From nytr at blythe-systems.com Mon Dec 10 07:23:46 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 07:23:46 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Fidel Castro on Antonio Maceo: The Bronze Titan Message-ID: <20071210072346.6eca2733@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) -Dec 10, 2006 6:06 a.m. http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Reflections by the Commander in Chief Antonio Maceo: The Bronze Titan by Fidel Castro Ruz I am indebted to him. Yesterday [December 7th] marked another anniversary of his physical death. There are over forty versions of how it occurred, but all concur on several details that are of great interest. Maceo was in the company of young Francisco G?mez Toro, who had entered Cuba through the west of Pinar del Rio, as part of the expedition headed by General Rius Rivera. Previously wounded in one arm, Panchito travelled next to Maceo from one shore of the Mariel Bay to the other. With them were 17 brave officers from his general staff, a number of marines and only one escort. That day, the 7th, in the camp they had improvised in the vicinity of Punta Brava, Maceo and his officers heard the account of Mir? Argenter, author of "War Chronicles," on the events of the combat of Coliseo, where the invading column had defeated General Mart?nez Campos' troops. For several days now, Maceo had been suffering a high epidemic fever and pains as a result of his wounds. At around 3 in the afternoon, heavy gunfire was heard some 200 kilometres away from the camp located to the west of Ciudad de La Habana, the capital of the Spanish colony. Maceo is angered by the surprise attack, as he had ordered constant exploratory efforts, which was the customary practice among his expert troops. He asks for a bugler in order to give new orders, but none was available at that moment. He mounts his horse quickly and rides towards the enemy. He orders that an opening be made on the wire fence standing between him and the attackers. Noting the enemy's apparent retreat, he exclaims "things are looking up," seconds before a bullet severs his carotid artery. Having heard the news, Panchito G?mez Toro arrives at the camp, resolved to die next to Maceo's fallen body. He attempts to commit suicide when he finds himself surrounded and is about to be taken prisoner. Before this happens, he writes a very short and moving farewell note to his family. The small dagger, the one weapon he carried with him besides the revolver, could not be driven in with enough force by the one hand he could still use. An enemy soldier, on seeing that someone was moving among the dead, slit his neck with a machete and nearly cut off his head. Maceo's death greatly demoralizes the patriotic troops, made up, for the most part, of inexperienced soldiers. On hearing what had occurred, Mamb? Colonel Juan Delgado, from the Santiago de las Vegas regiment, set off in search of Maceo. The enemy had been in possession of the body and had taken its personal belongings, unaware that it was Maceo, whose feats were known and admired the world over. The troops headed by Juan Delgado, in a show of courage, rescued the lifeless bodies of the Titan and his young aide, son of Chief General M?ximo G?mez. They buried them after long hours of marching along the heights of El Cacahual. At the time, the Cuban patriots did not say a word that could give away this valuable secret. For every Cuban, Marti's frowning countenance and Maceo's withering look point to the arduous path of duty, not to a more comfortable life. We must read and reflect much on these ideas. Havana, December 8, 2007 8:05 p.m. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Mon Dec 10 11:07:42 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 11:07:42 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Weisbrot: Progressive Change in Venezuela and Latin America Message-ID: <20071210110742.4011e532@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Tom Warner - Dec 9, 2007 Progressive Change in Venezuela and Latin America By Mark Weisbrot "He had faults, like other men; but it was for his virtues that he was hated and successfully calumniated." -Bertrand Russell, on the American revolutionary Thomas Paine. The defeat of the Venezuelan government's proposed constitutional reforms last Sunday will probably not change very much in Venezuela. Most of what was in the reforms can be enacted through the legislature. This is especially true for the progressive reforms: social security pensions for informal sector workers, free university education, the prohibition of discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation. The negative elements, such as expanding the government's powers in a state of emergency, probably wouldn't have changed much if they had passed. The Chavez government has never declared a state of emergency, and did not invoke any special powers even when most democratic governments in the world would have done so, e.g. during the oil strike of 2002-2003, which crippled the economy and almost toppled the government for the second time in a year; or after the April 2002 military coup. (It is also worth noting that even if they had passed, the amendments wouldn't have given the Venezuelan government the authority to commit the worst infringements on civil liberties that the Bush administration has made in its "war on terror.") Chavez's proposal to scrap term limits was defeated, but he has more than five years to try again if he wants. But even if this is his last term, the changes underway in Venezuela will not likely be reversed when he steps down. Most importantly, the character of the political battles in Venezuela has not changed. The popular presentation of this contest as between pro-Chavez and anti-Chavez forces is misleading. It is a struggle of left versus right, with the two sides divided and polarized along the lines of class, democracy, national sovereignty, and race. For these reasons, in the past eight years there has been very little progressive or even liberal political opposition to the Chavez government in Venezuela - just as there were no progressive or liberal organizations in the United States that supported President George W. Bush for re-election in 2004. Venezuela is politically polarized - much more so than the United States. The referendum shifted these political dividing lines only very slightly, and very likely temporarily. Some within the pro-government coalition opposed the reforms; and it appears that the amendments failed mainly because a great many of Chavez's supporters didn't vote. But there is no indication that these people have shifted to the opposition camp, and polls show that Chavez and the government remain highly popular. And the opposition to the government is still a right-wing opposition, despite the addition of a mostly-well-off student movement that is more ideologically mixed - including the student opposition leader Stalin Gonzalez, who recently defended his namesake in the Wall Street Journal. With regard to democracy, there has always been a clear difference between the two sides. Chavez's immediate acceptance of a razor-thin margin of defeat - 50.7 percent against - before all the votes were even counted should cut through all the media hype about a "strongman" and a "dictator." Chavez congratulated his opponents on their victory. As in previous elections, he had publicly committed to accepting the results before the vote, and had called on the opposition to do the same. On the other side, the opposition tried several oil and business strikes, and a military coup in April 2002, to win what they could not gain at the ballot box. The first act of the short-lived coup government was to abolish the constitution and dissolve the Supreme Court and the elected National Assembly. The coup was reversed due to massive pro-democracy street demonstrations, but eight months later the opposition once again tried to topple the government with a devastating, management-led oil shutdown. Unlike in the United States, where we have three sets of labor laws that would have put the leaders of such a strike in jail, the Chavez government allowed the strike to run its course, with the economy crippled in the process. Only after all extra-legal means failed to dislodge the government did the Venezuelan opposition resort to the ballot box, exercising their constitutional right to a recall referendum on the presidency in August 2004. They lost by a margin of 59-41, and promptly refused to accept the result. Although vote-rigging was nearly impossible under the dual electronic-plus-paper-ballot voting system and the result was certified by the Carter Center and the OAS, the opposition - which has its own media and invents its own reality - to this day holds to conspiracy theories(1) that the referendum was stolen by a fantastic electronic fraud. In December 2005, seeing that it would lose congressional elections, the opposition boycotted, despite the OAS and European Union observers' condemnation of the boycott. The opposition did finally accept their defeat in the December 2006 presidential elections, which Chavez won with 63 percent of the vote and the highest turnout ever. And now that they have finally won at the ballot box, there is a possibility of an opposition emerging that is more willing to play by the democratic rules of the game. The student movement seems to have more elements that favor democratic means of challenging the government, and may have played a role in convincing others in the opposition to vote in the referendum. But they have not transformed the opposition into a democratic movement. With regard to class, polls sponsored by the opposition and the government show that poor and working people are overwhelmingly pro-Chavez, and the upper classes against him. There are obvious reasons for this class divide: the Chavez government has provided health care to the vast majority of poor Venezuelans, subsidized food, and increased access to education. Real (inflation-adjusted) social spending per person has increased by 314 percent over the eight years of the Chavez administration. The proportion of households in poverty has dropped by 38 percent - and this is measuring only cash income, not other benefits such as health care and education.(2) Interestingly, the upper classes have also done pretty well, but appear to oppose Chavez for mostly ideological reasons, including his commitment to "21st century socialism." The Chavez administration has also provided the poor with more of a voice in government than they have ever had previously. On the questions of national sovereignty and empire, the lines are also clearly divided in Venezuela. Leading opposition groups, including some who were involved in the coup, have received U.S. funding and other support. Washington's involvement in the coup is well-documented and much deeper(3) than the vast understatements and euphemisms used by the major US and international media describe the US role. The Washington Post reported this week that the Bush Administration has been funding unnamed student groups, presumably opposition, up to and including this year. The Bush Administration has remained committed to this day to regime change in Venezuela, through destabilization and de-legitimation, although there are differences within the State Department. Its tacit support for the completely unjustified opposition boycott of the December 2005 congressional elections is a good example of this strategy: giving up about 30 percent of the Venezuelan congress just for the propaganda advantage of having the media report on "a congress completely dominated by Chavez." While the media focuses on Chavez' rhetoric, such as his notorious UN speech in which he referred to President Bush as the devil, his confrontation with Washington has been inevitable and not of his choosing. Latin American racism, especially outside of that directed against indigenous groups, is different than in the United States because "race" is less well- defined; but institutional racism is no less prevalent, as the noticeable difference in skin color between the white elite and the poorer classes throughout the region makes very clear. In Venezuela, this difference of complexion is also quite visible between the anti- Chavez and pro-Chavez demonstrations. Perhaps more importantly, those who are aware of and against racism - including indigenous and anti-racist groups - are overwhelmingly pro-Chavez, partly because of his government's actions on behalf of indigenous rights, including land reform and land titling, and constitutional rights. (4) Needless to say, the opposition to Chavez - who is proud of his African and indigenous heritage - also contains overtly racist elements. Indigenous supporters outside Venezuela include President Evo Morales of Bolivia, a close friend and ally of Chavez. Other progressive Latin American presidents also have close relationships with Chavez and see him as a very important ally: Nestor Kirchner of Argentina, Rafael Correa of Ecuador and although the international media is always trying to deny it, President Lula da Silva of Brazil. Lula heads a divided government, but he has consistently defended Chavez.(5) All of these leaders understand the historic nature of what is happening in Latin America - the majority of a region once known as "the United States' backyard" now has governments that are more independent of the United States than Europe is. Chavez has played a huge role in this process, most importantly through the Venezuelan government's billions of dollars of lending and grants to governments - made without policy conditions. Until a few years ago, Washington's main avenue of influence in Latin America was through control over credit, which was exercised through a creditors' cartel headed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The collapse of this cartel in recent years is the most important change in the international financial system in more than three decades, and one that has drastically reduced U.S. influence. Venezuela's provision of an alternative source of credit has helped other democratic governments to try and deliver on their electoral promises without the threat of economic strangulation from abroad that, just a few years ago, may have doomed them to a short life. It is thus helping to promote democracy in the region. What about the charges that Venezuela under Chavez has been moving toward "an authoritarian state'? The denial of a broadcast license renewal to a TV station that participated in a military coup and several other attempts to topple the government, and that would not get a license in any other democratic country, is hardly inappropriate (6); it was also defended by other democratic presidents in the region, including those of Brazil, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Venezuela's media is still dominated by the opposition, and remains the most anti-government media in the hemisphere. Then there is the controversial "enabling law," which gives Chavez fairly broad temporary authority to make certain legislation by executive order, subject to revocation by the congress or referendum. But as the US State Department's top official for Latin America, Thomas Shannon, commented when the Venezuelan congress passed the law in January, "It's something valid under the constitution. As with any tool of democracy, it depends how it is used." And Chavez has hardly used the enabling legislation at all - only to extract more concessions from foreign oil companies. One can go through the list, but the point is that one does not have to agree with every decision of the Venezuelan government to see that there is little or nothing to back up the absurd image of "authoritarian rule" that the Chavez-haters have created. Unfortunately they have gotten help from politicized groups such as "Reporters Without Borders," which receives funding from the "National Endowment for Democracy" (which has funded groups involved in the overthrow of elected governments, including Venezuela [2002] and Haiti [2004]); the Committee to Protect Journalists, which is funded by big media owners; and other organizations who are generally more autonomous but whose independence seems to weaken under pressure with regard to Venezuela. Bottom line: no reputable human rights organization has claimed, nor would they, that civil liberties or human rights have deteriorated under the Chavez government - or that it compares unfavorably on these issues with the region. A historic transformation in underway in Latin America. After more than a quarter century of neoliberal economic reform, and the worst long-term economic growth failure in more than a century, a revolt at the ballot box has elected leaders who are looking for democratic alternatives that will restore economic growth and development, and reduce poverty and inequality.(7) The U.S. government is opposing these efforts; a key element of its overall strategy is to demonize Chavez and de-legitimize the democratic government of Venezuela. The U.S. and international media have enthusiastically embraced this agenda, w journalism that makes Judy Miller's worst articles in the run-up to the Iraq war look fair and balanced by comparison. A more truthful and accurate reporting and analysis of these events is sorely needed. Footnotes: 1.See Mark Weisbrot, David Rosnick and Todd Tucker, "Black Swans, Conspiracy Theories, and the Quixotic Search for Fraud," Center for Economic and Policy Research, September 2004. [ http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/venezuela_2004_09.pdf] 2.See Mark Weisbrot and Luis Sandoval, "The Venezuelan Economy in the Chavez Years," Center for Economic and Policy Research, July 2007. [ http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/venezuela_2007_07.pdf] Poverty figures here updated for first half 2007. 3. See Mark Weisbrot, "Venezuela's Election Provides Opportunity for Washington to Change its Course" Aniston Sunday Star, December 10, 2006. [ http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=649&Itemid=45] 4. See e.g., Michael Fox, "Indigenous March in Support of Chavez in Venezuela," Venezuelanalysis.com, June 11, 2006. [ http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1985] 5. See Gosman, Eleonara, "Lula: "Nadie Har?.?.?.?? que Discute con Ch?.?.?.??vez, es mi Amigo," Clar?.?.?.??n, July 7, 2007; and Mark Weisbrot, "President Bush's Trip to Latin America is All About Denial," Center for Economic and Policy Research, March, 2007 6. See Robert McChesney and Mark Weisbrot, "Venezuela and the Media: Fact and Fiction [ http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1200]; Mark Weisbrot, "Eyes Wide Shut: The Media Looks at Venezuela [ http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_content&task= view&id=1269&Itemid=45] 7. See Mark Weisbrot, "Latin America: The End of an Era," International Journal of Health Services, Volume 37, Number 3 / 2007, also available at [ http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=374&Itemid=8] _____ Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. (www.cepr.net). Forwarded by Tom Warner Seattle/Cuba Friendship Committee . a Task Force of the Church Council of Greater Seattle 8923 2nd Ave. N.E.Seattle, WA, 98115 Phone: (206) 523-1720 Contact person: Thomas Warner Email: warner(at)scn.org www.seattlecuba.net From nytr at blythe-systems.com Mon Dec 10 15:27:55 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:27:55 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] rit PM to Troops: 'Your Iraq War Is Over' Message-ID: <20071210152755.1c503b62@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Dave Muller - activ-l The Sun Dec 10, 1007 'leave her and go'. Happy Xmas, your war is over! By DAVID WOODING Whitehall Editor GORDON Brown yesterday delivered a stirring festive message to Our Boys in Iraq: Happy Christmas war is over. The PM was cheered as he praised UK troops and revealed combat operations in Basra will end within two weeks. Iraqi forces will take over as the 4,500-strong British force switches from front-line duties to a training role. By early next year, our contingent in Southern Iraq will be cut to 2,500 and may be withdrawn completely in March. The PM broke the good news in a flying visit to Iraq. He landed at the Army s base at Basra airport in darkness in an RAF Hercules transporter plane. Minutes later he spoke to Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki. He then gave a rousing speech to 300 squaddies after shaking hands with them To warm applause, he told them the region the last under British control in Iraq would be handed back to the Iraqis in a fortnight. He said: The Prime Minister of Iraq has asked me to pass on his thanks to you for helping to rebuild the democracy of Iraq. This is because of the operations over the last month that you have been involved in. The security situation has not only improved, but he is able to tell me he will now be recommending a move to a provisional Iraqi control within two weeks. Attacks Iraqis can take far more control of their country. Mr Brown quoted Sir Winston Churchill and Field Marshal Montgomery as he thanked Our Boys for their courage and bravery. He said: The British people are so grateful for all you do . . . we are incredibly proud of what you have done. The whole British people are proud of everything you achieved here Thank you very much and happy Christmas to you all. Click here to find out more! Since Our Boys withdrew from Basras city centre and palace to the airport a few miles away back in September attacks on them have fallen by 90 per cent. They have been helping to train 30,000 police and armed forces during rebuilding operations. It is thought they will only be recalled to the front if there is a major post-handover incident coupled with a direct plea from Iraqi generals. Several hundred may be stationed in neighbouring Kuwait early next year. Before flying out, Mr Brown insisted five Brits kidnapped in Iraqs capital Baghdad in May must be freed immediately. The kidnappers warned last week the men will be killed unless troops are withdrawn, but Mr Brown said he would not be forced into changing his policies in the country. He added: The taking of hostages is completely unacceptable. We are demanding the immediate release MR Brown could do a Maggie and defy the latest polls to win the next election, his closest ally claimed yesterday. Childrens Secretary Ed Balls said Margaret Thatcher led the Tories out of the Westland helicopter crisis and the loss of Cabinet ministers in 1986 to a landslide general election victory in 1987. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 15:13:11 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:13:11 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Demolition of New Orleans housing now set for Dec. 15 Message-ID: <20071211151311.42c602ff@viola.tamara-b.org> Workers World - Dec 13, 2007 issue http://www.workers.org/2007/us/new_orleans-1213 Demolition of New Orleans housing to take place Dec. 15 By Monica Moorehead The Housing Authority of New Orleans announced at its Nov. 29 public meeting that, in conjunction with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, it has rescheduled the demolition of five public housing projects in New Orleans. The demolition will now begin on Dec. 15. The projects are St. Bernard, Lafitte, C.J. Peete, Fisher and B.W. Cooper. Originally, some of this demolition was to take place earlier in November. Nationwide demonstrations protesting the demolition, including one in New Orleans, took place on Nov. 13. Ignoring the outcry of residents from the working-class neighborhood of Algiers, HANO officials stated their approval of $30 million in contracts with demolition companies to bulldoze these projects, which are generally still in good condition. The plan is to replace these public-housing units with ?mixed income? neighborhoods?meaning a mixture of low-income and luxury housing, at least on paper. According to the Nov. 29 Times-Picayune, the breakdown of the demolition contracts include: ?$9 million for the demolition of 132 buildings at the vacant St. Bernard development, in agreement to St. Bernard Redevelopment; $6 million for demolition of vacant buildings at the B.W. Cooper, in agreement with Keith B. Key Enterprises; an additional $955,000 to Keith B. Key for ?certain predevelopment expenses?; $5.8 million for the demolition of 55 buildings at the vacant C.J. Peete, in an agreement with Central City Partners; $2.5 million for the demolition of 70 vacant buildings at the Lafitte, awarded to D.H. Griffon of Texas, Inc.; $6.3 million for the demolition of buildings and the construction of streets, lighting and other utility infrastructure at the Fischer, to support new home construction, awarded to Boh Brothers Construction.? Once the demolition concludes, the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency has reserved $35 million in tax credits for HANO to ?rehabilitate? these buildings, affecting 1,949 units. If housing officials truly represented the interests of poor and working people, the combined amounts of the $30 million in contracts for demolition and $35 million in tax credits for ?rehabilitation? could be used for expanding public housing, not tearing it down. Housing activists in New Orleans and elsewhere have exposed this plan to destroy public housing as nothing more than racist gentrification as a means to discourage poor residents from moving back to New Orleans since being displaced by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A disproportionately high percentage of these displaced people are African American. HANO and HUD are in cahoots with the big real-estate and private developers in transforming New Orleans into a city to attract mainly white, affluent people and businesses. Combine the impending destruction of public housing with the devastation of the lower Ninth Ward, where massive flooding took place during Katrina due to breeched levees, and you can see a concerted effort to deny the vast majority of African Americans?tens of thousands of people?the right to return to New Orleans where generations lived before them. What?s happening in New Orleans might remind some people of what has been happening in Iraq during nearly five years of a racist military occupation. In Iraq there has been the systematic destruction of an entire country. Iraq?s so-called rehabilitation is carried out with multi-billion-dollar contracts provided by the U.S. government to Halliburton, KBR (formerly Kellogg Brown and Root) and other corporate interests, which have collected the money but still fail to provide sufficient water and electricity to Iraq. The New Orleans-based Coalition to Stop Demolition stated on Nov. 30: ?What is at stake with the demolition of public housing in New Orleans is more than just the loss of housing units: it destroys any possibility for affordable housing in New Orleans for the foreseeable future. Without access to affordable housing, thousands of working class New Orleanians will be denied their human right to return. ?Although this situation is unique and urgent in the city of New Orleans, it does not occur in isolation. The plans for redevelopment here are part of a national assault on public housing, in which tens of thousands of homes have been demolished in the past decade. ?In coming to New Orleans, you are helping us to draw this line in the sand. You are taking part in a critical piece of the ongoing fight against neo-liberal incursions into our cities. Here in New Orleans, as the bulldozers arrive to destroy any hope for the right of return for thousands of families, you can help us push back this agenda, and stand fast with us to promote a more people-focused reconstruction: one that is based on a vision of justice and rights for all people, and not profits for corporations and the desires of those with power.? 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 blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 15:17:28 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:17:28 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Nobel winner Gore: "Make peace with the planet" Message-ID: <20071211151728.55eed598@viola.tamara-b.org> Reuters - Dec 10, 2007 http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL1056849520071210 Nobel winner Gore: "Make peace with the planet" By John Acher and Wojciech Moskwa OSLO (Reuters) - Climate campaigner Al Gore collected the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday and said it was time to stop waging war on the earth and make peace with the planet. The former U.S. vice president shared the 2007 peace prize with the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change whose head, Rajendra Pachauri, urged leaders at a U.N. climate conference in Indonesia to heed the wisdom of science. "Without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself," Gore said in the prepared text of his speech. "It is time to make peace with the planet." "The very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed," Gore said at Oslo's City Hall. "The earth has a fever," he said, adding that the world every day pumps 70 million tons of global-warming pollution -- above all, carbon dioxide -- into the atmosphere. Instead of a "nuclear winter" warned of by scientists a few decades ago, the planet now faces a "carbon summer," he said. Gore, who lost the presidential election to George W. Bush in 2000, said earlier generations had the courage to save civilization when leaders found the right words in the 11th hour. "Once again it is the 11th hour," he said. "We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war," he said, crediting the generation that defeated fascism around the world in the 1940s. Gore said he was deeply moved to be the second man from the tiny town of Carthage, Tennessee, to win the peace prize. The first was U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull who got it in 1945 for his role fostering the United Nations. He said saving the global environment must become "the central organizing principle of the world community." WITHIN REACH Pachauri, an Indian scientist, warned that the impact of climate change on some of the world's poorest and most vulnerable people could prove "extremely unsettling." He said warming could lead to widespread extinctions of species and a sharp rise in temperatures of 4.5 degrees Celsius from 1980-99 levels would be "grave and disastrous." "However, it is within the reach of human society to meet these threats. The impacts of climate change can be limited by suitable adaptation measures and stringent mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions," he said. Gore said he would urge the U.N. climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, to adopt a bold mandate for a treaty that establishes a universal global cap on emissions and that uses the market in emissions trading to bring about speedy reductions. He said a new climate treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto pact curbing gas greenhouse emissions should be in place by 2010 -- two years sooner than now planned -- and heads of state should meet every three months until a new treaty is completed. He also urged a moratorium on building new power plants that burn coal without trapping and storing carbon dioxide (CO2). "And most important of all, we need to put a price on carbon," Gore said, urging also a CO2 tax that would be rebated to the people progressively in ways that shift the burden to polluters from taxation of wage-earners. Gore said the outcome of the battle to save the planet would depend decisively on the two biggest greenhouse gas emitters, the United States and China, making "the boldest moves." (Editing by Charles Dick) ) Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 15:20:30 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:20:30 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Env: At Bali, US urges abandoning 2020 goals Message-ID: <20071211152030.1a9931aa@viola.tamara-b.org> Reuters - Dec 10, 2007 http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL1064001320071210 U.N. climate talks under pressure to drop 2020 goals By Emma Graham-Harrison NUSA DUA, Indonesia (Reuters) - The United States has urged a tough 2020 target for rich nations to axe greenhouse gas emissions to be dropped from a draft text at climate change talks in Bali, delegates said on Monday. The December 3-14 meeting is seeking to launch two years of talks on a new pact to slow global warming but is split about whether to include guidelines such as a cut in emissions by rich nations of 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. "The numbers are still in the text. There has been a lot of pressure to take them out," one delegate with intimate knowledge of the draft negotiations said. He corrected an earlier statement that the numbers had been removed. Other delegates also said the draft, put together by delegates from Indonesia, Australia and South Africa, still included the numbers despite pressure to take them out by countries including the United States, Canada and Japan. Washington said goals for 2020 should be negotiated over the next two years rather than fixed in advance as part of a fight against rising temperatures that could bring more floods, droughts, melt Himalayan glaciers and raise sea levels. "It's prejudging what the outcome should be," chief U.S. negotiator Harlan Watson said of 2020 targets. "We don't want to start out with numbers." Watson said that the 25-40 percent range was based on "many uncertainties" and on a small number of studies examined by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). NOBEL SNUB "This is unacceptable," Hans Verolme of the WWF environmental group said of efforts to cut out goals, noting that the IPCC was to collect the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in Oslo with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. "It's trying to slash out the science," he said. The Bali talks are trying to agree the principles for a successor to the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, which binds 36 industrial nations to cut emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, by five percent below 1990 by 2008-12. "Our opinion about Kyoto has not changed," Watson said. President George W. Bush opposes Kyoto, saying it would damage the U.S. economy and wrongly excludes 2008-2012 goals for developing nations, such as China, India and Brazil. Bush says he will join a new global pact. Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. climate secretariat said the 25-40 percent range would be a "critical issue" at the talks. He said he considered the figure an important signpost to show where the world should be heading in curbing warming. De Boer also said all industrialized nations backed the need to agree on a Kyoto successor at U.N. talks in Copenhagen at the end of 2009. Developing nations, wary of any commitments that might hit their drive to fight poverty, are undecided. On the margins of the main talks, about 40 deputy finance ministers held unprecedented talks about ways to ensure that efforts to slow climate change do not derail the world economy. "Having the finance ministers meeting...itself is a breakthrough," Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said. The meeting will prepare for talks by about 20 finance ministers in Bali on Tuesday. The IPCC has said that the strictest measures to offset warming will slow annual world growth by 0.12 percentage point at most. -- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: blogs.reuters.com/environment/ (With extra reporting by Gde Anugrah Arka in Bali, Rob Taylor in Canberra; writing by Alister Doyle; editing by David Fogarty) ) Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 15:23:01 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:23:01 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Env: Science and policy collide in EU over genetically modified crops Message-ID: <20071211152301.3f8b9d8a@viola.tamara-b.org> Intl Herald Trib - Dec 9, 2007 http://iht.com/articles/2007/12/09/news/gmo.php?page=1 Science and policy collide in EU over genetically modified crops By Elisabeth Rosenthal December 9, 2007 BRUSSELS: A proposal that Europe's top environment official made last month to ban the planting of a genetically modified corn strain across the bloc sets the stage for a bitter war within European Union, where politicians have done their best to dance around the issue. The EU's environmental commissioner, Stavros Dimas, said he based his decision squarely on scientific studies suggesting that there remain long-term uncertainties and risks in planting the so-called Bt corn. But when the full European Commission takes up the matter in the next couple of months, commissioners will have to decide what mix of science, politics and trade to apply. And they will face the ambiguous limits of science when it is applied to public policy. For a decade, the European Union has maintained itself as the last major largely GMO-free swath of land left in the world, largely by sidestepping these tough questions; it kept a moratorium on the planting of crops made from genetically modified organisms while making promises of further scientific studies. But Europe has been under increasing pressure from the World Trade Organization and the United States, which argue that there is plenty of research to show such products do not harm the environment. Therefore, they insist, normal trade rules must apply. In fact science does not provide a definitive answer to the question of safety, experts say, just as science could not know for sure whether the Year 2000 computer bug would be a problem. "Science is being utterly abused by all sides for nonscientific purposes," said Benedikt Haerlin, head of Save Our Seeds, an environmental group in Berlin, and a former member of the European Parliament. "The illusion that science will answer this overburdens it completely." He added, "It would be helpful if all sides could be frank about their social, political and economic agendas." Dimas, a lawyer and the minister from Greece, looked at the advice provided by the European Union's scientific advisory body - which found that the corn was "unlikely" to pose a risk - but he decided there were nevertheless too many doubts to permit the modified corn. "Commissioner Dimas has the utmost faith in science," said Barbara Helfferich, spokeswoman for the Environment Commission. "But, there are times when diverging scientific views are on the table." She added that Dimas was acting as a "risk manager." Within the European scientific community there are passionate divisions about how to apply the growing body of research concerning genetically modified crops, and in particular the one known as Bt corn, which is based on the naturally occurring soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, a toxin that is genetically inserted in the corn to kill pests. The vast majority of that research is conducted by, or financed by, the companies that make seeds of genetically modified organisms. "Where everything gets polarized is the interpretation of results and how they might translate into different scenarios for the future," said Angelika Hilbeck, an ecologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, whose skeptical scientific work on Bt corn was cited by Dimas. "Is the glass half empty or half full?" she asked. Hilbeck says that company-funded studies do not devote adequate attention to broad ripple effects that modified plants might cause, like changes to bird species or the effect of all farmers planting a single biotechnology crop. Hilbeck said producers of modified organisms, like Syngenta and Monsanto, have rejected repeated requests to release seeds to researchers like herself to conduct independent studies of the environmental impact of the products. In his decision, Dimas cited a dozen scientific papers in finding potential hazards in the Bt corn to butterflies and other insects. But the European Federation of Biotechnology, an industry group, argues that the great majority of these papers show that Bt corn does not pose any environmental risk. Many plant researchers say that Dimas actually ignored science, including that of several researchers who advised the EU that the new corn was safe. "We are seeing 'advice-resistant' politicians pursuing their own agendas," said one researcher, who like others said he could not be quoted by name because of his advisory role. But Karen Oberhauser, a leading specialist on Monarch butterflies at the University of Minnesota, said that debate and further study of Bt corn was appropriate, particularly for Europe. "We don't really know for sure if it's having an effect" on ecosystems in the United States, she said, and it is hard to predict future problems. About 40 percent of U.S. corn is now the Bt variety, and it has been planted for about a decade. "Whether Bt corn is a problem depends totally on the ecosystem - what plants are near the corn field and what insects feed on them," Oberhauser said. "So it's really, really important to have careful studies." While Bt crops produce a toxin that kills a winged pest and its caterpillar but is also toxic to related insects, notably Monarch butterflies, but also a number of water insects. The butterflies do not feed on corn itself, but on nearby plants, like milkweed; but since corn pollen is carried in the wind, such plants can also become coated with Bt pollen. Oberhauser said she had been worried about the effect of Bt corn on Monarch butterflies in the United States, after her studies showed that populations of the insect dipped from 2002 until 2004. But they have rebounded in the last three years, and she has concluded that, in the U.S. corn belt, Bt corn has probably not hurt Monarch butterflies. Still, she said there was still disagreement and broader causes for worry. U.S. Monarch butterflies may have been saved by a bit of dumb luck, she said, a fluke of local farming practices. Year by year, farmers alternate Bt corn with a genetically modified soy seed that requires the use of a weed killer. That weed killer, Monsanto's Roundup, killed off the milkweed - the monarch's favored meal - in and around corn fields, so the butterflies went elsewhere and were no longer exposed to Bt. "It's a problem for milkweed, but it made the risk for Monarchs very small," she said. Still, she said, other effects could emerge with time and in farming regions with other practices. For example, Bt toxin slows the maturation of butterfly caterpillars, which leaves them exposed to predators for longer periods. Time will tell if there is a real problem. "Sure, time will give you answers on these questions - and maybe show you mistakes that you should have thought about earlier," she said. For ecologists and entomologists, a major concern is that insects could quickly become resistant to the toxin built into the corn if all farmers in a region used that corn, just as human microbes become resistant to antibiotics that are overused. The pests that are killed by modified corn are only a sporadic problem, which could be treated by other means. They worry, too, that Bt toxin is present in wind-borne pollen. It is extremely unusual for pollen to contain poison. Most pollens "are highly nutritious, as they are designed to attract," Hilbeck said, wondering how a toxic pollen would affect bees, for example. Having reviewed the science, insurance companies have been unwilling to insure Bt planting because the risks of collateral damage to health or environment are too uncertain, said Duncan Currie, an international lawyer in Christchurch, New Zealand, who studies the subject. In the United States, where almost all crops are now genetically modified, the debate is largely closed. "I'm not saying there are no more questions to pursue, but whether it's good or bad to plant Bt corn - I think we're beyond that," said Richard Hellmich, a plant scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture who is based at Iowa State University, who noted that hundreds of studies had been done. Bt corn could help "feed the world," Hellmich said. But the scientific equation may look different in Europe, with its increasing green consciousness and strong agricultural traditions. "Science doesn't say on its own what to do," Catherine Geslain-Lanielle, executive director of the European Food Safety Agency. She noted that while her agency had advised Dimas that Bt corn was "unlikely" to cause harm, it was still working to improve its assessment of the long-term risk to the environment. Part of the reason that science is central to the current debate is that EU law as well as WTO rules make it much easier for a country or a region to exclude genetically modified seeds in the case of new scientific evidence showing danger. Lacking that kind of justification, a move to bar the plants would be regarded as an unfair barrier to trade, leaving the European Union open to penalties. But the science probably will not be clear-cut enough to help the EU ministers dodge the bullet. Simon Butler at the University of Reading in Britain is using computer models to predict the long-term effect of genetically modified crops on birds and other species. But should the ministers should reject Bt corn? "My work is not to judge whether GM is right or wrong," he said. "It's just to get the data out there." From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 15:26:07 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:26:07 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Russian FM warning on Western recognition of Kosovo secession Message-ID: <20071211152607.6713ef9d@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by mart [ Important! - Note that Lavrow didn't say "might" or "could" , but rather, *will*. - mart ] ============================== via Rick Rozoff and Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato [stopnato] Kosovo Secession To Set Off Chain Reaction: Russian FM Interfax www.interfax.ru December 10, 2007 http://tinyurl.com/2xbe8a Kosovo independence to start chain reaction - Lavrov NICOSIA - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned Western partners against the unilateral recognition of independent Kosovo. That would be a flagrant violation of international laws and cause a chain reaction in the Balkans, he said in Nicosia on Monday. "If our partners unilaterally recognize independent Kosovo, they will fragrantly breach international laws. Russia will not breach international laws," Lavrov said after a meeting with Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos. "The unilaterally proclaimed independence of Kosovo and the illegal recognition of that will naturally have consequences," he said. "I am positive that such steps will trigger a chain reaction in the Balkans and other regions. Everyone who has such plans must be fully aware of their responsibility," Lavrov said. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com ============================ From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 15:29:04 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:29:04 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Brown calls on Google, other mega-corps to help world's poor Message-ID: <20071211152904.38db278c@viola.tamara-b.org> The Guardian - Dec 10, 2007 http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/dec/10/internationalaidanddevelopment.google Brown calls on Google to help world's poor Talks held with multinationals to tackle 'development emergency' by Larry Elliott Sarah Boseley Gordon Brown plans to harness at least 20 of the world's biggest multinational companies, including Google and Vodafone, to tackle a "development emergency" in the world's poorest countries and put the international community back on course to achieve seven UN development goals by 2015. As a UN report released today shows limited progress in hitting goals intended to tackle poverty, education, health and sanitation, the prime minister has been holding talks with the internet and telecoms giants as well as other international companies including Goldman Sachs and Wal-Mart in an attempt to find ways of increasing growth in poor countries. Brown will use three set-piece events next year - a conference involving the private sector in London in the spring, next summer's meeting of the G8 in Japan and a UN session in New York in the autumn - to reinvigorate the drive to hit the UN's millennium development goals, set in 2000. Brown told the Guardian: "We are half way to the target date of 2015, but a long way off track to our goals and face a development emergency. 2008 should be a development year and mark a call to action from everyone - not just rich and poor governments but civil society, faith groups, trade unions and even the private sector. "There are 72 million children not going to primary school, in some countries one woman in six dies in childbirth, over a billion people do not have access to safe drinking water. The international community needs to face up to this development emergency. We know what to do - we need to keep our promises and act. I am therefore calling for an millennium development goals action meeting during the UN general assembly in September to re-examine and galvanise our efforts." Preparations for Brown's initiative have been under way since the summer, but the emphasis on development - a key feature of Brown's 10 years at the Treasury - is intended to show that the government can recover from its battering this autumn. Ministers have been holding intensive discussions with the private sector in the hope that firms can be persuaded to use their expertise to improve infrastructure, upgrade skills and provide capital for fresh investment. Although the prominence given to multinationals is likely to be controversial with parts of the development community, Brown believes a lack of enterprise is hindering least-developed countries - especially in sub-Saharan Africa - achieving the development goals. While Brown intends to keep pressing Britain's G8 partners to meet the aid pledges made at the Gleneagles summit in 2005, the emphasis on the role of the private sector marks the start of a new phase in the government's development strategy. The development minister, Lady Vadera, who said recently that growth was the "single biggest factor separating success from failure" in developing countries, has been speaking to multinational corporations and Brown believes there is the prospect of initiatives in financial services, mobile telephony and agriculture over the coming year. Kevin Watkins, editor of the UN's annual human development report, said achieving growth without attempting to tackle inequality would not put the global community back on course to achieve the millennium development goals. Child death rates were two to three times higher for the poorest 20% of people and were falling more slowly than the average. "We are all in favour of high growth," he said, "but there has been a failure in some high growth countries, such as India, to deliver on human progress because of inequality. The key to achieving the development goals is to concentrate on helping the very poor." Peter Salama, Unicef's chief of health, said a priority was to get proper health systems running in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 15:37:20 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:37:20 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Save New Orleans public housing Message-ID: <20071211153720.3c01757d@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Ed Pearl - Dec 10, 2007 http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2007/12/take-action-to-save-nola-public-housing.asp Take action to save NOLA public housing Facing South Today, Monday, Dec. 10, is International Human Rights Day. It's also the day when activists in New Orleans are calling for actions opposing the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development plans to tear down more than 4,600 public housing units in four complexes across the city -- while replacing them with private, mixed-income developments that will set aside only 744 apartments for low-income people. The decision to demolish these public complexes, which suffered only relatively minor damage [PDF] during Hurricane Katrina, comes as rents across the city have doubled since the storm -- as has the homeless population. The activists are asking concerned citizens across the country to join the actions in New Orleans or to take action at home. According to a statement from Kali Akuno, director of the Stop the Demolition Coalition: What is at stake with the demolition of public housing in New Orleans is more than just the loss of housing units: it destroys any possibility for affordable housing in New Orleans for the foreseeable future. Without access to affordable housing, thousands of working class New Orleanians will be denied their human right to return. Although this situation is unique and urgent in the city of New Orleans, it does not occur in isolation. The plans for redevelopment here are part of a national assault on public housing, in which tens of thousands of homes have been demolished in the past decade. Organizers are asking supporters from across the country to organize demonstrations at local HUD offices and other government buildings. They are also asking them to make calls to government officials demanding the reopening of public housing in New Orleans. Among those leaders they are asking people to call: * New Orleans City Council Member Stacy Head, who has been a leading force in pushing for the tear-downs. Her number is 504-658-1020. * New Orleans City Council Member Shelley Midura, who is being asked to oppose the demolitions and support the reopening of public housing. Her number is 504-658-1010. * D.H. Griffin, the North Carolina-based contractor hired to demolish the Lafitte complex. For locations of the company's offices across the South, click here . The toll-free number is 888-336-3366. * U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who's blocking passage of the Gulf Coast Housing Recovery Act (Senate Bill 1668). Sponsored by his colleague, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), the measure would require any demolished public housing units to be replaced by other units available to low-income residents. Vitter can be reached in Washington at 202-224-4623 and New Orleans at 504-589-2753. * Members of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, where SB 1668 is currently stuck. They are Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) at 202-224-6361, Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) at 202- 224-5941, Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) at 202-224-5623, Robert Bennett (R-Utah) at 202-224-5444, Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) at 202-224-2315, Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) at 202-224-4343, Tom Carper (D- Del.) at 202-224-2441, Robert Casey (D-Pa.) at 202-224-6324, Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) at 202-224-6142, Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) at 202-224-2823, Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) at 202-224-6342, Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.) at 202-224-3424, Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) at 202-224-4224, Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) at 202-224-1638, Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) at 202-224-3041, Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) at 202-224-4744, Jack Reed (D-R.I.) at 202-224-4642, Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) at 202-224-0420, Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) at 202-224-5744, John Sununu (R-N.H.) at 202-224-2841 and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) at 202-224-2644. Send information about any solidarity actions to action at peopleshurricane.org with "Solidarity" in the subject line. If you have any questions, contact the Stop the Demolition Coalition at action at peopleshurricane.org or call 504-458-3494. For more information on the issues at stake and planned protest actions, visit the websites of Defend New Orleans Public Housing: http://www.defendneworleanspublichousing.org/ Justice for New Orleans http://www.justiceforneworleans.org/ People's Hurricane Relief Fund http://www.peopleshurricane.org/ From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 15:38:57 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:38:57 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Krugman: Paulson's Priorities Message-ID: <20071211153857.03c88052@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Ed Pearl The New York Times - Dec 10, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/opinion/10krugman.html Henry Paulson's Priorities By PAUL KRUGMAN By Bush administration standards, Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, is a good guy. He isn?t conspicuously incompetent; and he isn?t trying to mislead us into war, justify torture or protect corrupt contractors. But Mr. Paulson?s actions reflect the priorities of the administration he serves. And that, ultimately, is what?s wrong with the mortgage relief plan he unveiled last week. The plan is, as a Times editorial put it yesterday, ?too little, too late and too voluntary.? But from the administration?s point of view these failings aren?t bugs, they?re features. In fact, there?s a growing consensus among financial observers that the Paulson plan isn?t mainly intended to achieve real results. The point is, instead, to create the appearance of action, thereby undercutting political support for actual attempts to help families in trouble. In particular, the Paulson plan is probably an attempt to take the wind out of Barney Frank?s sails. Mr. Frank, the Democratic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has sponsored legislation that would give judges in bankruptcy cases the ability to rewrite mortgage loan terms. But ?Bankers Hope Bush Subprime Plan Will Scuttle House Bill,? as a headline in CongressDaily put it. As Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard bankruptcy expert, puts it, ?The administration?s subprime mortgage plan is the bank lobby?s dream.? Given the Bush record, that should come as no surprise. There are, in fact, three distinct concerns associated with the rising tide of foreclosures in America. One is financial stability: as banks and other institutions take huge losses on their mortgage-related investments, the financial system as a whole is getting wobbly. Another is human suffering: hundreds of thousands, and probably millions, of American families will lose their homes. Finally, there?s injustice: the subprime boom involved predatory lending ? high-interest loans foisted on borrowers who qualified for lower rates ? on an epic scale. The Wall Street Journal found that more than 55 percent of subprime loans made at the height of the housing bubble ?went to people with credit scores high enough to often qualify for conventional loans with far better terms.? And in a declining housing market, these victims are stuck, unable to refinance. So there are three problems. But Mr. Paulson?s plan ? or, to use its official name, the Hope Now Alliance plan ? is entirely focused on reducing investor losses. Any minor relief it might provide to troubled borrowers is clearly incidental. And it is does nothing for the victims of predatory lending. The plan sets voluntary guidelines under which some, but only some, borrowers whose mortgage payments are set to rise may get temporary relief. This is supposed to help investors, because foreclosing on a house is expensive: there are big legal fees, and the house normally sells for less than the value of the mortgage. ?Foreclosure is to no one?s benefit,? said Mr. Paulson in a White House interactive forum. ?I?ve heard estimates that mortgage investors lose 40 to 50 percent on their investment if it goes into foreclosure.? But won?t the borrowers gain, too? Not if the planners can help it. Relief is restricted to borrowers whose mortgage debt is at least 97 percent of the house?s value ? which means that in many, perhaps most, cases those who get debt relief will be borrowers who owe more than their house is worth. These people would be nearly as well off in financial terms if they simply walked away. And what about people with good credit who were misled into bad mortgage deals, who should have been steered to loans with better terms? They get nothing: the Paulson plan specifically excludes borrowers with good credit scores. In fact, the plan actually provides an incentive for some people to miss debt payments, because that would make them look like bad credit risks and eligible for relief. Now, Mr. Paulson?s attempt to help investors, while doing little or nothing for distressed and defrauded borrowers, might make sense if his plan would reduce investor losses enough to seriously improve the overall financial situation. But only a small fraction of subprime borrowers will qualify for relief, and many of these borrowers will eventually face foreclosure anyway. So the plan is unlikely to reduce overall mortgage-related losses by more than a few percent, at most ? not enough to make any real difference to financial stability. Indeed, interest-rate spreads that have been signaling a crisis of confidence in the financial system didn?t narrow at all when the plan was announced. Still, you might say that the Paulson plan is better than nothing. But the relevant alternative isn?t nothing; it?s a plan that ? like Barney Frank?s proposal ? would actually help working families. And that?s what the administration is trying to avoid. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 15:43:48 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:43:48 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Secret DIA Intelligence Cable Ties Fujimori to Summary Executions Message-ID: <20071211154348.6060896e@viola.tamara-b.org> National Security Archive - Dec 10, 2007 http://www.nsarchive.org FUJIMORI ON TRIAL Secret DIA Intelligence Cable Ties Fujimori to Summary Executions Washington D.C., December 10, 2007 - As disgraced former president Alberto Fujimori goes on trial in Lima, Peru, for human rights atrocities, the National Security Archive posted a declassified Defense Intelligence Agency cable tying him directly to the executions of unarmed rebels who had surrendered after the seizure of the residence of Japanese ambassador in 1997. "President Fujimori issued the order to 'take no prisoners,'" states the secret "roger channel" intelligence cable. "Because of this even MRTA [Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement members] who were taken alive did not survive the rescue operation." The new DIA cable was released on the Archive Web site along with other declassified documents that shed light on human rights crimes under Fujimori's government, his close ties to his intelligence chieftain, Vladimiro Montecinos, and the two cases for which the imprisoned former president is now being prosecuted: the death squad kidnapping and disappearance of nine students and one professor at La Cantuta University in July 1992, and the massacre of a group of 15 leftists and an eight-year-old child during a neighborhood community barbeque in Barrios Altos in November 1991. The documents were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by analysts at the Archive's Peru Documentation Project. The project has provided declassified evidence drawn from U.S. records to Peruvian human rights advocates and officials for over a decade. "The prosecution of Alberto Fujimori is nothing less than a historic event in the history of the human rights movement in Latin America," according to Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst on Latin America at the Archive. "It is a major step toward truth and justice in Peru and the Western Hemisphere." Visit the Web site of the National Security Archive for more information about today's posting. http://www.nsarchive.org ________________________________________________________ THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 15:52:40 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:52:40 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Huckabee and the Religious Right Message-ID: <20071211155240.61dec630@viola.tamara-b.org> Talk to Action - Dec 10, 2007 http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/12/10/11422/957 Huckabee: Dark Horse's Rise Tied to Backing of Religious Right By Bill Berkowitz Although several of the leading Republican Party presidential candidates have won endorsements from Religious Right leaders and organizations, no one has brought more Christian conservative leaders into their camp than former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. "Mike Huckabee has worked hard to get the Religious Right's backing and it seems to be paying off," the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told me. Huckabee's campaign advertisements open with the words "Christian Leader" in large white capitals. "Faith doesn't just influence me. It really defines me. I don't have to wake up every day wondering, what do I need to believe?" he says in the ad. Now that he's at, or near the top, of the pack, his record is being closely examined by the media. So far, it's not a pretty picture. 