From shimogamo at attglobal.net Thu May 1 03:39:12 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 01 May 2008 18:39:12 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Business As Usual Message-ID: <48198FC0.90107@attglobal.net> by John Michael Greer The Archdruid Report (April 23 2008) Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society Those of us who are watching the crisis of industrial society arrive on schedule take our omens where we find them, and one appeared yesterday morning in the unlikely form of an internet ad riding shotgun on a peak oil blog. The header was striking enough - "Oil Will Hit $100!" - or it would have been, except that one of the main benchmark grades of crude oil closed not far below $120 a barrel that evening. When the ads on your computer screen have already been left in the dust by the headlines, it's fair to say, yesterday's assumptions are in serious need of revision. Meanwhile, rolling blackouts and food shortages are making life more difficult for people in many of the world's poorer nations. Even in the United States, where instant availability of consumer products is generally considered an inalienable right, the first spot shortages of grain products have made ripples in the media. I won't even get into the plunging real estate prices and financial implosions along the route of the slow-motion train wreck the global economy resembles so much these days. One way or another, it's turning into a bad week for believers in an imminent return to what most people nowadays consider business as usual. Yet there's an irony, a rich one, in the chorus of reassurances still rising from the mainstream media across the industrial world. Like the frogs in Aesop's fable, they praised the replacement of the boring King Log of New Deal economic regulations and Seventies energy-efficiency standards by the far more exciting King Stork of the unfettered market, only to find that too much excitement in the economic sphere has its downside; their attempt to return to a free market succeeded mostly in kickstarting a recurrence of the cycle of disastrous depressions that reached its crescendo in 1929 and bringing about a recurrence of the energy crises of the 1970s, but on a larger scale. Before you decide to return to business as usual, in other words, it's useful to have some sense of what business as usual actually is. We are arguably facing a much more threatening example of the same phenomenon right now, as the fuel gauge on the world's oil, coal, and natural gas supplies moves visibly in the direction of that unwelcome letter E. For the last three centuries or so, a steadily increasing flow of cheap abundant fossil fuel energy has driven the growth of industrial societies across much of the world. For the last century, since petroleum replaced coal as industrial civilization's prime mover, and widespread electrification made it possible to apply fossil fuels at second hand to most business and domestic energy needs, most of the work done in the industrial world has been done by machines powered directly or indirectly by fossil fuels. This seems perfectly normal to most of us who have grown up in the industrial world. Up until very recently, essentially all the talk about the disparity between the world's industrial societies and the rest of the planet focused on how to bring the Third World "into the twenty-first century". The phrase itself betrays the huge burden of ideology that shaped that discussion - the belief, as potent and devoutly held as any other religion, that history progresses straight to us, that any different social arrangement is simply some version of our own outmoded past, and that our peculiar and extravagant way of managing human communities is thus as inevitable as it is inevitably beneficent. Yet the whole debate was also an exercise in futility. We are seeing right now what happens when an appreciable number of people in the world's nonindustrial societies do exactly what so many decades of rhetoric insisted they ought to, and claim a share of the world's fossil fuels and industrial output. The limits to growth were always there; it was merely the political arrangements that restricted the benefits of industrialism to a small portion of the human species that made it look as though unlimited growth was even an option. What we most need to realize at this juncture is that the way things have been in the world's industrial societies over the last century or so is in no way normal. It's precisely equivalent to the new lifestyle adopted by winners of a lottery whose very modest income has suddenly leapt upward by $1 million a year or so. After a few years, the lottery winners might well become accustomed to the privileges and possessions that influx of wealth made possible, and children growing up in such a family might never realize that life could be any other way. The hard fact remains, though, that when the lottery money runs out, it runs out, and if no provision has been made for the future, the transition from a million dollars a year to the much more modest income available from an ordinary job can be very, very rough. The huge distortions imposed on the modern industrial nations by the flood of cheap abundant energy that washed over them in the 20th century can be measured readily enough by a simple statistic. In America today, our current energy use works out to around 1000 megajoules per capita, or the rough equivalent of 100 human laborers working 24-hour days for each man, woman, and child in the country. The total direct cost for all this energy came to around $500 billion a year in 2005, the last year for which I was able to find statistics, or about $1667 per person per year. Now consider how much it would cost to hire human laborers to perform the same amount of work. At the current federal minimum wage of $5.75 an hour, hiring 100 workers in three shifts to provide the equivalent amount of energy would cost each American $512,811 a year, or about 308 times as much as the energy costs - and this doesn't count payroll taxes, health insurance, paid vacations and the like. Mind you, it would also require the US to find food, housing, and basic services for an additional workforce of thirty billion people, but we can let the metaphor go before tackling issues on that scale. What makes this huge disparity relevant is that as recently as a hundred years ago, the majority of work done even in the most advanced industrial societies was done by human beings using hand tools. Kitchens had servants instead of appliances; factories and shops had workbenches instead of industrial robots; the functions now carried out by computers were performed instead by legions of clerks wielding pen and ink. Go back a little further in history, to the time when fossil fuels hadn't yet become a significant energy source, and human muscles and minds did the vast majority of work of all kinds, with modest supplements from animal muscle, biomass, wind, and water power. The familiarity of our current arrangements, and the rhetoric of progress we use to justify those arrangements, make it easy to dismiss such a human-powered economy as some sort of primitive oddity that existed only because people didn't yet know any better. Look at the disparity in economic terms and a different picture emerges. In a society without access to cheap abundant energy resources, it makes much more economic sense to train and employ a human worker than to develop a machine to fill the same niche; except in special circumstances, the additional cost of building, powering, maintaining, and operating the machine more than outweighs the additional benefits of mechanical speed and regularity. This was why ancient Rome and imperial China, both of which had a solid understanding of mechanical principles and sophisticated technical traditions, never had industrial revolutions of their own. Lacking massive energy supplies of the sort that made modern industrial society possible, it simply made more economic sense to invest the available resources into the labor force. The Romans did this the cheap, crude, and ultimately ineffective way, by expanding a slave economy to the breaking point; the Chinese did it far more sustainably and effectively by evolving an extraordinarily robust system of small-scale capitalism, on the one hand, and equally durable traditions of specialized craftsmanship on the other. All this has a pressing relevance to the present situation, because we're running out of the energy resources that make it possible for every man, woman and child in America to dispose of the equivalent of $512,811 in labor every year. It's as though the thirty billion invisible guest workers whose sweat powers the American economy are quitting their jobs one by one, and moving back home to the Paleozoic. When the process completes itself, and the long curve of depletion finally sinks low enough that it's no longer economically worthwhile to extract the remaining dregs of fossil fuel from the ground, the amount of labor each of us will have at our disposal will be much, much less than it is today. With any luck, it'll be more than 1/308th as much - we know more about collecting and using energy than the Romans or the Chinese did, and may well be able to get enough renewable energy sources up and running in time to matter. Still, it's mere wishful thinking to assume that the universe is obliged to give us another vast windfall of cheap abundant energy to replace the one we've wasted so enthusiastically over the last few centuries, and none of the proposed replacements for fossil fuels seem likely to live up to their billing. On a finite planet subject to the laws of thermodynamics, claims that the trajectory of industrialism must inevitably continue into the future are statements of faith, not of fact. Far more likely is the reemergence of an economy in which the work of human hands and minds is once again the main source of economic value - and with luck and hard work, it may be a good deal closer to the Chinese than the Roman model. In a low-energy economy, after all, human beings have huge economic advantages over machines. Machines do not develop their own energy sources and find their own raw materials, much less manufacture their own replacements, and the products of a given machine do not improve over time all by themselves, as the products of a farmer or a craftsperson so often do. The farmers of the future may well use intensive organic methods rather than the field agriculture of an earlier day, just as the craftspeople of the future may well spend some of their time crafting solar hot water heaters and shortwave radios. Still, this sort of handicraft economy is a mature and effective social technology, and far and away the most common way societies provide for the needs of their members. It is, one might say, business as usual. _____ ?John Michael Greer has been active in the alternative spirituality movement for more than 25 years, and is the author of a dozen books, including The Druidry Handbook (Weiser, 2006). He lives in Ashland, Oregon. http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/04/business-as-usual.html#links TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From critical.montages at gmail.com Thu May 1 06:55:49 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 08:55:49 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Dockworkers Plan Walkout over Iraq (without Formal ILWU Support) Message-ID: Apparently the top ILWU officials' initial reluctant consent (cf. ) to this action has been withdrawn. -- Yoshie Dockworkers plan walkout over Iraq WARS: Workers don't have formal union support, but some are expected to skip jobs to protest actions in Iraq, Afghanistan. By Art Marroquin, Staff Writer Article Launched: 04/30/2008 06:41:51 AM PDT West Coast dockworkers plan to walk off the job Thursday to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though the action doesn't have the formal support of their employers or the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. It was unclear how successful the effort will be at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, where a group of longshore workers admitted uncertainty to how widely the plan was received by other dockworkers. "There are lots of members who are expressing their personal views and committing to this voluntary action," said Craig Merrilees, an ILWU spokesman. ILWU executives had initially given their blessing to an eight-hour work stoppage during the busy day shift, which was suggested two months ago during a union caucus in San Francisco. A clause in the union's current contract allow workers to hold monthly "stop-work" meetings during the evening shift, when cargo activity is considered to be lighter. The union withdrew its support shortly after the Pacific Maritime Association denied the union's request for the walkout. An arbitrator ruled last week that the union had to inform its members about the change in plans. As a result, any work stoppage held Thursday will be initiated by the union's rank-and-file members, not by union executives, according to Merrilees. "In light of those developments, we hope that May 1 will come and go without disruption," said Steve Getzug, a spokesman for the PMA, which represents the West Coast's shippers. "We're anticipating that May 1 is a regular work day," he said. Workers who choose to walk off the job Thursday might face some sort of discipline, but it was unclear what avenues the employers would pursue. Immigration rights groups also plan to hold a series of marches and rallies in Los Angeles and cities across the country on Thursday to call for reforms in immigration policies. Some port truck drivers and dockworkers have resisted signing up for the federal Transportation Workers Identification Credential because undocumented workers do not qualify for the high-tech security card. art.marroquin at dailybreeze.com -- Yoshie From fentona at shaw.ca Thu May 1 08:44:49 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Thu, 01 May 2008 07:44:49 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Mugabe: Pariah or scapegoat? Message-ID: Pariah or scapegoat? April 30, 2008 Antony Black The Hamilton Spectator (Apr 30, 2008) http://www.thespec.com/Opinions/article/361955 According to the Western mainstream media, Robert Mugabe is another pariah (or "monster," according to a recent column by Gwynne Dyer) of the ilk of Slobodan Milosevic. However, just as in the case of Milosevic, the Western demonization of Mugabe is a piece of pure theatre, a transparent, politically motivated hatchet job. But, first, what's all the fuss about? The problems started at the very outset of independence in 1979. At that time, the vast majority of the country's arable land was held by a few thousand white farmers, mostly descendants of the original British settlers who had taken the land by force a century earlier. Under pressure, the fledgling independent state agreed to a land transfer agreement that was called "willing buyer, willing seller." The British government would ante up money to help poor, black Zimbabweans (many being veterans of the independence struggle) buy back the land from white farmers -- when and if, of course, the latter chose to sell. However, even this agreement was too much "reform" for the likes of Britain, which in 1997 reneged on its financial commitments. The glacial pace of "land reform," then, was a sore that continued to fester until Mugabe, under pressure from the veterans, finally passed legislation that led to the seizure of nearly 1,500 farms owned by white Zimbabweans. At that point all hell broke loose and Mugabe became the overnight international pariah we all love to hate. But, of course, there is much more beneath the surface of this political iceberg than just a few confiscated farms. Both Washington and London hate Mugabe on a number of counts, including: * His abandonment in the late '90s of International Monetary Fund- mandated "structural adjustment programs" (designed to rob the poor to pay rich, foreign investors and such.) * His refusal to privatize every national institution in sight. * The fact that he sent troops to support Laurent Kabila's government in the Congo (which the United States was attempting to overthrow, and to which the Rwandan debacle was related). * The threat he poses to vested British economic interests and companies. * The fact that his fast-track land reform is a deeply troubling symbol to neighbouring countries such as South Africa, which, despite the fall of apartheid, has become mired in a devil's pact with old, elite interests and has done virtually nothing to redistribute wealth or land to its people. Moreover, the economic disarray of the country is, in large part, a direct result of the "international community's" deliberate undermining of the economy. Thus, the IMF, the World Bank and the International Development Association have all either frozen loans, blocked Zimbabwe from obtaining credit vital to its food and energy security, engaged in totally illegitimate economic sanctions, and/or threatened other nations with sanctions should they do business with it. In December 2001, the U.S. government passed its Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, which further tightened the screws on a nation already reeling under what amounts, in essence, to a form of collective (i.e. immoral and illegal) punishment. Considering that Zimbabwe imports 100 per cent of its oil, and 40 per cent of its electrical equipment and spare parts, these sanctions and interferences have, single-handedly, destroyed or substantially hobbled the country's industrial and agricultural sectors. None of this is to say that Mugabe hasn't acted harshly to crack down on internal dissent. But one must immediately counter with the fact that Zimbabwe is very much the subject of extensive foreign subversion. Much like the so-called "colour revolutions" in Serbia, Belarus, Georgia and Ukraine -- and numerous other attempted "revolutions" across the globe -- Zimbabwe's "independent" oppositional groups have received extensive funds, equipment and organizational support from the likes of the U.S. State Department, USAID and the ubiquitous U.S.- funded National Endowment for Democracy (called essentially the "civilian" arm of the CIA). And, of course, the international media can be relied upon to conjure their usual bang-up demonization campaign. Meanwhile, we hear not a media peep about countries right next door. Such as Tanzania, where even the barest hint of a strike is met with state violence and imprisonment. Or Rwanda, where under the Western-backed Tutsi leadership, thousands are routinely "disappeared." Or Uganda, where there has not been a free election since Yoweri Museveni came to power in 1986. Then again, according to a recent update by the Oxford Research Bureau, the United States and Britain (with extensive support from Canada through its sub-imperial role in Afghanistan) are now responsible for the deaths of 1.3 million people in Iraq since 2003. "Pariahs" and "monsters," it seems, are very much in the eye of the beholder. Antony Black lives in Hamilton. From fentona at shaw.ca Thu May 1 08:48:30 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Thu, 01 May 2008 07:48:30 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Ideological Mine Fields Message-ID: Wednesday, April 30, 2008 Ideological Mine Fields By Stephen Gowans http://gowans.blogspot.com/2008/04/ideological-mine-fields.html It?s easy to rail against The Times of London, The Telegraph, Canada?s The National Post and scores of US equivalents for being the worst kind of purveyors of right-wing propaganda. These advocates of all that is backward, with their philosophy of unremitting indulgence for the rich and limitless harshness for the poor, wear their reactionary, jingoist attitudes on their sleeves. They strive to be ?in your face? ? and are. But because they make no secret of their right-wing prejudices, their propaganda value in the larger population is approximately zero. These newspapers consciously cater to a right-wing constituency. There?s no need to worry about stumbling into ideological mine fields here; the mine field has been conveniently fenced off and bright warning signs have been deployed along the periphery. More dangerous, like a mine field cleverly concealed beneath an inviting patch of turf sporting signs reading: ?Please walk on the grass? are the respectable, seemingly balanced, quality newspapers. They share the same right-wing prejudices, but skillfully disguise them and package them to be palatable to those who aren?t inclined to spout right-wing shibboleths. Chomsky, Herman and others have been dissecting the reporting of these newspapers ? the New York Times in particular ? to show that the biases of so-called liberal media tilt just as strongly toward ruling class interests as their unabashedly right-wing counterparts do. The genius of the liberal media lies in reproducing ruling class ideology without seeming to ? the deception aided by their being starkly different on the surface from their conspicuously right-wing cousins. The same can be said of progressive and radical sources of information. In societies dominated by hereditary capitalist families and corporate wealth there are few places hived off from the influence of those who own the society?s productive assets. One way in which the corporate ruling class extends its influence to the progressive and radical communities is through buffer organizations. Buffer organizations include foundations, as well as government agencies that have names that appeal to traditional progressive concerns about peace and democracy. The United States Institute for Peace, for example, sounds like it might engage in the kind of work progressives can applaud, but is a buffer organization of the US State Department and Pentagon. The National Endowment for Democracy, which claims to promote democratization around the world, appears to be engaged in praiseworthy work, but works to destabilize foreign countries whose economic policies are not conducive to the interests of US investment banks and corporations. It is through these buffer organizations that wealthy individuals like billionaire financier George Soros and former Michael Milken right- hand man Peter Ackerman, hereditary capitalist families like the Fords, Rockefellers and Carnegies, and the governments they dominate, connect with the progressive community. These connections reach into sources of progressive and radical news and analysis. Consider two recent examples. Last March, Z-Net published an article on Zimbabwe by a founding member of the Movement for Democratic Change, a coalition of foreign-funded civil society organizations that came together in 2000 to oppose Zimbabwe?s Zanu-PF government as it was about to embark on a program of fast-track land reform. The leader of the MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai, acknowledged in 2002 that the MDC is funded by the British government and European corporations. Both Washington and London have since openly admitted to bankrolling Zimbabwe?s opposition and its civil society adjuncts. The author of the piece, Grace Kwinjeh, who has traveled to Washington on George Soros? tab to confer with Washington?s regime changers on how to get rid of the Mugabe government, failed to acknowledge her MDC credentials, passing herself off as an independent journalist (kind of like Donald Rumsfeld writing commentary on US elections for a Zimbabwean audience while pretending to be an independent US journalist.) To give the article a radical feel, Patrick Bond added his name as co-author. Bond had assured progressives in a Counterpunch article last year that the Western funded Zimbabwean underground movements Zvakwana and Sokwanele, which count among their number ?a conservative white businessman expressing a passion for freedom, tradition, polite manners and the British Royals? represent an ?independent? left. In Bond?s and Kwinjeh?s lexicon, ?US/British funded fifth columnist? equals ?independent.? In April, MRZine published an article titled ?China still a small player in Africa,? by Firoze Manji, the director of Fahuma and editor of Pambazuka News. Pambazuka News operates on grants from the Ford Foundation and George Soros. Fahuma is backed by the US Congress- funded Media Institute of Southern Africa, the European Union, and the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. (You can read Bond on Pambazuka News, too.) How far does Grace Kwinjeh stray from the views of the MDC when she?s masquerading as an independent journalist, and how far do the views of the MDC stray from its regime change underwriters in Washington and London? Are Manji?s views independent of the corporate foundations, wealthy individuals and imperialist governments who allow Pambazuka News and Fahuma to operate, and provide him a remunerative and interesting job? You don?t have to log onto Z-Net to find out what the MDC?s views are and you don?t need to read MRZine to discover what the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, George Soros and the Ford Foundation think about Africa. But if you go to these sources directly, you know what you?re getting into. Not so if you go to Z-Net and MRZine; you might think you?re getting an ?independent? left view, but you could be getting a ruling class view, repackaged to be leftist-friendly. This mine field doesn?t come with warning signs. From fentona at shaw.ca Thu May 1 10:39:10 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Thu, 01 May 2008 09:39:10 -0700 Subject: [R-G] The Fed Sinks the Dollar Message-ID: May 1, 2008 The Price-Wage Squeeze The Fed Sinks the Dollar By MICHAEL HUDSON http://counterpunch.com/hudson05012008.html Against the recommendations of most economists and even the Financial Times of London, the Federal Reserve Board yesterday cut its discount rate by yet another quarter-point, to just 2%. Ostensibly, the intention is to try and spur economic ?recovery? ? as if a cut in the interest rates would do this. At first glance this seems to reflect the Fed?s ideology that manipulating the interest alone can expand or contract the economy ? as if it is like a balloon, with its structure is pre-printed on it, to be inflated or deflated at will to control the level of activity. This simplistic philosophy was a hallmark of the Greenspan era. Changing the interest rate alone meant that the Fed didn?t have to ?think,? didn?t have to regulate markets, raise reserve requirements on bank loans to fuel the asset-price inflation that the Fed confused with real ?wealth creation.? It didn?t have to regulate subprime lending or rain in widespread financial fraud. All it had to do was raise interest rates when this gave banks an opportunity to charge more and increase their earnings ? or cut interest rates to lower cost of bank borrowing from the Fed. But surely not even the ideologically hide-bound Federal Reserve can still imagine that a structural problem ? the looming depression from the Fed?s favoritism to the banking sector promoting de- industrialization of the economy ? can be solved by lowering interest rates yet again. While the Fed lowers its rate for lending to banks, these banks have not been passing on the rate cuts to their customers. Credit card rates are going up, and entire Christmas trees of penalties are further increasing banks? rake-off. Mortgage rates remain high, so that real estate markets remain in the doldrums. The banks simply are not lending. What they are doing is speculating, above all against the dollar. They thus are emulating what Japanese banks did after that nation?s financial bubble burst in 1990. Japan?s banks became the most active players in the international ?carry? trade: borrowing at very low interest rates in a weak currency (the yen after 1990, the dollar today) to lend to high-interest borrowers, preferably with strong or at least stable currencies (such as to Iceland before it became so debt-ridden that its currency began to collapse last year; and today, the to European borrowers in euros). So fiat US credit is being directed to Europe. US banks create or borrow credit at 2%, and lend it out at 6% or more ? and get a speculative foreign-currency gain as the euro continues to rise against the dollar. The aim evidently the same as it was in Japan after 1990. Many banks are nearly insolvent as a result of the b ad real estate loans on their balance sheets. To rescue them (so that it is not necessary to nationalize them, as England recently had to do with Northern Trust) is to help banks ?earn their way out of debt? ? by making profitable loans. But bank lending and profitability has become decoupled from the economy at large. Banks are not lending to finance tangible capital investment and new hiring. Helping them thus does not help pull the US economy out of the deepening depression. (A recession is short and is followed by recovery. Today?s looming economic depression is headed toward a widespread forfeiture and transfer of property from debtors to creditors.) The ultimate effect is to inflate the power of finance, credit and real estate relative to labor?s wages and industrial capital. This is not a way to encourage new tangible investment. It is just the opposite of Keynesianism. Rather than signaling ?euthanasia of the rentier,? it is empowering finance and applying euthanasia to labor and industry. And to Europe, I should add. The Fed?s act to subsidize U.S. bank lending to Europe will help raise the euro?s exchange rate relative to the dollar. This will be a boon to currency speculators. And it will help keep the price of oil and food down to European consumers. But it also will raise the price of European labor and other domestic costs (including the cost of real estate, which is playing a rising role in employee budgets throughout the world). This will tend to make European exports even more expensive in global markets ? including the Airbus, much to the joy of Boeing, and European autos, much to the joy of GM and Ford. (No wonder Kirk Kirkorian recently began buying back into the U.S. auto industry.) In the 1930s, countries competed with one another by imposing rival tariff walls and non-tariff trade barriers (led by the United States) and ?beggar my neighbor? currency depreciation (again, led by the United States). But European central bankers for their part are so brainwashed with modern Chicago School monetarist ideology ? and so unaware of their own continent?s economic history ? that they pursue a knee-jerk reaction to domestic inflation by raising interest rates. This merely increases their currency value all the more, attracting yet more foreign ?carry trade? loans. (Economists call this a ?backward bending demand curve? and find it an ?anomaly,? as they find most reality to be these days.) So while U.S. monetary policy helps subsidize the banking system relative to the industrial sector and labor, European monetary policy goes along with today?s parallel- universe thinking and undercuts its own industry. An innocent victim of the dollar depreciation caused by the Fed?s action will be Third World food-deficit countries whose currencies are tied to the dollar. Latin America, much of Africa an Asia will find that in their currencies the price of raw materials denominated in euros will rise. But their domestic wages and other income for the population at large are not increasing. The wage-price squeeze will go on ? while their oligarchies no doubt contribute by joining the speculative outflow into hard currencies by moving their domestic funds offshore. Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist specializing in the balance of payments and real estate at the Chase Manhattan Bank (now JPMorgan Chase & Co.), Arthur Anderson, and later at the Hudson Institute (no relation). In 1990 he helped established the world?s first sovereign debt fund for Scudder Stevens & Clark. Dr. Hudson was Dennis Kucinich?s Chief Economic Advisor in the recent Democratic primary presidential campaign, and has advised the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and Latvian governments, as well as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002) He can be reached via his website, mh at michael-hudson.com From fentona at shaw.ca Thu May 1 10:43:20 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Thu, 01 May 2008 09:43:20 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Saint Patrick Goes to Haiti Message-ID: Saint Patrick Goes to Haiti by Brian Concannon Jr. Global Research, May 1, 2008 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8862 Saint Patrick is celebrated in Haiti, although not with the green beer and clothes he inspires in the United States. There he is better known as Dambala, a loa or spirit who often appears in the form of the snake in Haiti?s Vodou religion. Dambala and the other spirits were brought from West Africa to Haiti in slave ships that brought the ancestors of today?s Haitians across the Atlantic. Vodou was brutally suppressed, so the Haitians disguised their worship by representing their spirits with Christian symbols and icons. St. Patrick, often painted with snakes at his feet, and himself an escaped slave, must have seemed a good match. So centuries later, prints of St. Patrick with his staff and his bishop?s mitre still preside over the drumming and chanting of vodou ceremonies in Haiti. In the United States, St. Patrick is celebrated with sad songs that recognize the starvation and injustice that drove the ancestors of today?s revelers across the Atlantic. One of the saddest and most popular of these songs, The Fields of Athenry, can bring tears to your eyes, whether it is sung softly in the original folk version or shouted in the punk rock remake by the Dropkick Murphys. The song begins: By a lonely prison wall I heard a young girl calling Michael, they have taken you away For you stole Trevelyn's corn So the young might see the morn Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay. At first blush this is personal tragedy- a young man deported from Ireland (to Australia), leaving his wife and young children behind, perhaps forever. All because he stole food to keep his kids alive. But with more context, the personal tragedy evolves into a natural and economic disaster, and eventually into an outrageous international injustice. The song?s Trevelyn is Sir Charles Edward Trevelyn, a British bureaucrat during the Great Irish Famine of 1845-1849. By 1845 Britain had controlled Ireland for centuries, during which the large British landowners (and a few wealthy Irish ones) had, with government help, pushed Irish peasants into smaller and smaller parcels. Although the Emerald Isle was a fertile country that grew more beef, grain and other food than it needed, most of that food was grown on large estates and exported to Britain. Irish peasants -- the majority of the population -- ate mostly potatoes because that was the only crop they could grow enough of to feed their families on their small plots. So when a fungus killed almost the entire potato crop in 1845 (and again for the next four years), the peasants had nothing to eat. Sir Charles Trevelyn was responsible for managing the British government?s relief efforts during the Famine. These efforts were the outrageous international injustice. British relief programs did save lives, but they did not come close to matching the need, because the government refused to take life-saving measures if they conflicted with its free-market economic theories. Trevelyn himself welcomed the famine as a "mechanism for reducing surplus population." ?Trevelyn?s corn? was dried corn that the British government bought from the U.S. to distribute cheaply to the hungry. The government feared interfering with the free market more than it feared people starving to death, so it refused corn rations to anyone who could theoretically buy food on the market. This included people physically able to work but unable to find jobs in a collapsed economy, and families with any land- even a quarter acre. The economic theories did not fill empty stomachs, so people not theoretically poor enough for help starved to death while food sat undistributed in the warehouses. Meanwhile, the potato blight did not affect other crops, including beef and grain. Ireland continued to be a net exporter of food throughout the famine. Keeping the food in Ireland would have saved lives, but it might have interfered with the free market. So the British kept eating beef and grain imported from a starving Ireland. Some Irish desperately ate their island?s famously green grass: they were found dead, with green stains around their mouths. Trevelyn?s ?mechanism? for reducing Ireland?s population worked. Over one million people- by conservative estimates- were reduced to their graves, starved to death or killed by the diseases of hunger. More than 2 million were forced to flee the island- to America, England, Australia and many other places where St. Patrick is honored. All told, Ireland lost a quarter of its population. Today, the Great Famine is as much a distant memory in Ireland as it is in Boston, New York or San Francisco. After centuries of being one of the poorest nations in Western Europe, Ireland is now one of the wealthiest and peaceful countries in the world, the product of an economic boom fueled by strong government investment, especially in education and infrastructure. But a century and a half after the Great Famine, people in Haiti are still being killed by the same economic theories. Haiti has made headlines recently, for people eating cookies made of salt, butter and brown dirt to hold off starvation. The stories were, at first blush, a personal tragedy (a mother unable to feed her infant son) and a natural and economic disaster (hurricanes, high fuel prices). But with more context, the personal tragedy evolves into an outrageous international injustice. For decades, the World Bank and the Inter-America Development Bank (IDB) propped up Haitian dictators with generous loans. The notorious ?Papa Doc? and ?Baby Doc? -- Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier-- received almost half of Haiti?s current outstanding loans. The Duvaliers used the money to buy warm fur coats and fast cars, and to fund the brutal Tonton Macoute death squads. In return, the international community, especially the United States, received a reliable vote against Fidel Castro in the United Nations and the Organization of American States. The Haitian people received very little from these loans. Since 1980, when Haiti started receiving the Banks? help in earnest, its per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has shrunk by 38.3%. Along the way, Haiti became the poorest country in the Americas, and one of the hungriest countries in the world. Today, about half of school-age kids in Haiti are not in school. Over half of all Haitians struggle to survive on $1 a day or less, and life expectancy is in the mid-50?s. Many of those who can flee do so, including cities like Boston and New York, that sheltered the refugees from Ireland?s famine. The loans lavished on the Duvaliers and other dictators are now due, so Haiti?s elected government is sending almost a million dollars every week to the well-appointed offices of the World Bank and the IDB in Washington. Like Ireland exporting beef while people starved, Haiti is exporting money while people die of poverty. The World Bank and the IDB are not commercial banks. They are funded by our tax dollars, and were not established to make a profit. They are supposed to be, in the World Bank?s words, ?working for a world free of poverty.? Like the British in Ireland, the Banks have their ?relief programs? for Haiti, including programs that will eventually forgive a portion of Haiti?s debt. But like the British response to Ireland?s famine, the Bank programs do not rise to the seriousness of the situation. The Banks? programs are too late -- they will not provide full relief for months, perhaps years. The Banks started their programs in 1996, but would not admit Haiti until 2007. Like the British declaring the starving Irish theoretically able to work, in 2000 the World Bank declared Haiti theoretically able to pay its debts, and therefore ineligible for the Bank?s help: ?