the border was. Referring to his co-panelist Ben Prado, he said, "I took Ben last month to meet my brothers living in a canyon." He observed that what goes on in the agricultural fields is modern slavery. "We have a common enemy," he concluded. "Capitalism!" Sabrina Green of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal spoke on the very dangerous legal situation facing this globally recognized political prisoner. It was a politically intense weekend. These profoundly serious deliberations set in many ways a minimum standard for the development of international workers' councils, which are needed more with every day that global capitalism wreaks its havoc. ============================= Tijuana International Labor Conference report A warm reception for the family of the Cuban Five, Friday night, Dec. 4, 2009, in Tijuana, MX recreated and extended friendships from previous conferences. During a special 7 minute video presentation scripted by Alice Walker, writer and poet, we learned that "the cause of imprisonment for the Cuban five could only be described as envy. When injustice is the greatest foundation of hatred, what can our future be if we treat people this way?" However long it takes to free the five before the ice melts, we do not have the right to deny life to the Cinco Heroes and their families "for whimsy sake." Alicia Jrapko, Director of the International Committee to Free the Five, asserted that we must continue to multiply actions within the United States because the imperialists "do not like popular action in solidarity with the Five. We must become good story tellers. It bothers their conscience that homeland is humanity. There are no borders for people who support the Five. We lift each other up when we stand together in solidarity." The overriding theme throughout the 2 day session was "Let the rich pay for the crisis!" !Que la crisis la paguen los ricos! This may have been best illustrated when Joy Guzman of the Global Council of International Immigrants declared that "colonialism is the worst form of national oppression. The peoples of the Philippines and Mexico have one common link; we have been colonized. Therefore, we must resist." One hundred delegates from Mexico, Cuba, United States, Venezuela, Columbia, Puerto Rico, Honduras etc. engaged in a rich discussion celebrating solidarity, goodwill and fine food. Developing an approach to the global crisis means change in long standing policy harmful to working class poor, unemployed and underdeveloped peoples. The fight for legalization of all workers needs to be a basic demand next year stated Teresa Gutierrez, NY May Day coalition. An economic system that causes broken families, a policy of state terrorism that criminalizes workers and free trade liberalism that concentrates wealth from greater exploitation through unequal trade contributes to higher migratory pressure. New immigration patterns "from circular to unidirectional flow" result in countless deaths. For economic reasons alone, this is a crime against humanity. "We need to hit the streets on May 1, 2010. International working class day is for all workers in the world. One proposal by Celina Benitez was to support the people of Honduras after the fraudulent election on November 29 that will hold accountable those responsible for human rights violations. Most voters abstained from the fake election with a 21% turnout. Yet, with right wing control of the media no amount of fear could force the popular resistance to vote. Clarence Thomas, ILWU Local 10 leader, laid out a long history of challenging US foreign policy from apartheid to a genocidal blockade policy against Cuba. The conference was honored by the presence of 3 Cuban Trade union leaders who brought us up to date on current affairs. A new US president with the same system intact requires vigilence. People must remain alert, ready to mobilize when necessary. Carmen Godinez, CTC, explained the new integration process in the Americas, aka Bolivarian Alliance for America (ALBA). She cautioned delegates that "a political understanding is essential for workers" in the struggle to educate other people. Since 1959, solidarity for Cuba has meant "giving what we have to others in need." Cuba has faced an economic, commercial, financial blockade for 50 years costing their people $96 billion in losses. Only an anti-imperialist focus in which greater self-determination allows workers to take back control" can neutralize elitist capitalism. When we stand up, we win brought the entire delegation to their feet. Submitted by Richard Grassl, retired union carpenter ============================= ALBA Concrete projects with concrete results Published Dec 23, 2009 1:54 PM The Sixth U.S./Cuba/Venezuela/North America Conference held in Tijuana, Mexico, Dec. 4-6 discussed the effects of the global capitalist economic crisis and struggles in response by working-class and oppressed people and organizations in various countries throughout the Americas. Following are excerpts from a talk given by Carmen Godinez from the Confederation of Cuban Workers (CTC) International Department explaining the history and significance of ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of America. The original talk was presented in Spanish with a PowerPoint presentation and was translated by Mike Martinez of FIST Fight Imperialism, Stand Together. The audio tape was transcribed by Cheryl LaBash and John Parker. The people of Our America are using a new integration to come out of this global crisis and improve the living conditions of workers: the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of America. Carmen Godinez in Tijuana. Carmen Godinez in Tijuana. WW photo: Bob McCubbin ALBAs objective is to transform Latin American societies by making them more just, cultured, participatory and in solidarity through an integrated process that assures the elimination of social inequalities and improves the quality of life and the effective participation of the peoples to shape their own destiny. Both Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro signed the declaration that created the [originally named] Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas on Dec. 14, 2004, at the celebration of the 180th anniversary of the glorious victory of Ayacucho [the day Simon Bolivars army won independence from Spain WW]. Only integration based on cooperation, solidarity and common will to advance through all of the levels of development can satisfy the needs and wants of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean and preserve their independence, sovereignty and identity. But the U.S. imperialists are using such tactics as the coup in Honduras to stop the growing resistance in Latin America. For the same reason today there are seven new U.S. military bases in Colombia. The bases dont only represent a threat to our neighbor Venezuela and to the people of Colombia, but they are a threat to all of Latin America. This is why the ALBA integration is important. It can help construct a political and economic unity of our people and also defend the independence and sovereignty of each one of our homelands. The free trade agreements that the U.S. and Europe want to impose on Latin America will suck away all the resources of our countries. ALBA is a trade agreement that mutually benefits all parties based on the strengths and weaknesses of each of the members. In 2006 Bolivia signed on. On Jan. 10, 2007, Nicaragua joined with the inauguration of President Daniel Ortega. The integration among all of these countries began to take shape. In the process of development of our countries we initiated great national projects with literacy campaigns, cultural campaigns, advances in telecommunications, health and nutrition and efforts to reach a sustainable level of food production and to create a sustainable system of production and job creation for those who grow our food. At the sixth summit of ALBA Dominica joined. The ALBA bank was founded to help fund the different development projects in our countries and allow us to be independent from such institutions as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and other global institutions that were exploiting us. In April 2008 ALBA instituted a special plan for food production paying attention to the rise in food prices. It joined the international denunciation of the separatist attempt to divide Bolivia. On August 25, 2008, Honduras joined ALBA, something for which the U.S. has never forgiven Zelaya. It is important for us to understand why there was a coup in Honduras. This agreement identified strategic development lines among our countries to support Honduras with the goal of reaching energy independence and food security. In Caracas on Nov. 28, the progress and development of the great national projects was reported, approving resources from the ALBA bank to initiate studies of the selected projects and to continue the literacy campaigns in Bolivia and Nicaragua. Then in the state of Sucre in April 2009, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, islands in the Caribbean, joined ALBA. Fernando Lugo, president of the Republic of Paraguay, attended. The presidents agreed it was necessary for a new international economic order with profound changes to the international financial system to launch the SUCRE (Unified System for Regional Compensation), a regional currency that will include a common accounting system, a single system of reserves and a compensation fund. ALBA has provided $5 million to the literacy campaign in Haiti and a little bit more for its agricultural development. Development projects were approved in Honduras, Surinam, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Nicaragua and Belize. So the ALBA is not just an idea, it is a concrete project with concrete results. ALBAs health results In Venezuela since the project began in November 2000 up to June 2008 a total of 38,334 people received medical care including 8,797 surgery interventions and 1,889 youth under 15 years old. In Bolivia the Cuban medical brigade has a total of 1,129 collaborators. Right now the country has 18 ophthalmologic centers that have allowed 271,398 people to recover their vision, not just Bolivians, but Argentinians and Brazilians, too. Bolivian students who graduated from Cubas medical program are working in conjunction with this program. The medical brigade in Bolivia has saved 18,326 peoples lives. In Nicaragua there are 176 collaborators. Of those there are 41 focusing on eye operations. Fifty-six interns work with the project of the Latin American School of Medical Science that functions in eight municipalities of Nicaragua. They have set up two camp hospitals. In the technical activities we give aid especially for the diseases of AIDS and tuberculosis. Education Today 24,703 Venezuelan youth take part in the new medical program studying in either Cuba or Venezuela. A total of 1,663,661 people have become literate through ALBAs efforts. On Oct. 28, 2004, UNESCO reported Venezuela free from illiteracy. On March 20, 2006, we began a literacy campaign in Bolivia. On Dec. 20, 2008, Bolivia was declared free from illiteracy. On July 30, 2007 the Nicaraguan literacy campaign From Marti to Fidel began. This year Nicaragua was declared free from illiteracy. The Yes We Can Mission began in Honduras and it has led to literacy for 84,942 Hondurans. At this moment in Cuba 932 Honduran youth are studying, 397 of them in the Latin American School of Medical Science, 439 in the new medical program. The energy program in Dominica that was initiated in January 2007 concluded in 2008 with 137,679 installed units. The savings of oil is growing to $1.7 million and the total savings amounts to $5.6 million. Today ALBA is integrated with the participation of nine countries: Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, St. Vincent and Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, Ecuador, and Dominica. But the benefits of this project reach all of the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Articles copyright 1995-2009 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved. Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011 Email: ww at workers.org Subscribe wwnews-subscribe at workersworld.net Support independent news DONATE ============================= International conference highlights freedom for Cuban Five Published Dec 10, 2009 9:50 PM http://www.workers.org/2009/world/cuban_five_1217/ TIJUANA, Mexico-The Sixth Cuba/Venezuela/Mexico/North America Labor Conference met here the weekend of Dec. 4-6. The gathering was comprised of labor organizers, political activists, youth and students from all across Latin America, the U.S., Canada, the Philippines and other countries. Participants exchanged information, experience, political analysis and proposals for increasing the global influence of the international working class, including immigrant workers, in this period of severe worldwide economic and political crisis. The struggle to free the heroic Cuban Five, defenders of Cuba's independence against continued acts of terrorism originating in the U.S., was a prominent theme throughout the three-day conference. The Five are presently unjustly incarcerated in U.S. federal prisons. The Friday evening meeting was devoted specifically to this issue. An in-depth report on the conference will appear in an upcoming issue of Workers World. -Report and photo by Bob McCubbin ============================= Honourable President Barrack Obama , The participants of the VI Cuba/Venezuela/North America/Labour Conference that took place in Tijuana, Mexico from December 4th to 6th , 2009 write to you requesting your intervention in the case of the five Cubans: Gerardo Hern?ndez, Antonio Guerrero, Ram?n Laba?ino, Fernando Gonz?lez and Ren? Gonz?lez, who are imprisoned in U.S. jails since 1998. These five men were in the United States with the only objective of protecting their country and people from terrorist attacks hatched in U.S. territory, that have caused as much pain as the suffering felt by the people of the United States after the attacks of the September 11th. During your electoral campaign, you promised CHANGE towards Latin America and the world. The solution to this case would be to demonstrate that when you spoke of CHANGE, it was not said merely as electoral propaganda. To resolve this case it would be the best show that the US government really wants to CHANGE its position in respect to Cuba and Latin America. It is in your hands to do justice, not only for these five innocent men, but the Cuban people as a whole, who for 50 years has suffered through terrorist attacks and aggressions organized and supported by the U.S. government. Yes, you can, not only you can, but you must and you have the moral, judicial and political obligation to do so. Cuba has not been alone during all these years and is not alone now. The workers of the Americas including the United States are on the side of the Cuban people demanding for justice on this case, known now as the case of the Cuban Five. We ask you to take into consideration the violation of international agreements and human rights violations that have taken place in this case and that these five men be set free for once and for all, whose only real crime was that of being Cuban. While they languish in prison, we request that their families be granted visas, so that they can visit the prisons where their loved ones are enduring their long sentences. Specially, Adriana P?rez and Olga Salanueva, wives of Gerardo and Ren? respectively, who have not been able to visit their husbands in these past years. In Solidariy with Cuba, VI Cuba/Venezuela/North America/Labour Conference that took place in Tijuana, Mexico from December 4th to 6th, 2009. Cuba: Central de Trabajadores de Cuba ( CTC ) Unite State : United Autowerker Carpenters Union Electrical Workers Union Teamters Service Employees International Union Workers United Longshoreman United Teachers of L.A. Uni?n del Barrio Coalition in Solidarity with Cuba Peace and Justice Ctte CIAPES-LA/Radio Progreso Coalitcion paz y democracia en Honduras Centro Binacional de Organizaciones Comunitarias Mexicanas en EEUU UTLA AFT #1021 M?xico: Alianza por la Unidad Democr?tica (FAIS) Federaci?n de Trabajadores del Estado de Sonora. SUTERM Secc.6 Frente de Unidad Popular SNTE Direccion Colectiva Colombia : Sindicato Telef?nico ( SINTRATELEFONO) Venezuela : ASOPROTECMEC Puerto Rico : Uni?n Trabajadores Industria El?ctrica y Riego Comit? Internacional por la Liberaci?n de los Cinco c.c. . Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State . Hilda Sol?s, Secretary of labour . Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House ============================= Sat. Morning session 9am - 1:30 pm / Sat. afternoon session - 3:15pm - 7:25pm. Resolutions - letter to Obama requesting intervention in case of Cuban Five - submitted by Carmen Godinez, Cuba. Unanimous approval. Proposal - submitted by Oscar Gustavo Ortiz, Columbia, that conference support May Day action by workers of Columbia, Ecuador and Venezuela to reject US military bases in Columbia. Proposal - submitted by Gabriela Santos, Trade Union Frente de Mexico that conference repudiates the anti-labor policy of Mexican President Calderon to eliminate the National Electrical union (SME) and return power to the workers in whose hands it belongs. Proposal - submitted by Carlos Mejia that all 8 groups against the coupe in Honduras unite into one great front. Proposal - submitted by Celina Benitez who traveled to Honduras as a personal observer - that the conference supports the people of Honduras in their struggle to regain their sovereignty; that they are not alone at this important stage; that the fraudulent elections on November 29 will not stand; and that we hold accountable those reponsible for human rights violations. Proposal - submitted by Philippina Kuusela Hilo representing BAYAN organization (in the form of a special request) that we demand justice for victims of Maguindanao Massacre and all state-sponsored terrorism and violence against the people. Furthermore, we revoke the declaration of Martial law by the US/Arroyo regime. Proposal - submitted by Teresa Gutierrez of May Day coalition from NYC and International Migrant Alliance (IMA) - that unions link up in struggle with community organizations to advance common goals together in solidarity. Notes taken by Richard Grassl, delegate to conference. December 4, 5, 6, 2009. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 12 15:27:39 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:27:39 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Nablus executions: Shoot first, ask questions later Message-ID: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=62061 Nablus executions: Shoot first, ask questions later Bridget Chappell writing from Nablus, occupied West Bank [Photo: Anan Subih's children in their damaged home.] January 11, 2010 The brutal killing of three Palestinian men by Israeli military forces in Nablus last week on 26 December 2009 sparked grief and outrage across Palestine and brought the northern West Bank city to a standstill as thousands mourned the lethal attack. However, their voices are drowned out yet again by a well-played hand of Israel's propaganda machine and repeated by the mainstream media. On the eve of the one-year anniversary of Israel's winter invasion of Gaza, a force of several hundred Israeli soldiers entered Nablus and invaded the homes of Ghassan Abu Sharkh, Raed Sarakji and Anan Subih where they were executed in cold blood in front of family members. A statement by the Israeli military alleged that an operation was carried out to arrest the men suspected of involvement in the killing of an Israeli settler, Meir Avshalom Hai, two days earlier. The portraits of the targeted men -- armed perpetrators of another injustice -- painted by the military's statements have exploded throughout Israel's media and beyond, subsequently footnoted by Israeli police's forensic results, reporting a match between a rifle seized in the invasions and the weapon used to kill Hai, a rabbi and resident of the Shave Shomron settlement. This postmortem revelation, which has not been verified by independent sources, raises alarming questions of Israel's "shoot first, ask questions later" policy. It also echoes the disparities between the statements of the Israeli military, repeated by the Israeli and international media, and the testimony of the victims' family members, which were collected by a handful of local media agencies and human rights organizations. [Photo: Ghassan Abu Sharkh's wife, shot in the foot.] Ghassan Abu Sharkh's brother Diyaa Abu Sharkh said Israeli military forces stormed their home in Nablus' Old City at 12am. Sharkh's wife and four children were forced outside and the entire family was handcuffed, whereupon Sharkh's eldest son was kicked and beaten by soldiers with the butts of their guns. As Sharkh descended, unarmed, from the stairs inside in hopes of surrendering, soldiers immediately opened fire on him, riddling his body with bullet holes. Outside, Israeli soldiers continued to brutally beat Sharkh's son while their counterparts prevented Red Crescent ambulances from entering the area. According to Tahani Jaara, the wife of Raed Sarakji, the Israeli military then forced their way in to their home in the Old City at 2:30am, where Sarakji was shot in the head immediately. The force of the close-range fire was so great that it caused his head to split in two. As his pregnant wife ran forward to catch his falling body she was shot in the foot. Only at this point did soldiers confirm the identity of the man just executed, ordering his wife to hand over both their IDs and mobile phones. Soldiers opened fire once again on his now lifeless body, then ordered his wife to summon their children to behold the grisly remains. Half an hour later, Israeli soldiers entered Nablus' Ras al-Ain neighborhood. Quickly occupying several homes surrounding the house of Anan Subih, soldiers began firing anti-tank missiles at the upper levels of the building, blowing a giant cavity between the third and fourth stories. Farid Subih, brother of Anan, reported that soldiers entered the house on foot, firing live ammunition and destroying property as they forced family members out in to the street. Subih was found hiding in the rubble created by rocket blasts, where he was immediately executed. A spokesman for the Israeli army claimed that after the men "refused to leave their houses and surrender, we entered. They continued hiding and endangering our soldiers, which made the shooting imperative." How these three men sleeping at home with their families endangered an overwhelming armed military force is unclear. As is the justification for brutally excessive force employed lethally against the targeted men and wantonly upon their family members, including children. The Israeli military's trigger-happy strategies for the "liquidation" of those deemed a security risk have resulted in the tragic loss of hundreds of civilian lives in so-called "targeted killing" operations, as a result of both mistaken identity and the excessive use of force employed, such as the launching of missiles from aircrafts, tanks or missile launchers at densely populated areas. Although this did not occur during the 26 December Nablus incursion, it is particularly disturbing that the Israeli military issued a post-execution clarification of at least one of the slain men's identities. Israel's long history of such extrajudicial killing operations carried out in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) reached its height during and after the second Palestinian intifada. Israel's assassination policy resulted in the deaths of 754 persons from December 2000 to June 2008 in 348 operations. As reported by the Palestine Centre for Human Rights in July 2008, 521 of those killed were targeted and 233 were bystanders. Categorical execution without trial constitutes state terrorism, whatever statements military spokespeople may peddle regarding Israel's exhaustive quest for "security" and the means necessary to enforce it. Whether or not Israeli intelligence's suspicions of Sarakji, Sharkh and Subih were well-founded, the cold-blooded execution of these and hundreds of other victims are a grave departure from a human's right to due process. Israel's tired accusations of terrorism against those it kills are rarely supported by evidence, and only a handful of cases of those killed on these grounds have ever been investigated; fewer still have been accountable for their actions. There are still plenty of questions left unanswered and will likely remain that way forever. Two groups of two factions, at entirely opposite ends of the political spectrum, claimed responsibility for the attack on the settler: the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade associated with the Fatah party and the fundamentalist Islamic Jihad. Of the three men, Sarakji, released from a seven-year prison term last January, was the only one officially wanted by Israel for suspected involvement in the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade. In contrast, according to his brother, Subih had surrendered his arms and received a full governmental pardon some years ago, while Sharkh's wife states her husband's only link to armed struggle was through his brother, who was assassinated by Israeli forces in 2004. Israel's attempt to depict their actions as the standard routine of criminal inquiry is clearly a farce. However admissible the findings of the victim's armed involvement may be in a court of law, it amounts to little when those accused have already been tried and found guilty by the barrel of a gun. Whether these men were guilty or innocent -- they were executed without trial in cold blood. They leave behind traumatized children, grieving families and thousands of ex-prisoners and fellow citizens wondering who will be next. All images by Bridget Chappell. Bridget Chappell is an Australian activist and writer who has been working with the International Solidarity Movement in Palestine since August 2009. She is based in Nablus. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 12 18:22:45 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:22:45 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Iran, 1979 and 2010 Message-ID: <805EBB78910C4901A74A00D43939C79D@agingCHS072729> http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175189/ January 12, 2010 Iran, 1979 and 2010 by Dilip Hiro The Obama administration?s Iran policy is a riddle wrapped inside a conundrum folded into a pickle. So many signals are being sent in so many directions that it?s a wonder the Iranians (or other involved parties) have any idea what?s going on. Barack Obama came into office pledging to reach out diplomatically to Iran. In fact, the administration did so in only a half-hearted way, even as the president quickly began setting deadlines for the Iranians to respond (on their nuclear program) in a way Washington considered satisfactory -- or face further ?crippling? sanctions. Now, the latest of these deadlines, January 1, 2010, has passed and a move towards new sanctions, especially against companies associated with Iran?s Revolutionary Guard Corps, which controls significant parts of the country's economy, is evidently being prepared. But China, which holds the presidency of the Security Council for the month of January, recently rejected even a debate on the subject. Like the Russians, the Chinese are deeply involved in developing long-term energy relations with Iran, which means that no sanctions which might ?cripple? that country?s economy are likely to make it through the Security Council, no matter which country has the presidency. In the meantime, rumors, circulating for years, about an impending Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities (which is a polite way of saying Iranian military defenses of every sort) continue to fly. President Obama reportedly even used his supposed inability to hold the Israelis back as a way to urge China?s president to fall into line on sanctions. Administration officials regularly repeat versions of the Bush-era formula: ?all options are on the table.? Recently, for instance, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen referred vaguely in public to Pentagon contingency plans for an attack on Iran (??at the same time preparing forces, as we do for many contingencies that we understand might occur??). However, on the subject of such a military assault he sounded unenthusiastic in the extreme. Obama's influential Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has long been emphatic in his opposition to heading down such a path. From his 2006 confirmation hearings on, he has exhibited a clear sense of just how regionally catastrophic a military operation against those nuclear facilities would be (including a potentially globally crippling spike in oil prices). The Obama administration is now evidently considering throwing greater support behind Iran's ?green movement.? This movement of dissidents regularly in the streets protesting against the present regime and a fraudulent election would, as Dilip Hiro points out, instantly be undermined by either ?crippling sanctions? or an attack on the country?s nuclear facilities. All this, in other words, looks suspiciously like chaos as policy. Hiro, an Iran expert and TomDispatch regular, has just written a new book -- it?s being published this very day -- that puts Iran, the United States, China, and Russia into a global context. It?s called After Empire: The Birth of a Multipolar World and I?m proud to say that it grew from an article Hiro wrote for this website back in 2007, ?The Sole Superpower in Decline.? It offers the kind of balanced, knowledgeable assessment of our world that we?ve come to expect from him and which should put After Empire on every bookshelf. Tom Regime Change in Tehran? Don?t Bet on It? Yet By Dilip Hiro The dramatic images of protestors in Iran fearlessly facing -- and sometimes countering -- the brutal attacks of the regime?s security forces rightly gain the admiration and sympathy of viewers in the West. They also leave many Westerners assuming that this is a preamble to regime change in Tehran, a repeat of history, but with a twist. After all, Iran has the distinction of being the only Middle Eastern state that underwent a revolutionary change -- 31 years ago -- which originated as a mild street protest. Viewed objectively, though, this assumption is over-optimistic. It overlooks cardinal differences between the present moment and the 1978-1979 events which led to the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the founding of an Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. History shows that a revolutionary movement triumphs only when two vital factors merge: it is supported by a coalition of different social classes and it succeeds in crippling the country?s governing machinery and fracturing the state?s repressive apparatus. Two Movements, Two Moments A short review of Iran?s 31-year-old revolution is in order. In February 1979, the autocratic monarchy of the Shah collapsed when the country?s economy ground to a halt due to strikes not only by the religiously observant merchants of the bazaar, but also by civil servants, factory employees, and (crucially) leftist oil workers. At the same time, the foundations of the modern state -- the armed forces, special forces, armed police, and intelligence agencies, as well as the state-controlled media -- cracked. The street demonstrations, launched in October 1977 by Iranian intellectuals and professionals to protest human rights violations by SAVAK, the Shah?s brutal secret police, lacked both focus and an overarching set of coherent demands articulated by a towering personality. That changed when Khomeini, a virulently anti-Shah ayatollah exiled to neighboring Iraq for 14 years, was drawn into the process in January 1978. From then on, the ranks of the protestors swelled exponentially. Today, the key question is: Have the recent street protests, triggered by the rigged presidential poll of last June, drawn one or more of those segments of society which originally ignored the electoral fraud or dismissed the claims to that effect? The evidence so far suggests that the protests, while remaining defiant and resilient, have gotten stuck in a groove -- even though on December 27, the day of the Shiite holy ritual of Ashura, they spread to the smaller cities for the first time. What has remained unchanged is the social background of the participants. They are largely young, university educated, and well dressed, equipped with mobile phones, and adept at using the Internet, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. In the capital, they are usually from upscale North Tehran, which contains about a third of the city?s population of nine million. It is home to affluent families, many of whom have relatives in Western Europe or North America. They often spend their vacations in the West; and most are fluent in English and at ease with computers. Naturally, then, Western reporters and commentators identify with this section of Iranian society, and focus largely on them, inadvertently or otherwise. In the autumn of 1977, too, such people predominated in the street protests against the Shah. The difference now is one of scale. Since the Islamic Revolution, there has been an explosion in higher education. Between 1979 and 1999, while the population doubled, the number of university graduates grew nine-fold, from a base of 430,000 to nearly four million. The student bodies of universities and colleges have soared to three-quarters of a million young Iranians. That explains the vast size of the protests and their sartorial uniformity. Now, the foremost question for Iran specialists ought to be: Over the past six months have significant numbers of residents from downscale South Tehran, with its six million people, joined the protest? Going by the images on the Internet and Western TV channels, the answer is ?no.? South Tehranis do not wear fashionable jeans, and any protesting women would appear veiled from head to toe and without noticeable make-up. It is South Tehran that contains the Grand Bazaar, covering five miles of warren-like alleyways and more than a dozen mosques. That bazaar is the commercial backbone of the nation with its intricately woven strands of trade, Islamic culture, and politics. Its lead is followed by all the other bazaars of Iran. Because Prophet Muhammad was a merchant, there has been a symbiotic relationship between the commercial class and the mosque from the early days of Islam. Iran is no exception and the importance of the bazaar?s influence still cannot be overestimated. After all, it was barely a century ago that oil was first found in the country, while industrialization gained a foothold only after World War II. So, have bazaar merchants begun to shut their shops in solidarity with the protestors -- as they did during the anti-Shah movement? No again. Leaving aside the shuttering of stores, if some bazaar traders were simply to resort to setting up their own blogs and joining the protests online, that in itself would surely draw the attention of the regime of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei and might even lead it to consider a compromise with the reformers. The Limits of 2010 So far the opposition has been led by the defeated candidates for the presidency -- Mir Hussein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi -- neither of whom has anything like the charisma or religious standing of a Khomeini. Furthermore, the opposition suffers from the lack of a single overarching demand. During the 1978-1979 movement, Khomeini rallied diverse anti-Shah forces -- from Shia clerics to Marxist-Leninist groups -- around a maximum demand: Dethrone the Shah. Then Khomeini managed to hold together this unwieldy alliance by championing the causes of each of the social classes in the anti-Shah coalition. The traditional middle classes of merchants and artisans saw in him an upholder of private property and a believer in Islamic values. The modern middle classes regarded him as a radical nationalist committed to ending royal dictatorship and foreign influence in Iran. The urban working class backed him because of his repeated commitment to social justice which, it felt, could only be achieved by transferring power and wealth from the affluent to the needy. The rural poor saw him as the one to provide them with arable land, irrigation facilities, roads, schools, and electricity. Khomeini performed this superhuman task by maintaining a studied silence on such controversial issues as democracy, the status of women, and the role of clerics in the future Islamic republic. Today, the most popular slogan of the protestors is ?Death to the Dictator,? meaning Supreme Leader Khamanei. (In Persian, ?Marg bur/ Diktator? rhymes well.) Yet that is certainly not what either Mousavi or Karroubi wants. On his website, Mousavi recently demanded the release of all political prisoners and the amending of the electoral laws, along with the enforcement of freedom of expression, assembly, and the press as stated in the Iranian constitution. In short, he wants to reform the present system, not overthrow it. As it is, there is a mechanism in the constitution for the removal of the Supreme Leader. The popularly elected 86-member Assembly of Experts has the authority to appoint or dismiss him. That Assembly is presided over by Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. As a former close aide to Ayatollah Khomeini, his revolutionary credentials are on a par with Ali Khamanei?s. Rafsanjani backed Mousavi in his presidential bid with funds and strategic planning. Now, if he decides, he can summon the Assembly of Experts for an emergency session to debate the present crisis caused by the divisions at the top. Normally the Assembly meets only twice a year. But being a shrewd politician, Rafsanjani would first consult senior Assembly members individually to test the waters. It seems so far that he has not succeeded in gaining strong enough support for a special session. At the grass-roots level, the numerous oppositional blogs and websites rarely deal with the big picture. They are mainly focused on highlighting the brutal repression and arguing that Khamanei?s regime has strayed wildly from its Islamic roots and its revolutionary promises of justice, freedom, and independence. Their critique, however, covers only one major aspect of the situation. It is not enough to bring about regime change in the country. A second complimentary side would have to spell out some specifics about how the protestors want to see their vision of change realized in practice. At the very least, the opposition ought to debate the issue, which it is not doing now; or it could emulate Mousavi, who has dropped his earlier demand for a fresh presidential poll to be supervised not by the interior ministry but a non-governmental body. That gesture could, sooner or later, open the way for a compromise with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that might lead to a national unity government composed of his partisans and the opposition leaders. One major difference between 1979 and 2010 is that the Internet provides a great opportunity for a kind of debate that was unthinkable until a decade ago. On the other hand, what the 1979 movement and the present one have in common is the idea of making political use of the Shiite religious days, the Islamic custom of commemorating a dead person on the 40th day of his or her demise, as well as of the martyr complex engrained among Shiites. It was Ayatollah Khomeini who pioneered such tactics. He consistently used the 40th day of mourning for the martyrs of the Shah?s regime to draw ever bigger, ever more enthusiastic crowds in the streets, and used the holy month of Ramadan to charge the nation with revolutionary fervor. The attempts of today?s opposition leaders to emulate Khomeini?s example have not succeeded chiefly because their camp lacks a religious leader of his stature. The near-fatal blow that Khomeini struck at the Shah?s regime lay in the fatwa he issued decreeing that firing on unarmed protestors was equivalent to firing at a copy of the holy Quran. Most of the Shah?s soldiers, being Shiite and often young conscripts, accepted Khomeini?s interpretation. Many of them had already lost faith in their commanders after bank employees revealed, in September 1978, that top army officers had been transferring vast sums abroad. Little wonder that, by the time the Shah left Iran in January 1979, the army?s strength had plummeted from 300,000 to just over 100,000, mainly due to desertions. By contrast, there is little evidence so far that the present regime?s security forces -- the heavily indoctrinated Revolutionary Guards, the Basij militia, or the armed police -- are vacillating when ordered to break up demonstrations with force. On its part, the regime, aware of the danger of creating martyrs and of the historical precedent, has taken care to make minimal use of live fire in dispersing protesting crowds. During the 12 months of the revolutionary movement that stretched from 1978 into 1979, the indiscriminate use of live fire by the Shah?s regime led to between 10,000 -- the government figure -- and 40,000 -- the opposition?s statistic -- deaths. In the six months of the street protest this time around, the total, according to the opposition, is 106. Nationalism as a Factor If this interpretation of the current situation in Iran has focused solely on internal political dynamics, that doesn?t mean external forces are unimportant. Given the geo-strategic significance of Iran in the region and the world, any move by not-too-friendly Western governments against Tehran is bound to alter the domestic situation dramatically. Were the Western powers, for instance, to succeed in ratcheting up economic sanctions against Tehran through the United Nations Security Council, the opposition would undoubtedly cease its protests and cooperate with the Ahmadinejad administration to face a common national threat under the banner of patriotism. With a proud recorded history stretching back six millennia, Iranians have evolved into staunch nationalists in modern times. That is a simple, if overarching, fact which leaders in the West cannot afford to ignore. Dilip Hiro is the author of many books on the Middle East, including The Iranian Labyrinth. His latest book, After Empire: The Birth of a Multipolar World (Nation Books), has just been published. From January 22nd to February 4th, he will be in the U.S. on his book tour. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 12 19:04:15 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:04:15 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Answering Helen Thomas on Why They Want to Harm Us Message-ID: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/09-1 CommonDreams.org January 9, 2010 by Answering Helen Thomas on Why They Want to Harm Us Why can't Muslims end their preoccupation with dodging U.S. missiles in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Gaza long enough to reflect on how we are only trying to save them from terrorists while simultaneously demonstrating our commitment to "justice and progress"? Many Muslims have watched Washington's behavior closely for many years and view pious U.S. declarations about peace, justice, democracy and human rights as infuriating examples of hypocrisy and double talk. by Ray McGovern Thank God for Helen Thomas, the only person to show any courage at the White House press briefing after President Barack Obama gave a flaccid account of the intelligence screw-up that almost downed an airliner on Christmas Day. After Obama briefly addressed L'Affaire Abdulmutallab and wrote "must do better" on the report cards of the national security schoolboys responsible for the near catastrophe, the President turned the stage over to counter-terrorism guru John Brennan and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. It took 89-year old veteran correspondent Helen Thomas to break through the vapid remarks about channeling "intelligence streams," fixing "no-fly" lists, deploying "behavior detection officers," and buying more body-imaging scanners. Thomas recognized the John & Janet filibuster for what it was, as her catatonic press colleagues took their customary dictation and asked their predictable questions. Instead, Thomas posed an adult query that spotlighted the futility of government plans to counter terrorism with more high-tech gizmos and more intrusions on the liberties and privacy of the traveling public. She asked why Abdulmutallab did what he did. Thomas: "Why do they want to do us harm? And what is the motivation? We never hear what you find out on why." Brennan: "Al Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and wanton slaughter of innocents... They attract individuals like Mr. Abdulmutallab and use them for these types of attacks. He was motivated by a sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately, al Qaeda has perverted Islam, and has corrupted the concept of Islam, so that he's (sic) able to attract these individuals. But al Qaeda has the agenda of destruction and death." Thomas: "And you're saying it's because of religion?" Brennan: "I'm saying it's because of an al Qaeda organization that used the banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way." Thomas: "Why?" Brennan: "I think this is a - long issue, but al Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland." Thomas: "But you haven't explained why." Neither did President Obama, nor anyone else in the U.S. political/media hierarchy. All the American public gets is the boilerplate about how evil al Qaeda continues to pervert a religion and entice and exploit impressionable young men. There is almost no discussion about why so many people in the Muslim world object to U.S. policies so strongly that they are inclined to resist violently and even resort to suicide attacks. Obama's Non-Answer I had been hoping Obama would say something intelligent about what drove Abdulmutallab to do what he did, but the President limited himself to a few vacuous comments before sending in the clowns. This is what he said before he walked away from the podium: "It is clear that al Qaeda increasingly seeks to recruit individuals without known terrorist affiliations ... to do their bidding. ... And that's why we must communicate clearly to Muslims around the world that al Qaeda offers nothing except a bankrupt vision of misery and death ... while the United States stands with those who seek justice and progress. ... That's the vision that is far more powerful than the hatred of these violent extremists." But why it is so hard for Muslims to "get" that message? Why can't they end their preoccupation with dodging U.S. missiles in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Gaza long enough to reflect on how we are only trying to save them from terrorists while simultaneously demonstrating our commitment to "justice and progress"? Does a smart fellow like Obama expect us to believe that all we need to do is "communicate clearly to Muslims" that it is al Qaeda, not the U.S. and its allies, that brings "misery and death"? Does any informed person not know that the unprovoked U.S.-led invasion of Iraq killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and displaced 4.5 million from their homes? How is that for "misery and death"? Rather than a failure to communicate, U.S. officials are trying to rewrite recent history, which seems to be much easier to accomplish with the Washington press corps and large segments of the American population than with the Muslim world. But why isn't there a frank discussion by America's leaders and media about the real motivation of Muslim anger toward the United States? Why was Helen Thomas the only journalist to raise the touchy but central question of motive? Peeking Behind the Screen We witnessed a similar phenomenon when the 9/11 Commission Report tiptoed into a cautious discussion of possible motives behind the 9/11 attacks. To their credit, the drafters of that report apparently went as far as their masters would allow, in gingerly introducing a major elephant into the room: "America's policy choices have consequences. Right or wrong, it is simply a fact that American policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American actions in Iraq are dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world." (p. 376) When asked later about the flabby way that last sentence ended, former Congressman Lee Hamilton, Vice-Chair of the 9/11 Commission, explained that there had been a Donnybrook over whether that paragraph could be included at all. The drafters also squeezed in the reason given by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as to why he "masterminded" the attacks on 9/11: "By his own account, KSM's animus toward the United States stemmed ... from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel." Would you believe that former Vice President Dick Cheney also has pointed to U.S. support for Israel as one of the "true sources of resentment"? This unique piece of honesty crept into his speech to the American Enterprise Institute on May 21, 2009. Sure, he also trotted out the bromide that the terrorists hate "all the things that make us a force for good in the world." But the Israel factor did slip into the speech, perhaps an inadvertent acknowledgement of the Israeli albatross adorning the neck of U.S. policy in the Middle East. Very few pundits and academicians are willing to allude to this reality, presumably out of fear for their future career prospects. Former senior CIA officer Paul Pillar, now a professor at Georgetown University, is one of the few willing to refer, in his typically understated way, to "all the other things ... including policies and practices that affect the likelihood that people ... will be radicalized, and will try to act out the anger against us." One has to fill in the blanks regarding what those "other things" are. But no worries. Secretary Napolitano has a fix for this unmentionable conundrum. It's called "counter-radicalization," which she describes thusly: "How do we identify someone before they become radicalized to the point where they're ready to blow themselves up with others on a plane? And how do we communicate better American values and so forth ... around the globe?" Better communication. That's the ticket. Hypocrisy and Double Talk But Napolitano doesn't acknowledge the underlying problem, which is that many Muslims have watched Washington's behavior closely for many years and view pious U.S. declarations about peace, justice, democracy and human rights as infuriating examples of hypocrisy and double talk. So, Washington's sanitized discussion about motives for terrorism seems more intended for the U.S. domestic audience than the Muslim world. After all, people in the Middle East already know how Palestinians have been mistreated for decades; how Washington has propped up Arab dictatorships; how Muslims have been locked away at Guantanamo without charges; how the U.S. military has killed civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere; how U.S. mercenaries have escaped punishment for slaughtering innocents. The purpose of U.S. "public diplomacy" appears more designed to shield Americans from this unpleasant reality, offering instead feel-good palliatives about the beneficence of U.S. actions. Most American journalists and politicians go along with the charade out of fear that otherwise they would be accused of lacking patriotism or sympathizing with "the enemy." Commentators who are neither na?ve nor afraid are simply shut out of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM). Salon.com's Glen Greenwald, for example, has complained loudly about "how our blind, endless enabling of Israeli actions fuels terrorism directed at the U.S.," and how it is taboo to point this out. Greenwald recently called attention to a little-noticed Associated Press report on the possible motives of the 23-year-old Nigerian Abdulmutallab. The report quoted his Yemeni friends to the effect that the he was "not overtly extremist." But they noted that he was open about his sympathies toward the Palestinians and his anger over Israel's actions in Gaza. (Emphasis added) Former CIA specialist on al Qaeda, Michael Scheuer, has been still more outspoken on what he sees as Israel's tying down the American Gulliver in the Middle East. Speaking Monday on C-SPAN, he complained bitterly that any debate on the issue of American support for Israel and its effects is normally squelched. Scheuer added that the Israel Lobby had just succeeded in getting him removed from his job at the Jamestown Foundation think tank for saying that Obama was "doing what I call the Tel Aviv Two-Step." More to the point, Scheuer asserted: "For anyone to say that our support for Israel doesn't hurt us in the Muslim world ... is to just defy reality." Beyond loss of work, those who speak out can expect ugly accusations. The Israeli media network Arutz Sheva, which is considered the voice of the settler movement, weighed in strongly, branding Scheuer's C-SPAN remarks "blatantly anti-Semitic." Media Squelching As for media squelching, I continue to be amazed at how otherwise informed folks express total surprise when I refer them to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's statement about his motivation for attacking the United States, as cited on page 147 of the 9/11 Commission Report. Here is the full sentence (shortened above): "By his own account, KSM's animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experience there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel." One can understand how even those following such things closely can get confused. On Aug. 30, 2009, five years after the 9/11 Commission Report was released, readers of the neoconservative Washington Post were given a diametrically different view, based on what the Post called "an intelligence summary:" "KSM's limited and negative experience in the United States - which included a brief jail-stay because of unpaid bills - almost certainly helped propel him on his path to becoming a terrorist ... He stated that his contact with Americans, while minimal, confirmed his view that the United States was a debauched and racist country." Apparently, the Post found this revisionist version politically more convenient, in that it obscured Mohammed's other explanation implicating "U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel." It's much more comforting to view KSM as a disgruntled visitor who nursed his personal grievances into justification for mass murder. An unusually candid view of the dangers accruing from the U.S. identification with Israel's policies appeared five years ago in an unclassified study published by the Pentagon-appointed U.S. Defense Science Board on Sept. 23, 2004. Contradicting President George W. Bush, the board stated: "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf States. "Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy." Abdulmutallab's Attack Getting back to Abdulmutallab and his motive in trying to blow up the airliner, how was this individual without prior terrorist affiliations suddenly transformed into an international terrorist ready to die while killing innocents? If, as John Brennan seems to suggest, al Qaeda terrorists are hard-wired at birth for the "wanton slaughter of innocents," how are they also able to jump-start a privileged 23-year old Nigerian, inculcate in him the acquired characteristics of a terrorist, and persuade him to do the bidding of al Qaeda/Persian Gulf? As indicated above, the young Nigerian seems to have had particular trouble with Israel's wanton slaughter of more than a thousand civilians in Gaza a year ago, a brutal campaign that was defended in Washington as justifiable self-defense. Moreover, it appears that Abdulmutallab is not the only anti-American "terrorist" so motivated. When the Saudi and Yemeni branches of al Qaeda announced that they were uniting into "al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula," their combined rhetoric railed against the Israeli attack on Gaza. And on Dec. 30, Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, a 32-year-old Palestinian-born Jordanian physician, killed seven American CIA operatives and one Jordanian intelligence officer near Khost, Afghanistan, when he detonated a suicide bomb. Though most U.S. media stories treated al-Balawi as a fanatical double agent driven by irrational hatreds, other motivations could be gleaned by carefully reading articles about his personal history. Al-Balawi's mother told Agence France-Presse that her son had never been an "extremist." Al-Balawi's widow, Defne Bayrak, made a similar statement to Newsweek. In a New York Times article, al-Balawi's brother was quoted as describing him as a "very good brother" and a "brilliant doctor." So what led al-Balawi to take his own life in order to kill U.S. and Jordanian intelligence operatives? Al-Balawi's widow said her husband "started to change" after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. His brother said al-Balawi "changed" during last year's three-week-long Israeli offensive in Gaza, which killed about 1,300 Palestinians. (Emphasis added) When al-Balawi volunteered with a medical organization to treat injured Palestinians in Gaza, he was arrested by Jordanian authorities, his brother said. It was after that arrest that the Jordanian intelligence service apparently coerced or "recruited" al-Balawi to become a spy who would penetrate al Qaeda's hierarchy and provide actionable intelligence to the CIA. "If you catch a cat and put it in a corner, she will jump on you," the brother said in explaining why al-Balawi would turn to suicide attack. "My husband was anti-American; so am I," his widow told Newsweek. Her two little girls would grow up fatherless, but she had no regrets. Answering Helen Are we starting to get the picture of what the United States is up against in the Muslim world? Does Helen Thomas deserve an adult answer to her question about motive? Has President Obama been able to assimilate all this? Or is the U.S. political/media establishment incapable of confronting this reality and/or taking meaningful action to alleviate the underlying causes of the violence? Is the reported reaction of a CIA official to al-Balawi's attack the appropriate one: "Last week's attack will be avenged. Some very bad people will eventually have a very bad day." Revenge has not always turned out very well in the past. Does anyone remember the brutal killing of four Blackwater contractors on March 31, 2004, when they took a bad turn and ended up in the wrong neighborhood of the Iraqi city of Fallujah - and how U.S. forces virtually leveled that large city in retribution after George W. Bush won his second term the following November? If you read only the Fawning Corporate Media, you would blissfully think that the killing of the four Blackwater operatives was the work of fanatical animals who got - along with their neighbors - the reprisal they deserved. You wouldn't know that the killings represented the second turn in that specific cycle of violence. On March 22, 2004, Israeli forces assassinated the then-spiritual leader of Hamas in Gaza, Sheikh Yassin - a withering old man, blind and confined to a wheelchair. (Emphasis added) That murder, plus sloppy navigation by the Blackwater men, set the stage for the next set of brutalities. The Blackwater operatives were killed by a group that described itself as the "Sheikh Yassin Revenge Brigade." Pamphlets and posters were all over the scene of the attack; one of the trucks that pulled around body parts of the mercenaries had a large poster photo of Yassin in its window, as did store fronts all over Fallujah. We can wish Janet Napolitano luck with her "counter-radicalization" project and President Obama with his effort to "communicate clearly to Muslims," but there will be no diminution in the endless cycles of violence unless legitimate grievances are addressed on all sides. It would certainly also help if the American people were finally let in on the root causes for what otherwise gets portrayed as unprovoked savagery by Muslims. This article appeared first on Consortiumnews.com. Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his career as a CIA analyst, he prepared and briefed the President's Daily Brief and chaired National Intelligence Estimates. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 12 19:44:02 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:44:02 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] The war on terror has been about scaring people, not protecting them Message-ID: <8D3421FEB54C44DD8D277F7C5DF6C005@agingCHS072729> http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2010/jan/03/yemen-anti-terrorism-rendition-security The Guaradian 3 January 2010 The war on terror has been about scaring people, not protecting them The Bush administration may have been more alarmist and belligerent, but, despite his more emollient tone, Obama has kept most of the repressive apparatus that Bush constructed intact. Gary Younge So there was no ticking time bomb. No urgent need ever arose to torture anybody who was withholding crucial details, so that civilisation as we know it could be saved in the nick of time. No wires had to be tapped, special prisons erected or international accords violated. No innocent people had to be grabbed off the street in their home country, transported across the globe and waterboarded. Drones, daisy-cutters, invasions, occupations were, it has transpired, not necessary. Indeed, when it actually came down to it, to forestall a near-calamitous terrorist atrocity in the US the authorities didn't even have to go in search of information or informants. The alleged terrorist's father came to the US embassy in Nigeria of his own free will and warned them that his son, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had disappeared and could be in the company of Yemeni terrorists. Meanwhile the National Security Agency had heard that al-Qaida in Yemen was planning to use an unnamed Nigerian in an attack on the US. If that were not enough, then came Abdulmutallab himself, a 23-year-old Nigerian bound for Detroit who bought his ticket in cash, checked in no bags and left no contact information. For seven years the American state manipulated the public with its multicoloured terror alerts. But when all the warning lights were flashing red, it did nothing. To brand this near miss a "systemic failure", as Barack Obama has done, is both true and inadequate. It reduces the moral vacuity, political malevolence and enduring strategic recklessness that has been the enduring response to the 9/11 attacks to a question of managerial competence. "Terror is first of all the terror of the next attack," explains Arjun Appadurai in Fear of Small Numbers. During the Bush years that terror was routinely leveraged for the purposes of social control, military mobilisation and electoral advantage. Meanwhile, the administrative processes that might prevent the next attack were tragically lacking. In short, Bush's anti-terror strategy was not about protecting people but about scaring them. To galvanise the nation for war abroad and sedate it for repression at home, the previous administration constructed a terror threat that was ubiquitous in character, apocalyptic in scale and imminent in nature. Only then could they counterpose human rights against security as though they were not only contradictory but mutually exclusive. Al-Qaida was only too happy to oblige. In such a state of perpetual crisis both terrorists and reactionaries thrive. Terrorists successfully create a climate of fear; governments successfully exploit that fear to extend their own powers. "I'm absolutely convinced that the threat we face now, the idea of a terrorist in the middle of one of our cities with a nuclear weapon, is very real and that we have to use extraordinary measures to deal with it," said former vice-president Dick Cheney. The trouble is that even by their own shabby standards, none of these "extraordinary measures" have ever worked. No new laws were necessary to stop 9/11. If the immigration services, the FBI and the CIA had been doing their jobs properly, the attacks could have been prevented. Nonetheless, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the US government undertook the "preventative detention" of about 5,000 men on the basis of their birthplace and later sought a further 19,000 "voluntary interviews". Over the next year, more than 170,000 men from 24 predominantly Muslim countries and North Korea were fingerprinted and interviewed in a programme of "special registration". None of these produced a single terrorism conviction. This set the pattern for the years to come: wiretapping, rendition, torture, secrecy. Those who otherwise rail against the inefficiency of government argued for more extensive, intrusive state power even as it produced little in the way of results. When confronted with this lamentable record, their only defence was the threat of the next attack. "The next time, the smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud" said Condoleezza Rice, adding. "They only have to be right once. We have to be right every time." Over the last week even once in a while would have looked good. There are precious few partisan points to be made here. Responsibility for Abdulmutallab lies with Obama. He has been in power longer than Bush was when he received the FBI memo entitled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the US". The Bush administration may have been more alarmist and belligerent, but, despite his more emollient tone, Obama has kept most of the repressive apparatus that Bush constructed intact. Obama has expressed his support for trying Guant?namo prisoners under military commissions, while his CIA chief has expressed his desire to keep extraordinary rendition. Meanwhile, photographs of torture and documents describing videos of these "enhanced interrogations" remain under lock and key. "Leon Panetta has been captured by the people who were the ideological drivers for the interrogation program in the first place," a former CIA officer told the Washington Post. Casting the escalation of the Afghanistan war as a central front in the war on terror is a potent illustration of how this delusion has continued. Al-Qaida is now more likely to be found in Pakistan, an American ally, than in Afghanistan and the latest threat came via Yemen. Terrorism is a strategy, not a place - attempts to carpet-bomb it or occupy it or conquer it will inevitably fail. Given the nature of terrorism another attack can be predicted with grim certainty. Before 9/11 there was Oklahoma City and before that there was the World Trade Centre. In a nation where the shooting of innocents in schools, colleges, churches and coffee shops is relatively commonplace, it goes without saying that one disturbed individual, with a lethal weapon and with or without an agenda, can inflict a substantial amount of human carnage. If they are working in a team and well resourced, the damage could be huge. All the state can reasonably expect to do is limit the odds. The US has actually done the opposite. Thanks to war and torture it has swelled the number of people who might want to do it harm. Much has been made of Abdulmutallab's radicalisation in London. But there had to be something to radicalise him with. In Abu Ghraib, Haditha, Fallujah and elsewhere, the US has provided plenty of material. Meanwhile the institutional stasis within the agencies that are supposed to combat terrorism means that when a potential terrorist actually does rear their head they appear on every radar and yet somehow, all too often, go undetected. So instead of reducing the odds politicians instead invoke them. "If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaida build or develop a nuclear weapon," Cheney once said, "we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response". But it's precisely because their analysis has been so deeply flawed that their response has been so faulty. Until things improve there is a much higher chance that America's anti-terror efforts will repeat themselves: first as farce and then as human tragedy. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 12 21:16:13 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:16:13 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Paul Craig Roberts: Insouciant Americans Message-ID: http://www.countercurrents.org/roberts120110.htm 12 January, 2010 Insouciant Americans By Paul Craig Roberts The Underwear Bomber case indicates that whoever is behind these bomb scares is laughing at our gullibility. How realistic is it that al-Qaida, an organization that allegedly pulled off the most fantastic terror attack in world history, would in these days of heightened security choose for an attack on an airliner a person who is the most conspicuous of all? Umar Farouk Mutallab had a one-way ticket, no luggage, no passport, and his father, reportedly a CIA and Mossad asset, had reported him to the CIA and Mossad. Does anyone really believe that al-Qaida would choose as an airliner bomber a person waving every red flag imaginable? This obvious question has escaped the U.S. media, a collection of salespersons marketing full body scanning machines for airports. Would al-Qaida, with its extensive knowledge of explosives, have armed Umar with a "bomb" that experts say couldn't have blown up his own seat? It is difficult to imagine a more gullible population than America's, but do even Americans believe this story? Since 9/11 the F.B.I. has been busy enticing people, who lack organizational skills, into "terrorist plots" that consist of F.B.I. initiated hot air talk. These ridiculous stings are then taken to trial, and the media fans the flames of fear of "home-grown terrorist plots against Americans." There is little doubt that those interested in leading the U.S. deeper into a police state and deeper into a "war on terror" are active in adding orchestrated events to whatever real ones real terrorists manage to accomplish. The paucity of real terrorists has caused the U.S. government and its Ministry of Truth to promote the Taliban to terrorist rank. The problem is that these "terrorist acts" are taking place thousands of miles away in lands that the average American cannot find on a map and, thus, lack scare value. To keep the peril alive for Americans, we have the Underwear Bomb Plot. What will be next? An elaborate head of hair laced with nano-thermite? The "war on terror" is a far greater threat to Americans than all the terrorists in the world combined. This is so because the "war on terror" has destroyed the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. American citizens are now helpless in the event someone in government decides that some constitutionally protected behavior, such as free speech, or a contribution to a children's hospital in Gaza, where Hamas, a U.S.-declared "terrorist organization," happens to be the elected government, constitutes aiding and abetting terrorism. On Jan. 5 a ruling by the Federal Appeals Court in the District of Columbia gave away the most essential protection of liberty by declaring that the U.S. government is not bound by law during war. The ruling absolves Washington from complying with America's own laws and from complying with international laws, such as the Geneva Conventions. It makes a mockery of all war crime trials everywhere. By elevating the executive branch above the law, the court gave the government carte blanche. The rationale offered by the court for refusing to uphold the law came from Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who said that America had been pushed by war past "the leading edge of a new and frightening paradigm, one that demands new rules be written. War is a challenge to law, and the law must adjust." By "adjust" she means "be set aside" or "be thrown out." The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to defend both the Constitution and the principle that government is not above the law. Last Dec.14 the Supreme Court refused to review a ruling by the Federal Appeals Court in the District of Columbia, which dismissed a torture case with the argument that "torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military's detention of suspected enemy combatants." In other words, neither U.S. nor international laws against torture can be enforced in U.S. courts. The opinion [PDF] was written by Judge Karen Lecraft Henderson. The "war on terror," which is enriching Halliburton, Blackwater (now operating under an alias), and the military/security complex, while denying Americans health care, is running up debt that is a threat to Americans' purchasing power and living standards. The contrast between America's sanctimonious rhetoric and the murder of civilians and torture of prisoners has destroyed America's reputation and caused Europeans as well as Muslims to despise the United States. The sacrifice of the Constitution and rule of law to a hyped "theorist threat" has destroyed the heart and soul of America herself. As a poet wrote, "our world in stupor lies." Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan's first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. paulcraigroberts at yahoo.com =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Wed Jan 13 16:10:17 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:10:17 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] US authorites divert Air France flight carrying 'no-fly' journalist to Mexico Message-ID: <1318A05F19994577BCA1C220D67E7AB5@agingCHS072729> UK Telegraph 24 April, 2009 US authorites divert Air France flight carrying 'no-fly' journalist to Mexico American authorities reportedly refused an Air France flight from Paris to Mexico entry into US airspace because a left-wing journalist writing a book on the CIA was on board. By Henry Samuel in Paris Hernando Calvo Ospina, who works for Le Monde Diplomatique and has written on revolutionary movements in Cuba and Colombia , figured on the US authorities' "no-fly list". Air France said the April 18 flight was forced to divert to the French Caribbean island of Martinique before continuing its journey and that it might ask the US Transportation Security Administration for compensation. A spokesman for Mr Ospina's French publisher, Le Temps des Cerises, said: "Hernando, who was heading to Nicaragua to research a report, thus found out that he is on a 'no-fly list' that bans a number of people from flying to or even over the United States." Some 50,000 people are said to be on the list set up under George W. Bush, the former US president. The publisher accused the Central Intelligence Agency of being behind Mr Ospina's blacklisting, pointing out that the journalist was currently researching a book about the spy agency. "It shows to what degree its paranoia (has reached)," it said. Air France said that as the flight was not due to stop in a US airport, it had not sent US authorities the passenger manifest. However, it sent one to Mexico, which apparently sent the list on. The crew were informed of the ban as they approached US airspace. Mr Ospina, who has written several books and contributes to Le Monde Diplomatique, the left-wing French political monthly, said that he was informed of the order to divert the flight by its co-pilot. "I was speechless and my first reaction was to ask, 'Do you think I'm a terrorist?'," he said. "He replied 'no' and said that was why he told me about it, adding that it was extraordinary and the first time it had happened on an Air France plane." Maurice Lemoine, editor in chief of Le Monde diplomatique, said: "Hernando Calvo Ospina is a Colombian political exile in France who writes a lot denouncing the government of (President) Alvaro Uribe and the role of the United States in Latin America, and as a journalist has had occasion to interview top members of the Farc (leftist guerillas in Colombia). That seems enough for him to be considered a terrorist." Since the Sept 11, 2001 attacks, American officials have maintained a secret "terrorist watch list" of individuals forbidden to fly into or out of the US because they are thought to pose a security threat. Critics claim that, instead of simply targeting known extremists who pose a potential danger in the "war against terror", it has been abusively extended to peaceful critics of US policy. People with similar names to suspected militants have also been listed. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Thu Jan 14 07:54:33 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 07:54:33 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Afghan Children Executed By Us Forces? Message-ID: <339770B3B5634C12B31FD6227942714E@agingCHS072729> http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/4107 Were Afghan Children Executed By Us-Led Forces? And Why Aren't The Media Interested? Jan 13, 2010 By David Cromwell David Cromwell's ZSpace Page / ZSpace Ignoring or downplaying Western crimes is a standard feature of the corporate Western media. On rare occasions when a broadcaster or newspaper breaks ranks and reports 'our' crimes honestly, it is instructive to observe the response from the rest of the media. Do they follow suit, perhaps digging deeper for details, devoting space to profiles of the victims and interviews with grieving relatives, humanising all concerned? Do they put the crimes in perspective as the inevitable consequence of rapacious Western power? Or do they look away? One such case is a report that American-led troops dragged Afghan children from their beds and shot them during a night raid on December 27 last year, leaving ten people dead. Afghan government investigators said that eight of the dead were schoolchildren, and that some of them had been handcuffed before being killed. Kabul-based Times correspondent Jerome Starkey reported the shocking accusations about the joint US-Afghan operation. But the rest of the UK news media have buried the report. After details of the massacre first emerged, Afghan President Karzai sent a team of investigators to the alleged scene of the atrocity in the village of Ghazi Kang in eastern Kunar province. Assadullah Wafa, a former governor of Helmand province, led the investigation. He told The Times that US soldiers flew to Kunar from Kabul, implying that they were part of a special forces unit: "At around 1 am, three nights ago, some American troops with helicopters left Kabul and landed around 2km away from the village. The troops walked from the helicopters to the houses and, according to my investigation, they gathered all the students from two rooms, into one room, and opened fire." (Jerome Starkey, 'Western troops accused of executing 10 Afghan civilians, including children', The Times, December 31, 2009; http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6971638.ece) Wafa continued: "I spoke to the local headmaster. It's impossible they were al-Qaeda. They were children, they were civilians, they were innocent. I condemn this attack." The Times reporter interviewed the headmaster who told him that the victims were asleep in three rooms when the troops arrived: "Seven students were in one room. A student and one guest were in another room, a guest room, and a farmer was asleep with his wife in a third building. "First the foreign troops entered the guest room and shot two of them. Then they entered another room and handcuffed the seven students. Then they killed them. Abdul Khaliq [the farmer] heard shooting and came outside. When they saw him they shot him as well. He was outside. That's why his wife wasn't killed." A local elder told the Times reporter: "I saw their school books covered in blood." The dead children were aged from 11 to 17. In Kabul, the massacre sparked demonstrations with protesters holding up banners showing photographs of dead children alongside placards demanding "Foreign troops leave Afghanistan" and "Stop killing us". Nato's International Security Assistance Force told The Times that there was "no direct evidence to substantiate" Wafa's claims that unarmed civilians were harmed in what it described as a "joint coalition and Afghan security force" operation. The spokesperson claimed: "As the joint assault force entered the village they came under fire from several buildings and in returning fire killed nine individuals." The slippery military response did not even get the number of victims right: it was ten, not nine. Jerome Starkey published a follow-up report, recounting President Karzai's vain plea for the gunmen to face justice. ('Karzai demands that US hands over raiders accused of village atrocity', The Times, January 1, 2010). But the rest of the British media appear to have shown virtually zero interest in either refuting or confirming the report of schoolchildren being executed. As far as our media searches can determine, there were only three press reports in major UK newspapers that mentioned it; and even then, only in passing. In a brief weekly news digest, the Sunday Telegraph devoted 45 words to accusations of the atrocity, repeating the propaganda version of it as "a raid in which US forces shot dead 10 people at a suspected bomb factory." (Walter Hemmens and Alex Singleton, 'The Week; that was', Sunday Telegraph, January 3, 2010). A 136-word item in the Mirror led, not with accusations of the execution of schoolchildren, but with the deaths of American civilians killed elsewhere in a suicide attack at a military base in Afghanistan (Stephen White, 'Base blast kills Eight US civilians', The Mirror, January 2, 2010). The Guardian spared 28 words at the end of a report on the death of a British bomb disposal expert to note that: "The Afghan government says that 10 people were killed, including eight schoolchildren, in a village in eastern Kunar province in a night raid by international forces last weekend." (Adam Gabbatt, 'British bomb disposal expert dies after Afghan blast: "His sacrifice and courage will not be forgotten": Death brings the total toll to 245 since war began' Guardian, January 2, 2009). As ever, the headline summed up the priorities precisely: British lives count; Afghan lives are of lesser importance. To the corporate media's shame, it was left to the US-based journalist Amy Goodman to interview Times correspondent Jerome Starkey on her excellent independent news programme, Democracy Now! The programme reported that a preliminary investigation by the United Nations reinforced Afghan claims that most of the dead were schoolboys. (Jerome Starkey interviewed by Amy Goodman, 'US-Led Forces Accused of Executing Schoolchildren in Afghanistan', Democracy Now!, January 6, 2010; http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/6/us_led_forces_accused_of_executing) Goodman asked Starkey what had been the response of NATO forces to the allegations. He said: "Well, initially, US and NATO forces here were very slow to say anything at all, and that possibly reflects the most secret nature of this raid. The fact that, according to Afghan investigators, these troops appear to have flown to the scene from Kabul appears to confirm speculation that this was an operation carried out by some sort of Special Forces unit, possibly even by some sort of paramilitary unit attached to one of the intelligence agencies, the foreign intelligence agencies, which operate occasionally out of the capital." Starkey emphasised again that he had spoken to the headmaster who had given him the names and school registration numbers of all of the dead pupils. An additional tragic detail was that the headmaster was an uncle of the eight children. The Times correspondent was candid that it had not proven possible to verify all of the details of the reported massacre: "Given the nature of the environment, we haven't been able to travel there ourselves, and we've been relying on telephone interviews with people who are there and people who've visited the scene." But he also made it clear that the US-led occupation authorities were giving out very little information, and had refused Afghan requests to provide details of the gunmen or to hand the men over. The reported events are sickening. But we have been unable to find a single mention of the alleged atrocity on the BBC website. We emailed news editors at the BBC, ITN and Channel 4 News, asking why they had not reported these serious allegations of schoolchildren being executed in a US-led operation. None of them have replied. The lack of interest shown by the British news media in pursuing this story is damning indeed. The famous maxim of the three wise monkeys who 'See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' is an apt description of the corporate media's response to evidence for Western atrocities. SUGGESTED ACTION The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone. Mark Thompson, BBC director general Email: mark.thompson at bbc.co.uk Helen Boaden, BBC news director Email: helenboaden.complaints at bbc.co.uk Please send a copy to the Chair of the BBC Trust which is responsible for ensuring that the BBC upholds its obligations to the public: Michael Lyons Email: michael.lyons at bbc.co.uk David Mannion, editor-in-chief, ITV News Email: david.mannion at itn.co.uk Jim Gray, editor, Channel 4 News Email: jim.gray at itn.co.uk A fuller list of media contacts can be found at: http://www.medialens.org/contacts/ Please also send a copy of your emails to us Email: editor at medialens.org =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Thu Jan 14 08:13:16 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 08:13:16 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List Message-ID: <16415ABCC8DE48EFB0607159CD45D7C8@agingCHS072729> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/nyregion/14watchlist.html?hp Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List By LIZETTE ALVAREZ Published: January 13, 2010 The Transportation Security Administration, under scrutiny after last month's bombing attempt, has on its Web site a "mythbuster" that tries to reassure the public. Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times [Photo: Michael Hicks, 8, a Cub Scout in Clifton, N.J., has the same name as a suspicious person.] Myth: The No-Fly list includes an 8-year-old boy. Buster: No 8-year-old is on a T.S.A. watch list. "Meet Mikey Hicks," said Najlah Feanny Hicks, introducing her 8-year-old son, a New Jersey Cub Scout and frequent traveler who has seldom boarded a plane without a hassle because he shares the name of a suspicious person. "It's not a myth." Michael Winston Hicks's mother initially sensed trouble when he was a baby and she could not get a seat for him on their flight to Florida at an airport kiosk; airline officials explained that his name "was on the list," she recalled. The first time he was patted down, at Newark Liberty International Airport, Mikey was 2. He cried. After years of long delays and waits for supervisors at every airport ticket counter, this year's vacation to the Bahamas badly shook up the family. Mikey was frisked on the way there, then more aggressively on the way home. "Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch - someone is patting your 8-year-old down like he's a criminal," Mrs. Hicks recounted. "A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don't catch him. But my 8-year-old can't walk through security without being frisked." It is true that Mikey is not on the federal government's "no-fly" list, which includes about 2,500 people, less than 10 percent of them from the United States. But his name appears to be among some 13,500 on the larger "selectee" list, which sets off a high level of security screening. At some point, someone named Michael Hicks made the Department of Homeland Security suspicious, and little Mikey is still paying the price. (His father, also named Michael Hicks, was stopped for the first time on the Bahamas trip.) Both lists are maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center, which includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They are given to the Transportation Security Administration, which in turn sends them to the airlines. A spokesman for the T.S.A., James Fotenos, said that as a rule, "there are no children on the no-fly or selectee lists," but would not comment on Mikey's situation specifically. For every person on the lists, hundreds of others may get caught up simply because they share the same name; a quick scan through a national phone directory unearthed 1,600 Michael Hickses. Over the past three years, 81,793 frustrated travelers have formally asked that they be struck from the watch list through the Department of Homeland Security; more than 25,000 of their cases are still pending. Others have taken more drastic measures. Mario Labb?, a frequent-flying Canadian record-company executive, started having problems at airports shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, with lengthy delays at checkpoints and mysterious questions about Japan. By 2005, he stopped flying to the United States from Canada, instead meeting American clients in France. Then a forced rerouting to Miami in 2008 led to six hours of questions. "What's the name of your mother? Your father? When were you last in Japan?" Mr. Labb? recalled being asked. "Always the same questions in different order. And sometimes, it's quite aggressive, not funny at all." Fed up, in the summer of 2008, he changed his name to Fran?ois Mario Labb?. The problem vanished. Several Web sites, including the T.S.A.'s own blog, are rife with tales of misidentification and strategies for solving them. Some travelers purposely misspell their own names when buying tickets, apparently enough to fool the system. Even the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy once found himself on a list. "We can't just throw a bunch of names on these lists and call it security," said Representative William J. Pascrell Jr., a New Jersey Democrat. "If we can't get an 8-year-old off the list, the whole list becomes suspect." Mr. Fotenos, the T.S.A. spokesman, promised improvements in a few months, as the agency's Secure Flight Program takes full effect. Under the new system, airlines will collect every passenger's birth date and gender, along with their names. The T.S.A. will cross-check all that with the watch lists. Previously, the airlines cross-checked the lists themselves, using only the names. Certainly, Mikey's date of birth, less than a month before 9/11, should prevent him from being mistaken as a terrorist. A third grader at a parochial school in Clifton, N.J., Mikey recites the drill like the world-weary traveler he is. Leave early for the airport, always with his passport. Try to get a boarding pass at the counter. This will send up a flag. The ticket agent, peering down at tiny bespectacled Mikey, will apologize or roll her eyes, and call for a supervisor. The supervisor, after a phone call - or, more likely, a series of phone calls - will ultimately finagle him onto the plane. But the Hickses are typically the last to select seats and the last to board, which means they sometimes can't sit together. Mrs. Hicks, a photojournalist who herself got Secret Service clearance to travel aboard Air Force II with then-Vice President Al Gore, anticipated additional chaos following the attempted underwear bombing. Before leaving for the Bahamas on Jan. 2, she reached out to Congressman Pascrell's office, which then enlisted a T.S.A. agent to meet the family at the airport. Even this did not prevent Mikey from an extra pat-down. On the way home last Friday, Mikey's boarding pass showed four giant red S's at the airport in Nassau. "Oh, random screening," Mrs. Hicks said. Mikey asked his mother not to worry and said he would use his tae kwon do - he has a junior black belt - if needed. Mrs. Hicks said she wanted to take pictures of her son being frisked but was told it was against the rules. Mikey, who would rather talk about BMX bikes and his athletic trophies than airport security, remains perplexed about the "list" and the hurdles he must clear. "Why do they think a kid is a terrorist?" Mikey asked his mother at one point during the interview. Mrs. Hicks said the family was amused by the mistake at first. But that amusement quickly turned to annoyance and anger. It should not take seven years to correct the problem, Mrs. Hicks said. She applied for redress in December when she first heard about the Department of Homeland Security's program. "I understand the need for security," she added. "But this is ridiculous. It's quite clear that he is 8 years old, and while he may have terroristic tendencies at home, he does not have those on a plane." =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Thu Jan 14 18:02:04 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:02:04 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] UN should be sidelined in future climate talks, says Obama official Message-ID: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/14/climate-talks-un-sidelined The Guardian 14 January 2010 UN should be sidelined in future climate talks, says Obama official Suzanne Goldenberg Washington America sees a diminished role for the United Nations in trying to stop global warming after the "chaotic" Copenhagen climate change summit, an Obama administration official said today. Jonathan Pershing, who helped lead talks at Copenhagen, instead sketched out a future path for negotiations dominated by the world's largest polluters such as China, the US, India, Brazil and South Africa, who signed up to a deal in the final hours of the summit. That would represent a realignment of the way the international community has dealt with climate change over the last two decades. "It is impossible to imagine a global agreement in place that doesn't essentially have a global buy-in. There aren't other institutions beside the UN that have that," Pershing said. "But it is also impossible to imagine a negotiation of enormous complexity where you have a table of 192 countries involved in all the detail." Pershing said the flaws in the UN process, which demands consensus among the international community, were exposed at Copenhagen. "The meeting itself was at best chaotic," he said, in a talk at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "We met mostly overnight. It seemed like we didn't sleep for two weeks. It seemed a funny way to do things, and it showed." The lack of confidence in the UN extends to the $30bn (?18.5bn) global fund, which will be mobilised over the next three years to help poor countries adapt to climate change. "The UN didn't manage the conference that well," Pershing said. "I am not sure that any of us are particularly confident that the UN managing the near-term financing is the right way to go." Pershing did not exclude the UN from future negotiations. But he repeatedly credited the group of leading economies headed by America for moving forward on the talks, including on finance and developing green technology. He suggested the larger forum offered by the UN was instead important for countries such as Cuba or the small islands which risk annihilation by climate change to air their grievances. "We are going to have a very very difficult time moving forward and it will be a combination of small and larger processes," he said. The first test of the accord agreed by America, China, India, South Africa and Brazil arrives on 31 January, the deadline for countries to commit officially to actions to halt global warming. Here, too, Pershing indicated the focus would be narrower in scope than the UN's all-inclusive approach. "We expect there will be significant actions recorded by major countries," he said. "We are not really worried what Chad does. We are not really worried about what Haiti says it is going to do about greenhouse gas emissions. We just hope they recover from the earthquake." Key groups of developing countries are to meet this month to try to explore ways to get to agree a binding agreement. As the dust settles on the stormy Danish meeting, environment ministers from the so-called Basic countries - Brazil, South Africa, India and China - will meet on 24 January in New Delhi. No formal agenda has been set, but observers expect the emerging geopolitical alliance between the four large developing countries who brokered the final "deal" with the US in Denmark will define a common position on emission reductions and climate aid money, and seek ways to convince other countries to sign up to the Copenhagen accord that emerged last month. Fewer than 30 countries out of the 192 who are signed up to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which organised Copenhagen, have indicated that they will sign. Many are known to be deeply unhappy with the $100bn pledged for climate aid and the decision not to make deeper cuts in emissions. Under UN laws, consensus is required. There is confusion over the legal standing of the agreement reached in Copenhagen and many countries may not be in a position to sign up by 31 January because they have yet to consult their parliaments. Meanwhile, Bolivia, one of a handful of poor countries which openly opposed the deal in Copenhagen, has invited countries and non-governmental groups which want a much stronger climate deal to the World Conference of the People on Climate Change. Pershing said that he had told some of those leaders that there was no prospect of reaching a stronger deal that would limit warming to 1.5 degrees. The conference, to be held in Cochabamba in Bolivia from 20-22 April, is expected to attract heads of state from the loose alliance of socialist "Alba" countries, including Venezuela and Cuba. Alba, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America countries, was set up to provide an alternative to the US-led free trade area of the Americas. Bolivia this week urged leaders of the world's indigenous ethnic groups and scientists to come. "The invitation is to heads of state but chiefly to civil society. We think that social movements and non government groups, people not at decision level, have an important role in climate talks," said Maria Souviron, the Bolivian ambassador in London. The meeting, which is intended to cement ties between the seven Alba countries, is also expected to pursue the idea of an international court for environmental crimes, as well as the radical idea of "mother earth rights". This would give all entities, from man to endangered animal species, an equal right to life. "Our objective is to save humanity and not just half of humanity," said Morales in a speech at Copenhagen. "We are here to save mother earth. Our objective is to reduce climate change to [under] 1C. [Above this] many islands will disappear and Africa will suffer a holocaust. The real cause of climate change is the capitalist system. If we want to save the earth then we must end that economic model." =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Thu Jan 14 18:07:36 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:07:36 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Haitian Earthquake: Made in the USA Message-ID: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/14-13 CommonDreams.org January 14, 2010 Haitian Earthquake: Made in the USA Why the Blood Is on Our Hands by Ted Rall As grim accounts of the earthquake in Haiti came in, the accounts in U.S.