'Christian Leader' boosted by host of religious right bigwigs "At the Values Voter Summit in Washington last October, he gave a very well-received speech hitting on all the themes that are important to the Religious Right," Lynn pointed out. "It clearly energised the crowd, and in fact he later won a straw poll of attendees by a wide margin. Just a few weeks ago, Huckabee was viewed as just another third-tier candidate who hadn't made much headway. Now, however, with the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries coming up quickly, he has been creating buzz. In addition to being available for numerous media ops, he performed well in various Republican debates, and he received an increasing number of endorsements from important conservative Christian evangelical leaders. While Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani secured an unexpected endorsement from Rev. Pat Robertson (stirring up a hornet's nest in the Religious Right), Huckabee -- who is closest politically and ideologically to the Religious Right -- has received a series of endorsements from such lesser known but nevertheless significant Christian right leaders as Janet Folger, president of Faith2Action, Rick Scarborough, founder and president of Vision America, the Rev. Don Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association. Jerry Falwell, Jr., the chancellor of Liberty University and the son of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, has also come on board, as have Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, authors of the best-selling "Left Behind" series of apocalyptic novels. LaHaye's wife, Beverly - another Huckabee endorser -- is the founder and chairman of the board of Concerned Women of America, which claims to be the largest women's political organization in the U.S. "During the 25 years I have known Mike Huckabee, he has proven himself to be a Christian conservative who stands without apology for the pro-life, pro-marriage platform that is so important in this time of moral collapse," Tim LaHaye said during an early December appearance with the candidate in Iowa. An ordained Southern Baptist pastor, Huckabee has charted a course that not only includes orthodox conservative Christian positions -- anti-abortion, anti-same-sex marriage -- but one that also appears to reveal a certain level of compassion. The former Arkansas governor's rise in the Iowa polls is largely due to his courting a statewide network of evangelical pastors and to emphasizing his own faith. Lynn noted that Huckabee has been "speaking in a lot of fundamentalist churches around the country, which, while it doesn't always receive media attention, has moved his candidacy forward." Last week, Huckabee announced the formation of the Iowa Pastors Coalition and the endorsement of Iowa family values leader Chuck Hurley, the president of the Iowa Family Policy Center. The compassionate Huckabee surfaced during CNN's recent YouTube Republican debate during a question about immigration. Although generally supporting a hard line on immigration, Huckabee clearly separated himself from the field by saying that it was wrong to punish the children of undocumented workers for the illegal actions of their parents. That kind of stance didn't sit well with his opponents, particularly former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who slammed him for seeking to "giv[e] scholarships to illegal aliens". In one recent interview, the former Arkansas governor declared, "I am like a lot of folks who are tired of thinking the Republican Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street." He has denounced "immoral" CEO salaries, and warned, "People will only endure this for so many years before there is a revolt." Huckabee's so-called populism has riled the right. The conservative anti-tax Club for Growth is angry with Huckabee, and Robert Novak has called him an advocate of "class struggle. "In a recent column entitled "The False Conservative," Robert Novak maintained that while "Huckabee is campaigning as a conservative ... serious Republicans know that he is a high-tax, protectionist, big-government advocate of a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives of Americans." Scrutinized ... and not liking it Although he raised his hand at a debate last May when asked which candidates disbelieved the theory of evolution, he has lately bristled at being asked over and over again about evolution. At a recent Iowa press conference he pointed out that while he "believe[d] God created the heavens and the Earth," he (Huckabee) "wasn't there when he did it, so how he did it, I don't know." He added that it was "an irrelevant question to ask me -- I'm happy to answer what I believe, but what I believe is not what's going to be taught in 50 different states. Education is a state function. The more state it is, and the less federal it is, the better off we are." While Huckabee still has a number of formidable hurdles to leap over -- he needs to raise lots more money, and he still has a relatively small staff -- the fact that the field is so divided is clearly to his advantage. And, as he has moved up in the polls, his record is being examined a lot more closely. AIDS, drawing a blank on the NIE and the pardon of a rapist The Associated Press reported that as a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could "pose a dangerous public health risk." Responding to the AP story, Huckabee said that his "comments came at a time when the public was still learning about HIV and AIDS and promised to do `everything possible to transform the promise of a vaccine and a cure into reality.'" In Iowa last week, he was asked for a comment on the just-released National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that found that it had given up its nuclear weapons program four years ago. Appearing befuddled, Huckabee said that he was not familiar with the NIE, hadn't read it, been briefed on it, or even heard of it. The Associated Press reported in early December that a group affiliated with Huckabee has been "making automated phone calls that favor Huckabee and criticize his rivals." Huckabee has urged an end to the calls, while Romney asked Iowa's attorney general to investigate the group's activities. Huckabee is also under fire for his involvement in, and repeated denials, that while governor, he recommended parole for Arkansas rapist and murderer Wayne Dumond. Still, an Associated Press/Ipsos nationwide poll released Friday indicates that he has vaulted into second place after Giuliani. While the former New York City mayor has 26 percent among Republican and Republican-leaning voters, about where he has been since spring, Huckabee is at 18 percent, up from 10 percent in an AP-Ipsos survey a month ago and three percent in July. Arizona Sen. John McCain has 13 percent, Mitt Romney 12 percent and Thompson 11 percent. "Huckabee's rise should dispel claims that the Religious Right is dead," Americans United's Barry Lynn added. "This movement remains a huge bloc in the GOP [Republican Party] and, under the right circumstances it is quite capable of handing him the nomination." From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 15:56:27 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:56:27 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Karl Rove, the literary genius Message-ID: <20071211155627.549f197a@viola.tamara-b.org> Boston Globe - Dec 10, 2007 http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/12/10/karl_rove_the_literary_genius/?p1=MEWell_Pos1 Op-Ed: Karl Rove, the literary genius By Stephen McCauley DEAR MR. ROVE: I'm guessing you don't receive a lot of complimentary messages from my ZIP code, but this is a thank you note. To be honest, I'm surprised to find myself writing it - I haven't been a fan. But after watching your recent performance on "The Charlie Rose Show," I felt I had to express my gratitude. When I saw you implying that the Bush administration was, in essence, pressured by the Senate to go to war in Iraq before it wanted - before letting weapons inspections run their course, before forging a true international coalition - I realized that you're something of an ally. I don't mean a political ally. Here's the thing: I earn the bulk of my living writing novels - made-up stories about invented people - and somewhere in the middle of your bold restructuring of the historical record, I understood that you are, and always have been, a fiction writer's good friend. Literary fiction hasn't been flourishing in this country for the past decade. It used to be that people went to novels for great stories and memorable characters. For years, they read Jane Austen's romantic comedies and Leo Tolstoy's sprawling sagas and F. Scott Fitzgerald's melancholy love stories to connect, on a profound level, with the complicated ambiguities of emotion. Then, back in the mid-1990s, our culture took a sharp turn, and suddenly, everything was about "truth." Writers and readers abandoned the novel en masse, and shifted their allegiance to the memoir. Maybe readers became too impatient to wade through the obfuscations of art - metaphor and simile and the mandatory epiphany. Maybe writers became impatient, too. It's a lot quicker to simply lay out the details of the abuse and addiction, and cut straight to rehab and redemption. And the bleed didn't stop at books. Television soon followed suit. Who needs another scripted sitcom when you can gather together a group of buff folks under one roof, mix some Mai Tais, and turn on the hot tub? They'll come up with their own dialogue and, if things are cooking, take off their bikinis. Fiction, on the page and on the screen, needs a carefully structured narrative; life just has to happen. More than one novelist I know has plaintively cried, "Who needs fiction? We're becoming obsolete!" But there you were with Charlie Rose proving otherwise. With a few carefully chosen words, you made it clear that fiction does have a place in American life, and that you - arguably one of the most powerful men in the world - function with a novelist's instincts. When faced with a question that challenged the logic of your worldview, you did what novelists do: You made something up. You twisted the record to fit your narrative with the subtlety of Austen and the boldness of Tolstoy. And you did it with such Fitzgerald-like conviction, a lot of viewers probably accepted it, like they accept Gatsby's infatuation with Daisy. I used to shudder at the sight of your silhouette as you strode down the hallways of the White House. There was always something about your man-behind-the-curtain elusiveness combined with your appearance - Baby Huey in Brooks Brothers - that I found unnerving. You've been credited with being "Bush's brain" and I was appalled with the way your administration ignored, distorted, or simply buried the facts on so many issues - from global warming to foreign policy to medical science. But now I see that you're lifting the entire genre of fiction back to the level it once enjoyed in public life. Authors are unapologetically fictionalizing their "memoirs." Reality television producers are hiring out-of-work sitcom writers to create dialogue and character quirks for the "real" people in those hot tubs. Politicians have always been notorious for manipulating statistics to their favor, but according to a story in The New York Times, Rudy Giuliani is taking a page from your book - so to speak - and just making them up. There was a lot of hand-wringing in bookish Cambridge over President Bush's gleeful scorn for academics. Who would have guessed that his administration would turn out to be so literary? From the Kafkaesque muddle of its opening chapter back in 2000 to its Orwellian skewering of language to what is turning out to be its Stephen King-like denouement. So thank you, Mr. Rove. You've taken us full circle, from "Who needs fiction?" to "Who needs the truth?" Novelists everywhere have reason to be pleased. Except maybe the unlucky scribe who gets stuck writing the sequel. Stephen McCauley, a guest columnist, is the author of five novels and teaches at Brandeis. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 16:01:53 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:01:53 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Oakland - Defend Public Housing in New Orleans - Dec. 14th! Message-ID: <20071211160153.56215141@viola.tamara-b.org> Freedom Archives Anti-Imperialist News http://freedomarchives.org/mailman/listinfo/news_freedomarchives.org Oakland - Defend Public Housing in New Orleans - Dec.14th! International Liaison Committee P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140. Tel. (415) 641-8616; fax: (415) 824-1072. email: website: ILC section of www.owcinfo.org ------------------------------------------------ [please excuse duplicate postings] IN THIS MESSAGE 1) Urgent Oakland Action: Defend Public Housing in New Orleans - Dec. 14th 2) Join the Fight to Defend Public Housing in New Orleans! -- by the Coalition to Stop Demolition (New Orleans) 3) Resolution of Alameda Central Labor Council (Calif.) in Support of Gulf Coast Reconstruction Program ************** 1) URGENT OAKLAND ACTION: DEFEND PUBLIC HOUSING IN NEW ORLEANS! Support public housing residents from New Orleans to the Bay Area! Housing is a Human Right! WHEN: Friday, December 14th at 12:00 pm WHERE: Entrance to Civic Center Plaza (on Broadway between 12th and 14th Street) Oakland, CA WHO: Everyone who supports the Human Right to Shelter is welcome to attend and help organize the protest. In the next few days, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) plans to bulldoze more than 5,000 livable public housing units in New Orleans, Louisiana. This attack specifically targets working class women of color and their children, who have been working to reclaim these units since Hurricane Katrina. In response to this crisis, New Orlean's Coalition to Stop the Demolition has called for national support. The Katrina Solidarity Network (KSN) invites you to join with us in a solidarity demonstration to say NO to Ethnic Cleansing from the Gulf Coast to the Bay Area! Everyday more and more Bay Area residents experience first hand the result of ongoing gentrification policies in San Francisco and Oakland. KSN views the current housing crisis in New Orleans as part of a larger attack on the existence of public housing nationally. We hope that you will join with us to send a message to development corporations and congress: We know that in order to stop the destruction of our local communities, we must Stop The Bulldozers in New Orleans! For more information please email: ******************* 2) Join the Fight to Defend Public Housing in New Orleans! Dear Sisters and Brothers, On November 29, the Times-Picayune reported that the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) voted to approve more than $30 million in contracts for citywide demolition of vacant brick buildings at five developments, part of its sweeping plan to transform New Orleans public housing. The demolition is scheduled to begin December 15, according to HANO spokesman Adonis Expose. HUD announced in June that the city's four largest developments - St. Bernard, Lafitte, C.J. Peete and B.W. Cooper - are targeted for demolition to make way for "mixed income" neighborhoods. In the past two years, New Orleans has faced a series of social crises that have struck a blow to our collective vision for a more just and equitable city, not simply one that is more inviting to elites. Yet none of these crises has been so uniquely urgent as this. What is at stake with the demolition of public housing in New Orleans is more than just the loss of housing units: it destroys any possibility for affordable housing in New Orleans for the foreseeable future. Without access to affordable housing, thousands of working class New Orleanians will be denied their human right to return. Although this situation is unique and urgent in the city of New Orleans, it does not occur in isolation. The plans for redevelopment here are part of a national assault on public housing, in which tens of thousands of homes have been demolished in the past decade. Please come to New Orleans to help us draw this line in the sand. You will be taking part in a critical piece of the ongoing fight against neo-liberal incursions into our cities. Here in New Orleans, as the bulldozers arrive to destroy any hope for the right of return for thousands of families, you can help us push back this agenda, and stand fast with us to promote a more people-focused reconstruction: one that is based on a vision of justice and rights for all people, and not profits for corporations and the desires of those with power. We stand for a reconstruction that values and preserves services and infrastructure for poor people who have always lived, worked, and struggled to survive in New Orleans, and who possess the right to return to the homes from which they fled or were forcibly removed more than two years ago. Join us in urging the New Orleans City Council to take a definitive position against the demolitions. Urge them to demand that the Housing Conservation District Review Committee refuse to approve the demolition permits and plans placed before them. Join us to take it the streets and make our presence felt and get ready to square off against the bulldozers if they begin the demolition, as scheduled, on December 15. If you cannot travel to New Orleans, take action where you are. Let Vitter, the Senate Banking Committee, HUD, and the profiteering developers know, "No Justice, No Peace!' In Unity and Struggle, The Coalition to Stop Demolition New Orleans (For more information, contact Kali Akuno at ******************** 3) Resolution of Alameda Central Labor Council (Calif.) in Support of Gulf Coast Reconstruction Program [Note: The following resolution was adopted by the delegates' meeting of the Central Labor Council of Alameda on Monday, November 5, 2007. It was submitted by Clarence Thomas, delegate to the Council from ILWU Local 10. Two amendments submitted by teacher delegates and voted by the delegates on the role played by teachers in the post-Katrina period and the fight to defend public schools in New Orleans have yet to be incorporated into the final text.] WHEREAS: During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the world watched the United States government stand by and let thousands of African Americans and poor people in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf Coast suffer and hundreds die a most tragic and unnecessary death; Robert "Tiger" Hammond, president of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO, says, "Parts of this town look like a nuclear bomb hit two days ago, not like it was two years ago"; The AFL-CIO Housing Trust (HIT) is participating in the $1 billion Gulf Coast Revitalization Program for New Orleans and other communities ravaged by Hurricane Katrina; The AFL-CIO will be investing in the building of modular housing and will coordinate union sponsored worker training programs; The AFL-CIO community fund and affiliated unions have raised millions of dollars to assist Katrina survivors; ILWU Locals 10, 19, 52, and the International in conjunction with the African American Longshore Coalition sent several 40 foot containers of humanitarian and construction supplies, and vehicles along with financial support; Members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters volunteered to drive trucks filled with supplies to the Gulf for Survivors; Almost immediately after Katrina, President George W. Bush issued an executive order suspending prevailing wage requirements on federally funded projects. Bush and the Republican-controlled /Congress suspended affirmative action requirements, relaxed environmental regulations, and started handing out privatized, no-bid contracts like they were bottled water; In the weeks after Katrina and Rita, New Orleans witnessed an influx of more than 150,000 workers from outside the region, many of them recruited from Mexico and Central America by Temp agencies; Fifty percent of migrant day laborers were never paid for their work, the New Orleans Workers Center has countless stories of transient workers who showed up at a certain location to get paid, and instead were met by ICE agents and deported; Katrina brought about the largest displacement of African Americans in the U.S. South since the post-Reconstruction period at the end of the 19th century; The ACLU has released a report revealing continuing incidents of racial injustice and human rights abuses in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; These violations include reports of heighten racially motivated police activity, housing discrimination, and prisoner abuse; On August 29th thru September 2, 2007, an International Tribunal on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita held in New Orleans made up an international panel of judges from 7 countries, a prosecution team of leading attorneys from across the country, experts and witnesses (survivors) who provided testimony regarding human rights abuses and crimes by the government at all levels (federal, state an local); Both Katrina survivors (witnesses) and prosecutors at the International Tribunal on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita called for a reconstruction program to rebuild the Gulf; THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT: The Central Labor Council of Alameda County, AFL-CIO support the call for the implementation of a federally funded Gulf Coast Reconstruction Program which shall include prevailing wages for workers, and the right to organize; and The Gulf Coast Reconstruction Program include the right to return to the Gulf, a Gulf Coast Public Works Program (similar to the WPA of the 1930's), an end to state repression via police brutality and racial profiling, and building solidarity committees nationally to continue the struggle for a just reconstruction and an end to ethnic cleansing in the Gulf Coast; and This Resolution be sent to our affiliates and forwarded to the democratic leadership of the House, the Senate, and the Congressional Black Caucus. ========================= Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 863-9977 www.Freedomarchives.org From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 16:17:10 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:17:10 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Comment on Al Gore's Nobel Prize Speech Message-ID: <20071211161710.3f9abb55@viola.tamara-b.org> [Don't know what all this "G_d" stuff is about. Seems to refer to the alleged god. Otherwise, an interesting essay. If a "creator" exists, why should we even be concerned? About anything? -NY Transfer] sent by vantari - Dec 10, 2007 http://vantari.com/ Al Gore's Nobel Prize Speech Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech today, December 10, 2007, was a turning point in human history. There are only two options, either he is exaggerating an unfolding silent catastrophe that he, and most knowledgeable scientists, believe is happening, or, perhaps tragically, he and the consensus of the international scientific community is right and we as human beings are careening down the road to our own self destruction. I would take the option with the least danger of failure, namely, that we are in danger of destroying the climate on Earth, and that we must take bold and radical action to prevent it. If Al Gore is exaggerating the global climate change calamity, we will see the current climate trends to normal in a few years, no problem. But if he is right, we will have wasted a few very important years, years that could be crucial to our survival, while we continued to digress into our vulgar video entertainment and our narcissist materialism. How could his have happened to us, if we are so technologically advanced? How could the cacophony of modern political discourse be so fragmented as to ignore such a dire warning from our best scientists and political leaders? Al Gore's speech, important it was, will not be more than a flash of light in the video fireworks of the day, but it will be recorded for posterity, for all of our children to see, G_d willing. Some day our posterity may wonder what kind of people would ignore what is an obvious fact? The climate of our planet is changing, it is getting warmer, colder, harsher, faster, longer, it has become chaotic! Our climatic models are useless, they were written by meteorologists who did not have to deal with the dynamics of green house gases and pollution. Our political system is broken, fragmented into video sound bytes controlled by powerful business interests, our Universities have become business career mills promising advancement in exchange for lucrative student loans, our leaders are pulling us into military conflicts using lies and deception, for the sake of dominance over oil reserves. How can we expect to solve these problems if we can not even listen as a people? How can we raise the political will needed to take on this and other urgent ecological and social problems, if we as human beings have no direct access to the decision making process, if we have to rely on passing e-mails and messages to those who are supposed to represent us, but who in fact represent the power of money? Al Gore rightly stated in his Nobel acceptance speech today that the problem we as human beings face is essentially a political problem. We lack the political will to make the sacrifices necessary to control the effects of global climate change, before it becomes a problem that has no human solution. Nature has a problem, we caused it, we must try to solve it, or nature will solve it for us. We need to find a way to have the people act on this problem in a social context, not only as individuals caring for their own "carbon footprint". While it may be true that individual measures do help in remedying the effects of climate change, we can not solve this global problem with individual solutions. We must find a way for the people to know the problem, to understand its full implications, and to take action in a global context to prevent any further damage. It is my belief that our Creator [sic] has given us the means to solve this problem, if we are willing to change our reckless consumption of "things" requiring massive amounts of fossil fuels to produce and transport. We need to return to a harmonious way of life, one which regards Nature as our home, not as a "thing" to be conquered for the sake of money. We need to find ways to reduce our energy needs and our consumption of fabricated trinkets. We do not need whimsical gadgets and ostentatious vehicles, we need technology that is sustainable and harmonious with the environment. We have lost our ecological balance due to our individualistic drive to success in a material world. We have lost our very sense of what life is about, and have become slaves of our own technology. It is not by money that we will solve this problem, but by changing the system of "things" that has brought about this potential catastrophe. May G_d help us in this vital endeavor From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 17:47:37 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 17:47:37 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] FAS Secrecy News - 12/10/2007 Message-ID: <20071211174737.564be201@viola.tamara-b.org> SECRECY NEWS from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy Volume 2007, Issue No. 120 December 10, 2007 Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/ Support Secrecy News: http://www.fas.org/static/contrib_sec.jsp ** INTELLIGENCE OVERSIGHT FLEXES ONE NEW MUSCLE ** SELECTED CRS REPORTS INTELLIGENCE OVERSIGHT FLEXES ONE NEW MUSCLE The ability of Congress to provide an effective check on Bush Administration intelligence policy has been increasingly called into question by each succeeding departure from the norms of accepted intelligence conduct, including most recently the destruction of CIA interrogation videos. Even the Intelligence Committee leadership has expressed a disconcerting degree of self-doubt and inadequacy. "For seven years, I have witnessed first-hand how the Intelligence Committee has been continually frustrated in its efforts to understand and evaluate sensitive intelligence activities by an Administration that responds to legislative oversight requests with indifference, if not out-right disdain," said Senate Intelligence Committee chair Sen. Jay Rockefeller at a hearing last month. "For years, the White House and the Intelligence Community have repeatedly withheld information and documents -- even unclassified documents -- from the Committee that we have asked for," he said. So it is all the more remarkable that the intelligence oversight committees have finally dusted off and used one of the tools they have always had to compel executive branch cooperation -- the power of the purse. Specifically, a provision of the new FY2008 intelligence authorization bill would prohibit expenditure of certain funds for an unidentified classified program unless and until every member of the oversight committees is briefed on intelligence about the September 6, 2007 Israeli strike on a Syrian facility. See Section 328 ("Limitation on use of funds") of the Conference Report on the FY 2008 Intelligence Authorization Act completed last week: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_rpt/hrpt110-478.html Although disputes over congressional access to information date back to the first months of the Bush Administration, a review of past legislation shows that the intelligence committees have not previously exercised their budget authorization power in this way to compel disclosure of information, or to penalize non-disclosure, under the current Administration. In fact, a former staffer told Secrecy News he could not remember this approach ever having been used by the intelligence committees (though other committees have often made release of funds contingent on submission of required reports under their jurisdiction). So why did they do it now? The former staffer pointed to testimony last month by former Rep. Lee Hamilton at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in which he stressed the use of financial incentives to induce intelligence agencies to submit to oversight: "Okay, they don't share information. What do you do about it? You've only got one tool: 'If you don't give us this information, you're not going to get the money.' That's it," Mr. Hamilton told the Committee on November 13. The scales seemed to fall from the members' eyes. "I think you've given us a game-changing scenario," replied Sen. Kit Bond (R- MO) at the hearing. The use of appropriations authority to elicit information from the executive branch actually dates back to the earliest days of the Republic, observed Louis Fisher in a 2001 Congressional Research Service report. "Presidents may have to surrender documents they consider sensitive or confidential in order to obtain funds from Congress to implement programs important to the executive branch. This congressional leverage is evident in a number of early executive-legislative confrontations." See "Congressional Access to Executive Branch Information: Legislative Tools," May 17, 2001: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RL30966.pdf SELECTED CRS REPORTS Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service include the following. "Open Source Intelligence (OSINT): Issues for Congress," December 5, 2007: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/RL34270.pdf "Medal of Honor Recipients: 1979-2007," updated November 13, 2007: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL30011.pdf "Homeland Security Department: FY2008 Appropriations," updated August 20, 2007: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL34004.pdf "Greece Update," updated October 16, 2007: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RS21855.pdf "The Republic of the Philippines: Background and U.S. Relations," updated August 10, 2007: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33233.pdf _______________________________________________ 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 1725 DeSales St NW, 6th floor Washington, DC 20036 web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html email: saftergood at fas.org voice: (202)454-4691 From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 17:51:59 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 17:51:59 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Gravel Still #1 on VAJoe Presidential Poll After 1.7 Million Votes Message-ID: <20071211175159.76d3e7cb@viola.tamara-b.org> Mike Gravel Campaign 2008 - Dec 10, 2007 Gravel For President 2008 Press Release Gravel Still #1 on Presidential Poll After 1.7 Million Votes Cast Presidential Candidate and former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel continues to hold the #1 spot over all other Presidential candidates at VAJoe.com, an online military community for service members, veterans and their families. According to Director of Content Lane D. Burkholz, nearly 1.7 million votes have been cast on the site's Candidate Calculator since its release in mid September. Gravel ranks first with just under 14% followed by Mayor Rudy Giuliani at 11.9% and Governor Mitt Romney at 10.2%. The nearest Democratic rival is Congressman Dennis Kucinich at 9.8%. The site, which claims more than 15,000 members and offers free membership for active duty veterans and military family members, also offers a Military Discussion Forum with more than 50,000 posts. "The calculator is an online poll that matches voters with their most like-minded presidential candidates after voters indicate their positions on 24 political issues," said Burkholz. "We developed the Candidate Calculator as a thought-provoking tool to prompt consideration among voters of important issues facing our country." VAJoe: http://www.vajoe.com/ VAJoe Candidate Calculator: http://www.vajoe.com/candidate_calculator.html The Candidate Calculator has garnered nationwide media attention. CNN political news show The Situation Roomaired a story on September 20 about the calculator and Senator Mike Gravel's place at the top of the list as the most-frequently matched candidate by the calculator. The talk-radio show The Glenn Beck Programfeatured a discussion of the calculator with candidate Mike Huckabee on October 3. Google currently ranks the VAJoeCandidate Calculator first for the search term "2008 Election." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Learn More www.gravel2008.us Alex Colvin Press Secretary 310-650-7481 alex at gravel2008.us Gravel For President 2008 | P.O. Box 948 | Arlington | VA | 22216-0948 From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 18:02:45 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:02:45 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] The INF Treaty and the Washington Summit: 20 Years Later Message-ID: <20071211180245.5216fd5f@viola.tamara-b.org> National Security Archive Update - Dec 10, 2007 http://www.nsarchive.org The INF Treaty and the Washington Summit: 20 Years Later Washington D.C., December 10, 2007 - Previously secret Soviet Politburo records and declassified American transcripts of the Washington summit 20 years ago between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev show that Gorbachev was willing to go much further than the Americans expected or were able to reciprocate on arms cuts and resolving regional conflicts, according to documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org). Today's posting includes the internal Soviet deliberations leading up to the summit, full transcripts of the two leaders' discussions, the Soviet record of negotiations with top American diplomats, and other historic records being published for the first time. The documents show that the Soviet Union made significant changes to its initial position to accommodate the U.S. demands, beginning with "untying the package" of strategic arms, missile defense, and INF in February 1987 and then agreeing to eliminate its newly deployed OKA/SS-23 missiles, while pressing the U.S. leadership to agree on substantial reductions of strategic nuclear weapons. Gorbachev's goal was to prepare and sign the START Treaty on the basis of 50 percent reductions of strategic offensive weapons in 1988 before the Reagan administration left office. In the course of negotiations, the Soviet Union also proposed cutting conventional forces in Europe by 25 percent and starting negotiations to eliminate chemical weapons. The documents also detail Gorbachev's desire for genuine collaboration with the U.S. in resolving regional conflicts, especially the Iran-Iraq War, Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Nicaragua. However, the documents show that the U.S. side was unwilling and unable to pursue many of the Soviet initiatives at the time due to political struggles within the Reagan administration. Reading these documents one gets a visceral sense of missed opportunities for achieving even deeper cuts in nuclear arsenals, resolving regional conflicts, and ending the Cold War even earlier. The documents paint the fullest declassified portrait yet available of the Washington summit which ended 20 years ago today and centered on the signing of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty--the only treaty of its kind in actually eliminating an entire class of nuclear weapons. By eliminating mainly the missiles based in Europe, the treaty lowered the threat of nuclear war in Europe substantially and cleared the way for negotiations on tactical nuclear and chemical weapons, as well as negotiations on conventional forces in Europe. Under the Treaty, the Soviet Union destroyed 889 of its intermediate-range missiles and 957 shorter-range missiles, and the U.S. destroyed 677 and 169 respectively. These were the missiles with very short flight time to targets in the Soviet Union, which made them "most likely to spur escalation to general nuclear war from any local hostilities that might erupt." These weapons were perceived as most threatening by the Soviet leadership, which is why the Soviet military supported the Treaty, even though there was a significant opposition among them to including the shorter-range weapons. The Treaty included remarkably extensive and intrusive verification inspection and monitoring arrangements, based on the "any time and place" proposal of March 1987, which was accepted by the Soviets to the Americans' surprise; and the documents show that the Soviets were willing to go beyond the American position in the depth of verification regime. The new Soviet position on verification not only removed the hurdle that seemed insurmountable, but according to then-U.S. Ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock, became a symbol of the new trust developing in U.S.-Soviet relations, which made the treaty and further progress on arms control possible. The documents published here for the first time give the reader a unique and never-previously-available opportunity to look into the process of internal deliberations on both sides and the negotiations both before and during the summit in December 1987. Visit the Web site of the National Security Archive for more information about today's posting. http://www.nsarchive.org ________________________________________________________ THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 18:06:30 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:06:30 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Trade dollars for an even more imaginary currency -- just please don't spend them! Message-ID: <20071211180630.45425057@viola.tamara-b.org> Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee - Dec 10, 2007 http://www.gata.org Trade dollars for an even more imaginary currency -- just please don't spend them! What may be a trial balloon was floated today in the Financial Times via an essay by a former U.S. Treasury Department official, Fred Bergsten, headlined "How to Solve the Problem of the Dollar," which is appended here. Bergsten proposes allowing sovereign holders of huge dollar surpluses to exchange them for Special Drawing Rights in an account at the International Monetary Fund. "The account would invest the dollar deposits in US securities," Bergsten writes. "If additional backing were deemed necessary, the fund's gold holdings of $80 billion would more than suffice." Why any country that has done work and produced things of actual value for its dollar surpluses would exchange them for an even more imaginary currency is hard to understand -- especially since, as Bergsten writes, the dollar surpluses deposited with the IMF would be invested in "US securities," which is only how so much of those dollar surpluses are being held now, in U.S. government debt instruments that can never be repaid. But Bergsten's reference to the IMF's gold as potential "additional backing" for the extra Special Drawing Rights is interesting. Does he mean that sovereign dollar surplus holders should be allowed to exchange their dollars for gold in something other than free-market circumstances, so that the central bank suppression of the gold price might continue more easily? In any case Bergsten seems to be saying that the solution to the dollar problem is not to spend all those extra dollars on anything -- to ensure that those extra dollars flooding the world never can be spent, to take them out of circulation before they are returned to their issuer as payment for anything real. But of course that "solution" is only the problem itself now. If you can't spend dollars except for some other instrument you can't spend either, you're never going to get paid, only cheated. Couldn't those surplus dollar holders at least be allowed to buy, in addition to pretty new SDRs, a few more collateralized debt obligations? CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. * * * How to Solve the Problem of the Dollar By Fred Bergsten Financial Times, London - December 10, 2007 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/75cb5f2e-a729-11dc-a25a-0000779fd2ac.html The world economy faces an acute policy dilemma that, if mishandled, could bring on the mother of all monetary crises. Many dollar holders, including central banks and sovereign wealth funds as well as private investors, clearly want to diversify into other currencies. Since foreign dollar holdings total at least $20,000 billion, even a modest realisation of these desires could produce a free fall of the US currency and huge disruptions to markets and the world economy. Fears of such an outcome have risen sharply in both official circles and the markets. However, none of the countries into whose currencies the diversification would take place want to receive these inflows. The eurozone, the UK, Canada, and Australia among others believe that their exchange rates are already substantially overvalued. But China and most of the other Asian countries continue to intervene heavily to keep their currencies from rising significantly. Hence, further large shifts out of the dollar could indeed push the floating currencies far above their equilibrium levels, generating new imbalances and a possibly severe slowdown in global growth. There is only one solution to this dilemma that would satisfy all parties: creation of a substitution account at the International Monetary Fund through which unwanted dollars could be converted into special drawing rights, the international money created initially by the fund in 1969 and of which $34 billion-worth now exists. Such an account was worked out in great detail in 1978-1980 during an earlier bout of currency diversification and freefall of the dollar that closely resembled today's circumstances. There was widespread agreement, including from influential private-sector groups and congressional leaders as well as the IMF's governing body, that the initiative would enhance global monetary stability. It failed only because the sharp rise in the dollar that followed the Federal Reserve's monetary tightening of 1979-1980 obviated much of its rationale, and over disagreement between Europe and the US on how to make up for any nominal losses that the account might suffer as a result of further depreciation of dollars that had been consolidated. The idea of a substitution account is simple. Instead of converting dollars into other currencies through the market, depressing the former and strengthening the latter, official holders could deposit their unwanted holdings in a special account at the IMF. They would be credited with a like amount of SDR (or SDR-denominated certificates), which they could use to finance future balance-of-payment deficits and other legitimate needs, redeem at the account itself, or transfer to other participants. Hence the asset would be fully liquid. The fund's members would authorise it to meet the demand by issuing as many new SDRs as needed, which would have no net impact on the global money supply (and hence on world growth or inflation) because the operation would substitute one asset for another. The account would invest the dollar deposits in US securities. If additional backing were deemed necessary, the fund's gold holdings of $80 billion would more than suffice. All countries would benefit. Those with dollars that they deem excessive would receive an asset denominated in a basket of currencies (44 per cent dollars, 34 per cent euros, 11 per cent each yen and sterling), achieving in a single stroke the diversification they seek along with market-based yields. They would avoid depressing the dollar excessively, minimising the loss on their remaining dollar holdings as well as avoiding systemic disruption. The US would be spared the risk of higher inflation and potentially much higher interest rates that would stem from an even sharper decline of the dollar. Such consequences would be especially unwelcome today with the prospect of subdued US growth or even recession over the next year or so. The international financial architecture would be greatly strengthened by a substitution account. In the wake of the dollar crises of the early postwar period, the IMF membership adopted SDR as the centrepiece of a strategy to build an international monetary system that would no longer rely on a single currency. The move to floating exchange rates by most major countries in the 1970s postponed the need to pursue that strategy to its conclusion but also generated the extreme currency instability that triggered official consideration of an account. The global imbalances and large currency swings in recent years, and the accelerated accumulation of official dollar holdings by countries that have essentially reverted to fixed exchange rates, replicate the conditions that led to both the creation of SDR and the negotiations on an account. A substitution account would not solve all international monetary problems nor would it suffice to restore a stable global financial system. The dollar needs to decline further to restore equilibrium in the US external position. China, many other Asian countries, and most oil exporters will have to accept substantial increases in their currencies now and much more flexible exchange rates for the long run. But early adoption of a substitution account would minimise the risks of adjustment of the present imbalances and the inevitable structural shift to a bipolar monetary system based on the euro as well as the dollar. [The writer is director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He was assistant secretary of the Treasury for international affairs in 1977-1981 and led the substitution account negotiations for the US in 1980.] ================= GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at http://www.gata.org/. GATA is grateful for financial contributions, which are federally tax-deductible in the United States. Read more at http://www.gata.org/node/5829 From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 18:13:39 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:13:39 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Statement of former FBI agent John Ryan Message-ID: <20071211181339.05b6ac56@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Rich Winkel -activ-l - Dec 9, 2007 Judi Bari.org http://www.judibari.org/Ryan050701.html Statement of John C. Ryan May 7, 2001 I, John C. Ryan, was a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from Feb. 28, 1966 to Oct. 11, 1987, assigned to Phoenix and Yuma, AZ (1 yr), Utica, NY (9 yrs), East St. Louis, IL (5 yrs) and Peoria, IL (7yrs). Most of my career I specialized in organized crime (OC) investigations. I also worked general criminal and applicant cases, and near the end of my Career I specialized in Foreign Counterintelligence & Terrorist cases. My duties were to investigate violations of federal laws (those assigned to FBI jurisdiction), make arrests, serve search warrants, or as directed by the President of the United States. I was fired from FBI on Oct 11, 87 for refusing a direct order to investigate non-violent peace groups as saboteurs/terrorists, based on my religious beliefs. I sued for re-instatement, (John C. Ryan vs. US Dept of Justice, Case No. 88C 2410, Central District of Illinois). Reinstatement was denied. The case was heard 10/15/91 by 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals, Case No. 91-1467 -- appeal denied. Informant development and informant handling was my specialty throughout most of my FBI career. I worked OC for approximately 16 of my 22 years. I worked, handled, developed or attempted to develop literally hundreds of individuals as informants. I handled 7 Top Echelon (TE) informants including a Mafia member informant, and paid several thousand dollars to informants, both as "regularly paid" or in individual payments. I received two cash incentive awards for my work with informants. My two letters of censure from the FBI, neither of which I am ashamed, were because of overzealousness in my informant work. I attended a specialized informant In-Service training which gathered agents around the FBI that specialized or excelled in informant development. During my entire FBI career, all agents working criminal matters were expected to have informants, also known as a source, asset, snitch, stool-pigeon, a 137 (the informant file number). One's informant coverage was a major portion of all performance reviews and inspection reports. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, with the inner-city rioting and unrest, every field agent had to have at least one "ghetto informant" meaning an Afro-American informant. In the late 60s, early 70s, the Top-Echelon Criminal Informant Program (TECIP) began, targeting OC figures, particularly Mafia members. There were an overwhelming amount of rules and restrictions on the program, ostensibly to assure the "integrity" of bureau informants, and to prevent abuse by the informant or the agent. The reality is that many agents either had no ability or desire to develop informants, some were simply unable to converse with somebody in the "criminal element" in a civil manner. By and large, the informant program was an internal game between the field and headquarters, almost all on paper, to meet the bureau requirements, and fraud on the part of the agents became rampant. It was the unwritten policy of the field offices that all fugitive apprehensions, recovered stolen cars, and many other statistical accomplishments be attributed to an informant. A new informant was designated a Potential Criminal Informant, (PCI). This PCI needed 3 accomplishments (i.e., a fugitive located, a stolen car recovered), to become a Criminal Informant, (CI). After that all you had to do was contact the CI at least every 30 days, and fill out a background sheet. I heard these specific instructions, several times, from the informant coordinator at all-agent conferences. "Phony informants," or "paper informants" were the rule. Subsequently, the bureau rules governing informant development, handling. and reporting pertained almost entirely to this type of informant. On the other hand there was always a scattering of agents that worked legitimate informants. Some of these informants were extremely competent and productive. Sometimes the informant was a "walk-in," a person that contacts us with some information, for some reason, and volunteers to continue providing information. There were agents with hoodlum friends or relatives that turned informant. Then, often in the course of a case, especially in prosecution stages, a subject would turn informant in return for leniency or release. Then there were agents that had the desire and ability to develop informants. From my experience and from numerous contacts with other agents that specialized working informants, it became obvious that not many agents fell into this category. Many FBI divisions, mainly smaller ones, had no such agent, some with only one. Some of the larger divisions were not much different. As a rule, the more productive an informant, the more paperwork and administrative problems he or she caused. Any agent familiar with real informants knows this, and often the agent found him/herself at frequent odds with the field office or the bureau and found it essential to cut corners with the paperwork, and subsequently with the content of the informant's information. The rule said every informant had to be contacted at least once every thirty days. In reality, some informants were contacted on a regular basis, sometimes daily, while others were difficult to find, it was dangerous to meet, did not like to be contacted, or were generally unavailable. One productive informant could, in effect, carry several lesser productive informants. By this, I mean, it was common to take information from one informant and attribute it to another, or several others, to keep all productive, but especially to meet the 30 day contact rule. It was also common to use police intelligence information, information from illegal wire-taps and microphones, even news stories, by attributing the information to informants, both as a means of inflating an informant's worth, and/or masking an illegal eavesdropping operation. All agents were required to certify upon every informant contact that the informant did not hold back any information and that the informant showed no signs of emotional or mental instability. Both statements, in my estimation and that of most agents I knew that handled informants, were absurd. Informants frequently held track Information or altered the information to fit their agenda, which was often revenge, or to provide what the agent was hoping to learn, especially if payment was involved. I found this aspect so common that I regularly maintained informants to inform on my informants. Informant development and informant handling was my specialty throughout most of my FBI career. I worked OC for approximately 16 of my 22 years. I worked, handled, developed or attempted to develop literally hundreds of individuals as informants. I handled 7 TE informants including a Mafia member informant, and paid several thousand dollars to informants, both as "regularly paid" or individual payments. I received two cash incentive awards as well as two letters of censure from the bureau for informant matters. The informant program was haphazardly maintained, by the bureau and by the field. There was little security given to informants. On a PCI case, the informant's actual name was the title and used throughout all paperwork. (CI's names were concealed and given symbol numbers.) The informant files were shelved with all other files and were available to any agent or clerk in the office. It was presumed that most of the informants were either totally fictional, or at least exaggerated. The bureau requires a case agent to certify that they have instructed the informant that he/she is not an employee of the FBI, and that they are not to portray themselves as such. This is a problem that probably every agent that worked real informants has encountered. I recall a former mob muscle, hit-man that turned informant and who took to his new role with the same enthusiasm he had as he did for the mob. Once, after reading a newspaper column that trashed the FBI, he became so upset and took it so personal that he wanted to go and "mess-up" the columnist that wrote the article. One secretary that handled informant payments became extremely resistant and uncooperative to me because the informant was earning more than she was, and she complained openly to others in the office about this. One SAC (Special Agent in Charge) commented when an agent was forced to pay several hundred dollars to repair a bureau car he damaged, "I thought that's what informant money was for." In my first assignment I was told by an experienced agent to read "Our Man in Havana," a novel by Graham Green, if I wanted to know how the bureau informant program is best worked. In this story an "agent" in Havana, Cuba, manufactures all of the information he sends to his superiors using the diagram of a vacuum cleaner as the sinister weapon he spying on. I Worked at the Mexican border, and, as a favor to another agent responsible for "security" information from Mexico, would periodically go into Mexico, buy every Mexican newspaper I could find and give them to that agent, who told me he would read to find intelligence information to attribute to his security informant. I was working OC cases when the TECIP was initiated. The program was pointed at the Mafia, or organized crime in general, (for offices that did not have Italian Mafia affiliations) seeking major OC figures as informants. It was a highly successful program but rarely operated as the bureau instructed and was led to believe it was run. I attended an informant in-service training session at Quantico in which the director of the CI and TECI programs (both designed the particular programs and were with then from their start) both admitted they had never, in their field days, worked actual informants. Both were being very candid, and admitting the programs had great shortfalls. One agent that had two good OC informants feared and mistrusted the bureau informant system so much that he never put either informant on paper, but instead attributed any information either told him to any one of several marginal or non-existent informants he carried on paper. I know of an instance where an agent, in a division needing a Mafia member informant, took a person he was friendly with, a low level street con-man, with an Italian last name, and by quoting police intelligence sources and other informants, made him into a Mafia member -- or so the bureau thought. At the same time there was a highly productive illegal microphone in a local Mafia member's premises. The individual was "targeted" as a possible informant, successfully developed, greatly enhanced the agent's reputation, the field office's reputation and provided a vehicle to report the information from the microphone. Further, this informant was paid significantly on a regular basis (which also made the agent, office, and the information more appealing). When another, legitimate Mafia member informant, from the same Mafia family and the same city was developed, but did not validify the other so-called member, neither the field division nor the bureau balked, and the bogus member informant continued to be paid on a regular basis. I had an informant that was on federal probation, but deeply involved with OC friends. Bureau rules prohibited contacting a federal parolee or probationer without permission of his Probation Officer. I contacted the Probation Officer who was convinced the source was going straight and told me he would violate him if he caught him talking to me. Instead of violating the bureau rule I made his girlfriend an informant and normally contacted them together, attributing all the information to her file. At a later point it became necessary to use some of his information in court. The situation was explained to the bureau. Although I was given a letter of censure, the bureau permitted me to provide the information as testimony. Although prepared to, I never testified in this, case. I would have, honestly, but the FBI file in which I reported the informant information to the bureau was fraudulent. The OC section of the bureau recognized the problem but the Office of Professional Responsibility did not. With the advent of the Federal Strike Forces, the Media, PA break-in, (where, for the first time, actual internal FBI files, including informant contact forms, were stolen and seen by the public), the death of J. Edgar Hoover, then the Watergate scandal and the Senator Frank Church Guidelines that resulted, a great deal of change began to take place regarding informants. Prior to all of this, rarely was the majority of informant information used for prosecuting crimes. It was gathered primarily for intelligence purposes (as was security type information). Intelligence gathering had become an end in itself, to impress one's own supervisor or the bureau, or just to gather intelligence for its own sake. When wiretaps became legal, (early 1970s) informant information became imperative to obtain the affidavits necessary for the court authorized wiretaps. Often, especially when working with Strike Force attorneys, we would be tasked to obtain specific informant information to strengthen the affidavit, make it more specific, or to update the information due to the delays that occurred getting the affidavit approved. Sometimes it was dangerous -- dangerous for the informant's security, or dangerous for the case if the informant realized the target of the affidavit -- contacting the informant, or the informant was reluctant to be contacted, as when didn't like being an informant, or when the informant did not know he was an informant. Often in such cases, either the update would be invented. At this stage too much was at stake logistically, (eavesdropping equipment, manpower, surveillance, extra clerical help, etc.) for any informant problems, especially when it was the agent that testified as to what the informant said, not the informant. Regardless of the integrity of that agent, that informant's file was already so full of falsehoods that another one wouldn't matter. One day, sometime in the early 1980s, all agents were contacted, by phone, not by memo, and told to close all "non-productive," (meaning phony) informants, with "no questions asked." Gradually many changes were made, such as removing informant files from the general files and keeping them in a special locked area, inaccessible to one and all, supposedly only the case agent. At the same time a new policy overtook the bureau; "quality not quantity." This applied to informants as well as all of the case work. But at the same time an addendum was whispered; "but we want a lot of quality." As I have noted, there were numerous rules and procedures established at different times for the handling of informants at