[d]espite being very poor and having a relatively significant external debt level, ?. after taking advantage of other sources of debt relief, Haiti?s debt ?. will be reduced to a sustainable level.? So Haiti has just started jumping through the many hoops required to receive relief. The Banks? programs are also too little ? they stop where the requirements of helping poor people conflict with the requirements of the Banks? economic theories. The Banks could simply cancel Haiti?s debts, especially those from loans given to dictators, which would immediately make a million dollars a week available for life-saving government programs. But the very institutions that gave generously to the Duvaliers-- knowing full well how the money was being spent-- now demand ?accountability? from Haiti?s democratic government before cancelling the dictators? debts. Accountability means, in part, that the government has an economic plan that satisfies the Banks? free market theories. Haiti?s plan is not yet available, but the Banks have required other poor countries to demonstrate accountability by slashing public health and education spending. For now, accountability means keeping the $1 million coming every week, while the citizens of Haiti eat dirt. The citizens of the United States could put a stop to this injustice immediately. We pay the largest share of the Banks? costs, and have the largest say in the Banks? governance. If our leaders made cancellation of Haiti?s debt a priority, the debts would be cancelled. Some members of the U.S. House of Representatives have taken the first step towards ending this injustice. In mid-February, Rep. Maxine Waters circulated a letter that 53 of her colleagues signed, urging the U.S. Treasury Department to arrange the immediate suspension of all debt payments from Haiti. The Haiti Debt Cancellation resolution in the House, House Resolution 241, seeks to permanently cancel Haiti?s IDB and World Bank debts, and has 66 co-sponsors. In The Fields of Athenry, Michael calls out his final words to his wife Mary: Against the famine and the Crown I rebelled, they cut me down Now you must raise our child with dignity. If his children survived, Michael?s wish would have eventually come true. Athenry, Ireland, is now a dignified tourist destination and commuter town, known for its quaint medieval buildings and ruins. People do not flee Athenry anymore, or steal corn to feed their children. Instead, people move there for jobs and opportunity - the latest census classifies one in five Athenry residents as ?not Irish.? The children of ?Michel? and ?Marie? in Haiti deserve the same chance at dignity and prosperity that the children of Michael and Mary received. They can take a big step in the right direction if the international community lets Haiti?s government invest in its people, their education and the infrastructure, rather than in payments to wealthy banks. So this St. Patrick?s Day, as we sing about long-ago starvation and injustice in what is now a wealthy island, we should also think about the misery and injustice under St. Patrick?s eyes in Haiti, an outrage we can still do something about. Human rights lawyer Brian Concannon Jr., brian at ijdh.org, directs the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH). More information on the fight to relieve Haiti?s burden of debt can be found on IJDH?s website, From shniad at sfu.ca Thu May 1 12:50:42 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 01 May 2008 11:50:42 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Happy May Day! Message-ID: <200805011850.m41Iogrm008785@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080501/3bc22474/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Thu May 1 13:50:00 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 01 May 2008 12:50:00 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School Message-ID: <200805011950.m41Jo0Q5020946@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080501/d044bb82/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Thu May 1 13:50:35 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 01 May 2008 12:50:35 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Washington Plays Tibet Roulette with China Message-ID: <200805011950.m41JoZ7P022283@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080501/b645b9e4/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Thu May 1 13:51:24 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 01 May 2008 12:51:24 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Afghanistan - A changing war (becoming more like Iraq) Message-ID: <200805011951.m41JpOYG024301@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080501/0e1c01e8/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Thu May 1 13:51:55 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 01 May 2008 12:51:55 -0700 Subject: [R-G] (Biofuels) How the rich starved the world Message-ID: <200805011951.m41Jpt2n025334@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080501/48634e10/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Thu May 1 13:49:27 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 01 May 2008 12:49:27 -0700 Subject: [R-G] A Litany of Horrors Message-ID: <200805011949.m41JnRC1019671@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080501/346c4a0b/attachment.txt From critical.montages at gmail.com Thu May 1 15:31:03 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 17:31:03 -0400 Subject: [R-G] No Taksim May Day in Turkey: 500-900 Demonstrators Detained Message-ID: Clashes mark May Day in Turkey Around 30,000 security personnel have been deployed to enforce a ban on demonstrations [Reuters] Riot police in Turkey have clashed with labour activists trying to gather in Istanbul's Taksim square to celebrate May Day. Police used clubs, tear gas and water cannons on Thursday to disperse workers in different areas of the city. Authorities had warned they would use force to prevent the rallies, which have been banned since 1977. Over 500 demonstrators have been detained and six police officers injured. 'Tough measures' Police wearing gas masks first broke up a crowd that had gathered in front of a labour union office with the intention of walking to Taksim square, where at least 34 demonstrators were killed on May 1, 1977. The workers then ran into the building and police blockaded it, preventing them from leaving. The trade unions later abandoned plans to hold the march, the first time in 30 years they have agreed not to go into the square. Metehan Demir, from the Ankara-based Hurriyet newspaper, told Al Jazeera that the May Day demonstrations this year had turned into a "showdown" between the government and the labour unions over the last week. The unions ultimately decided not to go into Taksim Square on Thursday morning because of "tough measures" by the police, he said. "Earlier this month the unions were fully determined to walk to Taskim Square but later on, through the judiciary and police warnings they saw that the situation was very serious." Demir said the authorities had allowed the unions to demonstrate at other public squares. He said that they had also offered trade union leaders the chance to "lay a wreath at the monuments in Taksin Square ? but unions rejected this offer, saying they wanted to bring the workers along too". The demonstrations were relatively peaceful this year because of the decision not to march into the square, Demir told Al Jazeera. "If the unions had gone in there would have been a big catastrophe. Police would have responded in a very harsh way and easily turned it into a tragedy," he said. Turkish officials have said that they had intelligence that groups of extremists would also seek to provoke unrest during the march. Turkey's Anatolia news agency reported that a man in possession of 17 molotov cocktails was arrested near Taksim. Workers' rights The first of May is marked annually in many countries as a day of labour recognition. Human Rights Watch (HRW), a New York-based rights group, used the day to call on Lebanese authorities and employers to improve treatment of domestic workers. HRW's Nadim Houry said: "On the eve of Lebanese Labour Day, we would like to highlight a huge segment of labourers who are not recognised as such. "They are domestic workers, almost a 100 per cent of whom are foreigners." Workers and activists in the Philippines on Thursday called for a wage increase amid soaring food prices. While in Greece, disruptions to public transport services and domestic flights were expected due to trade union strikes. Thousands of people were expected to turn out in Havana to hear Raul Castro, Cuba's president, give his first May Day address. Overnight, police in the German city of Hamburg arrested several rioters after pre-May Day street protests turned violent. Source: Al Jazeera and agencies Page last updated at 16:16 GMT, Thursday, 1 May 2008 17:16 UK Police break up Turkey marchers Protesters tear-gassed by riot police during May Day clashes in Istanbul Several people collapsed from the effects of tear gas Turkish riot police have used tear gas and water cannon to prevent protesters from staging a banned May Day rally in the centre of Istanbul. The authorities say 505 people were arrested and several were hurt as crowds tried to reach Taksim Square. Stones and bottles were thrown at security forces and police wearing gas masks broke up the demonstrators. The Turkish government banned May Day celebrations in and around the square after 34 people died in 1977. Turkey's three main union confederations had announced they would try to hold a rally, but eventually they gave up because of the clashes. Police set up barricades around the square to enforce the ban, imposed after officials said they had received reports that radicals were planning violent protests. Local media said six police and an unknown number of demonstrators were injured. Calm in Turkey after clashes at major city May Day celebrations Turkish police fired pepper spray and water cannons to prevent crowds gathered to celebrate May Day in Istanbul from marching to Taksim Square where they planned to hold a mass gathering. A total of 530 demonstrators were detained by police, with 38 reported injured in Istanbul, the governor announced. Later in the day, peaceful May 1 celebrations in the capital Ankara turned ugly as police and demonstrators clashed. (UPDATED) Police wearing gas masks first broke up a crowd which had gathered in front of the DISK office in Istanbul's central business and residential Sisli district with the intention of walking to Taksim. The Turkish government had insisted on its rejection to lift the decades-long ban and open Taksim for celebrations, citing security concerns, taking extra ordinary security measures stationing thousands of police across the city. In the days leading up to the May Day celebrations, Turkey's leading labor unions, representing some 3 million workers, reaffirmed their vow to celebrate May Day peacefully in Taksim with an estimated 500,000 people. Police, blocking all the streets leading to Taksim, broke up groups of workers trying to enter the square through various alternative routes, firing tear gas and beating some demonstrators with clubs. Some demonstrators were seen throwing rocks at police. Journalists and people trying to get to work were also affected by the tear gas fired at the demonstrators. The unions ended the march in the Sisli district of Istanbul stating that they did not want to be seen as the government's provocation mechanism. Labor Unions Confederation (DISK) Chairman Suleyman Celebi said that together with Confederation of Public Sector Unions (KESK) Chairman Ismail Hakki Tombul and Turkish Confederation of Labor (Turk-Is) Secretary General Mustafa Turkel, they decided not to push workers towards Taksim Square for a colossal meeting. "Now we are ending the celebrations with common sense, because we don't want to be seen as the government's provocation mechanism," Celebi told reporters on Thursday. "We wanted to gather in Taksim (square) to express our demands with an enthusiastic festival. Now, all squares and the whole Turkey have become Taksim," he said. The governor of Istanbul, Muammer Guler announced that 38 people were injurdd and 530 demonstrations had been detained at the Istanbul rally. The Istanbul Crisis Center had announced that six police were reportedly injured. However, Tombul told ANKA that nearly 900 union members had been detained during the demonstrations. A group of demonstrators later made their way to Taksim's Istiklal Street where police used pepper spray and water cannons to disperse them. Brief scuffles erupted between police and a group from the leftist Freedom and Solidarity Party (ODP) during the mostly peaceful May Day celebrations in the capital Ankara's, Sihhiye Square. Police used pepper spray and batons to disperse the crowd. At least one demonstrator was hospitalized. Turkey banned May Day celebrations in Taksim Square after 36 people were killed on May 1, 1977; a date since referred to as the "Bloody May 1." This event is seen as a turning point in Turkish history and an important factor that paved the way for the military coup in 1980. Still-unidentified armed men opened fire on the crowd of some 1-million-people attending the celebrations. The clashes between left and right political groups in the 1970s had brought Turkey to the brink of civil war. DISK last year attempted to breach the ban and hold celebrations in Taksim. But clashes erupted between the demonstrators and police forces, wounding tens of people. Some 1,000 people were taken into custody in 2007. The Turkish government has decided to celebrate May Day as "Labor and Solidarity Day," but declined to declare it a national public holiday. Observers say the Turkish government is reluctant to lift the ban due to concerns that it could turn into a mass anti-AKP rally over the controversial social security law. -- Yoshie From shniad at sfu.ca Thu May 1 16:01:52 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 01 May 2008 15:01:52 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Canada reaches out to Taliban Message-ID: <200805012201.m41M1qYE022503@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080501/83631892/attachment.txt From suzannedk at gmail.com Thu May 1 16:54:55 2008 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 18:54:55 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School In-Reply-To: <200805011950.m41Jo0Q5020946@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> References: <200805011950.m41Jo0Q5020946@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> Message-ID: Daniel Pipes. a super Mc Carthy Medici of the 21st century, spilling over with politicaly correct Muslm hate, was put up for appointment by Bush and Cheney et al and the House and the Senate, Republican controlled shot him down so, Bush gave him a recess appointment for one year and then created a specail watchdog group for Pipes tp lead ..Pipes was lead attack dog for the destruction of this woman's school, life and reputation. Few or none ever show a bright light on these well 'respected' hatemongers who are useful in that they seem to believe the propaganda of the last six years ..paasionately. Media should shine bright lights on these now pivitol guys.....their vtrol seems to be cut just so that the lack of habeous corpus looks like a chic idea, just in time. Suzanne de Kuyper On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 3:50 PM, Sid Shniad wrote: > > http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/nyregion/28school.html?ex=1210046400 > &en=eb31e0ad46ef2191&ei=5070&emc=eta1 > New York Times April 28, 2008 > BATTLE IN BROOKLYN | A PRINCIPALS RISE AND FALL > Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School > By Andrea Elliott > Debbie Almontaser dreamed of starting a public school like no other in > New York City. Children of Arab descent would join students of other > ethnicities, learning Arabic together. By graduation, they would be > fluent in the language and groomed for the countrys elite colleges. > They would be ready, in Ms. Almontasers words, to become ambassadors > of peace and hope. > Things have not gone according to plan. Only one-fifth of the 60 > students at the Khalil Gibran International Academy are Arab-American. > Since the school opened in Brooklyn last fall, children have been > suspended for carrying weapons, repeatedly gotten into fights and > taunted an Arabic teacher by calling her a terrorist, staff members > and students said in interviews. > The academys troubles reach well beyond its cramped corridors in > Boerum Hill. The schools creation provoked a controversy so incendiary > that Ms. Almontaser stepped down as the founding principal just weeks > before classes began last September. Ms. Almontaser, a teacher by > training and an activist who had carefully built ties with Christians > and Jews, said she was forced to resign by the mayors office following > a campaign that pitted her against a chorus of critics who claimed she > had a militant Islamic agenda. > In newspaper articles and Internet postings, on television and talk > radio, Ms. Almontaser was branded a radical, a jihadist and a 9/11 > denier. She stood accused of harboring unpatriotic leanings and of > secretly planning to proselytize her students. Despite Ms. Almontasers > longstanding reputation as a Muslim moderate, her critics quickly > succeeded in recasting her image. > The conflict tapped into a well of post-9/11 anxieties. But Ms. > Almontasers downfall was not merely the result of a spontaneous outcry > by concerned parents and neighborhood activists. It was also the work > of a growing and organized movement to stop Muslim citizens who are > seeking an expanded role in American public life. The fight against > the school, participants in the effort say, was only an early skirmish > in a broader, national struggle. > Its a battle thats really just begun, said Daniel Pipes, who directs a > conservative research group, the Middle East Forum, and helped lead > the charge against Ms. Almontaser and the school. > In the aftermath of Sept. 11, critics of radical Islam focused largely > on terrorism, scrutinizing Muslim-American charities or asserting > links between Muslim organizations and violent groups like Hamas. But > as the authorities have stepped up the war on terror, those critics > have shifted their gaze to a new frontier, what they describe as > law-abiding Muslim-Americans who are imposing their religious values > in the public domain. > Mr. Pipes and others reel off a list of examples: Muslim cabdrivers in > Minneapolis who have refused to take passengers carrying liquor; > municipal pools and a gym at Harvard that have adopted female-only > hours to accommodate Muslim women; candidates for office who are > suspected of supporting political Islam; and banks that are offering > financial products compliant with sharia, the Islamic code of law. > The danger, Mr. Pipes says, is that the United States stands to become > another England or France, a place where Muslims are balkanized and > ultimately threaten to impose sharia. > It is hard to see how violence, how terrorism will lead to the > implementation of sharia, Mr. Pipes said. It is much easier to see > how, working through the system the school system, the media, the > religious organizations, the government, businesses and the like you > can promote radical Islam. > Mr. Pipes refers to this new enemy as the lawful Islamists. > They are carrying out a soft jihad, said Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a trustee > of the City University of New York and a vocal opponent of the Khalil > Gibran school. > Muslim leaders, academics and others see the drive against the school > as the latest in a series of discriminatory attacks intended to > distort the truth and play on Americans fear of terrorism. They say > the campaign is also part of a wider effort to silence critics of > Washingtons policy on Israel and the Middle East. > This is a political, ideological agenda, said John Esposito, a > professor of international affairs and Islamic studies at Georgetown > University who has been a focus of Mr. Pipess scrutiny. Its an agenda > to paint Islam, not just extremists, as a major problem. > That portrait, Muslim and Arab advocates contend, is rife with a bias > that would never be tolerated were it directed at other ethnic or > religious groups. And if Ms. Almontasers story is any indication, they > say, the message of her critics wields great power. > Ms. Almontaser watched city officials and some of her closest Jewish > allies distance themselves from her as the controversy reached its > peak. She was ultimately felled by an article in The New York Post > that said she had downplayed the significance of T-shirts bearing the > slogan Intifada NYC. > Last month, federal judges issued a ruling related to a lawsuit > brought by Ms. Almontaser to regain her job stating that her words > were inaccurately reported by The Post and then misconstrued by the > press. > While city officials and the Education Department declined to comment > about Ms. Almontaser because of the lawsuit, a lawyer for the city > said she had not been forced to resign. > In her first interview since stepping down, Ms. Almontaser said that > education officials had pressured her to speak to The Post and had > monitored the conversation. After the article was published, she said, > the department issued a written apology in her name, without her > approval. > I kept saying I wanted to set the record straight, said Ms. > Almontaser, 40. And they kept telling me, You cant undo what was done. > A Call to Lead > In April 2005, Debbie Almontaser got a telephone call that would > change her life. The man on the line, Adam Rubin, worked for a > nonprofit organization, New Visions for Public Schools. He was > exploring whether to help the city create a public school that would > teach Arabic. The group already had seed money a $400,000 grant from > the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation but needed the right person to > help lead the venture. > Everywhere Mr. Rubin went from the mayors office to a falafel stand in > Brooklyn people mentioned Ms. Almontaser. She was a teacher, a native > Arabic speaker and arguably the citys most visible Arab-American > woman. > After 9/11, Education Department officials had enlisted Ms. Almontaser > to hold workshops on cultural sensitivity for schoolchildren. She > spread the message that Islam was a peaceful religion. She told of how > her own son had served as a National Guardsman in the clearing effort > at ground zero. She was soon attending interfaith seminars, > befriending rabbis and priests. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg honored her > publicly. She became a ready commentator for the media, prompting some > Muslims to joke that she was the citys talking hijabi. > In fact, it had taken a long time for Ms. Almontaser to embrace the > hijab, or head scarf. Born in Yemen, she was 3 when she moved with her > family to Buffalo. Her parents encouraged her to blend in. She called > herself Debbie rather than Dhabah, her given name. She began wearing a > veil in her 20s, as a Brooklyn mother whose life revolved around PTA > meetings and Boy Scout trips. She took to riding on the back of her > husbands motorcycle, her head scarf tucked beneath a black helmet. She > got used to the stares and learned to be unapologetic. > In the months following the Sept. 11 attacks, she offered other Muslim > women the lessons she had learned: The only way to claim this as your > country is to continue on with your life here, she recalled telling > them. > For years, Ms. Almontaser had hoped to become a principal. But soon > after joining hands with New Visions, she faced her first challenge. > To administer the Gates grant, the school needed a community partner. > Two groups wanted the job: a secular Arab-American social services > agency and a Muslim-led organization that runs Al-Noor School, a > private Islamic establishment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. > Ms. Almontaser said she tried to remain neutral as discord erupted > between the two groups. Quietly, though, she worried that if an > organization linked to a private Islamic school took the lead, the > city would never approve the project, despite the groups pledge to > keep religion out of the curriculum. > Ultimately, a steering committee led by Ms. Almontaser voted in favor > of the social services agency. Leaders of the Muslim group walked away > feeling disrespected and distrustful of her, several of the groups > members said in interviews. It was a rupture that would come back to > haunt Ms. Almontaser. > As preparations moved forward, a design team assembled by Ms. > Almontaser named the school after the Lebanese Christian poet and > pacifist Khalil Gibran. A Palestinian immigrant had suggested the > name, hoping it would deflect any concerns that the school carried a > Muslim orientation. > In February 2007, the Department of Education announced that the > school had been approved. It would eventually encompass grades 6 > through 12, teach half of its classes in Arabic and be among 67 > schools in the city that offer programs in both English and another > language, like Russian, Spanish and Chinese. Ms. Almontaser designed a > recruitment brochure to attract the schools first class of sixth > graders. > The leaflet cited the words of Mr. Gibran: In understanding, all walls > shall fall down. > Opposition Forms > Irene Alter, a peppy, retired Queens schoolteacher, was sitting at her > computer one morning that February when she read an article in The New > York Times about the Khalil Gibran school, she said. A series of > questions flooded her head. > Which courses would be taught in Arabic? How would Israel be treated > in the study of Middle Eastern history? Then in April, she read an > op-ed article by Mr. Pipes in The New York Sun. > Conceptually, such a school could be marvelous, Mr. Pipes wrote, but > in practice, it was certain to be problematic. Arabic-language > instruction is inevitably laden with Pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage, > he wrote, referring to the school as a madrassa, which means school in > Arabic but, in the West, carries the implication of Islamic teaching. > Given how little Mr. Pipes knew about the school at the time, the word > was a bit of a stretch, he said in a recent interview. He defended its > use as a way to get attention for the cause. It got the attention of > Ms. Alter, 60, who contacted Mr. Pipes and, with his encouragement, > helped form a grass-roots organization in response to the school > project. Mr. Pipes joined the advisory board of the group, which > called itself the Stop the Madrassa Coalition. > Mr. Pipes, 58, has emerged as a divisive figure in the post-9/11 era. > An author of 12 books who has a doctorate in history from Harvard, he > has made a career out of studying and critiquing Islam. His research > group, which he established in downtown Philadelphia in the early > 1990s, seeks to define and promote American interests in the Middle > East, according to its Web site. > Among his supporters, Mr. Pipes enjoys a heroic status; among his > detractors, he is reviled. Those sharply divergent views reflect the > passions that infuse Middle Eastern politics, arguably nowhere in the > United States more than in New York City. > Mr. Pipes is perhaps best known for Campus Watch, a national > initiative he created to scrutinize Middle Eastern programs at > colleges and universities. The drive has accused professors of, among > other things, being soft on militant Islam and sympathetic to the > Palestinian cause. It has stirred widespread controversy and, in some > cases, may have undermined professors bids for tenure. > Mr. Pipes was joined in the monitoring effort by other self-declared > watchdogs of militant Islam. Their Web sites are often linked to one > another and their messages interwoven. One critic, David Horowitz, > founded Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, a campaign aimed at college > campuses. He noted in an interview that monitors of radical Islam have > increasingly trained their sights on nonviolent Muslim-Americans. > They dont throw bombs, but they create political cover for ideological > support of this jihadi movement, he said. > Mr. Pipes places Muslims in three categories, he said: those who are > violent, those who are moderate and those in the middle. It is this > middle group, he argued, that now poses the greatest threat to > American values. > Are these people who are not using violence but who are not fully > enthusiastic about this country and its mores, its culture are they on > our side or are they on the other side? he asked. > Ms. Almontaser never considered herself unenthusiastic about America, > she said. But as the conflict over the Khalil Gibran school > intensified, she came to be seen by many through Mr. Pipess lens. In > his article in The Sun, he referred to Ms. Almontaser by her birth > name, Dhabah, and called her views extremist. He cited an article in > which she was quoted as saying about 9/11, I dont recognize the people > who committed the attacks as either Arabs or Muslims. (As The Jewish > Week later reported, Mr. Pipes left out the second half of the quote: > Those people who did it have stolen my identity as an Arab and have > stolen my religion.) > The Stop the Madrassa Coalition focused primarily on Ms. Almontaser as > a strategy, said Mr. Pipes, because the group could get little > information about the school itself. The coalition quickly publicized > several discoveries. Ms. Almontaser had accepted an award from the > Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national Muslim organization > that critics claim has ties to terrorist groups (an assertion the > group adamantly denies). In news articles, Ms. Almontaser had been > critical of American foreign policy and police tactics in fighting > terrorism. She also gave $2,000 to Representative Cynthia A. McKinney > of Georgia, whom Mr. Pipes and others have characterized as an > Islamist sympathizer. (Ms. McKinney, who is no longer in office and > did not respond to requests for an interview, has had a strong > following among Arab-Americans in part because of her criticism of the > Patriot Act.) > Critics of the Madrassa Coalition say its tactics are typical of > campaigns singling out Muslims: They lean heavily on guilt by > association. The nuances of the claims against Ms. Almontaser were > lost as the controversy lit up the blogosphere, said Chip Berlet, a > senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a liberal > organization outside Boston that studies the political right. One Web > site, MilitantIslamMonitor.org, displayed photographs of Ms. > Almontaser wearing her hijab in different styles, suggesting that she > had undergone a public relations makeover to disguise her Islamist > agenda. The criticism of Ms. Almontaser and the school spread to > newspapers, eliciting negative editorials in The Daily News and The > New York Sun. > Ms. Almontaser was stunned, she said: Her school would touch upon > religion only in its global studies class, following the same > curriculum as all New York public schools. She tried to keep her head > down, she said, and set out to recruit students, half of whom she > hoped would be Arab. But opposition to the school mounted after > critics learned that its advisory council included three imams (along > with rabbis and priests), that there would be an internship for > students with a Muslim lawyers association and that the proposal for > the school suggested it might offer halal food. (The advisory council > never met and has since been dismantled, and the school does not offer > halal food, Education Department officials said.) > As the attacks continued, Joel Levy of the New York chapter of the > Anti-Defamation League published a letter defending Ms. Almontaser in > The Sun. Mr. Levy made reference to the possibility that his > organization would provide anti-bias training to Ms. Almontasers > staff. > The letter caused a stir among some Arab-Americans, who were bothered > by Ms. Almontasers ties to Jewish groups. In late June, Aramica, an > Arabic and English newspaper based in Brooklyn, ran a cover story with > the headline Zionist Organization Supports Gibran School Principal, > focusing on the link between Ms. Almontasers school and the > Anti-Defamation League. > In just five months, Ms. Almontasers image had been transformed. She > was rendered a radical Muslim by one group and a sellout by another. > T-Shirts, and a Resignation > At first, some city officials rallied to Ms. Almontasers side. Among > them was David Cantor, the chief spokesman for the Department of > Education, who wrote in an e-mail message to the editor of The New > York Sun, Seth Lipsky: I wont allow Dan Pipes a free pass to smear > Debbie Almontaser as an Islamist proselytizer who denies Muslim > involvement in 9/11. It is a false picture and an ugly effort. > But behind closed doors, department officials were nervous, Ms. > Almontaser recalled. With her help, she said, they drafted a > confidential memo of talking points to review with reporters: the > school was nonreligious, for example, and Ms. Almontaser was a > multicultural specialist and diversity consultant. > The Stop the Madrassa Coalition pressed its campaign. In July, one of > its members, Pamela Hall, made a discovery that would elevate the > controversy. At an Arab-American festival in Brooklyn, she spotted > T-shirts on a table bearing the words Intifada NYC. The organization > distributing them, Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media, trains > young women in community organizing and media production. The group > sometimes uses the office of a Yemeni-American association in Bay > Ridge, Brooklyn. Ms. Almontaser sits on the associations board. > Ms. Hall took a photograph, and a few weeks later, the coalition > announced on its blog that Ms. Almontaser was linked to the T-shirts. > On Aug. 3, Ms. Almontaser received a call from Melody Meyer, a > spokeswoman for the Education Department. What does Intifada NYC mean? > Ms. Almontaser recalled Ms. Meyer asking. > Ms. Almontaser was stumped, she said. She knew of the group. But she > had never heard about the T-shirts, she said she told Ms. Meyer, > adding that intifada meant uprising and was linked to the Arab-Israeli > conflict. > Most reporters lost interest in the T-shirts after Ms. Meyer explained > that neither Ms. Almontaser nor the school was linked to them, but The > Post persisted. Ms. Almontaser said Ms. Meyer and Mr. Cantor pressured > her to respond to the newspaper in an interview. > I said, Wait a minute, recalled Ms. Almontaser, who was critical of > The Posts coverage of Arabs and Muslims. I am not comfortable doing > the interview. > Ms. Meyer promised to monitor the conversation, Ms. Almontaser said, > and Mr. Cantor instructed her not to be apologetic about the T-shirts. > While both Ms. Meyer and Mr. Cantor said they could not comment on the > case, a city lawyer said that Ms. Almontaser was told to avoid > discussing the T-shirts and intifada altogether, and was never > pressured to speak to The Post. > During the Post interview, Ms. Almontaser said, she told the reporter, > Chuck Bennett, that the Arab womens organization was not connected to > her or the school, and that she would never be affiliated with any > group that condoned violence. Then Mr. Bennett asked her for the > origins of the word intifada, she said. > The educator in me responded, Ms. Almontaser said. She explained, with > Ms. Meyer listening in on the three-way phone call, that the root of > the word means shaking off. Ms. Almontaser then offered what she > described as a lengthy explanation about the evolution of the word and > the negative connotation it had developed because of the Arab-Israeli > struggle. > The thought went across my mind to be extremely careful with my words > not to offend the Jewish community and not to offend the Arab-American > community, she said. I was feeling pressure from all sides. > Although Ms. Almontaser said she never spoke to the reporter about the > T-shirts, she defended the girls in the organization because she > believed that the reporter was set on vilifying innocent teenagers. > After the reporter hung up, Ms. Almontaser recalled, Ms. Meyer told > her, Good job. > The next day, The Post ran the article under the headline City > Principal Is Revolting Tied to Intifada NYC Shirts. The article quoted > Ms. Almontaser as saying that the girls in the organization were > shaking off oppression, words that The Post, according to a ruling by > federal appellate judges, attributed to Ms. Almontaser incorrectly and > misleadingly. > Complaints about Ms. Almontaser began pouring into the Education > Department, and Mr. Cantor informed her that an apology would be > issued in her name. Ms. Almontaser objected, she said, and asked that > the department clarify her comments to The Post, which she said were > distorted, rather than apologize. > Mr. Cantor insisted on an apology, she said, and e-mailed her the > proposed wording. The first sentence was not negotiable, she recalled > him telling her. The apology began: The use of the word intifada is > completely inappropriate as a T-shirt slogan for teenagers. I regret > suggesting otherwise. Ms. Almontaser responded in an e-mail message > that Mr. Cantor should change the latter sentence to I regret my > response was interpreted as suggesting otherwise. > The press office issued the original apology. Pressure soon mounted > for Ms. Almontaser to resign. Randi Weingarten, the head of the > teachers union, published a letter in The Post criticizing Ms. > Almontaser for not denouncing ideas tied to violence. On Aug. 9, > Deputy Mayor Dennis M. Walcott asked Ms. Almontaser to step down, she > said. The mayor wants your resignation by 8 a.m. tomorrow so he can > announce it on his radio show, Ms. Almontaser recalled Mr. Walcott > saying. > She said he promised her that in exchange for her resignation, the > school would still open, and she would remain employed. She resigned > the next day, taking an administrative job at the Education > Department. She kept her principals salary of $120,000. > On his radio program, Mayor Bloomberg announced that Ms. Almontaser > had submitted her resignation, which was nice of her to do. > Shes certainly not a terrorist, he said, adding that she was not all > that media savvy maybe. > Three days later, Ms. Almontaser was replaced by an interim principal, > Danielle Salzberg, who is Jewish and speaks no Arabic. > Chaos in a New School > On Sept. 4, the Khalil Gibran International Academy opened its doors > at 345 Dean Street as parents ushered their children past a throng of > reporters, photographers and television crews. > Chaos soon erupted inside. Students cut classes and got into fights > with little consequence, said staff members, parents and students. At > least 12 of the 60 students showed signs of behavioral problems or > learning disabilities, said Leslie Kahn, a licensed social worker and > counselor who was employed at the school until January. (Education > Department officials, who denied repeated requests by The Times to > visit the school, said there are currently six special-needs students > there.) > Something is flying through the air, every class, every day, Sean R. > Grogan, a science teacher at the school, said in an interview. Kids > bang on the partitions, yell and scream, curse and swear. Its out of > control. > Physical altercations are frequent, Mr. Grogan and others said, with > Arab students and teachers the target of ethnic slurs. I just dont > feel safe, said an Arab-American student, 11, who will not return to > the school next year. > In the first days after Ms. Almontaser resigned, she felt numb, she > said. Her support among Arab-Muslims remained uneven. Had she not > alienated some who wanted more of a role in the schools creation, the > whole community would have stood behind her, said Wael Mousfar, > president of the Arab Muslim American Federation. A lot of our kids > would be part of that school. > Ms. Almontaser soon found herself flanked by a new group of > supporters, including Jewish and Muslim activists, who began lobbying > for her to be reinstated as the schools principal. On Oct. 16, Ms. > Almontaser announced that she was suing the Education Department and > the mayor. She claimed that her First Amendment rights had been > violated because she was forced to resign after she was quoted as > saying something controversial. > She requested that the city be prevented from hiring a permanent > principal until her case was resolved. A judge rejected the request, > and Ms. Almontaser appealed. In March, a federal appeals court upheld > the ruling, but the judges were sharply critical of the citys handling > of Ms. Almontasers case. > This was a situation where she was subject to sanction not for > anything she said, not for anything she did, but because a newspaper > reporter twisted what she said and the result of it was negative press > for the city and the Board of Ed, Judge Jon O. Newman told a city > lawyer at a hearing in February. > Ms. Almontasers case will proceed in the Federal District Court in > Manhattan. > The Stop the Madrassa Coalition continues to protest the school. The > group sued the Department of Education in October, requesting detailed > information about the schools creation, faculty and curriculum. While > the department has handed over thousands of records, the coalitions > lawyer said the documents leave many questions unanswered, including > which textbooks the school is using to teach Arabic. A department > spokeswoman said that a list of textbooks selected for the school was > sent to the lawyer last fall. > The coalition has also broadened the reach of its campaign. Some > members have joined with the Center for Policy Research in American > Education, a new organization that will research the influence of > radical Islam on public schools around the country. > In recent weeks, conditions at the Khalil Gibran school have improved, > said several students and staff members. Holly Anne Reichert, who was > appointed as the permanent principal in January, said in an interview > that she had reduced some of the disruptive behavior by minimizing > class sizes. She added that the media attention had led to a chaotic > experience for students. Adults have created this, and children are > the ones who have had to endure, she said. > The school will move to a larger space in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, by > next fall. > Ms. Almontaser still attends interfaith dinners and awards ceremonies. > During the day, she works for the citys Office of School and Youth > Development. Part of her job entails evaluating other schools. > In an odd twist of fate, she was sent to the Bronx last fall to review > a small, innovative school that had opened the same month as Khalil > Gibran. It also taught a foreign language: Spanish. The students > seemed to be thriving. As Ms. Almontaser walked the hallways, she was > shaken, she said. > It wasnt that I was envious that her dream materialized, said Ms. > Almontaser, referring to the principal. It was seeing her sixth > graders, her teachers, and seeing that she did it. And I didnt get a > chance. > _______________________________________________ > Rad-Green mailing list > Rad-Green at lists.econ.utah.edu > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green > From critical.montages at gmail.com Thu May 1 17:27:29 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 19:27:29 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Iran-Europe Gas Deals Anger Washington Message-ID: Iran-Europe gas deals anger Washington By Daniel Dombey in Washington, Anna Fifield in Tehran and Haig Simonian in Zurich Published: April 30 2008 18:05 | Last updated: April 30 2008 18:05 The US and its allies are worried that the sanctions regime against Tehran is under threat from a possible new wave of European investment in Iran's strategically important gas sector. Tehran has already concluded gas deals with Chinese and Malaysian companies ? ending a protracted lull in investment in its energy sector ? and has alarmed Washington by reaching an agreement with a Swiss group. The dilemma threatens to expose the limited US influence over foreign companies strategic decisions. Although Washington and its allies have convinced the United Nations Security Council to sign up to three sets of sanctions against Iran's nuclear and missile sectors and banks, it has been unable to broaden such international measures into the key energy sector. Until recently, informal US pressure ? combined with the difficulties associated with doing business in Iran ? had appeared to dissuade many companies from signing formal contracts. Now, the US fears that a 25-year supply agreement concluded in March between Elektrizit?ts-Gesellschaft Laufenburg (EGL) of Switzerland and Iran could encourage other deals, particularly in the gas sector, despite American calls for tougher sanctions against Tehran over its controversial nuclear programme. The Swiss government says the deal could be worth up to ?27bn ($42bn, ?21bn). "The worry is that the Swiss deal will lead others, such as the Austrians, to confirm energy investments in Iran, and that companies like [France's] Total could then follow suit and sign contracts of their own," said one western diplomat. He pointed out that the EGL agreement ended a period in which European energy