From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 12:20:08 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:20:08 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] The Insurrection Act: working for the clampdown Message-ID: <20070723122008.741f0162@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Mark Graffis Jul 21, 2007 Zmag - Aug 2007 http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2007/bovard.html Martial Law Working for the Clampdown By James Bovard How many pipe bombs might it take to end U.S. democracy? Far fewer than it would have taken a year ago. The Defense Authorization Act of 2006, passed on September 30, empowers President George W. Bush to impose martial law in the event of a terrorist bincidentb or if he or other federal officials perceive a shortfall of bpublic orderb or even in response to antiwar protests that get unruly as a result of government provocations. The media and most of Capitol Hill ignored or cheered on this grant of nearly boundless power. But now that the presidentbs arsenal of authority is swollen and consecrated, a few voices of complaint are being heard. Even the New York Times recently condemned the new law for "making martial law easier." It took a few paragraphs in a $500 billion, 591-page bill to destroy one of the most important limits on federal power. Congress passed the Insurrection Act in 1807 to severely restrict the presidentbs ability to deploy the military within the United States. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 tightened these restrictions, imposing a two-year prison sentence on anyone who used the military within the U.S. without the permission of Congress. But there was a loophole: Posse Comitatus is waived if the president invokes the Insurrection Act. Section 1076 of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 changed the name of the key provision in the statute book from Insurrection Act to Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order Act. The Insurrection Act of 1807 stated that the president could deploy troops within the United States only bto suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.b The new law expands the list to include bnatural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other conditionbband such bconditionb is not defined or limited. These new pretexts are even more expansive than they appear. FEMA proclaims the equivalent of a natural disaster when bad snowstorms occur and Congress routinely proclaims a natural disaster when there is a shortfall of rain in states with upcoming elections. A terrorist "incident" could be something as stupid as the flashing toys scattered around Boston last fall. The new law also empowers the president to commandeer the National Guard of one state to send to another state for up to 365 days. Bush could send the New York National Guard to disarm the residents of Mississippi if they resisted a federal law that prohibited private ownership of semiautomatic weapons. Governors' control of the National Guard can be trumped with a simple presidential declaration. The story of how Section 1076 became law demonstrates how expanding government power is almost always the correct answer in Washington. Some people have claimed the provision was slipped into the bill in the middle of the night. In reality, the Administration signaled its intent and almost no one in the media or Congress tried to stop it. The Katrina debacle appears to have drowned Washingtonbs resistance to military rule. Bush declared, bI want there to be a robust discussion about the best way for the federal government, in certain extreme circumstances, to be able to rally assets for the good of the people.b His initial proposal generated only a smattering of criticism and there was no "robust discussion." On August 29, 2006, the Administration upped the ante, labeling the breached levees bthe equivalent of a weapon of mass effect being used on the city of New Orleans.b Nobody ever defined a "weapon of mass effect," but the term wasn't challenged. Section 1076 was supported by both conservatives and liberals. Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), the ranking Democratic member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, co-wrote the provision, along with committee chair Sen. John Warner (R-VA). Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) openly endorsed it and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), then-chair of the House Armed Services Committee, was an avid proponent. Every governor in the country opposed the changes and the National Governors Association repeatedly and loudly objected. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, warned on September 19 that, bWe certainly do not need to make it easier for Presidents to declare martial law,b but his alarm got no response. Ten days later, he commented in the Congressional Record: "Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy.b Leahy further condemned the process, declaring that it bwas just slipped in the defense bill as a rider with little study. Other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals." Congressional Quarterlybs Jeff Stein wrote an excellent article in the December issue on how the provision became law with minimal examination or controversy. A Republican Senate aide blamed the governors for failing to raise more fuss: bMy understanding is that they sent form letters to offices. If they really want a piece of legislation considered they should have called offices and pushed the matter. No office can handle the amount of form letters that come in each day.b Thus, the Senate was not guilty by reason of form letters. Plus, the issue was not on the front page of the Washington Post within the 48 hours before the Senate voted on it. Surely no reasonable person can expect senators to know what they were doing when they voted 100 to 0 in favor of the bill? Apparently, they were simply too busy to notice the latest coffin nails they hammered into the Constitution. This expansion of presidential prerogative illustrates how every federal failure redounds to the benefit of leviathan. FEMA was greatly expanded during the Clinton years for crises like the New Orleans flood. It, along with local and state agencies, floundered. Yet the federal belly flop on the Gulf Coast somehow anointed the president to send in troops where he sees fit. bMartial lawb is a euphemism for military dictatorship. When foreign democracies are overthrown and a junta establishes martial law, Americans usually recognize that a fundamental change has occurred. Perhaps some conservatives believe that the only change when martial law is declared is that people are no longer read their Miranda rights when they are locked away. "Martial law" means obey soldiers' commands or be shot. The abuses of military rule in southern states during Reconstruction were legendary, but they have been swept under the historical rug. Section 1076 is Enabling Act-type legislationbsomething that purports to preserve law-and-order while formally empowering the president to rule by decree. The Bush team is rarely remiss in stretching power beyond reasonable bounds. Bush talks as if any constraint on his war-making prerogative or budget is baiding and abetting the enemy.b Can such a person be trusted to reasonably define insurrection or disorder? Bush can commandeer a statebs National Guard any time he declares a "state has refused to enforce applicable laws." Does this refer to the laws as they are commonly understoodbor the laws after Bush fixes them with a signing statement? Some will consider concern about Bush or future presidents exploiting martial law to be alarmist. This is the same reflex many people have had to each administration proposal or power grab, from the USA PATRIOT Act in October 2001 to the president's enemy-combatant decree in November 2001 to setting up Guantanamo prison in early 2002 to the doctrine of preemptive war. The Administration has perennially denied that its new powers pose any threat even after evidence of abusesbillegal wiretapping, torture, a global network of secret prisons, Iraq in ruinsbbecame overwhelming. If the Administration does not hesitate to trample the First Amendment with "free speech zones," why expect it to be diffident about powers that could stifle protests en masse? On February 24, the White House conducted a highly publicized drill to test responses to Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) going off simultaneously in ten American cities. The White House has not disclosed the details of how the feds responded, but it would be out of character for this president to let new powers he sought to gather dust. There is nothing to prevent presidents from declaring martial law on a pretext than there is to prevent them from launching a war on the basis of manufactured intelligence. Senators Leahy and Kit Bond (R-MO) are sponsoring a bill to repeal the changes. Leahy urged his colleagues to consider the Section 1076 fix, declaring, bIt is difficult to see how any Senator could disagree with the advisability of having a more transparent and thoughtful approach to this sensitive issue.b He deserves credit for fighting hard on this issue, but there is little reason to expect most members of Congress to give it a second look. The Section 1076 debacle exemplifies how the Washington establishment pretends that new power will not be abused, regardless of how much existing power has been mishandled. Why worry about martial law when there is pork to be harvested and photo ops to attend? It is still unfashionable in Washington to worry about the danger of the open barn door until after the horse is two miles down the road. [James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy and eight other books.] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 12:23:10 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:23:10 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Palestine: Opinions Across the Divide Message-ID: <20070723122310.1f94047d@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Ed Pearl - Jul 21, 2007 Al Ahram Weekly No 850 - 21 - 27 June 2007 http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/850/re3.htm Palestine: Opinions Across the Divide Interviews by Khaled Amayreh and Sherine Bahaa Palestinians across the sectarian divide and from opposing political parties give their take on the crisis facing Gaza and the West Bank Professor Ali Al-Jerbawi is a leading Palestinian intellectual who has been critical of the Oslo process from its very inception. Considered a leading independent-minded member of the Palestinian intelligentsia in the West Bank, Al-Jerbawi has on many occasions called for the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority (PA). He argues that the continued existence of the PA makes the goal of freedom and liberation from the Israeli occupation more distant and illusive than ever. Al-Jerbawi, analysing the current situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, said, "it is obvious we are facing a crisis of immense proportions. We seem to have lost our sense of direction. This situation didn't erupt out of the blue, it is the cumulative effect of years of faulty policies and mismanagement of the national cause. In the final analysis, this is the result of having an 'authority' without real authority, without sovereignty and without statehood. This is also the consequence of having a 'government' under a sinister foreign military occupation. "Finding a way out will not be easy due to the destructive effects of the Oslo process, which enabled Israel to have a veto power over every aspect of our internal and external affairs. I think we must exercise a lot of soul-searching and re-examine our entire political reality. We must ask ourselves if there really is a political horizon, if the goal of Palestinian statehood is still feasible and attainable and if the continued existence of the PA serves the paramount interests of our people. We must face these questions very honestly, otherwise we will continue rotating in the same cycle." Al-Ahram Weekly asked Al-Jerbawi to evaluate the chances of success for the newly established Fayyad government, especially given the fact that the vast majority of its members are not affiliated with the Fatah movement which forms the backbone of the PA political and security apparatus in the West Bank. "First of all, nobody is talking about the legality and legitimacy of the government now, and this is in itself very worrying. However, the government will try to stabilise the overall situation as much as possible," he explained. The reason why the issue of the constitutionality of the government is treated as an afterthought or a secondary issue is because the government regards the overall situation as legitimate, said Al-Jerbawi. As to whether the Ramallah-based government would be able to re-establish the rule of law in the West Bank, given the continuing campaign of intimidation against Hamas members and their property, he explained that if Fatah, including the Fatah-dominated security agencies, refused to obey government decisions, then Fayyad would have to resign and his government would collapse. Commenting on the American, European and Israeli decision to lift the economic embargo imposed on the PA following Hamas's election victory in January, 2006, Al-Jerbawi warned of a trap. "We have to understand if the sanctions will be completely or only partially lifted. For example, will the sanctions on Gaza remain in place? I ask this because if sanctions are not removed completely, then there will be a tacit recognition of two Palestinian authorities, one in Gaza under Hamas, and another in the West Bank, supported and backed by the United States. Furthermore, we must also examine the ramifications and repercussions of pushing Hamas and 1.4 million Gazans into a corner," said the analyst. Al-Jerbawi thought that there was a possibility that Abbas might organise early elections as a way out of the protracted crisis with Hamas if he thought the majority of Palestinians would go to the polls. But without the participation of Hamas the situation would be very problematic, he added. "Holding elections would signal the end of the current crisis, but not a resolution of the problems from which it emanated," he stated. He concluded by saying that even if the Israelis and the Americans were successful in forcing Hamas to back down through isolating Gaza and cutting off vital services, this would ultimately backfire on Abbas, and badly. Maher Al-Taher is the chairman of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The dissolution of the Hamas government and the establishment of an emergency government, he believes, is not the answer to the problems in Gaza and the West Bank. The recent catastrophic events in Gaza during the internal fighting between Fatah and Hamas and the subsequent military takeover of Hamas of the Strip has further complicated an already complex situation. He recalled when the Oslo Accords were first discussed, there was an understanding there and then that one of the prime goals of the Zionists was to see inter-factional fighting between the Palestinians. "I further believe that the current crisis in Gaza and the West Bank, and even in the diaspora, is akin to entering a long and dark tunnel. The Palestinian factions, who opposed the Oslo agreement, declared right at the very beginning that the ulterior motive of the accord was aimed at undermining the Palestinian national agenda and thereby the Palestine Liberation Organisation. "Following Hamas's landslide victory in the 2005 legislative elections, the security apparatus continued to remain under the control of Fatah who refused to implement the orders of the Ministry of Interior. This resulted in two de facto governments operating, one in Gaza and one in West Bank. There was, in reality, no 'authority'," stated Taher. He went on to explain that there was a faction of Fatah members, who patently dissatisfied with the status quo, considered a more confrontational approach. Their strategy relied on support from the Americans and negotiations with the Israelis but they subsequently became disillusioned when it appeared that the Israelis were not interested in a fair and equitable solution towards a peace settlement. According to the politician, underpinning this Israeli arrogance were written guarantees from US President George W Bush, known then as the big "no's". These included no to the right of return, no to withdrawal to the 1967 borders and no to East Jerusalem as the future Palestinian capital. When Yasser Arafat refused to comply with this scenario, the Israelis forced him into incarceration in his Muqataa compound in Ramallah. Later he died of what some claim was poisoning. Despite these events, there were still optimistic individuals within the Fatah movement who argued about the necessity to continue with "peace talks". This was mainly due to their own vested interests, economical or social, which they wanted to protect, he stated. Recently Hamas has succeeded in taking over the Gaza Strip militarily and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) believes this is a serious error and are now contemplating the near future with alarm. "We think the decision by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to dismiss the former government and declare an emergency government will only complicate issues further without offering solutions to the impasse," said Taher. In regard to the future, Taher explained his concerns. "The latest developments have badly fractured the Palestinian Territories and sharply redrawn the political and geographic divisions undermining our nation's drive towards statehood. We are risking splitting our country into two lawless entities neither of which will be accountable to Palestinian society or its legal and social institutions. This is exactly what Israel has been hoping for," he added. Taher stated adamantly that a solution to this imbroglio should be derived from the steadfastness and determination of the Palestinian people to protect their political agenda. "To this end, we initiated contacts with our brothers in Fatah and requested an emergency meeting which would be attended by the leaders of all the Palestinian factions," said Taher. The main objective of such a meeting is to appoint an interim national leadership, which includes all parties, and to start implementing what we agreed upon in Cairo in March 2005. During the Cairo discussions all of the factions which attended concurred upon the necessity to reinstate the PLO, within its political framework and agenda to work for the benefit of all Palestinians both inside and outside Palestine, said Taher. "Finally, we have also called upon the Arab League to undertake a more effective role in helping the Palestinians resolve the crisis," concluded Taher. Yehia Moussa is a leading Hamas politician and deputy head of the movement's parliamentary bloc in the Gaza Strip. He accuses what he calls the "treacherous trend" within Fatah, an allusion to former Gaza strongman Mohamed Dahlan, of having planned to carry out a "bloody coup" against the government of Ismail Haniyeh. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and other Fatah leaders recently accused Hamas of carrying out a coup against the symbols of Palestinian legitimacy. Moussa countered saying that the real coup was being hatched and planned by Dahlan, in concert with the CIA and Israel. "They were planning to carry out a bloody coup against Hamas, involving the murder of hundreds of people, including Hamas's political and religious leaders. The coup was to take place on 13 July, three weeks from today. They were planning to dig mass graves in Gaza for Hamas and its supporters. But we managed to thwart their heinous plans before they could carry them out," said Moussa. When asked to substantiate the claims so that they wouldn't be regarded as part of the continuing propaganda war between Hamas and Fatah, the Hamas politician explained that US General Keith Dayton had supplied Dahlan, and the security agencies affiliated with Fatah, with arms and weapons which included heavy machineguns, anti-armour missiles, sniper fitted rifles and millions of bullets. "Now, let me ask you, why do you think America gave Dahlan and his men all these weapons? To fight Israel or fight Hamas?" Furthermore, Moussa explained that his movement had confiscated thousands of damning documents incriminating Dahlan. He further stated that he believed Dahlan was a CIA agent whose primary objective was to destroy Hamas even if that meant an all-out civil war in Gaza. Dahlan was simply carrying out orders given by Elliot Abrams, the American Zionist official in charge of the Hamas file, who admitted recently that the US was arming and financing Dahlan in a bid to destroy Hamas and undo the Mecca Agreement which had been the precursor of the government of national unity, he said. When Al-Ahram Weekly questioned the Hamas official as to whether former Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniyeh had notified President Abbas of what was happening, and if so what was Abbas's response, he replied in the affirmative. "Prime Minister Haniyeh provided President Abbas with every bit of relevant information. As early as six months ago, the prime minister informed Abbas that large consignments of weapons were being shipped by the US and Israel to the Dahlan-controlled presidential guard. Haniyeh also informed Abbas that Dahlan was building up a new security force, encamped at the Ansar Base, in preparation for a military confrontation with Hamas's Executive Force. Furthermore, the new force was being equipped with armoured cars, armoured personnel carriers and lethal weaponry. Haniyeh also informed Abbas about several highly- sensitive meetings that were held between American officers and preventive security officers in Israel," explained Moussa. Abbas failed to respond, according to Moussa. On the contrary, Abbas actually expressed his disappointment that Israel had not permitted a larger supply of weapons into the Strip, to allow Fatah to fight Hamas more efficiently. In response to claims by Fatah that there was no room for talks with Hamas if they refused to relinquish power in Gaza, Moussa responded by asking if the readers were aware what returning to the previous situation entailed. "Do you know what reverting to the former situation would mean in real terms? It would mean returning to hell. It would mean returning to lawlessness, chaos, daily killings, theft, assassinations, clan feuds, arson and total insecurity. Today, we have succeeded in re- establishing the rule of law. There is almost total quiet here. Peoples and families are walking in the streets without being shot at, without being terrorised by armed thugs," he said. However, some people have argued that despite the calm, the situation fails to serve the cause of Palestinian national unity. The Hamas politician refuted claims that his organisation was trying to oust Fatah from Gaza. He said Fatah was an integral part of Palestinian society and negating it was, therefore, unthinkable. "We are not against Fatah. Fatah and Hamas are brothers. We are only against American and Israeli agents who are carrying out their treachery under the rubric of Fatah. In short, the problem lies not with Fatah, but with a small faction within it that is answerable to our enemies." The solution was very simple, according to Moussa. The respect for the rule of law, including the basic law, was paramount and it was vital that the Palestinians didn't allow their enemies to undermine their common cause, he explained. Moussa also appeared unperturbed by US and Israel claims that they would seek to isolate and starve the Gaza Strip. "First of all, our lives are not in the hands of America and Israel, but in the hands of God. Second, starving 1.4 million people could have grave and unpredictable repercussions. I think the world community will think twice before allowing such a thing to happen," he said. As to whether the status quo of two governments and two premiers would continue, Moussa explained unequivocally that Haniyeh was elected by the Palestinians with a large majority. On the other hand, Salam Fayyad was appointed prime minister by Abbas in order to appease and please the United States and Israel. So which government is legitimate, the elected one or the appointed one, he asked. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 12:29:02 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:29:02 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Latest Bush Executive Order Reinterprets Geneva Conventions Message-ID: <20070723122902.2eb2babd@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by MichaelP - Jul 21, 2007 In fact, the CIA months ago produced a list of proposed interrogation guidelines, and lawmakers were briefed on them. While the specifics of the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" remain secret, they reportedly no longer include some of the more controversial methods such as "waterboarding," a practice that simulates drowning. According to the executive order, the guidelines are to include requirements to ensure "the development of an approved plan of interrogation tailored for each detainee," as well as "effective monitoring of the program" and "compliance with applicable law." Human rights activists criticized Friday's action on grounds that assurances of humane treatment of detainees are meaningless without knowing what the CIA guidelines allow. See: http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=12777 The White House http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070720-5.html For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary July 20, 2007 President Bush Signs Executive Order Fact sheet Executive Order: Interpretation of the Geneva Conventions Common Article 3 as Applied to a Program of Detention and Interrogation Operated by the Central Intelligence Agency This afternoon, the President signed an Executive Order that interprets for the United States "Common Article 3" of the Geneva Conventions, as authorized in the Military Commissions Act. The Order interprets the meaning and application of Common Article 3 with respect to certain detentions and interrogations. Specifically, the interpretation of Common Article 3 set forth in this Order is applied to the Central Intelligence Agency's detention and interrogation program whose purpose is to question captured Al Qaeda terrorists who have information on attack plans or the whereabouts of the group's senior leaders. The Order requires that any CIA interrogation program that might go forward comply with all relevant federal statutes, including the prohibition on "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, the federal prohibition on torture, and the War Crimes Act, all of which protect against violations of Common Article 3. The Order imposes other explicit limitations on interrogation techniques and conditions of confinement in a CIA program. It bars, "acts of violence serious enough to be considered comparable to murder, torture, mutilation, and cruel and inhuman treatment." It also prohibits "willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual in a manner so serious that any reasonable person, considering the circumstances, would deem the acts beyond the bounds of human decency." And the Order forbids acts intended to denigrate detainees' religion, religious practices, or religious objects. Last September, the President explained how the CIA's program had disrupted attacks and saved lives, and that it must continue on a sound legal footing. The President has insisted on clear legal standards so that CIA officers involved in this essential work are not placed in jeopardy for doing their job - and keeping America safe from attacks. This Order was signed after an extensive interagency process of review and coordination. By providing these clear rules, the Order has clarified vague terms in Common Article 3, and its interpretation is consistent with the decisions of international tribunals applying Common Article 3, including the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. # # # From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 12:33:29 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:33:29 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Turkish PM threatens to invade northern Iraq Message-ID: <20070723123329.2b5b54d9@viola.tamara-b.org> The Independent - Jul 21, 2007 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2788616.ece Turkish PM threatens to invade northern Iraq By Patrick Cockburn in Arbil, Iraq Turkey's Prime Minister has threatened an invasion of northern Iraq if, after the Turkish election on Sunday, talks fail with Iraq and the US on curbing the activities of Turkish Kurd guerrillas. Turkish artillery has been firing increasingly heavy barrages at villages in the north of Iraqi Kurdistan. After three Turkish soldiers were killed and five wounded by a mine laid by PKK guerrillas last week, some 100 shells exploded around the border town of Zakho, forcing residents to flee. The Prime Minister, Recep Tayyib Erdogan, said the PKK fighters had been using northern Iraq as a base to make attacks. He said there would be a tripartite meeting with the US and Iraq after the election but if Turkish demands were not satisfied, an invasion was on the agenda. "Whatever is necessary could be done immediately," he said. "We are capable enough to do it." Mr Erdogan's hard line is geared to the Turkish election tomorrow in which his Justice and Development Party (AKP is fearful of losing votes because it is being portrayed as not acting firmly enough against PKK guerrillas. It wants to stop the far-right Nationalist Party, which is demanding an incursion in Iraq, getting the 10 per cent of the vote that it needs to win seats in parliament. The PKK has about 4,000 fighters hiding in the mountains of northern Iraq. It has escalated its attacks in largely Kurdish south-east Turkey, but these are pinpricks as Turkey has an army of 250,000 men in the region. Nevertheless, the question of how to deal with the PKK has become a central issue in the election. The Iraqi government in Baghdad and the powerful and semi-independent Kurdistan Regional Government are taking Turkish threats seriously. Iraqi Kurdish leaders are dismissive of a Turkish invasion achieving anything against elusive PKK forces. Safeen Dezayee, an expert on Turkey and a spokesman for the Kurdistan Democratic Party of the KRG President Massoud Barzani, says: "The Turkish policy of military intervention here has failed over 20 to 25 years. They crossed the border in 1992, 1995 and 1997 and got nowhere." But the PKK is not Turkey's only concern. Others include the development of the KRG as the nearest entity the Kurds have ever had to an independent state. The Kurds are very powerful within the government in Baghdad and are pressing ahead with a referendum, which the Iraqi constitution says must be held in northern Iraq by the end of 2007, under which the oil province of Kirkuk may vote to join the KRG. The Turkish threat to invade puts the US in a difficult position. The Kurds are America's main supporter in Iraq. Turkey is also a long-term American strategic ally. "The US is telling the Turks not to come in," says Dr Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Kurdish leader. "But if there is a conflict between Turkey and the Kurds then the US will support Turkey." To try to avoid a war the US is pressing the KRG to act against the PKK. After the election, the Turkish government may feel that it has no choice but to launch at least a limited incursion. The Iraqi Kurds are nervous about how far Turkish troops will advance and when they will retreat. If the invasion comes it will be difficult to keep Kurdish soldiers, who form the most reliable part of the Iraqi army, stationed in Baghdad. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 12:35:25 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:35:25 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] UK troop reserves 'almost gone' Message-ID: <20070723123525.791f88cb@viola.tamara-b.org> BBC - Jul 21, 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/6909550.stm UK troop reserves 'almost gone' The head of the Army has warned that British troops are so stretched that the nation's military reserves are "almost non-existent". In the memo, leaked to the Daily Telegraph, General Sir Richard Dannatt said the Army was undermanned because of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. He also said vital equipment was being used "at the edge of sustainability". A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said the forces were working hard but the current situation was "manageable". General Dannatt also said the Army has "almost no capability to react to the unexpected". He said: "It is difficult to predict the long-term effect of this level of pressure on people. It is critical that we improve manning as quickly as we can." There is reportedly just one battalion of 500 troops, called the Spearhead Lead Element, available to be used in an emergency, such as a major domestic terrorist attack or a rapid deployment overseas. Revisit planning The document also said that Britain's second back-up unit, the Airborne Task Force, which is formed around the Parachute Regiment, could not deploy fully. It blamed this on "shortages in manpower, equipment and stocks". The MoD conceded that if "operations continue at this pace, we will have to revisit our planning assumptions". The spokesman added: "In recent months, we have drawn down our force levels in a number of operations. "The Armed Forces' mission in Northern Ireland will end on 31 July; we withdrew the bulk of our forces from Bosnia-Herzegovina earlier this year and... we will reduce further our force levels in Iraq by 500. It is critical that we improve manning as quickly as we can General Sir Richard Dannatt "We are certainly not complacent about the longer term implications, which we are acutely aware of and are addressing." Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, said the lack of reserves was "an appalling situation and damning indictment" of the way the government handled the Services. "They are being asked to carry out tasks for which they are neither funded or equipped for. There is an urgent need to review our strategic approach because we cannot continue over-stretching our Forces." In October General Dannatt said that the presence of UK armed forces in Iraq "exacerbates the security problems" and they should "get out some time soon". He also said that initial planning for the post-war period had been poor. ) BBC MMVII From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 12:39:26 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:39:26 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Wolf: No More Petitions - Just Action! Message-ID: <20070723123926.054e058d@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Bob Nichols - July 21, 2007 For Immediate Release No More Petitions - Just Action! Summary: But take my word for it, if you want to see a change, GIVE UP ON CONGRESS doing the right thing. As it has been said, Democrats don't want to wrench excessive, ubiquitous, executive power away from the Republicans - they simply want it for themselves in just under two years. http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/07/21/18436684.php by Timbre' Wolf (San Francisco) - If you're still holding your breath for Congress to impeach Bush/Cheney you'd better have some serious lung capacity. Only 15 congress folk have come out in support of impeachment. While polls show that a 54% majority of Americans support impeachment proceedings only about 3% of Congress does. ( 3.448% to be exact). The appellation "Representative" is clearly a misnomer. I am asked daily, through email, to sign yet another petition to try to right this-or-that injustice - and the problem is almost always caused by some stupid Bush administration antic. There is only one chance, one hope, one way to solve these myriad problems...get Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney out of office. . The bastards have shown us, repeatedly, that they do not care about the will of the American people. If Congress will not impeach, If the FBI will not investigate blatant "color of law" violations, And if Military officers continue to chose retirement, over upholding their oath to protect the constitution against domestic enemies, then all is lost. It's a simple game. It is logical. There will be another "terrorist" attack. Iran will be blamed and will find itself senselessly attacked. All natural national treasures will be opened for drilling. The rights of all Americans will be severely, and probably irreversibly, violated - make no mistake - there will be torture. And, finally, there will be no 2008 election in the interest of maintaining "National Continuity." It is also a strong possibility that the USA will be attacked...not by Muslim extremists but, rather, by other "first world" countries. Hitler showed that you can only piss off the rest of the world for "so long" before they come after you. Remember that Dresden was once a beautiful city full of art, music, theater, culture, architecture - probably a little like your place of residence. I will not sign another petition. Like Cindy Sheehan, I am tired and I feel used. FYI: I resisted the Afghanistan and Iraq wars BEFORE they were started and BEFORE they became unpopular. Hell I resisted the FIRST Iraq war and Regan's threat to Iran and Vietnam years before all of this. But America seems economically addicted to these cyclical major wars; as well as the constant and continuous "skirmishes" where ever leaders are not in concert with US economic and ideological will. You should sign the petitions - but all that you will be left with, at the end of the day, is your name on the wrong list. Since I'm already on that list, and I don't see any improvement what-so-ever, I don't see any value in continuing to sign petitions. If you really want to make an impact I would suggest asking any military officer, that you can find, to uphold their oath - by force if necessary - to remove the Bush administration for violating the Constitution three times and committing countless illegal acts according to the Supreme and Federal Courts. The definition of an "enemy of the constitution" would certainly include someone who has willfully and unapologetically violated it three times and continues, unabated and unchecked, to do so. If you really want to make a difference hound the FBI to investigate and prosecute the Bush administration for it's rampant assault on the American and Iraqi people with it's extensive color of law violations. The FBI's track record on these matters is deplorable but who knows...if we're lucky the administration has pissed somebody off over there. But take my word for it, if you want to see a change, GIVE UP ON CONGRESS doing the right thing. As it has been said, Democrats don't want to wrench excessive, ubiquitous, executive power away from the Republicans - they simply want it for themselves in just under two years. Spare me the "you're so cynical" emails. I'm NOT cynical - I'm just skeptical, and with good reason, and I have observed that certain courses of action are ineffective. In My Opinion, we must get much more creative to find EFFECTIVE ways to deal with this problem. Bio: In 1990 Timbre' Wolf moved to the plains of Oklahoma and built a pole house so that he might live intentionally. Chopping wood and carrying water was a reality of his existence for the next decade. Invited through a dream to attend a Sac & Fox sweat lodge, Timbre' Wolf was embraced as a long lost brother, by the tribal elder Ronnie Harris. Because of this arrangement there are men nearly his age who call him "Uncle." Timbre' Wolf holds that honor close to his heart as one of the most precious experiences of his life. Such a regular at the sweats, Ronnie "named" Wolf Lodge Pole which resulted in a good deal of jocularity among Timbre' Wolf's "nephews." Timbre' Wolf has been heavily involved in music from the time he was four years old. First listening intently and pounding out rhythms, as he fell asleep at night, then as a vocalist in a regionally renowned boy choir, and later as a pianist, classical clarinetist, jazz saxophonist, and finally as a composer studying with Aaron Copeland's student and Curtis graduate Michael Hennigan. Wolf campaigned for anti-war candidate George McGovern while in seventh grade and has protested every war since. Timbre' Wolf is rarely seen, publicly, without his guitar. Timbre' Wolf is currently involved in an extensive Visualization Art Project in which he is running for President of the United States. Wolf may be reached at timbrewolf1 at gmail.com http://www.myspace.com/timbrewolfforpresident Login required. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 12:41:24 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:41:24 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] The Logic of Impeachment Message-ID: <20070723124124.454e6eb3@viola.tamara-b.org> Consortium News - Jul 21, 2007 http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/072107.html he Logic of Impeachment By Robert Parry July 21, 2007 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has taken impeachment ?off the table,? in line with Official Washington?s view that trying to oust George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would be an unpleasant waste of time. But there is emerging a compelling logic that an unprecedented dual impeachment might be vital to the future of the United States. If some historic challenge is not made to the extraordinary assertions of power by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, the United States might lose its status as a democratic Republic based on a Constitution that adheres to the twin principles that no one is above the law and everyone is endowed with inalienable rights. Over the past six-plus years, Bush has trampled on these traditional concepts of liberty and the rule of law time and again, even as he professes his love of freedom and democracy. Indeed, in Bush?s world, the word ?freedom? has come to define almost its classical opposite. Bush?s ?freedom? means the right of the Executive to imprison enemies of the state indefinitely without charge and without even the centuries-old right of habeas corpus; Bush?s ?freedom? tolerates coercion, torture or what the Founders called ?cruel and unusual punishment? to extract confessions from detainees; it countenances surveillance of anyone ? citizen and non-citizen alike ? without a requirement for judicial review or evidence of probable cause that a crime is being committed; it sees no problem with the government and its private-sector allies teaming up to silence dissent. Bush?s ?freedom? also embraces the notion of a Commander in Chief acting as a quasi-dictator possessing ?plenary? ? or unlimited ? powers in wartime, deciding which human beings on the planet get basic rights and which ones don?t. Given the indefinite and boundless nature of the ?war on terror,? which could last forever and extends to a global battlefield (including U.S. territory), Bush?s presidential powers also don?t represent just a temporary suspension of the Constitution in the face of a short-term emergency, but rather a permanent change in the American system of government. After all, if one man possesses unlimited power, that means the rest of us hold our personal liberties at the leader?s forbearance, much as feudal subjects lived at the pleasure of the monarch, not as citizens who could stand up to the ruler with the firm knowledge that their basic rights of life and liberty were unshakeable. As the so-called ?unitary executive,? Bush asserts further his right to enforce the laws selectively, protecting friends and punishing enemies ? and most of all, putting himself and his senior aides beyond the reach of the law. Under these theories of presidential powers, Bush can ignore domestic laws, international treaty commitments and even the Constitution when he deems it necessary. Sometimes he just waives a law by issuing a ?signing statement? declaring he won?t be bound by its restrictions. Other times, he makes ad hoc judgments as the mood suits him. [For more on Bush?s assertions of power, see the new book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, co-authored by Robert Parry.] New Affront Bush?s latest affront to the traditional American concept of checks and balances was to bar the Justice Department from handling contempt-of-Congress complaints lodged against White House aides who have invoked executive privilege rather than testify about the politically tainted firings of nine federal prosecutors, ones who didn't measure up as "loyal Bushies." In Bush?s view, federal prosecutors can enforce the laws only the way he sees fit ? and thus once he tells a subordinate not to testify, the Justice Department has no choice but to rebuff any efforts by Congress to compel testimony. So, the ?unitary executive? gets to decide how much congressional oversight will be allowed, regardless of an existing law which makes it the duty of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to take congressional contempt citations to a grand jury. In similar cases in the past, the Executive Branch has averted a showdown by making compromises that were acceptable to Congress. But Bush has refused to budge from his position that the most Congress will be granted is an informal chat with his advisers without a transcript and with no chance to ask follow-up questions. Bush is daring Congress to either mount a constitutional battle or submit to his will. While this latest affront alone might not justify Congress seeking impeachment, the executive privilege ploy is only part of a larger pattern. It is the consistency of the White House arrogance, dating back to the earliest days of the Bush-Cheney administration, that argues for impeachment hearings against both Bush and Cheney. Beyond their mutual disdain for the constitutional limits on executive power, Bush and Cheney have committed what the Founders would call ?a long train of abuses,? including some ? like refusing to ?assent to laws? ? which parallel the crimes of King George III as enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. But arguably Bush and Cheney have committed offenses against the nation that are worse than the actions of King George III. Bush and Cheney, for instance, induced the United States to invade Iraq under false pretenses, a war that has caused grievous harm to the nation in loss of life, treasure and international standing. Over the past five years, Bush and Cheney repeatedly have deceived the American people about the causes for war with Iraq ? with Bush claiming even now that Saddam Hussein ?chose? war by not disarming, although the U.S. intelligence community has long since concluded that Iraq did dispose of its unconventional weapons and had declared that fact accurately long before Bush ordered the invasion. Beyond the administration?s brazen deceit and the horrendous death toll, the U.S. occupation of Iraq has let al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization that killed almost 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001, off the hook. According to a new National Intelligence Estimate, the Iraq War has helped al-Qaeda attract recruits, raise money and again threaten the American people. [See Consortiumnews.com?s ?Bush Is al-Qaeda?s Strategic Ally.?] Bush Incompetence The Bush administration also has demonstrated gross incompetence in responding to national emergencies. Not only did Bush?s neglect of pre-9/11 warnings leave the United States vulnerable to attack, but Bush?s political cronyism contributed to the destruction of a leading American city, New Orleans, when Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. There is also the issue of treasonous behavior by Bush and Cheney in the exposure of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame as part of a political attack on her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for criticizing Bush?s use of false intelligence to justify going to war with Iraq. Even in the plot of the first ?Mission Impossible? movie, it is recognized that the willful identification of CIA officers under ?non-official cover? (or NOCs), the status of Valerie Plame, constitutes an act of treason. In the Plame-gate affair, however, the government officials behind this security breach and the subsequent cover-up were George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Still, many leading Democrats argue that impeachment would just be an exercise in futility, because conviction in the Senate requires a two-thirds majority and because the sizable Republican minorities in Congress would stick by Bush no matter what ? which may indeed be true. Impeachment hearings in the House, however, would at least focus the public?s attention on the severity of Bush?s offenses, demonstrate the pattern of abuse, and explain how this administration has deviated so far from the course laid out by the Founders. Impeachment also offers a definable ? and constitutionally envisioned ? response to leaders who threaten the survival of the Republic. The Founders put the impeachment clause in the Constitution for exactly this kind of moment. Even if impeachment didn?t reach the ultimate goal of removing Bush and Cheney, it would put down a marker of congressional resistance to executive abuses. The public would get the point, too. The current Democratic strategy of fighting and losing legislative battles over symbolic resolutions of disapproval or meaningless votes of no confidence only invites the consolidation of the Bush-Cheney vision of an all-powerful presidency. The Democratic fecklessness also alienates the only logical allies in the fight to save the Republic, millions of citizens alarmed at the Bush-Cheney power grab. In my neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia, lawn signs have sprung up reading simply ?Impeach Him? or ?Impeach Them Both.? No one needs to say who the ?him? and the ?them? are. >From opinion polls, it?s clear, too, that Americans across the country are furious with Bush and Cheney. Many recognize that Bush and Cheney represent an unparalleled threat to core American principles, such as the concept of inalienable rights. These millions of Americans are searching for some courageous politicians willing to take the lead. Instead, the people get all-night Iraq War debates that go nowhere ? and empty promises that, some day down the road, the Democrats will finally get serious. What these citizens want is for the Democrats to stiffen their spines and finally declare, loudly and clearly, ?Impeach the bastards.? [Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there.] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 12:43:35 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:43:35 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Pilger: The Invisible Government Message-ID: <20070723124335.46aa9164@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Riaz K. Tayob - activ-l Information Clearing House - Jul 20, 2007 The Invisible Government In a speech in Chicago, John Pilger describes how propaganda has become such a potent force in our lives and, in the words of one of its founders, represents 'an invisible government'. By John Pilger [Speech delivered at the Chicago Socialism 2007 Conference on Saturday June 16 2007] The title of this talk is Freedom Next Time, which is the title of my book, and the book is meant as an antidote to the propaganda that is so often disguised as journalism. So I thought I would talk today about journalism, about war by journalism, propaganda, and silence, and how that silence might be broken. Edward Bernays, the so-called father of public relations, wrote about an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. He was referring to journalism, the media. That was almost 80 years ago, not long after corporate journalism was invented. It is a history few journalist talk about or know about, and it began with the arrival of corporate advertising. As the new corporations began taking over the press, something called "professional journalism" was invented. To attract big advertisers, the new corporate press had to appear respectable, pillars of the establishmentobjective, impartial, balanced. The first schools of journalism were set up, and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around the professional journalist. The right to freedom of expression was associated with the new media and with the great corporations, and the whole thing was, as Robert McChesney put it so well, "entirely bogus". For what the public did not know was that in order to be professional, journalists had to ensure that news and opinion were dominated by official sources, and that has not changed. Go through the New York Times on any day, and check the sources of the main political storiesdomestic and foreignyou'll find they're dominated by government and other established interests. That is the essence of professional journalism. I am not suggesting that independent journalism was or is excluded, but it is more likely to be an honorable exception. Think of the role Judith Miller played in the New York Times in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Yes, her work became a scandal, but only after it played a powerful role in promoting an invasion based on lies. Yet, Miller's parroting of official sources and vested interests was not all that different from the work of many famous Times reporters, such as the celebrated W.H. Lawrence, who helped cover up the true effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August, 1945. "No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin," was the headline on his report, and it was false. Consider how the power of this invisible government has grown. In 1983 the principle global media was owned by 50 corporations, most of them American. In 2002 this had fallen to just 9 corporations. Today it is probably about 5. Rupert Murdoch has predicted that there will be just three global media giants, and his company will be one of them. This concentration of power is not exclusive of course to the United States. The BBC has announced it is expanding its broadcasts to the United States, because it believes Americans want principled, objective, neutral journalism for which the BBC is famous. They have launched BBC America. You may have seen the advertising. The BBC began in 1922, just before the corporate press began in America. Its founder was Lord John Reith, who believed that impartiality and objectivity were the essence of professionalism. In the same year the British establishment was under siege. The unions had called a general strike and the Tories were terrified that a revolution was on the way. The new BBC came to their rescue. In high secrecy, Lord Reith wrote anti-union speeches for the Tory Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and broadcast them to the nation, while refusing to allow the labor leaders to put their side until the strike was over. So, a pattern was set. Impartiality was a principle certainly: a principle to be suspended whenever the establishment was under threat. And that principle has been upheld ever since. Take the invasion of Iraq. There are two studies of the BBC's reporting. One shows that the BBC gave just 2 percent of its coverage of Iraq to antiwar dissent2 percent. That is less than the antiwar coverage of ABC, NBC, and CBS. A second study by the University of Wales shows that in the buildup to the invasion, 90 percent of the BBC's references to weapons of mass destruction suggested that Saddam Hussein actually possessed them, and that by clear implication Bush and Blair were right. We now know that the BBC and other British media were used by the British secret intelligence service MI-6. In what they called Operation Mass Appeal, MI-6 agents planted stories about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, such as weapons hidden in his palaces and in secret underground bunkers. All of these stories were fake. But that's not the point. The point is that the work of MI-6 was unnecessary, because professional journalism on its own would have produced the same result. Listen to the BBC's man in Washington, Matt Frei, shortly after the invasion. "There is not doubt," he told viewers in the UK and all over the world, "That the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially now in the Middle East, is especially tied up with American military power." In 2005 the same reporter lauded the architect of the invasion, Paul Wolfowitz, as someone who "believes passionately in the power of democracy and grassroots development." That was before the little incident at the World Bank. None of this is unusual. BBC news routinely describes the invasion as a miscalculation. Not Illegal, not unprovoked, not based on lies, but a miscalculation. The words "mistake" and "blunder" are common BBC news currency, along with "failure"which at least suggests that if the deliberate, calculated, unprovoked, illegal assault on defenseless Iraq had succeeded, that would have been just fine. Whenever I hear these words I remember Edward Herman's marvelous essay about normalizing the unthinkable. For that's what media clichid language does and is designed to doit normalizes the unthinkable; of the degradation of war, of severed limbs, of maimed children, all of which I've seen. One of my favorite stories about the Cold War concerns a group of Russian journalists who were touring the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by the host for their impressions. "I have to tell you," said the spokesman, "that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV day after day that all the opinions on all the vital issues are the same. To get that result in our country we send journalists to the gulag. We even tear out their fingernails. Here you don't have to do any of that. What is the secret?" What is the secret? It is a question seldom asked in newsrooms, in media colleges, in journalism journals, and yet the answer to that question is critical to the lives of millions of people. On August 24 last year the New York Times declared this in an editorial: "If we had known then what we know now the invasion if Iraq would have been stopped by a popular outcry." This amazing admission was saying, in effect, that journalists had betrayed the public by not doing their job and by accepting and amplifying and echoing the lies of Bush and his gang, instead of challenging them and exposing them. What the Times didn't say was that had that paper and the rest of the media exposed the lies, up to a million people might be alive today. That's the belief now of a number of senior establishment journalists. Few of themthey've spoken to me about itfew of them will say it in public. Ironically, I began to understand how censorship worked in so-called free societies when I reported from totalitarian societies. During the 1970s I filmed secretly in Czechoslovakia, then a Stalinist dictatorship. I interviewed members of the dissident group Charter 77, including the novelist Zdener Urbanek, and this is what he told me. "In dictatorships we are more fortunate that you in the West in one respect. We believe nothing of what we read in the newspapers and nothing of what we watch on television, because we know its propaganda and lies. I like you in the West. We've learned to look behind the propaganda and to read between the lines, and like you, we know that the real truth is always subversive." Vandana Shiva has called this subjugated knowledge. The great Irish muckraker Claud Cockburn got it right when he wrote, "Never believe anything until it's officially denied." One of the oldest clichis of war is that truth is the first casualty. No it's not. Journalism is the first casualty. When the Vietnam War was over, the magazine Encounter published an article by Robert Elegant, a distinguished correspondent who had covered the war. "For the first time in modern history," he wrote, the outcome of a war was determined not on the battlefield, but on the printed page, and above all on the television screen." He held journalists responsible for losing the war by opposing it in their reporting. Robert Elegant's view became the received wisdom in Washington and it still is. In Iraq the Pentagon invented the embedded journalist because it believed that critical reporting had lost Vietnam. The very opposite was true. On my first day as a young reporter in Saigon, I called at the bureaus of the main newspapers and TV companies. I noticed that some of them had a pinboard on the wall on which were gruesome photographs, mostly of bodies of Vietnamese and of American soldiers holding up severed ears and testicles. In one office was a photograph of a man being tortured; above the torturers head was a stick-on comic balloon with the words, "that'll teach you to talk to the press." None of these pictures were ever published or even put on the wire. I asked why. I was told that the public would never accept them. Anyway, to publish them would not be objective or impartial. At first, I accepted the apparent logic of this. I too had grown up on stories of the good war against Germany and Japan, that ethical bath that cleansed the Anglo-American world of all evil. But the longer I stayed in Vietnam, the more I realized that our atrocities were not isolated, nor were they aberrations, but the war itself was an atrocity. That was the big story, and it was seldom news. Yes, the tactics and effectiveness of the military were questioned by some very fine reporters. But the word "invasion" was never used. The anodyne word used was "involved." America was involved in Vietnam. The fiction of a well-intentioned, blundering giant, stuck in an Asian quagmire, was repeated incessantly. It was left to whistleblowers back home to tell the subversive truth, those like Daniel Ellsberg and Seymour Hersh, with his scoop of the My-Lai massacre. There were 649 reporters in Vietnam on March 16, 1968the day that the My-Lai massacre happenedand not one of them reported it. In both Vietnam and Iraq, deliberate policies and strategies have bordered on genocide. In Vietnam, the forced dispossession of millions of people and the creation of free fire zones; In Iraq, an American-enforced embargo that ran through the 1990s like a medieval siege, and killed, according to the United Nations Children's fund, half a million children under the age of five. In both Vietnam and Iraq, banned weapons were used against civilians as deliberate experiments. Agent Orange changed the genetic and environmental order in Vietnam. The military called this Operation Hades. When Congress found out, it was renamed the friendlier Operation Ranch Hand, and nothing change. That's pretty much how Congress has reacted to the war in Iraq. The Democrats have damned it, rebranded it, and extended it. The Hollywood movies that followed the Vietnam War were an extension of the journalism, of normalizing the unthinkable. Yes, some of the movies were critical of the military's tactics, but all of them were careful to concentrate on the angst of the invaders. The first of these movies is now considered a classic. It's The Deerhunter, whose message was that America had suffered, America was