-controlled state media all carried the same descriptive sentence: "Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere..." Gee, I wonder how that happened? You'd think Haiti would be loaded. After all, it made a lot of people rich. How did Haiti get so poor? Despite a century of American colonialism, occupation, and propping up corrupt dictators? Even though the CIA staged coups d'?tat against every democratically elected president they ever had? It's an important question. An earthquake isn't just an earthquake. The same 7.0 tremor hitting San Francisco wouldn't kill nearly as many people as in Port-au-Prince. "Looking at the pictures, essentially it looks as if (the buildings are of) breezeblock or cinderblock construction, and what you need in an earthquake zone is metal bars that connect the blocks so that they stay together when they get shaken," notes Sandy Steacey, director of the Environmental Science Research Institute at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. "In a wealthy country with good seismic building codes that are enforced, you would have some damage, but not very much." When a pile of cinderblocks falls on you, your odds of survival are long. Even if you miraculously survive, a poor country like Haiti doesn't have the equipment, communications infrastructure or emergency service personnel to pull you out of the rubble in time. And if your neighbors get you out, there's no ambulance to take you to the hospital--or doctor to treat you once you get there. Earthquakes are random events. How many people they kill is predetermined. In Haiti this week, don't blame tectonic plates. Ninety-nine percent of the death toll is attributable to poverty. So the question is relevant. How'd Haiti become so poor? The story begins in 1910, when a U.S. State Department-National City Bank of New York (now called Citibank) consortium bought the Banque National d'Ha?ti--Haiti's only commercial bank and its national treasury--in effect transferring Haiti's debts to the Americans. Five years later, President Woodrow Wilson ordered troops to occupy the country in order to keep tabs on "our" investment. >From 1915 to 1934, the U.S. Marines imposed harsh military occupation, murdered Haitians patriots and diverted 40 percent of Haiti's gross domestic product to U.S. bankers. Haitians were banned from government jobs. Ambitious Haitians were shunted into the puppet military, setting the stage for a half-century of U.S.-backed military dictatorship. The U.S. kept control of Haiti's finances until 1947. Still--why should Haitians complain? Sure, we stole 40 percent of Haiti's national wealth for 32 years. But we let them keep 60 percent. Whiners. Despite having been bled dry by American bankers and generals, civil disorder prevailed until 1957, when the CIA installed President-for-Life Fran?ois "Papa Doc" Duvalier. Duvalier's brutal Tonton Macoutes paramilitary goon squads murdered at least 30,000 Haitians and drove educated people to flee into exile. But think of the cup as half-full: fewer people in the population means fewer people competing for the same jobs! Upon Papa Doc's death in 1971, the torch passed to his even more dissolute 19-year-old son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. The U.S., cool to Papa Doc in his later years, quickly warmed back up to his kleptomaniacal playboy heir. As the U.S. poured in arms and trained his army as a supposed anti-communist bulwark against Castro's Cuba, Baby Doc stole an estimated $300 to $800 million from the national treasury, according to Transparency International. The money was placed in personal accounts in Switzerland and elsewhere. Under U.S. influence, Baby Doc virtually eliminated import tariffs for U.S. goods. Soon Haiti was awash predatory agricultural imports dumped by American firms. Domestic rice farmers went bankrupt. A nation that had been agriculturally self-sustaining collapsed. Farms were abandoned. Hundreds of thousands of farmers migrated to the teeming slums of Port-au-Prince. The Duvalier era, 29 years in all, came to an end in 1986 when President Ronald Reagan ordered U.S. forces to whisk Baby Doc to exile in France, saving him from a popular uprising. Once again, Haitians should thank Americans. Duvalierism was "tough love." Forcing Haitians to make do without their national treasury was our nice way or encouraging them to work harder, to lift themselves up by their bootstraps. Or, in this case, flipflops. Anyway. The U.S. has been all about tough love ever since. We twice deposed the populist and popular democratically-elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The second time, in 2004, we even gave him a free flight to the Central African Republic! (He says the CIA kidnapped him, but whatever.) Hey, he needed a rest. And it was kind of us to support a new government formed by former Tonton Macoutes. Yet, despite everything we've done for Haiti, they're still a fourth-world failed state on a fault line. And still, we haven't given up. American companies like Disney generously pay wages to their sweatshop workers of 28 cents an hour. What more do these ingrates want? Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Thu Jan 14 19:05:05 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:05:05 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Obama wants $33 billion more for wars Message-ID: <59D220A7265742A59C2BED94D717F3EA@agingCHS072729> http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/34831989/ns/politics-white_house/ Associated Press Jan. 12, 2010 Obama wants $33 billion more for wars Comes on top of record $708 billion request for next year WASHINGTON - The Obama administration plans to ask Congress for an additional $33 billion to fight unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on top of a record request for $708 billion for the Defense Department next year, The Associated Press has learned. The administration also plans to tell Congress next month that its central military objectives for the next four years will include winning the current wars while preventing new ones, and its core missions will include both counterinsurgency and counterterror operations. The administration's Quadrennial Defense Review, the main articulation of U.S. military doctrine, is due in Congress on Feb. 1. Top military commanders were briefed on the document at the Pentagon on Monday and Tuesday. They also received a preview of the administration's budget plans through 2015. The four-year review outlines six crucial mission areas and spells out capabilities and goals the Pentagon wants to develop. The pilotless drones used for surveillance and attack missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan are a priority, with a goal of speeding up the purchase of new Reaper drones and expansion of Predator and Reaper drone flights through 2013. The extra $33 billion in 2010 would go mostly toward expansion of the war in Afghanistan. Obama ordered an extra 30,000 troops for that war as part of an overhaul of the war strategy late last year. The request for that additional funding will be sent to Congress at the same time as the record spending request for next year, making financing the war an especially difficult pill for some of Obama's Democratic allies to swallow. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Thu Jan 14 20:31:46 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:31:46 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Our Role in Haiti's Plight Message-ID: <7E8C50DBEDCF4CF7AFC469A461CFBBAB@agingCHS072729> http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/296.php#continue The B u l l e t Socialist Project . E-Bulletin No. 296 January 15, 2010 --------------------------------------- Our Role in Haiti's Plight Peter Hallward Any large city in the world would have suffered extensive damage from an earthquake on the scale of the one that ravaged Haiti's capital city on Tuesday afternoon, but it's no accident that so much of Port-au-Prince now looks like a war zone. Much of the devastation wreaked by this latest and most calamitous disaster to befall Haiti is best understood as another thoroughly manmade outcome of a long and ugly historical sequence. The country has faced more than its fair share of catastrophes. Hundreds died in Port-au-Prince in an earthquake back in June 1770, and the huge earthquake of 7 May 1842 may have killed 10,000 in the northern city of Cap ?Haitien alone. Hurricanes batter the island on a regular basis, most recently in 2004 and again in 2008; the storms of September 2008 flooded the town of Gona?ves and swept away much of its flimsy infrastructure, killing more than a thousand people and destroying many thousands of homes. The full scale of the destruction resulting from this earthquake may not become clear for several weeks. Even minimal repairs will take years to complete, and the long-term impact is incalculable. What is already all too clear, however, is the fact that this impact will be the result of an even longer-term history of deliberate impoverishment and disempowerment. Haiti is routinely described as the "poorest country in the western hemisphere." This poverty is the direct legacy of perhaps the most brutal system of colonial exploitation in world history, compounded by decades of systematic postcolonial oppression. The noble "international community" which is currently scrambling to send its "humanitarian aid" to Haiti is largely responsible for the extent of the suffering it now aims to reduce. Ever since the U.S. invaded and occupied the country in 1915, every serious political attempt to allow Haiti's people to move (in former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's phrase) "from absolute misery to a dignified poverty" has been violently and deliberately blocked by the U.S. government and some of its allies. Aristide's own government (elected by some 75% of the electorate) was the latest victim of such interference, when it was overthrown by an internationally sponsored coup in 2004 that killed several thousand people and left much of the population smouldering in resentment. The UN has subsequently maintained a large and enormously expensive stabilisation and pacification force in the country. Haiti is now a country where, according to the best available study, around 75% of the population "lives on less than $2 per day, and 56% - four and a half million people - live on less than $1 per day." Decades of neoliberal "adjustment" and neo-imperial intervention have robbed its government of any significant capacity to invest in its people or to regulate its economy. Punitive international trade and financial arrangements ensure that such destitution and impotence will remain a structural fact of Haitian life for the foreseeable future. The Neoliberal Assault It is this poverty and powerlessness that account for the full scale of the horror in Port-au-Prince today. Since the late 1970s, relentless neoliberal assault on Haiti's agrarian economy has forced tens of thousands of small farmers into overcrowded urban slums. Although there are no reliable statistics, hundreds of thousands of Port-au-Prince residents now live in desperately sub-standard informal housing, often perched precariously on the side of deforested ravines. The selection of the people living in such places and conditions is itself no more "natural" or accidental than the extent of the injuries they have suffered. As Brian Concannon, the director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, points out: "Those people got there because they or their parents were intentionally pushed out of the countryside by aid and trade policies specifically designed to create a large captive and therefore exploitable labour force in the cities; by definition they are people who would not be able to afford to build earthquake resistant houses." Meanwhile the city's basic infrastructure - running water, electricity, roads, etc - remains woefully inadequate, often non-existent. The government's ability to mobilise any sort of disaster relief is next to nil. The international community has been effectively ruling Haiti since the 2004 coup. The same countries scrambling to send emergency help to Haiti now, however, have during the last five years consistently voted against any extension of the UN mission's mandate beyond its immediate military purpose. Proposals to divert some of this "investment" toward poverty reduction or agrarian development have been blocked, in keeping with the long-term patterns that continue to shape the ?distribution of international "aid." The same storms that killed so many in 2008 hit Cuba just as hard but killed only four people. Cuba has escaped the worst effects of neoliberal "reform," and its government retains a capacity to defend its people from disaster. If we are serious about helping Haiti through this latest crisis then we should take this comparative point on board. Along with sending emergency relief, we should ask what we can do to facilitate the self-empowerment of Haiti's people and public institutions. If we are serious about helping we need to stop ?trying to control Haiti's government, to pacify its citizens, and to exploit its economy. And then we need to start paying for at least some of the damage we've already done. . Peter Hallward is a Canadian-born professor of philosophy at Middlesex University in London, UK. His Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment was published in 2008 by Verso. That year, he made a four-city speaking tour across Canada to coincide with the book's publishing, organized by the Canada Haiti Action Network. This article first appeared on The Guardian website. --------------------------------------- Urgent Appeal for the People of Haiti From the Canada Haiti Action Network January 14, 2010 - Two days ago at 5 pm local time, a powerful magnitude-7 earthquake struck in Haiti. It was centred near the capital city Port-au-Prince and has caused massive destruction. The Canada Haiti Action Network urges Canadians and others around the world to contribute generously to emergency relief. You can contribute to the Haitian Red Cross through its international partners in the International Red Cross. Contributions are tax deductible. The Canadian Red Cross is at: www.redcross.ca/article.asp?id=33900&tid=001. We also encourage contributions to the following organizations. Remember that you must provide a name and return mailing address in order to receive a tax-deductible receipt: .Zanmi Lasante/Partners in Health - medical center is located in the Central Plateau of Haiti and delivers health care through a network of clinics in that region of the country. It also trains Haitians as doctors and health professionals. The health center survived the earthquake and is moving to deliver aid to the disaster zone. Donations in the U.S. are tax deductible. To donate, go to: www.pih.org By mail, "Haiti Earthquake Relief" in cheque memo line to: Partners In Health P.O. Box 845578 Boston, MA 02284-5578 .Doctors Without Borders/Medecins sans fronti?res - operates clinics in Port au Prince and surrounding neighbourhoods. It has expertise in disaster relief. Donations in Canada and the U.S. are tax deductible. Go to: www.msf.ca/news-media/news/2010/01/haiti-update By mail, "Haiti Earthquake" in memo line: Doctors Without Borders 720 Spadina Ave, Suite 402 Toronto, ON M5S 2P9 .Sawatzky Family Foundation-SOPUDEP School - is a pioneering school in Petionville with an enrolment of 600 students from elementary to senior high school grades. The school was not in session when the disaster struck; we do not know if the building survived. The resources of the school and its teachers are being mobilized to assist the neighbouring population. The Sawatzky Family Foundation is a registered charity in Canada and issues tax deductible receipts. Go to: www.sopudep.org/donate By mail: The Sawatzky Family Foundation PO Box 626, 25 Peter Street North Orillia, Ontario, Canada L3V 6K5 .Haiti Emergency Relief Fund - In association with the Haiti Action Committee in San Francisco/Bay Area, this fund delivers resources directly to grassroots organizations in Haiti. It was founded 04 following the 2004 coup d'etat that forced the elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, from office and imposed a two-year regime of human rights violations whose consequence continues today. Go to: www.haitiaction.net/About/HERF/HERF.html By mail: Haiti Emergency Relief Fund/EBSC East Bay Sanctuary Covenant 2362 Bancroft Way Berkeley, CA 94704 .For more information, including telephone contact, go to the website of the Canada Haiti Action Network at canadahaitiaction.ca and Toronto Haiti Action Committee (THAC). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( The B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From may at applebybooks.net Fri Jan 15 02:04:56 2010 From: may at applebybooks.net (May at Appleby Books) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:04:56 -0800 Subject: [Fresh Ink] New Terrorist Threat Message-ID: <4B5021A8.5050905@applebybooks.net> A teacher was arrested today at John F. Kennedy International Airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a compass, a slide-rule and a calculator. At a morning press conference, the Attorney General said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement. He did not identify the man, who has been charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction. "Al-Gebra is a problem for us," the Attorney General said. "They derive solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in search of absolute values." They use secret code names like 'X' and 'Y' and refer to themselves as "unknowns", but we have determined that they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, 'There are 3 sides to every triangle'. When asked to comment on the arrest, President Obama said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, he would have given us more fingers and toes." White House aides told reporters they could not recall a more intelligent or profound statement by the President. It is believed that the Nobel Prize for Physics will follow. * * * * * From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 15 09:00:43 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:00:43 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Arctic permafrost leaking methane at record levels, figures show Message-ID: <62E47AF778394A99BADC0ED772AB857B@agingCHS072729> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/14/arctic-permafrost-methane guardian.co.uk 14 January 2010 Arctic permafrost leaking methane at record levels, figures show Experts say methane emissions from the Arctic have risen by almost one-third in just five years, and that sharply rising temperatures are to blame David Adam, environment correspondent [Photo: Permafrost in Siberia. Methane emissions from the Arctic permafrost increased by 31% from 2003-07, figures show. Photograph: Francis Latreille/Corbis] Scientists have recorded a massive spike in the amount of a powerful greenhouse gas seeping from Arctic permafrost, in a discovery that highlights the risks of a dangerous climate tipping point. Experts say methane emissions from the Arctic have risen by almost one-third in just five years, and that sharply rising temperatures are to blame. The discovery follows a string of reports from the region in recent years that previously frozen boggy soils are melting and releasing methane in greater quantities. Such Arctic soils currently lock away billions of tonnes of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, leading some scientists to describe melting permafrost as a ticking time bomb that could overwhelm efforts to tackle climate change. They fear the warming caused by increased methane emissions will itself release yet more methane and lock the region into a destructive cycle that forces temperatures to rise faster than predicted. Paul Palmer, a scientist at Edinburgh University who worked on the new study, said: "High latitude wetlands are currently only a small source of methane but for these emissions to increase by a third in just five years is very significant. It shows that even a relatively small amount of warming can cause a large increase in the amount of methane emissions." Global warming is occuring twice as fast in the Arctic than anywhere else on Earth. Some regions have already warmed by 2.5C, and temperatures there are projected to increase by more than 10C by 2100 if carbon emissions continue to rise at current rates. Palmer said: "This study does not show the Arctic has passed a tipping point, but it should open people's eyes. It shows there is a positive feedback and that higher temperatures bring higher emissions and faster warming." The change in the Arctic is enough to explain a recent increase in global methane levels in the atmosphere, he said. Global levels have risen steadily since 2007, after a decade or so holding steady. The new study, published in the journal Science, shows that methane emissions from the Arctic increased by 31% from 2003-07. The increase represents about 1m extra tonnes of methane each year. Palmer cautioned that the five-year increase was too short to call a definitive trend. The findings are part of a wider study of methane emissions from global wetlands, such as paddy fields, marshes and bogs. To identify where methane was released, the researchers combined methane levels in the atmosphere with surface temperature changes. They did not measure methane emissions directly, but used satellite measurements of variations in groundwater depth, which alter the way bacteria break down organic matter to release or consume methane. They found that just over half of all methane emissions came from the tropics, with some 20m tonnes released from the Amazon river basin each year, and 26m tonnes from the Congo basin. Rice paddy fields across China and south and south-east Asia produced just under one-third of global methane, some 33m tonnes. Just 2% of global methane comes from Arctic latitudes, the study found, though the region showed the largest increases. The 31% rise in methane emissions there from 2003-07 was enough to help lift the global average increase to 7%. Palmer said: "Our study reinforces the idea that satellites can pinpoint changes in the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from a particular place on earth. This opens the door to quantifying greenhouse gas emissions made from a variety of natural and man-made sources." Palmer said it was a "disgrace" that so few satellites were launched to monitor levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. He said it was unclear whether the team would be able to continue the methane monitoring in future. The pair of satellites used to analyse water, known as Grace, are already over their expected mission life time, while a European version launched last year, called Goce, is scheduled to fly for less than two years. The new study follows repeated warnings that even modest levels of global warming could trigger huge increases in methane release from permafrost. Phillipe Ciais, a researcher with the Laboratory for Climate Sciences and the Environment in Gif-sur-Yvette, France, told a scientific meeting in Copenhagen last March that billions of tonnes could be released by just a 2C average global rise. More on methane While carbon dioxide gets most of the attention in the global warming debate, methane is pound-for-pound a more potent greenhouse gas, capable of trapping some 20 times more heat than CO2. Although methane is present in much lower quantities in the atmosphere, its potency makes it responsible for about one-fifth of man-made warming. The gas is found in natural gas deposits and is generated naturally by bacteria that break down organic matter, such as in the guts of farm animal. About two-thirds of global methane comes from man-made sources, and levels have more than doubled since the industrial revolution. Unlike carbon dioxide, methane lasts only a decade or so in the atmosphere, which has led some experts to call for greater attention to curbs on its production. Reductions in methane emissions could bring faster results in the fight against climate change, they say. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 15 12:31:47 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:31:47 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King Jr. Message-ID: <9CC73518DB9F47F9A9A61102F37AC89D@agingCHS072729> Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King Jr. We do remember that you said this: "This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." -- MLK http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/ =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 15 13:41:45 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 13:41:45 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] The Empire Discovers Yemen Message-ID: <77672918B14B49CDA04CCC063C41F3AC@agingCHS072729> http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2010/01/13/the-empire-discovers-yemen/ Antiwar.com January 14, 2010 The Empire Discovers Yemen by Philip Giraldi It was another one of those Orwellian moments that have occurred so frequently over the past eight years. On January 4th Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that ". we see global implications from the war in Yemen and the ongoing efforts by al-Qaeda in Yemen to use it as a base for terrorist attacks far beyond the region." As in Orwell's 1984, one almost expected Clinton to intone "We have always been at war with Yemen" during a two minutes of hate rally held on the White House lawn. The Clinton statement was widely reported in the media as a call to arms by the Obama Administration because Yemen has become a "global threat." The White House's identification of a new enemy was good news for those who had become concerned that the war on terror, now called overseas contingency operations, was not expanding quickly enough. So what do we do about the central front in the fight against terrorism? It had recently moved from Iraq, where 130,000 US soldiers still sit around playing gin rummy, to Afghanistan. Soon there will be 100,000 American soldiers supplemented by even more contractors and nation builders in that unhappy land bringing democracy and freedom. If Yemen becomes the new central front, President Hamid Karzai will undoubtedly lament no longer being number one and demand a recount. Yemen, who would have thought of Yemen as the new front? Somalia for sure, maybe Mauretania, Mali, or Chad. And it all happened because of a Christmas surprise on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. Good thing a couple of guys in Sana'a were able to fit a confused Nigerian with an underwear bomb that failed to go off otherwise we Americans would not have been alerted to the Yemeni threat. Why, by some reports there are as many as two or three hundred al-Qaeda supporters in the country. Time to land a couple of Marine divisions, if we had them to spare. Yemen's sudden emergence makes you wonder a bit about the $70 billion annual intelligence budget. I realize that they are somewhat preoccupied in dodging suicide bombers while wiping out Afghan wedding parties with hellfire missiles, but didn't they know Yemen was there? It admittedly is a bit hard to find on a map, tucked away as it is on a corner of the Arabian Peninsula, but surely there were some smart guys in Washington who knew that al-Qaeda in Yemen was doing a lot of searching in websites advertising underwear. Now that Yemen has been discovered it changes the way we should think about the security of the United States. Al-Qaeda, which only a couple of weeks ago was slinking around in caves, is suddenly possessed of infinite guile and resourcefulness. How else would those fiends incarnate have come up with an underwear suicide bomber? And Yemen will surely be another fun imperial adventure for America's all-volunteer army. It is a country dominated by heavily armed tribesmen who are fiercely independent, frequently engaged in activities that most observers would regard as criminal, deeply conservative in religion and culture but further divided along sectarian lines, and ruled over by a highly corrupt government that is fighting both a civil war and an insurgency. Throw into the hopper crushing poverty, high unemployment, extremely rugged trackless terrain, porous borders, and security forces incapable of exercising jurisdiction outside of the capital city and it is a perfect place to spend a long vacation especially if you like to blow things up. Yemen used to export oil but it is running out and is short on water so long hot showers after a day trekking through the desert are definitely out. Of course, the Pentagon could ask Halliburton to truck some water in at $300 per gallon. Intelligence officers who are familiar with Yemen agree that coming to grips with the country's tribesmen in an attempt to root out al-Qaeda will make Afghanistan look a Sunday stroll in Central Park. As is frequently the case in the imperial capital city of Oz referred to as Washington, the Obamas see another Yemen that is divorced from reality. It is an opportunity for nation building, to strengthen institutions and the economy and support an ostensibly friendly government to suppress terrorism. But it doesn't take much to see what's wrong with that approach. The Yemenis themselves are fearful of the consequences of too tight an embrace by Washington and have already announced that they will accept American dollars but no foreign soldiers. They have even indicated their willingness to negotiate with al-Qaeda, a thumb in the eye for Clinton and Obama. They see gangsterism and tribalism as their greatest internal security threats, not terrorism. They know that many of the several hundred citizens who call themselves al-Qaeda are likely the grapes of wrath, bitter fruit from Guant?namo Bay, where the United States successfully confined Yemenis who were completely innocent, radicalizing them and turning them into terrorism proselytizers upon their return home. As if picking on Yemen is not enough, the US is also redefining its relationships with a basket of fourteen countries that are defined as "state sponsors of terrorism and countries of interest." Citizens of those countries will be required to undergo special security screening that might include invasive body and cavity searches. Twelve of the countries in question are overwhelmingly Muslim. One is half Muslim (Nigeria) and one is communist (Cuba). The inclusion of Cuba is bizarre as there has never been a suicide bomber from Cuba but it reveals the mindset of the Obama Administration - let's make it look like we're doing something even if it is completely ridiculous and irrelevant. And President Obama is so good at describing it all with a sincere face, reminiscent of the beefsteak mine bonds salesman J. Frothingham Waterbury in the W.C. Fields movie The Bank Dick, "I want to show you I'm honest in the worst way." The use of nationality as a defining issue in airport security screening is unprecedented. It will be seen as an insult to the citizens of the countries involved, implying that that they are all somehow being regarded as terrorists, and will further harden already negative views about the United States. It also is illogical as many of the world's most radicalized young men carry European passports. And travel by air will get much, much more unpleasant. Broadening the security sweep to include any and all travelers from certain countries will create difficulties for the security system and for air travel in general. This is already being seen in Europe, where the demands from the Transportation Security Administration and the Obama White House have effectively created a two tier security system which no one has quite figured out how to implement. It is also creating a backlash in the Muslim world, where media reports emphasize the anti-Islamic message being sent by the new procedures, suggesting that the new administration in Washington is again signaling its intent to engage in conflict the entire Muslim world, knocking the countries off like dominoes, one by one. The lesson of Guant?namo - i.e. that you will turn innocent people into terrorists by treating them as such - is also being ignored. The Obama Administration needs to step back from what it is doing. It must first acknowledge that it doesn't have a clue what is going on in Yemen or in most other places. It should stop the fearmongering and recognize that Yemen is not a threat to the United States, must realize that it will not fix the country through the addition of American soldiers, and that the best thing to do when dealing with a complex and poorly understood situation is to leave it alone. Regarding airport and airline security, Washington must stop feeding the panic. It should fix the failure to communicate and other disconnects in the system by repairing what must be repaired and retaining what works while maybe firing a few useless bureaucrats along the way to show that it is serious. Increasing the size of government and buying billions of dollars of expensive new equipment that doesn't work while expanding no-fly lists and hiring more snoopers is no solution. Washington must establish workable and effective security standards that apply to everyone without appearing to accuse entire nations of being prone to terrorism. If it does all that, the ability of Americans and others to travel safely will be improved and the United States will avoid yet another tragic involvement in a faraway land where there is no vital national interest at stake. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 15 14:36:00 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:36:00 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Yemen: Deja Vu All Over Again Message-ID: http://www.fpif.org/articles/yemen_dj_vu_all_over_again Foreign Policy in Focus January 13, 2010 Yemen: Deja Vu All Over Again By Phyllis Bennis Barack Obama is not the first US president to find Yemen a challenge. And the current $70 million package of military and security assistance is not the first $70 million US aid program to Yemen. Two decades ago, in 1990, then-President George H.W. Bush was preparing for his looming invasion of Iraq - what would become Operation Desert Storm. Like his son in 2002, Bush was eager to force a unanimous vote in the United Nations Security Council endorsing his war. But unlike George Junior who abandoned the UN when the Council stood defiant against his illegal war, the first President Bush was willing to pay - in expensive bribes and political concessions - to win what the great Pakistani scholar Eqbal Ahmad called "a multilateral fig-leaf for a unilateral war." For poor and weak countries on the Council, the United States offered new economic assistance, access to cheap Saudi oil, and crucially, military aid packages to governments long denied such support because of civil wars and/or widespread corruption and repression in their countries. So the governments of Colombia, Ethiopia, and Zaire all took their kickbacks and voted yes. For China, which had threatened to veto the war-backing resolution, the Bush administration offered diplomatic rehabilitation and the resumption of long-term development aid, both of which had been cut in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre the year before. China abstained. Two countries were left. One was Cuba, which refused on principle to endorse the US-led invasion, although Cuba had joined in the Council's unanimous condemnation of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait as illegal. The other "no" vote came from Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world. Yemen was serving as a Security Council member largely in recognition of its reunification after 10 years of a brutal civil war. With the Arab world divided down the middle by the threat of a U.S. attack and only one Arab country on the Council, there was no way Yemen could endorse an invasion of its region. Yemen voted no. And no sooner had the Yemeni ambassador, Abdullah al-Ashtal, put down his hand, then a U.S. diplomat moved to his side, telling him "that will be the most expensive 'no' vote you ever cast." The remark was picked up on an open UN microphone and immediately broadcast throughout UN headquarters and soon throughout the world. Journalists and analysts excoriated the U.S. diplomat for not knowing the mike was on and being caught in such an embarrassing situation. But I always thought he knew exactly what he was doing - because the message was not really aimed at Yemen. No one in Washington knew or cared at that time about what Yemen or Yemenis did or thought. The message aimed much broader, at every country in the UN that might consider defying U.S. power. The message was clear: if you cross us on an issue important to us, you will pay a price. The people of Yemen paid a huge price. Three days later Washington made good on its threat and cut its entire aid budget to Yemen, an already measly $70 million. And today, 20 years later, diplomats and staff around UN headquarters still refer uneasily to the "Yemen Precedent." This week the Obama administration announced plans to send $70 million in aid to Yemen. But it won't be for medicine, building homes, or job training. And the accompanying U.S. experts won't be hydrologists or doctors or midwife instructors. The $70 million will be for "counter-terrorism" and "security" purposes - and the U.S. experts will be military trainers and various kinds of Special Forces. But a strengthened Yemeni military will not reverse Yemen's legacy of anti-Americanism and the support for anti-U.S. violence that sometimes accompanies it. What if - just imagine - the United States had not used Yemen to broadcast the price of defiance to other wavering governments? What if the United States had not reprimanded the Yemeni government by punishing the entire Yemeni population and then largely ignoring the impoverished people for most of two decades? What if, instead of cutting its entire aid budget, the United States had flooded Yemen and its people with agricultural assistance, training for midwives and doctors, access to the latest hydrology technology to recover scarce water, and lots and lots of money for Yemenis themselves to use to build up their own country's social and physical infrastructure as they chose, not as US "experts" imposed? Today, twenty years later, things might just be a whole lot different.. Phyllis Bennis directs the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. Her latest book, with David Wildman, is Ending The Us War In Afghanistan: A Primer (Olive Branch Press, 2009) =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 16 09:46:56 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2010 09:46:56 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Fw: Obama confidant's spine-chilling proposal Message-ID: <63FAA8EB646B489AB498F0E6726220F5@agingCHS072729> (hat tip to Henry H.) Friday, Jan 15, 2010 08:16 EST Glenn Greenwald Obama confidant's spine-chilling proposal By Glenn Greenwald (updated below - Update II - Update III) Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama's closest confidants. Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama's head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for "overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs." In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-"independent" advocates to "cognitively infiltrate" online groups and websites -- as well as other activist groups -- which advocate views that Sunstein deems "false conspiracy theories" about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens' faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. The paper's abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here. Sunstein advocates that the Government's stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups." He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called "independent" credible voices to bolster the Government's messaging (on the ground that those who don't believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government). This program would target those advocating false "conspiracy theories," which they define to mean: "an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role." Sunstein's 2008 paper was flagged by this blogger, and then amplified in an excellent report by Raw Story's Daniel Tencer. a.. Continue Reading There's no evidence that the Obama administration has actually implemented a program exactly of the type advocated by Sunstein, though in light of this paper and the fact that Sunstein's position would include exactly such policies, that question certainly ought to be asked. Regardless, Sunstein's closeness to the President, as well as the highly influential position he occupies, merits an examination of the mentality behind what he wrote. This isn't an instance where some government official wrote a bizarre paper in college 30 years ago about matters unrelated to his official powers; this was written 18 months ago, at a time when the ascendancy of Sunstein's close friend to the Presidency looked likely, in exactly the area he now oversees. Additionally, the government-controlled messaging that Sunstein desires has been a prominent feature of U.S. Government actions over the last decade, including in some recently revealed practices of the current administration, and the mindset in which it is grounded explains a great deal about our political class. All of that makes Sunstein's paper worth examining in greater detail. * * * * * Initially, note how similar Sunstein's proposal is to multiple, controversial stealth efforts by the Bush administration to secretly influence and shape our political debates. The Bush Pentagon employed teams of former Generals to pose as "independent analysts" in the media while secretly coordinating their talking points and messaging about wars and detention policies with the Pentagon. Bush officials secretly paid supposedly "independent" voices, such as Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher, to advocate pro-Bush policies while failing to disclose their contracts. In Iraq, the Bush Pentagon hired a company, Lincoln Park, which paid newspapers to plant pro-U.S. articles while pretending it came from Iraqi citizens. In response to all of this, Democrats typically accused the Bush administration of engaging in government-sponsored propaganda -- and when it was done domestically, suggested this was illegal propaganda. Indeed, there is a very strong case to make that what Sunstein is advocating is itself illegal under long-standing statutes prohibiting government "propaganda" within the U.S., aimed at American citizens: As explained in a March 21, 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, "publicity or propaganda" is defined by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to mean either (1) self-aggrandizement by public officials, (2) purely partisan activity, or (3) "covert propaganda." By covert propaganda, GAO means information which originates from the government but is unattributed and made to appear as though it came from a third party. Covert government propaganda is exactly what Sunstein craves. His mentality is indistinguishable from the Bush mindset that led to these abuses, and he hardly tries to claim otherwise. Indeed, he favorably cites both the covert Lincoln Park program as well as Paul Bremer's closing of Iraqi newspapers which published stories the U.S. Government disliked, and justifies them as arguably necessary to combat "false conspiracy theories" in Iraq -- the same goal Sunstein has for the U.S. Sunstein's response to these criticisms is easy to find in what he writes, and is as telling as the proposal itself. He acknowledges that some "conspiracy theories" previously dismissed as insane and fringe have turned out to be entirely true (his examples: the CIA really did secretly administer LSD in "mind control" experiments; the DOD really did plot the commission of terrorist acts inside the U.S. with the intent to blame Castro; the Nixon White House really did bug the DNC headquarters). Given that history, how could it possibly be justified for the U.S. Government to institute covert programs designed to undermine anti-government "conspiracy theories," discredit government critics, and increase faith and trust in government pronouncements? Because, says Sunstein, such powers are warranted only when wielded by truly well-intentioned government officials who want to spread The Truth and Do Good -- i.e., when used by people like Cass Sunstein and Barack Obama: Throughout, we assume a well-motivated government that aims to eliminate conspiracy theories, or draw their poison, if and only if social welfare is improved by doing so. But it's precisely because the Government is so often not "well-motivated" that such powers are so dangerous. Advocating them on the ground that "we will use them well" is every authoritarian's claim. More than anything else, this is the toxic mentality that consumes our political culture: when our side does X, X is Good, because we're Good and are working for Good outcomes. That was what led hordes of Bush followers to endorse the same large-government surveillance programs they long claimed to oppose, and what leads so many Obama supporters now to justify actions that they spent the last eight years opposing. * * * * * Consider the recent revelation that the Obama administration has been making very large, undisclosed payments to MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber to provide consultation on the President's health care plan. With this lucrative arrangement in place, Gruber spent the entire year offering public justifications for Obama's health care plan, typically without disclosing these payments, and far worse, was repeatedly held out by the White House -- falsely -- as an "independent" or "objective" authority. Obama allies in the media constantly cited Gruber's analysis to support their defenses of the President's plan, and the White House, in turn, then cited those media reports as proof that their plan would succeed. This created an infinite "feedback loop" in favor of Obama's health care plan which -- unbeknownst to the public -- was all being generated by someone who was receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in secret from the administration (read this to see exactly how it worked). In other words, this arrangement was quite similar to the Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher scandals which Democrats, in virtual lockstep, condemned. Paul Krugman, for instance, in 2005 angrily lambasted right-wing pundits and policy analysts who received secret, undisclosed payments, and said they lack "intellectual integrity"; he specifically cited the Armstrong Williams case. Yet the very same Paul Krugman last week attacked Marcy Wheeler for helping to uncover the Gruber payments by accusing her of being "just like the right-wingers with their endless supply of fake scandals." What is one key difference? Unlike Williams and Gallagher, Jonathan Gruber is a Good, Well-Intentioned Person with Good Views -- he favors health care -- and so massive, undisclosed payments from the same administration he's defending are dismissed as a "fake scandal." Sunstein himself -- as part of his 2008 paper -- explicitly advocates that the Government should pay what he calls "credible independent experts" to advocate on the Government's behalf, a policy he says would be more effective because people don't trust the Government itself and would only listen to people they believe are "independent." In so arguing, Sunstein cites the Armstrong Williams scandal not as something that is wrong in itself, but as a potential risk of this tactic (i.e., that it might leak out), and thus suggests that "government can supply these independent experts with information and perhaps prod them into action from behind the scenes," but warns that "too close a connection will be self-defeating if it is exposed." In other words, Sunstein wants the Government to replicate the Armstrong Williams arrangement as a means of more credibly disseminating propaganda -- i.e., pretending that someone is an "independent" expert when they're actually being "prodded" and even paid "behind the scenes" by the Government -- but he wants to be more careful about how the arrangement is described (don't make the control explicit) so that embarrassment can be avoided if it ends up being exposed. In this 2008 paper, then, Sunstein advocated, in essence, exactly what the Obama administration has been doing all year with Gruber: covertly paying people who can be falsely held up as "independent" analysts in order to more credibly promote the Government line. Most Democrats agreed this was a deceitful and dangerous act when Bush did it, but with Obama and some of his supporters, undisclosed arrangements of this sort seem to be different. Why? Because, as Sunstein puts it: we have "a well-motivated government" doing this so that "social welfare is improved." Thus, just like state secrets, indefinite detention, military commissions and covert, unauthorized wars, what was once deemed so pernicious during the Bush years -- coordinated government/media propaganda -- is instantaneously transformed into something Good. * * * * * What is most odious and revealing about Sunstein's worldview is his condescending, self-loving belief that "false conspiracy theories" are largely the province of fringe, ignorant Internet masses and the Muslim world. That, he claims, is where these conspiracy theories thrive most vibrantly, and he focuses on various 9/11 theories -- both domestically and in Muslim countries -- as his prime example. It's certainly true that one can easily find irrational conspiracy theories in those venues, but some of the most destructive "false conspiracy theories" have emanated from the very entity Sunstein wants to endow with covert propaganda power: namely, the U.S. Government itself, along with its elite media defenders. Moreover, "crazy conspiracy theorist" has long been the favorite epithet of those same parties to discredit people trying to expose elite wrongdoing and corruption. Who is it who relentlessly spread "false conspiracy theories" of Saddam-engineered anthrax attacks and Iraq-created mushroom clouds and a Ba'athist/Al-Qaeda alliance -- the most destructive conspiracy theories of the last generation? And who is it who demonized as "conspiracy-mongers" people who warned that the U.S. Government was illegally spying on its citizens, systematically torturing people, attempting to establish permanent bases in the Middle East, or engineering massive bailout plans to transfer extreme wealth to the industries which own the Government? The most chronic and dangerous purveyors of "conspiracy theory" games are the very people Sunstein thinks should be empowered to control our political debates through deceit and government resources: namely, the Government itself and the Enlightened Elite like him. It is this history of government deceit and wrongdoing that renders Sunstein's desire to use covert propaganda to "undermine" anti-government speech so repugnant. The reason conspiracy theories resonate so much is precisely that people have learned -- rationally -- to distrust government actions and statements. Sunstein's proposed covert propaganda scheme is a perfect illustration of why that is. In other words, people don't trust the Government and "conspiracy theories" are so pervasive precisely because government is typically filled with people like Cass Sunstein, who think that systematic deceit and government-sponsored manipulation are justified by their own Goodness and Superior Wisdom. UPDATE: I don't want to make this primarily about the Gruber scandal -- I cited that only as an example of the type of mischief that this mindset produces -- but just to respond quickly to the typical Gruber defenses already appearing in comments: (1) Gruber's work was only for HHS and had nothing to do with the White House (false); (2) he should have disclosed his payments, but the White House did nothing wrong (false: it repeatedly described him as "independent" and "objective" and constantly cited allied media stories based in Gruber's work); (3) Gruber advocated views he would have advocated anyway in the absence of payment (probably true, but wasn't that also true for life-long conservative Armstrong Williams, life-long social conservative Maggie Gallagher, and the pro-war Pentagon Generals, all of whom mounted the same defense?); and (4) Williams/Gallagher were explicitly paid to advocate particular views while Gruber wasn't (true: that's exactly the arrangement Sunstein advocates to avoid "embarrassment" in the event of disclosure, and it's absurd to suggest that someone being paid many hundreds of thousands of dollars is unaware of what their paymasters want said; that's why disclosure is so imperative). The point is that there are severe dangers to the Government covertly using its resources to "infiltrate" discussions and to shape political debates using undisclosed and manipulative means. It's called "covert propaganda" and it should be opposed regardless of who is in control of it or what its policy aims are. UPDATE II: Ironically, this is the same administration that recently announced a new regulation dictating that "bloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most cases, the receipt of free products and whether or not they were paid in any way by advertisers, as occurs frequently." Without such disclosure, the administration reasoned, the public may not be aware of important hidden incentives (h/t pasquin). Yet the same administration pays an MIT analyst hundreds of thousands of dollars to advocate their most controversial proposed program while they hold him out as "objective," and selects as their Chief Regulator someone who wants government agents to covertly mold political discussions "anonymously or even with false identities." UPDATE III: Just to get a sense for what an extremist Cass Sunstein is (which itself is ironic, given that his paper calls for "cognitive infiltration of extremist groups," as the Abstract puts it), marvel at this paragraph: So Sunstein isn't calling right now for proposals (1) and (2) -- having Government "ban conspiracy theorizing" or "impose some kind of tax on those who" do it -- but he says "each will have a place under imaginable conditions." I'd love to know the "conditions" under which the government-enforced banning of conspiracy theories or the imposition of taxes on those who advocate them will "have a place." That would require, at a bare minumum, a repeal of the First Amendment. Anyone who believes this should, for that reason alone, be barred from any meaningful government position http://www.salon.com/news/cass_sunstein/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2010/01/15/sunstein -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/octet-stream Size: 115648 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: message-footer.txt URL: From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 16 10:13:41 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2010 10:13:41 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Bolivia launches traditional medicines programs Message-ID: <27C153BB64344ED3A905759389DD4542@agingCHS072729> http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/2010/01/bolivia-launches-traditional-medicines.html Bolivia launches traditional medicines programs Rick Kearns, Jan 14 LA PAZ, Bolivia - The Bolivian government is promoting traditional indigenous medicine by sponsoring two intercultural pharmacies and by pledging $10 million towards the development of a larger "pharmaceutical enterprise" according to press statements. Bolivia's Health Minister Ramiro Tapia announced Dec. 29 the opening of the two pharmacies that will offer "ancestral medicine" prescribed by traditional healers known as kallawayas as well as modern Western drugs ordered by contemporary physicians. The conference began with a blessing ceremony where kallawayas "prayed for good results to Pachamama (mother earth)" and burned sweet herbs, coca leaves and other items of significance in Andean indigenous cultures. "The initial launch will take place in La Paz," said Amilcar Rada, medications director for the Ministry of Health, "but the two first Inter-institutional Intercultural Municipal Pharmacies will operate in the Andean towns of Patacamaya and Orinoca [which is the hometown of President Evo Morales]." Rada explained that the intercultural pharmacies will offer remedies developed by modern laboratories that are registered with the Health Ministry, and that in the connected health centers there will be modern doctors and kallawayas that will be available for consultation. He noted that the Health Ministry has already registered traditional medicines such as coca leaf syrup, maca (an Andean tuber) powder used as a stimulant, valerian root oil, which is a sedative or calmative used for anxiety, and torunco ointment that is used for treating rheumatism. Rada also noted that the Ministry is in the process of registering other traditional medicines "by regions and type of products for each illness and in accordance with the peoples' needs." In the week following the press conference about the pharmacies, the Health Ministry also announced that the Bolivian government would invest $10 million into a pharmaceutical enterprise involving the traditional remedies. The Health Minister, on behalf of the government, signed an agreement with a group of kallawayas and a representative of the Major University of San Andres that will allow researchers to investigate and then formally register natural medicines that are being used in Bolivia already but without any official monitoring or control. Tapia said the agreement was put together for the purpose of reasserting the value of traditional medicines "as was ordered by the new Constitution." He also stated that national surveys indicated that 60 percent of Bolivians turn to natural prescriptions before going to a modern physician. "What we will be doing is to guarantee access to formally registered medications, that are scientifically proven and lawfully dispensed," said Igor Pardo, a director at the Health Ministry. "On top of that the state will recover the initiative in a time when many are complaining that some of these same natural elements are being patented by foreign entities." Towards that end, the university's faculty of pharmaceutical science and biochemistry will develop a germplasm - defined as "the hereditary material of germ cells" - bank and a herbarium where scientists would collect and study a variety of plant specimens to be potentially used by the intercultural medications industry. Pardo also noted that upon winning the election in 2006, Morales has directed the Health Ministry to develop programs connecting Western medicine with indigenous practices. Since the onset of this policy, modern doctors in Bolivia have often turned to kallawayas to accompany them on journeys to remote Andean regions to assist in delivering babies; and it is in those areas that people traditionally have more trust in natural healers. That same mandate led Morales to institute a Vice Ministry of Traditional and Intercultural Medicine that was charged with "promoting, protecting and looking after the preservation and strengthening of traditional medicines, in accordance with the knowledge and wisdom of the indigenous cultures," according to Bolivia's Health Ministry Web site. The official site also lists policy objectives such as "strengthening traditional medicine through investigations into the factors involved with treatment of illnesses from the perspective of rural peoples, and to protect traditional medical knowledge through legislation that would recognize intellectual property rights of those healers." Posted by Bolivia Rising on Saturday, January 16, 2010 Labels: health, Indigenous rights =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 16 20:00:27 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2010 20:00:27 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Canada redirects funding for UN relief agency Message-ID: <8C2D3E11CCF84938B1B036CE0B541DFE@agingCHS072729> http://www.thestar.com/living/article/750917--canada-redirects-funding-for-un-relief-agency Toronto Star January 15, 2010 Canada redirects funding for UN relief agency Considering the warring Palestinian factions in Gaza and the West Bank, one has to wonder if Canada has taken sides in the internal conflicts - and will help the PA jail its political enemies Antonia Zerbisias Is Canada pulling the plug on the UN's Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provides education, health and other social services in 59 Palestinian refugee camps in the Middle East? Will UNRWA's Canadian funding be diverted instead to training Palestinian police forces and building courthouses and prisons? That's certainly what was suggested on Wednesday by Treasury Minister Vic Toews in both the Jerusalem Post and a news release from B'nai Brith Canada. Toews, who met on Monday with senior Palestinian Authority (PA) officials in the occupied West Bank, is quoted by the Post saying, "Canada is not reducing the amount of money given to the PA, but it is now being redirected in accordance with Canadian values." Yesterday, the Canada-Israel Committee also released a statement applauding the government's reallocation of UNRWA's funding to "direct food aid to the Palestinians." In the wake of the government's defunding of the humanitarian and activist KAIROS last month which, as Immigration Minister Jason Kenney indicated to a Jerusalem audience, is an anti-Semitic organization, Canada's refusal to fund UNRWA, should that be the case, would come as no surprise. UNRWA is controversial because, as its critics note, its mandate supports the Palestinian right of return. It also has been accused of hiring terrorists. That despite a report last year by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) that said the organization has "strengthened'' its operations to avoid providing support to UN-recognized terrorist groups. "Canadian funding of UNRWA has always been problematic due to the fact that numerous reports spelled out the degree to which Hamas and other Islamic terrorist organizations have infiltrated UNRWA,'' Frank Dimant, executive vice-president of B'nai Brith Canada, said in a statement on Wednesday. "We are grateful that Canadians have a government that truly understands the situation in Israel and the territories and has acted to redirect funding from UNRWA to specific projects in the Palestinian Authority.'' While saying he finds the reports in the Post and in other media confusing on the funding issue, UNRWA's New York City-based Andrew Whitley, who is responsible for the organization's relations with Ottawa, flatly denies any terrorist associations. "We know that there is a vocal pro-Israel lobby in Canada,'' he told me in a telephone interview. "I have met a number of the groups, especially the Canada-Israel Committee, on several occasions and so have the commissioner general and deputy commissioner general of the organization. They have chosen to continue to criticize us unfairly and often quite erroneously making quite false statements - guilt by association - which is not correct." Like KAIROS, UNRWA receives funding via the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), which is overseen by Bev Oda, the minister of international cooperation. Note that the justice funding and UNRWA contributions come from different budgets. But, despite repeated attempts to get clarification from both Toews' and Oda's offices, the exact state of UNRWA's future Canadian contributions remains vague. That said, Toews' communications director, Christine Csversko, said in an email yesterday that Canada is honouring its five-year, $300 million commitment to Palestinians, a pledge made in late 2007, to "support security, justice sector reform, private sector development and humanitarian assistance." In 2009, said Whitley, Canada gave UNRWA $20 million, 3.7 per cent of the funding it receives from governments. It's too early to tell how much, if any, of an allocation will be made for 2010, he added. The amount Canada contributes varies from year to year, depending on emergencies and UNRWA infrastructure projects. Toews' statement in the Jerusalem Post that Canada has "pledged $20M towards training prosecutors, judges and police and building up the Palestinian judicial sector'' is in keeping with what Canada has been doing elsewhere, notably in Haiti. There, Canada has been building prisons and training police forces as opposed to the usual forms of humanitarian aid. But, considering the warring Palestinian factions in Gaza and the West Bank, one has to wonder if Canada has taken sides in the internal conflicts - and will help the PA jail its political enemies. Antonia Zerbisias is a Living section columnist. azerbisias at thestar.ca. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 16 22:52:25 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2010 22:52:25 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] WHERE IS THE AID IN HAITI? Message-ID: http://canadahaitiaction.ca/?p=1055 January 16th, 2010 by CHAN | Posted in Uncategorized | WHERE IS THE AID IN HAITI? By Roger Annis January 15-Evidence of monstrous neglect of the Haitian people is mounting following the catastrophic earthquake three days ago. As life-saving medical supplies, food, water purification chemicals and vehicles pile up at the airport in Port au Prince, and as news networks report a massive international effort to deliver emergency aid, the people in the shattered city are wondering when they will see help. BBC World Service reports that Haitian officials now fear the death toll could rise to 140,000. Three million people are homeless. BBC reporter Andy Gallagher told an 8 pm (Pacific Time) broadcast tonight that he had traveled "extensively" in Port au Prince during the day and saw little sign of aid delivery. He said he was shown nothing but courtesy by the Haitians he encountered. Everywhere he went he was taken by residents to see what had happened to their neighbourhood, their homes and their lives. Then they asked, "Where is the help?" "When the Rescue teams arrive," Gallagher said, "they will be welcomed with open arms." CBC Radio One's As It Happens broadcast an interview this evening with a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross. He said he spent the morning touring one of the hardest hit areas of the city (the district was not named), in the hills that rise from the flat plain on which sits historic Port au Prince. "In three hours, I didn't see a single rescue team." The BBC report contrasts starkly with warnings of looting and violence that fill the airwaves of news channels such as CNN and are being voiced by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates. He was asked by media in Washington why relief supplies were not being delivered by air. He answered, "It seems to me that air drops will simply lead to riots." Gates says that "security" concerns are impeding the delivery of aid. But Gallagher responded directly to that in his report, saying, "I'm not experiencing that." Describing the airport, Gallagher reported, "There are plenty of materials on the ground and plenty of people there. I don't know what the problem is with delivery." Nan Buzard, a spokesperson for the American Red Cross, was interviewed on the same BBC broadcast about the problem with aid delivery. She implied that there were not, in fact, many supplies at the airport to be moved, that many of the planes that have been landing were filled with people, not supplies. When pressed by the BBC host why aid was not being moved into the city, Buzard conceded she was "surprised" that it was not being airlifted in. The BBC's is not the only report to contradict exaggerated security concerns. The daily report on the website of Doctors Without Borders one day after the earthquake said, "Some parts of the city are without electricity and people have gathered outside, lighting fires in the street and trying to help and comfort each other. When they saw that I was from MSF they were asking for help, particularly to treat their wounded. There was strong solidarity among people in the streets." An e-mailed report received by the Canada Haiti Action Network describes a city largely bereft of international aid. "Thus far," it reports, "the rescue teams cluster at the high profile and safer walled sites and were literally afraid to enter the barrios. They gravitated to the sites where they had secure compounds and big buildings. "Meanwhile, the neighbourhoods where the damage appears to be much wider, and anywhere there were loose crowds, they avoided. In the large sites, and in the nice neighbourhoods, and where the press can be found, there would be teams from every country imaginable. Dogs and extraction units with more arriving, yet with 90% or more of them just sitting around; in the poor neighbourhoods, awash in rubble, there was not a foreigner is sight. "News crews are looking for the story of desperate Haitians that are in hysterics. When in reality it is more often the Haitians that are acting calmly while the international community, the elite and politicians have melted down over the issue, and none seem to have the remotest idea what is going on." The report says that most of the staff of the U.S. embassy and US AID complex (located a stone's throw from the oceanfront) have fled and buildings are largely empty, even though the streets in the area are clear. Yesterday, BBC broadcast an interview with Mark Stuart, a director of an orphanage in Jacmel, a city of 50,000 on the south coast of Haiti, 50 km south of Port au Prince. Aerial footage showed catastrophic damage to the city center. Stuart appealed for international relief, saying that food and water supplies would soon run out and no aid whatsoever had arrived. An article on the website of a Chicago publication says a trickle of aid arrived today but the road between Port-au-Prince and Jacmel is impassable. http://www.examiner.com/x-3122-Chicago-International-Travel-Examiner~y2010m1d15-Haiti-earthquake-Jacmel-pleads-for-help Aid authorities must be urged to speed up their efforts to flood the earthquake zone with food, water, supplies and medical personnel. A network of relief centers fanning out from the port and airport, including air lift and parachute drops, are crucial. Donors to relief efforts should contribute to medical agencies already on the ground delivering services, such as Partners in Health and Doctors Without Borders. Roger Annis is a coordinator of the Canada Haiti Action Network. He can be reached at rogerannis(at)hotmail.com. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 16 23:05:56 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2010 23:05:56 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] [Haiti] US Rolls in the Troops and Media Propaganda Message-ID: <26FDF0591F934DBB9B8D12CA20194150@agingCHS072729> (from the laborexchange-n list-serv) US, Fearing Political Tsunami in Haiti, Rolls in the Troops and Media Propaganda - Haitians Are Not Fooled 2010 January 16 tags: Aristide, CNN, Haiti, imperialsm, Kevin Pina, Lavalas, Michael Moore, MINUSTAH, montana hotel, politics, Sanjay gupta, troops, UNUS, US, USS Comfort by magbana Port-au-Prince, Haiti, May 2004: US Marines point loaded guns at unarmed, peaceful demonstrators demanding the return of their democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Yesterday, I watched news of rescue efforts in P-au-P. Elite rescue teams, such as the one from Fairfax County, VA, were focusing primarily on the Montana Hotel and the headquarters of the UN "peacekeeping" force, MINUSTAH. Anyone who knows Haiti knows that the Montana Hotel is the most lavish lodging your can find in Port-au-Prince and is frequented by wealthy business people, foreign dignitaries, and served as the initial headquarters of the MINUSTAH force. Meanwhile, in the neighborhoods most heavily hit by the earthquake, Haitians, equipped with nothing more than their bare hands, digged frantically to save their families and neighbors. The Canada Haitian Action Network is circulating an aid worker's account that tells of this class/race disparity in responding to the injured. The aid worker says rescue teams are refusing to go into popular neighborhoods because they fear "violence." Breathlessly, the media rotate stories of poor, injured Haitians with warnings of violent Haitian masses on the verge of a nationwide riot. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's foil to counter Michael Moore about his indictment of the US health care system in his film, "Sick," (Moore kicked his ass), reported two nights ago that a tent clinic in downtown Port-au-Prince was abandoned by all medical staff because of a "rumor" of impending violence. Gupta showed the CNN audience cot after cot of injured Haitians with no medical staff in sight. CNN would probably get an Emmy award if Gupta would quit playing journalist and used his time there being the doctor he was trained to be. This is not a place or time where ANY medical professional on the ground in Haiti should do anything other than treating the injured. Those who have observed that US aid is slow getting to Haiti, such as the Navy's USS Comfort which is leaving Baltimore, Md., only TODAY, should understand that the US is concentrating on getting military boots on the ground first. By the end of the weekend, the US will have 10,000 military in Haiti. Once this is done, it will be "safe" for aid workers to tend to the injured in the popular neighborhoods. As time goes on, pay attention to the back story and you will see that the placement of these soldiers has more to do with stemming a political tsunami than helping the people. Maintaining a violence-prone profile for poor Haitians is de rigeur. During the US Marine occupation of 1915-1934, Haitians were characterized summarily as "bandits." In the US' destabilization campaign against President Aristide in 2003-2004, his followers were called "chimeres" or "thug-creatures," a label created for propaganda purposes by a Western journalist. Further, the concept of the "violent Haitian" has given cover to the UN "peacekeeping" force to conduct one deadly attack after another in the middle of the night in poor neighborhoods against unarmed, sleeping Haitians. On the day after the earthquake, reporters expressed concern about the prisoners who escaped from the collapsed Haitian penitentiary (the ones that didn't die, of course). In the first and only mention of the Haitian National Police, the media reported that their top priority was apprehending these violent criminals. Yet, we have not heard of police helping the people dig out of the earthquake. This is not surprising. In the days after the US kidnapping of Aristide in 2004, the Haitian National Police were responsible for summary executions of Aristide's supporters, illegal mass detentions, and numerous disappearances. Who knows how many of the dead or escaped prisoners there were who were incarcerated without cause over the course of the two years that followed Aristide's departure. The whole point is that the police are worried about escaped prisoners when their entire country is in shambles. If you ask the average Haitian how concerned he/she is about these prisoners, they will look at you as if you are crazy. The prison story is good "violence" propaganda and we will most likely hear more about it. President Aristide is as popular now in Haiti as he has ever been. The people, especially the poor which comprise the majority of the population, found Aristide to be the only president that ever gave a damn about them. The 2004 coup was a US, France, and Canadian expedition that had NO popular support in Haiti. In order to make the coup stick, the US engineered the placement of a 10,000 United Nations "peacekeeping" force there. As my friend Kevin Pina, journalist and documentary filmmaker who lived and reported from Haiti for many years says, "If MINUSTAH had not been brought into Haiti, the coup would have fallen in a week." Aristide's political party, Lavalas, undoubtedly the most popular party in Haiti, has been barred from the ballot in the two previous elections resulting in a massive boycott and illegitimate results for the state. In the earthquake, MINUSTAH suffered many casualties and because its offices were destroyed, it is not fully functional. The US is scared that without full MINUSTAH muscle, the tsunami of Haitian demand for the return of Aristide will rise up, that is, until the planned 10,000 troops are on the ground. So, Haiti's poor, already totally consumed by loss of homes, injury and the death of loved ones, will have to start watching their back as well - as always. (Shirley Pate is a Haiti solidarity activist and was in Haiti six weeks after the 2004 coup participating on a delegation to determine the role of the US in the coup) =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 16 23:18:11 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2010 23:18:11 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Reflections of Fidel: The lesson of Haiti Message-ID: http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2010/enero/vier15/Reflections-14enero.html Havana. January 15, 2010 Reflections of Fidel The lesson of Haiti January 14, 2010 TWO days ago, at almost six o'clock in the evening Cuban time and when, given its geographical location, night had already fallen in Haiti, television stations began to broadcast the news that a violent earthquake - measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale - had severely struck Port-au-Prince. The seismic phenomenon originated from a tectonic fault located in the sea just 15 kilometers from the Haitian capital, a city where 80% of the population inhabit fragile homes built of adobe and mud. The news continued almost without interruption for hours. There was no footage, but it was confirmed that many public buildings, hospitals, schools and more solidly-constructed facilities were reported collapsed. I have read that an earthquake of the magnitude of 7.3 is equivalent to the energy released by an explosion of 400,000 tons of TNT. Tragic descriptions were transmitted. Wounded people in the streets were crying out for medical help, surrounded by ruins under which their relatives were buried. No one, however, was able to broadcast a single image for several hours. The news took all of us by surprise. Many of us have frequently heard about hurricanes and severe flooding in Haiti, but were not aware of the fact that this neighboring country ran the risk of a massive earthquake. It has come to light on this occasion that 200 years ago, a massive earthquake similarly affected this city, which would have been the home of just a few thousand inhabitants at that time. At midnight, there was still no mention of an approximate figure in terms of victims. High-ranking United Nations officials and several heads of government discussed the moving events and announced that they would send emergency brigades to help. Given that MINUSTAH (United Stabilization Mission in Haiti) troops are deployed there - UN forces from various countries - some defense ministers were talking about possible casualties among their personnel. It was only yesterday, Wednesday morning, when the sad news began to arrive of enormous human losses among the population, and even institutions such as the United Nations mentioned that some of their buildings in that country had collapsed, a word that does not say anything in itself but could mean a lot. For hours, increasingly more traumatic news continued to arrive about the situation in this sister nation. Figures related to the number of fatal victims were discussed, which fluctuated, according to various versions, between 30,000 and 100,000. The images are devastating; it is evident that the catastrophic event has been given widespread coverage around the world, and many governments, sincerely moved by the disaster, are making efforts to cooperate according to their resources. The tragedy has genuinely moved a significant number of people, particularly those in which that quality is innate. But perhaps very few of them have stopped to consider why Haiti is such a poor country. Why does almost 50% of its population depend on family remittances sent from abroad? Why not analyze the realities that led Haiti to its current situation and this enormous suffering as well? The most curious aspect of this story is that no one has said a single word to recall the fact that Haiti was the first country in which 400,000 Africans, enslaved and trafficked by Europeans, rose up against 30,000 white slave masters on the sugar and coffee plantations, thus undertaking the first great social revolution in our hemisphere. Pages of insurmountable glory were written there. Napoleon's most eminent general was defeated there. Haiti is the net product of colonialism and imperialism, of more than one century of the employment of its human resources in the toughest forms of work, of military interventions and the extraction of its natural resources. This historic oversight would not be so serious if it were not for the real fact that Haiti constitutes the disgrace of our era, in a world where the exploitation and pillage of the vast majority of the planet's inhabitants prevails. Billions of people in Latin American, Africa and Asia are suffering similar shortages although perhaps not to such a degree as in the case of Haiti. Situations like that of that country should not exist in any part of the planet, where tens of thousands of cities and towns abound in similar or worse conditions, by virtue of an unjust international economic and political order imposed on the world. The world population is not only threatened by natural disasters such as that of Haiti, which is a just a pallid shadow of what could take place in the planet as a result of climate change, which really was the object of ridicule, derision, and deception in Copenhagen. It is only just to say to all the countries and institutions that have lost citizens or personnel because of the natural disaster in Haiti: we do not doubt that in this case, the greatest effort will be made to save human lives and alleviate the pain of this long-suffering people. We cannot blame them for the natural phenomenon that has taken place there, even if we do not agree with the policy adopted with Haiti. But I have to express the opinion that it is now time to look for real and lasting solutions for that sister nation. In the field of healthcare and other areas, Cuba - despite being a poor and blockaded country - has been cooperating with the Haitian people for many years. Around 400 doctors and healthcare experts are offering their services free of charge to the Haitian people. Our doctors are working every day in 227 of the country's 337 communes. On the other hand, at least 400 young Haitians have trained as doctors in our homeland. They will now work with the reinforcement brigade which traveled there yesterday to save lives in this critical situation. Thus, without any special effort being made, up to 1,000 doctors and healthcare experts can be mobilized, almost all of whom are already there willing to cooperate with any other state that wishes to save the lives of the Haitian people and rehabilitate the injured. Another significant number of young Haitians are currently studying medicine in Cuba. We are also cooperating with the Haitian people in other areas within our reach. However, there can be no other form of cooperation worthy of being described as such than fighting in the field of ideas and political action in order to put an end to the limitless tragedy suffered by a large number of nations such as Haiti. The head of our medical brigade reported: "The situation is difficult, but we have already started saving lives." He made that statement in a succinct message hours after his arrival yesterday in Port-au-Prince with additional medical reinforcements. Later that night, he reported that Cuban doctors and ELAM's Haitian graduates were being deployed throughout the country. They had already seen more than 1,000 patients in Port-au-Prince, immediately establishing and putting into operation a hospital that had not collapsed and using field hospitals where necessary. They were preparing to swiftly set up other centers for emergency care. We feel a wholesome pride for the cooperation that, in these tragic instances, Cuba doctors and young Haitian doctors who trained in Cuba are offering our brothers and sisters in Haiti! Fidel Castro Ruz January 14, 2009 8:25 p.m. Translated by Granma International - Reflections oF Fidel =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 16 23:28:26 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2010 23:28:26 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Europe's Post-Copenhagen View of Obama Message-ID: <3BF8BF13BC344BE3B6AADB67784EEFE4@agingCHS072729> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/opinion/14iht-edhill.html New York Times January 14, 2010 Op-Ed Contributor Europe's Post-Copenhagen View of Obama A consistent pattern has emerged, where the world has seen more symbolic gestures than accomplishments from the Obama administration. By STEVEN HILL The Copenhagen summit on climate change taught Europe a hard lesson about its trans-Atlantic partner. Great hope had greeted President Obama when he replaced George W. Bush at the American helm, but a year later Europeans are realizing that Mr. Obama is going to have a very difficult time delivering on his agenda. During the Copenhagen summit, the American media portrayed President Obama as a global dealmaker, shuttling from leader to leader trying to broker various compromises. What Mr. Obama was really doing was a lot of fence-mending, because the United States was seen as the principal obstacle - and Mr. Obama as the footdragger-in-chief - that prevented any ambitious agreements from being signed. Certainly the developing countries, led by China and India, were behaving stubbornly, but for good reason. The United States is by far the largest per-capita polluter in the world. Each American generates about 45,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, twice as much as the average European or Japanese, and 4 to 10 times more than someone living in China, India or any other developing country. China is close to the U.S. in terms of total carbon emissions - each emits about 25 percent of the world's total - but it has four times more people. The U.S. demanded that the developing world join in making drastic cuts, but the poorer countries cried foul. As one Indian official said, "First you do virtually nothing to cut your emissions, and then you threaten us [the developing world] with drowning from global warming sea level rise if we don't cut ours. It won't wash." So it was known all along that the U.S. had to offer something ambitious to start off the bargaining. In a real sense, the success of Copenhagen depended on the United States - that is, on President Obama. Instead, what Mr. Obama offered was a bait-and-switch. Leading up to Copenhagen, Europe already had committed itself to reduce carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020, and offered to go to 30 percent if the U.S. matched it. That was a generous offer, especially considering that Europe already has an "ecological footprint" that is half that of the United States because it has done far more than the U.S. to implement conservation and renewable technologies. American negotiators countered by offering to reduce carbon emissions by 17 percent - but stipulated that it would be 17 percent of 2005 levels, whereas most other countries used the benchmark of 1990 levels. The difference is substantial: In effect, America was agreeing to reduce carbon emissions by only about 4 percent of 1990 levels. When the U.S. negotiators made this offer, the shock that echoed around Copenhagen was palpable. Everyone knew its ramifications - mainly that China, India and the developing nations would walk away from any significant agreement. So when Mr. Obama finally arrived in Copenhagen, he was in complete face-saving mode. Another sticking point at Copenhagen was that the developing world insisted, quite rightly, that the developed world should pay for much of the poor nations' carbon mitigations, since the developed world had caused most of the pollution to begin with. Here again, Europe stepped up with an initial offering of up to $15 billion a year for the next decade to help developing nations cope with climate warming. Yet the Obama administration didn't offer anything close to that amount. A consistent pattern has emerged, where the world has seen more symbolic gestures than accomplishments from the Obama administration. Even the White House's biggest achievement has been a disappointment. President Obama signed an executive order to increase U.S. motor vehicle mileage standards to 32 miles per gallon - but not until 2020. That's a level that European and Japanese cars, which already average 40 m.p.g., have long surpassed, and even China will soon achieve. Why has President Obama been so unwilling to match his lofty words with concrete deeds? One major reason is the U.S. Senate. Mr. Obama needs 60 of the 100 Senate votes to get climate policy - or any other measure, like health care. This means that the 40 Republican senators joined by a single Democrat or independent can block any measure. Mr. Obama isn't delivering because he can't deliver. The majorities needed for major policy changes are too high a threshold, even for someone with Mr. Obama's political gifts. Following Copenhagen, Germany's environment minister, Norbert R?ttgen, had some stinging criticisms for President Obama, as well as for China's leadership. "We are experiencing a lack of results and an inability to act, triggered mainly by the United States which, in the case of climate protection, is no longer capable of leading," he said. "China doesn't want to lead, and the U.S. cannot lead." Europe, on the other hand, presented itself as a unified bloc at the summit, with clear goals and a solid strategy. It already has done much to reduce its own carbon footprint. But Europe cannot solve the problem alone. Since its share of global carbon emissions is only about 14 percent, Europe could stop emitting CO2 tomorrow and global warming would still be catastrophic. Said Mr. R?ttgen, "On this issue those who emit the most have the greatest power." So one of the unfortunate lessons from Copenhagen is that even an Obama-led United States cannot be counted on as a reliable partner. Europe is trying to step into the leadership vacuum, but without the world's largest national economy and per capita polluter making greater efforts, success is in jeopardy. Steven Hill is director of the Political Reform Program at the New America Foundation and author of "Europe's Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age." =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 16 23:38:42 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2010 23:38:42 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] John Pilger: For Israel, A Reckoning Message-ID: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/4111 For Israel, A Reckoning Jan 16, 2010 By John Pilger John Pilger's ZSpace Page / ZSpace The farce of the climate change summit in Copenhagen affirmed a world war waged by the rich against most of humanity. It also illuminated a resistance growing perhaps as never before: an internationalism linking justice for the planet earth with universal human rights, and criminal justice for those who invade and dispossess with impunity. And the best news comes from Palestine. Palestinian resistance to the theft of their country reached a critical moment in 2001 when Israel was identified as an apartheid state at a United Nations conference on racism in Durban, South Africa. To Nelson Mandela, justice for the Palestinians is "the greatest moral issue of our time". The Palestinian Civil Society Call for Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS), was issued on 9 July 2005, effectively reconvening the great non-violent movement that swept the world and brought the scaffolding of African apartheid crashing down. "Through decades of occupation and dispossession," wrote Mustafa Barghouti, a wise voice of Palestinian politics, " 90 per cent of the Palestinian struggle has been non-violent ... A new generation of Palestinian leaders [now speaks] to the world precisely as Martin Luther King did. The same world that rejects all use of Palestinian violence, even clear self-defense, surely ought not begrudge us the non-violence employed by men such as King and Gandhi." In the United States and Europe, trade unions, academic associations and mainstream churches have brought back the strategies and tactics that were used against apartheid South African. In a resolution adopted by 431 votes to 62, the US Presbyterian Church voted for "a process of phased selective disinvestment in multinational corporations doing business with Israel". This followed the opinion of the International Court of Justice that Israel's wall and its "settler" colonies were illegal. A similar declaration by the court in 1971, denouncing South Africa's occupation of Namibia, ignited the international boycott. Like the South Africa campaign, the issue of law is central. No state is allowed to flout international law as wilfully as Israel. In 1990, a UN Security Council resolution demanding that Saddam Hussein get out of Kuwait was the same, almost word for word, as that demanding Israel get out of the West Bank. The United States and its allies attacked and drove out Iraq while Israel has been repeatedly rewarded. On 11 December, President Obama announced $2.75 billion "aid" for Israel, a down payment on the $30 billion American taxpayers will gift from their stricken economy during this decade. The hypocrisy is now well understood in the US, where consumer boycott campaigns are becoming commonplace. A "stolen beauty" campaign pursues Ahava beauty products which are made in illegal West Bank "settlements", forcing the company to drop its ballyhooed celebrity "ambassador", Kristin Davis, a star of Sex and the City . In Britain, Sainsbury's and Tesco are under pressure to identify "settlement" products, whose sale contravenes the human rights clause in the EU trade agreement with Israel. In Australia, a consortium including the French company Veolia has lost its bid for a billion-dollar desalination plant following a campaign highlighting Veolia's plan to build a light rail connecting Jerusalem to the "settlements". In Norway, the government has withdrawn its support for the Israeli hi-tech company Elbit, which helped build the wall across Palestine. This is the first official boycott by a western country. "We do not wish to fund companies that so directly contribute to violations of international humanitarian law," said the Norwegian finance minister. In 2005, the Association of University Teachers in Britain (AUT) voted to boycott Israeli academic institutions complicit in the oppression of Palestinians. The AUT campaign was forced to retreat when the Israel lobby unleashed a blizzard of character assassination and charges of anti-Semitism. The Palestinian writer and activist Omar Baghouti called this "intellectual terror": a perversion of morality and logic that says to be against racism towards Palestinians makes one anti-Semitic. However, the Israeli assault on Gaza on 27 December, 2008 changed almost everything. The first US Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was formed, with Desmond Tutu on its board. At its 2009 conference, Britain's Trade Union Council voted for a consumer boycott. The "Israel taboo" is no more. Complementing this is the rapid development of international criminal law since the Pinochet case in 1999 when the former Chilean dictator was placed under house arrest in Britain. Israeli warmongers now face similar prosecution in countries which have "universal jurisdiction" laws. In Britain, the Geneva Conventions Act of 1957 is fortified by the UN report on Gaza by Judge Richard Goldstone, which in December obliged a London magistrate to issue a warrant for the arrest of Tzini Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister wanted for crimes against humanity. In September, only contrived diplomatic immunity rescued Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister during the assault on Gaza, from arrest by Scotland Yard. Just over a year ago, 1400 defenseless people in Gaza were murdered by the Israelis. On 29 December, Mohamed Jassier became the 367th Gazan to die because people needing life-saving medical treatment are not allowed out. Keep that in mind when you next watch the BBC "balance" such suffering with the weasel protestations of the oppressors. There is a clear momentum now. To mark the first anniversary of the Gaza atrocity, a great humanitarian procession from 42 countries - Muslims, Jews, Christians, atheists, old and young, trade unionists, writers, artists, musicians and those leading convoys of food and medicine - converged on Egypt, and even though the American bribed dictatorship in Cairo prevented most from proceeding to Gaza, the people in that open prison knew they were not alone, and children climbed on walls and raised the Palestinian flag. And this is just a beginning. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 17 10:57:05 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2010 10:57:05 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Palast on Haiti: Blackwater before drinking water Message-ID: <70A3C18EE28F443DA8A478544A2D0C9D@agingCHS072729> http://www.gregpalast.com/the-right-testicle-of-hell-history-of-a-haitian-holocaust/ The Right Testicle of Hell: History of a Haitian Holocaust Blackwater before drinking water by Greg Palast for The Huffington Post Sunday, January 17, 2010 1. Bless the President for having rescue teams in the air almost immediately. That was President Olafur Grimsson of Iceland. On Wednesday, the AP reported that the President of the United States promised, "The initial contingent of 2,000 Marines could be deployed to the quake-ravaged country within the next few days." "In a few days," Mr. Obama? 2. There's no such thing as a 'natural' disaster. 200,000 Haitians have been slaughtered by slum housing and IMF "austerity" plans. 3. A friend of mine called. Do I know a journalist who could get medicine to her father? And she added, trying to hold her voice together, "My sister, she's under the rubble. Is anyone going who can help, anyone?" Should I tell her, "Obama will have Marines there in 'a few days'"? 4. China deployed rescuers with sniffer dogs within 48 hours. China, Mr. President. China: 8,000 miles distant. Miami: 700 miles close. US bases in Puerto Rico: right there. 5. Obama's Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, "I don't know how this government could have responded faster or more comprehensively than it has." We know Gates doesn't know. 6. From my own work in the field, I know that FEMA has access to ready-to-go potable water, generators, mobile medical equipment and more for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. It's all still there. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honor?, who served as the task force commander for emergency response after Hurricane Katrina, told the Christian Science Monitor, "I thought we had learned that from Katrina, take food and water and start evacuating people." Maybe we learned but, apparently, Gates and the Defense Department missed school that day. 7. Send in the Marines. That's America's response. That's what we're good at. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed - without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters. 8. But don't worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field, deployed immediately with ten metric tons of tools and equipment, three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water purifying capability. They're from Iceland. 9. Gates wouldn't send in food and water because, he said, there was no "structure ... to provide security." For Gates, appointed by Bush and allowed to hang around by Obama, it's security first. That was his lesson from Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater before drinking water. 10. Previous US presidents have acted far more swiftly in getting troops on the ground on that island. Haiti is the right half of the island of Hispaniola. It's treated like the right testicle of Hell. The Dominican Republic the left. In 1965, when Dominicans demanded the return of Juan Bosch, their elected President, deposed by a junta, Lyndon Johnson reacted to this crisis rapidly, landing 45,000 US Marines on the beaches to prevent the return of the elected president. 11. How did Haiti end up so economically weakened, with infrastructure, from hospitals to water systems, busted or non-existent - there are two fire stations in the entire nation - and infrastructure so frail that the nation was simply waiting for "nature" to finish it off? Don't blame Mother Nature for all this death and destruction. That dishonor goes to Papa Doc and Baby Doc, the Duvalier dictatorship, which looted the nation for 28 years. Papa and his Baby put an estimated 80% of world aid into their own pockets - with the complicity of the US government happy to have the Duvaliers and their voodoo militia, Tonton Macoutes, as allies in the Cold War. (The war was easily won: the Duvaliers' death squads murdered as many as 60,000 opponents of the regime.) 12. What Papa and Baby didn't run off with, the IMF finished off through its "austerity" plans. An austerity plan is a form of voodoo orchestrated by economists zomby-fied by an irrational belief that cutting government services will somehow help a nation prosper. 13. In 1991, five years after the murderous Baby fled, Haitians elected a priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who resisted the IMF's austerity diktats. Within months, the military, to the applause of Papa George HW Bush, deposed him. History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. The farce was George W. Bush. In 2004, after the priest Aristide was re-elected President, he was kidnapped and removed again, to the applause of Baby Bush. 14. Haiti was once a wealthy nation, the wealthiest in the hemisphere, worth more, wrote Voltaire in the 18th century, than that rocky, cold colony known as New England. Haiti's wealth was in black gold: slaves. But then the slaves rebelled - and have been paying for it ever since. >From 1825 to 1947, France forced Haiti to pay an annual fee to reimburse the profits lost by French slaveholders caused by their slaves' successful uprising. Rather than enslave individual Haitians, France thought it more efficient to simply enslave the entire nation. 15. Secretary Gates tells us, "There are just some certain facts of life that affect how quickly you can do some of these things." The Navy's hospital boat will be there in, oh, a week or so. Heckuva job, Brownie! 16. Note just received from my friend. Her sister was found, dead; and her other sister had to bury her. Her father needs his anti-seizure medicines. That's a fact of life too, Mr. President. *** Through our journalism network, we are trying to get my friend's medicines to her father. If any reader does have someone getting into or near Port-au-Prince, please contact Haiti at GregPalast.com immediately. Urgently recommended reading - The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, the history of the successful slave uprising in Hispaniola by the brilliant CLR James. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 17 11:16:55 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2010 11:16:55 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] New survey shows U.S. public libraries in financial jeopardy Message-ID: http://www.ala.org/ala/newspresscenter/news/pressreleases2010/january2010/trendstudy_ors.cfm Contacts: Macey Morales / Jennifer Petersen ALA Media Relations 312-280-4393 / 312-280-5043 mmorales at ala.org / jpetersen at ala.org NEWS For Immediate Release January 14, 2010 New survey shows U.S. public libraries in financial jeopardy Cuts reduce hours, staffing at thousands of libraries as patron demand escalates CHICAGO - Libraries have been on the front lines during the recession. U.S. public libraries have expanded available job resources, and more people are turning to libraries for technology access and help in applying for jobs and government assistance online, according to a new library survey. The survey also found, however, that half of states have reduced funding to public libraries and to state library agencies, and close to one-quarter of urban libraries have reduced open hours. Adequate staffing is the leading challenge to aiding job seekers. More than three-quarters of all public libraries reported increased use of their public Internet computers over the past year, and 71 percent reported increased wireless use, according to the survey conducted by the American Library Association (ALA) and the Center for Library and Information Innovation at the University of Maryland in fall 2009. Two-thirds (67 percent) of all libraries reported that staff members help patrons complete online job applications and offer software or other resources (69 percent) to help patrons create resumes and other employment materials. The vast majority of libraries surveyed provide access to job databases and other online resources (88 percent) and civil service exam materials (75 percent). Forty-two percent of urban libraries report offering classes related to job seeking, and about 27 percent collaborate with outside agencies or individuals to help patrons complete online job applications. But just when people need their public libraries the most, funding for this valued resource is decreasing, as governments cut library budgets as a way of addressing state and local deficits. More than half of responding state library agencies (52 percent or 24 states) reported cuts in state funding for public libraries between FY2009 and FY2010; and 11 of these states reported cuts were greater than 11 percent, double what was reported last year. In addition, nearly 75 percent of state library agencies also have received cuts resulting in fewer available staff, reduced funding for library materials and subscription databases, and continuing education for public library staff and trustees. Funding for Pennsylvania's Office for Commonwealth Libraries, for instance, was cut in half and reduced staff levels from 56 to 21. "Public libraries are uniquely positioned to provide a full range of resources American families rely on as they trim expenses and seek employment," said ALA President Camila Alire. "As the poor economy continues to fuel deep library budget cuts, I'm haunted by the notion that for each hour a library is closed, and for every service lost, thousands will lose the opportunity to better their lives through education." Decreased funding has impacted staffing levels at many public libraries. The number one challenge affecting libraries' ability to help job seekers is a lack of adequate staff to effectively help patrons with their job-seeking needs. Almost 60 percent of libraries surveyed agreed or strongly agreed that the library does not have enough staff to help patrons with job-seeking needs. Forty-six percent agreed or strongly agreed that library staff does not have the necessary skills to meet patron demand; and about 36 percent agreed or strongly agreed the library has too few public computers to meet demand. The number of libraries reporting a decrease in operating hours increased significantly. Nearly one-quarter of urban libraries and 14.5 percent of all libraries (up from 4.5 percent last year) report their operating hours have decreased since the previous fiscal year. Nationally, this translates to lost hours at more than 2,400 public library branches. The Broward County (Fla.) Library System has lost 28 percent of its funding and one-third of its staff positions in three years, while circulation has increased 27 percent over the same period. Libraries are also now closed on Sundays. Washoe County (Nev.) Library System, has experienced cuts of nearly 40 percent over the last two years and is expecting additional reductions in July. Libraries are open 25 percent fewer hours, and library staff has been reduced by nearly 30 percent. Libraries in Seattle and Clark County, Ohio, were shuttered for more than a week to satisfy budget reductions. Thirteen state libraries (28 percent) reported they were aware of public library closures in the past 12 months. Twelve states reported closures of five or fewer libraries; and one state (Indiana) reported more than five closures in the past year. For more information on the survey, please visit www.ala.org/plinternetfunding. The study is funded by the ALA and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 17 12:05:32 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2010 12:05:32 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Moving from crimes-as-charity to actual support for Haiti Message-ID: <49BDA231E12A4AB7B36A1FB5CE469B11@agingCHS072729> << Over the past decade, the idea that more Western involvement in Haiti is always better has dovetailed with what Peter Hallward has flagged as "perhaps the most consistent theme of Western commentary on the island: that poor black people remain incapable of governing themselves." At a time when the need for international involvement is indeed urgent, it is all the more important to keep this racist tendency in check. >> http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/297.php#continue The B u l l e t Socialist Project . E-Bulletin No. 297 January 17, 2010 Relief Efforts in the Shadow of Past "Help": Moving from crimes-as-charity to actual support for Haiti Dan Freeman-Maloy Over the course of the past decade, Canada's leading officials and most prestigious commentators have learned how to approach Haiti in the spirit of cynical power politics and racist condescension (or worse) while maintaining a posture of national self-flattery. With attention again riveted on Haiti following the horrific tragedy inflicted by Tuesday's earthquake, this ugly mixture is once again on display. The need for emergency aid is, without question, urgent [see below for links]. But established patterns of "help" for Haiti need to be overcome if the destructive impact of this catastrophe is to be somehow limited. Scattered self-congratulations can already be heard in Canada's mainstream press (a willing partner, for the most part, in recent Canadian government crimes against Haiti). On Thursday, papers across the country ran editorials on Canadian policy and the relief effort. Under the title "Helping Haiti," the Calgary Herald editorialized that "Canada's response is not only appropriate, but one to be proud of. . Once again, Canada's humanitarianism and compassion shines brightly." The Montreal Gazette concurred: "Canadians have, to their credit, been involved in helping Haiti help itself for years." For its part, the Globe and Mail yet again cast Haiti as the "basket case of the Western hemisphere," the editorial headline promising that "Today's rescue is just the beginning." In previous years, such benevolent rhetoric has been to Western policy in Haiti what anti-terrorist slogans have been to Western policy in the Middle East. It was under the cover of such declared benevolence that the elected Haitian government was overthrown in 2004 by means of U.S., French and Canadian involvement; it was amidst similar rhetoric that Haitian movements resisting this outrage were decimated in the ensuing years with the "security assistance" of foreign powers. This is not to distract from the urgent need for a massive international relief effort. But it should give us reason for pause. The Haitian struggle for sovereignty and decolonization is very much ongoing. And for many years, it has been common practice to package assaults on Haiti as aid. It is imperative that genuine aid and relief work be disentangled, in our understanding and in practice, from the criminal policies they are often used to justify. This article does not address the details of the ongoing catastrophe in Haiti triggered by the earthquake of January 12. Rather, it provides a reminder of how calls to "help" Haiti were a cornerstone justification for one of the greatest crimes in the past decade of Canadian foreign policy. It is beyond me to discuss how the Haitian struggle for independence is likely to adapt to the catastrophic circumstances that have now emerged. What is clear is the need to not only expand the evolving relief effort, but also engage with the inevitable tensions within it. "Operation Halo" 2004: Regime Change as an Aid Package The 2004 regime change in Haiti was one of most despicable episodes in a miserable decade of Western aggression. Early that year, Haiti faced intervention from the two powers which have most tormented it throughout its history: France, which grew rich on this slave colony through to the late 18th century (Haiti declared its independence in 1804); and the U.S., which occupied Haiti from 1915-1934 and maintained client dictatorships in the country through to the late 1980s, and then again from 1991-1994. The intervention of 2004 was preceded by years of destabilization. Aid to the government was cut and re-routed through sources more beholden to donors. Finally, on February 29, U.S. Marines occupied the National Palace and forced Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide into exile. Canadian troops secured the airport from which he was flown out of the country. Put simply, the country produced by the world's only successful slave rebellion - punished for centuries by spiteful racist powers - marked its bicentennial with renewed Western occupation. And so a presidential term that was supposed to last until 2006 was violently cut short. Among the Aristide presidency's crimes was constructing a legal case for repayment by France of the massive payment extorted from Haiti in the 19th century to compensate for the slaves France lost when they freed themselves (the equivalent of $21.7-billion today). The aftermath of the coup saw paramilitary forces with a well-known record of torture and extra-judicial killing ruthlessly target Haiti's main mass-based political party, Lavalas. It is against the backdrop of centuries of such sabotage that Haiti has been made so vulnerable to disaster. At the time, prestigious Canadian media joined officials in whitewashing the intervention as somehow charitable. Facing outrage from the 20-nation Caribbean Community (Caricom), Prime Minister Paul Martin framed the issue for the Globe and Mail immediately after Aristide's ouster: "their upset is not with Canada per se. Their upset is with the fact a constitutionally elected president has lost his position." What was necessary, he implied, was to refocus on humanitarian assistance for Haitians and spin Canadian involvement in these terms. As Martin put it: "we've got to get aid in there."[1] Caricom, alongside the African Union (AU), refused to recognize the regime that had been installed with Canadian support. In the Canadian press, Martin found a more receptive audience. Indeed, a sample of Globe and Mail headlines from the weeks of Canadian involvement leading up the coup is illustrative: "Martin helps in Haiti," "PM offers to help solve Haitian crisis" (January 13); "How to help Haiti" (January 24); "U.S. asks Canada to help police chaotic Haiti" (February 13); ".Canada, U.S. adopt France's suggestion that President's departure might help Haiti" (February 27); "Canada considers sending troops to help Haiti" (February 28); "Time to help Haiti" (March 1); and so on. Official presentation of Canadian participation in the coup as an aid package fit all too naturally into such Globe reports. Riding out these diplomatic bumps, the Prime Minister would within a couple of months go on an official visit to Washington. Drew Fagan reported approvingly for the Globe how "Martin smiled broadly as Mr. Bush praised Canada's commitments in Afghanistan and Haiti."[2] By 2005, the Haitian regime change of February 2004 factored into news coverage as the start of a Canadian "peace mission."[3] The spinning of "Operation Halo" (the official name for Canada's February-July 2004 troop deployment) involved rewriting a state crime as a charity effort. In the summer of 2004, the Canadian military role in Haiti gave way to such other forms of involvement as police deployment, financing and diplomatic support for the installed government of G?rard Latortue (who had been flown in from Florida to head the government after the coup). A combination of the reconstituted Haitian National Police (HNP), associated paramilitaries, and foreign police and military forces (now operating with United Nations authorization) acted to suppress movements calling for the restoration of democratic rule. Canadian involvement remained wide-ranging. In a period of mass political imprisonment without trial, for example, the installed Minister of Justice, Philippe Vixamar, explained to the University of Miami's Thomas M. Griffin "that he is a political appointee of the Latortue administration, but the Canadian International Development Agency ('CIDA') assigned him to his position and is his direct employer."[4] Such were the forms of Canadian "aid." With a willing press, the Canadian government had little problem maintaining this destructive fiction at home. The routine was often laughable. The fall of 2004, for example, witnessed an upsurge of popular demonstrations calling for Aristide's return, and a wave of lethal repression. For Prime Minister Martin, Canadian involvement in such a fight compensated for the limitations of Canadian participation in the occupation of Iraq. "Think about what we're doing in Afghanistan, think about what we're doing in Haiti," Martin explained in mid-October: "we are not on the sidelines."[5] With Haitians reeling from the intensified repression, the Canadian government dispatched Prime Minister Martin for a November 2004 visit with the stated aim of bolstering the installed Haitian government's legitimacy. For good measure, Martin packed his plane with food and other aid supplies - a point Canadian reporters happily emphasized. The Globe and Mail account of his visit was published with a large picture of a young Haitian girl sitting on Martin's lap, waving a Canadian flag for the camera. This visit was later cited as a "humanitarian trip."[6] Within this setting, it has been all too easy for Canadian commentators to express thinly veiled racism toward Haitians and to openly question their right to independence. Sticking with the case of the Globe and Mail, one may recall Marina Jim?nez giving voice to Canadian hopes that "the poor people of Cit? Soleil will have a change of heart, switching allegiance from the shadowy and ruthless chim?res [i.e., activists affiliated with Haiti's leading mass party] to 'les blancs' in the uniforms who, this time, are in it for the long haul." Or Jeffrey Simpson, shedding crocodile tears over this "failed state" - whose "ills . have persisted and even grown worse despite a United Nations military and police presence and hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign aid" - only to propose that independent Haitian governance be revoked and formally (if temporarily) replaced by a UN protectorate.[7] Simpson floated the proposal under a headline with the familiar message: "Hello, my name is Haiti and I really need your help." More "help" of this kind is the last thing that Haiti needs. Disaster Relief and Reconstruction The election of Ren? Pr?val in 2006 was a testament to the perseverance of Haitian society and its independent political organizations in the face of harsh circumstances. However, this decade's round of destabilization and repressive violence capped off a much longer period of imposed under-development, and again tipped the balance in favour of international and against sovereign Haitian institutions. Any country would require massive international support to cope with a disaster on the scale of this week's earthquake. Now, international relief efforts are plainly imperative. Massive reparations from Western powers to Haiti are long overdue. (This is in addition to the minimalist demand that the indemnity France extorted from Haiti for lost slave labour be repaid.) It is at this point flatly obnoxious to accompany the sending of any Western funds, even on a massive scale, with the faintest hint of self-congratulations. But funds and resources certainly need to be sent. An immediate challenge, as Naomi Klein argues, is to ensure that all government resources are sent as grants, absolutely none as loans. Such demands are urgent and pressing. The danger that Western powers will use this occasion to increase their leverage over Haitian society is real. President Obama's appointment of former president George W. Bush to join Bill Clinton in organizing the relief effort is a troubling sign. In Canada, while it was the Martin Liberals who carried out the intervention of 2004, the main apparent objection of the Harper Conservatives was that Canadian forces left too soon and should have participated more directly in repression. With Sarkozy's France calling a donors conference amidst a flurry of international commitments, the actual policies that emerge need to be carefully monitored and considered. In sum, it is necessary to acknowledge and deliberately break with past crimes. Those who set up a continuum between recent years' intervention and proposed relief missions are issuing threats, not promises. Over the past decade, the idea that more Western involvement in Haiti is always better has dovetailed with what Peter Hallward has flagged as "perhaps the most consistent theme of Western commentary on the island: that poor black people remain incapable of governing themselves." At a time when the need for international involvement is indeed urgent, it is all the more important to keep this racist tendency in check. . Dan Freeman-Maloy is a Toronto-based writer. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Emergency Appeals .The Haiti Emergency Relief Fund .Partners in Health -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Footnotes 1. "Ottawa works to ease Caribbean 'upset,'" Jeff Sallot (March 3, 2004; A17). What follows draws from the Globe and Mail unless otherwise indicated, partly because it is most representative of official opinion in Canada, partly because my notes from the period are based mostly on its coverage. 2. "Bush backs open border for beef," Drew Fagan - Ottawa Bureau Chief (May 1, 2004; A1). 3. "Martin vows to ease Darfur's suffering," Paul Koring (February 23, 2005; A1). 4. Thomas M. Griffin, "Haiti - Human Rights Investigation: November 11-21, 2004," Center for the Study of Human Rights, University of Miami School of Law (www.law.miami.edu/cshr/CSHR_Report_02082005_v2.pdf): p. 24. 5. "Martin cool to renewed U.S. request for assistance; Canada stretched too thin to contribute to Iraq, PM says in Paris," Mark Mackinnon (October 15, 2004; A16). 6. "Internal strife will undermine rebuilding plan, PM tells Haiti," Brian Laghi - Ottawa Bureau Chief (November 15, 2004; A4); "On the road again," Brian Laghi (January 15, 2005; F3). 7. "Backyard Baghdad," Marina Jimenez (January 22, 2005; F4); "Hello, my name is Haiti and I really need your help," Jeffrey Simpson (June 8, 2005; A17). =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 17 18:23:54 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2010 18:23:54 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Eli Zaretsky: The Coming Obama Shipwreck Message-ID: http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2010/01/17/the-coming-obama-shipwreck/ January 17th, 2010 The Coming Obama Shipwreck >From its inception, the American Constitution has been a carefully calibrated machine for preserving private wealth, elite status and power. Everything in it aims to keep genuinely serious issues out of politics, and especially to make sure there is never a challenge to capital. There is only one democratic aspect to the American system, one moment when the grip of money can be loosened: the Presidency. Obama's failure to use the President's power - especially to reach out to the American people after he became President - sealed his fate. by Eli Zaretsky - http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/author/elizaretsky/ The dramatic downturn in Obama's poll numbers, the growing support for rightist positions, the unbelievably close Senate race in Massachusetts, and the upcoming losses in the 2010 election all point to a Democratic disaster. Obama may yet save his Presidency by moving dramatically to the left, but barring that we have to look failure in the face. Whenever any great effort in which popular hopes have been invested goes down, there is an inevitable period of finger pointing and blame. It might be better now, before the shipwreck, to try to assess the causes. We all know the dominant narrative. Expectations for Obama's Presidency were unrealistically high. In a country that is fundamentally conservative, dubious about the role of government, deeply committed to markets, he encouraged a new New Deal. He went too far too fast. From the ground up, people revolted against big government, big spending and intrusive bureaucracies. A correction was inevitable. This narrative is more or less shared by the right and the left. The right blames Obama for being a socialist, the liberals praise him for all he got done given how dysfunctional the system is. It is also a narrative shared by Obama. He won the nomination by promising "change we can believe in;" after becoming President he talked about how long a time it will take to bring change ("turning a tanker"); and now he and his followers talk about how a dysfunctional system prevents change at all. I reject this narrative completely. In its place, I identify three causes of the failure that were far more important than the putative conservatism of the American people, or dysfunctionality of the system: Obama, the Democratic Party and the left. Undoubtedly the lion's share of the blame goes personally to Obama who spent most of the first year of his Presidency sycophantically cultivating his right wing enemies, whose essential mantra (cost-cutting) he channeled. The reason it is important to understand Obama's personal responsibility for this has nothing to do with him as an individual. It is because this responsibility goes to the heart of the so-called "system." From its inception, the American Constitution has been a carefully calibrated machine for preserving private wealth, elite status and power. Everything in it aims to keep genuinely serious issues out of politics, and especially to make sure there is never a challenge to capital. There is only one democratic aspect to the American system, one moment when the grip of money can be loosened: the Presidency. Obama's failure to use the President's power - especially to reach out to the American people after he became President - sealed his fate. Way down the list, but still bearing responsibility is the Democratic Party. Beginning in the eighties, the Party abandoned its historic role as the champion of the middle or working classes and became nothing more than the instrument of the corporations. Obama reached office with huge obligations to the rich which he more than fulfilled, handing the US checkbook to the banks, and giving the insurance companies, the private hospitals and the drug companies the bonanzas of their life in response to a very few societal gains, some real, most symbolic. Finally, the left has to face its own failure. Understandably unwilling to criticize the first black President, it enabled Obama and the corporate Democrats to hand a popular victory over to the corporations. In the only two occasions in American history when the government acted in the interests of lower-class Americans - Reconstruction and the New Deal - it was only because a left (the abolitionists, and the Popular Front) was willing to criticize the President. Should Obama recover his footing by moving in a Populist direction, it will be the left's job to make sure that that movement is real, and not as phony as we have come to expect. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 17 18:31:42 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2010 18:31:42 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] [Haiti] Breaking News Videos from CNN.com Message-ID: <92A34B9383274B8DB1A2412B4EAD90DA@agingCHS072729> A working hospital in Haiti http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/01/17/kastenbaum.haiti.la.paz.hosp.cnn?iref=allsearch ============================ Excerpt of transcript from CNN Report: January 17, 2010: "CNN's Steve Kastenbaum reports on a hospital which provides quality care for Haiti's earthquake victims." A Working Hospital in Haiti "There are so few places where ordinary Haitians can turn to when they are in need of urgent medical care in the center of the city. We came across one: La Paz hospital. It is now being administered by Cuban medical personnel here in Haiti alongside crews from Spain and Latin America. And it is amazing to see. They are giving medical attention-quality medial care-to severely injured people, six to seven hundred patients a day, several dozen surgeries a day. They have three theaters going around the clock, 24-7, and it is one of the only places deep in the city where Haitians can go and be treated and have a reasonable expectation of surviving. "We saw so many traumatic injuries there. I can't even say how many amputations we saw, compound fractures, traumatic flesh wounds. Yet, these overwhelmed medical teams were finding ways to take care of all of them, despite being very low on critical supplies-sutures, oxygen, anesthetics, water-they need all these things. Their supply lines stretch all the way back to Spain, and it's being sent in. And it is being done in a remarkably orderly fashion." "Steve Kastenbaum, CNN, Haiti" =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 17 18:56:33 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2010 18:56:33 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Why the US Owes Haiti Billions: The Briefest History Message-ID: <43B75B68518E4BAF8A16168B8FDD46AE@agingCHS072729> http://www.countercurrents.org/quigley170110.htm Countercurrents.org 17 January, 2010 Why the US Owes Haiti Billions: The Briefest History By Bill Quigley Why does the US owe Haiti Billions? Colin Powell, former US Secretary of State, stated his foreign policy view as the "Pottery Barn rule." That is - "if you break it, you own it." The US has worked to break Haiti for over 200 years. We owe Haiti. Not charity. We owe Haiti as a matter of justice. Reparations. And not the $100 million promised by President Obama either - that is Powerball money. The US owes Haiti Billions - with a big B. The US has worked for centuries to break Haiti. The US has used Haiti like a plantation. The US helped bleed the country economically since it freed itself, repeatedly invaded the country militarily, supported dictators who abused the people, used the country as a dumping ground for our own economic advantage, ruined their roads and agriculture, and toppled popularly elected officials. The US has even used Haiti like the old plantation owner and slipped over there repeatedly for sexual recreation. Here is the briefest history of some of the major US efforts to break Haiti. In 1804, when Haiti achieved its freedom from France in the world's first successful slave revolution, the United States refused to recognize the country. The US continued to refuse recognition to Haiti for 60 more years. Why? Because the US continued to enslave millions of its own citizens and feared recognizing Haiti would encourage slave revolution in the US. After the 1804 revolution, Haiti was the subject of a crippling economic embargo by France and the US. US sanctions lasted until 1863. France ultimately used its military power to force Haiti to pay reparations for the slaves who were freed. The reparations were 150 million francs. (France sold the entire Louisiana territory to the US for 80 million francs!) Haiti was forced to borrow money from banks in France and the US to pay reparations to France. A major loan from the US to pay off the French was finally paid off in 1947. The current value of the money Haiti was forced to pay to French and US banks? Over $20 Billion - with a big B. The US occupied and ruled Haiti by force from 1915 to 1934. President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to invade in 1915. Revolts by Haitians were put down by US military - killing over 2000 in one skirmish alone. For the next nineteen years, the US controlled customs in Haiti, collected taxes, and ran many governmental institutions. How many billions were siphoned off by the US during these 19 years? >From 1957 to 1986 Haiti was forced to live under US backed dictators "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" Duvlaier. The US supported these dictators economically and militarily because they did what the US wanted and were politically "anti-communist" - now translatable as against human rights for their people. Duvalier stole millions from Haiti and ran up hundreds of millions in debt that Haiti still owes. Ten thousand Haitians lost their lives. Estimates say that Haiti owes $1.3 billion in external debt and that 40% of that debt was run up by the US-backed Duvaliers. Thirty years ago Haiti imported no rice. Today Haiti imports nearly all its rice. Though Haiti was the sugar growing capital of the Caribbean, it now imports sugar as well. Why? The US and the US dominated world financial institutions - the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank - forced Haiti to open its markets to the world. Then the US dumped millions of tons of US subsidized rice and sugar into Haiti - undercutting their farmers and ruining Haitian agriculture. By ruining Haitian agriculture, the US has forced Haiti into becoming the third largest world market for US rice. Good for US farmers, bad for Haiti. In 2002, the US stopped hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to Haiti which were to be used for, among other public projects like education, roads. These are the same roads which relief teams are having so much trouble navigating now! In 2004, the US again destroyed democracy in Haiti when they supported the coup against Haiti's elected President Aristide. Haiti is even used for sexual recreation just like the old time plantations. Check the news carefully and you will find numerous stories of abuse of minors by missionaries, soldiers and charity workers. Plus there are the frequent sexual vacations taken to Haiti by people from the US and elsewhere. What is owed for that? What value would you put on it if it was your sisters and brothers? US based corporations have for years been teaming up with Haitian elite to run sweatshops teeming with tens of thousands of Haitians who earn less than $2 a day. The Haitian people have resisted the economic and military power of the US and others ever since their independence. Like all of us, Haitians made their own mistakes as well. But US power has forced Haitians to pay great prices - deaths, debt and abuse. It is time for the people of the US to join with Haitians and reverse the course of US-Haitian relations. This brief history shows why the US owes Haiti Billions - with a big B. This is not charity. This is justice. This is reparations. The current crisis is an opportunity for people in the US to own up to our country's history of dominating Haiti and to make a truly just response. (For more on the history of exploitation of Haiti by the US see: Paul Farmer, The Uses of Haiti; Peter Hallward, Damming the Flood; and Randall Robinson, An Unbroken Agony) Bill is Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He is a Katrina survivor and has been active in human rights in Haiti for years with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Quigley77 at gmail.com =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 17 20:01:48 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:01:48 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] [Haiti] Statement from the International Action Center Message-ID: Peoples Solidarity with Haiti - Make Demands on the U.S. Government Statement from the International Action Center - www.IACenter.org Justice for Haiti means immediate aid, reparations, debt cancelation, restoration of President Aristide, asylum for all Haitians and self-determination not military occupation. The International Action Center expresses its full solidarity with the Haitian people at this time of greatest crisis following the devastating Jan.12 earthquake. In the Haitian capital, tens of thousands of lives have been lost and the lives of hundreds of thousands of additional people are at stake. It is essential that there be an all-out effort for immediate and massive humanitarian relief effort. Tons of supplies could be parachuted to desperate people in immediate need of food and especially water. The delivery of this essential aid, plus the placement of rescue and medical teams must be the priority. Dozens of countries from all over the world, rich and poor, immediately sent hundreds of doctors and emergency medical teams and search and rescue teams and supplies. Cuba already had 344 health workers in Haiti and is ready to send 152 more. Because the United States is the most powerful and wealthiest country in the world and is so near to Haiti , it is almost inevitable that many will look to Washington to lead the rescue effort. And with all concerned for immediate relief for the Haitians, it will be easy to ignore the political realities both before the calamity and in its aftermath. These realities, however, will continue to affect the future of Haiti , and all of us should keep them in mind. 1. Haiti is the poorest and least developed country in the hemisphere, everyone repeats. That is true, but it is because Haiti has been occupied by U.S. imperialism again and again. In 2004 in a coup, planned from Washington and supported by troops from France and Canada , President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a president democratically elected by over 75 % of the vote was kidnapped and removed. The U.S. still prevents President Aristide from returning to Haiti from South Africa , where he is exiled. The U.S. set up an occupation of Haiti under UN command. Six years of this UN occupation has done nothing to develop Haiti or improve its infrastructure. Instead it has led to still greater poverty and hunger and higher debt. 2. The Pentagon is controlling the U.S. intervention in the disaster. Its priority is not the rapid delivery of food and water, but the establishment of a beachhead of 2,200 Marines and 3,500 paratroopers, now increased to 10,000 military to police the Haitian population. This military has a dual role that includes delivery of aid, but its main role is repression and control, just as it is in Afghanistan , Iraq and other occupied countries. Jarry Emmanuel of World Food Organization stated: "There are 200 flights going in and out every day. But most of those flights are for the U.S. military. Their priorities are to secure the country. Ours are to feed." 3. President Barack Obama has appointed not only Bill Clinton but also George W. Bush in charge of raising support for the U.S. relief effort. It was Bush -- probably the most hated of U.S. presidents worldwide -- who cynically delayed relief efforts and allowed the people of New Orleans to drown following the Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and who presided over the kidnapping and enforced exile of President Aristide. 4. From 1804, when the first successful slave revolution in history drove out the French colonialists and slave masters, until the present, Washington has continually imposed sanctions, debt repayments and military intervention in an attempt to crush Haitian independence. The U.S. directly occupied the country from 1915 to 1934 and again in the last 20 years. 5. The $100 million President Obama promised sounds like a lot of money, but it is tiny compared to the amount the rulers of France and the United States stole from Haiti and its people over centuries. It is a fraction of the $1 billion that Haitian workers in the diaspora send home to their families every year. It is less than what the U.S. spends in 5 hours for the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq . It is far less than 1% of the $18 billion that Goldman Sacks executives will receive in bonuses after a $700 billion bailout of the banks. 6. The IMF immediately gave a $100 million loan to Haiti . This is an outrage and a crime. Haiti 's debts are already unsustainable. Hundreds of millions in debts remain from the U.S. imposed Pap Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier dictatorships. IMF required 'structural adjustments' have forced Haiti from sustainable agriculture to cash crops for the rich, raised the price of electricity, leaving millions in the dark and frozen pay on vital social services of doctors, nurses, teachers, public transit and infrastructure. Millions of people in solidarity with the Haitian people are making great efforts to send emergency supplies. The Haitian people themselves are organizing and gathering desperately needed supplies. Along with emergency peoples relief efforts there must be peoples' demands on the U.S. government and the powerful corporations. In light of the above points, the International Action Center proposes the following demands: * Immediate delivery of food, water and medical supplies, not military occupation; * Allow the return of democratically elected President Aristide to Haiti and restore his government, * Reparations from the U.S. , France and Canada so that Haitians can take charge of the relief effort and invite the international assistance of their choice; * Immediate Cancelation of Haiti 's debts * Immediate asylum for all Haitians in the United States * Permission for Haitian residents of the U.S. to go to Haiti to help their families and to return to the U.S. ; * Self-determination for Haiti . International Action Center 55 W. 17th St, # 5C, New York , NY 10011 212-633-6646 www.IACenter.org =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 17 23:07:03 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2010 23:07:03 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Fw: Haiti: provocation and pretext for war. MSF cargo plane blocked. Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Sid Shniad Sent: Sunday, January 17, 2010 10:21 PM Subject: Haiti: provocation and pretext for war. MSF cargo plane blocked. From: sfptor-bounces at listserv.physics.utoronto.ca [sfptor-bounces at listserv.physics.utoronto.ca] On Behalf Of Manuel Rozental [em_rozental at yahoo.com] Sent: January 17, 2010 4:36 PM Subject: [Sfptor] [encamino-info] Haiti: provocation and pretext for war. MSF cargo plane blocked. Succesful effective solidarity and assistance are essential within a context and coordinated with logistical efficiency and politica-communications strategies. I am absolutely convinced that the US has used the situation in Haiti as a pretext to establish a base closer to Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. It is part of a military plan that includes the use of the recently established bases in Colombia. In fact, I fear a terrible scenario. People in Haiti driven to dispair due to hunger, lack of water and the entire disaster, leading to riots, violence and expected responses under these unimaginable conditions. This situation will provide the justification for military presence, not for aid, but to monitor and supervise a "natural" genocide. This military occupation to establish monopoly over aid, use it as a political tool and limit its delivery is a provocation to the proggressive governments in the region. They either remain silent and watch Haitians dye and kill each other under US and Canadian occupation, or they react, like President Ortega already has reacted from Nicaragua, demanding an immediate withdrawal of the US troops. If Venezuela reacts for the protection of Haitians and against US military presence together with Cuba and UNASUR, and try to intervene with aid, this could trigger a military response from the US. We could certainly be facing a scenario of war between the US and its servant regimes (Colombia, Peru, Honduras) and Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador. The frightening fact that this is possible under the circumstances and that oil, mining resources and transnational corporate and financial interests to overcome the economic crisis is the main interest here, exposes the evolving initiative into a Caribbean-Andean war that the US has been preparing for a long time. This is not paranoia or a conspiracy theory. Beyond other serious analysis on the web, (http://www.countercurrents.org/lendman160110.htm, http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/places/Latin+America, http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/23642, http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/23623) the attached communiqu? from MSF, begins to expose the situation. President Evo Morales has announced he will deliver Bolivia?s aide personally, travelling with it on a Bolivian plane early next week. The response, the best response under the circumstanses is massive and effective solidarity that works and breaks through the provocation by responding to the needs and restores the dignity of Haitians. This requires a comprehensive articulated effort AND an extraordinary political and communications strategy to expose the truths. In other words, getting there with supplies and human resources is essential, but it has to be part of a solid, coordinated effort to help Haitians and counterparts in continents resist. I don?t think this vision is clear amongst the majority of the people, as the propaganda and political, together with the military machinery of global capital has been activated. Obama has met with Bush and Clinton to launch a coordinated US initiative. We are facing a situation as the one that justified the invasion of Iraq, under the pretext of weapons of mass destruction. This time, an earthquake and the suffering of Haitians is the pretext. We have called solidarity movements and organizations such as Via Campesina, whose efforts in Asia after the Tsunami were exemplary and other organizations and groups to: 1. Mobilize medical and other resources, material and human 2. Establish logistics to have these arrive and be used well 3. Mobilize a communication strategy and solidarity for awareness and resistance articulating those on the ground with the outside counterparts. Now that MSF and probably others are being blocked, we underscore the fact that solidarity, more than aid, is what is urgently required and that assistance, urgently needed will only reach those in need if it is combined with communications and political action. The US and Canadian military presence in Haiti is a criminal action with racist components, as has been the case from Empire throughout history. See the MSF Communiqu? below. Thank you Manuel http://www.msf.ca/news-media/news/2010/01/haiti-msf-cargo-plane-with-full-hospital-and-staff-blocked-from-landing-in-port-au-prince/ Haiti: MSF cargo plane with full hospital and staff blocked from landing in Port-au-Prince MSF demands deployment of lifesaving medical equipment given priority Published 17 January 2010 M?decins Sans Fronti?res (MSF) urges that its cargo planes carrying essential medical and surgical material be allowed to land in Port-au-Prince in order to treat thousands of wounded waiting for vital surgical operations. Priority must be given immediately to planes carrying lifesaving equipment and medical personnel. Despite guarantees, given by the United Nations and the U.S. Defense Department, an MSF cargo plane carrying an inflatable surgical hospital was blocked from landing in Port-au-Prince on Saturday Jan. 16, and was re-routed to Samana, in Dominican Republic. All material from the cargo is now being sent by truck from Samana, but this has added a 24-hour delay for the arrival of the hospital. A second MSF plane is currently on its way and scheduled to land today in Port- au-Prince at around 10:00 a.m. local time with additional lifesaving medical material and the rest of the equipment for the hospital. If this plane is also rerouted, then the installation of the hospital will be further delayed, in a situation where thousands of wounded are still in need of life saving treatment. The inflatable hospital includes 2 operating theaters, an intensive care unit, 100-bed hospitalization capacity, an emergency room and all the necessary equipment needed for sterilizing material. MSF teams are currently working around the clock in 5 different hospitals in Port-au-Prince, but only 2 operating theaters are fully functional, while a third operating theater has been improvised for minor surgery due to the massive influx of wounded and lack of functional referral structures. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 17 23:15:06 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2010 23:15:06 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Disputes emerge over Haiti aid control; Naomi Klein Issues Alert Message-ID: <826DB2F7587C4D979F32522C5391B88F@agingCHS072729> >From Al-Jazeera: Disputes emerge over Haiti aid control "Most Haitians here have seen little humanitarian aid so far. What they have seen is guns, and plenty of them." "Here the Americans have taken control. It looks more like the Green Zone in Baghdad than a centre for aid distribution." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F5TwEK24sA&feature=player_embedded ============= And in case you missed it: Naomi Klein Issues Haiti Disaster Capitalism Alert: Stop Them Before They Shock Again Democracy Now! January 14, 2010 http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/14/naomi_klein_issues_haiti_disaster_capitalism Journalist and author Naomi Klein spoke in New York last night and addressed the crisis in Haiti: "We have to be absolutely clear that this tragedy-which is part natural, part unnatural-must, under no circumstances, be used to, one, further indebt Haiti and, two, to push through unpopular corporatist policies in the interest of our corporations. This is not conspiracy theory. They have done it again and again." AMY GOODMAN: Let's go back to Naomi Klein. We're going to try that tape again, her commenting on what is going on in Haiti right now and who is profiting already. NAOMI KLEIN: But as I write about in The Shock Doctrine, crises are often used now as the pretext for pushing through policies that you cannot push through under times of stability. Countries in periods of extreme crisis are desperate for any kind of aid, any kind of money, and are not in a position to negotiate fairly the terms of that exchange. And I just want to pause for a second and read you something, which is pretty extraordinary. I just put this up on my website. The headline is "Haiti: Stop Them Before They Shock Again." This went up a few hours ago, three hours ago, I believe, on the Heritage Foundation website. "Amidst the Suffering, Crisis in Haiti Offers Opportunities to the U.S. In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti's long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the image of the United States in the region." And then goes on. Now, I don't know whether things are improving or not, because it took the Heritage Foundation thirteen days before they issued thirty-two free market solutions for Hurricane Katrina. We put that document up on our website, as well. It was close down the housing projects, turn the Gulf Coast into a tax-free free enterprise zone, get rid of the labor laws that forces contractors to pay a living wage. Yeah, so it took them thirteen days before they did that in the case of Katrina. In the case of Haiti, they didn't even wait twenty-four hours. Now, why I say I don't know whether it's improving or not is that two hours ago they took this down. So somebody told them that it wasn't couth. And then they put up something that was much more delicate. Fortunately, the investigative reporters at Democracy Now! managed to find that earlier document in a Google cache. But what you'll find now is a much gentler "Things to Remember While Helping Haiti." And buried down there, it says, "Long-term reforms for Haitian democracy and its economy are also badly overdue." But the point is, we need to make sure that the aid that goes to Haiti is, one, grants, not loans. This is absolutely crucial. This is an already heavily indebted country. This is a disaster that, as Amy said, on the one hand is nature, is, you know, an earthquake; on the other hand is the creation, is worsened by the poverty that our governments have been so complicit in deepening. Crises-natural disasters are so much worse in countries like Haiti, because you have soil erosion because the poverty means people are building in very, very precarious ways, so houses just slide down because they are built in places where they shouldn't be built. All of this is interconnected. But we have to be absolutely clear that this tragedy, which is part natural, part unnatural, must, under no circumstances, be used to, one, further indebt Haiti, and, two, to push through unpopular corporatist policies in the interests of our corporations. And this is not a conspiracy theory. They have done it again and again. AMY GOODMAN: Naomi Klein speaking last night at the Ethical Culture Society. She's the author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Mon Jan 18 20:14:36 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:14:36 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Thousands of volunteer nurses for earthquake relief blocked by US Navy Message-ID: <5C315EBF7D624C18AC39A3FC24ABF04C@agingCHS072729> [In case anyone is still unsure of what the criminals running Haiti are up to] http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_14213791 Volunteer nurses stalled in Haiti earthquake relief By Matt O'Brien Contra Costa Times Posted: 01/17/2010 09:07:28 PM PST Updated: 01/18/2010 06:45:12 AM PST OAKLAND-More than 10,000 nurses across the United States are signed up with an Oakland-based nurses union to help treat wounded Haitians, but after days negotiating with the U.S. Navy they have not yet found a way to get there, said Chuck Idelson, spokesman for the California Nurses Association. "A lot of people are frustrated because they're anxious to be deployed, they want to be helping," Idelson said on Sunday night. >From their downtown Oakland office, organizers have worked around the clock since just hours after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake shook Haiti on Tuesday coordinating a growing list of volunteers, including more than 2,800 from California, so they can be deployed to use their skills to help with international relief efforts. "Without question, there's a need. There's a shortage of functioning medical facilities," Idelson said. The group hit a temporary dead end over the weekend, however, when the U.S. military informed the nurses they would not be able to travel aboard a Navy hospital ship called the USNS Comfort, at least not anytime soon. That was after days the union spent scouring the nurses list and making sure volunteers fulfilled the military's extensive list of requirements, Idelson said. He said the nurses are now actively seeking alternate routes to get into the country using partners who are scouring Port-au-Prince and neighboring towns for places where they can set up clinics. The nurses culled volunteers through National Nurses United, an affiliate that was founded by the California Nurses Association. They said their list of volunteers includes several Haitian-American nurses who speak French and Kreyol. Efforts by medical experts around the world to reach Port-au-Prince have been difficult since there is only one working runway at the city airport that has been crowded by international agencies bringing food, supplies, search teams and troops. One well-known emergency health organization, Doctors Without Borders, had difficulty flying its teams into Haiti over the weekend, causing one French diplomat to criticize the United States, which oversees the airport's traffic, according to wire reports. Some medical volunteers have traveled over land from the neighboring Dominican Republic, but the biggest challenge is making sure they have some kind of safe and secure medical infrastructure equipped with supplies once they reach Haiti, nurse organizers said. A smaller, 7-person team of emergency physicians and nurses from Stanford Hospital was also struggling with how to get to Haiti late last week, and it was not known if they had arrived yet. Once they get there, the team, which includes Stanford's chief of emergency medicine, was going to be stationed for about three weeks at a hospital near the Presidential Palace and a makeshift clinic in the hills above Port-au-Prince. Stanford said the physicians were working with the International Medical Corps group, which had four doctors in Haiti as of Friday and another 13 on the way. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Mon Jan 18 20:25:20 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:25:20 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] **MUST READ** Is the Haiti Rescue Effort Failing? Message-ID: http://www.alternet.org/story/145226/ Is the Haiti Rescue Effort Failing? By Danny Schechter, AlterNet. Posted January 18, 2010. Everyone wants to believe in the best intentions of all involved, but five days after the quake, with so few being helped, we have to ask: how did this get so badly done? Every disaster plan is built to some degree around the idea of triage -- deciding who can and cannot be saved. The worst cases are often separated and allowed to perish so that others who are considered more survivable can be treated. There is a tragic triage underway in Haiti thanks to screw-ups in the US and western response, and in part because of the objectively tough conditions in Haiti that blocked access and made the delivery of food, water and services difficult. But the planners should have known that! Look at the TV coverage. "Saving Haiti" is the title CNN has given to its coverage. It shows us all the planes landing, and donations coming in and celebrity response on one hand, and then the problems/failures to actually deliver aid on the other. Much of the coverage focuses on the upbeat -- people being saved. But despite that frame, which highlights a compassionate America's response, the reality of what's happening in Haiti is only barely getting through. It's not pretty. Everyone wants to believe in the best intentions of all involved but five days after the quake, with so few being helped, we have to ask: how did this get so badly done? It's like Obama's plan to stop foreclosures through modifying loans. Great idea, but only a handful of homeowners have benefited. There is a yawning gap between the idea and its execution. So what happened in Haiti? The short answer: it is too little and in many cases, much of it too late. A natural disaster has been compounded by a well-intentioned man-made one. Why? One global report explained: United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon emphasized the importance of the first 72 hours following the 12 January disaster. But already much of that crucial time has been spent attempting to assess the situation. The structures usually responsible for dealing with civilian emergencies have been unable to respond effectively due to widespread destruction of national and international power structures. (This means the UN and the Haitian government as well as the US effort). Lacking outside support, civilians have worked communally to try to save their own families. Supplies were sent but many have yet to get out of the airport. Troops have not been assigned to help deliver water or guard medical facilities. There is a fear of the wrath of a people that are pissed off at hearing about aid and money donated, and then seeing nothing trickling down into their neighborhoods. And there is a deeper fear -- a political fear. With President Aristide, the man the US considers too radical for its tastes, anxious to return, there is fear that a possible revolt against the lack of help could turn angry and political. Hillary Clinton keeps telling the Haitians that we are their friends -- but many doubt it. They know that Aristide's Lavalas party is the most popular in Haiti and wants a more profound transformation than the US wants to allow. It had been banned from taking part in scheduled elections next month, that are likely to be canceled now. Haiti's president Preval is weak and dependent on US largesse. They also know that in the aftermath of earthquakes, like the one that rocked Manaqua, Nicaraga in the 1970s, there can be revolution. They don't want that to happen in Haiti. They also know how volatile the country is, in part because of neglect by the West over the years. Private help is not getting through either. Western Union offices are still closed in a country that relies on foreign remittances as a lifeline. The media is finally admitting the aid mission is failing, although that's not the word used -- they say the relief effort is "troubled!" Here's the headline in the NY Times: "Officials Strain to Distribute Aid to Haiti as Violence Rises." The piece continues: "A sprawling assembly of international officials and aid workers struggled to fix a troubled relief effort." The Guardian/Observer focuses on a water delivery crisis. The article doesn't ask why armed troops were not assigned to protecting drivers: Hundreds of thousands of Haitians are in desperate need of drinking water because of an earthquake-damaged municipal pipeline and truck drivers either unable or unwilling to deliver their cargo. Many drivers are afraid of being attacked if they go out, some drivers are still missing in the disaster and others are out there searching for missing relatives," said Dudu Jean, a 30-year-old driver who was attacked on Friday when he drove into the capital's sprawling Cite Soleil slum. The lack of water has become one of the greatest dangers facing Haitians in part because earthquake survivors stay outdoors all day in the heat out of fear of aftershocks and unstable buildings. But there is something else going on. The disaster planners have an agenda that goes beyond just saving lives. They want to use the crisis to rebuild Haiti along lines they support. (ie. Support of property rights etc) So far they have not spoken about how policies backed by the United States through the Caribbean Basin Initiative were responsible for uprooting peasants from the countryside to move them to the city to be a cheap labor reserve. In that Reagan era effort, pigs were killed and imported food replaced home grown varieties to benefit US suppliers. Debt dependence grew -- classic imperialist policies. Read this report in coded uncritical top-down language from the Washington Post: Even as rescuers are digging victims out of the rubble in Haiti, policymakers in Washington and around the world are grappling with how a destitute, corrupt and now devastated country might be transformed into a self-sustaining nation. Development efforts have failed there, decade after decade, leaving Haitians with a dysfunctional government, a high crime rate and incomes averaging a dollar a day. But the leveled capitol, Port-au-Prince, must be rebuilt, promising one of the largest economic development efforts ever undertaken in the hemisphere -- an effort "measured in months and even years," President Obama said Saturday in an appeal for donations alongside former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. And those who will help oversee it are thinking hard about how to use that money and attention to change the country forever. "It's terrible to look at it this way, but out of crisis often comes real change," said C. Ross Anthony, the Rand Corp's global health director. "The people and the institutions take on the crisis and bring forth things they weren't able to do in the past." The Rand Corporation is a military contractor primarily, a center for spooks and covert strategies. The fact that they are being quoted as saviors is scary in itself. In other words, Haiti's future is being planned outside of Haiti and will be imposed step by step. I don't know about you but anything that George W. Bush is supporting, I tend to be skeptical of, to say the least. Let's admit it, this disaster response is itself a disaster. And it's helping promote a new disaster to come. Greg Palast points to some of the many contradictions that the TV networks that are milking Haiti's pain in an orgy of self-congratulatory reporting have yet to explore: *China deployed rescuers with sniffer dogs within 48 hours. China, Mr. President. China: 8,000 miles distant. Miami: 700 miles close. US bases in Puerto Rico: right there. [Greg, make that 25,000 miles away!] * Obama's Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, "I don't know how this government could have responded faster or more comprehensively than it has." We know Gates doesn't know. * From my own work in the field, I know that FEMA has access to ready-to-go potable water, generators, mobile medical equipment and more for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. It's all still there. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honor?, who served as the task force commander for emergency response after Hurricane Katrina, told the Christian Science Monitor, "I thought we had learned that from Katrina, take food and water and start evacuating people." Maybe we learned but, apparently, Gates and the Defense Department missed school that day. * Send in the Marines. That's America's response. That's what we're good at. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed -- without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters. * But don't worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field, deployed immediately with ten metric tons of tools and equipment, three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water purifying capability. They're from Iceland. [Hillary Clinton said proudly on Saturday that there are now 30 teams in place. No one asked, why only 30?] * Gates wouldn't send in food and water because, he said, there was no "structure ... to provide security." For Gates, appointed by Bush and allowed to hang around by Obama, it's security first. That was his lesson from Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater before drinking water. * Previous US presidents have acted far more swiftly in getting troops on the ground on that island. Haiti is the right half of the island of Hispaniola. It's treated like the right testicle of Hell. The Dominican Republic the left. In 1965, when Dominicans demanded the return of Juan Bosch, their elected President, deposed by a junta, Lyndon Johnson reacted to this crisis rapidly, landing 45,000 US Marines on the beaches to prevent the return of the elected president. " And Greg asks the question that our media heroes have yet to explore: How did Haiti end up so economically weakened, with infrastructure, from hospitals to water systems, busted or non-existent - there are two fire stations in the entire nation - and infrastructure so frail that the nation was simply waiting for "nature" to finish it off? Good question. One of the many we should be asking. In the meantime, we need the press to start asking tougher questions and exposing a Katrina-like response that is still losing countless lives. A country in pain deserves relief. Not more pain. If you lived there, wouldn't you be pissed and ready to explode? =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Mon Jan 18 23:34:34 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 23:34:34 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] How the U.S. Impoverished Haiti Message-ID: <06606B30F0D1455CBF60E1B1ADD805A1@agingCHS072729> http://www.portside.org/?q=showpost&i=7171 January 16, 2010 How the U.S. Impoverished Haiti by Jean Damu The horrific disaster that has befallen Haiti is perhaps unprecedented in the Western hemisphere. Estimates now say that perhaps hundreds of thousands have died as a result of the Jan. 12 earthquake. Many in the media have constantly said, as a mantra, that the reason so many have died is because of the weak infrastructure and poor quality of construction there. The implication is that Haitians are unable to govern and build a reliable, sustainable society. The truth of the matter is that left to their own efforts Haitians would have been more than able to build a reliable democracy with adequate infrastructure. But it has never been allowed to do so; not by Europe and certainly not the United States. The article below was written in 2003. It attempts to describe how Haiti has been by design maintained as the most impoverished nation in our hemisphere. Contact your congressional representative and urge them to help move Congress to increase aid to Haiti. For more direct aid and action go to Haitiaction.net Though the demand by Haiti for reparations from France is just, it obscures the role the United States played in the process to impoverish Haiti - a role that continues to this day. Today Haiti is a severely indebted country whose debt to export ratio is nearly 300 percent, far above what is considered sustainable even by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Both institutions are dominated by the U.S. In 1980 Haiti's debt was $302 million. Since then it has more than tripled to $1.1 billion, approximately 40 percent of the nation's gross national product. Last year Haiti paid more in debt service than it did on medical services for the people. Haitian officials say nearly 80 percent of the current debt was accumulated by the regimes of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier, Doc and Baby Doc. Both regimes operated under the benign gaze of the United States that has had a long and sordid history of keeping Haiti well within its sphere of economic and political influence. It is now well known that the primary source of Haiti's chronic impoverishment is the reparations it was forced to pay to the former plantation owners who left following the 1804 revolution. Some of the white descendants of the former plantation owners, who now live in New Orleans, still have the indemnity coupons issued by France. So in fact, at least part of the reparations paid by Haiti went toward the development of the United States. In 1825 Haiti was forced to borrow 24 million francs from private French banks to begin paying off the crippling indemnity debt. Haiti only acknowledged this debt in exchange for French recognition of her independence, a principle that would continue to characterize Haiti's international relationships. These indemnity payments caused continual financial emergencies and political upheavals. In a 51-year period, Haiti had 16 different presidents - new presidents often coming to power at the head of a rebel army. Nevertheless, Haiti always made the indemnity payments - and, following those, the bank loan payments - on time. The 1915 intervention by the Marines on behalf of U.S. financial interests changed all of that, however. The prelude to the 1915 U.S. intervention began in 1910 when the National Bank of Haiti, founded in 1881 with French capital and entrusted from the start with the administration of the Haitian treasury, disappeared. It was replaced by the financial institution known as the National Bank of the Republic of Haiti. Part of the capital of the new national bank was subscribed by the National City Bank of New York, signaling, for the first time, U.S. interest in the financial affairs of Haiti. The motivation for the original U.S. financial interest in Haiti was the schemes of several U.S. corporations with ties to the National City Bank to build a railroad system there. In order for these corporations - including the W.R. Grace Corp. - to protect their investments, they pressured President Woodrow Wilson and his secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, to find ways to stabilize the Haitian economy, namely by taking a controlling interest in the Haitian custom houses, the main source of revenue for the government. After Secretary of State Bryan was fully briefed on Haiti by his advisers, he exclaimed, 'Dear me, think of it! Niggers speaking French.' Ironically, however, Bryan, a longtime anti-imperialist, was against any exploitative relationship between the U.S. and Haiti or any other nation in the Western Hemisphere. In fact he had long called for canceling the debts of smaller nations as a means by which they could normally grow and develop. Not surprisingly, Bryan's views were not well received in Washington or on Wall Street. Due to the near total ignorance at the State Department and in Washington generally about Haiti, Bryan was forced to rely on anyone who had first hand information. That person turned out to be Roger L. Farnham, one of the few people thoroughly familiar with Haitian affairs. Farnham was thoroughly familiar with Haitian affairs because he was vice-president of the National City Bank of New York and of the new National Bank of the Republic of Haiti and president of the National Railway of Haiti. In spite of the secretary of state's hostility to Wall Street and Farnham's obvious conflict of interest, Bryan leaned heavily on Farnham for information and advice. As vice president of both National City Bank and the National Bank of the Republic of Haiti, Farnham played a cat and mouse game with the Haitian legislature and president. Alternately, he would threaten direct U.S. intervention or to withhold government funds if they did not turn over control of the Haitian custom houses to National City Bank. In defense of Haitian independence, lawmakers refused at every juncture. Finally, in 1914, with the outbreak of World War I, Farnham was able to convince Washington that France and Germany posed direct threats to the U.S. by their presence in Haiti. Each had a small colony of business people there. In December of 1914, Farnham arranged for the U.S. Marines to come ashore at Port Au Prince, march into the new National Bank of Haiti and steal two strongboxes containing $500,000 in Haitian currency and sail to New York, where the money was placed in New York City Bank. This made the Haitian government totally dependent on Farnham for finances with which to operate. The final and immediate decision to intervene in Haiti came in July of 1915 with yet another overthrow of a Haitian president, this time the bloody demise of Vilbrun Guillaume Sam. For the next 19 years, the U.S. Marine Corps wielded supreme authority throughout Haiti, often dispensing medicines and food as mild forms of pacification. Within several years, however, charges of massacres of Haitian peasants were made against the military as Haitians revolted against the road building programs that required forced labor. In one such incident at Fort Reviere, the Marines killed 51 Haitians without sustaining any casualties themselves. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt awarded Major Smedley D. Butler the Congressional Medal of Honor. That's not unlike the awarding of Medals of Honor to the 'heroes' of the massacre at Wounded Knee, in which hundreds of Sioux Native Americans were slaughtered in 1890. Reports of U.S. military abuses against the Haitians became so widespread that NAACP official James Weldon Johnson headed a delegation to investigate the charges, which they deemed to be true. While the U.S. occupation was not without some successes - the health care system was improved and the currency was stabilized - it was in other economic spheres where the most damage was done. For the entire 19-year duration of the intervention, maximum attention was given to paying off Haiti's U.S. creditors, with little to no attention given to developing the economy. In 1922 former Marine Brigade Commander John Russell was named as High Commissioner of Haiti, a post he held until the final days of the occupation. Under Russell's influence, all political dissent was stifled and revenue from the custom houses was turned over, often months ahead of schedule, to Haiti's U.S. bond creditors, who had assumed loans originally extended to Haiti to pay off the French plantation owners' reparations! By 1929, however, with the Western world's economic depression and the lowering of living standards throughout Haiti, serious student strikes and worker revolts, combined with Wall Street's inability to lure serious business investors there, Washington decided it was time to end the military occupation. When then President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Haiti in 1934 to announce the pullout, he was the first head of a foreign nation in Haiti's history to extend a visit. Despite the American military pullout, U.S. financial administrators continued to dominate the Haitian economy until the final debt on the earlier loans was retired in 1947. Soon after the U.S. withdrew from Haiti, a Black consciousness movement of sorts took hold that was the precursor of the 'negritude' movement popularized by Aimee Cesaire and Leopold Senghor. Francois Duvalier, an early believer in 'negritude,' came to power in the late 1950s, popularizing ideas that resonated with a population that had withstood a white foreign occupation for many years. By the time Duvalier grabbed the presidency of the world's first Black republic established by formerly enslaved peoples, Haiti had experienced more than 150 years of chronic impoverishment and discriminatory lending policies by the world's leading financial institutions and powers. The economic forecast for Haiti has not improved, even with the democratic election of Jean Bertrand Aristide, since he has been consistently demonized in the U.S. and world press. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 19 11:40:51 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 11:40:51 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] [Haiti] CARICOM BLOCKED ...as US takes control of airport Message-ID: <445D11AB76EA4C359E9B292195150E46@agingCHS072729> http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_news?id=161583443 CARICOM BLOCKED ...as US takes control of airport Rickey Singh Barbados Sunday, January 17th 2010 [Photo: IN DIRE NEED: A woman reacts in a street in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, yesterday. Relief groups and officials are focused on moving aid flowing into Haiti to survivors of the powerful 7.0 earthquake that hit the country on Tuesday. -Photo: AP] THE CARIBBEAN Community's emergency aid mission to Haiti, comprising Heads of Government and leading technical officials, failed to secure permission Friday to land at that devasted country's aiport, now under the control of the United States. Consequently, the Caricom 'assessment mission', that was to determine priority humanitarian needs resulting from the mind-boggling earthquake disaster of Haiti last Tuesday, had to travel back from Jamaica to their respective home destinations.. On Friday afternoon the US State Department confirmed signing two 'Memoranda of Understanding' with the Government of Haiti that made 'official that the United Stateas is in charge of all inbound and outbound flights and aid off-loading...' Further, according to the agreements signed, US medical personnel 'now have the authority to operate on Haitian citizens and otherwise render medical assistance without having to wait for licences from Haiti's government...' Prior to the US taking control of Haiti's airport, a batch of some 30 Cuban doctors had left Havana, following Wednesday's earthquake, to join more than 300 of their colleagues who have been working there for more than a year. Last evening the frustration suffered by the Caricom mission to get landing permission was expected to be raised in a scheduled meeting at Jamaica's Norman Manley International Airport with US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton. Jamaica's Prime Minister Bruce Golding who was making arrangements for the meeting with Clinton, following her visit earlier in the day to witness the devasation of the capital Port-au-Prince, said he could not comment on details to be discussed. He, however, told this correspondent: 'I appreciate the chaos and confusion at Haiti's airport, where there is just one operational runway. But Haiti is a member of Caricom and we simply have to be facilitated and the truth is, there is hardly a functioning government in Haiti...' Asked whether the difficuties encountered by the Caricom mission may be related to reports that US authorities were not anxious to facilitate landing of aircraft from Cuba and Venezuela, Prime Minister Golding said he could 'only hope that there is no truth to such immature thinking in the face of the horrific scale of Haiti's tragedy...' Golding, who has lead portfolio responsibility among Caricom leaders for external economic relations, had a personal first-hand assessment when he flew to Haiti on Thusday. A contigent of some 150 members of the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF has since established a camp with medical facilities in the vicinity of Haiti's airport. Ahead of last evening scheduled meeting with Secretary of State Clinton, Prime Minister Golding had discussed on Friday in Kingstom some of the probems to be overcome at a meeting he held in Kingston on Friday with the Prime Ministers of Barbados and Dominica and including the Community's Secretary General.. Among urgent matters to be discussed with Secretary Clinton was to be possible use of the Norman Manley Airport as a primary hub, given its short distance from Haiti (45 minutes), for all emergency missions. The Community's Secretary General (Edwin Carrington) explained that proper use of the Norman Manley Airport would be consistent with a decision last week for Jamaica to serve as the Sub-regional Operational Focal Point (SOFP) responses to the Haitian humanitarian crisis. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 19 11:58:33 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 11:58:33 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] US military tightens grip on Haiti Message-ID: <2A4AEF380C644FC2B5CB0430FE52180F@agingCHS072729> <> <> http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/hait-j18.shtml US military tightens grip on Haiti By Alex Lantier 18 January 2010 Amid the humanitarian tragedy following the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, Washington has concentrated on establishing indefinite military control of the country. Fearing mass protests and riots by desperate Haitians against inadequate rescue efforts, US logistical efforts are focused on massing tens of thousands of troops for use against the population. Speaking yesterday on ABC television's "This Week" program, US General Ken Keen, who commands the military task force in Haiti, said US troops would "be here as long as needed." He confirmed there were roughly 4,200 US troops in Haiti, largely in cutters patrolling offshore, and that by today there would be 12,000 US troops in the country. On Saturday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Port-au-Prince at the invitation of Haitian President Ren? Pr?val. She argued for the imposition of an emergency decree in Haiti, allowing for the imposition of curfews and martial-law conditions by US forces. Clinton explained: "The decree would give the government an enormous amount of authority, which in practice they would delegate to us." The US government is also working with a force of roughly 7,000 Brazilian-led UN peacekeepers. Clinton commented, "We're being very thoughtful about how we support them." Brazilian officials publicly commented on the risk that mass rioting could overpower international security forces in Haiti. On Friday, Brazil's Defense Minister Nelson Jobin had warned that the peacekeepers "could struggle" if there was large-scale protests: "We are concerned about security." The Times of London commented, "Haiti's capital could quickly descend into rioting if three million hungry, thirsty, and traumatised earthquake survivors don't receive emergency aid soon." US officials are citing contradictory reports of looting in Haiti to justify further US troop deployments. Keen told ABC, "having a safe and secure environment is going to be very important. ... We have had incidents of violence that impede our ability to support the government of Haiti and answer the challenges that this country faces as they're suffering a tragedy of epic proportions." However, one official with the World Food Program (WFP) told the New York Times: "For the moment, the population is rather quiet. But we are seeing the first signs of violence and looting." The first signs included scuffles between Haitians as food aid is distributed to the population, and one incident in P?tionville, where police threw an alleged looter to an angry mob, who beat him and then burned him to death. The US military has taken control of Port-au-Prince airport as a key hub of its military buildup, blocking access by humanitarian flights. Humanitarian flights from France, Brazil, and Italy were refused permission to land, and the Red Cross reported one of its planes was diverted to Santo Domingo, the capital of the neighboring Dominican Republic. France's ambassador to Haiti, Didier le Bret, said France's foreign minister Bernard Kouchner had lodged a protest with the US State Department after the US blocked a French flight carrying an emergency field hospital. He added that Port-au-Prince airport was "not an airport for the international community. It's an annex of Washington. ... We were told it was an extreme emergency, there was need for a field hospital. We might be able to make a difference and save lives." French officials later backed down from these statements. Presidential counselor Claude Gu?ant said, "The US, who have a very sizeable Haitian community, have decided to make a considerable effort ... Now is really not the time to express rivalries between countries." However, WFP officials confirmed that US control of Port-au-Prince airport was creating serious logistical problems for aid and rescue efforts. The WFP's Jarry Emmanuel told the New York Times: "There are 200 flights going in and out every day, which is an incredible amount for a country like Haiti. But most of those flights are for the United States military. ... Their priorities are to secure the country. Ours are to feed [people]. We have got to get those priorities in sync." At Port-au-Prince's Municipal Nursing Home, barely one mile from the US-controlled airport, 85 elderly Haitians are starving and being attacked by rats. One man, Joseph Julien, has already died. Officials have cited fights over food at a nearby soccer stadium to justify not sending them supplies, despite their proximity to the airport. Nursing home administrator Jean Emmanuel told the Associated Press: "I'm pleading for everyone to understand that there's a truce right now, the streets are free, so you can come through to help us." As of yesterday, US search-and-rescue teams had only dug out 15 people from the rubble. The US military intervention in Haiti is criminal in both form and content. Disguised as a humanitarian rescue operation, its main aim is to build up the necessary firepower to terrorize the masses into accepting a shocking lack of treatment without protest. Even taken on its own terms, the US occupation of Haiti has not taken the opportunities available to it to treat wounded Haitians. This operation recalls the March 1993 US intervention in Somalia, when US forces invaded that strategically-located country, supposedly to help relieve famine. US forces were soon deeply entangled in civil war and hated by the population, leading up to a shoot-out between US forces and civilians in Mogadishu. Current US operations in Haiti are preparing similar confrontations with the population. The rescue efforts in Haiti are held hostage by a US national security establishment that is completely impervious to popular sympathy for the victims of the earthquake, and unanswerable to the masses-of Haiti or any other country, including the US itself. Instead, as the death toll mounts, there is an unspoken but unanimous agreement in the international media that it is legitimate for the US military to dictate how operations will proceed. Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive confirmed yesterday that the death toll was at least 70,000. However, this counted only confirmed dead in Port-au-Prince and the nearby city of Leogane, which was over 80 percent destroyed in the quake. Bellerive added that the figure of 100,000 dead throughout Haiti "would seem to be the minimum." Interviewed on NBC's "Meet the Press," USAID administrator Rajiv Shah said he had "no reason to contradict" estimates of 100,000 to 200,000 dead. Time is also running out for many of the even larger number of Haitians wounded in the earthquake. Hospitals have been destroyed and medical staffs are overwhelmed by large numbers of patients with crushed limbs and rapidly spreading infections. Deprived of antibiotics and basic medical supplies, doctors are resorting to amputations and are refusing treatment to badly injured patients, whom they do not think they can save. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times at Port-au-Prince's General Hospital, Dr. Georges Lamarre said most of his patients the first night had bled to death, and that he still had no antibiotics or blood supplies: "Up to this moment, there are patients out there we haven't even touched." At the General Hospital, Yolanda Gehry and her baby, Ashleigh, waited four days before doctors could tape up Ashleigh's head. However, they have not yet treated Ashleigh's shattered left hand. Gehry commented: "The Haitian doctors didn't have anything to help us, so we had to wait for the foreigners." US officials have made clear that treating Haitian victims of the earthquake is not a US priority. Medical facilities on the US aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, steaming off Haiti's shores, will not treat Haitians. The senior medical officer on board, Commander Alfred Shwayhat, told the Wall Street Journal he had plans to "treat 1,000 Haitians if necessary," but said that he had received no orders to do so. He continued, "If the captain authorizes it, I will take anyone ... [the Vinson's facility] exceeds anything in the civilian sector, bar none." Lieutenant Commander Jim Krohne, a spokesman for the Vinson's captain, explained that the carrier's mission was "sea-based." The Vinson later sent two doctors onshore to help treat Haitian patients. US officials are also warning Haitians that, if they try to flee from Haiti to the US, they will be deported back to Haiti. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said: "There may be an impulse to leave the island to come here. You will not qualify for TPS [Temporary Protected] status." This would allow the US to deport them upon arrival. Officials in Miami, a city with a large Haitian immigrant population, are watching for signs of a mass flght from Haiti to the US. Democratic Representative Kendrick B. Meek noted, "The entire community is emotionally attached to Haiti, and it's been rough," adding that Haitian-Americans form the bulk of the workforce for many major employers in the region. However, officials are preparing prisons for potential Haitian refugees. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that it would move 400 detainees from the Krome detention facility to an undisclosed location, to free up space in case any Haitians manage to reach US shores. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 19 20:45:32 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:45:32 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] IMF to Haiti: Freeze Public Wages Message-ID: the nation blog January 15, 2010 IMF to Haiti: Freeze Public Wages posted by Richard Kim Since a devastating earthquake rocked Haiti on Tuesday-- killing tens of thousands of people--there's been a lot of well-intentioned chatter and twitter about how to help Haiti. Folks have been donating millions of dollars to Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti (by texting "YELE" to 501501) or to the Red Cross (by texting "HAITI" to 90999) or to Paul Farmer's extraordinary Partners in Health, among other organizations. I hope these donations continue to pour in, along with more money, food, water, medicine, equipment and doctors and nurses from nations around the world. The Obama administration has pledged at least $100 million in aid and has already sent thousands of soldiers and relief workers. That's a decent start. But it's also time to stop having a conversation about charity and start having a conversation about justice--about recovery, responsibility and fairness. What the world should be pondering instead is: What is Haiti owed? Haiti's vulnerability to natural disasters, its food shortages, poverty, deforestation and lack of infrastructure, are not accidental. To say that it is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere is to miss the point; Haiti was made poor--by France, the United States, Great Britain, other Western powers and by the IMF and the World Bank. Now, in its attempts to help Haiti, the IMF is pursuing the same kinds of policies that made Haiti a geography of precariousness even before the quake. To great fanfare, the IMF announced a new $100 million loan to Haiti on Thursday. In one crucial way, the loan is a good thing; Haiti is in dire straits and needs a massive cash infusion. But the new loan was made through the IMF's extended credit facility, to which Haiti already has $165 million in debt. Debt relief activists tell me that these loans came with conditions, including raising prices for electricity, refusing pay increases to all public employees except those making minimum wage and keeping inflation low. They say that the new loans would impose these same conditions. In other words, in the face of this latest tragedy, the IMF is still using crisis and debt as leverage to compel neoliberal reforms. For Haiti, this is history repeated. As historians have documented, the impoverishment of Haiti began in the earliest decades of its independence, when Haiti's slaves and free gens de couleur rallied to liberate the country from the French in 1804. But by 1825, Haiti was living under a new kind of bondage--external debt. In order to keep the French and other Western powers from enforcing an embargo, it agreed to pay 150 million francs in reparations to French slave owners (yes, that's right, freed slaves were forced to compensate their former masters for their liberty). In order to do that, they borrowed millions from French banks and then from the US and Germany. As Alex von Tunzelmann pointed out, "by 1900, it [Haiti] was spending 80 percent of its national budget on repayments." It took Haiti 122 years, but in 1947 the nation paid off about 60 percent, or 90 million francs, of this debt (it was able to negotiate a reduction in 1838). In 2003, then- President Aristide called on France to pay restitution for this sum--valued in 2003 dollars at over $21 billion. A few months later, he was ousted in a coup d'etat; he claims he left the country under armed pressure from the US. Then of course there are the structural adjustment policies imposed by the IMF and World Bank in the 1990s. In 1995, for example, the IMF forced Haiti to cut its rice tariff from 35 percent to 3 percent, leading to a massive increase in rice- dumping, the vast majority of which came from the United States. As a 2008 Jubilee USA report notes, although the country had once been a net exporter of rice, "by 2005, three out of every four plates of rice eaten in Haiti came from the US." During this period, USAID invested heavily in Haiti, but this "charity" came not in the form of grants to develop Haiti's agricultural infrastructure, but in direct food aid, furthering Haiti's dependence on foreign assistance while also funneling money back to US agribusiness. A 2008 report from the Center for International Policy points out that in 2003, Haiti spent $57.4 million to service its debt, while total foreign assistance for education, health care and other services was a mere $39.21 million. In other words, under a system of putative benevolence, Haiti paid back more than it received. As Paul Farmer noted in our pages after hurricanes whipped the country in 2008, Haiti is "a veritable graveyard of development projects." So what can activists do in addition to donating to a charity? One long-term objective is to get the IMF to forgive all $265 million of Haiti's debt (that's the $165 million outstanding, plus the $100 million issued this week). In the short term, Haiti's IMF loans could be restructured to come from the IMF's rapid credit facility, which doesn't impose conditions like keeping wages and inflation down. Indeed, debt relief is essential to Haiti's future. It recently had about $1.2 billion in debt canceled, but it still owes about $891 million, all of which was lent to the country from 2004 onward. $429 million of that debt is held by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), to whom Haiti is scheduled to make $10 million in payments next year. Obviously, that's money better spent on saving Haitian lives and rebuilding the country in the months ahead; the cancellation of the entire sum would free up precious capital. The US controls about 30 percent of the bank's shares; Latin American and Caribbean countries hold just over 50 percent. Notably, the IDB's loans come from its fund for special operations (i.e. the IDB's donor nations and funds from loans that have been paid back), not from IDB's bonds. Hence, the total amount could be forgiven without impacting the IDB's triple-A credit rating. Finally, although the Obama administration temporarily halted deportations to Haiti, it hasn't granted Haitians temporary protected status (TPS), which would save them from being deported back to the scene of a disaster for as long as 18 months, allow them to work in the US and, crucially, send money back to relatives in Haiti. In the past, TPS has been given to countries like Honduras and Nicaragua in 1998 after Hurrican Mitch, but it has never been extended to Haitians, even after the 2008 storms, presumably because immigrations officials fear a mass exodus from Haiti. But decency, as well as fairness, should trump those fears now. As Sunita Patel, an attorney with CCR, told me, "We have granted TPS to El Salavador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Somalia and Sudan following natural disasters. To apply different rules here would fly in the face of the administration's efforts to build good will abroad." (UPDATE: It has just been announced that the Obama administration has granted Temporary Protected Status to Haiti. This is a great relief to Haitians in the US and a victory for those who pressured the administration to do so.) =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 19 20:45:39 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:45:39 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] [Financial Crisis] Bring Back Glass-Steagall Message-ID: <993BDEBC5F6944C1AA00A265DE3974E0@agingCHS072729> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704586504574654751857203602.html WALL STREET JOURNAL JANUARY 12, 2010 OPINION: THE TILTING YARD Bring Back Glass-Steagall Banks that behave like hedge funds don't deserve guarantees. By THOMAS FRANK Last month, Sens. Maria Cantwell and John McCain proposed a measure that would revive parts of the old Glass-Steagall Act, the 1933 law that separated investment from commercial banking. After having been diluted many times over the years, Glass-Steagall was largely repealed in 1999, permitting a wave of consolidation in the financial industry. The latest crisis has provoked a new debate over the old regulatory regime. Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz has argued that the repeal of Glass-Steagall had an "especial role" in making the financial calamity of 2008 possible. Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, currently the head of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, has called for a new separation between commercial banking and riskier financial activities. Any discussion about breaking up the financial industry, however, runs into a powerful stereotype: the overwhelming consensus belief in the risible backwardness of Glass-Steagall. In 1999, the last time the 1933 law was being debated, it was routinely described as a "Depression-era" law, a "relic" of a benighted age, "venerable," "obsolete," "outdated," "archaic," insufficient to meet the public's "sophisticated needs" in the bold new era of accelerated everything. The measure that overturned Glass-Steagall in 1999 was, of course, called the "Financial Services Modernization Act." Having government forbid everyday commercial banks to take gambles on high-risk schemes, why, that just didn't make sense to the enlightened minds of 1999. We had learned by then to trust the market. Besides, what could go wrong? Fears about speculative risk were so 1933! Today, it is that old critique of Glass-Steagall that strikes one as a relic in need of modernization. Reading through journalistic accounts of the old regulatory regime from 1999 is like watching long reels of ecstatic dot-com commercials or flipping through the metallic-and-fluorescent pages of old copies of Wired magazine and remembering the mind-blowing prosperity that the Internet was supposed to be bringing us. The business-culture delusions of the '90s may seem obvious today. But at the time, our great thinkers assured us that we had turned a historical corner and the "old rules" no longer applied. Prosperity was eternal. And government was a dinosaur, serving only to impede our pursuit of info-age excellence. Again and again, the narrow agenda of particular interests were cast as freedom for all of humanity. Consider "The Twilight of Sovereignty," the influential 1992 manifesto by former Citicorp CEO Walter Wriston. Here was a man who had spent much of his career warring against Glass-Steagall and other federal banking regulations. In his book, however, he did not criticize regulation so that Citi might be permitted to become a grotesquely distended too-big-to-fail financial supermarket gambling in whatever schemes would bring the richest bonuses. Certainly not. Wriston instructed us to give up on regulation because we had entered a new stage of history and regulation was now technologically obsolete. "How does [government] track or control the money supply when the financial markets create new financial instruments faster than the regulators can keep track of them?" he asked. Half-baked historicism like that was persuasive stuff in those days. On the occasion of the old banking law's repeal, President Bill Clinton intoned that Glass-Steagall was "no longer appropriate to the economy in which we live. It worked pretty well for the industrial economy. . . . But the world is very different." Today, as we begin to debate Glass-Steagall all over again, the old stereotypes are simply being pulled out of deep-freeze. The futility of efforts to "turn back the clock" are noted. A clever put-down from an anonymous Treasury official is much repeated: it "would be like going back to the Walkman." The old law's revival is said to be a way of pandering to the low emotions of the public, as opposed to its higher faculties of reason. A Business Week story on the subject understands the Cantwell-McCain proposal as a way of "soothing public anger over bailouts and bonuses." Politico's account of the measure chalks the whole thing up to "populist angst," whatever that is. What no one has yet grasped is that pooh-poohing Glass-Steagall in this way is about as sound a move as was slapping down your savings on shares of TheGlobe.com. One of these days, we will finally dispel the "New Economy" mysticism that beclouds this issue and begin to think seriously about how to re-regulate the financial sector. And when we do, we may find that the answer involves some version of the idea behind Glass-Steagall-drawing a line between banks that the government effectively guarantees and banks that behave like big hedge funds, experimenting with the latest financial toxins. Hopefully, that day will come before Wall Street decides to take another headlong run at some attractive cliff. Write to thomas at wsj.com. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 19 21:41:17 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:41:17 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] =?iso-8859-1?q?The_Social_Historical_Context_of_=22Na?= =?iso-8859-1?q?tural_Disasters=22=3A_Haiti?= Message-ID: http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/01/the-social-historical-context-of-"natural-disasters"-haiti/ The Social Historical Context of "Natural Disasters": Haiti by Victor M. Rodriguez Dom?nguez / January 18th, 2010 Poor Mexico, so far away from God but so close to the United States. - Porfirio Diaz Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. - Santayana Just like we have learned earlier from the Katrina disaster, it is important, while we share our solidarity and our support for the tragedy being endured by the courageous people of Haiti, not to forget the historical and social context that frames this most recent disaster in the Haitian experience. After hearing the news and the self-congratulatory speech of President Obama about the "historical ties" of Haiti and the United States, I could not but recall a different narrative of "historical ties" than the one the media is conveying. This counter narrative is more congruent with a famous quote from former Mexican Dictator Porfirio Diaz which applies to the Haitian experience in an ominous way. Dictator Diaz in the last half of the 19th century opened Mexico to foreign capitalists, especially U.S. investors and created the precursor of today's neo-liberal policies in that country. By the early part of the twentieth century half of Mexico's wealth was in foreign hands. Today, Haiti is under the total control of the United States and its institutions. A country that used to produce its own rice, now imports it from the United States. One aspect of these "historical ties" that are not told in United States' high school history textbooks is that Haiti, by being the first independent country in the Americas, led by people of African descent, created fear in the white slave holding elites throughout the world. Haiti was the most prosperous European colony in the Americas and one that brought to France a significant amount of the wealth that catapulted it to the rank of a developed nation. But, France's and the United States ascent to the developed world were rooted in the sentencing of Haiti to centuries of economic despair and political instability. This is the story we are asked to forget. In 1804, Haiti declared its independence from France under the leadership of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who succeeded the brilliant military strategist and former slave Toussaint L'Ouverture. In the preceding years the Haitian army defeated the most powerful European army in Europe, Napoleon Bonaparte's army of tens of thousands and at different times defeated smaller attempts by the British and the Spanish to subdue the Haitians. Europe and the United States never forgave Haiti for becoming a model of freedom against the infamous system of slavery and after Haiti was in a state of political weakness because of internal strife imposed economic blockades (like in Cuba). Ironically, France collected "reparations" for its loss of "property" (slaves) during the Haitian war of liberation and Haiti was isolated (worse than Cuba is today). The United States waited sixty years before it granted recognition to the nascent republic. What today we call the global north, dominated by the United States created the conditions for perpetual Haitian underdevelopment. The example of an African nation which was prosperous in the Americas was too much to swallow for the slaveholders of the United States and Europe. In fact, President Jefferson initially supported the French efforts against Haiti until it discovered that Napoleon wanted to then expand the French empire beyond the Louisiana territory. After Napoleon's defeat, it sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States dramatically expanding the United States' empire. So thanks to Haiti's victory, the United States began its modern phase of territorial expansion. We paid them with economic sanctions. Unfortunately, Latin American nations in struggle for their own independence from Spain, also betrayed the nascent Haitian nation. Simon Bolivar, the liberator of the most of Latin America, received military support and weapons from the Haitian revolutionaries in 1816. Yet, in the end Bolivar denied support and recognition to Haiti when they needed it. Their own fear of a pardocracia (government of the people of color) instilled more fear in the Bolivarian revolutionaries than the Spanish or the United States imperialists. Brazil did not abolish slavery until 1888, being the last country in the world to do so. The economic disaster created by United States and Europe policies of isolation, let to the creation of one of the first debtor states. Haiti, in what was latter debt peonage, was forced to endure a period of formal colonialism when the United States marines invaded Haiti in 1915. After 19 years, they left the country neatly re-organized to become a neo-colony of United States. In order to assure obedience and discipline to the imperial requirements, the United States military trained the Haitian National Guard (like in recent years the formerly called "School of the Americas" trained Latin America's military) and left the military forces that would lead to the eventual dictatorship of Francois Duvalier in 1957, probably (together with another U.S. prot?g? in the other side of the island, the Dominican Republic's dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo) one of the most cruelest and murderous in the Americas. In recent decades, after the end of the Duvalier dynasty period of bloody control, the Haitian nation has attempted to stand on their own feet and establish a democratic and prosperous nation. Each time their efforts have been thwarted, this time again by the United States and the support of Europe. Father Bertrand Aristide, who despite his weaknesses, was by far a step in the right direction for Haiti. He was elected democratically by the Haitian people twice and twice removed by forces supported and directed by the United States. The last time, in 2004, President Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown by former military forces influenced by the Duvalierists and other forces allied to the light-skinned elites who have ruled Haiti for decades in alliance with the United States. Marx said that history repeats itself, the first as tragedy the second time as a farce. The first tragedy was that President Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped by United States agents, placed in a United States military plane and whisked away to the Central African Republic. Today he lives in exile in South Africa. Summer 2009, President Zelaya from Honduras was also overthrown and later kidnapped and exiled in a sequel that seems more like a farce. Today, he is still in exile. Someone has said that "Americans are the people with the most access to information and the least informed." As we watch the coverage of the Haitian tragedy and we hear President Obama's words, the first African American president, let's not forget white supremacy is alive and kicking in the United States. The main networks are in a self-congratulatory mood about how we are the first responders and celebrating the spirit of giving of the nation. The United States people are a generous people and they will respond but we should not forget the reasons why this disaster has been amplified. The government and the infrastructure of Haiti are so inefficient and non-existent that the coordination of efforts will be more difficult. Ironically, corporate media in the United States, because they are monolingual and do not read Spanish or Creole, are cheerleading the arrival of Canadians and U.S. planes late on Wednesday, the fact is that the first responders came from Venezuela, which sent its air force with medics, food and equipment a few hours after the tragedy. Cuba, which already had 344 medical doctors on the ground, sent more teams with 151 more specialized medical doctors (including the Reed brigade that was offered to the Bush administration to help in New Orleans) that arrived (Cubans already had two tent hospitals serving 800 wounded), the Dominican Republic which sent a 20 member Urban Rescue team, and through which Puerto Rico attempted to coordinate and sent a team of three helicopters, dozens of urban rescuers (who had earlier served in New York during 9/11 attack) and 20 structural engineers. However, Puerto Rico was unable to send them as quickly as they wished; at least until last night (1/16/2010) teams of technicians with water purifying systems, communications and military police did not receive permission from the Southern Command. As a colony of the United States, they had to wait for approval from the U.S. Southern command. God forbid Puerto Ricans and Latinos upstaged the U.S. rescue efforts. Victor M. Rodriguez Dom?nguez is a professor of sociology of race and ethnicity in the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies, California State University, Long Beach, his most recent book is Latino Politics in the United States: Race, Ethnicity, Class and Gender in the Mexican American and Puerto Rican Experience (Kendall Hunt, 2005). Read other articles by Victor, or visit Victor's website. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Wed Jan 20 08:28:06 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:28:06 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Fw: [COAT] "WAR is BUSINESS" New ONLINE Canadian resource Message-ID: <9EABD1439FA2493D909E4CDF021EFE72@agingCHS072729> [COAT is the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade] From: coat at list.openconcept.ca "WAR is BUSINESS" A new ONLINE RESOURCE for Canadian activists, researchers and the media Read it now ---> http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/64/64.htm Few Canadians know much about this country's war profiteers, or the billions in military technologies that they export to dozens of countries at war. Between 2003 and 2006, Canadian war industries exported at least $7.4 billion in military hardware to 62 countries with troops fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti and elsewhere. And, the Canada Pension Plan forces us to invest in many of the world's largest weapons manufacturers. Taxpayers are also complicit in the immoral business of war, because -- for many decades -- Canadian governments (Liberal and Conservative) have transferred billions in publicly-funded corporate welfare to this country's most profitable arms exporters. Learn about Canada's war industries, what they produce, where it is exported and how the government is aiding and abetting the whole sordid process. Find out about the government-funded lobby group that represents 700 Canadian war industries and their huge arms bazaar, called CANSEC, which is returning to Ottawa municipal property, June 2-3, 2010. "CANSEC: War is Business," is the latest 50-page issue of Press for Conversion!, a magazine published by the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT). This new resource -- including all of the articles, photos, graphics, cartoons, tables and charts focusing on Canada's major role in the international arms trade -- is NOW ONLINE: http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/64/64.htm If you haven't already SUBSCRIBED, please consider doing so! http://coat.ncf.ca/support_us/subscribe.html Thanks for supporting COAT's efforts! Cheers, Richard Sanders Coordinator, Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT) Editor, Press for Conversion! P.S. Dozens of previous issues of COAT's magazine are also online -- full text -- at COAT's website: http://coat.ncf.ca HAITI: Four of COAT's publications focus exclusively on Canadian complicity (and particularly CIDA's despicable role) in backing the 2004 coup that overthrew Haiti's elected government and imposed a brutal dictatorship: Lies without Borders: How CIDA-funded 'NGOs' waged a propaganda war to justify Haiti's 2004 coup http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/63/63.htm Putting the Aid in Aiding and Abetting: CIDA's Agents of Regime Change in Haiti's 2004 Coup http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/62/62-TOC.htm CIDA's Key Role in Haiti's 2004 Coup d'?tat: Funding Regime Change, Dictatorship and Human Rights Atrocities, one Haitian 'NGO' at a Time http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/61/61-TOC.htm A Very Canadian Coup d'?tat in Haiti: The Top 10 Ways that Canada's Government Helped the 2004 Coup and its Reign of Terror http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/60/60.htm =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Wed Jan 20 11:27:06 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:27:06 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Cuban Medics: A Salutation Message-ID: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17001 344 Cuban Medics Treat Earthquake Victims Global Research, January 16, 2010 Cuba Support Group Ireland - 2010-01-14 There are 344 Cuban medics working in Haiti today, they have two improvised hospitals where they are providing services to the earthquake victims. Only two of them were injured in the earthquake, both of whom have received treatment for minor injuries and remain there to assist the disaster victims. Cuban doctors are working in all 10 "departments" (administrative regions) of Haiti. They are assisted by approximately 400 Haitian medical interns who have completed medical degrees on full scholarships in Cuba. Cuba has provided free public health care to the poor of Haiti since 1989 - the only public medicine available in that country. During the recent coup and subsequent US/French/Canadian invasion which deposed the Aristide presidency, Cuban doctors continued to provide medical care when other hospitals closed down and other doctors fled the country. The Cuban government has offered condolences to the people of Haiti and pledged immediate additional medical assistance if the Haitian government requires it. Cuba's "Henry Reeve Contingent", a volunteer contingent of 1,000 medics, fully equipped and entirely self sustaining for 30 days, can land on any airstrip in the world at 72 hours notice. Haiti is 32 miles from Cuba - members of the Henry Reeve Contingent could be there within hours of a request. Cuban doctors will go where no doctor has gone before, live in conditions that no doctor has ever lived in before and deliver life saving medical care to people who have never even seen a doctor before. And they do all this for free. Each doctor feels privileged to be able to use their skills to help people who are in such desperate need of medical care. 35,000 Cuban medics currently provide healthcare in 78 countries around the world, more than the World Health Organisation and Medecins sans Frontiers put together. Cuban doctors have unique experience of working in earthquake zones in third world countries without infrastructure. There are Cuban medics currently working on the frozen slopes of the Himalayas in Pakistan following their unmatched medical support provided during the 2005 Pakistan earthquake. Many hiked for days over mudslides to reach the isolated communities of the region to deliver medical assistance. To this day, Pakistanis parents in the earthquake region name their children after the Cuban doctors who helped deliver them. For Further information contact: Simon McGuinness, National Coordinator, Cuba Support Group Ireland, 15 Merrion Square, Dublin 2. Ph: 087 6785842 =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Wed Jan 20 15:14:37 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:14:37 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament (Rally list & info) Message-ID: <60E829AA07914122A7B81C30A423E9A8@agingCHS072729> [Winnipeggers: see below for details of Winnipeg Rally] http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=227662474562 Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament-Rally Stand Up for Democracy on January 23rd! Host: Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament-Rally for the Cause! Type: Causes - Protest Network: Global Date: Saturday, January 23, 2010 Time: 1:00pm - 4:00pm Location: Various Locations Across Canada Description" When a government starts trying to cancel dissent or avoid dissent is frankly when it's rapidly losing its moral authority to govern." (Stephen Harper, Canadian Press, April 18, 2005) On December 30th Stephen Harper announced - without consulting anyone - that he will be Proroguing Parliament and suspending democracy until March 3. This is the second time he has done this in under two years. Proroguing means: 1. All 37 bills being debated in Parliament are thrown in the trash. Discussion on bills starts from scratch in March, wasting months of hard work by all parties. These bills included new crime legislation, limits on credit card insurance rates, etc. 2. Committees investigating accusations of torture of Afghan detainees stop working 3. Discussions and decisions about the pension crisis affecting Canada's seniors stops 4. Questions about Canada's inaction at the Copenhagen climate-change summit are silenced. Opportunities to move forward with Canada's plan for sustainable development are stalled for over a month. 5. Your MPs cannot raise your concerns in Ottawa Our troops in Afghanistan don't get to take a couple of months off. You don't either. Why does Harper feel he can? On January 23rd, 2010 you can stand up and make your voice heard Canada-and tell the government to get back to work. Specific details for each city to follow soon, we are just coordinating details at the moment with various volunteers across the country. Generally speaking protests in major cities will be held at government legislative buildings, in smaller cities locations will be announced well in advance of the protest. Protests are peaceful demonstrations, generally with guest speakers, music and entertainment. These events are family friendly. At this time we are most definitely holding protests in: WINNIPEG, MB RALLY Date: Saturday, January 23 Time: 1:00-4:00 pm Location: University of Winnipeg, room TBA, followed by a march to Legislative building and back to the University for hot chocolate RALLY PLANNING GROUP http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=275343198311#/group.php?gid=275343198311 PLANNING MEETING DATE: Saturday, January 16, 2010 TIME: 10:30am - 12:30pm LOCATION: TBA http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=275343198311#/event.php?eid=250609435951&index=1 Details for rallies in the following cities can be found at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=227662474562 ANTIGONISH, NS INVERNESS, NS HALIFAX, NS SYDNEY, NS FREDERICTON, NB MONCTON, NB SAINT JOHN, NB ST. JOHN'S, NL CHARLOTTETOWN, PEI MONTREAL, QC QUEBEC CITY, QC TORONTO, ON OTTAWA, ON KINGSTON, ON NORTH BAY, ON ORILLIA, ONTARIO SUDBURY, ON ORANGEVILLE/BOLTON BARRIE, ON HUNTSVILLE, ON PETERBOROUGH, ON COBOURG, ON OWEN SOUND, ON THUNDER BAY, ON SAULT STE. MARIE, ON WHITBY/OSHAWA, ON HAMILTON, ON OAKVILLE, ON MISSISSAUGA, ON KITCHENER-WATERLOO, ON GUELPH, ON LONDON, ON STRATFORD, ON WINDSOR, ON WINNIPEG, MB SASKATOON, SK REGINA, SK CALGARY, AB EDMONTON, AB PEACE COUNTY, AB LETHBRIDGE, AB VANCOUVER, BC VICTORIA, BC VERNON, BC TERRACE, BC PENTICTON, BC PRINCE GEORGE, BC PRINCE RUPERT, BC KELOWNA-OKANAGAN, BC NANAIMO, BC WHITEHORSE, YT YELLOWKNIFE, NWT INTERNATIONAL LOCATIONS LONDON, ENGLAND NEW YORK CITY, USA DALLAS TX, USA If you're interested in helping organize a protest in any major city, including the ones listed, let us know! You can FB message the creator of the group hosting it (Shilo Davis), or Debbie Lapointe (hosting group admin) who is graciously helping keep this up to date), or you can simply email Shilo at daviss3 at mcmaster.ca. ***The amount of emails I've received have crashed my mcmaster email server! Please email me at shiloadavis at gmail.com*** This is your chance to make your voice heard Canada. Stand up for democracy on January 23rd! ***Details on locations and specifics for each protest will be posted at least 10 days in advance!*** ***Want to get involved in the meantime?*** 1) Write to your local paper(s) 2) Write to your MP and your MPP 3) Write to the GG, Her Excellency the Right Honourable Micha?lle Jean (By Email: info at gg.ca By Mail: Rideau Hall, 1 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0A1 NO POSTAGE REQUIRED By Fax: 613-998-8760) 4) Write to the Queen about the GG and Harper (Her Majesty The Queen Buckingham Palace, London SW1A 1AA, United Kingdom) 5) Spread the word to friends, family, and coworkers! The more Canadians we can get on board, the stronger our voice will be. Also, check out www.noprorogue.ca. (Rally organizers: Make sure you update your details there on your own-that's our main spot for media to gather more information!) If you're interested in donating to help with the rallies, you can do so here: http://noprorogue.ca/events/ =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Wed Jan 20 16:59:24 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:59:24 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Fw: [COAT] Support Cuban Medical Brigades in Haiti !! Message-ID: <58D5BB0D12084D42A806E92F2C8BE98C@agingCHS072729> ----- Original Message ----- From: coat at list.openconcept.ca Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 3:52 PM Subject: [COAT] Support Cuban Medical Brigades in Haiti !! Dear friends, I, like many others no doubt, had been wondering how to send financial donations to support the excellent work of the Cuban medical brigades in Haiti. I called the Cuban embassy to inquire and received a positive call from them today. I also received an email this afternoon from the Hamilton Friendship Association with Cuba, which conveyed the same good news. Yes! We can indeed donate money to support Cuba's medical brigades in Haiti and, if this matters to you, we even get a tax receipt. The material is appended below. All of the money will go to support the 300 Cuban medical personnel who had already been working in Haiti for years before the earthquake. Plus, Cuba sent additional doctors and supplies immediately after the quake (before the US took control of Haiti's main airport). There are also 500 Haitian doctors in Haiti, who were trained -- free of charge -- in Cuba! (In striking contrast, there are many more Haitian doctors than that working in Canada who were encouraged to leave their country and come here by the Canadian government. (It's called the "brain drain" and it is one part of the problem now being faced by Haitians in need.) I hope you will consider supporting Cuba's exemplary humanitarian relief efforts in Haiti by donating to the charity described in the letter below. Please encourage others to do likewise! In solidarity, Richard Sanders Coordinator, Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT) http://coat.ncf.ca P.S. The email below refers to the Mac-Pap Battalion and an NGO called the Mackenzie-Papineau Memorial Fund, which is collecting the money for the "Cuba for Haiti" campaign. In case people don't know this history, the Mac-Paps were a group of Canadians (mostly communists) who volunteered to go to Spain between 1936 and 1939 to fight in the civil war against Franco's fascism. (As an interesting aside, the Canadian government tried to stop the Mac-Paps from going to Spain and eventually refused to give them passports. Then the Canadian government refused to let them return! When they finally did let the Mac-Paps come home, many were persecuted by the RCMP. Their sacrifice has never been recognized by the Canadian government and the Mac-Paps are not commemorated in federal war memorials or in Remembrance Day services.) --- CNC's Cuba for Haiti Fund The Hamilton Friendship Association with Cuba (HFAC) is pleased to forward the letter below from the Canadian Network on Cuba (CNC) announcing the launching of the Cuba for Haiti campaign. This campaign will raise urgently needed funds so as to provide humanitarian aid to the people of Haiti after the devastating earthquakes they have faced that have caused great human loss and devastated large parts of the country. The HFAC calls on all Canadians with a humanitarian striving to provide such assistance to do so through this fund which can be trusted to deliver the needed aid. All Out in Humanitarian Support for the People of Haiti! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Canadian Network on Cuba www.canadiannetworkoncuba.ca January 18, 2010 Dear Friends, In response to the horrendous suffering of the Haitian people resulting from the earthquake and its many aftershocks, many Canadians have been wondering what the most effective way to provide aid is. The Canadian-Cuban Friendship Association of Toronto has proposed the Cuba for Haiti fundraising campaign which is also endorsed by the Canadian Network on Cuba as a national effort. Cuba has an unequalled record in helping people in crises such as the earthquake in Pakistan and natural disasters in many other countries. In fact it has set up a special emergency unit, the Henry Reeve Medical Brigade, to respond to such disasters. At the time of the earthquake in Haiti, 402 Cuban internationalists, 302 of them medical personnel, had already been helping Haitians. These together with many of the 500 Haitian doctors who had been trained in Cuba free of charge formed the essential early group of lifesavers, attending to 1,102 Haitian patients in the first 24 hours after the earthquake. They have continued their work, boosted by an additional medical brigade which arrived promptly from Cuba. We believe that this kind of unprecedented and invaluable help which Cuba has been giving Haiti for eleven years deserves to be supported as strongly as possible. The CNC urges you to support Cuba in this work by giving a donation to "The Mackenzie-Papineau Memorial Fund," indicating on your cheque's memo line "Cuba for Haiti". Charitable receipts will be issued by the Mackenzie-Papineau Memorial Fund (Charitable Org - Revenue Canada Reg, #88876 9197RR0001). Your donation should be mailed to: The Mackenzie-Papineau Memorial Fund & Friends of the Mac-Pap Battalion, Int'l Brigades Att: S. Skup 56 Riverwood Terrace Bolton, ON L7E 1S4 The "Cuba for Haiti" contributions will go into a special account, ensuring that 100% of all donations are used for medical support and aid to Haiti. We are working directly with The Cuban Embassy in Ottawa and the Consulate General in Toronto. Sincerely, Isaac Saney, CNC Co-chair & and National Spokesperson, Tamara Hansen, CNC Co-Chair Keith Ellis, CNC Coordinator "Cuba for Haiti" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From menecraj at shaw.ca Wed Jan 20 18:55:48 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:55:48 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] =?iso-8859-1?q?The_Guant=E1namo_=22Suicides=22=3A_A_C?= =?iso-8859-1?q?amp_Delta_sergeant_blows_the_whistle?= Message-ID: <7226892D56A24198A3A8C7FA8DC88C7A@agingCHS072729> http://harpers.org/archive/2010/01/hbc-90006368 Harpers Magazine January 18, 2010 The Guant?namo "Suicides": A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle By Scott Horton This is the full text of an exclusive advance feature by Scott Horton that will appear in the March 2010 Harper's Magazine. The issue will be available on newsstands the week of February 15. 1. "Asymmetrical Warfare" When President Barack Obama took office last year, he promised to "restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great." Toward that end, the president issued an executive order declaring that the extra-constitutional prison camp at Guant?namo Naval Base "shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order." Obama has failed to fulfill his promise. Some prisoners there are being charged with crimes, others released, but the date for closing the camp seems to recede steadily into the future. Furthermore, new evidence now emerging may entangle Obama's young administration with crimes that occurred during the George W. Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the current administration failed to investigate seriously-and may even have continued-a cover-up of the possible homicides of three prisoners at Guant?namo in 2006. Late in the evening on June 9 that year, three prisoners at Guant?namo died suddenly and violently. Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, from Yemen, was thirty-seven. Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, from Saudi Arabia, was thirty. Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, also from Saudi Arabia, was twenty-two, and had been imprisoned at Guant?namo since he was captured at the age of seventeen. None of the men had been charged with a crime, though all three had been engaged in hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their imprisonment. They were being held in a cell block, known as Alpha Block, reserved for particularly troublesome or high-value prisoners. As news of the deaths emerged the following day, the camp quickly went into lockdown. The authorities ordered nearly all the reporters at Guant?namo to leave and those en route to turn back. The commander at Guant?namo, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, then declared the deaths "suicides." In an unusual move, he also used the announcement to attack the dead men. "I believe this was not an act of desperation," he said, "but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us." Reporters accepted the official account, and even lawyers for the prisoners appeared to believe that they had killed themselves. Only the prisoners' families in Saudi Arabia and Yemen rejected the notion. Two years later, the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which has primary investigative jurisdiction within the naval base, issued a report supporting the account originally advanced by Harris, now a vice-admiral in command of the Sixth Fleet. The Pentagon declined to make the NCIS report public, and only when pressed with Freedom of Information Act demands did it disclose parts of the report, some 1,700 pages of documents so heavily redacted as to be nearly incomprehensible. The NCIS report was carefully cross-referenced and deciphered by students and faculty at the law school of Seton Hall University in New Jersey, and their findings, released in November 2009, made clear why the Pentagon had been unwilling to make its conclusions public. The official story of the prisoners' deaths was full of unacknowledged contradictions, and the centerpiece of the report-a reconstruction of the events-was simply unbelievable. According to the NCIS, each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell's eight-foot-high steel-mesh wall. Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat. We are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin to hang until he asphyxiated. The NCIS report also proposes that the three prisoners, who were held in non-adjoining cells, carried out each of these actions almost simultaneously. Al-Zahrani, according to the report, was discovered first, at 12:39 a.m., and taken by several Alpha Block guards to the camp's detention medical clinic. No doctors could be found there, nor the phone number for one, so a clinic staffer dialed 911. During this time, other guards discovered Al-Utaybi. Still others discovered Al-Salami a few minutes later. Although rigor mortis had already set in-indicating that the men had been dead for at least two hours-the NCIS report claims that an unnamed medical officer attempted to resuscitate one of the men, and, in attempting to pry open his jaw, broke his teeth. The fact that at least two of the prisoners also had cloth masks affixed to their faces, presumably to prevent the expulsion of the rags from their mouths, went unremarked by the NCIS, as did the fact that standard operating procedure at Camp Delta required the Navy guards on duty after midnight to "conduct a visual search" of each cell and detainee every ten minutes. The report claimed that the prisoners had hung sheets or blankets to hide their activities and shaped more sheets and pillows to look like bodies sleeping in their beds, but it did not explain where they were able to acquire so much fabric beyond their tightly controlled allotment, or why the Navy guards would allow such an obvious and immediately observable deviation from permitted behavior. Nor did the report explain how the dead men managed to hang undetected for more than two hours or why the Navy guards on duty, having for whatever reason so grievously failed in their duties, were never disciplined. A separate report, the result of an "informal investigation" initiated by Admiral Harris, found that standard operating procedures were violated that night but concluded that disciplinary action was not warranted because of the "generally permissive environment" of the cell block and the numerous "concessions" that had been made with regard to the prisoners' comfort, which "concessions" had resulted in a "general confusion by the guard and the JDG staff over many of the rules that applied to the guard force's handling of the detainees." According to Harris, even had standard operating procedures been followed, "it is possible that the detainees could have successfully committed suicide anyway." This is the official story, adopted by NCIS and Guant?namo command and reiterated by the Justice Department in formal pleadings, by the Defense Department in briefings and press releases, and by the State Department. Now four members of the Military Intelligence unit assigned to guard Camp Delta, including a decorated non-commissioned Army officer who was on duty as sergeant of the guard the night of June 9-10, have furnished an account dramatically at odds with the NCIS report-a report for which they were neither interviewed nor approached. All four soldiers say they were ordered by their commanding officer not to speak out, and all four soldiers provide evidence that authorities initiated a cover-up within hours of the prisoners' deaths. Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman and men under his supervision have disclosed evidence in interviews with Harper's Magazine that strongly suggests that the three prisoners who died on June 9 had been transported to another location prior to their deaths. The guards' accounts also reveal the existence of a previously unreported black site at Guant?namo where the deaths, or at least the events that led directly to the deaths, most likely occurred. 2. "Camp No" The soldiers of the Maryland-based 629th Military Intelligence Battalion arrived at Guant?namo Naval Base in March 2006, assigned to provide security to Camp America, the sector of the base containing the five individual prison compounds that house the prisoners. Camp Delta was at the time the largest of these compounds, and within its walls were four smaller camps, numbered 1 through 4, which in turn were divided into cell blocks. Life at Camp America, as at all prisons, was and remains rigorously routinized for both prisoners and their jailers. Navy guards patrol the cell blocks and Army personnel control the exterior areas of the camp. All observed incidents must be logged. For the Army guards who man the towers and "sally ports" (access points), knowing who enters and leaves the camp, and exactly when, is the essence of their mission. One of the new guards who arrived that March was Joe Hickman, then a sergeant. Hickman grew up in Baltimore and joined the Marines in 1983, at the age of nineteen. When I interviewed him in January at his home in Wisconsin, he told me he had been inspired to enlist by Ronald Reagan, "the greatest president we've ever had." He worked in a military intelligence unit and was eventually tapped for Reagan's Presidential Guard detail, an assignment reserved for model soldiers. When his four years were up, Hickman returned home, where he worked a series of security jobs-prison transport, executive protection, and eventually private investigations. After September 11 he decided to re-enlist, at thirty-seven, this time in the Army National Guard. Hickman deployed to Guant?namo with his friend Specialist Tony Davila, who grew up outside Washington, D.C., and who had himself been a private investigator. When they arrived at Camp Delta, Davila told me, soldiers from the California National Guard unit they were relieving introduced him to some of the curiosities of the base. The most noteworthy of these was an unnamed and officially unacknowledged compound nestled out of sight between two plateaus about a mile north of Camp Delta, just outside Camp America's perimeter. One day, while on foot patrol, Hickman and Davila came across the compound. It looked like other camps within Camp America, Davila said, only it had no guard towers and it was surrounded with concertina wire. They saw no activity, but Hickman guessed the place could house as many as eighty prisoners. One part of the compound, he said, had the same appearance as the interrogation centers at other prison camps. The compound was not visible from the main road, and the access road was chained off. The Guardsman who told Davila about the compound had said, "This place does not exist," and Hickman, who was frequently put in charge of security for all of Camp America, was not briefed about the site. Nevertheless, Davila said, other soldiers-many of whom were required to patrol the outside perimeter of Camp America-had seen the compound, and many speculated about its purpose. One theory was that it was being used by some of the non-uniformed government personnel who frequently showed up in the camps and were widely thought to be CIA agents. A friend of Hickman's had nicknamed the compound "Camp No," the idea being that anyone who asked if it existed would be told, "No, it doesn't." He and Davila made a point of stopping by whenever they had the chance; once, Hickman said, he heard a "series of screams" from within the compound. Hickman and his men also discovered that there were odd exceptions to their duties. Army guards were charged with searching and logging every vehicle that passed into and out of Camp Delta. "When John McCain came to the camp, he had to be logged in." However, Hickman was instructed to make no record whatsoever of the movements of one vehicle in particular-a white van, dubbed the "paddy wagon," that Navy guards used to transport heavily manacled prisoners, one at a time, into and out of Camp Delta. The van had no rear windows and contained a dog cage large enough to hold a single prisoner. Navy drivers, Hickman came to understand, would let the guards know they had a prisoner in the van by saying they were "delivering a pizza." The paddy wagon was used to transport prisoners to medical facilities and to meetings with their lawyers. But as Hickman monitored the paddy wagon's movements from the guard tower at Camp Delta, he frequently saw it follow an unexpected route. When the van reached the first intersection, instead of heading right-toward the other camps or toward one of the buildings where prisoners could meet with their lawyers-it made a left. In that direction, past the perimeter checkpoint known as ACP Roosevelt, there were only two destinations. One was a beach where soldiers went to swim. The other was Camp No. 3. "Lit up" The night the prisoners died, Hickman was on duty as sergeant of the guard for Camp America's exterior security force. When his twelve-hour shift began, at 6 p.m., he climbed the ladder to Tower 1, which stood twenty feet above Sally Port 1, the main entrance to Camp Delta. From there he had an excellent view of the camp, and much of the exterior perimeter as well. Later he would make his rounds. Shortly after his shift began, Hickman noticed that someone had parked the paddy wagon near Camp 1, which houses Alpha Block. A moment later, two Navy guards emerged from Camp 1, escorting a prisoner. They put the prisoner into the back of the van and then left the camp through Sally Port 1, just below Hickman. He was under standing orders not to search the paddy wagon, so he just watched it as it headed east. He assumed the guards and their charge were bound for one of the other prison camps southeast of Camp Delta. But when the van reached the first intersection, instead of making a right, toward the other camps, it made the left, toward ACP Roosevelt and Camp No. Twenty minutes later-about the amount of time needed for the trip to Camp No and back-the paddy wagon returned. This time Hickman paid closer attention. He couldn't see the Navy guards' faces, but from body size and uniform they appeared to be the same men. The guards walked into Camp 1 and soon emerged with another prisoner. They departed Camp America, again in the direction of Camp No. Twenty minutes later, the van returned. Hickman, his curiosity piqued by the unusual flurry of activity and guessing that the guards might make another excursion, left Tower 1 and drove the three quarters of a mile to ACP Roosevelt to see exactly where the paddy wagon was headed. Shortly thereafter, the van passed through the checkpoint for the third time and then went another hundred yards, whereupon it turned toward Camp No, eliminating any question in Hickman's mind about where it was going. All three prisoners would have reached their destination before 8 p.m. Hickman says he saw nothing more of note until about 11:30 p.m, when he had returned to his preferred vantage at Tower 1. As he watched, the paddy wagon returned to Camp Delta. This time, however, the Navy guards did not get out of the van to enter Camp 1. Instead, they backed the vehicle up to the entrance of the medical clinic, as if to unload something. At approximately 11:45 p.m.-nearly an hour before the NCIS claims the first body was discovered-Army Specialist Christopher Penvose, preparing for a midnight shift in Tower 1, was approached by a senior Navy NCO. Penvose told me that the NCO-who, following standard operating procedures, wore no name tag-appeared to be extremely agitated. He instructed Penvose to go immediately to the Camp Delta chow hall, identify a female senior petty officer who would be dining there, and relay to her a specific code word. Penvose did as he was instructed. The officer leapt up from her seat and immediately ran out of the chow hall. Another thirty minutes passed. Then, as Hickman and Penvose both recall, Camp Delta suddenly "lit up"-stadium-style flood lights were turned on, and the camp became the scene of frenzied activity, filling with personnel in and out of uniform. Hickman headed to the clinic, which appeared to be the center of activity, to learn the reason for the commotion. He asked a distraught medical corpsman what had happened. She said three dead prisoners had been delivered to the clinic. Hickman recalled her saying that they had died because they had rags stuffed down their throats, and that one of them was severely bruised. Davila told me he spoke to Navy guards who said the men had died as the result of having rags stuffed down their throats. Hickman was concerned that such a serious incident could have occurred in Camp 1 on his watch. He asked his tower guards what they had seen. Penvose, from his position at Tower 1, had an unobstructed view of the walkway between Camp 1 and the medical clinic-the path by which any prisoners who died at Camp 1 would be delivered to the clinic. Penvose told Hickman, and later confirmed to me, that he saw no prisoners being moved from Camp 1 to the clinic. In Tower 4 (it should be noted that Army and Navy guard-tower designations differ), another Army specialist, David Caroll, was forty-five yards from Alpha Block, the cell block within Camp 1 that had housed the three dead men. He also had an unobstructed view of the alleyway that connected the cell block itself to the clinic. He likewise reported to Hickman, and confirmed to me, that he had seen no prisoners transferred to the clinic that night, dead or alive. 4. "He Could Not Cry out" The fate of a fourth prisoner, a forty-two-year-old Saudi Arabian named Shaker Aamer, may be related to that of the three prisoners who died on June 9. Aamer is married to a British woman and was in the process of becoming a British subject when he was captured in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in 2001. United States authorities insist that he carried a gun and served Osama bin Laden as an interpreter. Aamer denies this. At Guant?namo, Aamer's fluency in English soon allowed him to play an important role in camp politics. According to both Aamer's attorney and press accounts furnished by Army Colonel Michael Bumgarner, the Camp America commander, Aamer cooperated closely with Bumgarner in efforts to bring a 2005 hunger strike to an end. He persuaded several prisoners to break their strike for a while, but the settlement collapsed and soon afterward Aamer was sent to solitary confinement. Then, on the night the prisoners from Alpha Block died, Aamer says he himself was the victim of an act of striking brutality. He described the events in detail to his lawyer, Zachary Katznelson, who was permitted to speak to him several weeks later. Katznelson recorded every detail of Aamer's account and filed an affidavit with the federal district court in Washington, setting it out: On June 9th, 2006, [Aamer] was beaten for two and a half hours straight. Seven naval military police participated in his beating. Mr. Aamer stated he had refused to provide a retina scan and fingerprints. He reported to me that he was strapped to a chair, fully restrained at the head, arms and legs. The MPs inflicted so much pain, Mr. Aamer said he thought he was going to die. The MPs pressed on pressure points all over his body: his temples, just under his jawline, in the hollow beneath his ears. They choked him. They bent his nose repeatedly so hard to the side he thought it would break. They pinched his thighs and feet constantly. They gouged his eyes. They held his eyes open and shined a mag-lite in them for minutes on end, generating intense heat. They bent his fingers until he screamed. When he screamed, they cut off his airway, then put a mask on him so he could not cry out. The treatment Aamer describes is noteworthy because it produces excruciating pain without leaving lasting marks. Still, the fact that Aamer had his airway cut off and a mask put over his face "so he could not cry out" is alarming. This is the same technique that appears to have been used on the three deceased prisoners. The United Kingdom has pressed aggressively for the return of British subjects and persons of interest. Every individual requested by the British has been turned over, with one exception: Shaker Aamer. In denying this request, U.S. authorities have cited unelaborated "security" concerns. There is no suggestion that the Americans intend to charge him before a military commission, or in a federal criminal court, and, indeed, they have no meaningful evidence linking him to any crime. American authorities may be concerned that Aamer, if released, could provide evidence against them in criminal investigations. This evidence would include what he experienced on June 9, 2006, and during his 2002 detention in Afghanistan at Bagram Airfield, where he was subjected to a procedure in which his head was smashed repeatedly against a wall. This torture technique, called "walling" in CIA documents, was expressly approved at a later date by the Department of Justice. 5. "You All Know" By dawn, the news had circulated through Camp America that three prisoners had committed suicide by swallowing rags. Colonel Bumgarner called a meeting of the guards, and at 7:00 a.m. at least fifty soldiers and sailors gathered at Camp America's open-air theater. Bumgarner was known as an eccentric commander. Hickman marveled, for instance, at the colonel's insistence that his staff line up and salute him, to music selections that included Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and the reggae hit "Bad Boys," as he entered the command center. This morning, however, Hickman thought Bumgarner seemed unusually nervous and clipped. According to independent interviews with soldiers who witnessed the speech, Bumgarner told his audience that "you all know" three prisoners in the Alpha Block at Camp 1 committed suicide during the night by swallowing rags, causing them to choke to death. This was a surprise to no one-even servicemen who had not worked the night before had heard about the rags. But then Bumgarner told those assembled that the media would report something different. It would report that the three prisoners had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells. It was important, he said, that servicemen make no comments or suggestions that in any way undermined the official report. He reminded the soldiers and sailors that their phone and email communications were being monitored. The meeting lasted no more than twenty minutes. (Bumgarner has not responded to requests for comment.) That evening, Bumgarner's boss, Admiral Harris, read a statement to reporters: An alert, professional guard noticed something out of the ordinary in the cell of one of the detainees. The guard's response was swift and professional to secure the area and check on the status of the detainee. When it was apparent that the detainee had hung himself, the guard force and medical teams reacted quickly to attempt to save the detainee's life. The detainee was unresponsive and not breathing. [The] guard force began to check on the health and welfare of other detainees. Two detainees in their cells had also hung themselves. After praising the guards and the medics, Harris-in a notable departure from traditional military decorum-launched his attack on the men who had died on his watch. "They have no regard for human life," Harris said, "neither ours nor their own." A Pentagon press release issued soon after described the dead men, who had been accused of no crime, as Al Qaeda or Taliban operatives. Lieutenant Commander Jeffrey Gordon, the Pentagon's chief press officer, went still further, telling the Guardian's David Rose, "These guys were fanatics like the Nazis, Hitlerites, or the Ku Klux Klan, the people they tried at Nuremberg." The Pentagon was not the only U.S. government agency to participate in the assault. Colleen Graffy, a deputy assistant secretary of state, told the BBC that "taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good P.R. move." The same day the three prisoners died, Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly completed a reporting trip to the naval base, where, according to his account on The O'Reilly Factor, the Joint Army Navy Task Force "granted the Factor near total access to the prison." Although the Pentagon began turning away reporters after news of the deaths had emerged, two reporters from the Charlotte Observer, Michael Gordon and photographer Todd Sumlin, had arrived that morning to work on a profile of Bumgarner, and the colonel invited them to shadow him as he dealt with the crisis. A Pentagon spokesman later told the Observer it had been expecting a "puff piece," which is why, according to the Observer, "Bumgarner and his superiors on the base" had given them permission to remain. Bumgarner quickly returned to his theatrical ways. As Gordon reported in the June 13, 2006, issue of the Observer, the colonel seemed to enjoy putting on a show. "Right now, we are at ground zero," Bumgarner told his officer staff during a June 12 meeting. Referring to the naval base's prisoners, he said, "There is not a trustworthy son of a bitch in the entire bunch." In the same article, Gordon also noted what he had learned about the deaths. The suicides had occurred "in three cells on the same block," he reported. The prisoners had "hanged themselves with strips of knotted cloth taken from clothing and sheets," after shaping their pillows and blankets to look like sleeping bodies. "And Bumgarner said," Gordon reported, "each had a ball of cloth in their mouth either for choking or muffling their voices." Something about Bumgarner's Observer interview seemed to have set off an alarm far up the chain of command. No sooner was Gordon's story in print than Bumgarner was called to Admiral Harris's office. As Bumgarner would tell Gordon in a follow-up profile three months later, Harris was holding up a copy of the Observer: "This," said the admiral to Bumgarner, "could get me relieved." (Harris did not respond to requests for comment.) That same day, an investigation was launched to determine whether classified information had been leaked from Guant?namo. Bumgarner was suspended. Less than a week after the appearance of the Observer stories, Davila and Hickman each heard separately from friends in the Navy and in the military police that FBI agents had raided the colonel's quarters. The MPs understood from their FBI contacts that there was concern over the possibility that Bumgarner had taken home some classified materials and was planning to share them with the media or to use them in writing a book. On June 27, two weeks later, Gordon's Observer colleague Scott Dodd reported: "A brigadier general determined that 'unclassified sensitive information' was revealed to the public in the days after the June 10 suicides." Harris, according to the article, had already ordered "appropriate administrative action." Bumgarner soon left Guant?namo for a new post in Missouri. He now serves as an ROTC instructor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. Bumgarner's comments appear to be at odds with the official Pentagon narrative on only one point: that the deaths had involved cloth being stuffed into the prisoners' mouths. The involvement of the FBI suggested that more was at issue. 6. "An Unmistakable Message" On June 10, NCIS investigators began interviewing the Navy guards in charge of Alpha Block, but after the Pentagon committed itself to the suicide narrative, they appear to have stopped. On June 14, the interviews resumed, and the NCIS informed at least six Navy guards that they were suspected of making false statements or failing to obey direct orders. No disciplinary action ever followed. The investigators conducted interviews with guards, medics, prisoners, and officers. As the Seton Hall researchers note, however, nothing in the NCIS report suggests that the investigators secured or reviewed the duty roster, the prisoner-transfer book, the pass-on book, the records of phone and radio communications, or footage from the camera that continuously monitored activity in the hallways, all of which could have helped them authoritatively reconstruct the events of that evening. The NCIS did, however, move swiftly to seize every piece of paper possessed by every single prisoner in Camp America, some 1,065 pounds of material, much of it privileged attorney-client correspondence. Several weeks later, authorities sought an after-the-fact justification. The Justice Department-bolstered by sworn statements from Admiral Harris and from Carol Kisthardt, the special agent in charge of the NCIS investigation-claimed in a U.S. district court that the seizure was appropriate because there had been a conspiracy among the prisoners to commit suicide. Justice further claimed that investigators had found suicide notes and argued that the attorney-client materials were being used to pass communications among the prisoners. David Remes, a lawyer who opposed the Justice Department's efforts, explained the practical effect of the government's maneuvers. The seizure, he said, "sent an unmistakable message to the prisoners that they could not expect their communications with their lawyers to remain confidential. The Justice Department defended the massive breach of the attorney-client privilege on the account of the deaths on June 9 and the asserted need to investigate them." If the "suicides" were a form of warfare between the prisoners and the Bush Administration, as Admiral Harris charged, it was the latter that quickly turned the war to its advantage. 7. "Yasser Couldn't Even Make a Sandwich!" When I asked Talal Al-Zahrani what he thought had happened to his son, he was direct. "They snatched my seventeen-year-old son for a bounty payment," he said. "They took him to Guant?namo and held him prisoner for five years. They tortured him. Then they killed him and returned him to me in a box, cut up." Al-Zahrani was a brigadier general in the Saudi police. He dismissed the Pentagon's claims, as well as the investigation that supported them. Yasser, he said, was a young man who loved to play soccer and didn't care for politics. The Pentagon claimed that Yasser's frontline battle experience came from his having been a cook in a Taliban camp. Al-Zahrani said that this was preposterous: "A cook? Yasser couldn't even make a sandwich!" "Yasser wasn't guilty of anything." Al-Zahrani said. "He knew that. He firmly believed he would be heading home soon. Why would he commit suicide?" The evidence supports this argument. Hyperbolic U.S. government statements at the time of Yasser Al-Zahrani's death masked the fact that his case had been reviewed and that he was, in fact, on a list of prisoners to be sent home. I had shown Al-Zahrani the letter that the government says was Yasser's suicide note and asked him whether he recognized his son's handwriting. He had never seen the note before, he answered, and no U.S. official had ever asked him about it. After studying the note carefully, he said, "This is a forgery." Also returned to Saudi Arabia was the body of Mani Al-Utaybi. Orphaned in youth, Mani grew up in his uncle's home in the small town of Dawadmi. I spoke to one of the many cousins who shared that home, Faris Al-Utaybi. Mani, said Faris, had gone to Baluchistan-a rural, tribal area that straddles Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan-to do humanitarian work, and someone there had sold him to the Americans for $5,000. He said that Mani was a peaceful man who would harm no one. Indeed, U.S. authorities had decided to release Al-Utaybi and return him to Saudi Arabia. When he died, he was just a few weeks shy of his transfer. Salah Al-Salami was seized in March 2002, when Pakistani authorities raided a residence in Karachi believed to have been used as a safe house by Abu Zubaydah and took into custody all who were living there at the time. A Yemeni, Al-Salami had quit his job and moved to Pakistan with only $400 in his pocket. The U.S. suspicions against him rested almost entirely on the fact that he had taken lodgings, with other students, in a boarding house that terrorists might at one point have used. There was no direct evidence linking him either to Al Qaeda or to the Taliban. On August 22, 2008, the Washington Post quoted from a previously secret review of his case: "There is no credible information to suggest [Al-Salami] received terrorist related training or is a member of the Al Qaeda network." All that stood in the way of Al-Salami's release from Guant?namo were difficult diplomatic relations between the United States and Yemen. 8. "The Removal of the Neck Organs" Military pathologists connected with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology arranged immediate autopsies of the three dead prisoners, without securing the permission of the men's families. The identities and findings of the pathologists remain shrouded in extraordinary secrecy, but the timing of the autopsies suggests that medical personnel stationed at Guant?namo may have undertaken the procedure without waiting for the arrival of an experienced medical examiner from the United States. Each of the heavily redacted autopsy reports states unequivocally that "the manner of death is suicide" and, more specifically, that the prisoner died of "hanging." Each of the reports describes ligatures that were found wrapped around the prisoner's neck, as well as circumferential dried abrasion furrows imprinted with the very fine weave pattern of the ligature fabric and forming an inverted "V" on the back of the head. This condition, the anonymous pathologists state, is consistent with that of a hanging victim. The pathologists place the time of death "at least a couple of hours" before the bodies were discovered, which would be sometime before 10:30 p.m. on June 9. Additionally, the autopsy of Al-Salami states that his hyoid bone was broken, a phenomenon usually associated with manual strangulation, not hanging. The report asserts that the hyoid was broken "during the removal of the neck organs." An odd admission, given that these are the very body parts-the larynx, the hyoid bone, and the thyroid cartilage-that would have been essential to determining whether death occurred from hanging, from strangulation, or from choking. These parts remained missing when the men's families finally received their bodies. All the families requested independent autopsies. The Saudi prisoners were examined by Saeed Al-Ghamdy, a pathologist based in Saudi Arabia. Al-Salami, from Yemen, was inspected by Patrice Mangin, a pathologist based in Switzerland. Both pathologists noted the removal of the structure that would have been the natural focus of the autopsy: the throat. Both pathologists contacted the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, requesting the missing body parts and more information about the previous autopsies. The institute did not respond to their requests or queries. (It also did not respond to a series of calls I placed requesting information and comment.) When Al-Zahrani viewed his son's corpse, he saw evidence of a homicide. "There was a major blow to the head on the right side," he said. "There was evidence of torture on the upper torso, and on the palms of his hand. There were needle marks on his right arm and on his left arm." None of these details are noted in the U.S. autopsy report. "I am a law enforcement professional," Al-Zahrani said. "I know what to look for when examining a body." Mangin, for his part, expressed particular concern about Al-Salami's mouth and throat, where he saw "a blunt trauma carried out against the oral region." The U.S. autopsy report mentions an effort at resuscitation, but this, in Mangin's view, did not explain the severity of the injuries. He also noted that some of the marks on the neck were not those he would normally associate with hanging. 9. "I Know Some Things You Don't" Sergeant Joe Hickman's tour of duty, which ended in March 2007, was distinguished: he was selected as Guant?namo's "NCO of the Quarter" and was given a commendation medal. When he returned to the United States, he was promoted to staff sergeant and worked in Maryland as an Army recruiter before settling eventually in Wisconsin. But he could not forget what he had seen at Guant?namo. When Barack Obama became president, Hickman decided to act. "I thought that with a new administration and new ideas I could actually come forward, " he said. "It was haunting me." Hickman had seen a 2006 report from Seton Hall University Law School dealing with the deaths of the three prisoners, and he followed their subsequent work. After Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, he called Mark Denbeaux, the professor who had led the Seton Hall team. "I learned something from your report," he said, "but I know some things you don't." Within two days, Hickman was in Newark, meeting with Denbeaux. Also at the meeting was Denbeaux's son and sometime co-editor Josh, a private attorney. Josh Denbeaux agreed to represent Hickman, who was concerned that he could go to prison if he disobeyed Colonel Bumgarner's order not to speak out, even if that order was itself illegal. Hickman did not want to speak to the press. On the other hand, he felt that "silence was just wrong." The two lawyers quickly made arrangements for Hickman to speak instead with authorities in Washington, D.C. On February 2, they had meetings on Capitol Hill and with the Department of Justice. The meeting with Justice was an odd one. The father-and-son legal team were met by Rita Glavin, the acting head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division; John Morton, who was soon to become an assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security; and Steven Fagell, counselor to the head of the Criminal Division. Fagell had been, along with the new attorney general, Eric Holder, a partner at the elite Washington law firm of Covington & Burling, and was widely viewed as "Holder's eyes" in the Criminal Division. For more than an hour, the two lawyers described what Hickman had seen: the existence of Camp No, the transportation of the three prisoners, the van's arrival at the medical clinic, the lack of evidence that any bodies had ever been removed from Alpha Block, and so on. The officials listened intently and asked many questions. The Denbeauxes said they could provide a list of witnesses who would corroborate every aspect of their account. At the end of the meeting, Mark Denbeaux recalled, the officials specifically thanked the lawyers for not speaking to reporters first and for "doing it the right way." Two days later, another Justice Department official, Teresa McHenry, head of the Criminal Division's Domestic Security Section, called Mark Denbeaux and said that she was heading up an investigation and wanted to meet directly with his client. She went to New Jersey to do so. Hickman then reviewed the basic facts and furnished McHenry with the promised list of corroborating witnesses and details on how they could be contacted. The Denbeauxes did not hear from anyone at the Justice Department for at least two months. Then, in April, an FBI agent called to say she did not have the list of contacts. She asked if this document could be provided again. It was. Shortly thereafter, Fagell a Justice official [see update] and two FBI agents interviewed Davila, who had left the Army, in Columbia, South Carolina. Fagell asked Davila if he was prepared to travel to Guant?namo to identify the locations of various sites. He said he was. "It seemed like they were interested," Davila told me. "Then I never heard from them again." Several more months passed, and Hickman and his lawyers became increasingly concerned that nothing was going to happen. On October 27, 2009, they resumed dealings with Congress that they had initiated on February 2 and then broken off at the Justice Department's request; they were also in contact with ABC News. Two days later, Teresa McHenry called Mark Denbeaux and asked whether he had gone to Congress and ABC News about the matter. "I said that I had," Denbeaux told me. He asked her, "Was there anything wrong with that?" McHenry then suggested that the investigation was finished. Denbeaux reminded her that she had yet to interview some of the corroborating witnesses. "There are a few small things to do," Denbeaux says McHenry answered, "then it will be finished." Specialist Christopher Penvose told me that on October 30, the day following the conversation between Mark Denbeaux and Teresa McHenry, McHenry an official [see update] showed up at Penvose's home in south Baltimore with some FBI agents. She had a "few questions," she told him. Investigators working with her soon contacted two other witnesses. On November 2, 2009, McHenry called Mark Denbeaux to tell him that the Justice Department's investigation was being closed. "It was a strange conversation," Denbeaux recalled. McHenry explained that "the gist of Sergeant Hickman's information could not be confirmed." But when Denbeaux asked what that "gist" actually was, McHenry declined to say. She just reiterated that Hickman's conclusions "appeared" to be unsupported. Denbeaux asked what conclusions exactly were unsupported. McHenry refused to say. 10. "They Accomplished Nothing" One of the most intriguing aspects of this case concerns the use of Camp No. Under George W. Bush, the CIA created an archipelago of secret detention centers that spanned the globe, and authorities at these sites deployed an array of Justice Department-sanctioned torture techniques-including waterboarding, which often entails inserting cloth into the subject's mouth-on prisoners they deemed to be involved in terrorism. The presence of a black site at Guant?namo has long been a subject of speculation among lawyers and human-rights activists, and the experience of Sergeant Hickman and other Guant?namo guards compels us to ask whether the three prisoners who died on June 9 were being interrogated by the CIA, and whether their deaths resulted from the grueling techniques the Justice Department had approved for the agency's use-or from other tortures lacking that sanction. Complicating these questions is the fact that Camp No might have been controlled by another authority, the Joint Special Operations Command, which Bush's defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, had hoped to transform into a Pentagon version of the CIA. Under Rumsfeld's direction, JSOC began to take on many tasks traditionally handled by the CIA, including the housing and interrogation of prisoners at black sites around the world. The Pentagon recently acknowledged the existence of one such JSOC black site, located at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, and other suspected sites, such as Camp Nama in Baghdad, have been carefully documented by human-rights researchers. In a Senate Armed Services Committee report on torture released last year, the sections about Guant?namo were significantly redacted. The position and circumstances of these deletions point to a significant JSOC interrogation program at the base. (It should be noted that Obama's order last year to close other secret detention camps was narrowly worded to apply only to the CIA.) Regardless of whether Camp No belonged to the CIA or JSOC, the Justice Department has plenty of its own secrets to protect. The department would seem to have been involved in the cover-up from the first days, when FBI agents stormed Colonel Bumgarner's quarters. This was unusual for two reasons. When Pentagon officials engage in a leak investigation, they generally use military investigators. They rarely turn to the FBI, because they cannot control the actions of a civilian agency. Moreover, when the FBI does open an investigation, it nearly always does so with great discretion. The Bumgarner investigation was widely telegraphed, though, and seemed intended to send a message to the military personnel at Camp Delta: Talk about what happened at your own risk. All of which suggests it was not the Pentagon so much as the White House that hoped to suppress the truth. In the weeks following the 2006 deaths, the Justice Department decided to use the suicide narrative as leverage against the Guant?namo prisoners and their troublesome lawyers, who were pressing the government to justify its long-term imprisonment of their clients. After the NCIS seized thousands of pages of privileged communications, the Justice Department went to court to defend the action. It argued that such steps were warranted by the extraordinary facts surrounding the June 9 "suicides." U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson gave the Justice Department a sympathetic hearing, and he ruled in its favor, but he also noted a curious aspect of the government's presentation: its "citations supporting the fact of the suicides" were all drawn from media accounts. Why had the Justice Department lawyers who argued the case gone to such lengths to avoid making any statement under oath about the suicides? Did they do so in order to deceive the court? If so, they could face disciplinary proceedings or disbarment. The Justice Department also faces questions about its larger role in creating the circumstances that led to the use of so-called enhanced interrogation and restraint techniques at Guant?namo and elsewhere. In 2006, the use of a gagging restraint had already been connected to the death on January 9, 2004, of an Iraqi prisoner, Lieutenant Colonel Abdul Jameel, in the custody of the Army Special Forces. And the bodies of the three men who died at Guant?namo showed signs of torture, including hemorrhages, needle marks, and significant bruising. The removal of their throats made it difficult to determine whether they were already dead when their bodies were suspended by a noose. The Justice Department itself had been deeply involved in the process of approving and setting the conditions for the use of torture techniques, issuing a long series of memoranda that CIA agents and others could use to defend themselves against any subsequent criminal prosecution. Teresa McHenry, the investigator charged with accounting for the deaths of the three men at Guant?namo, has firsthand knowledge of the Justice Department's role in auditing such techniques, having served at the Justice Department under Bush and having participated in the preparation of at least one of those memos. As a former war-crimes prosecutor, McHenry knows full well that government officials who attempt to cover up crimes perpetrated against prisoners in wartime face prosecution under the doctrine of command responsibility. (McHenry declined to clarify the role she played in drafting the memos.) As retired Rear Admiral John Hutson, the former judge advocate general of the Navy, told me, "Filing false reports and making false statements is bad enough, but if a homicide occurs and officials up the chain of command attempt to cover it up, they face serious criminal liability. They may even be viewed as accessories after the fact in the original crime." With command authority comes command responsibility, he said. "If the heart of the military is obeying orders down the chain of command, then its soul is accountability up the chain. You can't demand the former without the latter." The Justice Department thus faced a dilemma; it could do the politically convenient thing, which was to find no justification for a thorough investigation, leave the NCIS conclusions in place, and hope that the public and the news media would obey the Obama Administration's dictum to "look forward, not backward"; or it could pursue a course of action that would implicate the Bush Justice Department in a cover-up of possible homicides. Nearly 200 men remain imprisoned at Guant?namo. In June 2009, six months after Barack Obama took office, one of them, a thirty-one-year-old Yemeni named Muhammed Abdallah Salih, was found dead in his cell. The exact circumstances of his death, like those of the deaths of the three men from Alpha Block, remain uncertain. Those charged with accounting for what happened-the prison command, the civilian and military investigative agencies, the Justice Department, and ultimately the attorney general himself-all face a choice between the rule of law and the expedience of political silence. Thus far, their choice has been unanimous. Not everyone who is involved in this matter views it from a political perspective, of course. General Al-Zahrani grieves for his son, but at the end of a lengthy interview he paused and his thoughts turned elsewhere. "The truth is what matters," he said. "They practiced every form of torture on my son and on many others as well. What was the result? What facts did they find? They found nothing. They learned nothing. They accomplished nothing." =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Wed Jan 20 19:07:41 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:07:41 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Helen Thomas: Accepting various truths Message-ID: http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=890123&category=opinion Albany Times Union January 18, 2010 *Accepting various truths* By HELEN THOMAS No one in the Obama administration is going to acknowledge that our foreign policy in the Middle East has alienated many Arabs. The U.S. pro-Israel policy and our shocking neglect of the beleaguered Palestinians underlie almost every initiative or tactical tilt that comes out of Washington. President Obama and his predecessors in the White House have scored domestic political points by embracing this world view. This is one vantage point that is truly bipartisan, to the point where no one discusses it. Michael Scheuer, a former CIA specialist on the al-Qaida terrorists, complained on C-SPAN recently that any debate about American support for Israel is "normally squelched." "For anyone to say our support for Israel doesn't hurt us is to just defy reality," he added. Another former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern, says the 9/11 Commission report noted that Khalid Sheikh -- the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- cited his violent disagreement with U.S. support for Israel as the motivating dynamic behind the attacks. Obama knows enough about the Middle East that tightening airport security is not the whole answer to fighting terrorism. He should try a more even-handed policy in the region. Grievances of the Arab man on the street include bitter criticism of the U.S. for supporting harsh authoritarian regimes in the Arab world and the failure of those U.S.-backed regimes to help the Palestinians in Gaza. Surely after several years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can dispense with the obfuscation and evasion that flood forth from official U.S. megaphones. Terrorism spawned in the Middle East is not the only threat we face. As the American economy digs out from the debris of the Great Recession triggered by the collapse of the housing bubble, we should think about what could happen about another bubble that invisibly chugs through the American economy. I refer to our bloated defense spending. The United States spends more for its arsenal than any other 10 countries combined. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. accounts for more than 40 percent of the world's total military spending. China is in second place, at a relatively puny 5.8 percent. If the U.S. defense spending bubble were ever to deflate, domestic job losses would be catastrophic, a stunning fact that raises the question of whether we can ever afford peace. The American people have long shown they can handle the truth. When it comes to the Middle East and to threats to our economy, so should our leaders. Helen Thomas' e-mail address is hthomas at hearstdc.com. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Wed Jan 20 22:30:20 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:30:20 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Welcome to the Working Class Message-ID: <7505F543C0034F2295CA05E7E6378C0B@agingCHS072729> (the corollary to all this, of course, is the misguided spending by the Obama Administration (including the massive bailouts to banks -- de facto, a blank check), with the Pentagon and affiliated war "industry" eating up over half the pie) http://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/ Welcome to the Working Class Working-Class Perspectives January 19, 2010 As the financial industry celebrates its recovery from the Great Recession with huge bonuses, attention has turned increasingly to jobs. But that's not a new concern: over the past three decades first the working class and then the middle class faced unemployment caused by economic restructuring and globalization. Back in the 70s and 80s, when working-class people were losing thousands of blue collar manufacturing jobs that paid middle-class wages, many economists brushed the problem aside, insisting that new forms of work would soon replace disappearing blue-collar jobs. Industrial workers and their unions knew better 30 years ago. They've long warned that economic restructuring, globalization, and unfair trade laws would result in the loss of the middle class. Today we're learning that they were right. With the jobless recovery of the early 2000s and the ongoing unemployment crisis of today's recession, the middle class is discovering that sociologists Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb were accurate when they suggested that what it means to be middle class is to be just one job away from poverty. In Fear of Falling, Barbara Ehrenreich explored the impact of this decline on individual consciousness. But it is only within the last decade that people who thought they were safely middle class have come to understand the episodic, anxiety-ridden, contingent, low-wage-and-benefit life of many in the working class. And that experience seems likely to become permanent reality for many. Unlike in past business cycles, the middle class has not been able to recover so far, despite increases in productivity and stock prices. In "America Without a Middle Class," Elizabeth Warren documents how the de facto unemployment rate, credit debt, "underwater" mortgages, increased use of food stamps, personal bankruptcies, and the loss of pensions and health care have all dramatically increased. Middle-class households have depleted their savings and are increasingly accruing debt to pay for college, health care, and other expenses. The situation continues to worsen. The latest monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Report shows an additional 85,000 jobs lost. As the U.S. population grows, the need for jobs increases. The economy would need 100,000 new jobs just to keep up. In other words, the net effect puts us 185,000 jobs behind where we need to be to stay even with current misery. To make matters worse, 600,000 gave up looking for work and so were not even counted in the official unemployment rate. Over the last decade, the data shows no net creation of new jobs. Some experts believe that the decline in jobs will only continue. For example, Alexandra Levit predicts significant losses in a number of key industries between 2008 and 2018: semiconductor manufacturing(33.7%), motor vehicle parts manufacturing (18.6%), printing and related jobs (16%), apparel manufacturing (57%), newspaper publishers (24,8%), mining support jobs (76,000 or 23,2%), and the postal service (13%). Corporations are moving many of these jobs offshore or replacing them with technology rather than paying middle class wages and benefits. The economists are right that new jobs are being created in place of these. But as Jack Metzgar discussed last week, most of the new jobs offer even lower wages and benefits and require less education. Since private sector jobs cannot or will not be replaced in significant numbers, working people will have to rely on government spending to fill the gap. The first Obama stimulus, while important (see The Stimulus at Work), has clearly proven insufficient. The limits of this approach can be seen in California, Illinois, and New York. No wonder business leaders like Warren Buffet, economists like Paul Krugman, and others are calling for second stimulus directed more at creating new jobs. While many approaches have been offered, the Economic Policy Institute has outlined a simple plan to create jobs and stem the unemployment crisis. It contains five major themes: strengthening the social safety net (including unemployment compensation, COBRA health coverage, and nutrition assistance); providing additional fiscal relief to state and local governments; making renewed investments in infrastructure including transportation and schools; supporting direct creation of public service jobs; and establishing a new tax credit to employers who create new jobs. No doubt, we need stronger government leadership in creating the jobs that will expand the so-called recovery from the financial sector to the jobs sector. But making real, lasting change requires something more: a reexamination of the neoliberal ideology that has been responsible for current economic crisis that is moving so many from the middle class to the working class. As a recent Special Report in The American Prospect suggests, nothing short of an complete overhaul involving industrial, trade, and foreign policy will do, especially involving the revival of American manufacturing. Why manufacturing? As Richard McCormack has found, the loss of a single manufacturing job in a single large manufacturing plant, such as the GM Moraine Assembly in Dayton, can result in the loss of 15 additional jobs in the local community and through supply chains - job losses that affect both working- and middle-class workers. But it's not just that lost manufacturing jobs have wide-ranging effects. It's also that manufacturing jobs, unlike the low-wage service jobs Metzgar wrote about last week, are more likely to pay a liveable wage and provide decent benefits. Manufacturing jobs can be good working-class jobs, working-class jobs that can in turn help rebuild the middle class. With a new stimulus package and a revitalized manufacturing sector, the Great Recession may - like the Great Depression before - provide the ideological stimulus to create a more humane economy that is supportive of the working class. We need such a shift now, especially as the working class increasingly includes thousands who once thought they were solidly middle class. John Russo =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 22 09:24:05 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 09:24:05 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] CIA Contractor Now Flying Spy Drone Over Haiti Message-ID: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/cia-contractor-now-flying-spy-drone-over-haiti/ Wired January 21, 2010 CIA Contractor Now Flying Spy Drone Over Haiti by Noah Shachtman A controversial CIA contractor has found new work in Haiti, flying drones on disaster recovery duty. When last we heard from Evergreen International Aviation, the Oregon-based firm was offering to post sentries at local voting centers during the 2008 election, "detaining troublemakers" and making sure voters "do not get out of control." Now, company vice president Sam White tells Aviation Week that the firm is flying at least one ScanEagle surveillance drone over Haiti. "The company has a fleet of 747s and a fleet of large and small choppers, and has begun ferrying in supplies to Port au Prince," the magazine's Paul McLeary notes. "White wouldn't say who the company is moving cargo for, saying only that 'we're working with different agencies, and we have one plane coming in tomorrow full of humanitarian supplies.'" Over the years, Evergreen has had all sorts of interesting clients over its five-plus decades in operation. Back in the late '80s, the company "acknowledged one agreement under which his companies provide occasional jobs and cover to foreign nationals the CIA wants taken out of other countries or brought into the United States." In 2006, Evergreen's parent company flew Bill O'Reilly into Kuwait in 2006, according toSourceWatch. Last April, the company won a $158 million contract to supply the Air Force with helicopters in Afghanistan. Haiti wouldn't be Evergreen's first disaster-response mission, however. In September, the State of California chartered Evergreen's 747 supertanker, to help put out forest fires there. UPDATE: Brian Whiteside, executive vice president of Evergreen Unmanned Systems, denied that his company is flying drones for the earthquake recovery operation. "We have no UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] in Haiti - nothing currently in Haiti, and nothing in the region,"he tells Danger Room. Whiteside acknowledged that "we do have teams over there that are trying to help." But Whiteside isn't sure what, exactly, they've been able to accomplish. "We don't have very good comms with them." And when I asked him which government agency or charity Evergreen was trying to support, he ducked the question, and referred me to his spokesperson. UPDATE 2: McLeary went back and posted the quotes he got from Evergreen's Sam White. "We also have some UAVs here that we're bringing in to, uh, probably work with the press to help out downloading live video links and aerial shots of the devastation," he said. "We also have 747 cargo airplanes, and so we're working with different agencies there and uh, we have a plane landing here tomorrow to bring in a lot of humanitarian supplies. So we'll be here for quite some time." So which Evergreen exec is telling the truth? =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 22 09:34:08 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 09:34:08 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Past Decade Warmest Ever, NASA Data Shows Message-ID: <533250067EC64C3BA53A62298123D86E@agingCHS072729> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/science/earth/22warming.html?hp Past Decade Warmest Ever, NASA Data Shows By JOHN M. BRODER Published: January 21, 2010 WASHINGTON - The decade ending in 2009 was the warmest on record, new surface temperature figures released Thursday by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration show. The agency also found that 2009 was the second warmest year since 1880, when modern temperature measurement began. The warmest year was 2005. The other hottest recorded years have all occurred since 1998, NASA said. James E. Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said that global temperatures varied because of changes in ocean heating and cooling cycles. "When we average temperature over 5 or 10 years to minimize that variability," said Dr. Hansen, one of the world's leading climatologists, "we find global warming is continuing unabated." A separate preliminary analysis from another NASA office, the National Climatic Data Center, found that 2009 tied with 2006 as the fifth warmest year on record, based on measurements taken on land and at sea. The data center report, published earlier this week, also cited the years 2000 to 2009 as the warmest decade ever measured. The new temperature figures provide evidence in the scientific discussion of global warming but are not likely to be the last word on whether the planet's temperature is on a consistent upward path. Dr. Hansen, who has been an outspoken figure in the climate debate for years, has often been attacked by skeptics of global warming for what they charge is selective use of temperature data. The question of whether the planet is heating and how quickly was at the heart of the so-called "climategate" controversy that arose last fall when hundreds of e-mail messages from the climate study unit at the University of East Anglia in England were released without authorization. Critics seized on the messages as evidence that, in their view, climate scientists were manipulating data and colluding to keep contrary opinion out of scientific journals. But climate scientists and political leaders affirmed what they called a broad-based consensus that the planet was growing warmer, and on a consistent basis, although with measurable year-to-year variations. The NASA data released Thursday showed an upward temperature trend of about 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit (0.2 degrees Celsius) per decade over the past 30 years. Average global temperatures have risen by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degrees Celsius) since 1880. "That's the important number to keep in mind," said Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at Goddard. "The difference between the second and sixth warmest years is trivial because the known uncertainty in the temperature measurement is larger than some of the differences between the warmest years." Policy makers at the United Nations climate change summit conference in Copenhagen last month agreed on a goal of trying to keep the rise in average global temperatures to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, to try to forestall the worst effects of global warming. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 22 10:36:11 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:36:11 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] [Detroit] 45% Unemployed: Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shutoffs Call to Action Message-ID: 45% unemployed in the City of Detroit - Families losing their lives due to DTE shutoffs - Our neighborhoods destroyed by foreclosures and evictions - Detroit schools continuing to fail - City services diminished due to lay-offs. Mayor Bing: Declare a State of Economic Emergency in the City of Detroit! Moratorium NOW to Stop all Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shutoffs in the City Request President Obama declare Detroit a Disaster Area and Fund a Public Works Program to Provide Jobs Now The people of Detroit need emergency action by the new administration to meet the economic disaster that has hit our city. Under Michigan law, specifically MCL 10.31 et. seq., upon application of the Mayor the governor can proclaim a state of emergency and designate the area involved. Mayor Bing, with the support of City Council, needs to formally apply to Governor Granholm to declare a State of Economic Emergency in Detroit, and demand she use her police powers to place a two-year Moratorium on foreclosures, evictions and utility shutoffs in the city. In addition, as part of the State of Emergency declaration, the Mayor must demand that the Governor apply to President Obama for money to bail out Detroit, the hardest-hit city in the country. We need funds for jobs for youth to rebuild the houses that have been stripped and destroyed, and money to stop the destruction of public education and services in our city. Tuesday, January 26, 10:00 a.m. Come to the Detroit City Council meeting - 13th Floor, Coleman A. Young Municipal Center (Woodward at E. Jefferson) and demand City Council adopt a State of Emergency resolution during Public Comment section - Delegation to Mayor Bing's office will follow Wednesday, February 3, 5:30 p.m. Demonstrate in Lansing at Gov. Granholm's State of the State address (Call 313-887-4344 for transportation from Detroit) FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO GET INVOLVED, CONTACT: Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shutoffs 5920 Second Avenue, Detroit, MI 48202 313-887-4344 www.moratorium-mi.org =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 22 10:48:18 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:48:18 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] [USA] Greg Palast: Manchurian Candidates Message-ID: http://www.gregpalast.com/ Manchurian Candidates: Supreme Court allows China and others unlimited spending in US elections By Greg Palast | Updated from the original report for AlterNet Thursday, January 21, 2010 In today's Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Court ruled that corporations should be treated the same as "natural persons", i.e. humans. Well, in that case, expect the Supreme Court to next rule that Wal-Mart can run for President. The ruling, which junks federal laws that now bar corporations from stuffing campaign coffers, will not, as progressives fear, cause an avalanche of corporate cash into politics. Sadly, that's already happened: we have been snowed under by tens of millions of dollars given through corporate PACs and "bundling" of individual contributions from corporate pay-rollers. The Court's decision is far, far more dangerous to U.S. democracy. Think: Manchurian candidates. I'm losing sleep over the millions - or billions - of dollars that could flood into our elections from ARAMCO, the Saudi Oil corporation's U.S. unit; or from the maker of "New Order" fashions, the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Or from Bin Laden Construction corporation. Or Bin Laden Destruction Corporation. Right now, corporations can give loads of loot through PACs. While this money stinks (Barack Obama took none of it), anyone can go through a PAC's federal disclosure filing and see the name of every individual who put money into it. And every contributor must be a citizen of the USA. But under today's Supreme Court ruling that corporations can support candidates without limit, there is nothing that stops, say, a Delaware-incorporated handmaiden of the Burmese junta from picking a Congressman or two with a cache of loot masked by a corporate alias. Candidate Barack Obama was one sharp speaker, but he would not have been heard, and certainly would not have won, without the astonishing outpouring of donations from two million Americans. It was an unprecedented uprising-by-PayPal, overwhelming the old fat-cat sources of funding. Well, kiss that small-donor revolution goodbye. Under the Court's new rules, progressive list serves won't stand a chance against the resources of new "citizens" such as CNOOC, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation. Maybe UBS (United Bank of Switzerland), which faces U.S. criminal prosecution and a billion-dollar fine for fraud, might be tempted to invest in a few Senate seats. As would XYZ Corporation, whose owners remain hidden by "street names." George Bush's former Solicitor General Ted Olson argued the case to the court on behalf of Citizens United, a corporate front that funded an attack on Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primary. Olson's wife died on September 11, 2001 on the hijacked airliner that hit the Pentagon. Maybe it was a bit crude of me, but I contacted Olson's office to ask how much "Al Qaeda, Inc." should be allowed to donate to support the election of his local congressman. Olson has not responded. The danger of foreign loot loading into U.S. campaigns, not much noted in the media chat about the Citizens case, was the first concern raised by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who asked about opening the door to "mega-corporations" owned by foreign governments. Olson offered Ginsburg a fudge, that Congress might be able to prohibit foreign corporations from making donations, though Olson made clear he thought any such restriction a bad idea. Tara Malloy, attorney with the Campaign Legal Center of Washington D.C. says corporations will now have more rights than people. Only United States citizens may donate or influence campaigns, but a foreign government can, veiled behind a corporate treasury, dump money into ballot battles. Malloy also noted that under the law today, human-people, as opposed to corporate-people, may only give $2,300 to a presidential campaign. But hedge fund billionaires, for example, who typically operate through dozens of corporate vessels, may now give unlimited sums through each of these "unnatural" creatures. And once the Taliban incorporates in Delaware, they could ante up for the best democracy money can buy. In July, the Chinese government, in preparation for President Obama's visit, held diplomatic discussions in which they skirted issues of human rights and Tibet. Notably, the Chinese, who hold a $2 trillion mortgage on our Treasury, raised concerns about the cost of Obama's health care reform bill. Would our nervous Chinese landlords have an interest in buying the White House for an opponent of government spending such as Gov. Palin? Ya betcha! The potential for foreign infiltration of what remains of our democracy is an adjunct of the fact that the source and control money from corporate treasuries (unlike registered PACs), is necessarily hidden. Who the heck are the real stockholders? Or as Butch asked Sundance, "Who are these guys?" We'll never know. Hidden money funding, whether foreign or domestic, is the new venom that the Court has injected into the system by its expansive decision in Citizens United. We've been there. The 1994 election brought Newt Gingrich to power in a GOP takeover of the Congress funded by a very strange source. Congressional investigators found that in crucial swing races, Democrats had fallen victim to a flood of last-minute attack ads funded by a group called, "Coalition for Our Children's Future." The $25 million that paid for those ads came, not from concerned parents, but from a corporation called "Triad Inc." Evidence suggests Triad Inc. was the front for the ultra-right-wing billionaire Koch Brothers and their private petroleum company, Koch Industries. Had the corporate connection been proven, the Kochs and their corporation could have faced indictment under federal election law. As of today, such money-poisoned politicking has become legit. So it's not just un-Americans we need to fear but the Polluter-Americans, Pharma-mericans, Bank-Americans and Hedge-Americans that could manipulate campaigns while hidden behind corporate veils. And if so, our future elections, while nominally a contest between Republicans and Democrats, may in fact come down to a three-way battle between China, Saudi Arabia and Goldman Sachs. Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." Palast investigated Triad Inc. for The Guardian (UK). View Palast's reports for BBC TV and Democracy Now! at gregpalast.com. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 22 10:57:37 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:57:37 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Covering Haiti: When the Media Is the Disaster Message-ID: http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/1514/when_the_media_is_the/ Guernica January 21, 2010 Covering Haiti: When the Media Is the Disaster By Rebecca Solnit Soon after almost every disaster the crimes begin: ruthless, selfish, indifferent to human suffering, and generating far more suffering. The perpetrators go unpunished and live to commit further crimes against humanity. They care less for human life than for property. They act without regard for consequences. I'm talking, of course, about those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster often abets and justifies a second wave of disaster. I'm talking about the treatment of sufferers as criminals, both on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from rescue to property patrol. They still have blood on their hands from Hurricane Katrina, and they are staining themselves anew in Haiti. Within days of the Haitian earthquake, for example, the Los Angeles Times ran a series of photographs with captions that kept deploying the word "looting." One was of a man lying face down on the ground with this caption: "A Haitian police officer ties up a suspected looter who was carrying a bag of evaporated milk." The man's sweaty face looks up at the camera, beseeching, anguished. Another photo was labeled: "Looting continued in Haiti on the third day after the earthquake, although there were more police in downtown Port-au-Prince." It showed a somber crowd wandering amid shattered piles of concrete in a landscape where, visibly, there could be little worth taking anyway. A third image was captioned: "A looter makes off with rolls of fabric from an earthquake-wrecked store." Yet another: "The body of a police officer lies in a Port-au-Prince street. He was accidentally shot by fellow police who mistook him for a looter." People were then still trapped alive in the rubble. A translator for Australian TV dug out a toddler who'd survived 68 hours without food or water, orphaned but claimed by an uncle who had lost his pregnant wife. Others were hideously wounded and awaiting medical attention that wasn't arriving. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, needed, and still need, water, food, shelter, and first aid. The media in disaster bifurcates. Some step out of their usual "objective" roles to respond with kindness and practical aid. Others bring out the arsenal of clich?s and pernicious myths and begin to assault the survivors all over again. The "looter" in the first photo might well have been taking that milk to starving children and babies, but for the news media that wasn't the most urgent problem. The "looter" stooped under the weight of two big bolts of fabric might well have been bringing it to now homeless people trying to shelter from a fierce tropical sun under improvised tents. The pictures do convey desperation, but they don't convey crime. Except perhaps for that shooting of a fellow police officer-his colleagues were so focused on property that they were reckless when it came to human life, and a man died for no good reason in a landscape already saturated with death. In recent days, there have been scattered accounts of confrontations involving weapons, and these may be a different matter. But the man with the powdered milk? Is he really a criminal? There may be more to know, but with what I've seen I'm not convinced. What Would You Do? Imagine, reader, that your city is shattered by a disaster. Your home no longer exists, and you spent what cash was in your pockets days ago. Your credit cards are meaningless because there is no longer any power to run credit-card charges. Actually, there are no longer any storekeepers, any banks, any commerce, or much of anything to buy. The economy has ceased to exist. By day three, you're pretty hungry and the water you grabbed on your way out of your house is gone. The thirst is far worse than the hunger. You can go for many days without food, but not water. And in the improvised encampment you settle in, there is an old man near you who seems on the edge of death. He no longer responds when you try to reassure him that this ordeal will surely end. Toddlers are now crying constantly, and their mothers infinitely stressed and distressed. So you go out to see if any relief organization has finally arrived to distribute anything, only to realize that there are a million others like you stranded with nothing, and there isn't likely to be anywhere near enough aid anytime soon. The guy with the corner store has already given away all his goods to the neighbors. That supply's long gone by now. No wonder, when you see the chain pharmacy with the shattered windows or the supermarket, you don't think twice before grabbing a box of PowerBars and a few gallons of water that might keep you alive and help you save a few lives as well. The old man might not die, the babies might stop their squalling, and the mothers might lose that look on their faces. Other people are calmly wandering in and helping themselves, too. Maybe they're people like you, and that gallon of milk the fellow near you has taken is going to spoil soon anyway. You haven't shoplifted since you were 14, and you have plenty of money to your name. But it doesn't mean anything now. If you grab that stuff are you a criminal? Should you end up lying in the dirt on your stomach with a cop tying your hands behind your back? Should you end up labeled a looter in the international media? Should you be shot down in the street, since the overreaction in disaster, almost any disaster, often includes the imposition of the death penalty without benefit of trial for suspected minor property crimes? Or are you a rescuer? Is the survival of disaster victims more important than the preservation of everyday property relations? Is that chain pharmacy more vulnerable, more a victim, more in need of help from the National Guard than you are, or those crying kids, or the thousands still trapped in buildings and soon to die? It's pretty obvious what my answers to these questions are, but it isn't obvious to the mass media. And in disaster after disaster, at least since the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, those in power, those with guns and the force of law behind them, are too often more concerned for property than human life. In an emergency, people can, and do, die from those priorities. Or they get gunned down for minor thefts or imagined thefts. The media not only endorses such outcomes, but regularly, repeatedly, helps prepare the way for, and then eggs on, such a reaction. If Words Could Kill We need to banish the word "looting" from the English language. It incites madness and obscures realities. "Loot," the noun and the verb, is a word of Hindi origin meaning the spoils of war or other goods seized roughly. As historian Peter Linebaugh points out, "At one time loot was the soldier's pay." It entered the English language as a good deal of loot from India entered the English economy, both in soldiers' pockets and as imperial seizures. After years of interviewing survivors of disasters, and reading first-hand accounts and sociological studies from such disasters as the London Blitz and the Mexico City earthquake of 1985, I don't believe in looting. Two things go on in disasters. The great majority of what happens you could call emergency requisitioning. Someone who could be you, someone in the kind of desperate circumstances I outlined above, takes necessary supplies to sustain human life in the absence of any alternative. Not only would I not call that looting, I wouldn't even call that theft. Necessity is a defense for breaking the law in the United States and other countries, though it's usually applied more to, say, confiscating the car keys of a drunk driver than feeding hungry children. Taking things you don't need is theft under any circumstances. It is, says the disaster sociologist Enrico Quarantelli, who has been studying the subject for more than half a century, vanishingly rare in most disasters. Personal gain is the last thing most people are thinking about in the aftermath of a disaster. In that phase, the survivors are almost invariably more altruistic and less attached to their own property, less concerned with the long-term questions of acquisition, status, wealth, and security, than just about anyone not in such situations imagines possible. (The best accounts from Haiti of how people with next to nothing have patiently tried to share the little they have and support those in even worse shape than them only emphasize this disaster reality.) Crime often drops in the wake of a disaster. The media are another matter. They tend to arrive obsessed with property (and the headlines that assaults on property can make). Media outlets often call everything looting and thereby incite hostility toward the sufferers as well as a hysterical overreaction on the part of the armed authorities. Or sometimes the journalists on the ground do a good job and the editors back in their safe offices cook up the crazy photo captions and the wrongheaded interpretations and emphases. They also deploy the word panic wrongly. Panic among ordinary people in crisis is profoundly uncommon. The media will call a crowd of people running from certain death a panicking mob, even though running is the only sensible thing to do. In Haiti, they continue to report that food is being withheld from distribution for fear of "stampedes." Do they think Haitians are cattle? The belief that people in disaster (particularly poor and nonwhite people) are cattle or animals or just crazy and untrustworthy regularly justifies spending far too much energy and far too many resources on control-the American military calls it "security"-rather than relief. A British-accented voiceover on CNN calls people sprinting to where supplies are being dumped from a helicopter a "stampede" and adds that this delivery "risks sparking chaos." The chaos already exists, and you can't blame it on these people desperate for food and water. Or you can, and in doing so help convince your audience that they're unworthy and untrustworthy. Back to looting: of course you can consider Haiti's dire poverty and failed institutions a long-term disaster that changes the rules of the game. There might be people who are not only interested in taking the things they need to survive in the next few days, but things they've never been entitled to own or things they may need next month. Technically that's theft, but I'm not particularly surprised or distressed by it; the distressing thing is that even before the terrible quake they led lives of deprivation and desperation. In ordinary times, minor theft is often considered a misdemeanor. No one is harmed. Unchecked, minor thefts could perhaps lead to an environment in which there were more thefts and so forth, and a good argument can be made that, in such a case, the tide needs to be stemmed. But it's not particularly significant in a landscape of terrible suffering and mass death. A number of radio hosts and other media personnel are still upset that people apparently took TVs after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August 2005. Since I started thinking about, and talking to people about, disaster aftermaths I've heard a lot about those damned TVs. Now, which matters more to you, televisions or human life? People were dying on rooftops and in overheated attics and freeway overpasses, they were stranded in all kinds of hideous circumstances on the Gulf Coast in 2005 when the mainstream media began to obsess about looting, and the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana made the decision to focus on protecting property, not human life. A gang of white men on the other side of the river from New Orleans got so worked up about property crimes that they decided to take the law into their own hands and began shooting. They seem to have considered all black men criminals and thieves and shot a number of them. Some apparently died; there were bodies bloating in the September sun far from the region of the floods; one good man trying to evacuate the ruined city barely survived; and the media looked away. It took me months of nagging to even get the story covered. This vigilante gang claimed to be protecting property, though its members never demonstrated that their property was threatened. They boasted of killing black men. And they shared values with the mainstream media and the Louisiana powers that be. Somehow, when the Bush administration subcontracted emergency services-like providing evacuation buses in Hurricane Katrina-to cronies who profited even while providing incompetent, overpriced, and much delayed service at the moment of greatest urgency, we didn't label that looting. Or when a lot of wealthy Wall Street brokers decide to tinker with a basic human need like housing. Well, you catch my drift. Woody Guthrie once sang that "some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen." The guys with the six guns (or machetes or sharpened sticks) make for better photographs, and the guys with the fountain pens not only don't end up in jail, they end up in McMansions with four-car garages and, sometimes, in elected-or appointed-office. Learning to See in Crises Last Christmas a priest, Father Tim Jones of York, started a ruckus in Britain when he said in a sermon that shoplifting by the desperate from chain stores might be acceptable behavior. Naturally, there was an uproar. Jones told the Associated Press: "The point I'm making is that when we shut down every socially acceptable avenue for people in need, then the only avenue left is the socially unacceptable one." The response focused almost entirely on why shoplifting is wrong, but the claim was also repeatedly made that it doesn't help. In fact, food helps the hungry, a fact so bald it's bizarre to even have to state it. The means by which it arrives is a separate matter. The focus remained on shoplifting, rather than on why there might be people so desperate in England's green and pleasant land that shoplifting might be their only option, and whether unnecessary human suffering is itself a crime of sorts. Right now, the point is that people in Haiti need food, and for all the publicity, the international delivery system has, so far, been a visible dud. Under such circumstances, breaking into a U.N. food warehouse-food assumedly meant for the poor of Haiti in a catastrophic moment-might not be "violence," or "looting," or "law-breaking." It might be logic. It might be the most effective way of meeting a desperate need. Why were so many people in Haiti hungry before the earthquake? Why do we have a planet that produces enough food for all and a distribution system that ensures more than a billion of us don't have a decent share of that bounty? Those are not questions whose answers should be long delayed. Even more urgently, we need compassion for the sufferers in Haiti and media that tell the truth about them. I'd like to propose alternative captions for those Los Angeles Times photographs as models for all future disasters: Let's start with the picture of the policeman hogtying the figure whose face is so anguished: "Ignoring thousands still trapped in rubble, a policeman accosts a sufferer who took evaporated milk. No adequate food distribution exists for Haiti's starving millions." And the guy with the bolt of fabric? "As with every disaster, ordinary people show extraordinary powers of improvisation, and fabrics such as these are being used to make sun shelters around Haiti." For the murdered policeman: "Institutional overzealousness about protecting property leads to a gratuitous murder, as often happens in crises. Meanwhile countless people remain trapped beneath crushed buildings." And the crowd in the rubble labeled looters? How about: "Resourceful survivors salvage the means of sustaining life from the ruins of their world." That one might not be totally accurate, but it's likely to be more accurate than the existing label. And what is absolutely accurate, in Haiti right now, and on Earth always, is that human life matters more than property, that the survivors of a catastrophe deserve our compassion and our understanding of their plight, and that we live and die by words and ideas, and it matters desperately that we get them right. At the dawn of the millennium, three catastrophes were forecast for the United States: terrorists in New York, a hurricane in New Orleans, and an earthquake in San Francisco. Rebecca Solnit lives in San Francisco with her earthquake kit and is about to make her seventh trip to New Orleans since Katrina. Her latest book, A Paradise Built in Hell, is a testament to human bravery and innovation during disasters. Copyright 2010 Rebecca Solnit ___________________________________________________________________ This essay originally appeared at TomDispatch.com =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 22 11:20:07 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 11:20:07 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] U.S. feeds one quarter of its grain to cars while hunger is on the rise Message-ID: http://www.grist.org/article/u.s.-feeds-one-quarter-of-its-grain-to-cars-while-hunger-is-on-the-rise/ U.S. feeds one quarter of its grain to cars while hunger is on the rise 21 Jan 2010 10:49 AM by Lester Brown The 107 million tons of grain that went to U.S. ethanol distilleries in 2009 was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption levels. More than a quarter of the total U.S. grain crop was turned into ethanol to fuel cars last year. With 200 ethanol distilleries in the country set up to transform food into fuel, the amount of grain processed has tripled since 2004. [see graph: U.S. Grain Used for Ethanol, 1980-2009] The United States looms large in the world food economy: it is far and away the world's leading grain exporter, exporting more than Argentina, Australia, Canada, and Russia combined. In a globalized food economy, increased demand for food to fuel American vehicles puts additional pressure on world food supplies. >From an agricultural vantage point, the automotive hunger for crop-based fuels is insatiable. The Earth Policy Institute has noted that even if the entire U.S. grain crop were converted to ethanol (leaving no domestic crop to make bread, rice, pasta, or feed the animals from which we get meat, milk, and eggs), it would satisfy at most 18 percent of U.S. automotive fuel needs. When the growing demand for corn for ethanol helped to push world grain prices to record highs between late 2006 and 2008, people in low-income grain-importing countries were hit the hardest. The unprecedented spike in food prices drove up the number of hungry people in the world to over 1 billion for the first time in 2009. Though the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression has recently brought food prices down from their peak, they still remain well above their long-term average levels. [see graph: Number of Undernourished People in the World, 1969-2009] The amount of grain needed to fill the tank of an SUV with ethanol just once can feed one person for an entire year. The average income of the owners of the world's 940 million automobiles is at least 10 times larger than that of the world's 2 billion hungriest people. In the competition between cars and hungry people for the world's harvest, the car is destined to win. [see graph: Number of People who could be Fed by the U.S. Grain Used to Produce Ethanol, 1980-2009] Continuing to divert more food to fuel, as is now mandated by the U.S. federal government in its Renewable Fuel Standard, will likely only reinforce the disturbing rise in hunger. By subsidizing the production of ethanol, now to the tune of some $6 billion each year, U.S. taxpayers are in effect subsidizing rising food bills at home and around the world. For more information on the competition between cars and people for grain, see Chapter 2 -- http://www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/books/pb4/PB4ch2_ss6 -- in Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 009) -- http://www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/books/pb4 --, on-line for free downloading with supporting datasets. Lester R. Brown is founder and president of Earth Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. 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To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 22 12:18:40 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:18:40 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] The United States of Corporate America Message-ID: <7227C8026ECD4762AFE43254D509224D@agingCHS072729> http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2010/01/22/the-united-states-of-corporate-america-f#more9585 The United States of Corporate America: From Democracy to Plutocracy January 22nd, 2010 7:11 AM Rodrigue Tremblay "The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -- Plato, ancient Greek philosopher -- "The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy." -- Alex Carey, Australian social scientist "The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations." -- Noam Chomsky, M.I.T. emeritus Professor of Linguistics On Tuesday, January 19 (2010), the Obama administration got a kick in the pants from the Massachusetts voters when they filled former Senator Ted Kennedy's seat by electing a conservative Republican candidate. The essence of their message was: stop dithering and start governing; stop trying to satisfy the bankers and please the editors of Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, and start caring for the ordinary people. Two days later, President Barack Obama seemed to have understood the people's message when he announced a "Volcker rule" that will forbid large banks from owning hedge funds that make money by placing large bets against their own clients, using information that these same clients gave them. It was time. Such a policy should have been announced months ago, if not years ago. On the same day, however, a nonelected body, the U.S. Supreme Court, threw a different challenge to the Obama administration. Indeed, on Thursday January 21 (2010), a Republican-appointed majority on the U.S. Supreme Court took it upon itself to profoundly change the U.S. Constitution and American democracy. Indeed, in what can be labeled a most reactionary decision, the Roberts U.S. Supreme Court, ruled that legal entities, such as corporations and labor unions, have the same purely personal rights to free speech as living individuals. Indeed, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech. The only problem with such a wide interpretation of the U.S. Bills of Rights (N.B.: The first ten amendments to the United States Constitution are known as the Bill of Rights) is that this runs contrary its letter and its spirit, since it clearly states later on that "the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people, and reserves all powers not granted to the federal government to the citizenry or States." The words "people" and "citizenry" clearly refer here to living human beings, not to legal or artificial entities such as business corporations, labor unions, financial organizations or political lobbies. Such entities, for example, cannot vote in an election. Indeed, laws governing voting rights in the United States clearly establish that only "Adult citizens of the United States who are residents of one of the 50 states have the right to participate fully in the political system of the United States". No mention is made of corporations or other legal entities. However, with its January 19 (2010) decision, the majority on the Roberts U.S. Supreme Court is saying in effect that even if artificial entities cannot vote in an election, they can spend as much money as they like to influence the outcome of an election. Money is speech for them, and the more a legal entity has of it, the more it has a right to become powerful politically and control the political agenda. In fact, what Chief Justice Roberts and his conservative Supreme Court majority have done is to overcome a century-old democratic tradition in the United States in granting a constitutional right to business corporations and to banks, (because they are really the ones with a lot of money), to use their enormous resources to not only participate in debates about public issues, but also, and above all, to de facto dictate the election of candidates of their choice to public office. That's plutocracy, not democracy! Plutocracy is defined as a political system characterized by "the rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth." Democracy, on the other hand, is defined as a political system where political power belongs to the people. This means "a political government either carried out directly by the people (direct democracy) or by means of elected representatives of the people (representative democracy). The terms "the power to the people" are derived from the words "people" and "power" in Greek. This fundamental idea of democracy was well summarized by President Abraham Lincoln, in his 1863 Gettysburg Address, when he said that it is "a government of the people, by the people and for the people." This is a definition that is based on the basic democratic principle of equality among human beings. But now, the Roberts Court's decision must have made President Lincoln turn in his grave, because that decision, in effect, transfers political power from the living "people" to artificial corporate entities, with tons of money to spend. If Congress does not act quickly to reverse this decision, legal entities will be able to spend freely in the media to support or oppose political candidates for president and Congress, and this, as far as the last moment of a political campaign. This is quite something! By a stroke of the pen, the Roberts Court has thus abolished the laws governing American electoral financing and removed limits to how much special money interests can spend to have the elected officials they want. The government they want will largely be "a government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations." Truly amazing! To reflect the new political philosophy of the five-member majority of the Roberts Court, the Preambule of the U.S. Constitution that says "We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union..." should, maybe, more appropriately be changed for "We, the business corporations of America..." It is that much more ironic that the word "corporation" appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution or in the Bill of Rights. It is scarcely conceivable that the drafters of the Constitution had anything resembling corporate entities in mind when they drafted the Bill of Rights. But the Roberts Court majority does not seem to agree with Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Mason...etc. Because of their decision, the five conservative members of the U. S. Supreme Court of today have become the new Fathers of the U. S. Constitution. For nearly a century, it has been assumed that the U.S. Bill of Rights protected persons, not corporations. Even if sometimes the courts have extended the rights of the 14th Amendment banning the deprivation of property without due process or equal protection of the law to the property of corporations, it was never thought that the purely personal rights of the first Amendment of the Bill of Rights applied to corporate entities as well as to human beings. This is understandable. Business corporations are created through legislation that gives them potentially perpetual life and limited liability to enhance their efficiency as economic entities. While such characteristics can be beneficial in the economic sphere, they represent special dangers in the political sphere. That is the rationale for not extending constitutional rights to purely legal entities. But now, the five-member majority of the Roberts Court have said that such legalized artificial entities have the same constitutionally protected rights to engage in political activities as living individuals. This is clearly revolutionary or, more precisely, counter-revolutionary. -###- Rodrigue Tremblay http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/author.htm is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay at yahoo.com. He is the author of the coming book "The Code for Global Ethics" at: http://www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ You may reserve a copy of the book on Amazon The French version of the book is now available. See: http://www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/ or on Amazon Canada Register to be alerted when the English version is available by sending the word "Code" to bigpictureworld at yahoo.com Please visit the book site at: http://www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ Email to a friend: http://www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1121 or, http://www.thecodeforglobalethics.com/pb/wp_26f7a0c1/wp_26f7a0c1.html Send contact, comments or commercial reproduction requests (in English or in French) to: bigpictureworld at yahoo.com N.B.: Messages may be published in our weblog, unless you request otherwise. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 22 12:24:55 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:24:55 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Magical Realism -- A coup in Honduras, so 20th Century! Message-ID: <60B78422FC094CC5AF69E44C8D82550E@agingCHS072729> http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/4117 Magical Realism -- A coup in Honduras, so 20th Century! January 22, 2010 By Saul Landau and Nelson Valdes "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people." -- Henry Kissinger, June 26, 1970 "I've heard many in this room say that they will not recognize the elections in Honduras. ... What does that mean in the real world, not in the world of magical realism?" -- W. Lewis Amselem, U.S. Representative to the Organization of American States, Nov. 11, 2009 For U.S. magical realists, a coup becomes a coup after Washington defines it as such. On March 10, 1952, Cuban General Fulgencio Batista grabbed power and sought to legitimize his coup by holding fake elections. Magically, the coup makers won; Washington recognized Batista. In 1964, Brazil's military removed President Jo?o Goulart and covered naked crime with electoral fig leaves, as if coups came with routine republicanism. In 2009, few imagined military goons taking orders from a corrupt supreme court, kidnapping a President and exiling him to Costa Rica. Fewer imagined Costa Rican President Oscar Arias cooperating with kidnappers and instead of charging them with major felonies, allowed them free return in their military plane. More 21st Century Magical Realism surfaced when Arias evolved from collaborator to mediator - with U.S. and OAS blessing. Washington could have frozen the plotters' assets, or denounced the coup-supporting Honduran congressional hooligans for producing a fake resignation letter by President Manuel Zelaya, one he had not signed and with the wrong date. Instead of the State Department labeling the blatant heist a coup, officials "studied" the absurd allegation that Zelaya had violated Honduras' Constitution by calling for a referendum (consultation) with his people -- to see if they wanted to change the document. Indeed, a 2009 State Department human rights report had labeled as corrupt the very Supreme Court that ordered Zelaya arrested - but not kidnapped and exiled. By November, the thugs had repressed opposition media, killed, tortured and beaten protesters. Then, the conditions were ready for the plotters to hold "elections." Fifty percent or less voted for candidates that reflected none of Zelaya's programs. Despite charges of fraud and irregularities, Washington recognized the process and beseeched the world to forget Honduras' disagreeable past: five months of a nation's upset stomach? With U.S. support, President "Whatshisname," a member of the worried cr?me de la cr?me, moved the former Banana Republic now riddled with maquiladoras, back into "the community of nations" - with objection from dozens of member countries. "Hey," said a reporter in Tegucigalpa, "the election was as legitimate as the Afghanistan farce." Success took longer than its plotters desired, but official Washington defined last year as ancient history. The kidnapping of Zelaya -- for offering legal steps to reform --and subsequent death squad murders, well, "let auld acquaintance be forgot..." A dozen oligarchic families have owned the country for decades. They learned from their experiences with the quixotic Zelaya's "disobedience" not to delegate political control to even wealthy allies. The hotsy totsy class has now pushed family members to "win" congressional seats and "serve" on the court. Hondurans' Cro Magnon elite replaced Zelaya because, like many illegitimate entities, they grew concerned that their victims, the majority of Honduras, would mobilize and change the constitution: the foundation that protected them against structural change. Zelaya's proposed non-binding referendum threatened their minority rule. A new Constitution would allow the majority to replace the Cold War system. >From the late 1940s on, Washington trained local militaries to use anti-Communism as the pretext to repress movements advocating policies opposed by large U.S. investors and local aristocracies. Counterinsurgency from the 1960s through the 1980s became the era of military dictatorships -- with republican fa?ades. Utopians believed Obama's ascension would bring change: the President would respect even elections that didn't turn out as desired, one that had prevailed for centuries when Latin Americans elected the "wrong" presidents. "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves," said Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, justifying support for the 1973 coup in Chile. Thirty six years later, at the Trinidad summit, President Obama eschewed such crudeness. The rule of law went hand in hand with its globalization policies. Coups upset business. So why did the ruling elite and its military stage a coup and ultimately get Washington's blessing? Because they thought they could get away with it. And they did. The old policy, favoring large corporations and banks, prevailed. After all, Obama's first acts were bailing out big banks and auto companies. So, thanks to amnesia (was there a coup there?), Honduras is again safe - temporarily - for Chiquita Banana, U.S. banks and local aristocrats. Saul Landau has written for ZNET for years and a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. Nelson Valdes is Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 22 13:25:59 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:25:59 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Haitians Dying By The Thousands As US Escalates Military Intervention Message-ID: <07975C1234184E3C8EB3EE961CE67DCD@agingCHS072729> =============================== Reminder: Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== http://www.countercurrents.org/auken220110.htm Haitians Dying By The Thousands As US Escalates Military Intervention By Bill Van Auken 22 January, 2010 WSWS.org Thousands of Haitians are dying every day for lack of medical care and supplies, according to a leading humanitarian aid group. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has announced that it is expanding the US military presence in the country, maintaining Washington's priority of troops over humanitarian aid. The US-based medical aid group Partners in Health has warned that as many as 20,000 Haitians may be dying daily due to infections such as gangrene and sepsis that have set in, as the majority of the injured receive no medical care or are treated in facilities that lack the most basic supplies. "Tens of thousands of earthquake victims need emergency surgical care now!!!," the organization said in a statement posted on its web site. "The death toll and the incidence of gangrene and other deadly infections will continue to rise unless a massive effort is made to open and staff more operating rooms and to deliver essential equipment and supplies." Partners in Health has worked in Haiti for more than 20 years. Its co-founder, Dr. Paul Farmer, is the deputy United Nations envoy to Haiti and a senior professor of public health at Harvard University. While Haitian officials and other organizations have claimed the Partners in Health figure is too high, it is indisputable that Haiti confronts a disaster that could equal or even eclipse that of the quake itself because of the delays in the provision of health care to hundreds of thousands of sick and injured people. The New York Times Thursday quoted Dr. Eduardo de Marchena, a University of Miami cardiologist overseeing one field hospital in Haiti, who provided a similarly grim prognosis. "There are still thousands of patients with major fractures, major wounds, that have not been treated yet," he said. "There are people, many people, who are going to die unless they're treated." As the Times reported, "In the squatter camps now scattered across this capital, there are still people writhing in pain, their injuries bound up by relatives but not yet seen by a doctor eight days after the quake struck. On top of that, the many bodies still in the wreckage increase the risk of diseases spreading, especially, experts say, if there is rain." The Wall Street Journal reported that the Port-au-Prince General Hospital is continuously besieged by more than 1,000 patients waiting for surgery. "Armed guards in tanks kept out mobs," the newspaper reported. It added, "At any given moment, thousands of injured, some grievously, wait outside virtually any hospital or clinic, pleading for treatment." CNN's Karl Penhaul reported from Port-au-Prince General Hospital, where US paratroopers have taken up positions. He said that Haitians questioned why so many US troops were pouring into the country. "They say they need more food and water and fewer guys with guns," he reported. He also indicated that American doctors at the hospital seemed mystified by the military presence. "They say there has never been a security problem here at the hospital, but there is a problem of getting supplies in." He added, "They can get nine helicopters of troops in, but some of the doctors here say if they can do that, then why can't they also bring with them IV fluids and other much needed supplies." The Spanish daily El Pa?s quoted one of these American doctors, Jim Warsinguer: "We lack a lot of things, too many for so much time having passed since the earthquake: betadine, bandages, gloves. And, above all, morphine. We have to do amputations without anesthesia. You see them suffer, and it is terrible. The Haitians are very brave, but they are suffering a lot." The desperate conditions and lack of sanitation for the estimated 2 million Haitians left homeless by the earthquake threaten to trigger a public health disaster. "The next health risk could include outbreaks of diarrhea, respiratory tract infections and other diseases among hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in overcrowded camps with poor or non-existent sanitation," said Doctors Without Borders deputy operations manager Greg Elder. While media reports claim that ever-growing amounts of material aid are coming into the country, reporters on the ground have said that there is still no sign that it is getting into the hands of the overwhelming majority of those who need it. The British Broadcasting Corporation reported Thursday, "Correspondents say the aid that has thus far arrived at the port is being driven for 45 minutes across the city to the airport, where it is piling up and not being distributed to those who need it." The BBC continued, "The US and UN World Food Programme insist the distribution of food and water is well under way, but the BBC's Adam Mynott in Port-au-Prince says many people have still seen no international relief at all." Aid organizations have charged that since establishing its unilateral control over the Port-au-Prince airport and the city's port facilities, and assuming essential governmental powers in Haiti, the US military has given the beefing up of its presence in the country priority over the provision of aid. Doctors Without Borders, for example, has protested that military air traffic controllers have since January 14 refused permission to land to five of its planes carrying 85 tons of medical supplies. With the Haitian catastrophe now in its 10th day, it is becoming increasingly clear that the response of the Obama administration and the Pentagon, which have made military occupation of the Caribbean nation its first objective, has deepened the immense suffering of millions of injured, homeless and hungry people. The Pentagon has announced that it is sending 4,000 more troops to Haiti, which will boost the US military occupation force to 16,000. For the first time, a unit that had been slated for deployment by the US Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is being diverted to the Caribbean nation. Meanwhile, a naval encirclement of Haiti's coastline is growing. The Miami Herald reported Thursday that the US military has also prepared a detention camp at the Guant?namo Bay Navy Base in Cuba-site of the infamous prison where detainees were tortured-to hold up to 1,000 Haitians should they manage to elude the US warships. By using Guant?namo as a holding pen for refugees fleeing the horrific conditions of Haiti, the US government will insist that they have no legal rights and cannot appeal their deportation back to their homeland. This same procedure was used in 1991, when thousands of Haitians fled the country following a violent military coup. The claim that this military "surge" into Haiti is an indispensable prerequisite for delivering aid to the Haitian people is a lie. Relief agencies operating in the country insist that they have not been threatened by the Haitian people, but rather hindered by the attempt to impose war zone-style security over their efforts. The US media never so much as hints that there could be anything but the sincerest humanitarian motives behind Washington's assertion of control over Haiti. It makes no reference to the country's history, which includes a two-decade US occupation at the beginning of the twentieth century, the deployment of US troops twice in the last 20 years, and Washington's orchestration of a 2004 coup that ousted and exiled Haiti's elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In publications reflecting the views of the military-intelligence apparatus, however, there are franker assessments of Washington's objectives and the real mission. The American Enterprise Institute's Center for Defense Studies issued a "crisis update" on Haiti, warning: "Conducting a 'humanitarian relief' mission in a poor country stricken by a natural disaster can quickly embroil the United States in local politics. And desperate people can easily become violent people." The statement continued by affirming, "Beyond delivering relief, US soldiers and Marines will inevitably find themselves securing the peace." Part of this mission, it added, would be "to ensure that Haiti's gangs-particularly those loyal to ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide-are suppressed." Similarly, William Kristol and Thomas Donnelly, writing in the Weekly Standard, argued that beyond the humanitarian pretext for intervening in Haiti, "the strategic case is also compelling." "With a transition looming in Cuba and challenges in Central America among others, there is a political reason to be-and to be seen to be-a good and strong neighbor." In other words, Washington is exploiting the tragedy that has been inflicted upon the people of Haiti to assert colonial-style control over the country. Its aim is to reaffirm US imperialist hegemony in the broader region and to suppress any social revolt by the Haitian masses. It is only a matter of time before the horrendous death toll caused by the January 12 earthquake will be augmented by victims shot to death by US occupation forces. From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 22 20:35:45 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:35:45 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] US Security Company Offers to Perform "High Threat Terminations" in Haiti Message-ID: http://rebelreports.com/post/341673601/us-security-company-offers-to-perform-high-threat Rebel Reports Monday, January 18th US Security Company Offers to Perform "High Threat Terminations" and to Confront "Worker Unrest" in Haiti Here we go: New Orleans 2.0 By Jeremy Scahill We saw this -- http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051010/scahill -- type of Iraq-style disaster profiteering in New Orleans and you can expect to see a lot more of this in Haiti over the coming days, weeks and months. Private security companies are seeing big dollar signs in Haiti thanks in no small part to the media hype about "looters." After Katrina, the number of private security companies registered (and unregistered) multiplied overnight. Banks, wealthy individuals, the US government all hired private security. I even encountered -- http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051010/scahill -- Israeli mercenaries operating an armed check-point outside of an elite gated community in New Orleans. They worked for a company called Instinctive Shooting International. (That is not a joke). Now, it is kicking into full gear in Haiti. As we know, the member companies of the Orwellian-named mercenary trade association, the International Peace Operations Association, are offering their services -- http://rebelreports.com/post/341031627/us-security-companies-offer-services-in-haiti - - in Haiti. But look for more stories like this one: On January 15, a Florida based company called All Pro Legal Investigations registered the URL Haiti-Security.com -- http://www.haiti-security.com/ --. It is basically a copy of the company's existing US website ( http://www.allprotectionandsecurity.com/ ) but is now targeted for business in Haiti, claiming ( http://www.haiti-security.com/Home_Page.html ) the "purpose of this site is to act as a clearinghouse for information seekers on the state of security in Haiti." "All Protection and Security has made a commitment to the Haitian community and will provide professional security against any threat to prosperity in Haiti," the site proclaims ( http://www.haiti-security.com/Home_Page.html ). "Job sites and supply convoys will be protected against looters and vandals. Workers will be protected against gang violence and intimidation. The people of Haiti will recover, with the help of the good people from the world over." The company boasts that it has run "Thousands of successful missions in Iraq & Afghanistan." As for its personnel, "Each and every member of our team is a former Law Enforcement Officer or former Military service member," the site claims ( http://www.haiti-security.com/Services.html ). "If Operator experience, training and qualifications matter, choose All Protection & Security for your high-threat Haiti security needs." Among the services offered ( http://www.haiti-security.com/Services.html ) are: "High Threat terminations," dealing with "worker unrest," armed guards and "Armed Cargo Escorts." Oh, and apparently they are currently hiring. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 22 22:08:07 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 22:08:07 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] The architecture of apartheid fosters the architecture of a movement Message-ID: http://mondoweiss.net/2010/01/the-architecture-of-apartheid-fosters-the-architecture-of-a-movement.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+feedburner%2FWDBc+%28Mondoweiss%29 Mondoweiss January 22, 2010 The architecture of apartheid fosters the architecture of a movement by Philip Weiss Last night I went to hear the reports from Palestine at the Judson Memorial Church in New York. The church is a national historical site. The vaulted hall was designed by Stanford White and has a grand but plain nobility about it. The microphone was set up in front of a St-Gaudens marble relief, the hall was jammed with people, over 300, and there was a sense in the air of a movement gathering power. Speaker Michael Ratner pointed out that a few years ago there would have been 50 people in the room for a Palestine event. I was most impressed by the seamlessness of the crowd: the lack of identity politics, the ways that Palestinian, Jewish and non-Jewish Americans spoke out in Palestinian solidarity. At the end of the night, a number of people went to the mike to make announcements, and there were probably a dozen activists from that many different communities, one after another. Strands are inter-weaving, and the cord they are making is a strong one. To specifics. The first speaker, introduced by Abdeen Jabara, was Fida Qishta, a young journalist from Gaza who left her family 7 months ago saying she would be back in two months and has not been able to return. This was her theme. This is not a humanitarian issue, she told us. It is not about material things, it is about freedom. "We don't need food and we don't want money. My family ate the same food for a year. Lentils." She shrugged. "It wasn't bad. We need to be free. to come and go. We need to feel human. Sometimes we are kept three weeks at a crossing. People want to feel free. They don't want food. We can stay eating one meal a day." Can anything be more clear than that? Qishta also showed a video of a white phosphorous victim of a year ago. He had burns all over his back and arms. It was extremely hard to watch, it was emotionally scarring. The only thing I can say about it is that, He seemed like a boy like any boy you know. A 13- or 14-year-old boy. He had that same innocence about him, a boy who wants to be reading books for school or laughing in the street with his friends. Some day they will show videos like this in a Nakba museum. Next to speak was Michael Ratner. For me personally it was the most compelling speech because I identify with Ratner as a middle-aged bourgeois NY Jew who has awakened to this issue late but who now seizes on the moral issues and does not mince words. Ratner last visited Israel 50 years ago. He went back earlier this month and was profoundly disturbed. You heard that disturbed feeling in all his remarks. This is a man who has studied human rights and civil rights around the world, and at home, and it was very clarifying to hear him speak with no uncertainty about the conditions that he observed in the West Bank. "You are seeing apartheid in action, you can't believe what you are seeing," he said. Israel has no right to be doing a thing in the West Bank, under any international law; "they shouldn't be taking an inch of it." Yet they go into villages and demolish houses and then Palestinians rebuild and Israel demolishes them "again and again and again." He described the valley leading up to the settlement of Ma'ale Adumim, with the separate roadways and the stark differences in quality of life between Palestinians and Jews. The olive trees are cut down all thru the valley and the Bedouins live in tin shacks, then in Ma'ale Adumim there is a great old 400-year olive tree consecrated in a traffic circle and greenery everywhere and houses like Beverly Hills and they are building a swimming pool bigger than this room. "You're seeing an area that's being ethnically cleansed. You're seeing the architecture of apartheid. This is an open and notorious system of apartheid. and no one, no one is doing anything about it..I never had a sense of this until I saw it.. an open and notorious taking of land, a pass system, an apartheid system." The two-state solution? "Once you see this, it's completely ridiculous. It's three Bantustans in the West Bank, with Israel controlling everything." After Ratner was Jenna Bitar. She is an 18-year-old high NY school student, half Palestinian, slender, sophisticated. She related her experiences in Cairo with the Gaza Freedom March, and though her voice is still girlish, we saw the woman, and a leader, before us. I know her parents; I know how they pushed back their own awareness of their connection to this place out of emotional/political necessity; and I know the apprehension they must feel about their child being exposed to these tremendous political questions (Just read Lila Abu-Lughod on the issue of Palestinian-American inheritance): but we saw the woman before us, a strong woman who will be engaged on these issues for a long time, and the crowd often whooped and cheered as she spoke of her awakening in Cairo to her own political powers. These were moments when she found herself confronting police, taking space in the street or at the Journalists' Syndicate and refusing to give it up, lying to police to get through barricades with a suitcase full of posters, etc. For Jenna Bitar had a clear understanding in Cairo upon the revelation that we would not get into Gaza: "We were really there for political reasons-and that was to bring attention to the siege in Gaza." And so the business of Cairo was to create a movement that had not existed before; and that happened, she said. Ali Abunimah was the last speaker and he echoed Bitar's awareness. "We didn't get to Gaza, and that was an enormous disappointment. But I'm thankful for having a taste of what Gaza experiences every day. We experienced a small taste of the anger and frustration. We learned that Gaza is harder to get into than a maximum security prison. So 1.5 million people, most of them children, are political prisoners." In Cairo, he went on, "Almost nothing went to plan, and I don't say that as a criticism." The results showed how quickly people adapted, how creative they were, how determined they were to show solidarity with Palestinians. The results, said Abunimah, were evident before us, with the tumult and excitement that filled the church. I study myself in these situations, and try in my writing to be an everyman; and what do I take away from the night? Well there are the evident political stirrings: A diverse group has come together over an enormity, in a word, Gaza. It is clearly on the left; it has power because it has momentum, and young people of conscience are drawn to it. No one goes up and says, I'm Jewish, anymore. (Except for the amazing women of Jews Say No). That's a beautiful thing. No one cares what your identity is; we ask, is your conscience shocked by shooting white phosphorous at boys? Yes it is on the left, but it has political significance because it is the only game in town; the right and center are used up, and our politicians are hacks. And all the energy/movement is here. I insist always that I'm no radical. Too old, too privileged, too immured in the woods and books and reflection. I can't make fiery speeches. Also, I find that after years of travel and exploration, I have ethnocentric feelings, of concern for the Jews who have made such a mistake by making a religion of Zionism, I worry how to help them get out of it. On that score, I spent a lot of my night with Jews, American Jews, and the feeling is that history lies before us and it is going this way and we want to be with history. This is not an easy path, not anxiety-free, a friend said last night, but powerful decadent political forces have built a nightmare situation for the Palestinians, and there lies the urgency of our presence. I remembered being in a car in the West Bank with three Israeli lefties 2 weeks ago. They were all smoking and upset, going from one demonstration to another. Under my impatient questioning about all the forces that are against us, one said at last with a little shrug, "We want to be on the right side of history." As the event last night showed,There is no question of which way it is going. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 22 22:12:15 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 22:12:15 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] A Very American Coup Message-ID: <3A723D7691424A94B9A2D2E50E079CDA@agingCHS072729> http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175193/tomgram%3A_william_astore%2C_going_rogue_in_combat_boots__/#more Tomgram: William Astore, Going Rogue in Combat Boots Posted by William Astore at 4:00pm, January 19, 2010. Here?s a bit of cheery news: Last week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates met with the nation's top defense company executives, including the CEOs of those mega-military-industrial combines Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and called for a ?closer partnership.? He also made them a promise. He pledged, according to his spokesman, ?to work with the White House to secure steady growth in the Pentagon's budgets over time.? Let?s put that pledge in context. Last week, President Obama did something common in the Bush years, something he swore never to do; he requested a supplemental $33 billion over and above the fiscal year 2011 defense budget, mainly for his Afghan surge. That sum, when appropriated by Congress, will bring the total official Pentagon budget to $708 billion dollars ($159 billion of which will be directly slated for Afghan and Iraq war costs). To put that sum in context, it?s close to what the rest of the world combined spends on military matters. And you can be guaranteed of one thing: this won?t be the last supplemental request of 2011. By the way, if you were to add up the real ?defense? budget, including funds for the Department of Homeland Security, the Energy Department (which handles the U.S. nuclear arsenal), veterans' care, the State Department?s planned near-billion-dollar expansion of its embassy in Pakistan into a mega-command post for the region and the planned doubling of the number of personnel in its already monstrous embassy in Baghdad for a similar purpose, and many other relevant things, you would be closing in on $1 trillion per year. Meanwhile, in December 2009, the total funds Congress has so far appropriated since 2001 only for our two wars topped $1 trillion dollars, with no end in sight, and that figure doesn?t include projected future costs ranging from care for soldiers wounded in those wars to the cost of replenishing worn out military equipment. At the war-fighting level, the Congressional Budget Office has already projected direct war costs over the next decade at $867 billion. The Pentagon?s 2011 budget is already the highest since World War II, according to defense analyst Winslow T. Wheeler. Now, consider that the secretary of defense has just ?pledged? more of the same for years to come. And note that none of this -- with the possible exception of that $33 billion supplemental request -- is considered particularly controversial by anyone who matters in Washington, or worth much front-page news attention. Sums that put health-care reform in the shade cause barely a stir. In other words, the Pentagon rules the roost and, as TomDispatch regular William Astore indicates, it could get a lot worse. Tom A Very American Coup Coming Soon to a Hometown Near You By William J. Astore The wars in distant lands were always going to come home, but not this way. It?s September 2016, year 15 of America?s ?Long War? against terror. As weary troops return to the homeland, a bitter reality assails them: despite their sacrifices, America is losing. Iraq is increasingly hostile to remaining occupation forces. Afghanistan is a riddle that remains unsolved: its army and police forces are untrustworthy, its government corrupt, and its tribal leaders unsympathetic to the vagaries of U.S. intervention. Since the Obama surge of 2010, a trillion more dollars have been devoted to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and other countries in the vast shatter zone that is central Asia, without measurable returns; nothing, that is, except the prolongation of America?s Great Recession, now entering its tenth year without a sustained recovery in sight. Disillusioned veterans are unable to find decent jobs in a crumbling economy. Scarred by the physical and psychological violence of war, fed up with the happy talk of duplicitous politicians who only speak of shared sacrifices, they begin to organize. Their motto: take America back. Meanwhile, a lame duck presidency, choking on foreign policy failures, finds itself attacked even for its putative successes. Health-care reform is now seen to have combined the inefficiency and inconsistency of government with the naked greed and exploitative talents of corporations. Medical rationing is a fact of life confronting anyone on the high side of 50. Presidential rhetoric that offered hope and change has lost all resonance. Mainstream media outlets are discredited and disintegrating, resulting in new levels of information anarchy. Protest, whether electronic or in the streets, has become more common -- and the protestors in those streets increasingly carry guns, though as yet armed violence is minimal. A panicked administration responds with overlapping executive orders and legislation that is widely perceived as an attack on basic freedoms. Tapping the frustration of protesters -- including a renascent and mainstreamed ?tea bag? movement -- the former captains and sergeants, the ex-CIA operatives and out-of-work private mercenaries of the War on Terror take action. Conflict and confrontation they seek; laws and orders they increasingly ignore. As riot police are deployed in the streets, they face a grim choice: where to point their guns? Not at veterans, they decide, not at America?s erstwhile heroes. A dwindling middle-class, still waving the flag and determined to keep its sliver-sized portion of the American dream, throws its support to the agitators. Wages shrinking, savings exhausted, bills rising, the sober middle can no longer hold. It vents its fear and rage by calling for a decisive leader and the overthrow of a can?t-do Congress. Savvy members of traditional Washington elites are only too happy to oblige. They too crave order and can-do decisiveness -- on their terms. Where better to find that than in the ranks of America?s most respected institution: the military? A retired senior officer who led America?s heroes in central Asia is anointed. His creed: end public disorder, fight the War on Terror to a victorious finish, put America back on top. The United States, he says, is the land of winners, and winners accept no substitute for victory. Nominated on September 11, 2016, Patriot Day, he marches to an overwhelming victory that November, embraced in the streets by an American version of the post-World War I German Freikorps and the police who refuse to suppress them. A concerned minority is left to wonder (and tremble) at the de facto military coup that occurred so quickly, and yet so silently, in their midst. It Can Happen Here, Unless We Act Yes, it can happen here. In some ways, it?s already happening. But the key question is: at this late date, how can it be stopped? Here are some vectors for a change in course, and in mindset as well, if we are to avoid our own stealth coup: 1. Somehow, we need to begin to reverse the ongoing militarization of this country, especially our ever-rising ?defense? budgets. The most recent of these, we?ve just learned, is a staggering $708 billion for fiscal year 2011 -- and that doesn?t even include the $33 billion President Obama has requested for his latest surge in Afghanistan. We also need to get rid of the idea that anyone who suggests even minor cuts in defense spending is either hopelessly na?ve or a terrorist sympathizer. It?s time as well to call a halt to the privatization of military activity and so halt the rise of security contractors like Xe (formerly Blackwater), thereby weakening the corporate profit motive that supports and underpins the American version of perpetual war. It?s time to begin feeling chastened, not proud, that we?re by far the number one country in the world in arms manufacturing and the global arms trade. 2. Let?s downsize our global mission rather than endlessly expanding our military footprint. It?s time to have a military capable of defending this country, not fighting endless wars in distant lands while garrisoning the globe. 3. Let?s stop paying attention to major TV and cable networks that rely on retired senior military officers, most of whom have ties both to the Pentagon and military contractors, for ?unbiased? commentary on our wars. If we insist on fighting our perpetual ?frontier? wars, let?s start insisting as well that they be covered in all their bitter reality: the death, the mayhem, the waste, the prisons, and the torture. Why is our war coverage invariably sanitized to ?PG? or even ?G,? when we can go to the movies anytime and see ?R? rated, pornographically violent films? And by the way, it?s time to be more critical of the government?s and the media?s use of language and propaganda. Mindlessly parroting the Patriot Act doesn?t make you patriotic. 4. It?s time to elect a president who doesn?t surround himself with senior ?civilian? advisors and ambassadors who are actually retired military generals and admirals, one who won?t accept a Nobel Peace Prize by defending war in theory and escalating it in practice. 5. Let?s toughen up. Let?s stop deferring to authority figures who promise to ?protect? us while abridging our rights. Let?s stop bowing down before men and women in uniform, before they start thinking that it?s their right to be worshipped and act accordingly. 6. Let?s act now to relieve the sort of desperation bred by joblessness and hopelessness that could lead many -- notably male workers suffering from the ?He-Cession? -- to see a militarized solution in ?the homeland? as a credible last resort. It?s the economy, stupid, but with Main Street?s health, not Wall Street?s, in our focus. 7. Let?s take Sarah Palin and her followers seriously. They?re tapping into anger that?s real and spreading. Don?t let them become the voices of the angry working (and increasingly unemployed) classes. 8. Recognize that we face real enemies in our world, the most powerful of which aren?t in distant Afghanistan or Yemen but here at home. The essence of our struggle to sustain our faltering democracy should not be against ?terrorists,? with their shoe and crotch bombs, but against various powerful, perfectly legal groups here whose interests lie in a Pentagon that only grows ever stronger. 9. Stop thinking the U.S. is uniquely privileged. Don?t take it on faith that God is on our side. Forget about God blessing America. If you believe in God, get out there and start trying to earn His blessing through deeds. 10. And, most important of all, remember that fear is the mind-killer that makes militarism possible. Ramping up ?terror? is an amazingly effective way of shredding our Constitution. Putting our ?safety? above all else is asking for trouble. The only way we?ll be completely safe from the big bad terrorists, after all, is when we?re all living in a maximum security state. Think of walking down the street while always being subject to a ?full-body scan.? That?s my top 10 things we need to do. It?s a daunting list and I?m sure you have a few ideas of your own. But have faith. Ultimately, it all boils down to Franklin Delano Roosevelt?s words to a nation suffering through the Great Depression: the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. These words came to mind recently as I read the following missive from a friend and World War II veteran who?s seen tough times: "It?s very hard for me to accept how soft the American people have become. In 1941, with the western world under assault by powerful and deadly forces, and a large armada of ships and planes attacking us directly, I never heard a word of fear as we faced three powerful nations as enemies. Sixteen million of us went into the military with the very real possibility of death and I never once heard of fear, except from those exposed to danger. Now, our people let [their leaders] terrify them into accepting the destruction of our economy, our image in the world, and our democracy... All this over a small group of religious fanatics [mostly] from Saudi Arabia whom we kowtow to so we can drive 8-cylinder SUV?s. Pathetic! "How many times have I stood in ?security lines? at airports and when I complained of the indignity of taking off shoes and not having water and the manhandling of passengers, have well educated people smugly said to me, ?Well, they?re just keeping us safe.? I look at the airport bullshit as a training ground to turn Americans into docile sheep in a totalitarian state." A public conditioned to act like sheep, to ?support our troops? no matter what, to cower before the idea of terrorism, is a public ready to be herded. A military that?s being used to fight unwinnable wars is a military prone to return home disaffected and with scores to settle. Angry and desperate veterans and mercenaries already conditioned to violence, merging with ?tea baggers? and other alienated groups, could one day form our own Freikorps units, rioting for violent solutions to national decline. Recall that the Nazi movement ultimately succeeded in the early 1930s because so many middle-class Germans were scared as they saw their wealth, standard of living, and status all threatened by the Great Depression. If our Great Recession continues, if decent jobs remain scarce, if the mainstream media continue to foster fear and hatred, if returning troops are disaffected and their leaders blame politicians for ?not being tough enough,? if one or two more terrorist attacks succeed on U.S. soil, wouldn?t this country be well primed for a coup by any other name? Don?t expect a ?Seven Days in May? scenario. No American Caesar will return to Washington with his legions to decapitate governmental authority. Why not? Because he won?t have to. As long as we continue to live in perpetual fear in an increasingly militarized state, we establish the preconditions under which Americans will be nailed to, and crucified on, a cross of iron. William J. Astore teaches History at the Pennsylvania College of Technology (wastore at pct.edu). A retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), he has also taught at the U.S. Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author of Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 23 08:51:55 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2010 08:51:55 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] This Week in Crazy: Clarence Thomas Message-ID: http://www.salon.com/life/this_week_in_crazy/index.html?story=/tech/htww/2010/01/22/week_in_crazy_clarence_thomas This Week in Crazy: Clarence Thomas The Supreme Court judge brings insanity to the campaign finance decision, and inaugurates our new weekly feature By Andrew Leonard This Week in Crazy is a new Saturday feature, in which we crown the person whose behavior has been most impressively off-the-rails. To read our coverage of the Year in Crazy, 2009, click here. AP/Charles Dharapak Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas In his remarkably undistinguished 20-year stint as a Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas has rarely called attention to himself for original jurisprudential thinking. But if Thomas had had his way with Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, in which the court decided this week to remove critically important limits on campaign financing, an already horrible decision would have been made far, far worse. Crazy worse. Thomas went along with the majority in agreeing that corporations and unions can once more be permitted to spend freely on political issues, thus driving a stake through the heart of the democratic process in the United States. But he dissented in part, because he didn't think the ruling went far enough. Specifically, he argued that the court was wrong to continue requiring that the sponsors of political advertising disclose who paid for them. That's right. Thomas came out against the principle of transparency, and for the right of corporations to spend millions of dollars to influence public policy without having to tell anyone what they were up to. It's hard to imagine a less democratic stance. Thomas did have his reasons, however. He blamed the gays. In the heated war over Proposition 8 in California, he wrote, any individual who contributed as little as $100 in favor of the ban on same-sex marriage was required to disclose his or her name and address to the public, and thus opened themselves up to harassment. Some opponents of Proposition 8 compiled this information and created Web sites with maps showing the locations of homes or businesses of Proposition 8 supporters. Many supporters (or their customers) suffered property damage, or threats of physical violence or death, as a result. ... I cannot endorse a view of the First Amendment that subjects citizens of this Nation to death threats, ruined careers, damaged or defaced property, or pre-emptive and threatening warning letters as the price for engaging in "core political speech, the 'primary object of First Amendment protection.'" To be fair, writing at the Sunlight Foundation blog, Daniel Schuman notes that there is some precedent for challenging disclosure by individuals when there is the potential for harassment. It stems from attempts by the KKK to get membership lists of NAACP contributors during the civil rights era so that the Klan could attack the organization's supporters. With firebombs. But that's a far cry from disclosing corporate donors.... Also, unlike in the civil rights era, criminal behavior such as that engaged in by the Klan will be prosecuted by the state, and likely can be deterred. To recap: In order to protect Californian opponents of gay marriage from harassment, which is best handled by legal prosecution, Thomas wanted to let corporations spend as much as they want on influencing public policy without ever having to identify themselves. I'll outsource the kicker to Adam Bonin, writing at DailyKos. Too often, Justice Thomas gets accused of being an unthinking automatic second vote for whatever Justice Scalia says. Untrue. He's his own unique sphere of wrongness, and not even Scalia, Alito, Kennedy or the Chief Justice were willing to follow him on this one. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/octet-stream Size: 41860 bytes Desc: not available URL: From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 23 16:19:16 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2010 16:19:16 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] =?iso-8859-1?q?How_I_fought_to_survive_Guant=E1namo?= Message-ID: <60F1D57FBDEA47B8B573D8987B4DB332@agingCHS072729> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/21/i-fought-to-survive-guantanamo The Guardian 21 January 2010 How I fought to survive Guant?namo For nearly six years, British resident Omar Deghayes was imprisoned in Guant?namo and subjected to such brutal torture that he lost the sight in one eye. But far from being broken, he fought back to retain his dignity and his sanity Patrick Barkham It is not hot stabbing pain that Omar Deghayes remembers from the day a Guant?namo guard blinded him, but the cool sen?sation of fingers being stabbed deep into his eyeballs. He had joined other prisoners in protesting against a new humiliation - inmates ?being forced to take off their trousers and walk round in their pants - and a group of guards had entered his cell to punish him. He was held down and bound with chains. "I didn't realise what was going on until the guy had pushed his fingers ?inside my eyes and I could feel the coldness of his fingers. Then I realised he was trying to gouge out my eyes," Deghayes says. He wanted to scream in agony, but was determined not to give his torturers the satisfaction. Then the officer standing over him instructed the eye-stabber to push harder. "When he pulled his hands out, I remember I couldn't see anything - I'd lost sight completely in both eyes." Deghayes was dumped in a cell, fluid streaming from his eyes. The sight in his left eye returned over the following days, but he is still blind in his right eye. He also has a crooked nose (from being punched by the guards, he says) and a scar across his forefinger (slammed in a prison door), but otherwise this resident of Saltdean, near Brighton, appears ?relatively ?unscarred from the more than five years he spent locked in Guant?namo Bay. Two years after his release, he speaks softly and calmly; he has the unlined skin and thick hair of a man younger than his 40 years; he has just remarried and has, for the first time in his life, a firm feeling that his home is on the clifftops of East Sussex. Deghayes must, however, live with the darkness of Guant?namo for the rest of his days. There are reminders everywhere, from the beautiful picture of Saltdean that was painted for him while he was incarcerated, to the fact that Guant?namo ?remains open 12 months after Barack Obama vowed to close it within a year. There are still around 200 prisoners left in the detention camp, many of whom have been there for eight years. Of the 800 freed, only one has been found guilty of any crime and he was convicted by a dubious military commission, a verdict that is likely to be overturned. Deghayes, too, does not want to forget. He says there is so much still to be ?exposed about the ?conditions there, and about British ?collusion in the ?extraordinary rendition and torture of men such as him in the months following the American-led ?invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Deghayes, one of five children of a prominent Libyan lawyer, first came to Saltdean from Tripoli aged five, to learn English with his brothers and ?sisters on their summer holidays. He would return and stay with British families every summer. Then, in 1980, his father, an opponent of the increasingly totalitarian Gaddafi, was taken away by the authorities. Three days later, Deghayes' uncle was told to ?collect his body from the morgue. ?Harassed and increasingly fearful for their safety, Deghayes' mother sought asylum for her family in Britain. They settled in the place they knew best, Saltdean, in a large white house with fine views over the sea. More than two decades on, the family still lives there. After a secular upbringing in ?Saltdean, Deghayes became a practising Muslim while at university in ?Wolverhampton, where he graduated in law. When he finished studying to become a solicitor, he had a "longing" to return to Libya but couldn't because of his family name and opposition to Gaddafi, so he left for a round-the-world trip to ?experience Arabic cultures and visit university friends. He enjoyed ?Pakistan's mixture of west and east, and was then tempted into a trip to ?Afghanistan: he saw business oppor?tunities and the chance to use his ?languages (Farsi, Arabic and English) and legal training (understanding both western and Sharia law) to help ?import-export companies. He fell in love with the country and an Afghani woman; they married and had a son. "I liked the country - such beautiful rivers and different terrains. The people were difficult to get to know at first, but if they knew you and liked you, they'd open their hearts and houses to you," he says. Afghanistan, it seems, triggered many ambitious dreams: he says he helped set up a school in Kabul, assisted NGOs, ?experimented with an agricultural ?social enterprise and exported apples to Peshawar. "I was generating income for myself but I had more ambition than that - to establish myself as a ?lawyer," he says. "Things were really good. Then this war broke out and ?everything was shattered." Fearing for his new family's safety, he paid people-smugglers to get them all back to Pakistan in early 2002 after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. He hoped his mother would take his wife and child back to England, while he planned to return to Afghanistan and continue his NGO and legal work. "I still thought I had nothing to fear. Even if there was an invasion, there was nothing I had been doing that was illegal." They rented a house in Lahore, "far away from the war atmosphere". But then the Americans began paying large amounts of money to find Arabs who had been in Afghanistan. Suddenly, he was lucrative bounty for the Pakistani authorities. "The atmosphere changed completely. Nice Pakistan turned into a trap," he says. One day, their house was surrounded by armed police. He was seized, but not taken to a ?normal police station. Instead he was driven, fast and under heavily armed guard, between secure rooms in hotels and villas. A Kafkaesque nightmare had begun. Deghayes says he was beaten and ?interrogated first by Pakistani officials. He thinks the Americans and the ?Libyans competed to "buy" him from the Pakistanis, and it appears the Americans won: when he was moved from Lahore to Islamabad, a man ?introduced himself as the head of the CIA's Libyan section. Taken between hotels by armed guards, Deghayes ?believes he saw a man who is now listed as a disappeared prisoner: an Italian Moroccan. "I remember seeing him; he was with me in the same car in Islamabad. He came out crying from the meeting, scared; he was saying, 'No, don't do this to me.'" Deghayes also describes meeting a British interrogator when he met the CIA section head for the second time. "I was facing the British man, who introduced himself as Andrew. He spoke in an obvious British accent." According to Deghayes, Andrew said he was from the intelligence services and wanted to question him. "I was really annoyed and said, 'You shouldn't do this, you're helping these people - I'm kidnapped, abducted against my will. Your job is to get me out of here. I'm British and if I go back to England, I will take you to court for what you are doing now.' Andrew was a little bit scared, but he looked at me and said, 'What case would you bring against me?' I had nothing in my mind. He said, 'Listen, if you answer my questions and co-operate with me, I will do my best. I will get you out of there.'" Deghayes was shown an ?album of 100 photographs of supposed terrorists. He says he did not recognise anyone. One morning, he was tied, bound and blindfolded and taken to an airport. The "thin black bag" was removed from his head: he was standing in front of a mirror, guarded by two US soldiers. They tied another bag over his head, which "felt worse than the first bag - it suffocated me." It smelt "like socks or cheese," he says. "This was an indi?cation of the new regime - there were even harder times coming up." Inside the plane, it was mayhem: his feet and hands bound together and covered in bags, Deghayes was bundled on top of others in the hold. "People were crying. People were throwing up. Some people were suffocating, and there was a kick here and a kick there: 'Get your head down, you bastard!' Things like that. Then the plane took off and you could smell [the guards] drinking spirits." They landed in what he later ?realised was Bagram military air base. Here, Deghayes' clothes were taken away and he was given two pieces of blue uniform. He was not allowed to speak to fellow inmates, and was bound to barbed wire before, he says, being beaten and made to suffer "all sorts of humiliation". He spent several months there. "There were no rules in Bagram; people just went in and kicked people if they didn't like them." He says he did not eat for more than 50 days. "I was really sick; I became a skeleton. I couldn't walk any more. I lost my mind - I was really scared for my mental safety. I tried to eat but I threw up. I started to hear voices in my head because of the hunger. People would say something and I could not understand what they were saying. You hear shouts and you're speaking to yourself inside your head. I started to become really scared because I thought I was losing my brains and ?going crazy." While he was in Bagram, he was again interrogated several times by ?officials he believes were from Britain. "They felt I was lying to them. I said to them I studied in ?Holborn, London. They said, 'Which train did you take to get there?' They didn't believe anything," he says. "They weren't free to do what they liked; the Americans were running the show." When he said he was too sick to speak, they called him "a bandit". His British interrogators "came up with lots of ?stupid things" - suggesting the scuba?diving lessons he had taken in the shabby lido in Saltdean, within yards of his family home, were terrorist training. "The Americans took that up in Guant?namo. It was a big headache. They showed me books of military ?scubadiving and ships and mines and they said, 'Which ones did you see?'" The British also accused him of teaching people to fight in terrorist training camps in Chechnya, and claimed they had secret video evidence. Deghayes had never been to ?Chechnya, and thought all these allegations ?laughable. Only later did he discover through Clive Stafford Smith, director of the human rights charity Reprieve, that his apparent appearance in an ?Islamic terrorist training video in Chechnya was the crucial evidence in a flimsy case against him. The ?authorities refused to give Stafford Smith, who campaigned for Guant?namo detainees, a copy of this videotape, but he eventually obtained one through the BBC. It was, says the Reprieve director, an ?obvious case of mistaken identity: the person depicted lacked Deghayes' small childhood scar on his face. ?Stafford Smith was able to show that the videotape was of a completely different ?person, actually a Chechnyan rebel called Abu Walid, who was dead. "This was typical of the whole Guant?namo experience," says Stafford Smith. "They said they had evidence and they wouldn't let you see it. Then when you did, it was incorrect." After two months in Bagram, Deghayes was flown to Guant?namo in autumn 2002. There, prisoners were treated brutally. According to Deghayes, when guards physically subdued them by tying them down, they would "do actions to pretend as if they are raping you. They put you down on your stomach. It was really horrible, all sexual and psychological stuff." On other occasions, he says, guards would hold a prisoner's head and "bang it on the floor". Deghayes developed a personal ?policy of resistance. Guards would ?typically arrive at a prisoner's cell and spray pepper and other chemicals through the "bean-hole", the hatch in the door. While most prisoners cowered at the back of their cell, Deghayes says he would grab the guards' hands and attack them. He fought back, as viciously as he could, trying to take the fights with guards out of the privacy of his cell and into the corridors. "It was chaos; they would fall on top of each other and it was embarrassing [for them]. They were wearing all this heavy stuff [body armour] which didn't help either," he says. Some guards ?became afraid of going into his cell. Most, he says, were Puerto Rican and were not driven by the patriotism of the "war on terror". They did not want to get hurt for their meagre wages. Deghayes did not realise how badly his eye had been beaten until a year ?after the incident, when he looked in a mirror for the first time in four years. He accepts his resistance caused him more physical pain, but believes it ?subsequently helped him. In the camp, he was less fearful. "I was targeted more, but I was also relaxed compared with others who didn't do that. It was really scary for [the guards] to come into my cell," he says. "Being humiliated by getting beaten up is better than giving your own trousers out. If I'd done those things, I would've been really bitter now. I'm probably less bitter than ?anyone else because I know I gave them a really hard time. If I had given in, and all this was bottled up, I would have been like I see them [other ex-prisoners] - really bitter, full of hatred." Deghayes says his suffering made his faith stronger; it helped him ?survive. "We knew there's a Muslim [God] ?behind things, there's a hereafter, our patience and hardships will be ?rewarded and the pain has to end sometime. Our religion teaches these things - the good always prevails and the bad is only temporary; the patience of Job, the patience of Moses. All these teachings make a difference." Praying five times a day delivered ?transcendence, removing him from the material world of bodily suffering. "My body and physical being can be chained, can be tarnished, can be beaten, can be raped," he says now, "but not the spiritual: that is something that nobody can bind down. The spirit is what makes us who we are." As a campaign to free him gained momentum back in Brighton, Deghayes languished in Guant?namo for nearly six years. He was never charged or convicted of anything, by any authority. "And never been apologised to either," he adds. Finally, in August 2007, the British government requested the ?release of Deghayes and four other ?detainees who were legal British ?residents. In the month before his ?release in December 2007, he says, he was deliberately fed well so he would not emerge looking gaunt and half-starved. "For one month we were ?fattened up with milk shakes, ?chocolates and really good cakes." When he returned to his family in ?Saltdean, he was happy but also dis?orientated. "You know if you are in a forest or walking on the moon, you can't tell what is what. I was like this when I came out," Deghayes says. He was stunned by some of the changes in ?Britain. "To my shock, when I came out from prison the whole country had changed - the surveillance, the Islamophobia, the control orders, secret ?evidence, and people being under ?curfews not being able to leave the house." His neighbourhood also ?appeared to have altered: "We never had thugs and mobs in the street ?before, and kids didn't go binge-drinking or stealing. When I came back, these were some of the changes that I had to adjust to," he says. While he is very appreciative of the support he had in Brighton, after he was freed his family was targeted by racist teenagers who bullied his ?nephews and threw stones and bottles at their house for months. This stopped, abruptly, after a community meeting and media coverage led the police, rather belatedly, to install a video camera in the window of their home. His imprisonment also caused his marriage to break down. His wife wrote to him in prison but her letters were never delivered; nor were his to her. "It's cruel, isn't it? These were just ?normal letters between husband and wife." Both believed they had abandoned each other, and they divorced. She now lives with her family in ?Afghanistan. His son, Sulaiman, who is now eight, is staying with Deghayes' mother in the Emirates. They hope eventually to bring him to Britain and give him a western education. Two years after he was released, Deghayes remarried in ?December and is now busy buying furniture for a new place in Brighton. "Brighton is such a nice city. You can just walk by the sea, and the fresh air comes across. It ?reminds me of Tripoli. ?Before, I used to long for Tripoli; now, only recently, I have started to prefer Brighton. Maybe when you are younger you want to go back to dreams, and when you get to 40 you start to think, this is nicer, this is really what I like." Deghayes now works with ?Reprieve and other survivors of Guant?namo on legal challenges, ?including a civil case being brought against the Home Office with help from Gareth Peirce, the human rights lawyer. Deghayes hopes there will be a public inquiry into Guant?namo to bring those to account who were ?involved in his interrogation. Financial damages are not, he says, his ?motivation. "Even if I get damages, I will give them to ?charity. The court is an opportunity to embarrass and ?expose those who committed these crimes." While Reprieve campaigned to get Deghayes released, Stafford Smith ?explains how Deghayes "was a ?tremendously helpful ally in Guant?namo because he was fluent in English and he had a bit of legal training". Stafford Smith brought him legal textbooks but they were censored as a "threat" to national security, and he says he worried for Deghayes' safety during his incarceration. "If it had been me, I would have taken the course of quieter resistance. I was always afraid for Omar, that he would get himself beaten up. I was concerned for him ?because he was constantly being beaten up by the guards, but there's nothing you can do to stop Omar loudly saying what is just and right." Stafford Smith believes Deghayes has fared better than many veterans of Guant?namo since his release because he had the support of his family, an ?education - and because he has taken a very positive approach to his experiences. "He's not just sat back and taken it; he's tried to do something positive. Omar works a lot with us to try to help other prisoners who are still in Guant?namo. He's also always been up for a good argument or a good ?debate." Deghayes appears remarkably calm; but his brother, Abubaker, says he has noticed signs of trauma. "His memory is not as good as it was. He forgets to switch off lights. If he opens a window, it stays open. He stays up at night a lot, thinking." Abubaker is not surprised his brother struggles to sleep. "Imagine the lights are on for six years." Has Deghayes changed as a person? "A lot of the things Omar had in his character seem to have deepened, like rebellion and resistance and not accepting oppression. I think they became more rooted in him rather than being beaten out of him." But isn't he ever tempted to retreat to a quiet place, start his own business, and ?renounce the ?hassles of political campaigning? "I don't want that life," Deghayes says firmly. "I never ?intended to live like that before imprisonment, and nor do I intend that after imprisonment. I would not be true to ?myself if I did. "Life is worth more. It's good to be a number in society rather than a zero. There are many zeros around but every ?human is ?worthy of being a number, and I hope I will be something of a change for the good, rather than for harm and wars. I hope so. I really hope so." =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 24 17:54:46 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 17:54:46 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Occupation in Humanitarian Clothing Message-ID: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/24 CommonDreams.org January 24, 2010 Occupation in Humanitarian Clothing by Jesse Hagopian Everything you need to know about the U.S. aid effort to assist Haiti in the wake of the catastrophic earthquake can be summed up by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's touchdown in Port-Au-Prince on Saturday, January 16: they shut down the airport for three hours surrounding her arrival for "security" reasons, which meant that no aid flights could come in during those critical hours. If there was one day when the Haitian people needed aid to flow all day long, last Saturday was it because the people trapped under the rubble on Tuesday evening couldn't survive much beyond that without water. Defenders of Clinton will say that her disimpassioned, monotone, photo-op speech was needed in Haiti to draw attention to the plight of the Haitians. But no one north of hell can defend her next move: according to airport personnel that I spoke to during my recent evacuation from Haiti, she paralyzed the airport later that same day to have a new outfit flown in from the Dominican Republic. I am having a hard time readjusting to life back home after having survived the earthquake and witnessing so much death, so even typing those words is making my heart pound uncontrollably. I guess for America's rulers a new pantsuit is more valuable than the lives of poor, Black Haitians. Unfortunately, Clinton's model of diverting and delaying critical aid to the Haitian people, while emphasizing security, has become standard operating procedure. Alain Joyandet, the French minister responsible for humanitarian relief in Haiti, charged the U.S. with treating this as a military operation rather than an aid mission. Mr. Joyandet told the Daily Telegraph he had been involved in an argument with a U.S. commander in the airport's control tower over the flight plan for a French evacuation flight, saying, "This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti." But with the U.S. occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, and funding the Israeli occupation of Palestine, it seems our government knows how to do little else when it comes to international affairs. The day I left the Toussaint L'Ouverture International Airport I saw lots of crates of food, water and medical supplies piled on the tarmac. But I didn't see that aid being transported out of the airport to actually be used by Haitians. Undoubtedly, there has been some aid distributed, but because there was no serious effort to disperse that aid in the first four days after the quake, tens of thousands of people trapped under rubble have died needlessly because they couldn't get a sip of water. The Geneva-based organization Doctors Without Borders has been turned away from the airport numerous times to allow U.S. troops to land. A ring of U.S. war ships surround Haiti to make sure that Haitians don't escape the disaster and try to get to the United States. The U.S. has taken control of Haiti's main airport and seaport, and is in the process of deploying 18,000 U.S. troops to bolster the 9,000 UN troops already occupying the island nation--and as an eyewitness I can tell you those troops are guarding their own compounds rather than distributing aid. The Obama administration will try to dress up their ambition to occupy and pillage Haiti in a humanitarian evening gown. But clothing is in short supply in Haiti and we can't afford to waste it. As a man from Leogane, Haiti, told Democracy Now, "Myself, if you look at me, I don't have shoes, and I don't have food. Even my shoes, if you look at them, you see. I need clothes. We need everything. Even medicines, we need." Jesse Hagopian, a teacher from Seattle, was in Haiti with his wife (who works on HIV education in the country) and one-year-old son when the earthquake hit. Jesse can be contacted at: jdhagopian at gmail.com =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 24 17:54:54 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 17:54:54 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Cuban doctors in Haiti respond rapidly to crisis Message-ID: <533FC15E0B2443E780E43E58DACD6506@agingCHS072729> http://www.themilitant.com/2010/7404/740457.html The Militant Vol. 74/No. 4 February 1, 2010 Cuban doctors in Haiti respond rapidly to crisis BY SETH GALINSKY Cuban doctors already stationed in Haiti when the January 12 earthquake struck were the first to begin treating the injured. The response of Cuba's revolutionary government, which rapidly boosted its medical personnel in Haiti in the wake of the disaster, stands in sharp contrast to the callous indifference of Washington, the governments of other wealthy nations, the United Nations, and various aid groups. After the earthquake Cuban medical personnel reopened three hospitals in Port-au-Prince, set up field hospitals-including one in the courtyard of the Cuban volunteers' living quarters near the National Palace-and converted an eye clinic into a medical center to treat injuries. Some 60 medical specialists in natural disasters arrived from Cuba the day after the earthquake to reinforce the effort under way by 344 Cuban medical volunteers. On January 16, 32 Haitian doctors who graduated from medical school in Cuba arrived to join the contingent. The Cuban government has also flown in 10 tons of medical supplies. CNN reporter Steve Kastenbaum tried to find functioning hospitals in Port-au-Prince. In a January 17 broadcast he noted that La Paz Hospital, operated by the Cubans, is one of "the few places ordinary Haitians can turn to" to get urgent care. "It's amazing to see," Kastenbaum said, they're treating "six to seven hundred patients a day." The Cuban doctors keep three operating rooms running 24 hours a day, he noted. The discipline, efficiency, and solidarity demonstrated by the Cubans inspired some Chilean and Spanish medical workers to ask to join the Cuban teams. CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta was present, on the other hand, when Belgian doctors and nurses abandoned 25 patients overnight in a mobile hospital, including three who had just undergone surgery, after hearing rumors of rioting in the area. The Belgians took their supplies with them. One Haitian nurse refused to leave. The Belgian medical personnel only returned the next day when the United Nations agreed to provide security. A team of 267 from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention arrived in Haiti January 15 but sat at the airport for two days because they were waiting for military "escorts" to take them into the city. Cuban medical aid to Haiti goes back to 1998, when Cuban volunteers arrived to treat victims of Hurricane George. Since then more than 3,000 Cuban volunteers have helped provide medical care under an agreement with the Haitian government. The Cubans repaired broken medical equipment, opened up health centers, immunized more than 370,000 people, arranged for eye operations for more than 41,000 patients, and helped lower the infant mortality rate in many parts of the country. Since 1999 Cuba has trained 544 Haitians as doctors at Cuban medical schools. According to the daily Juventud Rebelde, some 200 Haitian graduates of these schools are working with the Cuban volunteers in Haiti to treat quake victims. Gonzalo Est?vez Torres, a leader of the Cuban medical brigade in Port-au-Prince, told Juventud Rebelde that many Haitians are still in shock from the earthquake. The brigade will be working with the Haitian doctors graduated in Cuba to prepare people for the problems they will face in the weeks ahead. Related articles: Haiti: U.S. gov't fails to provide needed aid Working-class areas last to get attention Open the border to Haitian refugees Latest attack on Cuba falsifies history of fight against racism Defend the Cuban Revolution! =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 24 17:55:02 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 17:55:02 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] [USA] Supreme Court enshrines corporate rule Message-ID: <1323572F28734D2C9CB69BD5CECB0E20@agingCHS072729> http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-chemerinsky22-2010jan22,0,5829403.story Los Angeles Times January 22, 2010 Opinion Conservatives embrace judicial activism in campaign finance ruling The Supreme Court's decision in favor of corporate spending in elections makes previous rhetoric laughable. By Erwin Chemerinsky The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision holding that corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts of money in election campaigns is a stunning example of judicial activism by its five most conservative justices. In striking down a federal statute and explicitly overturning prior decisions, the court has changed the nature of elections in the United States. At the same time, the conservative justices have demonstrated that decades of conservative criticism of judicial activism was nonsense. Conservative justices are happy to be activists when it serves their ideological agenda. Since Richard Nixon ran for president in 1968, a central feature of Republican and conservative rhetoric has been to attack judicial activism. The phrase is never defined with any precision and has often been used to refer to decisions that conservatives simply don't like. But if judicial activism has any meaning, it surely refers to decisions that overturn laws and overrule precedents. In contrast, judicial restraint occurs when courts defer to the other branches of government and follow precedents. By this definition, judicial activism can be good or bad. Brown vs. Board of Education was activist in that it declared unconstitutional laws in many states requiring the segregation of the races in education. To do so, the justices overruled a 58-year-old precedent upholding such laws. But virtually all agree today that Brown was one of the greatest moments in Supreme Court history. To conservatives, though, the phrase "judicial activism" has come to mean any decision with a liberal outcome. President George W. Bush declared: "The judges ought not to take the place of the legislative branch of government. . . . I don't believe in liberal activist judges. I believe in strict constructionists." The 2008 Republican platform declared that "[j]udicial activism is a grave threat to the rule of law because unaccountable federal judges are usurping democracy, ignoring the Constitution and its separation of powers, and imposing their personal opinions upon the public." The court's campaign finance decision makes this conservative rhetoric laughable. The ruling, which grew out of a conservative nonprofit corporation's attempt to air an anti-Hillary Rodham Clinton documentary during the 2008 primary, throws out a key component of the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Among other things, the law banned corporations from paying to broadcast "electioneering communications" for or against candidates in the final weeks of presidential primaries and general elections. McCain-Feingold was a continuation of statutes that have existed since 1906 limiting corporate spending in federal election campaigns. The act was intended to prevent the enormous wealth of corporations from distorting elections and protect corporate shareholders from having their money used for purposes with which they disagree. For years, conservatives have argued that judicial restraint requires deferring to the choices of the elected branches of government. No such deference was evident when the court's five most conservative justices struck down this provision of the McCain-Feingold law on Thursday. Nor did the decision defer to judicial precedent. In 2003, in McConnell vs. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision upheld this same law. In fact, in an earlier case in 1990, the court said that legislatures may restrict corporate spending in election campaigns. The court's decision on Thursday expressly overruled these decisions. What changed over the last eight years? In the 2003 decision, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor joined with John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer to make up the majority. O'Connor's replacement, Samuel A. Alito Jr. voted the other way and joined with conservatives John G. Roberts Jr., Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas to declare the same law unconstitutional. For decades, conservatives have argued that judicial restraint requires that courts protect rights only if they are stated in the text of the Constitution or were clearly intended by the document's framers. This, for example, is the core of the conservative attack on Roe vs. Wade. But there is not the slightest shred of evidence that the framers of the 1st Amendment meant to protect the rights of corporations to spend money in election campaigns. The conservatives were glad to abandon the "original meaning" when it served their purposes. The conservative majority, which in recent years has dramatically limited free speech in other areas -- such as for government employees and for students -- was willing to expand the free speech of corporations. There is no way to see this other than as the conservative justices using judicial review to advance the traditional conservative ideological agenda. Almost 10 years ago, in Bush vs. Gore, the five conservative justices for the first time decided a presidential election. One would have thought that decision would have laid to rest the notion that judicial activism is a tool of liberal judges and revealed that the real judicial activism today is from the right. Perhaps Thursday's decision will finally reveal the truth. Erwin Chemerinsky is dean of the UC Irvine School of Law. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 24 17:54:58 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 17:54:58 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] [UK] David Kelly post mortem to be kept secret for 70 years Message-ID: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245599/David-Kelly-post-mortem-kept-secret-70-years-doctors-accuse-Lord-Hutton-concealing-vital-information.html# Daily Mail Jan 24, 2010 David Kelly post mortem to be kept secret for 70 years as doctors accuse Lord Hutton of concealing vital information By Miles Goslett Vital evidence which could solve the mystery of the death of Government weapons inspector Dr David Kelly will be kept under wraps for up to 70 years. In a draconian - and highly unusual - order, Lord Hutton, the peer who chaired the controversial inquiry into the Dr Kelly scandal, has secretly barred the release of all medical records, including the results of the post mortem, and unpublished evidence. The move, which will stoke fresh speculation about the true circumstances of Dr Kelly's death, comes just days before Tony Blair appears before the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War. It is also bound to revive claims of an establishment cover-up and fresh questions about the verdict that Dr Kelly killed himself. Tonight, Dr Michael Powers QC, a doctor campaigning to overturn the Hutton findings, said: 'What is it about David Kelly's death which is so secret as to justify these reports being kept out of the public domain for 70 years?' Campaigning Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, who has also questioned the verdict that Dr Kelly committed suicide, said: 'It is astonishing this is the first we've known about this decision by Lord Hutton and even more astonishing he should have seen fit to hide this material away.' The body of former United Nations weapons inspector Dr Kelly was found in July 2003 in woods close to his Oxfordshire home, shortly after he was exposed as the source of a BBC news report questioning the Government's claims that Saddam Hussein had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, which could be deployed within 45 minutes. Lord Hutton's 2004 report, commissioned by Mr Blair, concluded that Dr Kelly killed himself by cutting his wrist with a blunt gardening knife. It was dismissed by many experts as a whitewash for clearing the Government of any culpability, despite evidence that it had leaked Dr Kelly's name in an attempt to smear him. Only now has it emerged that a year after his inquiry was completed, Lord Hutton took unprecedented action to ensure that the vital evidence remains a state secret for so long. A letter, leaked to The Mail on Sunday, revealed that a 30-year ban was placed on 'records provided [which were] not produced in evidence'. This is thought to refer to witness statements given to the inquiry which were not disclosed at the time. In addition, it has now been established that Lord Hutton ordered all medical reports - including the post-mortem findings by pathologist Dr Nicholas Hunt and photographs of Dr Kelly's body - to remain classified information for 70 years. The normal rules on post-mortems allow close relatives and 'properly interested persons' to apply to see a copy of the report and to 'inspect' other documents. Lord Hutton's measure has overridden these rules, so the files will not be opened until all such people are likely to be dead. Last night, the Ministry of Justice was unable to explain the legal basis for Lord Hutton's order. The restrictions came to light in a letter from the legal team of Oxfordshire County Council to a group of doctors who are challenging the Hutton verdict. Last year, a group of doctors, including Dr Powers, compiled a medical dossier as part of their legal challenge to the Hutton verdict. They argue that Hutton's conclusion that Dr Kelly killed himself by severing the ulnar artery in his left wrist after taking an overdose of prescription painkillers is untenable because the artery is small and difficult to access, and severing it could not have caused death. In their 12-page opinion, they concluded: 'The bleeding from Dr Kelly's ulnar artery is highly unlikely to have been so voluminous and rapid that it was the cause of death. We advise the instructing solicitors to obtain the autopsy reports so that the concerns of a group of properly interested medical specialists can be answered.' Tonight, Dr Powers, a former assistant coroner, added: 'Supposedly all evidence relevant to the cause of death has been heard in public at the time of Lord Hutton's inquiry. If these secret reports support the suicide finding, what could they contain that could be so sensitive?' The letter disclosing the 70-year restriction was written by Nick Graham, assistant head of legal and democratic services at Oxfordshire Council. It states: 'Lord Hutton made a request for the records provided to the inquiry, not produced in evidence, to be closed for 30 years, and that medical (including post-mortem) reports and photographs be closed for 70 years.' Nicholas Gardiner, the Chief Coroner for Oxfordshire, confirmed that he had seen the letter. Speaking to The Mail on Sunday today, he said: 'I know that Lord Hutton made that recommendation. Someone told me at the time. Anybody concerned will be dead by then, and that is quite clearly Lord Hutton's intention.' Asked what was in the records that made it necessary for them to be embargoed, Mr Gardiner said: 'They're Lord Hutton's records not mine. You'd have to ask him.' He added that in his opinion Lord Hutton had embargoed the records to protect Dr Kelly's children. The inquest into Dr Kelly's death was suspended before it could begin by the then Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer. He used the Coroners Act to designate the Hutton Inquiry as 'fulfilling the function of an inquest'. News that the records will be kept secret comes just days before Mr Blair gives evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on Friday. To date, Dr Kelly's name has scarcely been mentioned at the inquiry. One source who held a private meeting with Sir John Chilcot before the proceedings began said that Sir John had admitted he 'did not want to touch the Kelly issue' . A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said: 'Any decision made by Lord Hutton at the time of his inquiry was entirely a matter for him.' A spokesman for Thames Valley Police said yesterday that it would not be possible to search their records during the weekend. The Mail on Sunday was unable to contact Lord Hutton. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 24 18:01:45 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:01:45 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Literal interpretation of religious texts: a cure for Islamophobia? Message-ID: It has become fashionable lately to quote the Qu'ran and other religious texts to "prove" that Islam is an "evil" religion, and by extension implicate the inhabitants of entire countries or regions as "extremists". The folly of such literal interpretations of religious texts should be apparent in the following. ============ Dear Dr. Laura: Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I am trying to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how best to follow them. A: When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them? B: I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her? C: I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense. D: Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians? E: I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself? F: A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? G: Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here? H: Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die? I: I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves? J: My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field - as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them (Lev. 24:10-16)? Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair as we do with people who sleep with their in-laws (Lev. 20:14)? I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's law is eternal and unchanging. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 24 19:00:14 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 19:00:14 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Climate Skeptics and the Himalayan Glacier Melt Message-ID: One has to assume that William Engdahl, writing here -- www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17155 ("Glacier Meltdown: Another Scientific Scandal Involving the IPCC Climate Research Group"), and making such claims either did not read -- or chose to ignore -- the rebuttal by Syed Hasnain, partly reproduced in the article below, in Countercurrrents. =============== http://www.countercurrents.org/nazareth230110.htm Countercurrents.org January 23, 2010 Climate Skeptics and the Himalayan Glacier Melt by Marianne de Nazareth Conspiracy theories have always swished about over the issue of Climate Change. But now, Climate Change sceptics are having a field day with the so called 'collapse' of the Copenhagen Summit in December 2009. It all began a few weeks before COP15 when an exchange of emails by scientists form the East Anglia Climate Research Unit were hacked into and were cited as a huge cover up. Then Copenhagen ended with a politically binding agreement, rather than any strong legal agreement, which has added fuel to fire. Now a huge furore has erupted over whether the Himalayan glaciers are melting or not. The problem causing the controversy lies in the 2007 UN's IPCC report which used the interview with Professor Syed Hasnain in 1999 by the WWF which was published in New Scientist, in the UK, as the source of its claim. This was not peer reviewed science and should not have been included in the IPCC report. The IPCC and a committee of 2500 of the best climate change scientists in the world, has accepted the egg on its face that, in its fourth assessment its assertion that the Himalayan glaciers will be lost by 2035 is incorrect. However that does not take away from the fact that the glaciers are melting. In the month of August 2009, I was invited for the Third Pole media workshop in Kathmandu, co-ordinated by Chinadialogue, Internews Europe and Earth Journalism Network. There we were spoken to by Syed Iqbal Hasnain one of India's foremost glaciologists from TERI who is now at the heart of the controversy. Hasnain's presentations were photographic evidence of what he had collated over the years. In his rebuttal on the present controversy sent to the media, Hasnain says, "First and foremost, I assert that I am a scientist, with years of painstaking study, collation and analyses of field experience who relies more on facts and figures and not an astrologer who may give any date on the demise of glaciers. To reiterate, I have not given any date or year on the likely disappearance of Himalayan glaciers, neither in any interview nor in any of my publications in various journals. "Whatever got published in New Scientist ('Flooded Out', 05 June 1999, by Fred Pearce) was a journalistic assumption interpolated by the interviewer, over which I had no control. During the interview I presented the outcome of the findings on the basis of twenty years of my research till 1999. "The statement I gave on the basis of the results being found till then was: 'All the glaciers in the middle Himalayas are retreating', and a scientific postulation was made that all the glaciers in the central and eastern Himalayas could disappear in the next forty to fifty years at their present rate of decline. "Moreover, this postulation factually represented the findings based on research techniques and instruments available in 1980s and 1990s. Now, we have more sophisticated and accurate instruments and techniques, as compared to those ten years back. So precision has increased and the new results are coming out. "I must stress that a journalistic substitution of the year 2035 was made without my knowledge and approval that was markedly contrary to my research supported finding of the likelihood of the central and eastern Himalaya glaciers disappearing in forty to fifty years. "It is now well established that climate change is being driven by long lived Green House Gases as well as short lived forcers like Black Carbon, and has its impact globally. However, the intensity of impact is governed regionally and locally. Micro-level climatic as well as topographical variations, like slope facies et cetera have strong influence on local level impacts of global warming. "With reference to climate change and its impacts on Himalayan glaciers, can there be any doubt on the pathetic state of the Himalayan glaciers? This has been affirmed by the findings of research works, published in peer-reviewed journals after 1990s, as well as the present research work being carried out by me and my team. All these findings indicate towards the negative mass balance of the Himalayan glaciers studied, whether by remote sensing or field based monitoring techniques. Moreover, the analysis of data presented in the report released from the MoEF in November 2009, supports the alarming rate of melting of Himalayan glaciers." Further, ICIMOD (International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development) which we visited in Kathmandu, Nepal has this to say on the issue, "The debate on the rate of melting of the Himalayan glaciers has gained momentum in recent days. The debate has centred on the statement made in the IPCC AR4 Working Group II report that the Himalayan glaciers are retreating faster than in any other part of the world and at the present rate of retreat could disappear by the third decade of this millennium. This has culminated with the statement from the IPCC on 20 January 2010 retracting this one statement in AR4, but reiterating that the broader conclusion of the report is unaffected. "Many of the inferences regarding glacial melting are based on terminus fluctuation or changes in glacial area, neither of which provides precise information on ice mass or volume change. Measurements of glacial mass balance would provide direct and immediate evidence of glacier volume increase or decrease with annual resolution. But there are still no systematic measurements of glacial mass balance in the region although there are promising signs that this is changing. China is the only country in the region which has been conducting long-term mass balance studies of some glaciers and it has expressed the intention of extending these to more Himalayan glaciers in the near future. India has recently started to study several glaciers for regular mass balance measurements. Recognising the importance of mass-balance measurements, ICIMOD has been promoting mass balance measurements of benchmark glaciers in its member countries and has co-organised trainings to build capacity for this in the region. "ICIMOD has been drawing attention to the severe problems resulting from the lack of good scientific data and information for the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region, especially but not only on glaciers. This severely limits the ability to understand present changes or predict future impacts, a prerequisite for good decision-making; thus the Centre has been promoting development of baseline information related to environmental processes and their changes. In early 2002, ICIMOD initiated a regional inventory of glaciers and glacial lakes, based on desk research and analysis of maps, aerial photographs, and satellite images. Since then, partner institutions have continued this work and developed inventories at national scales. ICIMOD is now focusing on assimilating existing information and national data and developing a regional database so that a regional monitoring system on the status of cryospheric elements like snow and glaciers can be put in place. Standardisation of methodologies has been given due emphasis to facilitate integration of the database. "At present, ICIMOD is conducting research on critical glacial lakes and is promoting the organisation of mass balance measurements in the region. Based on the analyses we have been doing, we can state that the majority of glaciers in the region are in a general condition of retreat, although with some regional differences; that small glaciers below 5000 meters above sea level will probably disappear by the end of the century, whereas larger glaciers well above this level will still exist but be smaller; and that de-glaciation could have serious impacts on the hydrological regime of the downstream river basins. "Further, it is important to compare and summarise observations from a number of glaciers in different areas, of different size, and at different altitudes to draw clear scientifically justified conclusions about the changes that are occurring. "Although the lack of information and knowledge about the glacier melt processes in the Himalayas has been used to politicise the larger issues, the positive aspect of the debate has been the immense awareness created at various levels including politicians, decision makers, the media, and the public at large, which has led to some positive outcomes in recent months. In this context, the Indian Government has taken a decision to establish a specialised glacier research centre. Similarly, the concept of the Third Pole Environment initiated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences will have a positive impact on minimising the gaps in our basic understanding." Of course this does not let the IPCC off the hook. This is a body of scientists the world looks up to and therefore should have had a series of checks and balances in place before publishing the 2007 UN's IPCC report. Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the UNFCCC has this to say on the issue, "The credibility of the IPCC depends on the thoroughness with which its procedures are adhered to. The procedures have been violated in this case. That must not be allowed to happen again because the credibility of climate change policy can only be based on credible science. Nobody is denying that the Himalayan glaciers are disappearing fast as a result of climate change. What is happening now is comparable with the Titanic sinking more slowly than expected. But that does not alter the inevitable consequences, unless rigorous action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is taken." _____ The writer is a media fellow with the UNFCCC and teaches Environment Journalism in Saint Joseph's College, Bangalore. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 24 21:21:37 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 21:21:37 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] [Haiti] Most vicious example of national strangulation in modern history Message-ID: <9923DCCAD49B46598B42A265E4F7A406@agingCHS072729> http://www.nationnews.com/story/guest-column-hilary-beckles-copy-for-web National News (Barbados) 1/17/2010 The hate and the quake Haiti was isolated at birth - ostracised and denied access to world trade, finance, and institutional development. It was the most vicious example of national strangulation recorded in modern history. BY SIR HILARY BECKLES THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES is in the process of conceiving how best to deliver a major conference on the theme Rethinking And Rebuilding Haiti. I am very keen to provide an input into this exercise because for too long there has been a popular perception that somehow the Haitian nation-building project, launched on January 1, 1804, has failed on account of mismanagement, ineptitude, corruption. Buried beneath the rubble of imperial propaganda, out of both Western Europe and the United States, is the evidence which shows that Haiti's independence was defeated by an aggressive North-Atlantic alliance that could not imagine their world inhabited by a free regime of Africans as representatives of the newly emerging democracy. The evidence is striking, especially in the context of France. The Haitians fought for their freedom and won, as did the Americans fifty years earlier. The Americans declared their independence and crafted an extraordinary constitution that set out a clear message about the value of humanity and the right to freedom, justice, and liberty. In the midst of this brilliant discourse, they chose to retain slavery as the basis of the new nation state. The founding fathers therefore could not see beyond race, as the free state was built on a slavery foundation. The water was poisoned in the well; the Americans went back to the battlefield a century later to resolve the fact that slavery and freedom could not comfortably co-exist in the same place. The French, also, declared freedom, fraternity and equality as the new philosophies of their national transformation and gave the modern world a tremendous progressive boost by so doing. They abolished slavery, but Napoleon Bonaparte could not imagine the republic without slavery and targeted the Haitians for a new, more intense regime of slavery. The British agreed, as did the Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese. All were linked in communion over the 500 000 Blacks in Haiti, the most populous and prosperous Caribbean colony. As the jewel of the Caribbean, they all wanted to get their hands on it. With a massive slave base, the English, French and Dutch salivated over owning it - and the people. The people won a ten-year war, the bloodiest in modern history, and declared their independence. Every other country in the Americas was based on slavery. Haiti was freedom, and proceeded to place in its 1805 Independence Constitution that any person of African descent who arrived on its shores would be declared free, and a citizen of the republic. For the first time since slavery had commenced, Blacks were the subjects of mass freedom and citizenship in a nation. The French refused to recognise Haiti's independence and declared it an illegal pariah state. The Americans, whom the Haitians looked to in solidarity as their mentor in independence, refused to recognise them, and offered solidarity instead to the French. The British, who were negotiating with the French to obtain the ownership title to Haiti, also moved in solidarity, as did every other nation-state the Western world. Haiti was isolated at birth - ostracised and denied access to world trade, finance, and institutional development. It was the most vicious example of national strangulation recorded in modern history. The Cubans, at least, have had Russia, China, and Vietnam. The Haitians were alone from inception. The crumbling began. Then came 1825; the moment of full truth. The republic is celebrating its 21st anniversary. There is national euphoria in the streets of Port-au-Prince. The economy is bankrupt; the political leadership isolated. The cabinet took the decision that the state of affairs could not continue. The country had to find a way to be inserted back into the world economy. The French government was invited to a summit. Officials arrived and told the Haitian government that they were willing to recognise the country as a sovereign nation but it would have to pay compensation and reparation in exchange. The Haitians, with backs to the wall, agreed to pay the French. The French government sent a team of accountants and actuaries into Haiti in order to place a value on all lands, all physical assets, the 500 000 citizens were who formerly enslaved, animals, and all other commercial properties and services. The sums amounted to 150 million gold francs. Haiti was told to pay this reparation to France in return for national recognition. The Haitian government agreed; payments began immediately. Members of the Cabinet were also valued because they had been enslaved people before independence. Thus began the systematic destruction of the Republic of Haiti. The French government bled the nation and rendered it a failed state. It was a merciless exploitation that was designed and guaranteed to collapse the Haitian economy and society. Haiti was forced to pay this sum until 1922 when the last instalment was made. During the long 19th century, the payment to France amounted to up to 70 per cent of the country's foreign exchange earnings. Jamaica today pays up to 70 per cent in order to service its international and domestic debt. Haiti was crushed by this debt payment. It descended into financial and social chaos. The republic did not stand a chance. France was enriched and it took pleasure from the fact that having been defeated by Haitians on the battlefield, it had won on the field of finance. In the years when the coffee crops failed, or the sugar yield was down, the Haitian government borrowed on the French money market at double the going interest rate in order to repay the French government. When the Americans invaded the country in the early 20th century, one of the reasons offered was to assist the French in collecting its reparations. The collapse of the Haitian nation resides at the feet of France and America, especially. These two nations betrayed, failed, and destroyed the dream that was Haiti; crushed to dust in an effort to destroy the flower of freedom and the seed of justice. Haiti did not fail. It was destroyed by two of the most powerful nations on earth, both of which continue to have a primary interest in its current condition. The sudden quake has come in the aftermath of summers of hate. In many ways the quake has been less destructive than the hate. Human life was snuffed out by the quake, while the hate has been a long and inhumane suffocation - a crime against humanity. During the 2001 UN Conference on Race in Durban, South Africa, strong representation was made to the French government to repay the 150 million francs. The value of this amount was estimated by financial actuaries as US$21 billion. This sum of capital could rebuild Haiti and place it in a position to re-engage the modern world. It was illegally extracted from the Haitian people and should be repaid. It is stolen wealth. In so doing, France could discharge its moral obligation to the Haitian people. For a nation that prides itself in the celebration of modern diplomacy, France, in order to exist with the moral authority of this diplomacy in this post-modern world, should do the just and legal thing. Such an act at the outset of this century would open the door for a sophisticated interface of past and present, and set the Haitian nation free at last. Sir Hilary Beckles is pro-vice-chancellor and Principal of the Cave Hill Campus, UWI. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Mon Jan 25 14:49:58 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:49:58 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction Message-ID: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/democracy_in_america_is_a_useful_fiction_20100124/ Chris Hedges' Columns Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction Posted on Jan 24, 2010 [Photo: Original: AP / Charles Dharapak] By Chris Hedges Corporate forces, long before the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, carried out a coup d'?tat in slow motion. The coup is over. We lost. The ruling is one more judicial effort to streamline mechanisms for corporate control. It exposes the myth of a functioning democracy and the triumph of corporate power. But it does not significantly alter the political landscape. The corporate state is firmly cemented in place. The fiction of democracy remains useful, not only for corporations, but for our bankrupt liberal class. If the fiction is seriously challenged, liberals will be forced to consider actual resistance, which will be neither pleasant nor easy. As long as a democratic facade exists, liberals can engage in an empty moral posturing that requires little sacrifice or commitment. They can be the self-appointed scolds of the Democratic Party, acting as if they are part of the debate and feel vindicated by their cries of protest. Much of the outrage expressed about the court's ruling is the outrage of those who prefer this choreographed charade. As long as the charade is played, they do not have to consider how to combat what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of "inverted totalitarianism." Inverted totalitarianism represents "the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry," Wolin writes in "Democracy Incorporated." Inverted totalitarianism differs from classical forms of totalitarianism, which revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader, and finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. The corporate forces behind inverted totalitarianism do not, as classical totalitarian movements do, boast of replacing decaying structures with a new, revolutionary structure. They purport to honor electoral politics, freedom and the Constitution. But they so corrupt and manipulate the levers of power as to make democracy impossible. Inverted totalitarianism is not conceptualized as an ideology or objectified in public policy. It is furthered by "power-holders and citizens who often seem unaware of the deeper consequences of their actions or inactions," Wolin writes. But it is as dangerous as classical forms of totalitarianism. In a system of inverted totalitarianism, as this court ruling illustrates, it is not necessary to rewrite the Constitution, as fascist and communist regimes do. It is enough to exploit legitimate power by means of judicial and legislative interpretation. This exploitation ensures that huge corporate campaign contributions are protected speech under the First Amendment. It ensures that heavily financed and organized lobbying by large corporations is interpreted as an application of the people's right to petition the government. The court again ratified the concept that corporations are persons, except in those cases where the "persons" agree to a "settlement." Those within corporations who commit crimes can avoid going to prison by paying large sums of money to the government while, according to this twisted judicial reasoning, not "admitting any wrongdoing." There is a word for this. It is called corruption. Corporations have 35,000 lobbyists in Washington and thousands more in state capitals that dole out corporate money to shape and write legislation. They use their political action committees to solicit employees and shareholders for donations to fund pliable candidates. The financial sector, for example, spent more than $5 billion on political campaigns, influence peddling and lobbying during the past decade, which resulted in sweeping deregulation, the gouging of consumers, our global financial meltdown and the subsequent looting of the U.S. Treasury. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America spent $26 million last year and drug companies such as Pfizer, Amgen and Eli Lilly kicked in tens of millions more to buy off the two parties. These corporations have made sure our so-called health reform bill will force us to buy their predatory and defective products. The oil and gas industry, the coal industry, defense contractors and telecommunications companies have thwarted the drive for sustainable energy and orchestrated the steady erosion of civil liberties. Politicians do corporate bidding and stage hollow acts of political theater to keep the fiction of the democratic state alive. There is no national institution left that can accurately be described as democratic. Citizens, rather than participate in power, are allowed to have virtual opinions to preordained questions, a kind of participatory fascism as meaningless as voting on "American Idol." Mass emotions are directed toward the raging culture wars. This allows us to take emotional stands on issues that are inconsequential to the power elite. Our transformation into an empire, as happened in ancient Athens and Rome, has seen the tyranny we practice abroad become the tyranny we practice at home. We, like all empires, have been eviscerated by our own expansionism. We utilize weapons of horrific destructive power, subsidize their development with billions in taxpayer dollars, and are the world's largest arms dealer. And the Constitution, as Wolin notes, is "conscripted to serve as power's apprentice rather than its conscience." "Inverted totalitarianism reverses things," Wolin writes. "It is politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash." Hollywood, the news industry and television, all corporate controlled, have become instruments of inverted totalitarianism. They censor or ridicule those who critique or challenge corporate structures and assumptions. They saturate the airwaves with manufactured controversy, whether it is Tiger Woods or the dispute between Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien. They manipulate images to make us confuse how we are made to feel with knowledge, which is how Barack Obama became president. And the draconian internal control employed by the Department of Homeland Security, the military and the police over any form of popular dissent, coupled with the corporate media's censorship, does for inverted totalitarianism what thugs and bonfires of books do in classical totalitarian regimes. "It seems a replay of historical experience that the bias displayed by today's media should be aimed consistently at the shredded remains of liberalism," Wolin writes. "Recall that an element common to most 20th century totalitarianism, whether Fascist or Stalinist, was hostility towards the left. In the United States, the left is assumed to consist solely of liberals, occasionally of 'the left wing of the Democratic Party,' never of democrats." Liberals, socialists, trade unionists, independent journalists and intellectuals, many of whom were once important voices in our society, have been silenced or targeted for elimination within corporate-controlled academia, the media and government. Wolin, who taught at Berkeley and later at Princeton, is arguably the country's foremost political philosopher. And yet his book was virtually ignored. This is also why Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney, along with intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, are not given a part in our national discourse. The uniformity of opinion is reinforced by the skillfully orchestrated mass emotions of nationalism and patriotism, which paints all dissidents as "soft" or "unpatriotic." The "patriotic" citizen, plagued by fear of job losses and possible terrorist attacks, unfailingly supports widespread surveillance and the militarized state. This means no questioning of the $1 trillion in defense-related spending. It means that the military and intelligence agencies are held above government, as if somehow they are not part of government. The most powerful instruments of state power and control are effectively removed from public discussion. We, as imperial citizens, are taught to be contemptuous of government bureaucracy, yet we stand like sheep before Homeland Security agents in airports and are mute when Congress permits our private correspondence and conversations to be monitored and archived. We endure more state control than at any time in American history. The civic, patriotic and political language we use to describe ourselves remains unchanged. We pay fealty to the same national symbols and iconography. We find our collective identity in the same national myths. We continue to deify the Founding Fathers. But the America we celebrate is an illusion. It does not exist. Our government and judiciary have no real sovereignty. Our press provides diversion, not information. Our organs of security and power keep us as domesticated and as fearful as most Iraqis. Capitalism, as Karl Marx understood, when it emasculates government, becomes a revolutionary force. And this revolutionary force, best described as inverted totalitarianism, is plunging us into a state of neo-feudalism, perpetual war and severe repression. The Supreme Court decision is part of our transformation by the corporate state from citizens to prisoners. Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent, writes a column published every Monday on Truthdig. His latest book is "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle." =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Mon Jan 25 15:01:31 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:01:31 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] We send Doctors, not Soldiers Message-ID: <510BA1C4BC75403BA5CCB83B7B0B65B7@agingCHS072729> http://www.prensa-latina.cu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=156901&Itemid=73 Prensa Latina Reflections of Fidel Castro: We send Doctors, not Soldiers Havana, Jan 24 (Prensa Latina) Prensa Latina transmits as follows the article titled: "We send doctors, not soldiers", by the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, Publisher by digital website Cubadebate. WE SEND DOCTORS, NOT SOLDIERS. In my Reflection of January 14, two days after the catastrophe in Haiti, which destroyed that neighboring sister nation, I wrote: "In the area of healthcare and others the Haitian people has received the cooperation of Cuba, even though this is a small and blockaded country. Approximately 400 doctors and healthcare workers are helping the Haitian people free of charge. Our doctors are working every day at 227 of the 237 communes of that country. On the other hand, no less than 400 young Haitians have been graduated as medical doctors in our country. They will now work alongside the reinforcement that traveled there yesterday to save lives in that critical situation. Thus, up to one thousand doctors and healthcare personnel can be mobilized without any special effort; and most are already there willing to cooperate with any other State that wishes to save Haitian lives and rehabilitate the injured." "The head of our medical brigade has informed that ???the situation is difficult but we are already saving lives.???" Hour after hour, day and night, the Cuban health professionals have started to work nonstop in the few facilities that were able to stand, in tents, and out in the parks or open-air spaces, since the population feared new aftershocks. The situation was far more serious than was originally thought. Tens of thousands of injured were clamoring for help in the streets of Port-au-Prince; innumerable persons laid, dead or alive, under the rubbled clay or adobe used in the construction of the houses where the overwhelming majority of the population lived. Buildings, even the most solid, collapsed. Besides, it was necessary to look for the Haitian doctors who had graduated at the Latin American Medicine School throughout all the destroyed neighborhoods. Many of them were affected, either directly or indirectly, by the tragedy. Some UN officials were trapped in their dormitories and tens of lives were lost, including the lives of several chiefs of MINUSTAH, a UN contingent. The fate of hundreds of other members of its staff was unknown. Haiti's Presidential Palace crumbled. Many public facilities, including several hospitals, were left in ruins. The catastrophe shocked the whole world, which was able to see what was going on through the images aired by the main international TV networks. Governments from everywhere in the planet announced they would be sending rescue experts, food, medicines, equipment and other resources. In conformity with the position publicly announced by Cuba, medical staff from different countries -namely Spain, Mexico, and Colombia, among others- worked very hard alongside our doctors at the facilities they had improvised. Organizations such as PAHO and other friendly countries like Venezuela and other nations supplied medicines and other resources. The impeccable behavior of Cuban professionals and their leaders was absolutely void of chauvinism and remained out of the limelight. Cuba, just as it had done under similar circumstances, when Hurricane Katrina caused huge devastation in the city of New Orleans and the lives of thousands of American citizens were in danger, offered to send a full medical brigade to cooperate with the people of the United States, a country that, as is well known, has vast resources. But at that moment what was needed were trained and well- equipped doctors to save lives. Given New Orleans geographical location, more than one thousand doctors of the "Henry Reeve" contingent mobilized and readied to leave for that city at any time of the day or the night, carrying with them the necessary medicines and equipment. It never crossed our mind that the President of that nation would reject the offer and let a number of Americans that could have been saved to die. The mistake made by that government was perhaps the inability to understand that the people of Cuba do not see in the American people an enemy; it does not blame it for the aggressions our homeland has suffered. Nor was that government capable of understanding that our country does not need to beg for favors or forgiveness of those who, for half a century now, have been trying, to no avail, to bring us to our knees. Our country, also in the case of Haiti, immediately responded to the US authorities requests to fly over the eastern part of Cuba as well as other facilities they needed to deliver assistance, as quickly as possible, to the American and Haitian citizens who had been affected by the earthquake. Such have been the principles characterizing the ethical behavior of our people. Together with its equanimity and firmness, these have been the ever-present features of our foreign policy. And this is known only too well by whoever have been our adversaries in the international arena. Cuba will firmly stand by the opinion that the tragedy that has taken place in Haiti, the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, is a challenge to the richest and more powerful countries of the world. Haiti is a net product of the colonial, capitalist and imperialist system imposed on the world. Haiti???s slavery and subsequent poverty were imposed from abroad. That terrible earthquake occurred after the Copenhagen Summit, where the most elemental rights of 192 UN member States were trampled upon. In the aftermath of the tragedy, a competition has unleashed in Haiti to hastily and illegally adopt boys and girls. UNICEF has been forced to adopt preventive measures against the uprooting of many children, which will deprive their close relatives from their rights. There are more than one hundred thousand deadly victims. A high number of citizens have lost their arms or legs, or have suffered fractures requiring rehabilitation that would enable them to work or manage their own. Eighty per cent of the country needs to be rebuilt. Haiti requires an economy that is developed enough to meet its needs according to its productive capacity. The reconstruction of Europe or Japan, which was based on the productive capacity and the technical level of the population, was a relatively simple task as compared to the effort that needs to be made in Haiti. There, as well as in most of Africa and elsewhere in the Third World, it is indispensable to create the conditions for a sustainable development. In only forty years time, humanity will be made of more than nine billion inhabitants, and right now is faced with the challenge of a climate change that scientists accept as an inescapable reality. In the midst of the Haitian tragedy, without anybody knowing how and why, thousands of US marines, 82nd Airborne Division troops and other military forces have occupied Haiti. Worse still is the fact that neither the United Nations Organization nor the US government have offered an explanation to the world???s public opinion about this relocation of troops. Several governments have complained that their aircraft have not been allowed to land in order to deliver the human and technical resources that have been sent to Haiti. Some countries, for their part, have announced they would be sending an additional number of troops and military equipment. In my view, such events will complicate and create chaos in international cooperation, which is already in itself complex. It is necessary to seriously discuss this issue. The UN should be entrusted with the leading role it deserves in these so delicate matters. Our country is accomplishing a strictly humanitarian mission. To the extent of its possibilities, it will contribute the human and material resources at its disposal. The will of our people, who takes pride in its medical doctors and cooperation workers who provide vital services, is huge, and will rise to the occasion. Any significant cooperation that is offered to our country will not be rejected, but its acceptance will fully depend on the importance and transcendence of the assistance that is requested from the human resources of our homeland. It is only fair to state that, up until this moment, our modest aircrafts and the important human resources that Cuba has made available to the Haitian people have arrived at their destination without any difficulty whatsoever. We send doctors, not soldiers! Fidel Castro Ruz January 23, 2010 5:30 p.m. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Mon Jan 25 15:03:35 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:03:35 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Haiti earthquake: Italian disaster expert attacks US response Message-ID: Daily Telegraph 25 Jan 2010 Haiti earthquake: Italian disaster expert attacks US response Guido Bertolaso, Italy's top disaster expert, has attack the US response to the Haiti earthquake, criticising its lack of organisation and the reliance on soldiers with no training in humanitarian operations. Mr Bertolaso, head of Italy's civil protection service who received international acclaim for his handling of an L'Aquila earthquake last April, described the response as "a pathetic situation which could have been much better organised". Mr Bertolaso, who arrived in Haiti on Friday, told Italy's RAI state television that Washington had made "a show of force", but military officers co-ordinating the emergency had no links with the humanitarian groups in the Caribbean island state. "We are missing a leader, a co-ordination capacity that goes beyond military discipline," said Mr Bertolaso, who holds the rank of a government minister, late on Sunday. "The Americans are extraordinary, but when you are facing a situation in chaos, they tend to confuse military intervention with emergency aid, which cannot be entrusted to the armed forces." A contingent of 13,000 US troops and marines is helping relief efforts after the Jan. 12, 7.1-magnitude quake, which has killed at least 150,000 and possibly twice that and left up to 3 million hurt and homeless. Silvio Berlusconi's centre-Right Italian government, which has tried to foster close ties with Washington, was quick to distance itself from the remarks. "Bertolaso ... has attacked American and international organisations head on. The Italian government does not share these statements," said Franco Frattini, the foreign minister, during a visit to Washington. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Mon Jan 25 17:05:50 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:05:50 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] The Nation praises US intervention in Haiti Message-ID: <6BE2116D983F4DCEB7DD82CC97607046@agingCHS072729> http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/nati-j25.shtml The Nation praises US intervention in Haiti By Alex Lantier 25 January 2010 The US intervention in Haiti after the major earthquake that devastated that country on January 12 has become a subject of international controversy. Though there were no reports of attacks on aid workers, US forces seized Port-au-Prince airport and the main government buildings, flying in thousands of troops and blocking the flow of food and medical supplies to hundreds of thousands of desperate Haitians. Anger is rising in the country and in aid organizations. France's co-operation minister, Alain Joyandet, even rebuked the US operation at a summit meeting in Brussels, saying, "This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti." The Nation magazine, a leading publication of US "progressive" opinion, has responded by applauding the US intervention in Haiti. The magazine's Washington correspondent, John Nichols, recently penned an Orwellian column, "Obama's Fine Moment," to praise the intervention and particularly the "dignity and determination" he sees in Obama's response to the quake. He writes: "At a time when there is so much disappointment regarding the unmet promise of a presidency that finished its first year on the bitter note of a lost US Senate seat, Obama has responded to the crisis in a spirit that has the potential to reassure not just Haitians but Americans." Nichols' reference to the recent defeat of a Democratic candidate for the US Senate in the liberal state of Massachusetts, in an election that turned into a referendum against Obama's policies, is significant. Cheerleaders for the Democratic Party, such as The Nation, feel surrounded by bitterness and disappointment. Their response has been to deepen their support for the Obama administration. And they see the historic tragedy inflicted upon the people of Haiti largely through the prism of how it will affect Obama in the opinion polls. Nichols admits that he does not want "to say that Obama has done right by Haiti at every turn.... But as the world came to recognize the full scope of Haiti's humanitarian crisis-a crisis that grew more agonizing with a new tremor on Wednesday morning-the president has projected a concern and a commitment that meets the moment." Such passages are altogether characteristic of the outlook of The Nation. For Nichols, whether the US has "done right" by millions of earthquake victims is less important than the question: has Obama "projected" an acceptable public face for the US occupation of Haiti? Apparently convinced that the White House has proved up to the task, Nichols continues: "It is early in what could be a long presidency. So there is no need to suggest that we are seeing Obama's finest moment. Yet, we are seeing a fine moment." Such claims constitute an insult to elementary decency. Over 150,000 people are confirmed dead, not counting those buried privately by their families or still under the rubble. Many have died because the string of corrupt, US-backed regimes that ruled Haiti did not enforce basic building codes. Approximately 250,000 people wounded in the quake are being treated largely without antibiotics or anesthetics, with thousands dying preventable deaths from gangrene and septicemia as the US military blocks the arrival of medical supplies. Far from constituting a "fine moment" in history, such events testify to profound social obstacles preventing humanity from realizing the potential inherent in its scientific progress. For anyone with a shred of political or moral honesty, the situation is not exemplary, but rather deeply troubling. Nichols praises Obama's conduct in talks with Haitian President Ren? Pr?val, installed in the wake of a 2004 US-backed coup against elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Pr?val has barely been seen in public since the earthquake, and is reportedly holed up inside the US-controlled Port-au-Prince airport, guarded by thousands of US troops. Nichols comments, "The American president paid due respect to Haiti's sovereignty-an appropriately touchy issue for a country that has suffered more than its share of imperial abuse." Combining a fleeting acknowledgement of Washington's oppression of Haiti with unrestrained support for the latest US intervention, Nichols' statement is saturated with imperialist hypocrisy. The Pr?val regime has acted as Washington's puppet in handing over full control of Haiti to the US government, which has acted without any regard for the country's sovereignty. The talk of Haiti's sovereignty being an "appropriately touchy" subject merely reflects fears of mass anger in Haiti over the US takeover and US interference in relief operations. Nichols is remarkably vague on the "imperial abuse" suffered by Haiti, much of which was meted out to further the interests of the US ruling classes. After the initial slave revolt against French colonial rule that gave Haiti its independence in 1804, the US blockaded the country for fear the revolt would spread to the black slaves of the American South. From 1915 to 1934, US Marines occupied the country to suppress the cacos peasant armies and block growing German influence in Haiti before World War I. From 1957 to 1986, it backed the anti-Communist dictatorship of the Duvaliers. After the collapse of the Duvalier dictatorship, it mounted two coups-in 1991 and 2004-against Aristide, whom it had reinstated in 1994 on the condition that he impose IMF austerity plans. Nichols comments: "After French colonial rule was overthrown by the Haitians, [in 1805 Thomas] Paine urged Jefferson to position the United States as a 'guarantee' of the freedom of Haiti in a manner that 'accords with the humanity of her principles.' Thomas Jefferson did not rise to Paine's call. Nor, for the most part, did succeeding presidents. But Barack Obama can." Only someone promoting the most appalling delusions about the US can describe the military-financial clique that now rules Washington as being able to guarantee Haiti's freedom. The Obama administration presides over a deeply unequal and divided society, and its main representative overseas-the US military-is engaged in unpopular wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and now an apparently open-ended occupation of Haiti. Nichols' writings are a sample of a significant strand of bourgeois public opinion: the "progressive" supporter of imperialism. This corresponds not only to these layers' worship of the Democratic Party, but their increasingly privileged social status and close integration into the state apparatus. The Nation's editor, Katrina van den Heuvel, for instance, now regularly appears as a TV pundit and is a member of the US Council on Foreign Relations. The Nation has enthusiastically promoted "regime change" in Iran, backing the US-supported candidate Mirhossein Mousavi in last June's disputed presidential election, while both Nichols and van den Heuvel praised Obama for his bellicose Nobel prize acceptance speech defending the ongoing US wars and warning that Washington will launch new military actions whenever and wherever it sees fit. >From the standpoint of these pro-war "progressives," it is not abhorrent but praiseworthy when an oppressed country targeted by Washington receives-to use Nichols' phrase-"its share of imperial abuse." There is no more revealing demonstration of the right-wing character of today's ex-lefts. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Mon Jan 25 22:11:30 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:11:30 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Unions Can't Compete With "United Corps of America" Message-ID: <2D54FB6B256F436C96B7E450D7EE3E79@agingCHS072729> [this all seems rather obvious, but I guess someone needs to point it out, and the numbers here do highlight that this is not exactly a level playing field. It's time for a name change from United States of America to "United Corporations of America" -- much more accurate! --rm] <> http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/521020/unions_can_t_compete_with_corporate_campaign_cash The Nation January 24, 2010 Unions Can't Compete With Corporate Campaign Cash By John Nichols Some union leaders think that the Supreme Court ruling in the case of Citizens United v. FEC -- which essentially takes the limits off campaign spending -- will give them the same flexibility and freedom to influence the process as it does corporations. These are the same union leaders who imagined that electing Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress would lead to the rapid enactment of the Employee Free Choice Act and meaningful labor-law reform. The AFL-CIO actually filed a brief in the Citizens United case that urged removal of reasonable restraints on campaign spending. Indeed, an attorney who prepared the amicus brief for the AFL-CIO recently participated in a conference call talking up the merits of the corporate position, along with representatives of the conservative Heritage Foundation and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky. What are the leaders of the labor federation thinking? They imagine that, with spending limits removed, organized labor will be able to buy enough television time to reward their political friends and punish their political enemies. It's a sweet fantasy. But the reality is that corporations will be buying so much more television time when it matters -- in the run-up to key elections -- that the voices of working Americans will drowned out with the same regularity that they are on Capitol Hill -- where, it should be noted, overwhelming Democratic majorities have yet to deliver on even the most basic demands of the labor movement. To think otherwise is to neglect the reality that one corporation -- Goldman Sachs -- spends more annually to pay just its top employees than the combined assets of all the nation's major unions. University of Wisconsin communications professor Lew Friedland points out that the nation's four largest banks would have to allocate a mere one-tenth of one percent of their assets -- $6 billion -- to counter a campaign in which the whole of the U.S. labor movement spent all of its assets. The bottom line is that a union leader who supports the Citizens United ruling is like a steer who talks up a steak restaurant because they're both in the same business. Organized labor ought to be siding clearly and unequivocally with the forces of democracy in the struggle to establish a political process in which all voices can be heard, and in which elections are about ideas and issues rather than fund raising and attacks ads. A few unions "get it." The California Nurses Association and National Nurses United, the nation's largest nurses union, have accurately identified the Citizens United decision as a "disastrous ruling for American workers and American democracy." "The healthcare debate of the last year has provided a sobering reminder of the already pervasive influence of giant pharmaceutical and insurance corporations. The last thing our democracy and political system needs is ever more spending and political sway by the wealthiest interests in this country," says Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, the 150,000-member labor organization. The notion that the Citizens United ruling might somehow make it easier for organized labor to influence the political process is "ludicrous," says DeMoro. "Equating what unions and working people could spend on campaigns would be like comparing a toy boat to an aircraft carrier," she explains. "Corporate influence peddling in politics already distorts and prevents our democracy and political system (from functioning)." "Opening the floodgates to unlimited spending is a dangerous prescription for candidates who will be even more beholden to the biggest corporate spenders," argues DeMoro. "The likely result would be more dominance of healthcare policy by insurance and drug giants and less public oversight of our air, water, food, and workplaces that is needed to protect consumers and workers." That is the message that all of organized labor should be delivering. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 26 09:42:07 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:42:07 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] 'Oral sex' definition prompts dictionary ban in US schools Message-ID: <23C6E0FC57404BA0B00616165B4C7D9C@agingCHS072729> [It might be tough to find an "appropriate" dictionary. What next? NO dictionaries?] http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/25/oral-sex-dictionary-ban-us-schools guardian.co.uk 25 January 2010 'Oral sex' definition prompts dictionary ban in US schools A parent's complaint over a 'sexually graphic' definition has seen dictionaries removed from southern Californian schools Alison Flood [Photo: 'Sexually graphic' ... Merriam Webster dictionary] Dictionaries have been removed from classrooms in southern California schools after a parent complained about a child reading the definition for "oral sex". Merriam Webster's 10th edition, which has been used for the past few years in fourth and fifth grade classrooms (for children aged nine to 10) in Menifee Union school district, has been pulled from shelves over fears that the "sexually graphic" entry is "just not age appropriate", according to the area's local paper. The dictionary's online definition of the term is "oral stimulation of the genitals". "It's hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we'll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature," district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus told the paper. While some parents have praised the move - "[it's] a prestigious dictionary that's used in the Riverside County spelling bee, but I also imagine there are words in there of concern," said Randy Freeman - others have raised concerns. "It is not such a bad thing for a kid to have the wherewithal to go and look up a word he may have even heard on the playground," father Jason Rogers told local press. "You have to draw the line somewhere. What are they going to do next, pull encyclopaedias because they list parts of the human anatomy like the penis and vagina?" A panel is now reviewing whether the Menifee ban will be made permanent. The Merriam Webster dictionary joins an illustrious set of books that have been banned or challenged in the US, including Nobel prize winner Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, which last year was suspended from and then reinstated to the curriculum at a Michigan school after complaints from parents about its coverage of graphic sex and violence, and titles by Khaled Hosseini and Philip Pullman, included in the American Library Association's list of books that inspired most complaints last year. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 26 09:52:44 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:52:44 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] U.S. Moves Missiles And Troops To Russian Border Message-ID: <3A8C2E82F0804721A1A670D4D0EC8060@agingCHS072729> www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17169 Global Research January 23, 2010 Stop NATO Dangerous Crossroads: U.S. Moves Missiles And Troops To Russian Border Nuclear and Conventional Arms Pacts Stalled By Rick Rozoff 2010 is proceeding in a manner more befitting the third month of the year, named after the Roman god of war, than the first whose name is derived from a pacific deity. On January 13 the Associated Press reported that the White House will submit its Quadrennial Defense Review to Congress on February 1 and request a record-high $708 billion for the Pentagon. That figure is the highest in absolute and in inflation-adjusted, constant (for any year) dollars since 1946, the year after the Second World War ended. Adding non-Pentagon defense-related spending, the total may exceed $1 trillion. The $708 billion includes for the first time monies for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which in prior years were in part funded by periodic supplemental requests, but excludes what the above-mentioned report adds is the first in the new administration's emergency requests for the same purpose: A purported $33 billion. Already this month several NATO nations have pledged more troops, even before the January 28 London conference on Afghanistan when several thousand additional forces may be assigned for the war there, in addition to over 150,000 already serving or soon to serve under U.S. and NATO command. Washington has increased lethal drone missile attacks in Pakistan, and calls for that model to be replicated in Yemen have been made recently, most notably by Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who on January 13 also advocated air strikes and special forces operations in the country. [1] The Pentagon will begin the deployment of 1,400 personnel to Colombia to man seven new bases under a 10-year military agreement signed last October 30. [2] This year the U.S. will also complete the $110 million dollar construction of new military bases in Bulgaria and Romania to house at least 4,000 American troops. [3] The Pentagon's newest regional command, Africa Command, will expand its activities on and off the coasts of that continent beyond current counterinsurgency operations in Somalia, Mali and Uganda and drone flights from a newly acquired site in Seychelles. [4] But this month has brought even more dramatic and dangerous news. The Pentagon has authorized the completion of a $6.5 billion arms deal with Taiwan with an agreement to deliver 200 Patriot Advanced Capability anti-ballistic missiles. The People's Republic of China is infuriated, as Washington would be if the situation were reversed and Beijing provided a comparable arsenal of weapons to, for example, an independent Puerto Rico. [5] As though that action was not provocative enough however, on January 20 the Polish Defense Ministry announced that a U.S. Patriot missile battery, and the 100 American soldiers who will operate it, would not be based on the outskirts of the capital of Warsaw as previously announced but in the Baltic Sea city of Morag, 35 miles [6] from Poland's border with Russia. The missile battery and troops are scheduled to arrive in March or April. As part of the Obama administration's new missile shield project, one which will be integrated with NATO to take in all of Europe and extend into the Middle East and the Caucasus, the Patriots will be followed by Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) interceptor deployments on warships in the Baltic Sea and, for the first time ever, a land-based version of the same. "The Pentagon will deploy command posts of SM-3 missiles, which can intercept both short- and mid-range missiles..." [7] An SM-3 was used by the Pentagon to shoot a satellite out of orbit in February of 2008 to give an indication of its range. Further deployments will follow. The new, post-George W. Bush administration, interceptor missile system will employ "existing missile systems based on land and at sea... Deployment of the revised missile defense would extend through 2020. The first step is to put existing sea-based weapons systems on Aegis-class destroyers and cruisers. [8] "Subsequently, a mobile radar system would be deployed in a European nation... More advanced, mobile systems would be put in place later elsewhere in Europe. Their centerpiece would be... Lockheed's Terminal High Altitude Defense interceptor missiles and improved Standard Missile-3 IB missiles made by... Raytheon." [9] Last December Washington signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that formalizes plans for "the United States military to station American troops and military equipment on Polish territory" and "opens the way for the promised Patriot missiles and US troops to be stationed in Poland... as part of an upgrading of NATO air defences in Europe." [10] In October, shortly after U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden visited Warsaw to finalize the plan, Polish Deputy Defense Minister Stanislaw Komorowski met with his opposite number from the U.S., Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Alexander Vershbow, and announced that the American missiles "will be combat-ready, not dummy varieties as Washington earlier suggested." The same report added that "Earlier, Ukrainian and American officials stated that Ukrainian territory may be used in some way in the new antimissile shield." [11] Poland borders Russia's Kaliningrad enclave, but Ukraine has a 1,576 kilometer (979 mile) border with Russia. The State Department issued a press release on the agreement to deploy American troops to Poland, the first foreign forces to be based there since the end of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, which stated "The agreement will facilitate a range of mutually agreed activities including joint training and exercises, deployments of U.S. military personnel, and prospective Ballistic Missile Defense deployments." [12] A Pentagon spokesperson said "U.S. Army Europe will help the Polish Armed Forces develop their air and missile defense capabilities. Considering the cooperative training we already do with the Polish Armed Forces, this Patriot training program is just another extension of that effort." [13] If earlier plans to deploy ground-based midcourse missiles to Poland evoked, however implausibly, an alleged Iranian missile threat, the Patriots can only be meant for Russia. Russian Lieutenant-General Aitech Bizhev, former commander of the United Air Defense System of the Commonwealth of Independent States, told one of his nation's main news agencies: "It's completely unclear why the air defense group of the northern flank of NATO needed strengthening - NATO has manifold superiority over Russian conventional armaments as it is. "It can't be ruled out that the stationing of the Patriots in Poland may be followed by other actions in building up the American military infrastructure in Eastern Europe..." [14] The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms expired on December 5 and has been extended, but no agreement has been reached on a new pact, 48 days later. At the end of last year Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was asked about the delay and identified the main impediment to resolving it: "What is the problem? The problem is that our American partners are building an anti-missile shield and we are not building one." He further defined the problem: "If we are not developing an anti-missile shield, then there is a danger that our partners, by creating such 'an umbrella,' will feel completely secure and thus can allow themselves to do what they want, disrupting the balance, and aggressiveness will rise immediately." In respect to how prospects for the reduction, much less elimination, of nuclear arms in Europe and North America were faring, Putin added, "In order to preserve balance... we need to develop offensive weapons systems," [15] reiterating a statement by his nation's president, Dmitry Medvedev, a week before. The timing of the announcement that the Pentagon will soon station Patriot missiles so close to Russian territory will not help matters. Nor was the State Department's contention that "the START follow-on agreement is not the appropriate vehicle for addressing" the issue of "missile offense and defense." [16] A month before, Russian news media revealed that "Russia's Strategic Missile Forces (SMF), the land-based component of the nuclear triad, will put on combat duty a second regiment equipped with Topol-M mobile missile systems by the end of 2009. "The Topol-M missile, with a range of about 7,000 miles (11,000 km), is said to be immune to any current and future U.S. ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] defense. It is capable of making evasive maneuvers to avoid a kill using terminal phase interceptors [for example Patriot missiles], and carries targeting countermeasures and decoys." [17] Just as supplying Taiwan with Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) theater anti-ballistic missiles led China to conduct a ground-based, midcourse missile interception on January 11, so moving U.S. military hardware and troops nearer Russia bodes poorly for a nuclear arms reduction agreement. On the non-strategic front, the 1990 Treaty On Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) limiting the amount and expansion of major armaments on the continent is also seriously jeopardized by U.S. and NATO missile shield plans. The adapted CFE (Agreement on Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe) of 1999 has not been ratified by any member of NATO, which has linked it with so-called frozen conflicts in the former Soviet Union. The August 2008 Georgia-Russia war was a consequence of that obstructionist and belligerent policy. The establishment of permanent U.S. and NATO military bases in Kosovo, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania and now Poland is a gross violation of and may prove the death knell for the CFE. Russia suspended the observance of its treaty obligations under the CFE on July 14, 2007 because of "extraordinary circumstances... which affect the security of the Russian Federation and require immediate measures." [18] The circumstances alluded to were the U.S. project of establishing missile interception facilities in Eastern Europe and the general movement of NATO bases and forces to the Baltic and Black Sea regions. On November 29 of last year Russia "released a draft of a proposal for a new European security agreement the Kremlin says should replace outdated institutions such as NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)." [19] Chinese analysts Yu Maofeng and Lu Jingli contend that Moscow was motivated by its concerns over U.S. and NATO missile plans, NATO's eastward expansion to its borders, the 1999 war against Yugoslavia, Western-sponsored "color revolutions" in other former Soviet states and NATO members' non-ratification of the Treaty On Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. [20] For the past thirty years each successive American president has unveiled an ostensible plan to eliminate nuclear weapons, if none before now has received the Nobel Peace Prize while in office [21]. Each in turn then escalated reckless arms buildups and armed aggression abroad in an effort to achieve global military dominance. The current U.S. commander-in-chief with his foreign policy entourage of Robert Gates, James Jones and Hillary Clinton is no exception. [22] Notes 1) Yemen: Pentagon's War On The Arabian Peninsula Stop NATO, December 15, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/yemen-pentagons-war-on-the-arabian-peninsula 2) Rumors Of Coups And War: U.S., NATO Target Latin America Stop NATO, November 18, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/rumors-of-coups-and-war-u-s-nato-target-latin-america 3) Bulgaria, Romania: U.S., NATO Bases For War In The East Stop NATO, October 24, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/bulgaria-romania-u-s-nato-bases-for-war-in-the-east 4) AFRICOM Year Two: Seizing The Helm Of The Entire World Stop NATO, October 22, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/africom-year-two-taking-the-helm-of-the-entire-world 5) U.S.-China Military Tensions Grow Stop NATO, January 19, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/u-s-china-military-tensions-grow 6) New York Times, January 21, 2010 7) Voice of Russia, December 14, 2009 8) U.S. Missile Shield System Deployments: Larger, Sooner, Broader Stop NATO, September 27, 2009 Black Sea, Caucasus: U.S. Moves Missile Shield South And East Stop NATO,September 19, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/283 U.S. Expands Global Missile Shield Into Middle East, Balkans Stop NATO, September 11, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/u-s-expands-global-missile-shield-into-middle-east-balkans 9) Bloomberg News, January 14, 2010 10) Polish Radio, December 11, 2009 11) Russia Today, October 16, 2009 12) Stars and Stripes, December 21, 2009 13) Ibid 14) Interfax Ukraine, January 20, 2010 15) Reuters, December 29, 2009 16) Ibid 17) Russian Information Agency Novosti, November 18, 2009 18) Time, July 14, 2007 19) Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, November 30, 2009 20) Strategic considerations behind Russian proposal for new European security treaty Xinhua News Agency, December 1, 2009 http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-12/02/content_12571639.htm 21) Obama Doctrine: Eternal War For Imperfect Mankind Stop NATO, December 10, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/obama-doctrine-eternal-war-for-imperfect-mankind 22) White House And Pentagon: Change, Continuity And Escalation Stop NATO, March 19, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/white-house-and-pentagon-change-continuity-and-escalation =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 26 11:57:57 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 11:57:57 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] RAW STORY: Fox News Leaves False Cuba/Haiti story uncorrected Message-ID: <305FA3BCC24D4D0EA383E1E2A95A68F4@agingCHS072729> Fair and balanced? You decide. Matt Dubuque http://rawstory.com/2010/01/fox-false-report-uncorrected/ Fox News leaves false report on Haiti uncorrected | Raw Story Fox News is staying silent after bloggers and commentators criticized the news network for a January 13 report on its Web site that stated Cuba was "absent" from global aid efforts in Haiti. Observers note that the communist country was, in fact, one of the first to arrive after the earthquake that is now estimated to have taken the lives of 200,000 people. That has led some bloggers to accuse Fox of using the devastation in Haiti to propagandize against Cuba. In an online news story entitled "US Spearheads Global Response to Haiti Earthquake," Fox reported that "one geographically close country is conspicuously absent from the roster of helping hands. Cuba, which had evacuated some of its residents as a precaution in case the earthquake triggered a tsunami, has so far not offered any assistance publicly to its devastated island neighbor." "The opposite is the case," reports Tony Iltis at Green Left Online. "At the time the earthquake struck, Cuba already had 344 doctors and paramedics working in Haiti. Also, in the past 12 years 450 young Haitians have graduated as doctors from Cuban colleges, free of charge." Iltis reported: >From January 13, more teams of Cuban health workers, accompanied by Haitian medical students studying in Cuba, began arriving in Haiti with medical supplies. A January 12 Granma article said that, within a week of the earthquake: ?€œCuban doctors in the Haitian capital [had held] 13,418 consultancies, with 1,078 operations, more than 550 of them considered major surgery. The Cuban doctors have also assisted 38 births.?€? Notably, on the same day that Fox published its report, the network also ran an article from the Associated Press that stated, "Cuba, which already had hundreds of doctors in Haiti, treated injured in field hospitals." Fox doesn't appear to have corrected the error. As of press time, the network had not responded to Raw Story's repeated requests for comment. For nearly two weeks media watchdogs have been complaining that Fox News has been minimizing its coverage of the Haiti earthquake. MediaMatters reported that, in the first full day after the earthquake -- Jan. 13 -- MSNBC devoted 20 times as much time to Haiti as Fox News, and on January 14, the ratio was roughly five to one. But other observers say the lack of coverage is more widespread than Fox News. Freelance journalist Dave Lindorff reported last week that Cuba was commonly overlooked when US news outlets reported on international aid efforts. Far from ?€œdoing nothing?€? about the disaster as the right-wing propagandists at Fox-TV were charging, Cuba has been one of the most effective and critical responders to the crisis, because it had set up a medical infrastructure before the quake, which was able to mobilize quickly and start treating the victims. If Cuba is to share any blame for the misconception that it's doing nothing, it may be that the government in Havana simply didn't put out a press release fast enough. A Jan. 13 article in Granma, the Cuban state-run publication, didn't mention Cuban relief efforts. That led bloggers to post the article as proof Cuba was absent from the rescue effort. But news of the country's efforts is slowly beginning to trickle into the United States. On Monday, NPR reported that "the day after the earthquake struck the Cuban doctors reopened two hospitals. Since the Cubans live in the poorest neighborhoods amongst the most disadvantaged Haitians they were actually the first responders." ================================================================= a.. Home b.. Raw Replay c.. Contact Us d.. e.. About f.. Donate -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fox News leaves false report on Haiti uncorrected By Daniel Tencer Monday, January 25th, 2010 -- 2:53 pm Share on Facebook Stumble This! Fox News is staying silent after bloggers and commentators criticized the news network for a January 13 report on its Web site that stated Cuba was "absent" from global aid efforts in Haiti. Observers note that the communist country was, in fact, one of the first to arrive after the earthquake that is now estimated to have taken the lives of 200,000 people. That has led some bloggers to accuse Fox of using the devastation in Haiti to propagandize against Cuba. In an online news story entitled "US Spearheads Global Response to Haiti Earthquake," Fox reported that "one geographically close country is conspicuously absent from the roster of helping hands. Cuba, which had evacuated some of its residents as a precaution in case the earthquake triggered a tsunami, has so far not offered any assistance publicly to its devastated island neighbor." "The opposite is the case," reports Tony Iltis at Green Left Online. "At the time the earthquake struck, Cuba already had 344 doctors and paramedics working in Haiti. Also, in the past 12 years 450 young Haitians have graduated as doctors from Cuban colleges, free of charge." Iltis reported: Story continues below... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From January 13, more teams of Cuban health workers, accompanied by Haitian medical students studying in Cuba, began arriving in Haiti with medical supplies. A January 12 Granma article said that, within a week of the earthquake: ?Cuban doctors in the Haitian capital [had held] 13,418 consultancies, with 1,078 operations, more than 550 of them considered major surgery. The Cuban doctors have also assisted 38 births.? Notably, on the same day that Fox published its report, the network also ran an article from the Associated Press that stated, "Cuba, which already had hundreds of doctors in Haiti, treated injured in field hospitals." Fox doesn't appear to have corrected the error. As of press time, the network had not responded to Raw Story's repeated requests for comment. For nearly two weeks media watchdogs have been complaining that Fox News has been minimizing its coverage of the Haiti earthquake. MediaMatters reported that, in the first full day after the earthquake -- Jan. 13 -- MSNBC devoted 20 times as much time to Haiti as Fox News, and on January 14, the ratio was roughly five to one. But other observers say the lack of coverage is more widespread than Fox News. Freelance journalist Dave Lindorff reported last week that Cuba was commonly overlooked when US news outlets reported on international aid efforts. Far from ?doing nothing? about the disaster as the right-wing propagandists at Fox-TV were charging, Cuba has been one of the most effective and critical responders to the crisis, because it had set up a medical infrastructure before the quake, which was able to mobilize quickly and start treating the victims. If Cuba is to share any blame for the misconception that it's doing nothing, it may be that the government in Havana simply didn't put out a press release fast enough. A Jan. 13 article in Granma, the Cuban state-run publication, didn't mention Cuban relief efforts. That led bloggers to post the article as proof Cuba was absent from the rescue effort. But news of the country's efforts is slowly beginning to trickle into the United States. On Monday, NPR reported that "the day after the earthquake struck the Cuban doctors reopened two hospitals. Since the Cubans live in the poorest neighborhoods amongst the most disadvantaged Haitians they were actually the first responders." __._,_.___ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 26 20:43:55 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:43:55 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Venezuela Cancels Haiti's Debt Message-ID: [Note: the UK just also announced cancellation of Haiti's debt. When will the USA, France and Canada -- the three culprits most responsible for the devastation -- follow suit?] Venezuela Cancels Haiti's Debt http://embavenez-us.org/news.php?nid=5257 The President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez announced on Monday, January 25, that the Venezuelan government will forgive any Venezuelan debts held by Haiti. During a meeting of the Political Council of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), the Venezuelan president said that in view of the tragedy suffered by the Caribbean nation, its debt will be not only be forgiven, but the Venezuelan oil supply to the country will continue. President Chavez Proposes ALBA countries to Create Humanitarian Found for Haiti Likewise, the Venezuelan head of state proposed the creation of a $100 million Humanitarian Fund to strengthen the aid offered by the ALBA countries to Haiti. President Chavez explained that the fund will be financed by the governments, peoples and companies that integrate the Latin American organization. ========================================= CITGO Starts Shipment of 120 tons of Humanitarian Aid to Hait? http://embavenez-us.org/news.php?nid=5252 As a complement to the Venezuelan Aid Miami, Jan. 22, 2010 --- CITGO Petroleum Corporation, and its charitable organization, the Sim?n Bol?var Foundation, have started the shipment to Port-Au-Prince of 120 tons of humanitarian aid, in coordination with the Embassies of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the Republic of Haiti in the United States. This effort complements the contributions of the Venezuelan people through their government, led by President Hugo Ch?vez, with the goal of alleviating the suffering of the thousands of people left homeless following the earthquake that struck the Caribbean nation on Jan. 12. "In alignment with the solidarity principle of our shareholder, PDVSA, the national oil company of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, we at CITGO are working very hard to offer additional assistance to the Haitian people at this time of need. Because of this, I am very pleased to witness today the sendoff of this first 20-ton shipment, out of 120-tons of aid to be shipped to Port-A-Prince," said Alejandro Granado, president and CEO of CITGO, an affiliate of PDVSA. The high ranking oil executive explained that CITGO allocated one million dollars for the purchase of aid to Haiti which will help between 8,000 and 10,000 people. The funds were invested in the purchase of tents, cots, and non battery-operated AM/FM radios, which recharge using a manual system, as required by the Embassy of the Republic of Haiti in the United States. Additionally, CITGO is conducting a fund-raising campaign, aimed at increasing the help to the people of Haiti. This campaign involves CITGO's 3,600 employees and more than a thousand energy companies, suppliers, marketers and owners of CITGO branded service stations, as well as non-governmental/non-profit organizations, especially those with which CITGO is partnering in different social development initiatives. Furthermore, the Sim?n Bol?var Foundation is also matching dollar-for-dollar, up to $600,000 in monetary donations by CITGO employees, which could add $1.2 million to the total aid being provided. "Not only are we shipping aid items to Port-Au-Prince, we are also sending CITGO representatives to accompany a member of the Venezuelan embassy in the United States, in order to guarantee the arrival and distribution of the aid among the Haitian population, in support of the Haitian authorities and the Sim?n Bol?var International Brigade, sent by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela," Granado said. During the preparations to send this first shipment, the CITGO president was accompanied by the Minister Counselor of the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the United States, ?ngelo Rivero. "Venezuela in good part owes its independence to Haiti, and because of this, as President Hugo Ch?vez has pointed out, we will continue to do everything we can to help this sister nation recover from this tragedy," Rivero said. CITGO, based in Houston, is a refiner, transporter and marketer of transportation fuels, lubricants, petrochemicals and other industrial products. The company is owned by PDV America, Inc., an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Petr?leos de Venezuela, S.A., the national oil company of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. For more information visit www.citgo.com CITGO Petroleum Corporation / January 22, 2010 =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 26 20:46:16 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:46:16 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] [Canada] Demand proportional representation from opposition leaders Message-ID: From: "Murray Dobbin" Word Warriors letter # 94 - Demand proportional representation from opposition party leaders Both Jack Layton of the NDP and Michel Ignatieff of the Liberals are taking advantage of the new democracy movement by making proposals to curb the power of the prime minister - any prime minister - to shut down Parliament. While this is a good start it's clearly not enough. Without proportional representation (PR) the abuse of power in Parliament will continue. At the root of Harper's ability to abuse the power of the executive branch is the first-past-the-post system of electing MPs. Under such a system, and with multiple parties as we have in Canada, you need only 38 percent of the vote to govern. And when only 60% of eligible voters cast a ballot it means that fewer than 23% of Canadian elected Stephen Harper and his government. If PR had been in place in 2006, Harper would never have been prime minister because he could not have found another party in the house to support him. In the 2008 election Harper ended up with 143 seats - more than the Libs (77) and the NDP (37) combined. With proportional representation the Cons would have had 117 - fewer than the combined total of the Libs and NDP ( 80 + 55= 135). We should be supporting both the Libs and the NDP in their calls for limits on the power to prorogue. There are other reforms that need to be enacted to make our system more democratic but the key one is proportional representation as it would put pressure on the parties to enact other reforms. WRITE A SHORT LETTER. calling on Jack Layton and Michael Ignatieff to support proportional representation in federal elections. FRAMING.as above - the only real solution to democratizing Parliament, preventing the abuse of executive power and having House of Commons that actually reflects the voting desires of Canadians is to implement proportional representation. Some points to make in your letters: * Canadians should support both the NDP and the Liberals in their efforts to end the abuse of prorogation - this outrageous/appalling/unacceptable abuse of power must never happen again * But this is not enough - only when the seats in the House of Commons exactly reflect the percentage of votes that the parties receive from Canadians, will our Parliament be truly democratic. We need proportional representation and the NDP and the Liberals should make this part of their next election platform. * With PR we never again have a government given absolute power with just 38% of the vote. * The Liberals and the NDP - if they are serious about ending the autocratic rule of Stephen Harper and renewing democracy - should begin now to talk about a possible accord after the next election and jointly commit to implementing PR. * Call on the democracy movement which had such huge success last Saturday, to continue its mobilizing of Canadians and to move from criticizing Harper to proposing positive reforms - like PR. * With PR, the percentage of Canadians voting would increase as people would not feel that their votes are wasted - another way that democracy would be enhanced. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 26 22:41:15 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:41:15 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] I.F. Stone on fights worth fighting Message-ID: The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing - for the sheer fun and joy of it - to go right ahead and fight, knowing you're going to lose. You mustn't feel like a martyr. You've got to enjoy it. --I. F. Stone =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Tue Jan 26 23:01:59 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:59 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Haiti: Obama's Katrina (by American MD's) Message-ID: <9AD25C975A4342EEB4A131052FF7746F@agingCHS072729> [why this statement is filed under and falls under the category "OPINION" is a mystery, but then this is the Wall Street Journal ! What IS surprising is that this statement even appears here.....rm] <> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703808904575025091656446622.html#mod=todays_us_opinion JANUARY 26, 2010. OPINION Haiti: Obama's Katrina By SOUMITRA R. EACHEMPATI, DEAN LORICH AND DAVID HELFET Four years ago the initial medical response to Hurricane Katrina was ill equipped, understaffed, poorly coordinated and delayed. Criticism of the paltry federal efforts was immediate and fierce. Unfortunately, the response to the latest international disaster in Haiti has been no better, compounding the catastrophe. On Tuesday, Jan. 12, a major earthquake overwhelmed a country one hour south of Miami whose inhabitants include American citizens and their relatives. Thanks to the Internet, pictures of the death and destruction were familiar to the world within hours, and the need for a massive influx of relief and specialized medical care was instantaneously apparent. While particular fatalities such as head injuries or massive blood loss are rarely treatable in mass casualty situations, delayed deaths from infection may be preventable. On Wednesday, the day after the quake, we organized a relief team in cooperation with the U.S. State Department and Partners in Health (a Boston-based humanitarian organization) to provide emergency orthopedic and surgical care. We wanted to reach the local hospitals in Haiti immediately-but were only allowed by the U.S. military controlling the local airport to land in Port-au-Prince Saturday night. We were among the first groups there. This delay proved tragic. Upon our arrival at the Haiti Community Hospital we found scores of patients with pus dripping out of open fractures and crush injuries. Some wounds were already infested with maggots. Approximately one-third of the victims were children. Most of the patients already had life-threatening infections, and all were dehydrated. Many had been waiting in the hospital compound for days without water, antibiotics or even pain medicine. The hospital smelled of infected, rotting limbs. Our team spent the next 60 plus hours performing a variety of operations including orthopedic repairs to broken limbs and amputations. Sadly, a limb amputation in an underdeveloped country may be a death sentence. We tallied over 100 operations between four surgeons and three orthopedic fellows (medical doctors getting additional specialty training), and evaluated perhaps 100 more patients for surgery. In contrast, a busy night in a New York City hospital might include four or five surgeries. Hindering the effort was an absence of ventilators, anesthetic machines, and oxygen tanks. There was no blood bank or laboratory, and a dearth of surgical instruments. Due to the lack of resources, we know many patients may still succumb to infection and other postoperative complications. The U.S. response to the earthquake should be considered an embarrassment. Our operation received virtually no support from any branch of the U.S. government, including the State Department. As we ran out of various supplies we had no means to acquire more. There was no way to transfer patients we were poorly equipped to manage (such as a critically ill newborn with respiratory distress) to a facility where they would get better care. We were heartbroken having to tell patients suffering incredible pain we could not perform their surgery for at least a day. Even after hearing gunshots outside the hospital, we had no protection for ourselves or our belongings-though we observed that a Jamaican medical team came with armed guards. All these problems stemmed from ours being an isolated operation, a feature that may work in a humanitarian medical mission but not in a disaster situation. Later, as we were leaving Haiti, we were appalled to see warehouse-size quantities of unused medicines, food and other supplies at the airport, surrounded by hundreds of U.S. and international soldiers standing around aimlessly. With an organized central command dedicated to medical relief, we could have done much better. A reconnaissance team, managed by government or U.N. officials in conjunction with medical and logistic specialists, could have immediately come to Haiti to evaluate local facilities. Preapproved groups of experienced civilian and military medical teams could have been consolidated in the U.S. from the Pensacola, Fla., military base or other locations, to avoid the airplane traffic clutter and delays that plagued landing of people and supplies into Port-au-Prince. Targeted teams with military support could then go to adequate facilities where they could be most effective. After the disaster, certain roads should have been secured to allow the transfer of patients or supplies. A base hospital could have been established for patients requiring specialized services (such as a neonatal ICU and neurosurgery). A specialized, postoperative care center should have been established. In our case, however, we lacked the resources to ensure that patients were receiving basic wound care, antibiotics, nutrition or hydration. The death toll from Katrina was under 2,000 people. Deaths in Haiti as of yesterday are at least 150,000. Untold numbers are dying of untreated, preventable infections. For all the outcry about Katrina, our nation has fared no better in this latest disaster. Dr. Eachempati is a trauma surgeon and incoming president of the New York State Chapter of the American College of Surgeons. Drs. Lorich and Helfet are orthopedic surgeons. All practice at the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City. Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A17 =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Wed Jan 27 17:03:54 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (menecraj at shaw.ca) Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:03:54 -0800 Subject: [Fresh Ink] wants you to take action on "Medical relief, not military intervention in Haiti!"! Message-ID: <20100127230353.A910B1B30233@blade03-04.care2.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From may at applebybooks.net Thu Jan 28 00:23:45 2010 From: may at applebybooks.net (May at Appleby Books) Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:23:45 -0800 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Howard Zinn Dies at 87 Message-ID: <4B612D71.30704@applebybooks.net> The Boston Globe, January 27, 2010 07:12 PM Howard Zinn, Historian who Challenged Status Quo, Dies at 87 by Mark Feeney and Bryan Marquard, Globe Staff Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and whose books, such as "A People's History of the United States," inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience, died today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling. He was 87. His daughter, Myla Kabat-Zinn of Lexington, said he suffered a heart attack. "He's made an amazing contribution to American intellectual and moral culture," Noam Chomsky, the left-wing activist and MIT professor, said tonight. "He's changed the conscience of America in a highly constructive way. I really can't think of anyone I can compare him to in this respect." Chomsky added that Dr. Zinn's writings "simply changed perspective and understanding for a whole generation. He opened up approaches to history that were novel and highly significant. Both by his actions, and his writings for 50 years, he played a powerful role in helping and in many ways inspiring the Civil rights movement and the anti-war movement." For Dr. Zinn, activism was a natural extension of the revisionist brand of history he taught. "A People?s History of the United States" (1980), his best-known book, had for its heroes not the Founding Fathers?many of them slaveholders and deeply attached to the status quo, as Dr. Zinn was quick to point out?but rather the farmers of Shays' Rebellion and union organizers of the 1930s. As he wrote in his autobiography, "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train" (1994), "From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than 'objectivity'; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble." Certainly, it was a recipe for rancor between Dr. Zinn and John Silber, former president of Boston University. Dr. Zinn, a leading critic of Silber, twice helped lead faculty votes to oust the BU president, who in turn once accused Dr. Zinn of arson (a charge he quickly retracted) and cited him as a prime example of teachers "who poison the well of academe." Dr. Zinn was a cochairman of the strike committee when BU professors walked out in 1979. After the strike was settled, he and four colleagues were charged with violating their contract when they refused to cross a picket line of striking secretaries. The charges against "the BU Five" were soon dropped. In 1997, Dr. Zinn slipped into popular culture when his writing made a cameo appearance in the film "Good Will Hunting." The title character, played by Matt Damon, lauds "A People?s History" and urges Robin Williams?s character to read it. Damon, who co-wrote the script, was a neighbor of the Zinns growing up. "Howard had a great mind and was one of the great voices in the American political life," Ben Affleck, also a family friend growing up and Damon's co-star in "Good Will Hunting," said in a statement. "He taught me how valuable?how necessary?dissent was to democracy and to America itself. He taught that history was made by the everyman, not the elites. I was lucky enough to know him personally and I will carry with me what I learned from him?and try to impart it to my own children?in his memory." Damon was later involved in a television version of the book, "The People Speak," which ran on the History Channel in 2009, and he narrated a 2004 biographical documentary, "Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train." "Howard had a genius for the shape of public morality and for articulating the great alternative vision of peace as more than a dream," said James Carroll a columnist for the Globe's opinion pages whose friendship with Dr. Zinn dates to when Carroll was a Catholic chaplain at BU. "But above all, he had a genius for the practical meaning of love. That is what drew legions of the young to him and what made the wide circle of his friends so constantly amazed and grateful." Dr. Zinn was born in New York City on Aug. 24, 1922, the son of Jewish immigrants, Edward Zinn, a waiter, and Jennie (Rabinowitz) Zinn, a housewife. He attended New York public schools and was working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard when he met Roslyn Shechter. "She was working as a secretary," Dr. Zinn said in an interview with the Globe nearly two years ago. "We were both working in the same neighborhood, but we didn't know each other. A mutual friend asked me to deliver something to her. She opened the door, I saw her, and that was it." He joined the Army Air Corps, and they courted through the mail before marrying in October 1944 while he was on his first furlough. She died in 2008. During World War II, he served as a bombardier, was awarded the Air Medal, and attained the rank of second lieutenant. After the war, Dr. Zinn worked at a series of menial jobs until entering New York University on the GI Bill as a 27-year-old freshman. He worked nights in a warehouse loading trucks to support his studies. He received his bachelor?s degree from NYU, followed by master?s and doctoral degrees in history from Columbia University. Dr. Zinn was an instructor at Upsala College and lecturer at Brooklyn College before joining the faculty of Spelman College in Atlanta, in 1956. He served at the historically black women?s institution as chairman of the history department. Among his students were novelist Alice Walker, who called him "the best teacher I ever had," and Marian Wright Edelman, future head of the Children's Defense Fund. During this time, Dr. Zinn became active in the civil rights movement. He served on the executive committee of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the most aggressive civil rights organization of the time, and participated in numerous demonstrations. Dr. Zinn became an associate professor of political science at BU in 1964 and was named full professor in 1966. The focus of his activism became the Vietnam War. Dr. Zinn spoke at many rallies and teach-ins and drew national attention when he and the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, another leading antiwar activist, went to Hanoi in 1968 to receive three prisoners released by the North Vietnamese. Dr. Zinn?s involvement in the antiwar movement led to his publishing two books: "Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal" (1967) and "Disobedience and Democracy" (1968). He had previously published "LaGuardia in Congress" (1959), which had won the American Historical Association's Albert J. Beveridge Prize; "SNCC: The New Abolitionists" (1964); "The Southern Mystique" (1964); and "New Deal Thought" (1966). He also was the author of "The Politics of History" (1970); "Postwar America" (1973); "Justice in Everyday Life" (1974); and "Declarations of Independence" (1990). In 1988, Dr. Zinn took early retirement to concentrate on speaking and writing. The latter activity included writing for the stage. Dr. Zinn had two plays produced: "Emma," about the anarchist leader Emma Goldman, and "Daughter of Venus." On his last day at BU, Dr. Zinn ended class 30 minutes early so he could join a picket line and urged the 500 students attending his lecture to come along. A hundred did. "Howard was an old and very close friend," Chomsky said. "He was a person of real courage and integrity, warmth and humor. He was just a remarkable person." Carroll called Dr. Zinn "simply one of the greatest Americans of our time. He will not be replaced?or soon forgotten. How we loved him back." In addition to his daughter, Dr. Zinn leaves a son, Jeff of Wellfleet; three granddaughters; and two grandsons. Funeral plans were not available. ? 2010 The Boston Globe From menecraj at shaw.ca Thu Jan 28 09:07:20 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:07:20 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] John Pilger: The Kidnapping of Haiti Message-ID: <8CF41AED6C5A466C9DE4DA9B16726C19@agingCHS072729> http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/4123 John Pilger's ZSpace Page / ZSpace The Kidnapping of Haiti Jan 27, 2010 By John Pilger The theft of Haiti has been swift and crude. On 22 January, the United States secured "formal approval" from the United Nations to take over all air and sea ports in Haiti, and to "secure" roads. No Haitian signed the agreement, which has no basis in law. Power rules in an American naval blockade and the arrival of 13,000 marines, special forces, spooks and mercenaries, none with humanitarian relief training. The airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is now an American military base and relief flights have been re-routed to the Dominican Republic. All flights stopped for three hours for the arrival of Hillary Clinton. Critically injured Haitians waited unaided as 800 American residents in Haiti were fed, watered and evacuated. Six days passed before the US Air Force dropped bottled water to people suffering thirst and dehydration. The first TV reports played a critical role, giving the impression of widespread criminal mayhem. Matt Frei, the BBC reporter dispatched from Washington, seemed on the point of hyperventilation as he brayed about the "violence" and need for "security". In spite of the demonstrable dignity of the earthquake victims, and evidence of citizens' groups toiling unaided to rescue people, and even an American general's assessment that the violence in Haiti was considerably less than before the earthquake, Frei claimed that "looting is the only industry" and "the dignity of Haiti's past is long forgotten." Thus, a history of unerring US violence and exploitation in Haiti was consigned to the victims. "There's no doubt," reported Frei in the aftermath of America's bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003, "that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially now to the Middle East ... is now increasingly tied up with military power." In a sense, he was right. Never before in so-called peacetime have human relations been as militarised by rapacious power. Never before has an American president subordinated his government to the military establishment of his discredited predecessor, as Barack Obama has done. In pursuing George W. Bush's policy of war and domination, Obama has sought from Congress an unprecedented military budget in excess of $700 billion. He has become, in effect, the spokesman for a military coup For the people of Haiti the implications are clear, if grotesque. With US troops in control of their country, Obama has appointed George W. Bush to the "relief effort": a parody surely lifted from Graham Greene's The Comedians, set in Papa Doc's Haiti. As president, Bush's relief effort following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 amounted to an ethnic cleansing of many of New Orleans' black population. In 2004, he ordered the kidnapping of the democratically-elected prime minister of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and exiled him in Africa. The popular Aristide had had the temerity to legislate modest reforms, such as a minimum wage for those who toil in Haiti's sweatshops. When I was last in Haiti, I watched very young girls stooped in front of whirring, hissing, binding machines at the Port-au-Prince Superior Baseball Plant. Many had swollen eyes and lacerated arms. I produced a camera and was thrown out. Haiti is where America makes the equipment for its hallowed national game, for next to nothing. Haiti is where Walt Disney contractors make Mickey Mouse pjamas, for next to nothing. The US controls Haiti's sugar, bauxite and sisal. Rice-growing was replaced by imported American rice, driving people into the cities and towns and jerry-built housing. Years after year, Haiti was invaded by US marines, infamous for atrocities that have been their specialty from the Philippines to Afghanistan. Bill Clinton is another comedian, having got himself appointed the UN's man in Haiti. Once fawned upon by the BBC as "Mr. Nice Guy ... bringing democracy back to a sad and troubled land", Clinton is Haiti's most notorious privateer, demanding de-regulation of the economy for the benefit of the sweatshop barons. Lately, he has been promoting a $55m deal to turn the north of Haiti into an American-annexed "tourist playground". Not for tourists is the US building its fifth biggest embassy in Port-au-Prince. Oil was found in Haiti's waters decades ago and the US has kept it in reserve until the Middle East begins to run dry. More urgently, an occupied Haiti has a strategic importance in Washington's "rollback" plans for Latin America. The goal is the overthrow of the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, control of Venezuela's abundant oil reserves and sabotage of the growing regional cooperation that has given millions their first taste of an economic and social justice long denied by US-sponsored regimes. The first rollback success came last year with the coup against President Jose Manuel Zelaya in Honduras who also dared advocate a minimum wage and that the rich pay tax. Obama's secret support for the illegal regime carries a clear warning to vulnerable governments in central America. Last October, the regime in Colombia, long bankrolled by Washington and supported by death squads, handed the US seven military bases to, according to US air force documents, "combat anti-US governments in the region". Media propaganda has laid the ground for what may well be Obama's next war. On 14 December, researchers at the University of West England published first findings of a ten-year study of the BBC's reporting of Venezuela. Of 304 BBC reports, only three mentioned any of the historic reforms of the Chavez government, while the majority denigrated Chavez's extraordinary democratic record, at one point comparing him to Hitler. Such distortion and its attendant servitude to western power are rife across the Anglo-American corporate media. People who struggle for a better life, or for life itself, from Venezuela to Honduras to Haiti, deserve our support. www.johnpilger.com =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Thu Jan 28 10:02:22 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 10:02:22 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Muscling Latin America Message-ID: <78DA34E9A6FE40859D047B673C465111@agingCHS072729> http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100208/grandin Muscling Latin America By Greg Grandin January 21, 2010 In September Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, delivered on an electoral promise and refused to renew Washington's decade-old, rent-free lease on an air base outside the Pacific coast town of Manta, which for the past ten years has served as the Pentagon's main South American outpost. The eviction was a serious effort to fulfill the call of Ecuador's new Constitution to promote "universal disarmament" and oppose the "imposition" of military bases of "some states in the territory of others." It was also one of the most important victories for the global demilitarization movement, loosely organized around the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases, since protests forced the US Navy to withdraw from Vieques, Puerto Rico, in 2003. Correa, though, couldn't resist an easy joke. "We'll renew the lease," he quipped, "if the US lets us set up a base in Miami." Funny. Then Washington answered with a show of force: take away one, we'll grab seven. In late October the United States and Colombia signed an agreement granting the Pentagon use of seven military bases, along with an unlimited number of as yet unspecified "facilities and locations." They add to Washington's already considerable military presence in Colombia, as well as in Central America and the Caribbean. Responding to criticism from South America on the Colombian deal, the White House insists it merely formalizes existing military cooperation between the two countries under Plan Colombia and will not increase the offensive capabilities of the US Southern Command (Southcom). The Pentagon says otherwise, writing in its 2009 budget request that it needed funds to upgrade one of the bases to conduct "full spectrum operations throughout South America" to counter, among other threats, "anti-U.S. governments" and to "expand expeditionary warfare capability." That ominous language, since scrubbed from the budget document, might be a case of hyping the threat to justify spending during austere times. But the Obama administration's decision to go forward with the bases does accelerate a dangerous trend in US hemispheric policy. In recent years, Washington has experienced a fast erosion of its influence in South America, driven by the rise of Brazil, the region's left turn, the growing influence of China and Venezuela's use of oil revenue to promote a multipolar diplomacy. Broad social movements have challenged efforts by US- and Canadian-based companies to expand extractive industries like mining, biofuels, petroleum and logging. Last year in Peru, massive indigenous protests forced the repeal of laws aimed at opening large swaths of the Amazon to foreign timber, mining and oil corporations, and throughout the region similar activism continues to place Latin America in the vanguard of the anti-corporate and anti-militarist global democracy movement. Such challenges to US authority have led the Council on Foreign Relations to pronounce the Monroe Doctrine "obsolete." But that doctrine, which for nearly two centuries has been used to justify intervention from Patagonia to the Rio Grande, has not expired so much as slimmed down, with Barack Obama's administration disappointing potential regional allies by continuing to promote a volatile mix of militarism and free-trade orthodoxy in a corridor running from Mexico to Colombia. The anchor of this condensed Monroe Doctrine is Plan Colombia. Heading into the eleventh year of what was planned to phase out after five, Washington's multibillion-dollar military aid package has failed to stem the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States. More Andean coca was synthesized into cocaine in 2008 than in 1998, and the drug's retail price is significantly lower today, adjusted for inflation, than it was a decade ago. But Plan Colombia is not really about drugs; it is the Latin American edition of GCOIN, or Global Counterinsurgency, the current term used by strategists to downplay the religious and ideological associations of George W. Bush's bungled "global war on terror" and focus on a more modest program of extending state rule over "lawless" or "ungoverned spaces," in GCOIN parlance. Starting around 2006, with the occupation of Iraq going badly, Plan Colombia became the counterinsurgent marquee, celebrated by strategists as a successful application of the "clear, hold and build" sequence favored by theorists like Gen. David Petraeus. Its lessons have been incorporated into the curriculums of many US military colleges and cited by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a model for Afghanistan. Not only did the Colombian military, with support from Washington, weaken the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), Latin America's oldest and strongest insurgency, but according to the Council on Foreign Relations, it secured a state presence in "many regions previously controlled by illegal armed groups, reestablishing elected governments, building and rebuilding public infrastructure, and affirming the rule of law." Plan Colombia, in other words, offered not just a road map to success but success itself. "Colombia is what Iraq should eventually look like," wrote Atlantic contributor Robert Kaplan, "in our best dreams." Traditionally in most counterinsurgencies, the "clear" stage entails a plausibly deniable reliance on death-squad terror--think Operation Phoenix in Vietnam or the Mano Blanca in El Salvador. The Bush administration was in office by the time Plan Colombia became fully operational, and according to the Washington Post's Scott Wilson, it condoned the activities of right-wing paramilitaries, loosely organized as the United Self-Defense Forces, or AUC in Spanish. "The argument at the time, always made privately," Wilson writes, "was that the paramilitaries"--responsible for most of Colombia's political murders--"provided the force that the army did not yet have." This was followed by the "hold" phase, a massive paramilitary land grab. Fraud and force--"sell, or your widow will," goes many an opening bid--combined with indiscriminate fumigation, which poisoned farmlands, to turn millions of peasants into refugees. Paramilitaries, along with their narcotraficante allies, now control about 10 million acres, roughly half of the country's most fertile land. After parts of the countryside had been pacified, it was time to "build" the state. Technically, the United States considers the AUC to be a terrorist organization, part of the narcoterrorist triptych, along with FARC and the narcos, that Southcom is pledged to fight. But Plan Colombia did not so much entail an assault on the paras--aside from the most recalcitrant and expendable--as create a venue through which, by defining public policy as perpetual war, they could become the state itself. Under the smokescreen of a government-brokered amnesty, condemned by national and international human rights groups for institutionalizing impunity, paras have taken control of hundreds of municipal governments, establishing what Colombian social scientist Le?n Valencia calls "true local dictatorships," consolidating their property seizures and deepening their ties to narcos, landed elites and politicians. The country's sprawling intelligence apparatus is infiltrated by this death squad/narco combine, as is its judiciary and Congress, where more than forty deputies from the governing party are under investigation for ties to the AUC. Plan Colombia, in other words, has financed the opposite of what is taking place in neighboring Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela, where progressive movements are fitfully trying to "refound" their societies along more inclusive lines. In place of the left's "participatory democracy," Colombian President ?lvaro Uribe offers "democratic security," a social compact whereby those who submit to the new order are promised safe, even yuppified cities and secure highways, while oppositional civil society suffers intimidation and murder. Colombia remains the hands-down worst repressor in Latin America. More than 500 trade unionists have been executed since Uribe took office. In recent years 195 teachers have been assassinated, and not one arrest has been made for the killings. And the military stands accused of murdering more than 2,000 civilians and then dressing their bodies in guerrilla uniforms in order to prove progress against the FARC. It also seems that many right-wing warriors are not cut out for the quiet life offered by the Paz Uribista. The Bogot?-based think tank Nuevo Arco Iris reports mini civil wars breaking out among "heirs of the AUC" for control of local spoils. Yet Plan Colombia continues to be hailed. Flying home from a recent Bogot?-hosted GCOIN conference, the former head of Southcom wrote on his blog that Colombia is a "must see" tourist spot, having "come a long, long way in controlling a deep-seated insurgency just over two hours flight from Miami--and we could learn a great deal from their success." Seen in light of his escalation in Afghanistan, Obama's support for the Colombian base deal endorses the kind of elastic threat assessment that has turned the "long war" against radical Islam into a wide war where ultimate victory will be a world absent of crime--"counterinsurgen-?cies without end," as Andrew Bacevich recently put it. Shortly after the fall of Baghdad, Washington tried to conscript all of Latin America in the fight. In October 2003 it pushed the Organization of American States to include corruption, undocumented migration, money laundering, natural and man-made disasters, AIDS, environmental degradation, poverty and computer hacking alongside terrorism and drugs as security threats. In 2004 an Army War College strategist proposed "exporting Plan Colombia" to all of Latin America, which Donald Rumsfeld tried to do later that year at a regional defense ministers meeting in Ecuador. He was rebuffed; countries like Chile and Brazil refuse to subordinate their militaries, as they did during the cold war, to US command. So the United States retrenched, setting about to fight the wide war in a narrower place, creating a security corridor running from Colombia through Central America to Mexico. With a hodgepodge of treaties and projects, such as the International Law Enforcement Academy and the Merida Initiative, Obama is continuing the policies of his predecessors, spending millions to integrate the region's military, policy, intelligence and even, through Patriot Act-like legislation, judicial systems. This is best thought of as an effort to enlarge the radius of Plan Colombia to create a unified, supra-national counterinsurgent infrastructure. Since there is "fusion" among Latin American terrorists and criminals, goes a typical argument in a recent issue of the Pentagon's Joint Force Quarterly, "countering the threat will require fusion on our part." At the same time, schemes like the Mesoamerican Integration and Development Project are using World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank financing to synchronize the highway, communication and energy networks of Mexico, Central America and Colombia, blending the North American and Central American free-trade treaties and, eventually, the pending Colombian Free Trade Agreement into a seamless whole. Thomas Shannon, Bush's top envoy to Latin America and Obama's ambassador to Brazil, called these initiatives "armoring NAFTA." "Fusion" is a good word for this integration, since the melding of neoliberal economics and counterinsurgent diplomacy is explosive. One effect of Plan Colombia has been to diversify the violence and corruption endemic to the cocaine trade, with Central American and Mexican cartels and military factions taking over export of the drug to the United States. This cycle of violence is reinforced by the rapid spread of mining, hydroelectric, biofuel and petroleum operations, which wreak havoc on local ecosystems, poisoning land and water, and by the opening of national markets to US agroindustry, which destroys local economies. The ensuing displacement either creates the assorted criminal threats the wide war is waged to counter or provokes protest, which is dealt with by the avengers the wide war empowers. Throughout Latin America, a new generation of community activists continues to advance the global democracy movement that was largely derailed in the United States by 9/11. They provide important leadership to US environmental, indigenous, religious and human rights organizations, working to develop a comprehensive and sustainable social-justice agenda. But in the Mexico-Colombia corridor, activists are confronting what might be called bio-paramilitarism, a revival of the old anticommunist death-squad/planter alliance, energized by the current intensification of extractive and agricultural industries. In Colombia, Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities fighting paras who have seized land to cultivate African palm for ethanol production have been evicted by mercenaries and the military [see Teo Ballv?, "The Dark Side of Plan Colombia," June 15, 2009]. From Panama to Mexico, rural protesters are likewise targeted. In the Salvadoran department of Caba?as, for instance, death squads have executed four leaders--three in December--who opposed the Vancouver-based Pacific Rim Mining Company's efforts to dig a gold mine in their community. And in Honduras, human rights organizations say palm planters have recruited forty members of Colombia's AUC as private security following the June overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya. That coup was at least partly driven by Zelaya's alliance with liberation-theologian priests and other environmental activists protesting mining and biofuel-induced deforestation. Just a month before his overthrow, Zelaya--in response to an investigation that charged Goldcorp, another Vancouver-based company, with contaminating Honduras's Siria Valley--introduced a law that would have required community approval before new mining concessions were granted; it also banned open-pit mines and the use of cyanide and mercury. That legislation died with his ouster. Zelaya also tried to break the dependent relationship whereby the region exports oil to US refineries only to buy back gasoline and diesel at monopolistic prices; he joined Petrocaribe--the alliance that provides cheap Venezuelan oil to member countries--and signed a competitive contract with Conoco Phillips. This move earned him the ire of Exxon and Chevron, which dominate Central America's fuel market. Since the controversial November 29 presidential elections, Honduras has largely fallen off the media's radar, even as the pace of repression has accelerated. Since the State Department's recognition of that vote, about ten opposition leaders have been executed--roughly half of the number killed in the previous five months. It didn't have to be this way. Latin America does not present a serious military danger. No country is trying to acquire a nuclear weapon or cut off access to vital resources. Venezuela continues to sell oil to the United States. Obama is popular in Latin America, and most governments, including those on the left, would have welcomed a demilitarized diplomacy that downplays terrorism and prioritizes reducing poverty and inequality--exactly the kind of "new multilateralism" Obama called for in his presidential campaign. Yet because Latin America presents no real threat, there is no incentive to confront entrenched interests that oppose a modernization of hemispheric relations. "Obama," said a top-level Argentine diplomat despairingly, "has decided that Latin America isn't worth it. He gave it to the right." The White House could have worked with the Organization of American States to restore democracy in Honduras. Instead, after months of mixed signals, Obama capitulated to Senate Republicans and endorsed a murderous regime. Washington could try to advance a new hemispheric economic policy, balancing Latin American calls for equity and development with corporate profits. But the Democratic Party remains Wall Street's party, and shortly after taking office Obama abandoned his pledge to renegotiate NAFTA. With Washington's blessing the IMF continues to push Latin American countries to liberalize their economies. In December Arturo Valenzuela, Obama's assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, caused a scandal in Argentina when he urged the country to return to the investment climate of 1996--which would be something like Buenos Aires calling on the United States to reinflate the recent Greenspan bubble. The Obama administration could reconsider Plan Colombia and the Pentagon's base agreement. But that would mean rethinking a longer, multi-decade, bipartisan, trillion-dollars-and-counting "war on drugs," and Obama has other wars to extricate himself from--or not, as the case may be. Unable or unwilling to make concessions on these and other issues important to Latin America--normalizing relations with Cuba, for instance, or advancing immigration reform--the White House is adopting an increasingly antagonistic posture. Hillary Clinton, following a visit to Brazil by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, warned Latin Americans to "think twice" about "the consequences" of engagement with Iran. Bolivia denounced the comments as a threat, Brazil canceled a scheduled meeting between its foreign minister and Valenzuela, and even Argentina, no friend of Iran, grew irritated. As the Argentine diplomat quoted above told me, "The Obama administration would never talk to European countries like that." Insiders report that high-level State Department officials are furious at Brazilian president Luiz In?cio Lula da Silva, who in recent months has been as steadfast as Venezuela's Hugo Ch?vez in opposing Washington's ongoing militarism, particularly the White House's attempt to legitimize the Honduran coup. Having successfully thwarted a similar destabilization campaign against Bolivian president Evo Morales in 2008, Brazil, according to Lula's top foreign-policy adviser, Marco Aur?lio Garcia, is worried that Obama's Honduras policy is "introducing the 'theory of the preventive coup' in Latin America"--by which Garcia means an extension of Bush's preventive war doctrine. In a region that has not seen a major interstate war for more than seventy years, Brazil is concerned that the Pentagon's Colombian base deal is escalating tensions between Colombia and Venezuela. The US media have focused on Ch?vez's warning that the "winds of war" were blowing through the region, but Brazil's foreign minister, Celso Amorim, places blame for the crisis squarely on Washington. Ch?vez, Amorim said, "had backed away from that statement. To talk about war--a word which should never be uttered--is one thing. Another is the practical and objective issues of the Colombian bases.... If Iran or Russia were to establish a base in Venezuela, that would also worry us." There are also indications that the White House is hoping an upcoming round of presidential elections in South America will restore pliable governments. On a recent trip to Buenos Aires, for instance, Valenzuela met with a number of extreme right-wing politicians but not with moderate opposition leaders, drawing criticism from center-left President Cristina Fern?ndez's government. In January a right-wing billionaire, Sebasti?n Pi?era, was elected president of Chile. And if Lula's Workers Party loses Brazil's October presidential vote, as polls indicate is a possibility, the Andean left will be increasingly isolated, caught between the Colombia-Mexico security corridor to the north and administrations more willing to accommodate Washington's interests to the south. Twenty-first-century containment for twenty-first-century socialism. Fidel Castro, normally an optimist, has recently speculated that before Obama finishes his presidency, "there will be six to eight rightist governments in Latin America." Until that happens, the United States is left with a rump Monroe Doctrine and an increasingly threatening stance toward a region it used to call its own. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Thu Jan 28 13:43:12 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:43:12 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Mike Davis: Who Will Build The Ark? Message-ID: <664BE8E856514C8DBD08A59D29BDC03C@agingCHS072729> New Left Review 61, January-February 2010 mike davis WHO WILL BUILD THE ARK? What follows is rather like the famous courtroom scene in Orson Welles's The Lady from Shanghai (1947). [1] In that noir allegory of proletarian virtue in the embrace of ruling-class decadence, Welles plays a leftwing sailor named Michael O'Hara who rolls in the hay with femme fatale Rita Hayworth, and then gets framed for murder. Her husband, Arthur Bannister, the most celebrated criminal lawyer in America, played by Everett Sloane, convinces O'Hara to appoint him as his defence, all the better to ensure his rival's conviction and execution. At the turning point in the trial, decried by the prosecution as 'yet another of the great Bannister's famous tricks', Bannister the attorney calls Bannister the aggrieved husband to the witness stand and interrogates himself in rapid schizoid volleys, to the mirth of the jury. In the spirit of Lady from Shanghai, this essay is organized as a debate with myself, a mental tournament between analytic despair and utopian possibility that is personally, and probably objectively, irresolvable. In the first section, 'Pessimism of the Intellect', I adduce arguments for believing that we have already lost the first, epochal stage of the battle against global warming. The Kyoto Protocol, in the smug but sadly accurate words of one of its chief opponents, has done 'nothing measurable' about climate change. Global carbon dioxide emissions rose by the same amount they were supposed to fall because of it. [2] It is highly unlikely that greenhouse gas accumulation can be stabilized this side of the famous 'red line' of 450 ppm by 2020. If this is the case, the most heroic efforts of our children's generation will be unable to forestall a radical reshaping of ecologies, water resources and agricultural systems. In a warmer world, moreover, socio-economic inequality will have a meteorological mandate, and there will be little incentive for the rich northern hemisphere countries, whose carbon emissions have destroyed the climate equilibrium of the Holocene, to share resources for adaptation with those poor subtropical countries most vulnerable to droughts and floods. The second part of the essay, 'Optimism of the Imagination', is my self-rebuttal. I appeal to the paradox that the single most important cause of global warming-the urbanization of humanity-is also potentially the principal solution to the problem of human survival in the later twenty-first century. Left to the dismal politics of the present, of course, cities of poverty will almost certainly become the coffins of hope; but all the more reason that we must start thinking like Noah. Since most of history's giant trees have already been cut down, a new Ark will have to be constructed out of the materials that a desperate humanity finds at hand in insurgent communities, pirate technologies, bootlegged media, rebel science and forgotten utopias. i. pessimism of the intellect Our old world, the one that we have inhabited for the last 12,000 years, has ended, even if no newspaper has yet printed its scientific obituary. The verdict is that of the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London. Founded in 1807, the Society is the world's oldest association of earth scientists, and its Stratigraphy Commission acts as a college of cardinals in the adjudication of the geological time-scale. Stratigraphers slice up Earth's history as preserved in sedimentary strata into a hierarchy of eons, eras, periods and epochs, marked by the 'golden spikes' of mass extinctions, speciation events or abrupt changes in atmospheric chemistry. In geology, as in biology and history, periodization is a complex, controversial art; the most bitter feud in nineteenth-century British science-still known as the 'Great Devonian Controversy'-was fought over competing interpretations of homely Welsh greywackes and English Old Red Sandstone. As a result, Earth science sets extraordinarily rigorous standards for the beatification of any new geological division. Although the idea of an 'Anthropocene' epoch-defined by the emergence of urban-industrial society as a geological force-has long circulated in the literature, stratigraphers have never acknowledged its warrant. At least for the London Society, that position has now been revised. To the question, 'Are we now living in the Anthropocene?', the twenty-one members of the Commission have unanimously answered 'yes'. In a 2008 report they marshalled robust evidence to support the hypothesis that the Holocene epoch-the interglacial span of unusually stable climate that allowed the rapid evolution of agriculture and urban civilization-has ended, and that the Earth has now entered 'a stratigraphic interval without close parallel' in the last several million years. [3] In addition to the build-up of greenhouse gases, the stratigraphers cited human landscape transformation, which 'now exceeds [annual] natural sediment production by an order of magnitude', the ominous acidification of the oceans, and the relentless destruction of biota. This new age, they explained, is defined both by the heating trend-whose closest analogue may be the catastrophe known as the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum, 56 million years ago-and by the radical instability expected of future environments. In sombre prose, they warned: The combination of extinctions, global species migrations and the widespread replacement of natural vegetation with agricultural monocultures is producing a distinctive contemporary biostratigraphic signal. These effects are permanent, as future evolution will take place from surviving (and frequently anthropogenically relocated) stocks. [4] Evolution itself, in other words, has been forced into a new trajectory. Spontaneous decarbonization? The Commission's recognition of the Anthropocene coincided with growing scientific controversy over the Fourth Assessment Report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The ipcc, of course, is mandated to assess the possible range of climate change and establish appropriate targets for the mitigation of emissions. The most critical baselines include estimates of 'climate sensitivity' to increasing accumulations of greenhouse gas, as well as socio-economic tableaux that configure different futures of energy use and thus of emissions. But an impressive number of senior researchers, including key participants in the ipcc's own working groups, have recently expressed unease or disagreement with the methodology of the four-volume Fourth Assessment, which they charge is unwarrantedly optimistic in its geophysics and social science. [5] The most celebrated dissenter is James Hansen from nasa's Goddard Institute. The Paul Revere of global warming who first warned Congress of the greenhouse peril in a famous 1988 hearing, he returned to Washington with the troubling message that the ipcc, through its failure to parameterize crucial Earth-system feedbacks, has given far too much leeway to further carbon emissions. Instead of the ipcc's proposed red line of 450 ppm carbon dioxide, his research team found compelling paleoclimatic evidence that the threshold of safety was only 350 ppm or even less. The 'stunning corollary' of this recalibration of climate sensitivity, he testified, is that 'the oft-stated goal of keeping global warming below two degrees Celsius is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation'. [6] Indeed, since the current level is about 385 ppm, we may already be past the notorious 'tipping point'. Hansen has mobilized a Quixotic army of scientists and environmental activists to save the world via an emergency carbon tax, which would reverse greenhouse concentrations to pre-2000 levels by 2015. I do not have the scientific qualifactions to express an opinion on the Hansen controversy, or the proper setting on the planetary thermostat. Anyone, however, who is engaged with the social sciences or simply pays regular attention to macro-trends should feel less shy about joining the debate over the other controversial cornerstone of the Fourth Assessment: its socio-economic projections and what we might term their 'political unconscious'. The current scenarios were adopted by the ipcc in 2000 to model future global emissions based on different 'storylines' about population growth as well as technological and economic development. The Panel's major scenarios-the A1 family, the B2, and so on-are well known to policymakers and greenhouse activists, but few outside the research community have actually read the fine print, particularly the ipcc's heroic confidence that greater energy efficiency will be an 'automatic' by-product of future economic growth. Indeed all the scenarios, even the 'business as usual' variants, assume that almost 60 per cent of future carbon reduction will occur independently of explicit greenhouse mitigation measures. [7] The ipcc, in effect, has bet the ranch, or rather the planet, on a market-driven evolution toward a post-carbon world economy: a transition that requires not only international emissions caps and carbon trading, but also voluntary corporate commitments to technologies that hardly exist even in prototype, such as carbon capture, clean coal, hydrogen and advanced transit systems, and cellulosic biofuels. As critics have long pointed out, in many of its 'scenarios' the deployment of non-carbon-emitting energy-supply systems 'exceeds the size of the global energy system in 1990.' [8] Kyoto-type accords and carbon markets are designed-almost as analogues to Keynesian 'pump-priming'-to bridge the shortfall between spontaneous decarbonization and the emissions targets required by each scenario. Although the ipcc never spells it out, its mitigation targets necessarily presume that windfall profits from higher fossil-fuel prices over the next generation will be efficiently recycled into renewable energy technology and not wasted on mile-high skyscrapers, asset bubbles and mega-payouts to shareholders. Overall, the International Energy Agency estimates that it will cost about $45 trillion to halve greenhouse gas output by 2050. [9] But without the large quotient of 'automatic' progress in energy efficiency, the bridge will never be built, and ipcc goals will be unachievable; in the worst case-the straightforward extrapolation of current energy use-carbon emissions could easily triple by mid-century. Critics have cited the dismal carbon record of the last-lost-decade to demonstrate that the ipcc baseline assumptions about markets and technology are little more than leaps of faith. Despite the eu's much-praised adoption of a cap-and-trade system, European carbon emissions continued to rise, dramatically in some sectors. Likewise there has been scant evidence in recent years of the automatic progress in energy efficiency that is the sine qua non of ipcc scenarios. Much of what the storylines depict as the efficiency of new technology has in fact been the result of the closing down of heavy industries in the United States, Europe and the ex-Soviet bloc. The relocation of energy-intensive production to East Asia burnishes the carbon balance-sheets of some oecd countries but deindustrialization should not be confused with spontaneous decarbonization. Most researchers believe that energy intensity has actually risen since 2000; that is, global carbon dioxide emissions have kept pace with, or even grown marginally faster than, energy use. [10] Return of King Coal Moreover the ipcc carbon budget has already been broken. According to the Global Carbon Project, which keeps the accounts, emissions have been rising faster than projected even in the ipcc's worst-case scenario. From 2000 to 2007, carbon dioxide rose by 3.5 per cent annually, compared with the 2.7 per cent in ipcc projections, or the 0.9 per cent recorded during the 1990s. [11] We are already outside the ipcc envelope, in other words, and coal may be largely to blame for this unforeseen acceleration of greenhouse emissions. Coal production has undergone a dramatic renaissance over the last decade, as nightmares of the 19th century return to haunt the 21st. In China 5 million miners toil under dangerous conditions to extract the dirty mineral that reportedly allows Beijing to open a new coal-fuelled power station each week. Coal consumption is also booming in Europe, where 50 new coal-fuelled plants are scheduled to open over the next few years, [12] and North America, where 200 plants are planned. A giant plant under construction in West Virginia will generate carbon equivalent to the exhaust of one million cars. In a commanding study of The Future of Coal, mit engineers concluded that usage would increase under any foreseeable scenario, even in the face of high carbon taxes. Investment in ccs technology-carbon-capture and sequestration-is, moreover, 'completely inadequate'; even assuming it is actually practical, ccs would not become a utility-scale alternative until 2030 or later. In the United States, 'green energy' legislation has only created a 'perverse incentive' for utilities to build more coal-fired plants in the 'expectation that emissions from these plants would potentially be "grandfathered" by the grant of free co2 allowances as part of future carbon emission regulations.' [13] Meanwhile a consortium of coal producers, coal-burning utilities and coal-hauling railroads-calling themselves the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity-spent $40 million over the 2008 election cycle to ensure that both presidential candidates sang in unison about the virtues of the dirtiest but cheapest fuel. Largely because of the popularity of coal, a fossil fuel with a proven 200-year supply, the carbon content per unit of energy may actually rise. [14] Before the American economy collapsed, the us Energy Department was projecting an increase of national energy production by at least 20 per cent over the next generation. Globally the total consumption of fossil fuels is predicted to rise by 55 per cent, with international oil exports doubling in volume. The un Development Programme, which has made its own study of sustainable energy goals, warns that it will require a 50 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions worldwide by 2050, against 1990 levels, to keep humanity outside the red zone of runaway warming. [15] Yet the International Energy Agency predicts that, in all likelihood, such emissions will actually increase over the next half-century by nearly 100 per cent-enough greenhouse gas to propel us past several critical tipping points. The iea also projects that renewable energy, apart from hydropower, will provide only 4 per cent of electricity generation in 2030-up from 1 per cent today. [16] A green recession? The current world recession-a non-linear event of the kind that ipcc scenarists ignore in their storylines-may provide a temporary respite, particularly if depressed oil prices delay the opening of the Pandora's box of new mega-carbon reservoirs such as tar sands and oil shales. But the slump is unlikely to slow the destruction of the Amazon rainforest because Brazilian farmers will rationally seek to defend gross incomes by expanding production. And because electricity demand is less elastic than automobile use, the share of coal in carbon emissions will continue to increase. In the United States, in fact, coal production is one of the few civilian industries that is currently hiring rather than laying off workers. More importantly, falling fossil-fuel prices and tight credit markets are eroding entrepreneurial incentives to develop capital-intensive wind and solar alternatives. On Wall Street, eco-energy stocks have slumped faster than the market as a whole and investment capital has virtually disappeared, leaving some of the most celebrated clean-energy start-ups, like Tesla Motors and Clear Skies Solar, in danger of sudden crib death. Tax credits, as advocated by Obama, are unlikely to reverse this green depression. As one venture capital manager told the New York Times, 'natural gas at $6 makes wind look like a questionable idea and solar power unfathomably expensive'. [17] Thus the economic crisis provides a compelling pretext for the groom once again to leave the bride at the altar, as major companies default on their public commitments to renewable energy. In the United States, Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens has downscaled a scheme to build the world's largest wind farm, while Royal Dutch Shell has dropped its plan to invest in the London Array. Governments and ruling parties have been equally avid to escape their carbon debts. The Canadian Conservative Party, supported by Western oil and coal interests, defeated the Liberals' 'Green Shift' agenda based on a national carbon tax in 2007, just as Washington scrapped its major carbon-capture technology initiative. On the supposedly greener side of the Atlantic, the Berlusconi regime-which is in the process of converting Italy's grid from oil to coal-denounced the eu goal of cutting emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 as an 'unaffordable sacrifice'; while the German government, in the words of the Financial Times, 'dealt a severe blow to the proposal to force companies to pay for the carbon dioxide they emit' by backing an almost total exemption for industry. 'This crisis changes priorities', explained a sheepish German foreign minister. [18] Pessimism now abounds. Even Yvo de Boer, Director of the un Framework Convention on Climate Change, concedes that, as long as the economic crisis persists, 'most sensible governments will be reluctant to impose new costs on [industry] in the form of carbon-emissions caps.' So even if invisible hands and interventionist leaders can restart the engines of economic growth, they are unlikely to be able to turn down the global thermostat in time to prevent runaway climate change. Nor should we expect that the G7 or the G20 will be eager to clean up the mess they have made. [19] Ecological inequalities Climate diplomacy based on the Kyoto-Copenhagen template assumes that, once the major actors have accepted the consensus science in the ipcc reports, they will recognize an overriding common interest in gaining control over the greenhouse effect. But global warming is not H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds, where invading Martians democratically annihilate humanity without class or ethnic distinction. Climate change, instead, will produce dramatically unequal impacts across regions and social classes, inflicting the greatest damage upon poor countries with the fewest resources for meaningful adaptation. This geographical separation of emission source from environmental consequence undermines pro-active solidarity. As the un Development Programme has emphasized, global warming is above all a threat to the poor and the unborn, the 'two constituencies with little or no political voice'. [20] Coordinated global action on their behalf thus presupposes either their revolutionary empowerment-a scenario not considered by the ipcc-or the transmutation of the self-interest of rich countries and classes into an enlightened 'solidarity' with little precedent in history. >From a rational-actor perspective, the latter outcome only seems realistic if it can be shown that privileged groups possess no preferential 'exit' option, that internationalist public opinion drives policy-making in key countries and that greenhouse gas mitigation can be achieved without major sacrifices in northern hemispheric standards of living-none of which seem likely. Moreover, there is no shortage of eminent apologists, like Yale economists William Nordhaus and Robert Mendelsohn, ready to explain that it makes more sense to defer abatement until poorer countries become richer and thus more capable of bearing the costs themselves. In other words, instead of galvanizing heroic innovation and international cooperation, growing environmental and socio-economic turbulence may simply drive elite publics into more frenzied attempts to wall themselves off from the rest of humanity. Global mitigation, in this unexplored but not improbable scenario, would be tacitly abandoned-as, to some extent, it already has been-in favour of accelerated investment in selective adaptation for Earth's first-class passengers. The goal would be the creation of green and gated oases of permanent affluence on an otherwise stricken planet. Of course, there would still be treaties, carbon credits, famine relief, humanitarian acrobatics, and perhaps the full-scale conversion of some European cities and small countries to alternative energy. But worldwide adaptation to climate change, which presupposes trillions of dollars of investment in the urban and rural infrastructures of poor and medium-income countries, as well as the assisted migration of tens of millions of people from Africa and Asia, would necessarily command a revolution of almost mythic magnitude in the redistribution of income and power. Meanwhile we are speeding toward a fateful rendezvous around 2030, or even earlier, when the convergent impacts of climate change, peak oil, peak water, and an additional 1.5 billion people on the planet will produce negative synergies probably beyond our imagination. The fundamental question is whether rich countries will ever actually mobilize the political will and economic resources to achieve ipcc targets, or help poorer countries adapt to the inevitable, already 'committed' quotient of global warming. More vividly: will the electorates of the wealthy nations shed their current bigotry and walled borders to admit refugees from predicted epicentres of drought and desertification-the Maghreb, Mexico, Ethiopia and Pakistan? Will Americans, the most miserly people when measured by per capita foreign aid, be willing to tax themselves to help relocate the millions likely to be flooded out of densely settled mega-delta regions like Bangladesh? And will North American agribusiness, the likely beneficiary of global warming, voluntarily make world food security, not profit-taking in a seller's market, its highest priority? Market-oriented optimists, of course, will point to demonstration-scale carbon-offset programmes like the Clean Development Mechanism which, they claim, will ensure green investment in the Third World. But the impact of cdm is thus far negligible; it subsidizes small-scale reforestation and the scrubbing of industrial emissions rather than fundamental investment in domestic and urban use of fossil fuels. Moreover, the standpoint of the developing world is that the North should acknowledge the environmental disaster it has created and take responsibility for cleaning it up. Poor countries rightly rail against the notion that the greatest burden of adjustment to the Anthropocene epoch should fall on those who have contributed least to carbon emissions and drawn the slightest benefits from two centuries of industrial revolution. A recent assessment of the environmental costs of economic globalization since 1961-in deforestation, climate change, overfishing, ozone depletion, mangrove conversion and agricultural expansion-found that the richest countries had generated 42 per cent of environmental degradation across the world, while shouldering only 3 per cent of the resulting costs. [21] The radicals of the South will rightly point to another debt as well. For thirty years, cities in the developing world have grown at breakneck speed without counterpart public investments in infrastructure, housing or public health. In part this has been the result of foreign debts contracted by dictators, with payments enforced by the imf, and public spending downsized or redistributed by the World Bank's 'structural adjustment' agreements. This planetary deficit of opportunity and social justice is summarized by the fact that more than one billion people, according to un Habitat, currently live in slums and that their number is expected to double by 2030. An equal number, or more, forage in the so-called informal sector-a first-world euphemism for mass unemployment. Sheer demographic momentum, meanwhile, will increase the world's urban population by 3 billion people over the next forty years, 90 per cent of whom will be in poor cities. No one-not the un, the World Bank, the G20: no one-has a clue how a planet of slums with growing food and energy crises will accommodate their biological survival, much less their aspirations to basic happiness and dignity. The most sophisticated research to date into the likely impacts of global warming on tropical and semi-tropical agriculture is summarized in William Cline's country-by-country study, which couples climate projections to crop process and neo-Ricardian farm-output models, allowing for various levels of carbon-dioxide fertilization, to look at possible futures for human nutrition. The view is grim. Even in Cline's most optimistic simulations, the agricultural systems of Pakistan (minus 20 per cent of current farm output) and Northwestern India (minus 30 per cent) are likely devastated, along with much of the Middle East, the Maghreb, the Sahel belt, parts of Southern Africa, the Caribbean and Mexico. Twenty-nine developing countries, according to Cline, stand to lose 20 per cent or more of their current farm output to global warming, while agriculture in the already rich North is likely to receive, on average, an 8 per cent boost. [22] This potential loss of agricultural capacity in the developing world is even more ominous in the context of the un warning that a doubling of food production will be necessary to sustain the earth's mid-century population. The 2008 food affordability crisis, aggravated by the biofuel boom, is only a modest portent of the chaos that could soon grow from the convergence of resource depletion, intractable inequality and climate change. In face of these dangers, human solidarity itself may fracture like a West Antarctic ice shelf, and shatter into a thousand shards. 2. optimism of the imagination Scholarly research has come late in the day to confront the synergistic possibilities of peak population growth, agricultural collapse, abrupt climate change, peak oil and, in some regions, peak water, and the accumulated penalties of urban neglect. If investigations by the German government, Pentagon and cia into the national-security implications of a multiply determined world crisis in the coming decades have had a Hollywoodish ring, it is hardly surprising. As a recent un Human Development Report observed: 'There are no obvious historical analogies for the urgency of the climate change problem.' [23] While paleoclimatology can help scientists anticipate the non-linear physics of a warming Earth, there is no historical precedent or vantage point for understanding what will happen in the 2050s when a peak species population of 9 to 11 billion struggles to adapt to climate chaos and depleted fossil energy. Almost any scenario, from the collapse of civilization to a new golden age of fusion power, can be projected on the strange screen of our grandchildren's future. We can be sure, however, that cities will remain the ground zero of convergence. Although forest clearance and export monocultures have played fundamental roles in the transition to a new geological epoch, the prime mover has been the almost exponential increase in the carbon footprints of urban regions in the northern hemisphere. Heating and cooling the urban built environment alone is responsible for an estimated 35 to 45 per cent of current carbon emissions, while urban industries and transportation contribute another 35 to 40 per cent. In a sense, city life is rapidly destroying the ecological niche-Holocene climate stability-which made its evolution into complexity possible. Yet there is a striking paradox here. What makes urban areas so environmentally unsustainable are precisely those features, even in the largest megacities, that are most anti-urban or sub-urban. First among these is massive horizontal expansion, which combines the degradation of vital natural services-aquifers, watersheds, truck farms, forests, coastal eco-systems-with the high costs of providing infrastructure to sprawl. The result is grotesquely oversized environmental footprints, with a concomitant growth of traffic and air pollution and, most often, the downstream dumping of waste. Where urban forms are dictated by speculators and developers, bypassing democratic controls over planning and resources, the predictable social outcomes are extreme spatial segregation by income or ethnicity, as well as unsafe environments for children, the elderly and those with special needs; inner-city development is conceived as gentrification through eviction, destroying working-class urban culture in the process. To these we may add the socio-political features of the megapolis under conditions of capitalist globalization: the growth of peripheral slums and informal employment, the privatization of public space, low-intensity warfare between police and subsistence criminals, and bunkering of the wealthy in sterilized historical centres or walled suburbs. By contrast, those qualities that are most 'classically' urban, even on the scale of small cities and towns, combine to generate a more virtuous circle. Where there are well-defined boundaries between city and countryside, urban growth can preserve open space and vital natural systems, while creating environmental economies of scale in transportation and residential construction. Access to city centres from the periphery becomes affordable and traffic can be regulated more effectively. Waste is more easily recycled, not exported downstream. In classic urban visions, public luxury replaces privatized consumption through the socialization of desire and identity within collective urban space. Large domains of public or non-profit housing reproduce ethnic and income heterogeneity at fractal scales throughout the city. Egalitarian public services and cityscapes are designed with children, the elderly and those with special needs in mind. Democratic controls offer powerful capacities for progressive taxation and planning, with high levels of political mobilization and civic participation, the priority of civic memory over proprietary icons and the spatial integration of work, recreation and home life. The city as its own solution Such sharp demarcations between 'good' and 'bad' features of city life are redolent of famous twentieth-century attempts to distil a canonical urbanism or anti-urbanism: Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs, Frank Lloyd Wright and Walt Disney, Corbusier and the ciam manifesto, the 'New Urbanism' of Andr?s Duany and Peter Calthorpe, and so on. But no one needs urban theorists to have eloquent opinions about the virtues and vices of built environments and the kinds of social interactions they foster or discourage. What often goes unnoticed in such moral inventories, however, is the consistent affinity between social and environmental justice, between the communal ethos and a greener urbanism. Their mutual attraction is magnetic, if not inevitable. The conservation of urban green spaces and waterscapes, for example, serves simultaneously to preserve vital natural elements of the urban metabolism while providing leisure and cultural resources for the popular classes. Reducing suburban gridlock with better planning and more public transit turns traffic sewers back into neighbourhood streets while reducing greenhouse emissions. There are innumerable examples and they all point toward a single unifying principle: namely, that the cornerstone of the low-carbon city, far more than any particular green design or technology, is the priority given to public affluence over private wealth. As we all know, several additional Earths would be required to allow all of humanity to live in a suburban house with two cars and a lawn, and this obvious constraint is sometimes evoked to justify the impossibility of reconciling finite resources with rising standards of living. Most contemporary cities, in rich countries or poor, repress the potential environmental efficiencies inherent in human-settlement density. The ecological genius of the city remains a vast, largely hidden power. But there is no planetary shortage of 'carrying capacity' if we are willing to make democratic public space, rather than modular, private consumption, the engine of sustainable equality. Public affluence-represented by great urban parks, free museums, libraries and infinite possibilities for human interaction-represents an alternative route to a rich standard of life based on Earth-friendly sociality. Although seldom noticed by academic urban theorists, university campuses are often little quasi-socialist paradises around rich public spaces for learning, research, performance and human reproduction. The utopian ecological critique of the modern city was pioneered by socialists and anarchists, beginning with Guild Socialism's dream-influenced by the bio-regionalist ideas of Kropotkin, and later Geddes-of garden cities for re-artisanized English workers, and ending with the bombardment of the Karl Marx-Hof, Red Vienna's great experiment in communal living, during the Austrian Civil War in 1934. In between are the invention of the kibbutz by Russian and Polish socialists, the modernist social housing projects of the Bauhaus, and the extraordinary debate over urbanism conducted in the Soviet Union during the 1920s. This radical urban imagination was a victim of the tragedies of the 1930s and 1940s. Stalinism, on the one hand, veered toward a monumentalism in architecture and art, inhumane in scale and texture, that was little different from the Wagnerian hyperboles of Albert Speer in the Third Reich. Postwar social democracy, on the other hand, abandoned alternative urbanism for a Keynesian mass-housing policy that emphasized economies of scale in high-rise projects on cheap suburban estates, and thereby uprooted traditional working-class urban identities. Yet the late nineteenth and early twentieth century conversations about the 'socialist city' provide invaluable starting points for thinking about the current crisis. Consider, for example, the Constructivists. El Lissitzky, Melnikov, Leonidov, Golosov, the Vesnin brothers and other brilliant socialist designers-constrained as they were by early Soviet urban misery and a drastic shortage of public investment-proposed to relieve congested apartment life with splendidly designed workers' clubs, people's theatres and sports complexes. They gave urgent priority to the emancipation of proletarian women through the organization of communal kitchens, day nurseries, public baths and cooperatives of all kinds. Although they envisioned workers' clubs and social centres, linked to vast Fordist factories and eventual high-rise housing, as the 'social condensers' of a new proletarian civilization, they were also elaborating a practical strategy for leveraging poor urban workers' standard of living in otherwise austere circumstances. In the context of global environmental emergency, this Constructivist project could be translated into the proposition that the egalitarian aspects of city life consistently provide the best sociological and physical supports for resource conservation and carbon mitigation. Indeed, there is little hope of mitigating greenhouse emissions or adapting human habitats to the Anthropocene unless the movement to control global warming converges with the struggle to raise living standards and abolish world poverty. And in real life, beyond the ipcc's simplistic scenarios, this means participating in the struggle for democratic control over urban space, capital flows, resource-sheds and large-scale means of production. The inner crisis in environmental politics today is precisely the lack of bold concepts that address the challenges of poverty, energy, biodiversity and climate change within an integrated vision of human progress. At a micro-level, of course, there have been enormous strides in developing alternative technologies and passive-energy housing, but demonstration projects in wealthy communities and rich countries will not save the world. The more affluent, to be sure, can now choose from an abundance of designs for eco-living, but what is the ultimate goal: to allow well-meaning celebrities to brag about their zero-carbon lifestyles or to bring solar energy, toilets, pediatric clinics and mass transit to poor urban communities? Beyond the green zone Tackling the challenge of sustainable urban design for the whole planet, and not just for a few privileged countries or social groups, requires a vast stage for the imagination, such as the arts and sciences inhabited in the May Days of Vkhutemas and the Bauhaus. It presupposes a radical willingness to think beyond the horizon of neo-liberal capitalism toward a global revolution that reintegrates the labour of the informal working classes, as well as the rural poor, in the sustainable reconstruction of their built environments and livelihoods. Of course, this is an utterly unrealistic scenario, but one either embarks on a journey of hope, believing that collaborations between architects, engineers, ecologists and activists can play small, but essential roles in making an alter-monde more possible, or one submits to a future in which designers are just the hireling imagineers of elite, alternative existences. Planetary 'green zones' may offer pharaonic opportunities for the monumentalization of individual visions, but the moral questions of architecture and planning can only be resolved in the tenements and sprawl of the 'red zones'. >From this perspective, only a return to explicitly utopian thinking can clarify the minimal conditions for the preservation of human solidarity in face of convergent planetary crises. I think I understand what the Italian Marxist architects Tafuri and Dal Co meant when they cautioned against 'a regression to the utopian'; but to raise our imaginations to the challenge of the Anthropocene, we must be able to envision alternative configurations of agents, practices and social relations, and this requires, in turn, that we suspend the politico-economic assumptions that chain us to the present. But utopianism is not necessarily millenarianism, nor is it confined just to the soapbox or pulpit. One of the most encouraging developments in that emergent intellectual space where researchers and activists discuss the impacts of global warming on development has been a new willingness to advocate the Necessary rather than the merely Practical. A growing chorus of expert voices warn that either we fight for 'impossible' solutions to the increasingly entangled crises of urban poverty and climate change, or become ourselves complicit in a de facto triage of humanity. Thus I think we can be cheered by a recent editorial in Nature. Explaining that the 'challenges of rampant urbanization demand integrated, multidisciplinary approaches and new thinking', the editors urge the rich countries to finance a zero-carbon revolution in the cities of the developing world. 'It may seem utopian', they write, to promote these innovations in emerging and developing-world megacities, many of whose inhabitants can barely afford a roof over their heads. But those countries have already shown a gift for technological fast-forwarding, for example, by leapfrogging the need for landline infrastructure to embrace mobile phones. And many poorer countries have a rich tradition of adapting buildings to local practices, environments and climates-a home-grown approach to integrated design that has been all but lost in the West. They now have an opportunity to combine these traditional approaches with modern technologies. [24] Similarly, the un Human Development Report warns that the 'future of human solidarity' depends upon a massive aid programme to help developing countries adapt to climate shocks. The Report calls for removing the 'obstacles to the rapid disbursement of the low-carbon technologies needed to avoid dangerous climate change'-'the world's poor cannot be left to sink or swim with their own resources while rich countries protect their citizens behind climate-defence fortifications.' 'Put bluntly', it continues, 'the world's poor and future generations cannot afford the complacency and prevarication that continue to characterize international negotiations on climate change.' The refusal to act decisively on behalf of all humanity would be 'a moral failure on a scale unparalleled in history'. [25] If this sounds like a sentimental call to the barricades, an echo from the classrooms, streets and studios of forty years ago, then so be it; because on the basis of the evidence before us, taking a 'realist' view of the human prospect, like seeing Medusa's head, would simply turn us into stone. ----------------------------------------------- [1] This paper was given as a talk at the ucla Center for Social Theory and Comparative History in January 2009. [2] The Cato Institute's execrable Patrick Michaels in the Washington Times, 12 February 2005. [3] Jan Zalasiewicz et al., 'Are We Now Living in the Anthropocene?', gsa Today, vol. 18, no. 2, February 2008. [4] Zalasiewicz, 'Are We Now Living in the Anthropocene?' [5] Indeed, three leading contributors to Working Group 1 charged that the Report deliberately understated the risks of sea-level rise and ignored new research on instability in the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. See the debate in 'Letters', Science 319, 25 January 2008, pp. 409-10. [6] James Hansen, 'Global Warming Twenty Years Later: Tipping Point Near', Testimony before Congress, 23 June 2008. [7] Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (scope), The Global Carbon Cycle, Washington, dc 2004, pp. 77-82; and ipcc, Climate Change 2007: Mitigation of Climate Change: Contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report, Cambridge 2007, pp. 172 and 218-24. [8] scope, The Global Carbon Cycle, p. 82. [9] International Energy Agency, Energy Technology Perspectives: In support of the G8 Plan of Action-Executive Summary, Paris 2008, p. 3. [10] Josep Canadell et al., 'Contributions to Accelerating Atmospheric co2 Growth', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104, 20 November 2007, pp. 18,866-70. [11] Global Carbon Project, Carbon Budget 2007, p. 10. [12] Elisabeth Rosenthal, 'Europe Turns Back to Coal, Raising Climate Fears', New York Times, 23 April 2008. [13] Stephen Ansolabehere et al., The Future of Coal, Cambridge, ma 2007, p. xiv. [14] Pew Center on Global Climate Change, quoted in Matthew Wald, 'Coal, a Tough Habit to Kick', New York Times, 25 September 2008. [15] un Human Development Report 2007/2008: Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World, p. 7. [16] iea report quoted in Wall Street Journal, 7 November 2008. [17] Clifford Krauss, 'Alternative Energy Suddenly Faces Headwinds', New York Times, 21 October 2008. [18] Peggy Hollinger, 'eu Needs Stable Energy Policy, edf Warns', Financial Times, 5 October 2008. [19] The shameful charade in Copenhagen, crowned by Obama's desperate deceit of an agreement, exposed less the political gulf between nations than the moral abyss between governments and humanity. In the meantime, the famous 2?c of additional warming, which president and premier have vowed to prevent, is already working its way through the world ocean: a future that will happen even if all carbon emissions ceased tomorrow. (On 'committed' warming and the underlying illusion of Copenhagen, see the harrowing, if awkwardly titled article by Scripps Institution researchers V. Ramanathan and Y. Feng: 'On Avoiding Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference with the Climate System: Formidable Challenges Ahead', Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 105, 23 September 2008, pp. 14,245-50.) [20] un Human Development Report 2007/2008, p. 6. [21] U. Srinivasan et al, 'The Debt of Nations and the Distribution of Ecological Impacts from Human Activities', Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 105, 5 February 2008, pp. 1,768-73. [22] William Cline, Global Warming and Agriculture: Impact Estimates by Country, Washington, dc 2007, pp. 67-71, 77-8. [23] un Human Development Report 2007/2008, p. 6. [24] 'Turning blight into bloom', Nature, 11 September 2008, vol. 455, p. 137. [25] un Human Development Report 2007/2008, pp. 6, 2. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Thu Jan 28 14:39:34 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:39:34 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] [Review] Amy Goodman: Breaking the Sound Barrier Message-ID: Breaking the Sound Barrier (Signed Paperback) By Amy Goodman, Edited by Denis Moynihan Foreword by Bill Moyers 380 pages ISBN: 978-1-931859-99-8 Price:$16.00 Amy Goodman breaks through the corporate media's lies, sound-bites, and silence in this wide-ranging new collection of articles. In place of the usual suspects, the "experts" who, in Goodman's words, "know so little about so much, explain the world to us, and get it so wrong," this accessible, lively collection allows the voices the corporate media exclude and ignore to be heard loud and clear. From community organizers in New Orleans, to the courageous American soldiers who've said "No" to Washington's wars, to the victims of torture and police violence, we are given the extraordinary opportunity to hear ordinary people standing up and speaking out. As Willie Nelson says, "There is no one who should be more on the mainstream media, every day reminding us and giving us a glimpse of the power of one." Written with all of the fierce intelligence and passion for truth that millions have come to expect from Amy Goodman's reportage, Breaking the Sound Barrier is, in Arianna Huffington's words, "crusading journalism at its best." All proceeds from product sales go directly toward continued production of Democracy Now!, community sponsored radio and television. We are a non-profit 501c3. Orders: http://www.democracynow.org/store/product/11/BKBTSBPB =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Thu Jan 28 14:54:42 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:54:42 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Holocaust remembrance is a boon for Israeli propaganda Message-ID: <7F9790F5BDDE4C04B22F73BE5769DA2B@agingCHS072729> http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1145670.html Haaretz 28/01/2010 Holocaust remembrance is a boon for Israeli propaganda When the world is talking Goldstone, we talk Holocaust, as if out to blur the impression. When the world talks occupation, we'll talk Iran as if we wanted them to forget. By Gideon Levy Israel's bigwigs attacked at dawn on a wide front. The president in Germany, the prime minister with a giant entourage in Poland, the foreign minister in Hungary, his deputy in Slovakia, the culture minister in France, the information minister at the United Nations, and even the Likud party's Druze Knesset member, Ayoob Kara, in Italy. They were all out there to make florid speeches about the Holocaust. Wednesday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and an Israeli public relations drive like this hasn't been seen for ages. The timing of the unusual effort - never have so many ministers deployed across the globe - is not coincidental: When the world is talking Goldstone, we talk Holocaust, as if out to blur the impression. When the world talks occupation, we'll talk Iran as if we wanted them to forget. It won't help much. International Holocaust Remembrance Day has passed, the speeches will soon be forgotten, and the depressing everyday reality will remain. Israel will not come out looking good, even after the PR campaign. On the eve of his departure, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at Yad Vashem. "There is evil in the world," he said. "Evil must be stamped out at the beginning." Some people are "trying to deny the truth." Lofty words, said by the same person who only the day before, not quite in the same breath, uttered very different words, words of true evil, evil that should be extinguished at the start, evil that Israel is trying to hide. Netanyahu spoke of a new "migration policy," one that is evil through and through. He malevolently lumped together migrant workers and wretched refugees - warning that they all endanger Israel, lower our wages, harm our security, make us into a third-world country and bring in drugs. He zealously supported our racist interior minister, Eli Yishai, who has spoken of the migrants as the spreaders of diseases such as hepatitis, tuberculosis, AIDS and God knows what else. No Holocaust speech will erase these words of incitement and slander against migrants. No remembrance speech will obliterate the xenophobia that has reared its head in Israel, not only on the extreme right, as in Europe, but throughout government. We have a prime minister who speaks about evil but is building a fence to prevent war refugees from knocking at Israel's door. A prime minister who speaks about evil but shares the crime of the Gaza blockade, now in its fourth year, leaving 1.5 million people in disgraceful conditions. A prime minister in whose country settlers perpetrate pogroms against innocent Palestinians under the slogan "price tag," which also has horrific historical connotations, but against whom the state does virtually nothing. This is the prime minister of a state that arrests hundreds of left-wing protesters against the injustices of the occupation and the war in Gaza, while time grants mass pardons to the right-wingers who demonstrated against the disengagement. In his speech yesterday, Netanyahu's equating Nazi Germany with fundamentalist Iran was no more than cheap propaganda. Talk about "degrading the Holocaust." Iran isn't Germany, Ahmedinejad isn't Hitler and equating them is no less spurious than equating Israeli soldiers with Nazis. The Holocaust must not be forgotten, and there is no need to compare it with anything. Israel must take part in the efforts to keep its memory alive, but in doing so it must show up with clean hands, clean of evil of their own doing. And it must not arouse suspicion that it is cynically using the memory of the Holocaust to obliterate and blur other things. Regrettably, this is not the case. How beautiful it would have been if on this international day of remembrance Israel had taken the time to examine itself, look inward and ask, for example, how it is that anti-Semitism has reared its head in the world precisely in the past year, the year after we dropped white-phosphorous bombs on Gaza. How beautiful it would have been if on this International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Netanyahu had declared a new policy for integrating refugees instead of expulsion, or lifted the Gaza blockade. A thousand speeches against anti-Semitism will not extinguish the flames ignited by Operation Cast Lead, flames that threaten not only Israel but the entire Jewish world. As long as Gaza is under blockade and Israel sinks into its institutionalized xenophobia, Holocaust speeches will remain hollow. As long as evil is rampant here at home, neither the world nor we will be able to accept our preaching to others, even if they deserve it. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Thu Jan 28 15:10:55 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:10:55 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Howard Zinn: A Tribute Message-ID: Howard Zinn (1922-2010): A Tribute to the Legendary Historian with Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein and Anthony Arnove http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/28/howard_zinn_1922_2010_a_tribute Goodbye, Howard Zinn: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/actnow/522580/goodbye_howard_zinn Howard Zinn, Historian who Challenged Status Quo, Dies at 87 http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/01/howard_zinn_his.html 'People's History' author Howard Zinn dies at 87 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/27/AR2010012704219.html?hpid=moreheadlines Howard Zinn, author of 'People's History' and left-wing historian, dies at 87 in California http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-obit-zinn,0,3882068.story =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 29 12:09:31 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:09:31 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] The Big Theories Underwriting Society Are Crashing All Around Us Message-ID: <3FAFBF4A99614FD7B63648963EAC46F1@agingCHS072729> http://www.alternet.org/story/145394/ AlterNet / By Terrence McNally The Big Theories Underwriting Society Are Crashing All Around Us -- Are You Ready for a New World? The ideas and institutions that define our culture are breaking down -- and that's a good thing, say authors Bruce Lipton and Steve Bhaerman. January 27, 2010 | Economic meltdown ... environmental crises ... seemingly endless warfare. The world is in critical condition. Bad news? Good news? Or both? Many of the ideas and institutions that define our culture are breaking down -- and that's a good thing, say Bruce Lipton and Steve Bhaerman. In their new book, Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future and a Way to Get There from Here , they write that today's crises are part of a natural process -- clearing out what no longer serves us to make room for a new way of being. Are they cockeyed optimists or do they see things others miss? Reality is alive, dynamic and interconnected. Science has been saying so for nearly a century, and we experience it every time we walk on a beach or look into another's eyes. Yet most of our cultural, societal, political and economic structures act as if it's not so. We can no longer afford to indulge outdated worldviews. In order to deal with the crises we now face, we've got to act on the new realities and understandings revealed by science. A cell biologist by training, Bruce Lipton taught at the University of Wisconsin's School of Medicine, performed pioneering studies at Stanford, and authored The Biology of Belief. Steve Bhaerman has been writing and performing "enlightening" comedy in the character of Swami Beyondananda for over 20 years. He is the author of several books. Terrence McNally: Bruce, you first, a bit about your path to the work you do today? Bruce Lipton: When I was very young I looked into a microscope for the first time and saw cells moving around. That vision ultimately led to my becoming a cellular biologist and teaching in medical schools. I was a pretty conventional biologist who thought of the body as a biochemical machine run by genes. I was teaching the genetic control of a molecular body to medical students, but at the same time I was doing research on muscular dystrophy and cloning stem cells starting about 1967. My research proved so mind-boggling that it led to my leaving the university. I saw that genetically identical cells put into different environments have different fates. I'd start with genetically identical stem cells, change some of the constituents of their environment, and the stem cells would form muscle; change the environment a little bit differently and genetically identical cells would form bone; change it yet again, and another group of genetically identical cells would form fat cells. I was teaching medical students that genes control life, yet my research said that the genes were actually controlled by the organism's response to the environment. That work ultimately led to The Biology of Belief, and presaged epi-genetics, one of today's leading areas of research in biomedicine. Epi is a prefix that means above. Epidermis means the layer above the dermis. Epi-genetic control literally means "control above the genes." How an organism perceives the environment or, in the case of humans, what an organism believes about the environment, actually controls its genetics. If we change our perceptions or beliefs or attitudes about life, we actually change our genetic read-out dynamically. This revolution in science empowers you to recognize that your health is under your control. TM: Now Steve, your path, which I assume may be even more circuitous than Bruce's? Steve Bhaerman: I was a very idealistic young teacher in Washington, DC teaching during the late '60s-early '70s. I found some really fabulous ideas about how things could be, but how to put those ideas into practice escaped most people. I remember meeting a world-famous expert on communal living, but nobody could stand to live with him. For the last 30 or 40 years I've been exploring spiritual paths, learning about myself, and seeking ways of making our great ideas congruent with actual reality. I thought it would be interesting to write a book about healing the body politic, applying a biological or medical metaphor to the wider world. When I read The Biology of Belief and met Bruce, I realized that he was the guy I was meant to do this book with. In Spontaneous Evolution we hope to help people see that many of the beliefs we've been living by are now burned-out stars, yet we keep trying to navigate by them. TM: Steve, you left out the fact that a big part of your path has been humor. SB: For the last 20-something years I've been performing and writing as Swami Beyondananda, the cosmic comic. Humor is a great way to allow new ideas to infiltrate, and I've learned a lot cohabiting with the Swami. As soon as I put the turban on , oh then we've got a whole different set of wisdom coming out. TM: Bruce, how did you decide to take on this collaboration? BL: I got so caught up with cellular biology and the biology of belief that I kept putting the biological understanding of civilization on the back burner -- until Steve and I started talking. Most people get caught up in, "Oh my God, crisis here, crisis there. What are we going to do? The sky is falling!" For the last few years Steve and I have been crafting an understanding that says we're in a transition. Rather than focusing on what's coming apart, we want people to understand that this crisis makes it possible to move to a much higher level of evolution. TM: Let's pull apart some of the threads that you deal with in the book. You say 1) there are three perennial questions that any belief system needs to address; and 2) that the answers to those questions have changed. What are those three questions? SB: Why are we here? How did we get here? And now that we're here, how do we make the best of the situation? TM: And how have those changed? SB: If you look at recorded history, we began with animism -- simply "I am one with everything." There wasn't much of a distinction between the spiritual world and the material world, and indigenous people were able to navigate these two worlds fairly easily. Had we stayed at that point, we would be little more than human animals in a cosmic petting zoo. But we ventured out to explore. We then began to see that there are many forces. We recognized the "me" and the "not me," and we began to assign powers to various gods. So we had polytheism. Then came the monotheistic view that there is only one God and one power. The institutionalized version of monotheism through Christianity was very powerful throughout the middle ages. TM: You single out the institutionalized version of Christianity, not Judaism or Islam? SB: Christianity is most powerful in terms of its impact on Western society. Christianity's worldview eventually gave birth to scientific materialism as a challenge to the institutionalized version of the infallible church. The first little chip to fall: Copernicus recognizes that the earth actually revolves around the sun. It takes over 100 years for that belief to be integrated throughout even the thinking world. As the church loses its infallibility, we see the rise of the current dominant paradigm: scientific materialism, the material world is what matters. Newton, Descartes and the rest say that the universe is a machine. We are now at the threshold of a new understanding which we call holism, in which what we call "science" and what we call "spirit" are part of the same thing. Yet our institutions are still based on scientific materialism, on beliefs that have actually been disproved by science. TM: You point out myth perceptions: unexamined pillars that support modern thought. In science, some of these have been proven wrong, but the public hasn't been let in on that yet. BL: When the general population accepts particular answers to perennial questions from some group or entity, they tend to turn to that same source for other truths about the world. When the Church was running the show, if you wanted to find out about health or what's going on in the future, you turned to the priest or the Church for answers. TM: Or prior to that, the medicine man. BL: In animism. When science took over, we started saying, "You want truth? You don't go to the Church anymore. Now you go to the science people." The flavor of the answers flavors culture and character. When the answers change, civilization changes. In the current vision of scientific materialism, belief in matter is primary. The Newtonian belief that the universe is a physical machine takes our attention away from the invisible realm. We focus on material acquisition as a representation of how well we're doing in our lives. We take the earth and the environment apart seeking more matter. The more matter you have, the more effective you are in this world. He who dies with the most toys wins. Over 100 years ago, quantum physics said, "The invisible realm you ignore is actually the primary shaper of the physical realm." TM: I hear you expressing a kind of duality: "We were paying attention to matter, now we've got to pay attention to the invisible." But holism doesn't pay attention to one or the other, it realizes they are in fact the same. BL: Exactly. That's the conclusion we come to. If it sounded like we were emphasizing the spiritual over the material, it was only because that's the piece that's missing in today's world: the piece that says "Wait there's more to us than this physical plane." Look over history. The primary differences between civilizations is whether they emphasize the spiritual or the material. With animism, both were the same thing. We're coming back to that. After taking civilization to the spiritual realm under the Church and then into the material realm under the sciences, science and spirituality are coming back to a midpoint, recognizing that they are both critical. TM: What is the old belief and what is the new belief? BL: The old belief: Genes predetermine our fate and control who we are. We didn't select our genes and we can't change them, so our lives are beyond our control. That kind of science says I'm a victim, so I need a rescuer. As victims, we turn over our healthcare to other people. But the new biology reveals that our thoughts and beliefs and how we interact with the environment control our genetics. TM: Until fairly recently I thought that I was born with a blueprint that would play out for the rest of my life. I think that's a common misconception. You're saying that, though we're born with a particular genetic structure, it's not a blueprint or a done deal. Again, not a simple either/or. BL: The scientific story we've been living says we have no power. But we say we are all active participants in the unfoldment of our own genetics, our own health, and the health of the world that we live in. TM: You say that from a position of science, not from a position of belief. We've talked about two of the false beliefs: Newtonian physics, and the belief that genes control our lives. What are others? BL: The premises of Darwinian evolution: that random mutations got life going and that life is based on a struggle for survival of the fittest. Those are beliefs that influence our culture well beyond the realm of science. As a consequence, we live in a world based on competition and struggle. But we have to ask: Is the world really that way or did our beliefs create that impression? Now we learn that the entangled community called the biosphere is driven not by competition but by cooperation and community. This means our competing has been anti-evolutionary. Humans evolved over a million years ago. What's evolving now is not the individual human, but the living superorganism called humanity. We are all cells in the body of one living thing. So we need to come together and recognize our unity. The cells making up humanity will keep killing each other -- as in an autoimmune disease -- until we realize that we're all part of one organism and cooperation is key. The way we live in our world today mimics some of our biggest health issues: autoimmune diseases like arthritis, Alzheimer's and cancer. The fundamental underlying issue in almost all illnesses today is stress. When stress hormones are released into your body, the same hormones that get you ready for fight and flight, also shut off the immune system. TM: In the old days, fleeing or confronting a tiger, you didn't need immunity or digestion or much intellectual capacity. You needed speed and force. And so the body turns off certain things and turns on others. In modern society, however, those stressors are often symbolic and constant. What about the notion of random evolution? BL: "Why are we here?" If you start from random mutations, we're just an accident, a genetic crap-shoot. That belief disconnects us from the biosphere and all the other organisms on the planet. But the fundamental nature of evolution is that every new organism emerges into the biosphere to bring greater harmony and balance to the environment. TM: You're saying evolution is not about individual organisms, it's about larger and larger ecosystems. BL: We started this whole cycle of civilizations with animism and we have to return to that kind of awareness. Belief systems that allow us to pollute will go away when we realize we're part of an intricate and delicate network and web of life. TM: You conclude that the crises and breakdowns we're facing are in some ways a good thing that will allow the rise of new and better systems. That may not be such good news to a lot of people who are hurt in the process. SB: Survival of the fittest is a dominator belief system. We must move to "thrival of the fittingest" where we disperse resources in such a way that everybody benefits and we build a common wealth. When we allow every individual to thrive in a local garden, we allow them local energy, local autonomy, local sustainability. All of a sudden, every group makes a contribution, and we spend less time, energy, money and attention protecting ourselves from one another and fixing things that could have been prevented. Underneath our skins we have a 50-trillion-cell, highly functional community with technology that far outstrips anything that we've invented with our human minds. When we're healthy, this system is so impeccable and harmonious that within us we have full employment, universal health care, no cell left behind. The organs cooperate with one another so that the whole system can thrive. You never hear about the liver invading the pancreas demanding the islets of Langerhands. It just doesn't happen. We need to begin to imagine how to put these ideas into practice in our lives, our communities and our world. Awareness is the first step. Every phase of evolution involves expanding awareness and expanding connection. TM: Are you saying that even evolution that appears to us to be simply physical, arises through awareness and connection? SB: When single cell organisms "decided" they didn't want to be single any more, they combined in community. And the process of combining as a community enhanced the awareness of each cell. Each now had access to the information that was being gathered and used by other cells. Then we had specialization of cells, and some cells would never see the light of day but would get signals about what was happening out in the world. Each of us is a community of 50 trillion cells working in concert. At this stage in human evolution, we don't need to grow another arm or a bigger brain. We need to grow greater awareness and connection in community. What are the implications of that? How do we live our lives? How do we relate to other people? Politically we've been divided -- as if the liver said, "I'm not talking to the heart, to hell with him!" Can we begin to recognize that every nationality, every cluster of human cells, is an organ in this one body of humanity? What would it be like if our systems -- the organization of money or health care or the law -- actually worked in concert with one another rather than in competition? These are important questions to begin to ask as we take the first steps of new awareness, as we lift ourselves outside the matrix of invisible beliefs that we've mistaken for reality. TM: What would a person want to know or learn or do to begin to participate in this spontaneous evolution? BL: We have to start recognizing that our belief systems are controlled by our mind, and that most of our mind is not under our control. We have a conscious mind, the creative mind, home to our wishes and desires, and we have a subconscious mind, a habit mind with programs downloaded. We generally believe that we're running our lives with our creative minds. A lot of people say, "We're facing a crisis, let's create answers and solutions." But 95 percent of our life comes from the habit mind, programmed primarily by other people and our culture. TM: So even with the best of intentions, we miss 95 percent of where the action is. BL: Absolutely. That's why we struggle so hard to get to where we want to go. We're operating from invisible beliefs about how life works that were programmed into us before we were six. In the first six years of your life, you see the stresses and struggles your parents go through, and that becomes a behavioral program in your subconscious mind. Then when you're older, you say, "Let's have a life that's wonderful and joyous and happy." But 95 percent of your life is coming from behaviors downloaded from your parents. Until we become aware of these invisible programs that undermine us, we look like we're victims to the world. If we want peace and love, harmony and health, and we don't get it, we may conclude that the universe is against us. But from the perspective of the new biology, we undermine ourselves with the acquired beliefs of our culture. We have to rewrite those beliefs to re-empower ourselves. TM: I knew we were facing lots of crises. Now I learn that 95 percent of what I do is out of my control. Where's the good news? BL: The good news is if we become aware of it, we can do something about it. Being forewarned is being forearmed. TM: What can I do about the 95 percent that's habitual? SB: Once we recognize how much of our reality is programmed, we can begin to forgive ourselves and forgive others. We can begin to recognize that one thing we have in common is that we're all programmed. That recognition is a first step outside the matrix of controlled beliefs. I've been told that a person out there is my enemy. We've both been programmed, but with different programs, therefore we disagree. So the first step is to recognize that we are all programmed. The reality we have in common is not in our heads, it's in our hearts. Scientific studies have shown that we can walk into a room and begin to entrain with one another. McNally: We begin to have similar heartbeats? SB: Like a tuning fork, we begin to harmonize. When you create situations where people can communicate and listen in a respectful way, an interesting thing happens. We begin to focus on what we have in common as humanity. We begin thinking like a species instead of like individuals. We're in a similar situation to a caterpillar in the process of transforming into a butterfly. Most of the news is about the caterpillar that can't be fixed. Our book is about the emergence of the butterfly. While still a caterpillar, the imaginal cells of a new butterfly begin to communicate with one another, allowing new structure to emerge as the caterpillar collapses. We face a choice of focus. Do we focus on the Titanic sinking or the party boat doing fine? TM: The premise of all of this is holism, yet out of habit we end up with dualism. I don't accept that it's a choice between this or that. I'm not going to be satisfied focusing on the party boat and ignoring the hunger and inequity around me. SB: It will take a new structure for that hunger to be solved. We can't solve it at the level that we've created the problem. TM: So you're not saying to focus on where the goodies are, you're saying focus on the possibility of evolution and transformation. SB: We're not saying to ignore the problems in the world. We're simply putting our attention on what we're building instead. BL: Today we write off whole populations because they don't fit into our economic models. There's hope in our future, because the breakdown is necessary to build a more sustainable foundation. Some people will have terrible problems and others will have great success, yet they're both part of a community. In your body, no particular cells go hungry. Every cell must be fed for the body to be in harmony. When we begin to treat all humans as cells in one body, and make sure that they all get the basics in life, we create the foundation on which to build an exciting future. Every cell counts. Every human counts. Interviewer Terrence McNally hosts Free Forum on KPFK 90.7FM, Los Angeles (streaming at kpfk.org ). Visit terrencemcnally.net for podcasts of all interviews and more. 2010 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Fri Jan 29 21:51:34 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:51:34 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] [Review] "Seven countries in five years" Message-ID: <8600EFFD4E394009A52040F52194264B@agingCHS072729> http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/10/12/wesley_clark/ Salon.com Oct 12, 2007 "Seven countries in five years" Wesley Clark's new memoir casts more light on the Bush administration's secret strategies for regime change in Iran and elsewhere. By Joe Conason While the Bush White House promotes the possibility of armed conflict with Iran, a tantalizing passage in Wesley Clark's new memoir suggests that another war is part of a long-planned Department of Defense strategy that anticipated "regime change" by force in no fewer than seven Mideast states. Critics of the war have often voiced suspicions of such imperial schemes, but this is the first time that a high-ranking former military officer has claimed to know that such plans existed. The existence of that classified memo would certainly cast more dubious light not only on the original decision to invade Iraq because of Saddam Hussein's weapons and ambitions but on the current efforts to justify and even instigate military action against Iran. In "A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country," published by Palgrave Macmillan last month, the former four-star general recalls two visits to the Pentagon following the terrorist attacks of September 2001. On the first visit, less than two weeks after Sept. 11, he writes, a "senior general" told him, "We're going to attack Iraq. The decision has basically been made." Six weeks later, Clark returned to Washington to see the same general and inquired whether the plan to strike Iraq was still under consideration. The general's response was stunning: "'Oh, it's worse than that,' he said, holding up a memo on his desk. 'Here's the paper from the Office of the Secretary of Defense [then Donald Rumsfeld] outlining the strategy. We're going to take out seven countries in five years.' And he named them, starting with Iraq and Syria and ending with Iran." While Clark doesn't name the other four countries, he has mentioned in televised interviews that the hit list included Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan. Indeed, he has described this same conversation on a few occasions over the past year, including in a speech at the University of Alabama in October 2006, in an appearance on Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" broadcast last March, and most recently in an interview with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room." On "Democracy Now" he spoke about the meetings and the memo in slightly greater detail, saying that he had made the first Pentagon visit "on or about Sept. 20." Clark says he didn't read the memo from Rumsfeld's office. When the general first held it up, he remembers asking, "Is it classified?" Receiving an affirmative answer, he said, "Well, don't show it to me." He also says that when he saw the same general last year and reminded him of their conversation, the officer said, "Sir, I didn't show you that memo! I didn't show it to you!" During the Blitzer interview, Clark backed off slightly, conceding that the memo "wasn't [necessarily] a plan. Maybe it was a think piece. Maybe it was a sort of notional concept, but what it was, was the kind of indication of dialogue around this town in official circles ... that has poisoned the atmosphere and made it very difficult for this administration to achieve any success in the region." Clark's book also describes a telling encounter nearly a decade earlier with neoconservative eminence Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense under Rumsfeld who resigned under a cloud of scandal from the World Bank last spring. In May 1991, according to Clark, he dropped in for a conversation with Wolfowitz, then the third-ranking civilian in the Pentagon, to congratulate him on the success of the Gulf War. "We screwed up and left Saddam Hussein in power. The president [then George H.W. Bush] believes he'll be overthrown by his own people, but I rather doubt it," he quotes Wolfowitz lamenting. "But we did learn one thing that's very important. With the end of the Cold War, we can now use our military with impunity. The Soviets won't come in to block us. And we've got five, maybe 10, years to clean up these old Soviet surrogate regimes like Iraq and Syria before the next superpower emerges to challenge us ... We could have a little more time, but no one really knows." More than a decade and a half later, the neoconservative obsession with regime change persists and flourishes in the upper reaches of the Bush administration, where Vice President Dick Cheney is reportedly pressing for action against Iran. (Of course, by overthrowing Saddam and putting the Shiites in control of Iraq, Cheney and President Bush have already done more to empower Tehran than the ruling mullahs could ever have imagined in their fondest fantasies.) The stated reasons range from Iran's suspected sponsorship of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq to its worrisome pursuit of nuclear power, but Clark's allegations strongly suggest American policymakers chose war years ago, no matter what Tehran ended up doing. Perhaps it is time for the appropriate Senate and House committees to start asking harder questions about this administration's secret strategies for the Mideast. They might begin by interviewing Clark behind closed doors about that classified memo -- and to what extent such extreme ideas have promoted the "permanent war" policy that is fundamental to neoconservative ideology. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 30 00:00:24 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:24 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Roger Hodge: The mendacity of hope Message-ID: <14928F6D58274B43A3088F831096D334@agingCHS072729> http://harpers.org/archive/2010/02/0082802 Harper's Magazine February 2010 The mendacity of hope By Roger D. Hodge Roger D. Hodge is the editor of Harper's Magazine. A year and more has passed, yet we have not been delivered. Some believed that Barack Obama had come to restore the Republic, to return our nation to the righteous path. A new, glorious era in American politics was at hand. If only that were true. We all can taste the bitterness now. Obama promised to end the war in Iraq, end torture, close Guant?namo, restore the constitution, heal our wounds, wash our feet. None of these things has come to pass. As president, with few exceptions, Obama either has embraced the unconstitutional war powers claimed by his predecessor or has left the door open for their quiet adoption at some later date. Leon Panetta, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has declared that the kidnapping and rendition of foreigners will continue, and the Bush Administration's expansive doctrine of state secrets continues to be used in court against those wrongfully detained and tortured by our security forces and allies. Obama has adopted military commissions, once an unpardonable offense against our best traditions, to prosecute terrorism cases in which legitimate convictions cannot be obtained; when even such mock trials provide too much justice, he will make do with indefinite detention. If, by some slim chance, a defendant were to be found not guilty, we have been assured that the president's "post-acquittal" detention powers would then come into play. The principle of habeas corpus, sacred to candidate Obama as "the essence of who we are," no longer seems so essential, and reports continue to surface of secret prisons hidden from due process and the Red Cross. Waterboarding has been banned, but other "soft" forms of torture, such as sleep deprivation and force-feeding, continue-as do the practices, which once seemed so terribly important to opponents of the Bush regime, of presidential signing statements and warrantless surveillance. In at least one respect, the Obama Justice Department has produced an innovation: a claim of "sovereign immunity" in response to a lawsuit seeking damages for illegal spying. Not even the minions of George W. Bush, with their fanciful notions of the unitary executive, made use of this constitutionally suspect doctrine, derived from the ancient common-law assumption that "the King can do no wrong," to defend their clear violations of the federal surveillance statute. As the attorney Glenn Greenwald has argued, in his writings for Salon and elsewhere, the rule of law has not been restored but perverted; what had been outlawed but committed, the law now simply permits. Obama's lawyers, benefiting from Bush-era litigation, can claim conformity with law, but the disgraceful policies continue largely unchanged. Better, smarter legal arguments obtain for policies that should give any decent man nightmares. Our torturers and war criminals and illegal spies and usurpers remain at liberty, unpunished. The wars of choice continue and threaten to spread; 30,000 additional soldiers prepare to "finish the job" in Afghanistan's graveyard of empires while our flying robots bomb villagers in the mountains of Waziristan. This, we are told, is progress. Admirers of the president now embrace actions they once denounced as criminal, or rationalize and evade such questions, or attempt to explain away what cannot be excused. That Obama is in most respects better than George W. Bush, John McCain, Sarah Palin, or Joseph Stalin is beyond dispute and completely beside the point. Obama is judged not as a man but as a fable, a tale of moral uplift that redeems the sins of America's shameful past. Even as many casual supporters begin to show their inevitable displeasure with his "job performance," and his poll numbers decline, the character and motivations of the president remain above question. He is a good man. I trust him to do the right thing. It is not surprising that unsophisticated children, naive Europeans, and Democratic partisans continue to revere the heroic former candidate, despite everything he has done and left undone. Nor is it surprising that the broken remnants of the old White Supremacy coalition hate and fear the man and will oppose him without quarter (excepting, of course, his war policies). Puzzling, however, is the fact that Obama, until fairly recently an obscure striver in the Chicago Democratic machine, continues to inspire perfervid devotion among intellectual liberals who know their history. Even they say: Be patient. Give him time. It's hard to change the government. Or, more cynically: He's the best we can do. Thus, his most sophisticated admirers assume the burden of Obama's sins, bite their tongues, and indulge the temptation to frame his shortcomings as our own. Obama is not to blame; we are to blame. Obama has not failed us; America has failed him. Perhaps I am wrong to expect a flood of thoughtful apologetics on or around the first anniversary of Obama's rule. It may be that the bizarre spectacle of a putatively antiwar president standing in imperial glory before an audience of young West Point cadets, declaring that War is Peace even as he promises to send many of them to the grave, will jar the liberal intelligentsia from its affectionate slumber. But, as I write, the rationalizations and hagiographies have already begun to pour in, although they are not always packaged as such. Seeking fresh historical perspective on yet another president with an obscure plan to somehow win an unwinnable war he did not start, I picked up a new book by Garry Wills with a provocative title: Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State. The walls of my library are lined with books advertising similar themes, the works of trenchant historians who seek to explain what went wrong with America, how the noble republic of Jefferson and Madison devolved into a globe-gobbling empire. I came to Bomb Power with high expectations and was surprised by what I found. Wills traces the roots of the American empire to the invention and deployment of nuclear weaponry by the Manhattan Project, the vast and secret apparatus authorized by Franklin Roosevelt and created by General Leslie Richard "Dick" Groves. An enormous covert bureaucracy, hidden from congressional oversight and beholden to one man, created the most fearsomely destructive weapon in history, and thus set the paradigm for the national security state that arose immediately after World War II. Wills tracks its development, sketching the scientific and political intrigues at Los Alamos, and briefly outlines the development of America's Cold War posture and its culmination in the National Security Act of 1947, the epochal raft of legislation that reorganized the armed services and created the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council. Anti-communism and the perceived Soviet threat provided a ready justification for paranoia, secrecy, and the consolidation of presidential power, but nothing contributed more to that process, according to Wills, than the sheer fact of the atomic bomb. That "bomb power," as Wills calls it, was so enormous, so seductive and awe-inspiring, that it swamped the Constitution. Lodging "the fate of the world" in one man, with no constitutional check on his actions, caused a violent break in our whole governmental system. . . . The nature of the presidency was irrevocably altered by this grant of a unique power. The President's permanent alert meant our permanent submission. He became, mainly, the Commander in Chief, since he could loose the whole military force of the nation at any moment. Elections became fateful because we were choosing a Commander in Chief, a custodian of the football, a person whose hand was on the button. When the North Korean army crossed the 38th Parallel, Wills writes, the new bomb power was put to the test. President Truman, devoted to the idea of his "great office" and determined to avoid costly congressional entanglements, successfully fought off constitutional pedants such as Senator Robert Taft and launched what Wills considers the first presidential war. This was followed, as we know, by a long succession of interventions, coups d'?tat, and police actions, culminating in the catastrophe of Vietnam and now the "Long War" that comprises our misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bomb Power, a vigorous, lawyerly indictment of the imperial presidency, provides a useful summary of America's shameful and violent Cold War history, and demonstrates that the crimes of the Bush regime differed from those of previous administrations largely in degree rather than in kind. Oddly, however, Wills's emphasis on the peculiar aura of presidential bomb power, so compellingly expressed in his opening chapters, begins to lose its persuasive force as the narrative unfolds, as the wars drag on and the list of interventions and coups grows longer. What historian William Appleman Williams called the impotence of nuclear supremacy begins to make itself felt, and it is this impotence that lurks behind the belligerence of a monster like Dick Cheney, whose statement of the "bomb power" theory of presidential power is unrivaled in its clarity: "The president of the United States," he told a television audience, "could launch the kind of devastating attack the world has never seen. He doesn't have to check with anybody, he doesn't have to call the Congress, he doesn't have to check with the courts." It's easy to see why the president's bomb power appeals to Cheney, and although Wills is surely right to observe that the president's arrogation of nuclear command represented an important victory for the executive in its long struggle with the other two branches of government, one suspects that the total mobilization required by World War II would have had much the same effect even without the atomic bomb. The threat of the Soviet Union, together with the horrific realities of air power and conventional bombing-which claimed far more victims than did Little Boy and Fat Man-would have remained. Presidents have rarely been frustrated when contemplating violence, and Caesar required only the power of the sword. Like many who revere the idea of the lost American Republic, Wills wishes to isolate a singular efficient cause for our imperial declension, when the more likely, and more complex, explanation is an inherent tendency or immanent manifestation, which is why the term "manifest destiny" is so perfectly apt. Continental expansion, the Indian Wars, decades of Open Door diplomacy and economic imperialism, not to mention a 150-year tradition of extraconstitutional military intervention, executive misbehavior, and secrecy, all culminated in the Cold War ideology of national security, which provided the template for our present-day terror dreams. The American empire was always present, in both idea and reality, along with the more noble republican rhetoric, as in the following bit of prophetic doggerel, printed by the Virginia Gazette in 1774: Some fitter day shall crown us the Masters of the Main, In giving laws and freedom to subject France and Spain, And all the isles o'er Ocean shall tremble and obey The Lords, the Lords, the Lords of North America. Wills, a learned historian and the author of more than one presidential biography, can see the problem, and he spends a few paragraphs on Abraham Lincoln, whose wartime assumption of dictatorial powers troubles his thesis, and Woodrow Wilson, that accomplished theorist of executive power, according to whom "the President is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can." Yet he does not ponder Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the country by executive fiat, or Madison's failed dream of conquering Canada, or Polk's successful conquest of northern Mexico. It was Madison, principal author of the Constitution, who did more than anyone to refute Montesquieu's maxim that republican liberty requires a small state, the political consensus of the day. "Extend the sphere," he argued, and displace internal conflicts outward. Hamilton agreed, urging his countrymen to "dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world!" Americans did precisely that, and in the long years of American expansion, both territorial and economic, military power was the decisive wedge that permitted executive usurpation. The dangers inherent in our constitutional design were recognized from the beginning. Here is John Taylor of Caroline taking stock in 1814: Both the English king and our president are the exclusive managers of negotiation; and secrecy is their common maxim. By negotiation, foreign governments may be provoked; by secrecy, a government may delude and knead a people into a rage for war; and war is a powerful instrument for expelling the element of self-government, and introducing that of force. . . . By negotiation, secrecy and war, traitors convert a national detestation of tyranny into a tool for making tyrants. "Dazzled by the prospect of permanent union," Taylor continues, "the sponsors for liberty, were forgotten in the general joy; and a president of the United States was invested with far greater powers than sufficed to Caesar for enslaving his country. Patronage, negotiation, a negative upon laws, and a paper system, render some of those talents which Caesar possessed, unnecessary to enable a president to perform what Caesar effected." America's liberal empire and executive monarchism were nurtured together in the womb of the Republic. Wills, however, prefers a tale of diabolical "bomb power" and thus a Christian allegory of the Fall, in which America, after tasting the fruit of the Tree of Atomic Knowledge, is surprised by sin and stumbles into hegemony. The dismaying subtext of Wills's book becomes fully manifest only in his afterword: he seems to have written his book, as if in parody of Milton, to justify the ways of Obama to men. The awesome seductiveness of bomb power, Wills suggests, is something with which mere mortals cannot contend. A new president, ambushed by his sudden potency, has no choice but to give in. "Bomb power," as Wills conjures it, is both more sinister and more palliative than the comparatively tame thesis, submitted by generations of critical historians, that the United States of America never did follow a path of republican virtue, and that the presidency has steadily devolved into an office of elected emperor. But such knowledge offers little in the way of consolation when applied to the shortcomings of a beloved leader. "Perhaps it should come as no surprise," Wills writes, reflecting on Obama's record, "that turning around the huge secret empire built by the National Security State is a hard, perhaps impossible task. . . . A president is greatly pressured to keep all the empire's secrets. . . . He becomes a prisoner of his own power. As President Truman could not not use the Bomb, a modern President cannot not use his huge power base. It has all been given him as the legacy of Bomb Power, the thing that makes him not only Commander in Chief but Leader of the Free World. He is a self-entangling giant." Thus a president's shabby compromises and betrayals assume the high pathos of tragedy. Indeed, Wills writes in a recent issue of The New York Review of Books, were Obama to end the war in Afghanistan-as reason, morality, history, and all canons of prudence most urgently recommend-he would pay the ultimate sacrifice: he would forfeit his reelection. "It is unlikely that we will soon have another president with the moral and rhetorical force to talk us out of a foolish commitment that cannot be sustained without shame and defeat. If it costs him his presidency, what other achievement can match it? During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama said he would rather be a one-term president than give up on his goals. Here is a goal no other president we can imagine would have a possibility of reaching." Wills, like many of Obama's supporters, apparently did not believe his candidate when during the campaign he repeatedly vowed to escalate the Afghan war-nor did he seem to notice when the president deployed 21,000 new troops there upon taking office. As it happens, Obama's Nixonian performance at West Point caused the scales to fall from Wills's eyes (he promised in a short, strange essay never to give Obama "another penny"), but other thoughtful liberals, such as Hendrik Hertzberg ("a sombre appeal to reason") and Frank Rich ("the sincere product of serious deliberations, an earnest attempt to apply his formidable intelligence to one of the most daunting Rubik's Cubes of foreign policy America has ever known"), have not wavered in their adjectival devotion. Let us grant that Barack Obama is as intelligent as his admirers insist. What evidence do we possess that he is also a moral virtuoso? What evidence do we possess that he is a good, wise, or even a decent man? Yes, he can be eloquent, yet eloquence is no guarantee of wisdom or of virtue. Yes, he has a nice family, but that evinces a private morality. Public morality requires public action, and all available public evidence points to a man with the character of a common politician, whose singular ambition in life was to attain power; nothing in Barack Obama's political career suggests that he would ever willingly commit to a course of action that would cost him an election. His preposterously two-faced approach to Afghanistan, wherein he simultaneously escalates the war while promising to begin "the transition to Afghan responsibility" just a year later, is a perfect illustration of his compulsion to split the difference on any given political question. (One could also point to the health-care boondoggle, or to his utter capitulation to Wall Street in economic matters.) He dilly-dallies, draws out both friends and opponents, dangles promises in front of everyone, gives a dramatic speech, and then pulls back to gauge the reaction. Since the policy itself is incoherent-and, as usual with Obama, salted with stipulations and provisos-he can always trim and readjust as necessary. Deadlines and definitions of "combat forces" are infinitely malleable. Since Obama is an intelligent man, surely he understands the meaning of the word mendacity. Having embraced and professionalized the powers of force and fraud previously associated with the likes of John Yoo and Dick Cheney, Obama has embarked on a course of war that will certainly invite further abuses of power. His political survival now depends on martial success in a land that has defeated some of history's most brutal strategies of conquest. Obama has set a trap for himself, but because he is such a clever politician, the spring is just as likely to fall on us instead. Such insidious governance demands serious, sustained opposition, not respectful disagreement or fanciful historical apologies or mournful lamentations about the tragedy of his presidency. Principles can be sacrificed to hopes as well as to fears. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 30 22:02:35 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:02:35 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Uri Avnery: The Kangaroo Message-ID: http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/71006 The Kangaroo by Uri Avnery (Saturday, January 30, 2010) ------------------------------------- "Obama must keep his kangaroo tied up at home and take the initiative into his own hands. He must announce a clear peace program, the one about which there is now a world-wide consensus (Two states for two peoples, a Palestinian state in all the occupied territories with its capital in East Jerusalem and the dismantling of the settlements in Palestinian territory) and call upon the two sides to adopt it in theory and practice - perhaps by a referendum on both sides. When the time is ripe, he may come to Jerusalem and address the Israeli people from the Knesset rostrum with a clear and unequivocal message." ------------------------------------- GEORGE MITCHELL looks like a kangaroo hopping around with an empty pouch. He hops here and he hops there. Hops to Jerusalem and hops to Ramallah, Damascus, Beirut, Amman (but, God forbid, not to Gaza, because somebody may not like it). Hops, hops, but doesn't take anything out of his pouch, because the pouch is empty. So why does he do it? After all, he could stay at home, raise roses or play with his grandchildren. This compulsive traveling reveals a grain of chutzpah. If he has nothing to offer, why waste the time of politicians and media people? Why burn airplane fuel and damage the environment? THE DECLARED aim of Mitchell is to "get the peace process going again". How? "Get the two sides to return to the negotiating table". There is a na?ve American belief that all the problems of the world could be solved if only the parties would sit down at the table and talk. When reasonable people talk to each other, they will eventually arrive at a solution. The trouble with this is that the people responsible for the fate of nations are not, in general, reasonable people. They are politicians with passions and prejudices and constituencies, who are driven by the mood of the masses. When one is dealing with a 130-year old conflict, the na?ve belief in the value of talk borders on folly. Decades of experience indicate that negotiations are useless if one of the parties is not interested in an agreement. Worse: negotiations can actually cause damage when one of the parties uses them to waste time while creating a false impression of progress towards peace. In our conflict, peace negotiations have become a substitute for peace, a means to obstruct peace. They are an instrument used by successive Israeli governments to gain time - time to enlarge the settlements and entrench the occupation. (In an interview with Haaretz published yesterday, Ehud Barak accused the "left" in general, and Gush Shalom and Peace Now in particular, of not supporting Netanyahu's call for negotiations. He got close to accusing us of treason.) Anyone who now proposes negotiations "without prior conditions" is collaborating with the Netanyahu-Barak-Lieberman government in a ploy to sabotage the chances of peace. Indeed, Mitchell has become - perhaps unwittingly - such a collaborator. When he exerts pressure on Mahmoud Abbas "to come back to the negotiating table", he is playing the game of Netanyahu, who presents himself as the great peace-lover. Abbas is being pictured as a man who has "climbed a high tree and doesn't know how to get down again". There is no occupation, no ongoing settlement activity, no Judaization of East Jerusalem. The only problem is to get a ladder. A ladder for Abbas! All this for what? What is the kangaroo hopping for? It's all to help Obama, who is thirsting for a political achievement like a man in the desert thirsting for water. The start of negotiations, however meaningless, would be presented as a great diplomatic success. THE OTHER day, Obama himself made a rare gesture: the President of the United States of America declared publicly that he had made a mistake and apologized for it. He admitted that he had not properly understood the difficulties involved in the restarting of the peace process. Everybody praised the President. Such a courageous leader! Such nobility! To which I would add: And such chutzpah! Here comes the most powerful leader in the world and says: I was wrong. I did not understand. I have failed. For a whole year I have not achieved any progress at all towards a solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Look how honest I am! Look how ready I am to admit mistakes! That is chutzpah. That is chutzpah, because a whole year was lost due to this "mistake", a whole year in which 1.5 million human beings in Gaza, men, women and children, have been suffering utter destitution, many of them without sufficient food, many of them without shelter in the cold and in rain. A whole year in which more than a hundred Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem were demolished while new Jewish housing projects sprang up at a crazy pace. A whole year in which settlements in the West Bank were enlarged, apartheid roads were built and pogroms, under the "price tag" slogan, were carried out. So, with all due respect, Mr. President, the word "mistake" hardly suffices. The Bible says: "He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy" (Proverbs 28:13). Obama covereth not his "mistake", and that is good. But it is the second half of the verse that counts: "confesseth and forsaketh". No mercy for one who "confesseth" but not "forsaketh". You have not hinted with a single word that you are about to forsake your old ways. It is chutzpah for another reason, too: You say that you have failed because you did not properly appreciate the domestic problems of the two leaders, Netanyahu and Abbas. Netanyahu, you say, has an extreme right-wing coalition, and Abbas has Hamas. Sorry, sorry, but what about your own "coalition", which does not allow you to move an inch in the right direction? What about the two houses of Congress, which are completely subservient to the pro-Israel lobbies, both the Jewish and the Christian-Evangelical? What about your fear of your extreme right, which is supporting our own extreme right? What about your inability - or unwillingness - to exercise your leadership, invest political capital in a confrontation with the lobbies and move forwards according to the real interests of the United States (and Israel) - as did President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his time, and even, for a short period, Secretary of State James Baker? THE TERRIBLE blow dealt to Obama in the Massachusetts by-election has dumbfounded many people. It has changed the texture of American politics and is endangering the health system reforms, the jewel in the crown he has put on his head. It threatens to turn him into a lame duck that may not only lose the midterm elections this year, but even fail to be reelected less than three years from now. Many ask: what happened to the shining candidate who enchanted the entire United States and mobilized millions of enthusiastic new voters? Where is the man with a vision who aroused the masses with the battle-cry "Yes, We Can"? How did the inspiring campaigner turn into a so-so president, one who does not excite anyone? How did the candidate, who always hit exactly the right note, turn into a president who is unable to touch the hearts of the people? How did the candidate, who made all the right decisions, turn into a president who cannot make decisions? How did the anti-Bush turn into another-Bush? It seems to me that the answers lie in one of the fundamental paradoxes of the democratic system. I have thought about this many a time while sitting through boring speeches in the Knesset. A democratic leader who has a vision and wants to realize it has to pass two tests: to win an election and to govern a country. If he does not get elected, he will not have a chance to realize his dream. If he fails in governing, his election victory loses its meaning. The trouble is that these two tasks are very different. Indeed, they tend to contradict each other, because they demand very different talents. The candidate must make speeches, excite the imagination, make promises and convince the voters that he is capable of fulfilling them. These talents can indeed be of help to the ruler - but they do not suffice to enable him to rule. The ruler must make hard decisions, withstand extreme pressures, manage a huge apparatus with many contradictory components, convince the public of his country and the leaders of foreign countries. He cannot satisfy all sectors of the public and all the interest groups, the way he tried to do as a candidate. The most inspiring candidates often turn out to be disastrous heads of government. They are swept into power by the enthusiasm they evoke in their voters, and then suddenly find out that their brilliant speeches have no impact any more - not on the members of their parliament, not on the public, not on foreign leaders. Their brightest talent has become useless. I have the impression that Obama's numerous speeches are starting to tire people and are losing their appeal. When he turns his face from left to right and from right to left, from one teleprompter to the other, he starts to look like a mechanical doll. The millions viewing his speeches on TV see him turning to the left and turning to the right, but never really looking them in the eyes. The candidate is an actor on stage playing the role of a leader. After the elections, when he actually becomes a leader, he can become helpless. The man who plays Julius Caesar in Shakespeare's play can be a great actor - but if he were Caesar in real life, he would not have a clue what to do. (When I put this to an actor, his retort was: "But Caesar himself would not be able to play Caesar on the stage!") Barack Obama is no Caesar. Rather he is Hamlet, Prince of America. Enchanting, attractive, full of good intentions - but feeble and hesitant. To rule or not to rule, that is the question. IT IS much too early to announce Obama's political death. Contrary to Mark Antony, who declares in the play "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him", I am not yet ready to bury the great hope raised by him. A year has passed since he entered the White House. A year wasted to a large extent. Three more years are left until the next elections. True, in the first year, after such a dramatic victory, it would have been much easier for him to do things than in the following three years, but Obama can still recover, draw the necessary conclusions from the experience and manage a comeback. One of the roads there leads through Jerusalem. Obama must keep his kangaroo tied up at home and take the initiative into his own hands. He must announce a clear peace program, the one about which there is now a world-wide consensus (Two states for two peoples, a Palestinian state in all the occupied territories with its capital in East Jerusalem and the dismantling of the settlements in Palestinian territory) and call upon the two sides to adopt it in theory and practice - perhaps by a referendum on both sides. When the time is ripe, he may come to Jerusalem and address the Israeli people from the Knesset rostrum with a clear and unequivocal message. In short: exit Hamlet, enter Julius Caesar. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 30 22:06:39 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:06:39 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Tony Blair Testifies Before Inquiry Message-ID: <3D8835C694124A619B013A3A4AF2426C@agingCHS072729> http://www.countercurrents.org/marsden300110.htm Tony Blair Testifies Before Inquiry By Chris Marsden 30 January, 2010 WSWS.org Former Prime Minister Tony Blair's testimony before the Chilcot inquiry into the 2003 Iraq war marks him down once more as a war criminal. His testimony made clear that he collaborated in preparing an illegal war of aggression, in line with the policy of pre-emptive war elaborated by the Bush administration in the United States. Time and again, he directly alluded to his belief that regime change was required in Iraq, even after it was apparent that Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction. His most emotive passage defending his decision to go to war was also the most damning legally. "This isn't about a lie or a conspiracy or a deceit or a deception," he declared. "It's a decision. And the decision I had to take was, given Saddam's history, given his use of chemical weapons, given the over one million people whose deaths he had caused, given 10 years of breaking UN resolutions, could we take the risk of this man reconstituting his weapons program or is that a risk it is responsible to take?... The decision I took-and frankly would take again-was: if there was any possibility that he could develop weapons of mass destruction, we would stop him. It was my view then and that is my view now." The substantive issues Blair raises are that there was only a "danger" of Saddam Hussein "reconstituting" a weapons programme, not actually possessing weapons of mass destruction or having used them against Britain or its allies. Instead Blair declares that the "possibility" of Iraq possessing WMDs justified war, given that he had used WMDs in the past against the Kurds and during the Iran War. When Blair was asked why Britain had not stuck to the "policy of containment through the use of sanctions, he also echoed the US justification for war that everything had changed after the 9/11 terror attacks. It was no longer possible to "take risks" that other attacks might be mounted. When it was pointed out that Saddam Hussein was not involved in 9/11 or with al-Qaeda, he countered that "rogue states" could not be allowed to develop WMDs and that the link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda was that repressive and failing states become "porous" and therefore easier for terror groups to infiltrate. Blair essentially asserted that there need not be an actual threat, only a potential threat, whether in respect to WMDs or terror attacks. Even while formally denying that the war against Iraq was in pursuit of regime change, and that he had agreed to such a war when meeting with President Bush at his Crawford ranch in the spring of 2002, he repeatedly gave tacit support to the US policy of pre-emptive war. The option of removing Saddam had "always been there", he said. After 9/11, the view was that "we can't go on like this." Asked whether the removal of regimes had become a "valid objective" of government policy by 1999, he said it had not. But he added that President Bill Clinton had come out in favour of regime change as early as 1998. Britain too wanted to deal with the threat from WMDs and if this required regime change, then "so be it." Blair's only attempt to avoid explicitly sanctioning regime change as a policy was to insist that the issue was WMDs and that Iraq it was in defiance of UN Resolution 1441, which he continues to claim gave authority for war to be declared. There were many regimes that he would "like to see the back of," but there has to be a basis of a security threat to the UK, he said. Not once did he identify any such threat to the UK, without which there was no basis for war. Instead there was the claim against all evidence that Saddam "definitely had" WMDs, or alternatively that he had "believed" it was "beyond doubt" that Iraq had WMDs as he had stated in his notorious foreword to the 2002 intelligence dossier. When it was pointed out that it was proved that Iraq possessed no WMDs and that UN weapons inspectors under Hans Blix had not been allowed to complete their work, Blair again fell back on the question of a "potential": The Iraq Survey Group, he said, found that Saddam had the means and "know how" to restart a weapons programme and this alone justified war. Sometimes it is important not to ask the "March 2003 question" but the "2010 question," he said. Blair portrays the "2010 question" as being whether the world is "better off without Saddam." It is far more than that. His argument amounts to a rationale for the major powers, and the US and Britain in particular, launching wars of aggression with the aim of regime-change whenever and wherever they see fit. This was, he said, of continued importance. There are "very similar issues" with Iran as with Iraq under Saddam Hussein, he proclaimed, and Britain was in a "far better placed" to deal with this threat now. Regarding the issue of UN authorisation and the requirement for a second UN resolution, he baldly insisted that Resolution 1441-passed in 2002-gave war legitimacy. But he was forced to acknowledge that the US was always ready to act unilaterally. He too eventually gave up on a second UN resolution because it was "very clear" that France and Russia would not agree to such a resolution, which had "disintegrated" the possibility of securing a majority on the Security Council. This was an admission that Britain had also acted unilaterally because it could not get what it wanted from the UN, which is in contravention of the UN Charter. Blair was left to fall back on the fact that he had secured the approval of the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith for war on the basis of 1441, repeatedly dismissing the fact that this was only at the eleventh hour and was against the "consistent and united advice" of the Foreign Office legal team that fresh UN authorisation was required. Blair's testimony, his kid-gloves treatment by the inquiry and his closing declaration that he had "no regrets" over the war was greeted with cries of "liar" and "murderer" by some of those in attendance. With relatives of some soldiers who died in Iraq present, one woman broke into tears. His arrogant performance was facilitated by Blair's knowledge that the Chilcot inquiry is not merely toothless, but has every reason to skate over the criminal character of his actions. Many commentators have noted that there was not a single probing question put to Blair by the panel. Not one of his startling and incriminating statements was ever challenged. The discussion on the legality of the war, for example, took just 35 minutes of the six hours of testimony. The inquiry's addressing of last month's televised interview with Fern Britton was typical. Britton had asked, "If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?" Blair replied that he would still have invaded Iraq and "thought it right to remove" Saddam Hussein and would have only "had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat." The inquest allowed Blair to declare without challenge that he had not used the words "regime change" and that "It was in no sense a change of position. The position was that it was the breach of United Nations resolutions on WMD. That was the cause. It was then and it remains." Nothing else should ever have been expected. The Chilcot inquiry was set up by the government as a means of avoiding any genuine accounting for Britain's participation in the Iraq War. Even as yesterday's proceedings began, the inquiry chair Sir John Chilcot cautioned those in attendance, "This is not a trial." That it most certainly is not. Not only does the inquiry have no legal powers, but it is staffed by trusted representatives of British imperialism, members of the Privy Council, some of whom have intimate ties to the government. Chilcot himself sat on the 2004 Butler inquiry into the intelligence used to justify the Iraq war, which refused to hold Blair or anyone else accountable for the "dodgy dossier" culled from old Internet reports or false claims such as the assertion that Iraq had weapons that it could deploy against Britain within 45 minutes. It was a report that allowed Blair to declare in parliament, "No one lied, no one made up intelligence. No one inserted things into the dossier against the advice of the intelligence services." Sir Lawrence Freedman was a foreign policy adviser to Blair and a staunch advocate of the Iraq war. The historian Sir Martin Gilbert describes himself as a Zionist and his appointment to Chilcot was criticised by four MPs because he compared George W. Bush and Tony Blair to Roosevelt and Churchill in the same year he was appointed to the Privy Council. He recently praised Prime Minister Gordon Brown for being "totally committed to Israel." Sir Roderic Lyne was British ambassador to the Russian Federation and is an adviser to JP Morgan Chase, which operates the Trade Bank of Iraq, and was a special adviser to the oil conglomerate BP. In addition to facing a toothless inquiry, Blair also knows that he is not the only man with blood on his hands. During his testimony, he noted that Goldsmith supported the war, as well as the cabinet, the Conservatives and parliament as a whole. If he is proclaimed a war criminal, then he will be in company with many other leading figures in Britain and in the Bush administration. For Blair and his fellow criminals to be brought to justice means placing no confidence in empty charades such as the Chilcot inquiry and in limited protests such as those organised by the Stop the War Coalition. It demands the independent political mobilisation of the working class in Britain, the US and internationally against the warmongers heading the governments of the world's major powers. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 30 22:12:14 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:12:14 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Blair the British Neo-Con Message-ID: http://www.alanhart.net/blair-as-monster/#more-1129 30 January, 2010 Blair the British Neo-Con by Alan Hart Putting Tony Blair on trial would be much too cruel. The man is ill, delusional, quite possibly to the point of madness. What he needs most of all is psychiatric help. Any doubts I might have had about that diagnosis were removed by his six-hour presentation to the Chilcot Inquiry of his reasons for joining the neo-conned "Dubya" Bush in the war on Iraq. Without understanding why, I never thought Blair was Bush's puppet. Now, thanks to the access Blair gave us to the workings of his mind for six hours, I do understand. He was ahead of Bush in the war on terrorism game because he is a neo-con, the real thing, whereas Bush had to be won over, conned, by America's mad men. Blair didn't. He was always with them in spirit. After 9/11, immediately after it, probably while the towers were still collapsing, their agenda was his agenda. Though the Chilcot Inquiry is concerned only with Iraq - how Blair's government made the decision to go to war and what lessons should be learned - Blair could not resist beating the drum for war on Iran. He did that four times. One might have been listening to John Bolton or any of America's or Israel's lunatics. When he was going on about terrorism being a threat to all, he threw in: "It's a constant problem for Israel. They get attacked." That there is a cause-and-effect relationship between Israeli occupation and Israel's frequent demonstrations of state terrorism and a degree of violence directed at the Zionist state from time to time is not something Blair the neo-con can, or ever will, get his deluded minded around. At one point during his display of insufferable, Zionist-like self-righteousness, Blair denied he had said in an interview with the BBC's Fern Britton that he favoured regime change in Iraq. "I didn't use the words regime change in that interview," he said to the Chilcot Inquiry. He was telling the truth in that he did not use those actual words. What then did he say on camera to Fern Britton on 13 December 2009? She asked him if knowing what we all know today (that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction) would he still have gone to war. Blair replied, "I would still have thought it right to remove him. If that is not regime change, what is?! Blair still insists that the invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein has "made the world a safer place". The reality is that Blair and Bush together were the best recruiting sergeants for violent Islamic fundamentalism in many manifestations, not only the Al-Qaeda franchise. Most amazing of all was that Blair declined an invitation to express any regret. He couldn't even bring himself to say he regretted the loss of the lives of British soldiers and a great number of Iraqis (somewhere between 100,000 and 600,000), mainly civilians. To my way of thinking that makes him less than fully human. Blair described Saddam Hussein as "a monster who threatened the world." There's an old English saying, "It takes one to know one." =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 30 22:19:44 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:19:44 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Tim Costello, Trucker-Author Who Fought Globalization, Dies at 64 Message-ID: The Nation January 8, 2010 JOHN NICHOLS Tim Costello, Trucker-Author Who Fought Globalization, Dies at 64 KEEP ON TRUCKIN': Tim Costello, the blue-collar intellectual, truck-driving internationalist and globally respected author who died in December at 64 (from pancreatic cancer), fully embraced the anti- corporate globalization slogan: "Another World Is Possible." Costello was the energetic founder of groups such as the Campaign on Contingent Work, the North American Alliance for Fair Employment and Global Labor Strategies, and he wrote (with Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith) groundbreaking books like Global Village or Global Pillage (1994) and Globalization From Below (2000), which forged newer and deeper understandings of the importance of international solidarity on economic and social issues. Costello delighted in the late '90s renewal of activism around globalization, and he celebrated the new tools available to organizers. In one of his last articles for The Nation ("Social Movements 2.0," January 15, 2009), he wrote with Brecher and Smith that the "online universe is not simply another place for people to congregate, circulate a petition, debate politics or mail out a newsletter.... Instead, the web is increasingly looking like the invention of the printing press, which radically changed the lives of even those who could not read, by spurring the Protestant reformation and scientific revolution." That was classic Costello: rooted in the old struggle between privilege and the cooperative commonwealth, yet ever at the ready to employ new technologies, adopt smarter tactics and build broader coalitions. ==================== Tim Costello, Trucker-Author Who Fought Globalization, Dies at 64 By STEVEN GREENHOUSE New York Times December 26, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/26/us/26costello.html Tim Costello, a truck driver who became a labor advocate and theorist, the co-author of four books and the founder of an organization that fought globalization, died Dec. 4 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 64. The cause was pancreatic cancer, said his brother, Sean. Mr. Costello was hailed by many academics and labor advocates as a bona fide worker-intellectual. A genial, mustached native of Boston, he drove fuel-delivery trucks, worked as a lobsterman, founded a group that battled against the fast-growing use of temporary workers and developed close links with labor advocates in China, Italy and Mexico. His most notable book was "Globalization From Below: The Power of Solidarity" (2000), written with Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith, which became a primer for labor advocates who argued that globalization was destroying jobs and reducing wages in the United States while exploiting workers in Asia. During his two decades driving trucks - he was also a long-haul driver - Mr. Costello often used the back of his truck as a private study to read and write. Mr. Costello was often several steps ahead of the rest of the labor movement. In 2005, he helped found Global Labor Strategies, which fostered cross-border alliances to fight to improve wages and working conditions in the face of downward pressures from companies moving jobs overseas. In 2007, when American and European business groups were battling China's plans to adopt a law strengthening workers' rights, Mr. Costello was a leading voice in countering corporate efforts to block the law. "We called him Cosmic Tim because he seemed to be everywhere in the universe," said James Green, a labor historian at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, who was a friend and professor of Mr. Costello. "He seemed to have trucked everywhere and read everything." Timothy Mark Costello was born in Boston on June 13, 1945. His father was the president of a union local that represented railway car welders. He was raised in Dedham, Mass., and graduated from the Huntington School for Boys in Boston in 1964. He attended Goddard College in Vermont before transferring to Franconia College in New Hampshire and the New School in New York, where he joined Students for a Democratic Society. While in school in New York, he began driving oil trucks. In 1971, he moved back to Boston, without having finished college, and continued driving fuel-delivery trucks and, as he had in New York, writing and speaking out against corruption in the Teamsters union. In the mid-1970s he traveled cross-country to study the recession's effects on young workers, producing a book, "Common Sense for Hard Times," with Mr. Brecher, his longtime co-author. While in Boston, he switched trucking jobs to become a long-haul driver, often carrying loads to the Deep South and the Midwest. He enrolled at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, obtaining his bachelor's degree there in 1990. He became a business agent for Local 285 of the Service Employees International Union, which represented hospital workers and janitors. In 1999, he founded the Campaign on Contingent Work, which evolved into another organization he helped found, the North American Alliance for Fair Employment, a grouping of 65 organizations that opposed the growing use of temporary workers, who rarely had job security, health insurance or pensions. With Mr. Brecher, he also wrote "Building Bridges: The Emerging Grassroots Coalition of Labor and Community" (1990) and "Global Village or Global Pillage: Economic Reconstruction From the Bottom Up" (1994). In addition to his brother, Sean, of Belmont, Mass., he is survived by his wife, Susanne Rasmussen; his daughters Pia, of Cambridge, and Gillian, of Brooklyn; and two grandchildren. Mr. Costello was low-key, his brother said, but he was forever battling for one cause or another. "He thought that if you're on the left," Sean Costello said, "you'll be working at it for the rest of your life, and you may not be successful, but it would be worth the effort." =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sat Jan 30 22:26:25 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:26:25 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Ralph Nader On the State of the Union Message-ID: <70F418DBC80240E9933E3094CE75EB3C@agingCHS072729> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/30-0 CommonDreams.org January 30, 2010 On the State of the Union by Ralph Nader The President's State of the Union Speech is the Big Speech of the year. Yet there is never an opportunity either for the press or the citizenry to promptly follow up with any questions or requests for clarifications. As a result, doubt and misunderstandings fester. Watching President Obama's speech the other evening before a joint session of vociferous members of Congress, quiet Supreme Court Justices and military brass, I jotted down a few items for the White House to consider. First, Mr. Obama cited the Senate's inaction four times in contrast to the House of Representatives. To add to his frustration, he cited the Republican leadership for insisting that "sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town." What he did not do was to urge his fellow Democrats to change the filibuster rule by a simple majority vote. As a legal expert, Tom Geoghegan wrote to Senate majority leader Harry Reid (Dem. Nev) this week, "the Senate can act to change its rules, any rule, by majority vote, even a rule requiring a greater one." That means that the Democrats can change this rule with only 51 of their 59 votes in the Senate and get these bills passed. Why President Obama did not tell tens of millions of Americans Wednesday evening about how to break the logjam, the gridlock on health insurance, energy, jobs, financial reform and other measures, that they dislike, is a question only he can answer. "Certainly Senate Rule 22 itself should be changed, so that there is ultimately a simple majority for a cloture limiting debate vote," according to Geoghegan. Second, since dollars invested in energy efficiency and renewable energy have greater, safer, returns than money going into what Mr. Obama calls ??oa new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants and clean coal technologies,(which require heavy government subsidies), why did he accord the latter the same priority as the former? Third, President Obama promised to double our exports over the next five years. This really raised eyebrows, leading New York Times reporter Helene Cooper to write that this highly ambitious goal would require him to persuade China to revalue its currency by 40 percent, "get global economic growth to outperform the salad days from 2003 to 2007 and lower taxes for American companies that do business abroad," plus "forget about strengthening the dollar." He left his own supporters wondering how he could perform this miracle and not forget his campaign promise to revise NAFTA. Fourth, on health insurance reform, Mr. Obama said: "If anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors and stop insurance company abuses, let me know." Well, Mr. President, try what you supported before you became a Presidential candidate--single payer, full Medicare for all, with free choice of doctor and hospital. Remember you did not allow single payer adherents to have a seat at the table, the way the CEO of Aetna did five times in the White House. (For more see SinglePayerAction.org) Fifth, you alluded as one reason for the multi-trillion dollar deficits you inherited from the Bush regime was "not paying for two wars." Well, you also are not pressing for a war tax to pay for your two wars, as Rep. David Obey (Dem. Wisc) urged you and other Democrats to do a few months ago. What is the difference and why? Sixth, the President asserted the need to freeze government spending for three years, but excluded the well-documented, bloated, wasteful, redundant Pentagon budget. He also did not go after the huge corporate welfare budget of subsidies, handouts, giveaways and bailouts. Instead, he left many civic groups wondering what cuts might be coming for programs relating to food, auto, job and environmental safety. Seventh, his brief words of foreign and military policy came across as Bush redux trying to show how tough he is. He compared notches on his belt in terms of the number of captured or slain "Al Qaeda's fighters and affiliates." He, of course, did not make any comparisons with the far greater number of innocent civilian causalities from drones and other bombings. These were strange phrasings from a recent Nobel Peace Prize winner who managed to ignore completely the peace process for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There was not one sentence on, arguably, the core issue in that tumultuous region. Eighth, on the Iraq war, he went over the top, declaring "make no mistake: this war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home." Not really. Both Bush and Obama have concluded that 50,000 soldiers will remain in Iraq indefinitely, with many more in the Persian Gulf region. American taxpayers will be paying nearly $800 million a year just to guard the U.S. Embassy and its personnel in Baghdad. That sum alone is greater than either the annual budgets of OSHA ($502 million to deal with 58,000 work related deaths in America) or NHTSA ($730 million to deal with over 40,000 road fatalities.) I'm sending this column to the White House. You also may wish to send your observations to President Obama. Citizens should be more than spectators to the annual state of the union spectacle. Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 31 08:52:10 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 08:52:10 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] War is peace; arming is disarming Message-ID: Will American liberals buy into this argument as well?? "The Obama administration plans to ask Congress to increase spending on the U.S. nuclear arsenal by more than $5 billion over the next five years as part of its strategy to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and eventually rid the world of them." Enough to make one weep.... http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20100130/wl_mcclatchy/3413894_1 Obama to seek major increase in nuclear weapons funding By Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy Newspapers Fri Jan 29, 7:21 pm ET WASHINGTON - The Obama administration plans to ask Congress to increase spending on the U.S. nuclear arsenal by more than $5 billion over the next five years as part of its strategy to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and eventually rid the world of them. The administration argues that the boost is needed to ensure that U.S. warheads remain secure and work as designed as the arsenal shrinks and ages nearly 18 years into a moratorium on underground testing and more than two decades after large-scale warhead production ended. The increase is also required to modernize facilities - some dating to World War II - that support the U.S. stockpile and to retain experts who "will help meet the president's goal of securing vulnerable nuclear materials worldwide . . . and enable us to track and thwart nuclear trafficking (and) verify weapons reductions," Vice President Joe Biden wrote in a Friday Wall Street Journal opinion piece. The administration will seek an initial $600 million increase for nuclear weapons programs in the proposed 2011 budget it submits to Congress on Monday. That would increase annual spending on those programs by about 10 percent, to almost $7 billion . The spending plan already has sparked controversy. Some arms control advocates who ordinarily support the administration contend that the boost will fund unnecessary construction of new facilities that could give future administrations the ability to design and build new warheads, something that President Barack Obama has forsworn. "Essentially the new facilities would allow an increase in the production of new warheads if they wanted to do that. They (the Obama administration) say they don't, but the next administration could," said Stephen Young of the Union of Concerned Scientists . "There are risks . . . for our overall non-proliferation goals." Conservatives contend that with the arsenal to be slashed to no more than 1,675 deployed warheads under a new pact being finalized with Russia , U.S. security will depend on ending the testing moratorium and designing and fielding a new "modern" warhead. "Nobody should kid themselves if they think there is a substitute for testing," said John Bolton , who served as the Bush administration's top nuclear arms control official and was an ambassador to the United Nations . All 40 Republican senators and Sen. Joseph Lieberman , a Connecticut independent, implied in a letter to Obama last month that they'd block ratification of the new treaty with Russia unless he funds a "modern" warhead and new facilities at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Y-12 Plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn. "We don't believe further reductions can be in the national security interest of the U.S. in the absence of as significant program to modernize our nuclear deterrent," wrote the senators, led by Republican Jon Kyl of Arizona . Some experts said the administration apparently is hoping that its plan to boost spending on nuclear weapons will persuade enough Republicans to join Democrats in ratifying the new treaty with Russia and a global ban on underground testing known as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Iran and North Korea , however, could argue that the plan contradicts Obama's pledge to cut the U.S. arsenal and seek a nuclear weapons-free world in their campaigns to blunt U.S.-led efforts to halt their nuclear programs. Other countries could see increased U.S. spending for nuclear weapons as backsliding by Obama, whose strategy helped win him the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. "The tightrope the president has to walk is to put in enough funding to ensure everyone that the weapons will remain safe, secure and effective, but not so much that it looks like a new arms buildup," said Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund , a foundation that underwrites arms control programs. "There is no question that some counties, friends and foes, will see the increased spending as a sign of U.S. hypocrisy." Obama vowed to take "concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons" in an April 5 speech in the Czech Republic capital of Prague , warning that the growing danger of powers such as Iran or terrorist groups acquiring them puts "our survival" at risk. He committed the U.S. to signing the new treaty with Moscow , de-emphasizing the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. defense strategy, joining the global ban on underground testing and bolstering the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the keystone of the international system to halt the spread of nuclear arms. Obama, however, stipulated that "as long as these weapons exist, the U.S. will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal" to deter nuclear strikes on the U.S. or its allies. Since the mid-1990s, the U.S. has used computer simulations, advanced experiments, inspections, monitoring and overhauls - the Stockpile Stewardship Program - to ensure the safety, security and effectiveness of its arsenal, now estimated at 2,200 deployed strategic warheads and 2,500 reserve strategic warheads. A series of government and independent studies have certified the reliability of the arsenal. A September report by the JASONs, an independent advisory group, found that the "lifetimes of today's nuclear warheads could be extended for decades with no anticipated loss in confidence." The JASONs' report, however, also added to concerns about a loss of U.S. nuclear weapons expertise, inadequate support for the Stockpile Stewardship Program and the need to modernize the Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and the Lawrence Livermore laboratory in California and five other sites of the "nuclear complex" where warheads are maintained, monitored, overhauled and stored. The National Nuclear Security Administration , the civilian agency that oversees the U.S. arsenal, is pursuing a multi-billion dollar plan to "transform" the complex by demolishing old, unsafe and unused facilities and consolidating their functions in modern, high-security buildings. =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 31 21:35:09 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:35:09 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Eva Golinger at the Havana Bookfair (NOT the usual fare) Message-ID: http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2010/enero/vier29/For-social.html GRANMA INTERNATIONAL Havana. January 29, 2010 For social justice in the face of permanent aggression . Interview with Venezuelan-American researcher and lawyer Eva Golinger OLGA D?AZ RUIZ AND GEISY GU?A (JOURNALISM STUDENTS) THE Havana Book Fair has accustomed us to good, interesting publications. Its 19th edition brings us Eva Golinger, the Venezuelan-American writer and lawyer, for the launch of her book, USAID, NED and the CIA: Permanent Aggression, an ambitious compilation and analysis of current situations, written by Golinger and Jean-Guy Allard, a Canadian journalist resident in Cuba. On this occasion, the perspicacity of Golinger, who is participating in the international fair for the second time, impelled her to expose the constant onslaught of U.S. imperialism in Latin America, "which, to date, we have been unable to halt," after studying the cases of Cuba, Bolivia, Honduras and Venezuela. "This is a visit of expos?, to achieve maximum impact and, in one way, a pretext to outline that message and to prompt reflection on the constant imperial acts of aggression and their various manifestations." Moreover, it lays out "all the marvelous things that we have achieved" in the subcontinent, she affirmed in an interview with Granma. Golinger proposes to take up this selection of political, economic, cultural and social events that are evidence of Washington's tactics and strategies in 2009, maintaining its interference in the region, as "a weapon in the defense of our revolutions." At this point in the conversation, she stops to observe that the coup d'?tat in Honduras last June "has taught us the need to take care of our spaces, to recognize that the enemy is everywhere," adding that the book is to be published in Honduras this year. Likewise the author of The Ch?vez Code (2005) and Bush vs. Ch?vez: Washington's War on Venezuela, the writer believes that the strengthening of Latin American integration, fundamentally through the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) has prompted an increase in U.S. right-wing aggression, "Because we constitute a threat to its domination in the region." Integration that has expanded its borders to the rest of the world, and that "seeks to lift up our countries without exploitation, or competition, through the principles of solidarity, integration and cooperation," she notes, commenting that Cuba and Venezuela constitute the vanguard of this South-South union. Despite the fact that she was born and raised in the United States and "talks like a gringo" - as she reproaches herself - Golinger directs all her energy and passion into fighting for social justice, and emphasizes that cooperation among ALBA countries "is perceived outside of our bloc with much hope, because we are constructing a more just social model." She gives the example of the Bolivarian Revolution, which has transformed all sectors of Venezuelan society, as well as making an impact at international level on account of that nation's significance to the world, with the figure of Ch?vez. "We are constructing a country that was in ruins, despite its natural resources. Then this president comes along, without experience in politics, moreover, and look what he's done!" In this struggle against constant aggression, the writer notes the leading role of the alternative media: "Telesur has had a fundamental role in dismantling the received opinions of the international media and in promoting another class of journalism, which consists of going into and bearing witness to the facts." At the same time, she expresses her enthusiasm at one of the first printed copies of the only Venezuelan English-language newspaper, Correo de Orinoco International. "It is the first time that there is information in English from a Venezuelan perspective, from the Venezuelan revolution," she affirms with pride. Golinger told us that she intends to continue exposing the principal maneuvers of the powerful in Latin America and in that proposition, she says, she can count on her friend and colleague Jean-Guy Allard. Translated by Granma International =============================== Support the alternative online news service FreshInk. Forward this article and subscribe link below to a friend. To view previous postings or to subscribe: http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink =============================== From menecraj at shaw.ca Sun Jan 31 21:46:37 2010 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:46:37 -0600 Subject: [Fresh Ink] Daniel Ellsberg remembers Howard Zinn Message-ID: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_memory_of_howard_20100127/ Truthdig.com January 27, 2010 A Memory of Howard By Daniel Ellsberg AP / Dima Gavrysh I just learned that my friend Howard Zinn died today. Earlier this morning, I was being interviewed by the Boston Phoenix, in connection with the February release of a documentary in which he is featured prominently. The interviewer asked me who my own heroes were, and I had no hesitation in answering, first, "Howard Zinn." Just weeks ago, after watching the film, I woke up thinking that I had never told him how much he meant to me. For once in my life, I acted on that thought in a timely way. I sent him an e-mail in which I said, among other things, what I had often told others: that he was, "in my opinion, the best human being I've ever known. The best example of what a human can be, and can do with their life." Our first meeting was at Faneuil Hall in Boston in early 1971, where we both spoke against the indictments of Eqbal Ahmad and Phil Berrigan for "conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger." We marched with the rest of the crowd to make citizens' arrests at the Boston office of the FBI. Later that spring, we went with our affinity group (including Noam Chomsky, Cindy Fredericks, M