companies had largely confined themselves to agreeing only non-binding memoranda of understanding with Iran. He added: "There is a lot of attention on sanctions on Iranian banks, but investment in the energy sector is much more important for Iran's economy." Iran has the world's second-largest proven gas reserves, but exports far below its potential. Flynt Leverett, a former US National Security Council adviser on the Middle East, says pressure is growing on non-US companies to conclude supply contracts with Iran in the wake of the deals already signed between Tehran and Sinopec of China and SKS of Malaysia. So angry is Washington about the Swiss deal that it has suggested that Switzerland's role as the US representative in Cuba and Iran could be at risk. Swiss officials reply that no international sanctions prohibit investment in the Iranian energy sector, and that the gas supply contract signed by EGL is intended to alleviate energy shortages in Italy. "For almost 30 years, Switzerland has rendered good services to the US as their protecting power in Iran," said a Swiss foreign ministry spokesman. The website of the US embassy in Bern carries a series of questions about the gas deal, explicitly raising the question of whether Switzerland's role is "in jeopardy". Officials there merely say that Switzerland has a mandate to represent the US "at this time". Following the deal, some European leaders have voiced concern about new investment in liquefied natural gas, the sector in which groups such as Total, Royal Dutch Shell and Austria's OMV have struck preliminary agreements but have yet to sign formal contracts. Iran has warned such companies they need to conclude deals by June or it will look elsewhere for investment. Gordon Brown, UK prime minister, said in the US this month that he wanted to broaden sanctions over Iran's nuclear programme "to include investment in liquefied natural gas". At present, there are no such sanctions at either UN or EU level against investment in Iran's gas sector. European diplomats say it is unlikely that the EU will agree formal sanctions on the Iranian energy sector in the immediate future ? instead it is concentrating on measures against Iran's Bank Melli. Foreign ministers from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany meet in London tomorrow to discuss further action against Iran. Diplomats say Mr Brown's words are an attempt to increase the political pressure against new investment in the sector. Under US law, investments of above $20m (?13m, ?10m) in Iran's energy sector can lead to US retaliatory measures, But Mr Leverett said Washington's options were limited. "The EU would effectively take us to court [at the World Trade Organisation] and the US would probably lose," he said. Hojatullah Ghanimi Fard, head of international affairs at the National Iranian Oil Company, said Tehran was legitimately supplying an international need. "Would it be wise to deprive common people of consuming countries of supplies from Iran?" he asked. -- Yoshie From shimogamo at attglobal.net Thu May 1 18:42:35 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 02 May 2008 09:42:35 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Why Bother? Message-ID: <481A637B.5020802@attglobal.net> The Way We Live Now by Michael Pollan The New York Times (April 20 2008) Why bother? That really is the big question facing us as individuals hoping to do something about climate change, and it's not an easy one to answer. I don't know about you, but for me the most upsetting moment in An Inconvenient Truth (2006) came long after Al Gore scared the hell out of me, constructing an utterly convincing case that the very survival of life on earth as we know it is threatened by climate change. No, the really dark moment came during the closing credits, when we are asked to ... change our light bulbs. That's when it got really depressing. The immense disproportion between the magnitude of the problem Gore had described and the puniness of what he was asking us to do about it was enough to sink your heart. But the drop-in-the-bucket issue is not the only problem lurking behind the "why bother" question. Let's say I do bother, big time. I turn my life upside-down, start biking to work, plant a big garden, turn down the thermostat so low I need the Jimmy Carter signature cardigan, forsake the clothes dryer for a laundry line across the yard, trade in the station wagon for a hybrid, get off the beef, go completely local. I could theoretically do all that, but what would be the point when I know full well that halfway around the world there lives my evil twin, some carbon-footprint doppelg?nger in Shanghai or Chongqing who has just bought his first car (Chinese car ownership is where ours was back in 1918), is eager to swallow every bite of meat I forswear and who's positively itching to replace every last pound of carbon dioxide I'm struggling no longer to emit. So what exactly would I have to show for all my trouble? A sense of personal virtue, you might suggest, somewhat sheepishly. But what good is that when virtue itself is quickly becoming a term of derision? And not just on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal or on the lips of the vice president, who famously dismissed energy conservation as a "sign of personal virtue". No, even in the pages of The New York Times and The New Yorker, it seems the epithet "virtuous", when applied to an act of personal environmental responsibility, may be used only ironically. Tell me: How did it come to pass that virtue - a quality that for most of history has generally been deemed, well, a virtue - became a mark of liberal softheadedness? How peculiar, that doing the right thing by the environment - buying the hybrid, eating like a locavore - should now set you up for the Ed Begley Jr treatment. And even if in the face of this derision I decide I am going to bother, there arises the whole vexed question of getting it right. Is eating local or walking to work really going to reduce my carbon footprint? According to one analysis, if walking to work increases your appetite and you consume more meat or milk as a result, walking might actually emit more carbon than driving. A handful of studies have recently suggested that in certain cases under certain conditions, produce from places as far away as New Zealand might account for less carbon than comparable domestic products. True, at least one of these studies was co-written by a representative of agribusiness interests in (surprise!) New Zealand, but even so, they make you wonder. If determining the carbon footprint of food is really this complicated, and I've got to consider not only "food miles" but also whether the food came by ship or truck and how lushly the grass grows in New Zealand, then maybe on second thought I'll just buy the imported chops at Costco, at least until the experts get their footprints sorted out. There are so many stories we can tell ourselves to justify doing nothing, but perhaps the most insidious is that, whatever we do manage to do, it will be too little too late. Climate change is upon us, and it has arrived well ahead of schedule. Scientists' projections that seemed dire a decade ago turn out to have been unduly optimistic: the warming and the melting is occurring much faster than the models predicted. Now truly terrifying feedback loops threaten to boost the rate of change exponentially, as the shift from white ice to blue water in the Arctic absorbs more sunlight and warming soils everywhere become more biologically active, causing them to release their vast stores of carbon into the air. Have you looked into the eyes of a climate scientist recently? They look really scared. So do you still want to talk about planting gardens? I do. Whatever we can do as individuals to change the way we live at this suddenly very late date does seem utterly inadequate to the challenge. It's hard to argue with Michael Specter, in a recent New Yorker piece on carbon footprints, when he says: "Personal choices, no matter how virtuous [NB!], cannot do enough. It will also take laws and money." So it will. Yet it is no less accurate or hardheaded to say that laws and money cannot do enough, either; that it will also take profound changes in the way we live. Why? Because the climate-change crisis is at its very bottom a crisis of lifestyle - of character, even. The Big Problem is nothing more or less than the sum total of countless little everyday choices, most of them made by us (consumer spending represents seventy percent of our economy), and most of the rest of them made in the name of our needs and desires and preferences. For us to wait for legislation or technology to solve the problem of how we're living our lives suggests we're not really serious about changing - something our politicians cannot fail to notice. They will not move until we do. Indeed, to look to leaders and experts, to laws and money and grand schemes, to save us from our predicament represents precisely the sort of thinking - passive, delegated, dependent for solutions on specialists - that helped get us into this mess in the first place. It's hard to believe that the same sort of thinking could now get us out of it. Thirty years ago, Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer and writer, put forward a blunt analysis of precisely this mentality. He argued that the environmental crisis of the 1970s - an era innocent of climate change; what we would give to have back that environmental crisis! - was at its heart a crisis of character and would have to be addressed first at that level: at home, as it were. He was impatient with people who wrote checks to environmental organizations while thoughtlessly squandering fossil fuel in their everyday lives - the 1970s equivalent of people buying carbon offsets to atone for their Tahoes and Durangos. Nothing was likely to change until we healed the "split between what we think and what we do". For Berry, the "why bother" question came down to a moral imperative: "Once our personal connection to what is wrong becomes clear, then we have to choose: we can go on as before, recognizing our dishonesty and living with it the best we can, or we can begin the effort to change the way we think and live". For Berry, the deep problem standing behind all the other problems of industrial civilization is "specialization", which he regards as the "disease of the modern character". Our society assigns us a tiny number of roles: we're producers (of one thing) at work, consumers of a great many other things the rest of the time, and then once a year or so we vote as citizens. Virtually all of our needs and desires we delegate to specialists of one kind or another - our meals to agribusiness, health to the doctor, education to the teacher, entertainment to the media, care for the environment to the environmentalist, political action to the politician. As Adam Smith and many others have pointed out, this division of labor has given us many of the blessings of civilization. Specialization is what allows me to sit at a computer thinking about climate change. Yet this same division of labor obscures the lines of connection - and responsibility - linking our everyday acts to their real-world consequences, making it easy for me to overlook the coal-fired power plant that is lighting my screen, or the mountaintop in Kentucky that had to be destroyed to provide the coal to that plant, or the streams running crimson with heavy metals as a result. Of course, what made this sort of specialization possible in the first place was cheap energy. Cheap fossil fuel allows us to pay distant others to process our food for us, to entertain us and to (try to) solve our problems, with the result that there is very little we know how to accomplish for ourselves. Think for a moment of all the things you suddenly need to do for yourself when the power goes out - up to and including entertaining yourself. Think, too, about how a power failure causes your neighbors - your community - to suddenly loom so much larger in your life. Cheap energy allowed us to leapfrog community by making it possible to sell our specialty over great distances as well as summon into our lives the specialties of countless distant others. Here's the point: Cheap energy, which gives us climate change, fosters precisely the mentality that makes dealing with climate change in our own lives seem impossibly difficult. Specialists ourselves, we can no longer imagine anyone but an expert, or anything but a new technology or law, solving our problems. Al Gore asks us to change the light bulbs because he probably can't imagine us doing anything much more challenging, like, say, growing some portion of our own food. We can't imagine it, either, which is probably why we prefer to cross our fingers and talk about the promise of ethanol and nuclear power - new liquids and electrons to power the same old cars and houses and lives. The "cheap-energy mind", as Wendell Berry called it, is the mind that asks, "Why bother?" because it is helpless to imagine - much less attempt - a different sort of life, one less divided, less reliant. Since the cheap-energy mind translates everything into money, its proxy, it prefers to put its faith in market-based solutions - carbon taxes and pollution-trading schemes. If we could just get the incentives right, it believes, the economy will properly value everything that matters and nudge our self-interest down the proper channels. The best we can hope for is a greener version of the old invisible hand. Visible hands it has no use for. But while some such grand scheme may well be necessary, it's doubtful that it will be sufficient or that it will be politically sustainable before we've demonstrated to ourselves that change is possible. Merely to give, to spend, even to vote, is not to do, and there is so much that needs to be done - without further delay. In the judgment of James Hansen, the NASA climate scientist who began sounding the alarm on global warming twenty years ago, we have only ten years left to start cutting - not just slowing - the amount of carbon we're emitting or face a "different planet". Hansen said this more than two years ago, however; two years have gone by, and nothing of consequence has been done. So: eight years left to go and a great deal left to do. Which brings us back to the "why bother" question and how we might better answer it. The reasons not to bother are many and compelling, at least to the cheap-energy mind. But let me offer a few admittedly tentative reasons that we might put on the other side of the scale: If you do bother, you will set an example for other people. If enough other people bother, each one influencing yet another in a chain reaction of behavioral change, markets for all manner of green products and alternative technologies will prosper and expand. (Just look at the market for hybrid cars.) Consciousness will be raised, perhaps even changed: new moral imperatives and new taboos might take root in the culture. Driving an SUV or eating a 24-ounce steak or illuminating your McMansion like an airport runway at night might come to be regarded as outrages to human conscience. Not having things might become cooler than having them. And those who did change the way they live would acquire the moral standing to demand changes in behavior from others - from other people, other corporations, even other countries. All of this could, theoretically, happen. What I'm describing (imagining would probably be more accurate) is a process of viral social change, and change of this kind, which is nonlinear, is never something anyone can plan or predict or count on. Who knows, maybe the virus will reach all the way to Chongqing and infect my Chinese evil twin. Or not. Maybe going green will prove a passing fad and will lose steam after a few years, just as it did in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan took down Jimmy Carter's solar panels from the roof of the White House. Going personally green is a bet, nothing more or less, though it's one we probably all should make, even if the odds of it paying off aren't great. Sometimes you have to act as if acting will make a difference, even when you can't prove that it will. That, after all, was precisely what happened in Communist Czechoslovakia and Poland, when a handful of individuals like Vaclav Havel and Adam Michnik resolved that they would simply conduct their lives "as if" they lived in a free society. That improbable bet created a tiny space of liberty that, in time, expanded to take in, and then help take down, the whole of the Eastern bloc. So what would be a comparable bet that the individual might make in the case of the environmental crisis? Havel himself has suggested that people begin to "conduct themselves as if they were to live on this earth forever and be answerable for its condition one day". Fair enough, but let me propose a slightly less abstract and daunting wager. The idea is to find one thing to do in your life that doesn't involve spending or voting, that may or may not virally rock the world but is real and particular (as well as symbolic) and that, come what may, will offer its own rewards. Maybe you decide to give up meat, an act that would reduce your carbon footprint by as much as a quarter. Or you could try this: determine to observe the Sabbath. For one day a week, abstain completely from economic activity: no shopping, no driving, no electronics. But the act I want to talk about is growing some - even just a little - of your own food. Rip out your lawn, if you have one, and if you don't - if you live in a high-rise, or have a yard shrouded in shade - look into getting a plot in a community garden. Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it's one of the most powerful things an individual can do - to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind. A great many things happen when you plant a vegetable garden, some of them directly related to climate change, others indirect but related nevertheless. Growing food, we forget, comprises the original solar technology: calories produced by means of photosynthesis. Years ago the cheap-energy mind discovered that more food could be produced with less effort by replacing sunlight with fossil-fuel fertilizers and pesticides, with a result that the typical calorie of food energy in your diet now requires about ten calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce. It's estimated that the way we feed ourselves (or rather, allow ourselves to be fed) accounts for about a fifth of the greenhouse gas for which each of us is responsible. Yet the sun still shines down on your yard, and photosynthesis still works so abundantly that in a thoughtfully organized vegetable garden (one planted from seed, nourished by compost from the kitchen and involving not too many drives to the garden center), you can grow the proverbial free lunch - carbon-dioxide-free and dollar-free. This is the most-local food you can possibly eat (not to mention the freshest, tastiest and most nutritious), with a carbon footprint so faint that even the New Zealand lamb council dares not challenge it. And while we're counting carbon, consider too your compost pile, which shrinks the heap of garbage your household needs trucked away even as it feeds your vegetables and sequesters carbon in your soil. What else? Well, you will probably notice that you're getting a pretty good workout there in your garden, burning calories without having to get into the car to drive to the gym. (It is one of the absurdities of the modern division of labor that, having replaced physical labor with fossil fuel, we now have to burn even more fossil fuel to keep our unemployed bodies in shape.) Also, by engaging both body and mind, time spent in the garden is time (and energy) subtracted from electronic forms of entertainment. You begin to see that growing even a little of your own food is, as Wendell Berry pointed out thirty years ago, one of those solutions that, instead of begetting a new set of problems - the way "solutions" like ethanol or nuclear power inevitably do - actually beget other solutions, and not only of the kind that save carbon. Still more valuable are the habits of mind that growing a little of your own food can yield. You quickly learn that you need not be dependent on specialists to provide for yourself - that your body is still good for something and may actually be enlisted in its own support. If the experts are right, if both oil and time are running out, these are skills and habits of mind we're all very soon going to need. We may also need the food. Could gardens provide it? Well, during World War II, victory gardens supplied as much as forty percent of the produce Americans ate. But there are sweeter reasons to plant that garden, to bother. At least in this one corner of your yard and life, you will have begun to heal the split between what you think and what you do, to commingle your identities as consumer and producer and citizen. Chances are, your garden will re-engage you with your neighbors, for you will have produce to give away and the need to borrow their tools. You will have reduced the power of the cheap-energy mind by personally overcoming its most debilitating weakness: its helplessness and the fact that it can't do much of anything that doesn't involve division or subtraction. The garden's season-long transit from seed to ripe fruit - will you get a load of that zucchini?! - suggests that the operations of addition and multiplication still obtain, that the abundance of nature is not exhausted. The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world. _____ Michael Pollan, a contributing writer for the magazine, is the author, most recently, of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (Penguin, 2008). Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/magazine/20wwln-lede-t.html?_r=1&em&ex=1208836800&en=d1c754441761d09a&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From critical.montages at gmail.com Thu May 1 18:53:12 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 20:53:12 -0400 Subject: [R-G] India Raises a Toast to Iran Message-ID: May 2, 2008 India raises a toast to Iran By Siddharth Srivastava NEW DELHI - The one-day visit this week of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, the first Iranian head of state to visit India in five years, was short in time, but it was high in symbolic content and laid bare some of New Delhi's strategic thinking. While energy issues remained the main focus of the visit, the attention was as much on perceptions of Washington, which has a major problem with Iran's independent nuclear program and has been urging nations, including India, not to deal with Tehran. However, Ahmadinejad's visit is perhaps the first time that the Congress-party led New Delhi government headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has stood up to the United States on Iran, making an effort to emphasize an independent foreign policy not influenced by Washington's ideas. In the past couple of years, India, as the new US strategic partner in Asia to dilute the growing influence of China, has been sensitive to US urgings, taking a stand against Iran at international forums. Awash with its new stature as "America's friend", New Delhi has also been accused of deliberately delaying the US$7.6 billion, 2,600-kilometer Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline to keep Washington happy. Coincidentally, India's changed views emerge even as the India-US civilian nuclear deal is almost dead due to domestic Indian political opposition. Washington, instead, has been keen to push defense purchases from India in the recent past. In this period, voices have emerged from New Delhi indicating a changed thinking about Iran. Last week, New Delhi reacted sharply when US State Department spokesman Tom Casey called on India to utilize Ahmadinejad's visit to persuade Iran to stop its uranium-enrichment activities. In a terse statement, the Foreign Ministry said, "India and Iran are ancient civilizations whose relations span centuries. Both nations are perfectly capable of managing all aspects of their relationship with the appropriate degree of care and attention." Iran recently declared it has considerably widened its plans to enrich uranium, a program that has earned it three rounds of United Nations sanctions and independent ones from the United States, which fears Tehran has a nuclear weapons program. This week, Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said isolating Iran is not the right approach. "From our point of view, the more engagement there is, the more Iran becomes a factor of stability in the region." He said the IPI pipeline was "doable". Indian National Security Adviser M K Narayanan recently said that India-Iran relations need to be handled in a subtle way. "It [Iran] is a big country, it is a major country, with tremendous influence, and you need to deal with it diplomatically. Otherwise, the world will have to pay a heavy price," he told a conference. Indeed, the reasons for India's new approach are many and the stakes are quite high. Firstly, India desperately needs energy sources, with competitor China equally keen to tap Iran's rich hydrocarbon fields. China has expressed willingness to join a truncated IPI should India keep away from it. Pakistan has been smarting under Washington's pro-India tilt and will be happy to accommodate China. This year, a Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman said, "If there are prospects of China joining the IPI project with or without India, we will welcome it. Pakistan is committed to the pipeline because of its desire to achieve energy security." Secondly, domestic Indian politics is a big determining factor now. Political parties will look to exploit New Delhi as a "US stooge" in general elections due in a year. There is the fear of a backlash from Indian Muslim voters, who constitute a sizable constituency, and despise America due to its attack on Iraq and now problems with Iran. New Delhi's latest move can also be seen as an attempt to keep the anti-US coalition partners, the left parties, happy. Indications are that any new government next year, whether headed by the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party or a Third Front formation, will have to seek outside support. It is important for the Congress to keep the left parties happy as it is quite possible that they will be needed again for the next round of government formation. Thirdly, there is a growing view that New Delhi has to learn how to deal and balance various nations' interests to sustain a high-growing Indian economy, in need for new markets for both export and import. India's gross domestic product is growing at 8-9% per annum. Such an approach could have its dividends and result in win-win situations. Keen to obtain new gas, India last week formally joined the Asian Development Bank-sponsored and US-backed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAP) pipeline project that has now been officially renamed as the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline. Indicating forward movements on IPI, Ahmadinejad told a news conference after talks for over three-hours with Manmohan and senior officials in New Delhi, "All pending issues and agreements will be finalized within 45 days and given to the leadership of the three countries. Afterwards we will decide." An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said that "reaching an agreement on the [IPI] project will be possible" in the light of recent ministerial level India-Pakistan talks on transit issues. The Ahmadinejad visit will boost state-owned explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corporation's (ONGC's) chances of winning an equity stake in the gas-rich South Pars block in Iran, along with private player Hindujas. According to the latest reports, the Hindujas Group-ONGC combine has secured Iran's approval to conduct due diligence for taking stakes in one of the largest oil and gas fields. The deal for the projects, signed by Hindujas with NICO, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Co, in August 2007, had not taken off, reportedly due to Chinese attempts to win the project. Under the deal, Hindujas will take a 45% stake in the Azadegan oilfield and a 60% stake in Phase 12 of the giant South Pars gas field. Indian officials say a breakthrough could also be achieved soon in the $22 billion liquefied natural gas deal with Tehran, signed in 2005, for the supply of 5 million tonnes of gas per year for 25 years that is stalled due to price disputes. However, some analysts still say Iran is unlikely to become a major exporter for more than a decade, given the tough attitude of Western countries, especially the US, which has threatened sanctions against any nation dealing with Tehran. Ahmadinejad believes otherwise, "The ruling powers are collapsing and falling down. We just prepare ourselves for the collapse. America is not the previous America. It is the falling power," he said in New Delhi. The Iranian president criticized "bullying powers" for trying to rein "Iran's right to develop nuclear energy". Clearly, dealing with both Iran and the US will be one of the big foreign-policy challenges India will face in the near future. Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist. -- Yoshie From critical.montages at gmail.com Thu May 1 19:36:29 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 21:36:29 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Iraq Debacle: Ending It Tied to Engagement with Iran Message-ID: Note "the close inter-relationship between ending the occupation of Iraq and forcing Washington to engage Iran diplomatically." -- Yoshie Iraq Debacle: Ending It Tied to Engagement with Iran by Max Elbaum This time the message was delivered by the Pentagon's own premier educational institute. The opening line of a report released April 17 by the National Institute for Strategic Studies read: "Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle." The document goes on to admit that the war's outcome "is in doubt." The "On-To-Victory" crowd (now led by John McCain as well as George Bush) wants to drown out such reports by any means necessary. Unfortunately for them, fear-mongering proclamations that "winning" in Iraq is essential to "keep America safe" don't have the impact they once did. The latest polls show only 30% of the public believes "victory" in Iraq is crucial to defeating terrorism. So Bush, McCain, & friends have shifted their rationale for war yet again. They've turned to hyping the alleged "danger from Iran" as the main justification for staying in Iraq -- and perhaps even launching another preemptive war. This updated propaganda line was the centerpiece of General David Petraeus' early-April testimony before Congress. Bush and McCain had hoped their savior-general would decisively shift public debate in their favor. But the crash of their mythologized "surge" -- as indicated by the failure of their attack on Basra (see below) just before Petraeus' appearance -- buried this fantasy. Even so, the "Iran danger" bait-and-switch does target a vulnerable point in public opinion. It exerts a strong pull on elite critics of the Iraq war (particularly those most beholden to the Israel Lobby) to keep their mouths shut out of loyalty to the "larger goal" of U.S. domination of the Middle East. All this has made the close inter-relationship between ending the occupation of Iraq and forcing Washington to engage Iran diplomatically clearer than ever. Despite the new round of fear-mongering, prospects for accomplishing this are more favorable than in previous years. Public sentiment against the war in Iraq is higher than ever. A record 63% of the population now says the invasion was a mistake. And at the end of March five Washington heavyweights -- former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Warren Christopher, Madeline Albright and Colin Powell -- all urged the administration to open a dialogue with Iran (and to close Guant?namo prison). "THEY CAME, THEY DESERTED" The Pentagon "debacle" report was written last fall. That's before the full extent of the surge's failure became clear. Though Bush and McCain still bluster that "the surge is a success," the April fighting in Basra ripped apart that imperial claim. The Nation's Tom Engelhardt laid out the reality (April 7): They came, they saw, they deserted. That, in short form, is the story of the recent Iraqi government "offensive" in Basra (and Baghdad). It took a few days, but the headlines now tell a grim tale . . . . Sudarsan Raghavan and Ernesto Londono of the Washington Post suggest that 30% of government troops had "abandoned the fight before a cease-fire was reached." Tina Susman of the Los Angeles Times offers 50% as an estimate for police desertions in the midst of battle in Sadr City. . . . In other words, after years of intensive training and an investment of $22 billion, U.S. military spokesmen are once again left trying to put the best face on a strategic disaster (from which they were rescued thanks to negotiations between Muqtada al-Sadr and advisors to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, brokered in Iran by General Qassem Suleimani, a man on the U.S. Treasury Department's terrorist watch list). . . . This week, with surge commander General David Petraeus back from Baghdad's ever redder, ever more dangerous "Green Zone," here are a few realities to keep in mind: 1. The situation in Iraq is getting worse: Don't believe anyone who says otherwise. The surge-ified, "less violent" Iraq the general has presided over so confidently is, in fact, a chaotic, violent tinderbox. Think nightmare. 2. The Bush administration has no learning curve. Its top officials are unable to absorb the realities of Iraq (or the region) and so, like the generals of World War I, simply send their soldiers surging "over the top" again and again, with minor changes in tactics, to the same dismal end. . . . 3. The "success" of the surge was always an expensive illusion, essentially a Ponzi scheme. . . the Bush administration put out IOUs in Iraq to be paid in future chaos and violence. It now hopes to slip out of office before these fully come due. ELITE DEBATE OVER IRAN A big part of Bush's effort to postpone payment -- and avoid accountability for the entire Iraq disaster -- is to blame everything on Iran. John McCain may not know the difference between Sunni and Shia. But he thinks it's a vote-getter to demonize Iranians (and tap into lingering chauvinism going back to the 1979 "hostage crisis" provoked by U.S. backing the Shah). George Bush might or might not remember that his own National Intelligence Estimate declared that Iran had no nuclear weapons program. But with the lowest approval rating of any President since polling was invented, he figures one more lie hardly matters if it can whip up war hysteria and "protect his legacy." But even within the top guardians of empire (no fans of Iran there), there is strong resistance to this course. For starters, there's plenty of evidence that most of the military brass knows it's not Iran behind the anti-occupation resistance in Iraq and is adamantly opposed to launching another war. (Admiral William Fallon, forced to step down in March as commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East, made the mistake of voicing this position too publicly. But Fallon's views are shared widely in the military command. Unfortunately, not by Petraeus, who has been nominated to succeed him.) Further, arch Cold Warrior Zbigniew Brzezinki (now an adviser to Barack Obama) speaks for a growing faction of policy-makers who believe ramping up tensions with Iran is the road to catastrophe for the empire he is committed to defend. In an op-ed titled "The Smart Way Out of a Foolish War" (Washington Post, March 30), Brzezinki wrote: The overall goal of a comprehensive U.S. strategy to undo the errors of recent years should be cooling down the Middle East, instead of heating it up. The "unipolar moment" that the Bush administration's zealots touted after the collapse of the Soviet Union has been squandered to generate a policy based on the unilateral use of force, military threats and occupation masquerading as democratization -- all of which has pointlessly heated up tensions, fueled anti-colonial resentments and bred religious fanaticism. The long-range stability of the Middle East has been placed in increasing jeopardy. Terminating the war in Iraq is the necessary first step to calming the Middle East, but other measures will be needed. It is in the U.S. interest to engage Iran in serious negotiations -- on both regional security and the nuclear challenge it poses. But such negotiations are unlikely as long as Washington's price of participation is unreciprocated concessions from Tehran. Threats to use force on Iran are also counterproductive. . . . THE ISRAEL FACTOR A negative factor in the U.S. elite debate is the stance of the Israeli government and the blank-check-for-Israel grouping in U.S. political life. They are among the loudest voices whipping up hostility toward Iran. It's hard-nosed realpolitik. Israel is not letting up one bit in its squeeze on the Palestinians. The latest person to call the Israeli siege of Gaza a "crime," an "atrocity" and an "abomination" is former President Jimmy Carter. Carter met with Hamas officials in late April and afterwards top Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal l told the Associated Press: "We have offered a truce of 10 years if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders." Israel, while claiming that it always goes the extra mile for peace, dismissed the offer and reaffirmed its policy of refusing to talk to Hamas. And on the very day talks were reopened with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel announced it was expanding settlements in the West Bank. The Israeli government is worried that, given those kinds of daily actions, even people in the U.S. might wake up to the fact Israel is more interested in seizing Palestinian land than avoiding violence. And what with the balance of military power between Israel and the Palestinians, it's harder and harder for Tel Aviv to keep claiming that the beleaguered Palestinian people pose an "existential threat" to Israel. So to keep wavering supporters in line, a "better enemy" must be found. Iran is currently the top choice, despite the inconvenient fact that Iran has no nuclear weapons and Israel has 200-plus. The influence, direct and indirect, of the Israeli establishment pushing this view should not be underestimated. (Note Hillary Clinton's recent threat to "totally obliterate" Iran.) At the same time, this high-stakes gamble could well backfire. The U.S. policy-making elite are, after all, dealing with "debacle" all across the region. Iraq is the centerpiece. But they are also facing disaster in Afghanistan, which is causing major divisions within the NATO alliance. They are rapidly losing their grip on Pakistan in the wake of Musharraf's electoral humiliation. And their client dictatorships in Egypt and Saudi Arabia are full of anxiety. All this is translating into more and more sectors of the U.S. elite looking for some way to (in Brzezinski's words) "cool down the Middle East" instead of heat it up. And it is becoming obvious to these same sectors that Israeli policies -- from Gaza to the West Bank to war-drum-beating against Iran -- are among the biggest obstacles to "cooling down." Most are not prepared to follow Jimmy Carter's footsteps. But rumblings are there just below the surface. That's why articles and books along the lines of 2006's "The Israel Lobby" by "realist" heavyweights John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt are starting to make a wave or two. The outcome is very much in doubt. But if the U.S. is forced to turn to a "cooling down" strategy instead of Bush/McCain and their Hundred Years War, changes in Washington's "special relationship" to Tel Aviv are not out of the question. POPULAR PRESSURE ESSENTIAL A key element in how things play out will be the extent of pressure for peace and diplomacy coming "from below." Public opposition to the continuing occupation of Iraq is a central factor in all elite calculations. The April 20 New York Times revelations about the White House orchestrating a massive campaign of deception and lies by retired military officers is just the latest proof that the war-makers are anxious as hell about the potential impact of public sentiment -- "the second superpower." In solidifying peace sentiment and translating it into tangible pressure, Iraq is still the centerpiece and Washington's most vulnerable point. But as another moment of decision -- retrench or escalate -- looms, the complexities of the entire region come into play. Washington's relationships with Iran and with Israel/Palestine become relevant not just analytically but in terms of practical politics. And even regarding Iraq itself, an elite decision to retrench does not yet mean acceptance of total withdrawal from Iraq. That will only be won with even higher levels of popular pressure. In the streets and in the electoral arena, in direct action and in counter-recruitment, in long-term anti-militarist organizing and in dealing with each week's twists and turns -- the antiwar movement has our work cut out for us. Max Elbaum Max Elbaum is the author of Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che (Verso 2002). Elbaum is also a member of War Times/Tiempo de Guerras, a group represented on the steering committee of United for Peace and Justice. War Times/Tiempo de Guerras invites you to sign on to its announcement list (3-4 messages per month) to receive regular reports, interviews, flyers, and news recaps. Go to the War Times website at war-times.org. War Times/Tiempo de Guerras is a fiscally sponsored project of the Center for Third World Organizing. Donations to War Times are tax-deductible; you can donate on-line at war-times.org or send a check to War Times/Tiempo de Guerras, c/o P.O. Box 99096, Emeryville, CA 94662. -- Yoshie From fentona at shaw.ca Thu May 1 23:18:05 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Thu, 01 May 2008 22:18:05 -0700 Subject: [R-G] CANADA: Jewish Defence League Energised by Israel's Far Right Message-ID: <7D3DC282-74C7-4EBE-8F5B-AD6A87CBF011@shaw.ca> CANADA: Jewish Defence League Energised by Israel's Far Right By Paul Weinberg http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42195 TORONTO, Apr 30 (IPS) - Like an aging group of retro rocker musicians, the Jewish Defence League (JDL) resurfaced in Toronto recently after a decade of dormancy, trying to look a little more mainstream. The group made its largest public foray in quite some time on Mar. 27, when it hosted a meeting of about 150 for Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin at the Shaarei Tefillah Synagogue on a stretch of Bathurst south of Wilson that conjures Jerusalem's Mea Shirim with its black top hats, piety and peyes. Once targeted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation as "domestic extremists" and linked to two banned anti-Arab racist groups in Israel, the JDL now considers Feiglin, leader of the hard-line Jewish Leadership faction of the already right-wing Likud party, its political mentor. Feiglin saved most of his bile at the meeting for Israel's leadership, accusing them of caving in to the violence perpetrated by the enemy, namely the Palestinians, whom he referred to as simply "Arabs". "We are not going to get used to it," he declared to an applauding audience about Hamas rocket attacks on Israel. Nevertheless, said this West Bank settler, "The Arabs are not the problem; [some] Jews are." Feiglin advocates an Israel without Arabs, citing the example of the peaceful Golan Heights, emptied of its Arab population after the Six- Day War when the territory was taken from Syria. Where U.S. JDL founder Rabbi Meir Kahane, assassinated in New York City in 1990, advocated the expulsion of Arabs from Israeli-controlled territory, Feiglin, in a new wrinkle, urges they be paid to vacate. "We are talking about more than 60,000 people on the military payroll," he says. "We're talking about 150 billion dollars that Israel spends every 10 years. That money is enough to give every Arab family in Yesha [Gaza and the West Bank] 250,000 dollars." Meir Weinstein, aka Meir Halevi, national director for the JDL of Canada, spoke with IPS after the event and directed attention to the growing Muslim population of more than 750,000 and the shrinking number of Jews living in Canada -- a little above 300,000. "The significance of that is that Muslims come from countries that don't have a friendly view of Jews. A lot of these countries promote material denying the Holocaust, so when they come here in greater numbers and their population is on rise...," he said. Weinstein said he is willing to go to court to refute any racist tag attached to his organisation. Recently, he issued a letter of intent threatening to sue Canadian Arab Federation president Khaled Mouammar for defamation over comments allegedly made on the CAF's website. Mohamed Boudjenane, CAF exec director, told IPS the organisation has no comment at this time. In fact, the JDL is in on the offence on more than one front. One of its directors, Lou VanDelman, a white-haired militant who began his participation in the late 1960s, says the group's thuggish reputation is overblown. "People always like to dramatise. The JDL was always a defensive organisation, and it always will be. If somebody hits us, we have the legal right to hit back," he said. VanDelman regrets "the deterioration'' in the relations between the JDL, in its heyday, and U.S. authorities, in contrast to what occurred in Canada, particularly in Montreal. "We had an association with the police, we had association with members of parliament,'' he said. On the other hand, in 2002, U.S. JDL leader Irv Rubin died in jail awaiting trial on charges of allegedly planning to bomb a mosque and the office of a local U.S. congressman in California. Currently, the JDL is supporting a public campaign both in Israel and North America by Feiglin to be included on the list of candidates for the Likud party in the upcoming election, which recent public opinion polls indicate it has a shot at winning. Feiglin came in a significant second at 22 percent in a leadership contest up against the subsequent winner and former Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. But how serious a force is Feiglin in Israel's complex political landscape? According to Beate Zilversmidt, a spokesperson for Israeli peace group Gush Shalom, even within Likud he is considered "too extreme". "But he definitely has some leverage, and the more relevant question might be how much influence he can exert on the more mainstream Likud candidates. They don't want him to break away and compete with them from the outside, forming powerful blocs together with other Judeo- supremacists," Zilversmidt said. Meanwhile, Bernie Farber, chief executive officer of the Canadian Jewish Congress, casts doubt on the re-emergent Jewish Defence League's ability to be anything but a marginal force in Canada. Farber says his organisation had "serious concerns" about the JDL in the past regarding its "highly inappropriate, even racist" language. "They have come back again, as I understand it, a different version of what they were. As long as they maintain the peace, as long as they do not engage in racist language or hate or violate Canadian law, they have the right to exist. They will not in any way be connected to the mainstream, nor do they want to be, from what I understand," he said. Michael Neumann, a Trent University philosophy professor and the author of "The Case Against Israel", also warns against getting diverted by fears of JDL ultra-nationalism. "Hell, if I'm going to be concerned about violent or extremist Jews, I'll be concerned about the Israel Defence Forces. By far the greatest threat to peace are the lobbying efforts of impeccably well-behaved, well-connected Zionists and the decent but fence-sitting Jews who allow these lobbyists to speak in their name," he asserted. (END/2008) From realiteee1 at yahoo.com Thu May 1 23:35:19 2008 From: realiteee1 at yahoo.com (james m nordlund) Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 22:35:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] =?utf-8?q?Executions_Resume_=E2=80=93_Take_Action!?