stricken, American boys had done their best against oriental barbarians. The message was all the more pernicious, because the Deerhunter was brilliantly made and acted. I have to admit it's the only movie that has made me shout out loud in a Cinema in protest. Oliver Stone's acclaimed movie Platoon was said to be antiwar, and it did show glimpses of the Vietnamese as human beings, but it also promoted above all the American invader as victim. I wasn't going to mention The Green Berets when I set down to write this, until I read the other day that John Wayne was the most influential movie who ever lived. I a saw the Green Berets starring John Wayne on a Saturday night in 1968 in Montgomery Alabama. (I was down there to interview the then-infamous governor George Wallace). I had just come back from Vietnam, and I couldn't believe how absurd this movie was. So I laughed out loud, and I laughed and laughed. And it wasn't long before the atmosphere around me grew very cold. My companion, who had been a Freedom Rider in the South, said, "Let's get the hell out of here and run like hell." We were chased all the way back to our hotel, but I doubt if any of our pursuers were aware that John Wayne, their hero, had lied so he wouldn't have to fight in World War II. And yet the phony role model of Wayne sent thousands of Americans to their deaths in Vietnam, with the notable exceptions of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Last year, in his acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the playwright Harold Pinter made an epoch speech. He asked why, and I quote him, "The systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought in Stalinist Russia were well know in the West, while American state crimes were merely superficially recorded, left alone, documented." And yet across the world the extinction and suffering of countless human beings could be attributed to rampant American power. "But," said Pinter, "You wouldn't know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest." Pinter's words were more than the surreal. The BBC ignored the speech of Britain's most famous dramatist. I've made a number of documentaries about Cambodia. The first was Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia. It describes the American bombing that provided the catalyst for the rise of Pol Pot. What Nixon and Kissinger had started, Pol Pot completedCIA files alone leave no doubt of that. I offered Year Zero to PBS and took it to Washington. The PBS executives who saw it were shocked. They whispered among themselves. They asked me to wait outside. One of them finally emerged and said, "John, we admire your film. But we are disturbed that it says the United States prepared the way for Pol Pot." I said, "Do you dispute the evidence?" I had quoted a number of CIA documents. "Oh, no," he replied. "But we've decided to call in a journalistic adjudicator." Now the term "journalist adjudicator" might have been invented by George Orwell. In fact they managed to find one of only three journalists who had been invited to Cambodia by Pol Pot. And of course he turned his thumbs down on the film, and I never heard from PBS again. Year Zero was broadcast in some 60 countries and became one of the most watched documentaries in the world. It was never shown in the United States. Of the five films I have made on Cambodia, one of them was shown by WNET, the PBS station in New York. I believe it was shown at about one in the morning. On the basis of this single showing, when most people are asleep, it was awarded an Emmy. What marvelous irony. It was worthy of a prize but not an audience. Harold Pinter's subversive truth, I believe, was that he made the connection between imperialism and fascism, and described a battle for history that's almost never reported. This is the great silence of the media age. And this is the secret heart of propaganda today. A propaganda so vast in scope that I'm always astonished that so many Americans know and understand as much as they do. We are talking about a system, of course, not personalities. And yet, a great many people today think that the problem is George W. Bush and his gang. And yes, the Bush gang are extreme. But my experience is that they are no more than an extreme version of what has gone on before. In my lifetime, more wars have been started by liberal Democrats than by Republicans. Ignoring this truth is a guarantee that the propaganda system and the war-making system will continue. We've had a branch of the Democratic party running Britain for the last 10 years. Blair, apparently a liberal, has taken Britain to war more times than any prime minister in the modern era. Yes, his current pal is George Bush, but his first love was Bill Clinton, the most violent president of the late 20th century. Blair's successor, Gordon Brown is also a devotee of Clinton and Bush. The other day, Brown said, "The days of Britain having to apologize for the British Empire are over. We should celebrate." Like Blair, like Clinton, like Bush, Brown believes in the liberal truth that the battle for history has been won; that the millions who died in British-imposed famines in British imperial India will be forgottenlike the millions who have died in the American Empire will be forgotten. And like Blair, his successor is confident that professional journalism is on his side. For most journalists, whether they realize it or not, are groomed to be tribunes of an ideology that regards itself as non-ideological, that presents itself as the natural center, the very fulcrum of modern life. This may very well be the most powerful and dangerous ideology we have ever known because it is open-ended. This is liberalism. I'm not denying the virtues of liberalismfar from it. We are all beneficiaries of them. But if we deny its dangers, its open-ended project, and the all-consuming power of its propaganda, then we deny our right to true democracy, because liberalism and true democracy are not the same. Liberalism began as a preserve of the elite in the 19th century, and true democracy is never handed down by elites.. It is always fought for and struggled for. A senior member of the antiwar coalition, United For Peace and Justice, said recently, and I quote her, "The Democrats are using the politics of reality." Her liberal historical reference point was Vietnam. She said that President Johnson began withdrawing troops from Vietnam after a Democratic Congress began to vote against the war. That's not what happened. The troops were withdrawn from Vietnam after four long years. And during that time the United States killed more people in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos with bombs than were killed in all the preceding years. And that's what's happening in Iraq. The bombing has doubled since last year, and this is not being reported. And who began this bombing? Bill Clinton began it. During the 1990s Clinton rained bombs on Iraq in what were euphemistically called the "no fly zones." At the same time he imposed a medieval siege called economic sanctions, killing as I've mentioned, perhaps a million people, including a documented 500,000 children. Almost none of this carnage was reported in the so-called mainstream media. Last year a study published by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health found that since the invasion of Iraq 655, 000 Iraqis had died as a direct result of the invasion. Official documents show that the Blair government knew this figure to be credible. In February, Les Roberts, the author of the report, said the figure was equal to the figure for deaths in the Fordham University study of the Rwandan genocide. The media response to Robert's shocking revelation was silence. What may well be the greatest episode of organized killing for a generation, in Harold Pinter's words, "Did not happen. It didn't matter." Many people who regard themselves on the left supported Bush's attack on Afghanistan. That the CIA had supported Osama Bin Laden was ignored, that the Clinton administration had secretly backed the Taliban, even giving them high-level briefings at the CIA, is virtually unknown in the United States. The Taliban were secret partners with the oil giant Unocal in building an oil pipeline across Afghanistan. And when a Clinton official was reminded that the Taliban persecuted women, he said, "We can live with that." There is compelling evidence that Bush decided to attack the Taliban not as a result of 9-11, but two months earlier, in July of 2001. This is virtually unknown in the United Statespublicly. Like the scale of civilian casualties in Afghanistan. To my knowledge only one mainstream reporter, Jonathan Steele of the Guardian in London, has investigated civilian casualties in Afghanistan, and his estimate is 20,000 dead civilians, and that was three years ago. The enduring tragedy of Palestine is due in great part to the silence and compliance of the so-called liberal left. Hamas is described repeatedly as sworn to the destruction of Israel. The New York Times, the Associated Press, the Boston Globetake your pick. They all use this line as a standard disclaimer, and it is false. That Hamas has called for a ten-year ceasefire is almost never reported. Even more important, that Hamas has undergone an historic ideological shift in the last few years, which amounts to a recognition of what it calls the reality of Israel, is virtually unknown; and that Israel is sworn to the destruction of Palestine is unspeakable. There is a pioneering study by Glasgow University on the reporting of Palestine. They interviewed young people who watch TV news in Britain. More than 90 percent thought the illegal settlers were Palestinian. The more they watched, the less they knewDanny Schecter's famous phrase. The current most dangerous silence is over nuclear weapons and the return of the Cold War. The Russians understand clearly that the so-called American defense shield in Eastern Europe is designed to subjugate and humiliate them. Yet the front pages here talk about Putin starting a new Cold War, and there is silence about the development of an entirely new American nuclear system called Reliable Weapons Replacement (RRW), which is designed to blur the distinction between conventional war and nuclear wara long-held ambition. In the meantime, Iran is being softened up, with the liberal media playing almost the same role it played before the Iraq invasion.. And as for the Democrats, look at how Barak Obama has become the voice of the Council on Foreign Relations, one of the propaganda organs of the old liberal Washington establishment. Obama writes that while he wants the troops home, "We must not rule out military force against long-standing adversaries such as Iran and Syria." Listen to this from the liberal Obama: "At moment of great peril in the past century our leaders ensured that America, by deed and by example, led and lifted the world, that we stood and fought for the freedom sought by billions of people beyond their borders." That is the nub of the propaganda, the brainwashing if you like, that seeps into the lives of every American, and many of us who are not Americans. From right to left, secular to God-fearing, what so few people know is that in the last half century, United States adminstrations have overthrown 50 governmentsmany of them democracies. In the process, thirty countries have been attacked and bombed, with the loss of countless lives. Bush bashing is all very welland is justifiedbut the moment we begin to accept the siren call of the Democrat's drivel about standing up and fighting for freedom sought by billions, the battle for history is lost, and we ourselves are silenced. So what should we do? That question often asked in meetings I have addressed, even meetings as informed as those in this conference, is itself interesting. It's my experience that people in the so-called third world rarely ask the question, because they know what to do. And some have paid with their freedom and their lives, but they knew what to do. It's a question that many on the democratic leftsmall "d"have yet to answer. Real information, subversive information, remains the most potent power of alland I believe that we must not fall into the trap of believing that the media speaks for the public.. That wasn't true in Stalinist Czechoslovakia and it isn't true of the United States. In all the years I've been a journalist, I've never know public consciousness to have risen as fast as it's rising today. Yes, its direction and shape is unclear, partly because people are now deeply suspicious of political alternatives, and because the Democratic Party has succeeded in seducing and dividing the electoral left. And yet this growing critical public awareness is all the more remarkable when you consider the sheer scale of indoctrination, the mythology of a superior way of life, and the current manufactured state of fear. Why did the New York Times come clean in that editorial last year? Not because it opposes Bush's warslook at the coverage of Iran. That editorial was a rare acknowledgement that the public was beginning to see the concealed role of the media, and that people were beginning to read between the lines. If Iran is attacked, the reaction and the upheaval cannot be predicted. The national security and homeland security presidential directive gives Bush power over all facets of government in an emergency. It is not unlikely the constitution will be suspendedthe laws to round of hundreds of thousands of so-called terrorists and enemy combatants are already on the books. I believe that these dangers are understood by the public, who have come along way since 9-11, and a long way since the propaganda that linked Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda. That's why they voted for the Democrats last November, only to be betrayed. But they need truth, and journalists ought to be agents of truth, not the courtiers of power. I believe a fifth estate is possible, the product of a people's movement, that monitors, deconstructs, and counters the corporate media. In every university, in every media college, in every news room, teachers of journalism, journalists themselves need to ask themselves about the part they now play in the bloodshed in the name of a bogus objectivity. Such a movement within the media could herald a perestroika of a kind that we have never known. This is all possible. Silences can be broken. In Britain the National Union of Journalists has undergone a radical change, and has called for a boycott of Israel. The web site Medialens.org has single-handedly called the BBC to account. In the United States wonderfully free rebellious spirits populate the webI can't mention them all herefrom Tom Feeley's International Clearing House, to Mike Albert's ZNet, to Counterpunch online, and the splendid work of FAIR. The best reporting of Iraq appears on the webDahr Jamail's courageous journalism; and citizen reporters like Joe Wilding, who reported the siege of Fallujah from inside the city. In Venezuela, Greg Wilpert's investigations turned back much of the virulent propaganda now aimed at Hugo Chavez. Make no mistake, it's the threat of freedom of speech for the majority in Venezuela that lies behind the campaign in the west on behalf of the corrupt RCTV. The challenge for the rest of us is to lift this subjugated knowledge from out of the underground and take it to ordinary people. We need to make haste. Liberal Democracy is moving toward a form of corporate dictatorship. This is an historic shift, and the media must not be allowed to be its fagade, but itself made into a popular, burning issue, and subjected to direct action. That great whistleblower Tom Paine warned that if the majority of the people were denied the truth and the ideas of truth, it was time to storm what he called the Bastille of words. That time is now. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 12:58:28 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:58:28 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Pentagon junking millions in gear Message-ID: <20070723125828.7e671f05@viola.tamara-b.org> AP via USA Today - Jul 23, 2007 http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-07-23-militarysurplus_N.htm Pentagon said junking millions in gear By SHARON THEIMER Associated Press Writer Millions of dollars' worth of gear, including combat boots, helmets, vests and aircraft parts, is being junked by the Pentagon rather than stored or sold as surplus to suppliers who sometimes sell it back to the military. Of roughly $1.8 billion worth of equipment the Defense Department downgraded to scrap from January through June, at least $330 million worth came from categories of gear the Pentagon most frequently buys back from surplus dealers, according to the National Association of Aircraft & Communication Suppliers. Those include parts for aircraft, weapons and communications systems, the group said. The association, a lobbying group for surplus dealers, is worried the military's recent decision to shred retired F-14 "Tomcat" fighter jets is the start of a broader effort to destroy Pentagon leftovers that surplus dealers once bought routinely. Iran is aggressively seeking F-14 components for its own aging Tomcat fleet. In a new lobbying campaign, association members and other surplus buyers are urging Congress to force the Pentagon to do a better job separating sensitive surplus from items considered safe to sell, rather than lumping both types of surplus together and destroying them. The association's allegations of Pentagon waste during the war is hitting a nerve with some lawmakers. Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., wrote to Lt. Gen. Robert Dail, director of the Defense Logistics Agency, asking whether surplus equipment is being scrapped, including new items such as Camelbak backpack-style hydration packs. "I have received reports that usable items such as sleeping bags and gloves, and auto parts such as mufflers, are being scrapped because DRMS has stated that it is unable to identify them," Shadegg wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press. The DRMS is the Pentagon's Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service. Shadegg said he also is concerned about the loss of government revenue from surplus sales and about harm to small businesses in the surplus industry. The DRMS sells military surplus through an Arizona-based contractor, Government Liquidation. In fiscal 2005, the Defense Department earned $57 million from surplus sales. A spokeswoman for the Defense Logistics Agency, Dawn Dearden, said the military is only destroying surplus it no longer needs. The Pentagon is aware of the surplus dealers' concerns, she said. The agency has reviewed its rules for handling surplus but hasn't decided whether to make changes, she said. The trade group said it supports tougher government screening of surplus buyers to help prevent military gear from getting into the wrong hands. "I believe they're using the F-14 as sort of an umbrella to get everything through under national security, to say it needs to be done," said Ed Wilk, owner of Dixie Air Parts in San Antonio and an association member. "They're destroying boots, binoculars, aircraft parts, engine parts, airframe parts." "They do not have enough room to keep everything and they don't want to pay the overhead of keeping all this inventory," Wilk said. The trade group isn't protesting the Pentagon's recent decision to destroy old F-14 jets because it understands the sensitivity over the U.S. relationship with Iran, said Peter Beaulieu, the group's president and vice president of Associated Aircraft Manufacturing and Sales in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. However, the group said some F-14 parts that also could be used on other U.S. military aircraft and commercial planes should be preserved and sold to surplus dealers. Beaulieu said surplus dealers sometimes resell scrap aircraft parts back to the military. It can be faster for military bases to repurchase parts on the surplus market than to get them from within the military or new from manufacturers, he said. >From November 2003 to May 2004, the Pentagon awarded nearly 400 urgent contracts to the trade association's members for replacement parts for aircraft flying in Iraq and Afghanistan, including fighter jets, combat helicopters and transport planes, the group said. "We're their ultimate warehousing source," Beaulieu said. Items the Pentagon downgrades to scrap are demolished by the military, or if sold as surplus, only to buyers who promise to destroy them. The surplus association doesn't know how many downgraded items are useful. But it said it commonly finds useful and even new gear among surplus designated as scrap. The $1.8 billion in equipment the Pentagon scrapped during the first six months of 2007 represents the amount the Pentagon originally paid for the items. The resale value can amount to pennies on the dollar but still would be worth millions of dollars. Errors in the Pentagon's surplus sorting and recordkeeping have drawn criticism for years from Congress. The Pentagon decided to destroy its retired F-14s after The Associated Press reported in January that weaknesses in surplus sale security had allowed middlemen for Iran, China and other countries to acquire sensitive U.S. military technology including parts for Tomcats and other aircraft and missile components. Iran is the only country trying to maintain Tomcats. U.S. efforts to track down illegal brokers of F-14 parts continue. On Thursday, Jilani Humayun of Lynbrook, N.Y., was arrested by federal agents on charges that between January 2004 and May 2006, he illegally exported F-14 and F-5 jet parts and Chinook helicopter parts to Malaysia, a common pass-through point for contraband military goods. Prosecutors wouldn't say whether any of the parts came from Pentagon surplus sales, though the complaint suggests at least some did, quoting one of Humayun's suppliers as telling him parts were military surplus and subject to export controls. On the Net: National Association of Aircraft & Communications Suppliers: http://www.naacs.com Defense Department surplus sales: http://www.drms.dla.mil Copyright ) 2007 The Associated Press. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 13:00:34 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:00:34 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Bush Executive Order: Criminalizing the Antiwar Movement Message-ID: <20070723130034.2425c218@viola.tamara-b.org> Global Research - Jul 20, 2007 http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6377 Bush Executive Order: Criminalizing the Antiwar Movement by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky The Executive Order entitled "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq" provides the President with the authority to confiscate the assets of whoever opposes the US led war. A presidential Executive Order issued on July 17th, repeals with the stroke of a pen the right to dissent and to oppose the Pentagon's military agenda in Iraq. The Executive Order entitled "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq" provides the President with the authority to confiscate the assets of "certain persons" who oppose the US led war in Iraq: "I have issued an Executive Order blocking property of persons determined to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people." In substance, under this executive order, opposing the war becomes an illegal act. The Executive Order criminalizes the antiwar movement. It is intended to "blocking property" of US citizens and organizations actively involved in the peace movement. It allows the Department of Defense to interfere in financial affairs and instruct the Treasury to "block the property" and/or confiscate/ freeze the assets of "Certain Persons" involved in antiwar activities. It targets those "Certain Persons" in America, including civil society organizatioins, who oppose the Bush Administration's "peace and stability" program in Iraq, characterized, in plain English, by an illegal occupation and the continued killing of innocent civilians. The Executive Order also targets those "Certain Persons" who are "undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction", or who, again in plain English, are opposed to the confiscation and privatization of Iraq's oil resources, on behalf of the Anglo-American oil giants. The order is also intended for anybody who opposes Bush's program of "political reform in Iraq", in other words, who questions the legitimacy of an Iraqi "government" installed by the occupation forces. Moreover, those persons or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), who provide bona fide humanitarian aid to Iraqi civilians, and who are not approved by the US Military or its lackeys in the US sponsored Iraqi puppet government are also liable to have their financial assets confiscated. The executive order violates the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the US Constitution. It repeals one of the fundamental tenets of US democracy, which is the right to free expression and dissent. The order has not been the object of discussion in the US Congress. Sofar, it has not been addressed by the US antiwar movement, in terms of a formal statement. Apart from a bland Associated Press wire report, which presents the executive order as "an authority to use financial sanctions", there has been no media coverage or commentary of a presidential decision which strikes at the heart of the US Constitution.. Broader implications The criminalization of the State is when the sitting President and Vice President use and abuse their authority through executive orders, presidential directives or otherwise to define "who are the criminals" when in fact they they are the criminals. This latest executive order criminalizes the peace movement. It must be viewed in relation to various pieces of "anti-terrorist" legislation, the gamut of presidential and national security directives, etc., which are ultimately geared towards repealing constitutional government and installing martial law in the event of a "national emergency". The war criminals in high office are intent upon repressing all forms of dissent which question the legitimacy of the war in Iraq. The executive order combined with the existing anti-terrorist legislation is eventually intended to be used against the anti-war and civil rights movements. It can be used to seize the assets of antiwar groups in America as well as block the property and activities of non-governmental humanitarian organizations providing relief in Iraq, seizing the assets of alternative media involved in reporting the truth regarding the US-led war, etc. In May 2007, Bush issued a major presidential National Security Directive (National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive NSPD 51/HSPD 20), which would suspend constitutional government and instate broad dictatorial powers under martial law in the case of a "Catastrophic Emergency" (e.g. Second 9/11 terrorist attack). On July 11, 2007 the CIA published its "National Intelligence Estimate" which pointed to an imminent Al Qaeda attack on America, a second 9/11 which, according to the terms of NSPD 51, would immediately be followed by the suspension of constitutional government and the instatement of martial law under the authority of the president and the vice-president. (For further details, see Michel Chossudovsky, Bush Directive for a "Catastrophic Emergency" in America: Building a Justification for Waging War on Iran? June 2007) NSPD 51 grants unprecedented powers to the Presidency and the Department of Homeland Security, overriding the foundations of Constitutional government. It allows the sitting president to declare a "national emergency" without Congressional approval. The implementation of NSPD 51 would lead to the de facto closing down of the Legislature and the militarization of justice and law enforcement. "The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government...." Were NSPD 51 to be invoked, Vice President Dick Cheney, who constitutes the real power behind the Executive, would essentially assume de facto dictatorial powers, circumventing both the US Congress and the Judiciary, while continuing to use President George W. Bush as a proxy figurehead. NSPD 51, while bypassing the Constitution, nonetheless, envisages very precise procedures which guarantee the powers of Vice President Dick Cheney in relation to "Continuity of Goverment" functions under Martial Law: "This directive shall be implemented in a manner that is consistent with, and facilitates effective implementation of, provisions of the Constitution concerning succession to the Presidency or the exercise of its powers, and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 (3 U.S.C. 19), with consultation of the Vice President and, as appropriate, others involved. Heads of executive departments and agencies shall ensure that appropriate support is available to the Vice President and others involved as necessary to be prepared at all times to implement those provisions." (NSPD 51, op cit.) The executive order to confiscate the assets of antiwar/peace activists is broadly consistent with NSPD 51. It could be triggered even in the absence of a "Catastrophic emergency" as envisaged under NSPD 51. It repeals democracy. It goes one step further in "criminalizing" all forms of opposition and dissent. to the US led war and "Homeland Security" agenda. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/attachments/20070723/1c2a57e5/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ News mailing list News at freedomarchives.org http://freedomarchives.org/mailman/listinfo/news_freedomarchives.org From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 13:03:23 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:03:23 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Katrina-Rita tribunal to focus on U.S. crimes Message-ID: <20070723130323.2ae9c832@viola.tamara-b.org> Workers World - Jul 26, 2007 issue http://www.workers.org/2007/us/katrina-rita-0726 Aug. 29-Sept. 2: Katrina-Rita tribunal to focus on U.S. crimes By Dustin Langley New York July 17 at the Center for Constitutional Rights in Manhattan community organizers from Louisiana, progressive attorneys and elected officials announced that the International Tribunal on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita will be held in New Orleans from Aug. 29 to Sept. 2, marking the second anniversary of the Katrina disaster. The tribunal will include hurricane survivors, expert witnesses, international delegations, a team of human rights and civil rights prosecutors, and a panel of U.S.-based and international judges. Attorney Joan Gibbs of Medgar Evers Center for Law and Social Justice, who will also be part of the prosecution team, chaired the news conference. Speakers included Kwame Kalimara of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement; former Georgia Congress Member Cynthia McKinney; New York City Council Member Charles Barron; Kali Akuno of the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund; and Viola Fran?ois-Washington, an organizer with the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund and Executive Director for the Welfare Rights Organization. Kalimara opened by announcing that President George W. Bush and Governors Kathleen Blanco and Haley Barbour (of Louisiana and Mississippi respectively) had all been officially advised that the Tribunal would be trying the U.S. government for crimes against humanity and genocide under the U.N. Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other relevant international agreements following the hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast almost two years ago. McKinney cited as an example of the crimes committed the incident at the Gretna Bridge, when more than a hundred hungry and thirsty Katrina survivors?mostly African-American?tried to flee across to dry land right after New Orleans was flooded in 2005 and were prevented from crossing by racist Gretna police officers, who fired on the crowd and shouted racist epithets. McKinney also cited the suspension of the Second Amendment right to bear arms by Michael Chertoff, secretary of Homeland Security. Survivors found that their own weapons were confiscated, while mercenaries from Blackwater and other corporations were sent in to patrol the streets. ?Instead of sending food, they sent men with guns,? McKinney said. She pointed out that the blame for the ongoing disaster falls on both major political parties. ?Bush was criticized for not mentioning Katrina in his 2007 State of the Union address, but Pelosi also failed to mention it in the Democratic Party?s first one hundred days in power.? Barron said that the tribunal would be an opportunity to shed light on important institutional issues, including race, class and gender issues. He said, ?We need to put enough pressure to put Katrina on the top of the agenda. Black people cannot let the government get away with what they did, because they left our people to die.? Viola Fran?ois-Washington, a Katrina survivor on the Gretna Bridge during the infamous incident, reported on the complete lack of any assistance during and after the storm. ?We saw helicopters flying all over the city, but no one was helping us,? she said. The racism that denied help to people during the disaster is still very much a reality. ?We still have two cities,? Fran?ois-Washington said. ?One is getting help and the other has not.? For more information on the tribunal, see www.internationaltribunal.org. Articles copyright 1995-2007 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 From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 13:05:24 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:05:24 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Colombia: Uribe nose-deep in political scandal Message-ID: <20070723130524.5a5660a0@viola.tamara-b.org> Workers World - Jul 26, 2007 issue http://www.workers.org/2007/world/colombia-0726 COLOMBIA Parapolitical scandal is Uribe's quagmire By Berta Joubert-Ceci Colombian President ?lvaro Uribe V?lez is nose-deep in a parapolitical scandal. Like Merlin, the wizard at King Arthur?s court, he is trying to come up with the magical spell that will turn around his cruel reality show. His delusion is shared by U.S. President George W. Bush, who, along with Bush?s close associates, consistently defends Uribe. But reality only pulls Uribe deeper and deeper into the horrible quagmire caused by the tight relationship of his closest political associates with the criminal paramilitaries who have inflicted so much suffering on Colombia?s people. So far, more than a dozen politicians, including senators and other government officials, all from parties or groups allied with Uribe, are in prison because of these links. And that?s not all. According not only to human rights advocates but also to other paramilitaries, the investigations and subsequent arrests are mounting and getting closer and closer to Uribe himself. And the testimonies of ?reinserted? or ?demobilized? paramilitaries have only begun to reveal the intricate network of crimes, assassinations and utter corruption that involve the Colombian military, police, government officials, the president and several U.S. corporations. A compromising video Dan Kovalik, a United Steel Workers union attorney, represents the relatives of three murdered employees of the U.S. mining company Drummond. This corporation is currently on trial in federal court in Alabama for its hiring of paramilitaries to use against its workforce in Colombia. During his investigative work for the USW suit against Drummond, Kovalik found a video recorded on Oct. 31, 2001, in Colombia?s northern department of Antioquia. In it, presidential candidate Uribe is seen shaking hands with a well-known paramilitary chief in that area, Frenio S?nchez Carre?o, also called commander Esteban. Uribe?s spokesperson denied the relationship, saying that Uribe ?was not aware that the person had connection with or was a paramilitary.? Kovalik countered in a June 15, Miami-based Nuevo Herald article that, ?It is reasonable to think that Uribe should have known that he was meeting with members of the AUC [United Self Defense Forces of Colombia or paramilitaries], including commander Esteban, given his [Esteban?s] notoriety.? An article in the Colombian Semana.com supports Kovalik?s assertion in the Nuevo Herald article, saying, ?The newspaper also affirms that during that time, the name of commander Esteban was well-known among the labor leaders in Barrancabermeja. Twelve days before the meeting, Esteban signed a message from the AUC targeting the union leaders of the region, something that prompted a 24-hour strike by the workers of ECOPETROL. This news had national repercussion.? Uribe?s associates under investigation Though Uribe denies association with paramilitaries, there is a report from the Secret Department linking current Army Commander General Mario Montoya with the paramilitaries of Medell?n. In July, the Supreme Court initiated an investigation of three more Congresspeople for the same reason. Among them were Uribe?s first cousin, Senator Mario Uribe. Uribe?s vice-president, Francisco Santos, is also under suspicion of association with paramilitaries, particularly with Carlos Casta?o. Jorge Noguera, the former director of the Administrative Department of Security/Intelligence (DAS), was rearrested on July 6. Noguera is an Uribe appointee who was imprisoned last February and accused of allowing the ?infiltration of paramilitaries? in the DAS. He was also accused of giving to paramilitaries a list with names of labor leaders, many of whom were assassinated afterwards. Noguera had been in jail one month when a judge ruled in March that his detention was illegal due to the technicality that the prosecutor in his case was only a ?deputy? instead of the general prosecutor. After this ridiculous decision, the prosecutor issued a new order stating that there is evidence linking Noguera to paramilitaries. These ?parapoliticians? as they are called in Colombia, are now in the justice system. Their testimonies could offer more information about the paramilitary association of others, including Uribe. For that reason, and to ?protect? his parapolitician friends, Uribe will have to devise a way to help them out of this swamp. As May ended, Uribe proposed a law that would help politicians who associate with ?paras? but have committed no ?atrocious? crimes and who confess the ?truth.? Neither their opponents nor the parapoliticians, who objected to the part that stopped them from holding public office, accepted this law. Uribe?s unilateral releases: setup, cover up, or both? At the end of May, Uribe unilaterally released more than 100 prisoners, whom he identified as members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Uribe?s main enemy with whom he has refused to negotiate. The FARC denied the 100 were members. Uribe also released Rodrigo Granda, FARC?s international relations person, to act as ?peace negotiator.? Granda stated that he took orders only from the FARC secretariat. If prisoner-exchange peace negotiations are to succeed, they have to be planned by both sides. But Uribe was making a theatrical gesture, not really opening talks. Granda eventually went to Cuba, which had offered asylum. Days later, on June 18, the Colombian government launched a military operation to ?rescue? politicians whom the FARC had detained. Eleven deputies from Cali died in the crossfire. Uribe accused the FARC of killing them. Humanitarian exchange With U.S. approval, Uribe had consistently called for a military retaking of the hostages. This attitude completely ignores the demand of the majority of the Colombian people, including most of the hostages? relatives, who want to see a negotiated humanitarian exchange. Completely misjudging the situation, Uribe called for demonstrations on July 5 to ?condemn terrorism,? which to him means condemning the FARC. But thousands of people turned out with slogans of ?humanitarian exchange now,? and many blamed the government for the death of the 11, calling Uribe?s administration irresponsible. In a shameless show of cruelty against victims? relatives, local government officials in Cali criticized Carolina Charry, daughter of one of the victims, when she thanked those present at a demonstration for their solidarity and ?for mobilizing to reject the government policies that are stained with my dear father?s blood ... as an indolent president refused to listen to their plea to declare [the zones] Pradera and Florida a Zone for Humanitarian Exchange.? The real terrorism The real terrorists, known to millions of Colombians, are the criminal paramilitaries in alliance with the government forces and U.S. imperialism. Through Plan Colombia, U.S. military and corporations plot to steal the natural wealth and resources of the Colombian people. Let us not forget the victims of paramilitaries? crimes: close to 5,000 members of the Patriotic Union killed; 4 million people displaced; the hundreds of assassinations already confessed to by just one paramilitary; the hundreds of bodies being unearthed from common graves; the more than 3,000 kidnapped; the 10,000 bodies expected to be found in several common graves according to the general prosecutor. ?Dime con qui?n andas y te dir? qui?n eres??this Spanish adage corresponds to: ?You are known by the company you keep.? Uribe?s close company with criminal paramilitaries has become his big problem. Articles copyright 1995-2007 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 From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 14:41:19 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 14:41:19 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] US Senate erased a page of history; removes vote from Cong'l Record Message-ID: <20070723144119.178d2d42@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Mark Graffis - Jul 21, 2007 MSNBC - Jul 20, 2007 http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/07/20/280260.aspx US Senate erased a page of history; removes vote from Cong'l Record NBC's Ken Strickland Last night, the US Senate erased a page of history -- literally. The body agreed to permanently remove from the constitutionally mandated Congressional Record a vote they'd taken earlier in the evening on a measure saying the president should not pardon Scooter Libby. The vote failed 47-49, but any reference to the vote itself was expunged as though it never happened. The Senate was in the process of finishing up an education bill, when various Republican senators called for votes on measures having nothing to do with education, like Gitmo and the Fairness Doctrine. After apparently getting annoyed, Democrats countered with the Libby amendment. "If you are going to shoot this way, we have to shoot that way," said Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) on the floor. Republicans were besides themselves. "Until this last amendment, I haven't seen politically inspired amendments before this body," Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said in opposition. There was so much audible grumbling from senators in reaction (and disbelief), that Kyl had to pause for it to subside. After the Libby vote failed, Republicans struck back hard, offering a amendment condemning about a dozen previous pardons by President Clinton. As one GOP aide put it, "we brought our gun to the knife fight." But cooler heads prevailed when both party leaders decided not to have the Clinton vote, and the Majority Leader Harry Reid simply asked that the Libby vote "be vitiated and stricken from the record." And with those words, it never happened -- except on C-SPAN tapes. For what it's worth, Hillary Clinton, who was on the Hill, did not take the Libby vote. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 14:42:33 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 14:42:33 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Buchanan: This Is How Empires End Message-ID: <20070723144233.35965422@viola.tamara-b.org> AntiWaar.com - Jul 20, 2007 http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=11319 This Is How Empires End by Patrick J. Buchanan Responding to the call of Pope Urban II at Claremont in 1095, the Christian knights of the First Crusade set out for the Holy Land. In 1099, Jerusalem was captured. As their port in Palestine, the Crusaders settled on Acre on the Mediterranean. There they built the great castle that was overrun by Saladin in 1187, but retaken by Richard the Lion-Hearted in 1191. Acre became the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the stronghold of the Crusader state, which fell to the Mameluks in a bloody siege in 1291. The Christians left behind were massacred. The ruins of Acre are now a tourist attraction. Any who have visited this last outpost of Christendom in the Holy Land before Gen. Allenby marched into Jerusalem in 1917 cannot on reading of the massive U.S. embassy rising in Baghdad but think of Acre. At a cost of $600 million, with walls able to withstand mortar and rocket fire, and space to accommodate 1,000 Americans, this mammoth embassy, largest on earth, will squat on the banks of the Tigris inside the Green Zone. But, a decade hence, will the U.S. ambassador be occupying this imperial compound? Or will it be like the ruins of Acre? What raises the question is a sense the United States, this time, is truly about to write off Iraq as a lost cause. The Republican lines on Capitol Hill are crumbling. Starting with Richard Lugar, one GOP senator after another has risen to urge a drawdown of U.S. forces and a diplomatic solution to the war. But this is non-credible. How can U.S. diplomats win at a conference table what 150,000 U.S. troops cannot secure on a battlefield? Though Henry Kissinger was an advocate of this unnecessary war, he is not necessarily wrong when he warns of "geopolitical calamity." Nor is Ryan Crocker, U.S. envoy in Iraq, necessarily wrong when he says a U.S. withdrawal may be the end of the American war, but it will be the start of bloodier wars in Iraq and across the region. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari also warns of the perils of a rapid withdrawal: "The dangers vary from civil war to dividing the country to regional wars ... the danger is huge. Until the Iraqi forces and institutions complete their readiness, there is a responsibility on the U.S. and other countries to stand by the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people to help build up their capabilities." In urging a redeployment of U.S. forces out of Iraq, and a new focus on diplomacy, Lugar listed four strategic goals. Prevent creation of a safe haven for terrorists. Prevent sectarian war from spilling out into the broader Middle East. Prevent Iran's domination of the region. Limit the loss of U.S. credibility through the region and world as a result of a failed mission in Iraq. But how does shrinking the U.S. military power and presence in Iraq advance any of these goals? Longtime critics of the war like Gen. William Odom say it is already lost, and fighting on will only further bleed the country and make the ultimate price even higher. The general may be right in saying it is time to cut our losses. But we should take a hard look at what those losses may be. It is a near certainty the U.S.-backed government will fall and those we leave behind will suffer the fate of our Vietnamese and Cambodian friends in 1975. As U.S. combat brigades move out, contractors, aid workers and diplomats left behind will be more vulnerable to assassination and kidnapping. There could be a stampede for the exit and a Saigon ending in the Green Zone. The civil and sectarian war will surely escalate when we go, with Iran aiding its Shi'ite allies and Sunni nations aiding the Sunnis. A breakup of the country seems certain. Al-Qaeda will claim it has run the U.S. superpower out of Iraq and take the lessons it has learned to Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. The Turks, with an army already on the border, will go in to secure their interests in not having the Kurdish PKK operating from Iraq and in guaranteeing there is no independent Kurdistan. What will America do then? As for this country, the argument over who is responsible for the worst strategic debacle in American history will be poisonous. With a U.S. defeat in Iraq, U.S. prestige would plummet across the region. Who will rely on a U.S. commitment for its security? Like the British and French before us, we will be heading home from the Middle East. What we are about to witness is how empires end. COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 14:45:47 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 14:45:47 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Power Without Limits (NYT Edit'l) Message-ID: <20070723144547.79bfcd34@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Trent Schroyer The New York Times - Jul 22, 2007 EDITORIAL Power Without Limits The Bush administration, which has been pushing presidential power to new extremes, is reportedly developing an even more dangerous new theory of executive privilege. It says that if Congress holds White House officials in contempt for withholding important evidence in the United States attorney scandal, the Justice Department simply will not pursue the charges. This stance tears at the fabric of the Constitution and upends the rule of law. Congress has a constitutional right to investigate the purge of nine United States attorneys last year. And there is no doubt that the investigation has unearthed improprieties: several administration officials have already admitted illegal or improper actions involving the politicization of the country's chief law enforcement agency. But the administration has been extraordinarily defiant toward Congress's legitimate requests for information. The low point came recently when Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, refused even to show up in response to a Congressional subpoena. Some of the questions she would have been asked might have been protected by executive privilege, but others no doubt would not have been. Ms. Miers had no right to ignore the entire proceeding. The next question is how Congress will enforce its right to obtain information, and it is on that point that the administration is said to have made its latest disturbing claim. If Congress holds White House officials in contempt, the next step should be that the United States attorney for the District of Columbia brings the matter to a grand jury. But according to a Washington Post report, the administration is saying that its claim of executive privilege means that the United States attorney would be ordered not to go forward with the case. There is no legal basis for this obstructionism. The Supreme Court has made clear that executive privilege is not simply what the president claims it to be. It must be evaluated case by case by a court, balancing the need for the information against the president's interest in keeping his decision-making process private. Mark Rozell, an expert on executive privilege at George Mason University, calls the administration's stance "almost Nixonian in breadth," because of its assertion that "the mere utterance of the phrase executive privilege" means that "no other branch has recourse." The White House's extreme position could lead to a constitutional crisis. If the executive branch refused to follow the law, Congress could use its own inherent contempt powers, in which it would level the charges itself and hold a trial. The much more reasonable route for everyone would be to proceed through the courts. This showdown between a Democratic Congress and a Republican president may look partisan, but it should not. In a year and a half, there could be a Democratic president, and such extreme claims of executive power would be just as disturbing if that chief executive made them. Congress should use all of the tools at its disposal to pursue its investigations. It is not only a matter of getting to the bottom of some possibly serious government misconduct. It is about preserving the checks and balances that are a vital part of American democracy. Copyright The New York Times Company From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 14:47:35 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 14:47:35 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Do antivirus apps ignore US government spyware? Message-ID: <20070723144735.6b89b455@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Mark Graffis C|Net News - Jul 28, 2007 http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/Do-antivirus-apps-ignore-US-government-spyware-/0,130061744,339280165,00.htm Do antivirus apps ignore US government spyware? by Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com Companies that produce security software may soon be ignoring certain spyware, and potentially even infecting their customers through auto updates, under orders from US government agencies. In the case decided earlier this month by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, federal agents used spyware with a keystroke logger -- call it fedware -- to record the typing of a suspected Ecstasy manufacturer who used encryption to thwart the police. A CNET News.com survey of 13 leading antispyware vendors found that not one company acknowledged cooperating unofficially with government agencies. Some, however, indicated that they would not alert customers to the presence of fedware if they were ordered by a court to remain quiet. Most of the companies surveyed, which covered the range from tiny firms to Symantec and IBM, said they never had received such a court order. The full list of companies surveyed: AVG/Grisoft, Computer Associates, Check Point, eEye, IBM, Kaspersky Lab, McAfee, Microsoft, Sana Security, Sophos, Symantec, Trend Micro and Websense. Only McAfee and Microsoft flatly declined to answer that question. Because only two known criminal prosecutions in the United States involve police use of key loggers, important legal rules remain unsettled. But key logger makers say that police and investigative agencies are frequent customers, in part because recording keystrokes can bypass the increasingly common use of encryption to scramble communications and hard drives. Some companies that responded to the survey were vehemently pro-privacy. "Our customers are paying us for a service, to protect them from all forms of malicious code," said Marc Maiffret, eEye Digital Security's co-founder and chief technology officer. "It is not up to us to do law enforcement's job for them so we do not, and will not, make any exceptions for law enforcement malware or other tools." eEye sells Blink Personal for US$25, which includes antivirus and antispyware features. Others were more conciliatory. Check Point, which makes the popular ZoneAlarm utility, said it would offer federal police the "same courtesy" that it extends to legitimate third-party vendors that request to be whitelisted. A Check Point representative said, though, that the company had "never been" in that situation. This isn't exactly a new question. After the last high-profile case in which federal agents turned to a key logger, some security companies allegedly volunteered to ignore fedware. The Associated Press reported in 2001 that "McAfee contacted the FBI... to ensure its software wouldn't inadvertently detect the bureau's snooping software." McAfee subsequently said the report was inaccurate. Later that year, the FBI confirmed that it was creating spy software called "Magic Lantern" that would allow agents to inject keystroke loggers remotely through a virus without having physical access to the computer. (In both the recent Ecstasy case and the earlier key logging case involving an alleged mobster, federal agents obtained court orders authorising them to break into buildings to install key loggers.) Government agencies and backdoors in technology products have a long and frequently clandestine relationship. One 1995 expose by the Baltimore Sun described how the National Security Agency persuaded a Swiss firm, Crypto, to build backdoors into its encryption devices. In his 1982 book, The Puzzle Palace, author James Bamford described how the NSA's predecessor in 1945 coerced Western Union, RCA and ITT Communications to turn over telegraph traffic to the feds. More recently, after the BBC reported last year on supposed talks between the British government and Microsoft, the software maker pledged not to build backdoors into Windows Vista's encryption functions. Even if the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration or other federal police haven't tried to compel security companies to whitelist fedware, security experts predict that such a court order is just a matter of time. What remains unclear, however, is whether police have the legal authority to do so under current law. "The government would be pushing the boundaries of the law if it attempted to obtain such an order," said Kevin Bankston, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who has litigated wiretapping cases. "There's simply no precedent for this sort of thing." One possibility is a section of the Wiretap Act that says courts can "direct that a provider of wire or electronic communication service, landlord, custodian or other person" to help with electronic surveillance. "There is some breadth in that language that is of concern and that the Justice Department may attempt to exploit," Bankston said. In theory, government agencies could even seek a court order requiring security companies to deliver spyware to their customers as part of an auto-update feature. Most modern security companies, including operating system makers such as Microsoft and Apple, offer regular patches and bug fixes. Although it would be technically tricky, it would be possible to send an infected update to a customer if the vendor were ordered to do so. When asked if it had ever received such a court order, Microsoft demurred. "Microsoft frequently has confidential conversations with both customers and government agencies and does not comment on those conversations," a company representative said. Of the 13 companies surveyed, McAfee was the other company that declined to answer. (Two others could not be reached as of Tuesday morning.) Some security companies refused to reply to the initial version of our survey, which broadly asked about fedware whitelisting. In response, we revised the question to ask if they would alert a customer to the presence of keystroke loggers installed by a police or intelligence agency "in the absence of a lawful court order signed by a judge." Cris Paden, Symantec's manger of corporate public relations, initially declined to reply. "There are legitimate reasons for not giving blanket guarantees--one of those is a court order," he said at first. "There are extenuating circumstances and grey issues." But after we altered the question, Paden replied: "Barring a court order to cooperate with law enforcement authorities, Symantec would definitely alert our customers to the presence of any malicious code or programs that we detect on their systems." He added that Symantec had "absolutely not" received any such a court order. One danger with whitelisting fedware is that it creates a potentially serious vulnerability in security software. If a malicious vendor of spyware were clever enough to mimic the whitelisted government spyware, it would also go undetected. But if fedware becomes more common, savvy criminals could simply turn to open-source software that's less likely to have backdoors for police. ClamAV and OpenAntiVirus.org both offer open-source security software, and it's also possible to boot off of a CD-ROM and inspect the hard drive for malicious tampering. At the moment, at least, there aren't any industry standards about detecting fedware. "CSIA does not currently have a position on this issue nor has the issue ever been addressed by its board of directors," said Tim Bennett, president of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance. Copyright ) 2007 CNET Networks, Inc. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 14:48:28 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 14:48:28 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Iran says "confessions" unveil U.S. plot Message-ID: <20070723144828.1d9e6f9b@viola.tamara-b.org> Reuters - Jul 22, 2007 http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSHAF23166220070722 Iran says "confessions" unveil U.S. plot By Hossein Jaseb TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that televised "confessions" of two detained American-Iranians unveiled a U.S.-backed plan to topple Iran's clerical establishment. State television aired a program called "In the Name of Democracy" on Wednesday and Thursday, featuring interviews with Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh, who Iran accuses of being involved in a U.S.-backed plot to stage a "velvet revolution" in the Islamic state. Washington has called the program illegitimate and coerced, urging Iran to immediately release the two dual nationals, arrested separately in May while visiting Iran from the United States. Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said the program proved the United States had a long-term program to "overthrow the system" in Iran. "The confessions of the two detained people uncovers a long-term plan which America has invested in and has allocated a great budget for," Hosseini told a weekly news conference. Esfandiari, an academic at the U.S.-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said on Thursday she had helped create a network "to lead to very fundamental changes in Iran's system." Senior cleric Ahmad Khatami, member of a body with power to sack or appoint Iran's supreme leader, said on Friday: "The confessions proved America wanted to weaken the system by using intellectuals." U.S. REQUEST A U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said on Friday: "This should be an embarrassment to the Iranian regime. Is it really possible to imagine that a government is so fragile and so under siege that individuals coming to visit elderly family members threaten its existence?" He said the U.S. request through the Swiss and other embassies in Tehran to have consular access to the pair, had been refused by Tehran. Tehran and Washington have no diplomatic relations since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution. Tajbakhsh, a consultant with the Soros institute, founded by billionaire investor George Soros, told the same program: "The aim of the Soros centre was to bring a model of the Western democracy" to Iran after an eventual conflict. The U.S.-based Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute said it was "deeply concerned over Iran's use of deliberately contrived television footage" of the pair. The program made no mention of two other American-Iranians detained on spying charges, one of whom has been freed on bail. Iranian TV has in the past broadcast the so-called "confessions" by dissidents serving jail sentences for alleged attempts to undermine the Islamic Republic. Washington is leading efforts to isolate Iran over its disputed nuclear program, which Iran says is solely to generate electricity. U.S. forces have detained five Iranians in Iraq on charges of backing militants there. The two countries are set to hold fresh talks in Iraq soon, following a landmark meeting in Baghdad in May. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 15:12:01 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:12:01 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Dahr Jamail: After Iraq, US Feels Like Disneyland Message-ID: <20070723151201.6449c2fe@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Ed Pearl - Jul 22, 2007 TomDispatch via Alternet - Jul 20, 2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/57500/ After Reporting in Iraq, America Feels Like a Bizarre Disneyland By Dahr Jamail, "In violence we forget who we are" -Mary McCarthy, novelist and critic 1. Statistically Speaking Having spent a fair amount of time in occupied Iraq, I now find living in the United States nothing short of a schizophrenic experience. Life in Iraq was traumatizing. It was impossible to be there and not be affected by apocalyptic levels of violence and suffering, unimaginable in this country. But here's the weird thing: One long, comfortable plane ride later and you're in Disneyland, or so it feels on returning to the United States. Sometimes it seems as if I'm in a bubble here that's only moments away from popping. I find myself perpetually amazed at the heights of consumerism and the vigorous pursuit of creature comforts that are the essence of everyday life in this country -- and once defined my own life as well. Here, for most Americans, you can choose to ignore what our government is doing in Iraq. It's as simple as choosing to go to a website other than this one. The longer the occupation of Iraq continues, the more conscious I grow of the disparity, the utter disjuncture, between our two worlds. In January 2004, I traveled through villages and cities south of Baghdad investigating the Bechtel Corporation's performance in fulfilling contractual obligations to restore the water supply in the region. In one village outside of Najaf, I looked on in disbelief as women and children collected water from the bottom of a dirt hole. I was told that, during the daily two-hour period when the power supply was on, a broken pipe at the bottom of the hole brought in "water." This was, in fact, the primary water source for the whole village. Eight village children, I learned, had died trying to cross a nearby highway to obtain potable water from a local factory. In Iraq things have grown exponentially worse since then. Recently, the World Health Organization announced that 70% of Iraqis do not have access to clean water and 80% "lack effective sanitation." In the United States I step away from my desk, walk into the kitchen, turn on the tap, and watch as clear, cool water fills my glass. I drink it without once thinking about whether it contains a waterborne disease or will cause kidney stones, diarrhea, cholera, or nausea. But there's no way I can stop myself from thinking about what was -- and probably still is -- in that literal water hole near Najaf. I open my pantry and then my refrigerator to make my lunch. I have enough food to last a family several days, and then I remember that there is a 21% rate of chronic malnutrition among children in Iraq, and that, according to UNICEF, about one in 10 Iraqi children under five years of age is underweight. I have a checking account with money in it; 54% of Iraqis now live on less than $1 a day. I can travel safely on my bicycle whenever I choose -- to the grocery store or a nearby city center. Many Iraqis can travel nowhere without fear of harm. Iraq now ranks as the planet's second most unstable country, according to the 2007 Failed States Index. These are now my two worlds, my two simultaneous realities. They inhabit the same space inside my head in desperately uncomfortable fashion. Sometimes, I almost settle back into this bubble world of ours, but then another email arrives -- either directly from friends and contacts in Iraq or forwarded by friends who have spent time in Iraq -- and I remember that I'm an incurably schizophrenic journalist living on some kind of borrowed time in both America and Iraq all at once. 2. Emailing Here is a fairly typical example of the sorts of anguished letters that suddenly appear in my in-box. (With the exception of the odd comma, I've left the examples that follow just as they arrived. They reflect the stressful conditions under which they were written.) This one was sent to my friend Gerri Haynes from an Iraqi friend of hers: Dear Gerri: No words can describe the real terror of what's happening and being committed against the population in Baghdad and other cities: the poor people with no money to leave the country, the disabled old men and women, the wives and children of tens of thousands of detainees who can't leave when their dad is getting tortured in the Democratic Prisons, senior years students who have been caught in a situation that forces them to take their finals to finish their degrees, parents of missing young men who got out and never came back, waiting patiently for someone to knock the door and say, "I am back." There are thousands and thousands of sad stories that need to be told but nobody is there to listen. I called my cousin in the al-Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad to check if they are still alive. She is in her sixties and her husband is about seventy. She burst into tears, begging me to pray to God to take their lives away soon so they don't have to go through all this agony. She told me that, with no electricity, it is impossible to go to sleep when it is 40 degrees Celsius unless they get really tired after midnight. Her husband leaves the doors open because they are afraid that the American and Iraqi troops will bomb the doors if they don't respond from first door knock during searching raids. Leaving the doors open is another terror story after the attack of the troops' vicious dogs on a ten-month old baby, tearing him apart and eating him in the same neighborhood just a few days ago. The troops let the dogs attack civilians. The dogs bite them and terrify the kids with their angry red eyes in the middle of the night. So, as you can see my dear Gerri, we don't have only one Abu Ghraib with torturing dogs, we have thousands of Abu Ghraibs all over Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. I was speechless. I couldn't say anything to comfort her. I felt ashamed to be alive and well. I thought I should be with them, supporting them, and give them some strength even if it costs me my life. I begged her to leave Baghdad. She told me that she can't because of her pregnant daughter and her grandkids. They are all with them in the house without their dad. I am hearing the same story and worse every single day. We keep asking ourselves what did we do to the Americans to deserve all this cruelness, killing, and brutishness? How can the troops do this to poor, hopeless civilians? And why? Can anybody answer my cousin why she and her poor family are going through this?? Can you Gerri? Because I sure can't. In recent weeks I had been attempting to get in touch with one of my friends, a journalist in Baghdad. I'll call him Aziz for his safety. Beginning to worry when I didn't receive his usual prompt response, I sent him a second email and this is what finally came back: Dear old friend Dahr, I am so sorry for my late reply. It is because my area of Baghdad was closed for six days and also because I lost my cousin. He was killed by a militia. They tortured and mutilated his body. I will try to send you his picture later. Just remember me, friend, because I feel so tired these days and I live with this mess now. With all my respect, Aziz Conveying my sadness, I asked him if there was anything I could possibly do to ease his suffering. As a reporter in that besieged country, he is constantly exhausted and overworked. I hesitantly suggested that perhaps he should take a little time to rest. He promptly replied: Dahr, my old friend, I really appreciate your condolence message. Your words affected me very much and I feel that all my friends are around me in this hard time. I live with this mess and I do need some rest time as you advise before getting back to work again. BUT, really, I have to continue working because there are just very few journalists in Iraq now, and especially in my area. I have to cover more and more everyday. Anyway friend, everything will be ok for me. And I wish we can make some change in our world towards peace. With my respect to you friend, Aziz I have also been corresponding with "H," who lives in the volatile Diyala province and has been a dear friend since my first trip to Iraq. He would visit me in Baghdad, bringing with him delicious home-cooked meals from his wife, insisting always that I be the one to eat the first morsel. A deeply religious man, his unfailing greeting, accompanied by a big hug, would always be: "You are my brother." He was concerned about the perception that there were vast differences between Islam and Christianity. "Islam and Christianity are not so different," he would say, "In fact they have many more similarities than differences." He would often discuss this with U.S. soldiers in his city. Yet he was no admirer of imperialism. Last summer in Syria, he and I visited the sprawling Roman ruins of Palmyra. One evening, as we stood together overlooking the vast landscape of crumbling columns and sun-bleached walls in the setting sun, he turned to me and said, "Mr. Dahr, please do not be offended by what I want to say, but it makes me happy to see these ruins and remember that empires always fall because empires are never good for most people." After several weeks when I received no reply to repeated emails, I wrote to "M," a mutual friend, and received the following response: Habibi [My dear friend], It has been very long since I have written to you. I'm sorry. I was terribly busy. I have some very bad news. [H] was kidnapped by the members of al-Qaeda in Diyala 25 days ago and there is no news about him up to this moment. It's a horrible situation. One cannot feel safe in this country. When I pressed him for more information, he wrote me the details: [H] was kidnapped as he was trying to get home. He was coming to Baquba to visit his parents, as he does every day. His oldest daughter who was with him told him that a car carrying several men was following them from the beginning of the street leading to his parents' home. So, when he stopped to get his car in the garage, they got out of their car covering their faces and asked him to come with them for questioning. People in Diyala definitely know that such a thing means either killing or arresting for few days. You may ask why I'm sure it is al-Qaeda. That is because no other group, including the U.S. military, dominates the whole city like they do. We are the people of the city and we know the truth. They overwhelmingly dominate the streets and are even stronger than the government. So, there is no doubt about whether this was al-Qaeda or another group. You may ask how people stay away from these very bad people. People never go in places like the central market of Baquba. For this reason, all, and I mean all, the shops are closed; some people have left Diyala, some have been killed, while most are kept in their homes. If someone wants to go the market, this means a bad adventure. He may be at last found in the morgue. Al-Qaeda fought every group that are called resistance who work against coalition [U.S.] forces or the government (policemen or Iraqi National Guards). Nowadays, there is fighting between al-Qaeda and other [Iraqi resistance] groups like Qataib who are known here as the honest resistance in the streets. By the way, I forgot, when al-Qaeda kidnaps someone, they also take his car in order that the car shall be used by them. So, they took his car, along with him. In case he is released, he comes without his car. I will tell you more later on. I soon slipped into the frantic routine all too familiar by now to countless Iraqis -- scanning the horrible reports of daily violence in Iraq looking for the faintest clue to the whereabouts of my missing friend 3. Murderously Speaking In McClatchy News' July 5th roundup of daily violence for Diyala, I read: "A source in the morgue of Baquba general hospital said that the morgue received today a head of a civilian that was thrown near the iron bridge in Baquba Al Jadida neighborhood today morning. "A medical source in Al Miqdadiyah town northeast [of] Baquba city said that 2 bodies of civilians were moved to the hospital of Miqdadiyah. The source said that the first body was of a man who was killed in an IED explosion near his house in Al Mu'alimeen neighborhood in downtown Baquba city while the second body was of a man who was shot dead near his house in Al Ballor neighborhood in downtown Baquba city." The data for Baghdad that day read: "24 anonymous bodies were found in Baghdad today. 16 bodies were found in Karkh, the western side of Baghdad in the following neighborhoods (7 bodies in Amil, 3 bodies in Doura, 2 bodies in Ghazaliyah, 1 body in Jihad, 1 body in Amiriyah, 1 body in Khadhraa and 1 body in Mahmoudiyah). 8 bodies were found in Rusafa, the eastern side of Baghdad in the following neighborhoods (6 bodies in Sadr city, 1 body in Husseiniyah and 1 body in Sleikh.)" What could I possibly hope to find in nameless reports like these, especially when I know that most of the Iraqi dead never make it anywhere near these reports. That is the way it has been throughout the occupation. On July 8th, M sent me this email: Habibi, Up to this moment, I heard that one of my neighbors saw [H's] photo in the morgue but I couldn't make sure yet. Traditionally, when a body is dropped in a street and found by police, they take it to the morgue. The first thing done is to take a photo for the dead person in the computer to let the families know them. This procedure is followed because the number of bodies is tremendously big. For this people cannot see every body to check for their sons or relatives. For this, people see the photos before going to the refrigerator. I will go to the morgue tomorrow. The next day he wrote yet again: Habibi, Today I went to the morgue. I saw horrible things there. I didn't see [H's] photo among them. Some figures cannot be easily recognized because of the blood or the face is terribly deformed. I saw also only heads; those who were slayed, it's unbelievable. Tomorrow, we will have another visit to make sure again. In your country, when somebody wants to go to the morgue, he may naturally see two or, say, three or four bodies. For us, I saw hundreds today. Every month, the municipality buries those who are not recognized by their families because of the capacity of the morgue. Imagine! In one of H's last emails to me sent soon after his return home from Syria earlier this summer, he described driving out of Baquba one afternoon. Ominously, he wrote: We left Baquba, which was sinking in a sea of utter chaos, worries, and instability. People there in that small town were scared of being kidnapped, killed, murdered or expelled. The entire security situation over there was deteriorating; getting to the worse. Now, that passage might be read as his epitaph. 4. Subjectively Speaking The morning I receive the latest news from M, I crawl back into bed and lie staring at the ceiling, wondering what will become of H's wife and young children, if he is truly dead. Barring a miracle, I assume that will turn out to be the case. Later, I go for a walk. It's California sunny and the air is pleasantly cool on my skin. I'm aware -- as I often am -- that I never even consider looking over my shoulder here. I'm also aware that those I pass on my walk don't know that they aren't even considering looking over their shoulders. The American Heritage Dictionary's second definition of schizophrenia is: A situation or condition that results from the coexistence of disparate or antagonistic qualities, identities, or activities: the national schizophrenia that results from carrying out an unpopular war [italics theirs]. That's what I'm experiencing -- a national schizophrenia that results from our government carrying out an unpopular war. It's what I continue to experience with never lessening sharpness two years after my last trip to Iraq. The hardest thing, in the California sun with that cool breeze on my face, is to know that two realities in two grimly linked countries coexist, and most people in my own country are barely conscious of this. In Iraq, of course, there is nothing disparate, no disjuncture, only a constant, relentless grinding and suffering, a pervasive condition of tragic hopelessness and despair with no end in sight. [Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist who has covered the Middle East for the last four years, eight months of which were spent in occupied Iraq. Jamail is currently writing for Inter Press Service, Al-Jazeera English, and is a regular contributor to Tomdispatch.com. Jamail's forthcoming book, "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Independent Journalist in Occupied Iraq" (Haymarket Books) will be released this October.] ? 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 15:13:10 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:13:10 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Suffering sparks exodus from Zimbabwe Message-ID: <20070723151310.26a0e522@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Simon McGuinness The Irish Times - Jul 23, 2007 http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2007/0723/1184965208509.html Suffering sparks exodus from Zimbabwe Zimbabwe: Nearly a quarter of the population have fled the economic collapse, writes Joe Humphreys in Musina. They mainly come at night, scrambling in twos and threes across the no-man's land between Zimbabwe and South Africa. Like prison inmates on a mass break-out, they dodge police patrol lights and cut through the fence that separates their homeland from apparent freedom. "We are suffering in Zimbabwe. We are dying of hunger," said Owen Nyararai, one of the latest escapees. "There is no flour, no mealie , no sugar, no cooking oil, no soap. It's very hard," Marera Mugaga chipped in. The pair travelled from Zimbabwe's Masvingo district to the border town of Beitbridge where they were set upon on by the "guma guma" - opportunistic thieves who swarm around the area. Mugaga lost his money, Nyararai his mobile phone. One of their travel companions had a gold filing prised from a tooth. "There were more than 15 guys in the gang. They were carrying long knives and knobkerries [traditional clubs]," said Mugaga, showing fresh cuts and bruises on his legs. Other such refugees crossing the Limpopo river have encountered crocodiles. Yet more have become entangled in the electrified, razor-wire barriers that run for hundreds of kilometres along the river bank. The risk of injury is high, the risk of deportation higher, but still there is no stemming the flow. Between January and June, 600,000 Zimbabweans entered South Africa legally. How many arrived illegally is anyone's guess, with some estimating that at least three million Zimbabweans - nearly a quarter of the population - have fled south since their economy started collapsing under President Robert Mugabe's ruinous economic policies. A night drive along the border illustrates the scale of the human flight. Long stretches of fencing patched during the day is once again torn apart as people, mostly young men, climb and crawl their way on to South African soil. Pick-up trucks dart along the narrow road, stopping at pre-arranged collection points. Refugees are charged exorbitant fares for a lift to Musina, the main border town on the South African side of the Limpopo. People-trafficking has undoubtedly become big business, and the once-depressed Musina is now booming. Locals report an upsurge in activity since Mugabe's decision last month to order a price freeze on basic commodities. Food shortages have become more widespread in Zimbabwe, and things are set to get worse when a government ban on the import of unlicensed foodstuffs comes into effect on August 1st. Elinor Sisulu of the Harare-based Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition said the government policies were aimed at "making people more vulnerable" ahead of next year's elections. "The only parallels I can think of are North Korea, and Cambodia under Pol Pot, and the only consequence will be the intensification of hunger." She said it was no coincidence that the food restrictions were introduced just weeks ahead of the closing date for the electoral register. "People who should be registering to vote are now busy chasing after food, or are leaving the country. You'd have to assume they [the government] don't want people to register." Francis Hweshe (25) from Harare, who crossed the border last month, said the government is trying to force people from urban areas - where support for the opposition is strongest - into the countryside, or abroad. "It's all about preparing for next year. At the moment, there is no way Mugabe will lose the election," he said. Hweshe, a newspaper journalist who was detained and allegedly tortured in custody, escaped across the border posing as a bus conductor. He has since found a part-time job - unlike many of his compatriots for whom emigration is merely another trial to overcome. There is much hostility among South Africans to the new arrivals. Some Zimbabweans have been linked to organised crime. Others are accused of poaching jobs from locals. Exploitation is rife, and children are particularly vulnerable. Ennie Lelushi, a voluntary outreach worker in Musina, said she had found employment for dozens of unaccompanied minors who had recently arrived from Zimbabwe. However, the work was fraught with difficulty. "One man told us he had a job for a girl," she said. "But when we got there he said he had no job and instead would give her 100 Rand [ ?10.50] to have sex. Just because the girl was suffering, starving, he tried to take advantage." Nyararai (20) and Mugaga (40) had their own story of abuse to tell. On entering Musina, just hours after their dangerous crossing, they were stopped by a white farmer and set to work in a field. After a while, the farmer returned. "He kicked us, and threw stones at us, and told us we weren't doing it properly," said Mugaga. "So we ran away." According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which is assisting refugees in the area, deportations from South Africa to Zimbabwe have increased from 12,000 a month to 17,000 over the past year. A survey indicates that 27 per cent of IOM clients had been deported more than once. "It's a very unpredictable situation," said Andrew Gethi, head of local operations for the aid agency. A number of humanitarian groups, including the IOM, have discussed the possibility of setting up refugee camps in Musina. But the South African government is understood to be resisting any intervention that might accelerate the exodus. Judging by Nyararai and Mugaga, Zimbabweans need little inducement to leave their homeland. Both had steady jobs in Harare, earning between 300,000 and 600,000 Zimbabwe dollars a month. That was barely enough to buy between six and 12 loaves of bread. "When I left home, I told my wife I was going to war," said Mugaga, a father of four. "I don't know when I will be back." ? 2007 The Irish Times From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 15:19:56 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:19:56 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Union of Concerned Scientists Issue Some Global Warming Snakeoil Message-ID: <20070723151956.0d232efe@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Harry Saloor - Jul 23, 2007 The Union of Concerned [sic] Scientists have recently posted an article on their website under the banner of Global Warming, titled: Ten Personal Solutions. Unfortunately the article lacks adequate substance and stands short of persuading the informed readers that their personal choices can have a significant impact on global warming. Ed Crane said: ?The history of mankind is a history of the subjugation and exploitation of a great majority of people by an elite few by what has been appropriately termed the 'ruling class'. The ruling class has many manifestations. It can take the form of a religious orthodoxy, a monarchy, a dictatorship of the proletariat, outright fascism, or, in the case of the United States, corporate statism. In each instance the ruling class relies on academics, scholars and 'experts' to legitimize and provide moral authority for its hegemony over the masses." Not surprisingly, UCS?s Ten Personal Solutions fails to make an impact in the absence of an appeal to readers for radical changes in their politics, businesses and lifestyles that are urgently needed to save the planet from the looming ecocide. Cindy Smith, a member of Creating A Sustainable Future (CASF), has prepared a brief reply to the UCS?s Ten Personal Solutions to Global Warming which follows their article. Harry Saloor *** Global Warming: What You Can Do Ten Personal Solutions http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/ten-personal-solutions.html Individual choices can have an impact on global climate change. Reducing your family's heat-trapping emissions does not mean forgoing modern conveniences; it means making smart choices and using energy-efficient products, which may require an additional investment up front, but often pay you back in energy savings within a couple of years. Since Americans' per capita emissions of heat-trapping gases is 5.6 tons?more than double the amount of western Europeans?we can all make choices that will greatly reduce our families' global warming impact. 1. The car you drive: the most important personal climate decision. When you buy your next car, look for the one with the best fuel economy in its class. Each gallon of gas you use is responsible for 25 pounds of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. Better gas mileage not only reduces global warming, but will also save you thousands of dollars at the pump over the life of the vehicle. Compare the fuel economy of the cars you're considering and look for new technologies like hybrid engines. 2. Choose clean power. More than half the electricity in the United States comes from polluting coal-fired power plants. And power plants are the single largest source of heat-trapping gas. None of us can live without electricity, but in some states, you can switch to electricity companies that provide 50 to 100 percent renewable energy. (For more information go to Green-e.org.) 3. Look for Energy Star. When it comes time to replace appliances, look for the Energy Star label on new appliances (refrigerators, freezers, furnaces, air conditioners, and water heaters use the most energy). These items may cost a bit more initially, but the energy savings will pay back the extra investment within a couple of years. Household energy savings really can make a difference: If each household in the United States replaced its existing appliances with the most efficient models available, we would save $15 billion in energy costs and eliminate 175 million tons of heat-trapping gases. 4. Unplug a freezer. One of the quickest ways to reduce your global warming impact is to unplug the extra refrigerator or freezer you rarely use (except when you need it for holidays and parties). This can reduce the typical family's carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 10 percent. 5. Get a home energy audit. Take advantage of the free home energy audits offered by many utilities. Simple measures, such as installing a programmable thermostat to replace your old dial unit or sealing and insulating heating and cooling ducts, can each reduce a typical family's carbon dioxide emissions by about 5 percent. 6. Light bulbs matter. If every household in the United States replaced one regular light bulb with an energy-saving model, we could reduce global warming pollution by more than 90 billion pounds over the life of the bulbs; the same as taking 6.3 million cars off the road. So, replace your incandescent bulbs with more efficient compact fluorescents, which now come in all shapes and sizes. You'll be doing your share to cut back on heat-trapping pollution and you'll save money on your electric bills and light bulbs. 7. Think before you drive. If you own more than one vehicle, use the less fuel-efficient one only when you can fill it with passengers. Driving a full minivan may be kinder to the environment than two midsize cars. Whenever possible, join a carpool or take mass transit. 8. Buy good wood. When buying wood products, check for labels that indicate the source of the timber. Supporting forests that are managed in a sustainable fashion makes sense for biodiversity, and it may make sense for the climate too. Forests that are well managed are more likely to store carbon effectively because more trees are left standing and carbon-storing soils are less disturbed. 9. Plant a tree. You can also make a difference in your own backyard. Get a group in your neighborhood together and contact your local arborist or urban forester about planting trees on private property and public land. In addition to storing carbon, trees planted in and around urban areas and residences can provide much-needed shade in the summer, reducing energy bills and fossil fuel use. 10. Let policymakers know you are concerned about global warming. Our elected officials and business leaders need to hear from concerned citizens. Sign up for the Union of Concerned Scientists Action Network to ensure that policymakers get the timely, accurate information they need to make informed decisions about global warming solutions. *** A Response to the UCS: by Cindy Smith Creating A Sustainable Future The Union of ?Concerned Scientists,? or overpaid hypocrites? This must be a sick joke in 10 installments. Why don?t the Concerned Scientists tell you 1. The total number of ?the best fuel economy cars? our planet can sustain? 2. Maximum amount of energy consumption before the ecosystems collapse irreversibly? 3. The threshold at which the Energy Star turns into a ?white dwarf!? How many more refrigerators, freezers, furnaces, air conditioners, water heaters? could we buy? 4. What is the total number of refrigerators and freezers that can remain plugged in? 5. How many new homes would it take to offset the ?old? family's carbon dioxide emissions reduction? 6. How much difference would their suggested steps make when each year more than 65 million cars and light commercial vehicles hit the roads globally? 7. See the reply I have given in No. 6. 8. What are the total volumes of ?good wood? that consumers can buy each year without destroying the environment? 9. When they doubt you, tell them to plant a tree! So you must be the good guys, otherwise you wouldn't be saying that. 10. Should we let policymakers and elected [sic] officials know we are concerned about global warming before we impeach them for starting illegal wars, murdering a million plus people, torturing prisoners and spying on citizens, or afterwards? From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 15:26:09 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:26:09 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Conyers Needs Just 3 Congress members to Begin Impeachment Message-ID: <20070723152609.00e22c6f@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by "Uncle Don B Fanning" via Ed Pearl John Conyers is within THREE CONGRESS MEMBERS of what he feels is a large enough contingent supporting impeachment! Please forward this to whomever might follow through on the steps needed to prepare for Conyers' plan to impeach. Even if your own congress member is unwilling to respond in a favorable manner, you might reach a congress person in another district (or their staff) who will listen. You may also know other people in districts whose congress members are more favorable to impeachment. Due to recent developments, it is becoming more conceivable that Bush might simply dispense with the next election, declaring, in effect, martial law. In that case, this may be one of our few options for restoring the United States to a situation with some semblance of popular governance. I.e., ending a would-be dictatorship. In that case, waiting for optimal opportunities in the 2008 election will be USELESS. In that case, hoping that a new regime will end the endless wars, restore our constitutional rights and set other governing processes back on a track where we some say in our civil liberties, environment, health, safety or anything else we care about will be USELESS. In that case, hoping that another failure of Democrats or Republicans will open opportunities for a third party (disclosure: I'm a registered Green) will be USELESS. In fact, I don't know what means will still be found useful by any of us without dire consequences for all of us. I am, at times, at a loss as to what we can do to restore even a somewhat democratic process to our country. My philosophy is that we must continue to use whatever non-violent tools we have even if we do not know whether they will be effective. The Bush regime employs a technique they describe as "shock and awe" not only militarily but also against citizens of the US. The same psyops techniques used by our government against opponents in war are also applied to effectively prevent its own citizenry from providing reasonable checks and balances to governmental and corporate excess and blatant abuse of power. Thus, the GW Bush regime believes that it is immune from charges of High Crimes and Misdemeanors that the many informed experts have accused them of. It is my fervent hope that impeachment proceedings might prevent further and greater abuse of power and the possible dire consequences thereof. In any case, I strongly feel that, given the current situation, it is worth a try. Please make at least one call MONDAY and inform friends to do the same. Phone your own Congress Member at 202-224-3121 Thanks to Dick Kaiser for forwarding this on the [ImpeachBushAZ] listserv! ----- Conyers: 3 More Congress Members and I'll Impeach By David Swanson http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/24962 House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has said that if three more Congress Members get behind impeachment he will start the impeachment proceedings. I was a guest today on Bree Walker's () radio show. She's the progressive radio host from California who purchased Cindy Sheehan's land from her in Crawford, Texas. Bree attended an event on Friday in San Diego at which Congressman Conyers spoke about impeachment. Her report was extremely interesting. I had already heard reports that Conyers had said: "What are we waiting for? Let's take these two guys out!" But, of course, what we're waiting for is John Conyers. Is he ready to act? It was hard to tell from that comment. In January, Conyers spoke at a huge rally on the National Mall and declared "We can fire them!" but later explained that what he meant was that we could wait for two years and Bush and Cheney's terms would end. Was this week's remark just more empty rhetoric? It appears to be more than that. Bree Walker told me, on the air, that Conyers said that all he needs is three more Congress Members backing impeachment, and he'll move on it, even without Pelosi. I asked whether that meant specifically moving from 14 cosponsors of H Res 333 () to 17, or adding 3 to the larger number of Congress Members who have spoken favorably of impeachment but not all signed onto bills. Bree said she didn't know and that Conyers had declined to take any questions. Either way, this target of three more members seems perfectly doable. It's safe to assume, I think, that we're talking about impeaching Cheney first. But, even if Conyers is talking about Bush, the target is perfectly achievable. First, there are Congress Members like Jesse Jackson Jr. who have spoken out for impeachment but not signed onto H Res 333. They should be urged to act now! Second, there are dozens of members () who signed onto H Res 635 a year and a half ago, Conyers' bill for an investigation into grounds for impeachment, who have not signed onto H Res 333 yet. Third, one of the excuses citizens often hear from lots of Congress Members for not signing onto articles of impeachment is that not enough of their colleagues have signed on and therefore "we don't have the votes." Well that just changed. Now three more votes is all that's needed to get this machine rolling. Fourth, many of the 14 Congress Members backing H Res 333 have used similar excuses to justify refraining from lobbying their colleagues to join them. That can now end. Our 14 leaders can do more than just put down their names. Now, if Conyers begins impeachment proceedings in the House Judiciary Committee, we should all be clear on what that will mean. If it is serious, it will not mean sending any subpoenas or contempt citations to the emperors' court. Bush and Cheney have already repeatedly refused to comply with subpoenas (). President Richard Nixon did the same, of course, and his refusal to comply with subpoenas constituted the offense cited in one of the three Articles of Impeachment approved by the House Judiciary Committee on July 27, 1974 as warranting "impeachment and trial, and removal from office." But Bush and Cheney have gone further, ordering former staffers not to comply with subpoenas, and announcing that the Justice Department will not enforce any contempt of Congress proceedings. What the impeachment of Cheney or Bush will be is very, very fast. It will not disrupt or distract from the important business of passing nonbinding resolutions and holding all-night gripe sessions over bills destined to be vetoed. Impeachment in the case of Dick Cheney need not take the three months it did for Nixon or the two months it did for President Bill Clinton. In fact, it could take a day. Here's why: Bush and Cheney's lies about Iraqi ties to al Qaeda are on videotape and in writing, and Bush and Cheney continue to make them to this day. There was no al Qaeda in Iraq until the invasion. Their claims about Iraqi weapons have been shown in every detail () to have been, not mistakes, but lies. Their threats to Iran are on videotape. Bush being warned about Katrina and claiming he was not are on videotape. Bush lying about illegal spying and later confessing to it are on videotape. A federal court has ruled that spying to be a felony. The Supreme Court has ruled Bush and Cheney's system of detentions unconstitutional. Torture, openly advocated for by Bush and Cheney and their staffs, is documented by victims, witnesses, and public photographs. Torture was always illegal and has been repeatedly recriminalized under Bush and Cheney. Bush has reversed laws with signing statements. Those statements are posted on the White House website, and a GAO report found that with 30 percent of Bush's signing statements in which he announces his right to break laws, he has in fact proceeded to break those laws. For these and many other offenses, no investigation is needed because no better evidence is even conceivable. This impeachment will be swift. And it will require only a simple majority. We already know that the Democrats can vote as a block if they want to, and that a few brave Republicans might join them. Whether the Senate will then convict Cheney will depend on how much pressure citizens apply and how much information the House manages to force onto television sets. The latter could be surprisingly large and substantive, since the conflict of an impeachment is certain to generate incredible ratings. But even an acquittal would identify the Senators to be removed from office by voters in 2008. And Cheney (or Bush) would still have been 100% impeached. Al Gore didn't run for president pretending he'd never met Bill Clinton and pick Senator Joe Lieberman as a running mate because the Senate convicted Clinton (it acquitted). The timing of Conyers' remark may be related to the steps the White House has recently taken to assert "unitary executive" dictatorial power. Bush has commuted the sentence of a subordinate who obstructed an investigation into matters involving Bush and Cheney. And, as mentioned above, neither subpoenas nor contempt citations will go anywhere. Impeachment is no longer merely the appropriate step that it has been for the past six years. It is now the only tool left to the Congress for use in asserting its very existence as a functioning body of government. But the timing is also quite helpful to the grassroots movement for impeachment, and rather symbolic. Five years ago this Monday, the meeting was held at #10 Downing Street that produced the Downing Street Minutes (). Over two years ago, then Ranking Member Conyers held a hearing in the basement of the Capitol, the only space the Republican leadership would allow him. At that hearing, several Democratic Congress Members for the first time began talking about impeachment. The witnesses at the hearing were Ambassador Joseph Wilson, attorney John Bonifaz, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, and a then unknown gold star mother named Cindy Sheehan. They discussed the evidence of the Downing Street documents, which added significantly to the growing body of evidence that Bush and Cheney misled the Congress about the case for war. This Monday, Sheehan and McGovern and a great many leaders of the movements for peace and impeachment will lead a march at 10 a.m. at Arlington National Cemetery. We will march to Congressman Conyers office and ask to talk with him about impeachment. We will refuse to leave without either a commitment to begin at once the impeachment of Cheney or Bush or both, or our arms in handcuffs. The same day, groups in several states around the country will be sitting in and risking arrest for impeachment in the district offices of their congress members. Not everyone will be able to take part (). But everyone can take two minutes on Monday and do two things: phone Chairman Conyers at 202-225-5126 and ask him to start the impeachment of dick Cheney; and phone your own Congress Member at 202-224-3121 and ask them to immediately call Conyers' office to express their support for impeachment. Your Congress Member might just be one of the three needed, not just to keep us out of jail but to keep this nation from devolving into dictatorship. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 15:46:11 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:46:11 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Cuban 5: BBC Interviews Wife of Gerardo Hernandez Message-ID: <20070723154611.00d32bdd@viola.tamara-b.org> NOTE: The July 3, 2007 BBC interview with Gerardo Hernandez has already been distributed by NY Transfer. See this link, which also contains links to the BBC Audio PodCast: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070702/065154.html sent by mart National Committee To Free The Cuban Five Bulletin web: http://www.freethefive.org July 19, 2007 BBC interviews Adriana P?rez After the interview earlier this month with Gerardo Hern?ndez, the first interview by a major media outlet with any member of the Cuban Five, the BBC has now broadcast a shorter interview with Gerardo's wife, Adriana P?rez. Along with the broadcast interview, the BBC published an article highlighting the criminal decade-long denial of visas to Adriana and Olga Salanueva, wife of Ren? Gonz?lez, by U.S. authorities. The BBC article includes a link to the website of the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five. Hundreds of visitors to the BBC website have already clicked on that link to learn more about the case of the Five in just the first few hours that the article has been posted on the BBC website. We've posted the complete article, along with the video interview of Adriana, on our website, and a link to Gerardo's interview. [BBC News story about the interview, and links to the video, follow.] *** Click here to view a BBC video interview with Adriana Perez which forms the basis of the article below http://tinyurl.com/2ehk6v Or watch a lower-resolution YouTube version here: http://tinyurl.com/2poq94 BBC News - Jul 19, 2007 http://tinyurl.com/2lpvbw BBC Interview with Adriana P?rez Cuban wives fight US jail visit ban by Michael Voss Two Cuban women, whose husbands are serving long sentences in the United States for conspiracy to commit espionage, are campaigning to be allowed to visit them in jail. It is not that the Cuban authorities are refusing them permission to travel but that for some 10 years the American authorities have repeatedly refused to grant them visas. They are among the wives of the so-called Cuban Five who were arrested in Florida in 1998 as part of an alleged spy ring known as the "Wasp Network". Earlier this month the BBC broadcast an interview with the group's leader, Gerardo Hernandez, from his prison cell in California. He is currently serving two life sentences for conspiracy to commit espionage and murder. It was the first interview with any of the five and made front-page headlines in Cuba, which is adamant that the men were wrongly convicted and has long campaigned for a retrial. Visits not allowed From his maximum security penitentiary in California, Gerardo Hernandez described life behind bars. "The worst part of my treatment has not to do with the prison but the fact I haven't been able to see my wife for the past 10 years because the US government doesn't give her a visa." "I am told I could be a danger to the security of the United States, a possible terrorist or even an illegal immigrant" Adriana Perez, Gerardo Hernandez's wife I met his wife Adriana at an office in central Havana, a softly spoken yet determined and articulate woman. She came armed with dozens of pamphlets and books written about the case of the Cuban Five. I had my laptop with a downloaded copy of the BBC interview plus a transcript in Spanish. "Seven times I have applied," she told me, "and each time I get a different reason for being refused. I am told I could be a danger to the security of the United States, a possible terrorist or even an illegal immigrant." Adriana, who does speak regularly to her husband by phone, sat silently as I played the interview, concentrating intensely on her husband's voice, the occasional flash of emotion crossing her face. "It was like a ray of light," she told me afterwards. "It gives me hope of seeing him face-to-face again. Even though we couldn't touch, just looking into each others eyes would mean so much." Controversial trial The five Cubans were convicted in a Miami court in 2001 on a range of charges including lying about their identities, trying to obtain US military secrets and spying on Cuban exile groups. It was a highly controversial trial particularly as it took place in Miami, the centre of anti-Castro Cuban exile activities in the US. The five are national heroes in Cuba The Miami Herald newspaper recently described it as "one of South Florida's most politically-laden criminal cases." Of the five, Antonio Guerrero and Ramon Labanino got life, with 19 years for Fernando Gonzalez, and 15 years for Rene Gonzalez. Gerardo Hernandez was also charged with conspiring in the deaths of four Cuban exiles, whose two light aircraft were shot down by the Cuban air force over the Straits of Florida in 1996. This is why he is currently serving two consecutive life sentences. Three of the wives have been allowed to visit their husbands in jail. But Adriana Perez along with Rene Gonzales's wife, Olga Salanueva, have consistently been denied visas to enter the US. I asked her about the conspiracy to murder charges and the families of the four Cuban exiles who had died in the small planes shot down by the Cuban fighter planes. "Unfortunately they also had families who have suffered the loss of their love ones. But Gerardo had nothing to do with it," she says. "That was a decision taken by the Cuban government on the grounds of national defence. "The government had informed the US that exile groups were repeatedly violating Cuban air space," Adriana Perez told me. National heroes In Cuba the five men are national heroes. There are giant posters of them prominently displayed throughout Havana and across the country. They are also the focus of regular rallies and demonstrations. The authorities here say they were not sent to Miami to spy on the United States, but to infiltrate and monitor militant anti-Castro exile groups which the Cubans describe as "terrorists." The year before their arrest there had been a series of bomb attacks on tourist locations in Havana in which an Italian man died and several Cubans were injured. The Cuban Five have attracted sympathy from a range of supporters worldwide, with a Free the Five web page being produced in San Francisco. On 20 August, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in their case on claims of insufficient evidence. Adriana Perez and Olga Salanueva are also planning to appeal against the refusal of their visa application, in the hope of being allowed visit their husbands in jail. [The article above and the interview with Adriana refer to the earlier BBC interview with Gerardo [already distributed by NY Transfer]. Photos: Photo 1) "Billboards are on display in Cuba calling for the five to be freed" http://tinyurl.com/322wmt Photo 2) " 'I am told I could be a danger to the security of the United States, a possible terrorist or even an illegal immigrant' - Adriana Perez, Gerardo Hernandez's wife" http://tinyurl.com/3cabwm Photo 3) "The five are national heroes in Cuba" http://tinyurl.com/2wpd4e From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 15:47:52 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:47:52 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Cuban 5: Next Legal Hurdle is August 20th Hearing Message-ID: <20070723154752.27e4ba97@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by mart National Committee To Free The Cuban Five web: http://www.freethefive.org Aug. 20 appeals hearing nears! On Monday, August 20 the oral arguments in the appeals for the Five will be held in Atlanta's 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. There is very limited seating capacity in the courtroom, and we ask supporters to understand that the preference for attendance at the oral arguments will be for invited international and national jurists. The day before the hearing, on Sunday, August 19, the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five will host a reception for all supporters of the Five who come to Atlanta. Watch for more details about the place and time. A complete collection of legal briefs in the case of the Cuban Five is maintained on our website. Appeals briefs and other legal documents: http://www.freethefive.org From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:00:38 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:00:38 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] US Forbids Cuban 5 a Visit from Members of EU Parliament Message-ID: <20070723160038.50133a40@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Members of European Parliament Denied Permission to Visit Cuban Five Havana, July 23 (acn) US authorities rejected a petition by members of the European Parliament to visit five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters who remain unjustly imprisoned in the United States. The announcement was made by Willy Meyer, a member of the European Parliament representing Izquierda Unida (United Left), who described the decision as a violation of basic principles of justice according to a communiqu? published by Europa Press news agency. According to the text, "this is another unacceptable decision of the US authorities in regards to the case of the five Cuban prisoners who are suffering excessive and unjust sentences". The document notes that it not only violates the basic human rights of the Cuban Five - as they are internationally known - but also the principles of international and humanitarian law. As an excuse, Washington alleged that the deputies did not know the prisoners before their incarceration, which Meyer described as a decision that flies in the face of world public opinion. Meyer added that this behavior only confirms the political nature of the incarceration of Ren? Gonz?lez, Gerardo Hern?ndez, Antonio Guerrero, Ram?n Laba?ino and Fernando Gonz?lez. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:01:45 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:01:45 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Pastors for Peace Meet with Cuban Children Message-ID: <20070723160145.1e5568d2@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Pastors for Peace Exchange with Cuban Children Havana, July 23 (acn) Members of the 18th Pastors for Peace Cuba-US Friendshipment Caravan met on Sunday with children of a foster home of the city of Sancti Sp?ritus in central Cuba. The members of Pastors for Peace, who arrived last Friday in Havana after collecting 90 tons of humanitarian aid for Cuba in a tour around 127 US cities, spoke with the children who showed them their home and offered them a cultural show. During the meeting, the visitors learned about the advantages of the Cuban educational system that guarantees the necessary resources for the education of all the youth of the country. The visitors also visited a poli-clinic on Sunday and learned about the efforts being made there towards social and economic development. They also expressed interest in education and health care programs in the central province of Sancti Sp?ritus, and praised the infant mortality rate in the territory, which is only 3.1 deaths per every one thousand live births. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:03:46 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:03:46 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] 1, 000, 000 AMERICANS TELL CONGRESS: TIME'S UP - IMPEACH BUSH! Message-ID: <20070723160346.7954c28c@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by David Swanson - July 23, 2007 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT Tiffany Burns (562) 912-5859 Dede Miller (562) 912-5838 Liz Havstad (510) 206-6749 1,000,000 AMERICANS TELL CONGRESS: TIME'S UP - IMPEACH BUSH! WHO: Peace activists Cindy Sheehan, President of the Hip-Hop Caucus Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern and activists from around the country that have been traveling on a 29 day "Journey for Humanity" caravan from Crawford. WHAT: The "Journey For Humanity" reaches D.C. and delivers over 1,000,000 signatures to Congressman John Conyers appealing to him to begin impeachment proceedings. WHEN: Monday, July 23, 2007 10AM Rally at main gate of Arlington Cemetery. 10:30AM Begin march from Arlington Cemetery to Capitol Hill. 12PM End march at 3rd & Maryland Streets. Head into John Conyers office - Room 2426, Rayburn Building. WHERE: March will begin at the main gate of Arlington Cemetery, about 100 feet from the Arlington metro stop. March will end at 3rd & Maryland. Signatures will be delivered to John Conyers office - Room 2426 Rayburn Building For more information go to: www.thecampcaseypeaceinstitute.org, www.impeachbush.org, www.afterdowningstreet.org From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:04:48 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:04:48 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Cuba Maintains Second Spot in Medal Standings of Pan Am Games Message-ID: <20070723160448.2bb0b38f@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Cuba Maintains Second Spot in Medal Standings of Pan American Games Havana, July 23 (acn) The Cuban delegation that is participating in the 15th edition of the Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, won three more titles on Sunday and thus remained in the second spot of the general medal standings. The crowns on Sunday were for Mariela Gonz?lez who opened the athletics contest with a historic gold medal in the women's marathon event. Mariela, silver medalist four years ago in Santo Domingo, clocked 2:43.11 hours and became the first Cuban champion in Pan American marathon events. The silver and bronze medals were for Brazilians Marcia Narloch and Sirlene Pinho, respectively. Meanwhile, the two other titles were for judokas Yanet Bermoy (women's 48 kg) and Sheila Espinosa (women's 52 kg) who helped Cuba finished atop the medal standings in the judo tournament with five crowns, three silver and five bronze medals. Brazil (4-6-3) and the United States (3-1-2) placed second and third, respectively. Cuba also won a silver on Sunday with judoka Yasmani Pikey (men's 60 kg) and three bronze medals. One was for judoka Yordanis Arencibia (men's 66 kg), the other was for the men's handball team who beat Uruguay in the third-place match and the other was for Francisco Alvarez and Leonel Munder who walked away with the bronze in the men's beach volleyball tournament downing Canada in the bronze medal match. After these results, the United States leads the general medal standings with 58 titles, 56 silver and 27 bronze while Cuba (29-12-19) and Brazil (26-23-36) place second and third, respectively. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:05:54 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:05:54 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Vice President Lage Praises Petroleum Production in Cuba Message-ID: <20070723160554.5ddc87b1@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Vice President Lage Praises Petroleum Production in Cuba Havana, July 23 (acn) Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage said on Saturday that Cuba already produces half of the petroleum and accompanying gas that the island consumes. The announcement was made by Lage during a visit to several facilities of the Company of Petroleum Drilling and Extraction of the West in the municipality of Santa Cruz del Norte, northeast of Havana, which on Saturday arrived to the million tons produced this year, needing almost three weeks less than in 2006. Lage said that this entity and also that of Matanzas are two of the most efficient ones on the island as they have both fulfilled their plans and even surpassed it in the production of gas. He added that new wells have been concluded, which has allowed the country to increase its reserves and guarantee a similar production for next year. Lage noted that country has also acquired the skills to give services to the extraction wells, something for which the island depended on foreign companies in the past. He explained that today Cuba has 12 machines for the drilling of wells and seven others for repair work. Lage was accompanied by the Minister of the Basic Industry, Yadira Garc?a, and by Iv?n Ordaz, First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party in Matanzas province. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:06:28 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:06:28 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Iranian Minister Begins Official Program in Cuba Message-ID: <20070723160628.3950a59b@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Iranian Minister Begins Official Program in Cuba Havana, July 23 (acn) The Iranian Minister of Trade Sayed Masoud Mir Kasemi begins on Monday an official visit to Cuba heading a delegation of his country that also includes Vice Minister Mohammad Al? Zeyghami and Seyed Hamid Ghayam Shahidi, head of the Center for the Promotion of International Exhibitions, as well as by other Iranian officials. The visiting delegation arrived on Sunday in Havana for a five-day working visit. Monday's program includes a meeting with Cuba's Foreign Trade Minister Ra?l de la Nuez to sign a cooperation agreement dealing with the setting up of tariffs. Mir Kasemi and his delegation will also meet with Foreign Minister Felipe P?rez Roque, Government Minister Ricardo Cabrisas and Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation Minister Marta Lomas. Their program also includes visits to the Center for Genetics Engineering and Biotechnology in the western part of Havana and to Old Havana and its System of Colonial Fortifications, declared as world heritage sites by UNESCO in 1982. Last June, the Iranian Minister of Industries and Mining, Ali Reza Tahmasbi, visited the island to participate in the 12th Cuba-Iran Intergovernmental Commission for Economic, Technical and Scientific Cooperation. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:08:17 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:08:17 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Cuba-Malaysia to Test Vaccine Against Cancer Message-ID: <20070723160817.5da88082@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Cuba-Malaysia to Test Vaccine Against Cancer Havana, July 23(acn) Malaysia and Cuba will shortly start in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's capital, the clinical trials of a vaccine aimed to improve life quality of patients with terminal cancer. Known as Epiderma Growth Factor (EGF), the vaccine was created and developed by Cuban scientists from the Molecular Immunology Center in Havana in 1992. The trials will be conducted on 230 patients in 14 Malaysian hospitals --six of them in the capital-- under the supervision of the Cancer Research Institute of Kuala Lumpur Hospital. "Cuba-Malaysia relations go back to several years," noted Malaysian Deputy Minister of Health Abdul Latiff Ahmad, who expressed his full support for this medical initiative against cancer. "Cuba boasts of one of the best healthcare systems in the world; we are confident of the success of the trials," pointed out Mukhriz Mahathir, president of Bioven, a company specialized in state-of-the-art technology and biological sciences. Cuban head of the project, Dr Gisela Gonzalez Marinello, noted that the EGF is not a prophylactic vaccine, but it fights the regeneration of carcinogenic cells. It is injected once a month as a complement of traditional treatments such as the chemotherapy and the radiotherapy. According Dr. Gonzalez, the vaccine has proven effective in previous trials carried out in Cuba, Canada and the United Kingdom, since it has extended life by up to two years in terminally ill cancer patients. Cuban ambassador to Malaysia, Pedro Monzon Barata, said that Asian nation promotes South-South cooperation. He added the project was also possible thanks to Malaysia's political will, its excellent infrastructure and the competence of its specialists. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:13:45 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:13:45 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Widening the War - Canada Recruits Arab Soldiers for NATO's Afghanistan Occupn Message-ID: <20070723161345.3e8a00bb@viola.tamara-b.org> Agence France-Presse via Defence News - Jul 20, 2007 http://defensenews.com/story.php?F=2913861&C=mideast Report: UAE Could Be First Arab Nation to Send Troops to Afghanistan Agence France-Presse OTTAWA - The United Arab Emirates is planning to send troops to Afghanistan to fight alongside Canadians, at Ottawa's behest to put a "Muslim face" on the NATO-led coalition, media reported Friday. The Toronto Star, citing unnamed sources, said Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government had been urging the tiny Arab nation to contribute soldiers and equipment to help stabilize war-torn Afghanistan. Canadian authorities were not immediately available to comment. If the report is accurate, the Afghanistan deployment is believed to be a first for an Arab nation and a diplomatic coup for Canada. The UAE was one of only three countries that recognized the hard-line Taliban government that took control of most of Afghanistan in 1996 and was forced out in a U.S.