different stages of their development, and for maintaining files and records of contacts and dealings between informants and the agents who worked with them. Those rules were honored as much in the breach as in the observance in my experience. There were periodic announcements from the bureau of reforms, reconstitution of procedures and other supposed improvements in the system, but the same practices always continued, or were re-established over time. Because of these experiences and observations, it would come as no surprise that FBI agents in the Judi Bari case, or any case, would distort, exaggerate, misrepresent, falsify or otherwise manipulate information about an informant, or about information supposedly received from an informant, or meetings, or the contents of reports and files, etc., regardless of the untruthfulness or unlawfulness of their actions. Anyone -- supervisors, bureau headquarters, a court or magistrate in a given case, prosecutors, city police officers -- might have been a target (victim) of such fraud and deception regarding informants and informant information in the circumstances and atmosphere I am describing. (signed) John C. Ryan May 7, 2001 From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 18:16:11 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:16:11 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] The Dismantling of Yugoslavia - Herman & Peterson Message-ID: <20071211181611.34a81e8a@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Tim Murphy - activ-l - Dec 9, 2007 Monthly Review - Oct 2007 http://www.monthlyreview.org The Dismantling of Yugoslavia This is a clear, succinct, insightful analysis of a critically important crisis, one that opened the Pandora's Box of "humanitarian intervention" as the preferred rationale for imperialist action in the current era. It will change your understanding of a chapter of history that has been grossly distorted by the dominant media. A must read. The Dismantling of Yugoslavia: A Study in Inhumanitarian Intervention (and a Western Liberal-Left Intellectual and Moral Collapse) By Edward S. Herman and David Peterson Edward S. Herman is professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and has written extensively on economics, political economy, and the media. Among his books are Corporate Control, Corporate Power (Cambridge University Press, 1981), The Real Terror Network (South End Press, 1982), and, with Noam Chomsky, The Political Economy of Human Rights (South End Press, 1979), and Manufacturing Consent (Pantheon, 2002). David Peterson is an independent journalist and researcher based in Chicago. Part I http://www.monthlyreview.org/1007herman-peterson1.htm Part II http://www.monthlyreview.org/1007herman-peterson2.htm Part III http://www.monthlyreview.org/1007herman-peterson3.htm Part IV http://www.monthlyreview.org/1007herman-peterson2.htm Notes http://www.monthlyreview.org/1007hp-notes.htm Glossary http://www.monthlyreview.org/1007hp-glossary.htm Timeline http://www.monthlyreview.org/1007hp-glossary.htm#time From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 18:19:11 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:19:11 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Racism and the American Psyche: Thoughts on Race and Intelligence Message-ID: <20071211181911.096d1108@viola.tamara-b.org> CounterPunch - Dec 7, 2007 http://www.counterpunch.org/piety12072007.html Racism and the American Psyche: Some Thoughts on Race and Intelligence By M. G. PIETY Race is in the news again. First it was the Jena Six, then Nobel laureate James D. Watson's assertion, that black are less intelligent than whites, and finally, a series of articles two weeks ago in Slate arguing that there was scientific evidence to back Watson's claim. The reaction to these recent developments was predictable. There have been a number of heated debates on the internet concerning not only race and intelligence, but also the appropriateness of studying race and intelligence. Two crucial points have yet to be made, however. The first concerns the contentious association of intelligence with IQ score and the second is the equally contentious assumption that we have anything like a clear scientific conception or race. Let's take the first one first. What is intelligence anyway? We have no better grasp of this than we have of the relation of the mind to the brain. Sure, some people can solve certain sorts of puzzles faster than other people, but everyone knows people who are great at Scrabble, or crosswords, or chess, or who can fix almost any mechanical or electrical gadget, but who seem unable to wrap their minds around even the most rudimentary of social or political theories. Then there are the people with great memories who are able to retain all the elements of even the most arcane theories and who can undertake an explanation of them if pressed, but whose inability to express them in novel terms betrays that they have not really grasped them after all. Other people-I've known quite a few of this type-have keenly analytical minds. They can break individual claims, or even entire theories, down into their conceptual components, yet they appear to lack any sort of synthetic intelligence in that they are unable to see the myriad implications of these analyses. Still other people are great at grasping the big picture, so to speak, but have difficulty hanging onto the details. Some people plod slowly and methodically toward whatever insights they achieve and others receive them almost effortlessly, through flashes of inspiration. But the insights of the former group are sometimes more profound than those of the latter group. Then there are people who are mostly mistaken in their beliefs, sometimes quite obviously so, but correct in some one belief the implications of which are so staggering that we tend to forget they are otherwise unreliable. I'm inclined to put Watson in this last group. Perhaps that's not fair. After all, I know of only one point on which he is obviously mistaken. That mistake is so glaring, however, that it leads me to think he is probably more like an idiot savant than a genuinely intelligent human being. I.Q. scores represent something. It just isn't all that clear what. To suggest that they represent intelligence in any significant sense is thus to betray that one has less than the ideally desirable quantity of this quality himself. Sure the mind, and therefore intelligence, is intimately connected with the brain. Read Oliver Sachs if you want to see just how intimate that connection is. Sachs is one of my favorite authors not simply because the substance of his writings is so fascinating, but also because he is himself so clearly intelligent. Not only does he not go leaping to conclusions on issues that lie outside his area of professional expertise (though I have to say I'd be more interested to hear Sachs' social and political views than Watson's), he doesn't go leaping to conclusions about the implications of what he has observed in his own work in neurology. He'd be one of the first people, I think, to defend the claim that we do not yet have a clear enough idea of what intelligence is to be reliably able to quantify it. We don't even understand it well enough yet to be able to say confidently that it is quantifiable. At this point, all we can say is that it appears so intimately connected with the brain that it can, in some sense, be associated with, or represented by, we-know-not-yet-what neurological activities or tendencies. OK, so far, so little. But what is a black brain and what is a white brain? Most blacks in the U.S., as opposed to blacks in Africa, have a great deal of white blood, or whatever you want to call it. If whites really were more intelligent than blacks, that would mean African-Americans would be that much more intelligent than Africans. (I'm sure my friend, the Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, would be interested to hear that one.) There may well be people who believe this. I am not aware of any empirical evidence, however, that supports such a conclusion. My own experience does not support it. I grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood and attended predominantly black schools from fourth grade to college. Since that time I have also met more than a few Africans. I couldn't detect any difference in intelligence. I'm unaware of even anecdotal evidence that would support the conclusion that there was such a difference. Do you see what I'm saying? We're not looking at a slippery slope here, but at a meteoric descent down into a pile of deep doo-doo. >From what I've read, there is no clear scientific definition of race. "Race" is just a name we give to a collection of physical characteristics such as eye and hair color and degree of pigmentation of the skin. There is no race gene. There are just genes that encode for these individual characteristics. So how many, and what sort, of characteristics does one have to have to be either black or white. It is some kind of ineffable sum isn't it? Blacks sometimes have very pale skin, some whites actually have darker skin than some blacks. Blacks even occasionally have blue eyes, or straight hair, just as whites often have brown eyes or kinky hair. In the past, we just arbitrarily determined what made a person black, and, by implication, white. Since, presumably, we have gotten beyond the point where we would say that even one drop of black blood makes a person black, the only reasonable definition of race (even given its circularity) would, therefore, appear to be one based on the statistical representation of the various races in one's family tree. That would mean people with predominantly white, or perhaps I should say "white-ish" ancestry would be considered white. Have you ever seen a photo of Charles Chestnut or Anatole Broyard? Not only are these guys clearly white, according to this definition, there are a whole lot of other people walking around this country who call themselves "black" because of the social environment into which they were born, but who ought properly to consider themselves white. Since when have scientific studies been undertaken on ineffable, or arbitrarily determined, classes of thing? It's like trying to determine whether people with purportedly good taste are more intelligent than people with supposedly bad taste, or whether people who live in Chicago are more intelligent than people who live in L.A. You might undertake such a thing as a sociological study with some arbitrarily agreed upon criteria for what would constitute good and bad taste, or for how far out into the suburbs you want to go before you decide you have left Chicago, as well with some equally arbitrarily agreed upon criteria for what constitutes intelligence. You cannot undertake such a thing though as a scientific study (no matter how convinced you may be in the genetic superiority of people who live in Chicago), and to think that you could betrays that you have a very weak grasp of what constitutes natural science. Given that race, at least from the standpoint of natural science, is nothing more than a collection of certain physical characteristics, the view that white people are more intelligent than black people is not uncomfortably close to view of the Nazis that blue-eyed blonds were inherently superior to everyone else-it is essentially the same thing. As I said earlier, I spent a huge portion of my life in the almost exclusive company of black people. I've been around black people and I've been around white people and I haven't found any general differences in terms of intelligence. My experience has led me to believe that most of what often passes for intelligence is actually intellectual self confidence, confidence in one's own reasoning powers, confidence in the value of one's insights. Teachers, of which I am one, will tell you that you can just see some people's brains seize up when they are confronted with tasks that later prove not to have been beyond them. This fear, however, that certain tasks are beyond one, is a substantial obstacle to completing them. One stumbles again and again, fearing that his "guess" is just that, a guess, rather than understanding. One fails to pursue an insight for fear that it is not genuine, or from fear that it is so obvious that others have come to it long ago. I don't mean to suggest that there are not innate differences in intelligence among human beings. I'm sure there are, but I agree with what I believe Noam Chomsky said somewhere about how these differences, measured relative to the difference in intelligence between human beings and their closes relatives the apes, are simply vanishingly small. I construe my job as an educator not to impart knowledge, but to nurture intellectual confidence. (Of course this could be partly a defensive mechanism because I am a philosopher, which means I don't have any knowledge to impart.) I try to teach critical thinking skills, of course, but even more important to me is somehow to get my students to believe in their own intellectual potential because even these skills, I believe, can, at least to a certain extent, be acquired naturally by people who are confident in their ability to acquire them. I say, teach people to believe in themselves and then see what they are able to do with that faith. But be very careful when you start judging the results because if anything of value has emerged from the recent debates on race and intelligence, it is that many of us are much closer to the edge of idiocy than any of us would like to admit. What we have here are noted intellectuals who have failed to grasp even the most basic facts about what constitutes natural scientific research and failed to understand that to parade this ignorance in the way they have before a public still marked by social and economic inequities that cut along racial lines is offensive in the extreme. The whole thing has been very humbling. It has shown, I believe, that racism is still very firmly entrenched in the American psyche. [M.G. Piety teaches philosophy at Drexel University. She can be reached at: mgpiety at drexel.edu ] From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 18:28:37 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:28:37 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] BP: The biggest environmental crime in history Message-ID: <20071211182837.53764158@viola.tamara-b.org> The Independent - Dec 10, 2007 http://environment.independent.co.uk/article3239364.ece 'The biggest environmental crime in history' By Cahal Milmo BP, the British oil giant that pledged to move "Beyond Petroleum" by finding cleaner ways to produce fossil fuels, is being accused of abandoning its "green sheen" by investing nearly #1.5bn to extract oil from the Canadian wilderness using methods which environmentalists say are part of the "biggest global warming crime" in history. The multinational oil and gas producer, which last year made a profit of #11bn, is facing a head-on confrontation with the green lobby in the pristine forests of North America after Greenpeace pledged a direct action campaign against BP following its decision to reverse a long-standing policy and invest heavily in extracting so-called "oil sands" that lie beneath the Canadian province of Alberta and form the world's second-largest proven oil reserves after Saudi Arabia. Producing crude oil from the tar sands a heavy mixture of bitumen, water, sand and clay found beneath more than 54,000 square miles of prime forest in northern Alberta an area the size of England and Wales combined generates up to four times more carbon dioxide, the principal global warming gas, than conventional drilling. The booming oil sands industry will produce 100 million tonnes of CO2 (equivalent to a fifth of the UK's entire annual emissions) a year by 2012, ensuring that Canada will miss its emission targets under the Kyoto treaty, according to environmentalist activists. The oil rush is also scarring a wilderness landscape: millions of tonnes of plant life and top soil is scooped away in vast open-pit mines and millions of litres of water are diverted from rivers up to five barrels of water are needed to produce a single barrel of crude and the process requires huge amounts of natural gas. The industry, which now includes all the major oil multinationals, including the Anglo-Dutch Shell and American combine Exxon-Mobil, boasts that it takes two tonnes of the raw sands to produce a single barrel of oil. BP insists it will use a less damaging extraction method, but it accepts that its investment will increase its carbon footprint. Mike Hudema, the climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace in Canada, told The Independent: "BP has done a very good job in recent years of promoting its green objectives. By jumping into tar sands extraction it is taking part in the biggest global warming crime ever seen and BP's green sheen is gone. "It takes about 29kg of CO2 to produce a barrel of oil conventionally. That figure can be as much 125kg for tar sands oil. It also has the potential to kill off or damage the vast forest wilderness, greater than the size of England and Wales, which forms part of the world's biggest carbon sinks. For BP to be involved in this trade not only flies in the face of their rhetoric but in the era of climate change it should not be being developed at all. You cannot call yourself 'Beyond Petroleum' and involve yourself in tar sands extraction." Mr Hudema said Greenpeace was planning a direct action campaign against BP, which could disrupt its activities as its starts construction work in Alberta next year. The company had shied away from involvement oil sands, until recently regarded as economically unviable and environmentally unpleasant. Lord Browne of Madingley, who was BP's chief executive until May, sold its remaining Canadian tar sands interests in 1999 and declared as recently as 2004 that there were "tons of opportunities" beyond the sector. But as oil prices hover around the $100-per-barrel mark, Lord Browne's successor, Tony Hayward, announced that BP has entered a joint venture with Husky Energy, owned by the Hong Kong based billionaire Li Ka-Shing, to develop a tar sands facility which will be capable of producing 200,000 barrels of crude a day by 2020. In return for a half share of Husky's Sunrise field in the Athabasca region of Alberta, the epicentre of the tar sands industry, BP has sold its partner a 50 per cent stake in its Toledo oil refinery in Ohio. The companies will invest $5.5bn (#2.7) in the project, making BP one of the biggest players in tar sands extraction. Mr Hayward made it clear that BP considered its investment was the start of a long-term presence in Alberta. He said: "BP's move into oil sands is an opportunity to build a strategic, material position and the huge potential of Sunrise is the ideal entry point for BP into Canadian oil sands." Canada claims that it has 175 billion barrels of recoverable oil in Alberta, making the province second only to Saudi Arabia in proved oil riches and sparking a #50bn "oil rush" as American, Chinese and European investors rush to profit from high oil prices. Despite production costs per barrel of up to #15, compared to #1 per barrel in Saudi Arabia, the Canadian province expects to be pumping five million barrels of crude a day by 2030. BP said it will be using a technology that pumps steam heated by natural gas into vertical wells to liquefy the solidified oil sands and pump it to the surface in a way that is less damaging than open cast mining. But campaigners said this method requires 1,000 cubic feet of gas to produce one barrel of unrefined bitumen the same required to heat an average British home for 5.5 days. A spokesman for BP added: "These are resources that would have been developed anyway." Licenses have been issued by the Albertan government to extract 350 million cubic metres of water from the Athabasca River every year. But the water used in the extraction process, say campaigners, is so contaminated that it cannot be returned to the eco-system and must instead be stored in vast "tailings ponds" that cover up to 20 square miles and there is evidence of increased rates of cancer and multiple sclerosis in down-river communities. Experts say a pledge to restore all open cast tar sand mines to their previous pristine condition has proved sadly lacking. David Schindler, professor of ecology at the University of Alberta, said: "Right now the big pressure is to get that money out of the ground, not to reclaim the landscape. I wouldn't be surprised if you could see these pits from a satellite 1,000 years from now." From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 18:30:39 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:30:39 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] New Hospital Built w/Cuban Assistance in Honduras Message-ID: <20071211183039.07abec27@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles New Hospital Built with Cuban Assistance Inaugurated in Honduras Havana, Dec 10 (acn) A new hospital that will give its services mainly to people of African-American origin and that was built with Cuban assistance, was inaugurated on Saturday in Honduras. According to Granma news daily, this facility, the first of its kind in the Central American country, is the result of the solidarity among Cuba, US trade unionists, African-American communities and the first Honduran youths who graduated from the Havana-based Latin American School of Medicine. The hospital is located in Ciriboya, a remote village in the Caribbean coast of Honduras. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 18:32:07 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:32:07 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Latin American Presidents Found Bank of the South Message-ID: <20071211183207.281cf860@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Latin American Presidents Found Bank of the South Havana, Dec 10, (acn) The Presidents of Brazil, Venezuela, Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay and Argentina officially founded the Bank of the South on Sunday aimed to sponsor regional projects. The Bank of the South will open with an initial capital of seven billion dollars, coming from the seven member countries' international reserves, reports Granma newspaper. After the signing ceremony, Bolivian President Evo Morales highlighted the historic importance of the moment and said it is also a good step towards the creation of a single currency. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, called the event a decisive step towards regional integration to promote development in key areas such as infrastructure and social programs. Lula announced that Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez, who didn't attend the ceremony, would arrive Monday to sign the accord. Lula expressed his hope that the other countries of the region join to make the institution advance. He noted that it will be the first bank truly controlled by the countries of the region and will lessen the dependence on the US dollar for commercial transactions. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said the bank's founding is a step towards making the utopia of one America, envisioned by liberator Simon Bolivar. He said a new financial institution is being born to reverse the selfishness and subordination to the international organisms. Nicanor Duarte, the Paraguayan president, said the Bank of the South opens a process of financial sovereignty, political liberation and cultural independence. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez noted the coincidence of the meeting to found the Bank of the South with the anniversary of the Battle of Ayacucho, 183 years earlier, when the independence heroes affirmed that unity is the only path to true freedom and self-determination. The host leader, outgoing President Nestor Kirchner, recounted his term in office and the relations established with his colleagues. He thanked each of them for the close ties established to consolidate Latin American integration. Among the main functions of the new bank will be financing development projects in key economic sectors to improve competitiveness and scientific and technological development. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 18:47:01 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:47:01 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] NY Times Catches Up with Canadian Ruling on US Lawlessness Message-ID: <20071211184701.05f67b33@viola.tamara-b.org> [Thanks to Jane Franklin for spotting this. The decision itself was reported on by The Jurist. The "Times" is just reporting it, on Dec 10! Maybe in honor of Int'l Human Rights Day? NYTr] For several stories and links to others, see: MAJOR NEWS: Canada Scraps Refugee Agreement w/US Because It Tortures, Does Not Obey Int'l Law http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20071126/072391.html The New York Times - Dec 10, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/us/10bar.html U.S. Is No Haven, Canadian Judge Finds By ADAM LIPTAK Late last month, a federal judge in Canada ruled that the United States had violated international conventions on torture and the rights of refugees. The decision has caused quite a stir in Canada. The Globe and Mail, a Toronto newspaper, said it was ?outrageous, and has the whiff of Canadian cultural superiority about it.? The decision, by Justice Michael L. Phelan, does at first blush sound like a judicial stunt. You don?t often see judges instructing their own governments about how to conduct foreign affairs. It is less common still to see them engaging in freelance diplomacy by chastising foreign governments. Justice Phelan?s decision was, moreover, based on affidavits from about a dozen American professors and lawyers. However sound their criticisms of American practices were, it was odd to see them addressed to a foreign judge. The mix of aromas surrounding the decision included a whiff of forum shopping. And yet. There was a sound legal reason for Justice Phelan to be addressing American practices and policies. The case concerned a 2002 agreement between the United States and Canada on the treatment of people fleeing persecution from other places, and the agreement itself requires compliance with international conventions on refugees and torture. Under the deal, which became effective three years ago this month, people from other countries entering Canada from the United States by land could no longer ask for asylum, on the theory that they should have done so in the United States. (The agreement works in reverse, too, but most refugee traffic moves north.) You get one bite at the asylum apple, the agreement says, because you will get a fair shake in either country. But the deal, known as the Safe Third Country Agreement, sets conditions based on the international conventions, and Justice Phelan said the United States had in recent years not lived up to them. He acknowledged that an English court had turned back a similar challenge to American refugee policy in 2000. But things have changed since the Bush administration came to power, Justice Phelan said, and the reasons given in the English decision ?clearly relate to a different time.? Justice Phelan declared the 2002 agreement invalid. It is not entirely clear what follows from that decision. The parties have further briefs to submit, and an appeal is likely. But it certainly seems possible that many thousands of refugees will again become able to make asylum claims in Canada. That should not be a cause for alarm, said Philip G. Schrag, a law professor at Georgetown who submitted an affidavit in the case. ?Some people will arrive at Kennedy airport and they?ll take the bus up to Montreal,? Professor Schrag said, ?and they?ll be processed where they wanted to be processed in the first place.? Justice Phelan writes with the opposite of flair. (On Tuesday, an appeals court in California issued a warning at the beginning of an unrelated decision that should have been affixed to this decision, too: ?We think it only fair to suggest that the reader might want to be sitting in a comfortable chair, with a cup of strong coffee nearby.?) In his studiously technical 124-page decision, Justice Phelan found that a one-year deadline for filing asylum claims here, enacted by Congress in 1996, had been applied in recent years in ways that violated the international convention on refugees. He found a similar flaw in a provision of the USA Patriot Act that, as interpreted by the Bush administration?s immigration courts, allows people to be excluded for providing material support to terrorists ? even if the support was coerced or under duress. In other words, providing food at gunpoint may be material support of terrorism, as is paying ransom for a kidnapped relative. Justice Phelan?s decision also cited the findings of a Canadian commission in the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian whom the United States sent to Syria, where the commission said he was tortured. Canada has paid him more than $10 million, which is one way to respond to his ordeal. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently conceded in general terms that the matter had not been ?handled as it should have been,? which is another. Justice Phelan said the ?real life? example of Mr. Arar made the contention that the United States does not comply with the torture convention ?credible.? Peter J. Spiro, a law professor at Temple University and the author of a new book called ?Beyond Citizenship,? said the issues discussed by Justice Phelan were ?debatable and unstable.? But, he added, ?there is nothing that is way out on a limb about this opinion.? American officials declined to discuss the details of Justice Phelan?s critique. ?The United States has a proud record of accepting and protecting refugees, defending human rights and adhering to our treaty obligations,? David H. Wilkins, the United States ambassador to Canada, said in a statement read by a spokeswoman. ?This is why the United States welcomes more refugees than any other country in the world and remains a beacon of hope and liberty.? Justice Phelan?s decision has received almost no attention in the United States, to the frustration of the plaintiffs in the suit. ?Canada, which has a lot of respect for the institutions and traditions of the United States, was forced to conclude that the U.S. is violating refugees? rights,? said Janet Dench, the executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, one of the plaintiffs in the suit. ?It should be a wake-up call,? she said, sounding a little plaintive. Related: Canadian Council for Refugees v. Her Majesty the Queen (Federal Court of Canada, Nov. 29) http://cas-ncr-nter03.cas-satj.gc.ca/rss/IMM-7818-05.pdf Safe Third Country Agreement (2002) http://www.uscis.gov/files/article/appendix-c.pdf American Guarantee and Liability Insurance Company v. ADP Marshall (California Court of Appeal, Dec. 4) http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/nonpub/E041182.PDF From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 18:47:44 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:47:44 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Cuba Hails International Human Rights Day Message-ID: <20071211184744.79125453@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Cuba Hails International Human Rights Day Havana, Dec 10 (acn) Cuba celebrates on Monday the International Human Rights Day with an honorable and extensive record of cooperation with a large number of countries around the world. A note from the Cuban permanent mission at the United Nations Organization states that there are no violations in the island that justify the attention from the UN Human Rights Council or any other international body, reports Prensa Latina news agency. The document also highlights the island's cooperation with other countries through universal and non-selective human rights mechanisms. Cuba has demonstrated with concrete facts, its unequivocal will to open dialogue in all issues, the text stresses. The Cuban declaration also refers to the approval of a resolution in the Third Commission of the General Assembly on November 16 that ratified the construction of the Human Rights Council. "Dignity and justice for everyone" will be the topic of the commemoration in 2008 for the anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The aim is "to make use of basic values, human dignity, non-discrimination, equality, equity and universality applied to everyone, everywhere and every moment," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-mon recently stated. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 18:52:02 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:52:02 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Venezuelan Oil Arrives in Massachusetts Message-ID: <20071211185202.225e533e@viola.tamara-b.org> WBUR News - December 10, 2007 http://www.wbur.org/news/2007/73131_20071210.asp Venezuelan Oil Arrives By Shannon Mullen BRAINTREE, Mass. -- A tanker ship is set to arrive in Braintree today carrying low-cost home-heating oil from Venezuela for needy people in Massachusetts and other northeastern states. Venezuela will sell its oil at a 40 percent discount to low income U.S. families, including hundreds in Massachusetts. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez started the program three years ago. Despite some controversy over his intentions, the program brings some relief to needy New Englanders. One in every two households in the region burns heating oil. Costs are expected to jump more than 20 percent this winter over last year. The local nonprofit, Action for Boston Community Development, says federal heating aid has decreased 35 percent in the past 2 years. The state plans to chip in another $15 million this winter. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 18:58:24 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:58:24 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] 6 Presidents Inaugurate Bank of the South Message-ID: <20071211185824.5a950d16@viola.tamara-b.org> Venezuela Information Office (VIO) http://www.rethinkvenezuela.com excerpted from VIO Venezuela Daily News Roundup - Dec 10, 2007 [The Bank of the South was inaugurated by six presidents on Sunday in Buenos Aires. Member countries of the regional bank expect it will reduce dependence on Washington-dominated international financial institutions such as the IMF. AFP reports that the Bank of the South will begin operations in 2008 with an initial capital of $7 billion for investment regional development and integration projects. Bloomberg reports that President Correa of Ecuador emphasized the autonomy that the bank gives countries, saying, "The signing of the Bank of the South agreement is going to help us establish our financial independence." Meanwhile, Brazil's Lula da Silva highlighted inter-dependence: "Today we have taken the first step toward the integration of South America. ... We have the conviction that our futures are linked." -VIO] South America set to launch bank to rival IMF Agence France Presse - December 9, 2007 http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071209/ts_afp/latamargentinabank_071209163650 BUENOS AIRES (AFP) - Latin American leaders on Sunday inaugurate the Bank of the South, the brainchild of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, who hopes it will help wean the region off institutions like the IMF. Six South American presidents are scheduled to gather in Buenos Aires on Sunday to formally launch the bank, which will be headquartered in Caracas. The creation of the regional bank comes amid a widespread perception in South America that adjustment policies imposed by multinational credit agencies have failed. The bank, which will start operations in 2008 with an initial capital of seven billion dollars, is designed to support regional development and integration projects. Venezuela's Finance Minister Rodrigo Cabezas acknowledged last week there are still differences as to how much each member should contribute to the bank. "The discussion is whether the entity will take into account the differences in economic weight of the nations," an Argentine official said. Cabezas said a number of other issues still had to be finetuned, including the composition of the directors and how top executives will be picked. The initiative to create the bank was born in 2006, and the project dreamed up by Chavez gradually gained popularity in the region. Several of the governments that joined the project do not share the ideology of the leftist Venezuelan president. What they do have in common is the rejection of what they consider the negative influence by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. "The bank will finance public and private projects. It will not participate in projects in countries outside the region. It is directed to South America," said Brazil's Economy Minister Guido Mantega. The ceremony for the founding of the bank will coincide with the inauguration of Cristina Kirchner as president of Argentina. Outgoing Argentine president Nestor Kirchner, who will hand over the sash of office to his wife, will attend the ceremony alongside his counterparts from Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay and Venezuela. The president of Uruguay will not attend the signing ceremony, according to media reports. *** Latin American Leaders Form Regional Bank, Seeking Independence By Bill Faries and Christopher Swann Bloomberg - December 10, 2007 http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a5wtQZeimbjE South American presidents said the creation of a regional development bank was the first step in lessening the continent's dependence on existing international financial institutions and the U.S. Leaders from six nations --- including Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Argentina's Nestor Kirchner -- inaugurated the Bank of the South last night in Buenos Aires. The bank, which Venezuelan officials say will have about $7 billion in capital, will fund development projects in Latin America. ``The signing of the Bank of the South agreement is going to help us establish our financial independence,'' Ecuador's President Rafael Correa said to reporters upon arriving in Buenos Aires. ``We should also create a fund, backed by our reserves, to help during financial crises and we should have our own currency.'' The new bank represents a victory for Chavez, who campaigned for the institution by arguing that decades of U.S.- backed economic policies failed to lower poverty and improve the economies of the region. The inauguration came one week after Chavez's plans for a new constitution in Venezuela were defeated, his first electoral loss in nine years. ``Today we have taken the first step toward the integration of South America,'' Brazil's Lula said after the ceremony at the presidential palace. ``We have the conviction that our futures are linked.'' Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega said before the ceremony that the by-laws for the new institution, which will be based in Caracas and have offices in La Paz, Bolivia and Buenos Aires, will be completed in 2008. Founding members include Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Ecuador. Chile, the country with the region's best credit rating, declined to join. Regional Development Funds The signing of the Bank of the South accord was one of the last official acts for Kirchner, who leaves office today and will be replaced by his wife, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. The new bank will struggle to compete with existing regional development funds should it fail to secure a strong credit rating, analysts said. This year, the Inter-American Development Bank, based in Washington, is on course to lend around $8 billion, according to the Bank Information Center, a Washington-based research organization that monitors international lenders. ``Their capital will quickly disappear if they do not leverage their funds like other banks,'' said Vince McElhinny, a Latin American analyst at the Bank Information Center. Credit Ratings None of the bank's supporters have an investment grade credit rating. Both the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank enjoy AAA credit ratings because of the backing of the U.S. The Corporacion Andina de Fomento has an A+ credit rating from Standard & Poor's. The rating of any new multilateral lender would also hinge on the commitment of its member countries, said John Chambers, managing director of sovereign ratings at Standard & Poor's. ``It's important that the member countries provide strong backing for the institution and that they support its priorities,'' Chambers said. *** Why South America wants a new bank By Lourdes Heredia BBC News - December 10, 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7068124.stm Leaders of several South American nations have signed a founding document to create a new body, the Banco del Sur, as an alternative to multilateral credit organisations such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. President Chavez sees the IMF and World Bank as tools of the US The idea was first put forward by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in December 2006 as part of his battle against the influence of the US and the international financial institutions, which he has decried as "tools of Washington". Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela have all joined the initiative. Chile and Peru decided to remain on the sidelines, while Colombia, which had expressed interest, has put its decision on hold following recent disagreements between Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and Mr Chavez. According to Venezuelan finance minister Rodrigo Cabezas, the creation of a new organisation is "a demonstration that times have changed". The Banco del Sur, or Bank of the South, he explains, will be funded and run by South American countries themselves. Lack of reforms Analysts believe the Banco del Sur initiative reflects the increased unpopularity of the IMF and the World Bank among many South American countries. Venezuelan finance minister Rodrigo Cabezas Venezuela's finance minister says the IMF is too hard on poor nations Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, also sees it as one of many signs of a new independence from institutions such as the IMF and its "unwanted austerity measures". "At the beginning of this decade, scepticism in Latin America was sealed when Argentina disregarded IMF advice by defaulting on its debt and then experienced robust economic recovery," Mr Weisbrot said. Luis Maldonado, a presidential representative to the government body that helps regulate Ecuador's banking sector, argues that "Latin America has been impoverished and harassed long enough that we have no other choice [but to] start Banco del Sur". Venezuela has gone so far as to threaten to leave the IMF - although it has not set any date for such a move. "If the IMF does not abandon its record of implementing tough policies with regards to emerging countries and being totally benevolent to developed countries, as it was in the last US mortgage crisis, it will struggle to regain its credibility," said Mr Cabezas. Pulling out of the IMF would amount to a technical default on Venezuela's bonds and would raise the cost of future borrowing in global markets. Other members of the Banco del Sur share many of Venezuela's concerns about the IMF, but have made clear that they do not intend to leave it or other international institutions. Gustavo Guzman, Bolivia's ambassador to Washington, explained to the BBC that the Banco del Sur would provide a much-needed "alternative source" of funds. He points out that it has been difficult for Bolivia to get loans from the IMF and international markets since the government's recent moves to renationalise its oil and natural gas industry. Colombian finance minister Oscar Ivan Zuluaga said at a meeting in New York that the Banco del Sur was seen as an effort to integrate the countries of South America and "nothing more than that". Obstacles Venezuela hopes that the newly created Banco del Sur, which will be based in Caracas, will begin to operate in 2008, but there are several obstacles. The amount each country will contribute to the bank and how it will raise additional capital are details which have not been disclosed. These issues may prove a major obstacle. Brazil and Venezuela differ, for example, on how shares in the bank should be distributed. Venezuela also insists that the initial capital contribution should not be mandatory, but rather a "donation" relating to each country's GDP. Meanwhile, Ecuador wants each member country to make a contribution "equal to or greater" than it makes to the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) and World Bank. Mixed reactions The Banco del Sur proposition has been greeted with caution by most analysts, although they agree that having more options for countries seeking funding is not a bad idea. Bolivia's indigenous Quechua people at a gathering (file image) In Bolivia, the government is keen to help indigenous communities Former World Bank chief economist and Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has endorsed the Banco del Sur on those grounds. "It's good to have competition in most markets, including the market for development lending," he said. Michael Shifter, Latin American expert at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, said that while it was "tempting to dismiss the Banco del Sur because of the political agenda behind it", he would advise sceptics to wait and see. "Chavez's political agenda is undeniable, but so is the money he has at his disposal right now," he said. "Over the longer run, the initiative will have real problems because of politicisation, but in the meantime it would be a mistake to underestimate its possibilities." Mr Shifter also feels the timing is fortunate. "Banco del Sur is taking off precisely when traditional multilateral institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank are struggling to redefine their missions and adapt to new circumstances," he said. "Everything is in flux, so anything can happen." Good governance Even the representatives of the multilateral credit organisations seem reluctant to dismiss Banco del Sur. The World Bank's vice president for Latin America, Pamela Cox, recently said that there was enough scope for both agencies to work in the region. "The Banco del Sur is a complement, not a competitor," she said. And the new president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, offered advice to the Banco del Sur on transparency. "One of the lessons we have learned on good development practices is that they should be combined with good governance, proper respect for the laws and firm practices against corruption," Mr Zoellick said. *** Chavez, Allies Launch Bank of the South By Bill Cormier The Associated Press AP via Wash. Post - December 9, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/09/AR2007120900568.html BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- Hugo Chavez and leaders of six other South American nations launched a regional development bank that they tout as the continent's answer to U.S.-influenced international lenders. With as much as $7 billion in expected startup capital, backers say the Banco del Sur, or Bank of the South, will offer Latin American countries loans with fewer strings attached than those given by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund or the Inter-American Development Bank. The leaders signed the "founding act" Sunday at a ceremony at Argentina's presidential palace hosted by President Nestor Kirchner and his wife, President-elect Cristina Fernandez, who takes office Monday. "Not long ago there was a general chorus singing the praises of neoliberalism" in the region, Chavez said in a speech. "But we are now hearing the great voice of our nations." Bolivian President Evo Morales, whose country is the continent's poorest, praised the bank as a new tool to fight poverty and ease inequalities, and criticized what he characterized as the heavy-handed practices of international lenders who demand austerity prescriptions as conditions for extending credit. "Only strong and united can South America occupy its rightful place among nations," Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said. "This will be the first international bank truly controlled by the nations of our continent." The institution is one of several proposals under Chavez's ambitious call to unite Latin American countries in a "confederation of republics." His vision also includes a transcontinental natural gas pipeline and trade alliances. Venezuela, with South America's largest known oil reserves, is expected to be a leading financier along with Brazil. But critics note much remains to be determined about how the bank will operate and say it might turn out to be a largely symbolic project used by Chavez to spread his oil-financed influence. "Chavez has very large resources at his disposal and will continue to promote his vision for the hemisphere," said Peter DeShazo of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. But he said it remains to be seen "whether it's going to be a politically oriented gesture or if it's going to be a real regional development bank." Others call it a bold stroke for Latin America's financial independence. "What you had in the past decade was the collapse of a very powerful creditors' cartel headed by the IMF," said Mark Weisbrot of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. "This is the first step in creating an alternative." Finance ministers of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela will sit on the bank's board. Officials say it will dispense loans for projects from road-building to anti-poverty programs and regional integration plans. Venezuelan officials say the bank's loans will be issued at interest rates similar to those of other international lenders. Rodolfo Sanz, a Venezuelan state bank official, said initial capitalization is expected between $5 billion and $7 billion depending on final pledges. The institution will be headquartered in Caracas. "It's a very interesting initiative which I think expresses the desire to find stronger cooperation between Latin American governments," the World Bank's chief economist for Latin America, Augusto de la Torre, said in a recent interview. "As far as the World Bank is concerned, this new initiative is not perceived as a competitor." IMF-watcher Paul Blustein at Washington's Brookings Institution said the project highlights Latin America's yearning for greater autonomy after decades of financial crises and imposed austerity measures. "It's really emblematic of how Latin America has become disillusioned with the model that the IMF and the World Bank and the U.S. Treasury promotes _ the so-called Washington consensus," he said. But he noted the IMF and World Bank have decades of know-how. "I'm not so sure this institution is going to be any more successful," he said. "I don't worry about the climate or shortages of oil in the world," Mr. Guerrero said. "I just worry if gasoline prices go up." From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 19:07:11 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:07:11 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Secretly briefed, Pelosi did not object to waterboarding in 2002 Message-ID: <20071211190711.64b62a15@viola.tamara-b.org> Sorry if this is a dupe - What's ironic is that the "sole objector" Pelosi nudged out of the Intel Committee chair, Jane Harman, is the sponsor of some of the worst civil liberties-denying legislation on "domestic terrorism." -NYTr ] sent by Riaz K Tayob Raw Story - Dec 9, 2007 http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=8505 Secretly briefed, Pelosi did not object to waterboarding in 2002 Pelosi would later boot sole objector to program from chance to chair Intelligence Committee by John Byrne Two senior Republicans and Democrats in Congress -- including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- were briefing on the CIA's program to use waterboarding on terror suspects in September 2002 and did not object, according to Sunday's Washington Post. In the long-ranging article, which seemingly takes the lawmakers and the Bush Administration to task by discussing the practice's emergence in Nazi Germany and other totalitarian states, a Pelosi aide said the Speaker remembered discussion of "enhanced" interrogation techniques and "acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time." "In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody," the Post wrote. "For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk." "Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill," the Post added. "But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said." Democrats have since been vehement critics of the practice, piggybacking on public outrage to a practice many have described as torture -- including 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain (R-AZ) who was tortured in the Vietnam War. Only Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) -- then the second-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee who would supplant Pelosi in 2003 -- formally objected. Harman, who was set to lead the House Intelligence Committee when the Democrats retook the chamber in 2006, was pushed aside by Pelosi when she took over as Speaker, in what was seen as an element of personal rivalry. "Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the committee's top Democrat in January 2003, disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in February of that year as an official protest about the interrogation program," the Post notes. "Harman said she had been prevented from publicly discussing the letter or the CIA's program because of strict rules of secrecy." "When you serve on intelligence committee you sign a second oath -- one of secrecy," she said. "I was briefed, but the information was closely held to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything." None of the other lawmakers briefed raised formal objections. Those lawmakers included former Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), former Sen. John Rockefeller IV (D-WV), former Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KN). "Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support," the Post added. 'Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing,' said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. 'And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement.'" From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 19:12:38 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:12:38 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] "miraculous timing" - Taliban Retreat as Gordon Brown Lands in Afgh Message-ID: <20071211191238.7384fc5a@viola.tamara-b.org> Channel 4 News - Snowmail (UK) - Dec 10, 2007 http://www.channel4.com The problem with the Taliban as the Brits have already discovered is that they play dead.... They didn't even stay dead for five months, let alone five years - how long with they play dead this time?" Brown visit during Afghan offensive With miraculous timing the Afghan town of Musa Qala falls just as Prime Minister Gordon Brown lands in Helmand province. An operation that has been ongoing since November comes to its critical climax as the rotor blades' of the prime ministerial helicopter come to a halt in a British airbase. Some say there's a sense in which the Labour government fortunes have been 'rescued' by the canoeist whose reappearance has so engaged the country. Mr Brown's face today suggests that the retreat of the Taliban wasn't doing him any harm either. The problem with the Taliban as the Brits have already discovered is that they play dead for a far shorter time than Mr Darwin did. They didn't even stay dead for five months, let alone five years - how long with they play dead this time? It's clearly been a very interesting military NATO operation with considerable British and Afghanistan involvement too. But it's also been the heavy boots of US special forces that cleared the way in the first place. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 19:17:23 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:17:23 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Cuba to Sign Human Right Agreements Message-ID: <20071211191723.1fd3b3f6@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Cuba to Sign Human Right Agreements Havana, Dec 10 (acn) Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said on Monday that Cuba will sign during the first trimester of 2008 the International Agreement on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Agreement on Civil and Political Rights. In statements to the press, the Cuban diplomat said that the step taken by the island, coinciding with the Human Rights Day celebrations, is the result of a sovereign decision, without any external political influence. Perez Roque noted that the rights contained in both agreements are widely protected by the national legal system and by the Cuban Revolution policies since their implementation after 1959. The Cuban Minister said his country will ratify with the signing of the document its close cooperation with the United Nations Organization on the basis of the respect to Cuban national sovereignty. He said the signing of the international agreement was not possible while the US government used the Human Rights Commission as an inquisitorial trial to prosecute the countries which rebelled against its imperial domination. "This situation has radically changed with the emergence of the new Human Rights Council, of which Cuba is a founder member along with two thirds of the international community," noted Perez Roque. The Cuban official also called upon the US administration to end the criminal blockade against the island, close the torture camp in the US Naval base in Guantanamo, extradite confessed terrorist Posada Carriles to Venezuela, and release the five Cuban antiterrorist fighters unjustly held in US prisons for over nine years. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 19:18:54 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:18:54 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Cuba: More Expensive Fuel, More Expensive Everything Else Message-ID: <20071211191854.03cbebcd@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles More Expensive Fuels, More Expensive Everything Else Havana, Dec 10 (acn) Cuba will spend US $250 million more than in 2006 for importing foodstuffs, whose prices have gone up considerably for a number of reasons, including the increase in fuels. The price of oil, the fuel most commonly used on the planet, now threatens to hit US$ 100 per barrel and beyond, with serious consequences for the world, particularly developing countries, including of course Cuba, which bears the nearly half-century US blockade as an aggravating factor. Today the purchase of a bus requires many more tons of sugarcane or some other national product than five, ten or fifteen years ago. To maintain its operating costs is still more expensive since the price of fuel and parts has multiplied. Cuba has invested more than US $1.3 billion in new electricity generation capacities, and another $250 million in the improvement of distribution networks, reads an article published by Granma newspaper. The country also continues to implement the Energy Revolution, an idea of President Fidel Castro, which includes more efficient forms of production, distribution and energy consumption. The Cienfuegos oil refinery will soon begin operations; meanwhile, the oil exploration efforts of CUBAPETROLEO and its foreign partner open new perspectives for exploration and extraction of oil in the country. Yet it is more important than ever to convert public awareness on the need for savings to meet people's basic needs and development in all areas, concludes the article. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 19:22:06 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:22:06 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Iran No Nuclear Threat? All the More Reason to Attack Them! Message-ID: <20071211192206.40e5e1ad@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Tim Murphy - activ-l The Guardian - Dec 10, 2007 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2225029,00.html So Iran's not a nuclear threat any more? All the more reason for Bush to unleash Armageddon Bush is so fact-phobic that he might as well declare a war on reality, in which anything palpably authentic is the enemy By Charlie Brooker So let's get this straight. A US intelligence report decides that Iran isn't as big a threat as once feared, and Bush decides this proves that, actually guys, I think you'll find it is. You've got to admire his steadfast refusal to acknowledge anything that doesn't complement his monochromatic world view. He's a true tunnel visionary. Awkward facts simply ricochet off him, like peashooter pellets bouncing harmlessly from an elephant's hide. He knows what he wants to believe, and he'll carry on believing it until it kills him. Or us. Preferably us. He can always recant and say, "Oops, I was wrong" in his bunker. We'll be long gone by then, so what does he care? Very little, in all probability. Bush is a bit like an unhinged iconoclast who has arbitrarily decided he doesn't believe in cows, and loudly and repeatedly denies their existence until you get so annoyed you drive him to a farm and show him a cow, and he shakes his head and continues to insist there's no such thing. At which point it moos indignantly, but he claims not to hear it, so in exasperation you drag him into the field and force him to touch the cow, and milk the cow, and ride around on the cow's back. And, finally, he dismounts and says, "That was fun'n'all, but dagnammit, I still don't believe in no cow." And then he shoots it in the head regardless, just to be on the safe side. Just so it isn't a threat. Come to think of it, Bush is so vehemently fact-phobic, he might as well expand the war on terror into an outright war on reality, in which anything palpably authentic is the enemy. There'll be an "Axis of Real Stuff", encompassing everyone and everything from hairbands to dustmen, all of which Must Be Eliminated. "If it's provable, we can kill it." That's our new motto. God's on our side, because he can't be proved or disproved. He's one of our most valuable allies - the others being Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, ghosts, the bogeyman, and Bigfoot. Not to mention a vast fleet of UFOs, which the enemy won't have a chance of defeating because it never existed in the first place. Our armies won't be constrained by the laws of physics, and even if we lose, we'll simply say we won, even if we have to say it from an afterlife which doesn't exist either. That's the power of unwavering denial. It makes deities of us all. Of course, by rejecting anything he doesn't want to hear, Bush is simply proving he's human. Humans hate the truth. Once someone's made up their mind, they rarely change it, no matter how much evidence to the contrary you show them. Changing your mind or admitting you were wrong is seen as weak, as though life itself were an almighty pub quiz where incorrect answers are penalised. The only option left is to interpret the facts in a new and interesting way that supports your overall position. This is what Bush has done. He says that since the report indicates that Iran halted its weapons programme in 2003, there's a clear possibility it could start it up again. The very fact that the Iranians don't have a nuclear bomb proves they might still develop one. Therefore, Iran is dangerous. That's a clever thing to say, because a) the future is unknowable, so it's impossible to tell him he's wrong, and b) the more he says it, the more likely it is to come true. Since Bush has shown that he'll view Iran as a nuclear threat regardless of whether it's got the bomb or not, the Iranians might as well build one. What have they got to lose? Also, the report doesn't say whether the Iranians are developing a giant laser beam capable of sawing the sun in two, but that's no reason to assume they won't be starting work on it next week. Picture a world in which Ahmadinejad holds us to ransom by threatening to plunge one sawn-off half of the sun into the Atlantic, sending 900ft waves of boiling water rushing toward our shores. We can't let that happen. We've got to get in first: drive a space shuttle into the sun and blow the damn thing up before the enemy get their hands on it. It might solve global warming too. Let's hope the Pentagon is across this. Don't let us down, guys. Knock that baby out. Another benefit of ignoring the report and piling in regardless is that at least this time round we'll know for sure that the invasion and subsequent war is based on a false premise in advance, which beats finding out later and feeling a bit disgusted with ourselves. Forewarned is forearmed. It's a narrative tweak which keeps things fresh and interesting. The TV series Columbo used a similar device: instead of being served a common-or- garden whodunnit, you'd see the murderer committing the crime at the start, so the fun came from watching his plan slowly unravel. There's no danger of that happening to Bush though, because he doesn't believe in plans either. So nothing unravels. It's a win-win situation. He should unleash the hounds tomorrow. Go ahead, George. We'll be fine, out here, outside the bunker. Don't you worry about us. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 19:25:13 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:25:13 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Bolivia's Evo Morales Extols New Constitution Message-ID: <20071211192513.4b6017e0@viola.tamara-b.org> [The mainstream capitalist press outlets in the US are making dire predictions about Bolivia, and Ecuador, just as they did about Venezuela. -NYTr] Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Bolivia's Evo Morales Extols New Constitution Havana, December 10 (acn) Bolivia's President Evo Morales extolled the changes made in the Bolivian constitution approved Sunday by constituent assembly members meeting in Oruro, reports Granma newspaper. Morales celebrated the new constitution despite efforts by conservative groups to impede the democratic and peaceful changes demanded by the majority of the population. The recognition of Sucre as the capital of Bolivia resolved the leading controversy that threatened the approval of the new constitution. The age-old regional demand, pitting the departments of Chuquisaca and La Paz against each other vying for the venue of the state powers, was resolved with a modification to article six which now declares Sucre as the capital of the Bolivian Republic. Government Minister Alfredo Rada called the new constitution a triumph of the democratic forces that consolidates national unity. Rada told the press that the approval strengthens the unity of the Bolivian people and was accomplished against the wishes of some sectors that instigated chaos and confrontation. Likewise, the Bolivian Workers Federation (COB) pronounced that the anti-neoliberal essence of the new constitution strengthens the social nature of the current process of change occurring in Bolivia. The new constitution will now face a public referendum in 2008 before taking effect. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 19:41:18 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:41:18 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Gang Rape Cover-up by Halliburton/KBR/US - Houston Woman Sues Message-ID: <20071211194118.213e2bfd@viola.tamara-b.org> AP via Google - Dec 11, 2007 http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ilYz6v1yfgxCsfcPZ84qLbMJrY_gD8TFHU080 DOJ Questioned About '05 Iraq Rape Case By JOHN PORRETTO HOUSTON (AP) ? The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee asked the Justice Department on Tuesday to give a full account of its investigation into the alleged rape of a female contract worker in Iraq two years ago. Jamie Leigh Jones, a former Conroe resident, filed a federal lawsuit in May against Halliburton Co., its former subsidiary, KBR Inc., and others claiming she was raped by co-workers while working for a Halliburton subsidiary at Camp Hope, Baghdad, in 2005. The Associated Press usually does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted, but Jones' face and name have been broadcast by ABC News and appear on her own Web site. In a letter dated Tuesday, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., asked Attorney General Michael Mukasey if his office had investigated Jones' claims and whether the Justice Department has jurisdiction to prosecute under military provisions of the USA Patriot Act. Conyers also seeks clarification on a statement from KBR, the military contractor that split from Halliburton in April, that says it had initiated investigations into the alleged assault but later halted the probe. KBR has said it was "instructed to cease by government authorities because they were assuming sole responsibility for the criminal investigations." Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said Tuesday the agency was reviewing Conyers' letter. "The Department is investigating this matter and because it's an ongoing investigation, we are unable to comment further," Carr said. Jones' case got renewed attention this week after ABC News previewed a report of the allegations it plans to air on "20/20" next month. Jones began working for KBR as an administrative assistant in 2004 when she was 19, but later transferred to Iraq with another Halliburton subsidiary, according to her lawsuit. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Beaumont, claims Jones lived in a coed barracks and, after enduring harassment from some of the men in the quarters, was drugged and raped July 28, 2005. Her attackers were Halliburton and KBR firefighters, the suit claims. The petition says the facility was under direct control of the U.S. government, KBR and Halliburton, collectively. Jones' attorney, L. Todd Kelly, declined to say where Jones was living now because she fears for her safety. He declined to elaborate. Jones' Web site highlights her nonprofit foundation to help fellow contract workers who may have been sexually assaulted, and displays her "therapeutic" still-life paintings that she offers to paint on commission. The site also mentions a screenplay of her story in Iraq. In a statement, KBR said it couldn't comment on specifics of the case but that the safety and security of its employees were its top priority. Halliburton says it is improperly named in the matter and expects to be dismissed from the case. "It would be inappropriate for Halliburton to comment on the merits of a matter affecting only the interest of KBR," the oilfield services company said in a statement. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, who signed Conyers' letter, sent his own inquiry to Mukasey on Monday. He said Jones' father contacted his office after the alleged rape and said his daughter reported KBR/Halliburton was holding her in a shipping container without food and water. Poe said he then contacted the State Department, which dispatched agents to rescue Jones. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack declined Tuesday to comment on specifics of the case, but he confirmed its Bureau of Diplomatic Security had responded to and investigated the incident. He said the results were turned over to the Justice Department. [Associated Press Writer Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington contributed to this report.] Copyright ? 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. *** sent by Jane Franklin - Dec 10, 2007 ABC News - Dec 10, 2007 http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=3977702&page=1 Gang Rape Cover-Up by US, Halliburton/KBR KBR told victim she could lose her job if she sought help after being raped, she says. By Brian Ross, Maddy Sauer and Justin Rood ABC News A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident. Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job. "Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told. In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave. "It felt like prison," says Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming "20/20" investigation. "I was upset; I was curled up in a ball on the bed; I just could not believe what had happened." Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas. "I said, 'Dad, I've been raped. I don't know what to do. I'm in this container, and I'm not able to leave,'" she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas. "We contacted the State Department first," Poe told ABCNews.com, "and told them of the urgency of rescuing an American citizen" -- from her American employer. Poe says his office contacted the State Department, which quickly dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Jones' camp, where they rescued her from the container. According to her lawsuit, Jones was raped by "several attackers who first drugged her, then repeatedly raped and injured her, both physically and emotionally." Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped "both vaginally and anally," but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers. A spokesperson for the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security told ABCNews.com he could not comment on the matter. Over two years later, the Justice Department has brought no criminal charges in the matter. In fact, ABC News could not confirm any federal agency was investigating the case. Legal experts say Jones' alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury, due to an enormous loophole that has effectively left contractors in Iraq beyond the reach of United States law. "It's very troubling," said Dean John Hutson of the Franklin Pierce Law Center. "The way the law presently stands, I would say that they don't have, at least in the criminal system, the opportunity for justice." Congressman Poe says neither the departments of State nor Justice will give him answers on the status of the Jones investigation. Asked what reasons the departments gave for the apparent slowness of the probes, Poe sounded frustrated. "There are several, I think, their excuses, why the perpetrators haven't been prosecuted," Poe told ABC News. "But I think it is the responsibility of our government, the Justice Department and the State Department, when crimes occur against American citizens overseas in Iraq, contractors that are paid by the American public, that we pursue the criminal cases as best as we possibly can and that people are prosecuted." Since no criminal charges have been filed, the only other option, according to Hutson, is the civil system, which is the approach that Jones is trying now. But Jones' former employer doesn't want this case to see the inside of a civil courtroom. KBR has moved for Jones' claim to be heard in private arbitration, instead of a public courtroom. It says her employment contract requires it. In arbitration, there is no public record nor transcript of the proceedings, meaning that Jones' claims would not be heard before a judge and jury. Rather, a private arbitrator would decide Jones' case. In recent testimony before Congress, employment lawyer Cathy Ventrell-Monsees said that Halliburton won more than 80 percent of arbitration proceedings brought against it. In his interview with ABC News, Rep. Poe said he sided with Jones. "Air things out in a public forum of a courtroom," said Rep. Poe. "That's why we have courts in the United States." In her lawsuit, Jones' lawyer, Todd Kelly, says KBR and Halliburton created a "boys will be boys" atmosphere at the company barracks which put her and other female employees at great risk. "I think that men who are there believe that they live without laws," said Kelly. "The last thing she should have expected was for her own people to turn on her." Halliburton, which has since divested itself of KBR, says it "is improperly named" in the suit. In a statement, KBR said it was "instructed to cease" its own investigation by U.S. government authorities "because they were assuming sole responsibility for the criminal investigations." "The safety and security of all employees remains KBR's top priority," it said in a statement. "Our commitment in this regard is unwavering." Since the attacks, Jones has started a nonprofit foundation called the Jamie Leigh Foundation, which is dedicated to helping victims who were raped or sexually assaulted overseas while working for government contractors or other corporations. "I want other women to know that it's not their fault," said Jones. "They can go against corporations that have treated them this way." Jones said that any proceeds from the civil suit will go to her foundation. "There needs to be a voice out there that really pushed for change," she said. "I'd like to be that voice." Copyright ? 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures *** The Telegraph - Dec 11, 2007 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/12/11/wtexas111.xml Woman claims Halliburton-KBR rape cover-up By Alex Spillius in Washington A Texas woman who claims she was raped by male colleagues working for Halliburton-KBR in Iraq is suing after the US government failed to bring charges. Jamie Leigh Jones, 22, alleged she was attacked by several men inside Baghdad's Green Zone two years ago and then held in a shipping container for 24 hours. Her captors then threatened her if she sought medical treatment abroad. Miss Jones, from Houston, told ABC News that she was warned: "Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston." According to her lawsuit against Halliburton-KBR, she was raped by "several attackers who first drugged her, then repeatedly raped and injured her, both physically and emotionally". She said she persuaded a guard to lend her a mobile phone, which she used to call her father in Texas. He then alerted their Congressman, Ted Poe, who contacted the State Department, which sent agents to rescue Miss Jones. According to the alleged victim and her lawyer, the US authorities took no further interest in her case. It is not clear if the case has been investigated, they claimed. Her alleged assailants may well be beneficiaries of a loophole that has in effect left American contractors in Iraq beyond US law. Created in part to prevent prosecutions by the Iraqi authorities, it has meant that armed contractors have never faced legal action for several instances of shooting dead Iraqi civilians. Halliburton, which has won billions of dollars worth of contracts for reconstruction work in Iraq, no longer owns KBR, an engineering firm, and told ABC it was "improperly named" in the suit. In a statement, KBR said it was "instructed to cease" its own inquiry by the US authorities because they were assuming all responsibility for investigations. *** Houston.com - Dec 11, 2007 http://www.click2houston.com/news/14826527/detail.html Houston Woman Sues Company Over Alleged Gang-Rape By Daniella Guzman POSTED: 5:51 pm CST December 11, 2007 HOUSTON -- A Houston woman and a former employee of then-Halliburton-KBR claimed she was drugged and brutally raped by several KBR employees while working as an administrative assistant in Iraq, KPRC Local 2 reported Tuesday. Jaime Leigh Jones, 22, claims the rape happened in July 2005. Jones and her attorney have filed a civil lawsuit in federal court against the company. She claims she was abused and then locked in a guarded shipping container for 24 hours without food or water. She also claims she was threatened if she talked. That's when Congressman Ted Poe said he got a call from her father asking for help. "She was able to borrow a cell phone from a compassionate guard. She called her dad and then dad called us. Our immediate concern was to get her to a safe environment," Poe said. Within 48 hours, Jones was back in the U.S. The lawsuit claims a medical exam showed that Jones had been raped. However, those records have been lost. None of the attackers has been arrested or charged. Local 2 legal analyst Brian Wice said the State Department has not brought any criminal charges against the alleged attackers because they claim it's not their jurisdiction. "This notion of it not being their jurisdiction is irrelevant. KBR is claiming diplomatic immunity but these thugs are not diplomats," said Wice. Poe also said he hasn't had any luck getting a response from the State Department to his questions about any arrests or criminal charges. Jones started her own foundation for sexually abused employees and now paints as a form of therapy. Copyright 2007 by Click2Houston.com. All rights reserved. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 19:45:21 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:45:21 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] "Save Darfur" a PR Scam to Justify the Next US Oil/Resource Wars in Africa Message-ID: <20071211194521.78ba0017@viola.tamara-b.org> Black Agenda Report - Nov 27, 2007 http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=453&Itemid=1 Ten Reasons Why "Save Darfur" is a PR Scam to Justify the Next US Oil and Resource Wars in Africa The star-studded hue and cry to "Save Darfur" and "stop the genocide" has gained enormous traction in U.S. media along with bipartisan support in Congress and the White House. But the Congo, with ten to twenty times as many African dead over the same period is not called a "genocide" and passes almost unnoticed. Sudan sits atop lakes of oil. It has large supplies of uranium, and other minerals, significant water resources, and a strategic location near still more African oil and resources. The unasked question is whether the nation's Republican and Democratic foreign policy elite are using claims of genocide, and appeals for "humanitarian intervention" to grease the way for the next oil and resource wars on the African continent. Top Ten Reasons to Suspect "Save Darfur" is a PR Scam to Justify US Military Intervention in African By Bruce Dixon BAR Managing Editor The regular manufacture and the constant maintenance of false realities in the service of American empire is a core function of the public relations profession and the corporate news media. Whether it's fake news stories about wonder drugs and how toxic chemicals are good for you, bribed commentators and journalists discoursing on the benefits of No Child Left Behind, Hollywood stars advocating military intervention to save African orphans, or slick propaganda campaigns employing viral marketing techniques to reach out to college students, bloggers, churches and ordinary citizens, it pays to take a close look behind the facade. Among the latest false realities being pushed upon the American people are the simplistic pictures of Black vs. Arab genocide in Darfur, and the proposed solution: a robust US-backed or US-led military intervention in Western Sudan. Increasing scrutiny is being focused upon the "Save Darfur" lobby and the Save Darfur Coalition; upon its founders, its finances, its methods and motivations and its truthfulness. In the spirit of furthering that examination we here present ten reasons to suspect that the "Save Darfur" campaign is a PR scam to justify US intervention in Africa. 1. It wouldn't be the first Big Lie our government and media elite told us to justify a war. Elders among us can recall the Tonkin Gulf Incident, which the US government deliberately provoked to justify initiation of the war in Vietnam. This rationale was quickly succeeded by the need to help the struggling infant "democracy" in South Vietnam, and the still useful "fight 'em over there so we don't have to fight 'em over here" nonsense. More recently the bombings, invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have been variously explained by people on the public payroll as necessary to "get Bin Laden" as revenge for 9-11, as measures to take "the world's most dangerous weapons" from the hands of "the world's most dangerous regimes", as measures to enable the struggling Iraqi "democracy" stand on its own two feet, and necessary because it's still better to "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here". 2. It wouldn't even be the first time the U.S. government and media elite employed "genocide prevention" as a rationale for military intervention in an oil-rich region. The 1995 US and NATO military intervention in the former Yugoslavia was supposedly a "peacekeeping" operation to stop a genocide. The lasting result of that campaign is Camp Bondsteel, one of the largest military bases on the planet. The U.S. is practically the only country in the world that maintains military bases outside its own borders. At just under a thousand acres, Camp Bondsteel offers the US military the ability to pre-position large quantities of equipment and supplies within striking distance of Caspian oil fields, pipeline routes and relevant sea lanes. It is also widely believed to be the site of one of the US's secret prison and torture facilities. 3. If stopping genocide in Africa really was on the agenda, why the focus on Sudan with 200,000 to 400,000 dead rather than Congo with five million dead? "The notion that a quarter million Darfuri dead are a genocide and five million dead Congolese are not is vicious and absurd," according to Congolese activist Nita Evele. "What's happened and what is still happening in Congo is not a tribal conflict and it's not a civil war. It is an invasion. It is a genocide with a death toll of five million, twenty times that of Darfur, conducted for the purpose of plundering Congolese mineral and natural resources." More than anything else, the selective and cynical application of the term "genocide" to Sudan, rather than to the Congo where ten to twenty times as many Africans have been murdered reveals the depth of hypocrisy around the "Save Darfur" movement. In the Congo, where local gangsters, mercenaries and warlords along with invading armies from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola engage in slaughter, mass rape and regional depopulation on a scale that dwarfs anything happening in Sudan, all the players eagerly compete to guarantee that the extraction of vital coltan for Western computers and cell phones, the export of uranium for Western reactors and nukes, along with diamonds, gold, copper, timber and other Congolese resources continue undisturbed. Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young and George H.W. Bush both serve on the board of Barrick Gold, one of the largest and most active mining concerns in war-torn Congo. Evidently, with profits from the brutal extraction of Congolese wealth flowing to the West, there can be no Congolese "genocide" worth noting, much less interfering with. For their purposes, U.S. strategic planners may regard their Congolese model as the ideal means of capturing African wealth at minimal cost without the bother of official U.S. boots on the ground. 4. It's all about Sudanese oil. Sudan, and the Darfur region in particular, sit atop a lake of oil. But Sudanese oil fields are not being developed and drilled by Exxon or Chevron or British Petroleum. Chinese banks, oil and construction firms are making the loans, drilling the wells, laying the pipelines to take Sudanese oil where they intend it to go, calling far too many shots for a twenty-first century in which the U.S. aspires to control the planet's energy supplies. A U.S. and NATO military intervention will solve that problem for U.S. planners. 5. It's all about Sudanese uranium, gum arabic and other natural resources. Uranium is vital to the nuclear weapons industry and an essential fuel for nuclear reactors. Sudan possesses high quality deposits of uranium. Gum arabic is an essential ingredient in pharmaceuticals, candies and beverages like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and Sudanese exports of this commodity are 80% of the world's supply. When comprehensive U.S. sanctions against the Sudanese regime were being considered in 1997, industry lobbyists stepped up and secured an exemption in the sanctions bill to guarantee their supplies of this valuable Sudanese commodity. But an in-country U.S. and NATO military presence is a more secure guarantee that the extraction of Sudanese resources, like those of the Congo, flow westward to the U.S. and the European Union. 6. It's all about Sudan's strategic location Sudan sits opposite Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, where a large fraction of the world's easily extracted oil will be for a few more years. Darfur borders on Libya and Chad, with their own vast oil resources, is within striking distance of West and Central Africa, and is a likely pipeline route. The Nile River flows through Sudan before reaching Egypt, and Southern Sudan has water resources of regional significance too. With the creation of AFRICOM, the new Pentagon command for the African continent, the U.S. has made open and explicit its intention to plant a strategic footprint on the African continent. >From permanent Sudanese bases, the U.S. military could influence the politics and ecocomies of Africa for a generation to come. 7. The backers and founders of the "Save Darfur" movement are the well-connected and well-funded U.S. foreign policy elite. According to a copyrighted Washington Post story this summer "The "Save Darfur (Coalition) was created in 2005 by two groups concerned about genocide in the African country - the American Jewish World Service and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum... "The coalition has a staff of 30 with expertise in policy and public relations. Its budget was about $15 million in the most recent fiscal year... "Save Darfur will not say exactly how much it has spent on its ads, which this week have attempted to shame China, host of the 2008 Olympics, into easing its support for Sudan. But a coalition spokeswoman said the amount is in the millions of dollars." Though the "Save Darfur" PR campaign employs viral marketing techniques, reaching out to college students, even to black bloggers, it is not a grassroots affair, as were the movement against apartheid and in support of African liberation movements in South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique a generation ago. Top heavy with evangelical Christians who preach the coming war for the end of the world, and with elements known for their uncritical support of Israeli rejectionism in the Middle East, the Save Darfur movement is clearly an establishment affair, a propaganda campaign that spends millions of dollars each month to manufacture consent for US military intervention in Africa under the cloak of stopping or preventing genocide. 8. None of the funds raised by the "Save Darfur Coalition", the flagship of the "Save Darfur Movement" go to help needy Africans on the ground in Darfur, according to stories in both the Washington Post and the New York Times. "None of the money collected by Save Darfur goes to help the victims and their families. Instead, the coalition pours its proceeds into advocacy efforts that are primarily designed to persuade governments to act." 9. "Save Darfur" partisans in the U.S. are not interested in political negotiations to end the conflict in Darfur. President Bush has openly and repeatedly attempted to throw monkey wrenches at peace negotiations to end the war in Darfur. Even pro-intervention scholars and humanitarian organizations active on the ground have criticized the U.S. for endangering humanitarian relief workers, and for effectively urging rebel parties in Darfur to refuse peace talks and hold out for U.S. and NATO intervention on their behalf. The slick, well financed and nearly seamless PR campaign simplistically depicts the conflict as strictly a racial affair, in which Arabs, generally despised in the US media anyway, are exterminating the black population of Sudan. In the make-believe world it creates, there is no room for negotiation. But in fact, many of Sudan's 'Arabs", even the Janjiweed, are also black. In any case, they were armed and unleashed by a government which has the power to disarm them if it chooses, and can also negotiate in good faith if it chooses. Negotiations are never a guarantee of anything, but refusal to participate in negotiations, as the U.S. appears to be urging the rebels in Darfur to do, and as the "Save Darfur" PR campaign justifies, avoids any path to a political settlement among Sudanese, leaving open only the road of U.S and NATO military intervention. 10. Blackwater and other U.S. mercenary contractors, the unofficial armed wings of the Republican party and the Pentagon are eagerly pitching their services as part of the solution to the Darfur crisis. "Chris Taylor, head of strategy for Blackwater, says his company has a database of thousands of former police and military officers for security assignments. He says Blackwater personnel could set up perimeters and guard Darfurian villages and refugee camps in support of the U.N. Blackwater officials say it would not take many men to fend off the Janjaweed, a militia that is supported by the Sudanese government and attacks villages on camelback." Apparently Blackwater doesn't need to come to the Congo, where hunger and malnutrition, depopulation, mass rape and the disappearance of schools, hospitals and civil society into vast law free zones ruled by an ever-changing cast of African proxies (like the son of the late and unlamented Idi Amin), all under a veil of complicit media silence already constitute the perfect business-friendly environment for siphoning off the vast wealth of that country at minimal cost. Look for the adoption of the Congolese model across the wide areas of Africa that U.S. strategic planners call "ungoverned spaces". Just don't expect to see details on the evening news, or hear about them from Oprah, George Clooney or Angelina Jolie. [Bruce Dixon can be contacted at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com ] From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 19:47:13 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:47:13 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Monbiot: The real answer to climate change - leave fossil fuels in the ground Message-ID: <20071211194713.7b5c23ec@viola.tamara-b.org> The Guardian - Dec 11, 2007 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2225387,00.html The real answer to climate change is to leave fossil fuels in the ground All the talk in Bali about cutting carbon means nothing while ever more oil and coal is being extracted and burned By George Monbiot Ladies and gentlemen, I have the answer! Incredible as it might seem, I have stumbled across the single technology which will save us from runaway climate change! From the goodness of my heart, I offer it to you for free. No patents, no small print, no hidden clauses. Already this technology, a radical new kind of carbon capture and storage, is causing a stir among scientists. It is cheap, it is efficient and it can be deployed straight away. It is called ... leaving fossil fuels in the ground. On a filthy day last week, as governments gathered in Bali to prevaricate about climate change, a group of us tried to put this policy into effect. We swarmed into the opencast coal mine being dug at Ffos-y-fran in South Wales and occupied the excavators, shutting down the works for the day. We were motivated by a fact which the wise heads in Bali have somehow missed: if fossil fuels are extracted, they will be used. Most of the governments of the rich world now exhort their citizens to use less carbon. They encourage us to change our lightbulbs, insulate our lofts, turn our televisions off at the wall. In other words, they have a demand-side policy for tackling climate change. But as far as I can determine, not one of them has a supply-side policy. None seeks to reduce the supply of fossil fuel. So the demand-side policy will fail. Every barrel of oil and tonne of coal that comes to the surface will be burned. Or perhaps I should say that they do have a supply-side policy: to extract as much as they can. Since 2000, the UK government has given coal firms #220m to help them open new mines or to keep existing mines working. According to the energy white paper, the government intends to "maximise economic recovery ... from remaining coal reserves". The pit at Ffos-y-fran received planning permission after two ministers in the Westminster government jumped up and down on Rhodri Morgan, the first minister of the Welsh assembly. Stephen Timms at the department of trade and industry listed the benefits of the scheme and demanded that the application "is resolved with the minimum of further delay". His successor, Mike O'Brien, warned of dire consequences if the pit was not granted permission. The coal extracted from Ffos-y-fran alone will produce 29.5m tonnes of carbon dioxide: equivalent, according to the latest figures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to the sustainable emissions of 55 million people for one year. Last year British planning authorities considered 12 new applications for opencast coal mines. They approved all but two of them. Two weeks ago, Hazel Blears, the secretary of state in charge of planning, overruled Northumberland county council to grant permission for an opencast mine at Shotton, on the grounds that the scheme - which will produce 9.3m tonnes of CO2 - is "environmentally acceptable". The British government also has a policy of "maximising the UK's existing oil and gas reserves". To promote new production, it has granted companies a 90% discount on the licence fees they pay for prospecting the continental shelf. It hopes the prospecting companies will open a new frontier in the seas to the west of the Shetland Isles. The government also has two schemes for "forcing unworked blocks back into play". If oil companies don't use their licences to the full, it revokes them and hands them to someone else. In other words, it is prepared to be ruthlessly interventionist when promoting climate change, but not when preventing it: no minister talks of "forcing" companies to reduce their emissions. Ministers hope the industry will extract up to 28bn barrels of oil and gas from the continental shelf. Last week the government announced a new tax break for companies working in the North Sea. The Treasury minister, Angela Eagle, explained that its purpose is "to make sure we are not leaving any oil in the ground that could be recovered". The government's climate change policy works like this: extract every last drop of fossil fuel then pray to God that no one uses it. The same wishful thinking is applied worldwide. The International Energy Agency's new outlook report warns that "urgent action is needed" to cut carbon emissions. The action it recommends is investing $22 trillion in new energy infrastructure, most of which will be spent on extracting, transporting and burning fossil fuels. Aha, you say, but what about carbon capture and storage? When governments use this term, they mean catching and burying the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels. It is feasible, but there are three problems. The first is that fossil fuels are being extracted and burned today, and scarcely any carbon capture schemes yet exist. The second is that the technology works only for power stations and large industrial processes: there is no plausible means of dealing with cars, planes and heating systems. The third, as Alistair Darling, then in charge of energy, admitted in the Commons in May, is that the technologies required for commercial carbon capture "might never become available". (The government is prepared to admit this when making the case, as he was, for nuclear power, but not when making it for coal). Almost every week I receive an email from someone asking what the heck I am talking about. Don't I realise that peak oil will solve this problem for us? Fossil fuels will run out, we'll go back to living in caves and no one will need to worry about climate change again. These correspondents make the mistake of conflating conventional oil supplies with all fossil fuels. Yes, at some point the production of petroleum will peak then go into decline. I don't know when this will happen, and I urge environmentalists to remember that while we have been proved right about most things we have been consistently wrong about the dates for mineral exhaustion. But before oil peaks, demand is likely to outstrip supply and the price will soar. The result is that the oil firms will have an even greater incentive to extract the stuff. Already, encouraged by recent prices, the pollutocrats are pouring billions into unconventional oil. Last week BP announced a huge investment in Canadian tar sands. Oil produced from tar sands creates even more carbon emissions than petroleum extraction. There's enough tar and kerogen in North America to cook the planet several times over. If that runs out, they switch to coal, of which there is hundreds of years' supply. Sasol, the South African company founded during the apartheid period - when supplies of oil were blocked - to turn coal into liquid transport fuel, is conducting feasibility studies for new plants in India, China and the US. Neither geology nor market forces is going to save us from climate change. When you review the plans for fossil fuel extraction, the horrible truth dawns that every carbon-cutting programme is a con. Without supply-side policies, runaway climate change is inevitable, however hard we try to cut demand. The talks in Bali will be meaningless unless they produce a programme for leaving fossil fuels in the ground. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 19:49:05 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:49:05 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Chiapas: accused mastermind in Acteal massacre dies Message-ID: <20071211194905.59634483@viola.tamara-b.org> World War 4 Report - Dec 9, 2007 http://www.ww4report.com Chiapas: accused mastermind in Acteal massacre dies Antonio V?zquez Secum, named by Mexico's Prosecutor General of the Republic (PGR) as the author of the December 1997 Acteal massacre, died Nov. 17 at his home in the village of Quextic, Chiapas. Secum, who was over 70 years old, was freed from Cerro Hueco prison last year when he contracted pneumonia. The PGR's "white book" on the affair said he led a group of eight men from Miguel Utrilla Los Chorros hamlet in the attack on nearby Acteal (both in Chenahl? municipality) in retaliation for the slaying of his son, Agust?n V?zquez. He was among the first arrested for the massacre early in 1998. (La Jornada, Nov. 20) According to the investigation findings posted on the website of the Mexican Presidency, Agust?n V?zquez was killed in an ambush by masked men on Dec. 17, 1997, and the powerful "cacique" families of Chenalh? identified the perpetrators as residents of Acteal. ("Chiapas: Cobertura Especial," Presidencia.gob.mx) The Chiapas state government has opened a new investigation into the Dec. 22, 1997 slaying of 45 unarmed Toztzil Maya peasants - including children and pregnant women - at Acteal. The announcement said the investigation will be "objective, scientific and, above all, without prejudice." Las Abejas, the Maya Catholic pacifist group targeted in the massacre, has long been demanding a new investigation. (La Jornada, Nov. 23) Las Abejas continue to protest the militarization of the Chiapas Highlands. Massacre survivor Roberto P?rez recently said that the permanent military presence has led to a growing incidence of prostitution among the Maya women of the zone. (CMDPH, Nov. 20) Las Abejas has announced that they will be hosting a "National Encuentro Against Impunity" at Acteal on the anniversary of the massacre this year. (Zapateando, Dec. 1) From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 19:50:38 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:50:38 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Chiapas: paramilitary violence continues Message-ID: <20071211195038.0427224e@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Milt Shapiro (mexnews) World War 4 Report - Dec 9, 2007 http://www.ww4report.com Chiapas: paramilitary violence continues Land conflicts between communities loyal to the Zapatista rebel movement and the state's traditional political machine continue to generate violence in Chiapas, Mexico. The Zapatista Good Government Junta (JBG) Coraz?n del Arcoiris de la Esperanza announced that on Nov. 24, the community of Bolom Ajaw, Autonomous Municipality Olga Isabel, was attacked by members of the OPDDIC paramilitary group. The force of some 80 men armed with pistols, rifles, clubs and machetes arrived when the community's men were working in the fields, with only women, children and elders at home. They briefly held the community hostage, beating one ill resident unconscious with clubs. (La Jornada, Nov, 26) Sebasti?n Espinoza Mart?nez, director of the "Paz y Justicia" peasant organization?named as a paramilitary group by rights obervers?threatened to organize roadblocks in Chiapas if Gov. Juan Sabines does not address the organization's land claims. (Noticias Palenque, Nov. 17) Meanwhile, rights activists joined with members of the Emiliano Zapata Campesino Organization (OCEZ) from Venustiano Carranza village in a march on the state capital Tuxtla to protest the "restructuring and reforming of paramilitary groups and White Guards" in the region. (La Jornada, Nov. 20) Mexico's Congressional Commission on Pacification (COCOPA), convened ten years ago to broker peace with the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), has announced that the long-moribund peace process must be revived, and that the Commission will be opening an office in San Crist?bal de Las Casas, Chiapas. (Real Jovel, Nov. 20) COCOPA president Martha Cecilia D?az Gordillo said the question of constitutional reform must be re-opened, and that the issue of indigenous rights represents an "outstanding debt" of the Mexican state. (Proceso, Nov. 27) From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 19:53:16 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:53:16 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Mexican Pres Wants to End anti-immigrant hysteria in US, Canada Message-ID: <20071211195316.253d3103@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Milt Shapiro (mexnews) AP - Dec 7, 2007 Mexican leader seeks tempered attitudes By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO Associated Press Writer President Felipe Calderon on Friday told Mexican consuls to the U.S. and Canada that they must work to "neutralize" anti-immigrant attitudes north of the border. Calderon's instructions came two days after he accused U.S. presidential candidates of "swaggering, macho and anti-Mexican" posturing. He also warned the U.S. Congress not to impose conditions on a $1.4 billion anti-drug aid package. On Friday, the Mexican leader asked his diplomatic representatives in the U.S. to participate in the public debate on immigration by appearing at public events, talking more to the media and working with nonprofit groups to promote Mexican immigrants' role in supporting the U.S. economy. "The key is to neutralize this strategy of confrontation and discrimination that forms part of U.S. society's mistaken perception, and be able to newly focus arguments on the complimentary aspects of our economies," he said. Calderon complained about "the seeds of animosity, or in some cases even hate and discrimination, that are being planted are not only against immigrants, but sometimes against Mexicans in general." He said the increasingly hostile attitude toward Mexicans was "affecting our bilateral relationship" with the U.S. "The worst mistake that we can make, both in the U.S. and in Mexico, is make our respective people feel that the other nation is the enemy," he said. Mexico has pushed for an immigration accord and better treatment of its estimated 11 million citizens who live in the U.S. Some 6 million are believed to be there illegally. Copyright ? 2007 The Associated Press From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 19:56:49 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:56:49 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Shell game - step-by-step on the Hill Message-ID: <20071211195649.7314e412@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by MichaelP World Socialist Web Site -- 11 December 2007 http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/dec2007/dems-d11.shtml DEMOCRATS PROPOSE DEAL TO EXTEND IRAQ WAR FUNDING By Patrick Martin Leading congressional Democrats have outlined plans for a deal with the Bush White House that would continue funding the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan without any restriction, in return for a pittance of additional spending on domestic social programs. The proposal was made public by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer in a colloquy on the floor of the House December 6 and then elaborated in an interview with the editorial board of the Washington Post published that night on the newspaper's web site http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/07/AR20071 Hoyer said that the ongoing deadlock between the White House and Congress over appropriations for the current fiscal year could be resolved if Bush accepted about half the $22 billion increase in domestic spending proposed by the Democrats, in return for congressional agreement to provide emergency funding for Iraq and Afghanistan without any deadline or timetable for withdrawal. The arrangement would be similar to that worked out last spring, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi allowed two separate votes on an emergency spending bill that combined war funding with an increase in the minimum wage. Democrats wishing to strike an "antiwar" posture could vote against the military funding, which passed with Republican votes. The majority of each party switched sides on the minimum wage rise, but the sizeable minority of House Democrats who voted for both measures ensured final passage. This month's deal is, if anything, even more cynical in its betrayal of the antiwar sentiments of millions of voters who put the Democrats in control of Congress 13 months ago. The Post noted in its report on Hoyer's interview: "If the bargain were to become law, it would be the third time since Democrats took control of Congress that they would have failed to force Bush to change course in Iraq and continued to fund a war that they have repeatedly vowed to end." Hoyer was unabashed in his endorsement of the Democratic capitulation to Bush. "The way you pass appropriations bills is you get agreement among all the relevant players, among which the president with his veto pen is a very relevant player," he told the Post. "Everybody knows he has no intention of signing anything without money for Iraq, unfettered, without constraints. I think that's ultimately going to be the result." The House reportedly will vote Tuesday on an omnibus spending bill providing over $500 billion for various federal departments, including $30 billion for the war in Afghanistan. The Senate will then take up the measure, adding $40 billion for the war in Iraq, and then both houses will approve the resulting bill and send it on to the White House. The outlines of this deal were first suggested by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, and both Hoyer and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have given their approval, pending White House agreement. The principal opposition to the deal comes not from Democrats claiming opposition to the war, but from House Republicans who are adamant against any spending increase for domestic social programs and believe that the Bush administration should reject any compromise with the Democrats. Both House Minority Leader John Boehner and House Minority Whip Roy Blunt met with Bush last week and urged him to veto such a bill. Blunt told reporters that the Democrats would cave in on war funding and that no concessions on domestic spending were necessary. "There's no reason to make a bad bargain," he said. "The president holds all the cards." Congressional Democrats have already reduced the price of their support for continued funding of the slaughter in Iraq from $22 billion--the total increase in domestic spending above the White House budget request--to $11 billion. The likely result of the backroom wrangling among the two parties is an even smaller increase, perhaps only a few billion dollars, less than one percent of the budget, in return for an extension of war funding through the end of Bush's presidency. This is not simply an act of political surrender--that term would imply that the congressional Democrats actually wanted to halt the war but were overawed by the power of a president who is a widely despised lame duck. The truth is that Pelosi, Hoyer, Reid & Co. had absolutely no intention of ending the war in Iraq, let alone doing so through a confrontation with the White House. Hoyer spelled this out most crudely, telling the Post editorial board--like him, a fervent supporter of the initial US invasion of Iraq, "We have to get to a point where the American public more clearly perceives our policy position and is not confused by whether or not the Democrats intend to support the troops that we've sent to Iraq. I don't think there's an option on that." This is the umpteenth iteration of the grotesque falsification that "support" for the troops requires spending countless billions to continue their maiming and death in Iraq, while escalating the mass killing that has already taken the lives of more than a million Iraqi civilians. Another leading congressional Democrat, Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, endorsed the proposed deal Friday, saying, in reference to the emergency war spending, "One way or another, there, I believe, will be bridge funding provided, and should be." Speaker Pelosi, who has not signed off on the final form of the appropriation bill, acknowledged that the House would approve the additional spending on the war in Afghanistan, the first step in the deal. "There will probably be some level of addressing Afghanistan," she told reporters. She said a Bush veto of the bill would be "reckless." Pelosi and Reid issued a joint statement declaring, "America expects this president to lead--that means working in a bipartisan way with Congress to responsibly address our country's priorities rather than issuing veto threats without even knowing what he is threatening to veto." House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, said he might abandon the effort to split the difference on spending increases and simply pass a budget that pays for the increases by cutting congressional earmarks and Bush administration spending priorities. He voiced the fear that a deal to fund the war in return for a small increase in domestic spending might produce a political backlash against the Democrats from antiwar voters, saying, "I don't see how we have any choice but to go to the president's numbers on appropriations to make clear that we aren't going to link the war with token funding on the domestic side." Whatever the outcome of the legislative maneuvers, the Bush administration has clearly taken the measure of its nominal opposition in Congress. Vice President Cheney expressed his contempt in an interview Thursday with politico.com, in which he gloated that the congressional Democrats "had lost their spines. They are not carrying the big sticks I would have expected." Noting the Democrats' failure to accomplish anything in relation to curbing the war in Iraq, he said, "They've produced absolutely nothing that I can see that's of benefit or consistent with the promises that they made when they went out and ran for election." *** The Washington Post - Dec 8, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/07/AR2007120702550.html HILL CLOSE TO DEAL ON WAR FUNDS -- Democrats Would Drop Iraq Timeline By Jonathan Weisman and Paul Kane House Democratic leaders could complete work as soon as Monday on a half-trillion-dollar spending package that will include billions of dollars for the war effort in Iraq without the timelines for the withdrawal of combat forces that President Bush has refused to accept, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said yesterday. In a complicated deal over the war funds, Democrats will include about $11 billion more in domestic spending than Bush has requested, emergency drought relief for the Southeast and legislation to address the subprime mortgage crisis, Hoyer told a meeting of the Washington Post editorial board. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was the first to suggest to Hill Democrats the outlines of the pending deal on war funds for Iraq. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was the first to suggest to Hill Democrats the outlines of the pending deal on war funds for Iraq. (By Susan Walsh -- Associated Press) If the bargain were to become law, it would be the third time since Democrats took control of Congress that they would have failed to force Bush to change course in Iraq and continued to fund a war that they have repeatedly vowed to end. But it would also be the clearest instance yet of the president bowing to a Democratic demand for more money for domestic priorities, an increase that he had promised to reject. "The way you pass appropriations bills is you get agreement among all the relevant players, among which the president with his veto pen is a very relevant player," Hoyer said. "Everybody knows he has no intention of signing anything without money for Iraq, unfettered, without constraints. I think that's ultimately going to be the result." The Democrats plan to take a three-step approach to completing the deal. House leaders are considering an initial allotment of about $30 billion, ostensibly for the war in Afghanistan and some other military needs, which all sides in the deal recognize could be shifted to fund the Iraq war. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) then would allow Republicans to increase that amount to avert a filibuster of the spending bill in the Senate. The goal of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is $70 billion for the war, more than the $50 billion short-term funding that House Democrats initially proposed but far less than the $196 billion Bush has sought. The Senate-passed bill would then go to the House for final approval. McConnell was the first to suggest the outlines of the deal, which would allow Congress to pass the 11 remaining appropriations bills for fiscal 2008. Hoyer said Democrats are ready to accept that bargain. But the deal has a long way to go before it can be enacted. Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) vowed last month to oppose any additional money for the Iraq war that does not come with a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. In talks this week with White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and White House budget chief Jim Nussle, Reid signaled that he could accept the McConnell deal, according to Senate Democratic aides. But Pelosi is uncommitted, spokesman Nadeam Elshami said. Republican leaders are badly divided on the plan. At a White House meeting this week, McConnell presented the proposal to Bush, but House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) urged the president to reject it. Even as Bush's approval ratings have slid to historic lows, House GOP leaders have stood by him, twisting the arms of rank-and-file Republicans to uphold his vetoes of popular legislation, such as an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program and funding increases for health care and education. White House acquiescence now to increased domestic spending would be viewed as a betrayal by House Republicans who are trying to reestablish their credentials as small-government conservatives. "I am adamantly opposed to it," Boehner said Thursday. "I came here to hold the line on spending, not to raise it." Blunt said yesterday that Democrats will give in on war funding, with or without additional money for domestic programs. "There's no reason to make a bad bargain," he said. "The president holds all the cards." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was the first to suggest to Hill Democrats the outlines of the pending deal on war funds for Iraq. McConnell has been more circumspect in his public statements, predicting that an omnibus spending bill will pass only if Bush gets Iraq war funding with no timeline strings attached to it. "We made our bright lines very clear," said Don Stewart, McConnell's spokesman. Behind closed doors, McConnell has expressed confidence in the Republican negotiating position, telling his GOP colleagues Thursday that, by holding firm, they had moved from a Democratic offer of no money for the war to at least $30 billion, according to a Republican in the meeting. "We're just going to sit right here," McConnell told Senate Republicans of the negotiating strategy, according to the Republican, who made anonymity a condition for speaking freely about an internal meeting. Senate Republican leadership aides said an additional $11 billion in domestic spending, plus drought relief, might be a hard sell in the Senate. One GOP aide said that the Democrats made a bargaining mistake last month when Reid signaled that the Democrats were willing to halve their initial request of $22 billion in additional domestic spending, setting "boundaries" for the current debate in which $11 billion serves as the new ceiling. Regardless of the spending increases for veterans, health care, education and other domestic priorities, however, several House Democrats have said they will vote against any bill that includes war funding shorn of policy prescriptions. Pelosi will have to attract considerable Republican support to get the deal through. Democratic leadership aides expressed confidence that Boehner and Blunt will not be able to keep enough Republicans away from a bill that funds the war, popular domestic programs and their own pet projects, known as earmarks. With a long holiday break beckoning, few lawmakers will be in the mood for a protracted standoff. Ultimately, it will be up to Bush to decide whether to accept the deal. Sean Kevelighan, a spokesman for the White House's Office of Management and Budget, would not say how the president will proceed. "Until we have seen a piece of legislation, it's really hard to speculate, because not only had [the Democrats'] strategy been shifting constantly, but we can't know whether or not the House and the Senate are even talking to each other," he said. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said the president's position has not changed. He wants the war funds without strings, and he wants Congress to toe his line on spending. Hoyer struck a pragmatic tone, pushing for Congress to adjourn for the year by the end of next week. He suggested that Democrats need to divorce their goal of ending the war from the battle over funding. "We have to get to a point where the American public more clearly perceives our policy position and is not confused by whether or not the Democrats intend to support the troops that we've sent to Iraq. I don't think there's an option on that," Hoyer said. *** The Washington Post - Dec 11, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/10/AR2007121001615.html?hpid=moreheadlines House Democrats Pull Budget Offer The GOP Is Negotiating In Bad Faith, Obey Says A Democratic deal to give President Bush some war funding in exchange for additional domestic spending appeared to collapse last night after House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.) accused Republicans of bargaining in bad faith. Instead, Obey said he will push a huge spending bill that would hew to the president's spending limit by stripping it of all lawmakers' pet projects, as well as most of the Bush administration's top priorities. It would also contain no money for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "When the White House continues to stick it in our eye, I say to hell with it," House Appropriations Chairman David Obey. He said he will push a stripped-down spending bill. "Absent a Republican willingness to sit down and work out a reasonable compromise, I think we ought to end the game and go to the president's numbers," Obey said. "I was willing to listen to the argument that we ought to at least add more for Afghanistan, but when the White House refuses to compromise, when the White House continues to stick it in our eye, I say to hell with it." House Democratic leaders were scheduled to complete work last night on a $520 billion spending bill that included $11 billion in funding for domestic programs above the president's request, half of what Democrats had initially approved. The bill would have also contained $30 billion for the war in Afghanistan, upon which the Senate would have added billions more for Iraq before final congressional approval. But a stern veto threat this weekend from White House budget director Jim Nussle put the deal in jeopardy, and Obey said he is prepared for a long standoff with the White House. "If anybody thinks we can get out of here this week, they're smoking something illegal," he said. Obey's proposal would ax about 9,500 home-district and home-state projects worth a total of $9.5 billion, according to Keith Ashdown, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group. Republicans inserted about 40 percent of those projects. Not all of that money could be eliminated, however. The budget of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is parceled out as home-district projects, and Congress has no intention of eliminating the Army Corps. Obey would not specify where the remaining billions would come from to reach Bush's bottom line, beyond saying the money would be shaved from the president's priorities. One possibility would be funding for abstinence education. Other targets could be nuclear weapons research and development in the Energy Department, NASA programs and high-technology border security efforts that have come under criticism for being wasteful and ineffective, said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense. Obey's proposal did not move the White House to negotiate, spokesman Tony Fratto said. "Different day, different Democrat, different direction. Our position hasn't changed," Fratto said. House Republican leaders would be happy to take Obey's offer on spending, GOP aides said yesterday. But rank-and-file lawmakers from both parties could revolt. Home-district projects -- known as earmarks -- were stripped from the fiscal 2007 spending bills early this year, after Democrats took control of Congress and hastily disposed of budget bills their Republican predecessors had not passed. Earmarks were also eliminated from the 2006 appropriations bill that funded labor, health and education programs, the biggest domestic spending bill of the year. "There are a lot of people who were very disappointed last year when nobody got any earmarks. If they do it again for the second year in a row, it will be a very bitter pill to swallow," said Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), an appropriator who complained that he could lose $400,000 he needs for the Abraham Lincoln bicentennial celebration, slated to begin Feb. 12. LaHood is not the only Republican appropriator who is angry at the White House and at GOP leaders who have refused to negotiate with Democrats on domestic spending levels. In recent days, Rep. David L. Hobson (Ohio), ranking Republican on the Appropriations subcommittee in charge of energy and water projects, had a heated discussion with House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), arguing that Boehner should come off his hard line. Rep. James T. Walsh (N.Y.), another senior Republican appropriator, took to the House floor to argue: "If the proposal is to split the difference, to reduce the amount of spending above the president's request by $11 billion, I would advise the president to take yes for an answer." But most Republicans are expected to fall in line, as the GOP leadership pushes to regain the mantle of small-government conservatism. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), another member of the Appropriations Committee, said Republican lawmakers will face no political jeopardy for not bringing money home for their districts, because they can simply blame Democrats. "The smartest thing for [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi to do is to realize the White House always wins these spending contests," he said, advising her to "cut your losses, get out of town and say Bush is still relevant" to the legislative process. That still leaves the war-funding issue unresolved. Democratic leadership aides on Capitol Hill concede that at some point, Republicans can add some money for Iraq as a stripped-down spending bill winds through Congress. But plans for a quick end to the showdown appear to be fading. "It is extraordinary that the president would request an 11 percent increase for the Department of Defense, a 12 percent increase for foreign aid, and $195 billion of emergency funding for the war while asserting that a 4.7 percent increase for domestic programs is fiscally irresponsible," Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) said. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 19:58:56 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:58:56 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Oprah Electrifies Obama's 'Women's Initiative' Message-ID: <20071211195856.6886015f@viola.tamara-b.org> Womens eNews - Dec 11, 2007 http://www.womensenews.org Oprah Electrifies Obama's 'Women's Initiative' By Megan Tady WeNews correspondent (WOMENSENEWS)--Sen. Barack Obama's campaign is wagering that last weekend's stumping by the diversified-media celebrity Oprah Winfrey will spur its grassroots organizing initiative aimed at women. "What ultimately will be the greatest benefit to the campaign is that the women attending these rallies will also be serving as precinct captains, canvassers and in other key positions to help get out the vote and caucus in their respective states," said Becky Carroll, national director of the campaign's Women for Obama initiative. "So, they're not just attending a rally to show their support for Barack; but they'll be playing a key role when it counts on Election Day." Winfrey, an old friend of Obama's from Chicago, stirred mass-media buzz in May by breaking her nonpartisan stance to endorse him. Last weekend, she ignited the campaign trail in Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire, all early primary voting states. The duo drew over 29,000 to the Williams-Brice football stadium in Columbia, S.C., and around 6,000 people at the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester, N.H. Last month, the campaign announced the formation of state-specific Women for Obama leadership committees to organize in the nine states holding primaries on Feb. 5: Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Missouri, Minnesota and New Jersey. The committees are being asked to help expand the campaign's base and increase the number of women fundraising, canvassing and holding house parties for the candidate. Michelle Obama, Barack's wife, launched the committee with a conference call with over 700 female leaders across the country. Even before Winfrey offered the candidate her mass appeal--her 22-year-old daytime TV show is watched by nearly 8 million U.S. viewers a day--Obama had been quick to declare the party coed and challenge New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's historic bid to put a woman in the White House by making his own historic bid for a person of African descent to be leader of the United States. Endorsement Battle Clinton has captured a host of endorsements from women's advocacy groups, including EMILY's List, the National Women's Political Caucus, the National Organization for Women Political Action Committee, the Women's Campaign Forum, the Women's Political Committee and the Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy Committee. For many months, Clinton enjoyed a strong gender gap but now some polls show Obama gaining on her among women and even surpassing in other groups. While Obama may be making inroads with women, Clinton in turn is appealing to African Americans. A CNN poll conducted and released in October indicated Clinton has a 26-point lead over Obama among African American registered Democrats. In that poll, 68 percent of black women said they preferred Clinton. Clinton has also secured endorsements from the Alabama Black Caucus, civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis of Georgia and Robert Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television and owner of the NBA Charlotte Bobcats. Obama's endorsements were slower to start but have been rolling in. In late November, Iowa State Rep. Deb Barry gave a nod to the senator, calling him the "best candidate to bring our country together." In the same month, 46 other female elected officials in Iowa endorsed him. Karen Bass Talks Up Obama On the West Coast, California Assembly Leader Karen Bass, who is from a Los Angeles district and endorsed Obama in May, has been talking him up. "He is the candidate who will end the war as well as ensure that the country uses those wasted funds to address poverty issues throughout the nation," she recently wrote on the Women for Obama blog. Bass is the vice chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus, which endorsed Obama in September. Alice Walker, the Berkeley, Calif., author of "The Color Purple"--the film version of which marked Winfrey's film debut--and songstress Nancy Wilson began backing Obama this fall. Another women's group, Black Women for Obama, which is not affiliated with the Obama campaign, launched in September and now says on its Web site that it has 12 chapters across the country and uses a grassroots approach to mobilize voters. In Obama's home state of Illinois, Rep. Jan Schakowsky endorsed her colleague in the upper house in December. The campaign's attention to women seemed to become invigorated last March when Bonnie Grabenhofer, president of Illinois NOW, drew some public attention when she chastised the senator for only voting "present" on abortion bills. "When we needed someone to take a stand, Senator Obama took a pass," Grabenhofer said in a press statement. "He wasn't there for us then and we don't expect him to be now." A month later, in April, the Obama campaign launched its Women for Obama initiative, along with an ample Web site. Network of 20,000 Like its wider grassroots mobilization effort the women's initiative matches one donor to another and encourages donors to urge others to contribute. Carroll, the director of Women for Obama, says the initiative has a grassroots network of 20,000 women. "Women who support Obama have really been the backbone of our operation," she told Women's eNews, adding that more women than men have donated to the campaign. In the Illinois State Senate in 2003, Obama introduced a set of employment law protections for domestic and sexual violence victims. In April, Obama co-sponsored a bill that guarantees women receive equal pay comparable to men. Last January, he introduced a bill that would lower the child tax credit's income limit so more working families could qualify and benefit. As president, Obama says he would expand a program that provides home visits by trained nurses to low-income pregnant women and their families, raise the minimum wage and create a housing trust fund to develop affordable housing. "He talks about fighting poverty, which is to my mind a woman's issue," says Lenore Patton, chair of the Rockingham County Democrats in New Hampshire and an Obama supporter. "Most people in poverty in this country are children. The second largest group is single mothers, who are raising those children." Rockingham is one of the largest and most Democratic of the state's counties. "Although I am a woman and a feminist, and am very concerned about seeing women in all positions of influence in the country, I wouldn't vote for a woman just because she's a woman," Patton told Women's eNews. "When I'm making my choice, I have to pick the person who I think would be best for the country and the planet." Obama was raised by a single mother and likes to say that he has the right "biography" to fight for women. A blogger who calls herself "Margaret from Viroqua, WI" agrees. "I am the product of a single mom," she wrote on the Women for Obama blog last month, "went to an all women's college, and am a stay-at-home, self-employed mom and I think that Barack Obama is the change we need on so many issues that women are concerned about--the war in Iraq, health care, education, etc." [Megan Tady is a national political reporter for In These Times, and a freelance journalist.] For more information: Women's eNews Spotlight on 2008 Presidential Election: - http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3410/ "Iowa Women Jostle Obama Ahead of Clinton in Poll": - http://womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3413 Women for Obama homepage: - http://women.barackobama.com/page/content/WFOhome Copyright 2007 Women's eNews. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 20:00:26 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:00:26 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] UN Representative Praises Respect for Human Rights in Cuba Message-ID: <20071211200026.35c43995@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles UN Representative Praises Respect for Human Rights in Cuba Havana, Dec 11 (acn) UN resident coordinator in Cuba Susan McDade congratulated the island on Monday for its respect for human rights. In a press conference at the UN venue in Havana, McDade recognized the free and universal nature of medical services on the island and also the access to education at all levels. She also noted that the ongoing efforts to level all the people's capacity to acquire a basic food basket reflects the government's political will and respect of these and other rights. The UN official also praised Cuba's decision to sign in 2008 the International Agreement on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Agreement on Civil and Political Rights, as announced on Monday by Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque. In McDade's opinion, these two accords that the island will sign are the most important ones out of the seven established by the United Nations regarding human rights. She also recalled that Cuba was elected from the very first moment - with more than two thirds of the votes of the UN member countries - to join the UN Council on Human Rights. Every December 10th, the world celebrates International Human Rights Day. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 20:04:48 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:04:48 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Latin American Financial Independence Message-ID: <20071211200448.65a080c6@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Latin American Financial Independence By Nestor N??ez AIN Special Service Eight years after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's proposal, finally the Bank of the South has been born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Created with the participation of Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela, the foundation document was signed a few hours after the swearing in ceremony of Argentina's President elect Cristina Fernandez, wife of out-going president Nestor Kirchner. Of course, the news would not have been welcomed by Washington, or by its financial mafia, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The reaction of other banking entities in the rest of the western powers might have been the same. The Bank of the South begins its operations with a fund of 7 billion dollars and will at the same time propose as an important step, to pay back to the countries of origin the over 250 billion dollars which have been sent to the treasury of the industrial North under the alleged excuse of the existence of a climate of financial and stable security in those back yards. The operation of the new regional bank rests on the effective support of the economic and social development of the area's nations, based on solidarity and open understanding, which relates to people with the same roots, similar goals and enormous common challenges. In an act of constitution, President Hugo Chavez pointed out that the creation of the Bank of the South is another step towards independence and a more profound integration of our nations and without a doubt he is absolutely right. The presence of Argentina and Brazil, two of the region's economic poles, constitutes a guarantee of success and Venezuela itself, with an annual growth rate of 9 percent in its GDP, important social programs and enormous energy reserves, as have Bolivia and Ecuador also, two of the other signers. If the entity is consolidated, as is expected, South America and the entire hemisphere south of the Rio Bravo will have gained an important degree of independence. This is especially important, in the context of a world where the egocentric hierarchy considers itself elected to impose its will on the rest of humanity. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 20:06:14 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:06:14 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Cuba Boosts Training in Electrical Engineering Message-ID: <20071211200614.0c667b4a@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Cuba Boosts Training in Electrical Engineering Havana, Dec 11 (acn) Cuba is promoting the training of electrical engineers to face the shortage of skilled personnel in that area, a crucial task for the successful fulfilment of the energy revolution undertaken throughout the island. In statements to Juventud Rebelde newspaper, the director of the Center for Energy Research (CIPEL), Miriam Vilaragut Llanes, referred to the importance of training a professional capable of using and repairing all the equipment employed in the National Energy Network. CIPEL, adjoined to the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Jose Antonio Echeverria Higher Polytechnic Institute, leads the training of the personnel in the field. "Between 40 and 70 students graduate every year at CIPEL," said Vilaragut who further added that the institution along with the Higher Education Ministry and the Cuban Electrical Union are working on the promotion of the enrolment of new pupils for CIPEL. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 20:10:32 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:10:32 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] US-Sponsored Provocations Against Cuba for Human Rights Day Message-ID: <20071211201032.15e6651f@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Washington Backs Provocations Against Cuban Dignity Havana, Dec 11 (acn) The US government sponsored new provocations against the dignity of the Cuban people at events occurring on Sunday and Monday in two downtown locations in Havana. A group of women known for their close ties to the US Interests Section in Havana carried out a protest along the Fifth Avenue promenade in front of the Santa Rita de Casia Church on Sunday, with the support of foreigners with tourist visas that came specifically to take part in the protest, reports Granma newspaper. On Monday, a smaller group orchestrated a similar provocation in the Villalon Park in the Vedado neighborhood in front of the Amadeo Roldan Theater. On both occasions, workers, students and nearby residents, armed with the humanist and ethical principles that unite revolutionaries, verbally confronted the protesters. Behind the incidents was the pretext of celebrating International Human Rights Day to step up the subversive activity against Cuba promoted by the Bush administration, which is completely committed to the anti-Cuba Mafia in southern Florida and its diplomatic representatives in Havana. Throughout the year, officials at the US Interests Section have held more than 300 contacts of diverse types with locals on the payroll of the highly publicized White House objective to destroy the Cuban revolution. In recent weeks, and by diverse means, including illegal radio broadcasts and Internet sites designed specifically to undermine Cuban society, statements and calls to turn International Human Rights Day on December 10 into a distorted publicity stunt were issued: hoping to show the world an image of a supposedly active internal opposition. The serenity, firmness and civic nature of the Cuban people impeded the provocations from succeeding and both events, with few participants, petered out. The goal of the mercenaries, many of whom have criminal records, is to obtain favors that will facilitate their emigration to the United States. Hours after the last incident, the close ties between Washington and its lackeys on the island was clearly revealed. Around 60 of the protesters were invited to the house of US Interests Section officials on the corner of 7th Avenue and 24th Street in the Miramar district. They were then taken to the home of the head of the Interests Section, Michael Parmly, who honored them for their services and encouraged them to persevere, backed by a new budget of US $45.7 million --recently approved by the US Congress-- that will guarantee the salaries of the mercenaries. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 20:14:29 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:14:29 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Cuba Promotes Quality Domestic Products to Replace Imports Message-ID: <20071211201429.55f1c415@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Cuba Promotes Quality Domestic Products to Replace Imports Havana, Dec 11 (acn) The importance of producing quality products in the national effort to substitute imports with domestic goods was highlighted by Communist Party Politburo member Jose Ramon Machado Ventura during a tour to workplaces in the Cuban eastern province of Guantanamo. In conversations with administrators and workers at the Mano Guaso Tool Company, Machado Ventura emphasized the need to prioritize the quality indicator so that national products can compete with foreign ones. He also examined the handles for rakes, masons trowels, shovels and other tools made at the factory inaugurated in the 1960s by Ernesto Che Guevara. Manager Orestes Fournier Garrido informed that these products used to be imported. He said that other lines of production are under study are for pick and axe handles using a hard wood found in the Guantanamo hillsides, reports Granma newspaper. Machado Ventura also visited the Carlos Roloff Valve and Pump Industry, the Muebles Imperio furniture factory and INPUD Oriente home appliance plant, all hard at work to recover production and substitute imports. At each workplace the Cuban Communist Party official showed interest in the current state of the work force and emphasized the importance of training new workers, especially young people, to increase production. Machado noted that in the battle to substitute imports, cooperation between the different businesses and ministries is crucial and a key expression of unity. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 20:15:23 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:15:23 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] South American Leaders Support Bolivian President Message-ID: <20071211201523.73806ac7@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles South American Leaders Support Bolivian President Havana, Dec 11 (acn) Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela manifested their support to the Bolivian Government in the face of the conflict surrounding the new constitution in that South American country. The Latin American Presidents stated their confidence that Bolivia will channel the current situation with respect for democratic principles. The statement was signed by the eight South American countries and Honduras, reports Granma newspaper. The Buenos Aires Declaration, announced by the Argentine Foreign Ministry, further states its confidence "in the capacity of the Bolivian political forces to maintain a climate of dialogue and understanding, rejecting all attempts that endanger the stability of the country's institutions and the democratically elected government." The opposition governors of five of the nine Bolivian departments said Monday that the new constitution supported by President Evo Morales and approved on Sunday in not valid. They confirmed that four of them will apply their regional autonomy regardless of the constitution. In a statement signed after a meeting in Cochabamba, the governors of this region and Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni and Pando, said they would not recognize the new constitution. Morales, who attended the inauguration of Cristina Fernandez in Buenos Aires, held a press conference in which he thanked his colleagues of the region for their support in the conflict. The Bolivian president also noted the conspiracy of the country's oligarchs and the international oligarchy headed by the United States. He assured that the groups that oppose him are growing ever smaller, but increasingly more violent. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 20:19:29 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:19:29 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Juan Cole: Guerrilla War 3.0 in Iraq Message-ID: <20071211201929.15a0f892@viola.tamara-b.org> Informed Comment - Dec 9, 2007 http://www.juancole.com/2007/12/attacks-in-bayji-yusufiya-elsewhere.html Guerrilla War 3.0 in Iraq Attacks in Bayji, Yusufiya, Elsewhere, Kill 32, Wound Dozens; Dulaimi's Sunnis Unlikely to Rejoin Government by Juan Cole Guerrillas differ from conventional armies in that they typically avoid direct, conventional engagements on the battlefield. They melt away before a conventional army's advance, and then reemerge to engage in sniping, sneak attacks, and bombings from an unexpected quarter. The advantage of Fred Kagan's troop escalation or "surge" is that it allowed a tamping down of violence in Baghdad through a US campaign to disarm the Sunni Arabs there. There were two disadvantages of it. First, it allowed the Shiite militias to take advantage of the disarming of many Sunni Arabs, and to ethnically cleanse hundreds of thousands of Sunnis from the capital during the past six months. As a result, Baghdad is virtually a Shiite city now, like Isfahan or Shiraz. Second, the Sunni guerrillas melted away in West Baghdad, either laying low or relocating to other provinces, so that the violence was displaced to the provinces. Very likely when the extra US troops are removed, the guerrillas will reemerge in the capital, though their loss of so many Sunni neighborhoods to the ethnic cleansing may put them at a disadvantage now. The Sunni Arab guerrilla movement has clearly regrouped outside Baghdad and is deploying high explosives with deveastating effect in Diyala, Salahuddin, Ninevah and Kirkuk provinces, to the northeast and due north of Baghdad. Cells also remain active in the northern reaches of Babil province just south of Baghdad, where Saddam had planted Sunni families in what had been a Shiite area, sowing the seeds of conflict when the Shiites returned to reclaim their property from 2003. There were two big bombings in Diyala on Friday and a major attack in Mosul, a city nearly the size of Houston several hundred miles north of the capital On Saturday, the guerrillas deployed two big car bombs in Bayji, an oil refining center just northwest of Saddam's home town of Tikrit north of Baghdad. One car exploded with massive force outside the house of Ali al-Juburi, the counter-terrorism chief in the local police force, killing 11 individuals (7 of them policemen) and wounding 44 other persons. Another bomb targeting a police station killed 6 and wounded 15, and damaged surrounding buildings. South of Baghdad in Babil Province, the US military forestalled a planned attack on American soldiers by a guerrilla cell at Yusufiya. They engaged well-armed cell members and the fighting grew so deadly that the US troops had to call in air strikes on their foe. They killed 10 guerrillas from the air and found a weapons cache. A mortar attack in nearby Mahmudiya killed one child and wounded two others. In addition, in Baghdad itself guerrillas used a roadside bomb to wound two police commandoes (these are usually recruited from the Shiite Badr Corps, the Iran-trained paramilitary of the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq (ISCI). Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Adnan Dulaimi, the head of the Sunni fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front, has been released from any confinement and is back in his house. But he expressed doubt that his bloc will rejoin the Shiite government of Nuri al-Maliki. He said Iraqi President Jalal Talabani had sent over some Peshmerga (Kurdish) bodyguards to protect Dulaimi. A car bomb was found near his house Thursday a week ago and one of his personal bodyguards had the key. Dulaimi claims that he the target of a Salafi Jihadi assassination plot, with the extremists having infiltrated his staff. (Whether that is true or not, it has happened to other Sunni politicians cooperating with the new government). Al-Hayat says that its sources in ISCI maintain that they are still negotiating with the Iraqi Islamic Party, a constituent of the Iraqi Accord Front, in hopes it will rejoin the al-Maliki government. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Mosul city council has decided to dig a ditch around the northern city of 1.5 million to keep radical Sunni extremists out. The council has seen an uptick of relocation of militants to the city from Baghdad. Cities haven't had moats since the medieval period. Such modern advancement, the Bush administration has brought to Iraq. Leila Fadel's blog from Baghdad is revealing on the fears of a teenager that his mother may end up killed for working for a Western news service. He wishes he had more typical teenage problems, but his are that he cannot bring home friends since they would find out about his mother's employment. See: http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/baghdad/ From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 20:33:25 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:33:25 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Juan Cole - Reagan and the Ayatollahs: The Real History vs Rudy's Message-ID: <20071211203325.7b1f4455@viola.tamara-b.org> [Juan Cole has been covering Rudy Giuliani's bluster about Iran, and has published several important pieces on his blog and in Salon. See Informed Comment for full embedded links. - NY Transfer] Informed Comment - Dec 11, 2007 http://www.juancole.com/2007/12/giuliani-reagan-and-kissing-up-to.html AND: http://www.juancole.com/2007/12/cole-in-salon-gops-iran-option-is-off.html Cole in Salon: The GOP's Iran option is off the table My column in Salon.com, "The GOP's Iran option is off the table." The subhead is: "Rudy Giuliani was counting on Iran as a weapon of mass distraction in the '08 race. But the flailing Republican right has just been disarmed." Excerpt: ' Republicans have used the alleged nuclear threat posed by Iran to scare the American public and to turn attention away from Iraq, economic troubles and Republican scandals. But the NIE findings have pulled the rug out from under the Grand Old Party. Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani initially dismissed the NIE, but on Sunday he backtracked substantially on "Meet the Press." He said of Iran, "And of course we don't ... want to use the military option. It would be dangerous; it would be risky." . . . This is, of course, the same Rudy Giuliani who while campaigning has all but pledged to bomb Iran if elected. It is a "promise" and not a "threat," he has said, that if Tehran appears close to getting a bomb, he will "set them back eight or 10 years." While Giuliani hasn't specified how he would do so, he likely means launching military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities such as the one at Natanz. That message has been accompanied by bluster from Giuliani worthy of a World Wrestling Federation ham in spandex: "We will not beg to negotiate with them. We're going to make them beg to negotiate with us." Such Hulk Hogan-style boasts may play to the Republican base, but Giuliani now seems more aware of the possibility that the war-weary public may not embrace his reckless bravado if he wins his party's nomination for the general election. ' Read the whole thing here: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/12/11/iran_08/index.html *** Giuliani, Reagan, and Kissing up to Ayatollahs with fancy Cakes I just saw this campaign ad for Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. He says that Iran held US embassy hostages for 444 days. Then they were released within one hour. That was the hour after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president, succeeding Jimmy Carter. Giuliani goes on to tell us that this incident shows how you deal with "Islamic terrorists." You get tough on them and don't back down. The problem with this assertion is that it is not true, and indeed the opposite is true. Gary Sick showed in "October Surprise" that: ' Piercing the shadowy netherworld of international espionage, Sick has written one of the most controversial and disturbing accounts of political intrigue to appear in recent years. In 1980, William Casey, then campaign manager of the Reagan-Bush ticket, without the knowledge or approval of the legitimate government, arranged a deal with the Iranian government that in return for military equipment, the Iranians would not release the 52 American hostages until Ronald Reagan was safely inaugurated. ' So the hostages weren't released because Reagan was tough on the Iranian regime. They were released because Casey promised that the Republicans would sell Khomeini weapons if they kept the hostages for an extra couple of months and denied Jimmy Carter the sort of diplomatic coup that might have rescued his presidency. Not only was Reagan not in fact 'tough' on the ayatollahs in Tehran, he later on stole Pentagon weaponry from the warehouses, illegally sold this US military materiel to a terrorist regime (that of Khomeini), then pocketed the money from the illegal arms sales to 'Islamic terrorists' and laundered it through shadowy bank accounts, sending it to far rightwing death squads in Nicaragua. Besides, they aren't "Islamic" terrorists because Islam forbids terrorism. They might be Muslim terrorists, but then not very good Muslims. When will Giuliani denounce the "Catholic terrorism" of some prominent priests who were active in the Irish Republican Army? Would he talk about "Jewish terrorism" in regard to the blowing up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem? As for Iran-contra, I feel a golden oldie coming on: http://www.juancole.com/2003/12/rumsfeld-bechtel-and-iraq-well.html 'And, Shultz told both Rumsfeld and Saddam that the US was trying to curb weapons flows to Iran. Yet it is well known that Israel was supplying Iran with weaponry in return for Iranian oil. Only a little over a year later, Shultz double-crossed Saddam by getting on board with the Iran-Contra weapons exchange, which was suggested by the Israelis in the first place. The White House illegally sold Iran hundreds of powerful TOW anti-tank and HAWK anti-aircraft weapons [which Reagan came on television and told us were shoulder-launched weapons!], for use against Washington's newfound ally, the Iraqis, who were being assured that the US was trying hard to "prevent an Iranian victory....." These weapons sales contravened US law, under which Iran was tagged as a terrorist nation. (Even today I can get into trouble for so much as editing a paper by an Iranian scholar for publication in a US scholarly journal, but it was all right for the Republicans and Neocons to send Khomeini 1000 TOWs!) Not only that, but Reagan's team then turned around and used the money garnered from these off-the-books sales to support the contra death squads in Nicaragua. In the US Constitution, how to spend government money is the purview of Congress, and Congress had told Reagan "no" on funding the death squads. So Reagan's people essentially stole weapons from the Pentagon storehouses, shipped them to Israel for transfer to Ayatollah Khomeini, and then took the ill gotten gains from fencing the stolen goods and gave them to nun-murderers in Latin America. Here's the timeline: "1985 July -- An Israeli official suggests a deal with Iran to then-national security adviser Robert McFarlane, saying the transfer of arms could lead to release of Americans being held hostage in Lebanon. McFarlane brings the message to President Reagan. Aug. 30 -- The first planeload of U.S.-made weapons is sent from Israel to Tehran. Two weeks later the first American Hostage is released. Dec. 5 -- Reagan secretly signs a presidential 'finding,' or authorization, describing the operation with Iran as an arms-for-hostages deal. 1986 Jan. 17 -- Reagan signs a finding authorizing CIA participation in the sales and ordering the process kept secret from Congress. April -- Then-White House aide Oliver North writes a memo outlining plans to use $12 million in profits from Iran arms sales for Contra aid. " Oh, yeah, that Reagan was tough on Khomeini. Why, he even sent him a Bible and a cake, to go along with those nice TOW's he gave him. That will teach those terrorists to mess with the Republican Party! From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 21:00:48 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:00:48 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] China signs $2bn Iran oil deal Message-ID: <20071211210048.41bf6799@viola.tamara-b.org> Al Jazeera - Dec 11, 2007 http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5423D57A-20A3-4CB7-B3CC-1DEECBA6D97C.htm China signs $2bn Iran oil deal One of China's biggest energy companies has signed a $2bn deal to develop a huge oil field in Iran, defying US calls for a trade boycott with Tehran. Under the deal, China's biggest refiner, Sinopec, will eventually help pump out 185,000 barrels of oil a day from the Yadavar field in southwest Iran. Gholam Hossein Nozari, Iran's oil minister, said the deal showed Western efforts to isolate Tehran had failed with Iran instead "solidifying our economic relations with China". "This contract has a clear message that despite the negative atmosphere . trying to falsely imply that no one is willing to invest in Iran's energy sector, we have such contracts signed," he said at a signing ceremony in Tehran. US 'deeply disappointed' Officials in the US warned that the agreement would undermine international efforts to press Iran over its nuclear programme. "We're deeply disappointed and disturbed at the reports [of the deal], and we'll be making this clear to the Chinese authorities," Jessica Simon, a US state department spokeswoman, told reporters in Washington on Monday. "Major new deals with Iran, particularly ones like these involving investment in oil and gas, really undermine international efforts to pressure the Iranians to comply with obligations already in place under the UN Security Council resolutions," she said. She did not say whether Washington would review the deal to see if it violates the US-imposed Iran Sanctions Act, which seeks to punish foreign companies that invest more than $20m annually in Iran's energy sector. ] Last week a US intelligence report suggested Iran had halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 and was "less determined" than previously thought to develop a bomb. But four days later Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, insisted Iran remained dangerous, calling on allies to "intensify" pressure on Tehran over the issue. Iran has the world's third largest oil reserves and second largest gas reserves in the world and had been seeking foreign partners to develop its oil fields. According to Iranian estimates, the Yadavaran field holds 3.2bn barrels of recoverable crude oil and 2.7trn cubic feet of recoverable natural gas. In recent years China has been snapping up energy deals around the world as it seeks to ensure supplies of fuel for its booming economy. Iran is already China's third largest supplier of crude oil. But Chinese investments in countries such as Iran and Sudan have proved controversial, with critics saying it undermines diplomatic efforts to tackle issues such as nuclear proliferation or the conflict in Darfur. Beijing, meanwhile, has rejected US demands for new UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme, saying that the standoff over Iran's alleged development of atomic weapons requires a diplomatic solution. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 21:04:36 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:04:36 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Supreme Court restores sentencing powers of federal judges Message-ID: <20071211210436.7d2a8f87@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Steven L. Robinson - activ-l [Important because the cases concerned trial court rejection of sentencing guidelines that called for harsher punishment of crack cocaine-associated crimes in comparison to powdered cocaine, a disparity that has a disproportionate racial impact. -SR] The New York Times - Dec 10, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/washington/10cnd-scotus.html Court Restores Sentencing Powers of Federal Judges By Linda Greenhouse Washington - The Supreme Court today restored federal judges to their traditional central role in criminal sentencing. In two decisions, the court said federal district judges have broad discretion to impose what they think are reasonable sentences, even if federal guidelines call for different sentences. One decision was particularly emphatic in saying judges are free to disagree with guidelines that call for much longer sentences for offenses involving crack cocaine than for crimes involving an equivalent amount of cocaine in powdered form. Both cases, each decided by the same 7-to-2 alignment, chided federal appeals courts for failing to give district judges sufficient leeway. The appeals court had in each case overturned a sentence that was lower than that provided by the guidelines. The two dissenters were Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. Taken together, the decisions reflected the remarkable trajectory the court has traveled in the seven years since it overturned a New Jersey hate-crime statute on the ground that the law gave judges an unconstitutional degree of authority to make the crucial factual determinations that added a hate-crime "enhancement" to an ordinary criminal sentence. Along with their diminished function under the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, which set up the federal sentencing guidelines system, federal judges appeared to have been all but ejected from their role at the heart of criminal sentencing. Judges still may not impose sentences above the range written into law by Congress or state legislatures. But the decision on Monday gives judges broad discretion to impose sentences higher or lower than the guidelines, which are not statutes and are issued by the United States Sentencing Commission. The two decisions answered questions left hanging in 2005, when the court ruled in United States v. Booker that the federal sentencing guidelines could be constitutional only if "advisory" rather than mandatory. Appeals courts were to review sentences for "reasonableness," the court said then. But the court did not say what it meant by either "advisory" or "reasonableness." Last June, in Rita v. United States, the court ruled that appeals courts could choose to presume that sentences within the guidelines range were reasonable, but that such a presumption was not binding. But that opinion was quite opaque and said relatively little about the trial judge's role. It is now clear that while judges should consult the guidelines, they are just one factor among others and do not carry any special weight. It is also clear that an appeals court must have a very good reason of its own to displace the trial judge's judgment. "The guidelines should be the starting point and the initial benchmark," Justice John Paul Stevens said in one of the decisions today, Gall v. United States, No. 06-7949. But Justice Stevens went on to say that the guidelines were just one factor in the "individualized assessment" that a judge must make in every case. The judge "may not presume that the guidelines range is reasonable," he said. In that case, Brian M. Gall, who had briefly been involved in an Ecstasy distribution ring while a college student, received a sentence of three years' probation rather than 30 to 36 months in prison called for by the guidelines. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis, ruled that such an "extraordinary" variance from the guidelines range required an equivalently extraordinary justification. That judgment was erroneous, Justice Stevens said, in failing to give "due deference" to the district judge's "reasoned and reasonable decision." He added that "if the sentence is outside the guidelines range, the court may not apply a presumption of unreasonableness." Nor, he continued, should a sentence be overturned just because the appeals court "might reasonably have concluded that a different sentence was appropriate." The defendant in the crack cocaine case, Derrick Kimbrough, received 15 years instead of 19 to 22 = for several cocaine and gun-related offenses. The sentence was the lowest possible, given the statutory mandatory minimum sentences. The trial judge said the higher guidelines term would be inappropriate for Mr. Kimbrough, a Marine veteran of the gulf war with an honorable discharge. The judge also disagreed with the relative treatment of crack and powdered cocaine, a disparity that he said led to "disproportionate and unjust" results. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., overturned the sentence on the ground that it was "per se unreasonable" for a judge to depart from the guidelines "based on a disagreement with the sentencing disparity for crack and powder cocaine offenses." The Supreme Court took the unusual step of reinstating the original lower sentences, rather than simply instructing the appeals courts to reconsider the cases under an appropriately deferential standard of review. Prof. Douglas A. Berman of Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law, an expert on sentencing, called the decisions a "stinging rebuke of circuit court micromanagement of district court discretion." The decision in the crack cocaine case, Kimbrough v. United States, No. 06-6330, was particularly pointed in this regard. In her majority opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that ordinarily, "closer review may be in order" when a judge's sentence is based on a policy disagreement with the guidelines. But she went on to say that this higher level of appellate scrutiny should not apply to a sentence based on a district judge's critique of the crack-powder disparity. Justice Ginsburg's opinion took account of an important policy development since the case was argued on Oct. 2. On Nov. 1, amended guidelines for crack cocaine that the United States Sentencing Commission had long advocated took effect when Congress, which had the power to block them, let the moment pass without acting. Justice Ginsburg said that "this tacit acceptance" of the amendment by Congress "undermines the government's position" that judges should not have discretion to depart from the guidelines themselves. The amendments put into effect a relatively modest change that will reduce sentences for crack by about one-quarter, resulting in sentences that are two to five times longer than for equivalent amounts of powdered cocaine. The commission was limited in what it could accomplish on its own. A 1986 federal law, enacted at the height of public concern about crack, incorporated a 100:1 ratio into mandatory minimum sentences - that is, the same sentence was imposed for a given amount of crack and 100 times that amount of powder. The Sentencing Commission guidelines operated as an overlay on that statutory framework. But as the commission studied the impact, it grew concerned. A 2002 report noted that 85 percent of defendants convicted of crack offenses were black, a fact the commission warned was leading to a loss of confidence in the fairness of the system. Bipartisan bills are pending in Congress to address the disparity. On Tuesday, the Sentencing Commission will vote on whether to make the Nov. 1 amendment retroactive to the 19,500 inmates imprisoned for crack offenses. The court's endorsement of judges' discretion raised the prospect that higher sentences, not only lower ones, would now be upheld on appeal. Current statistics indicate that defendants benefit the most when judges depart from the guidelines. Below-guidelines sentences have been given in 11.9 percent of cases, and above-guidelines sentences in 1.6 percent. Criminal defense lawyers regarded today's decision as good news. "The court has taken the handcuffs off and told judges that 'you are free to apply your mind,'" said Graham Boyd, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Drug Law Reform Project. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 21:12:24 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:12:24 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Sugarcane Harvesting Season Began in Cuba Message-ID: <20071211211224.75352843@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles Sugarcane Harvesting Season Began in Cuba Havana, Dec 10 (acn) The 2007-8 sugarcane harvesting season began in Cuba on Monday, with the start of operations at the Roberto Ramirez sugarcane factory in the municipality of Niquero, in eastern Granma province. A total of 52 factories will produce sugar this season, 14 of them starting operations in December. Harvesting will last an average of 96 days, and the largest planned operation is scheduled for 129 days in the Urbano Noris factory, in eastern Holguin province. The Roberto Ramirez factory will run for 90 days, with 68 percent of the raw material cut by sugarcane harvesting machines. Next scheduled to start up are the Paquito Rosales (Santiago de Cuba), Bartolome Maso (Granma) and Panchito Gomez Toro (Villa Clara) factories. 87 percent of the sugarcane will be harvested mechanically, while over 21,000 workers will do the manual cutting. Hindering factors this season are the poor condition of the roads to transport the sugarcane, 470 kilometers of which were severely damaged by the intense rains caused by tropical storm Noel in October. Intense rains also affected 40 kilometers of railroads and flooded 57,000 hectares of sugarcane. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 21:14:34 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:14:34 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Only one thing unites Iraq: hatred of the US Message-ID: <20071211211434.74e682d2@viola.tamara-b.org> The Independent - Dec 11, 2007 http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article3241904.ece Only one thing unites Iraq: hatred of the US The Americans will discover, as the British learned to their cost in Basra, that they have few permanent allies by Patrick Cockburn As British forces come to the end of their role in Iraq, what sort of country do they leave behind? Has the United States turned the tide in Baghdad? Does the fall in violence mean that the country is stabilising after more than four years of war? Or are we seeing only a temporary pause in the fighting? American commentators are generally making the same mistake that they have made since the invasion of Iraq was first contemplated five years ago. They look at Iraq in over-simple terms and exaggerate the extent to which the US is making the political weather and is in control of events there. The US is the most powerful single force in Iraq but by no means the only one. The shape of Iraqi politics has changed over the past year, though for reasons that have little to do with "the surge" the 30,000 US troop reinforcements and much to do with the battle for supremacy between the Sunni and Shia Muslim communities. The Sunni Arabs of Iraq turned against al Qa'ida partly because it tried to monopolise power but primarily because it brought their community close to catastrophe. The Sunni war against US occupation had gone surprisingly well for them since it began in 2003. It was a second war, the one against the Shia majority led by al-Qa'ida, which the Sunni were losing, with disastrous results for themselves. "The Sunni people now think they cannot fight two wars against the occupation and the government at the same time," a Sunni friend in Baghdad told me last week. "We must be more realistic and accept the occupation for the moment." This is why much of the non-al-Qa'ida Sunni insurgency has effectively changed sides. An important reason why al-Qa'ida has lost ground so swiftly is a split within its own ranks. The US military the State Department has been very much marginalised in decision-making in Baghdad does not want to emphasise that many of the Sunni fighters now on the US payroll, who are misleadingly called "concerned citizens", until recently belonged to al Qa'ida and have the blood of a great many Iraqi civilians and American soldiers on their hands. The Sunni Arabs, five million out of an Iraqi population of 27 million and the mainstay of Saddam Hussein's government, were the core of the resistance to the US occupation. But they have also been fighting a sectarian war to prevent the 16 million Shia and the five million Kurds holding power. At first, the Shia were very patient in the face of atrocities. Vehicles, packed with explosives and driven by suicide bombers, were regularly detonated in the middle of crowded Shia market places or religious processions, killing and maiming hundreds of people. The bombers came from al-Qa'ida but the attacks were never wholeheartedly condemned by Sunni political leaders or other guerrilla groups. The bombings were also very short-sighted since the Iraqi Shia outnumber the Sunni three to one. Retaliation was restrained until a bomb destroyed the revered Shia al-Askari shrine in Samarra on 22 February, 2006. The bombing led to a savage Shia onslaught on the Sunni, which became known in Iraq as "the battle for Baghdad". This struggle was won by the Shia. They were always the majority in the capital but, by the end of 2006, they controlled 75 per cent of the city. The Sunni fled or were pressed back into a few enclaves, mostly in west Baghdad. In the wake of this defeat, there was less and less point in the Sunni trying expel the Americans when the Sunni community was itself being evicted by the Shia from large parts of Iraq. The Iraqi Sunni leaders had also miscalculated that an assault on their community by the Shia would provoke Arab Sunni states like Saudi Arabia and Egypt into giving them more support but this never materialised. It was al-Qa'ida's slaughter of Shia civilians, whom it sees as heretics worthy of death, which brought disaster to the Sunni community. Al-Qa'ida also grossly overplayed its hand at the end of last year by setting up the Islamic State of Iraq, which tried to fasten its control on other insurgent groups and the Sunni community as a whole. Sunni garbage collectors were killed because they worked for the government and Sunni families in Baghdad were ordered to send one of their members to join al Qai'da. Bizarrely, even Osama bin Laden, who never had much influence over al Qa'ida in Iraq, was reduced to advising his acolytes against extremism. Defeat in Baghdad and the extreme unpopularity of al Qa'ida gave the impulse for the formation of the 77,000-strong anti-al-Qa'ida Sunni militia, often under tribal leadership, which is armed and paid for by the US. But the creation of this force is a new stage in the war in Iraq rather than an end to the conflict. Sunni enclaves in Baghdad are safer, but not districts where Sunni and Shia face each other. There are few mixed areas left. Many of the Sunni fighters say openly that they see the elimination of al Qai'ida as a preliminary to an attack on the Shia militias, notably the Mehdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, which triumphed last year. The creation of a US-backed Sunni militia both strengthens and weakens the Iraqi government. It is strengthened in so far as the Sunni insurrection is less effective and weakened because it does not control this new force. If the Sunni guerrillas were one source of violence in 2006 the other was the Mehdi Army, led by Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia nationalist cleric. This has been stood down because he wants to purge it of elements he does not control, and wishes to avoid a military confrontation with his rivals within the Shia community if they are backed by the US army. But the Mehdi Army would certainly fight if the Shia community came under attack or the Americans pressured it too hard. American politicians continually throw up their hands in disgust that Iraqis cannot reconcile or agree on how to share power. But equally destabilising is the presence of a large US army in Iraq and the uncertainty about what role the US will play in future. However much Iraqis may fight among themselves, a central political fact in Iraq remains the unpopularity of the US-led occupation outside Kurdistan. This has grown year by year since the fall of Saddam Hussein. A detailed opinion poll carried out by ABC News, BBC and NTV of Japan in August found that 57 per cent of Iraqis believe that attacks on US forces are acceptable. Nothing is resolved in Iraq. Power is wholly fragmented. The Americans will discover, as the British learned to their cost in Basra, that they have few permanent allies in Iraq. It has become a land of warlords in which fragile ceasefires might last for months and might equally collapse tomorrow. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 21:19:59 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:19:59 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Silly Wisconsin Battle over Keeping Christ in "Christmas Tree" Message-ID: <20071211211959.51913343@viola.tamara-b.org> Freedom From Religion Foundation - Dec 11, 2007 http://www.ffrf.org FFRF in the News Fox News airs a (very brief) comment by Freedom From Religion Foundation co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor in its coverage of a Wisconsin lawmaker's attempt to out-O'Reilly Bill O'Reilly by introducing a publicity-seeking resolution to rename the Wisconsin "holiday" tree a "Christmas" tree. A written news story follows, but the link below will take you to the Fox News video segment (there's a commercial and loading time). For the record, Gaylor has said naming the tree in a way that identifies it with one religion only is "exclusionary." She has suggested the tree doesn't even need a name, and the legislator will not be arrested by Capitol Police if he calls it a "Christmas tree," but why should everyone have to call it a "Christmas tree"? Wouldn't a "Winter Solstice tree" make more sense, given its pagan roots? Fox News http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,316368,00.html Wisconsin Lawmakers to Vote on Calling Holiday Evergreen 'Christmas Tree MADISON, Wis. -- The 35-foot tall balsam fir standing proudly in the rotunda of the Wisconsin Capitol is a familiar annual December display, but it'd be a mistake to call it a "Christmas tree," much to the dismay of one Badger State lawmaker now leading a legislative fight to change the name of the evergreen. The General Assembly is expected to vote Tuesday on the bill proposed by Rep. Marlin Schneider, a Democrat, who wants the tree to be known officially as the State of Wisconsin Christmas Tree. The tree "celebrates one holiday and that holiday is Christmas," Schneider told FOX News. "It was called a Christmas tree from 1916 until 1985 when political correctness took over, and then we decided it would become a holiday tree. But what it really is, is a Christmas tree, and there's nothing really wrong with that," Schneider said. Not everyone shares the Christmas spirit, however. Annie Laurie Gaylor, a spokesperson for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a separation of church and state watchdog group, said she considers the proposed name change offensive. Officially calling the tree a Christmas tree, she said, would amount to a state endorsement of Christianity. "The word Christmas does have religious significance and to deny it is sort of preposterous," Gaylor said. The Capitol rotunda currently houses other displays and decorations with seasonal themes, including a menorah. But Gaylor said the other exhibits are sponsored independently by private organizations ? unlike the evergreen, which is displayed and decorated by the state. "It's OK to have decorations that celebrate the winter season. But when you call something that's Christmas, that's religious," Gaylor said. Schneider said the majority of Wisconsin's 5 million residents celebrate Christmas, and most of the Wisconsinites who have contacted him about the tree support his cause. One of those supporters, Jordan Loeb, is a Jewish attorney from Madison. "I think it's a relatively innocuous symbol," Loeb said. "I have much stronger feelings trying to be convinced it's something other than a Christmas tree. I don't think changing the name to a holiday tree somehow makes it an inclusive symbol." Further confusing matters, each year the tree is adorned with an official state ornament. For this holiday season, the paperwork inside the ornament reads "the inspiration for the 2007 holiday ornament is the beautiful Christmas tree, which graces the Capitol Rotunda each December." Wisconsin isn't the only place where the battle over Christmas is being fought. On Capitol Hill, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, is sponsoring a resolution to recognize the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith. The resolution, which has 52 co-sponsors, follows two similar bills honoring both the Hindu and the Islamic religions and their respective holidays, King said. "Earlier this year , the House of Representatives passed bills proclaiming Hinduism and Islam great religions of the world at the time of their major celebrations. My resolution offers the same honor to the Christian faith," King said. Both the U.S. House and Wisconsin Assembly could move on their respective measures as early as Tuesday. But the timing may not be soon enough for the tree to change its identity this year. That measure still must pass the Wisconsin Senate, and Schneider said it's unlikely the Senate will have time this month to vote on the measure. Freedom From Religion Foundation PO Box 750 * Madison, WI 53701 * (608) 256-8900 ? Freedom From Religion Foundation. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 21:22:26 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:22:26 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] FAIR: Poll-Obsessed Media Focus on Strategy Over Substance Message-ID: <20071211212226.13bc9d8b@viola.tamara-b.org> FAIR - Dec 11, 2007 http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3227 Poll-Obsessed Media Focus on Strategy Over Substance Op-ed published in the Seattle Times By Peter Hart With just a few weeks to go before the Iowa caucuses, polls are providing pundits and political junkies with fresh data to spin out a new round of the usual "who's up, who's down" campaign coverage. But while the press seems settled on a new narrative for the campaign, journalists should recall what the polls told them last time around about who would likely win the Iowa caucuses. The tone of coverage of the Democratic race seemed to shift when a Nov. 19 ABC/Washington Post poll of likely caucus-goers showed a tight race among three candidates: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. The difference from the previous survey was within the poll's margin of error, so the actual data said very little. Much of the media seemed to think otherwise. "The ground may be shifting," announced NBC anchor Brian Williams. The Los Angeles Times called it "a shift in momentum in this crucial state" -- in an article that boiled the race down to just two candidates, Clinton and Obama. The Washington Post's write-up was downright confusing -- the Post mentioned the results were "only marginally different" from their poll several months prior, yet nonetheless pointed to "significant signs of progress for Obama -- and harbingers of concern for Clinton." On ABC, reporter Kate Snow mentioned something most of her colleagues seemed unconcerned with: the fact that these polls actually tell you very little about the outcome of the race. Snow recalled that "four years ago, John Kerry -- who eventually was the Democratic nominee -- he was polling in Iowa at 4 percent." Indeed, campaign reporters should all remember the lesson of the 2004 Iowa caucus. A little more than a month before Iowa Democrats actually caucused in January, the poll-obsessed media had narrowed down the field to two "front-runners": Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri and Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. "Two See Iowa as Crucial Battleground," announced The Washington Post on Nov. 29, 2003, billing the race as a "fight rich in substance and symbolism." A Nov. 9 Post report said that Dean was "for the first time, threatening to pull away from the pack," and even discussed his "opening for a quick-kill strategy" by winning Iowa and New Hampshire. The polling was presumably a key factor leading reporters to reach such conclusions. A December 2003 Pew poll of likely Iowa caucus-goers showed Dean leading the pack with 29 percent, followed by Gephardt at 21 percent. Kerry was in third with 18 percent, followed by John Edwards at 5 percent. A Zogby poll from around the same time had a closer race between Dean and Gephardt (26 to 22 percent), with Kerry and Edwards picking up 9 and 5 percent, respectively. And what happened when Iowa Democrats actually caucused? Kerry won with 37 percent, followed by Edwards at 32 percent. "Front-runners" Dean and Gephardt finished with 18 and 11 percent, respectively. The point is not just to note that polls at this stage are hardly predictive -- though the media acknowledging as much would be a start. Nor is it to wish that the national press would simply work at finding a better method of declaring which candidates are "front-runners," and whose campaigns aren't worth your attention. The more fundamental problem for the press -- and for American democracy -- is that the media's overreliance on polls encourages a kind of political conversation that prioritizes strategic consideration and tactics over substance. A recent study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism confirmed that much of what passes for campaign journalism focuses primarily on the tactical dimensions of the race (like poll results and fundraising) and not on the actual policy differences between the candidates. In a recent New York Times op-ed, former ABC News political director and current Time magazine editor-at-large Mark Halperin admitted that most political coverage is built around the notion that you can judge candidates' potential to be a good president based on how well they run their campaigns. Halperin admits he was "wrong," and suggests a change of course: Journalists "should examine a candidate's public record and full life as opposed to his or her campaign performance." What a concept. But then Halperin added a strange qualifier: "But what might appear simple to a voter can, I know, seem hard for a journalist." Halperin seems to be saying that if you think it's hard to cover the substance of electoral politics, it's a good bet you're a campaign reporter. That's bad news, to say the least -- and makes it hard to imagine journalists are going to change any time soon. ****** FAIR (212) 633-6700 http://www.fair.org/ E-mail: fair at fair.org From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 21:25:58 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:25:58 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] International Commission to Claim US Visas for 2 Cubsan 5 Wives Message-ID: <20071211212558.440b1acc@viola.tamara-b.org> Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles International Commission to Claim U.S Visas for Cuban Women Havana, Dec 11 (acn) An international commission in defense of the rights of Olga Salanueva and Adriana Perez to visit their husbands in jail, Rene Gonzalez and Gerardo Hernandez, will be joining the world campaign for the release of the Cuban Five. In a press conference in Havana, Argentinean Graciela Ramirez, coordinator of the International Committee for the Release of the Five, announced the participation of the Commission in the world campaign. The American government has denied the two Cuban women entry permits to the United States to visit their husbands who have been imprisoned for more than 9 years in that country. They are part of the five political prisoners known as the Cuban Five. Ramirez told the media that some of the relatives of the men have been expecting to travel to the U.S for 18 months, and they still do not know when they will be able to do so. The White House's refusal to allow the visits is a violation of its own national legal regulations. Gerardo and Rene, along with Fernando Gonzalez, Ramon Laba?ino and Antonio Guerrero, were sentenced in a politically biased trial in Miami to four life sentences in all and 77 years in prison. They were arrested in 1998 while trying to collect information about terrorist activities planned against Cuba by groups based in Southern Florida. The International Commission is made up of 100 world scholars involved in human rights organizations and in the cultural sector. These include Argentinean Adolfo Parez Esquivel and Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchu, both of them are Nobel Prize Laureates; also France's former First Lady Danielle Mitterrand is on the list. The commission's claim for the granting of visas to Olga and Adriana is expected to reach out to national and international human rights organizations, women's and social movements, religious sectors, workers unions, political and governmental organizations. The group will address in particular Secretary Condolezza Rice, the Attorney General and the Congress of the United States; and also the UN's Human Rights Council, Amnesty International and the Ibero American Federation of Ombudsman. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 21:29:24 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:29:24 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] KILL EVERYBODY: American soldier exposes US policy in Iraq Message-ID: <20071211212924.350c69fa@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by mart - Dec 11, 2007 YouTube video: KILL EVERYBODY: American soldier exposes US policy in Iraq "KILL EVERYBODY" - US ARMY SPECIALIST DARRELL ANDERSON EXPOSES US POLICY Duration: 9 minutes, 46 seconds. Added: April 26, 2007 Category: News & Politics Click here to view: http://tinyurl.com/2jb343 From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 21:35:34 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:35:34 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Fisk on Annapolis: Same old Pious Story Message-ID: <20071211213534.4201b74b@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Ed Pearl The Independent - Nov 29, 2007 http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article3204054.ece A different venue, but the pious claims and promises are the same by Robert Fisk Haven't we been here before? Isn't Annapolis just a repeat of the White House lawn and the Oslo agreement, a series of pious claims and promises in which two weak men, Messrs Abbas and Olmert, even use the same words of Oslo. "It is time for the cycle of blood, violence and occupation to end," the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday. But don't I remember Yitzhak Rabin saying on the White House lawn that, "it is time for the cycle of blood... to end"? Jerusalem and its place as a Palestinian and Israeli capital isn't there. And if Israel receives acknowledgement that it is indeed an Israeli state - and in reality, of course, it is - there can be no "right of return" for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled (or whose families fled) what became Israel in 1948. And what am I to make of the following quotation from the full text of the joint document: "The steering committee will develop a joint work plan and establish and oversee the work of negotiations (sic) teams to address all issues, to be headed by one lead representative from each party." Come again? We went through all these steering committees before - and they never worked. True we've got a date of 12 December for the first session of this so-called "steering committee" and we have the faint hope from Mr Bush, embroidered, of course, with all the usual self-confidence, that we're going to have an agreement by 2008. But how can the Palestinians have a state without a capital in Jerusalem? How can they have a state when their entire territory has been chopped up and divided by Jewish settlements and the settler roads and, in parts, by a massive war? Yes of course, we all want an end to bloodshed in the Middle East but the Americans are going to need Syria and Iran to support this - or at least Syrian support to control Hamas - and what do we get? Bush continues to threaten Iran and Bush tells Syria in Annapolis that it must keep clear of Lebanese elections, or else... Yes, Hizbollah is a surrogate of Iran and is playing a leading role in the opposition to the government of Lebanon. Do Bush and Condoleezza Rice (or Abbas or Olmert for that matter) really think they're going to have a free ride for a year without the full involvement of every party in the region? More than half of the Palestinians under occupation are under the control of Hamas. Reading the speeches - especially the joint document - it seems like an exercise in self-delusion. The Middle East is currently a hell disaster and the President of the United States thinks he is going to produce the crown jewels from a cabinet and forget Afghanistan and Iraq and Iran - and Pakistan, for that matter. The worst element of the whole Annapolis shindig is that once again millions of people across the Middle East - Muslims, Jews and Christians - will believe all this and will then turn - after its failure - with fury on their antagonists for breaking these agreements. For more than two years, the Saudis have been offering Israel security and recognition by Arab states in return for a total withdrawal of Israeli forces from the occupied territories. What was wrong with that? Mr Olmert promised that "negotiations will address all the issues which thus far has been evaded". Yet the phrase "withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territories" simply doesn't exist in the text. Like most people who live in the Middle East, I would like to enjoy these dreams and believe they are true. But they are not. Wait for the end of 2008. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 21:41:51 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:41:51 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] The First Intifada, 20 Years Later Message-ID: <20071211214151.7ea8bec7@viola.tamara-b.org> electronic Intifada - Dec 10, 2007 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9155.shtml The first intifada 20 years later by Sonja Karkar The first Palestinian intifada (uprising or shaking off) erupted dramatically on 9 December 1987 after twenty long years of brutal Israeli military occupation. The Palestinians had had enough. Not only had they been dispossessed of their homeland and expelled from their homes in 1948 to make way for the boatloads of European Jewish immigrants flooding into Palestine on a promise of a Jewish state, they had been made to suffer the indignities of a people despised and rejected by the whole world. They were the victims of a colonialist project that denied their existence and their rights to self-determination in the land that they had continuously inhabited for millennia so that a state could be created in all of the land exclusively for Jews from anywhere in the world. To this day, the Zionist project has held powerful countries and august institutions hostage in its service, despite the indisputable rulings of international law and United Nations resolutions supporting the rights of the Palestinians. What Israel had not bargained for, though, was the steadfastness of a wronged people and their indomitable spirit that sent the first stones hurtling towards army tanks and bulldozers in their desperate bid to shake off Israel's crushing occupation. So began the "War of the Stones." The occupation and the intifada The cause of the first intifada is most often attributed to the killing of four Palestinian civilians by an Israeli jeep at a checkpoint in the Gaza Strip, and then the subsequent killing of seventeen-year-old Hatem Abu Sisi by an Israeli officer who fired into a crowd of aggrieved and protesting Palestinians. However, these violent individual acts -- and those preceding them -- were merely the last straws in a 20-year saga of military occupation and its debilitating effects on a population denied any control over their economic, social and political development. More than a knee-jerk reaction to that occupation, it was a united demonstration of a continuous political struggle for self-determination that had been playing out long before 1987 at the grassroots level. A whole generation of Palestinians had never known anything other than occupation. That occupation had made them economically dependent on Israel. Not only did they have to put up with being treated like inferiors and prisoners in their own homeland, but they were also grossly exploited for their labor. They were paid half the wages of Israeli workers, they were taxed higher, they had few benefits and they were without job security because official Israeli policy denied them any rights within Israel. Many Palestinians were employed without the required work permits, which put them in an even more tenuous situation. They -- like any other people -- wanted to be free from Israel's tyranny, and like any other people, they wanted to resist the force being used against them, but without an organized resistance movement, they were powerless to challenge the occupation itself. The more dependent they were, the more the occupation became entrenched, and the more Israel profited. Beneath the surface, though, their discontent was seething. Palestinians were also seeing their confiscated land being illegally settled by Jewish foreigners who were allowed to carry machine guns and were protected by the Israeli army when they used them to terrorize Palestinian families. These families were constantly under threat, not only for continuing to live on their own land and properties, but also for any outward expression of their cultural identity or nationalist feelings. Anything that was deemed pro-Palestinian was forbidden or destroyed. The word "Palestine" was expunged from textbooks and any products marketed as Palestinian were relabeled as Israeli. [1] Literature, art, music, and other activities that encouraged a national consciousness were subject to attack and universities were often closed for long periods because they were seen as fomenting nationalist fervor. This repression of Palestinian national identity led to an underground movement which only deepened their feelings for liberation and over time created a culture of resistance which ultimately found expression in the intifada. [2] Israel tried numerous times to manipulate events so that a "new leadership" would supplant the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) that was spearheading the national movement. The idea was to limit Palestinian control of their own affairs as much as possible while leaving Israel in complete control of military and security matters. The Palestinians, however, had other ideas and rose up against the "Civil Administration" scheme in 1976, against the Camp David accords in 1979-80, and also against confederation with Jordan. They pursued their rights through political and legal channels, but Israel used deportation as a means of quelling the growing resistance. Thousands of political figures and activists were expelled from their country, their lives often threatened. By 1987, there were still some 4,700 political prisoners in Israeli jails [3] out of the 200,000 Palestinians arrested in that 20 year period. [4] The Palestinians found that they had no impartial avenue available to them to hear their grievances fairly, particularly over Israel's land confiscations, water use and building constructions. As conditions deteriorated and Palestinians saw their political and cultural identity at risk of being annihilated, it is not at all surprising that they rose up to shake off Israel's brutal occupation. Challenging images The Palestinians realized that their greatest power lay in mass civil disobedience -- boycotting Israeli goods, refusing to pay taxes to Israel, establishing their own mobile medical clinics, providing social services, organizing strikes and demonstrations and unarmed confrontations. The tactics they used took Israel unawares and captured the attention of a hitherto unreceptive Western media. Specifically, the images of Palestinian boys throwing stones at advancing armored tanks totally upended the David and Goliath myth that Israel had propagated so effectively -- a fledgling Israel struggling to survive against the mighty Arab world. Suddenly, everyone was seeing a different Goliath. Israel -- the most powerful military force in the Middle East -- was facing down defenseless "David" in a re-enactment of the Old Testament story when David slung his stone and slew the giant, Goliath. Israel's carefully constructed image of the defenseless victim had already been crumbling since the 1967 War when it launched preemptive strikes against Egypt and Jordan and won spectacularly and then had no qualms in defying international law and occupying all of Palestinian land. In 1982, the scenes of butchered Palestinian bodies in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon horrified the world and there was no mistaking Israel's involvement. By the time the intifada catapulted the Palestinian struggle into the public spotlight, Israel's schizophrenic self-image of victim and conqueror was up against the media's pictures of soldiers' bullets shooting down Palestinian boys with rocks in their hands. Matters were made worse by Israel's Defense Minister, Yitzhak Rabin who ordered the soldiers to "break the bones" of Palestinian demonstrators. In just four years, more than a thousand Palestinians had been killed and many more were crippled. To the outside world, the throwing of stones became a powerful visual image of the first intifada, but it was the use of leaflets that effectively mobilized the Palestinians against the occupation. Writers Shaul Mishal and Reuben Aharoni observe that "In the absence of an official and prominent local leadership, leaflets became a substitute leadership during the intifada." [5] Their influence was felt everywhere as they informed the people of where to go and what to do and what had been achieved. Messages of upcoming strikes, boycotts and specific campaigns made the rounds and gave the people a sense of unity of purpose. This was also a time when symbolism became very important to the national movement and the Palestinian flag and its colors were incorporated even in clothing and embroidery. When so much else was restricted in their lives, the Palestinians had found novel ways to resist nonviolently, which had Israel searching for ways to respond. Force was still its preferred method of control, but later its manipulation of the peace process so frustrated even the small gains made by the Palestinians, that resistance took on a new and much more dangerous meaning with the second intifada in 2000. Punishing the Palestinians Throughout the years of the first intifada, it was not the stone-throwing youths that had Israel worried as much as the civil disobedience that had become rampant amongst the Palestinians. To quell it, Israel resorted to punishing the Palestinian population en masse. Ordinary civilians found themselves without freedom to pursue even the most routine daily activities. Curfews were ordered for weeks on end and thousands of Palestinians were arrested. With the closure of schools and universities, education effectively became illegal and teachers and students had to resort to "underground" classes. Homes were demolished without warning, olive trees and agricultural crops were destroyed, vital water supplies were redirected to Israel and then water usage restricted so severely, people had to queue with containers for hours to buy back their own water. So punishing were Israel's assaults on the Palestinian population that rumors of transfer began surfacing, especially when Israeli Former Military Intelligence Chief General Shlomo Gazit said that these measures were intended so that Palestinians would "face unemployment and a shortage of land and water and thus we can create the necessary conditions for the departure of the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza." [6] Empowering the people The idea of population transfer was not something new even then and the Palestinians understood that their survival depended on uniting all levels of society. The intifada drew its support for the first time from the lower social strata -- people who had been most burdened by Israel's occupation, particularly by Israel's exploitation of their resources and their labor. Under what was called the United National Command, "unified" popular committees took responsibility for everything, from keeping watch over villages and refugee camps at night against army and settler raids to distributing food and clothing to those in need. Emerging from these groups came nonpartisan local leadership and a social revolt against traditional conventions. The masses took part in the demonstrations and confrontations with the Israeli army, urged on by the anonymous printed leaflets that were always careful to avoid calling for armed struggle so as not to alienate the people. In their book, The Intifada, Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari say that "This was a sharp psychological turnabout for a public that had discovered what it could do -- and how to exploit the enemy's weaknesses." [7] There was no doubt that this national movement gave every Palestinian a sense of empowerment, even though there were very few gains on the ground. Women especially found themselves free to engage in productive work, much of which was created by women's committees, and conventional social boundaries soon blurred as women became more politically involved by transforming "their family responsibilities to encompass the entire community." [8] While the stones were no match for Israel's impressive arsenal, an Israeli commander observed that "The essence of the intifada is not in the actual level of activity, but in the perception of the population ... the sense of identity, direction and organization." [9] If nothing else, the people's non-violent mass civil disobedience strategy had attracted media coverage and journalist Thomas Friedman commented that "the presence of the foreign media really forced Israelis to look at the true brutality of their occupation." [10] That is, until Israel found other more sinister ways to turn around public opinion. Israel shifts the goal posts The Oslo "peace process" took the wind out of the intifada. Suddenly, Israel was the peacemaker on the world stage and began talks with the PLO, fully intending to neutralize it. Rather than leading the national movement and resistance to Israel's oppression, the PLO morphed into an institution -- the Palestinian Authority (PA) -- charged with policing its own people for a place at the negotiating table. The world breathed a sigh of relief and international efforts were concentrated on the peace process while the sordid realities on the ground were once again ignored. Despite Israel agreeing to withdraw from the occupied territories, it did no such thing. Instead, it confiscated even more Palestinian land and continued to build more illegal Jewish settlements. Jerusalem residency rights were withdrawn and not only was Jerusalem closed to Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, but freedom of movement within the occupied territories was further curtailed and reduced to the humiliating experience of being told when and where they could go -- if at all. What is more, the Palestinians found themselves split into three disconnected enclaves A, B and C -- islands in a sea of looming Israeli settlements. Yet, the world dangled the carrot of an independent Palestinian state and Israel allowed the discourse to continue, everyone knowing full well that Israel was doing what it wanted. The brazenness of the charade was breathtaking. Even more breathtaking, is that the charade is being repeated today. As peace and a two-state solution became the catch-cry for the protagonists and observers alike, the intifada appeared to lose its raison d'etre. It had wrought a huge toll on the disintegrating Palestinian economy. The mass national strikes had invited a devastating military response in the form of curfews where "every Palestinian living in the Occupied Territories had spent an average of approximately 10 weeks under in-house curfew," [11] creating an incredible worker absenteeism problem. Palestinians not only lost their jobs at home, but Israeli employers began employing imported labor and newly arrived immigrants to replace the Palestinians. Essentially, mass resistance was impossible to sustain indefinitely, if the routine of daily life was to go on with some semblance of normality. The intifada lives on The carefully organized resistance network was gradually disbanded as Palestinians prepared for the promise of Oslo. The intifada became much less dramatic, even uninspiring, but nevertheless, it was rooted in the Palestinian that would allow it to endure for years. [12] When the Palestinians came to realize that the Oslo process would never reach a conclusion and that their national struggle had been in fact further eroded by Israel's unbridled expansionism, the intifada that followed was understandably explosive. It should not be forgotten that every day, all Palestinians engage in acts of resistance just by simply finding ways of getting around the grid of suffocating checkpoints to pursue normal, ordinary activities like working or going to school. Every week, villages like Bil'in stage nonviolent protests against the apartheid wall that Israel is building throughout the West Bank. Thousands of such protests go unnoticed by the Western media which mindlessly repeat Israel's mantra that the Palestinians must stop their violence. For Israel, every act of resistance against its colonialist and illegitimate policies is anathema and must be put down, punished and demonized. For the Palestinians -- with the experience of two intifadas behind them -- they know that their resistance will continue as long as Israel denies them their universal human rights to freedom and self-determination. The question that should weigh heavily on our consciences is -- how many intifadas must be fought before justice for the Palestinians finally prevails? Endnotes [1] R Jamal Nassar and Roger Heacock, Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads, New York: Praeger, 1990, p.27. [2] Samira Meghdessian, "The discourse of oppression as expressed in writings of the intifada," World Literature Today, 72.1 (1998), p.43. [3] Toby Shelley, and Ben Cashdan, Palestine: Profile of an Occupation, London: Zed Books Ltd, 1989, p.21. [4] Ruth Margolies Beitler, "The Intifada: Palestinian Adaptation to Israeli Counterinsurgency Tactics," Terrorism and Political Violence, 7.2 (1995), p.68. [5] Shaul Mishal, Reuben Aharoni, Speaking Stones: Communiques from the Intifada Underground, Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1994, p.25. [6] The Jerusalem Post International Edition, 5 March 1988, p.7. [7] Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari, The Intifada, Jerusalem: Schocken 1990, p.102. [8] Kanako Mabuchi, "The Meaning of Motherhood during the First Intifada: 1987-1993," M.Phil Thesis in Modern Middle Eastern Studies, St Antony's College, University of Oxford, Trinity Term 2003, p84. [9] D. Reische, Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, New York: Franklin Watts, 1991, p.135. [10] Thomas Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem, New York: Anchor Books, 1995, p.447. [11] "No Exit: Israel's Curfew Policy in the Occupied Palestinian Territories," Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre, 1991. [12] Norman G. Finkelstein, The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996 p21-22. [Sonja Karkar is the founder and president of Women for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia.] From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 21:59:18 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:59:18 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Blum's Anti-Empire Report #52 - Dec 11, 2007 Message-ID: <20071211215918.78853bc7@viola.tamara-b.org> Blum's Killing Hope - http://killinghope.org/aer52.htm The Anti-Empire Report #52 - Dec 11, 2007 Read this or George W. Bush will be president the rest of your life by William Blum Another peace scare. Boy, that was close. The US intelligence community's new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) -- "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities" -- makes a point of saying up front (in bold type): "This NIE does not (italics in original) assume that Iran intends to acquire nuclear weapons." The report goes on to state: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program ." Isn't that good news, that Iran isn't about to attack the United States or Israel with nuclear weapons? Surely everyone is thrilled that the horror and suffering that such an attack -- not to mention an American or Israeli retaliation or pre-emptive attack -- would bring to this sad old world. Here are some of the happy reactions from American leaders: Senate Republicans are planning to call for a congressional commission to investigate the NIE's conclusion that Iran discontinued its nuclear weapons program in 2003.[1] National Security Adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, said: The report "tells us that the risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon remains a very serious problem."[2] Defense Secretary Robert Gates "argued forcefully at a Persian Gulf security conference ... that U.S. intelligence indicates Iran could restart its secret nuclear weapons program 'at any time' and remains a major threat to the region."[3] John R. Bolton, President Bush's former ambassador to the United Nations and pit bull of the neo-conservatives, dismissed the report with: "I've never based my view on this week's intelligence."[4] And Bush himself added: "Look, Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. The NIE says that Iran had a hidden -- a covert nuclear weapons program. That's what it said. What's to say they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program? ... Nothing has changed in this NIE that says, 'Okay, why don't we just stop worrying about it?' Quite the contrary. I think the NIE makes it clear that Iran needs to be taken seriously. My opinion hasn't changed."[5] Hmmm. Well, maybe the reaction was more positive in Israel. Here's a report from Uri Avnery, a leading Israeli columnist: "The earth shook. Our political and military leaders were all in shock. The headlines screamed with rage. ... Shouldn't we be overjoyed? Shouldn't the masses in Israel be dancing in the streets? After all, we have been saved! ... Lo and behold -- no bomb and no any-minute-now. The wicked Ahmadinejad can threaten us as much as he wants -- he just has not got the means to harm us. Isn't that a reason for celebration? So why does this feel like a national disaster?"[6] We have to keep this in mind -- America, like Israel, cherishes its enemies. Without enemies, the United States appears to be a nation without moral purpose and direction. The various managers of the National Security State need enemies to protect their jobs, to justify their swollen budgets, to aggrandize their work, to give themselves a mission, to send truckloads of taxpayer money to the corporations for whom the managers will go to work after leaving government service. And they understand the need for enemies only too well, even painfully. Here is US Col. Dennis Long, speaking in 1992, just after the end of the Cold War, when he was director of "total armor force readiness" at Fort Knox: For 50 years, we equipped our football team, practiced five days a week and never played a game. We had a clear enemy with demonstrable qualities, and we had scouted them out. [Now] we will have to practice day in and day out without knowing anything about the other team. We won't have his playbook, we won't know where the stadium is, or how many guys he will have on the field. That is very distressing to the military establishment, especially when you are trying to justify the existence of your organization and your systems.[7] In any event, all of the above is completely irrelevant if Iran has no intention of attacking the United States or Israel, even if they currently possessed a large stockpile of nuclear weapons. As I've asked before: What possible reason would Iran have for attacking the United States or Israel other than an irresistible desire for mass national suicide? The crime of GWS: Governing while socialist In Chile, during the 1964 presidential election campaign, in which Salvador Allende, a Marxist, was running against two other major candidates much to his right, one radio spot featured the sound of a machine gun, followed by a woman's cry: "They have killed my child -- the communists." The announcer then added in impassioned tones: "Communism offers only blood and pain. For this not to happen in Chile, we must elect Eduardo Frei president."[8] Frei was the candidate of the Christian Democratic Party, the majority of whose campaign costs were underwritten by the CIA according to the US Senate.[9] One anti-Allende campaign poster which appeared in the thousands showed children with a hammer and sickle stamped on their foreheads.[10] The scare campaign played up to the fact that women in Chile, as elsewhere in Latin America, are traditionally more religious than men, more susceptible to being alarmed by the specter of "godless, atheist communism". Allende lost. He won the men's vote by 67,000 over Frei (in Chile men and women vote separately), but amongst the women Frei came out ahead by 469,000 ... testimony, once again, to the remarkable ease with which the minds of the masses of people can be manipulated, in any and all societies. In Venezuela, during the recent campaign concerning the constitutional reforms put forth by Hugo Ch?vez, the opposition played to the same emotional themes of motherhood and "communist" oppression. (Quite possibly because of the same CIA advice.) "I voted for Ch?vez for President, but not now. Because they told me that if the reform passes, they're going to take my son, because he will belong to the state," said a woman, Gladys Castro, interviewed in Venezuela before the December 2 vote which rejected the reforms; this according to a report of Venezuelanalysis.com, an English-language news service published by Americans in Caracas. "Gladys is not the only one to believe the false rumors she's heard," the report added. "Thousands of Venezuelans, many of them Ch?vez supporters, have bought the exaggerations and lies about Venezuela's Constitutional Reform that have been circulating across the country for months. Just a few weeks ago, however, the disinformation campaign ratcheted up various notches as opposition groups and anti-reform coalitions placed large ads in major Venezuelan papers. The most scandalous was ... (a) two-page spread in the country's largest circulation newspaper, ?ltimas Noticias, which claimed about the Constitutional Reform: 'If you are a Mother, YOU LOSE! Because you will lose your house, your family and your children. Children will belong to the state'." This particular ad was placed by a Venezuelan business organization, C?mara Industrial de Carabobo, which has among its members dozens of subsidiaries of the largest US corporations operating in Venezuela.[11] Ch?vez lost the December 2 vote (in part, I believe, because of his unrelenting bravado, which turned off any number of his supporters) but he's still a marked man in Washington, which can not stomach the prospect of five more years of the man and his policies. It's not because the United States is looking to grab Venezuela's oil. It's because Ch?vez is completely independent of Washington and has used his oil wealth to become a powerful force in Latin America, inspiring and aiding other independent-minded governments in the region, like Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador, as well as carrying on close relations with the likes of China, Russia, and Iran. The man does not show proper understanding that he's living in the Yankee's back yard; indeed, in the Yankee's world. The Yankee empire grew to its present size and power precisely because it did not tolerate men like Salvador Allende and Hugo Ch?vez and their quaint socialist customs. Despite their best efforts, the CIA was unable to prevent Allende from becoming Chile's president in 1970. When subsequent parliamentary elections made it apparent to the Agency and their Chilean conservative allies that they would not be able to oust the left from power legally, they instigated a successful military coup, in 1973. Here for the record is a brief summary of Washington's charming history in relation to such men, their foreign ideas, and their dubious governments since the end of World War Two: * Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected; successful a majority of the time. * Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries. * Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders. * Dropped bombs on the people of some 30 countries. * Helped to suppress dozens of populist/nationalist movements.[12] Although Ch?vez has spoken publicly about his being assassinated, and his government has several times uncovered what they perceived to be planned assassination attempts, from both domestic and foreign sources, the Venezuelan president has continued to take repeated flights and attend numerous conferences and meetings all over the world, exposing himself and his airplane again and again. The cases of Jaime Rold?s, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, military leader of Panama, should perhaps be considered. Both were reformers who refused to allow their countries to become client states of Washington or American corporations. Both were firm supporters of the radical Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua; both banned an American missionary group, the Summer Institute of Linguistics -- long suspected of CIA ties -- because of suspicious political behavior; both died in mysterious plane disasters during the Reagan administration in 1981, Torrijos' plane exploding in mid-air.[13] Torrijos had earlier been marked for assassination by Richard Nixon.[14] Who would have thought? Bush has been vindicated. We're making progress in Iraq! The "surge" is working, we're told. Never mind that the war is totally and perfectly illegal. Not to mention totally and perfectly, even exquisitely, immoral. It's making progress. That's a good thing, is it not? Meanwhile, the al Qaeda types have greatly increased their number all over the Middle East and South Asia, so their surge is making progress too. Good for them. And speaking of progress in the War on Terror, is anyone progressing faster and better than the Taliban? The American progress is measured by a decrease in violence, the White House has decided -- a daily holocaust has been cut back to a daily multiple catastrophe. And who's keeping the count? Why, the same good people who have been regularly feeding us a lie for the past five years about the number of Iraqi deaths, completely ignoring the epidemiological studies. (Real Americans don't do Arab body counts.) A recent analysis by the Washington Post left the administration's claim pretty much in tatters. The article opened with: "The U.S. military's claim that violence has decreased sharply in Iraq in recent months has come under scrutiny from many experts within and outside the government, who contend that some of the underlying statistics are questionable and selectively ignore negative trends." The article then continued in the same critical vein.[15] To the extent that there may have been a reduction in violence, we must also keep in mind that, thanks to this lovely little war, there are several million Iraqis either dead or in exile abroad or in bursting American and Iraqi prisons; there must be as well a few million more wounded who are homebound or otherwise physically limited; so the number of potential victims and killers has been greatly reduced. Moreover, extensive ethnic cleansing has taken place in Iraq (another good indication of progress, n'est-ce pas? nicht wahr?) -- Sunnis and Shiites are now living more in their own special enclaves than before, none of those stinking mixed communities with their unholy mixed marriages, so violence of the sectarian type has also gone down.[16] On top of all this, US soldiers have been venturing out a lot less (for fear of things like ... well, dying), so the violence against our noble lads is also down. Remember that insurgent attacks on American forces is how the Iraqi violence all began in the first place. Oh, did I mention that 2007 has been the deadliest year for US troops since the war began?[17] It's been the same worst year for American forces in Afghanistan. One of the signs of the reduction in violence in Iraq, the administration would like us to believe, is that many Iraqi families are returning from Syria, where they had fled because of the violence. The New York Times, however, reported that "Under intense pressure to show results after months of political stalemate, the [Iraqi] government has continued to publicize figures that exaggerate the movement back to Iraq"; as well as exaggerating "Iraqis' confidence that the current lull in violence can be sustained." The count, it turns out, included all Iraqis crossing the border, for whatever reason. A United Nations survey found that 46 percent were leaving Syria because they could not afford to stay; 25 percent said they fell victim to a stricter Syrian visa policy; and only 14 percent said they were returning because they had heard about improved security.[18] How long can it be before vacation trips to "Exotic Iraq" are flashed across our TVs? "Baghdad's Beautiful Beaches Beckon". Just step over the bodies. Indeed, the State Department has recently advertised for a "business development/tourism" expert to work in Baghdad, "with a particular focus on tourism and related services."[19] We've been told often by American leaders and media that the US forces can't leave because of the violence, because there would be a bloodbath. Now there's an alleged significant decrease in the violence. Is that being used as an argument to get out -- a golden opportunity for the United States to leave, with head held high? Of course not. I almost feel sorry for them. They're "can-do" Americans, accustomed to getting their way, accustomed to thinking of themselves as the best, and they're frustrated as hell, unable to figure out "why they hate us", why we can't win them over, why we can't at least wipe them out. Don't they want freedom and democracy? At one time or another the can-do boys have tried writing a comprehensive set of laws and regulations, even a constitution, for the country; setting up mini-bases in neighborhoods; building walls to block off areas; training and arming "former" Sunni insurgents to fight Shias and al Qaeda; enlisting Shias to help fight, against whomever; leaving weapons or bomb-making material in public view to see who picks it up, then pouncing on them; futuristic vehicles and machines and electronic devices to destroy roadside bombs; setting up their own Arabic-language media, censoring other media; classes for detainees on anger control, an oath of peace, and the sacredness of life and property; regularly revising the official reason the United States is in the country in the first place ... one new tactic after another, and when all else fails they call it a "success" and give it a nice inspiring action name, like "surge" ... and nothing helps. They're can-do Americans, using good ol' American know-how and Madison Avenue savvy, sales campaigns, public relations, advertising, selling the US brand, just like they do it back home ... and nothing helps. And how can it if the product you're selling is toxic, inherently, from birth, if you're totally ruining your customers' lives, with no regard for any kind of law or morality. They're can-do Americans, accustomed to playing by the rules -- theirs; and they're frustrated as hell. Once is an accident; twice is a coincidence; three times is a conspiracy. "All science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided." -Karl Marx [20] I believe in conspiracies. So do all of you. American and world history are full of conspiracies. Watergate was a conspiracy. The cover-up of Watergate was a conspiracy. So was Enron. And Iran-Contra. The October Surprise really took place. For a full year, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney conspired to invade Iraq while continually denying that they had made any such decision. The Japanese conspired to attack Pearl Harbor while negotiating with Washington to find peaceful solutions to the issues separating the two governments. There are many people sitting in prison at this very moment in the United States for having been convicted of "conspiracy" to commit this or that crime. However, it doesn't follow that all conspiracy theories are created equal, all to be taken seriously. Many people send me emails which I'm unable to take seriously. Here are a few examples: If they try to access my website a few times and keep getting an error message, they ask me if the FBI or Homeland Security or America Online has finally gotten around to shutting me down. If they send me an email and it's returned to them, for whatever reason, they wonder if AOL is blocking their particular mail or perhaps blocking all my mail. If they fail to receive a copy of this report, they wonder if AOL or some government agency is blocking it. If they come upon a news item on the Internet which exposes really bad behavior of the powers-that-be, they point out how "the mainstream media is completely ignoring this", even though I may already have read it in the Washington Post or the New York Times. To make the claim that the mainstream media is completely ignoring a particular news item, one would need to have access to the full version of a service like Lexis-Nexis and know how to use it expertly. Google often won't suffice if the news item has not appeared on the website of any mainstream media even though it may be in print or have been broadcast, although the recent creation of Google News has improved chances of finding an item. With every new audiotape or videotape from Osama bin Laden my correspondents are sure to inform me that the man is really dead and that the tape is a CIA fabrication. In January 2006, when bin Laden, on an audiotape, recommended that Americans read my book "Rogue State," the mainstream media was eager to interview me. But a number of my correspondents were quick to inform me and the entire Internet that the tape was phony, implying that I was being naive to believe it; this continues to this day. When I ask them why the CIA would want to publicize and enrich a writer like myself, who has been exposing the intelligence agency's crimes his entire writing life, I get no answer that's worth remembering, often not even understandable. "Why do you criticize Bush? He's not the real power. He's just a puppet," they ask me. The real power behind the throne, I'm told, is [Dick Cheney, David Rockefeller, the Federal Reserve, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberger Group, the Trilateral Commission, Bohemian Grove, et al.] Why, I wonder, are the annual meetings of the Bilderberger Group, et al., thought to be so vital to their members and so indicative of their power? To the extent that the Bilderbergerites have access to those in power and are able to influence them, they have this access and power all year long, whether or not they gather together in a once-a-year closed meeting. I think their meetings are primarily a social thing. Money and power likes to enjoy cocktails with money and power. Of course many important political and historical events are indeed the result of certain people of money and power talking to each other and secretly deciding what course of action would be most advantageous to their collective interests, but it doesn't necessarily follow that those who hold public office are merely puppets of these interests. Bush displays his independence every day of the week -- independence from Congress, the Constitution, the Republican Party, classic conservative economic policies, the American people, election results, the facts, logic, humanity. George W. is his own [sociopathic] man. Finally, there's September 11, 2001. Amongst those in the "9/11 Truth Movement" I am a sinner because I don't champion the idea that it was an "inside job". I think it more likely that some individuals in the Bush administration knew that something was about to happen involving airplanes -- perhaps an old fashioned hijacking with political demands -- and they let it happen, to make use of it politically, as they certainly have. But I do wish you guys in the 9/11 Truth Movement luck; if you succeed in proving that it was an inside job, that would do more to topple the empire than anything I have ever written. NOTES [1] Washington Post, December 7, 2007, p.8 [2] New York Times, December 3, 2007 [3] Washington Post, December 9, 2007, p.27 [4] Washington Post, December 4, 2007, p.1 [5] Washington Post, December 5, 2007, p.23 [6] "How they stole the bomb from us", December 8, 2007, http://zope.gush-shalom.org/index_en.html [7] New York Times, February 3, 1992, p.8 [8] Paul Sigmund, "The Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile, 1964-1976 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977) p.297 [9] "Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973, a Staff Report of The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (US Senate)" 18 December 1975. p.4 [10] Sigmund, op. cit., p.34 [11] Venezuelanalysis.com, November 27, 2007, article by Michael Fox [12] In sequence, details of the five items can be found in Blum's books:"Freeing the World", chapter 15; "Rogue State", chapters 18, 3, 11, 17; see also "Killing Hope" for further details. [13] For further information, see John Perkins, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" (2004), passim [14] Newsweek magazine, June 18, 1973, p.22 [15] Washington Post, September 6, 2007, p.16 [16] For a good discussion of this see the Inter Press Service report of November 14, 2007 by Ali al-Fadhily [17] Associated Press, November 6, 2007 [18] New York Times, November 26, 2007 [19] Washington Post, December 5, 2007, p.27 [20] Capital, Vol. III [William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2 Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at http://www.killinghope.org Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website at "essays". To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6 at aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area. ] Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 23:14:50 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 23:14:50 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] The Contras, the CIA and Drugs: Gary Webb's Enduring Legacy Message-ID: <20071211231450.7317c3a1@viola.tamara-b.org> Consortium News - Dec 11, 2007 http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/121007.html Gary Webb's Enduring Legacy By Robert Parry Three years ago, I walked into my home in Arlington, Virginia, and checked my phone messages. One was from a Los Angeles Times reporter who was looking for a comment from me about Gary Webb?s suicide on the night of Dec. 9, 2004. It was the first I had heard of the news. After I recovered from the shock, I called the reporter back to get more details. I also told him he would have a hard time writing a decent obituary on Webb because the L.A. Times had never acknowledged that Webb was substantially correct in his reporting about the Nicaraguan contras' role in smuggling cocaine into the United States in the 1980s. Though Los Angeles had been hit hard by the ?crack epidemic? and the L.A. Times had devoted front-page space to trash Webb?s contra-cocaine reporting in 1996, the newspaper never ran a story detailing the CIA inspector general?s 1998 findings, which confirmed much of what Webb had alleged ? and more. The CIA inspector general found that not only had the contras helped the cocaine cartels get their goods into the United States, but that the CIA and the Reagan administration had helped cover up the evidence. However, to have written that story in 1998, the L.A. Times editors would have had to admit they had wronged Webb two years earlier when they bought into the ongoing government cover stories about the innocence of the Reagan administration and the CIA. It was much easier for the L.A. Times to ignore the findings of the CIA's own inspector general and to maintain the fiction that Webb was just a reckless reporter who had gotten the contra-cocaine story all wrong. That decision by the L.A. Times ? when combined with the abusive treatment Webb received from other major news outlets and his betrayal by his own editors at the San Jose Mercury News ? had sent Webb?s life into a downward spiral that ended with him shooting himself with his father?s handgun. On Dec. 10, 2004, I told the L.A. Times reporter that since his newspaper had never reported on the CIA?s admissions, he could not put Webb?s death in any honest context. So, I was not surprised the next day when the L.A. Times published a nasty obituary that treated Webb as if he had been a common criminal rather than a fellow journalist. The Washington Post republished the graceless L.A. Times obit ? and it quickly hardened into the official judgment on Gary Webb. Yet, today, when trying to understand how the United States ended up with a national press corps that so eagerly passed on government propaganda about Iraq?s WMD and other lies, it is worth recalling the story of Gary Webb and the contra-cocaine scandal. Dark Alliance Webb?s death in 2004 had its roots in his fateful decision eight years earlier to write a three-part series for the San Jose Mercury News that challenged a potent conventional wisdom shared by the elite U.S. news organizations ? that one of the most shocking scandals of the 1980s just couldn?t be true. Webb?s ?Dark Alliance? series, published in August 1996, revived the decade-old allegations that the Reagan administration in the 1980s had tolerated and protected cocaine smuggling by its client army of Nicaraguan rebels known as the contras. Though substantial evidence of the contra crimes had surfaced in the mid-1980s (initially in an article that Brian Barger and I wrote for the Associated Press in December 1985 and later at hearings conducted by Sen. John Kerry), the major news outlets had bent to pressure from the Reagan administration and refused to take the disclosures seriously. Reflecting the dominant attitude toward Kerry and his work on the contra-cocaine scandal, Newsweek even dubbed the Massachusetts senator a ?randy conspiracy buff.? [For details, see Consortiumnews.com?s ?Kerry?s Contra-Cocaine Chapter? or Robert Parry?s Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & Project Truth.] Thus, the ugly reality of the contra-cocaine scandal was left in that netherworld of uncertainty, largely proven with documents and testimony but never accepted by Official Washington, including its premier news organizations, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. But Webb?s series thrust the scandal back into prominence by connecting the contra-cocaine trafficking to the spread of crack that ravaged Los Angeles and other American urban centers in the 1980s. For that reason, African-American communities were up in arms as were their elected representatives in the Congressional Black Caucus. So, Webb?s ?Dark Alliance? series offered a unique opportunity for the major news outlets to finally give the contra-cocaine scandal the attention it deserved. But that would have required some painful self-criticism among Washington journalists whose careers had advanced in part because they had not offended Reagan supporters who had made an art out of punishing out-of-step reporters for pursuing controversies like the contra-cocaine scandal. Also, by the mid-1990s, a powerful right-wing news media had taken shape and was in no mood to accept the notion that many of President Reagan?s beloved contras were drug traffickers. That recognition would have cast a shadow over the Reagan Legacy, which the Right was busy elevating into mythic status. There was the turf issue, too. Since Webb?s stories coincided with the emergence of the Internet as an alternate source for news and the San Jose Mercury News was at the center of Silicon Valley, the big newspapers saw a threat to their historic dominance as the nation?s gatekeepers for what information should be taken seriously. Plus, the major media?s focus in the mid-1990s was on scandals swirling around Bill Clinton, such as some firings at the White House Travel Office and convoluted questions about his old Whitewater real-estate deal. In other words, there was little appetite to revisit scandals from the Reagan years and there was strong motive to disparage what Webb had written. Rev. Moon?s Newspaper It fell to Rev. Sun Myung Moon?s right-wing Washington Times to begin the counterattack. The Washington Times turned to some ex-CIA officials, who had participated in the contra war, to refute the drug charges. Then ? in a pattern that would repeat itself over the next decade ? the Washington Post and other mainstream newspapers quickly lined up behind the right-wing press. On Oct. 4, 1996, the Washington Post published a front-page article knocking down Webb?s story, although acknowledging that some contra operatives did help the cocaine cartels. The Post?s approach was twofold: first, it presented the contra-cocaine allegations as old news ? ?even CIA personnel testified to Congress they knew that those covert operations involved drug traffickers,? the Post sniffed ? and second, the Post minimized the importance of the one contra smuggling channel that Webb had highlighted ? that it had not ?played a major role in the emergence of crack.? A Post side-bar story dismissed African-Americans as prone to ?conspiracy fears.? Soon, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times joined in the piling on against Gary Webb. The big newspapers made much of the CIA?s internal reviews in 1987 and 1988 ? almost a decade earlier ? that supposedly had cleared the spy agency of a role in contra-cocaine smuggling. But the CIA?s decade-old cover-up began to weaken on Oct. 24, 1996, when CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz conceded before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the first CIA probe had lasted only 12 days, the second only three days. He promised a more thorough review. Nevertheless, Webb was becoming the target of media ridicule. Influential Post media critic Howard Kurtz mocked Webb for saying in a book proposal that he would explore the possibility that the contra war was primarily a business to its participants. ?Oliver Stone, check your voice mail,? Kurtz smirked. [Washington Post, Oct. 28, 1996] Webb?s suspicion was not unfounded, however. Indeed, White House aide Oliver North?s chief contra emissary Rob Owen had made the same point in a March 17, 1986, message about the contra leadership. ?Few of the so-called leaders of the movement ? really care about the boys in the field,? Owen wrote. ?THIS WAR HAS BECOME A BUSINESS TO MANY OF THEM.? [Capitalization in the original.] Mercury News Retreat Kurtz and other big-name journalists may have been ignorant of key facts about the contra war, but that didn?t stop them from pillorying Gary Webb. The ridicule also had a predictable effect on the executives of the Mercury News. By early 1997, executive editor Jerry Ceppos was in retreat. On May 11, 1997, Ceppos published a front-page column saying the series ?fell short of my standards.? He criticized the stories because they ?strongly implied CIA knowledge? of contra connections to U.S. drug dealers who were manufacturing crack-cocaine. ?We did not have proof that top CIA officials knew of the relationship,? Ceppos wrote. The big newspapers celebrated Ceppos?s retreat as vindication of their own dismissal of the contra-cocaine stories. Ceppos next pulled the plug on the Mercury News? continuing contra-cocaine investigation and reassigned Webb to a small office in Cupertino, California, far from his family. Webb resigned the paper in disgrace. For undercutting Webb and other Mercury News reporters working on the contra investigation, Ceppos was lauded by the American Journalism Review and was given the 1997 national ?Ethics in Journalism Award? by the Society of Professional Journalists. While Ceppos won raves, Webb watched his career collapse and his marriage break up. Still, Gary Webb had set in motion internal government investigations that would bring to the surface long-hidden facts about how the Reagan administration had conducted the contra war. The CIA published the first part of Inspector General Hitz?s findings on Jan. 29, 1998. Despite a largely exculpatory press release, Hitz?s Volume One admitted that not only were many of Webb?s allegations true but that he actually understated the seriousness of the contra-drug crimes and the CIA?s knowledge. Hitz acknowledged that cocaine smugglers played a significant early role in the Nicaraguan contra movement and that the CIA intervened to block an image-threatening 1984 federal investigation into a San Francisco-based drug ring with suspected ties to the contras, the so-called ?Frogman Case.? On May 7, 1998, another disclosure shook the earlier presumptions of the Reagan administration?s innocence. Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, introduced into the Congressional Record a Feb. 11, 1982, letter of understanding between the CIA and the Justice Department. The letter, which had been requested by CIA Director William Casey, freed the CIA from legal requirements that it must report drug smuggling by CIA assets, a provision that covered both the Nicaraguan contras and Afghan rebels who were fighting a Soviet-supported regime in Afghanistan and who were implicated in heroin trafficking. Justice Report The next break in the cover-up was a report by the Justice Department?s inspector general Michael Bromwich. Given the hostile climate surrounding Webb?s series, Bromwich?s report opened with criticism of Webb. But, like the CIA?s Volume One, the contents revealed new details about government wrongdoing. According to evidence cited by Bromwich, the Reagan administration knew almost from the outset of the contra war that cocaine traffickers permeated the paramilitary operation. The administration also did next to nothing to expose or stop the crimes. Bromwich?s report revealed example after example of leads not followed, corroborated witnesses disparaged, official law-enforcement investigations sabotaged, and even the CIA facilitating the work of drug traffickers. The report showed that the contras and their supporters ran several parallel drug-smuggling operations, not just the one at the center of Webb?s series. The report also found that the CIA shared little of its information about contra drugs with law-enforcement agencies and on three occasions disrupted cocaine-trafficking investigations that threatened the contras. Though depicting a more widespread contra-drug operation than Webb had understood, the Justice report also provided some important corroboration about a Nicaraguan drug smuggler, Norwin Meneses, who was a key figure in Webb?s series. Bromwich cited U.S. government informants who supplied detailed information about Meneses?s operation and his financial assistance to the contras. For instance, Renato Pena, a money-and-drug courier for Meneses, said that in the early 1980s, the CIA allowed the contras to fly drugs into the United States, sell them and keep the proceeds. Pena, who was the northern California representative for the CIA-backed FDN contra army, said the drug trafficking was forced on the contras by the inadequate levels of U.S. government assistance. The Justice report also disclosed repeated examples of the CIA and U.S. embassies in Central America discouraging Drug Enforcement Administration investigations, including one into contra-cocaine shipments moving through the international airport in El Salvador. Inspector General Bromwich said secrecy trumped all. ?We have no doubt that the CIA and the U.S. Embassy were not anxious for the DEA to pursue its investigation at the airport,? he wrote. Despite the remarkable admissions in the body of these reports, the big newspapers showed no inclination to read beyond the press releases. Cocaine Crimes & Monica By fall 1998, Official Washington was obsessed with the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, which made it easier to ignore even more stunning contra-cocaine disclosures in the CIA?s Volume Two. In Volume Two, published Oct. 8, 1998, CIA Inspector General Hitz identified more than 50 contras and contra-related entities implicated in the drug trade. He also detailed how the Reagan administration had protected these drug operations and frustrated federal investigations throughout the 1980s. According to Volume Two, the CIA knew the criminal nature of its contra clients from the start of the war against Nicaragua?s leftist Sandinista government. The earliest contra force, called ADREN or the 15th of September Legion, had chosen ?to stoop to criminal activities in order to feed and clothe their cadre,? according to a June 1981 draft CIA field report. ADREN also employed terrorist methods, including the bombing of Nicaraguan civilian planes and hijackings, to disrupt the Sandinista government, the CIA knew. Cocaine smuggling was also in the picture. According to a September 1981 cable to CIA headquarters, two ADREN members made the first delivery of drugs to Miami in July 1981. ADREN's leaders included Enrique Bermudez and other early contras who would later direct the major contra army, the CIA-organized FDN. Throughout the war, Bermudez remained the top contra military commander. The CIA later corroborated the allegations about ADREN?s cocaine trafficking, but insisted that Bermudez had opposed the drug shipments to the United States which went ahead nonetheless. Ends and Means The truth about Bermudez?s supposed objections to drug trafficking, however, was less clear. According to Volume One, Bermudez enlisted Norwin Meneses, a large-scale Nicaraguan cocaine smuggler, to raise money and buy supplies for the contras. Volume One had quoted a Meneses associate, another Nicaraguan trafficker named Danilo Blandon, who told Hitz?s investigators that he and Meneses flew to Honduras to meet with Bermudez in 1982. At the time, Meneses?s criminal activities were well known in the Nicaraguan exile community. But Bermudez told the cocaine smugglers that ?the ends justify the means? in raising money for the contras. After the Bermudez meeting, contra soldiers helped Meneses and Blandon get past Honduran police who briefly arrested them on drug-trafficking suspicions. After their release, Blandon and Meneses traveled on to Bolivia to complete a cocaine transaction. There were other indications of Bermudez?s drug-smuggling tolerance. In February 1988, another Nicaraguan exile linked to the drug trade accused Bermudez of narcotics trafficking, according to Hitz?s report. After the contra war ended, Bermudez returned to Managua, where he was shot to death on Feb. 16, 1991. The murder has never been solved. Along the Southern Front, in Costa Rica, the drug evidence centered on the forces of Eden Pastora, another leading contra commander. But Hitz discovered that the U.S. government may have made matters worse. Hitz revealed that the CIA put an admitted drug operative ? known by his CIA pseudonym ?Ivan Gomez? ? in a supervisory position over Pastora. Hitz reported that the CIA discovered Gomez?s drug history in 1987 when Gomez failed a security review on drug-trafficking questions. In internal CIA interviews, Gomez admitted that in March or April 1982, he helped family members who were engaged in drug trafficking and money laundering. In one case, Gomez said he assisted his brother and brother-in-law in transporting cash from New York City to Miami. He admitted that he ?knew this act was illegal.? Later, Gomez expanded on his admission, describing how his family members had fallen $2 million into debt and had gone to Miami to run a money-laundering center for drug traffickers. Gomez said ?his brother had many visitors whom [Gomez] assumed to be in the drug trafficking business.? Gomez?s brother was arrested on drug charges in June 1982. Three months later, in September 1982, Gomez started his CIA assignment in Costa Rica. Years later, convicted drug trafficker Carlos Cabezas alleged that in the early 1980s, Ivan Gomez was the CIA agent in Costa Rica who was overseeing drug-money donations to the contras. Gomez ?was to make sure the money was given to the right people [the contras] and nobody was taking ... profit they weren?t supposed to,? Cabezas stated publicly. But the CIA sought to discredit Cabezas at the time because he had trouble identifying Gomez?s picture and put Gomez at one meeting in early 1982 before Gomez started his CIA assignment. While the CIA was able to fend off Cabezas?s allegations by pointing to these discrepancies, Hitz?s report revealed that the CIA was nevertheless aware of Gomez?s direct role in drug-money laundering, a fact the agency hid from Sen. Kerry?s investigation in 1987. The Bolivian Connection There also was more about Gomez. In November 1985, the FBI learned from an informant that Gomez?s two brothers had been large-scale cocaine importers, with one brother arranging shipments from Bolivia?s infamous drug kingpin Roberto Suarez. Suarez already was known as a financier of right-wing causes. In 1980, with the support of Argentine?s hard-line anti-communist military regime, Suarez bankrolled a coup in Bolivia that ousted the elected left-of-center government. The violent putsch became known as the Cocaine Coup because it made Bolivia the region's first narco-state. Bolivia?s government-protected cocaine shipments helped transform the Medellin cartel from a struggling local operation into a giant corporate-style business for delivering cocaine to the U.S. market. Some of those profits allegedly found their way into contra coffers. Flush with cash in the early 1980s, Suarez invested more than $30 million in various right-wing paramilitary operations, including the contra forces in Central America, according to U.S. Senate testimony by an Argentine intelligence officer, Leonardo Sanchez-Reisse. In 1987, Sanchez-Reisse said the Suarez drug money was laundered through front companies in Miami before going to Central America. There, other Argentine intelligence officers ? veterans of the Bolivian coup ? trained the contras. CIA Inspector General Hitz added another piece to the mystery of the Bolivian-contra connection. One contra fund-raiser, Jose Orlando Bolanos, boasted that the Argentine government was supporting his anti-Sandinista activities, according to a May 1982 cable to CIA headquarters. Bolanos made the statement during a meeting with undercover DEA agents in Florida. He even offered to introduce them to his Bolivian cocaine supplier. Containing the Scandal Despite all this suspicious drug activity around Ivan Gomez and the contras, the CIA insisted that it did not unmask Gomez until 1987, when he failed a security check and confessed his role in his family?s drug business. The CIA official who interviewed Gomez concluded that ?Gomez directly participated in illegal drug transactions, concealed participation in illegal drug transactions, and concealed information about involvement in illegal drug activity," Hitz wrote. But senior CIA officials still protected Gomez. They refused to refer the Gomez case to the Justice Department, citing the 1982 DOJ-CIA agreement that spared the CIA from a legal obligation to report narcotics crimes by non-employees. Instead, the CIA eased Gomez, an independent contractor, out of the agency in February 1988, without alerting law enforcement or the congressional oversight committees. When questioned about the case nearly a decade later, one senior CIA official who had supported the gentle treatment of Gomez had second thoughts. ?It is a striking commentary on me and everyone that this guy?s involvement in narcotics didn?t weigh more heavily on me or the system,? the official acknowledged. A Medellin drug connection arose in another section of Hitz?s report, when he revealed evidence suggesting that some contra trafficking may have been sanctioned by Reagan's National Security Council. The protagonist for this part of the contra-cocaine mystery was Moises Nunez, a Cuban-American who worked for Oliver North?s NSC contra-support operation and for two drug-connected seafood importers, Ocean Hunter in Miami and Frigorificos de Puntarenas in Costa Rica. Frigorificos de Puntarenas was created in the early 1980s as a cover for drug-money laundering, according to sworn testimony by two of the firm?s principals ? Carlos Soto and Medellin cartel accountant Ramon Milian Rodriguez. Drug allegations were swirling around Moises Nunez by the mid-1980s. At the AP, his operation was one of the targets of our investigation. Finally reacting to these suspicions, the CIA questioned Nunez on March 25, 1987, about his alleged cocaine trafficking. He responded by pointing the finger at his NSC superiors. ?Nunez revealed that since 1985, he had engaged in a clandestine relationship with the National Security Council,? Hitz reported, adding: ?Nunez refused to elaborate on the nature of these actions, but indicated it was difficult to answer questions relating to his involvement in narcotics trafficking because of the specific tasks he had performed at the direction of the NSC. Nunez refused to identify the NSC officials with whom he had been involved.? After this first round of questioning, CIA headquarters authorized an additional session, but then senior CIA officials reversed the decision. There would be no further efforts at ?debriefing Nunez.? Hitz noted that ?the cable [from headquarters] offered no explanation for the decision? to stop the Nunez interrogation. But the CIA?s Central American task force chief Alan Fiers said the Nunez-NSC drug lead was not pursued ?because of the NSC connection and the possibility that this could be somehow connected to the Private Benefactor program [the contra money handled by North]. A decision was made not to pursue this matter.? Joseph Fernandez, who had been the CIA?s station chief in Costa Rica, later confirmed to congressional Iran-Contra investigators that Nunez ?was involved in a very sensitive operation? for North?s ?Enterprise.? The exact nature of that NSC-authorized activity has never been divulged. At the time of the Nunez-NSC drug admissions and his truncated interrogation, the CIA?s acting director was Robert M. Gates, who is now President George W. Bush?s Secretary of Defense. Miami Vice The CIA also worked directly with other drug-connected Cuban-Americans on the contra project, Hitz found. One of Nunez?s Cuban-American associates, Felipe Vidal, had a criminal record as a narcotics trafficker in the 1970s. But the CIA still hired him to serve as a logistics coordinator for the contras, Hitz reported. The CIA also learned that Vidal?s drug connections were not only in the past. A December 1984 cable to CIA headquarters revealed Vidal?s ties to Rene Corvo, another Cuban-American suspected of drug trafficking. Corvo was working with anti-communist Cuban Frank Castro, who was viewed as a Medellin cartel representative within the contra movement. There were other narcotics links to Vidal. In January 1986, the DEA in Miami seized 414 pounds of cocaine concealed in a shipment of yucca that was going from a contra operative in Costa Rica to Ocean Hunter, the company where Vidal worked. Despite the evidence, Vidal remained a CIA employee as he collaborated with Frank Castro?s assistant, Rene Corvo, in raising money for the contras, according to a CIA memo in June 1986. By fall 1986, Sen. Kerry had heard enough rumors about Vidal to demand information about him as part of a congressional inquiry into contra drugs. But the CIA withheld the derogatory information. On Oct. 15, 1986, Kerry received a briefing from Alan Fiers, who didn?t mention Vidal?s drug arrests and conviction in the 1970s. But Vidal was not yet in the clear. In 1987, the U.S. attorney in Miami began investigating Vidal, Ocean Hunter and other contra-connected entities. This prosecutorial attention worried the CIA. The CIA?s Latin American division felt it was time for a security review of Vidal. But on Aug. 5, 1987, the CIA?s security office blocked the review for fear that the Vidal drug information ?could be exposed during any future litigation.? As expected, the U.S. Attorney did request documents about ?contra-related activities? by Vidal, Ocean Hunter and 16 other entities. The CIA advised the prosecutor that ?no information had been found regarding Ocean Hunter,? a statement that was clearly false. The CIA continued Vidal?s employment as an adviser to the contra movement until 1990, virtually the end of the contra war. Honduras Trafficking Hitz revealed that drugs also tainted the highest levels of the Honduran-based FDN, the largest contra army. Hitz found that Juan Rivas, a contra commander who rose to be chief of staff, admitted that he had been a cocaine trafficker in Colombia before the war. The CIA asked Rivas, known as El Quiche, about his background after the DEA began suspecting that Rivas might be an escaped convict from a Colombian prison. In interviews with CIA officers, Rivas acknowledged that he had been arrested and convicted of packaging and transporting cocaine for the drug trade in Barranquilla, Colombia. After several months in prison, Rivas said, he escaped and moved to Central America where he joined the contras. Defending Rivas, CIA officials insisted that there was no evidence that Rivas engaged in trafficking while with the contras. But one CIA cable noted that he lived an expensive lifestyle, even keeping a $100,000 thoroughbred horse at the contra camp. Contra military commander Bermudez later attributed Rivas?s wealth to his ex-girlfriend?s rich family. But a CIA cable in March 1989 added that ?some in the FDN may have suspected at the time that the father-in-law was engaged in drug trafficking.? Still, the CIA moved quickly to protect Rivas from exposure and possible extradition to Colombia. In February 1989, CIA headquarters asked that DEA take no action ?in view of the serious political damage to the U.S. Government that could occur should the information about Rivas become public.? Rivas was eased out of the contra leadership with an explanation of poor health. With U.S. government help, he was allowed to resettle in Miami. Colombia was not informed about his fugitive status. Another senior FDN official implicated in the drug trade was its chief spokesman in Honduras, Arnoldo Jose ?Frank? Arana. The drug allegations against Arana dated back to 1983 when a federal narcotics task force put him under criminal investigation because of plans ?to smuggle 100 kilograms of cocaine into the United States from South America.? On Jan. 23, 1986, the FBI reported that Arana and his brothers were involved in a drug-smuggling enterprise, although Arana was not charged. Arana sought to clear up another set of drug suspicions in 1989 by visiting the DEA in Honduras with a business associate, Jose Perez. Arana?s association with Perez, however, only raised new alarms. If ?Arana is mixed up with the Perez brothers, he is probably dirty,? the DEA responded. Through their ownership of an air services company called SETCO, the Perez brothers were associated with Juan Matta Ballesteros, a major cocaine kingpin connected to the murder of a DEA agent, according to reports by the DEA and U.S. Customs. Hitz reported that someone at the CIA scribbled a note on the DEA cable about Arana stating: ?Arnold Arana ... still active and working, we [CIA] may have a problem.? Despite its drug ties to Matta Ballesteros, SETCO emerged as the principal company for ferrying supplies to the contras in Honduras. During congressional Iran-Contra hearings, FDN political leader Adolfo Calero testified that SETCO was paid from bank accounts controlled by Oliver North. SETCO also received $185,924 from the State Department for ferrying supplies to the contras in 1986. Drug Flights Hitz found that other air transport companies, which were used by the contras, also were implicated in the cocaine trade. Even FDN leaders suspected that they were shipping supplies to Central America aboard planes that might be returning with drugs. Mario Calero, Adolfo Calero?s brother and the chief of contra logistics, grew so uneasy about one air-freight company that he notified U.S. law enforcement that the FDN only chartered the planes for the flights south, not the return flights north. Hitz found that some drug pilots simply rotated from one sector of the contra operation to another. Donaldo Frixone, who had a drug record in the Dominican Republic, was hired by the CIA to fly contra missions from 1983-85. In September 1986, however, Frixone was implicated in smuggling 19,000 pounds of marijuana into the United States. In late 1986 or early 1987, he went to work for Vortex, another U.S.-paid contra supply company linked to the drug trade. By the time that Hitz?s Volume Two was published in fall 1998, the CIA?s defense against Webb?s series had shrunk to a fig leaf: that the CIA did not conspire with the contras to raise money through cocaine trafficking. But Hitz made clear that the contra war took precedence over law enforcement and that the CIA withheld evidence of contra crimes from the Justice Department, the Congress and even the CIA?s own analytical division. Besides tracing the evidence of contra-drug trafficking through the decade-long contra war, the inspector general interviewed senior CIA officers who acknowledged that they were aware of the contra-drug problem but didn?t want its exposure to undermine the struggle to overthrow Nicaragua?s leftist Sandinista government. According to Hitz, the CIA had ?one overriding priority: to oust the Sandinista government. ? [CIA officers] were determined that the various difficulties they encountered not be allowed to prevent effective implementation of the contra program.? One CIA field officer explained, ?The focus was to get the job done, get the support and win the war.? Hitz also recounted complaints from CIA analysts that CIA operations officers handling the contras hid evidence of contra-drug trafficking even from the CIA?s analysts. Because of the withheld evidence, the CIA analysts incorrectly concluded in the mid-1980s that ?only a handful of contras might have been involved in drug trafficking.? That false assessment was passed on to Congress and the major news organizations ? serving as an important basis for denouncing Gary Webb and his series in 1996. See No Evil Although Hitz?s report was an extraordinary admission of institutional guilt by the CIA, it passed almost unnoticed by the big American newspapers. [For more details on the report, see Parry?s Lost History.] On Oct. 10, 1998, two days after Hitz?s Volume Two was posted at the CIA?s Internet site, the New York Times published a brief article that continued to deride Webb but acknowledged the contra-drug problem may have been worse than earlier understood. Several weeks later, the Washington Post weighed in with a similarly superficial article. The Los Angeles Times never published a story on the release of Volume Two. To this day, no editor or reporter who missed the contra-cocaine story has been punished for his or her negligence. Indeed, some of them rose to become top executives at their news organizations. On the other hand, Gary Webb?s career never recovered. Unable to find decent-paying work in a profession where his past awards included a Pulitzer Prize, Webb grew despondent. His marriage broke up. By December 2004, he found himself forced to move out of his rented house near Sacramento. Instead, Webb decided to end his life. On the night of Dec. 9, 2004, Webb typed out four suicide notes for his family, laid out a certificate for his cremation, put a note on the door suggesting a call to 911, and removed his father?s handgun from a box. The 49-year-old Webb, a father of three, then raised the gun and shot himself in the head. The first shot was not lethal, so he fired once more. His body was found the next day after movers, who were scheduled to clear out Webb?s rental house, arrived and followed the instructions from the note on the door. A Last Chance Webb?s suicide offered the New York Times, the Washington Post and the L.A. Times one more chance to set matters right, to revisit the CIA?s admissions in 1998 and to exact some accountability from the Reagan-era officials implicated in the contra crimes. But all that followed Gary Webb?s death was more trashing of Gary Webb. The L.A. Times ran its mean-spirited obituary that made no mention of the admissions in the CIA?s Volume Two. The Times obituary was republished in other newspapers, including the Washington Post. No one reading this obit would understand the profound debt that American history owed to Gary Webb, who deserved the lion?s share of the credit for forcing the CIA to make its extraordinary admissions. Though a personal tragedy, the destruction of Gary Webb had a larger meaning, too. Gary Webb was a kind of canary in the mine shaft, whose fate represented a warning about the dangers that can befall a nation whose journalists care more about their salaries and status than the truth and the public?s right to know. Today, when Americans look at the mounting death toll in Iraq, the collapse of the U.S. dollar on international markets, and their nation?s loss of prestige around the world, they should recall what happened to Gary Webb when he tried to shed some light amid the shadows of corrupt and covert government actions. Webb?s career destruction in the 1990s and his desperate act of suicide in 2004 were warnings to the American people that they must demand much more from their existing news outlets ? or they must build honest new ones. That understanding may be Gary Webb's enduring legacy. [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, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com ] From nytr at blythe-systems.com Tue Dec 11 23:49:07 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 23:49:07 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] America as a Prisoner to Primacy Message-ID: <20071211234907.10ad2f98@viola.tamara-b.org> Consortium News - Dec 10, 2007 http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/121007a.html [Editor?s Note: One of the riskiest features of George W. Bush?s foreign policy has been its embrace of permanent U.S. military dominance throughout the world. It is a concept so brazen in its ambition and so extravagant in its cost that it could well invite the opposite consequence, a precipitous and disastrous American decline. But questioning Bush?s dangerous vision of endless American primacy is almost a taboo topic for political debate, as Carl Conetta of the Project on Defense Alternatives notes in this guest essay.] America as a Prisoner to Primacy By Carl Conetta As foreign policy disasters go, the American adventure in Iraq is a splendid one - "splendid" in the sense of being both grand and manifest. We might call it "exceptional" as well, except that the troubles which beset U.S. policy do not end at Iraq's borders. The policy wreck is a more general one. The U.S. mission in Afghanistan has run aground, too. Rather than spreading democracy, recent U.S. military activism has helped spread chaos in several regions. It has tattered both our reputation and our armed forces. It has helped push Muslim populations toward Islamist politics, unsettled America's alliances, and prompted "balancing behavior" on the part of potential big power competitors: China and Russia. As for its impact on terrorism: terrorist activity and violence has grown worse, not better since 11 September 2001. Average levels of terrorist violence that would have been considered extreme in the period prior to 9/11 have become the norm in the years since. And there is no sign that this trend is abating. The present course is not only counter-productive, but also fabulously expensive. Indeed, it seems to be delivering less and less security at ever increasing cost. Annual defense expenditures have risen by 50 percent in real terms since 2001 (and 78 percent since 1998). By the end of FY 2008, defense authorization will exceed $700 billion - significantly more than was authorized in any year since 1946. Expenditures of this magnitude are not easily reconciled with bringing national debt under control, while also meeting pending demands on Social Security and Medicare. These circumstances may soon force an economic reckoning for which the nation is ill-prepared. New Direction? With American security policy listing on the shoals, we might reasonably expect congressional leaders and presidential candidates to be vowing incisive action - a fundamental re-think, a new direction, something! But no such awakening is evident. Perhaps Democrats are not eager to interrupt the self-immolation of the Bush administration. It is easy enough to ascribe the lapse in thought to the vaudeville of American electoral politics. But, again, the problem is a more general one. Lehigh University professor Chaim Kaufmann had it right when he wrote in the summer 2004 issue of International Security that America's slide into the Iraq war evinced a broad failure in our vaunted "marketplace of ideas" - and not simply the perfidy of the current administration. Today, the market failure continues. Again and again, we are tempted to rash action by falsehood. Our policy discourse - in the media, academe, the halls of government, and the think tank world - seems perpetually locked and loaded. And the "military option" is always on the table, darkening the agenda. And the future? What presently passes for the "cutting edge" in new thinking is a search for an imagined "middle ground" - a political safe harbor - located somewhere between the errors of the present administration and those of the previous one. Emblematic of this is the view that sees America's troubles in Afghanistan and Iraq as largely a matter of execution and insufficient troop strength, that foresees our military occupation of those nations continuing for decades, and that pins its hopes for success on the enlargement of U.S. ground forces and the renovation of counter-insurgency doctrine. Most prescriptions for policy change still operate within the framework of a "war on terrorism" - a piece of strategic nonsense if ever there was one. Even worse is the slippery, indistinct notion of a "long war" against Islamic radicalism (or "jihadism" or "Islamo-fascism"), which seems tailor-made to tempt war with the Muslim world. Neither framework accurately models the current security environment and neither illuminates a productive, sustainable path to greater security. Finally, and worst, are the ruminations about setting America on the path of "liberal empire" with U.S. ground troops serving as the constabulary of troubled regions. Imperial Option The fact that the imperial option - which has advocates left, right, and center - should gain a respectful hearing despite the experience of Iraq indicates that the American policy community has worked itself into a dead end, a cul de sac. We cannot think outside the military option, the "big stick." The problematic turn in U.S. policy did not begin on 11 Sept 2001, or even on 7 November 2000. Recognizing this is the minimum requirement for exiting our current predicament. By the late-1990s, U.S. security policy was already on a path that was counter-productive and unsustainable - not a wreck, but one waiting to happen. Defense budgets were already rising, but with little relation to actual threats. And America's world reputation was already eroding. Key precursors to current policy - unilateralism, offensive counter-proliferation, the "rogue state doctrine", and regime change - were already evident in U.S. policy toward Iraq and elsewhere. The 9/11 attacks may have stupefied the U.S. policy debate, rendering it narrow, reactive, and timid - but there is a more fundamental and longer-standing problem. Since the end of the Cold War, much of the U.S. policy community has been mesmerized by the advent of U.S. military primacy and the advantages it supposedly conveys. This circumstance seemed to provide the leverage with which the United States might further enhance its security, extend its position of world leadership, and advance an American vision of world order - a "new rule set". The 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review and U.S. National Security Strategy went a step further, construing military primacy as essential to U.S. global leadership and security - not just a fortuitous thing, but a necessary one. Thus, primacy became a security end in its own right and the cornerstone of our global policy. Trouble is: primacy is not sustainable. Indeed, the more it is exercised, the more it invites balancing behavior on the part of others. Moreover, experience suggests that we have dangerously overestimated both the extent and utility of our military primacy. Nonetheless, our policy discourse remains entranced by it. Militarized Policy Hoping to realize the promise of military primacy, three successive U.S. administrations have retreated from the idea that force should be an instrument of last and infrequent resort. Thus: --The threshold for using force has steadily come down, --The ways we imagine using force and our armed forces have multiplied, --And our military objectives have grown steadily more ambitious - now including the aim of fighting multiple, overlapping wars to fast decisive conclusions, including regime change. Beyond the traditional objectives of deterring and defending against aggression, there has been an increasing emphasis on trying to use force and forceful pressure to actually "prevent the emergence" of threats and, more generally, to "shape the strategic environment" (as the 1997 U.S. Defense Review put it.) In the past, threat prevention and "environment shaping" were largely in the purview of the State Department. But a feature of our post-Cold War practice has been the increasing intrusion of the Pentagon on the provinces of State. Parallel to this, diplomatic functions have been increasingly militarized. Thus, today coercive diplomacy plays a bigger role relative to traditional "quid pro quo" diplomacy. Similarly, "offensive counter-proliferation" has grown in importance relative to non-proliferation efforts. And even our programs in support of democratization and development have gained a khaki tinge. Prevention or Provocation? Using military power to prevent the emergence of threats often implies treating actors who are not preparing or conducting an act of aggression as though they were. Preventative military operations target not aggression but, instead, the capability to aggress - be it existing, emergent, or suspected. Prevention can also target actors who we believe are disposed, due to the nature of their governments or belief systems, to do us some type of harm at some point in the future - that is, adversary regimes or movements, rogues and radicals. ? Beginning in 1997, U.S. strategy has seen the success of dissuasion as depending in large part on maintaining America's considerable margin of global military superiority. In accord with this, a key objective of dissuasion has been to discourage other countries from initiating arms competitions with the United States. How? By continuously widening America's lead with the aim of making competition seem hopeless. ? A key enabler for the broader and more frequent use of force is the notion that the United States has developed ways to fight fast, low-risk, low-impact wars. This is the "new warfare" hypothesis and it did not originate with the Bush administration. In one form or another, it has helped shape U.S. thinking about the utility of force since the 1990-1991 Gulf War. However, what we have seen in Iraq and elsewhere is that military power is less discrete, manageable, and predictable in its effects than recent policy assumes. And its negative repercussions are more far-reaching and complex than imagined. Indeed, we have been treated to an exceptional lesson in how "precision warfare" can spawn chaos. Putting "boots on the ground" in Iraq was supposed to rectify the shortcomings of wars fought at a distance with stand-off weapons - wars like the 1999 Kosovo conflict. But instead of giving us greater control, military occupation has prompted nationalistic responses and inflamed ethnic tensions. Clearly, we have not understood the power and dynamics of "identity politics". This failure points to a more fundamental one: Seized by a sense of military primacy, we have failed to appreciate the difference between achieving military effects and achieving political-strategic ones. Military Primacy? Any true reassessment of the utility of force and its limits must lead to a re-evaluation of our present condition of "military primacy". What does it mean and what is it worth? Our distinct military superiority exists only in the conventional realm. Facing an unconventional foe in a complex contingency is another matter. And even in the conventional realm: potential adversaries do not have to match our levels of investment in order to boost the price of victory to unacceptable heights and, thus, effectively sap our superiority. It is worth remembering that the present global disparities in military power and investment do not reflect the global distribution of human and material resources. Many nations have considerable latent capacity to narrow the military gap between themselves and the United States -- if they are so motivated. At any rate, when evaluating primacy, the most important comparison is not between us and other international actors, but between means and ends - that is, between our power and what we propose to do with it. The options range from simple defense and deterrence at one end to schemes of coercive national transformation on the other. If our Iraq experience teaches anything, it is that humility is in order. But this lesson is not likely to register in our policy discourse - not so long as it remains a prisoner to primacy. [Carl Conetta is co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives. See: http://www.comw.org/pda/ ] From nytr at blythe-systems.com Wed Dec 12 14:59:53 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 14:59:53 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Ron Paul: Bombed If You Do, Bombed If you Don't Message-ID: <20071212145953.61eee11e@viola.tamara-b.org> Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk - Dec 9, 2007 http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2007/tst120907.htm Bombed if you do, Bombed if you Don't by Ron Paul The latest National Intelligence Estimate has been greeted by a mixture of relief and alarm. As I have been saying all along, Iran indeed poses no quantifiable imminent nuclear threat to us or her neighbors. It is with much alarm, however, that we see the administration continue to ratchet up the war rhetoric as if nothing has changed. Indeed nothing has changed from the administration's perspective, as they have had this latest intelligence report for some time. Only this week has it been made known to the public. They want it both ways with Iran. On the one hand, they discredit the report entirely, despite it being one of the most comprehensive intelligence reports on the subject, with over 1,000 source notes in the document. On the other hand, when discrediting it fails, they claim that the timing of the abandonment of the weapons program, just as we were invading Iraq, means our pressure must have worked, so we must keep it up with a new round of even tougher sanctions. Russia and China are not buying this, apparently, and again we are finding ourselves on a lonely tenuous platform on the world stage. The truth is Iran is being asked to do the logically impossible feat of proving a negative. They are being presumed guilty until proven innocent because there is no evidence with which to indict them. There is still no evidence that Iran, a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has ever violated the treaty's terms ? and the terms clearly state that Iran is allowed to pursue nuclear energy for peaceful, civilian energy needs. The United States cannot unilaterally change the terms of the treaty, and it is unfair and unwise diplomatically to impose sanctions for no legitimate reason. Are we to think that Iran hasn't noticed the duplicitous treatment being received by so-called nuclear threats around the globe? If they have been paying attention, and I think they have, they would see that if countries do have a nuclear weapon, they tend to be left alone, or possibly get a subsidy, but if they do not gain such a weapon then we threaten them. Why wouldn't they want to pursue a nuclear weapon if that is our current foreign policy? The fact remains, there is no evidence they actually have one, or could have one any time soon, even if they immediately resumed a weapons program. Our badly misguided foreign policy has already driven this country's economy to the brink of bankruptcy with one war based on misinformation. It is unthinkable that despite lack of any evidence of a threat, some are still charging headstrong into yet another war in the Middle East when what we ought to be doing is coming home from Iraq, coming home from Korea, coming home from Germany and defending our own soil. We do not need to be interfering in the internal affairs of other countries and waging war when honest trade, friendship, and diplomacy are the true paths to peace and prosperity. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Wed Dec 12 15:09:42 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:09:42 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Make Some Noise - Rattle Your Chains - Tribute to 97-Year-Old Activist Peg McIntire Message-ID: <20071212150942.792eab09@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Bruce K. Gagnon - activ-l - Dec 11, 1007 http://www.space4peace.org MAKE SOME NOISE - RATTLE YOUR CHAINS While just in Florida we took a one-day side trip to St. Augustine to visit our dear friend Peg McIntire. Peg just turned 97 and remains active in the peace movement. [Caption of photo, not included: The photo above is her at this year's School of the Americas demonstration at Fort Benning in Georgia.] The day we visited Peg she had spent the morning surveying the public in front of the public library on homeless issues. She told us that a few days before she had gone north to Jacksonville to speak at a rally and in October she had travelled to Orlando to address a big anti-war event. I've known Peg for at least 20 years and she has become like a second mother to me. For many years she served as the Treasurer of the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice which I coordinated for many years. She has been a loyal member and supporter of the Global Network since its creation and has been arrested doing civil disobedience at the space center in Florida numerous times. Peg, in addition to all her other activities, still ably coordinates her chapter of Grandparents for Peace. As I write this the Congress is working on a new funding bill for the Iraq occupation and the war in Afghanistan. Once again it is likely that the Democrats will talk big about ending the occupation and then in the end roll over and give Bush the money he wants. The money that is being wasted on war making is just mind blowing. Just days ago we heard that the Pentagon has lost $1 billion in Iraq. How could that happen except for outright stealing or handing the money over to the "enemy" so they can buy more weapons on the black market thus giving the U.S. a "good excuse" to stay in Iraq because it is such a mess. Now a new story has come out saying that the Army is undertaking a $200 billion modernization program (called Future Combat Systems) to make all their forces "net-centric". According to an article in the Washington Post, "The project involves creating a family of 14 weapons, drones, robots, sensors and hybrid-electric combat vehicles connected by a wireless network. It has turned into the most ambitious modernization of the Army since World War II and the most expensive Army weapons program ever, military officials say." In real terms double or triple that cost estimate and you get an idea how much of your money will be thrown down the rat hole on this one. What happened to all the fiscal conservatives? Hell, they are getting rich off this stuff. Today, the Army program involves more than 550 contractors and subcontractors in 41 states and 220 congressional districts, a wide dispersal of Department of War funds that generates political subservience. Ok, so what does Peg have to do with the Army's Future Combat Systems program? What is the connection? First, I'd say that Peg's life indicates that we have to be committed to our resistance work as a lifetime goal. We can't just dabble in it as a sideline. Age is not a ticket out of the struggle. Peg is in this for the revolutionary change that is needed. Secondly, we have to understand that just writing letters or showing up a demonstrations is not enough. Sometimes we have to step across the line at our non-violent actions and go to jail if need be. You can imagine the attention she gets when she takes such a step and gets arrested. In Florida she is a legend. Lastly, I'd say we can learn from Peg that a sense of joy, hopeful expectation, and wonder is important to maintain as we do our work. She is never naive but is always ready to embrace the unexpected. She reaches deep into people just by her own unwavering steadiness. Peg, unlike me, does not preach. She just sets an example by her actions and her life. Zillions of people have told Peg "I want to be just like you when I grow up." I am one of those people. Bruce K. Gagnon Coordinator Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 652 Brunswick, ME 04011 (207) 443-9502 http://www.space4peace.org globalnet at mindspring.com http://space4peace.blogspot.com (Blog) From nytr at blythe-systems.com Wed Dec 12 15:23:38 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:23:38 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Report on Race Whitwashes Reality of Discrimination in US Message-ID: <20071212152338.66df1a06@viola.tamara-b.org> US Human Right Network via Common Dreams - Dec 10, 2007 http://www.commondreams.org/news2007/1210-03.htm FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - DECEMBER 10, 2007 CONTACT: US Human Rights Network Ateqah Khaki and David Lerner, Riptide Communications, 212-260-5000 Whitewash: Human Rights Group Says US Report On Race Covers Up Reality of Discrimination in America Human Rights Network Issues ?Shadow Report? to UN Committee Report Challenging State Department View NEW YORK - December 10 - A report released today by the US Human Rights Network (USHRN), a coalition of over 250 social justice and human rights groups across the country, charged the Bush Administration with failing to comply with its obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), an international treaty that carries the force of law in the United States. The report, known as a shadow report, was filed with the United Nations committee that monitors compliance with the treaty based in Geneva. ?Our analysis reveals that the Bush Administration is utterly out of touch with the reality of racial discrimination in America,? said Ajamu Baraka, the Executive Director of the USHRN. ?From failing to address the chronic persistence of structural racism to even acknowledging the disparate racial impact on people of color of Hurricane Katrina, the State Department reports reads like a fantasy; unfortunately a fantasy that is to often experienced as a nightmare for American?s of color,? he added. The Convention, adopted by the United States in 1969, requires signatory countries to periodically report on their progress in identifying, correcting, and remedying racism and racial discrimination. The U.S. quietly submitted a report to the U.N. Committee that monitors compliance with the Convention last spring. Lisa Crooms, a Howard University law professor, and an author of the USHRN report says the State Department report ?blatantly overlooks and misrepresents ongoing racial disparities and discrimination in the US.? Among the concerns identified in the USHRN analysis are: * The U.S. government's report does not mention the internationally recognized race and poverty related impacts of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. * The report completely ignores the issue of policy brutality, recognized by many Americans as one of the most blatant and common forms of ongoing differential treatment based on race. * The report does not discuss the well documented ?school to prison pipeline,? in which discriminatorily applied ?zero tolerance? policies and criminal justice based responses to overcrowding and under resourcing of public schools drive children of color out of schools and into the prison system * Required to provide information about compliance with the Convention at the State level, the government only chose to provide comprehensive information on four states: Oregon, South Carolina, Illinois and New Mexico, notably overlooking States with some of the country's largest populations of people of color and immigrants, such as New York, California, Texas and Florida, as well as the Gulf Coast States victimized by Katrina. * The government's report suggests that stark racial disparities in incarceration rates (African Americans and Latino/as make up 60% of the over 2 million people incarcerated in the United States, but less than a quarter of the population) may be ?related to differential involvement in crime? rather than a result of the cumulative impacts of racial disparities in the treatment of minorities at every stage of the criminal justice process. Adding insult to injury, the U.S. report fails to cite evidence that rates of involvement in many criminalized activities, including drug use, are actually very similar across race. * The report highlights training and outreach programs for law enforcement agencies encouraging sensitivity to Arab and Muslim communities developed in the aftermath of 9/11, while completely failing to acknowledge widespread racially and ethnically targeted law enforcement practices such as the special registration program and aggressive round-ups and interviews of thousands of non-citizen Muslims, Arabs and South Asians. * Indigenous people continue to suffer profound and ongoing effects of the legacy of colonialism and racial discrimination in the U.S. The report was simultaneously submitted, on behalf national, state and local organizations from across the country, to the U.N. Committee today. The same committee will be questioning the U.S. government on its compliance with its obligations under the Convention early next year, as a counterpoint to the U.S. report. To view a copy of the shadow report submitted by the US Human Rights Network, please visit: http://lacccenter.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/shadowrptsummary2008.doc The US Human Rights Network was formed to promote US accountability to universal human rights standards by building linkages between organizations and individuals. The Network strives to build a human rights culture in the United States that puts those directly affected by human rights violations, with a special emphasis on grassroots organizations and social movements, in a central leadership role. The Network also works towards connecting the US human rights movement with the broader US social justice movement and human rights movements around the world. To learn more, please visit: http://www.ushrnetwork.org ============================ The Freedom Archives http://freedomarchives.org/mailman/listinfo/news_freedomarchives.org From nytr at blythe-systems.com Wed Dec 12 15:26:45 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:26:45 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] PR: Pro-Libertad Salsa for Freedom - 12/15 NYC Message-ID: <20071212152645.4125b4ad@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by mart The ProLibertad Freedom Campaign http://www.ProLibertadWeb.com ProLibertad at hotmail.com and ProLibertad.Campaign at gmail.com ProLibertad Hotline: 718-601-4751 ___________________________ ?SALSA FOR FREEDOM 2007! PROCEEDS GO TO THE COMMISSARY OF THE PUERTO RICAN POLITICAL PRISONERS!! Saturday Dec. 15th, 2007 at 7pm-2am St. Mary's Episcopal Church 521 W 126th St. (Btwn. Amsterdam Ave. and Broadway. Take the 1 train to W.125th St.) Join us for a night of amazing music, non-stop dancing, delicious Puerto Rican Food and bring your check book for annual Freedom Auction!! Suggested donation: $10 (no one will be turned away) Music Provided by "DJ CARLITO AND HIS MAMBO/SALSA SPINS"!! Party to all the Salsa, Merengue, and Hip Hop you can dance too!! For tickets or more information contact The ProLibertad Freedom Campaign: ProLibertad at Hotmail.com or call 718-601-4751 From nytr at blythe-systems.com Wed Dec 12 15:30:40 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:30:40 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Russia Slams Decisions on Kosovo Message-ID: <20071212153040.1278eb45@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by mart Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com Russia Slams Decisions on Kosovo Moscow, Dec 11 (Prensa Latina) Russian Foreign Minister Serguei Lavrov Tuesday warned again on the unilateral decisions in the solution of territorial conflicts and the Kosovo issue. Lavrov chiefly referred to the European Union position of recognizing the independence of the Serbian province behind a UN Security Council resolution. The Russian minister said that reports on the attempts of a number of European countries to interpret the 1244 UN resolution as a justification to the recognition of the separation of that territory from the Serbian territorial integrity. Russia, underlined the diplomat, upholds the firm position that a unilateral interpretation of the UN Security Council resolution is as dangerous as adopting similar actions to the detriment of the international law. After speaking at Russia-EU ministerial council, the Russian diplomat said that Moscow promotes its position on Kosovo with persuasive explanations to its European partners and does not intend to impose it with threats. Lavrov also said that the UN secretary general should not commit with a unilateral position regarding the interpretations of the Security Council resolution. hr ajs oda mf PL-15 *** earlier report: US Wants Kosovo as a NATO State Belgrade, Dec 6 (Prensa Latina) Serbia's Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said on Thursday that if the US supports the independence of Kosovo Province, it will be admitting why NATO bombed this country in 1999 and deployed its troops in that territory. That strategy aims to make Kosovo a puppet state under the aegis of NATO, Kostunica told Tanjug news agency. The prime minister said that plan figured in the initiative of ex mediator Martti Ahtisaari with the proposal of supervised independence of that province, which was rejected by Serbia. Now Washington and the Atlantic Alliance plan to bring the puppet state to fruition. That is what supervised independence really means since that is an oxymoron, said the head of government. Kostunica demands respect to the UN Charter on borders and the 1999 Security Council Resolution 1244, in which the territorial integrity of Serbia is guaranteed. The Belgrade government proposes extensive autonomy for that province, while Albania-Kosovo leaders threaten to unilaterally proclaim sovereignty with the support of the White House and some European countries. rma ccs ajs bts PL-22 From nytr at blythe-systems.com Wed Dec 12 15:32:31 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:32:31 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] N Korea Decries US Warmongering Message-ID: <20071212153231.409e087c@viola.tamara-b.org> Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com N Korea Decries US Warmongering Pyongyang, Dec 11 (Prensa Latina) The People's Democratic Republic of Korea on Tuesday denounced US aggression on the Korean peninsula, and arrival of a nuclear submarine to South Korea's Pusan port. Rodong Sinmun daily, the official publication of the Workers' Party of Korea, recalled the recent arrival of F-16, F-15, and F A-18 planes to South Korean bases. That deployment and intense US war exercises are an evident challenge to North Korea, its partner in dialogue, the daily reads. That stance, the publication sustains, is part of the invariable hostile policy by US conservative extremists against North Korea, aimed at bringing the denuclearization process to a standstill and putting the situation on the brink of a war. Such actions contravene the September 19, 2005 joint declaration on denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, signed in Beijing by the six parties involved in the talks, the newspaper indicates. Those maneuvers can only be interpreted as a sinister ploy to hinder advances in the talks, the Korean paper added. hr dig jhb mf PL-20 From nytr at blythe-systems.com Wed Dec 12 15:34:08 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:34:08 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Env: S. Korea Asks for Help to Clean Oil Spill Message-ID: <20071212153408.473f2608@viola.tamara-b.org> Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com South Korea Asks for Help to Clean Oil Spill Seoul, Dec 12 (Prensa Latina) South Korea requested international support Wednesday to contain 10,500 tons of oil spilled off its coasts December 7, when a tanker and freighter collided. The crude oil stain affects dozens of miles along the western coast, so authorities from the emergency coordination center requested Northwest Pacific Action Plan material to absorb it. According to reports by the Yonhap News Agency, Seoul is delayed in extracting the oil because of lack of equipment. It needs 100 tons of a material to remove the oil from the sea. Experts estimate that the spillage can be cleaned using 25 tons of that material daily, but the government only has five tons available per day, which obliged authorities to demand support from Japan, China, North Korea and Russia. The Interior Ministry announced yesterday that about $6.4 million will be immediately allocated for residents and the maritime industry of the region. This is the most dangerous ecological disaster caused by oil spillage in the history of South Korea. ef ccs iff alc PL-27 From nytr at blythe-systems.com Wed Dec 12 15:34:41 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:34:41 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] FAS Secrecy News - 12/11/2007 Message-ID: <20071212153441.02d9fbc3@viola.tamara-b.org> SECRECY NEWS from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy Volume 2007, Issue No. 121 December 11, 2007 Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/ Support Secrecy News: http://www.fas.org/static/contrib_sec.jsp ** VICE PRESIDENT'S OFFICE IS NOT AN AGENCY, ISOO TOLD ** BRAC PROCESS SAID TO BE SKEWED BY IMPROPER WITHHOLDING ** CRS ON THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT VICE PRESIDENT'S OFFICE IS NOT AN AGENCY, ISOO TOLD The Office of the Vice President is not an "agency" for purposes of the executive order on classification and therefore its classification and declassification activity no longer need be reported to the Information Security Oversight Office, the Justice Department finally informed ISOO Director Bill Leonard in a newly disclosed letter. http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/files/28/files//2007/12/eos-7-20-07-doj-to-leonard.pdf In a January 9, 2007 letter to the Attorney General, Director Leonard had questioned the OVP's refusal since 2003 to submit to normal oversight. He was following up on a complaint filed with ISOO by the Federation of American Scientists, which was also forwarded to the Attorney General. The OVP's position is not consistent with a "plain text reading" of the executive order, Mr. Leonard wrote to the Attorney General at that time. Be that as it may, the President's intention is that the Office of Vice President should not be considered an "agency" for purposes of oversight, Steven G. Bradbury of the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel wrote to Mr. Leonard on July 20, 2007 on behalf of the Attorney General. He cited another letter to that effect from White House counsel Fred Fielding. The Bradbury letter to ISOO was obtained by blogger Marcy Wheeler, who disclosed it today on her blog EmptyWheel: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/ The Bush Administration's evident willingness to reinterpret -- not revise -- the executive order and to deviate from what is commonly understood as the order's "plain text" meaning illustrates the unreliability of executive orders as a safeguard of public rights, Ms. Wheeler stressed. The move gave new resonance to a statement presented on the Senate floor last week by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) who described an Office of Legal Counsel opinion which he said concludes as follows: "An Executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new Executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous Executive order. Rather than violate an Executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it." http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/fisa120707.html What the President is claiming, Sen. Whitehouse said, is that "I don't have to follow my own rules, and if I break them, I don't have to tell you that I am breaking them." BRAC PROCESS SAID TO BE SKEWED BY IMPROPER WITHHOLDING Defense Department officials improperly withheld crucial data from the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission that might have justified the continued operation of certain Department laboratories and facilities, according to a new insider account. A detailed timeline supported by a hundred pages of internal documentation leads the author to urge a reversal of the decision to close Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, among other actions. The anonymous author, known to Secrecy News, said he has no financial or other material interest in the matter. He wrote that "integrity in Government decision-making is fundamental and essential to democracy." See "Pentagon Officials Withheld BRAC Data to Protect Proposals That Failed Legal Requirement" (119 pages, 4 MB PDF file): http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dod/brac/datawithheld.pdf A House Armed Services Subcommittee will hold a hearing on December 12 "on implementation of the Base Realignment and Closure 2005 decisions." CRS ON THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT The Congressional Research Service has issued two new reports on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as Congress prepares to consider amendments to the Act. "The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: A Brief Overview of Selected Issues," December 7, 2007: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/RL34279.pdf "The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: Comparison of House-Passed H.R. 3773, S. 2248 as Reported By the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and S. 2248 as Reported Out of the Senate Judiciary Committee," December 6, 2007: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/RL34277.pdf _______________________________________________ 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 1725 DeSales St NW, 6th floor Washington, DC 20036 web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html email: saftergood at fas.org voice: (202)454-4691 From nytr at blythe-systems.com Wed Dec 12 15:39:11 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:39:11 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Cuban FM's Statement on Human Rights Day Message-ID: <20071212153911.351fc0ab@viola.tamara-b.org> Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cuba - Dec 10, 2007 http://america.cubaminrex.cu/English/Speeches/FPR/2007/FPR_101207.htm Statement by Felipe P?rez Roque, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba, to the Local and Foreign Media, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 10 December, 2007 Felipe P?rez: Good morning. We would like to thank all local and foreign correspondents for being here with us today. We have asked you to come to inform that, shortly, Cuba will become a signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It is the political decision made by our country today, 10 December, World Day of Human Rights, when we celebrate the 59th anniversary of the proclamation by the UN General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The rights contained in both covenants, which are some of the most important international instruments in terms of human rights, are extensively covered by our national legislation and, particularly, by the work and performance of the Cuban Revolution right from its victory on 1 January 1959. This decision, which should materialize in the coming months, is indicative that our country will always maintain close cooperation with the UN system, on the basis of respect for our national sovereignty and for the right of the Cuban people to self-determination. While the manipulations against Cuba persisted in the field of human rights; while the US Government turned the former Commission on Human Rights into an Inquisition tribunal to persecute the countries that rebelled against imperial domination; while attempts were made to manipulate the human rights issue against Cuba to justify the blockade and the aggressions against our country; while the anti-Cuban practice in the area of human rights continued to prevail, particularly in Geneva, at the former Commission, where the US imposed a resolution every year through ruthless pressures and blackmail; while all of that happened, there were no conditions whatsoever to assess new commitments by Cuba to the UN machinery in the area of human rights. However, that situation has changed radically with the inception of the new Human Rights Council, of which Cuba was a founding member, with the vote of over two-thirds of the members of the international community ? and because, as known, the spurious mandate imposed by the US to monitor the Cuban situation was also discontinued. Since a new situation has arisen, in which the issue is not manipulated against Cuba, in which there has been failure after failure of the anti-Cuban schemes by the US, after twenty years of battle by Cuba in favor of the truth and in defense of our principles and our dignity, conditions are now ripe to take new steps indicative of Cuba?s political will to cooperate with the UN and to make its contribution and experience available to the international community in this matter. Cuba has never acted and will never act under pressure. Once the Human Rights Council decided and the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly confirmed the discontinuation of that spurious anti-Cuban mandate, our country then advanced several initiatives for international cooperation in the field of human rights. Thus, we were recently visited by the UN rapporteur for the right to food; thus, we announce today the decision of the Cuban Government to sign, in the first quarter of next year, these two human rights covenants: the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. And, also, in the future, our country will extend invitations to other figures that represent special procedures in the Human Rights Council, as an indication that in a scenario in which there is no longer any manipulation of the issue against our country, where the twenty-year-long scheme by the US Government was utterly defeated, our country can send clear signals and attest to its will to cooperate and emphasize its commitment to the international defense of human rights. The decision to move forward in enhancing the formal commitment ? because the real commitment has always existed and because it was the Cuban Revolution that guaranteed the respect for the human rights of the Cubans ? by signing the two covenants is another example of what our country can do without any political conditionalities and without being subjected to that unfair practice. So today, 10 December, World Day of Human Rights, our country ? in a free and sovereign fashion, without any outside pressures and keeping in line with our own conscience, with the acts of our own free will, exercising our sovereignty ? announces, as a new step in Cuba?s commitment, the signing of these two important human rights instruments. Pursuant to the commitment that we entered into by signing the inception of the new Human Rights Council and its procedures, we are also getting ready to report, in March 2009, on our performance and be part of the universal periodic review mechanism established by the new Council. Under the draw conducted on an equal footing for all countries, ours has to report in March 2009. We are seriously getting ready to reach that moment in a spirit of cooperation and with the will to display our results, our accomplishments, our shortcomings and difficulties, and also to hear the views and opinions of other players on this issue. This will of Cuba will remain as long as the current situation prevails, which we hope will not change ? of not being singled out, of non-selectivity, non-discrimination and politicization of the human rights issue to attack and justify the aggressions against those countries that do not yield to the imperial diktat. As long as that situation prevails, as now, our country will be free to move forward down this path. If, unfortunately and against our desire and our aspirations, the issue is once again politicized and the atmosphere of cooperation and respect for the countries now prevailing in the Human Rights Council becomes rarified, our country would be compelled ? and would not hesitate to stand its ground again ? to hoist the flags that we victoriously defended for twenty years until we managed to utterly and definitely defeat the practice orchestrated by successive US Administrations against Cuba. In addition to this announcement, on the 59th anniversary of