= In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <193871.22842.qm@web50812.mail.re2.yahoo.com> 1 May 2008 Greetings All, First, welcome to everyone who has joined this list since our last post, including the folks who signed up at last weeks Amnesty International Annual General Meeting in Virginia . CONTENTS OF THIS MESSAGE Executions Resume - First post-Baze execution is May 6 What to Do from Far Far Away Catching Up With Capital X Nebraska Notes Bumper Stickers, Buttons & Shirts Farewell to David Elliot EXECUTIONS RESUME - FIRST POST-BAZE EXECUTION IS MAY 6 Return to Executions ?But U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stevens Changes His Mind. After the longest moratorium in 25 years, executions are set to resume in the U.S. next week in Georgia , where William Lynd is scheduled to be killed on May 6, 2008 in response to his murders of Virginia "Ginger" Moore and Leslie Joan Sharkey. A number of other southern states - including Oklahoma , Texas and Virginia - have also set execution dates. (Please see the top right section at http://www.NCADP.org for more details and action alerts. Especially if you have a fax machine or are willing to overnight a letter to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles for delivery not later than 9am Monday morning, please follow that link and take that action.) In a way, this is simply a resumption of the status quo before the U.S. Supreme Court announced in September 2007 that it would review one state's lethal injection protocol. The Court handed down its decision on April 16, thus clearing the way for new execution dates to be set. However it is perhaps more important to note what the Court did not consider. The Court did not argue that the death penalty is a meritorious public policy. The Court did not declare that capital punishment is free of blunders, biases and bureaucracies - blunders because of the number of innocent people sentenced to death; biases because of the class and racial inequities that plague the system; and bureaucracies because of the cumbersome and time-consuming nature of death penalty appeals. These things about the death penalty were true before the moratorium began. They are just as true now that the moratorium has ended. Indeed, after more than 30 years of supporting executions, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens changed his mind and now concludes that the death penalty violates the constitutionbecause it amounts to no more than the pointless infliction of pain. In his opinion in the Baze decision, Stevens indicated that if it were up to him, he would do away with the death penalty altogether. He challenges all of us to engage in "? a dispassionate, impartial comparison of the enormous costs that death penalty litigation imposes on society with the benefits that it produces?." As executions resume in the U.S. , it indeed is time for such a contemplation. Today your work to oppose - and abolish - capital punishment is more important than ever before. Please click here to help NCADP pay for the work that needs to be done. *** WHAT TO DO FROM FAR FAR AWAY Recently Alison wrote to me: I have been a subscriber to the newsletter for sometime now, but to tell you the truth I live in a small town in NSW, Australia . As you know, Australia doesn't have the death penalty anymore, but I would really like to see it stopped in the USA . Is there anything that I can do, given I am not a US citizen, or live there? I would be interested in being involved in someway if you can think of something. Anyway, it is great to read the newsletters anyway, Thanks Abe There is a list of ten things you can do here on our web page: Clearly not all of these ideas work for our friends outside of the U.S. , but take a look and think about how you can use the circles that you travel in to further the cause you believe in. Here's a few more ideas: * Write a letter to the editor of your local paper about why you oppose the death penalty. When it is published, send a copy to the U.S. Ambassador to your country, and to your Ambassador to the U.S. , with a note asking them to raise this as an issue of concern with their higher ups. * Rent a film with a death penalty film and invite friends to watch and discuss it with you, or hold a public showing and discussion at the library or a local faith community. You can add an action component such as asking everyone to write a letter protesting an upcoming execution, and/or take up a collection to help support the work of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. * Think about other things that you can do, and share those ideas with me here at abe at NCADP.org - I'll compile and share some of them every once in a while. *** CATCHING UP WITH CAPITAL X Esther Brown of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty in Alabama writes this update on Capital X, who is walking from Trenton , NJ to Austin , TX to raise awareness about the death penalty: X is in Alabama ! I picked him up yesterday evening and brought him to my house after dinner with Judy and Jim. There was a long phone call with Holman and friendships were born. X and I talked late into the night. As I write, Judy has taken X to a local elementary school and an interview with the People's Voice will follow, back at my house. Tonight X will be in Tuskegee with Chief Frazier, of The Revealer program, participating in a town meeting. Lots is happening! X will be in Birmingham in a couple of days and is open to doing speaking and or interviews. He is an extraordinary man in every sense of the word and we are grateful for his friendship. If you would like to meet with him please contact him at 281 818 8935 or at his email projectrevolution2010 at gmail.com or call me at 334 499 0003 Esther The video blog is here: http://onloq.com/channels/from-the-front-lines/ More is on the Journey of Hope Blog at http://www.thejourneyofhope.blogspot.com/ *** NEBRASKA NOTES Megan wrote this in the Nebraskans Against the Death Penalty weekly update?. Yesterday, our board chair, Amy Miller spoke to a class at Omaha Marian High School and I was fortunate to be able to tag along. Not everyone in the class agreed on abolition, but it was lively discussion and some serious questions were brought up by the students. On our way back from Omaha , we discussed how important it is to continue to keep abolition a hot topic in Nebraska . When we arrived back to the office, I had an amazing phone call from a woman in Lexington who wanted to voice her support for abolition, and despite not being able to support NADP financially, wanted to know what she could do to help our cause. I told her write or call her elected officials, talk to your friends about abolition, and attend NADP related events. Her call was so passionate about her reasons behind wanting abolition. When the call ended, she said "I am going to call my senator at home right now." These two events were just small reminders about how much work we have done on the journey towards abolition as well as how much work we have left. We want to know how you are continuing to keep the fight for abolition going in your area of the state. We also want to extend our help! NADP is more than happy to come to your events, organizations, house parties, classrooms, anywhere there is an audience small or large to discuss the death penalty. We just want to spread the word on how we plan to end the death penalty in Nebraska ! If you want to either let us know how you are continuing your fight for abolition or if you want an NADP speaker to come talk to your group about the death penalty, please contact me at 402.477.7787 or info at nadp.net. Thank you again for all your ongoing support. Sincerely, Megan Moslander, Office Manager *** BUMPER STICKERS, BUTTONS AND SHIRTS For those of you who responded to the opportunity to receive visibility tools, you should have them by now. Please let me know how they are working for you! And to those who sent contributions to help cover the costs of that project, thanks very much! Reach me at abe at ncadp.org *** FAREWELL TO DAVID ELLIOT David Elliot, NCADP's Communications Director, will complete his service with the National Coalition this Friday. David is leaving to take a new position working on broader social justice issues at U. S. Action. Recently, former NCADP Board Chair Marshall Dayan wrote the following tribute to David. We will miss him here - myself especially, since his office is across the hall from mine and everyone else is all the way at the other end of a very long hall! It's not "goodbye," David, its "see you later!" Thanks for all that you have done in your tenure at NCADP. -abe An Open Letter to David: David, I dare say that you and I have worked together for well over a decade. Your work has been remarkable in many, many ways. Your communications skills are top-drawer, your understanding of new and old media is equal to anyone's I've met and with whom I've worked, your interpersonal skills are unsurpassed, and your passion for our work, the work of saving the lives of those condemned to death in America, whether through abolition or on a case-by-case basis, are likewise unsurpassed. I want to take a liberty to write particularly about your interpersonal skills. There have been occasions, once or twice, when the passions, the stakes, the difficulties of our work, have led to "intrafamily squabbles." No one, absolutely no one, has had more patience, more understanding, greater standing in the community, to divine peaceful resolutions to these squabbles than have you. I believe that your ability comes from an understanding that is the foundation of this work, an understanding that each of us as human beings--death row inmate, surviving family member, big-headed lawyer or pig-headed organizer, is endowed with special dignity and deserving of respect by others, and you've brought that understanding to all of your work and all of your tasks, big and small, on behalf of the anti-death penalty movement in America. I wish you well in your new endeavor, and all your future endeavors, and though I saddened by your leaving the National Coalition, I am filled with admiration for the work you've done for the National Coalition, and for the movement. I wish to pledge $500.00 to the National Coalition in your honor, and to strongly encourage at least 19 other friends of yours and supporters of your work to match my pledge to establish a $10,000.00 living legacy in your honor, and to further the work in which you've so tirelessly engaged. With much love, Marshall Dayan Friends, please click here to join Marshall with a contribution in recognition of David Elliot's legacy at NCADP. Yours in the Struggle, --abe Abraham J. Bonowitz Director of Affiliate Support National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty http://www.NCADP.org abe at ncadp.org mobile: 561-371-5204 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From shimogamo at attglobal.net Fri May 2 05:57:57 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 02 May 2008 20:57:57 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Great Consolidation Message-ID: <481B01C5.4020803@attglobal.net> What more can the government shut down? Oh yes, doctors' surgeries. by George Monbiot Published in the Guardian (April 29 2008) Everything is getting bigger and further away. Hospitals, post offices, schools and prisons are being "rationalised" and "consolidated". The government says that this process improves efficiency. Instead, it outsources inefficiency: we must travel further to use public services. This is bad for the environment, bad for community life, bad for universal provision. But we haven't seen anything yet. We are about to be confronted with the biggest shutdown of all: the government has started the process of closing England's network of doctors' surgeries. If you know nothing of this, don't blame yourself. The announcement was buried in an interim report published last October by a health minister {1}. The report was 52 pages long, and the policy was explained in a single paragraph on pages 25 and 26. Rather than being brought before parliament, it was released four days before MPs returned from their recess. Since then there has been no further public announcement. But in December the Department of Health sent a letter to all the strategic health authorities in England, demanding that the policy be implemented immediately {2}. The greatest transformation in the history of the NHS is taking place without public debate, public consent or formal consultation. The government's policy is to consolidate doctors' surgeries into a series of giant health centres or polyclinics. Thousands of small practices will be closed and patients will be processed in buildings containing up to fifty GPs. The new clinics will also house some services currently provided by hospitals, which allows the government to claim that it is bringing healthcare "closer to home". The net effect will be a massive reduction in convenience. The policy was launched by Ara Darzi, a colorectal surgeon who has been raised to the peerage and made under-secretary of state for health. He wrote his interim report in three months, during which he claims to have spoken to thousands of people. But it contains no record of who they are, how they were selected or what their answers were: he reveals only that "their views have helped shape this interim report". {3} His final report will not be published until June, but the Department of Health has instructed England's primary care trusts (PCTs) to advertise for bidders for the new polyclinics by May 2008 {4}: the first notices have already been posted in the Health Service Journal. During a parliamentary debate launched by the Conservatives last week, Alan Johnson, the secretary of state for health, claimed three times that this policy is not being imposed on primary care trusts. "There is no national policy", he said, "for replacing traditional GP surgeries with health centres or, indeed, polyclinics"; "we are not specifying polyclinics as any part of the exercise"; "[the Tories say] we are imposing a system of polyclinics throughout the country. We are not." {5} Three times, in other words, he misled the House. The letter sent by the Department of Health in December ordered that "each PCT will be expected to complete procurements during 2008/09 {6}. In a parliamentary answer in Febrary, the health minister Ben Bradshaw confirmed that "every PCT in the country will be procuring a new ... health centre during 2008-09" {7}. A press release published by the Labour Party on April 15th confirmed that the new health centres would be built "in every town and city" {8}. I hope MPs demand that Alan Johnson apologise to parliament. Lord Darzi insists that polyclinics will offer "a more personalised service" {9}. This is nonsense: in the huge new centres we are less likely to be able to see the same GP and more likely to get lost in the system. A recent paper in the British Medical Journal reveals that "patients in small practices rate their care more highly in terms of both access and continuity" and that small practices "achieved slightly higher levels of clinical quality than larger practices" {10}. The new centres will be built not where they are most convenient for patients but - as Darzi revealed to the Commons health committee - where the NHS happens to own land {11}. If you live in a village or a distant suburb and depend on public transport - as many elderly and sick people do - visiting the doctor could take all day. Ara Darzi is the new Dr Beeching, shutting down the branch lines of our primary health service. So why is this happening? In seeking surreptitiously to privatise healthcare, the government has a problem. Primary care is already in private hands: GPs run their own practices. But they are the wrong hands: the corporations demanding guaranteed streams of income from the taxpayer can't play. Polyclinics are perfectly designed to let them in, while preventing doctors from competing. It's not just that GPs can't raise the capital; because the contracts are much bigger than ordinary practices and involve many different services, the tendering process is expensive and fiendishly complex. The big service companies can produce the same bid for any number of clinics: they need spend their money only once. The Department of Health says that primary care trusts should use a type of contract called Alternative Provider Medical Services {12}, which is designed to allow corporations to bid. This is not a public-private partnership: it is the outright privatisation of primary healthcare. Do I need to explain the implications? The US health system, which the British government seems determined to emulate, is both more expensive and less efficient than ours; those who can't afford to pay are either excluded or treated like battery pigs {13}. The independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs - private clinics performing routine operations for the NHS - that the government introduced in England in 2003 have been a costly disaster. Private companies receive their money whether or not they carry out the work they are contracted to do. The government refuses to release comparative figures, but the little evidence we have suggests that their costs are much higher than the public sector's {14}. The risks have been transferred back to the taxpayer and in some cases the standards of treatment are appalling. In 2006 Angus Wallace, professor of orthopaedic and accident surgery at Nottingham University, told the Guardian, "We expect failures of hip replacements at approximately one per cent a year and knees at about 1.5% a year. But we have got some of the ISTCs that are looking at twenty per cent failure rates." {15} Because they put profits first, companies that run these centres have generated a stack of litigation claims and a huge NHS bill for repairing the damage they have caused {16}. Far from reversing its policy in the light of this evidence, the government is setting up a competition panel, to ensure that the health service never discriminates in favour of the public sector when awarding contracts {17}. Did any of us ask for this? Are there crowds on the streets demanding the privatisation of the NHS? Even the Tories, for God's sake, have come out against it: David Cameron's speech last week placed them to the left of Labour {18}. Why, after the sixty-odd consecutive quarters of growth that Gordon Brown keeps boasting about, can he not maintain a public service founded in the midst of poverty and rationing? What mysterious hold on policy do the corporations possess, that they can persuade this government to wreck Labour's finest achievement and damage its chances of re-election? www.monbiot.com References: 1. Ara Darzi, October 2007. Our NHS, Our Future. NHS Next Stage Review: Interim report. National Health Service. http://www.ournhs.nhs.uk/ 2. Ben Dyson, Commissioning and System Management Directorate, Department of Health, 21st December 2007. Letter to SHA Directors of Commissioning. 3. Ara Darzi, ibid, page 3. 4. Ben Dyson, ibid, paragraph 14. 5. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm080423/debtext/80423-0003.htm#08042357000001 6. Ben Dyson, ibid, paragraph 5. 7. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm080229/text/80229w0008.htm#08022970000046 8. The Labour Party, 15th April 2008. NHS on your side. http://www.labour.org.uk/nhs_on_your_side,2008-04-15 9. Ara Darzi, ibid, page 30. 10. Martin Roland, 22nd March 2008. Assessing the options available to Lord Darzi. British Medical Journal, volume 336, pages 625-626. doi:10.1136/bmj.39510.702234.80 11. Professor Lord Darzi of Denham KBE, 25th October 2007. Minutes of Evidence taken before the House of Commons Health Committee. Answer to Q94. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmhealth/uc1106-i/uc110602.htm 12. Ben Dyson, ibid, Annex A. 13. During the Commons debate last week, Richard Taylor MP cited two recent papers about the failures of the US medical system, published in the BMJ and the New England Journal of Medicine. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm080423/debtext/80423-0003.htm#08042357000001 14. Allyson M Pollock and Sylvia Godden, 23rd February 2008. Independent sector treatment centres: evidence so far. British Medical Journal, volume 336, pages 421-424. doi:10.1136/bmj.39470.505556.80 15. Quoted by Sarah Boseley, 1oth March 2006. NHS forced to fix bungled private sector hip replacement operations. The Guardian. 16. See also Stewart Player and Colin Leys, April 2008. Under the knife. Red Pepper magazine. 17. Nicholas Timmins, 16th March 2008. NHS providers to win right of appeal. Financial Times. 18. David Cameron, 21st April 2008. Speech on Primary Care. http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=143765&speeches=1 Copyright (c) 2006 Monbiot.com http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/04/29/the-great-consolidation/ TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From fentona at shaw.ca Fri May 2 10:54:52 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Fri, 02 May 2008 09:54:52 -0700 Subject: [R-G] If the Left Debated the Campaign [Foreign Policy] Issues Message-ID: If the Left Debated the Campaign Issues ELECTION DISSENSION May, 01 2008 By Lydia Sargent and Michael Albert http://www.zcommunications.org/zmag/viewArticle/17499 "Election Dissension" is part of a Z Magazine series on all things electoral. We welcome your contributions to the discussion; send to zmag at zmag.org . The previous interview with Michael Albert, "Serving the Dominant Elites," was published in the April issue. The full discussion is available on DVD via Z Video Productions ? Eds. SARGENT: In the last session you established that presidential elections are mostly a PR campaign and that, sincere or not, the campaign has little to do with truth or with fundamental changes in existing institutions and a lot to do with getting elected, with the help of elite funding and false promises to voters. Let's turn to a few specific issues, starting with foreign policy. How would the left or a left candidate go about exposing U.S. foreign policy? ALBERT: I don't think what the candidates say about foreign policy means much at all. They seek to appeal to funders, media, and various constituencies. They say what their pollsters tell them to say. At times they say what they believe while at other times they say what they don't believe. They sell themselves in the same way Proctor and Gamble sells toothpaste?by saying whatever needs to be said to find a way to get support. To find out about candidates, the way to go about it is not by looking at what they say, but by looking at the history of American foreign policy. Since the logic of it changes barely at all, there's no reason to suspect it's going to change now?unless, of course, large constituencies force it to change. As to what their foreign policy is it's relatively simple: U.S. foreign policy is elites in the United States? the Pentagon, the White House, the corporations?pursuing policies designed to enhance their own power, their own options, and their own wealth. So the policies are designed to extract wealth from other places in the world, whether by actual coercive behavior or, more often, just the power of threats. A case in point is that the United States isn't in Iraq to take Iraqi oil and benefit from it directly, it's rather more in Iraq to be in control of Iraqi and Mideast oil and to be able to use that power, that threat, that position of dominance over a critical resource to coerce outcomes around the world that it wants. It's always been our policy to behave in that way. So when candidates say that the U.S. should promote democracy and human rights around the world, what do they mean? I have no idea what's in their heads, but it's a little bit like saying Iran should promote democracy and human rights around the world. It makes no sense. It's like saying domestically the Mafia should promote human rights and democracy in major urban areas of the United States. The United States doesn't care what polls show the Iraqi people want; the United States doesn't care what polls show the population of any country in the world wants. When Turkey was going to oppose the war in Iraq because the Turkish population was so against war that the Turkish elites were afraid not to, American media described Turkey as a backward country, not a country that was exhibiting democratic behavior? which it was. And the same went for countries throughout Europe. The countries that opposed the war in Iraq, that were critical of it in response to overwhelming sentiments of their populations, the United States treated as somehow backward, peculiar, misbehaving. The countries that ignored their populations and supported the U.S. role in Iraq, the United States was happy about, describing them as enlightened. That's what American foreign policy is all about. The gap between reality and rhetoric is so huge that you can say things that are incredible. So to talk about the United States imposing democracy is like talking about the Mafia imposing non-violence or peace. What kind of a foreign policy would you present and how should America behave toward the rest of the world? I think a good leftist?my saying it doesn't mean much?but a good leftist who might be running for office would say something like, "As president, here are some of the things I would do: close American military bases around the world; reorient the funds that would be saved and spend some in parts of the world that have suffered due to policies of the United States and other wealthy first world countries; spend some of it inside the United States?raising the consciousness and a sense of solidarity with others?and improving the life of people in the United States." I would simply remove from the docket of American behavior occupying, invading, or otherwise using violence to coerce other nations in any way whatsoever. I would make clear that there are several ways to deal with "terrorism" in the world. One is to pursue it, to actually be terrorists. That's what the United States does as its primary policy. That is, the United States engages in coercive violence around the world to pursue its own interests regardless of its effect on populations. The second thing that the U.S. does is provoke terrorism. We have a foreign policy that is so callous toward, so dismissive of, and so denigrating to, people around the world that people naturally react hostilely. And then we have created an environment in which the only thing that matters is power. If the only thing that matters is power, and you're a third world country, you can't exercise power via a gigantic military apparatus like the United States, you have to do it via terrorism. It's the only avenue open. I should clarify that terrorism is a real issue. It is possible for there to be a terrorist apparatus that exacts gigantic horror. Besides the U.S., you mean? Yes. The U.S. is first in nuclear weapons, first in violence, first in coercion. But you could imagine a situation in which some apparatus got possession of nuclear weapons and used them. So how do you prevent that? Well, one way would be Bush's way, by having a gigantic coercive cop on the beat who, ahead of any threat, goes in and exterminates what it takes to be the likely threat. The problem with that approach, aside from being immoral, is the idea that the U.S. should do it. Everybody in the U.S. would laugh if we said that the Iranians or North Koreans should be the cops of the world. Well, for the rest of the world the idea that the U.S. should be the cops of the world is like that. It's ridiculous. Imagine that six people decide they're going on a rampage and engage in some horrible violent activity against Las Vegas. And surveillance discovers they are from Phoenix, Arizona. So what should we do? We want to prosecute these people, we think they're in Phoenix?let's bomb Phoenix. Let's launch a massive air assault against the entire state, for that matter, because we believe these six terrorists are in Phoenix. What would the result be? Instead of 6 people, there would be 6,000 people hostile toward the rest of the country. What should we do with the six people in Phoenix? We might try to catch them without killing everyone else in the city. What if Japan or India decided to bomb the U.S. and cut off food and medicine because there's a bunch of terrorists in Washington? The idea of solving the problem of coercive violence by the exercise of even greater coercive violence has never and probably will never work. These policies are barbaric and they do not deal with terrorism. On the other hand, they aren't meant to deal with terrorism. They're meant to perpetuate and propel the will of America in the world as the chief sovereign that decides what can and can't be done. So what's the alternative? The alternative would be international law. The alternative would be an environment in which international courts, international law, the UN, really meant something. The alternative would be an environment in which those who have power now?and it doesn't change overnight?would be restrained from and would restrict themselves from exercising it. That's what a left candidate would talk about. Let's turn specifically to Iraq. In a candidates' debate, what would you say about our foreign policy there? The United States should withdraw. But more than that, it should pay huge reparations. Why? Because we've destroyed the infrastructure of a country. We have harmed, perhaps irreparably, a society. We owe them reparations. We owe them support to get back to being a functioning polity, economy, and social system. So we should provide that, not just withdraw. But we should certainly withdraw. We are an occupying army. Another area of concern in the debates is China. The talk there is about human rights violations and lack of democracy. How would a left candidate discuss China? A left candidate might look and say not just what are the Chinese doing, but what are the Americans doing? For instance, American cigarette manufacturers are addicting the Chinese population to cigarettes. Why? In order to replace European and American populations' diminishing smoking. So we're exporting smoking to China. Let's compare that to cocaine from Colombia to the United States. Cocaine from Colombia to the United States kills about 3,000 Americans a year. Cigarette addiction will kill millions, tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of Chinese over decades. That's what American policy does. What is China doing that remotely compares?and remember we're only looking at one industry in the U.S.? So what I would do first is look at our behavior with respect to China and the rest of the world. Then, if we clean it up, if we begin to behave in a remotely responsible fashion, we would have more justification in criticizing violations elsewhere. Another country of great concern to the candidates is Cuba. Should we continue the sanctions, should we indict Castro, should we go in and get Castro's ally Chavez? Again, it's American political culture vs. reality. So what we have in Cuba is a situation where, for decades, the United States has engaged in economic warfare, terrorism as well. The economic warfare is the embargo, the terrorism is the acts of terror committed with the support of, and even engaged in by, U.S. policy toward Cuba. Why? If the Cuban people want to do X and X is dangerous to the United States, it's not allowed. What is X in this case? X is to own their own resources. X is to administer their own society. X is to not have a distribution of wealth like that in the United States where a few percent of the population own the vast majority of the economic assets and the wealth accruing from them. The Cubans don't have that. The Cubans have a society where the tremendous centralization of wealth in the hands of the few was undone. It's not my idea of an ideal society by a long shot, but that was a gigantic step forward. It's that step forward that makes Cuba anathema to the United States and which causes the U.S. to think that it makes sense to talk about what the future of Cuba should be. What if the Japanese started to talk about what the future of the U.S. should be? We can understand the idea that one nation doesn't have the right to dictate to another how it should function, except in the case of the United States. And Chavez in Venezuela? With respect to Chavez, it's even more ridiculous. For the U.S. to talk about Chavez as a dictator is a travesty. It's a travesty in the sense that they've had election after election in Venezuela which he handily wins. Then they have one recently, not about his being in office, but about a set of policies that he was backing, which lost. What was Chavez's response to that? "Okay, I lost." If he was a dictator he wouldn't lose; he wouldn't even have an election. So why is the U.S. government upset about Venezuela? We're upset for the same reasons as in Cuba. It's because in Venezuela the government is looking around at society and saying, "You know what? We should change things. We should change things such that those who are poorest, those who are suffering, those who are denied their dignity, will get it all back. How will they get it all back? We'll redistribute wealth, we'll redistribute power. We'll think of new ways to organize the political system, new ways to organize the economy." That's what they're doing. But that's a horror from the point of view of the United States. What happens if they succeed? The worst possible outcome for U.S. elites is not that Chavez is a dictator. In Washington each day the government gets up praying that he'll do something that, in fact, would be dictatorial. The worst conceivable outcome is that the Venezuelans succeed in improving the quality of life of the people of Venezuela and in creating a model that could be emulated elsewhere. That's why we go in and try to create turmoil and try to create a coup. And who knows what we'll try and do in the future. And a left president would...? A left president would say, "My gosh, what's going on in Venezuela is quite fascinating. Let's go down there and try to learn something." From fentona at shaw.ca Fri May 2 12:42:56 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Fri, 02 May 2008 11:42:56 -0700 Subject: [R-G] =?windows-1252?q?=22A_history_of_hypocrisy=22=3A_Canadian_c?= =?windows-1252?q?omplicity_links_U=2ES=2E_Cold_War_torture_with_cases_lik?= =?windows-1252?q?e_Maher_Arar=92s?