-led invasion in late 2001. The Toronto daily said the UAE tactical force would be small and mostly symbolic and would serve under Canadian commanders in the field. The UAE could also send four tanks, several armored reconnaissance vehicles, two self-propelled 155mm guns and a detachment of unmanned aerial vehicles, according to a military briefing note obtained by the Star. "The UAE is capable of bringing considerable financial support to development projects and would provide a Muslim face to the International Security Assistance Force operations, providing a counterpoint to insurgent rhetoric," the note said. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mailto: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com ============================== From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:22:10 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:22:10 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Support Benamar Benatta: Canada's 1st Rendition to Torture Victim Message-ID: <20070723162210.78a0f9a7@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by mart - Jul 21, 2007 (This note comes from TASC - Toronto Action for Social Change - a founding member of the Benatta Coalition for a Public Review See contact addresses at the end of this message) TASC Web: www.homesnotbombs.ca/tasc.htm E-mail: tasc at web.ca Imprisoned. Tortured. Abused. Forgotten. Why? The Case of Benamar Benatta: Canada's First 9/11 Rendition to Torture JULY 20, 2007, TORONTO -- Today Benamar Benatta marks a bittersweet anniversary. It was one year ago that he came to Canada for the second time, continuing his effort to be accepted here as a refugee. The first time he came to Canada, September 5, 2001, his life changed forever, and he wants to find out why. Benatta born born in Algeria, but came to North America to flee political persecution and threats to his life while serving in the Algerian Armed Forces as an aeronautical engineer. In early September 2001 Mr. Benatta crossed the border into Canada and claimed political asylum. Mr. Benatta was detained pending further inquiries into his identity. While in Canadian custody and unbeknownst to Mr. Benatta, terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre in New York City and other targets on September 11, 2001. Canadian officials alerted the Americans to the presence of Mr. Benatta and identified him as a person who allegedly had something to do with the attacks of September 11, 2001, seemingly because he was a Muslim man who knew something about airplanes. Without a hearing, without counsel and without conducting proceedings in his first language (French), Mr. Benatta was unceremoniously driven over the border in the back of a car and handed over to the Americans on September 12, 2001. This was an illegal transfer by the Canadian government. This was against the law. While being held in the notorious Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Centre, Benatta was assigned "high security status" and detained in solitary confinement; he was deprived of sleep; his cell was illuminated 24 hours a day; guards regularly beat him, and kept him constantly awake by banging on his door every half hour, a door which had been spray-painted WTC (World Trade Centre). Mr. Benatta was actually cleared of any terrorist suspicions by the FBI in November 2001; however, he was never told that he was cleared. In fact, Mr. Benatta was held incommunicado and without access to legal counsel. In all, Mr. Benatta spent nearly five years of his life in American prisons were he was abused and tortured (as documented by the United Nations and the U.S. department of justice). Indeed, according to U.S. Federal Magistrate Judge H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr.,"As a result of the horrific events of Sept. 11, 2001, the Canadian authorities alerted United States authorities of defendant's presence and profile ... and returned him to the United States....The defendant in this case undeniably was deprived of his liberty, and held in custody under harsh conditions which can be said to be 'oppressive'....To accept the [U.S.] government's arguments "would be to join in the charade that has been perpetrated." In an opinion adopted in September, 2004, by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, it was concluded with respect to Benatta, "Finally, the [U.S.] Government has said nothing about the high-security prison regime (involving impositions that could be described as torture), which, for no reason whatsoever, was imposed on him . . ." After all of this hardship, Benatta came across the border a year ago, and has resumed his claim for asylum. His application is currently pending, and like many refugees, he lives in a state of limbo, unable to get on with his life, and haunted by some serious questions that have yet to be answered. How was Canada involved in all of this? Why did Canadian officials undertake this rendition to torture? Benatta sought intervenor status at the Iacobucci Commission investigating the cases of torture against Canadians Ahmad El-Maati, Abdullah Almalki, and Muayyed Nureddin, but was unfortunately turned down. In his request for standing, Benatta had pointed out that El-Maati, Almalki, and Nureddin "were all detained and tortured on foregin soil allegedly because of information provided to foreign governments (Syria and Egypt) by Canadian officials linking these men to terrorist activities. Mr. Benatta was also detained and tortured on foreign soil because of information provided to a foreign government (America) by Canadian officials linking Mr. Benatta to terrorist activities, in particular, the events of September 11, 2001." But Iacobucci did not see it that way, and what was supposed to be a public inquiry is in fact being held in secret, without the presence of those three men and their lawyers. Since his return to Canada, Benatta sought records of his earlier refugee claim held by Canadian officials, but was informed his 2001 claim has been "misplaced." The Canadian government also erroneously alleges that Benatta withdrew his claim for asylum prior to the 9/12/2001 rendition, but has produced no documentation to support this outrageous claim. Earlier this year, Benatta and his supporters began the Benatta Coalition for a Public Review, which could certainly use the support of everyone in this country who cares about the complicity of the Canadian government and its so-called "intelligence" agencies in acts of torture. WHAT YOU CAN DO 1. Get more information by going to Benamar's website, http://www.benamarbenatta.com/ Once there, sign the online petition calling for a public review. There are also media clips from a press conference Benamar and his supporters held in Ottawa earlier this year. 2. Write to Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, demanding that he grant a public review of Benatta's case so that Benamar and all people in Canada can get the answers they need, and to prevent such human rights abuses from occurring. Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety Sir Wilfrid Laurier Building, 340 Laurier Avenue West, 13th Floor Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0P8 3. Invite Benamar to speak to your organization. He is fluent in English and French, and can be contacted at ben at dltlive.com 4. If you are with the media, Benamar is happy to speak with you. Again,contact him through ben at dltlive.com or via his lawyer, Nicole Chrolavicius, nicole at dltlive.com 5. Donate to the costs of the Benatta Coalition for a Public Review; to find out how, email Nicole at nicole at dltlive.com Benatta Coalition for a Public Review c/o Bakerlaw 672 Dupont Street, Suite 400 Toronto, Ontario Canada M6G 1Z6 Web: http://www.benamarbenatta.com Email Nicole Chrolavicius, Benatta's Attorney at: nicole at dltlive.com Email Benamar Benatta at: ben at dltlive.com Email Site Administrator at: ruschia at dltlive.com ================================= Niagara Coalition For Peace - NC4P http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NC4P To subscribe, send an e-mail to: NC4P-subscribe at yahoogroups.com ================================= From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:24:26 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:24:26 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Religious Pedophiles Go Free Message-ID: <20070723162426.3992e019@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Tim Murphy American Chronicle - Jul 19, 2007 http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=32565 Religious Pedophiles Go Free By Michelle Malsbury, BSBM, MM Religion can mean differing things to different people, but two common threads appear to be key factors. The role religion has in any individuals life supposed to help them to feel better about themselves or perhaps more empowered than going it alone. Secondly, religion uses the fear factor in helping to keep people in line. Regardless of what people say, fear about not getting into heaven, fear about going to hell, fear about not meeting up with 40 virgins, or whatever ones religion is about in the end can and does modify how one acts or reacts to a variety of situations that life dolls out. I am not a religious person, but feel compelled to speak out about the recent settlement that I regard as payoffs or hush monies by the Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church and their insurers in Los Angeles, California to hundreds of persons who have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of those entrusted with providing moral and ethical instruction in the name of religion. These priests preyed upon young unsuspecting children and imposed their sexual deviations upon them and remain free to continue to do so. If these priests had not the benefit of hiding behind their religions they would be in jail locked far away from the impressionable minds they have abused with their sexual misdoings. On July 15, 2007 the AP reported via Fox News that the Roman Catholic Diocese in Los Angeles, California had come to a settlement for the 508 cases against their priests in their most recent sexual abuse scandal. The amount of the settlement was touted to be the highest ever at $660 million dollars. Some 40% of that settlement will go to pay the attorneys fees. This is not the first of such settlements and most likely will not be the last. Part of this settlement is that the Roman Catholic Church is supposed to hand over documents from their priests that many are hopeful may provide insight or information about possible cover-ups for these abusive priests. The Archdiocese in Orange County, California paid out $100 Million dollars for sex abuse allegations in 2004. In December of 2006 the Los Angeles Archdiocese paid $60 Million Dollars to 45 people with claims against their priests for sexual abuse. Many of these persons coming forward in these and other abuse cases date back to 1950. Since 1950 the Roman Catholic Church has paid out more than $2 Billion dollars to quiet the discontent and smooth over those persons who have been abused by their priests. Nearly 25% of that $2 Billion dollars has come from Los Angeles, California. The judge has also opened the door to possible punitive damages for the plaintiffs in these cases which could also prove to be costly for the Roman Catholic Church. Five Roman Catholic Church's have filed for bankruptcy protection in order that they might circumvent the system. Those five are; Tuscan, AZ: Spokane, WA: Portland, OR: Davenport, IA: and San Diego, CA. In my opinion this does not negate their culpability in such cases. >From the web site www.answers.com I provide the following definition for sexual abuse; sexual abuse n. 1.The forcing of unwanted sexual activity by one person on another, as by the use of threats or coercion. 2.Sexual activity that is deemed improper or harmful, as between an adult and a minor or with a person of diminished mental capacity. Sexual abuse can manifest itself in many ways. Some of the symptoms of such are listed below. 1. depression 2. suicidal 3. avoidance of all things sexual 4. sleep disorders or nightmares 5. seductiveness 6. refusal to go to church or school 7. aggressive behavior, conduct problems, or delinquency Many of the people who have been sexually abused wear those scars for life. The people responsible for abusing these children should be punished and never allowed near children for the remainder of their lives. The monies garnered from these cases do not begin to mitigate the damages these priests have done on those lives they sexually abused. I sincerely hope that I am not the only one who smells a lot of hypocrisy in religious institutions and the double standards they set for their religious leaders. [Michelle Malsbury holds a BSBM and MM in Business Management. She is in the process of working towards her doctorate. Michelle is a lifelong learner who's passions lean toward politics, world peace, the environment, and about becoming energy independent. For more information about Michelle please visit her web site at http://www.MichelleMalsbury.com ] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:25:21 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:25:21 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Iran Interested in Broadening Trade Relations with Cuba Message-ID: <20070723162521.59b6a6d6@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Iran Interested in Broadening Trade Relations with Cuba Havana, Jul 23 (acn) Iran's Trade Minister, Sayed Masoud Mir Kasemi, said his country is interested in expanding commercial exchange with both Cuba and Venezuela. In statements to the press, Mir Kasemi said that Iran's largest commercial partner in Latin America is Venezuela and that Iran would like to expand trade with Cuba to reach those same levels. The Iranian trade minister announced the signing of deal for duty preferences that will benefit both Cuba and his country. He said experts from the two sides are working on a list of products to be included in the agreement. Mir Kasemi and his delegation arrived in Cuba on Sunday for a five-day work visit. The group met Monday with the Cuban minister for Foreign Trade. Mir Kasemi is the second Iranian minister to travel to Havana in less than a month, after a June visit from Industry and Mining Minister Ali Reza Tahmasbi who attended the 12th Session of the Intergovernmental Economic and Scientific and Technical Commission held in Havana. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:27:49 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:27:49 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] NY Times Responds to FAIR on Fallujah Weapons Message-ID: <20070723162749.397086ff@viola.tamara-b.org> FAIR http://www.fair.org Activism Update NY Times Responds on Fallujah Weapons Public editor sides with reporter's dismissal 7/20/07 On July 18, New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt responded to FAIR's June 11 Action Alert "Incendiary Weapons are No Allegation." FAIR's action alert took issue with a New York Times review (5/29/07) of the British play Fallujah, in which reviewer Jane Perlez called into question the "objectivity" and "authenticity" of the playwright, Jonathan Holmes, over "the scenes that deal with the use of napalm in Falluja, an allegation made by left-wing critics of the war but never substantiated." In his response, Hoyt stood by Perlez's criticism that alleged that the play erroneously referenced napalm attacks in Fallujah. He also criticized FAIR for supporting its argument with documentation about the use Mark 77 firebombs?a modern version of napalm--in another, earlier, attack in Iraq, but not in Fallujah. FAIR's point in taking issue with Perlez's criticism of the play is that there had been a serious controversy about the use of incendiary weapons in Fallujah: U.S. government officials denied that they were being used, while some independent journalists said that they had been. The New York Times took the government's side in this controversy with reporter Scott Shane reporting (11/13/05): "A documentary on Italian television on Tuesday accuses American forces of using white phosphorus shells in the assault on Fallujah last year not just for nighttime illumination, their usual purpose, but to burn to death Iraqi insurgents and civilians. The mainstream American news media, whose reporters had witnessed the fighting and apparently seen no evidence of this, largely ignored the claim." Unfortunately for the U.S. government and for the Times, it turned out that U.S. forces were on record as discussing the use of white phosphorus (WP) as a weapon in Fallujah (Field Artillery, 3?4/05). (The distinction between civilians and insurgents, which Hoyt stresses in his response, does not seem to have been taken as seriously by the U.S. military in Fallujah--see below.) Moreover, the U.S. military has admitted to using Mark 77 in Iraq. Hoyt points out that WP is not napalm at all, which FAIR did not argue. Rather, the point was that a chemical agent with potentially lethal effects was used in a battle in a major Iraqi city. In the context of the New York Times's acceptance of the false denials, a Times critic quibbling with a playwright about what particular form of incendiary weapons were used on which Iraqi city--in a phrasing that gives the reader no indication that any kind of incendiary weapons were used anywhere--is more than a little grotesque. As FAIR said in the original alert: "If Perlez meant to say that the U.S. military had only confirmed the use of a napalm-like weapon elsewhere in Iraq, not in Fallujah, while the only incendiary weapon admitted to have been used in Fallujah was white phosphorus, then that's a very slender technicality with which to call into question the "objectivity" and "authenticity" of a playwright." In his response to FAIR, Hoyt relied on the testimony of Dexter Filkins, a New York Times reporter who was embedded with the Marines during the siege of Fallujah. Filkins, Hoyt wrote, "said in an e-mail that he doesn?t buy the charges of large numbers of civilian deaths, from whatever cause. 'The city was a ghost town by the time the Marines went in, at least in the neighborhoods that I went through, and we traveled from one end of the city to the other on foot,' he said." With all due respect to Filkins, Hoyt would have done better to consult the reporters who were actually in Fallujah during the siege rather than one who was with the forces bombarding it. Journalists like Rahul Mahajan and Dahr Jamail described the roughly half of Fallujah's 300,000 residents who were still in the city being subject to indiscriminate attacks by U.S. forces. Wrote Mahajan (CounterPunch, 11/6/04): "The best estimates are that roughly 900-1000 people were killed directly, blown up, burnt or shot. Of them, my guess, based on news reports and personal observation, is that 2/3 to 3/4 were noncombatants." Hoyt's response did reveal that Filkins witnessed the use of white phosphorus in Fallujah--information that might have helped his colleague Shane avoid his embarrassing dismissal of white phosphorus reports, had Filkins bothered to report it at the time. It strains credulity to imagine that an incendiary weapon that put fist-sized holes in the gear of an embedded reporter didn't burn civilians to death in the city where the weapon was directed. FAIR activists who wish to comment on Hoyt's response can do so at the Times's website (at the link below). What follows is Hoyt's response in full: http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/was-there-napalm-in-fallujah/ July 18, 2007, 3:03 pm Was There Napalm in Fallujah? By Clark Hoyt On May 28, Jane Perlez reported from London on a play called ?Fallujah,? which purported to tell the story of the November, 2004 assault by U.S. forces on the Iraqi city where four American contract workers had been killed the previous spring and hung from a bridge. The Perlez story set off a mini-storm of e-mails because of this paragraph: ?The denunciations of the United States are severe, particularly in the scenes that deal with the use of napalm in Falluja, an allegation made by left-wing critics of the war but never substantiated.? (Times style is to spell the city?s name without the ?h.?) A media watchdog group called Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), which describes itself as progressive, took Perlez to task in an ?Action Alert,? declaring that ?Incendiary Weapons Are No ?Allegation.?? FAIR urged its readers to contact me to get The Times to set the record straight. I?ve spent quite a bit of time looking into this. Here?s what I found: Perlez was correct. There are no substantiated reports of the use of napalm ? or a ?napalm derivative,? as the play?s author and director said ? in the battle of Fallujah. FAIR?s complaint started with the assertion that U.S. forces ?did use the modern equivalent of napalm in Iraq.? Notice, that FAIR said ?Iraq,? not ?Fallujah.? That?s because the source for FAIR?s statement was an August, 2003 article in the San Diego Union-Tribune quoting a Marine colonel as saying that the successor weapon to napalm was used during the invasion of Iraq, as Marines battled toward Baghdad. The article was written more than a year before the battle of Fallujah. After discussing napalm, FAIR slid over to a discussion of white phosphorus (WP), a different incendiary weapon that the U.S. military first denied ? and then admitted ? using directly against insurgents in Fallujah. FAIR quoted accurately but selectively from an article in ?Field Artillery,? the journal of the Army?s Field Artillery: WP was such ?an effective and versatile munition? that U.S. forces ?saved our WP for lethal missions.? Those quotes suggest the WP was dropped directly on Iraqis to kill them. But a close reading of the article indicates a different story: WP was used for screening missions and later ?as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE (high explosives). We fired ?shake and bake? missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out.? Michael Stebbins, the director of biology policy at the Federation of American Scientists, a non-partisan, non-profit group that deals with national security issues, told me that napalm and white phosphorus are ?very different.? He said, ?No experienced military person would mistake one for the other.? Napalm and its successor use jellied petroleum products, require an ignition and often kill by suffocating their victims because the fire they create is so intense it uses up all the nearby oxygen. WP ignites on contact with the air and can inflict deep wounds because it burns as long as it has a supply of oxygen. These are weapons with horrible potential effects, and you might say, ?What?s the difference, they both kill.? But, so do 500-pound bombs dropping on Iraq and all the other weaponry employed in a war that inspires strong passions. Calling what was used in Fallujah ?napalm? may have greater emotional impact than calling it WP. Napalm raises images of Vietnam and, especially, that tragic 1972 photograph of a naked little girl, running down a street, screaming in agony from napalm burns. A playwright may take such license to achieve a dramatic effect. A journalist needs to deal precisely with facts, such as which weapons were actually used in a particular battle. The sub-text here comes from a 2005 documentary shown on Italian television. It charged that WP was used against civilians in Fallujah in November 2004, something that has also not been substantiated. Dexter Filkins of The Times, who accompanied the Marines who assaulted Fallujah, said in an e-mail that he doesn?t buy the charges of large numbers of civilian deaths, from whatever cause. ?The city was a ghost town by the time the Marines went in, at least in the neighborhoods that I went through, and we traveled from one end of the city to the other on foot,? he said. Filkins did experience WP first hand. He said the unit with which he was traveling took friendly fire, and chunks of WP burned holes the size of fists through his backpack and sleeping bag. ?But, honestly, I don?t know what that phosphorus was being used for. A flare? A weapon? I don?t know. We were under heavy fire, and it didn?t seem significant enough at the time to ask.? From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:29:37 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:29:37 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Why So Wet? Climate change 'triggering increased rainfall Message-ID: <20070723162937.0aaeeccf@viola.tamara-b.org> sednt by Tim Murphy IN THE NEWS - Jul 23, 2007 http://www.inthenews.co.uk/news/autocodes/countries/russia/climate-change-triggering-increased-rainfall-$1112788.htm Climate change 'triggering increased rainfall Scientists have found for the first time that human-induced climate change has triggered significant shifts in precipitation such as increased rain and snowfall either side of the equator. Previous studies have already linked global warming to changes in surface air temperature and rising sea levels and temperatures. The latest finding is based on international research which studied the link between human actions and precipitation (any product of atmospheric vapour). Researchers from Environment Canada and six research centres in the UK, Japan and US charted changes in greenhouse gases (GHG) and sulphate aerosol concentrations in the atmosphere along with global precipitation during the past century. GHG and sulphate aerosols are produced primarily by burning fossil fuels. Most of the increased precipitation was found to take place 50 degrees north of the equator in areas including Canada, Europe and Russia as well as in the southern hemisphere. Drying on the other hand increased in a region north of the equator including Mexico, Central America and northern Africa. Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists warn that these changes in precipitation may already have had a negative effect throughout the world. "We estimate that anthropogenic forcing [man-made effects] contributed significantly to observed increases in precipitation in the northern hemisphere mid-latitudes, drying in the northern hemisphere subtropics and tropics, and moistening in the southern hemisphere subtropics and deep tropics," the researchers write. "The observed changes, which are larger than estimated from model simulations, may have already had significant effects on ecosystems, agriculture and human health in regions that are sensitive to changes in precipitation, such as the Sahel [region in northern Africa]." From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:31:28 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:31:28 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Brits Were Using a Bad Map of Iran Message-ID: <20070723163128.056d5596@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Tim Murphy news.com.au - Jul 22, 2007 http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22114048-1702,00.html British map in Iran crisis 'inaccurate' By Sophie Walker in London A British map of the northern Gulf where Iran seized 15 naval personnel in March was not as accurate as it should have been and Britain was fortunate Iran did not contest it, a review into the crisis said. The parliamentary report also said Britain's Foreign Office should name the person who let two sailors sell their stories to the media, a decision widely criticised for handing a propaganda coup to Britain's enemies and embarrassing serving troops. The report by the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) said the Foreign Office's overall approach could not be faulted, but it said efforts should have been made to contact key Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani sooner. Iranian Revolutionary Guards seized 15 British personnel in the northern Gulf in March sparking a 13-day standoff that ended when Iran's President freed them, a day after Larijani spoke to a senior adviser to then Prime Minister Tony Blair. Mr Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, is regarded as a pragmatist more amenable to exploring a bargain with the West than hardliner President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Britain first applied to speak to Mr Larijani seven days into the crisis. Britain insists the personnel were in Iraqi territorial waters on a UN-backed mission when they were seized. Iran says the British sailors had strayed into its territory. A British Ministry of Defence map published during the crisis showed a territorial water boundary extending from the Shatt al-Arab waterway that separates Iran and Iraq out to sea. However experts say no maritime boundary between the two countries has been agreed and the line was based on a 1975 land boundary that could have shifted over time if the centre of the waterway had moved due to natural causes. "We conclude that there is evidence to suggest that the map of the Shatt al-Arab waterway provided by the Government was less clear than it ought to have been," the report said. "The Government was fortunate that it was not in Iran's interests to contest the accuracy of the map." 'Uncertainties' Britain and Iran provided different coordinates for the location of the capture. The report did not make a definitive conclusion on the accuracy of the map or whether the sailors were in Iraqi or Iranian waters. It quoted Martin Pratt, director of research at the International Boundaries Research Unit at Durham University, as saying that if the British coordinates were correct, it was difficult to see how Iran's claim could be legitimate. "Nevertheless, there are sufficient uncertainties over boundary definition in the area to make it inadvisable to state categorically that the vessel was in Iraqi waters," he was quoted as saying. He said the map was "certainly an oversimplification" and could be regarded as "deliberately misleading". The Foreign Office said it was pleased the report praised its overall approach. It was considering some recommendations and leaving others for the Ministry of Defence to address. The Ministry of Defence also said it would study the report. Compiled by members of parliament, the report said it was "wholly unsatisfactory" that a previous report into the affair had been unable to say who was responsible for authorising payment for the stories of the personnel after they were freed. "We recommend ... the (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) set out who specifically took the decision to authorise the naval personnel to sell their stories to the media," it said. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:34:46 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:34:46 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] US Continues to Issue Threats Against Pakistan Message-ID: <20070723163446.057e4a83@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Dave Muller (southnews) AFP - Jul 23, 2007 US won't rule out army incursion into Pakistan Agence France-Presse THE White House's top counterterrorism official has refused to rule out a US military incursion into Pakistan's remote border with Afghanistan to eradicate a resurgent Al-Qaeda militant network. "The president has made perfectly clear that job number one is protecting the American people. "There are no tools off the table, and we use all our instruments of national power to be effective,'' Fran Townsend, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism said, when asked whether Washington would resort to military action to disable the network's Pakistan outpost. There is "no question that we will use any instrument at our disposal to deal with the problem of Osama bin Laden and (Ayman al-)Zawahiri and Al-Qaeda,'' Ms Townsend said, naming the leaders and second-in-command of the network that carried out the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. Her comments came after a major US intelligence report, the National Intelligence Estimate, concluded in findings released last week that Al-Qaeda has regenerated, and is redoubling its efforts to get operatives inside the United States. US President George W. Bush on Saturday linked the US global campaign against Al-Qaeda to Pakistan's efforts to quell Islamist violence, including the storming of a pro-Taliban mosque last week. In his weekly radio address Saturday, US President George W. Bush expressed full US support for Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's efforts "to rid all of Pakistan of extremism'' including an Al-Qaeda "safe haven'' in tribal areas. But the US leader called the establishment of such enclaves "troubling.'' *** The New York Sun - Jul 23, 2007 http://www.nysun.com/article/58888 U.S. Says It Hits Qaeda in Pakistan BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is acknowledging publicly that the American military has staged attacks inside Pakistan on Al Qaeda, a signal that increases pressure on the leader in Islamabad, President Musharraf. Yesterday on "Fox News Sunday," the president's homeland security adviser, Frances Townsend, was asked about military actions in the Pakistani border provinces where Al Qaeda's chief, Osama bin Laden, and one of his two leadership councils reportedly meet regularly. "Just because we don't speak about things publicly doesn't mean we're not doing things you talk about," she said, using phrasing similar to that President Bush favors when asked whether he will use military force against Iran's nuclear program. American special forces operations inside the Pakistani border provinces are an open secret among close watchers of the region, but Ms. Townsend's words yesterday mark an escalation in public rhetoric against Mr. Musharraf. Mr. Musharraf has for the most part withdrawn his military from those provinces, which are dominated by tribes although subject to Pakistani federal control. The remarks pick up a theme that has been sounded this year by other top aides to Mr. Bush. On February 27, in his first public remarks to Congress after his confirmation hearing, the director of national intelligence, Admiral Michael McConnell, spoke of focusing efforts with "great intensity" on Al Qaeda safe havens in Pakistan. Ms. Townsend's remarks in part are prompted by the completion of last week's National Intelligence Estimate on Al Qaeda and its replenished leadership. Yesterday on CNN, Pakistan's foreign minister, Kurshid Kasuri, said direct American attacks on the tribal areas would be a bad idea. "Let the United States provide us with actionable intelligence, and you will find that Pakistan will never be lacking," he said. "Pakistan's army can do the job much better, and the result will be that there will be far less collateral damage." American forces in Afghanistan have cooperated with Pakistan's military in recent years on Al Qaeda targets on the Pakistani side of the border. In January 2006, an American airstrike took out Abu Kebab al-Masri, a Qaeda chemical and biological weapons engineer. The Washington Post in 2006 reported that American forces participated in a raid on Saidgai, a village that was home to a Qaeda camp said to train forces to protect Osama bin Laden. Last month, the Pakistani press reported that NATO forces fired a missile into the Pakistani tribal areas. One American military officer yesterday told The New York Sun, "There has been a steady stream of public reporting on this. For domestic reasons, the Pakistanis cannot say we are involved in any operations in their territory." Last June and again in September, the Pakistani military began signing agreements with local jihadists in the tribal provinces, giving them, effectively, home rule. That provided Al Qaeda and the Taliban a safe haven from which to train operatives and launch attacks in Islamabad and Afghanistan. Those provinces host one of the two known Shura Majlis, or leadership councils, for Al Qaeda. The other leadership council meets in eastern Iran, as the Sun reported on July 17. Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, yesterday confirmed to the Associated Press that talks will resume tomorrow between the American and Iranian ambassadors in Baghdad. While the U.S. State Department has publicly and privately pushed for the talks, the outreach to Iran after last month's meeting has met resistance from the command of the Multi-National Forces in Iraq, as well as from the remaining hawks in the Bush administration. One concern is that the talks will lead to a deal whereby General David Petraeus authorizes the release of senior Iranian operatives from military facilities in Iraq in exchange for a halt to Iranian funding, arming, and training of jihadists attacking the Iraqi government and American soldiers. Yesterday, the American military detained two more suspected weapons smugglers that a press release said might be linked to Iran's Quds Force. A box in the classified text of the National Intelligence Estimate, about "Al Qaeda leadership," contains a bullet point that says "meets regularly in Eastern Iran and northern Pakistan," according to one intelligence official. The wording changed from the final draft. Phrases to describe the senior Al Qaeda leaders meeting regularly in Iran considered and dropped in the drafting process include "general management," "leadership council," and "Shura Majlis." Publicly, American officials have said Al Qaeda leaders in Iran, such as Saif al-Adel and Sa'ad bin Laden, are under "some form of house arrest." Nonetheless, American intelligence officials believe they have freedom of movement to some degree within Iran and have been able to reconstitute regular meetings of members of the leadership that reside there. The Director for Media Relations for the office of the director for national intelligence, Steve Shaw, declined to comment Friday on the classified National Intelligence Estimate *** NewsBlaze - Jul 22, 2007 http://newsblaze.com/story/20070722083616kash.nb/newsblaze/TOPSTORY/Top-Stories.html US Will Take Away Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons: Geelani By Fayaz Wani Predicting America's attack on Pakistan, the chairperson of hardline faction of separatist amalgam, Huriyat Conference, Syed Ali Shah Geelani has said that America's main aim is to take over the nuclear weapons of Pakistan. "Pakistan is the only Muslim country to have nuclear weapons and this has not gone well with America", Geelani said adding, "America is making every possible means to weaken Pakistan and take away its nuclear weapons". The senior separatist leader, who is being considered as hardliner, said, "America's claim that Pakistan is providing sanctuary to the terrorist, is in fact aimed at providing justification for US troops to attack Pakistan. In near future, America is going to attack Pakistan; an ally to US in war against terrorism". He said that Pakistan will face the same fate as that of Iraq and its leaders would be given the same treatment as given to former Iraqi President, Saddam Hussain. Geelani said that America does not care about friendly countries. "It can leave them to lurch if its interests have been served". "The Pakistani establishment should not have surrendered before the US after 9/11. They should have resisted the US hegemony", he said, adding, "The present turmoil in Pakistan is the repercussion of Pakistan's surrender to the US after 9/11". It is pertinent to mention here that Geelani is a die-hard Pakistani supporter. However, after his differences with Pakistan President, Parvez Musharraf, he has been maintaining distance from Pakistan. He misses no opportunity to criticize Musharraf and has said his one-sided flexibility on Kashmir is hurting the Kashmir cause. Meanwhile, another senior separatist pro-Pakistan leader, Shabir Shah has expressed his concern over the precarious situation in Pakistan. He said that the politicians, opposition leaders and ulemas in Pakistan should help the Pakistan government to control the situation. He said that if necessary measures are not taken to control the situation this time, there is every possibility that it will plunge Pakistan into civil war, which can lead to devastation. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:37:40 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:37:40 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Avnery: A Trap for Fools Message-ID: <20070723163740.264de146@viola.tamara-b.org> Media Monitors Network - July 21, 2007 http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/45101 A Trap for Fools "The Palestinians, too, will not get their state without struggle, not as baksheesh from Bush nor as a '"gesture" from Olmert. Nations achieve their freedom by political or military struggle. Every struggle, violent or non-violent, is a matter of power. And power means first of all: Unity." by Uri Avnery In a classical American Western, the difference is as glaring as the midday sun in Colorado: there are Good Guys and Bad Guys. The good ones are the settlers, who are making the prairie bloom. The bad ones are the Indians, who are bloodthirsty savages. The ultimate hero is the cowboy, tough, humane, with a big revolver or two, ready to defend himself at all times. George Bush, who grew up on this myth, sticks to it even now, when he is the leader of the world's only superpower. This week he presented the world with an up-to-date Western. In this Western or, rather, Middle Eastern there are also Good Guys and Bad Guys. The good ones are the "moderates," who are the allies of the U.S. in the Middle East Israel, Mahmoud Abbas, and the pro-American Arab regimes. The bad ones are Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, and al-Qaeda. It is a simple script. So simple, indeed, that an 8-year-old can understand it. The conclusions are also simple: the good guys have to be supported, the bad guys have to bite the dust. At the end, the hero George himself will ride off into the sunset on his noble steed, while the music reaches a crescendo. The classical Western, of course, does not show us the heroic pioneers stealing the land from the Indians. Or the United States Cavalry attacking the camps of the Indians, burning down the tents and killing their inhabitants, men, women, and children. How the U.S. government, after signing formal treaties with the Indian nations, breaks them one after another. And how it drives the remnants into desolate regions, long before the term "ethnic cleansing" was first used. Denial runs through the classical Western like a purple thread, as it does through this speech of Bush's. This finds its main expression in a simple fact: the occupation is hardly mentioned at all. In the Palestinian community, for example, there is a struggle between the "moderates" and the "extremists." The extremists are killers. Why are they killers? There is no why. They are killers because they are killers. It's in their nature. They were just born that way. The moderates are moderates because they are moderates. Some people are just born good. So the whole problem is a Palestinian problem. They must decide. They must choose between moderates and extremists. If they choose the moderates, they will get everything they can imagine: colorful glass beads and gallons of whisky. If they choose the extremists, their end will be bitter. The Jewish Israelis do not have to choose between good and bad. Why? Simply because there are no Bad Guys among them. They are just good. They must help the good Palestinians. "Release" the Palestinian tax moneys and give them to "Prime Minister [Salem] Fayad." Not to the Palestinian government, but to one specific, named person, the darling of Bush. What else is required from the Israelis? They must understand that their "future lies in developing areas like the Negev and Galilee not in continuing occupation of the West Bank." (That's the only time the occupation is mentioned at all.) They should remove unauthorized outposts and end settlement expansion. Also, they may "find other practical ways to reduce their footprint [in the West Bank] without reducing their security." Meaning: the occupation can continue, but it would be nice if we take some steps to make it less visible. A long time ago, the United States viewed all settlements as illegal. When the Israeli government continued to expand them, James Baker, the secretary of state under Bush the father, imposed financial sanctions upon Israel. Bush the son at first demanded that all settlements established after January 2001 be dismantled. Later he withdrew all opposition to the settlement blocs ("centers of population"). In the "Road Map," he decreed that Israel must immediately freeze the enlargement of the settlements. Now he is satisfied with a sanctimonious request to "remove unauthorized outposts" (with no article) that's to say, some of those put up without the official authorization of the Israeli government itself. All this without "or else" or any mention of sanctions. In the last few years, only one such outpost, Amona, has been dismantled, and this week Ehud Olmert decided to pardon all the fanatics accused of attacking the police during that event. The Israeli government knows that Bush is only paying lip service, and it does not take him seriously. In many classical Westerns there appears a crook selling a patent medicine to heal all ills: headaches and hemorrhoids, tuberculosis and syphilis. George Bush has his own patent medicine, which appears in the speech again and again. It will heal all diseases and ensure the final victory of the Sons of Light over the Sons of Darkness. The label on the bottle says "Building Palestinian Institutions." How come we didn't think of this until now? Why did we go chasing off after all kinds of solutions and not find this one, so simple, lying in front of us for all to see? It is an egg of Columbus, with a whiff of Alexander the Great's sword cutting the Gordian knot. The Palestinians have no institutions. The two good people, "President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayad are striving to build the institutions of a modern democracy." This means: "security services ministries that deliver services without corruption steps that unleash the natural enterprise of the Palestinian people the rule of law" All this under occupation, behind roadblocks, walls, and fences, while the main roads are barred to Palestinians, while the West Bank is chopped into pieces and cut off from the rest of the world. By the way, in this matter Bush has another patent medicine: all Palestinian exports will in future go through Jordan and Egypt, not Israel. In order to realize the vision of "building Palestinian institutions," Bush is sending along his poodle. According to Bush, the sole task of Tony Blair is indeed this: "to coordinate international efforts to help the Palestinians establish the institutions of a strong and lasting free society." (Like which example? Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Jordan? Pakistan? Morocco? Or perhaps even Iraq?) Let's hope no one is rude enough to mention the fact that the Palestinians held democratic elections for their parliament, not so long ago, under the strict supervision of ex-president Jimmy Carter. As far as Bush is concerned, that just did not happen, since the majority of the people voted for Hamas. Therefore, Bush mentions only the elections held before that, when Mahmoud Abbas was elected president, practically without opposition. Everything else has been wiped off the slate. So this is the up-to-date vision: "democratic Palestinian institutions" will be in place, free of corruption (as in the U.S. and Israel), and "capable security forces" will be functioning, and Hamas will be eliminated, and the armed factions will be dismantled, and all attacks on Israel will be stopped, and the security of Israel will be ensured, and the incitement against Israel will end, and everybody will recognize Israel's right to exist as "a Jewish state and a homeland for the Jewish people," and all the agreements that were signed in the past will be accepted then "we can soon begin serious negotiations towards the creation of a Palestinian state." Wow! What a wonderful sentence! "Soon" without a timetable. "Serious negotiations" without fixing a date for their conclusion. "A Palestinian state" (again, without the definite article, which Bush seems to detest) without specific borders. But a hint is given: "mutually agreed borders reflecting previous lines and current realities, and mutually agreed adjustments." Meaning: the settlement blocs and much else will be annexed by Israel. IT SEEMS as if the speechwriters, after finishing the product, noticed that it was pitifully devoid of content. Nothing new, nothing that could cause a self-respecting newspaper to give it a headline. I imagine the media adviser saying: "Mister President, we must add something that will look new." Thus the "international meeting" was born. "So I will call together an international meeting this fall of representatives from nations that support a two-state solution, reject violence, recognize Israel's right to exist, and commit to all previous agreements between the parties. The key participants in this meeting will be the Israelis, the Palestinians, and their neighbors in the region. Secretary Rice will chair the meeting." Wonderful. A meeting that has no date yet, but has a season of the year. And for which no location has yet been fixed. And no list of participants. And no planned conclusions, except the general statement: "She [Condoleezza] and her counterparts will review the progress that has been made towards building Palestinian institutions. They will look for innovative and effective ways to support further reform. And they will provide diplomatic support for the parties in their bilateral discussions and negotiations, so that we can move forward on a successful path to a Palestinian state." The meeting will not review the progress made toward the removal of the outposts, for example. It is not by accident that Bush omitted to identify the governments he intends to invite. Clearly, he will try to fulfill one of the most cherished dreams of Olmert: to meet publicly with a top representative of Saudi Arabia. For Olmert this would be an immense achievement: an official meeting with the most important Arab country which has no peace agreement with Israel. A meeting for which he will not have to pay any price. A free lunch. It is dubious whether this wish will be fulfilled. The Saudis are very cautious. They do not want to quarrel with any party in the region not with Syria (which will not be invited, though it is a "neighbor" of the Israelis and the Palestinians) and not with Hamas. Unlike Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia cannot be bribed with money. It has enough of its own. The final objective is a "Palestinian state," the "two-state solution." That is a far-far-off aim. Not for nothing is it called a "political horizon," since a horizon, as is well-known, recedes in the distance as one tries to approach it. In his poem "If," Rudyard Kipling describes all the tests an Englishman has to endure in order to be considered a "man." One of them is: "If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken/Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools." We, the small group of Israelis who raised the banner of the "two-state solution" more than 50 years ago, now have to endure George Bush turning it into a rag to cover his nakedness. In his mouth, it is an empty, deceitful, and mendacious slogan. Only a fool will fall into this trap. As Chaim Weizmann, the prominent Zionist leader and first president of Israel, once said: "No state is given to a people on a silver platter." The Palestinians, too, will not get their state without struggle, not as baksheesh from Bush nor as a '"gesture" from Olmert. Nations achieve their freedom by political or military struggle. Every struggle, violent or nonviolent, is a matter of power. And power means first of all: Unity. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:39:29 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:39:29 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Nader: Atomic Blowback Message-ID: <20070723163929.69e8c6e6@viola.tamara-b.org> CounterPunch - Jul 21, 2007 http://www.counterpunch.org/nader07212007.html Atomic Blowback: The New Face of Nuclear Power (Same as the Old) By Ralph Nader Here they go again. After thirty years without a firm order, the atomic power companies are pushing their radioactive, costly technology for a comeback on the backs of you the taxpayers. The old argument in the Seventies was that nuclear powered electricity would reduce our dependence on foreign oil. With only three percent of our electricity coming from burning petroleum, the pro-nuke lobby is now jumping on the global warming bandwagon. Uranium, they argue, does not release greenhouse gases like coal or oil. What nuclear lobbies ignore is all the coal and oil that needs to be burned to enrich uranium, to transport radioactive wastes with protective highway and rail convoys and provide security since they would be a priority target for sabotage. Apart from that, let's start with the technological insanity of the nuclear fuel cycle-from uranium mines and their deadly tailings, to the refining and fabrication into fuel rods, to the multi-shielded dome-like nuclear plant, to the necessity for perfect operation of the facility, to the still unresolved problems of the location and containment of hot radioactive wastes and contaminated material for the next 200,000 years! All this for one objective-to boil water into steam. A pretty complex chain of events in order to boil water. There are far better, cheaper ways to meet the electricity needs of today's generation without burdening future generations for centuries with the deadly waste products. Back in the Seventies, before the public rose up and said no to nuclear power, helped by Wall Street's reluctance to finance these trouble-prone plants, the Atomic Energy Commission projected the construction of 1000 atomic power plants in the U.S. by the year 2000. There are today 103 plants. Placing the predicted 100 plants up and down the California coastline would have been an act of peerless recklessness, especially given the earthquake faults. Just this week, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck Kashiwazaki, Japan and disabled a gigantic nuclear power plant which the New York Times reported, "raised new concerns about the safety of the nation's accident-plagued nuclear industry." It turns out that this plant, owned by Tokyo Electric Power, may be sitting directly above an earthquake fault line. Each day, reports show damage greater than believed the day before, including radiation leaks, damage to exhaust ducts, burst pipes and other "malfunctions" beyond the fires. Several hundred barrels of radioactive waste were toppled. The problem with nuclear power is that it gets one bite of the apple. Just one major meltdown could provoke a demand to close the industry down by overwhelming adverse public outrage. You see, way back in the Fifties and Sixties, the Atomic Energy Commission, a booster-regulatory agency for atomic power plants, estimated that an "area the size of Pennsylvania" would be contaminated in such a disaster. Remember, Chernobyl in Ukraine is still surrounded by vacant towns and villages following the 1986 tragedy. Radioactivity found its way as far as sheep in England, nuts grown in Turkey and elsewhere. Do you know any other industry producing electricity that has to have specific evacuation plans for miles around it, is inherently a national security risk, cannot be privately insured without Congress mandating severe limited liability in case of massive casualties and requires massive taxpayer subsidies? A most concise, authoritative case against the electric atom was recently released titled "Why a Future for the Nuclear Industry is Risky" by a group of environmental health and social investment groups. (See www.cleanenergy.org) In the introduction to the report, the case against nuclear energy was summarized this way: "Wind power and other renewable technologies, combined with energy efficiency, conservation and cogeneration can be much more cost effective and can be deployed much sooner than new nuclear power plants." Yes indeed, efficiency or conservation, with a national mission, can cut in half the waste of energy, using currently available technology and know-how, before the first privately capitalized nuclear plant opens. One scientist once described the primary output of electric generating plants as "heating the heavens." If this insensitive industry cannot be revived by Uncle Sam's tax treasury, Wall Street certainly has given no indication that private investment would take on the risk. Investment money is pouring presently into wind power, solar and other renewables and this is just the early springtime for these benign sources of energy. The International Energy Agency sees a 25% cost reduction for wind power and a 50% cost reduction for solar photovoltaics from 2001 to 2020. Without Wall Street's private capital and with rising construction and operating costs in other countries, the prospect for nuclear power being competitive, even deducting decommissioning costs, and the many millennia of waste storage costs, is not there. Add a major accident and you'll see, in addition to casualties and contaminated land and property, every private investor running for cover while the bill is passed on to taxpayers. Here is a suggestion to put the industry's propaganda to rest. Will any high nuclear industry executive debate physicist Amory Lovins at the National Press Club filled with electric company leaders? If so, please visit http://www.rmi.org and contact Mr. Lovins. [Ralph Nader is the author of The Seventeen Traditions] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:41:12 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:41:12 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Defeat for Musharraf as rebel judge is reinstated Message-ID: <20070723164112.315a5c5c@viola.tamara-b.org> The Independent - Jul 21, 2007 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2788604.ece Defeat for Musharraf as rebel judge is reinstated By Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent Pakistan's supreme court dealt President Pervez Musharraf a damaging and embarrassing blow yesterday, ruling that his decision to fire the chief justice was illegal and ordering that he be reinstated. In what may be the most direct challenge to the military dictator's authority since he came to power by means of a coup in 1999, the court voted 10-3 to quash a case of alleged misconduct against Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday said that General Musharraf's order suspending Mr Chaudhry was "set aside as being illegal". In a move that backfired, General Musharraf sacked Mr Chaudhry in March after accusing him of corruption. The move was widely seen as politically motivated, given the judge's investigations into alleged human rights abuses by forces in Baluchistan province. While General Musharraf might have assumed his decision to force out Mr Chaudhry would have had little impact beyond the legal community, in the months since his ousting the 59-year-old has become a rallying point for the disparate elements of Pakistan's political opposition. Everywhere the judge has gone to deliver lectures to lawyers' groups, he has been mobbed by people who want to catch a glimpse of the man who dared to stand up to General Musharraf. Yesterday's decision triggered celebrations not only outside the Supreme Court in the capital Islamabad, but elsewhere across the country. Mr Chaudhry's lawyer, Aitzaz Ahsan, said: "He has been restored and it is a victory for the entire nation." General Musharraf said last month he would accept whatever decision the court made, something repeated by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who called for unity as the country heads to elections this year. "I would like to emphasise that we must all accept the verdict with the grace and dignity reflective of a mature nation," he said. "This is not the time to claim victory or defeat. The constitution ... must prevail at all times." Some of General Musharraf's opponents believe his decision to remove Mr Chaudhry was an attempt to pre-empt any legal challenges to his plan to ask the country's regional and national assemblies to give him another five-year term. Since the operation to clear the Red Mosque this month, which left more than 100 people dead, and the subsequent violent backlash, Pakistan's deteriorating security situation has overshadowed the judicial crisis. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:43:24 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:43:24 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Freed PFLP Leader Condemns Hamas Takeover of Gaza Message-ID: <20070723164324.6a63aff3@viola.tamara-b.org> Xinhua - Jul 21, 2007 http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-07/21/content_6410793.htm Freed PFLP leader blames Hamas over Gaza takeover Xinhua Ramallah -- A senior leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), newly released from Israeli prison, condemned the Hamas Islamists on Saturday for seizing the Gaza Strip, calling for early elections to overcome the crisis. Speaking at a news conference in Ramallah, Abdel Rahim Malouh said "What Hamas has done is completely condemned and should not have happened." His leftist movement will look for serious dialogue after Hamas reviews the mistake it made and agrees on elections and a new unity government, Malouh said. But he admitted that early elections can not be held without "minimum understanding between Hamas and Fatah and both sides' readiness to recognize the results of the polls." "I asked Hamas leadership to retreat and Fatah leaders to maintain the Palestinian people's interest," he said. Malouh, freed Friday after three and half years in prison, also expressed discontent with the condition of his leftist party and other factions, blaming it on the escalation of Hamas-Fatah power struggle. Malouh is among the 255 prisoners released on Friday by Israel as a goodwill gesture aimed at bolstering President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party after Hamas' violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in mid June. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:45:45 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:45:45 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Arab Female Journalists Stand Up for Press Freedom Message-ID: <20070723164545.36b4b116@viola.tamara-b.org> Womens eNews - Jul 22, 2007 http://www.womensenews.org Arab Female Journalists Stand Up for Press Freedom By Rita Henley Jensen Editor in Chief AMMAN, Jordan (WOMENSENEWS)--Freedom of the press and women's equality can be characterized as culturally invasive concepts in much of the Arab world. The region is dominated by nations that are still ruled by kings and queens and governed by religious leaders who advocate enforcement of gender-specific roles and clothing. Moreover, the region's violent conflicts have taken the lives of 19 journalists and three news media workers so far in 2007, according to reports by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. As the sole media representative from a Western nation attending the sixth annual conference of the Arab Women Media Center for 60 female Arab journalists on press freedom and gender equity within the media, I assumed I should behave with circumspection so as not to offend. I also expected the other attendees to do likewise. That misapprehension was quickly put to rest by the laughter and voices raised in song that filled the bus one night as it left the conference center, taking us all to dinner at an authentic Jordan open-air restaurant. A radio journalist from Palestine knew the words of traditional songs and she led the other 20 or so in the back of the bus in one song after another, each one a little bit louder and each one causing a little more laughter. She then began clapping and the others began clapping too, with the sheer joy of being together. Then high-pitched ululating started and all clapped, ululated, laughed and sang for the 30-minute ride to the restaurant. Nothing was muffled or subdued about this group, chosen from among 450 print reporters, broadcast news producers and on-air talent, and Internet journalists from the 22 Arab-speaking nations. The attendees, mostly between ages 25 to 35, spent three days in late June in Jordan to consider issues rich in complexity for their profession, their nations, their religion and their gender. Code of Ethics Often working in male-dominated newsrooms where their opinions are not solicited, these reporters and broadcast producers--some in veils and abayas, others in jeans and T-shirts--were asked to craft a code of ethics for all journalists in the region--not just women--consistent with international conventions. Without seeming daunted by the cultural, legal, religious, economic or violent barriers that stand in the way, the women came up with their code. Such gatherings of Arabic journalists are relatively rare: Organizations for news media professionals exist in 12 Arab nations, but calls for greater press access and freedom still require bravery. The Arab journalism ethics code, dating to 1972, ignores the context in which news professional operate and focuses more on a narrow vision of the obligation of journalists, including "perform my work honestly and truthfully, keep professional secrets, abide by its regulations and traditions and defend its dignity." In contrast, the ethics code adopted here stands up to the growing religious fervor, rising controversies over the roles of women and ethnic divides in the Arab world and calls on all journalists within the region "to respect the pluralism, accept the other opinion and not to discriminate based on religion, race, color, sex or culture." Candid talk in intense sideline conversations about the restrictions they face--both as journalists and as women working in the Arab states--were a major part of the process. Many of these conversations were in English, the language of international media. "We are only permitted 20 licenses for newspapers. How can there be freedom of the press?" a journalist from Lebanon quietly complained to a colleague during a session. "All is peaceful and calm where I live. But I couldn't write anything critical of a government minister, because that would be critical of His Highness because he appointed him. And even if I wrote it, my newspaper wouldn't publish it," a print reporter from the Gulf region said with a sigh during a bus trip. Questioning Their Own Rights Sessions on gender bias spurred women to question both their professional freedom and their own human rights as female employees and citizens. Was it ethical for an employer to bar a veiled journalist from appearing on television? Should the ethics code deal with sexual harassment of journalists or domestic violence? During a discussion of the rights and responsibilities of journalists, a reporter for a Palestinian radio station, Amal Jumah Khamis, brought up the law in her homeland that regulated women's work hours. "I am a feminist and I can't work past 8 o'clock," she complained, clearly frustrated. Another radio broadcaster, Shoaa Al-Kaate from Kuwait, joined in, clearly distraught about a law passed the week of the conference. "Under the new law, I could be arrested if I work past eight," she said with visible resentment and apprehension. Whenever they got together, the conference participants offered glaring examples of gender discrimination at the hands of employers and colleagues. Women spoke about not being allowed to leave the office for assignments; men taking credit for the work women do; men being paid travel expenses when they are on assignment, but not women; women being required to wear the hijab--the veil--while at work; men receiving preferential assignments; female journalists being refused a passport to travel for work; female journalists being looked on as less desirable as a marriage partner; and of course, receiving lower pay and being passed over for promotions. "Women are always thought to be inferior," sighed one. That may have been true outside the hotel walls, but for three days in Amman, these journalists held the high ground by standing up for women's rights and freedom of the press for all news media in the region. Mahassen Al Emam Presides Presiding over this conference was Mahassen Al Emam, a chain-smoking, Helen Thomas like figure who jubilantly read aloud at the closing ceremony the ethics code that was adopted. In 1994, Al Emam became the first female editor in chief of a newspaper in Jordan, a nation that borders Syria, Iraq and Israel. After Al Emam was elected to the board of the journalists union three years later, she tried to create a path for other women to follow her into journalism. The board rejected her suggestions to set up training courses and scholarships for female journalists. Taking matters into her own hands, in 1999, she established the Arab Women Media Center here in Amman, taking out a large personal loan to renovate the house that was to serve as its headquarters. The center has continued to grow in influence and recognition. Al Emam was given the 2002 Knight International Press Fellowship Award and this year the center now receives substantial support from Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, a German political foundation that supports political dialogue, media and the rule of law. She also now operates under the official patronage of Jordan's Royal Highness Princess Basma Bint Talal, the aunt of the current king, Abdullah bin Al-Hussein. In fact, this conference and the attendees were so energizing that Gaby Lteif, a Paris-based radio interviewer who is revered throughout the region, declared that she had enough fame, enough material goods, that she was now committed to attending each year and serving as a mentor for the women coming behind her. Her relative security and prominence has not dimmed Al Emam's fierce vision for press freedom and gender equity. She works closely with the Tunisia-based Center for Arab Women for Training and Research that last year produced a report that said media had "become a key actor" in the field of women's human rights in the region "given their effects and impacts on the world's various societies." The center is now training female journalists throughout the Arab region about avoiding gender stereotypes in news coverage, many of whom attended the conference. For more information: Arab Women Media Center Code of Ethics: - http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3249 Arab Women Media Center (English): - http://www.ayamm.org/english/index.htm Arab Women Media Center (Arabic): - http://www.ayamm.org/arabic/ Center for Arab Women for Training and Research: - http://www.cawtar.org/ Copyright 2007 Women's eNews. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:48:54 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:48:54 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Annotated Response to new CIA Exec Order on Torture Message-ID: <20070723164854.5fcfd721@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by MichaelP (activ-l) OpEd News - Jul 22, 2007 http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_stephen__070722__22enhanced_22_interroga.htm "Enhanced" Interrogation Techniques: The Risk of Criminality by Stephen Soldz http://soldzresearch.com/stephensoldz In response to Friday's Executive Order authorizing the CIA to resume abusdive interrogations of "enemy combatants" in its custody, two of the NGOs leading the fight against torture have released a summary of their forthcoming report on the CIA's "enhanced techniques." [For an Analysis of the Executive Order, see Marty Lederman at Balkinization.] For anyone thinking that the new CIA program will be substantially different than the old one -- described in detail online by Vanity Fair last week -- nearly universally condemned as torture, this quote from an Administration official is not comforting: "CIA detainees have also alleged they were left naked in cells for prolonged periods, subjected to sensory and sleep deprivation and extreme heat and cold, and sexually taunted. A senior administration officials briefing reporters yesterday said that any future use of 'extremes of heat and cold' would be subject to a 'reasonable interpretation . . . we're not talking about forcibly induced hypothermia.' " The report: Summary of Forthcoming Report on "Enhanced" Interrogation Techniques: The Risk of Criminality by Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights First July 2007 All U.S. personnel who engage in the CIA's so-called "enhanced" interrogation techniques and similarly abusive techniques are at serious risk of violating U.S. law. Under U.S. law, as detailed below, the severity of physical pain or mental harm caused by an interrogation technique is key to determining whether the technique can be considered torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. An extensive body of medical literature, derived from the treatment and study of torture survivors worldwide, demonstrates that the "enhanced" techniques are likely to cause significant physical and mental harm to detainees. As a result, officials and interrogators who authorize and participate in interrogations using these techniques face a substantial risk of criminal prosecution under the provisions prohibiting "torture" and "cruel and inhuman treatment" in the U.S. War Crimes Act (WCA), as amended by the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA),i and under the U.S. Torture Act of 2000.ii Many of these interrogation techniques may also be prohibited by the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (DTA).iii To protect U.S. officials and personnel from potential criminal liability and to ensure that all U.S. personnel adhere to U.S. law, these techniques should not be authorized. THE CIA ENHANCED INTERROGATION METHODS While the details of, and regulations governing, the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation program remain classified, credible reports have disclosed several of these techniques, including waterboarding (mock drowning), exposure to extreme cold (including induced hypothermia), stress positions, extreme sensory deprivation and overload, shaking, striking, prolonged sleep deprivation, and isolation, among others.iv Without identifying these and other specifically approved techniques, the President has publicly endorsed "alternative interrogation methods," declaring that the MCA, which he signed into law in October 2006, allows the CIA "program" to continue.v Yet a closer examination of the MCA and other U.S. law, informed by medical and psychological knowledge, reveals that authorization of these enhanced interrogation techniques, whether practiced alone or in combination, may constitute torture and/or cruel and inhuman treatment and, consequently, place interrogators at serious legal risk of prosecution for war crimes or other violations. A recently declassified report by the Pentagon's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has revealed that these techniques were based in large part on techniques of torture used by the U.S military in its Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) program intended to train personnel to resist such abuse.vi According to the OIG, these techniques were transformed, with the assistance of military psychologists, into "standard operating procedure" (SOP) for interrogations at the Guantnamo Bay detention facility. This Guantnamo SOP, the OIG reports, also was brought to Afghanistan and Iraq and, according to media reports, provided a basis for techniques used by CIA personnel, also with assistance from psychologists.vii The origin of these techniques is directly related to the focus of this report. They were designed to inflict physical and psychological harm for the purpose of breaking down interrogation subjects. This report describes the nature and extent of that harm and the legal consequences. VIOLATIONS OF THE WAR CRIMES ACT, THE TORTURE ACT AND THE DETAINEE TREATMENT ACT The recent amendments to the War Crimes Act establish as war crimes "grave breaches" of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions,viii including "torture" and "cruel and inhuman treatment."ix "Torture" is characterized, in pertinent part, as "an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering."x The separate war crime of "cruel and inhuman treatment," is defined "an act intended to inflict severe or serious physical or mental pain or suffering."xi For the crime of torture under the WCA xii and the Torture Act,xiii severe mental pain or suffering is defined as "the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from" several specified actions, including "the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering" and "the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality."xiv For the WCA crime of "cruel and inhuman treatment," serious mental pain or suffering is defined as "the serious and non-transitory mental harm (which need not be prolonged) caused by or resulting from" the same specified actions.xv ##### The Detainee Treatment Act requires that "no person in the custody or under the physical control of the United States be subject to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment (CIDT)."xvi The DTA defines CIDT as conduct prohibited by the 5th, 8th, or 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. ADVERSE PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CONSEQUENCES Medical literature clearly establishes that tactics such as the CIA's reported "enhanced interrogation techniques cause the types of physical and mental anguish that are criminalized under the WCA and other laws. In a letter sent to Senator John McCain during the height of the MCA debate, several leading medical and psychological experts, including current and past presidents of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association, conveyed this collective knowledge: There must be no mistake about the brutality of the "enhanced interrogation methods" reportedly used by the CIA. Prolonged sleep deprivation, induced hypothermia, stress positions, shaking, sensory deprivation and overload, and water-boarding (which may still be authorized), among other reported techniques, can have a devastating impact on the victim's physical and mental health.xvii The pain and suffering arising from the individual and combined use of water-boarding, hitting, induced hypothermia, prolonged bombardment with loud music and flashing lights, stress positions, total and long-term isolation, and other "enhanced" interrogation techniques is directly related to the purpose of these techniques: to "break" detainees, mentally and physically.xviii The medical consequences of such abuse have been well-documented through years of research and treatment of survivors of violence and severe trauma. Some of the enhanced techniques, particularly water-boarding, hitting, induced hypothermia, and stress positions are capable of causing "severe" or "serious" physical pain and suffering, the intentional infliction of which violates the "torture" and "cruel and inhuman treatment" provisions of the WCA. Each of the techniques can also cause significant psychological harm. According to one recent study, in fact, the significance of the harm caused by non-physical, psychological abuse is virtually identical to the significance of the harm caused by physical abuse.xix This mental harm can take many different forms, including: o Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), manifested in: prolonged, recurring flashbacks and nightmares; significant impairment and instability in life functions; suicidal ideation; and, weakened physical health, among other consequences.xx Rates of PTSD range from 45% to 92% of torture survivors, subjected to both physical and mental torture. xxi o Depressive disorder manifested in self-destructive and suicidal thoughts and behavior, and other characteristics.xxii o Psychosis, in the form of delusions, bizarre ideations and behaviors, perceptual distortions, and paranoia, among other manifestations.xxiii These techniques, moreover, are generally used in combination xxiv - prolonged isolation, for example, combined with sleep deprivation, light and sound bombardment, and exposure to cold - compounding their devastating psychological impact. THE LEGAL RISK UNDER U.S. LAW Given this body of medical and psychological knowledge, officials who authorize these techniques place themselves and those who engage in them at enormous risk: namely, that in future trials involving the War Crimes Act, courts will be presented with credible and compelling evidence of harm, provided by medical and psychological experts skilled in the documentation of physical and psychological consequences of torture and ill-treatment, in accordance with internationally accepted protocols.xxv It is the responsibility of the Executive Branch to ensure that its agents abide by the law. If instead it purports to authorize acts that violate the law, agents who carry out those acts will be put at risk of prosecution for serious crimes. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS This report demonstrates that "enhanced" techniques of interrogation, whether practiced alone or in combination, may cause severe physical and mental pain. In fact, the use of multiple techniques of "enhanced" interrogation virtually assures the infliction of severe physical and mental pain upon detainees. Given this knowledge, U.S. policy makers and interrogation personnel should understand that if such methods are practiced, it would be reasonable for courts to conclude that the resulting harm was inflicted intentionally. The interrogation techniques analyzed above - and other techniques that have comparable medical consequences - implicate legal prohibitions and could result in felony criminal prosecutions. It is therefore inappropriate that any such techniques be available for use by U.S. personnel in interrogations, and it is the responsibility of U.S. policy makers to ensure that the use of such techniques is effectively precluded. In issuing interrogation policy, the United States should refrain from repeating the mistake of allowing euphemistic descriptions of interrogation techniques to stretch the line between permissible and impermissible treatment. Instead, all U.S. agencies should firmly adhere to a single bright line standard of humane treatment that protects the lives and health of individuals in U.S. custody. ######## Recommendations to the Executive Branch 1. Prohibit the "enhanced" interrogation techniques, in order to protect U.S. officials and personnel from potential criminal liability and to ensure that all U.S. personnel adhere to U.S. law. 2. Prohibit the use of any other method that, alone or in combination with other interrogation methods, will more likely than not cause significant physical and/or mental pain or suffering. 3. Instruct all U.S. interrogators in effective, legal, non-harmful methods of interrogation. i Pub. L. No. 109-366, 6(b), 120 Stat. 2600 (2006). ii 18 U.S.C. 2340 (2007) (prohibits the infliction of "severe physical or mental pain and suffering," including "prolonged mental harm," in terms virtually identical to the MCA's provision prohibiting "torture.") iii National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006, P.L. 109-163 1403, 119 Stat. 3136 (2006). iv See, e.g., Dana Priest , CIA Puts Harsh Tactics On Hold; Memo on Methods Of Interrogation Had Wide Review, WASH. POST, June 27, 2004, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8534-2004Jun26?language=prin ter (accessed Apr. 26, 2007). According to the Washington Post article, the enhanced interrogation techniques were approved by Justice Department and National Security Council lawyers in 2002, briefed to key congressional leaders, and required the authorization of CIA Director George J. Tenet for use. See also, Brian Ross & Richard Esposito, CIA's Harsh Interrogation Techniques Described, ABC NEWS ONLINE, Nov. 18, 2005, available at http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1322866 (accessed Apr. 26, 2007). v Press Release, White House, George Bush, President of the United States, President Bush Signs Military Commissions Act of 2006, (October 17, 2006), available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061017-1.html. The methods and techniques reportedly used in the CIA program have also been referred to as "enhanced interrogation methods" by anonymous senior CIA officials. See Priest, supra note 4. vi Review of DoD-Directed Investigations of Detainee Abuse (U)-Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Defense; Report No. 06-INTEL-10--August 25, 2006; (Declassfied May 18th, 2007). vii Benjamin Mark, The CIA Torture Teacher, Salon. June 21, 2007. viii Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 126 S. Ct. 2749 (2006) (holding that Common Article 3 applies to alleged members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban). ix Military Commissions Act of 2006, 950(j)(b).. x Id. (emphasis added) xi Id. (emphasis added) xii Military Commissions Act of 2006, 5(b)(2)(A). ("the term `severe mental pain or suffering' shall be applied ... in accordance with the meaning given that term in section 2340(2) of this title"). xiii 18 U.S.C. 2340. xiv 18 U.S.C. 2340(2). (defining the term "severe mental pain or suffering") (emphasis added) xv Id. xvi National Defense Authorization Act , 1403.. xvii Letter from Allen S. Keller, Program Dir., Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, Gerald P. Koocher, President, American Psychological Association, Burton J. Lee, Physician to the President for George H.W. Bush, Bradley D. Olson, Chair, Divisions for Social Justice, American Psychological Association, Pedro Ruiz, President of the American Psychiatric Association), Steven S. Sharfstein, Immediate Past President, American Psychiatric Association, Brigadier General Stephen N. Xenakis, (Ret. U.S.A) and Philip G. Zimbardo, Prof. Emeritus, Stanford & past President, American Psychological Association, to Sen. John McCain (Sept. 21, 2006) available at http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/news-2006-09-22.htm (accessed Apr. 26, 2007). xviii PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, BREAK THEM DOWN: THE SYSTEMATIC USE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE BY U.S. FORCES,48-72 (2005), available at http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/report-2005-may.html (accessed Apr. 26, 2007) [hereinafter PHR, BREAK THEM DOWN]. xix Basoglu, M., et al., "Torture vs Other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment," Archives of General Psychiatry, vol. 64, No. 3, March 2007, pp. 277-285. xx AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION, DIAGNOSTIC AND STATISTICAL MANUAL, (Washington, DC. 4th Ed. 2000) (serves as the main diagnostic reference of mental health professionals in the United States of America) [hereinafter APA MANUAL]; U.N. OFFICE OF THE COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, ISTANBUL PROTOCOL: MANUAL ON THE EFFECTIVE INVESTIGATION AND DOCUMENTATION OF TORTURE AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN AND DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT 44 (2001). [hereinafter ISTANBUL PROTOCOL] The UN Commission on Human Rights in April, 2000, and the General Assembly on December, 2000, adopted resolution 55/89, the "Principles on the effective investigation and documentation of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment", commonly known as the Istanbul Protocol. The Istanbul Protocol is intended to provide international guidelines for the assessment of victims who alleged torture and ill-treatment and describes the fundamental principles of any viable investigation into incidents of torture. The manual was the result of three years of work of more than 75 experts in law, health and human rights, representing 40 organizations or institutions from 15 countries.; Ronald C. Kessler, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: The Burden to the Individual and to Society, 61 J. CLIN. PSYCHIATRY 61(suppl. 5) 4-12 (2000). xxi Moisander PA & Erik Edston, Torture and its sequel--a comparison between victims from six countries, Forensic Science International. 137(2-3):133-40 (Nov. 26, 2003). xxii Mollica RF. Surviving torture. New England Journal of Medicine. 351(1):5-7, 2004 Jul 1. xxiii ISTANBUL PROTOCOL, supra note 20 at 44. xxiv MAJ. GEN. GEORGE R. FAY, AR 15-6 INVESTIGATION OF INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES AT ABU GHRAIB, Aug. 2004, at 9-10, available at http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/reports/ar15-6/AR15-6.pdf (accessed Apr. 26, 2007); see also PHR BREAK THEM DOWN, supra note 18, at 7. xxv See generally ISTANBUL PROTOCOL, supra note 20. [Stephen Soldz is psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Institute for the Study of Violence of the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He is a member of Roslindale Neighbors for Peace and Justice. He maintains the Psyche, Science, and Society blog.] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:50:51 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:50:51 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Rattling the Reactor: Quakes, Fires and Leaks Message-ID: <20070723165051.4634e8ab@viola.tamara-b.org> CounterPunch - Jul 19, 2007 http://www.counterpunch.org/hoffman07192007.html Rattling the Reactor: Quakes, Fires and Leaks at the World's Largest Nuke By RUSSELL HOFFMAN On July 15th, 2007, a 6.8 magnitude earthquake killed 9 people and damaged the Kashiwazaki nuclear power generating station, the world's largest nuke facility. No one knows when the facility will reopen. More than a dozen separate leaks of radioactive materials have been reported, some going offsite via air and water. Approximately four hundred drums of so-called "low-level" radioactive waste toppled over (of more than 22,000 such drums located at the site). At least 40 of the toppled drums lost their covers when they fell over. Plant officials are now claiming the earthquake was larger than any they had planned for at the facility. Previous earthquakes produced wildly differing Richter Scale values, when measured at different spots at one Japanese nuke facility. So who knows what the reactors might have really experienced, or what they can really withstand? Four reactors were operating at the facility at the time of the quake. All four automatically SCRAMed when the jarring started. A "SCRAM" of a reactor is a violent, sudden, dangerous stoppage which causes enormous wear and tear (and sometimes causes leaks). The other three reactors at the facility were already shut down "voluntarily, for inspection" when the quake hit. Lucky, that. The facility produced about 7% of Japan's electricity, so undoubtedly the Japanese power companies will cause energy shortages and blackouts while the reactors remain closed, so that the Japanese people are fooled into thinking they MUST have MORE NUKES! Indeed, many more nukes are planned in Japan, as well as in America and elsewhere. And not one is truly "earthquake-proof," and most have never been given a reality check. Kashiwazaki's 8,212 megawatts of total generating capacity is enough for about 16 million homes in Japan (or for about half that many homes in America). So, just when hospitals, pumping stations, and individuals desperately needed power to recover from the earthquake, NONE was being delivered by the facility. Reports now say over 50 separate problems occurred at the facility because of the earthquake, including burst pipes and cobalt-60 and chromium-51 being released in gaseous form, but not including delayed reporting (which aggravated and endangered citizens). Several hundred gallons of radioactive liquid spilled into the Sea of Japan. The highest reported volume leaked was about 600 gallons. But early, widespread reports assured the public there were NO radioactive leaks. Early reports of no leakage were wrong and, as usual, have been replaced with reports of "minimal leakage" with "no danger to the public." In America, the Curie quantity (or, just as useful, the Becquerels) released is almost NEVER given to the public after an accident. However, reportedly "90,000 Becquerels of radioactivity" were released, so evidently the Japanese have a leg up on us for honest nuclear accident reporting in THAT department. (A Becquerel is one radioactive decay per second.) But the Becquerels alone is still not enough -- people also need to know the actual isotopes that were released (for example: strontium-90, iodine-131, cesium-137, etc.), since only then does one begin to have the ability to express, in concrete terms (i.e., numerically), the true danger from any specific accident. The number of gallons of diluted liquid, at some unspecified level of radioactivity, of some unspecified isotope of some unspecified element, tells you almost nothing. A fire at the facility kept local firefighters busy for several hours, as it spewed thick, terrifying black smoke into the air. But the real danger from a nuclear reactor accident -- radioactive poison -- is INVISIBLE. In some news reports, the fire was blamed for causing the leak (before it became "leaks"). If this is true in some way, it would be cause for concern in itself, since the fire was apparently in the switchyard, at the tail end of the operation, generally not considered part of the nuclear side of the plant. The feared tsunami never came. Nuclear power plants worldwide are NOT protected against reasonably foreseeable tsunami wave heights. The Japanese should be especially able to realize the insidious nature of radioactive poisons, since the effects of DNA damage from Hiroshima and Nagasaki still continue to this day, and could be carefully measured. But of course, the power companies don't want you to think about this, and government also won't fund proper research, probably in part due to pressure from American corporate and government interests. All those "special interests" don't want Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be properly studied, because of the effect such studies would have on the debate about the dangers of "Low Level Radiation." Many pro-nukers STILL CONTEND that "LLR" might be healthy -- like a vitamin or nutrient! (Similarly, the DNA damage in plants, animals, or humans in the area around Chernobyl is seldom carefully investigated.) Japan dodged a bullet THIS TIME, but disaster awaits those who do not learn from history. Japan can SURELY get along fine without nuclear power -- don't believe any other story! Modern technology CAN solve virtually ALL of humanity's environmental problems, but it requires reason and balance. Not all technology is good. There is no minimum threshold -- all ionizing radiation exposure carries with it some risk of cancer, leukemia, heart problems, genetic damage and other "health effects." The local mayor in Japan has forbidden any immediate restart of any of the Kashiwazaki reactors (in America, he would probably not be allowed to do that). May they NEVER open! [Russell D. Hoffman, a computer programmer in Carlsbad, California, has written extensively about nuclear power. His essays have been translated into several different languages and published in more than a dozen countries. He can be reached at: rhoffman at animatedsoftware.com] From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:53:54 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:53:54 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] The Hidden Injuries of Powerlessness Message-ID: <20070723165354.3b97568f@viola.tamara-b.org> CounterPunch - Jul 21, 2007 http://www.counterpunch.org/rosenthal07212007.html The Hidden Injuries of Powerlessness: Linking Alienation and Dissociation By SUSAN ROSENTHAL, M.D. Alienation and dissociation reinforce each other to create a cycle of social powerlessness. In The Hidden Injuries of Class, a worker ponders this dilemma. "The more a person is on the receiving end of orders, the more the person's got to think he or she is really somewhere else in order to keep up self-respect. And yet it's at work that you're supposed to 'make something' of yourself, so if you're not really there, how are you going to make something of yourself?" Capitalism alienates the majority from control over the decision-making process, putting most people "on the receiving end of orders." Dissociation is a psychological defense against feeling powerless; the worker goes "somewhere else" to preserve self-respect. However, dissociation keeps the worker in his alienated condition, "so if you're not really there, how are you going to make something of yourself?" Alienation and dissociation re-enforce each other in countless ways. Workers who must function like cogs in the social machine have dissociated relationships with the other cogs. There is no direct and conscious sharing of the creative, productive process. Instead of relating to each other as fellow producers, directly exchanging what they want and need, workers relate to each other as dissociated consumers, you pay my boss for what I made and I pay your boss for what you made. Consequently, despite living, working, commuting, and shopping together, most people feel estranged from one another. We talk about what we can't control (sports, the weather) to avoid discussing what we aren't allowed to control (our work, the world). Capitalism alienates humanity from the environment by dissociating the past and the future from the present. Only the sale is important. Every year, tons of industrial chemicals, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals enter the market as commodities with no consideration for what happens after they are sold. Once used, these products are thrown away, washed away and excreted from human and animal bodies, entering rivers, streams and lakes, returning to us in the form of contaminated food and water. Alienation and dissociation reach their pinnacle in war. When people feel helpless to stop the madness, they must dissociate from the brutality or go mad themselves. People who feel powerless have been compared to some laboratory animals who resign themselves to unavoidable electrical shocks. Even after their cage doors are opened, they do not escape. This phenomenon is called "learned helplessness," where the familiar, no matter how terrible, seems preferable to the unknown, no matter how promising. People without hope do feel powerlessness. However, animals have limited ways to extract themselves from harmful situations, unlike human beings who are creative and resourceful problem-solvers. And while individuals have a limited ability to solve problems, there is virtually no limit to the problems that people can solve together. To maintain their stranglehold over society, the people-in-power use divide-and-rule strategies that keep the majority feeling isolated, fearful, and powerless. Nevertheless, the criminal behavior of the ruling class compels ordinary people to organize in self-defense. Cooperation counters the downward cycle of alienation and dissociation. Cooperation elicits feelings of strength and hope, so people work harder to find solutions, thereby increasing their chances of success. Cooperation and hope re-enforce each other to increase social power. Whether we feel hopeless or hopeful, powerless or powerful depends on whether we work alone or together. Alone, we can't protect ourselves from environmental pollution, corrupt corporations, oppressive institutions and war-mongering governments. As an organized force, we have the power to change the world. [Dr. Susan Rosenthal has been practicing medicine for more than 30 years and has written many articles on the relationship between health and human relationships. She is also the author of "Striking Flint: Genora (Johnson) Dollinger Remembers the 1936-1937 General Motors Sit-Down Strike" (1996) and "Market Madness and Mental Illness: The Crisis in Mental Health Care" (1999) and "Power and Powerlessness." She is a member of the National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981. She can be reached through her web site: http://www.powerandpowerlessness.com or by email at: author at powerandpowerlessness.com From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:55:31 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:55:31 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Ugandan Science Scholarships Tilt Against Women Message-ID: <20070723165531.4cb3e4d9@viola.tamara-b.org> Womens eNews - Jul 23, 2007 http://www.womensenews.org Ugandan Science Scholarships Tilt Against Women By Anna S. Sussman WeNews correspondent KAMPALA, Uganda (WOMENSENEWS)--Just off the main road heading out of Uganda's capital is a ramshackle cinderblock building, the Kitetikka High School. In an unpainted science lab with no electricity and no running water, students study from yellowing textbooks. They are eager to excel in science because of a recent announcement that most of the government's university scholarships each year will go to students in the sciences. Now, about 53 percent of government scholarships are reserved for science students, a major boost from 13 percent before the science preference policy. For these low-income students, most of whom come from households earning less than $1 a day, government scholarships are their only hope for attending university. But education advocates such as the Forum for African Women Educationalists, say the new scholarship policy will further restrict the number of women going to university because of cultural biases against girls in science here. Kitetikka student Ritah Nanteza, for instance, wants to be a surgeon. But friends of the 16-year-old say she shouldn't even try. "Girls' minds aren't good at science," one of Nanteza's friends told Women's eNews. Even her teacher agrees. "Girls don't have the same capacity for sciences that boys do," said Francis Mulumba, a science teacher at the school. "The girls in my classes have never performed as well as the boys. Some of it is cultural, some of it is mental and some of it is biological," he said. Mulumba's assessment of girls in science is widely held across Uganda, and the statistics reflect it. Women make up only a tiny percentage of science students at the major universities. And girls' test scores are consistently lower than boys, with the widest performance gap in the sciences, according to the Kampala-based Association of Women Engineers, Technicians and Scientists in Uganda. Emphasis on Science in Schools While a scarcity of girls in sciences is not unique to Uganda, the combination with the government's new preference for science students could have particularly grave effects on young women's education. Before the science preference policy, about 37 percent of government merit scholarships were awarded to women. This year that fell to 29 percent, according to the Ugandan Ministry of Education and Sports. Major universities have already dramatically rolled back their admissions in non-science departments. "It simply means there are fewer options for girls to go to university," says Dorothy Muhume, the forum's program officer. "The prejudice against girls in science is very real here, and now it means that girls will not be going to university." The government already awards female students an additional one and a half points on their final exams to counteract the social obstacles they face in school. But the Uganda chapter of the Africa-wide Forum for African Women Educationalists is suggesting that further points be awarded in response to the new science policy. "Because we are seeing a drop in the number of female scholarship recipients, it would make sense that affirmative action be taken in response to this new development," said Martha Muhwezi, a technical advisor to the forum in Uganda. At Kitetikka High School, 18-year-old Herbert Kikiwambanga summed up the feeling among students. "Science is very difficult work, too difficult for the mind of a girl, that is why doctors are only men," he said. Other students, both male and female, nodded in agreement. Doing Science and Housework Ritah Nanteza, however, is determined to succeed. She struggles daily to overcome the skepticism about her mental abilities, but she also faces logistical challenges. "Our time for studying is very limited because as girls we have a lot of housework," she says. "It is very difficult to find the time to study things like sciences and math. That is why we are told to leave it for the boys." Housework is one of the primary reasons for girls' poor performance in Ugandan schools, says Muhume. They are expected to perform hours of cooking, cleaning, washing clothes by hand and fetching water, often from more than five miles away. In rural areas, where cultural biases against girls are more deeply entrenched and housework much greater, the science gap is even more pronounced, she says. Muhume says the new science policy compounds the already profound challenges to a girl's academic success here. The forum is promoting education campaigns to counteract the discouragement that girls like Nanteza face. "I think the key is to educate parents," says Proscovia Njuki. She was the first woman in East Africa to graduate with a degree in engineering, and she founded the Association of Women Engineers, Technicians and Scientists in Uganda to address the scientific gender gap. 'Static Gender Notions' "In Uganda, especially in rural areas, the notions of gender are very static. Parents and teachers discourage girls from sciences because they fear it will make a girl child unattractive, and she will not be able to marry," she said. "That is a very big deal here, especially for poor families. There is a perception that a woman scientist is no longer a woman, and therefore no man will want her as a wife." Now, Njuki is the Africa coordinator for the Gender Advisory Board of the Geneva-based United Nations Council on Science, Technology for Development. She tours Uganda speaking to schoolgirls about careers in science. "One of the first things I tell them is that I am married. And you can tell, it immediately makes them much more comfortable. It's probably the most important thing they learn from me, that women can be scientists and still have a husband." She says she has seen girls heckled and booed in high school science classes. "I was teased too," she says "I was one woman in a class of 40 men at university. Professors would yell at me for asking too many questions, one of them would always yell 'women!' in disgust," she says, laughing. Although her family teased her for pursing a profession that would result in her "wearing pants" and "working outside," Njuki has encouraged her daughters to pursue science. In an indication of parents' ability to help turn the key on Uganda's nationwide lockout of girls from science, Njuki's youngest daughter is studying mechanical engineering at Uganda's prestigious Makerere University. Entering high school, Njuki says with pride, her daughter was the top-ranked science student in the country. [Anna S. Sussman is a print and radio journalist. She currently lives in Uganda.] For more information: Women's eNews series, "Africa's Women Crack Open Its Universities": - http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3062 Forum for African Women Educationalists: - http://www.fawe.org/home/index.asp Association of Women Engineers, Technicians and Scientists in Uganda: - http://www.wougnet.org/Profiles/wetsu.html Copyright 2007 Women's eNews. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 16:57:03 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:57:03 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Senator Feingold calls for censure against Bush Message-ID: <20070723165703.5eb076f8@viola.tamara-b.org> Los Angeles Times - Jul 23, 2007 http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-feingold23jul23,1,3259912.story?track=crosspromo&coll=la-news-politics-national&ctrack=1&cset=true Senator calls for censure against Bush Feingold says the measures aim at 'misconduct' of the war and 'attack' on laws, but top Senate leaders predict the effort will fail. By Richard A. Serrano WASHINGTON One of the Senate's most liberal members said Sunday that he would "shortly" propose two censure resolutions against President Bush and his administration for the war in Iraq, even as the top Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate promptly predicted that the effort would fail. Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), who last year tried unsuccessfully to censure Bush over the administration's warrantless wiretap program, said he would introduce the resolutions "in a few days." According to a statement from Feingold's office, one resolution will be aimed specifically at Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for "misconduct related to the war in Iraq" such as "overstating" Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction, "failing to plan for the civil conflict and humanitarian problems," and "justifying our military involvement in Iraq by repeatedly distorting the situation on the ground there." The second censure resolution will "focus on the administration's attack on the rule of law" with respect to the warrantless wiretap program; policies on torture and on the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and the dismissal of several U.S. attorneys last year. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales will be among those cited in the second resolution, Feingold said Sunday. "This administration has assaulted the Constitution," Feingold told NBC's "Meet the Press." "We need to have on the historical record some kind of indication that what has happened here is disastrous." He called Cheney "one of the worst actors in American history" and added: "There may be others. On the rule-of-law issue, on the attack on the Constitution, the current attorney general has had one of the worst records of not being honest of being intentionally misleading." Feingold acknowledged that there would be no legal consequence to Bush and his administration if the resolutions were to pass, but he nonetheless said that "the buck stops with the president. That is the No. 1." A White House spokesman, Trey Bohn, responded to Feingold's comments by saying the Democratic-led Congress should be concentrating less on politically driven issues and more on such topics as U.S. troop funding, healthcare and tax relief. "We realize that Sen. Feingold does not care much for the president's policies," Bohn said. "Perhaps after calls for censure and more investigations, Congress may turn to such things." Even the leader of Feingold's party in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, predicted that the proposals would not pass. He said Republicans would not allow such a vote and, in any case, "we have so many other things to do." "The president already has the mark of the American people that he's the worst president we've ever had," Reid said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "I don't think we need a censure resolution in the Senate to prove that." On the GOP side, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky dismissed Feingold's proposal as "right in league with the all-night session the other night, which the American people are looking at with disbelief." In a marathon session last week, Senate Democrats came up short on a resolution to force Bush to commit to a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. "I think it's safe to say Russ Feingold is not a fan of George Bush," McConnell said on CNN's "Late Edition." "I think that's the best way to sum that up." Of Democrats' leadership since taking control of Congress in January, McConnell said: "This Congress now has a 14% approval rating. We think it's the lowest in the history of polling. "All they do is have Iraq votes and investigations." Coming to Feingold's defense on CNN was the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois. "This administration has gone far beyond the exercise of political power," he said. "They have abused the Constitution in some respects. And I think it's appropriate for us to take the censure resolution up. "It is short of impeachment, but it's an important debate." From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 17:00:30 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:00:30 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Oz: Another Haneef tall terror story blown sky-high Message-ID: <20070723170030.2364c118@viola.tamara-b.org> [In another dispatch from southnews, not included here, there is apparently growing concern among doctors worldwide about traveling to Australia, given the treatment Mohamed Haneef has been given. Perhaps Australia will soon be begging Cuba to send some of its legendary medical teams to help out. -NY Transfer] sent by Dave Muller (southnews) Sydney Morning Herald - Jul 23, 2007 http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/another-tall-story-blown-skyhigh/2007/07/22/1185042950376.html Another tall story blown sky-high by Craig Skehan Yet more confusion the federal police commissioner has dismissed reports of a plot to attack the Q1 building, above centre, involving the detainee Mohamed Haneef, pictured with his wife, Firdous Arshiya. Yet more confusion the federal police commissioner has dismissed reports of a plot to attack the Q1 building, above centre, involving the detainee Mohamed Haneef, pictured with his wife, Firdous Arshiya. Photo: Michel Osullivan PERHAPS thoughts of September 11 and its burning skyscrapers came to mind when investigators found a photograph of Mohamed Haneef and his family posing outside the Q1 residential tower on the Gold Coast. The 77-storey, 322.5-metre landmark - the world's tallest residential building - has become a photogenic attraction in itself in the middle of Surfers Paradise. But in the age of terrorism, you want to watch where you point your camera. In Haneef's case, his tower photograph prompted reports in Sunday newspapers of a terrorist plot to blow up the landmark. His lawyers said it was the first they had heard of it. Then it fell to the Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty, to publicly declare the claims false. It was the last thing Mr Keelty needed after weeks of controversy over the Haneef case, including British police sources describing Australian police as "a laughing stock" after the revelation that the crucial claim against the doctor - that his SIM card was found at the scene of a Glasgow bombing attempt - was false. "We will be taking the extraordinary step of contacting Dr Haneef's lawyer to correct the record," Mr Keelty said. The Herald understands Haneef's lawyers were contacted by the federal police late yesterday. The tower photograph was the subject of some police questioning after Haneef was arrested on July 2, but nothing was put to him to suggest it was regarded as potentially sinister. But yesterday's report, in News Ltd newspapers, said that police found "images of a Gold Coast building" and its foundations in a raid on Haneef's apartment. The report said investigators were looking at documents referring to the "destruction of structures" and information that Haneef was one of a group of doctors who had been learning to fly in Queensland. In his statement, Mr Keelty denied the federal police were the source of the leak. "There has been significant misreporting on many aspects of this case," he said. Earlier, Haneef's solicitor, Peter Russo, said the report was "fanciful and wrong". He asked why, if police believed such a plot existed, they had not raised it in court, or in the information provided to the Immigration Minister, Kevin Andrews, as he weighed cancelling Haneef's work visa. Mr Andrews cancelled the visa after Haneef was granted bail on a charge of recklessly providing support to a terrorist organisation. Haneef's wife, Firdous Arshiya, told the Herald that she and her husband had taken many photographs around Surfers Paradise because it was "the most happening place on the Gold Coast". The new reports were laughable, she said from her home in Bangalore, India. "I guess the AFP does not know what to do now. If this was the case that they have found some more evidence against my husband, then why are they planning to deport him as soon as possible?" She was reacting to reports that some unnamed Government MPs, concerned about the controversy, would prefer to see Haneef simply removed from Australia. Sources said Haneef would not seek an injunction to stop deportation - if the Federal Government tried to do so without proceeding to trial - because he was desperate to see his wife and new baby. Meanwhile, Indian Government sources said there had been no reply to their request for a copy of a confidential section of a police brief used by Mr Andrews in ruling on Haneef's visa. That information is expected to be presented at Federal Court hearings due to begin on August 8 to decide on an appeal against his visa being revoked. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 17:02:46 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:02:46 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Japan: Nuclear Power on Shaky Ground Message-ID: <20070723170246.2bc120cf@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Dave Muller (southnews) The Yomiuri Shimbun - Jul 23, 2007 http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20070723TDY01002.htm NUCLEAR POWER ON SHAKY GROUND No price too high to pay for safe nuclear plants This is the second installment of a three-part series examining how earthquake-prone Japan can coexist with nuclear power plants, a concern that has surfaced in the wake of the July 16 earthquake in the Chuetsu region of Niigata Prefecture--the first temblor anywhere in which a fault line ran beneath a nuclear power plant. Following last Monday's earthquake, the asphalt-paved grounds of Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture bulge and sag, blocking people's path. Immediately after the Niigata Prefecture Chuetsu Offshore Earthquake occurred, Shizuo Suda, deputy manager of the fire prevention division at Kashiwazaki Fire Department, entered the plant to inspect an electric transformer that had caught fire. After observing the scene, Suda became very concerned about the possibility of a secondary disaster occurring. He had never imagined that an earthquake would bring about such terrible destruction, and he thought to himself that if oil leaked from an underground pipe and ignited, there would be no remedying the situation. Suda's report to the Kashiwazaki municipal government indicating the seriousness of the situation at the plant prompted the municipal government to issue an emergency order to TEPCO instructing it to shut down the plant. Yumio Ishii, president of the Japan Society of Civil Engineers, said Friday: "I strongly feel we were lucky the disaster wasn't worse than it was. The quake-resistance standards for nuclear power plants definitely need to be reviewed." The late Nobu Kitamura, a prominent geologist and professor emeritus at Tohoku University, conducted research into faults across the country in the 1960s and '70s. He once described the Japanese archipelago, which is situated in a seismogenic zone, as follows: "If I throw a stone from here to there, countless faults lie underground in the space between. That's where Japan is located." Last Monday's quake, in which fault lines directly underneath the nuclear power plant shifted, showed Kitamura's description was no exaggeration. Japan is the only country located on four plates edging toward each other and many fault zones. Among 31 nations and regions that have nuclear power plants, Japan is the most at risk of being hit by earthquakes. Japan introduced nuclear power technology from Europe and the United States 50 years ago. The history of Japan's nuclear power industry has been a struggle against earthquakes. Inside a nuclear reactor, control rods designed to serve as brakes move between nuclear fuel rods that are assembled precisely spaced apart. If the spacing changes even slightly due to an earthquake, the control rods will cease to function as brakes. Japan Atomic Power Co.'s Tokai nuclear power station in Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture, is the nation's first commercial nuclear power plant. A graphite reactor, imported from Britain, a nation that not face the threat of serious earthquakes, was used for the power plant. At the time of introducing the reactor, questions regarding its quake-resistance capabilities were voiced by many experts, forcing the company to make changes in the construction plan, including improvements to the graphite layers surrounding the fuel rods. The technology for light water reactors, which was used in many plants later, was imported from the United States, which has seismogenic zones on its Pacific Coast. Although those reactors were designed for optimum quake resistance, the United States is blessed with many choices for locating its nuclear plants, so it does not have to worry so much about making its nuclear plants capable of withstanding very strong quakes. Japan, however, had to develop the strictest quake-resistant standards for its nuclear power plants. But the tremors of the Niigata Prefecture Chuetsu Offshore Earthquake exceeded those standards. Seismic research has advanced significantly in the past half century. But it was only after the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995 that active faults in various regions earned serious attention. Also, it was not until the 1980s that understanding of the process of liquefaction began to deepen. Seismology is still developing, and quake-resistance standards for nuclear power plants always need to be reviewed. It is said that the cost of building one nuclear power plant in Japan is 300 billion yen--the highest in the world--as expenses for quake-resistance measures are high. In the electric power industry, many are reluctant to adopt strict antiseismic measures, saying costs will skyrocket if standards are made rigorous. Mitsumasa Hirano, chief secretary of the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization said, "People have become to understand the uncertainty of seismology, and the social perception toward risk has changed since the Great Hanshin Earthquake." Electric power companies have been making efforts to balance cost and safety in setting quake-resistance standards for nuclear power plants, but it is not acceptable to delay the implementation of antiseismic measures simply because doing so will be expensive. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 17:04:02 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:04:02 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Guatemalan Lawyers Demand Freedom for the Cuban Five Message-ID: <20070723170402.14510c7a@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Guatemalan Lawyers Demand Freedom for the Cuban Five Havana, July 23 (acn) During a panel held at the Human Right Institute of the San Carlos University, Guatemalan lawyers discussed the arbitrary judicial process carried out against five Cuban antiterrorist fighters who have been unjustly held in US prisons for more than eight years. Lawyer Alfonso Bauer Paiz pointed out that the trial was held in Miami, in an atmosphere of impartiality. He denounced the unjust imprisonment of Antonio Guerrero, Fernado Gonzalez, Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino and Rene Gonzalez, internationally known as the Cuban Five, and recalled how a working group of the United Nations declared their detention as arbitrary. Lawyer Fernando Zuniga denounced that the Cuban Five have been held in isolation for more than a year and deprived of their right to communicate with their families, reported Prensa Latina news agency. The Cuban Five were detained in 1998 by the FBI and charged for espionage even though their mission was to prevent terrorist attacks from anti-Cuban organizations based in Florida responsible for deaths and damages to Cuba over the last 45 years. Cuban political counselor in Guatemala, Humberto Casta?eda, denounced the US double-standard on terrorism. He noted that the Cuban Five have been unjustly held behind bars for nearly nine years while notorious terrorist Posada Carriles walks freely in the United States. During the meeting, professor Rodolfo Davalos from the University of Havana, announced a hearing will be held on August 20 by a panel of judges at the Court of Appeals of Atlanta. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 17:05:07 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:05:07 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Cuban Community-Based Universities Hold First Graduation Message-ID: <20070723170507.550a2801@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Cuban Community-Based Universities Holds First Graduation Havana, Jul 23 (acn) More than 470 youths received their bachelor degrees this Monday in the first graduation of the Community-based University program that started in Cuba 2002. It is part of the government's effort to further expand higher education nationwide. Cuba's Higher Education Minister Juan Vela Valdes said the alternative has proven sustainable and effective, noting that the retention rates and the number of students who complete studies are very high. He recommended that the program be used in those countries that need to increase their number of professional workers. Valdes said the first graduation is only the beginning of a much more ambitious program that seeks to further increase the number of community-based university sites. Carlos Alberto Perez, one of the graduates, said he was grateful for the opportunity given by the government to become a professional. He highlighted the quality of professors. Present at the ceremony were also Lazara Mercedes Lopez Acea, member of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, and Julio Martinez, first secretary of the Cuban Young Communist League. The meeting was held at the Jose Marti Anti-Imperialist Square across from the US Interest Section in Havana. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 17:08:15 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:08:15 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Native Mainer To Be Sworn In As Venezuelan Ambassador Message-ID: <20070723170815.0dc88545@viola.tamara-b.org> AP via WCSH6 News - July 23, 2007 http://www.wcsh6.