the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN General Assembly and when we start the year to celebrate its 60th anniversary, Cuba reiterates today its demand that the US Government cease its ruthless economic, financial and commercial blockade, imposed on our people for almost 50 years, which is a flagrant, massive and systematic violation of the human rights of our people ? as has been overwhelmingly demanded by the UN General Assembly in 16 successive resolutions. On a day like today, it is worth recalling that our people will soon move into its fifth decade of suffering from the brutal and genocidal blockade that attempts to subdue us through starvation and disease. On the day that the world commemorates the World Day of Human Rights, we reiterate our demand that the US Government heed the opinion of the international community and lift the blockade on Cuba. Secondly, on behalf of the Cuban people, we demand that the US Government immediately close, without any further delays or justifications, the shameful torture center that it continues to operate at its naval base in Guant?namo, where all sorts of harassment and vexation have been carried out, as well as cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment against the prisoners, in breach of all the guarantees provided for by International Law for detained people. In addition to the closing of this shameful center, we demand that the US Government return to our country the territory that it currently occupies in an illegal manner against our will in Guant?namo, taking away from Cuba the practice of the right to sovereignty in that portion of our soil. We demand today, on the World Day of Human Rights, that the President of the United States and that the US Government close down the torture center in Guant?namo and return to our homeland the territory that they occupy illegally. Thirdly, on a day like today, we demand the immediate release of the Five Cuban Heroes: Gerardo Hern?ndez Nordelo, Ram?n Laba?ino Salazar, Fernando Gonz?lez Llort, Antonio Guerrero Rodr?guez and Ren? Gonz?lez Sehwerert, political prisoners held in US jails, subjected to unjust and harsh convictions, subjected to isolation cells for long periods of time and to other cruel, inhumane and degrading actions for over nine years ? and we now demand, as they are going through their tenth year in captivity, that they be released. On behalf of the Cuban people, we particularly demand that Adriana P?rez O?Connor, the wife of Gerardo Hern?ndez Nordelo, and Olga Salanueva Arango, the wife of Ren? Gonz?lez Sehwerert, be able to visit their husbands, whom they last saw in 1998. We demand respect for their rights and we challenge the President of the United States and the US Government to allow these two women, daughters of our nation, to visit their husbands in the prisons where they are now serving harsh sentences. Fourthly, on behalf of the Cuban families mourning the loss of their loved ones, as a result of the acts of terrorism by Luis Posada Carriles; on behalf of those families that lost children, parents and siblings, we demand that the US Government detain international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, who is walking freely in the city of Miami protected by the Bush Administration, and try him for terrorism and send him to prison; or that he be extradited to Venezuela, as has demanded that country?s government. Lastly, I would like to express our satisfaction over the news that the Cuban Medical Brigade currently working in Guatemala, composed of some 300 health workers, stationed there since Hurricane Mitch swept through Central America in 1998, was presented with the National Human Rights Awards, bestowed by that brotherly country. The Cuban doctors, since their arrival in the rural and mountainous areas, in the farthest and most remote places of the Guatemalan geography, have had over 22 million appointments and performed more than 55,000 deliveries. In this recognition of their noble endeavor, there is also recognition of all the Cubans who throughout the world are currently making their generous contribution to the respect for human rights; particularly, for the right of millions of people to life. I would like to recall today, on the World Day of Human Rights, that as we speak there are 37,000 Cuban health workers providing services in 79 countries. Of those, over 18,000 are medical doctors. There are 37,000 health cooperators in 79 countries and over 18,000 of them are doctors! In a few days, we will hit the target figure of 1 million patients with free surgeries through Operation Miracle. A million patients from 32 countries have regained their eyesight over the last few years as a result of the implementation of Operation Miracle, fostered by our country. These patients have been operated on by Cuban doctors, nurses and technicians, either in Cuba or in their respective countries. I would also like to underscore the fact that our universities have provided government-sponsored scholarships to nearly 30,000 students from 121 countries that are currently enrolled in them. These are children from poor families, on many occasions from rural areas in their countries. Of those nearly 30,000 students, some 23,000 are being trained in Cuba as doctors. In recalling that our country has graduated more than 45,000 Third-World youths in these years of the Revolution, of which almost 35,000 are from Africa, we must evoke Fidel?s remarks: ?Without culture, there is no freedom possible?. And we must recall Mart?, who said that ?Being educated is the only one to be free.? And I must also underscore ? because of what I have just said ? that with the Cuban literacy method Yes, I Can, designed by Cuban professors and implemented with the participation of thousands of Cuban pedagogical advisers, some 2.7 million illiterate people in 22 countries have been taught to read and write; and another 600,000 illiterate people are currently studying, learning to read and write in the languages of their countries, not only in Spanish. In recalling these figures and confirming with modesty but with healthy pride that the Cubans are not only fighting to build a society with all fairness and full equality of opportunities for all its children, a socialist society with equality of opportunity for all, where justice can be attained, I must also express our pride in knowing that our fellow countrymen and women did go to cure, to teach and to fight off apartheid and colonialism in Africa ? where over 350,000 Cuban voluntary fighters, both men and women, went to defeat the troops of apartheid, making it possible to obliterate, right in the midst of the 20th century, a brutal form of discrimination and exclusion of men over skin color, where more than 2,000 sons and daughters of our nation laid down their lives fighting and were instrumental in preserving Angola?s territorial integrity, in the inception of Namibia as an independent country, in the release of Nelson Mandela and the dismantling of the cruel apartheid system, which was kept alive through the shameful support of many who now try to forget that past in which they were accessories to the apartheid regime, which they provided with weapons and which they helped violate UN resolutions, the first of all being the US Government. Therefore, in doing so, I would like to express our pride that we are not only working for and defending in Cuba the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights for our people, but that we are also fighting in other countries of the world so that these can finally become real rights within everyone?s reach and stop being rights just proclaimed in paper. Today, we express our certainty that neither the manipulations schemed by the US Government with the participation of a handful of mercenaries, who they pay and instruct in our country, nor the threats or its abundant money to pay for defections and disloyalty, nor its media campaigns or its might over the international mass media, nor its pressures against other governments to follow them in their anti-Cuba campaigns, will cause our people to stay off course in defending human rights for our country and for other countries. Cuba celebrates this day, 10 December, World Day of Human Rights, standing tall and with the conviction that its people has maintained and will always maintain in victory a Revolution that truthfully ushered in for our people the real enjoyment of human rights, of all human rights for all the children of our homeland! Thank you very much (Ovation). From nytr at blythe-systems.com Wed Dec 12 15:44:52 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:44:52 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Huckabee Wins Backing from Fla. Gusano House Speaker Message-ID: <20071212154452.37a235cc@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Jane Franklin The Miami Herald - Dec 11, 2007 http://www.miamiherald.com/top_stories/story/339906.html Fla. Speaker Rubio backs Huckabee BY BETH REINHARD AND LAURA FIGUEROA Up-and-coming Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee defended his flip-flop on the Cuba embargo Monday as he cinched an endorsement from one of the most prominent Cuban-American politicians in Florida. The endorsement from House Speaker Marco Rubio of Miami was a coup for a candidate dismissed as an afterthought just two months ago. At a news conference Monday morning at La Carreta in Westchester, Huckabee said he opposed the U.S. embargo on Cuba when he was governor of Arkansas because of its impact on the state's rice industry. But as a presidential candidate, he said, he puts the interests of the nation before his home state. While courting Rubio's support over the past year, Huckabee said he began to appreciate the perspective of many Cuban-American exiles, who believe lifting the embargo would support a repressive regime. ''He really helped me understand some of the key issues that are so very important not just to Cuban-American community but to all Americans in terms of protecting freedom and standing tall,'' Huckabee said. ``As president I commit that we would veto any legislation that would lift the embargo that is currently in place because we must keep that pressure on.'' While national and statewide candidates have long trekked to South Florida to flog Fidel Castro, Huckabee's statement reflected one of the most dramatic reversals by a major presidential candidate on the issue that has defined U.S.-Cuba policy for nearly half a century. In 2002, Huckabee urged President Bush to end the embargo. His lobbying effort was brought to light by rival Fred Thompson's campaign, which circulated press clippings during Sunday night's debate. 'The United States' policy of unilateral embargo against Cuba continues to harm our own agricultural and business interests here at home and has certainly not helped the people of Cuba,'' Huckabee wrote in the letter to Bush at the time. DRAMATIC CHANGE Huckabee's change of heart, coming during his first public appearance as a presidential candidate in Miami, provided fodder for rivals who have spent months courting the influential Cuban-American community. ''Another part of running for president is that people take the views they have had their whole life and change them when it becomes convenient,'' said Thompson, campaigning Monday at the Bay of Pigs Museum honoring Cuban-American veterans. ``I think it raises issues when a candidate changes their mind on a dime.'' Supporters of Mitt Romney, whose success in the influential Iowa caucus is being threatened by Huckabee's rise in the polls, also blasted Huckabee in a call with reporters arranged by the campaign. ''His lack of sophistication and lack of experience in foreign policy has shown through,'' said U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney of Oviedo. ``While we welcome him to the ranks of freedom fighters, how could it be that only in the last week he realized that dealing with Fidel Castro is something we don't do?'' Huckabee's conversion also surprised the Arkansas Rice Growers Association, which represents the state's top agricultural industry. Cuba is one of the largest potential U.S. markets for rice in the world. ''Our guys, they're not going to like that he doesn't want the restrictions loosened,'' said Greg Yielding, executive director of the association. ``It's not just about rice. It's about understanding what the embargo is doing and whether it's doing any good. Those people in Cuba, they need food.'' STATE'S CLOUT Rubio put a positive spin on Huckabee's change of heart, saying it proved that moving up Florida's primary from March to Jan. 29 had boosted the state's political clout in the presidential race. In addition to his remarks on the embargo, Huckabee took up other demands from hard-line Cuban-American exiles. He said he supports allowing U.S. citizens to sue foreign companies doing business in Cuba on confiscated property, and favors the indictment of Ra?l Castro, head of Cuba's military, for the 1996 shoot down of four Brothers to the Rescue pilots flying out of Miami. ''Would these issues have been addressed at this stage in the campaign if not for the Jan. 29 primary?'' Rubio asked. ``I would hope the other candidates in the field match him on Cuba policy.'' The endorsement also spoke to the priorities of the ambitious state legislator. Supporting Huckabee, a former Baptist minister known for his staunch positions against abortion and gay marriage, could shore up Rubio's credentials with the religious right. Rubio has also staked his reputation on cutting taxes, and he dismissed the tax-and-spend attacks against Huckabee from rivals and special interest groups. Huckabee has also faced questions in recent days about his 1992 statement that AIDS patients should be quarantined. ? 2007 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Wed Dec 12 15:48:54 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:48:54 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] More Fla. Gusano Politics: GOP Candidates Back "Indictment" for Castros Message-ID: <20071212154854.7a7a009c@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Jane Franklin The Miami Herald - Dec 10, 2007 http://www.miamiherald.com/campaign08/story/340004.html Candidates target Castros for indictment BY LUISA YANEZ The frustration of Miami exiles over the Cuban government's downing of two Brothers to the Rescue planes more than a decade ago has now filtered into the presidential race, with top GOP candidates calling for the indictment of Fidel and Ra?l Castro. While stumping through South Florida, three Republican candidates have brought up the Brothers tragedy, and at least two have pledged to hold the Castro brothers responsible for the 1996 shoot-down by Cuban MiGs that killed four Miami-based fliers. The candidates' interest in the shoot-down may be an indication of the advice they're receiving from key Cuban-American leaders. Among Sen. John McCain's supporters are U.S. Reps. Mario and Lincoln D?az-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, all of Miami. In the past, she has brought up the possibility of indictments with President Bush. ''I talked to McCain about this specific recommendation, and he said yes, that as president he would . . . ask the Justice Department to begin a legal inquiry into the illegal shoot-down,'' Ros-Lehtinen said Monday. Leading former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's Florida campaign is Al C?rdenas, a former state GOP party chief who, during a Radio Mamb? campaign stop Monday, praised his candidate's tough-on-Cuba approach. Advising former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee are Florida Rep. David Rivera and House Speaker Marco Rubio, who announced his support on Monday. Huckabee, who once was against the Cuba embargo, called for indictments Monday at a news conference in Westchester. ''He will push for the indictments of the Castro brothers for ordering the murder of those Brothers to the Rescue fliers,'' Rivera said. The talk of the Castro indictment surfaced nationally during Sunday's Spanish-language Republican debate hosted by the University of Miami and aired by the Univisi?n network. Without prompting, McCain and Romney spoke about the Brothers shoot-down. ''And if I were president . . . I would order an investigation of the shoot-down of those brave Cubans who were killed under the orders of Ra?l and Fidel Castro and, if necessary, indict them,'' McCain said. Romney also had harsh words: ``Brothers to the Rescue. They shoot a small aircraft out of the sky . . . These Castro brothers are cowards.'' SUPPORT WELCOMED Relatives of those killed, who have for years pushed for indictments, welcomed the support. It comes just before the Jan. 25 release in Miami of a documentary about the incident, titled Shoot Down. ''I can tell you that I would take a stronger look at any candidates who took the position to indict Ra?l Castro,'' said Maggie Khuly, sister of Armando Alejandre Jr., one of the fliers who died. Said Jos? Basulto, the head of Brothers to the Rescue, a Cuban exile activist group: ``For me, the shoot-down has become a case of justice delayed, justice denied. To hear that Republican hopefuls are talking about it gives me hope.'' An indictment, Basulto agrees, would be largely symbolic, but it would serve to sully the Cuban leaders' reputation at a time when a growing number of leftist leaders in Latin America look to Cuba for advice. ''I don't think they will be brought here for trial, but just the fact that they're indicted by a U.S. court will cause havoc inside Cuba,'' he said. Gayle Osterberg, spokeswoman for Rogues Harbor Studios -- a production company founded by Alejandre's niece Cristina Khuly and her husband, Douglas Eger, to produce the documentary -- praised the candidates' attention to a defining moment in U.S.-Cuba history, one that attracted the attention of the United Nations. ''The shoot-down is among the most pivotal events in U.S.-Cuba relations, and these questions certainly warrant discussion,'' Osterberg said of the candidates' interests. WON'T GET VOTES One expert dismissed the notion that tapping into the Brothers tragedy would solidify support from Cuban-American voters. ''It's not necessary to get votes,'' said Jaime Suchlicki, director of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Affairs at UM. ``Remember that this kind of stance only works with a certain section of the Cuban community. ''But it is good policy for any candidate to stand up for justice. There were three American citizens killed here. Will an indictment bring down the Cuban government? I don't believe so, but it will go a long way to exposing the terrorist acts of its regime,'' Suchlicki said. The Brothers to the Rescue tragedy played out on a sunny day, Feb. 24, 1996. The group had enjoyed great success patroling the Florida Straits in search of Cuban rafters. But in 1994, when the Clinton administration struck a deal with Havana, Cubans intercepted at sea would be returned to the communist island under the U.S. ''wet foot/dry foot'' policy. The group began to drop antigovernment leaflets over Havana. Cuban officials warned Washington to stop the flights. The documentary shows the events of that day, as three Cessnas flew over Caribbean waters. Unaware of the approaching MiGs, two of the Brothers planes were blown out of the sky. ''We got them!'' a cockpit transmission from Cuba later showed one pilot boasting. Killed were Alejandre, Mario de la Pe?a, Carlos Costa and Pablo Morales, a Cuban exile who was not a U.S. citizen. The tragedy led to a Cuban spy ring bust in Miami. In recent years, taped evidence has indicated that Ra?l Castro gave the pilots the order to fire at the planes -- as instructed by his brother, Fidel. ? 2007 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Wed Dec 12 15:53:15 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:53:15 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] US Gusanos Funding Human Trafficking: Mexican Atty General Message-ID: <20071212155315.5fbe4095@viola.tamara-b.org> [... which is what the Cuban government has been saying all along.-NYTr] AP via Yahoo - Dec 10, 2007 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071210/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_us_smuggling_cubans Mexico: Cuban-Americans fund smugglers By MARK STEVENSON Associated Press Writer Cuban-Americans are financing the smuggling Cuban immigrants through Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, an illegal trade that is fomented by the U.S. policy of granting Cubans automatic asylum, Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said Monday. A violent ring of immigrant smugglers operates in Mexico, where Cubans land on the coasts in rickety boats before crossing overland to the U.S. border, Medina Mora told reporters. "This has been legally proved, that people of Cuban origin but who are citizens of the United States are involved, financing these people-smuggling operations, obviously with the complicity of Mexicans," the attorney general said. "This has to do with U.S. policy toward Cubans," he said. "Those who make it to (U.S.) territory by their own means can get automatic refugee status, so that policy serves as an incentive" to smuggle Cubans here. Under the so-called "wet foot, dry foot" policy, the U.S. turns back Cubans intercepted on the seas but grants asylum to most who make it to shore. To avoid capture by U.S. authorities before making it to land, many Cubans decide to go through Mexico. Mexico is struggling to deal with a series of gangland-style slayings apparently related to the trafficking of migrants from Cuba, which lies only about 130 miles east of the Yucatan Peninsula, just slightly farther by boat from Cuba than Florida. In a new trend, nearly 90 percent of all undocumented Cubans who make it to the United States now travel overland rather than reaching U.S. shores by boat, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Mexico also is having problems with its burgeoning population of detained Cuban migrants, most of whom want to go to the U.S. Most Cubans are released after being held 90 days at a Mexican immigration center. Only about one-third of all those arrested in 2006 were repatriated to Cuba, Mexican migration officials say. Last week, three Cuban immigrants were treated for dehydration at a Mexican hospital after going on a hunger strike to demand release from a detention center. They were returned to the center and are awaiting decisions in their cases. Copyright ? 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Wed Dec 12 15:54:49 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:54:49 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] EPR Guerrillas Unnoticed by Many Mexicans Message-ID: <20071212155449.4382274e@viola.tamara-b.org> sent by Milt Shapiro (mexnews) Angus Reid - Dec 11, 2007 EPR Guerrilla Unnoticed by Many Mexicans (Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Many Mexicans are not aware of the existence of an illegal armed group, according to a poll by Ipsos-Bimsa published in El Universal. Only 36 per cent of respondents are familiar with the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), while 63 per cent know about the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). When asked which conditions justify the formation of a guerrilla movement, 43 per cent of respondents mention dealing with the population?s poverty. Support is lower for groups that seek to either combat the authoritarianism of an administration, or create a revolution to topple the government. The EPR was assembled in 1996, and operates mainly in the state of Guerrero. Throughout 2007, the armed group has claimed responsibility for several attacks against state-owned oil facilities and pipelines, as well as a bombing in a department store located in the state of Oaxaca. On Dec. 8, Mexico?s interior secretary Francisco Ram?rez Acu?a dismissed the EPR?s claims of a targeted government campaign against activists, saying, "There is no persecution of social leaders. (...) We must act responsibly so the people can know the truth and be able to assess what the social movements are doing, and what the government has to do." In January 1994, the EZLN declared its intention to overthrow the Mexican government, headed at the time by Carlos Salinas de Gortari. The group took control of several municipalities in Chiapas during a two-week uprising. There have been no new clashes between the Zapatistas and the Mexican armed forces in more than 13 years. During the presidential term of Vicente Fox, the Zapatistas marched to Mexico City and presented their case to the Mexican Congress. The legislative branch eventually endorsed an indigenous rights bill, but the final document did not satisfy the Zapatistas. The EZLN has since established 32 "autonomous settlements" in Chiapas without the support of the Mexican government. Polling Data Are you familiar with the following guerrilla groups? ("Yes" responses only) Zapatista National Liberation Army 63% (EZLN) Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) 36% Under which of these conditions is a guerrilla movement justified? ("Yes" responses only) To deal with the population's poverty 43% To combat the authoritarianism of an 33% administration To create a revolution and topple the 20% government Source: Ipsos-Bimsa / El Universal Methodology: Face-to-face interviews with 1,000 Mexican adults, conducted in December 2007. Margin of error is 3.5 per cent. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Wed Dec 12 16:00:11 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:00:11 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Emergency Media Strategy Summit 1/25-27 Santa Cruz Message-ID: <20071212160011.15e29482@viola.tamara-b.org> Project Censored - Dec 11, 2007 https://webmail.sonoma.edu/mailman/listinfo/project-censored-l http://www.truthemergency.us/ We the undersigned urgently invite the most concerned members of the independent media community (and your brightest friends) to join us in Santa Cruz to reinvent the "free press" in America and resuscitate courageous journalism as a democracy restoring force. Larisa Alexandrovna, Ed Asner, David Altheide, John Parry Barlow, Dennis Bernstein, Khalil Bhendib, Kristina Borjesson, Peter B Collins, Gabriel Day, Katherine Dodds, Ronnie Dugger, Bonnie Faulkner, Mike Ferner, Robert Fitrakis, Brad Friedman, Richard Greene, David Ray Griffin, Kyle Hence, Mickey Huff, David Kubiak, Kalle Lasn, David Lindorff, Janice Mathews, David Mathison, Jason McKain, Ray McGovern, Cynthia McKinney, Kelly Omeara, Peter Phillips, Coleen Rowley, Bryan Sacks, Danny Schechter, Barbara Trent, Sarah Ruth van Gelder, Tracy Van Slyke, Aldo Vidali... PURPOSE A collaborative gathering of media veterans, scholars, activists & whistleblowers to assess and deploy our most powerful tools and messages to rectify history, awaken a critical mass, and effectively expose the accelerating corporate coup d'?tat. VISION Truth movements that arise after pivotal events like electoral fraud, 9/11, key assassinations and false flag ops can/should become more than forensic inquiries into a single heinous crime. They can also expose wider patterns of illicit control, deception and propaganda, and use their revelations to rouse entire societies to reject a malignant status quo. Consequently, this is not a media conference to dissect or condemn the conglomerates, demand reforms, or even celebrate the increasing vigor of independent journalism. It is intended as a strategy session for already active and influential players to coordinate their most revealing messages, forge tactical alliances, introduce new distribution technologies, and mutually enhance each other's strongest work. All participants will play an active role in nominal group processes over the weekend that will prioritize sources, analysis methods, and distribution models for trustworthy news dedicated to renewing activism and democracy in America. QUESTIONS IN NEED OF FAST ANSWERS ? ? What role can and should the independent media be playing in our crisis-driven age - and how can we collaborate to maximize its force? ? ? What master narratives should we be focusing on -- how can we best communicate both unspeakable knowledge and emboldening hope? ? ? What are the most promising tools and models out there for reporting, distributing, and maximizing the impact of deeply revelatory news? ? ? What are the most credible transformative goals we as a community can target in the political circus of 2008? ? ? How can we develop a collaborative infrastructure to supplant the corporate media and strengthen all our work? ? How can we support each other? How can we support ourselves? Short briefings will be offered on these topics by experts in each field, but all participants are responsible for the outcome because we still don't have the answers we need. TARGET PARTICIPANTS Leading media activists, A/V producers, authors, bloggers, journalists, scholars, whistleblowers, celebrities, publishers, broadcasters and funding angels. GOALS * Gather key media constituencies needed to inject trans- formative truths into 2008 political news and electoral debate; * Honor brave audacious "truth war veterans" (casualties & survivors) and learn from their experiences. * Devise coherent decentralized models for distribution of suppressed news, synergistic truth-telling, and collaborative strategies to popularize deeper historical narratives. * Strategize collective action that establishes independent news media as a realistic and viable substitute for corporate news, and diminishes the domination of Fox, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, and the mainstream newswires Bring your best ideas, an open mind, and an urgent desire for change. In sum, we hope to discover in this moment of Constitutional crisis, ecological peril and widening war, if a roomful of top investigative journalists, whistleblowers and Indy-media all-stars can transform the way Americans perceive and defend their world. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Wed Dec 12 16:12:01 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:12:01 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Media: Cautionary Tale In Journalism History Message-ID: <20071212161201.424e9111@viola.tamara-b.org> Credo Action - Dec 11, 2007 http://action.credomobile.com/sirota/2007/12/peter_beinart_as_cautionary_ta.html Peter Beinart As Cautionary Tale in Journalism History By David Sirota Just eight months ago, PBS's Bill Moyers aired perhaps the single most devastating indictment of the Washington press corps that I have ever seen. In his documentary, which looked at how the media cheered on President Bush's push for a war with Iraq, Moyers interviewed one of the key cheerleaders - then-New Republic editor Peter Beinart. Moyers asked Beinart "what made you present yourself as a Middle East expert" in the lead up to war? Beinart said that though he had never been to Iraq, he is "a political journalist." So Moyers naturally asked what kind of "political journalism" and reporting Beinart did to make sure his pro-war cheerleading was sound? Beinart's answer was the stuff of journalism infamy: "Well, I was doing mostly, for a large part it was reading, reading the statements and the things that people said. I was not a beat reporter. I was editing a magazine and writing a column. So I was not doing a lot of primary reporting. But what I was doing was a lot of reading of other people's reporting and reading of what officials were saying." This is the kind of quote that your journalism professor puts on the board during your freshman year as an example of all that is wrong with the reporting today. And you might think that after such an utterly humiliating admission, Beinart would change his ways, and do, ya know, real reporting the next time he opens his mouth about Iraq. But you would be wrong. In his latest Washington Post column, Beinart claims that "the war has receded" as a priority for Americans. As proof, he cites himself reading a live-blog from a New York Times reporter covering a Democratic presidential debate. I kid you not. Here is Beinart's lead "proving" his assertion that "the war has receded" as a priority: Last month, Katharine Q. Seelye of the New York Times live-blogged the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas. As the discussion bounced from subject to subject, she marked the topic and the time, then gave her thoughts. At 8:34 p.m., it was driver's licenses; 8:55, Pakistan; 9:57, the Supreme Court. By night's end she had 17 entries totaling almost 1,500 words. And she hadn't typed "Iraq" once. As the Atlantic Monthly's Matt Yglesias says, "Basically, the evidence for Beinart's side is that media elites who control the debate questioning process don't want to talk about the war." In other words, just like he pushed America to war based on "reading the statements and the things that people said" and not actual reporting, he is trying to downplay the Iraq War as a major issue by simply reading the punditry of other Washington reporters, rather than looking at the actual facts. It's no wonder why he has chosen to do this: The actual facts blow his entire thesis about the Iraq war "receding" to smithereens. As Editor & Publisher reports, "a new Gallup poll reveals that when 'asked which issues will be most important in determining their vote for president in next year's election, Americans by a wide margin say the war in Iraq, with more than one in three mentioning the war.'" What's really offensive about Beinart's behavior is as much his desperate propagandizing about the war he helped push America into as his disregard for any semblance of intellectual honesty. This is not some casual error here - this is a person who was quite literally embarrassed on national television just a few months ago and is now employing exactly the behavior he originally was embarrassed for - as if journalistic integrity and ethics are just nuisances to be ignored. Most normal people would react to getting factually crushed on television by sitting back and thinking about how to avoid such egregiously irresponsible behavior in the future. Not folks in D.C. like Beinart - it's full-speed ahead for them. Equally appalling (though, frankly, not shocking) is the fact that the Washington Post continues to publish him, and that for all his dishonesty, he has been rewarded with a perch at the Council on Foreign Relations. Apparently in Washington, helping push America into the worst foreign relations disaster in contemporary history and then continuing to lie about that disaster is a resume builder, rather than a blemish. Yes, you actually get a bigger platform and get paid more and get a cushier job in D.C. the more inaccurate and deliberately off the mark you are willing to be. The Peter Beinart Story is not troubling because this one insignificant warmonger continues to live the good life in D.C. It is deeply disturbing for what it says about the sorry state of the media's role as a check and balance on power. The Peter Beinart Story is, pound-for-pound, the saddest, sickest commentary of all on a Washington media culture whose insularity has totally divorced it from even the most basic tenets of journalism. And that's a tragedy for those of us outside of Washington, living in the reality-based community. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Wed Dec 12 16:15:13 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:15:13 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] American Dream Is Alive and Well ... in Finland! Message-ID: <20071212161513.34161519@viola.tamara-b.org> AlterNet - Dec 11, 2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/70103/ The American Dream Is Alive and Well ... in Finland! By Joshua Holland Fewer than 1 percent of Americans are millionaires, but almost one in three believe they'll end up among that group at some point. The belief that our chance of moving up the economic ladder is limited only by our innate abilities and our appetite for hard work is almost universal in the United States. When you define the "American Dream" as the ability of working-class families to afford a decent life -- to put their kids through school, have access to quality healthcare and a secure retirement -- most will tell you it simply doesn't exist anymore. In stark contrast, when you define it according to mobility, the picture is radically different; according to a study of public opinion in 25 rich countries, Americans are almost twice as likely to believe that "people get rewarded for intelligence and skill" than working people in other advanced economies (PDF). At the same time, fewer than one in five say that coming from a wealthy family is "essential" or "very important" to getting ahead -- significantly lower than the 25-country average. It's impossible to overstate the impact that has on our policy debates. Americans are less than half as likely as people in other advanced economies to believe that it's "the responsibility of government to reduce differences in income." Working Americans are parties to a unique social contract: They give up much of the economic security that citizens of other wealthy countries take for granted in exchange for a more "dynamic," meritorious economy that offers opportunity that's limited only by their own desire to get ahead. Of course, it's never explicitly stated, and most of us don't know about the deal, but it's reinforced all the time in our economic discourse. But new research suggests the United States' much-ballyhooed upward mobility is a myth, and one that's slipping further from reality with each new generation. On average, younger Americans are not doing better than their parents did, it's harder to move up the economic ladder in the United States than it is in a number of other wealthy countries, and a person in today's work force is as likely to experience downward mobility as he or she is to move up. Moreover, the single greatest predictor of how much an American will earn is how much their parents make. In short, the United States, contrary to popular belief, is not a true meritocracy, and the American worker is getting a bum deal, the worst of both worlds. Not only is a significant portion of the middle class hanging on by the narrowest of threads, not only do fewer working people have secure retirements to look forward to, not only are nearly one in seven Americans uninsured, but working people also enjoy less opportunity to pull themselves up by their bootstraps than those in a number of other advanced economies. Moving on up? Researchers look at two kinds of economic mobility: "absolute mobility," which is the degree to which one generation does better than the one before it, and "relative mobility," or how easy it is to move up in society through smarts, talent, hard work, etc. New research by Julia Isaacs, a fellow with the Economic Mobility Project, looked at both measures using a unique set of data that allowed her to directly compare how people were doing in the late 1990s and early 2000s with the incomes of their parents in the late 1960s. Isaacs, using family income data, found that the current generation as a whole is doing better than the previous generation -- that's absolute mobility -- but that the nation's income is distributed much less evenly than it was a generation ago. And family incomes tend to obscure the degree of overall mobility, because much of the past three decades' growth in household income was a result of more women joining the workforce. When the Brookings Institution's Isabel Sawhill and John Morton looked at four generations of income data for men alone (PDF), they came up with a very different picture. When they compared men aged 30-39 in 1994 with their fathers at the same point in their careers, they found that median incomes had increased by just 0.2 percent annually during the past three decades. But, they noted, "the story changes for a younger cohort." Men in their thirties in 2004 had a median income that was, on average, 12 percent less than that of their fathers' generation at the same age. The scholars concluded: "The up-escalator that has historically ensured that each generation would do better than the last may not be working very well." But it's relative mobility that really speaks to the health -- or lack thereof -- of the American Dream, and Isaacs' conclusions are stunning. "Contrary to American beliefs about equality of opportunity," she wrote, "a child's economic position is heavily influenced by that of his or her parents:" * Children of middle-income parents have a near-equal likelihood of ending up in any other quintile, presenting equal promise and peril for those born to middle-class parents. * The "rags to riches" story works in Hollywood but not on Main Street. Only 6 percent of children born to parents with family income at the very bottom move to the very top. Isaacs categorized American families as belonging to one of four groups: the "upwardly mobile" who do better relative to their parents, those "riding the tide" -- families that earn more than their parents but remain in the same relative position on the economic ladder -- those "falling despite the tide," a small group who are earning more than their parents but who nonetheless fell into a lower position on the ladder, and those who are "downwardly mobile." The key take-away is that American families are just as likely to be downwardly mobile -- 33 percent fall into the group -- as they are to join the 34 percent who move up. It's crucial to understand the relationship between inequality and immobility, and central to the relationship is the concept of "intergenerational assistance." That's a fancy way of saying that a person's chances to advance economically are very much impacted by whether his or her family can help with tuition payments, a down payment on a house or seed money to start a business. The wealthy don't pass on their status through inheritance alone, but by smoothing the way for their children. In an interview last year, Dalton Conley, director of NYU's Center for Advanced Social Science Research, compared two hypothetical kids -- one from a family with some money and the other from poor parents. Both are born with the same level of intelligence, both are ambitious and both work hard in school. In a meritocracy, the two would enjoy the same opportunity to get ahead. But the fact that one might graduate from college free and clear while the other is burdened with $50,000 in debt makes a huge difference in terms of their long-term earnings prospects. That's just one of the myriad ways that parents pass their economic status to their children. Conley concluded: "When you are talking about the difference between financing their kid's college education, starting a new business, moving if they need to move for a better job opportunity -- [differences] in net worth might make the difference between upward mobility and stagnation." As bleak as the recent findings about our ability to move up are, the picture for American families would look much worse if not for the increasing number of women in the work force. Women, while still earning less than their male counterparts, have had far greater upward mobility over the past three decades, largely because they had farther to go to get to the same place. While men's employment rates, hours worked and wages have been flat or declining during that period, all three measures have increased for women. Isaacs concluded: "Family incomes have grown slightly because the increase in women's earnings has more than offset stagnant male earnings." The streets are paved with gold in Denmark Several studies released in recent years suggest that, contrary to popular opinion, Americans enjoy significantly less upward mobility than citizens of a number of other industrialized nations (some of the studies can be accessed here, here and here). German workers have 1.5 times the mobility of Americans, Canada is nearly 2.5 times more mobile and Denmark is 3 times more mobile. Norway, Finland, Sweden and France (France!) are all more mobile societies than the United States. Of the countries included in the studies, the United States ranked near the bottom; only the United Kingdom came in lower. Blame the "neos" Unlike inequality, which some classical economists and most conservative pundits dismiss as irrelevant, there's broad agreement across the ideological spectrum about the importance of mobility. In the United States, where we take for granted levels of inequality and poverty that would be a front-page scandal in most advanced economies, the stakes are that much higher. It's one thing living in a new gilded age when we all have a fair shot at ending up among the "haves," but it's something else altogether when a nation's wealth is concentrated at the top of a rigidly stratified society. As Dalton Conley put it, the fact that parents' wealth is the strongest predictor of where kids will end up "very manifestly displays the anti-meritocracy in America -- the reproduction of social class without the inheritance of any innate ability." But it's the interplay of a number of factors that determines social mobility, and there's heated debate about what's caused these changes in the American economy and what their policy implications might be. Three trends help explain why it's so much harder to get ahead in America today than it was for previous generations of working people, and why it's apparently easier to get ahead in more socially oriented countries: differences in education, the decline in union membership and loss of good manufacturing jobs and, more generally, a relatively weaker social safety net. Roughly speaking, the decrease in relative mobility from generation to generation correlates with the rise of "backlash" conservatism, the advent of Reaganomics and the series of massive changes in industrial relations and other policies that people loosely refer to as the "era of globalization." The United States is the only advanced country in which the federal government is not directly involved in higher education. That's played a role in the dramatic increase in the average costs of a college education since the post-World War II era. In 1957, for example, a full-time student at the University of Minnesota paid $111 per year in tuition, which, in today's dollars, is about $750. During the 2005-2006 school year, in-state tuition at the University of Minnesota was $8,040. As education writer Naomi Rockler-Gladen noted, that's an inflation-adjusted increase of 1,000 percent since 1957. At almost $10,000 in average costs (in 2002), a public university education in America is a lot more difficult to finance than it was a generation ago. That impacts mobility; a college degree is a ladder -- one of the classic methods by which hard work and intelligence could be translated into economic success. Sawhill looked at the relationship between education and mobility (PDF) and concluded that "at virtually every level, education in America tends to perpetuate rather than compensate for existing inequalities." She pointed to three reasons for that. First, we have a relatively weak K-12 system. "American students perform poorly on international assessments," she wrote. "Colleges are forced to provide remedial work to a large share of entering freshmen, and employers complain about workers' basic skills." A society with a weak education system will, by definition, be one in which the advantages of class and family background loom large. Second, the U.S. education system is largely funded through state and local property taxes, which means that the quality of a kid's education depends on the wealth of the community in which he or she grows up. This, too, helps replicate parents' economic status in their kids. Finally, Sawhill notes, in the United States, unlike other advanced economies, "access both to a quality preschool experience and to higher education continues to depend quite directly on family resources." The decline in organized labor and solid, good-paying manufacturing jobs is another factor. Those jobs once represented a ladder; their role in moving past generations into the middle class is an American archetype: The paper boy's son finishes high school and gets an apprenticeship that leads to a solid job in a union shop that allows him to send his son or daughter to college, where they become a doctor or a lawyer. That particular ladder is disappearing. There's also an inverse relationship between how robust a country's social safety net is and the degree to which working families face the prospect of downward mobility. For example, research comparing countries that have generous unemployment benefits with those -- like the United States -- which offer stingier programs show a clear trend: Offering displaced workers better benefits (a) extends the period of unemployment (which tends to be the focus of most conservatives) and (b) means that when working people do re-enter the work force, they do so at a higher average wage. A similar dynamic has been demonstrated in terms of healthcare: People with access to paid sick leave and other health benefits switch jobs less frequently than those who don't and have longer average tenure and higher earnings. In all of these areas, the United States has undergone what Jacob Hacker calls the "great risk shift." Hacker describes how the American "framework of security has unraveled, leaving Americans newly exposed to the harshest risks of our turbulent economy: losing a good job, losing healthcare, losing retirement savings, losing a home -- in short, losing a stable, financial footing." All of these things offer unique opportunities to fall out of the middle class -- opportunities for downward mobility that simply don't exist for the Canadian or French worker, who can rely on a progressive state to help preserve his or her income level when those kinds of disasters arise. Ultimately, the take-away from the decline in American upward mobility is one that progressives have been saying for years: The existence of a middle class is not a natural phenomenon. It was built through real progressive policies like the GI education bill, which gave tens of millions of Americans (including my grandfather) access to free college tuition and low-cost loans to start businesses or buy homes. It was created by providing quality public education, mandating minimum wages and guaranteeing working people the right to organize. After spending three decades unraveling those kinds of protections -- all have been subjected to death "by a thousand small cuts" over the past 30 years -- we're no longer a mobile society. No longer is it the case that the accident of one's birth doesn't dictate one's life chances in America, and that's a wholly predictable result of the rise of the conservative backlash. Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer. ) 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Wed Dec 12 16:17:34 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:17:34 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Gravel Calls for Investigation of 2005 Green Zone Rape f US KBR Employee Message-ID: <20071212161734.43517613@viola.tamara-b.org> Mike Gravel Campaign 2008 - Dec 11, 2007 Gravel For President 2008 Press Release Senator Gravel Calls for Investigation of Green Zone Rape, Prosecution of Those Involved Los Angeles, CA - Former U.S. Senator and Presidential Candidate Mike Gravel called upon U.S. law enforcement to immediately investigate the rape case of 22-year-old Jamie Leigh Jones in Baghdad and prosecute under U.S. law those who are found guilty. Ms. Jones alleges she was brutally gang-raped by co-workers while employed by Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) in the Green Zone in Baghdad. Gravel also called upon the Iraqi parliament to immediately revoke Order 17, which gives private contractors immunity from Iraqi law. "The issue here is that there are no laws with which to prosecute Americans who commit crimes while in Iraq," said Gravel. "There is an atmosphere of lawlessness where government contractors are accountable to no one. This incident must be investigated, and if the accused are found guilty they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of U.S. law." Ms. Jones claims the attack occurred two years ago while working for KBR in Baghdad's Green Zone. She said a medical examination performed by army doctors confirmed she had been sexually assaulted. However, the rape kit vanished after it was handed over to KBR security officers after officials there promised a full investigation. At the time of the alleged incident, KBR was a subsidiary of Halliburton. Today, more than two years later, Ms. Jones says that KBR and the U.S. government are still covering up the incident. In a statement, KBR said it was "instructed to cease" its own investigation by U.S. government authorities "because they were assuming sole responsibility for the criminal investigations." "If George Bush refuses to investigate this horrendous crime, we can add accessory to rape to the long list of crimes committed by this administration," said Gravel. Ms. Jones said that after the rape she was held by armed KBR security guards in a shipping container for at least 24 hours with no food or water. A sympathetic guard gave her his cell phone to call her father in Texas, who then called his congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, to help get his daughter out of Baghdad. Learn More http://www.gravel2008.us Alex Colvin Press Secretary 310-650-7481 alex at gravel2008.us Gravel For President 2008 | P.O. Box 948 | Arlington | VA | 22216-0948 From nytr at blythe-systems.com Wed Dec 12 16:20:29 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:20:29 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Reprod. Freedom: Egg Initiatives Crack Open Case Against Women Message-ID: <20071212162029.412d4fd6@viola.tamara-b.org> Womens eNews - Dec 12, 2007 http://www.womensenews.org Egg Initiatives Crack Open the Case Against Women By Gloria Feldt - WeNews commentator (WOMENSENEWS)--Every sperm is sacred when it has fertilized an egg, to paraphrase Monty Python's satirical lyric from "The Meaning of Life." But all joking aside, the meaning of a woman's life will likely be before voters next year in states where efforts to grant legal personhood to fertilized eggs are on the ballots. Colorado's proposed initiative extends the state's constitutional protections to "any human being from the moment of fertilization." The Colorado Supreme Court has approved that wording and it will appear on the ballot if it garners just 76,000 signatures. Similar initiatives and referenda are in various stages of development in Michigan, Mississippi and Montana. And it's highly likely the wave will extend far beyond states that begin with "M." If passed, women would become less than second-class citizens. Our status as persons would become legally subordinate to fertilized eggs even before a pregnancy is established. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, the U.S. Supreme Court's Gonzales v. Carhart decision last April--for the first time giving more value to potential fetal life than to the pregnant woman's life and health--demonstrates that threats to federal protection for reproductive rights are real. The center's attorneys predict at least 30 states--including Colorado, Mississippi and Michigan--would outlaw abortion in a nanosecond absent federal restraints. But I'm not ringing alarm bells. Opportunity Knocks I'm sounding the gong of opportunity. Fetal personhood initiatives could be the best thing since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973. Maybe even since Griswold v. Connecticut made birth control legal in 1965. That's if, and only if, the pro-choice movement confronts the challenge head on and goes boldly toward a new moral rhetoric and legal agenda rooted in human rights. Roe and Griswold based their expansion of women's rights on a presumed constitutional right to privacy which, though valuable and necessary, doesn't speak to higher-order ethics. So privacy isn't always sufficient to protect women's bodily integrity and moral standing in the law. Let's face it: Weigh the moral scales of privacy against life and there is no contest. That's precisely why a woman's right to her own life in full, not just physical survival, must be given sufficient weight to tip the scales of justice to a human rights framework for reproductive self-determination. The reason reproductive rights, including the right to choose abortion, are advancing in many--even unlikely and more religious--parts of the world like Mexico, Ethiopia and Portugal is because proponents of these advances are grounding their jurisprudence and rhetoric in human rights agendas. Human rights also pack a more compelling moral punch than does the concept of choice. To me, "choice" means nothing less than the basis for all morality. But "choice" has been used for so long in a commercial sense (e.g., you get to choose the color of your lipstick) that its usefulness in arguing the meaning of life has been compromised. U.S. women--once at the vanguard and now in danger of full retreat--must demand that our childbearing decisions are honored as ours--and ours alone--to make. The brazen clarity of the motivation of the egg-first push gives us a golden opportunity to affirm women's human rights and be resolute in expecting our society to display a sense of justice toward us. Controversy Is Good Having been in this battle for many years, I understand why the thought of fighting it out vote by vote over a subject many Americans would as soon not think about strikes fear into the hearts of veteran activists for a woman's right to choose. There's no question such campaigns consume vast financial and human resources better spent providing reproductive health care and education. And it's always risky to pit the idea of "baby," to which people respond with unconditional love, against the idea of "woman," which they may say they value in the abstract but on a case-by-case basis judge rather harshly. But controversy grabs public attention. It creates a platform for messages otherwise lost in media overload. When an ambivalent electorate has had to grapple with such fundamental issues, time after time they have come down on the side of common sense, provided they have adequate information and courageous leadership willing to take a clear stand. I learned this firsthand when anti-choice forces in Arizona (where I was then CEO of a Planned Parenthood affiliate) announced they were launching a 1992 ballot initiative to outlaw almost all abortions, "The Preborn Child Protection Amendment." Pro-choice hand-wringing was rampant. I predicted it would be the best organizing vehicle we could possibly have. Despite being outspent 4-to-1, we defeated the initiative 2-to-1 in a typically red state. Last year South Dakota voters turned back their state legislature's draconian abortion ban, though by a much smaller margin, smaller in my view because the debate centered on circumstances justifying abortion rather than principles of women's self-determination. Voters Reject Anti-Choice Measures In between, almost every anti-choice ballot measure has been defeated by a vote of the people. The same can happen in Colorado and the M-states and beyond, but only if the pro-choice movement embraces the opportunity and truly becomes the reproductive justice movement advocating for the human rights of women. So far, reactions have been disappointingly mired in the ruts of old thinking. "All fertilized eggs could use the courts, and that lays the foundation for a potential onslaught," a Colorado NARAL representative said. Yes, a court quagmire could result. But the legal minutiae are not what matter most. Nor should we give in to the very real temptations to treat the whole thing as a hoot. Yes, it's absurd to wonder about our new egg-dated birthdays and to point out that pregnant women travelling overseas might have to get passports for their fetuses. It's somewhat more compelling to speculate that hormonal or intrauterine birth control would be criminalized. Those approaches might win short-term victories, but over time they will push our rights to the vanishing point like Mum and Dad's 63 children in the Python spoof. The kids were eventually sold for medical experimentation because their parents, whose religious ideology deemed every sperm sacred, couldn't afford to care for them once born. The newest ballot measures put the core question of the relative value of women and fetuses front and center. It's a public debate that, if engaged fully and courageously, will write a new refrain: Every woman's life is sacred. [Gloria Feldt is the co-author with Kathleen Turner of the forthcoming book "Send Yourself Roses," a political commentator, and former president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.] For more information: Hot Flash Report, "When is an egg not an egg," by Warren M. Hern, M.D.: - http://www.hotflashreport.com/story/2007/12/4/2010/39288 RH Reality Check, "Unsafe, Illegal and On a Prayer" by Cristina Page: - http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2007/12/04/unsafe-illegal-and-on-a-prayer-the-no-roe-plan Center for Reproductive Rights Report: "What if Roe Fell": - http://www.reproductiverights.org/pub_bo_whatifroefell2e.html Copyright 2007 Women's eNews. From nytr at blythe-systems.com Wed Dec 12 16:26:14 2007 From: nytr at blythe-systems.com (All the News That Doesn't Fit) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:26:14 -0500 Subject: [NYTr] Env: Ominous Arctic melt worries experts Message-ID: <20071212162614.45356435@viola.tamara-b.org> AP via Yahoo - Dec 11, 2007 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071211/ap_on_sc/arctic_melt Ominous Arctic melt worries experts By SETH BORENSTEIN AP Science Writer An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years. Greenland's ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer's end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press. "The Arctic is screaming," said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government's snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo. Just last year, two top scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040. This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions." So scientists in recent days have been asking themselves these questions: Was the record melt seen all over the Arctic in 2007 a blip amid relentless and steady warming? Or has everything sped up to a new climate cycle that goes beyond the worst case scenarios presented by computer models? "The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming," said Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal. "Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines." It is the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels that produces carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, responsible for man-made global warming. For the past several days, government diplomats have been debating in Bali, Indonesia, the outlines of a new climate treaty calling for tougher limits on these gases. What happens in the Arctic has implications for the rest of the world. Faster melting there means eventual sea level rise and more immediate changes in winter weather because of less sea ice. In the United States, a weakened Arctic blast moving south to collide with moist air from the Gulf of Mexico can mean less rain and snow in some areas, including the drought-stricken Southeast, said Michael MacCracken, a former federal climate scientist who now heads the nonprofit Climate Institute. Some regions, like Colorado, would likely get extra rain or snow. More than 18 scientists told The AP that they were surprised by the level of ice melt this year. "I don't pay much attention to one year ... but this year the change is so big, particularly in the Arctic sea ice, that you've got to stop and say, 'What is going on here?' You can't look away from what's happening here," said Waleed Abdalati, NASA's chief of cyrospheric sciences. "This is going to be a watershed year." 2007 shattered records for Arctic melt in the following ways: 552 billion tons of ice m