= Message-ID: <5B195E2F-3BEA-4E2B-A4A7-D4FC61E51BB7@shaw.ca> http://lrc.reviewcanada.ca/index.php?page=a-history-of-hypocrisy Literary Review of Canada Volume 16, Number 4 May 2008 Pages 5-8 A History of Hypocrisy Canadian complicity links U.S. Cold War torture with cases like Maher Arar?s. AN ESSAY by Regan Boychuk I. To judge by the statements of government officials, Canada is?as it should be?staunchly opposed to torture. Just over two decades ago, Canada became one of the first countries to ratify the United Nations Convention against Torture, adopting an absolute ban on ?any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person.? In 2005, foreign affairs minister Pierre Pettigrew restated our support: ?The use of torture is unacceptable and must not go unchallenged. Canada is fully committed to the elimination of torture, to investigating suspected cases of torture, and to supporting torture victims.? Canada recently also co-sponsored a resolution at the UN calling on Iran to address its continued use of torture, and our current minister of foreign affairs publicly demanded that Syria take firm measures to stop its use of torture, investigate allegations, prosecute perpetrators and provide remedies for torture victims. Officials? noble words notwithstanding, there is much that suggests a darker reality shadowing the image of Canadian opposition to torture. In April 2006, for example, the UN Human Rights Committee stated it was ?concerned by allegations that Canada may have cooperated with agencies known to resort to torture with the aim of extracting information from individuals detained in foreign countries.? The committee mentioned Maher Arar in particular, but was also concerned about similar cases involving other Canadians tortured abroad. Indeed, at the later Iacobucci inquiry into three such cases, Justice Department lawyer Michael Peirce, speaking on behalf of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the RCMP and the Department of Foreign Affairs, argued that signing the UN Convention against Torture does not necessarily prevent Canada from sharing intelligence with countries employing torture. In the wake of 9/11, the Supreme Court of Canada likewise unanimously decided that there were instances when Canada could deport people to face torture. This is despite perfectly clear language in the Convention against Torture that rules out sending anyone to another state ?where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.? As a result, the UN Human Rights Committee found Canada in violation of the prohibition of torture enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. As Human Rights Watch?s Jennifer Egsgard wrote to The Globe and Mail, that Supreme Court ruling, ?humiliatingly, makes Canada the only Western nation whose laws have been interpreted to allow them to return an individual to torture.? More recently, details of Canadian complicity in Afghan abuse have been trickling out across the front pages of the Globe. After repeatedly dismissing credible allegations of torture, the Harper government was finally forced to concede that torture existed in Afghan prisons when Canadian diplomats were confronted with a man covered in fresh welts who pointed out the hidden electrical cable and rubber hose secret police had used to beat him. He had been captured by Canadian forces, who routinely hand detainees over to Afghan authorities. A couple of weeks later, it was revealed that the Canadian government knew of?but tried for months to keep secret? allegations that the governor of Kandahar was personally involved in the torture of at least one detainee. Despite pledging to cooperate, the federal government has likewise refused to release uncensored documents to the Military Police Complaints Commission?s investigation of Afghan detainee transfers. And when the MPCC decided to hold a public interest hearing to gain access, the Tories moved to quash the inquiry. All of this has unfolded under the banner of America?s so-called war on terror. ?Since 9/11,? the University of Ottawa?s Peter Jones reminded us in the Ottawa Citizen last October, ?the Bush administration has systematically redefined torture to provide the CIA and other U.S. agencies with legal exemptions from both U.S. laws and international conventions to which the U.S. is party.? But criticizing Yankee torture?or that of Iran or Syria for that matter? is cheap and easy for Canucks. It is one thing to excoriate others for their crimes, quite another to look at our own. As Canadians, our focus should be on the role our own government has played in all this. And a look at the history of U.S. torture suggests that the injustices revealed in cases like Maher Arar?s are not exactly anomalies in what is in fact a long record of Canadian collusion, from Cold War assistance in the development and spread of modern torture techniques to complicity in worldwide abuses today. II. Between 1950 and 1962, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency led a massive project to improve psychological warfare in order to influence whole societies and better interrogate individuals. As much as US$1 billion a year was spent on research and operations, in what historian Alfred McCoy describes as ?a veritable Manhattan Project of the mind.?? These efforts led to the CIA?s very own brand of psychological, ?no touch? torture?an innovation that took shape around Canadian ideas. Throughout the CIA?s development of psychological torture, the U.S. had an unwritten understanding regarding such classified research with its close ally and neighbour, Canada. As the chair of Canada?s Defence Research Board at the time described it: ?If they wanted classified research they came to the board and if we thought it was suitable we paid for it and then passed it along to the U.S.? Some of the research Canadian officials evidently thought of as suitable included that of two McGill University professors that would ultimately leave a trail of victims?not just in Montreal, but around the globe. In March 1951, the CIA initiated a top-secret research program into ?all aspects of special interrogation.? Within months, defence and intelligence officials from the U.S., Britain and Canada met secretly at Montreal?s Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Ostensibly, these western officials were concerned with reports that communists may have developed new methods of mind control resulting in the disturbing public confessions made behind the Iron Curtain and in prisoner-of-war camps during the Korean War. But Britain had already researched the topic and all attending agreed there was ?no conclusive evidence? that the communists had made any giant leaps in mind control; the meeting participants therefore turned their attention to the offensive possibilities of new research into the human mind, rather than defensive concerns. What eventually emerged as the conceptual core of the CIA?s particular brand of torture was the devastating impact of sensory deprivation, first proposed as an avenue of research at the Ritz- Carlton meeting by Donald Hebb, chair of McGill?s psychology department. Hebb subsequently received a secret Canadian defence grant of CA$10,000 per year to study ?whether slight changes in attitude might be effected? by short periods of isolation intensified by light- diffusing goggles, earphones and cardboard tubes to reduce tactile perception. In stark contrast to Hebb?s modest predictions, the impact turned out to be overwhelming?the study?s participants all reported serious confusion and hallucinations, with Hebb concluding that after two to three days of sensory deprivation, ?the subject?s very identity began to disintegrate.? (Four of the first 22 volunteers spontaneously said that being in Hebb?s sensory deprivation chamber ?was a form of torture.?) Amid hundreds of generously funded projects, the CIA was quick to recognize Hebb?s research as the most promising: with just a few simple tools (goggles, gloves and a pillow), many subjects could be reduced to a state resembling acute psychosis within 48 hours, making them more vulnerable to interrogators. Less ethical researchers would refine Hebb?s findings, testing and escalating sensory deprivation?s impact on unwitting victims more like those to be targeted in the CIA?s field of operations. One such ethically challenged researcher was Hebb?s colleague at McGill, Ewen Cameron. In 1943, the Scottish-born Cameron was appointed professor of psychiatry at McGill and director of the newly created Allan Memorial Institute. Funded lavishly throughout the 1950s by the Canadian Department of National Health and Welfare and the Defence Research Board, Cameron started experimenting with brainwashing in 1953, using techniques he described as ?an adaptation of Hebb?s psychological isolation? that incorporated sedation, hypnosis and LSD. As documented by writers, including Harvey M. Weinstein, the 1956 publication of Cameron?s results brought him to the attention of the CIA. Having found a scientist willing to test the effects of prolonged, involuntary sensory deprivation, the CIA then funnelled about US$62,000 to Cameron between 1957 and 1963 for further brainwashing research on unwitting Allan Memorial patients. (The stories of lives destroyed by Cameron?s experiments are legion. Among the more poignant for Canadians concerned with their own government?s crimes is that of 26-year-old Linda MacDonald. She was admitted to the Allan Memorial Institute for depression in 1963, after the CIA?but not the Canadian government?had grown tired of funding Cameron?s work. MacDonald?s ?therapy? lasted six months and included an 86-day drug-induced sleep; at the end, she was totally amnesiac and had to be toilet trained.) III. In 1963, the CIA formally distilled its behavioural findings into the Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation handbook. Hebb and Cameron?s Montreal research provided what Anne Collins, author of In the Sleep Room, calls the ?Canadian contribution? to CIA interrogation, inspiring psychological torture techniques that were not only brutally effective but also left no telltale physical marks. Kubark laid out a novel two-phase combination of Hebb and Cameron?s sensory deprivation with stress positions (such as prolonged squatting) that induce suffering that is ?self-inflicted? and therefore more psychologically devastating. ?For the next forty years,? writes Alfred McCoy, ?the Kubark manual would define the agency?s interrogation methods and training programs throughout the Third World.? One of the first stops on Kubark?s world tour was Vietnam. According to historian Darius Rejali in Torture and Democracy, ?by 1963, there was no doubt that the South Vietnamese government tortured prisoners.? Beginning in the mid 1960s, the U.S. ran its infamous Phoenix ?counterterror? program together with Saigon authorities in a combined effort to eliminate the Vietcong and their supporters from South Vietnam. Phoenix ultimately left tens of thousands tortured and killed, the overwhelming majority of them innocent. For its part, Canada was a member of the International Commission of Control and Supervision responsible for supervising the implementation (and, in practice, violation) of Vietnam?s peace accords when the Phoenix program was winding down in 1973. Political scientist Victor Levant has documented that, while our government feigned objectivity and impartiality on Vietnam, ?the record of Canadian actions reveals a continuing pattern of partisan behaviour as well as a cynical disregard for the responsibilities of international peacekeeping. Ottawa needed no prompting from Washington on this score.? This is most certainly the case with the Canadian contingent of the commission?s refusal to shed unfavourable light on its neighbour to the south by investigating widespread torture among SouthVietnam?s hundreds of thousands of political prisoners. The Canadian government defended this stance, in part, by arguing that ?these prisoners? status is comparable to that of the Japanese Canadians who were interned during WWII and therefore exclusively within South Vietnam?s internal jurisdiction.?? As John Holmes, an influential Canadian diplomat of the period, once boasted, having principles?but finding ways around them?was a ?Canadian idea.? ?In retrospect,? McCoy writes, ?Phoenix proved a seminal experience for the U.S. intelligence community, combining both physical and psychological techniques in an extreme method that would serve as a model for later counterinsurgency training in South and Central America.? From the mid 1960s to the mid ?80s, the U.S. army exported this model to Latin America through training programs and materials for allied governments, resulting in counterguerilla operations from Columbia to Guatemala that bore ?an eerie but explicable resemblance to South Vietnam.? Throughout, Hebb and Cameron?s contributions remained evident. In an updated version of their Kubark manual, the CIA?s Honduras Human Resource Exploitation Manual (1983) makes reference to the ?powerful stress? caused by sensory deprivation: ?the more complete the deprivation, the more rapidly and deeply the subject is affected. The stress and anxiety become unbearable for most subjects.? During this period, both the Trudeau and Mulroney governments avoided direct criticism of U.S. policy in Latin America that supported regimes that executed hundreds of thousands and tortured tens of thousands more. In 1980, Canada supported a UN resolution condemning abuses in El Salvador, but soon acquiesced to continuing U.S. military aid and worked repeatedly to moderate direct denunciations of the Salvadoran government drafted by countries such as France and Mexico. When it came to ongoing state terror in Guatemala in 1984, church observers and a former senior human rights advisor to the Canadian government accused Canada of accommodating U.S. objections to the wording of a resolution concerning its Guatemalan allies in the UN Commission on Human Rights. Allan MacEachern, the minister of foreign affairs at the time, said that because U.S.-Canada relations were the first priority of Canadian foreign policy, there had to be limits to Canadian criticism of U.S. policy.? IV. As Alfred McCoy compellingly argues, Canadian research continues to echo to this day in Guantanamo, Bagram, Abu Ghraib and locations unknown. He points out that, for example, those iconic Abu Ghraib photos reflect familiar Kubark methods, rather than just the sadistic improvisation of a few ?creeps?: the hood imposes sensory deprivation, while standing for an extended period with outstretched arms administers so-called self-inflicted pain. Likewise, the issue of ?disappeared persons? closes the loop between America?s propagation of torture in Latin America in the 1970s and ?80s and today?s ongoing ?war on terror.? People are ?disappeared? when authorities hold them secretly, often to facilitate their torture and/or execution. The UN General Assembly first noted it as an urgent problem in 1978 and, since 1980, more than 51,000 people have been disappeared by governments in more than 90 countries, many of them in Latin America. At least 40,000 cases remain unsolved today. In this alleged war on terror, America resorts not only to widespread torture but also to ?extra-ordinary rendition,? the practice of disappearing people to other countries without due judicial process. Essentially, it is state kidnapping and is used to deliver captives to jurisdictions such as Syria and Egypt where they face torture by proxy or death. Although the scales of abuse are clearly different, the London director of Human Rights Watch recalled disappearances under regimes such as Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia before observing that ?the U.S. administration [has] made little secret that it apparently feels entitled to make people vanish.? Details remain secret. As journalist Stephen Grey emphasized in an article for Salon.com, ?we know the fate of just a small fraction of the thousands of prisoners captured by U.S. forces around the world since 9/11.? Such abuses lent new momentum to the issue of ?forced disappearances? at the UN more than 20 years after it first emerged on the world agenda. Here again, Canada has played a questionable role. In the 1980s, Canada was instrumental in creating and supporting the UN Working Group on Involuntary Disappearances, and in 2007 the Canadian delegate to the UN Human Rights Council reaffirmed that those responsible for enforced disappearances should not go unpunished. Nonetheless, as Human Rights Watch reported in 2006, Canada also worked aggressively to dilute key provisions of an international treaty on forced disappearances: ?To their disgrace, the United States and Russia strongly opposed the [treaty] effort, not least because each had begun using forced disappearances itself ? Canada contributed to this shameful opposition, not because it is known to forcibly ?disappear? people, but apparently because Prime Minister Martin, eager to improve relations with the United States that had been strained under his predecessor, decided to run interference for one of his neighbor?s unsavory practices.?? Despite the efforts of the U.S. and Canada, the text of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance?modelled after the UN Convention against Torture?was approved by the General Assembly in December 2006. Seventy-two countries have since signed it, neither the U.S. nor Canada among them. Documents obtained by Canadian Press help shed some light on the Canadian government?s lack of support. In late November 2005, a secret Canadian Border Services Agency briefing reported that 20 CIA aircraft had made 74 flights through Canada since 9/11, flights quite possibly carrying kidnap victims through Canadian airports and airspace into the hands of torturers. A later government review of those flights uncovered no ?illegal activities,? but there is no indication that this secretive assessment process took Canada?s human rights standards?or anything beyond basic flight regulations?into consideration. Moreover, the Canadian government may not actually deem extraordinary rendition illegal; a 2005 Department of Justice opinion on the issue remains secret and, although a Foreign Affairs briefing note from the same year acknowledges the practice is ?highly controversial,? department spokesman Rodney Moore stated in 2006 that ?whether any particular rendition is lawful would depend on the facts of each individual case.? V. In the final pages of A Question of Torture, Alfred McCoy quotes the inspiring words of an Israeli judge from a 1999 ruling against the abuse of Palestinian prisoners, reminding us that ?not all means are acceptable? for a democracy ?and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand.? But these words are not quite as meaningful as they first appear: by 2003, the Public Committee against Torture in Israel concluded that torture of Palestinian prisoners was again ?methodical and routine.? Not that you will find the Canadian government complaining about such abuse; far from it. When the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade recently disclosed training material that listed the U.S. and Israel among countries where prisoners are at risk of torture, all the U.S. and Israel had to do was say ?Boo!? and Canadian officials scrambled to remove them from the list, in spite of consensus among human rights groups that they both torture. So, from the early days of the Cold War, the Canadian government coordinated and funded the CIA?s research into psychological torture. When they exported the resulting techniques to Vietnam and Latin America, we ran interference. And with today?s war on terror, our complicity with U.S. torture has only grown. Apparently the ?Canadian idea? about finding ways around one?s principles knows few bounds. Notes 1 My discussion of the history of American torture throughout this essay owes a great deal to Alfred McCoy?s penetrating and important A Question of Torture (New York: Metropolitan, 2006) and his ?Science in Dachau?s Shadow,? Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences, Fall 2007. 2 Victor Levant, ?The Political Economy of Canadian Foreign Policy in Vietnam,? PhD thesis, McGill University, 1981, pages 769, 761?66. 3 Liisa North and CAPA, eds., Between War and Peace in Central America: Choices for Canada (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1990), pages 198, 205?06; Robert O. Matthews and Cranford Pratt, eds., Human Rights in Canadian Foreign Policy (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen?s University, 1988), pages 85, 91, 97, 232, 236, 238. 4 Human Rights Watch, World Report 2006, pages 2, 17. The LRC welcomes letters. We reserve the right to publish such letters and edit them for length, clarity and accuracy. E-mail editor[at]lrcreview[dot]com. Regan Boychuk lives in Calgary, where he researches Canadian foreign policy. From suzannedk at yahoo.com Fri May 2 13:18:59 2008 From: suzannedk at yahoo.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 12:18:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <779925.11974.qm@web30905.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 5/1/08, Suzanne de Kuyper wrote: > From: Suzanne de Kuyper > Subject: Re: [R-G] Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School > To: "suzanne de Kuyper" > Date: Thursday, May 1, 2008, 6:54 PM > Daniel Pipes. a super Mc Carthy Medici of the 21st century, > spilling over > with politicaly correct Muslm hate, was put up for > appointment by Bush and > Cheney et al and the House and the Senate, Republican > controlled shot him > down so, Bush gave him a recess appointment for one year > and then created a > specail watchdog group for Pipes tp lead ..Pipes was lead > attack dog for the > destruction of this woman's school, life and > reputation. Few or none ever > show a bright light on these well 'respected' > hatemongers who are useful in > that they seem to believe the propaganda of the last six > years > ..paasionately. Media should shine bright lights on these > now pivitol > guys.....their vtrol seems to be cut just so that the lack > of habeous corpus > looks like a chic idea, just in time. > Suzanne de Kuyper > > On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 3:50 PM, Sid Shniad > wrote: > > > > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/nyregion/28school.html?ex=1210046400 > > &en=eb31e0ad46ef2191&ei=5070&emc=eta1 > > New York Times April 28, 2008 > > BATTLE IN BROOKLYN | A PRINCIPALS RISE AND FALL > > Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School > > By Andrea Elliott > > Debbie Almontaser dreamed of starting a public > school like no other in > > New York City. Children of Arab descent would join > students of other > > ethnicities, learning Arabic together. By > graduation, they would be > > fluent in the language and groomed for the countrys > elite colleges. > > They would be ready, in Ms. Almontasers words, to > become ambassadors > > of peace and hope. > > Things have not gone according to plan. Only > one-fifth of the 60 > > students at the Khalil Gibran International Academy > are Arab-American. > > Since the school opened in Brooklyn last fall, > children have been > > suspended for carrying weapons, repeatedly gotten > into fights and > > taunted an Arabic teacher by calling her a > terrorist, staff members > > and students said in interviews. > > The academys troubles reach well beyond its cramped > corridors in > > Boerum Hill. The schools creation provoked a > controversy so incendiary > > that Ms. Almontaser stepped down as the founding > principal just weeks > > before classes began last September. Ms. Almontaser, > a teacher by > > training and an activist who had carefully built > ties with Christians > > and Jews, said she was forced to resign by the > mayors office following > > a campaign that pitted her against a chorus of > critics who claimed she > > had a militant Islamic agenda. > > In newspaper articles and Internet postings, on > television and talk > > radio, Ms. Almontaser was branded a radical, a > jihadist and a 9/11 > > denier. She stood accused of harboring unpatriotic > leanings and of > > secretly planning to proselytize her students. > Despite Ms. Almontasers > > longstanding reputation as a Muslim moderate, her > critics quickly > > succeeded in recasting her image. > > The conflict tapped into a well of post-9/11 > anxieties. But Ms. > > Almontasers downfall was not merely the result of a > spontaneous outcry > > by concerned parents and neighborhood activists. It > was also the work > > of a growing and organized movement to stop Muslim > citizens who are > > seeking an expanded role in American public life. > The fight against > > the school, participants in the effort say, was only > an early skirmish > > in a broader, national struggle. > > Its a battle thats really just begun, said Daniel > Pipes, who directs a > > conservative research group, the Middle East Forum, > and helped lead > > the charge against Ms. Almontaser and the school. > > In the aftermath of Sept. 11, critics of radical > Islam focused largely > > on terrorism, scrutinizing Muslim-American charities > or asserting > > links between Muslim organizations and violent > groups like Hamas. But > > as the authorities have stepped up the war on > terror, those critics > > have shifted their gaze to a new frontier, what they > describe as > > law-abiding Muslim-Americans who are imposing their > religious values > > in the public domain. > > Mr. Pipes and others reel off a list of examples: > Muslim cabdrivers in > > Minneapolis who have refused to take passengers > carrying liquor; > > municipal pools and a gym at Harvard that have > adopted female-only > > hours to accommodate Muslim women; candidates for > office who are > > suspected of supporting political Islam; and banks > that are offering > > financial products compliant with sharia, the > Islamic code of law. > > The danger, Mr. Pipes says, is that the United > States stands to become > > another England or France, a place where Muslims are > balkanized and > > ultimately threaten to impose sharia. > > It is hard to see how violence, how terrorism will > lead to the > > implementation of sharia, Mr. Pipes said. It is much > easier to see > > how, working through the system the school system, > the media, the > > religious organizations, the government, businesses > and the like you > > can promote radical Islam. > > Mr. Pipes refers to this new enemy as the lawful > Islamists. > > They are carrying out a soft jihad, said Jeffrey > Wiesenfeld, a trustee > > of the City University of New York and a vocal > opponent of the Khalil > > Gibran school. > > Muslim leaders, academics and others see the drive > against the school > > as the latest in a series of discriminatory attacks > intended to > > distort the truth and play on Americans fear of > terrorism. They say > > the campaign is also part of a wider effort to > silence critics of > > Washingtons policy on Israel and the Middle East. > > This is a political, ideological agenda, said John > Esposito, a > > professor of international affairs and Islamic > studies at Georgetown > > University who has been a focus of Mr. Pipess > scrutiny. Its an agenda > > to paint Islam, not just extremists, as a major > problem. > > That portrait, Muslim and Arab advocates contend, is > rife with a bias > > that would never be tolerated were it directed at > other ethnic or > > religious groups. And if Ms. Almontasers story is > any indication, they > > say, the message of her critics wields great power. > > Ms. Almontaser watched city officials and some of > her closest Jewish > > allies distance themselves from her as the > controversy reached its > > peak. She was ultimately felled by an article in The > New York Post > > that said she had downplayed the significance of > T-shirts bearing the > > slogan Intifada NYC. > > Last month, federal judges issued a ruling related > to a lawsuit > > brought by Ms. Almontaser to regain her job stating > that her words > > were inaccurately reported by The Post and then > misconstrued by the > > press. > > While city officials and the Education Department > declined to comment > > about Ms. Almontaser because of the lawsuit, a > lawyer for the city > > said she had not been forced to resign. > > In her first interview since stepping down, Ms. > Almontaser said that > > education officials had pressured her to speak to > The Post and had > > monitored the conversation. After the article was > published, she said, > > the department issued a written apology in her name, > without her > > approval. > > I kept saying I wanted to set the record straight, > said Ms. > > Almontaser, 40. And they kept telling me, You cant > undo what was done. > > A Call to Lead > > In April 2005, Debbie Almontaser got a telephone > call that would > > change her life. The man on the line, Adam Rubin, > worked for a > > nonprofit organization, New Visions for Public > Schools. He was > > exploring whether to help the city create a public > school that would > > teach Arabic. The group already had seed money a > $400,000 grant from > > the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation but needed > the right person to > > help lead the venture. > > Everywhere Mr. Rubin went from the mayors office to > a falafel stand in > > Brooklyn people mentioned Ms. Almontaser. She was a > teacher, a native > > Arabic speaker and arguably the citys most visible > Arab-American > > woman. > > After 9/11, Education Department officials had > enlisted Ms. Almontaser > > to hold workshops on cultural sensitivity for > schoolchildren. She > > spread the message that Islam was a peaceful > religion. She told of how > > her own son had served as a National Guardsman in > the clearing effort > > at ground zero. She was soon attending interfaith > seminars, > > befriending rabbis and priests. Mayor Michael R. > Bloomberg honored her > > publicly. She became a ready commentator for the > media, prompting some > > Muslims to joke that she was the citys talking > hijabi. > > In fact, it had taken a long time for Ms. Almontaser > to embrace the > > hijab, or head scarf. Born in Yemen, she was 3 when > she moved with her > > family to Buffalo. Her parents encouraged her to > blend in. She called > > herself Debbie rather than Dhabah, her given name. > She began wearing a > > veil in her 20s, as a Brooklyn mother whose life > revolved around PTA > > meetings and Boy Scout trips. She took to riding on > the back of her > > husbands motorcycle, her head scarf tucked beneath a > black helmet. She > > got used to the stares and learned to be > unapologetic. > > In the months following the Sept. 11 attacks, she > offered other Muslim > > women the lessons she had learned: The only way to > claim this as your > > country is to continue on with your life here, she > recalled telling > > them. > > For years, Ms. Almontaser had hoped to become a > principal. But soon > > after joining hands with New Visions, she faced her > first challenge. > > To administer the Gates grant, the school needed a > community partner. > > Two groups wanted the job: a secular Arab-American > social services > > agency and a Muslim-led organization that runs > Al-Noor School, a > > private Islamic establishment in Sunset Park, > Brooklyn. > > Ms. Almontaser said she tried to remain neutral as > discord erupted > > between the two groups. Quietly, though, she worried > that if an > > organization linked to a private Islamic school took > the lead, the > > city would never approve the project, despite the > groups pledge to > > keep religion out of the curriculum. > > Ultimately, a steering committee led by Ms. > Almontaser voted in favor > > of the social services agency. Leaders of the Muslim > group walked away > > feeling disrespected and distrustful of her, several > of the groups > > members said in interviews. It was a rupture that > would come back to > > haunt Ms. Almontaser. > > As preparations moved forward, a design team > assembled by Ms. > > Almontaser named the school after the Lebanese > Christian poet and > > pacifist Khalil Gibran. A Palestinian immigrant had > suggested the > > name, hoping it would deflect any concerns that the > school carried a > > Muslim orientation. > > In February 2007, the Department of Education > announced that the > > school had been approved. It would eventually > encompass grades 6 > > through 12, teach half of its classes in Arabic and > be among 67 > > schools in the city that offer programs in both > English and another > > language, like Russian, Spanish and Chinese. Ms. > Almontaser designed a > > recruitment brochure to attract the schools first > class of sixth > > graders. > > The leaflet cited the words of Mr. Gibran: In > understanding, all walls > > shall fall down. > > Opposition Forms > > Irene Alter, a peppy, retired Queens schoolteacher, > was sitting at her > > computer one morning that February when she read an > article in The New > > York Times about the Khalil Gibran school, she said. > A series of > > questions flooded her head. > > Which courses would be taught in Arabic? How would > Israel be treated > > in the study of Middle Eastern history? Then in > April, she read an > > op-ed article by Mr. Pipes in The New York Sun. > > Conceptually, such a school could be marvelous, Mr. > Pipes wrote, but > > in practice, it was certain to be problematic. > Arabic-language > > instruction is inevitably laden with Pan-Arabist and > Islamist baggage, > > he wrote, referring to the school as a madrassa, > which means school in > > Arabic but, in the West, carries the implication of > Islamic teaching. > > Given how little Mr. Pipes knew about the school at > the time, the word > > was a bit of a stretch, he said in a recent > interview. He defended its > > use as a way to get attention for the cause. It got > the attention of > > Ms. Alter, 60, who contacted Mr. Pipes and, with his > encouragement, > > helped form a grass-roots organization in response > to the school > > project. Mr. Pipes joined the advisory board of the > group, which > > called itself the Stop the Madrassa Coalition. > > Mr. Pipes, 58, has emerged as a divisive figure in > the post-9/11 era. > > An author of 12 books who has a doctorate in history > from Harvard, he > > has made a career out of studying and critiquing > Islam. His research > > group, which he established in downtown Philadelphia > in the early > > 1990s, seeks to define and promote American > interests in the Middle > > East, according to its Web site. > > Among his supporters, Mr. Pipes enjoys a heroic > status; among his > > detractors, he is reviled. Those sharply divergent > views reflect the > > passions that infuse Middle Eastern politics, > arguably nowhere in the > > United States more than in New York City. > > Mr. Pipes is perhaps best known for Campus Watch, a > national > > initiative he created to scrutinize Middle Eastern > programs at > > colleges and universities. The drive has accused > professors of, among > > other things, being soft on militant Islam and > sympathetic to the > > Palestinian cause. It has stirred widespread > controversy and, in some > > cases, may have undermined professors bids for > tenure. > > Mr. Pipes was joined in the monitoring effort by > other self-declared > > watchdogs of militant Islam. Their Web sites are > often linked to one > > another and their messages interwoven. One critic, > David Horowitz, > > founded Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, a campaign > aimed at college > > campuses. He noted in an interview that monitors of > radical Islam have > > increasingly trained their sights on nonviolent > Muslim-Americans. > > They dont throw bombs, but they create political > cover for ideological > > support of this jihadi movement, he said. > > Mr. Pipes places Muslims in three categories, he > said: those who are > > violent, those who are moderate and those in the > middle. It is this > > middle group, he argued, that now poses the greatest > threat to > > American values. > > Are these people who are not using violence but who > are not fully > > enthusiastic about this country and its mores, its > culture are they on > > our side or are they on the other side? he asked. > > Ms. Almontaser never considered herself > unenthusiastic about America, > > she said. But as the conflict over the Khalil Gibran > school > > intensified, she came to be seen by many through Mr. > Pipess lens. In > > his article in The Sun, he referred to Ms. > Almontaser by her birth > > name, Dhabah, and called her views extremist. He > cited an article in > > which she was quoted as saying about 9/11, I dont > recognize the people > > who committed the attacks as either Arabs or > Muslims. (As The Jewish > > Week later reported, Mr. Pipes left out the second > half of the quote: > > Those people who did it have stolen my identity as > an Arab and have > > stolen my religion.) > > The Stop the Madrassa Coalition focused primarily on > Ms. Almontaser as > > a strategy, said Mr. Pipes, because the group could > get little > > information about the school itself. The coalition > quickly publicized > > several discoveries. Ms. Almontaser had accepted an > award from the > > Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national > Muslim organization > > that critics claim has ties to terrorist groups (an > assertion the > > group adamantly denies). In news articles, Ms. > Almontaser had been > > critical of American foreign policy and police > tactics in fighting > > terrorism. She also gave $2,000 to Representative > Cynthia A. McKinney > > of Georgia, whom Mr. Pipes and others have > characterized as an > > Islamist sympathizer. (Ms. McKinney, who is no > longer in office and > > did not respond to requests for an interview, has > had a strong > > following among Arab-Americans in part because of > her criticism of the > > Patriot Act.) > > Critics of the Madrassa Coalition say its tactics > are typical of > > campaigns singling out Muslims: They lean heavily on > guilt by > > association. The nuances of the claims against Ms. > Almontaser were > > lost as the controversy lit up the blogosphere, said > Chip Berlet, a > > senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a > liberal > > organization outside Boston that studies the > political right. One Web > > site, MilitantIslamMonitor.org, displayed > photographs of Ms. > > Almontaser wearing her hijab in different styles, > suggesting that she > > had undergone a public relations makeover to > disguise her Islamist > > agenda. The criticism of Ms. Almontaser and the > school spread to > > newspapers, eliciting negative editorials in The > Daily News and The > > New York Sun. > > Ms. Almontaser was stunned, she said: Her school > would touch upon > > religion only in its global studies class, following > the same > > curriculum as all New York public schools. She tried > to keep her head > > down, she said, and set out to recruit students, > half of whom she > > hoped would be Arab. But opposition to the school > mounted after > > critics learned that its advisory council included > three imams (along > > with rabbis and priests), that there would be an > internship for > > students with a Muslim lawyers association and that > the proposal for > > the school suggested it might offer halal food. (The > advisory council > > never met and has since been dismantled, and the > school does not offer > > halal food, Education Department officials said.) > > As the attacks continued, Joel Levy of the New York > chapter of the > > Anti-Defamation League published a letter defending > Ms. Almontaser in > > The Sun. Mr. Levy made reference to the possibility > that his > > organization would provide anti-bias training to Ms. > Almontasers > > staff. > > The letter caused a stir among some Arab-Americans, > who were bothered > > by Ms. Almontasers ties to Jewish groups. In late > June, Aramica, an > > Arabic and English newspaper based in Brooklyn, ran > a cover story with > > the headline Zionist Organization Supports Gibran > School Principal, > > focusing on the link between Ms. Almontasers school > and the > > Anti-Defamation League. > > In just five months, Ms. Almontasers image had been > transformed. She > > was rendered a radical Muslim by one group and a > sellout by another. > > T-Shirts, and a Resignation > > At first, some city officials rallied to Ms. > Almontasers side. Among > > them was David Cantor, the chief spokesman for the > Department of > > Education, who wrote in an e-mail message to the > editor of The New > > York Sun, Seth Lipsky: I wont allow Dan Pipes a free > pass to smear > > Debbie Almontaser as an Islamist proselytizer who > denies Muslim > > involvement in 9/11. It is a false picture and an > ugly effort. > > But behind closed doors, department officials were > nervous, Ms. > > Almontaser recalled. With her help, she said, they > drafted a > > confidential memo of talking points to review with > reporters: the > > school was nonreligious, for example, and Ms. > Almontaser was a > > multicultural specialist and diversity consultant. > > The Stop the Madrassa Coalition pressed its > campaign. In July, one of > > its members, Pamela Hall, made a discovery that > would elevate the > > controversy. At an Arab-American festival in > Brooklyn, she spotted > > T-shirts on a table bearing the words Intifada NYC. > The organization > > distributing them, Arab Women Active in the Arts and > Media, trains > > young women in community organizing and media > production. The group > > sometimes uses the office of a Yemeni-American > association in Bay > > Ridge, Brooklyn. Ms. Almontaser sits on the > associations board. > > Ms. Hall took a photograph, and a few weeks later, > the coalition > > announced on its blog that Ms. Almontaser was linked > to the T-shirts. > > On Aug. 3, Ms. Almontaser received a call from > Melody Meyer, a > > spokeswoman for the Education Department. What does > Intifada NYC mean? > > Ms. Almontaser recalled Ms. Meyer asking. > > Ms. Almontaser was stumped, she said. She knew of > the group. But she > > had never heard about the T-shirts, she said she > told Ms. Meyer, > > adding that intifada meant uprising and was linked > to the Arab-Israeli > > conflict. > > Most reporters lost interest in the T-shirts after > Ms. Meyer explained > > that neither Ms. Almontaser nor the school was > linked to them, but The > > Post persisted. Ms. Almontaser said Ms. Meyer and > Mr. Cantor pressured > > her to respond to the newspaper in an interview. > > I said, Wait a minute, recalled Ms. Almontaser, who > was critical of > > The Posts coverage of Arabs and Muslims. I am not > comfortable doing > > the interview. > > Ms. Meyer promised to monitor the conversation, Ms. > Almontaser said, > > and Mr. Cantor instructed her not to be apologetic > about the T-shirts. > > While both Ms. Meyer and Mr. Cantor said they could > not comment on the > > case, a city lawyer said that Ms. Almontaser was > told to avoid > > discussing the T-shirts and intifada altogether, and > was never > > pressured to speak to The Post. > > During the Post interview, Ms. Almontaser said, she > told the reporter, > > Chuck Bennett, that the Arab womens organization was > not connected to > > her or the school, and that she would never be > affiliated with any > > group that condoned violence. Then Mr. Bennett asked > her for the > > origins of the word intifada, she said. > > The educator in me responded, Ms. Almontaser said. > She explained, with > > Ms. Meyer listening in on the three-way phone call, > that the root of > > the word means shaking off. Ms. Almontaser then > offered what she > > described as a lengthy explanation about the > evolution of the word and > > the negative connotation it had developed because of > the Arab-Israeli > > struggle. > > The thought went across my mind to be extremely > careful with my words > > not to offend the Jewish community and not to offend > the Arab-American > > community, she said. I was feeling pressure from all > sides. > > Although Ms. Almontaser said she never spoke to the > reporter about the > > T-shirts, she defended the girls in the organization > because she > > believed that the reporter was set on vilifying > innocent teenagers. > > After the reporter hung up, Ms. Almontaser recalled, > Ms. Meyer told > > her, Good job. > > The next day, The Post ran the article under the > headline City > > Principal Is Revolting Tied to Intifada NYC Shirts. > The article quoted > > Ms. Almontaser as saying that the girls in the > organization were > > shaking off oppression, words that The Post, > according to a ruling by > > federal appellate judges, attributed to Ms. > Almontaser incorrectly and > > misleadingly. > > Complaints about Ms. Almontaser began pouring into > the Education > > Department, and Mr. Cantor informed her that an > apology would be > > issued in her name. Ms. Almontaser objected, she > said, and asked that > > the department clarify her comments to The Post, > which she said were > > distorted, rather than apologize. > > Mr. Cantor insisted on an apology, she said, and > e-mailed her the > > proposed wording. The first sentence was not > negotiable, she recalled > > him telling her. The apology began: The use of the > word intifada is > > completely inappropriate as a T-shirt slogan for > teenagers. I regret > > suggesting otherwise. Ms. Almontaser responded in an > e-mail message > > that Mr. Cantor should change the latter sentence to > I regret my > > response was interpreted as suggesting otherwise. > > The press office issued the original apology. > Pressure soon mounted > > for Ms. Almontaser to resign. Randi Weingarten, the > head of the > > teachers union, published a letter in The Post > criticizing Ms. > > Almontaser for not denouncing ideas tied to > violence. On Aug. 9, > > Deputy Mayor Dennis M. Walcott asked Ms. Almontaser > to step