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, su