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=66832 Native Mainer To Be Sworn In As Venezuelan Ambassador The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- A swearing-in ceremony has been scheduled for a Maine native who's been confirmed as the next ambassador to Venezuela. Midcoast Federal Credit Union Patrick Duddy will be sworn in during a ceremony at the U.S. State Department on August ninth. Duddy is originally from Bangor and graduated from Colby College. He has worked in the Foreign Service for the past 25 years. Duddy replaces William Brownfield, whose tenure as ambassador was marked by growing hostility between the U.S. and Venezuela. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 17:09:45 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:09:45 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Low-Key Recall of AIDS Drug Hits World's Poor Message-ID: <20070723170945.67a57c14@viola.tamara-b.org> The New York Times - July 23, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/23/health/23recall.html Low-Key Recall of AIDS Drug Hits World's Poor By Elisabeth Rosenthal ROME--A total recall of an important AIDS drug widely used in developing countries has disrupted treatment for tens of thousands of the world's poorest patients, with no clear word from the manufacturer on when shipments will resume. The recall of the drug, Viracept, by Roche Pharmaceuticals of Switzerland, went largely unnoticed in the developed world when it was announced in early June, after the company had discovered that some batches made at its Swiss plant contained a dangerous chemical. But the recall has caused growing concern among global health officials and in AIDS programs in many poor nations. They say the company did an inadequate job of informing patients and officials about the potential risks and helping them find affordable access to newer alternative drugs. Roche said that it had been actively working with health officials across the globe and that the risk from the affected batches was low. The scope of Roche's recall is extraordinary, if not unprecedented, in the battle against the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, global health officials say. Dr. Lembit Rago, an official at the World Health Organization, said tens of thousands of people take Viracept worldwide, many of them poor people with H.I.V. in developing countries. The recall has left those patients with the painful choice of discontinuing a lifesaving medicine, or using a drug that might contain a dangerous contaminant. Officials at the W.H.O. in Geneva and the European Medicines Agency in London said Roche had not provided information they consider essential for safeguarding public health: which countries the tainted medicine was shipped to, the concentration of the contaminant and what the company will do for its patients. The European agency, which regulates drugs for the European Union, has canceled Roche's license to market the drug. Dr. Rago called the recall "sort of a disaster" for patients in very poor countries. He said of Roche, "They failed in communication." Roche has denied the accusation. The company, which had revenue of $35 billion last year, said it promptly notified health providers in the affected countries to discontinue use of the drug, which is dispensed in both pill and powder form. It also said it would cover the "reasonable costs" of the recall. It did not define "reasonable costs." So far, in some countries like Panama, patients or treatment programs have had to make up the difference in cost between Viracept and far more expensive alternatives. For some patients in other countries, like Venezuela, alternatives to Viracept are unavailable. Roche said the recall affected "Europe and some other world regions" but has not been more specific. The recall does not affect the United States, Canada or Japan, where a version of Viracept is made by Pfizer. Roche has been in discussions with Pfizer about supplying Pfizer's version to some affected countries, but regulatory and licensing issues could take "some time," said Martina Rupp, a Roche spokeswoman. Roche sells Viracept for use in low-income countries at the discounted median price of about 28 cents a dose, according to the W.H.O.'s 2006 global price reporting system for AIDS medicine. The drug, also known as nelfinavir, is a member of the class of AIDS drugs known as protease inhibitors. It is considered an important defense against H.I.V., but it has fallen out of favor in Europe in recent years compared with newer medicines that are more convenient and cause fewer side effects. In some places, newer substitutes are not available to patients, either because they are not licensed or are much more expensive, said people with H.I.V. and international health experts. In Panama, for example, a substitute drug, Kaletra, costs three times as much as Viracept. "Roche has provided information, but there has been much less support in terms of who is going to pay the additional cost," said Dr. C?sar Nu?ez, the United Nations AIDS program's coordinator for Latin America, who is based in Panama. A more limited recall might have been possible had Roche been more forthcoming about the countries affected and the lots that were suspect, said Dr. Rago, the W.H.O. coordinator of quality assurance and safety for medicines. "It's fine for Roche to say 'withdraw and replace,' but there may not be much else at hand to substitute" in many places, he said. "This is not just about Europe." In response to questions sent by e-mail, Ms. Rupp said Roche had shipped "at least one packet of Viracept with high levels of the impurity to 35 countries." But she declined to say which countries because Roche regards such information as proprietary. High levels of the contaminant "were observed in batches of Viracept that had been released to countries since March 2007," she said. The company made the recall worldwide "in order to avoid confusion," she said. Roche estimates that about 45,000 patients were affected by the recall. Ms. Rupp said the toxic substance, ethyl mesylate, should be called an "impurity" rather than a contaminant because it was created in the manufacturing process and because that type of chemical can be found in very low levels in other medicines, although it was not supposed to be present in Viracept. The company was performing studies on the issue, but the results would not be available for "some months," she said. At high doses, ethyl mesylate has been shown to cause cancer in animals, and at lower levels it can cause genetic mutations, which means children and fetuses are particularly vulnerable. Asia Russell, the coordinator of international advocacy for Health Gap, a nongovernmental organization based in New York and Philadelphia that focuses on medical care in the developing world, said, "It seems that Roche has abandoned these patients, since in many places there aren't ready alternatives." In Venezuela, 3,000 people were on Viracept, paid for by the national health service, and the effect of the recall was "severe," because many had no other options, said Edgar Carrasco, an advocate on issues relating to AIDS in Caracas. Alberto Nieve, another advocate, said Roche had promised to make a donation of another medicine. "Most people are still waiting," he said. "They have not switched yet, especially outside Caracas." In the month since the recall, officials at the European Medicines Agency and the W.H.O. said that they, too, would like more information from Roche about the dose of the contaminant and where exactly the medicine was sent. "We have not gotten information, not even an order of magnitude," said Martin Harvey-Allchurch, a spokesman for the European agency. "I understand sales figures are confidential, but I would have thought by now we would have this information." Viracept was sold in 49 countries since 2004, according to the W.H.O., with more than 12 million units sold in 2006 and 2 million in 2007. Tido Von Schoen-Angerer, director of the essential medicines campaign at Doctors Without Borders, said about half of the 400 patients who received therapy supplied by the group in Africa were on Viracept. The alternate from Abbott is not yet available, he said. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 17:12:17 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:12:17 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Chavez inaugurates refinery in Nicaragua Message-ID: <20070723171217.21753a35@viola.tamara-b.org> AP via The Miami Herald - July 20, 2007 http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/venezuela/AP/story/177297.html Chavez inaugurates refinery in Nicaragua By Filadelfo Aleman The Associated Press MANAGUA, Nicaragua -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Friday inaugurated a 150,000-barrel-a-day refinery the nation is building in Nicaragua as part of the leftist leader's oil-funded battle against U.S. influence in the region. Chavez said the $2.5 billion refinery will allow Nicaragua - the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere - to earn $700 million annually. "I have come to deepen ties with the Nicaraguan people through their government," said Chavez, who a day earlier celebrated the 28th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution with his ally, President Daniel Ortega. Later Friday, Chavez called himself and Ortega the region's "anti-imperialist vaccine." Ortega vowed during his campaign to have changed from his revolutionary days and said he would work with the United States, once his arch enemy. But since taking office, he has increasingly attacked the U.S. and made more radical statements. On Friday, Ortega called President Bush a "world tyrant" who came to power "through fraud." Venezuela is building new refineries in politically aligned countries such as Nicaragua, Cuba and Brazil to ease the country's reliance on the United States - its main market for oil. An avowed socialist who has sought to counter U.S. influence around the world, Chavez promised Nicaragua millions of dollars in financial aid and investment after Ortega's inauguration in January. He also has vowed to become the sole energy supplier to Nicaragua, Cuba, Bolivia, and Haiti in an attempt to strengthen his bloc, known as The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. Formed in 2004 by Chavez and Castro to promote trade and cooperation along socialist lines and oppose a U.S.-backed free trade area, the alliance has evolved into a symbol of Chavez's petrodollar-based clout in the region. Ortega said while Venezuela has sent generators to curb Nicaragua's rolling blackouts and offered the country $400 million in aid, "I haven't seen the United States send one single energy plant during this emergency." Ortega, whose Sandinista government led a war against U.S.-backed Contra rebels in the 1980s, returned to the presidency in January and has cultivated a strong relationship with Chavez, the White House's No. 1 foe in the region. U.S. ambassador Paul Triveli said Ortega's comments surprised him. He said the United States has launched a five-year aid program that has so far given Nicaragua $10 million and there are plans to give an additional $16 million. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 17:18:52 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:18:52 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Agents of Destabilization Will Be Expelled from Venezuela Message-ID: <20070723171852.17407ebc@viola.tamara-b.org> [Of course, the hostile mainstream press is playing this up to the hilt, with headlines like "critical foreigners will get the boot," etc. The two items below come from the Venezuela Information Office, which comments as follows: "Sources report today that a senior Mexican politician criticized President Chavez while in Caracas over the weekend, which led Chavez to express distaste for verbal attacks by foreigners visiting Venezuela. Despite the seriousness lent to such comments by the Associated Press and the BBC, they in no way affect laws protecting freedom of speech. This and other democratic guarantees remain very much in force in Venezuela, according to statements made by OAS Secretary General Insulza last week." -VIO] AP via The Washington Post - July 22, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/22/AR2007072200819.html Chavez: Critical Foreigners to Get Boot By Christopher Toothaker CARACAS, Venezuela -- President Hugo Chavez said Sunday that foreigners who publicly criticize him or his government while visiting Venezuela will be expelled from the country. Chavez ordered officials to closely monitor statements made by international figures during their visits to Venezuela _ and deport any outspoken critics. "How long are we going to allow a person _ from any country in the world _ to come to our own house to say there's a dictatorship here, that the president is a tyrant, and nobody does anything about it?" Chavez asked during his weekly television and radio program. The Venezuelan leader's statements came after Manuel Espino, the president of Mexico's conservative ruling party, criticized Chavez during a recent pro-democracy forum in Caracas. Government opponents argue Chavez _ a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro _ is becoming increasingly authoritarian and cracking down on dissent as he steers oil-rich Venezuela toward what he calls "21st-century socialism." Chavez rejects such allegations, countering that democratic freedoms have been extended since he was first elected in 1998. The former paratroop commander says his government has empowered the poor by giving them increased decision-making authority in politics. During Sunday's six-hour program, Chavez assured private property owners their rights will be guaranteed under a pending constitutional reform. "Private property will respected," he said. Many wealthy Venezuelans fear second homes, yachts or other assets could be seized as Chavez advances his Bolivarian Revolution, a movement named after South American independence hero Simon Bolivar. Chavez denies any such plans. Chavez is expected to present his reform proposal to the National Assembly, which is completely controlled by his allies, in the coming weeks. Few details have emerged from a special executive committee that he appointed to draft a proposal for overhauling the country's charter. Also Sunday, Chavez announced an initiative to slash the salaries of Venezuela's top public servants. He said no public servant should make more than $7,000 a month. Most Venezuelans make minimum wage _ roughly $250 a month. Reducing the pay of top officials has become a popular move in Latin America. The presidents Nicaragua, Bolivia, Peru and Costa Rica recently cut salaries, including their own, in response to widespread criticism. In his typically wide-ranging television program, Chavez also said Castro recently warned him to take precautions against possible U.S.-backed assassination attempts. He said Cuba's 80-year-old "Maximum Leader" gave him a copy of former CIA Director George Tenet's recently published memoir and told him: "'Read it, Chavez, because that is the most perfect killing machine ever invented and I'm a survivor ... I survived more than 600 (assassination) attempts.'" "The CIA is everywhere," said Chavez, who has repeatedly warned that U.S. President George W. Bush could order him killed. U.S. law has forbidden assassination attempts since the 1970s, and Washington denies the U.S. government has attempted to kill Castro since then. *** BBC News - Jul 23, 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6911246.stm Chavez to expel foreign critics BBC News Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has vowed to expel foreigners who publicly criticise him or his government. "No foreigner can come here to attack us. Anyone who does must be removed from this country," he said during his weekly TV and radio programme. Mr Chavez also ordered officials to monitor statements made by international figures in Venezuela. His comments came shortly after a senior Mexican politician publicly criticised the Venezuelan government. "How long are we going to allow a person - from any country in the world - to come to our own house to say there's a dictatorship here, that the president is a tyrant, and nobody does anything about it?" Mr Chavez said during his "Hello, President" broadcast on Sunday. "It cannot be allowed - it is a question of national dignity," he said. He did not mention any names, but his comments came on the same weekend that Manuel Espino, president of Mexico's ruling National Action Party, criticised Mr Chavez at a pro-democracy conference in Caracas. Mr Espino told the conference a plan by Mr Chavez to end term limits on Venezuela's presidency were a threat to democracy. He accused Mr Chavez of trying to extend his rule indefinitely with the proposed constitutional reform, which would let Mr Chavez run for the presidency again in 2012. Mr Chavez said the reform package would increase the influence of local community councils and student groups as part of his "21st-Century socialism" revolution. He is due to present the proposal to Venezuela's National Assembly next month. The assembly consists solely of politicians who back the president. Mr Chavez was re-elected to a third term last year with support from the millions of impoverished Venezuelans who back his social development policies. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 17:32:38 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:32:38 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] FAS Secrecy News - 07/23/2007 Message-ID: <20070723173238.54a1203d@viola.tamara-b.org> SECRECY NEWS from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy Volume 2004, Issue No. 75 July 23, 2007 ** JOINT CHIEFS ISSUE DOCTRINE ON "HOMELAND DEFENSE" ** CLINTON CAMPAIGN URGES PUBLICATION OF ALL AGENCY BUDGETS ** CRS REPORTS ON THE MIDDLE EAST ** CRS REPORTS ON VARIOUS TOPICS ** MAGGOT THERAPY AND OTHER SPECIAL FORCES MEDICINE JOINT CHIEFS ISSUE DOCTRINE ON "HOMELAND DEFENSE" A new publication of the Joint Chiefs of Staff presents U.S. military doctrine on "homeland defense." "It provides information on command and control, interagency and multinational coordination, and operations required to defeat external threats to, and aggression against, the homeland." See "Homeland Defense," Joint Publication 3-27, July 12, 2007: http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/jp3_27.pdf The document further extends the unfortunate use of the term "homeland" to refer to the United States, a relatively recent coinage that became prevalent in the George W. Bush Administration. Not only does the word "homeland" have unhappy echoes of the Germanic "Heimat" and the cult of land and soil, it is also a misnomer in a nation of immigrants. Moreover, "homeland" is defined by the military exclusively in terms of geography: It is "the physical region that includes the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, United States territories and possessions, and surrounding territorial waters and airspace." This means that actions to defend the Constitution and the political institutions of American democracy are by definition excluded from "homeland defense." For the Joint Chiefs, constitutional liberties are subordinate to, and contingent upon, physical security: "To preserve the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, the Nation must have a homeland that is secure from threats and violence, especially terrorism." (page I-1). CLINTON CAMPAIGN URGES PUBLICATION OF ALL AGENCY BUDGETS Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has put forward an agenda to increase transparency in government that includes "publishing budgets for every government agency." http://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/reform/ This appears to be a roundabout way of endorsing disclosure of intelligence agency budgets, since the budgets of all other agencies are already published. The Clinton campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment or elaboration on the proposal. Intelligence budget secrecy is perhaps the preeminent and most enduring example of overclassification, i.e. classification that is not justified by a valid national security concern. A proposal to declassify the aggregate figure for the National Intelligence Program, comprised of over a dozen individual agency intelligence budgets, is pending in the Senate version of the FY 2008 Intelligence Authorization Act (S. 1538). The 9/11 Commission went further and said "the overall amounts of money being appropriated for national intelligence and to its component agencies should no longer be kept secret." (Final Report, p. 416). The Clinton campaign appears to have adopted this bipartisan Commission recommendation for release of component agency budget information. The Bush Administration opposes any disclosure of any intelligence budget data, even the aggregate figure. CRS REPORTS ON THE MIDDLE EAST Recent reports of the Congressional Research Service on Middle East-related topics, obtained by Secrecy News without CRS authorization, include the following. "U.S. Foreign Assistance to the Middle East: Historical Background, Recent Trends, and the FY2008 Request," updated July 3, 2007: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL32260.pdf "Libya: Background and U.S. Relations," updated June 19, 2007: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33142.pdf "U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel," updated April 25, 2007: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf "Lebanon," updated July 11, 2007: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33509.pdf "The Iran Sanctions Act (ISA)," updated July 9, 2007: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS20871.pdf "Iran's Influence in Iraq," updated July 9, 2007: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22323.pdf CRS REPORTS ON VARIOUS TOPICS More publicly unreleased reports from the Congressional Research Service on various topics of interest to some include these. "Journalists' Privilege to Withhold Information in Judicial and Other Proceedings: State Shield Statutes," updated June 27, 2007: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RL32806.pdf "Federal Sentencing Guidelines: Background, Legal Analysis, and Policy Options," updated June 30, 2007: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL32766.pdf "Critical Infrastructure: The National Asset Database," updated July 16, 2007: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL33648.pdf "Chemical Facility Security: Regulation and Issues for Congress," updated June 21, 2007: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL33847.pdf "Pipeline Safety and Security: Federal Programs," updated July 11, 2007: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL33347.pdf MAGGOT THERAPY AND OTHER SPECIAL FORCES MEDICINE Under extreme conditions, live maggots may be inserted into a wound to consume damaged or diseased flesh, according to a medical manual for U.S. Army Special Forces. "Despite the hazards involved, maggot therapy should be considered a viable alternative when, in the absence of antibiotics, a wound becomes severely infected, does not heal, and ordinary debridement [removal of diseased tissue] is impossible," according to the 1982 manual (at page 22-3). See "U.S. Army Special Forces Medical Handbook," ST 31-91B, 1 March 1982 (407 pages, 16 MB PDF file): http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/milmed/sfhandbook.pdf It turns out that maggot therapy is recognized and regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Sterilized maggot colonies can be ordered, by prescription only, from specialized suppliers. The Special Forces manual, however, envisions the use of unsterilized maggots for emergency use. Along with a lot of standard wilderness medicine, the manual also describes various unorthodox, potentially dangerous remedies that may be considered when conventional medical alternatives are unavailable. For example, the manual suggests that intestinal worms can be combated by eating cigarettes. "The nicotine in the cigarette kills or stuns the worms long enough for them to be passed." Another option for dealing with intestinal parasites is to swallow kerosene. "Drink 2 tablespoons. Don't drink more." (page 22-2). _______________________________________________ Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists. The Secrecy News Blog is at: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/ To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, go to: http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/subscribe.html To UNSUBSCRIBE, go to http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/unsubscribe.html OR email your request to saftergood at fas.org Secrecy News is archived at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html SUPPORT Secrecy News with a donation here: http://www.fas.org/static/contrib_sec.jsp _______________________ Steven Aftergood Project on Government Secrecy Federation of American Scientists web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html email: saftergood at fas.org voice: (202) 454-4691 From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 17:46:16 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:46:16 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Hitchens to Receive Award at FFRF Convention Message-ID: <20070723174616.7b1cf3ce@viola.tamara-b.org> Wisconsin State Journal - Jul 22, 2007 http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/local/index.php?ntid=202397&ntpid=2 Atheist Hitchens will speak in city By Doug Erickson Not one to play it safe, the Freedom From Religion Foundation said Friday it has booked verbal bomb-throwing British-American author Christopher Hitchens as a keynote speaker for its annual convention this October in Madison. A noted atheist who once penned an anti-Mother Teresa diatribe, Hitchens' book "God Is Not Great," his takedown of religion, holds the No. 2 spot on The New York Times best-sellers list. Hard to peg politically, Hitchens has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Iraq war, yet delighted in the death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell, calling him an "ugly little charlatan" in a CNN interview. Hitchens often tosses off his blistering opinions with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other. "He's terrifically witty and has been just devastating to religion and his debate opponents at every appearance I've caught," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, foundation co-president with Dan Barker. Hitchens is set to speak Oct. 13. Convention attendees will get first priority for seats, although some tickets may be available to the general public, Gaylor said. The foundation won't know until closer to the date, she said. The convention at the Concourse Hotel runs Oct. 12-14. Updates will be available at www.ffrf.org. Gaylor would not say how much Hitchens is being paid. He will receive an honorarium and the foundation's Emperor Has No Clothes award, given to public figures who "tell it like it is," Gaylor said. Barker said Hitchens is controversial even within the foundation's 10,000-plus membership, and that's OK. "We have liberal and conservative members," he said. "We don't all have to think alike." Other speakers for the convention include The Nation columnist Katha Pollitt and former "Saturday Night Live" comedienne Julia Sweeney. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 17:50:00 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:50:00 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Christian Group Takes Cheap Shot, Disrupting Hindu Prayer in Congress Message-ID: <20070723175000.5b0143b7@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Freedom From Religion Foundation http://www.ffrf.org Those interested in hearing an audio of the disruption of the first-ever Hindu prayer in Congress, and FFRF's analysis of the problem with Congressional prayers, can listen to the first segment of Freethought Radio on July 21) here: http://ffrf.org/radio/podcast/archives/2007.php#brianflemming Wisconsin State Journal - Jul 20, 2007 http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/column/wineke/index.php?ntid=202183 Christian group takes cheap shot By Bill Wineke The U.S. Senate has, for the first time, invited a Hindu to deliver its opening prayer. Rajan Zed, director of public affairs and interfaith relations for the Hindu Temple of Northern Nevada, delivered the prayer on July 12. Clergy have been delivering prayers to open the Senate and its predecessor body sessions since the first Continental Congress met in 1774 and Anglican clergyman the Rev. Jacob Duche read Psalm 35. However, no Hindu, it is believed, has ever had the honor. So you might think it to be a good thing that a member of the world's third-largest religion would be honored by our Senate. After all, we're trying to convince the world we are a tolerant society that welcomes people of all faiths. If you thought that, you would be wrong. Just ask Coral Ridge Ministries, the outreach arm of the Rev. D. James Kennedy and his Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. "The prayer offered by Hindu chaplain Rajan Zed was directed not to the God of the Bible but to what Zed called the 'Deity Supreme, who is inside the heart of the Earth, inside the life of the sky and inside the soul of Heaven.'" said Jerry Newcombe, senior producer at Coral Ridge Ministries. Christians don't pray to that kind of God, Newcombe noted. Christians pray to a God who offers Heaven as a "consequence, to all who believe, of what Jesus Christ has done." Besides, Newcomb added, Hindus in India persecute Christians and Dalits (untouchables). All this is enough to make one want to join the Freedom From Religion Foundation. A week ago, many of us were grumbling that the Roman Catholic Church questions the validity of Protestant Christian churches. Now we see one of the nation's most powerful Christian broadcasters suggesting that non-Christians need not apply when it comes to praying in public places. Because he's not a Christian, that's why. Why a spokesman for a supposedly Christian organization would want to use a simple civic prayer (no one would ever call the Senate a religious body) as a means of denigrating an entire religion and suggesting its practitioners have no right to display their faith before the Senate is just beyond me. Whatever problems Hinduism may have in India ? and Hinduism has its nut-cases just as Christianity has its own ? we are not in India. We are in the United States. Here, we ask only that people live out the best of their faith. We do not judge Hindus or Buddhists or Christians in America by what their counterparts might do in other countries. There was a time when we didn't judge American Muslims by Muslims in other lands, but we increasingly seem to be willing to forget our principles when it comes to Islam. The criticisms of Hinduism get a little bizarre. Newcombe snorted that Hinduism has a multitude of Gods, while Christianity has but one: "God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit." A non-Christian might count that as three, not one. But we do like to feel superior. At any rate, what we need is more religious understanding, not less. Coral Ridge Ministries might do well to rejoice when any believer is welcomed to pray before our public bodies. Instead, it takes a cheap shot at a Hindu. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 17:55:18 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:55:18 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Fed Court: NY State Law Regulating Lawyers' Ads Violate Free Speech Message-ID: <20070723175518.3004d20e@viola.tamara-b.org> Public Citizen - Jul 23, 2007 http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2479 July 23, 2007 New Lawyer Advertising Rules in New York Violate Free Speech, Federal Court Rules Public Citizen Wins Injunction Against Unconstitutional Rules WASHINGTON, D.C. ? New rules governing lawyer advertising that took effect in New York on Feb. 1 cannot be enforced because they violate the First Amendment right to free speech, according to a ruling issued today by a federal court in New York. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York ruled in favor of Public Citizen?s request for an injunction against many of the new rules. The organization represented its members and attorney James L. Alexander and his law firm, Alexander & Catalano. The New York firm was forced to change its advertisements to comply with the more restrictive rules. The new guidelines were part of a revision of the rules contained in New York?s Code of Professional Responsibility for lawyers, which is designed to protect consumers by prohibiting false and misleading lawyer advertisements. Public Citizen contended in its lawsuit that the rules? broad language unconstitutionally prohibited truthful communication of information about legal services to New York consumers. The court heard oral argument on June 18. In a victory for First Amendment rights, the court permanently enjoined enforcement of most of the challenged rules against attorney advertising, including rules against attention-getting techniques, the use of nicknames and mottos, the use of client testimonials, the portrayal of judges and the use of Internet pop-up ads. ?The New York rules went too far in imposing burdensome restrictions on legal free speech that do not protect consumers,? said Greg Beck, an attorney for Public Citizen who litigated the case. ?The court rightly recognized that the First Amendment prevents states from arbitrarily restricting advertising just because some may find it distasteful.? In today?s ruling, the court held that the advertising at issue in the case was a form of speech protected by the First Amendment, and it categorically rejected New York?s argument that advertising considered by the state to be trivial or irrelevant was not covered by free speech rights. It noted that the state had not produced any evidence that its restrictions on speech were necessary to protect consumers and found that the prohibitions were much broader than necessary to accomplish the state?s claimed objectives. Public Citizen also challenged the rules? application to non-commercial speech, such as offers by lawyers to represent clients without a fee in civil rights cases. And in what amounted to another victory for free speech, the court construed the challenged amendments not to apply to nonprofit attorneys. ?The main beneficiaries of this decision are New York consumers,? Beck said. ?Truthful advertising promotes healthy competition between lawyers and allows the public to learn about their rights and available legal services.? READ the decision. http://www.citizen.org/documents/alexanderorder.pdf READ Public Citizen?s lawsuit and other materials in the case. http://www.citizen.org/litigation/forms/cases/CaseDetails.cfm?cID=358 READ more about this issue, visit the Consumer Law & Policy Blog, co-sponsored by Public Citizen?s Consumer Justice Project. http://pubcit.typepad.com/clpblog/advertising/index.html From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 18:05:44 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:05:44 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Bush's Martial Law Plan So Shocking Even Congress Denied Access Message-ID: <20070723180544.18749894@viola.tamara-b.org> [We are reluctant usually to distribute stuff from rense.com and, a bit less so, material from prisonplanet.com. Both are purveyors of the wildest cosnpiracy theories. However, in this case, Watson's major points have already been reported in other media. So you may not need your tinfoil hat while reading this one. We have already distributed a fair amount of material on Bush's latest Executive Orders, including their text released publicly on the White House website. Toward the end of this article we do get some typical Prison Planet Conspiracy Spin, which usually includes plans to round up the usual suspects into the concentration camps secretly built all over the country, One World Guvamint and Merging the USA, Mexico, and Canada. All done with the help of those black helicopters. -NY Transfer] sent by MichaelP (activ-l) Prison Planet - Jul 23, 2007 http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/july2007/230707martiallaw.htm Bush's Martial Law Plan Is So Shocking, Even Congress Can't See it Executive uber alles as member of Homeland Security Committee barred from viewing post-terror attack provisions by Paul Joseph Watson President Bush's post-terror attack martial law plan is so shocking that even sitting members of Congress and Homeland Security officials are barred from viewing it, another example of executive |ber alles and a chilling portent of what is to come as constant reminders of the inevitability of terror attacks reverberate. Congressman Peter DeFazio (D - OR) was asked by his constituents to see what was contained within the classified portion of the White House's plan for operating the government after a terrorist attack. Since DeFazio also sits on the Homeland Security Committee and has clearance to view classified material, the request would have appeared to be routine, but the Congressman was unceremoniously denied all access to view the documents, and the White House wouldn't even give an excuse as to why he was barred. "I just can't believe they're going to deny a member of Congress the right of reviewing how they plan to conduct the government of the United States after a significant terrorist attack," DeFazio told the Oregonian on Friday. "We're talking about the continuity of the government of the United States of America," DeFazio says. "I would think that would be relevant to any member of Congress, let alone a member of the Homeland Security Committee." "Maybe the people who think there's a conspiracy out there are right," DeFazio concluded. The article also quotes Norm Ornstein, a legal scholar who studies government continuity at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who told the paper he "cannot think of one good reason" to deny access to a member of Congress who serves on the Homeland Security Committee. "I find it inexplicable and probably reflective of the usual, knee-jerk overextension of executive power that we see from this White House," Ornstein said. The only plausible reason DeFazio was barred access to the documents is that the plans for a post-terror attack continuity of government scenario are so abhorrent that to reveal their true nature would cause a public outcry and lead to a major repeal of what is contained in the documents. What we already about Bush's recent spate of executive orders, and in particular PDD 51 , is bad enough - the provisions outline preparations for the implementation of open martial law in the event of a declared national emergency. New legislation signed on May 9, 2007, declares that in the event of a "catastrophic event", the President can take total control over the government and the country, bypassing all other levels of government at the state, federal, local, territorial and tribal levels, and thus ensuring total unprecedented dictatorial power. It is important to understand that, although these powers have been on the books for previous presidents, Bush is the first to openly brag of the fact that he will utilize them and officially become the supreme emperor of the United States in the aftermath of a catastrophe that the government itself has said will happen on innumerable occasions. According to columnist and author Jerome Corsi, the power grab assures that "The president can declare to the office of the presidency powers usually assumed by dictators to direct any and all government and business activities until the emergency is declared over." Also in May, it was reported that a high-level group of government and military officials has been quietly preparing an emergency survival program named "The Day After," which would effectively end civil liberties and implement a system of martial law in the event of a catastrophic attack on a U.S. city. Last year we also exposed the existence of a nationwide FEMA program which is training Pastors and other religious representatives to become secret police enforcers who teach their congregations to "obey the government" in preparation for a declaration of martial law, property and firearm seizures, and forced relocation. The documents that Congressman DeFazio was blocked from seeing likely interlock with both these programs and detail the overarching agenda to effectively nullify what's left of the U.S. Constitution and firmly ensconce George W. Bush as a supreme dictator. Only by putting enough pressure on the media and in turn the White House to be transparent about what the secret martial law provisions are can we lead an effort to repeal them before the next terror attack, whether real or manufactured, takes place. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 19:10:41 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:10:41 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Sheehan, 45 Others Arrested in Conyers' Office Impeachment Protest Message-ID: <20070723191041.05cfbcf6@viola.tamara-b.org> [It's not quite clear why Sheehan and her compatriots were sitting in at Conyers' office (since he is one of the few trying like hell to start impeachment proceedings), or if his office was the only one that would admit the protestors. Conyers, quite reasonably, explained he's still 3 votes short of being able to begin impeachment proceedings. Seems as if it would have been more sensible for Sheehan to sit in at Pelosi's office -- if possible. How the hell does Pelosi plan to end the war in Iraq with the gang of criminals now in charge of the White House? And Cindy? We don't care that you plan to run against Pelosi. -NY Transfer] AP via The Guardian - Jul 23, 2007 http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-6800038,00.html Monday July 23, 2007 11:16 PM WASHINGTON (AP) - Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan was arrested Monday at the Capitol for disorderly conduct, shortly after saying she would run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over the California Democrat's refusal to try to impeach President Bush. Sheehan was taken into custody inside Rep. John Conyers' office, where she had spent an hour imploring him to launch impeachment proceedings against Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Conyers, D-Mich., chairs the House Judiciary Committee, where any impeachment effort would have to begin. ``The Democrats will not hold this administration accountable, so we have to hold the Democrats accountable,'' Sheehan said outside of Conyers' office after the meeting. ``And I for one am going to step up to the plate and run against Nancy Pelosi.'' Sheehan and about 200 other protesters had walked to Conyers' office from Arlington National Cemetery. She said Conyers told her there weren't enough votes for impeachment to move forward on the issue. Forty-five of Sheehan's fellow protesters also were arrested. ``Impeachment is not a fringe movement, it is mandated in our Constitution. Nancy Pelosi had no authority to take it off the table,'' Sheehan told her group of orange-clad activists before they began their march from the national cemetery. Sheehan, whose 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed in Iraq, has been saying for two weeks that she would seek to oust Pelosi from office by running against her as an independent in her San Francisco district if Pelosi didn't change her mind by July 23 on trying to impeach Bush. Conyers introduced a bill last term calling on Congress to determine whether there are grounds for impeaching Bush. Pelosi has steadfastly dismissed any talk of impeachment, saying Democrats should focus their efforts on ending the war in Iraq. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Mon Jul 23 23:44:00 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 23:44:00 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Peak Tech? Message-ID: <20070723234400.14702719@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Mark Graffis (activ-l) Atlantic Free Press - Jul 23, 2007 http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/2024/81/ Peak Tech? by James Kunstler Go anywhere in America, among any class of people from the Nascar morons to the Ivy League and one expectation is pretty universal: that technology will only bring us more wonders and miracles, and it will certainly save-the-day where our energy problems are concerned. This would seem natural for people living in an age when a simple cassette SONY Walkman is superceded by an 80-gigabyte iPod in one generation. But what if this assumption is off? What if peak technology occurs roughly in the same wave as peak energy? Of course, another nearly universal expectation is that we will go through an orderly transition between the end of the oil fiesta and whatever comes next implying, naturally, that some new sovereign energy resource is out there in destiny's green room, getting prepped up, waiting to be sent on-stage. The confusion about this, induced by strenuous wishing, is such that most people expect the next energy resource to consist of technology itself. This has been the heart of my beef with the rosy future crowd. Energy and technology are not the same thing, not interchangeable or substitutable. If you run out of one (energy), you can't just plug in the other (technology). I certainly believe other energy resources exist besides oil and methane gas, but I maintain that we will be grossly disappointed by what they can do for us, given what we are currently running in society. Nor am I categorically against the idea of using these other things: solar, wind, bio-fuels, what-have-you. I can even be persuaded on nuclear with its many hazards, if that's the only way to keep the lights on. But all of these things will not preclude the extreme necessity to make severe changes in our manner of daily living and to do so rather quickly. Far from evolving triumphantly to yet-higher realms of technological nirvana, I'd expect a raw struggle to preserve much of the knowledge and applied technique that has already been acquired. I do happen to believe that the petroleum twilight will bring quite a bit of disorder to our society, which almost certainly means that the institutional context for research and development will suffer. Most particularly, I doubt that the big universities will be able to carry on in an energy-and-capital-starved future. Exactly how they might disintegrate is an open question. Last year, for example, I was shown the new bio-medical research "facility" at the University of Michigan, a building at least the size of a Cunard ocean liner, and wondered as I beheld it exactly how they were going to heat the goddam thing ten years down the line. But one might as well ask how the U might fund the paychecks of the building's occupants as Michigan's economy falls into an ever-larger crater. Such is the hubris-induced weakness of mind among those in charge of things that these mundane questions are not even asked. The same pretty much goes for the big corporations. Their world is going to change pretty rudely, too. Far from expecting them to take over our lives even more comprehensively than is the current case, I expect them to wobble, fall to their knees, and expire as the tonic of globalism vanishes down the drain of economic history. Just as most people expect technology to save-the-day for energy, the same people expect the world to keep becoming an ever-smaller place of more intricately co-wired parts. Not me. I expect the world to become a larger place. I expect the wiring to unravel in a contest over the world's remaining oil. I expect that the nations of the world will eventually retreat back into their own continental regions (while that retreat may be violent and messy). I expect our energy problems to limit any organization's ability to project power and influence whether it is a government or a corporation. I expect that anything now running at the giant scale will either have to downsize real fast or go out of business. Few of the rosy futurists foresee anything but ever-greater peaks of affluence among an ever-larger pool of players. I think they have been watching too many installments of "Richistan" on cable TV. My own notion is that capital will dry up quicker than rain on a Scottsdale patio as our energy predicament becomes apparent, since expectations of future growth (of economies and the capital representing them) are keyed to an assumption of unlimited energy resources. When the truth finally hits that there are real limits to the things of this world it will knock the capital markets on their asses. We will see large numbers of men wearing Rolex watches weep into crumpled certificates as the tranches of hallucinated wealth dissolve in the mists of their hopes and dreams. This means, at least, that investment in technology R and D on the grand scale will probably not meet our current expectations. In any case, it is getting pretty late in the day for us to just kick back and nurture fantasies about the future of technology while the prospect of an oil export shock resolves more vividly before us the first symptom of an industry that will shortly fly to pieces. Of course the very last thing we should be doing which everyone from the Nascar morons to the Ivy League "greenies" is doing is focus all effort on how to keep the American automobile fleet running by some magic means other than gasoline. I say, just as a mental jump-start, let's put at least some of that effort into getting the choo-choo trains running again but this is too silly for the boys at MIT or even the Pentagon. A few years ago, I went to the famous TED conference in Monterrey, where the mandarins of computer tech gather every year to hear talks about the neat things happening in the world beyond Silicon Valley. (I was part of the "entertainment.") By far the most popular presentation of the whole conference was the one on flying cars. Yeah, I know. It was straight out of a 1937 edition of Popular Science Magazine. But that's where their heads were at. All those twenty billion dollar heads, and that was what really lit their wicks. In case you wonder why I'm skeptical about where we're going in this country. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Jul 24 00:41:51 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 00:41:51 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Production Begins on the $100 Laptop Project Message-ID: <20070724004151.17e2c2a8@viola.tamara-b.org> [BBC is a bit behind the 8-ball here, but they've just caught up with the $100 laptop idea. This has been discussed by both Cubans and Venezuelans, and the project includes, naturally, a non-Windoze Open Source OS, and solar-powered batteries. Both these BBC stories are full of gee-whiz graphics and gizmos that require Javascript. Only the text is reproduced here. Though it reads more like an advertisement for the machine, it's the most complete description we've seen.-NY Transfer] BBC News - Jul 22, 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6908946.stm '$100 laptop' production begins By Jonathan Fildes Science and technology reporter Five years after the concept was first proposed, the so-called $100 laptop is poised to go into mass production. Hardware suppliers have been given the green light to ramp-up production of all of the components needed to build millions of the low-cost machines. Previously, the organisation behind the scheme said that it required orders for 3m laptops to make production viable. The first machines should be ready to put into the hands of children in developing countries in October 2007. "There's still some software to write, but this is a big step for us," Walter Bender, head of software development at One Laptop per Child (OLPC), told the BBC News website. The organisation has not said which countries have bought the first machines. Silencing critics Getting the $100 laptop to this stage has been a turbulent journey for the organisation and its founder Nicholas Negroponte. Since the idea was first put forward in 2002, the low-cost laptop has been both lauded and ridiculed. Intel chairman Craig Barret famously described it as a "$100 gadget" whilst Microsoft founder Bill Gates questioned its design, particularly the lack of hard drive and its "tiny screen". Other critics asked whether there was a need for a laptop in countries which, they said, had more pressing needs such as sanitation, water and health care. Professor Negroponte's response has always been the same: "It's an education project, not a laptop project." The view was shared by Kofi Annan, ex-secretary General of the UN. In 2005, he described the laptop as an "expression of global solidarity" that would "open up new fronts" for children's education. And as time passed, even some of the critics have changed their stance. Earlier this month, Intel, which manufactures what was considered a rival machine, the Classmate PC, joined forces with OLPC. Functional design The innovative design of the XO machine has also drawn praise from the technical community. Using open source software, OLPC have developed a stripped-down operating system which fits comfortably on the machine's 1GB of memory. "We made a set of trade-offs which may not be an office worker's needs but are more than adequate for what kids need for learning, exploring and having fun," said Professor Bender. The XO is built to cope with the harsh and remote conditions found in areas where it may be used, such as the deserts of Libya or the mountains of Peru. Professor Negroponte first proposed the laptop in 2002 For example, it has a rugged, waterproof case and is as energy efficient as possible. "The laptop needs an order of magnitude less power than a typical laptop," said Professor Bender. "That means you can power it by solar or human power." Governments that sign up for the scheme can purchase solar, foot-pump or pull-string powered chargers for the laptop. And because it may be used in villages without access to a classroom, it has also been designed to work outside. In particular, the green and white machines feature a sunlight-readable display. "For a lot of these children it's their only book and we want them to have a first class reading experience," said Professor Bender. Name drop The XO will be produced in Taiwan by Quanta, the world's largest laptop manufacturer. The final design will bring together more than 800 parts from multiple suppliers such as chip-maker AMD, which supplies the low-power processor at the heart of the machine. "This is the moment we have all been waiting for," Gustavo Arenas of AMD told the BBC News website. "We certainly believe very strongly in the mission and vision of OLPC so finally starting to see it come to fruition is not only gratifying, it is also rewarding." Test machines, on which the final design is based, are currently being put through their paces by OLPC. "We keep laptops in the oven at 50 degrees and they keep on running," said Professor Bender. Field testing is also being done in countries such as Nigeria and Brazil. However, the names of the governments that have purchased the first lots of machines have not been released. The XO currently costs $176 (#90) although the eventual aim is to sell the machines to governments for $100 (#50). *** BBC News - Jul 23, 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6679431.stm The One Laptop Per Child Project - BBC Report The One Laptop Per Child project is one step closer to releasing the completed machine to millions of schoolchildren in the developing world. But what makes the computer so unique? Internal Hardware To ensure the laptop is robust and can be maintained as easily as possible it omits all moving parts. It has no hard drive, CD or DVD drive. As it also packs a low power processor it has no cooling fans. Storage: Instead of a large hard drive the laptop has 1GB of flash memory, similar to that used in some digital cameras. The memory can be expanded using an SD memory card slot underneath the screen or by plugging in peripheral devices through the USB ports. Files can also be backed up on to a "school server" - a larger computer installed in a classroom - or via an online system provided by search giant Google. Processor: The chip, made by AMD, is much slower than most in today's PCs, operating at a speed of just 433Mhz. In comparison , some of today's high performance machines have multiple chips with speeds of up to 3GHz. The off-the-shelf processor is designed to be energy efficient. Unlike a standard chip, which remains active even when nothing changes on screen, the AMD processor is able to shut itself down, only waking when it is needed. It has an inbuilt graphics card. Wi-fi: To conserve as much battery power as possible the wi-fi adapter can operate even when the main processor is switched off or asleep. It is able to do this by having its own in-built low power chip. The adapter supports standard wireless protocols used in most homes and offices. Software The laptop has a bespoke Linux operating system (OS) developed by leading open source software company Red Hat. In contrast to sometimes costly proprietary software, open source software is free and allows users to access and alter the code. OLPC hopes some children will tinker with the code to develop new programs. In comparison to standard operating systems (OS), it is very small when compressed, taking up just 130MB of space. By comparison, Windows XP takes up around ten times that amount, requiring 1.5GB of hard drive space. Its user interface is known as Sugar. At the centre of the screen is a customised icon surrounded by a white circle known as the "doughnut". As different programs are opened icons appear in the doughnut. Different programs take up different amounts of space on the ring depending on their size and system requirements. Because of the machine's limited memory, when the doughnut is full, no more programs can be opened. It includes standard programs such as a web browser based on Firefox; a word processor able to handle most common document types, including Microsoft formats; a PDF reader and media player. In addition, it comes with games, a music creation tool and drawing programs. WI-FI One of the most recognisable features of the laptop is the dual wi-fi antennas, known affectionately as "rabbit ears". These boost the range of the wireless connection by between two-and three-times the normal range. A test done in the outback of Australia under ideal conditions showed that two laptops could communicate more than 2km (1.2 miles) apart. In reality, the range will be much shorter than this. Using standard wireless protocols, the laptops are automatically able to form a "mesh network" where each machine acts as both laptop and router, able to pass information between computers. If one laptop is switched on in range of an internet connection (usually at a local school) all other laptops on the network can share the access. Those computers furthest from the connection will have the lowest internet speeds. If there is no internet access, the laptops can still share data, video and information through the mesh. It does not have an Ethernet port for use with wired internet connections Screen The laptop has a low power dual-mode display, allowing children to toggle between colour and black-and-white screens. Designed for use in outdoor classrooms, the full-colour transmissive mode is similar to any other Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), but in ultra low-power black-and-white mode the screen is readable in direct sunlight. Many companies are interested in using the technology in standard laptop displays. The screen can also swivel around to convert the laptop into an e-book or a games console. It is also easily maintained. For example, a faulty backlight - a common complaint on aging laptops - can be replaced by undoing two screws. Power Supply A range of power supplies are available to countries buying the laptop. Two choices of rechargeable battery are offered with different chemistries. Both cost $10 (?5) to replace and hold their charge for at least four-times the amount of time as a normal laptop battery, according to OLPC. For areas with an electricity supply, the computer can be used with an 18W power adapter. In areas without access to the grid, various contraptions have been designed to plug directly into the laptop including a solar panel, a hand crank (similar to those used on wind-up radios), a foot pedal and a pull-string recharger, similar to a starter chord on a lawnmower. The pull-string gives 10 minutes of charge for every minute of pulling. Group recharging stations can also be bought for schools where multiple batteries can be hooked up to solar panels or car batteries. Keyboard The sealed green rubber keyboard is waterproof and its size is designed for a child's hands. As well as being offered in a standard QWERTY layout it has various configurations for different languages such as Thai, Arabic, Spanish, and Urdu. In addition, the keyboard does away with low-use keys such as Caps Lock. In their place are new buttons such as the "geek key" or "view source", which allows children to quickly see the underlying code used to write the program running on screen. A "grab" key allows children to pan and scroll around the screen while a slider key on the top left-hand-side of the keyboard allows users to quickly see who else is part of the mesh network, who they are working with on collaborative projects and which of their friends are online. Keys either side of the screen below the inbuilt speakers are used for gaming and reading e-books. A touchpad allows children to control the cursor and can be used as a drawing tablet using a stylus or the back of a pen. Plastic Case The hard-wearing green and white plastic case is designed to be as waterproof and dustproof as possible for children walking to and from school. When it is closed the wi-fi antennas lock the laptop and cover the only external openings, the data ports. The laptop has been dropped from 1.6m (5ft), with the antennas up, with no breakages. According to OLPC, the laptop keyboard has also been dunked in water for 10 minutes with no effect. The entire package is approximately half the weight and size of a standard laptop. Holes either side of the carry handle allow children to tie a scarf or string to the laptop so it can be carried over the shoulder. It also features a coloured XO on the back cover. There are 400 different colour combinations so that children can easily distinguish their laptop. In the future, the plastic case may be swapped for durable rubber. Video Camera Situated on the right hand side of the screen, the still and motion capture camera allows video chat across the mesh network and the internet. With a resolution of 640x480, the colour camera can also be used to take photographs or as a light meter for school projects. Data Ports Three USB ports will make it possible to connect a variety of peripherals including a mouse or larger keyboard. A microphone input and a line output will allow children to play music through external speakers and record sounds. All of the ports are covered by the wi-fi antennas when the laptop is closed, preventing water and dust getting inside. An SD memory card slot, underneath the screen can be used to expand the memory capacity or to load new software. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Jul 24 00:46:27 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 00:46:27 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] DeFazio Cringes from Impeachment Message-ID: <20070724004627.1827a29a@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by MichaelP (activ-l) - Jul 23, 2007 What's missing in this deFazio response is reference to what the Senate membership will do "tommorrow" this in contrast to what it does "today " And while he's correct in saying that impeachment can't succeed without the Senate, y'all may remember that with Nixon, the House agreed there was a case for impeachment, a case so strong on the facts demonstrating high crimes or misdemeanors that Nixon took the wise way out by resigning from office. That's a much more solid a precedent that what happened with Clinton - where the House agreed there was a case for impeachment in which the alleged high crimes and misdemeanors was based on the plaausibility of a blow-job. And there's no sign that there's any legislative reponse to the signing of one executive order after another whereby, which could be tested in the courts over the next decade; deFazio's desire to get on with "to make progress on other priorities, such as taking on the oil companies; reorienting our energy policies toward clean, renewable electricity and fuels, as well as conservation; reforming and funding the No Child Left Behind law; expanding access to health insurance and affordable health care; among many other issues you and I care about." won't do either him or us much good if deFazio is blocked from serving in the house, maybe put in a camp under Bush's current claims of authority. Where he addresses the need to send a message to future presidents, there is an even stronger need to send a message to current legislators. Indeed they have the power to restructure the feeling of the majority of Senators, Republicans among them. Certainly there can be no objection to censuring the executive by getting H.Res. 530 approved, but DeFazio doesn't address the notion of of conspiracy to deny civil liberties; it maybe doesn't matter to compliant legislators, but until the current legislators stop dithering, there can be no reliance on the ability of any non-complioant legislator to remain free even if only to dither. Certainly Stalin maintained a fully compliant legislature - Hitler persuaded the German legislature to disband itself Michael ++++++++++++++++++++ Begin forwarded message: From: Denzer/Field sent by MichaelP (activ-l) After Downing Street - Jul 23, 2007 http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/24660 [Latest BS Excuse from Congressman John Olver -- reads rather like deFazio's BS Excuse Only Impeachment, Removal or General Strike Can Stop Bush -M] This from Rep. John W. Olver: Dear Sally: Thank you for contacting me with your support for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and/or Vice President Richard B. Cheney. I appreciate learning your views. In 2002, I voted against the resolution to use military force against Iraq because I did not believe that President Bush presented ample evidence that Iraq posed a threat to our nation's security. It has now become clear that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction and that the Bush Administration manipulated intelligence to gain support for the war. During the 109th Congress, I cosponsored H.Res.635, a resolution that would have created a select committee to investigate the Administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment. H.Res.635 was not voted on during the 109th Congress. This Congress, Representative Dennis Kucinich has introduced H.Res.333 to impeach Vice President Cheney for high crimes and misdemeanors. H.Res.333 states that the Vice President purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress about a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in order to justify the use of the U.S. Armed Forces against Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests. While I feel the same outrage and distrust clearly felt by those who want to launch impeachment proceedings against the Vice President and President, I believe that the 67 Senate votes constitutionally required to remove either of them from office cannot be achieved in the 110th Congress. I want an end to the war in Iraq and a robust reassertion of Congress's co-equal authority in decision-making and ensuring compliance with federal law, and I believe that a significant change of U.S. policy can be achieved by repeatedly challenging the President legislatively on Iraq and other matters, even without a veto-proof majority. With growing bipartisan support for legislative efforts to draw down U.S. military forces in Iraq, there will be repeated opportunities to enact legislative reversals of President Bush's disastrous foreign policy. It is also critical that the 110th Congress spend time on other issues, like reforming immigration, improving education, expanding and improving health care coverage, curbing global warming and restoring and strengthening civil liberties. With close majority-minority ratios in both the House and the Senate, some bipartisanship is also probably necessary to address these challenges, and I support doing what is necessary to achieve successes in these areas. I have and will continue to support investigations to hold the Bush administration accountable for its conduct. I want many of President Bush's policies to be permanently reversed, and you can be assured that I will work to achieve that end in the shortest amount of time possible. Again, thank you for contacting me. Please continue to let me know your thoughts on matters of concern to you. Sincerely, John W. Olver *** http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/24358 Congressman John Olver Believes Bush Will Cancel 2008 Elections, Still Refuses to Support Impeaching Him or Cheney By Bob Feuer At 9 am, some twenty of the successful presenters of impeachment resolutions at their W. Mass. annual town meetings met at the Jones Library in Amherst, MA. We ratified our agenda and prepared ourselves for our 10 am meeting with Cong. John Olver. At about 10 am, the congressman came into the room with his aid, and Susie Patlove welcomed the congressman, laid out our agenda, and the congressman approved. We commenced with individual introductions and brief reports on the outcomes in each of our towns. Cong. Olver asked us to spare him a review of what he already knew and believed about the crimes of the Bush administration, and of the overwhelming majority of his district in favor of impeachment. When he aggrandized himself on his voting record, I took exception to 24 April 2007. When he asked what I was referring to, I challenged him to co-sponsor H. Res. 333; and he emphatically refused. Nonetheless, we informed him of the good that would come out of an impeachment, and gave intelligent and caring answers to all of the objections he might harbor. We had present a young U.S. soldier, a veteran of both the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, who directly asked the congressman what could we do to move him towards co-signing H. Res. 333. The congressman did not answer that direct question. He is deeply concerned whether we will actually have an election in Nov. '08, as he believes this administration will likely strike Iran from the air, declare a national emergency, and cancel the '08 elections. He sees ending the war as his primary goal, and he believes the brilliant Nancy Pelosi has a strategy more potent than impeachment. He thinks impeachment is a futile waste of legislative energy, will be harmful of democratic '08 victories, and further tighten the "gridlock" he has complained of for the past few decades. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Jul 24 00:51:31 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 00:51:31 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Breslin: Impeach Bush Now to Stop War, Lies, Deaths Message-ID: <20070724005131.2db51863@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by MichaelP (activ-l) NY Newsday - Jul 22, 2007 http://www.newsday.com/search/ny-nybres225303032jul22,0,1796819.story IMPEACH GEORGE BUSH TO STOP WAR LIES, DEATHS by Jimmy Breslin I am walking in Rosedale on this day early in the week while I wait for the funeral of Army soldier Le Ron Wilson, who died at age 18 in Iraq. He was 17 1/2 when he had his mother sign his enlistment papers at the Jamaica recruiting office. If she didn't, he told her, he would just wait for the months to his 18th birthday and go in anyway. He graduated from Thomas Edison High School at noon one day in May. He left right away for basic training. He came home in a box last weekend. He had a fast war. The war was there to take his life because George Bush started it with bold-faced lies. He got this lovely kid killed by lying. If Bush did this in Queens, he would be in court on Queens Boulevard on a murder charge. He did it in the White House, and it is appropriate, and mandatory for the good of the nation, that impeachment proceedings be started. You can't live with lies. You can't permit them to be passed on as if it is the thing to do. Yesterday, Bush didn't run the country for a couple of hours while he had a colonoscopy at the presidential retreat, Camp David. He came out of it all right. He should now take his good health and go home, quit a job he doesn't have a clue as to how to do. The other day, Bush said he couldn't understand why in the world would some people say that millions of Americans have no health insurance. "Why, all they have to do is go to the emergency room," he said. Said this with the smirk, the insolent smug, contemptuous way he speaks to citizens. People, particularly these politicians, these frightened beggars in suits, seem petrified about impeachment. It could wreck the country. Ridiculous. I've been around this business twice and we're all still here and no politician was even injured. Richard Nixon lied during a war and helped get some 58,500 Americans killed and many escaped by hanging onto helicopter skids. Nixon left peacefully. Mike Mansfield of Montana, the Democratic Senate majority leader, said on television that the Senate impeachment trial of Nixon would be televised and there would be no immunity. That meant Nixon would have to face the country under oath and if he lied he would go to prison. He knew he was finished as he heard this. Mansfield said no more. He got up and left. Barbara Walters, on the "Today" show, said, "He doesn't say very much, does he?" The second time the subject was Bill Clinton for illegal holding in the hallway. This time, we have dead bodies involved. Consider what is accomplished by the simple power of the word impeachment. If you read these broken-down news writers or terrified politicians claiming that an impeachment would leave the nation in pieces, don't give a moment to them. It opens with the appointing of an investigator to report to the House on evidence that calls for impeachment. He could bring witnesses forward. That would be all you'd need. Here in the impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon came John Dean. His history shows how far down the honesty and honor of this country has gone. Dean was the White House counsel. Richard Nixon, at his worst, never told him not to appear or to remain silent in front of the Congress. Dean went on and did his best to fill prisons. After that came Alexander Butterfield, a nobody. All he had to say was that the White House had a taping system that caught all the conversations in the White House. Any of them not on tape were erased by a participant. The same is desperately needed now. Curious, following the words, an investigator - the mind here sees George Mitchell and Warren Rudman, and you name me better - can slap a hand on the slitherers and sneaks who have kept us in war for five years and who use failing generals to beg for more time and more lives of our young. A final word in September? Two years more, the generals and Bush people say. Say impeachment and you'll get your troops home. As I am walking in Rosedale, on these streets sparkling with sun, I remember the places I have been in the cold rain for the deaths of our young in this war. Rosedale now, Washington Heights before, and the South Bronx, and Bay Shore and Hauppauge and too many other places around here. And in Washington we had this Bush, and it is implausible to have anyone who is this dumb running anything, smirking at his country. He sure doesn't mind copying those people. On his PBS television show the other night, Bill Moyers said he was amazed at Sara Taylor of the White House staff saying that she didn't have to talk to a congressional committee because George Bush had ordered her not to. "I took an oath to uphold the president," she said. That president had been in charge of a government that kidnapped, tortured, lied, intercepted mail and calls, all in the name of opposing people who are willing to kill themselves right in front of you. You have to get rid of a government like this. Ask anybody in Rosedale, where Le Ron Wilson wanted to live his young life. His grave speaks out that this is an impeachable offense. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Jul 24 00:56:03 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 00:56:03 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] U.S. Attorney in DC in tight spot Message-ID: <20070724005603.27c78610@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by MichaelP (activ-l) The Salt Lake Tribune - 07/23/2007 http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_6443592 U.S. Attorney in DC in tight spot A former Hatch aide, U.S. Attorney in DC is in a tight spot WASHINGTON -- For months, congressional investigators have been pursuing allegations that the Bush administration tried to influence cases handled by U.S. attorneys across the country in ways that would benefit the Republican Party. Now that investigation is near an impasse because the administration appears again to be telling one of those U.S. attorneys what to do. The prosecutor, Jeffrey A. Taylor, is the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Under federal law, Taylor's office is required to pursue cases in which persons are found to be in contempt of Congress. With lawmakers on Capitol Hill moving to hold past and present administration officials, including former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers, in contempt for failing to cooperate in the probe into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year, Taylor could soon become a central figure in the drama. But the White House and Justice Department are sending strong signals that they will bar Taylor -- or anyone else -- from prosecuting such a case. Despite the plain meaning of a federal statute, they believe it would be impermissible under the law, and violate the doctrine of separation of powers under the Constitution. The position is roiling congressional investigators planning their next step in the probe, which has hit a wall with the White House's refusal to turn over documents and make officials available for public questioning under oath. It is also leaving Taylor, 42, facing a test of his own independence from his bosses at the Justice Department. Taylor is a loyal Republican who has served as a top lawyer for both Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and former Attorney General John Ashcroft. He was originally appointed interim U.S. attorney by Gonzales under a law that was repealed by Congress this spring because it did not allow the Senate to approve his appointment. He was later nominated by Bush, although the Senate has yet to confirm him officially. Some legal experts believe Taylor might have to disqualify himself from participating in any investigation into the contempt charge because of his close ties to the administration. He once occupied a fifth-floor office at the Justice Department that was just a few doors away from that of former Gonzales counsel D. Kyle Sampson -- a principal figure in the prosecutor purge who later resigned. Taylor, a native of northern California, also is a career prosecutor who once worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in San Diego. Democratic friends and foes have called him reasonable and thoughtful. He sparked an internal Justice Department investigation this spring into whether former Gonzales aide Monica M. Goodling used a political litmus test to judge candidates for career prosecutor positions -- a potential violation of federal law. Taylor referred the matter to investigators after Goodling tried to hold up the application of a Howard University law graduate who worked in the civil rights division of the Environmental Protection Agency because she feared he was a "liberal Democrat." Taylor eventually hired the man. "We come from different political points of view, and we had healthy disagreements and debates and still do on. But I always found him to be a straight guy and a smart guy," said Steven M. Dettelbach, a former federal prosecutor and Taylor's roommate at Harvard Law School. "In a way, he is fairly well situated to be weighing in on this because he has had direct experience working in both of the two branches that are going to be at odds here," Dettelbach added. Taylor worked for two years as an aide to Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where among other things, he worked on the USA Patriot Act. The Justice Department this month first cast doubt on its readiness to pursue a contempt case against Miers or others. Its Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion saying that Miers did not have to appear before the House Judiciary Committee to answer questions about the U.S. attorney firings, even though she had been subpoenaed by the panel. The legal opinion cited the doctrine of executive privilege. The department went a step further Friday, circulating copies of a 1984 opinion issued by the Justice Department during the Reagan administration. According to the department, the opinion concluded that the statute under which Congress refers contempt charges to Justice officials "does not apply to executive officials who assert claims of executive privilege at the direction of the president." White House spokesman Tony Snow went further, telling reporters Friday that the U.S. attorney isn't required to prosecute in such circumstances and that President Bush would not allow it. "There are serious separation of powers issues here, and ... the legislative branch is not in a position to compel action on the part of the executive branch, other than in areas related to its legitimate oversight role," Snow said. "In circumstances like this, the constitutional prerogatives of the president make it futile and purely political for Congress to refer to a U.S. attorney a contempt citation." Whether Taylor agrees with that view of the law is unclear; he declined a request for an interview. Justice Department legal opinions, unless they are expressly disavowed, are considered official department policy. By holding this one up as good law, the department puts Taylor in a difficult spot. The 1984 opinion in question was issued during a battle over demands from Congress for Environmental Protection Agency documents concerning enforcement of hazardous-waste laws. The House found then-EPA administrator Anne Gorsuch Burford in contempt for refusing to turn over the materials, but the Justice Department refused to prosecute her in that case. Some legal experts questioned interpreting the law to mean that persons who cite executive privilege for failing to cooperate are exempt from prosecution. On its face, the law clearly instructs the appropriate U.S. attorney "to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action." The statute is "unambiguous," said Peter Shane, an Ohio State law professor and expert in executive privilege. Shane suggested that the Justice Department appoint a special counsel to evaluate the merits of the case and the legal arguments. "The administration could file legal briefs on behalf of the defense," he said, "and it would give the defendant an opportunity to raise executive privilege in defense of nonappearance." White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Friday that all this discussion was premature, and that the administration hoped that lawmakers would accept its offer to provide access to officials and documents -- but in private with no oaths or transcripts. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Jul 24 00:59:21 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 00:59:21 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] LA Times Edit'l: No to Nukes Message-ID: <20070724005921.1c3298d7@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Ed Pearl [I've never see a stronger editorial from a major newspaper. -ed] Los Angeles Times - Jul 23, 2007 http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-nuclear23jul23,0,378363.story?coll=la-opinion-center Lead Editorial No to nukes It's tempting to turn to nuclear plants to combat climate change, but alternatives are safer and cheaper. JAPAN SEES NUCLEAR POWER as a solution to global warming, but it's paying a price. Last week, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake caused dozens of problems at the world's biggest nuclear plant, leading to releases of radioactive elements into the air and ocean and an indefinite shutdown. Government and company officials initially downplayed the incident and stuck to the official line that the country's nuclear plants are earthquake-proof, but they gave way in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Japan has a sordid history of serious nuclear accidents or spills followed by cover-ups. It isn't alone. The U.S. government allows nuclear plants to operate under a level of secrecy usually reserved for the national security apparatus. Last year, for example, about nine gallons of highly enriched uranium spilled at a processing plant in Tennessee, forming a puddle a few feet from an elevator shaft. Had it dripped into the shaft, it might have formed a critical mass sufficient for a chain reaction, releasing enough radiation to kill or burn workers nearby. A report on the accident from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was hidden from the public, and only came to light because one of the commissioners wrote a memo on it that became part of the public record. The dream that nuclear power would turn atomic fission into a force for good rather than destruction unraveled with the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979 and the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. No U.S. utility has ordered a new nuclear plant since 1978 (that order was later canceled), and until recently it seemed none ever would. But rising natural gas prices and worries about global warming have put the nuclear industry back on track. Many respected academics and environmentalists argue that nuclear power must be part of any solution to climate change because nuclear power plants don't release greenhouse gases. They make a weak case. The enormous cost of building nuclear plants, the reluctance of investors to fund them, community opposition and an endless controversy over what to do with the waste ensure that ramping up the nuclear infrastructure will be a slow process - far too slow to make a difference on global warming. That's just as well, because nuclear power is extremely risky. What's more, there are cleaner, cheaper, faster alternatives that come with none of the risks. Glowing pains Modern nuclear plants are much safer than the Soviet-era monstrosity at Chernobyl. But accidents can and frequently do happen. The Union of Concerned Scientists cites 51 cases at 41 U.S. nuclear plants in which reactors have been shut down for more than a year as evidence of serious and widespread safety problems. Nuclear plants are also considered attractive terrorist targets, though that risk too has been reduced. Provisions in the 2005 energy bill required threat assessments at nuclear plants and background checks on workers. What hasn't improved much is the risk of spills or even meltdowns in the event of natural disasters such as earthquakes, making it mystifying why anyone would consider building reactors in seismically unstable places like Japan (or California, which has two, one at San Onofre and the other in Morro Bay). Weapons proliferation is an even more serious concern. The uranium used in nuclear reactors isn't concentrated enough for anything but a dirty bomb, but the same labs that enrich uranium for nuclear fuel can be used to create weapons-grade uranium. Thus any country, such as Iran, that pursues uranium enrichment for nuclear power might also be building a bomb factory. It would be more than a little hypocritical for the U.S. to expand its own nuclear power capacity while forbidding countries it doesn't like from doing the same. The risks increase when spent fuel is recycled. Five countries reprocess their spent nuclear fuel, and the Bush administration is pushing strongly to do the same in the U.S. Reprocessing involves separating plutonium from other materials to create new fuel. Plutonium is an excellent bomb material, and it's much easier to steal than enriched uranium. Spent fuel is so radioactive that it would burn a prospective thief to death, while plutonium could be carried out of a processing center in one's pocket. In Japan, 200 kilograms of plutonium from a waste recycling plant have gone missing; in Britain, 30 kilograms can't be accounted for. These have been officially dismissed as clerical errors, but the nuclear industry has never been noted for its truthfulness or transparency. The bomb dropped on Nagasaki contained six kilograms. Technology might be able to solve the recycling problem, but the question of what to do with the waste defies answers. Even the recycling process leaves behind highly radioactive waste that has to be disposed of. This isn't a temporary issue: Nuclear waste remains hazardous for tens of thousands of years. The only way to get rid of it is to put it in containers and bury it deep underground - and pray that geological shifts or excavations by future generations that have forgotten where it's buried don't unleash it on the surface. No country in the world has yet built a permanent underground waste repository, though Finland has come the closest. In the U.S., Congress has been struggling for decades to build a dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada but has been unable to overcome fierce local opposition. One can hardly blame the Nevadans. Not many people would want 70,000 metric tons of nuclear waste buried in their neighborhood or transported through it on the way to the dump. The result is that nuclear waste is stored on-site at the power plants, increasing the risk of leaks and the danger to plant workers. Eventually, we'll run out of space for it. Goin' fission? Given the drawbacks, it's surprising that anybody would seriously consider a nuclear renaissance. But interest is surging; the NRC expects applications for up to 28 new reactors in the next two years. Even California, which has a 31-year-old ban on construction of nuclear plants, is looking into it. Last month, the state Energy Commission held a hearing on nuclear power, and a group of Fresno businessmen plans a ballot measure to assess voter interest in rescinding the state's ban. Behind all this is a perception that nuclear power is needed to help fight climate change. But there's little chance that nuclear plants could be built quickly enough to make much difference. The existing 104 nuclear plants in the U.S., which supply roughly 20% of the nation's electricity, are old and nearing the end of their useful lives. Just to replace them would require building a new reactor every four or five months for the next 40 years. To significantly increase the nation's nuclear capacity would require far more. The average nuclear plant is estimated to cost about $4 billion. Because of the risks involved, there is scarce interest among investors in putting up the needed capital. Nor have tax incentives and subsidies been enough to lure them. In part, that's because the regulatory process for new plants is glacially slow. The newest nuclear plant in the U.S. opened in 1996, after having been ordered in 1970 - a 26-year gap. Though a carbon tax or carbon trading might someday make the economics of nuclear power more attractive, and the NRC has taken steps to speed its assessments, community opposition remains high, and it could still take more than a decade to get a plant built. Meanwhile, a 2006 study by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research found that for nuclear power to play a meaningful role in cutting greenhouse gas emissions, the world would need to build a new plant every one to two weeks until mid-century. Even if that were feasible, it would overwhelm the handful of companies that make specialized parts for nuclear plants, sending costs through the roof. The accelerating threat of global warming requires innovation and may demand risk-taking, but there are better options than nuclear power. A combination of energy-efficiency measures, renewable power like wind and solar, and decentralized power generators are already producing more energy worldwide than nuclear power plants. Their use is expanding more quickly, and the decentralized approach they represent is more attractive on several levels. One fast-growing technology allows commercial buildings or complexes, such as schools, hospitals, hotels or offices, to generate their own electricity and hot water with micro-turbines fueled by natural gas or even biofuel, much more efficiently than utilities can do it and with far lower emissions. The potential for wind power alone is nearly limitless and, according to a May report by research firm Standard & Poor's, it's cheaper to produce than nuclear power. Further, the amount of electricity that could be generated simply by making existing non-nuclear power plants more efficient is staggering. On average, coal plants operate at 30% efficiency worldwide, but newer plants operate at 46%. If the world average could be raised to 42%, it would save the same amount of carbon as building 800 nuclear plants. Nevertheless, the U.S. government spends more on nuclear power than it does on renewables and efficiency. Taxpayer subsidies to the nuclear industry amounted to $9 billion 2006, according to Doug Koplow, a researcher based in Cambridge, Mass., whose Earth Track consultancy monitors energy spending. Renewable power sources, including hydropower but not ethanol, got $6 billion, and $2 billion went toward conservation. That's out of whack. Some countries - notably France, which gets nearly 80% of its power from nuclear plants and has never had a major accident - have made nuclear energy work, but at a high cost. The state-owned French power monopoly is severely indebted, and although France recycles its waste, it is no closer than the U.S. to approving a permanent repository. Tax dollars are better spent on windmills than on cooling towers. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Jul 24 01:01:33 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 01:01:33 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Ecuador tries novel balance of oil and environment Message-ID: <20070724010133.39b21d15@viola.tamara-b.org> Reuters via Yahoo - Jul 22, 2007 http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070723/lf_nm/ecuador_oil_conservation_dc_1;_ylt=AunrdaIJtNiN4nb0LnFAHYaAsnsA Ecuador tries novel balance of oil and environment By Alonso Soto EL COCA, Ecuador (Reuters) - Under pressure to preserve the environment while at the same time ease the poverty of his people, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has come up with an unusual solution. Correa wants wealthy nations to pay Ecuador $350 million a year in exchange for leaving an estimated 1 billion barrels of oil under the ground in the pristine Yasuni rainforest. "I think oil has brought us more bad than good," said Correa during a recent visit to the bustling Amazonian oil town of El Coca. "We need to do something about it." Environmentalists around the world have celebrated the idea, apparently the first of its kind, as a way to preserve a delicate environment without creating an economic burden for the cash-strapped nation where six in ten people are poor. The move come amid growing popularity of "carbon offsetting," in which first-world residents concerned about climate change make donations to compensate for the environmental damage their consumer habits cause. But critics wonder if the politically unstable Ecuador, which relies on oil for nearly half of its export revenues, can keep this promise to the international community or whether authorities are trying to have their cake and eat it too. CLIMATE CHANGE The plan involves creating a trust fund for donations or accepting debt pardons from other countries or multilateral lenders like the International Monetary Fund. The $350 million would constitute about half the annual revenues Ecuador thinks it could make from extracting oil from the field, partly located inside the 2.4 million-acre (982,000-hectare) Yasuni National Park. Former energy minister Alberto Acosta has pointed out that all the oil in the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini field would only be enough for 12 days of global crude consumption. Government officials say Norway, a group of Italian lawmakers and even one undisclosed oil company have inquired about the plan. "It sounds ridiculous, but when you compare that money with Ecuador's foreign debt its actually a small quantity," said Matt Finer a scientist with U.S.-based environmental coalition Save America's Forests. "Rich nations have to chip in." The Yasuni is home to species ranging from endangered white-bellied spider monkeys to rare jaguars that live alongside indigenous groups that live isolated from the outside world and still hunt with spears and blowguns. Correa, a close ally of Venezuelan leftist President Hugo Chavez, has startled Wall Street by threatening not to pay Ecuador's $10.3 billion foreign debt. He is embroiled in a power struggle with Congress and opposition lawmakers who say he is scaring off oil investment. He also openly backs a $6 billion lawsuit filed by indigenous groups who accuse U.S. based Chevron of polluting a large swath of the Ecuadorean Amazon. DOUBTS ABOUND The proposal's detractors say Ecuador cannot ensure the park's sanctity given political turmoil that has at times halted oil operations and has made Correa the eighth president in 10 years. [One thing they are forgetting is that just postponing the burning of the oil is already a good thing (better technology in future years, and more need due to peak oil) versus burning it today. So how much would they pay for just not burning it this year? Maybe not 350m but it's worth far far more than zero to the world. Ergo, even if you were 100% it would be burned later, it would still be worth paying them _something_. And we're far far from 100% sure they will "end up reversing" -ED] "Correa is asking the international community to dive in to see if there is water in the pool," said Daniel Erikson, an analyst with the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank. Correa has said Ecuador will begin oil development next year if the government cannot secure the funds by then. Even if Ecuador can promise to halt the contamination of multinational oil behemoths, it may struggle to control an equally serious contamination threat to Yasuni -- migrants already setting up farms and shantytown dwellings there. [Farms are "contamination" comparable to massive oil pollution?! Earth to Reuters, come in Reuters! -Ed] But supporters of Correa's idea say the best way to limit the migration to the park is to ensure there are no oilfield jobs to draw them there. "Oh God, what I wouldn't do to halt oil development," said Alonso Jaramillo, chief of eight rangers that watch over the park, roughly the size of Vermont. "I shake every time I hear about new oil development in my park." From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Jul 24 01:03:37 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 01:03:37 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Delegates from 43 Nations Join Zapatistas in Chiapas Message-ID: <20070724010337.5c936b4a@viola.tamara-b.org> Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com Zapatista Members Converge in Mexico Mexico, Jul 23 (Prensa Latina) Over 3,000 delegates from 43 countries attend the Second Meeting of Zapatista Villages with the Peoples of the World, taking place in the Mexican state of Chiapas. A call to "foster struggles and rebellions throughout the world to fight capitalism" characterizes this extensive meeting, which until July 28, joins the quest for "a fairer and humane life." "We are convinced that the only way we have is unity, organization, uniting our struggles and exchanging experiences," commander Hortensia said to participants. Subcommander Marcos and other officials from the sixth commission of the Zapatista National Liberation Army led the first sessions in the locality of Oventic, which will continue in that of Morelia and are expected to conclude in that of La Realidad. Among the issues being examined are health, education, organization in communities, collective work, women?s struggle and its ways of organization and analysis of the process of autonomy. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Jul 24 01:31:49 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 01:31:49 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Shrink Testifies Psychotic Donor's Legacy to Tories was "Rational" Message-ID: <20070724013149.3ab28089@viola.tamara-b.org> [He left his money so the Tories could fight "Satanic monsters and dark forces" and was known to be delusional... but one shrink claims his will was "rational." Okaaay... - Very amusing. -NY Transfer] The Guardian - Jul 24, 2007 http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/story/0,,2133325,00.html Insane donor 'rational to give to Tories' By David Hencke Westminster correspondent A consultant psychiatrist yesterday argued that a "delusionary insane" Tory donor had been "rational and logical" to leave millions of pounds to the Conservatives to fight "satanic monsters" and "dark forces" around the world. Robert Howard, an expert in disputed wills by mentally ill people, was giving evidence at the high court on behalf of the Conservative party in a battle between Zoran Kostic, son of a multimillionaire businessman who disinherited him, and the Tories over an estate worth #10m. Both sides accept that Branislav Kostic, Zoran Kostic's father, had been "delusionary insane" since 1985 when he divorced, broke off relations with his son and sister and claimed there was an international conspiracy of more than 100 people masterminded by sexually perverted pharmaceutical company executives to destroy "freedom, democracy and human purity". The Conservatives contend that his decision to leave them his entire estate in 1989 was rational and based on his love of Britain and admiration for Mrs Thatcher. The son contends that he was of "unsound mind" when he wrote the last will disinheriting the son from the family fortune. Dr Howard argued that Mr Kostic's madness, unlike schizophrenia, did not " wax or wane" and after 1985 he would have had the capacity to write a will. Under cross-examination by Clare Montgomery QC, for Zoran Kostic, he accepted that one interpretation could be that his father's correspondence offering money to the Tories came from his delusions about "satanic monsters" rather than support for Tory values and philosophy. The case continues. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Jul 24 01:33:14 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 01:33:14 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Ethical shopping: just another way of showing how rich you are Message-ID: <20070724013314.3d689880@viola.tamara-b.org> The Guardian - Jul 24, 2007 http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2133110,00.html Ethical shopping is just another way of showing how rich you are The middle classes congratulate themselves on going green, then carry on buying and flying as much as before By George Monbiot It wasn't meant to happen like this. The climate scientists told us that our winters would become wetter and our summers drier. So I can't claim that these floods were caused by climate change, or are even consistent with the models. But, like the ghost of Christmas yet to come, they offer us a glimpse of the possible winter world that we will inhabit if we don't sort ourselves out. With rising sea levels and more winter rain - and remember that when the trees are dormant and the soils saturated, there are fewer places for the rain to go - all it will take is a freshwater flood to coincide with a high spring tide and we have a formula for full-blown disaster. We have now seen how localised floods can wipe out essential services and overwhelm emergency workers. But this month's events don't even register beside some of the predictions circulating in learned journals. Our primary political struggle must be to prevent the breakup of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. The only question now worth asking about climate change is how. Dozens of new books seem to provide an answer: we can save the world by embracing "better, greener lifestyles". Last week, for instance, the Guardian published an extract from A Slice of Organic Life, the book by Sheherazade Goldsmith - married to the very rich environmentalist Zac - in which she teaches us "to live within nature's limits". It's easy. Just make your own bread, butter, cheese, jam, chutneys and pickles, keep a milking cow, a few pigs, goats, geese, ducks, chickens, beehives, gardens and orchards. Well, what are you waiting for? Her book contains plenty of useful advice, and she comes across as modest, sincere and well-informed. But of lobbying for political change, there is not a word. You can save the planet from your own kitchen - if you have endless time and plenty of land. When I was reading it on the train, another passenger asked me if he could take a look. He flicked through it for a moment, and then summed up the problem in seven words: "This is for people who don't work." The media's obsession with beauty, wealth and fame blights every issue it touches, but none more so than green politics. There is an inherent conflict between the aspirational lifestyle journalism that makes readers feel better about themselves and sells country kitchens, and the central demand of environmentalism - that we should consume less. "None of these changes represents a sacrifice," Goldsmith tells us. "Being more conscientious isn't about giving up things." But it is if, like her, you own more than one home when others have none. Uncomfortable as this is for both the media and its advertisers, giving things up is an essential component of going green. A section on ethical shopping in Goldsmith's book advises us to buy organic, buy seasonal, buy local, buy sustainable, buy recycled. But it says nothing about buying less. Green consumerism is becoming a pox on the planet. If it merely swapped the damaging goods we buy for less damaging ones, I would champion it. But two parallel markets are developing - one for unethical products and one for ethical products, and the expansion of the second does little to hinder the growth of the first. I am now drowning in a tide of ecojunk. Over the past six months, our coat pegs have become clogged with organic cotton bags, which - filled with packets of ginseng tea and jojoba oil bath salts - are now the obligatory gift at every environmental event. I have several lifetimes' supply of ballpoint pens made with recycled paper and about half a dozen miniature solar chargers for gadgets that I do not possess. Last week the Telegraph told its readers not to abandon the fight to save the planet. "There is still hope, and the middle classes, with their composters and eco-gadgets, will be leading the way." It made some helpful suggestions, such as a "hydrogen-powered model racing car", which, for #74.99, comes with a solar panel, an electrolyser and a fuel cell. God knows what rare metals and energy-intensive processes were used to manufacture it. In the name of environmental consciousness, we have simply created new opportunities for surplus capital. Ethical shopping is in danger of becoming another signifier of social status. I have met people who have bought solar panels and wind turbines before they have insulated their lofts, partly because they love gadgets but partly, I suspect, because everyone can then see how conscientious and how rich they are. We are often told that buying such products encourages us to think more widely about environmental challenges, but it is just as likely to be depoliticising. Green consumerism is another form of atomisation - a substitute for collective action. No political challenge can be met by shopping. The middle classes rebrand their lives, congratulate themselves on going green, and carry on buying and flying as much as before. It is easy to picture a situation in which the whole world religiously buys green products and its carbon emissions continue to soar. As many environmentalists argue, it is true that most people find aspirational green living more attractive than dour puritanism. But it can also be alienating. I have met plenty of farm labourers and tenants who are desperate to start a farm of their own but have been excluded by what they call "horsiculture": small parcels of agricultural land that are being bought up for pony paddocks and hobby farms. In places such as Surrey and the New Forest, farmland is now fetching up to #30,000 an acre as City bonuses are used to buy organic lifestyles. When the new owners dress up as milkmaids and then tell the excluded how to make butter, they run the risk of turning environmentalism into the whim of the elite. Challenge the new green consumerism and you become a prig and a party pooper, the spectre at the feast. Against the shiny new world of organic aspirations you are forced to raise drab and boringly equitable restraints: carbon rationing, contraction and convergence, tougher building regulations, coach lanes on motorways. No colour supplement will carry an article about that. No rock star could live comfortably within his carbon ration. But these measures, and the long hard political battle that is needed to bring them about, are unfortunately required to prevent the catastrophe that the recent floods presage - rather than merely playing at being green. Only when these measures have been applied does green consumerism become a substitute for current spending, rather than a supplement to it. They are harder to sell, not least because they cannot be bought from mail order catalogues. Hard political choices will have to be made, and the economic elite and its spending habits must be challenged, rather than groomed and flattered. The multimillionaires who have embraced the green agenda might suddenly discover another urgent cause. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Jul 24 01:36:04 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 01:36:04 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Feingold's "Censure" Plan: Another Cynical Evasion of Impeachment Message-ID: <20070724013604.1df41aff@viola.tamara-b.org> World Socialist Web Site - Jul 24, 2007 http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jul2007/cens-j24.shtml Democrats? ?censure? plan: another cynical diversion of fight against war and reaction By Bill Van Auken Senator Russell Feingold (Democrat, Wisconsin) announced on Sunday that he will introduce resolutions in the US Senate seeking to ?censure? President Bush for his conduct of the Iraq war as well as his violations of the US Constitution and both US and international law, including his administration?s illegal domestic spying program and use of torture. Vice President Dick Cheney and perhaps other administration officials would be named in the censure bills. In a statement Sunday, Feingold announced that he plans to present two resolutions ?condemning the President, Vice President and other administration officials for misconduct relating to the war in Iraq and for their repeated assaults on the rule of law.? ?Censure is about holding the administration accountable,? Feingold said. ?Congress needs to formally condemn the President and members of the administration for misconduct before and during the Iraq war, and for undermining the rule of law at home. Censure is not a cure for the devastating toll this administration?s actions have taken on this country. But when future generations look back at the terrible misconduct of this administration, they need to see that a co-equal branch of government stood up and held to account those who violated the principles on which this nation was founded.? The Wisconsin senator said that the first resolution would denounce Bush for ?overstating the case? about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and ?falsely implying a relationship with al Qaeda and links to 9/11.? It would also indict the administration for failing to successfully wage its illegal war by neglecting to plan for the ?civil conflict and humanitarian problems? that followed the March 2003 invasion, as well as by ?over-stretching the Army, Marine Corps and Guard with prolonged deployments.? The second resolution on the rule of law would cover the illegal domestic spying program by the National Security Agency, the use of torture, the unlawful detentions at Guant?namo and the stonewalling of Congress on the politically motivated firing of US attorneys. Feingold acknowledged that he was reacting to increasing popular demands that ?the President and his administration be held accountable for their misconduct,? while admitting that ?censure is a relatively modest response.? Indeed, a recent poll by the American Research Group (ARG) showed that a clear majority?54 percent?is in favor of impeaching Cheney, while indicating that the American public is split almost evenly on the impeachment of Bush. A Newsweek poll conducted in October 2006 found that 52 percent of respondents, again a majority, believed that impeachment should be a high priority. (Among Democrats, the ARG poll showed 69 percent backing Bush?s impeachment and 76 percent Cheney?s.) The obvious question is: Given ample constitutional grounds together with this mass popular support for bringing impeachment proceedings against the president and vice-president, why is Feingold, supposedly among the most liberal Democrats in the US Senate, pushing for only a motion of censure, a measure that would have no legal implications and would do nothing to stop the administration from continuing its criminal actions? In an interview on NBC television?s ?Meet the Press? on Sunday, Feingold explicitly acknowledged that ?there?s a lot of sentiment in the country...for actually impeaching the president and the vice president,? adding that he himself thinks that ?they have committed impeachable offenses.? The senator declared that his ?modest course? was aimed at ?not tying up the Senate and the House with an impeachment trial, but simply passing resolutions that make sure that the historical record shows the way that they have weakened our country, weakened our country militarily and against al Qaeda, and weakened our country?s fundamental document, the Constitution.? He described his proposal as ?a reasonable course? that ?does not get in the way or our normal work.? Feingold?s attempt to introduce a similar bill in the spring of 2006, censuring Bush over the warrantless NSA spying program, garnered the support of just three other Senate Democrats and got a cold shoulder from the Democratic leadership. At the time, Feingold described his fellow Democrats as ?cowering? before the administration. Despite all of the Capitol Hill theatrics over supposed ?antiwar? resolutions, little has changed in that regard. This time around, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada lost no time in making his opposition to censuring Bush, Cheney & Co. clear. Appearing on the CBS morning news talk show ?Face the Nation? the same day as Feingold?s announcement, Reid said that while he understood the ?frustration? with the administration, the Senate had to remain focused on drafting bills to fund the Pentagon and pay for ?homeland security.? ?We have a lot of work to do,? said Reid. ?The president already has the mark of the American people?he?s the worst president we?ve ever had. I don?t think we need a censure resolution in the Senate to prove that.? Both Feingold and Reid express great concern about not interfering with the ?work? of the Senate, or ?tying up? Congress with the submission of formal charges against the Bush administration. What is this all-important ?work? that cannot brook interference? In essence, it has consisted of voting for funding to continue the slaughter in Iraq?$100 billion last May?while posturing to the growing majority of the public opposed to this war with ?nonbinding resolutions,? etc. This performance is now being repeated with the Pentagon?s $650 billion fiscal 2008 spending bill, a sizeable portion of which will go to pay the $12 billion monthly cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The so-called ?antiwar? measures put forward by the Democrats?including the one sponsored by Feingold together with Reid?all include provisions for US troops remaining in Iraq for the foreseeable future for purposes, defined in Feingold?s measure, as ?counter-terrorism activities, the training of Iraqi security services, and the protection of essential US infrastructure,? presumably including American-controlled oil fields. Reid stressed that the bill that he and Feingold are promoting did not envision ?a precipitous withdrawal? and would ?still leave tens of thousands of troops in Iraq.? The frankest description of the Democrats? motives and concerns was put forward last week by Senator Jack Reed (Democrat, Rhode Island), who is one of the key sponsors of the principal resolution calling for a partial troop withdrawal. ?The longer we delay, the more public support erodes, and options to avoid a more chaotic redeployment disappear,? said Reed. ?The concern that I have is that by next spring, the American public will be so out of patience that there?s not going to be the same tolerance for a longer-term mission that there is now.? In other words, the goal of the Democratic leadership is not to end the US occupation, but to save it. It is quite methodically utilizing the rhetoric of opposition to the war along with various bits of political theater and legislative stunts in order to contain and divert the mass antiwar sentiment, while working to implement policies that will reorganize the US occupation of Iraq on a sustainable basis. Feingold?s censure proposal is part and parcel of this political charade. He claims that his purpose is to ?hold the administration accountable.? But, according to the US Constitution, the means of exacting such accountability for what the Wisconsin senator acknowledges are ?high crimes and misdemeanors? is initiating impeachment proceedings against the president and others responsible for these crimes, an action that requires a simple majority vote in the House of Representatives, where the Democrats hold sway. How does bringing such charges constitute some diversion from the ?work? of the Congress, a useless ?tying up? of the legislative body? After all, the American people have yet to receive any serious accounting for how they were dragged into a criminal and murderous war?presumably the principal indictment against Bush and Cheney. They have been lied to and subjected to intimidation, using the alleged threat of terrorism as a political club, over the illegal domestic spying operation and other sweeping attacks on democratic rights and international law. Is not a thorough investigation and presentation of formal charges over these matters of vital importance, both for holding Bush and his cohorts accountable, and for political and moral health of the entire body politic? Neither Feingold nor any leading figure in the Democratic leadership has any interest in utilizing the power in their hands in order to pursue real accountability. The Democrats came into office with their leaders saying from the outset that impeachment was?in the words of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi??off the table.? Supposed ?lefts? like Michigan Congressman John Conyers, who had talked up impeachment when the Democrats were in the minority, immediately swung into line. Once Conyers took the chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee, the key panel in deciding whether grounds for impeachment exist, he parroted Pelosi. The truth is that the Democrats have no interest in laying out in detail the crimes of the Bush administration, because they are implicated in nearly every one of them, from supporting aggressive war to backing the wholesale assault on democratic rights in the name of a ?global war on terror.? The censure proposal is designed to skip lightly over the record of these crimes, issuing a rhetorical condemnation of Bush in which nothing is revealed and no one is held accountable. This bankrupt measure received enthusiastic support from the Nation magazine, the most representative publication of that layer of the so-called left that specializes in promoting illusions in the Democratic Party. In a piece heaping praise on Feingold?s proposal, Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote: ?While Feingold believes that Bush and Cheney have committed what our Founding Fathers would have thought of as ?high crimes and misdemeanors,? at this time he does not believe it is in the nation?s best interest to put important issues confronting our country on the back burner to go through months of a divisive impeachment process. That is a view shared my many progressives.? What is the root of this concern of ?many progressives? that congressional Democrats carrying out their constitutional mandate to impeach a criminal president would prove too ?divisive?? Clearly, the Republican right has never exhibited any such compunction about political divisiveness. It was willing to impeach Clinton?with little opposition from the Democrats?over a lie related to his private life, rather than lies that led to an illegal war that has claimed the lives of some 1 million Iraqis and more than 3,600 American troops. Whatever their tactical differences with the Bush White House?and such differences have grown increasingly bitter, including within the ranks of the Republicans themselves, the Democratic Party represents the same social interests as the Republicans, the top 1 percent that controls the immense bulk of society?s wealth. It likewise defends Washington?s drive for global domination, with all of its tragic and brutal implications for Iraq, the American people and the world as a whole. The real concern of the Democratic leadership is that a thorough-going examination of the crimes of the Bush administration would implicate not only its Democratic accomplices, but every section of the political establishment, including Congress, the media and corporate America. The Democrats and their ?left? apologists also fear that such a process could prove explosively ?divisive? in relation to the attitude of working people, the vast majority of the population, toward the government as a whole, potentially triggering a movement of opposition that could not be contained within the framework of the two-party system. From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Jul 24 01:40:14 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 01:40:14 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Bush's Exec Order to Seize Assets of Those who "Hinder" His Iraq Project Message-ID: <20070724014014.05186ab6@viola.tamara-b.org> World Socialist Web Site - Jul 24, 2007 http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jul2007/aset-j24.shtml Bush orders seizure of assets from those threatening Iraq ?stabilization efforts? By Joe Kay In an extremely broad executive order issued on July 17, President Bush authorized the Treasury Department to freeze the property of anyone determined to be hindering US actions in Iraq and the stability of the US-backed regime in Baghdad. The wording is vague enough to encompass not only those resisting the occupation directly, but also US citizens involved in antiwar activity. The executive order, issued under the headline, ?Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq,? cites powers granted to the President under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA). That act was originally intended to regulate the power of the US president to declare trade embargos on other countries. Beginning with the Clinton administration, powers under IEEPA have been expanded to include blocking financial assets of individuals targeted by the US, including ?designated terrorists? and ?designated terrorist organizations.? The July 17 order is more broadly written than previous orders. It begins with the declaration that there is an ?unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people.? Following from this declaration, the order grants the government the authority to block ?all property and interests in property? of ?any person? determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, ?to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of (a) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or (b) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people.? The inclusion in this group of those who ?pose a significant risk of committing? acts of violence is particularly significant. It is left to the government to decide who poses such a risk. What is meant by ?economic reconstruction and political reform? is also ambiguous. ?Economic reconstruction? is no doubt meant to include, among other things, the determination by the US to push through a law opening up Iraqi oil fields to the exploitation of US companies. Also threatened with having their property frozen are all those who are determined ?to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.? In other words, it is not just those who commit or pose a risk of committing acts of violence that can have their assets frozen, but also anyone who is determined to have supported such a person in some way. This includes anyone who is found to be ?owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.? Who might fall under this extremely broad category? ?Goods or services in support of? a person accused of destabilizing Iraq could include everyone from the barber, the doctor, or the lawyer defending his client against the imposition of the order. Moreover, the term ?person? is defined to include any ?entity??that is, any ?partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization.? Therefore, any individual, party or organization, including an antiwar organization, that is determined either to pose a threat of carrying out an act of violence in Iraq, or is determined to be in one way or another ?supporting? another individual, party or organization that poses such a threat, could have their assets blocked. The order would also prohibit any individual under the jurisdiction of the US from donating funds to, or receiving funds from, any individual or organization that is subject to the order. Under the IEEPA statute, a person violating the order could be subject to up to 10 years in jail, and tens of thousands of dollars in fines. There has been very little comment or media focus on the order. When probed, however, the Bush administration has insisted that it is intended to cover a narrow range of individuals in Iraq. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said, ?What this is really aimed at is insurgents and those who come across the border? of Iraq. Picking up on this line, an AP story from July 17 said that the order is ?a new tool ... aimed at putting a financial squeeze on people who run networks that recruit and send would-be terrorists into Iraq.? This is a completely false presentation, however. First, the order is not limited to ?would-be terrorists? in Iraq and surrounding countries, but applies to anyone who is determined by the US government to be working to destabilize the US-backed puppet regime and oppose the occupation. Second, as Washington Post columnist Walter Pincus noted in a July 23 column, ?the text of the order, if interpreted broadly, could cast a far bigger net to include not just those who commit violent acts or pose the risk of doing so in Iraq, but also third parties?such as US citizens in this country?who knowingly or unknowingly aid or encourage such people.? Indeed, the only reference to US citizens in the order is intended to specifically deny any additional rights. It holds that for anyone ?who might have a constitutional presence in the United States ... prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual,? and that therefore no prior notice is required. The July 17 executive order is the latest in a series of orders intended to block financial assets as part of operations in Iraq. These are all based on a state of national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 on May 22, 2003. The IEEPA can be invoked only with the declaration of a national emergency under the National Emergency Act of 1976. The main function of order 13303, however, was to protect US contractors and oil companies working in Iraq. (See ?Bush grants permanent legal immunity to US corporations looting Iraqi oil?) This order was subsequently expanded. EO 13315 (August 28, 2003) was issued to allow the Secretary of the Treasury to seize the assets of former members of the Saddam Hussein regime and their family members. EO 13364 (November 29, 2004) expanded the scope of the declared national emergency to include ?the extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States? posed by any judicial processes against the Central Bank of Iraq. These orders are part of a broader attempt to target anyone providing ?material support? to alleged terrorists or Iraqi insurgents. A similar executive order passed shortly after September 11, 2001 applied very broadly to anyone determined by the president to be ?specially designated global terrorists? or to be supporting or ?otherwise associated? with terrorist individuals or organizations. In November 2006, a federal judge in Los Angeles struck down the order in a case brought by the Humanitarian Law Association and the Center for Constitutional Rights. The judge ruled that the order was unconstitutionally vague because it gives the president ?unfettered discretion? and because someone may be ?subject to designation under the President?s authority for any reason, including for ... associating with anyone listed? as a terrorist. The case is still under litigation and appeal. A similar power is included in the ?material support? statute, which dates back to 1994, but was broadened by a section of the USA Patriot Act. The law makes it a crime to provide ?material support? to organizations declared to be terrorist. Shane Kadidal, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights who represents plaintiffs challenging these provisions, told the WSWS that they give the president broad discretion not only to determine what organizations and individuals are covered, but also what defines ?material support.? ?A crime of association? has been created, Kadidal said, ?and all these statutes are worded very broadly.? The measures can criminalize such actions as providing humanitarian goods and services. Kadidal called attention to the section of the July 17 executive order that prohibits individuals from receiving funds from designated organizations. ?Obviously this has nothing to do with cutting off resources to the group in question,? he sad. ?It is an attempt to block free association.? From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Jul 24 03:37:35 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 03:37:35 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Some Right-wing Lunatic Fringe Konspiracy Kult Stuff Message-ID: <20070724033735.4d33ab61@viola.tamara-b.org> [This comes from one of the 9-11 Truth lists. Sigh. It's pretty typical of the ultra-right-wing conspiracy stuff. Goes all the way back to the old REX84 plots (remember when FEMA seemed a truly sinister organization, long before Katrina and Homeland Hysteria?) Funny thing is, the lunatic fringe paranoid fantasies and reality seem to be less different every day. For those who want more, just Google REX84. This dude Hal Turner hails from North Bergen, NJ, in Hudson County, where the largest bunch of counter-revolutionary gusano losers outside of Miami reside. Hence the reference to Fidel Castro and Cuba as some fantasy red dungeon in the Caribbean that only the gusanos can believe in. But as for the rest of it, it makes for some amusing, if paranoid, reading. But then with the Half-wit and the Shadow Pres in charge, who's to say for sure? --NY Transfer] sent to activ-l by CAMPAIGN Institute for Cooperation in Space, Vancouver CAMPAIGN: http://www.peaceinspace.org Attributed to Hal Turner http://www.halturnershow.com/PlanToUseUSTroopsAgainstAmericans.html "TOP SECRET" U.S MILITARY DOCUMENT DECLARES EXISTENCE OF "DOMESTIC INSURGENCY" INSIDE UNITED STATES Note: Please see Precis of Reported Classified Plan below in email. "TOP SECRET" U.S MILITARY DOCUMENT DECLARES EXISTENCE OF "DOMESTIC INSURGENCY" INSIDE UNITED STATES PLAN OUTLINES GOVERNMENT INTENT TO USE MILITARY FORCE AGAINST U.S. CITIZENS OVER POLITICAL ISSUES! DESCRIBES USING PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS, OUTRIGHT MILITARY FORCE AND MEDIA PROPAGANDA AGAINST U.S. CITIZENS By: Hal Turner North Bergen, NJ -- As a radio talk show host, I receive a whole slew of e-mail and regular mail about virtually every issue under the sun. Much of it gets deleted or thrown away. Some of it results in stories appearing on my web site or being discussed on my show. Every once in awhile, something akin to a bombshell arrives and yesterday, July 18, 2007 was one such day. I came into possession of portions of a U.S. military plan which was allegedly classified "Top Secret." This put me in a bind because without having a security clearance myself, having something which is Classified is unlawful. Reading such a document is also unlawful and revealing it to the public is definietly unlawful. So, I thought about it. I decided screw it, I'm going to read it. As I read the document, my blood ran cold. Chills ran up my spine. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. My gut started churning. *This document is an operational plan to use U.S. military troops against U.S. Citizens!* The plan says "*A perceived serious potential of dissident American groups rising up against constituted authority has been clearly identified by counter-intelligence agencies.*[Underlining mine] The plan goes on to say why people are clearly thinking of rising up and throwing-off our federal government by saying "*The stated cause for such an uprising appear to be growing dissatisfaction with the course and conduct of the war in Iraq, the chronic inability of Congress to deal with various pressing issues and the perception of widespread corruption and indifference to public needs."* Sounds accurate to me. In fact, it describes perfectly reasonable justification for the America people to utilize our original right of self-defense against such a government or for us to impose reform! Most stunning about the plan is that it talks about political reform and offers an unbelievably out-of-touch, completely un-American observation: "Reform may be necessary, but reform is a matter for the state ...." A matter for the state? We The People ARE the state. We The People decide on reform. For this U.S. military plan to assert "Reform may be necessary, but reform is a matter for the state" is like reading something out of the old Soviet Union! What planet are these people on? The truly chilling parts of this plan involve the use of *"Informant nets"*of Americans literally spying on their fellow citizens and *"Block Control"* where the plan calls for "*trusted resident reports on the activities of people in their neighborhoods."* Folks, this is what Fidel Castro does in Communist Cuba! As you read the details below, remember this: This plan has been drawn up by OUR military. The military WE hired, WE train, WE equip, WE feed, WE clothe, WE house. It is an OUTRAGE that anyone in our military would DARE to even create such plan, nevermind try to implement it! A Blunt warning to our Government and our Military: In our nation of 300 million people, there are at least 95 million lawful gun owners. Those 95 million guns owners lawfully possess 212 million firearms. Even if the government recalled ALL military members from around the entire world, they would have a force of only about two million. 95 million gun owners versus 2 million troops. I think we all know how this would turn out: the government would be slaughtered. In fact, if only ten percent of the 95 million gun owners had guts enough to fight, we would still outnumber the military almost 3:1. We The People of the United States aren't the least bit worried about government tanks and planes, those tools are useless in guerilla warfare. Want proof? Iraq! The U.S. government is getting its ass kicked over there. Government wouldn't last a week if they tried implenting this plan here. Government would do well to remember they exist at the whim and behest of the American people. Government in this land exists to serve us as we direct. The power government wields belongs to The People. We The People merely LEND part of our power to government and we have the absolute right to take that power back at any time we deem appropriate. In fact, the founding fathers made clear we can take it back in any MANNER we deem appropriate! That's why they gave us the Second Amendment! If the U.S. government or military dares attempt to implement this plan, they should expect to be killed. ----------------- PRECIS OF THE PLAN --------------------- Classification: Top Secret-Noforn as of 1 June 2007 Distribution Restriction: Distribution authorized to the DOD and DOD contractors only to maintain operations security. This determination was made on 1 June 2007. Other requests for this document must be referred to (redacted) Destruction Notice: Destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document. . This publication uses the term insurgent to describe those taking part in any activity designed to undermine or to overthrow the established authorities Counterinsurgency is those military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency (JP 1-02). It is an offensive approach involving all elements of national power; it can take place across the range of operations and spectrum of conflict In dealing with the local populace, the primary aims must be to: -Protect the population. -Establish local political institutions. -Reinforce local governments. -Eliminate insurgent capabilities. -Exploit information from local sources. An insurgency is organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through use of subversion and armed conflict (JP 1-02). It is a protracted politico-military struggle designed to weaken government control and legitimacy while increasing insurgent control. Political power is the central issue in an insurgency. An insurgent organization normally consists of four elements: Leadership. Combatants (main forces, regional forces, local forces). Cadre (local political leaders that are also called the militants). Mass base (the bulk of the membership). The support of the people, passive or active then, is the center of gravity. It must be gained in whatever proportion is necessary to sustain the insurgent movement (or, contrariwise, to defeat it). As in any political campaign, all levels of support are relative. Insurgent movements begin as "fire in the minds of men." Insurgent leaders commit themselves to building a new world. They construct the organization to carry through this desire. Generally, popular grievances become insurgent causes when interpreted and shaped by the insurgent leadership. The insurgency grows if the cadre that is local insurgent leaders and representatives can establish a link between the insurgent movement and the desire for solutions to grievances sought by the local population Insurgent leaders will exploit opportunities created by government security force actions. The behavior of security forces is critical. Lack of security force discipline leads to alienation, and security force abuse of the populace is a very effective insurgent recruiting tool. Consequently, specific insurgent tactical actions are often planned to frequently elicit overreaction from security force individuals and units. Insurgencies are dynamic political movements, resulting from real or perceived grievance or neglect that leads to alienation from an established government. A successful counterinsurgency will result in the neutralization by the state of the insurgency and its effort to form a counterstate. While many abortive insurgencies are defeated by military and police actions alone, if an insurgency has tapped into serious grievances and has mobilized a significant portion of the population, simply returning to the status quo may not be an option. Reform may be necessary, but reform is a matter for the state, using all of its human and material resources. Security forces are only one such resource. The response must be multifaceted and coordinated, yet states typically charge their security forces with "waging counterinsurgency." This the security forces cannot do alone. These imperatives are- - Facilitate establishment or reestablishment of a 'legitimate government'. - Counterinsurgency requires perseverance. - Foster popular support for the incumbent US government. - Prepare to perform functions and conduct operations that are outside normal scope of training. - Coordinate with US governmental departments and agencies, and with vital non-governmental, agencies. Urban operations. - Protection of government facilities. - Protection of infrastructure. 7 Protection of commercial enterprises vital to the HN economy. - Protection of cultural facilities. - Prevention of looting. - Military police functions. - Close interaction with civilians. - Assistance with reconstruction projects. - Securing the national borders. - Training or retraining a national military police and security force. Establishing and maintaining local government credibility. - Contributing local government is both tangible and psychological. Local security forces must reinforce and be integrated into the plan at every stage. - Facilitate and use information and intelligence obtained from local sources to gain access to the insurgent's economic and social base of support, order of battle, tactics, techniques, and procedures. Army forces help local pro-government police, paramilitary, and military forces perform counterinsurgency, area security, or local security operations. They advise and assist in finding, dispersing, capturing, and destroying the insurgent force. US forces may conduct offensive operations to disrupt and destroy insurgent combat formations. These operations prevent the insurgents from attacking government-controlled areas. There are many organizations and extensive resources available to aid counterinsurgent forces. Commanders should not overlook the aid these organizations may provide. All forces assigned an AO or function should determine which departments and agencies are assisting in that AO and coordinate actions so that there is no duplication of effort. Such departments, councils and agencies include- - National Security Council. - Department of Defense. - Department of State. - Department of Justice. - Department of the Treasury. - Department of Homeland Security. - Department of Agriculture. - Department of Commerce. - Central Intelligence Agency. - Department of Transportation Various governmental departments directly administer or support other governmental agencies. Examples of these US agencies are- - The US Coast Guard (under Department of Homeland Security). - The Federal Bureau of Investigation (under Department of Justice). - Immigration Customs Enforcement (under Department of Homeland Security). - Federal Communications Commission . The proper application of force is a critical component to any successful counterinsurgency operation. In a counterinsurgency, the center of gravity is public support. In order to defeat an insurgent force, US forces must be able to separate insurgents from the population. At the same time, US forces must conduct themselves in a manner that enables them to maintain popular domestic support. Excessive or indiscriminant use of force is likely to alienate the local populace, thereby increasing support for insurgent forces. Insufficient use of force results in increased risks to US forces and perceived weaknesses that can jeopardize the mission by emboldening insurgents and undermining domestic popular support. Achieving the appropriate balance requires a thorough understanding of the nature and causes of the insurgency, the end state, and the military's role in a counterinsurgency operation. Nevertheless, US forces always retain the right to use necessary and proportional force for individual and unit self-defense in response to a hostile act or demonstrated hostile intent. The media, print and broadcast (radio, television and the Internet), play a vital role in societies involved in a counterinsurgency. Members of the media have a significant influence and shaping impact on political direction, national security objectives, and policy and national will. The media is a factor in military operations. It is their right and obligation to report to their respective audiences on the use of military force. They demand logistic support and access to military operations while refusing to be controlled. Their desire for immediate footage and on-the-spot coverage of events, and the increasing contact with units and Soldiers (for example, with embedded reporters) require commanders and public affairs officers to provide guidance to leaders and Soldiers on media relations. However, military planners must provide and enforce ground rules to the media to ensure operations security. Public affairs offices plan for daily briefings and a special briefing after each significant event because the media affect and influence each potential target audience external and internal to the AO. Speaking with the media in a forward-deployed area is an opportunity to explain what our organizations and efforts have accomplished. Continuous PSYOP are mounted to- - Counter the effects of insurgent propaganda. - Relate controls to the security and well-being of the population. - Portray a favorable governmental image. .Control measures must- - Be authorized by national laws and regulations (counterparts should be trained not to improvise unauthorized measures). - Be tailored to fit the situation (apply the minimum force required to achieve the de-sired result). - Be supported by effective local intelligence. - Be instituted in as wide an area as possible to prevent bypass or evasion. - Be supported by good communications. - Be enforceable. - Be lifted as the need diminishes. - Be compatible, where possible, with local customs and traditions. - Establish and maintain credibility of local government. A control program may be developed in five phases: - Securing and defending the area internally and externally. - Organizing for law enforcement. - Executing cordon and search operations. - Screening and documenting the population (performing a detailed census). - Performing public administration, to include resource control. Support to the judiciary may be limited to providing security to the existing courts or may lead to more comprehensive actions to build local, regional, and national courts and the required support apparatus. To avoid overcrowding in police jails, the courts must have an efficient and timely magistrate capability, ideally co-located with police stations and police jails, to review cases for trial. Cordon and search is a technique used by military and police forces in both urban and rural environments. It is frequently used by counterinsurgency forces conducting a population and resource control mission against small centers of population or subdivisions of a larger community. To be effective, cordon and search operations must have sufficient forces to effectively cordon off and thoroughly search target areas, to include subsurface areas. PSYOP, civil affairs, and specialist interrogation teams should augment cordon and search orces to increase the effectiveness of operations. Consider the following when conducting cordon and search operations: Cordon and search operations may be conducted as follows: Disposition of troops should- - Facilitate visual contact between posts within the cordon. - Provide for adequate patrolling and immediate deployment of an effective re-serve force. Priority should be given to- - Sealing the administrative center of the community. - Occupying all critical facilities. - Detaining personnel in place. - Preserving and securing all records, files, and other archives. Key facilities include- - Administrative buildings. - Police stations. - News media facilities. - Post offices. - Communications centers. - Transportation offices and motor pools. - Prisons and other places of detention. - Schools. - Medical facilities. Search Techniques include- - Search teams of squad size organized in assault, support, and security elements. One target is assigned per team. - Room searches are conducted by two-person teams. - Room search teams are armed with pistols, assault weapons, and automatic weapons. - Providing security for search teams screening operations and facilities. Pre-search coordination includes- - Between control personnel and screening team leaders. - Study of layout plans. - Communications, that is, radio, whistle, and hand signals. - Disposition of suspects. - On-site security. - Guard entrances, exits (to include the roof), halls, corridors, and tunnels. - Assign contingency tasks for reserve. - Room searches conducted by two- or three-person teams. - Immobilize occupants with one team member. - Search room with other team member. - Search all occupants. When available, a third team member should be the re-corder. - Place documents in a numbered envelope and tag the associated individual with a corresponding number. SCREENING AND DOCUMENTING THE POPULATION Screening and documentation include following: - Systematic identification and registration. - Issuance of individual identification cards containing- A unique number. Picture of individual. Personal identification data. Fingerprints. An official stamp (use different colors for each administration region). Family group census cards, an official copy of which is retained at the local po-lice agency. These must include a picture and appropriate personal data. Frequent use of mobile and fixed checkpoints for inspection, identification, and reg-istration of documents. Preventing counterfeiting of identification and registration documents by laminat-ing and embossing. Programs to inform the population of the need for identification and registration. Covert surveillance is a collection effort with the responsibility fixed at the intelligence/security division or detective division of the police department. Covert techniques, ranging from application of sophisticated electronics systems to informants, should include- Informant nets. Reliability of informants should be verified. Protection of identity is a must. Block control. Dividing a community or populated area into zones where a trusted resident reports on the activities of the population. If the loyalty of block leaders is questionable, an informant net can be established to verify questionable areas. Units designated for counterinsurgency operations - 115th MIB, Schofield, HI - 704th MIB, Fort Made, MD, Collaboration with NSA - 513st MIB, Fort Gordon, GA in Collaboration with NSA - Arlington Hall Station, VA - Aberdeen Proving Ground (Maryland) - US Army Intelligence and Security Command - INSCOM- Huachuca ( Arizona ) - INTELLIGENCE THREAT and ANALYSIS CENTER ( Center Analysis for threat and Intelligence ) - 501st Military Intelligence Brigade EAC - 3rd Military Intelligence Battalion Exploitation Area ....The document continues, page after page, throughout almost nine-hundred pages. In those other pages, the document outlines "REX 84" "FEMA concentration camps" , already established, constructed and manned inside the United States, to be utilized to house "insurgents" who are rounded-up by government. Conclusions When I read the document, I knew that I could be criminally prosecuted for having it, prosecuted on a separate charge for reading it and prosecuted yet again for releasing information contained within it. I decided that the threat to Liberty posed by the document made it imperative that I take action and I have done so. Now, all of you know! I also realized that in order for the U.S. Government to prosecute me, the document would have to be authentic. They would have to admit the Document is authentic and actually Classified in order to bring any prosecution. Since such an admission would prove me right and be an ominous warning to all of you that real trouble is here, I suspect I am safe from any reprisals for the time being. It's a gamble with enormous consequences, but saving our Republic from a tyrannical government is worth my risk. It is clear to me that very serious things are on the horizon here in America. It will be up to us, citizen-patriots, to step up to defend our liberty. I am ready. Are you? Hal Turner http://www.HalTurnerShow.com _________________________________ Alfred Lambremont Webre, JD, MEd ICIS-Institute for Cooperation in Space 3339 West 41 Avenue Vancouver, B.C. V6N3E5 CANADA TEL: 604-733-8134 FAX: 604-733-8135 Email: alw at peaceinspace.com ICIS: http://www.peaceinspace.com CAMPAIGN: http://www.peaceinspace.org NUCLEAR FREE ZONE: http://peaceinspace.blogs.com/nuclear_free_zone/ 9/11 War Crimes Tribunal: http://peaceinspace.blogs.com/911/ From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Jul 24 03:39:43 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 03:39:43 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Joseph Lieberman's Address to Christians United for Israel Message-ID: <20070724033943.5f8045f8@viola.tamara-b.org> Sorry if this is a dupe of something already distrubuted... -NYTr Oy vey! sent by Tim Murphy (activ-l) [Remember, this guy was Al Gores vice presidential candidate in the 2000 election! -TM] Joe Lieberman's senate website http://lieberman.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=279110 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - July 16, 2007 Contact: Marshall Wittmann, 202-224-4041 Lieberman Address to Christians United for Israel Washington, D.C. - Senator Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) yesterday delivered the following remarks to the Christians United for Israel Conference: "Thank you for that kind introduction and that warm welcome. May I in turn greet you with the ancient words of welcome offered to pilgrims in Jerusalem - "Bruchim Habaim B'Shem Hashem" - blessed be those who come in the name of the Lord. That greeting is especially fitting for you because you have come to Washington not just as men or women, Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals. You are here as Christians United for Israel. You represent a powerful force of people of faith in America who have pledged to never forget thee, O Jerusalem. And I know, as a Christian friend likes to remind me, that there are a lot more Christian Zionists in America than Jewish Zionists. And, I know the support of Christian Zionists today is critical to Israel's security and strength, and to America's security and strength. So I am honored by your invitation to speak tonight, to thank you for what you are doing, to exhort you to continue to do more -- which is God's work, and to pray with you that you are successful. I begin by thanking your founder, Pastor John Hagee. I would describe Pastor Hagee with the words the Torah uses to describe Moses, he is an "Eesh Elo Kim," a man of God because those words fit him; and, like Moses he has become the leader of a mighty multitude in pursuit of and defense of Israel. You know his story - almost sixty years ago, a young John Hagee sat at his family's kitchen table in Channelview, Texas, heard the news about Israel's Declaration of Independence, and saw how moved his family was by it. Since then, he has been devoted to the defense of Israel, and to its vitality. He has done so because Israel's fight is his fight. Israel's values are his values. And Israel's hopes and dreams are his hopes and dreams. Pastor Hagee, I pray that God will bless you with all that you pray for, and I do so with great confidence because I know what the Lord said to Abraham in Genesis 12:3. If ever there was a man who will be blessed because he has blessed Israel, Pastor Hagee, it is you. And the same is true of all of you here tonight. You are a family of Americans who deeply believe that our nation and the nation of Israel share common origins, values, and bonds. You are a family of Americans who understand that today the same fanatics that shout death to America, also shout death to Israel. And you are a family that will not bend with the political winds because your support is rooted in your faith, which is steadfast, unwavering, and eternal. You reject the temptation of moral relativism. You understand that there is a difference between good and evil, between eternal and temporal, between Israel and other nations. Your values are rooted in the same history, ideals, and dreams that bind together Israel and America, and that form the foundation of these two great nations - both "faith-based initiatives." In a literal sense, Christians United for Israel was founded a little more than a year ago, in February 2006. But in a larger sense, it began more than 4,000 years ago with the first words God spoke to Abraham in Genesis 12:1: "Now get thee unto the land that I will show thee, and I will make thee a great nation." That was the covenantal promise God repeated to Isaac and Jacob and then to Moses, who, with God's help, delivered the children of Israel out of bondage to Mount Sinai where they received the Ten Commandments - their statement of national values and purpose - and then, 40 years later, brought them to the land that was promised to them, to the land of Israel. There, more than 3,000 years ago, King David entered Jerusalem and declared it to be the capital of Israel. He brought the Ark of the Covenant and the Ten Commandments to the City where his son, Solomon, built the Holy Temple to house them and to honor God's creation and God's law. Thus, in one place was established both the political capital of a people and the religious center of that people's faith. Almost 2,600 years ago, on a dark day in history, the Temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. The Jewish people went into a brief exile, returning 48 years later to rebuild it. It was during that time that Jesus of Nazareth preached, taught, and healed in Israel. But the Temple was to be destroyed once more, a little more than 1,930 years ago, by Titus. And again, most - though not all - Jews were forced to flee Jerusalem and Israel. For nearly 1,900 years, Jews in the Diaspora prayed every day that they be allowed to rejoin their brothers and sisters who had remained in the Promised Land and to reestablish a Jewish nation there. And countless Christians prayed those same prayers, particularly here in America. That collective yearning gave rise to a new political movement at the end of the 19th century - the modern Zionist movement. It was led by Theodor Herzl and a small band of allies - Christian and Jewish - throughout the world, who recognized the threat from the pervasive anti-Semitism that infected Europe and began the work to reestablish a Jewish homeland in Israel. Many people said the Zionists were naove dreamers, but as Herzl responded, "If you will it, it is no dream." And will it they did. And work for it they did. In 1948, their dream was realized with the birth of the modern State of Israel. This is the long odyssey that has brought us here tonight. By standing with Israel today, each of you has joined that journey and taken up the torch that was lit in God's promise to Abraham 4,000 years ago, and carrying it forward to spread that light. I believe that Israel's rebirth in 1948 was divinely inspired by God, but I know that it was realized by the men and women here on earth who worked so hard to make it happen. Israel will be sustained by the work of men and women like you here on Earth. And I know you know how truly American is your support of Israel. Long before the miracle of 1948, the Nation of Israel was kept alive in the hopes and prayers and hard work of Christian Americans. In fact, from the very earliest days of our own nation's history, there has been an inseparable link between the promise of America and the promise of Zion. When William Bradford stepped off of the Mayflower onto Plymouth Rock in 1620, his first words were from Jeremiah, "Come let us declare in Zion the word of God." The first American missionaries to the Middle East sailed from Boston in the fall of 1819 with the goal of restoring Palestine to Jewish sovereignty. These brave Christian Zionists and their followers were not peripheral figures on the fringes of American history. They were mainstream Christian Americans. In the first half of the 19th century, the proposition that the United States should actively assist the Jews in returning to Palestine was widely held. As you know, many of our nation's founding fathers were Christian Zionists. The president of the Continental Congress, Elias Boudinot, predicted that "the mighty power of God" would return the Jews "to their beloved land of Palestine." John Adams wrote in 1819, "I really wish to see the Jews again in Judea an independent nation." And in 1844, a distinguished Christian professor of Hebrew at New York University became a national leader in the ingathering of Zionists. Jewish statehood, he wrote, would benefit all of mankind, forming a "link of communication" between humanity and God. That distinguished professor, as you may know, happened to share a name with one of his distinguished descendants, who also happens to be a great Christian Zionist today. The name: George Bush. And, when the modern state of Israel declared its independence on May 15, 1948, it was officially recognized eleven minutes later by another great Christian Zionist, President Harry S. Truman for the United States of America. These bonds for that purpose explain why America and Israel have stood together and will continue to stand together. Americans and Israelis are the children of freedom, freedom based on our shared faith in God, as our Declaration of Independence makes clear. We share democratic ideals, a culture of economic opportunity, and our political pluralism. These are the values we cherish the principles that define not just who we are but who we hope to be. They are also, unfortunately, the values that are under attack today. Israel and the United States now confront a common enemy in the forces of radical Islam. For many years, Israelis have been on the front lines as targets of this extremist and perverse theology that will brazenly and unapologetically attack innocent humans, children of God. We say we are in a war against terrorism, but terrorism is only our enemies' methods, not their end. Radical Islam is a totalitarian theology every bit as hateful, violent and expansionist as the fascism and communism we fought and defeated in the last century. And we must unite again as we did then as Americans, regardless of party, faith, race, or nationality to defeat the evil that seeks to kill us and our families and destroy the civilized ideals that we cherish. You have come to Washington at a critical time for the future of our country. The war in Iraq is the defining issue for this Congress but the decisions we will make in the days, weeks, and months ahead about Iraq will have consequences that reach far beyond the terms of anyone now in office. It is my deeply held conviction those who crave for a hasty retreat from Iraq are not only wrong, they are dangerously wrong for the withdrawal they demand would be a moral and security catastrophe for the United States, for Iraq, and for the entire Middle East, including Israel. Let there be no doubt an American defeat in Iraq would be a victory for Al Qaeda and Iran... the two most threatening enemies America and Israel face in the world today The fact of the matter is, you cannot claim to be tough on terrorism while demanding that our military withdraw from Iraq, because it is the terrorists Al Qaeda that our military is fighting in Iraq. You cannot claim to be committed to defeating Al Qaeda, while demanding that we abandon the heart of the Middle East to Al Qaeda. And you cannot claim to be tough on Iran, while demanding the very thing that the mullahs in Teheran want most of all and why they are engaged in the cold blooded murder through proxies of our troops in Iraq the retreat of the American military from the Middle East in defeat, leaving a vacuum that Iran will rush to fill, and asserting its dominance over the entire region. My friends, as President Reagan once said, now is the time for choosing. If we stand united through the months ahead, if we stand firm against the terrorists who want to drive us to retreat, the war in Iraq can be won and the lives of millions of people can be saved. But if we surrender to the barbarism of suicide bombers and yield the Middle East to fanatics and killers, to Al Qaeda and Iran, then all that our men and women in uniform have fought, and died for, will be lost, we will be left a much less secure and free nation, and our Middle East allies including Israel will be endangered. Fortunately, you here tonight know that evil will not prevail if good people act. And I know you will not allow Iran and Al Qaeda to triumph over America and Israel. I also know that you are familiar with the Book of Esther. I am particularly fond of this story because its heroine is Esther, which in Hebrew is Hadassah. And Hadassah is the name of my beloved, my wife so it is special to me. The Book of Esther tells us about the cruel Persian leader who sought to exterminate the Jews. But, a Jewish woman named Queen Esther bravely stepped forward and convinced the king to save her people. Remember, when she first expressed her reluctance to advocate the cause of her people before the King, her uncle Mordechai said to her, "Think not with thy self that thou shalt escape in the king's house, more than all the Jews. For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then will relief arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether have not been brought to the king's house for such a time as this?" Dear friends, brothers and sisters in faith, you have heard Mordechai's call "for such a time as this." You are in this time like Joshua and Caleb in their time. Let me explain how I mean that you are like Joshua and Caleb, which grows out of this day in the Jewish religious calendar. This is the first day of the Hebrew month of Av. The celebration of the new month is usually festive, but this day begins a somber day period of reflection and ever mourning concluding in the fast day of Tisha B'av, the ninth day of Av, corresponding this year to July 24, which is the day on which the first and second Temples were destroyed. Jewish tradition teaches that another event occurred on the ninth day of Av that speaks to us today and instructs us how to avoid the destruction that occurred on Av ninth, and that the story told in chapter 13 of the Book of Numbers where Moses selects out leaders of the Israelites "men of distinction" to explore The Promised Land and report back, and all of them but Joshua, son of Nun and Caleb, son of Yephunneh, bring back a report that is cowardly because it lacks faith. After they acknowledged that the land they had seen was indeed "flowing with milk and honey," they described the land was populated by giants. As they were quoted in Numbers 13:33, "We appeared as grasshoppers to them, and that is how we appeared to ourselves." But Joshua and Caleb disagreed, "We can surely ascend and conquer the land, we can surely do it," because they trusted in the promise God had made to Israel. Of that group, only Joshua and Caleb made it to the Promised Land of Israel. Dear friends, you Christians United for Israel clearly follow in the footsteps of Joshua and Caleb. Your faith is strong, and so is your confidence. And so great will be your effect. I thank you and pray that God will bless you and all that you do." From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Jul 24 03:40:51 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 03:40:51 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Online Poll on UK Academic boycott of Israel Message-ID: <20070724034051.017beda6@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Tim Murphy (activ-l) - Jul 24, 2007 ALERT: Poll on UK boycott FORWARD THIS Vote on the issue of whether or not there should be an academic boycott of Israel: http://www.surveymk.com//s.aspx?sm=zrDgLYed7wn_2fe_2bcR2lC4Pw_3d_3d TinyURL http://tinyurl.com/yw2qzb From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Jul 24 03:43:09 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 03:43:09 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] Ethiopia blocks food to rebel controlled areas Message-ID: <20070724034309.02784edb@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Steven L. Robinson (activ-l) [Another US ally in the war on terror in action. -SR] The New York Times - Jul 22, 2007 http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070722/NEWS01/707220383/1002/NEWS01 Officials say Ethiopia is blocking food to rebels Thousands of people at risk of starvation By Jeffrey Gettleman Nairobi, Kenya - The Ethiopian government is blockading emergency food aid and choking off trade to large parts of a remote region in the eastern part of the country that is home to a rebel force, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of starvation, Western diplomats and humanitarian officials say. The Ethiopian military and its proxy militias have also been siphoning off millions of dollars in international food aid, and using a U.N. polio eradication program to funnel money to their fighters, according to humanitarian officials, former Ethiopian government administrators and a member of the Ethiopian parliament who defected to Germany last month to protest the government's actions. The blockade takes aim at the heart of the Ogaden region, a vast desert on the Somali border where the government is struggling against a growing rebellion and where government soldiers have been accused by human rights groups of widespread brutality. Humanitarian officials say the ban on aid convoys and commercial traffic, intended to squeeze the rebels and dry up their bases of support, has sent food prices skyrocketing and disrupted trade routes, preventing the nomads who live there from selling their livestock. Hundreds of thousands of people are now sealed off in a desiccated, unforgiving landscape that is difficult to survive in even in the best of times. "Food cannot get in," said Mohammed Diab, the director of the U.N. World Food Program in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government says the blockade covers only strategic locations, and is meant to prevent guns and other supplies from reaching the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the rebel force that the government considers a terrorist group. In April, the rebels killed more than 60 Ethiopian guards and Chinese workers at a Chinese-run oil field in the Ogaden. "This is not a government which punishes its people," said Nur Abdi Mohammed, a government spokesman. But Western diplomats have been urging Ethiopian officials to lift the blockade, arguing that the many people in the area are running out of time. "It's a starve-out-the-population strategy," said one Western humanitarian official, who did not want to be quoted by name because he feared reprisals against aid workers. "If something isn't done on the diplomatic front soon, we're going to have a government-caused famine on our hands." The blockade, which involves soldiers and military trucks cutting off the few roads into the central Ogaden, comes as Congress is increasingly concerned about Ethiopia's human rights record. Ethiopia is a close American ally and a key partner in America's counterterrorism efforts in the Horn of Africa, a region that has become a breeding ground for Islamic militants, many of whom have threatened to wage a holy war against Ethiopia. The country receives nearly half a billion dollars in American aid each year, but this week, a House subcommittee passed a bill that would put strict conditions on some of that aid and ban Ethiopian officials linked to rights abuses from entering the United States. The House also recently passed an amendment, sponsored by J. Randy Forbes, R-Va., that stripped Ethiopia of $3 million in assistance to "send a strong message that if they don't wake up and pay attention, more money will be cut," Forbes said. Ethiopia's decision on Friday to pardon 30 political prisoners who had been sentenced to life in prison could ease some criticism. But Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., is pushing ahead with measures to more closely scrutinize assistance to the Ethiopian military. According to human rights groups and firsthand accounts, government troops have gang raped women, burned down huts and killed civilians. U.S. officials in Ethiopia said they were trying to investigate the situation but that the Ogaden was too dangerous right now for a fact-finding mission. They said they have heard persistent reports of burned villages and that the blockade was putting the area on the cusp of a crisis. Villagers say that anyone who criticizes the government risks getting killed. According to Ogaden Online, a Canadian-based news service that covers the Ogaden through a network of reporters and contributors, some equipped with satellite phones, four young men who were videotaped by The New York Times at a community meeting in an Ogaden village in May were later tortured and executed. The claim could not be fully verified independently, but their identities may have been discovered by Ethiopian soldiers who had arrested three journalists for The Times in the Ogaden and confiscated their notebooks, cameras and computers. "The army is out of control," said Jemal Dirie Kalif, the member of parliament who defected. The blockade has been in place since early June, and thousands of people have already fled on foot and by camel. Two weeks ago, Abdullahi Mohammed, a 17-year-old student, walked from his village deep in the Ogaden to the nearest town with a bus station. He carried with him a few pieces of bread. He said that when he stopped to ask villagers in the Ogaden for food, they asked him for some instead. "They had nothing," he said. Though good rains this year have nourished the few crops in the area and provided a little cushion, "The most these people can last without facing serious problems is one month, maybe two," said David Throp, country director for Save the Children UK. Even if relief trucks are allowed in to all the critical areas, the food might not reach the people who need it. According to humanitarian workers and several former Ethiopian officials, including Kalif, food aid is embezzled in two stages. First, soldiers skim sacks of grain, tins of vegetable oil and bricks of high-energy biscuits from food warehouses to sell at local markets. "The cash is distributed among security officers and regional officers," a former government administrator from the Ogaden region said in a recent telephone interview on condition of anonymity because he still works with government officials. Then the remaining food is hauled out to rural areas where the soldiers divert part of it to local gunmen and informers as a reward for helping them fight the rebels. The former administrator said he also knew of specific cases in which army officers stole food from warehouses and gave it to the families of women their soldiers had raped, as compensation. Several Western humanitarian officials estimated that 20 percent to 30 percent of the donor countries' food aid to the Ogaden - aid that last year was valued at more than $70 million - routinely disappears this way. To cover their tracks, the soldiers and the government administrators who work with them tell the aid agencies that the food has spoiled, or has been stolen or hijacked by the rebels, humanitarian officials said. Relief workers in Ethiopia have known about these problems for several years, one humanitarian official said, and have tried to set up committees of local elders to oversee distribution. But that did not work either, and aid officials eventually concluded that as long as the majority of the food was getting through, they would not stop the shipments. Mohammed, the government spokesman, denied Ethiopian troops were pilfering or mishandling foreign aid. "We don't do that," he said. As the food crisis looms, Western diplomats are also concerned about a separate plan by the regional government in the Ogaden to divert a share of its own budget for development projects - like schools and farming - to the Ethiopian military. This seems to be part of the Ethiopian government's strategy to do whatever it takes to crush the rebels, who have deep popular support. The people of the Ogaden are mostly Somalis and ethnically distinct from the highland Ethiopians who have ruled the country for centuries, and the long-standing battle over the region has been steadily escalating this year. The country director of one Western aid agency, who recently returned from a visit there, said he saw two villages that had been burned to the ground and several schools that had been converted into military bases, with foxholes. Humanitarian officials say the military is building up militias and setting the stage for clan-based bloodshed. The rank and file of the Ogaden National Liberation Front tend to be members of the Ogaden clan, and so the government has turned to other clans to form militias. In the past few weeks, thousands of men have been armed. "Those Ethiopians are smart," Kalif said. "They know Somalis are more loyal to clans than anything else." Tactics like these, he said, drove him to defect on June 20 while attending a conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. He was affiliated with the ruling party, and had been representing an area in the eastern Ogaden for the past seven years. He described a scheme with a U.N. polio program, which was corroborated by two former administrators in the Ethiopian government and a Western humanitarian official, in which military commanders gave prized jobs as vaccinators to militia fighters, and in the end, much of the polio vaccine was never distributed. "Army commanders are using the polio money to pay their people, who don't pass out the vaccines, so the disease continues and the payments continue," said Kalif, 32. "It's the perfect system." U.N. officials in Geneva said they did not know whether that was happening, but that they would investigate. When asked how he knew about the polio scheme, Kalif said: "Everybody out there knows. They're just too scared to talk." "If I don't get asylum and they send me back to my country, I'm dead," he added. "But I was sick of being a parrot. I have no regrets." From nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com Tue Jul 24 03:45:51 2007 From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com (nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 03:45:51 -0400 Subject: [NYTr] AIPAC's Influence Allegedly Waning Message-ID: <20070724034551.28810d21@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Steven L. Robinson (activ-l) - Jul 24, 2007 Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - July 2007 http://www.wrmea.com/archives/July_2007/0707059.html AIPAC's Influence Continues to Wane By Allan C. Brownfeld The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) long has been considered one of Washington's most effective lobbying groups. On the surface, it may appear that its influence remains as strong as ever. At its annual Washington policy conference in March, 6,000 AIPAC members heard Vice President Dick Cheney warn that failure in Iraq would endanger Israel. Stressing that he stood before the crowd "as a strong supporter of Israel" and that "Israel has never had a better friend in the White House than George Bush," Cheney's address came at a time of swelling criticism of the Iraq war in the U.S. as a whole and from many quarters in the American Jewish community. Cheney's call on AIPAC to oppose withdrawal from Iraq overshadowed the meeting. Organizers had hoped the plenum would focus on the need for tough economic sanctions against Iran, without having the effort portrayed publicly as advocating military action against the regime in Tehran. But attempts to avoid such a perception suffered a blow when Congressional Quarterly reported on AIPAC's role in blocking a House proposal that would have required the Bush administration to obtain congressional approval before taking military action against Iran. Beneath the appearance of continuing power and influence, it is becoming increasingly clear that AIPAC does not in fact represent the views of the constituency in whose name it claims to speak, the American Jewish community. Rather than supporting AIPAC's embrace of the war in Iraq, a recent Gallup Poll placed the American Jewish community at the top of the list of "major" religious groups opposed to the war. The Reform movement-the largest synagogue denomination in the U.S.-has gone on record in opposition to the war. According to Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of Reform Judaism, his group's resolution fairly reflects the Jewish community's attitude toward the war. "It is not us that are out of step with American Jews," he said. AIPAC's role is coming under increasing scrutiny, spurred in part by the debate initiated by Professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt in their in-depth 2006 study of the Israel lobby, which originally appeared in the London Review of Books (and was reprinted in the "Other Voices" supplement to the May/June 2006 Washington Report). Mearsheimer and Walt argued, among other things, that AIPAC had encouraged the U.S. to adopt policies that were neither in the American national interest nor in Israel's long-term interest. "It is suddenly becoming possible to ask hard questions about America's relationship with Israel." Despite the widespread criticism which the two professors received from some in the organized Jewish community, the criticism and scrutiny of AIPAC's role has increased dramatically in recent months. Declared New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof: "There is no serious political debate among either Democrats or Republicans about our policy toward Israelis and Palestinians. And that silence harms America, Middle East peace prospects and Israel itself..Within Israel, you hear vitriolic debate in politics and the news media about the use of force and the occupation of Palestinian territories. Yet no major American candidate is willing today to be half as critical of hard-line Israeli government policies as, say, Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper." One reason for such silence, Kristof wrote, "is that American politicians have learned to muzzle themselves. In the run-up to the 2004 presidential primaries Howard Dean said he favored an 'even-handed role' for the U.S.-and was blasted as being hostile to Israel. Likewise, Barack Obama has been scolded for daring to say: 'Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people.' In contrast, Hillary Rodham Clinton has safely refused to show an inch of daylight between herself and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert." Writing in the April 12 New York Review of Books, George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and political activist, argued that the U.S. is doing Israel a disservice by allowing it to boycott the Hamas-Fatah Palestinian unity government and to turn down the Saudi Arabian peace initiative. But, he pointed out, there is no meaningful debate of such policies. "While other problem areas of the Middle East are freely discussed, criticism of our policies toward Israel is very muted indeed," Soros wrote. Pro-Israel activists, he added, have been "remarkably successful in suppressing criticism." Singling out AIPAC as a key source of the problem, Soros accused the lobby of pushing a hawkish agenda on Israeli-Palestinian issues. "AIPAC under its current leadership has clearly exceeded its mission," he maintained, "and far from guaranteeing Israel's existence, has endangered it." Noting that "I have a great deal of sympathy for my fellow Jews and a deep concern for the survival of Israel," Soros declared that he "cannot remain silent now when the pro-Israel lobby is one of the last unexposed redoubts of this dogmatic way of thinking...I believe that a much-needed self-examination of American policy in the Middle East has started in this country; but it can't make much headway as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the Democratic and Republican parties...I should like to emphasize that I do not subscribe to the myths propagated by enemies of Israel...Neither Israel's policies nor the critics of those policies should be held responsible for anti-Semitism. At the same time, I do believe that attitudes toward Israel are influenced by Israel's policies, and attitudes toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby's success in suppressing divergent views." In its March 17 issue, The Economist of London devoted a full page to a discussion of the "changing climate" facing AIPAC: "The Iraq debacle has produced a fierce backlash against pro-war hawks, of which AIPAC was certainly one. It has also encouraged serious people to ask awkward question s about America's alliance with Israel. And a growing number of people want to push against AIPAC..AIPAC's ace in the hole is the idea that it represents Jewish interests in a country that is generally philo-Semitic. But liberal Jewish groups retort that it represents only a sliver of Jewish opinion. A number of liberal groups have started to use their political muscle-groups such as the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Americans for Peace Now and the Israel Policy Forum. These groups scored a significant victory over AIPAC by persuading Congress to water down a particularly uncompromising bit of legislation, the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, which would have prevented any American contact with the Palestinian leadership...The growing activism of liberal Jewish groups underline a worrying fact for AIPAC: most Jews are fairly left-wing. Fully 77 percent of them think that the Iraq war was a mistake compared with 52 percent of all Americans..." Beyond this, The Economist declared, "An even greater threat to AIPAC comes from the general climate of opinion. It is suddenly becoming possible for serious people-politicians and policymakers as well as academics-to ask hard questions about America's relationship with Israel. Is America pursuing its own interests in the Middle East, or Israel's? Should America tie itself so closely to the Israeli government's policies or should it forge other alliances?...The biggest challenge facing AIPAC is how to deal with this changing climate. Its members have been admirably honest about their mission in life. They boast about passing more than a hundred bits of pro-Israel legislation a year. But they are too willing to close down debate with explosive charges of anti-Israel bias when people ask whether this is a good thing. America needs an open debate about its role in the Middle East-and AIPAC needs to take a positive role in that debate if it is to remain such a mighty force in American politics." Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski worries that America is seen in the Middle East as "acting increasingly on behalf of Israel." In his new book, Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower, he calls for "stricter lobbying laws" because groups such as AIPAC have too tight a hold on U.S. policy. It is Brzezinski's view that AIPAC has seriously distorted U.S. policy in the Middle East. Increasingly, more and more Jews feel alienated from Jewish organizations that supported both the Iraq war and Israel's war in Lebanon. "The virtually unqualified support of organized American Jewry for Israel's brutal actions...is not new but now no longer tolerable to me," Sara Roy, a scholar at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, writes in a new book, The War On Lebanon. "The Moderate Jewish Left" According to Dan Fleshler, an activist in the pro-Israel peace community, Middle East violence has helped awaken a large "universe" of liberal, politically active Jews. "Many of them are alienated from Israel and want nothing to do with it," he says. "Maybe the most important thing to them is the Sierra Club. They're cultural Jews, they've never been involved with Israel per se." Their passivity has allowed right-wing Zionists who care more about the issue to affect policy, Fleshler explains, adding that the challenge to an alternative lobby is figuring out how to capture "the moderate Jewish left" on Israel issues. This past March, while thousands of AIPAC delegates traveled to Capitol Hill to advocate for tough sanctions on Iran and no negotiations with the Palestinian Authority until it renounces terror and recognizes Israel, two other Jewish groups were urging the opposite. Americans for Peace Now called on the Bush administration to change course and adopt a policy of "limited, constructive engagement" with Tehran. In a statement, the group recommended that the U.S. develop "a basket of meaningful diplomatic and economic carrots and sticks sufficient to persuade Iran to halt further development of its nuclear program." Another group, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, urged its supporters to call their senators and tell them not to sign a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, sponsored by Senators