down, she > > said. The mayor wants your resignation by 8 a.m. > tomorrow so he can > > announce it on his radio show, Ms. Almontaser > recalled Mr. Walcott > > saying. > > She said he promised her that in exchange for her > resignation, the > > school would still open, and she would remain > employed. She resigned > > the next day, taking an administrative job at the > Education > > Department. She kept her principals salary of > $120,000. > > On his radio program, Mayor Bloomberg announced that > Ms. Almontaser > > had submitted her resignation, which was nice of her > to do. > > Shes certainly not a terrorist, he said, adding that > she was not all > > that media savvy maybe. > > Three days later, Ms. Almontaser was replaced by an > interim principal, > > Danielle Salzberg, who is Jewish and speaks no > Arabic. > > Chaos in a New School > > On Sept. 4, the Khalil Gibran International Academy > opened its doors > > at 345 Dean Street as parents ushered their children > past a throng of > > reporters, photographers and television crews. > > Chaos soon erupted inside. Students cut classes and > got into fights > > with little consequence, said staff members, parents > and students. At > > least 12 of the 60 students showed signs of > behavioral problems or > > learning disabilities, said Leslie Kahn, a licensed > social worker and > > counselor who was employed at the school until > January. (Education > > Department officials, who denied repeated requests > by The Times to > > visit the school, said there are currently six > special-needs students > > there.) > > Something is flying through the air, every class, > every day, Sean R. > > Grogan, a science teacher at the school, said in an > interview. Kids > > bang on the partitions, yell and scream, curse and > swear. Its out of > > control. > > Physical altercations are frequent, Mr. Grogan and > others said, with > > Arab students and teachers the target of ethnic > slurs. I just dont > > feel safe, said an Arab-American student, 11, who > will not return to > > the school next year. > > In the first days after Ms. Almontaser resigned, she > felt numb, she > > said. Her support among Arab-Muslims remained > uneven. Had she not > > alienated some who wanted more of a role in the > schools creation, the > > whole community would have stood behind her, said > Wael Mousfar, > > president of the Arab Muslim American Federation. A > lot of our kids > > would be part of that school. > > Ms. Almontaser soon found herself flanked by a new > group of > > supporters, including Jewish and Muslim activists, > who began lobbying > > for her to be reinstated as the schools principal. > On Oct. 16, Ms. > > Almontaser announced that she was suing the > Education Department and > > the mayor. She claimed that her First Amendment > rights had been > > violated because she was forced to resign after she > was quoted as > > saying something controversial. > > She requested that the city be prevented from hiring > a permanent > > principal until her case was resolved. A judge > rejected the request, > > and Ms. Almontaser appealed. In March, a federal > appeals court upheld > > the ruling, but the judges were sharply critical of > the citys handling > > of Ms. Almontasers case. > > This was a situation where she was subject to > sanction not for > > anything she said, not for anything she did, but > because a newspaper > > reporter twisted what she said and the result of it > was negative press > > for the city and the Board of Ed, Judge Jon O. > Newman told a city > > lawyer at a hearing in February. > > Ms. Almontasers case will proceed in the Federal > District Court in > > Manhattan. > > The Stop the Madrassa Coalition continues to protest > the school. The > > group sued the Department of Education in October, > requesting detailed > > information about the schools creation, faculty and > curriculum. While > > the department has handed over thousands of records, > the coalitions > > lawyer said the documents leave many questions > unanswered, including > > which textbooks the school is using to teach Arabic. > A department > > spokeswoman said that a list of textbooks selected > for the school was > > sent to the lawyer last fall. > > The coalition has also broadened the reach of its > campaign. Some > > members have joined with the Center for Policy > Research in American > > Education, a new organization that will research the > influence of > > radical Islam on public schools around the country. > > In recent weeks, conditions at the Khalil Gibran > school have improved, > > said several students and staff members. Holly Anne > Reichert, who was > > appointed as the permanent principal in January, > said in an interview > > that she had reduced some of the disruptive behavior > by minimizing > > class sizes. She added that the media attention had > led to a chaotic > > experience for students. Adults have created this, > and children are > > the ones who have had to endure, she said. > > The school will move to a larger space in Fort > Greene, Brooklyn, by > > next fall. > > Ms. Almontaser still attends interfaith dinners and > awards ceremonies. > > During the day, she works for the citys Office of > School and Youth > > Development. Part of her job entails evaluating > other schools. > > In an odd twist of fate, she was sent to the Bronx > last fall to review > > a small, innovative school that had opened the same > month as Khalil > > Gibran. It also taught a foreign language: Spanish. > The students > > seemed to be thriving. As Ms. Almontaser walked the > hallways, she was > > shaken, she said. > > It wasnt that I was envious that her dream > materialized, said Ms. > > Almontaser, referring to the principal. It was > seeing her sixth > > graders, her teachers, and seeing that she did it. > And I didnt get a > > chance. > > _______________________________________________ > > Rad-Green mailing list > > Rad-Green at lists.econ.utah.edu > > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green > > > _______________________________________________ > Rad-Green mailing list > Rad-Green at lists.econ.utah.edu > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From shniad at sfu.ca Fri May 2 13:29:20 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 02 May 2008 12:29:20 -0700 Subject: [R-G] (Israel) 60 YEARS - WE WISH EVERYONE COULD CELEBRATE Message-ID: <200805021929.m42JTKid016605@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080502/b546f4f5/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Fri May 2 13:59:44 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 02 May 2008 12:59:44 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Hundreds killed by US strikes in Sadr City Message-ID: <200805021959.m42JxidS017103@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080502/4e314333/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Fri May 2 14:02:20 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 02 May 2008 13:02:20 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Iraqi MPs call Maliki 'depraved' Message-ID: <200805022002.m42K2KDN022497@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080502/632f8f19/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Fri May 2 14:14:28 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 02 May 2008 13:14:28 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Report: Taliban strengthens in Afghanistan Message-ID: <200805022014.m42KEScr016606@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080502/af96aa9d/attachment.txt From fentona at shaw.ca Fri May 2 14:23:47 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Fri, 02 May 2008 13:23:47 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Haiti's Big Lie: Operation Baghdad and Imperial Propaganda Message-ID: Haiti's Big Lie Operation Baghdad and Imperial Propaganda May 01, 2008 By Nik Barry-Shaw http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17512 "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." - Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minister of the Third Reich (1933-1945) With six people killed in the food protests that erupted throughout Haiti in early April, observers immediately began trying to explain why violence had once again shattered the country's two years of apparent stability. Yet rather than blame the massive structural violence of hunger and social exclusion, or even the UN troops who were responsible for the deaths of several protestors[1], the source of the violence was said to lie elsewhere. "Behind the riots, the spectre of Aristide," as a headline in the newspaper Le Devoir put it. "If the demonstrators had only socioeconomic demands," explained sociologist Laennec Hurbon, "they would have understood that you shouldn't loot businesses." Accordign to Hurbon, the looting and violence had been systematically planned by partisans of exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in an effort to force his return to the country.[2] These kinds of baseless accusations are familiar to anyone who has followed Haiti's recent history. If there is one "big lie" consistently told with respect to Haiti over the past two decades, it is the allegation that Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his Lavalas movement used - and continue to use - street gangs to violently achieve political ends. From the attempted coup of July 2001 that President Aristide staged against himself, to his instigation of "mob violence" in 1991, to even the attacks he faked against his church in 1988, the litany of charges against Aristide made by his foes stretches back to the very beginning of his involvement in politics.[3] As Peter Hallward notes, it often seems immaterial to critics of Aristide to make any distinction between fact and accusation.[4] Yet the success of a propaganda effort, as Goebbels understood, has less to do with the veracity of its claims than with their ceaseless repetition. A "big lie", however, is often difficult to grapple with - due to its very "bigness", all its various retellings and embellishments. When analyzing a propaganda campaign, therefore, it is useful to isolate one element of the "big lie" common to most accounts. The centerpiece in the most recent campaign of vilification is undoubtedly "Operation Baghdad" and the events of September 30, 2004. *** Jean-Bertrand Aristide's second term as President of Haiti would end the same way as had his first had, cut short in a U.S.-backed coup d'?tat. Aristide's opposition to neoliberalism, his defiant stance towards the U.S. and France, and his enduring popularity with Haiti's poor had made him a marked man from the very beginning of his term in February 2001. After U.S. Marines forced Aristide out of the country by plane on February 29, 2004, Haiti quickly came apart at the seams. Haiti's police force crumbled, the prison system was emptied, and in the absence of any effective public order, crime, looting and gang warfare spiraled out of control. At the same time, forces of repression hostile to the poor masses were quickly gathering strength. Three days after being appointed, the new Prime Minister Gerard Latortue openly embraced the rebels in a public appearance in Gonaives and hailed them as "freedom fighters".[5] The Minister of Interior, himself a former member of the military, announced that the rebels that had fought Aristide's government - composed mostly of members of Haiti's disbanded army and of paramilitary death squads that operated during the first coup - would be integrated into the police force.[6] Other factions of the rebels declared the Haitian army to be re-established and with the support of residents set up a base in the upper-class neighborhood of P?tionville. [7] Visiting the country one month after the coup, an Amnesty International delegation reported a widespread "pattern of persecution" against supporters of the deposed government.[8] This persecution was an attempt to pacify the residents of Port-au-Prince's teeming slum neighborhoods - overwhelmingly supporters of Aristide - who continued to voice their opposition to the coup d'?tat and the Latortue regime that had been imposed on them. As the Haiti Accompaniment Project reported in July 2004, "despite stepped up repression, many groups in Port-au-Prince and in other parts of the country were preparing for ongoing long-term mobilizations to call for the return of democracy to Haiti."[9] One such mobilization was the demonstration of September 30, 2004, marking the 13th anniversary of first coup that ousted President Aristide in 1991. Starting at 10 a.m., a crowd of more than 10,000 protestors wound their way through the capitol to demand an end to foreign military occupation, the departure of the Latortue government, the release of all political prisoners, and the return of the constitutional government, including President Aristide. Soon after the crowd passed the National Palace, police opened fire on the procession, killing two demonstrators.[10] Some press reports would claim protestors then retaliated, attacking police officers and looting businesses. In a radio interview the next day, Gerard Latortue was unrepentant about police actions: "We fired on them. Some died, others were wounded, and others fled." The government banned all further demonstrations and Latortue indicated that they would take action against unauthorized protests.[11] The day after the demonstration, government officials would announce the discovery of the headless bodies of three police officers, blaming Lavalas supporters for the crime.[12] The beheadings were described as the beginning of "Operation Baghdad", a campaign of terror and mayhem led by pro-Lavalas gangs intended to destabilize the country and force the return of President Aristide. "The decapitations are imitative of those in Iraq, and they are meant to show the failure of U.S. policy in Haiti," explained Jean-Claude Bajeux, head of the Centre Eucum?nique des Droits de l'Homme (CEDH) and an anti-Aristide politician.[13] In the weeks that followed, Port-au-Prince would crackle with gunfire. The hospital morgue began to overflow with bodies, and press reports indicated the death toll to be at least 46 in the first two weeks of October alone.[14] *** The very origins of the name "Operation Baghdad" are deeply contested. The interim government alleged the "fanatical hordes" of Aristide partisans "constantly claim responsibility for the terror they have instilled, operating under names echoing doom and gloom such as 'Operation Baghdad'."[15] However, according to Joseph Guyler Delva, head of the Haitian Journalists Association and widely regarded as one of the most even-handed observers in Haiti, the term "Operation Baghdad" was coined by Latortue himself. Lavalas partisans, on the other hand, had never spoken of any such operation.[16] The interim government's version of the events of September 30 was equally suspect. Government officials presented no evidence that the decapitations were the work of Aristide supporters, and did not release any photos or names of the alleged victims.[17] The Comit? des Avocats Pour le Respect des Libert?s Individuelles (CARLI), a human rights group, reported that two officers had been decapitated, but by former soldiers on September 29, the day before the demonstration. It was not until after the demonstration that the government began to blame the crimes on Lavalas supporters, according to CARLI.[18] The interim government also failed to substantiate its more general claim that a violent campaign against it was underway. As the Observer (UK) noted one month after "Operation Baghdad" had allegedly begun: Evidence of such "destabilization" is scant. Shootings and robberies have become common in central Port-au-Prince, but it is not always clear whether they are politically motivated or the result of crime sparked by desperate economic conditions and an ineffectual police force. [Minister of Justice Bernard] Gousse said he knew of only two lootings, and that police officers had only been killed while carrying out raids in slums.[19](emphasis added) CARLI's investigation of "Operation Baghdad" yielded the same result, leading the organization to conclude that there was no such operation launched by Lavalas supporters.[20] Whatever its origins, the trajectory of the name (or epithet more accurately) and accompanying story is instructive. The sectors that had participated in the opposition to Aristide's government - such as Bajeux's CEDH and other foreign-funded "civil society" groups, political parties, and intellectuals - enthusiastically took up the "Operation Baghdad" label. They joined in blaming Aristide and his supporters for the violence wracking Port-au-Prince, and called on the interim government for more vigorous action against them. [21] U.S. and UN officials were also quick to jump on the "destabilization" bandwagon. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher was unequivocal about the source of the post-September 30 violence: "Over the past two weeks, pro-Aristide thugs have murdered policemen, looted businesses and public installations, and terrorized civilians."[22] U.S. Embassy officials would also repeat the claim that police officers had been beheaded in "a slum gang operation called 'Operation Baghdad'" when speaking with human rights investigators.[23] Lavalas activists and political leaders, on the other hand, immediately denounced the violence, and condemned the police for firing on unarmed demonstrators. One Lavalas spokesperson identified "Operation Baghdad" as "a calculated attempt to manipulate the media and U.S. public opinion."[24] Trade unionist Paul "Loulou" Chery charged that the name had been concocted to "demonize the movement, the people and Lavalas supporters in particular."[25] Likewise, tens of thousands of demonstrators in Cap-Haitien marched behind a banner on December 16, 2004 decrying "Operation Baghdad" as a plot by the bourgeoisie "to put an end to Lavalas."[26] These statements, however, rarely if ever found their way into Western press reports about the violence in Haiti after September 30. Faced with a regime intolerant of dissent and outraged at the attacks on the demonstrators of September 30, the poor neighborhoods of Port- au-Prince erupted. "Skirmishes, barricades and spontaneous demonstrations have sprung up daily in poor neighborhoods around the capital since the police and paramilitary gunmen tried to stop a massive demonstration on September 30," Haiti Progres reported on October 6.[27] When the barricades failed to prevent the police and UN troops from entering the neighborhood, the invaders would be met with a hail of stones and bottles and other debris thrown by residents.[28] Destabilization or no destabilization, the Latortue government unleashed a new wave of repression against the Lavalas movement. Scores of prominent Lavalas figures and popular organization activists were arrested on charges of being "intellectual authors of the violence", of hiding "organizers of violence", or simply being "close to the Lavalas authorities." These arrests were conducted with neither warrants nor evidence - hardly surprising given the vagueness of the charges.[29] Haiti's prisons - emptied following the coup d'?tat - overflowed with detainees, the vast majority Lavalas members or poor people from the pro-Aristide bidonvilles.[30] The frequency and violence of the police operations also increased dramatically in the following weeks, with some community members describing their neighborhoods as being "under siege". The November 2004 delegation of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights described these chilling conditions: On an almost daily basis, the Haitian National Police in various units and dressed in a wide variety of uniforms, often masked, select and attack a neighborhood in operations reported as efforts to arrest armed gang members, with UN soldiers backing them up. . . . [T]here are dead bodies in the street almost daily, including innocent bystanders, women and children. The violent repression . . . has generated desperate fear in a community that is quickly losing its young men to violent death or arbitrary arrest.[31] These incursions were characterized by "execution-style killings" and in some cases massacres, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG). On 26 October, twelve young men were killed in the Fort National area, while on 27 October, the bodies of four young men were found in the Carrefour-P?an area, near Bel-Air. "All had been shot in the head and at least one had bound wrists," according to the ICG, and witnesses identified black-clad police officers wearing balaclavas as the perpetrators.[32] Calls for an independent enquiry into these killings were stonewalled by the Latortue government. The interim authorities categorically denied any responsibility for human rights abuses by its security forces, while blocking access to either the penitentiary or the morgue by journalists and human rights observers.[33] *** The announcement of "Operation Baghdad" by the interim government did not happen in a vacuum. By late September 2004, Haiti's interim government headed by Florida businessman Gerard Latortue was in dire straits. The 5-month-old administration was faced with a growing resistance movement in the quartiers populaires and accusations of corruption and ineptitude were coming from all quarters. Diplomatic problems began cropping up as well; in a radio interview on September 16, 2004, "Latortue complained that human rights criticism was making his relations with donor countries difficult."[34] The allegations, moreover, seemed perfectly calibrated to the prevailing North American media environment. The decapitation of Nick Berg by his captors in May 2004 had caused a media shock wave, and on September 20-21, 2004, two more American contractors were beheaded in Iraq, with the fate of a British colleague still hanging in the balance as of September 30.[35] What better way for the Latortue regime to discredit its opponents than to accuse them of the same tactics as Al-Qaida in Iraq? The government's claims should therefore have invited a substantial amount of skepticism. Latortue was desperate to recover some domestic legitimacy and his international backers needed a pretext to continue supporting the government's pacification of the slums. Port-au-Prince's poorer residents understood quite clearly the utility of the "Operation Baghdad" fiction. "By saying we are 'gang members' or 'chim?res,' the press are trying to discredit our demands for justice," a Bel-Air resident explained to the San Francisco Bay View. "Who cares about giving justice to those criminal gang members who just sell drugs and misbehave?"[36] "The police officers will say that this was an operation against gangs. But we are all innocent," said Eliphete Joseph, a young man from the Fort National district speaking to journalists following a police massacre. "The worst thing is that Aristide is now in exile far from here in South Africa, but we are in Haiti, and they are persecuting us only because we live in a poor neighborhood."[37] Such common-sense interpretations were nowhere to be found in the Canadian media, who generally accepted the government's claims at face value. Although disappointing, the media's performance was typical of journalistic coverage of Canada's interventions abroad; what proved to be much more puzzling was the unflinching credulity of Canadian organizations that claimed to be giving a voice to Haiti's grassroots. On October 22, 2004, as government attacks on the slums were reaching a fever pitch, the Concertation pour Haiti (CPH) issued a press release "denouncing the climate of terror ravaging Haiti, particularly since September 30, when the chim?res, the armed partisans of former President Aristide, launched Operation Baghdad."[38] Just a few days earlier, the Quebec-based non-governmental organization (NGO) Alternatives had produced a near identical analysis of the situation in Haiti. "A vast operation of terror has been set in motion in Port- au-Prince principally in the popular neighborhoods of Bel-Air and Cite Soleil. It is militants of [Aristide's] Famni Lavalas who are behind this campaign," wrote Tania Vachon in the Journal d'Alternatives, a monthly insert in Le Devoir, "dubbed 'Operation Baghdad' because of the extreme acts of violence that are perpetrated: public beheadings, sexual assaults, attacks on street vendors etc."[39] Neither article considered the possibility that the interim government and its foreign backers were trying to manipulate public opinion. Latortue's accusation that Lavalas had launched "Operation Baghdad" was uncritically repeated, while no mention was made of Lavalas statements to the contrary. Alternatives and the CPH both lamented the lack of action by UN forces and Haiti's police in the face of a wave of Lavalassian violence, with the CPH going so far as to complain that police operations in the poor neighborhoods "regularly fail[ed] to produce results." Neither group mentioned the well-documented "results"- in the form of brutal killings and arbitrary arrests - produced by the ongoing UN/police incursions into the pro-Lavalas slums. The CPH communique ended with a call for reinforcement and increased funding of the police and UN troops. With blame for the violence being heaped on Lavalas, Latortue's international patrons were able to give their full backing to the campaign of repression. Despite a long-standing arms embargo on Haiti, the US government authorized the shipment of thousands of new firearms to the Latortue government in November 2004, including military rifles and machine guns.[40] Then-Prime Minister Paul Martin, visiting Haiti on November 14, promised Canada would stand "shoulder to shoulder" in with the interim government in their efforts to re-establish "security". "You're not going to have a democracy when people are afraid for their lives," said Martin.[41] *** Sadly, the views of the CPH and Alternatives were not idiosyncratic. The CPH issued its statement on behalf of a coalition of development NGOs, unions and civil society groups, and Alternatives generally occupies the left wing of the NGO world.[42] Despite having opposed the 1991 coup d'?tat against Aristide, by the time of the second coup in 2004 the CPH, Alternatives and the vast majority of Canadian NGOs working in Haiti were openly hostile to the popular movement and regarded much of violence that followed as the result of a shadowy conspiracy of Aristide supporters - with the puppet master pulling the strings from his exile in South Africa. The "Operation Baghdad" smear is today common currency amongst NGOs and continues to be used against Lavalas activists. In a recently published report, Alternatives referred to it simply as "one of the most serious massacres since 2004."[43] The tumultuous class dynamics of Haiti over the past two decades were deeply linked to the ideological volte-face of the NGOs. Born of a cross-class alliance against the Duvalier dictatorship, the Lavalas movement began to fracture along class lines with the advent of democracy - a process accelerated by foreign funding. In the struggle that emerged between the Haitian elite and the popular classes, the shift in aid financing following the May 2000 elections that brought Aristide's Famni Lavalas party into power proved decisive. The Canadian government, along with the U.S. and the EU, redirected funds for the elected government to "civil society", thus tipping the scales in the elite's favour.[44] Sections of the middle classes were "slowly co-opted by the steady trickle of project dollars flowing through the almost interminable list of NGOs infesting every corner of Haiti."[45] Development funding offered a rare opportunity for upward mobility, and led to greater control of Haitian NGOs by their internationally-connected leaderships. Increasingly, positions were "not derived from a vote of a dwindling membership, but rather reflect[ed] the sentiments of a small handful of paid leaders."[46] These educated, French-speaking leaders now regarded their former ally Aristide as "worse than Cedras or Duvalier" and "aligned with the elite political movement" pushing for his overthrow.[47] They dismissed the government's supporters - overwhelmingly poor, uneducated and Creole-speaking - as nothing but a small group of "thugs" and "chim?res". Aristide was pronounced a traitor and the popular movement dead. Interestingly, the international architects of policy towards Haiti weren't beholden to such illusions about Aristide's popularity. Speaking with journalist Anthony Fenton, Fabiola Cordova, National Endowment for Democracy program officer responsible for Haiti, remarked that "one of the main problems in Haiti has been a very weak opposition . . . Aristide really had 70% of the popular support and then the 120 other parties had the thirty per cent split in one hundred and twenty different ways."[48] Following the coup d'?tat of February 29, 2004, Haitian NGOs hailed the new "democratic opening" as many of their leaders obtained posts in the interim government. Rallying behind the interim authorities' repression of Lavalas supporters, these groups took up the "Operation Baghdad" label as another ideological stick to beat their opponents with.[49] Canadian NGOs absorbed the prejudices of their middle-class "partners" in Haiti, including unquestioning acceptance of the interim government's "Operation Baghdad" fiction. *** In a review of Canada's "difficult partnership" with Haiti, CIDA concluded that their shift to "supporting civil society initiatives and Canadian NGO partners produced relatively good qualitative results." "Substantial support to non-governmental actors strengthened their ability to mobilize constituents" while "eroding legitimacy, capacity and will of the state to deliver key services" through the creation of "parallel systems of service delivery."[50] Canadian NGOs, in other words, played an integral part in bolstering the elite-led opposition while undermining Haiti's elected government. CIDA's candid description Canadian NGOs' role in the imperial destabilization of Haiti clashes dramatically with their self-image. These organizations firmly believe that their CIDA project partners in Haiti "represent" civil society, are the "true" bearers of the popular movement, etc. The implicit assumption is that CIDA is in the business of funding progressive, empowering social change. Yet with the ascendancy of "all-of-government engagement" and counterinsurgency warfare concepts in Canadian foreign policy thinking, faith in a benevolent, empowering CIDA becomes increasingly untenable.[51] Indeed, the subordination of aid to larger foreign policy goals - goals absolutely hostile to popular empowerment - is an area where "Canada has made significant headway" in Haiti, as the CIDA report noted.[52] To point out that, whatever delusions to the contrary, the empowerment of the poor may not be the ultimate aim of foreign aid is not particularly original. As James Ferguson observed in his 1990 book The Anti-Politics Machine: "In spite of the very common involvement of 'development' with counter-insurgency throughout the post-war period, a surprising number of Western progressives have been drawn to 'development' work by way of political commitments to and solidarity with Third World causes." While Ferguson allowed that "under certain circumstances" development work may fulfill such commitments, "it is all too easy to enter into complicity with a state bureaucracy [representing] the very social forces . . . that must be challenged if the impoverished and oppressed majority are to improve their lot."[53] The case of "Operation Baghdad" illustrates just how real this danger is. Notes: [1] "One protester killed as demonstrations grow in Haiti," Haiti Information Project, April 4, 2008. http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/4_4_8/4_4_8.html [2] ?tienne C?t?-Paluck, "Ha?ti - Derri?re les ?meutes, le spectre d'Aristide," Le Devoir, April 12-13, 2008. http://www.ledevoir.com/2008/04/12/184765.html [3] See Jim Naureckas, "Enemy Ally: The Demonization of Jean-Bertrand Aristide," Extra!, November/December 1994, and Ben Dupuy, "The Attempted Character Assassination of Jean-Bertrand Aristide", Peter Philips & Project Censored ed. Censored 1999: The news that didn't make the news, Seven Stories Press, 1999. [4] "What Dupuy means by the word 'immaterial', presumably, is that when he repeatedly accuses Aristide of creating and directing these [gangs], it is immaterial whether or not such accusations are in fact correct." Hallward is here reviewing Alex Dupuy's The Prophet and Power: Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the International Community and Haiti. Peter Hallward, "Aristide and The Violence of Democracy", Haiti Libert?, July 2007. [5] "South Africa to Become Permanent Home for Aristide," Washington Post, March 25, 2004. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23769-2004Mar25_2.html [6] Reuters, March 23, 2004. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/670.html [7] Tom Griffin, "Haiti Human Rights Investigation: November 11-21", Center for the Study of Human Rights, p. 18-24. [8] Amnesty International, "Haiti: Breaking the cycle of violence: A last chance for Haiti?". http://www.amnesty.org/en/report/info/AMR36/038/2004 [9] Laura Flynn, Robert Roth and Leslie Fleming, "Report of the Haiti Accompaniment Project," June 29-July 9, 2004. http://www.haitiaction.net/News/hap6_29_4.html [10] James Painter, "Haiti's Escalating Violence," BBC News, October 14, 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_3743000/3743376.stm [11] Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, "Haiti Human Rights Alert: Illegal Arrest of Political Leaders," October 8, 2004. http://www.ijdh.org/articles/article_human_rights_alerts_oct8.html [12] Ibid. [13] "Aristide supporters step-up protest", Associated Press, October 2, 2004. http://auto_sol.tao.ca/node/879 [14] "Haiti violence death toll rises to 46," China Daily, October 13, 2004. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-10/13/content_382028.htm Other sources would claim this significantly undercounted the number of deaths: "On October 15, it was reported that the State Morgue in Port au Prince had issued an emergency call to the Ministry of Health to remove the more than 600 bodies that had been piling up in the previous two weeks," Anthony Fenton, "Media Disinformation on Haiti," Znet, October 25, 2004. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6492 [15] Press Release from the Communication Office of the Prime Minister, October 22, 2004. http://www.haiti.org/general_information/communiqu%E9%20de%20presse102204_en.htm [16] Reed Lindsay, "Police Terror Sweeps Across Haiti," The Observer, October 31, 2004, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1340274,00.html and Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, "Caught in Their Own Trap", Haiti Action Committee, November 9, 2004. http://www.haitiaction.net/News/LPA/11_9_4.html [17] IJDH, "Haiti Human Rights Alert". [18] Griffin, p. 39. [19] Lindsay. [20] Griffin, p. 39 [21] e.g. Marc-Arthur Fils-Aim?, "Ha?ti dans la violence des chim?res," AlterPresse, November 12, 2004. http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article1919 [22] "Violence in Haiti," U.S. Department of State Press Statement, October 12, 2004. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2004/37018.htm [23] Griffin Report, p.31. [24] "'Operation Baghdad' brought to you by AP," Haiti News Watch, October 3, 2004. http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HNW/10_3_4.html [25] Paul Chery interviewed by Kevin Skerrett, "A Situation of Terror", Znet, November 4, 2005. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9060 [26] "Massive Protest demanding Aristide's return in Haiti's second largest city," Haiti Information Project, December 16, 2004. http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/12_16_4.html [27] "Street Resistance to Occupation Regime Surges," Haiti Progr?s, October 6 - 12, 2004. http://www.ijdh.org/articles/article_ijdh_in_the_news-11-12-04.htm [28] "Haiti: Rebellion in Bel Air," Revolutionary Worker, October 17, 2004. http://rwor.org/a/1255/haiti_current_situation.htm Rosean Baptiste interviewed by Lyn Duff, "We Won't Be Peaceful and Let Them Kill Us Any Longer," November 4, 2004. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9059 "Resistance in the Slums of Port-au-Prince," Black Commentator, October 14, 2004. http://blackcommentator.com/109/109_haiti.html [29] IJDH, "Haiti Human Rights Alert". [30] Lindsay: "'We fought to bring democracy to Haiti, but since this government took over, it's been a dictatorship,' said Mario Joseph, a lawyer who worked to bring past human rights abusers to justice under Aristide and is now representing 54 people he says are political prisoners. The prison was emptied by armed groups led by former military officers after Aristide's departure, and Joseph believes the majority of the new prisoners are Lavalas members." [31] Griffin, p.12-13. [32] "A New Chance for Haiti?" International Crisis Group, November 18, 2004, p.15. [33] Lindsay, and Griffin, p. 53. [34] IJDH, "Haiti Human Rights Alert". [35] Steve Fainaru and Karl Vick, "British Hostage Beheaded in Iraq," Washington Post, A23, October 9, 2004. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17349-2004Oct8.html [36] Baptiste interview. [37] Lindsay. [38] Concertation pour Ha?ti, "Ha?ti : de l'ins?curit? ? la terreur," Alterpresse, October 22, 2004. www.medialternatif.org/alterpresse/spip.php?article1834 [39] Tania Vachon, "Les victimes politiques de Jeanne," Journal d'Alternatives, 19 October, 2004. www.alternatives.ca/article1499.html?lang=en [40] Robert Muggah, "Securing Haiti's Transition: Reviewing Human Insecurity and the Prospects for Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration," Small Arms Survey, 2005, p. 10-12. [41] "Martin says violence preventing democracy from taking hold in Haiti," CBC News, November 14, 2004. http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2004/11/14/haiti041114.html [42] The CPH's members include Development and Peace, Entraide Missionaire, Centre international de Solidarite ouvriere (CISO), Centre Canadien de Coop?ration Internationale (CECI), the FTQ and CSQ union federations, and the Quebec chapter of Amnesty International. Co- signers of subsequent CPH statements concerning Haiti have also included Solidarit? Union Coop?ration (SUCO), AQOCI, the umbrella group of Quebec's development NGOs and the Canadian government- controlled group Rights & Democracy. [43] Pierre Bonin and Amelie Gauthier, "Haiti: Voices of the actors," Alternatives and FRIDE, p. 13, fn 63. www.fride.org/download/WP52_Haiti_Voices_ENG_feb08.pdf [44] Canadian International Development Agency, "Canadian Cooperation With Haiti: Reflecting on a Decade of 'Difficult Partnership'," December 2004, p. 8. www.oecd.org/dataoecd/41/45/34095943.pdf [45] Stan Goff, "A Brief Account of Haiti," Black Radical Congress News, October 22, 1999. www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/399.html [46] Anne Sosin quoted in Tom Reeves, "Haiti's Disappeared," Znet, May 5, 2004. [47] Reeves, "Haiti's Disappeared". [48] Anthony Fenton, "Declassified Documents: National Endowment for Democracy FY2005," Narcosphere, February 15, 2006. http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2006/2/15/205828/741 Little has changed since the election of Rene Preval in 2006, according to David Malone, then-Assistant Deputy Minister (Global Issues) at Foreign Affairs Canada: "To the distress of the Group of Friends [i.e. Canada, the US and France], Aristide remains the most potent political force within Haiti." Sebastian von Einsiedel and David M. Malone, "Peace and Democracy for Haiti: A UN Mission Impossible?" International Relations, Vol 20(2): p. 153-174. [49] E.g. "Depuis le 30 septembre 2004, le peuple ha?tien en g?n?ral, les populations de Port-au-Prince en particulier, vit sous la coupe r?gl?e des bandes arm?es ex?cutant les ordres de Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Ces bandits ont enclench? une op?ration baptis?e ? Op?ration Bagdad ? dont la finalit? ouvertement d?clar?e est le retour physique de Jean-Bertrand Aristide au pouvoir." "P?tition citoyenne pour r?clamer la mise en accusation de Jean-Bertrand Aristide et de ses partisans en Ha?ti," Alterpresse, July 22, 2005. Signed by PAPDA, GARR, EnfoFanm, and SOFA, Haitian NGOs with numerous ties to Canadian NGOs. [50] CIDA, "Canadian Cooperation With Haiti," p. 12. [51] Ibid, p. 18. "As the head of the army, Lt. Gen. Andrew Leslie, recently told journalists in Vancouver, the Canadian Forces work 'hand in glove with the folks from the Canadian International Development Agency [as well as] reinforce the diplomatic activities and efforts of Foreign Affairs.'" Jon Elmer and Anthony Fenton, "Development Aid as Counterinsurgency Tool," Inter-Press Service, March 23, 2007. www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37063 [52] CIDA, "Canadian Cooperation With Haiti," p. 18. [53] James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine, Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 283-284. From shniad at sfu.ca Fri May 2 14:24:00 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 02 May 2008 13:24:00 -0700 Subject: [R-G] The ILWU's May Day Strike Message-ID: <200805022024.m42KO0h2005093@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080502/fdec171b/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Fri May 2 14:34:19 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 02 May 2008 13:34:19 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Bush admits he approved torture Message-ID: <200805022034.m42KYJf7023623@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080502/a7a62626/attachment.txt From shimogamo at attglobal.net Fri May 2 17:09:28 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 03 May 2008 08:09:28 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Manifest Destiny? Message-ID: <481B9F28.6010706@attglobal.net> by Uri Avnery gush-shalom.org (April 12 2008) Next month, Israel will celebrate its sixtieth anniversary. The government is working feverishly to make this day into an occasion of joy and jubilation. While serious problems are crying out for funds, some forty million dollars have been allocated to this aim. But the nation is in no mood for celebrations. It is gloomy. From critical.montages at gmail.com Fri May 2 18:47:15 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 20:47:15 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Exxon Oil Production Struggles for Growth Message-ID: Exxon oil production struggles for growth By Sheila McNulty in Houston and Carola Hoyos in London Published: May 1 2008 14:55 | Last updated: May 1 2008 23:09 ExxonMobil, long regarded by its peers and investors as the most successful interational oil company, is beginning to show signs of weakness, revealing on Thursday that it is struggling to increase oil production and to squeeze profit out of its refining business. The world's biggest energy group announced a first-quarter record profit of $10.9bn but its oil production fell almost 10 per cent in the first three months of the year and refining profits slumped. While the broader market rallied, Exxon shares fell 3.6 per cent to $89.70 as analysts warned that the company might fail to grow at all in the next five years. Neil McMahon, an analyst at Sanford Bernstein, said: "Over the next five years their slow production growth guidance may not come to pass at these high oil prices given production sharing agreements." The disappointment was deepened by the fact that BP and Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon's closest rivals, had kept production flat or growing and had beaten expectations. Exxon's overall oil and gas production fell 5.6 per cent from the year-earlier quarter. Production in Africa, a key new area of investment, fell 20 per cent as high oil prices and contract stipulations forced it to hand over more of its production to host country governments. Venezuela's nationalisation of its oil fields also hurt the group's volumes, as did declines at Canadian gas fields. Unlike Royal Dutch Shell, which is stressing its research in second generation biofuels, and is a leader in making natural gas into transport fuels, Exxon has long argued that traditional alternatives, such as wind power, have proved uneconomic. But it says it is researching future fuels that it is less ready to talk about publicly. The figures are likely to increase pressure from investors for Exxon to raise dividends. It devoted $8bn to buying back its own shares and $1.9bn to dividends while adding another $6.9bn to its now $40.9bn cash pile. "They need to seriously consider a change of plan," Mr McMahon said. "They don't appear to be growing in volume terms and given the quality of their balance sheet, they need to give money back to their investors through a higher dividend." The $8bn in share buybacks dwared the company's $5.5bn spending on capital and exploration, prompting criticism by Edward Markey, chairman of the US House select committee on energy independence, who said: "At the rate of current stock buybacks, Exxon will have no privately held stock within 15 years.'' Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential contender, also responded to the earnings report, saying there was "something seriously wrong with our economy when Exxon's record $11bn in quarterly profits are seen as a disappointment by Wall Street". Exxon earned $2.03 a share, up 25 per cent from last year, but less than the $2.14 expected by analysts. Its net income of $10.9bn was up 17 per cent from last year. -- Yoshie From critical.montages at gmail.com Fri May 2 18:51:49 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 20:51:49 -0400 Subject: [R-G] US Petrol Price at Historic Low + Clinton-McCain Gas Tax Holiday Slammed as Bad Idea Message-ID: US petrol price at historic low By Sheila McNulty in Houston Published: April 24 2008 21:11 | Last updated: April 24 2008 21:11 Despite having reached an all-time high, US petrol prices are at a historical low in relation to crude oil prices, according to a study by a prominent think-tank at Rice University in Texas. Given stagnant or even falling demand at the pump, refiners are finding it difficult to pass oil price increases on to consumers. Jim Mulva, chief executive of ConocoPhillips, the third biggest US oil and gas company and second biggest US refiner, said in an interview with the Financial Times refiners were only "breaking even" despite the outcry over rising petrol prices. The university study reveals that if the price of petrol followed that of crude oil, petrol should have risen to $3.68 a gallon once oil hit $100 a barrel, based on the historical price relationship. Given that crude oil costs usually make up about 60 per cent of fuel prices, there has always been a close correlation between petrol and oil prices. Yet despite oil having risen as high as $119 in recent days, average US petrol prices have remained below $3.68. As a result, margins of refiners have decreased and the cost of crude oil now accounts for 65 to 70 per cent of the price at the pump. The US's biggest refiner, Valero, has pre-announced first-quarter earnings of between 10 and 35 cents per share, a sharp drop from Credit Suisse Global Energy's $1.14 estimate. Integrated oil companies, conducting exploration and production as well as refining and marketing, are better shielded from the inability to raise petrol prices further. ConocoPhillips reported a first-quarter net income of $4.1bn (?2.6bn, ?2.1bn) yesterday, but only $520m in net income for its refining and marketing segment, down from $1.1bn in the first quarter of 2007. In addition to sagging petrol demand, Credit Suisse's US equity research team says refinery margins are also under pressure because of the introduction of ethanol into the US market. If petrol prices continue to rise , analysts expect demand to fall further, leaving refiners with oversupply. According to Mr Mulva, some refiners have already stopped "some runs" because they judge the market to have excess supply. Amy Myers Jaffe, energy expert at the Baker Institute, says that in the past couple of years rising prices have begun to have an impact on US demand, resulting in the average annual consumption increase falling sharply from the previous decade. From 2003 to 2004, US petrol consumption rose 1.9 per cent, but increased only 0.6 per cent from 2004 to 2005 and 1 per cent from 2005 to 2006. Preliminary data for 2007 indicate demand rose 0.5 per cent from 2006 to 2007. This month, oil companies were called to hearings in Congress to explain the record price rises. ? Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, yesterday called on the White House to temporarily stop sending crude oil to the nation's emergency stockpile, Reuters reports from Washington. The White House has resisted calls to stop deliveries to the reserve, saying they have a minimal effect on prices and are a necessary buffer against supply disruptions. Ms Pelosi said suspending deliveries would cut pump prices by five to 24 cents per gallon. Clinton-McCain gas tax holiday slammed as bad idea Wed Apr 30, 2008 8:25pm BST By Alister Bull WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A gas tax holiday proposed by U.S. presidential hopefuls John McCain and Hillary Clinton is viewed as a bad idea by many economists and has drawn unexpected support for Clinton rival Barack Obama, who also is opposed. "Score one for Obama," wrote Greg Mankiw, a former chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. "In light of the side effects associated with driving ... gasoline taxes should be higher than they are, not lower." Republican McCain and Democrat Clinton, who is battling Obama for their party's nomination, both want to suspend the 18.4-cents-per-gallon federal gas tax during the peak summer driving months to ease the pain of soaring gas prices. The tax is used to fund the Highway Trust Fund that builds and maintains roads and bridges. Economists said that since refineries cannot increase their supply of gasoline in the space of a few summer months, lower prices will just boost demand and the benefits will flow to oil companies, not consumers. "You are just going to push up the price of gas by almost the size of the tax cut," said Eric Toder, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center in Washington. Obama criticized the plan as pure politics and said the only way to lower the price of gas is to use less oil. "It would last for three months and it would save you on average half a tank of gas, $25 to $30. That's what Senator Clinton and Senator McCain are proposing to deal with the gas crisis," he said on Tuesday in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. "This isn't an idea designed to get you through the summer, it's an idea designed to get them through an election." This stance has prompted Clinton to accuse him of being out of touch with ordinary Americans as she campaigns ahead of key presidential nomination contests in North Carolina and Indiana on May 6. CLINTON AT THE PUMP The New York senator was commuting to work in South Bend, Indiana, on Wednesday and planned to pump gas at a gas station to draw attention to her plan to suspend the gas tax on consumers and businesses. "We will pay for it by imposing a windfall profits tax on the big oil companies," she said on Tuesday. "They sure can afford it. This is a big difference in this race. My opponent opposes giving consumers a break from the gas tax but I believe the American people are being squeezed pretty hard." The cost of a gallon of gasoline has touched $4 in some parts of the country as oil prices nudge toward a record $120 per barrel, hammering drivers at a time when higher food prices and falling home values are already crimping U.S. consumers. Many economists implicitly agreed with Obama and said the McCain-Clinton gas tax plan sent the wrong signal on energy efficiency and was at odds with their pledges to combat climate change by encouraging lower U.S. carbon emissions. "I think it is a very bad idea," said Gilbert Metclaf, a economics professor at Tufts University currently working with the National Bureau of Economic Research. "If we want people to invest in energy-saving cars, we need some assurance that the higher price paid for these cars is going to pay off through fuel savings," he said. "It is a very short-sighted, counterproductive proposal." Economists also saw it is a poor way of getting money to the households that need it most and warned that it might end up in the cash tills of the oil companies. "If you want to provide households tax relief, a direct rebate ... is more effective. Not all of the tax relief from a gas tax holiday will be passed on to consumers. Some will likely be kept by refiners," Mankiw said in an e-mail response. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was similarly underwhelmed: "It's Econ 101: the tax cut really goes to the oil companies," he wrote on his blog on Tuesday. (Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Winston-Salem, N.C., and Ellen Wulfhorst in Indianapolis) (Editing by Bill Trott) -- Yoshie From critical.montages at gmail.com Sat May 3 03:01:22 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sat, 3 May 2008 05:01:22 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Ethanol, Food, and McCain Message-ID: Probably John McCain is the best candidate for poor people of the world outside the USA. -- Yoshie Corn Ethanol Loses More Support GOP Senators Ask EPA to Backtrack As Food Prices Rise By SIOBHAN HUGHES, IAN TALLEY and ANJALI CORDEIRO May 3, 2008; Page A4 FUEL VS. FOOD? ? The News: Two dozen Republican senators asked the EPA to ease requirements on blending ethanol and other renewable fuels into the gasoline supply, saying the mandates are contributing to increases in food prices. ? The Outlook: The move is the latest sign that Washington's support for turning corn into motor fuel is wavering. Rising food prices are prodding lawmakers in Washington to rethink support for corn ethanol. Two dozen Republican senators on Friday -- including Republican presidential candidate John McCain (R., Ariz.) -- asked the Environmental Protection Agency to ease requirements mandated by Congress in 2007 to blend more ethanol and other renewable fuels into the gasoline supply. The lawmakers said the mandates are contributing to a sharp increase in food prices. Sen. McCain has been a critic of ethanol subsidies. "With the price of everyday meat, chicken, bread and eggs rapidly increasing, we are asking the EPA to use the flexibility that Congress gave them, because so many families cannot afford the increasing prices at the grocery store," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R., Texas). An EPA spokesman couldn't be reached to comment. EPA spokesman Jonathan Shradar said the agency "will review waiver requests and respond according to the law." The move by the Republican Senate group is the latest sign that Washington's support for turning corn into motor fuel is wavering in the face of soaring food prices, despite the popularity of ethanol subsidies in farm states critical to the November election. So far, it appears unlikely that Washington, in an election year, will make the drastic cuts sought by critics of U.S. subsidies for corn ethanol. Any loosening of recently passed mandates for increased ethanol production will have to overcome opposition from senators representing farm states. President Bush also reiterated his support for corn ethanol on Friday. While acknowledging that ethanol is "part of" the reason for high food prices, he disputed the notion that it has been "the main cost driver" for recent food-price increases. "I'd much rather be paying our farmers when we go to the gas pump than paying some nation that may not like us," Mr. Bush said in a speech Friday. But there are signs that doubts about the wisdom of current U.S. biofuels policy are mounting. A number of lawmakers are calling for loosening mandates in a recently passed energy law that requires an increase in the use of ethanol and other biofuels to roughly five times their current level -- to 36 billion gallons by 2022. A sweeping farm bill under debate in the Senate also seeks to accelerate the U.S. shift away from corn-based ethanol, by proposing to reduce the current 51-cents-a-gallon credit to 45 cents. Another provision of the bill would create a new credit for so-called cellulosic ethanol -- which is made from wood chips, switch grass and other nonfood stocks -- of $1.01 a gallon. Cellulosic ethanol has yet to be proven on a commercial level, and many analysts don't expect a full-scale production facility to come online for years. "Good Growth: Corn-futures prices, settlement price on the near-month contract on the Chicago Board of Trade, " There are also signs of anti-ethanol backlash at the state level. The governors of Texas and Connecticut have requested that the EPA issue waivers from the mandate, arguing that the ethanol impact on food prices is too onerous. At a congressional hearing Thursday, the chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture said that government subsidies to ethanol producers are having a sizable impact on food prices, but that the impact is limited to corn-based food goods and will likely subside over time. Joseph Glauber told a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee that ethanol subsidies were having an "important impact" on corn prices, directly pushing up the cost of corn-based food. He told the panel that retail food prices increased by 4% in 2007, the fastest since 1990. Prices are forecast to grow a further 4% to 4.5% in 2008, he said. But he said the ethanol subsidies had little to do with sharp increases in wheat and rice prices. That has had more to do with the rapid increase in demand from countries like China and India for high-quality foods, and adverse weather conditions in major wheat producers like Australia and Canada, which has severely reduced yields. Mr. Glauber said he anticipated the ethanol impact on the price of corn would moderate over time. While U.S. lawmakers debate the link between the rapid increase in U.S. corn-based ethanol production and the escalation in food prices world-wide, several large packaged-food companies are hiring lobbyists or using their internal teams to make a stronger case against the use of corn to produce biofuels like ethanol. A March lobbying-registration form shows that Kraft Foods Inc. has hired Washington firm DLA Piper to lobby on "energy policy and initiatives related to biofuels." An April lobbying report filed by Kellogg Co. discloses that the company has been lobbying on the subject of "ethanol production," among other things. In the past week, Kraft -- which makes its namesake cheese singles, Philadelphia cream cheese and Oscar Mayer meats -- posted a 13% drop in first-quarter net income amid surging costs for dairy, wheat and other commodities. Kellogg posted a 1.9% drop in first-quarter net income as price boosts didn't completely offset the surging costs for ingredients and a higher tax rate. --Corey Boles contributed to this article. Write to Anjali Cordeiro at anjali.cordeiro at dowjones.com FACTBOX-U.S. presidential candidates on energy issues REUTERS 6:59 a.m. April 9, 2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . + BIOFUELS Clinton ? Make 60 billion gallons of biofuels available for trucks and cars by 2030. Obama ? Boost renewable fuel standard to at least 60 billion gallons of advanced biofuels like cellulosic ethanol by 2030; build out ethanol distribution infrastructure; mandate that all new vehicles be "flexfuel" by the end of 2012; produce 2 billion gallons of "cellulosic" ethanol from non-corn sources like switchgrass by 2013. McCain ? Favors ethanol incentives after opposing them in the past. Generally opposes subsidies and tariffs that distort marketplace. Can't eat ethanol April 13, 2008 CORN should be used for food, not motor fuel, and yet the United States is committed to a policy that encourages farmers to turn an increasing amount of their crop into ethanol. This may save the nation a bit of the cost of imported oil, but it increases global-warming gases and contributes to higher food prices. Candidates for president need to tell Americans the truth about ethanol, but they are falling over themselves in pursuit of the farm belt vote. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton want more ethanol factories built than even President Bush envisaged when he called for 15 percent of US gasoline consumption to be replaced by alternative fuels by 2017. John McCain, who correctly called the ethanol push a boondoggle in 2000, now says that it is "a very important way to achieve energy independence." Ethanol consumes almost a quarter of US corn production. The energy self-sufficiency that all the candidates seek should not come at the expense of the environment or the food supply. Increased ethanol production isn't the only reason for the spike in food costs, but it's more controllable than drought in Australia, higher fertilizer prices, or increased meat consumption by the Chinese. Unlike those other cost-drivers, ethanol production is encouraged by federal subsidies. And it's not as though ethanol improves the environment. When emissions inherent in the production process are included, ethanol consumption generates more carbon dioxide per gallon than gasoline, according to a recent report in Science magazine. Conversion of other cultivated biomass, such as sugarcane or soy, presents the same problem. The only biofuel that produces a net benefit is agricultural waste, an uncertain source. The best way for American motorists to use less gasoline is to drive fewer miles in lighter vehicles, rather than rely on the false promise of biofuels. Ethanol is now usually sold as 10 percent of a fuel mixture that includes 90 percent gasoline. The government is thinking of ordering refiners to raise the blend to 15 or 20 percent. Ethanol generates fewer miles per gallon than regular gasoline. And it's not yet clear, according to the Consumer Reports website, how the higher blends would affect engine reliability or longevity. Before the government insists on a new fuel blend, it ought to examine all the hidden costs. Greater use of ethanol means more greenhouse gases and more expensive food for people and livestock, hardly a fair exchange. There's a limited role for biofuels, excluding corn, in reducing oil imports from volatile regions, but they are not the answer to the world's need for energy on the go. -- Yoshie From critical.montages at gmail.com Sat May 3 03:13:19 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sat, 3 May 2008 05:13:19 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Oil and Food Spendings as Shares of Americans' Disposable Income Message-ID: Big profits for oil, food firms test public-relations skills By GEORGE ANDERS May 1, 2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Energy and food companies may spend less time in the spotlight today because their output commands a smaller share of people's pocketbooks than in decades past. Gasoline, for example, currently accounts for about 5.4% of household budgets, down from 7% to 8% in the early 1980s. For the first half of the 20th century, food spending accounted for at least 20% of Americans' disposable income, according to the Agriculture Department. That percentage dropped to 13.6% in 1974 and has been slightly below 10% this decade. Indeed, as the U.S. becomes more prosperous, extra household earnings are more likely to be spent on flat-panel televisions, casino junkets or college tuition than on food. And while bulk commodities such as wheat and corn have soared in price lately, it is harder to trace their impact on the cost of a basket of groceries. In the year ended March 31, U.S. food-price inflation totaled just 4.4%. The price of baked goods was up 8.1%, an annoying -- but hardly catastrophic -- rise. Outside the U.S., it is a different story. Rising food prices have touched off riots in Africa, rice-buying stampedes in Vietnam and political upheaval in Haiti. But U.S. multinationals haven't been cast as villains in any of these incidents. Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank, has been trying to calculate how much oil prices would need to rise for consumers world-wide to feel as alarmed as they did in 1980, when crude soared to a then-unheard-of price of $40 a barrel. If one adjusts for constant dollars, as measured by the consumer price index, oil at $100 a barrel today would be comparable, he says. But if one also adjusts for the somewhat smaller bite oil takes out of personal income -- as people have become more energy efficient -- it would take a price of $135 to $150 a barrel to produce the dislocations caused by the 1980s price spike. -- Yoshie From critical.montages at gmail.com Sat May 3 03:36:49 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sat, 3 May 2008 05:36:49 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Higher Food Prices May Be Here to Stay Message-ID: THE OUTLOOK Higher Food Prices May Be Here to Stay By PATRICK BARTA April 14, 2008; Page A2 For all the economists and consumers who hope high food prices are temporary, here's one reason why they probably won't be: Farm costs are skyrocketing, making permanently higher prices essential for farmers to keep expanding production. Inflation is biting farmers world-wide. In New Zealand, farm wages are up as much as 20% this year, and the average price of a dairy cow has jumped to more than $1,900 -- almost double last year's average of about $1,000. In Thailand and Indonesia, farmers are complaining about sharp increases in the price of fertilizer and diesel fuel. In the American Midwest, land prices have jumped, along with the cost of energy and chemicals. The price of diammonium phosphate, a common fertilizer, is about $1,200 a ton in the U.S., up from about $450 a ton a year ago. "Diesel, fertilizer, insecticide, grass-killing chemicals, they're all going up -- just like a shadow," says Samear Ruengrit, a 57-year-old farmer who grows rice about 45 minutes north of Bangkok. His average costs are now about 50% higher than last season, he says. Farming costs are climbing for several reasons. Higher fuel prices make it more expensive to run tractors and other equipment, while pricier natural gas -- needed to make some fertilizers -- has also played a role. Equipment prices are rising because of strong demand for farm machinery in China and other developing countries, along with rising costs for raw materials like steel. Wages are up in some parts of the world because many farms are expanding to meet higher demand, putting pressure on labor supplies, especially in countries like Australia where many workers are already occupied in commodity-based trades like mining. Cost pressures have intensified over the past six months. Many farm suppliers and equipment dealers held back on price increases in 2006 and 2007, despite their own higher energy and labor costs. Now, after a year or more of strong markets for corn and other crops, those suppliers are deciding farmers can afford to pay more -- and they are passing costs along. Many farmers were able to postpone cost increases through hedging or by buying fertilizer, chemicals and other supplies in bulk in 2006 or 2007, when they were cheaper. Now those strategies are hitting their limit as the stockpiles run down. "Growing Burden: Average US Price for Diammonium Phosphate Fertilizer": The higher costs are transforming the economics of agriculture. Since some of the heftier outlays -- like those for fuel -- are expected to persist, farmers will need to command higher prices for their crops than they did a few years ago to maintain their profit margins. For consumers, all this means continuing pain from high-food costs, at least for the foreseeable future. Rice prices have more than doubled since the beginning of 2008, causing some farmers to hoard their crops in hopes of further windfalls, pushing prices even higher. Food-inflation protests have rippled across the developing world, including Haiti, Mexico, Indonesia, Egypt and Pakistan. A similar cost spiral has played out in other commodities markets, notably those for minerals. Rising costs "are sweeping across the commodities complex, and agriculture can't escape it," says Michael Lewis, global head of commodities research at Deutsche Bank in London. The upshot, he says, is "a complete structural shift" in agricultural prices to a new, higher level. None of this means food prices can't fall somewhat from current levels -- indeed, many economists believe they will, as the world economy slows and new farms come into production. If the U.S. slides into a deep economic malaise that triggers a world-wide recession, prices of most commodities probably would fall. Even so, economists say the magnitude of the recent cost increases suggests it will be hard for farm prices to return to their lower levels of the late 1990s and early 2000s, amid a financial crisis in Asia and a recession in the U.S. Indeed, consider what happened in the mid-1980s, when crop prices collapsed following a sharp run-up in the 1970s. Corn fell to less than $1.60 a bushel in 1986 from a high of more than $3 a bushel a few years earlier. But within about two years, corn and wheat prices rebounded. Corn settled above $2.25 a bushel for much of the next decade, well above its price of less than $1.25 before the 1970s farm boom began -- the same kind of long-term upward shift in prices many economists expect today. The problem for many farmers back then was that costs also stayed high, eating into profit margins and forcing many out of business. That merely underscores how dangerous high costs can be for farmers. Added costs often take a while to materialize during the early years of a farm boom, allowing growers to cash in on big profits during the early stages -- much as they have over the past two years. But they also tend to stick around for a long time, even after some of the forces that drove crop prices higher have faded. That exposes farmers to significant risks as farm booms mature. Farmers are "terrified" of high costs if crop prices ease back, says Michael Swanson, an agricultural economist at Wells Fargo & Co. in Minneapolis. Such fears could make them reluctant to expand production as much as they might do otherwise. That would mean more constraints on food supplies -- and even higher prices. -- Yoshie From critical.montages at gmail.com Sat May 3 04:06:19 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sat, 3 May 2008 06:06:19 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Thailand Proposes Rice Cartel Message-ID: Thailand Proposes Rice Cartel Associated Press May 2, 2008 10:49 a.m. BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand, the world's biggest rice exporter, said Friday that it wants to form an OPEC-style cartel with four Southeast Asian neighbors so that together they have more control over international prices of the commodity. Thai Commerce Minister Mingkwan Saengsuwan plans to talk with his counterparts in Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam about forming a cartel to gain more influence over prices, said government spokesman Vichienchot Sukchokrat. "Though we are the food center of the world, we have had little influence on the price," Mr. Vichienchot said. "With the oil price rising so much, we import expensive oil but sell rice very cheaply and that's unfair to us and hurts our trade balance." Rice prices have tripled this year, with the regional benchmark hitting US$1,000 a metric ton for 100% Grade B white rice. The run-up in rice prices has come amid global food inflation, poor weather in some rice-producing nations and demand that has outstripped supply. Some Asian countries, including India and Vietnam, have contributed to the problem by curbing rice exports to guarantee their own supplies. In the Philippines, the world's top rice importer, Senator Edgardo Angara, chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, fears the potential that a small group of producers could control a food staple and set prices out of reach of "millions and millions of people." "Almost three billion people are rice eaters. It's not a good idea. It is a bad idea. ... It will create an oligopoly and it's against humanity," he said. However, Laos Foreign Ministry spokesman Yong Chanthalansy said Friday the Laotian government would "seriously consider" the idea of creating a cartel because it would give the five countries bargaining power. "Our priority is to help vulnerable groups in the country, both the producers and consumers," Mr. Yong said. "We are especially vulnerable because we are a landlocked country so everything depends on irrigation." Cambodia, which in the past has championed the rice cartel idea, also welcomed the latest proposal and said it was a "necessity" given the current global food crisis. "By forming an association, we can help prevent a price war and exchange information about food security," Cambodia's chief government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said. Mr. Vichienchot, the Thai government spokesman, confirmed that Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej brought up the idea of a grouping modeled after OPEC during his discussions Wednesday with Myanmar's Prime Minister Lt. Gen. Thein Sein in Bangkok. "The idea is that we can work together to improve yields and production and have some influence on setting the prices, making it a little more balanced," Mr. Vichienchot said. Mr. Samak said Wednesday Myanmar supported the idea, while officials in Vietnam have said they are studying it and could possibly support it. Much like the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries sets oil prices, the tentatively named Organization of Rice Exporting Countries would help set prices for rice. Supporters say that would ensure farmers benefit from the increasing demand for the staple. Robert Zeigler, director general of the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, said he expected it would be difficult to apply the OPEC model to rice. "Rice is grown by millions of farmers in one, two, three hectares of land. Oil is produced by a few multinational companies in a few countries," Mr. Zeigler said. "So I think the differences are so large as to make any comparison between the two wild fantasies." Chookiat Ophaswongse, president of the Thai Rice Exporters Association, said he was against the idea of a cartel. He said it would have difficulty swaying world markets because such a grouping would still exclude big producers like India and Pakistan and would find it difficult to control farmers producing rice on a seasonal basis. "When there is a crisis with rice, they [the government] talks about this cartel. It has never happened and I don't think it will," Mr. Chookiat said. "You cannot control farmers growing or not growing rice. It's not like oil," which even if isn't pumped out of the ground is still there. -- Yoshie From critical.montages at gmail.com Sat May 3 04:51:54 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sat, 3 May 2008 06:51:54 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Power Struggle: In Africa, Outages Stifle a Boom; Electricity Cuts Plague 35 Nations Message-ID: PAGE ONE POWER STRUGGLE In Africa, Outages Stifle a Boom Electricity Cuts Plague 35 Nations; Waiting in Gakuto By SARAH CHILDRESS April 17, 2008; Page A1 (See Corrections & Amplifications item below.) JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- The global commodities boom is claiming another casualty: Africa's already-shaky power grid. With the continent's power-hungry mining sector booming and the economy along with it, national electricity grids are fraying. Higher prices for coal and oil are only intensifying the strain on electricity companies. The poor in South Africa's sprawling townships have long been used to power cuts. Now, upscale shoppers here browse darkened malls, while moviegoers are accustomed to outages disrupting shows. In nearby Botswana, plans to bring electricity to rural villages are threatened as the government struggles to maintain power at the nation's diamond mines. Frequent and disruptive power outages plague about 35 of sub-Saharan Africa's 47 countries, according to the World Bank. The situation is triggering violence and threatening deeper instability across a region already wracked by unrest. Residents of impoverished Port Harcourt, Nigeria, enraged at paying for inconsistent or nonexistent electricity, recently have chased away the power company's bill collectors with machetes. In South Africa, Eskom, the government-owned power company, is taking drastic actions to prevent its national grid from collapsing altogether. Last month, it petitioned federal regulators to allow it to hike rates by more than 50% -- a stinging increase designed to curb demand. It also reduced power to the country's robust mining industry. The drop in capacity has helped elevate international gold and platinum prices. DARKNESS IN GAKUTO ? Botswana Village Waits for Lights to Come On "The situation is critical," says Steve Lennon, Eskom's managing director for resources and strategy. The company has had to resort to scheduled outages since January, and recently warned that additional cuts may be necessary. In a rare mea culpa, South African President Thabo Mbeki apologized for the electricity shortages during his February state-of-the-union address. He declared the situation to be a "national emergency" and vowed to confront the problem. Unreliable power poses a major constraint on the region's economic development. Much of sub-Saharan Africa still operates largely on the margins of the global financial markets, isolating it from the economic turmoil buffeting the developed world. Booming commodity prices of the past few years, however, have made the region attractive to foreign investors. Now the electricity crisis is damping their enthusiasm. "It's one of the biggest concerns for the business community," says Vivien Foster, the World Bank's lead economist on sustainable development in Africa. Economic Impact Outages are costing African economies as much as 2% of their gross domestic product, according to World Bank estimates. For big businesses, outages are reducing revenue by as much as 6%, according to the bank's surveys of manufacturing firms in Africa. Sales losses can approach 16% for smaller companies operating in the continent's vast, informal economy. These include unregistered convenience shops and hair salons that serve many African cities and villages. Power for most Africans is still a luxury. Just under a quarter of sub-Saharan Africa's population has access to electricity in the first place, and that is concentrated in urban areas. Africa has the capacity to generate about 63 gigawatts of power for roughly 770 million people -- about what Spain produces for its population of 40 million. For most African countries, the World Bank estimates that universal access to electricity is at least 50 years away.But these days, even the few who have come to expect electricity are finding it increasingly difficult to come by -- or afford. Falling Behind: Power generation capacity, megawatts per one million inhabitants: New plants -- some powered by coal or oil -- can take years to build, so some countries are resorting to pricey emergency measures: They're using generators powered by diesel or other fuel and attempting to store up extra coal to feed existing plants. All this is happening just as energy prices are rising, which means they can't afford enough coal, or enough oil, to fill the gaps. "We pay a bill this week, and put off another one," says Ibrahima Coulibaly, an accountant for a construction firm in Dakar, Senegal. Sometimes, he says his children's school fees go unpaid so that he can pay his electricity bill, which has shot up 88% over the past three years due to escalating oil prices. "You have to make a choice between what is indispensable and what is superfluous," he says. "Electricity is indispensable." Africa's power crisis is halting or reversing modest efforts in recent years aimed at bringing cheap electric power to rural areas. Economists call these residents the "energy poor," because without lights or the ability to power new technologies or appliances, people have difficulty competing or progressing in a modern world. One of the hardest hit regions so far is South Africa, the continent's largest and most vibrant economy. Since 2000, the country's gross domestic product has more than doubled, from $133 billion in 2000 to $272 billion last year. The country's power grid hasn't kept up. Despite warnings from Eskom in 1998 of an impending crisis, the government didn't order new plants built until 2004. The country has Africa's most developed infrastructure -- from busy freeways to speedy Internet connections -- lending it a first-world feel. Johannesburg, the commercial hub, is home to a burgeoning stock market and wealthy gated communities. The country also has vast reserves of diamonds, platinum, gold and other metals that it hauls from some of the world's deepest mines. On the country's southern coastal tip, Cape Town boasts sprawling beach homes. Amid the past few years of sharply rising commodities prices, the mining-heavy economy here has thrived. Investment bankers and private-equity investors are rushing to scout for deals. The power-intensive mining industry puts additional strain on the grid. Mining companies have had to dig deeper in recent years to get access to dwindling reserves. That requires more electricity. The mining industry, responsible for 7% of the country's economic output, draws 17% of the country's electricity production. Last year, Eskom found itself unable to meet demand for the first time. Blackouts this January snarled traffic as many stoplights in Johannesburg went on the blink. Retail stores reported a spike in thefts during power outages and some restaurants have invested in costly generators to keep customers coming. South Africa's cuts are roiling neighbors. That's because Eskom exports power to much of the region. In copper-rich Zambia, South Africa's outages forced the country's largest mining company to suspend operations altogether in January. Electricity demand in Botswana, a big diamond producer in southern Africa, is growing at 8% a year. Diamond mines suck up roughly half of the country's overall consumption. South Africa is now cutting back on the electricity it's willing to sell to the country. Botswana's Sole Plant Also at risk: government-funded electrification efforts aimed at bringing power to the countryside. Botswana has only one coal-fired power plant. In the past, it has relied on cheap imports from South Africa for 70% of its electricity needs. Eskom has said it will cut Botswana's share of power in half by 2010, leaving the country scrambling to find other solutions or face a crippling shortage. Map: "Tapped Out: Sub-Saharan Africa has been prone to frequent power outages due to: natural causes; oil price shock; system disrupted by conflict; and high growth, low investment": Energy Minister Ponatshego Kedikilwe acknowledged earlier this year that Botswana had an "emergency" situation. "With the rate of demand and levels of growth one could say that should've been anticipated," he said during a recent news conference. He noted that the government was looking into energy-saving measures -- such as public awareness campaigns -- to reduce demand. Botswana officials are also in the process of expanding the country's sole power plant and are soliciting bids from independent power producers. Given those measures, Mr. Kedikilwe predicts that by 2011, Botswana will actually have a small electricity surplus. For now, though, the country's crisis has endangered a new government project to bring electric power to the country's energy poor in about 100 rural villages. Last fall, the government installed power lines connecting the bush village of Gakuto, about 12 miles from the capital Gaborone, to the national grid. The village is a collection of tidy homes scattered along red-dirt paths. The lack of electricity makes Gakuto a quiet town. Without lights or refrigeration, there are few shops and no running water. The prospect of power in the village excited its 1,500 residents, many of whom moved from other rural areas because they could afford to buy their own homes here. Eager Gakuto residents paid about $130 each to wire up their homes when they heard about the electrification project. That's a major sacrifice considering some make as little as $75 a month. The effort got off to a rough start. Late last year, vandals stole some of the town's wiring, delaying the launch. The government said that it would replace it, and then Gakuto would be back on the schedule. Then the power crisis struck, and the village is still waiting. The energy minister, Mr. Kedikilwe, says that the rural electrification program won't be derailed by the power crunch. But Botswana is already struggling just to keep the lights on in the capital. At the Ministry of Minerals, Energy and Water Resources in Gabarone, the halls remain dark and un-air-conditioned. A sign on the elevators warns of spontaneous power cuts and advises would-be passengers to ride at their own risk. Dreams on Hold In Gakuto, middle-class residents are putting their own dreams on hold. When the Bika family learned that electricity was coming to Gakuto, they built a small slaughterhouse and bought a deep freezer for their chicken farm. They wired the chicken coops for electric lighting. Under bright lights, chickens eat constantly, fattening up for slaughter. But the Bikas' 2,000 scrawny chickens now peck halfheartedly at the feed under smoky, paraffin lanterns. Without electricity for refrigeration, slaughtered chickens rot within hours, so the Bikas have to sell the birds live to local families. The family tried to run the new freezer on a diesel-powered generator. But fuel costs ate through more than $1,100 a month. [Boitumelo Bika] "I can't progress if there's no electricity," says Boitumelo Bika, the elegant family matriarch, her thick braids twisted into a bun. "That's why I sit, and fold my hands." Some countries like Ghana and Senegal depend on imported oil and natural gas to fuel their power plants and are now struggling to pay mounting bills. In Senegal, the government relies on imported oil to fuel all but 66 megawatts of its 623-megawatt-capacity grid. When oil prices soared past $100 a barrel, the government, which subsidizes electricity prices, was hit hard. The government has spent more than $300 million in unplanned subsidies since 2004 to ease its citizens' rising electricity costs and is anticipating another difficult year, as the prices climb month-to-month. The spending has sucked the government dry at a time when it needs cash to upgrade its beleaguered power grid. "The government doesn't have a penny to invest in the energy sector," says Mohamadou Diop, an independent energy consultant in Dakar. The government can't match the price rises with new subsidies and is being forced to pass on some of the higher costs to consumers. Prices have risen 15% in just the past few months, leaving much of the power-addicted middle class struggling. Like many up-and-coming Dakar residents, Demba Falldiop, a sales representative for an import-export company, was building a second home to rent out in the hopes of capitalizing on rising housing costs in the booming capital. Just as the walls were going up, however, Mr. Falldiop had to halt construction because of soaring power bills. "I have another one I'm going to pay right now," he said, pulling an invoice from the pocket of his orange robe. The bill, for two months worth of power, is for about a fifth of his monthly salary. --Elizabeth Dickinson contributed to this article. Corrections & Amplifications Sub-Saharan Africa comprises 47 countries, according to the World Bank. A previous version of this page-one article Thursday incorrectly gave the number as 53. In addition, Botswana's capital is Gaborone. The city's name was misspelled in the article as Gabarone. -- Yoshie From fentona at shaw.ca Sat May 3 10:51:49 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sat, 03 May 2008 09:51:49 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Spies Without Borders: The CIA and the Raid on Ecuador Message-ID: <1F9293C1-F1F9-4FE7-B550-51D6C1D41F74@shaw.ca> May 2, 2008 The CIA and the Raid on Ecuador Spies Without Borders By WILLIAM BLUM http://counterpunch.com/blum05022008.html When Andreas Papandreou assumed his ministerial duties in 1964 in the Greek government led by his father George Papandreou, he was shocked to discover an intelligence service out of control, a shadow government with powers beyond the authority of the nation's nominal leaders, a service more loyal to the CIA than to the Papandreou government. This was a fact of life for many countries in the world during the Cold War, when the CIA could dazzle a foreign secret service with devices of technical wizardry, classes in spycraft, vital intelligence, unlimited money, and American mystique and propaganda. Many of the world's intelligence agencies have long provided the CIA with information about their own government and citizens. The nature of much of this information has been such that if a private citizen were to pass it to a foreign power he could be charged with treason. [William Blum, Killing Hope, pages 217-8.] Leftist Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa declared in April that Ecuador's intelligence systems were "totally infiltrated and subjugated to the CIA," and accused senior Ecuadoran military officials of sharing intelligence with Colombia, the Bush administration's top (if not only) ally in Latin America. The previous month missiles had been fired into a camp of the Colombian FARC rebels situated in Ecuador near the Colombian border, killing about 25. One of those killed was Franklin Aisalla, an Ecuadorean operative for the group. It turned out that Ecuadorean intelligence officials had been tracking Aisalla, a fact that was not shared with the president, but apparently with Colombian forces and their American military advisers. "I, the president of the republic, found out about these operations by reading the newspaper," a visibly indignant Correa said. "This is not something we can tolerate." He added that he planned to restructure the intelligence agencies so he would have greater direct control over them. [New York Times, April 21, 2008.] The FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) is routinely referred to in the world media as "Marxist", but that designation has not been appropriate for many years. The FARC has long been basically a criminal organization -- kidnapings for ransom, kidnapings for no apparent reason, selling protection services to businesses, trafficking in drugs, fighting the Colombian Army to be free to continue their criminal ways or to revenge their comrades' deaths. But Washington, proceeding from its declared ideology of "If you ain't with us, you're against us; in fact, if you ain't with us you're a terrorist", has designated FARC as a terrorist group. Every stated definition of "terrorist", from the FBI to the United Nations to the US criminal code makes it plain that terrorism is essentially a political act. This should, logically, exclude FARC from that category but, in actuality, has no effect on Washington's thinking. And now the Bush administration is threatening to add Venezuela to its list of "nations that support terrorism", following a claim by Colombia that it had captured a computer belonging to FARC after the attack on the group's campsite in Ecuador. A file allegedly found on the alleged computer, we are told, suggests that the Venezuelan government had channeled $300 million to FARC, and that FARC had appeared interested in acquiring 110 pounds of uranium. [New York Times, March 4, 2008] What next? Chavez had met with Osama bin Laden at the campsite? Amongst the FARC members killed in the Colombian attack on Ecuador were several involved in negotiations to free Ingrid Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate who also holds French citizenship and is gravely ill. The French government and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez have been very active in trying to win Betancourt's freedom. Individuals collaborating with Chavez have twice this year escorted a total of six hostages freed by the FARC into freedom, including four former Colombian legislators. The prestige thus acquired by Chavez has of course not made Washington ideologues happy. If Chavez should have a role in the freeing of Betancourt -- the FARC's most prominent prisoner -- his prestige would jump yet higher. The raid on the FARC camp has put an end to the Betancourt negotiations, at least for the near future. The raid bore the fingerprints of the US military/CIA -- a Predator drone aircraft dropped "smart bombs" after pinpointing the spot by monitoring a satellite phone call between a FARC leader and Chavez. A Colombian Defense Ministry official admitted that the United States had provided his government with intelligence used in the attack, but denied that Washington had provided the weapons.[9] The New York Times observed that "The predawn operation bears remarkable similarities to one carried out in late January by the United States in Pakistan."[10] So what do we have here? Washington has removed a couple of dozen terrorists (or "terrorists") from the ranks of the living without any kind of judicial process. Ingrid Betancourt continues her imprisonment, now in its sixth year, but another of Hugo Chavez's evil- commie plans has been thwarted. And the CIA -- as with its torture renditions -- has once again demonstrated its awesome power: anyone, anywhere, anytime, anything, all laws domestic and international be damned, no lie too big. William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir. He can be reached at BBlum6 at aol.com From fentona at shaw.ca Sat May 3 10:56:39 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sat, 03 May 2008 09:56:39 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Blum: Rev. Wright, the CIA and the AIDS Thing Message-ID: <9BF2026B-38E6-4762-BA8A-FA6864A4A013@shaw.ca> Weekend Edition May 3 / 4, 2008 The Search for Ethnic Weapons Rev. Wright, the CIA and the AIDS Thing By WILLIAM BLUM http://counterpunch.com/blum05032008.html "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?" T.S. Eliot Barack Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington on April 28, during which he was asked about his earlier statement that the US government had invented the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, "as a means of genocide against people of color". Wright did not offer any kind of evidence to support his claim. Even more important, the claim makes little sense. Why would the US government want to wipe out people of color? Undoubtedly, many government officials, past and present, have been racists, but the capitalist system at home and its imperialist brother abroad have no overarching ideological or realpolitik need for such a genocide. During the seven decades of the Cold War, the American power elite was much more interested in a genocide of "communists", of whatever color, wherever they might be found. Many weapons which might further this purpose were researched, including, apparently, an HIV-like virus. Consider this: On June 9, 1969, Dr. Donald M. MacArthur, Deputy Director, Research and Engineering, Department of Defense, testified before Congress: Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a new infective microorganism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory [resistant] to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease. [Hearings before the House Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, "Department of Defense Appropriations for 1970."] Whether the United States actually developed such a microorganism and what it did with it has not been reported. AIDS was first identified by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1981. It's certainly possible that the disease arose as a result of Defense Department experiments, and then spread as an unintended consequence. If you think that our leaders, as wicked as they are, would not stoop to any kind of biological or chemical warfare against people, consider that in 1984 an anti-Castro Cuban exile, on trial in a New York court, testified that in the latter part of 1980 a ship traveled from Florida to Cuba with "a mission to carry some germs to introduce them in Cuba to be used against the Soviets and against the Cuban economy, to begin what was called chemical war, which later on produced results that were not what we had expected, because we thought that it was going to be used against the Soviet forces, and it was used against our own people, and with that we did not agree." [Testimony of Eduardo Victor Arocena Perez, on trial in Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, transcript of September 10, 1984, pp. 2187-89.] It's not clear from the testimony whether the Cuban man thought that the germs would somehow be able to confine their actions to only Russians. This was but one of many instances where the CIA or Defense Department used biological or chemical weapons against Cuba and other countries, including in the United States against Americans, at times with fatal consequences. [See: Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, and Rogue State by William Blum.] William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir. He can be reached at BBlum6 at aol.com From fentona at shaw.ca Sat May 3 11:51:22 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sat, 03 May 2008 10:51:22 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Heads They Win, Tails You Lose: Canadian Nickel Companies in Guatemala Message-ID: <1474B52A-1FD2-48B5-98F2-61D9D6D55370@shaw.ca> http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1261/1/ Heads They Win, Tails You Lose: Canadian Nickel Companies in Guatemala Written by Dawn Paley Upside Down World Thursday, 01 May 2008 "INCO's Guatemalan plans have been gathering dust for nearly a decade. I thought by the end of 1962 we would start a project and I have thought so ever since." Harry S. Wingate (former INCO chairperson), Fortune Magazine, March 1970. On October 10, 2007, Andrew Grant from Vancouver's Skye Resources officially announced a new beginning for nickel mining in the Izabal region in northeast Guatemala. The press touted the creation of six thousand jobs and a thirty-year mine life, while vice minister of Energy and Mines Jorge Garc?a Chi? broke down how, starting in 2009, the government will collect $54,000,000 in taxes from the company each year. Just over three months later, on January 30, 2008, Skye announced that they could not get the financing needed for the project, and that the mine would not go ahead until US financial markets improved. Since then, Skye's CEO, Ian Austin, and William Enrico, the VP of Operations, have resigned from their positions. While the company would have shareholders believe otherwise, this massive nickel mining project has met the same fate that its predecessor did some thirty years ago: on hold until further notice. The story of Skye Resources in Guatemala is a story that's been told before, almost to the letter. The dominant narrative is about the wonders of economic development thanks to a large, Canadian owned nickel project. Instead of Skye Resources, the major player in Guatemala's past was one of Canada's top hats: the International Nickel Company (Inco). The history of North American mining projects in the region is a window to understanding the current activities of Skye Resources in the area, and it puts today's race for minerals, led by Canadian mining companies, into context. War Metal and a Flurry of Coups Before Inco arrived on the scene, the Hanna Mining Company acquired licenses from the military government of Castillo Armas to mine in the Izabal region in Guatemala in 1956. The licenses were granted two short years after the US State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency planned, organized and financed a coup d'?tat against Jacobo Arbenz, the country's democratically elected president. Hanna Mining Company was a major donor to the Republican Party. The former president of Hanna, George Humphrey, was Secretary of the Treasury during the Eisenhower administration, and is said to have maintained close relationships with John Foster Dulles. In addition to Hanna's entry into Guatemala two years after the coup d'?tat, the company set up or bolstered operations in Iran after the 1953 coup, and in Brazil following the coup in 1964. Inco bought an 80% share in the Guatemala project, known as Exmibal, from Hanna in 1960. According to a report written for the North American Congress on Latin America in 1974, "Exmibal was to make a $250 million investment in Guatemala, doubling all previous foreign investment, and causing a major shift in the Guatemalan economy; Exmibal was granted the right to mine, refine, and export 60 million pounds of nickel annually for the next 40 years." In 1954, the US defense department noted that nickel "comes closest to being a true 'war metal'," because of its importance in building modern engines for airplanes and jets, as well as in armor plating for war ships. During the Korean War, more than half of the US supply of nickel was used for military production. Nickel has long been designated a "strategic mineral" by the US Department of Defense. Today, nickel is an essential metal that still plays a huge role in war, but also has a variety of uses in manufacturing electronics, vehicles and as an alloy with other metals, like stainless steel. Aid Money to the Private Sector: The Inco Precedent Inco's Exmibal mine was delayed a number of times before production actually started. Though a smelter, power plant and furnace were constructed, and mining and income tax laws were rewritten after years of wrangling by Inco's lawyers and employees, the mine only operated for three years, from 1978 until 1980. A grand total of 11,000 tons of nickel was produced, out of a planned 1,200,000 tons. Such an operation, producing only a fraction of the nickel predicted, was only made possible by huge subsidies and financing given to Inco by the US and Canadian governments and International Financial Institutions. As of 1977, financing of Exmibal included a $15 million dollar loan from the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank, $13.5 million dollar loan from the US Export Import Bank, a $17.25 million dollar loan from Canada's Export Development Corporation, and $6 million from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (itself a creation of US AID). "That the Canadian state would contribute to something like this should not in itself cause surprise" states Jamie Swift in his book The Big Nickel: Inco at home and abroad, continuing "The history of Canadian government support to private industry dates back to the construction of the CPR and Confederation." Penny Lernoux explains the preferential treatment extended to Inco by North American governments in her book in Cry the People: "...while Washington had no qualms about advancing the Guatemalans $13.5 million for the nickel project, for years it refused to lend them money for a road to the Atlantic Coast that would have put United Fruit's inefficient International Railways out of business." Meanwhile, the World Bank recently came under renewed scrutiny in Guatemala because of their 2004 loan of $45 million to Glamis Gold (now Goldcorp) for the construction of the controversial Marlin mine. Repression as a Rule, in Times of War and Times of Peace Swift notes that "...just as the United States had made Guatemala 'safe for democracy' in 1954, so Colonel Carlos Arana Osoria made even these provinces safe for Inco in 1968." Many academics and labour leaders who denounced the Exmibal project were assassinated or forced into exile as part of making Guatemala a "safe" place for Inco. In Alta Verapaz, home to a large section of the Exmibal concession, there were 65 massacres during years of internal conflict. The Panz?s Massacre, which took place 30 years ago this May, was rooted in repressing indigenous demands for land titles in the midst of an influx of foreign direct investment. Panz?s is the next town west from the Exmibal project, in the heart of Guatemala's so called "nickel district." Descendents and relatives of people who were killed or disappeared for speaking out against the Exmibal project still live in the area. Entire Mayan Qeq'chi communities who were displaced to make way for Inco persist in their demands for their historical right to title over land for housing and harvest. In September of 2006, five landless communities occupied lands which they have historical claim to, but which Skye Resources claims to own. The communities were violently evicted from the lands in November of 2006, and again in January of 2007. Skye Resources' chief of Security during the evictions was a military man named Mynor Padilla. During January evictions, community members' houses were burned to the ground and the army participated in intimidating the communities, in a blatant betrayal of the 1996 Peace Accords. People present at the evictions said that they were reminded of "wartime" by the violent and threatening actions of the company. After a video circulated on You Tube showing the evictions, the company's representatives whom had once stated that they would evict the communities "as many times as is necessary," started negotiating with the communities about their right to stay on the land. Through the process, the company has settled with two of the communities. The Ghost of the Nickel Project that Never Was "Over the last 15 years, the government has officially proclaimed the reconstruction of this road three times. It was one of the first things President Berger announced when he was elected four years ago," says Eloida Mej?a, an El Estor resident and member of the Association of Friends of Izabal Lake. We were talking in the back of a beat-up pick up truck, carrying us and a dozen other people from Fronteras to El Estor on a Tuesday evening. All along the road the water in the potholes reflected the moonlit sky above. The narrow bridges required careful steering, and the thirty-five kilometers of gravel took over an hour to cover. The route where the company was -according to their technical report- already supposed to be running twenty tractor trailer round trips day and night, was quiet save the odd oncoming bus or pickup truck. Fireflies, of which there are estimated to be 25 species in the region, offered the only distraction from darkness on either side of the road. It's not just the road that makes the company's plans seem far from reality. It's the history, the ghost of the great nickel project that never was. When they took over the concession in 2004 from Inco, Skye Resources was expecting to drive up their share price and sell the company to a major nickel mining company. When they didn't get any bids on their attempt to sell the project, Skye Resources announced that they would build the mine and carry out the project themselves. The company's plan required them to raise nearly a billion dollars by 2014. More than half of the funds are needed to build a petroleum coke fired power plant to power the mine. In December of 2007, the company contracted Morgan Stanley to raise the bulk of the funds, and in January the company announced that they had defaulted on their financing. Ian Austin, who stepped down as president of Skye in February, cashed in $480,000 worth of Skye shares in late March, a nice retirement bonus for the president of a company whose balance sheets have never been out of the red. The company claims that it is "... preparing to initiate construction once financing is in place." Tension is high in the surrounding towns. After the project delays were announced, the congressperson for Izabal, Byron Chac?n, blamed the people who occupied company lands for the failure of Skye Resources to begin mine construction. The human cost of speculation on the financial markets by mining companies is high. This is evidenced by the grave human rights abuses that have been committed on behalf of Inco and Skye Resources. This mining project is but one example of what the promises of "development" and "corporate social responsibility" mean for the people directly affected by these projects. Dawn Paley is an independent journalist from Vancouver, British Columbia. Photos by James Rodriguez. Mimundo.org (unless otherwise noted). Works Consulted/Further Reading Devrell, John. (1975). Falconbridge: Portrait of a Canadian Mining Multinational. Toronto: James Lorimer & Company. E.D.B., F.G. (November, 1968). The Hanna Industrial Complex: Part 3. NACLA Newsletter, Volume II Number 7. Jones, Susanne (1974). Pushing Counterrevolution in Guatemala. NACLA. Lernoux, Penny. (1980.) Cry of the People: United States Involvement in the Rise of Fascism, Torture, and Murder and the Persecution of the Catholic Church in Latin America. New York: Doubleday and Company. NACLA. (1974.) "EXMIBAL promised to become as central to the Guatemalan economy as the United Fruit Co. had been 50 years earlier." NACLA Report on the Americas. Swift, Jamie. (1977). The Big Nickel: Inco at Home and Abroad. Kitchener, Ontario: Between the Lines. From shniad at sfu.ca Sat May 3 12:43:50 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 03 May 2008 11:43:50 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Corruption eats away at Afghan government Message-ID: <200805031843.m43IhowS025154@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080503/81b2b60b/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Sat May 3 12:44:43 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 03 May 2008 11:44:43 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Afghanistans drug war yields the wrong kinds of casualties Message-ID: <200805031844.m43IihsW025859@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080503/07210a79/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Sat May 3 12:54:52 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 03 May 2008 11:54:52 -0700 Subject: [R-G] How Iraq became a prison for women Message-ID: <200805031854.m43Isqi4005043@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080503/df1145a2/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Sat May 3 12:54:35 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 03 May 2008 11:54:35 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Ecuadors leader purges military and moves to expel American base Message-ID: <200805031854.m43IsZp4004783@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080503/639bac00/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Sat May 3 12:54:16 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 03 May 2008 11:54:16 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Whats next, Abbas? Message-ID: <200805031854.m43IsG1i004551@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080503/e289dac4/attachment.txt From critical.montages at gmail.com Sat May 3 17:27:16 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sat, 3 May 2008 19:27:16 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Prices of Major Crops Propped by Biofuels and Rapid Emerging Economy Growth Message-ID: IMF, World Economic Outlook, April 2008, pp. 60-61 Prices of Major Crops Propped by Biofuels and Rapid Emerging Economy Growth Food prices rose by 39 percent from February 2007 to February 2008 -- led by wheat, soybeans, corn, and edible oils, all of which reached new highs. As in the oil market, price strength reflects tight market balances, with inventories of major food crops at a two-decade low despite generally robust production growth (Figure 1.20, top panels). The tightening reflects a number of factors. Rising biofuel production in the United States and the European Union has boosted demand for corn, rapeseed oil, and other grains and edible oils. Although biofuels still account for only 11?2 percent of the global liquid fuels supply, they accounted for almost half the increase in the consumption of major food crops in 2006-07, mostly because of corn-based ethanol produced in the United States (Figure 1.20, third panel). Biofuel demand has propelled the prices not only for corn, but also for other grains, meat, poultry, and dairy through cost-push and crop and demand substitution effects.15 Strong per capita income growth in China, India, and other emerging economies has also buoyed food demand, including for meats and related animal feeds, especially grains, soybeans, and edible oils. On the supply side, drought conditions in a number of countries reduced global wheat production in 2007 (Figure 1.20, fourth panel). Moreover, higher oil prices have also increased production costs for many foods products. Policies may also have contributed to upward pressure on global prices. In view of political concern about the social implications of rising food prices, some countries have resorted to measures to reduce exports and increase imports of food, thereby contributing to global market tightness. For example, in 2007, China, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Argentina imposed export taxes on grains and lowered tariffs on edible oils, while India banned basmati rice exports and raised export taxes on palm oil. Food prices are expected to peak in 2008, and they are forecast to ease only gradually thereafter. In the short term, price risks are on the upside, as demand is expected to remain strong. More generally, although food price cycles in the past typically averaged three years, with supply responding quickly to changes in demand conditions, the current cycle is likely to last longer. The reason is that food demand is expected to continue increasing rapidly for some time with rising biofuel production in the United States16 and the European Union, and with continued strong demand from emerging and developing economies. -- Yoshie From critical.montages at gmail.com Sun May 4 05:04:53 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sun, 4 May 2008 07:04:53 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Venezuela's Labor Movement at the Crossroads Message-ID: For a long time, in the imagination of the Left (at least till the Sixties), the dominant image of proletariat was that of wage workers, especially industrial workers, in the formal sector, and it is this sector of workers who were most often thought of as agents of revolutionary transformation. In the history of revolutions, though, it looks as if the world has moved from the age of predominantly peasant revolutions to that of largely lumpen-proletarian revolutions (from Iran's Islamic Revolution to the Bolivarian Revolution). The only time industrial workers were at the center of a revolutionary challenge may have been May 1968 in France, but even there the ideological leadership that left the largest stamp on popular memory came from students. Where wage workers in the formal sector are well organized and relatively numerous, politics goes social democratic* rather than revolutionary. That is probably because this sector of workers has more bargaining power than other sectors, so where they are strong, they can establish many reforms and universalize some of their benefits, making revolution unnecessary to meet a majority's most urgent needs. * At best, that is. At worst, this sector of workers end up supporting formerly social democratic but now neoliberal political parties. The most obvious case is the United States and the United Kingdom, where lately all tendencies of the Left, from the Center-Left to the Left-Left, have simultaneously suffered defeats. Venezuela's Labor Movement at the Crossroads April 29th 2008, by Kiraz Janicke & Federico Fuentes - Venezuelanalysis.com First came the decision by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on April 9 to re-nationalize the Sidor steel plant?privatised by a pre-Chavez government in 1997?after a long worker's struggle. This was followed shortly by the call from Bolivarian Socialist Workers Force's (FSBT), a faction with in the pro-Chavez National Union of Workers (UNT), to split away to form a new national federation. Two days later, labor minister Jose Ramon Rivero, a member of the FSBT, who was accused by Sidor workers of opposing their struggle, was replaced by National Assembly Vice-President and former Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV) member Roberto Hernandez, now a United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) member. These events have once again brought to the fore the question of the role of workers in Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution, whose participation as an organized class has been sporadic at best, in this process aimed at constructing 'Socialism of the 21st Century.' Neoliberal unions Prior to Chavez's election in 1998, Venezuela's political system had been dominated for 40 years by two traditional parties: the Christian democratic COPEI and Democratic Action (AD), a social democratic party. The Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV), the main trade union federation, although having emerged out of workers struggle, had quickly become subordinated to AD, and by the eighties and nineties became a bastion of support for the policies of consecutive neoliberal governments. In the context of an emerging wave of privatizations, increased casualization, spiraling unemployment, and 80% poverty, Chavez was elected president on an anti-neoliberal platform in 1998. His election not only put a stop to further planned privatizations (which included the petroleum and electricity sector) but ushered in a new era of state policies directed at empowering the poor and exploited, causing a profound impact on the workers movement. Speaking to unionists from the industrial town of Valencia during a visit to Venezuela in 2005, they recounted to us what the Chavez presidency had meant for workers. "If you do a survey of all the companies, in all of them are new groups of [unionists] that have sprouted, because they have won referendums, because the new laws [introduced by President Hugo Chavez's government] protect them" explained Luis Flugo, one of the new layer of union activists, whose union at the time was involved in a 9 month struggle against the Aseven (KR) soft-drink company. "That is what has helped take the blindfold off and see that [workers] can win their rights." The new laws enabled workers to hold referendums in their workplace to decide who would oversee their collective contract and opened the space for a new layer of militants to rise up from the ranks. Whilst the new laws and government policy provided tools for workers' struggle, it was struggle from below that profoundly shook up the labor movement. In the context of the open collaboration of the CTV with the business federation, Fedecamaras, in a wave of rightwing anti-government protests from the end of 2001, and its participation in the failed coup attempt against Chavez in April 2002, a national gathering of pro-revolution unionists in September that year, voted against breaking with the CTV to form a new labor federation, and to continue to fight from within to win leadership of the CTV. New Federation It would take the experience of the bosses' lockout (once again with the open collaboration of the CTV), initiated December 2002, for workers, organized as a class, to enter into the arena of the revolution. In response to the wave of factory shutdowns, in particular the management shutdown and sabotage of Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA, workers moved in and began to take control of their factories, including restarting the oil and electrical sectors, which were crucial to breaking the bosses' lockout. This situation led to a definitive break with the CTV and the attempt by militant unionists to form a new revolutionary labor federation. The National Union of Workers was born on April 5, 2003. Diana Barahona, writing for CounterPunch on October 24, 2005, noted that whilst the UNT's first congress "left structural issues [essential for democratic unionism] unresolved?there was general agreement over principles and the plan of action." Spurred on by a government discourse ? backed by the constitution - of support for worker participation and co-management in industry and a government moratorium on lay-offs of lowest paid workers, UNT affiliation grew dramatically, representing 76.5% of all collective agreements signed in 2003-2004, rapidly overtaking the CTV as Venezuela's principal labor federation. Despite this growth, unionisation remains only slightly above 20% of the formal work force, while 47% of workers are in the so-called informal sector, according to the latest figures from the National Institute of Statistics. At its high point in 2005 some one million workers participated in a UNT-organized May Day march in Caracas under the banner of "Co-management is revolution," and "Venezuelan workers are building Bolivarian Socialism." "Factory closed, factory occupied and run by the workers" became the catch cry of both Chavez and the union movement, with a list of 800 factories that had been shut down across the country earmarked to be taken over. Divisions and setbacks However, three years later only a handful have been recuperated, and in a number of important cases, worker's co-management has been rolled back or defeated altogether. Today, many unionists agree that the labor movement is more dispersed and fragmented than it has ever been in the last 9 years of Chavez government. A number of factors have contributed to this situation including bitter divisions within the union movement itself, conflicting views over the experience of co-management, and issues such as union autonomy and democracy. Since its inception, internal debates and conflict have wracked the UNT. Lack of internal structures and horizontalism, perhaps necessary at the start but never redressed, lead to the UNT have 21 national coordinators. Elections were continually postponed due to factional wrangling, and with political differences and personal rivalries increasingly dominating the federation it reached a point where each current began to act independently of each other, though all in the name of the UNT. This lack of structure led to the Communist Party of Venezuela-aligned United Confederation of Venezuelan Workers deciding to remain outside the UNT. By the time of its second congress in 2006, five major political currents had emerged: the FSBT (initially the Bolivarian Worker's Force, which predates the UNT as a current within the CTV) led by Oswaldo Vera; the Alfredo Maneiro current, whose key leaders included Ramon Machuca in the steel industry and Franklin Rondon in the public sector; the Collective of Workers in Revolution (CTR), lead by Marcela Maspero; the United Revolutionary Autonomous Class Current (C-CURA), headed by Orlando Chirinos and Stalin Perez Borges; and the smaller Union Autonomy, lead by Orlando Castillo. While the FSBT and the Alfredo Manerio current involved leaders of some of the largest union federations, predominantly in the public service and state-owned industry where they worked to maintain control, the CTR and C-CURA focused on promoting the discussion of co-mangement and on winning the new emerging unions, generally in the private sector. The situation came to a head in an acrimonious dispute at the 2006 congress, ostensibly over the timing of elections, but in reality masking personal and ideological differences including over how to relate to the Chavez government. CCURA, which appeared to have a majority at the congress, called for immediate elections while the other factions argued they should be postponed until after the 2006 presidential elections so as not to distract from Chavez's presidential campaign. The congress ended in disarray and since then, the UNT has effectively ceased functioning as a national federation despite a number of strong regional sections. In addition to these divisions, another feature of the union movement, particularly striking in the context of the radical social changes occurring in Venezuela, is the lack of any political strategy aimed at deepening the Bolivarian process towards the construction of a socialism and genuine worker's control. This is reflected in the overwhelmingly economist nature of their demands. As Canadian Marxist academic Michael Lebowitz puts it, "Their whole orientation towards higher wages and their tendency to act like a labor aristocracy in a society where so many people are poor." The UNT, like the CTV before it has largely avoided any attempt to organize workers in the informal sector, focusing overwhelmingly on the demands of the most privileged layer of Venezuelan workers. This has lead to a disjuncture between the organized trade union movement and the masses of poor Venezuelans who form the backbone of the Bolivarian revolution. New political developments New political developments in 2007 such as the formation of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) (which unites many pro-Chavez groups and hundreds of thousands of Chavistas), Chavez's proposed constitutional reforms aimed at "opening the path to socialism," and the appointment of FSBT leader Jose Ramon Rivero to the position of Labor Minister lead to further debates within the union movement. While almost all the currents agreed with the necessity to join the PSUV, the CCURA current split over this question. Pointing to comments by Chavez against "union autonomy," a wing of CCURA lead by Chirinos rejected participation in the PSUV as it moved towards a more hostile position in relation to the government, including calling for a spoiled vote in the constitutional reform referendum of December 2, 2007. The majority of CCURA, however, voted to go into the PSUV, forming the Socialist Tide current, led by Stalin Perez Borges. Growing conflicts between labor and the state have also impacted on the debate over how the labor movement should relate to the government. As momentum built for greater worker participation, sections of the state bureaucracy seeking to protect their own interests began to actively undermine the process. One example occurred in the state-owned CADAFE electricity company. After a long struggle, winning the right to workers participation in their collective contract, and establishing workers committees to make it a reality, management moved to crush any real participation, limiting it to decisions over what Christmas decorations would fill the halls of administration offices. This pattern has been repeated in many different spheres of Venezuelan society - a push by the ranks, in alliance with Chavez, for popular power has encountered the resistance of sectors of the state bureaucracy who do not want to cede control. These vested interests intersect with the right wing of the Chavista camp, which has strong institutional weight and seeks to slow down the revolutionary process. This conflict has led to a debate over what role workers should have in running the economy, with some supporting a more passive role while others demand more active worker participation and control. In response, the Revolutionary Front of Workers in Co-managed Factories (FRETECO) was formed, grouping together many of the workers in the handful of worker-run factories that exist. The conflict between labor and the state increased dramatically with the appointment of Rivero as Labor Minister. He intervened into disputes to advance his own current, the FSBT, or even sided with the bosses, as with the case of Sanatarios Maracay, an occupied ceramics factory where workers say he intervened to set up a parallel union and hand back the factory to the boss. The situation intensified in January this year with the Sidor dispute. After more than a year of struggle for a collective contract the Sidor workers found themselves in a situation of open confrontation not only against management but also with the policies of the local "Chavista" governor, Fransisco Rangel Gomez, and the labor minister, who tried to impose a referendum on the company's final pay offer. At one point the workers were brutally repressed with teargas and rubber bullets by the National Guard and the local police. The labor minister also slandered the SIDOR workers, claiming they were "counter-revolutionary" and falsely alleged they had supported the boss's lockout of Dec 2002, when in fact, they had heroically seized control of the plant to help break it. Chavez eventually overrode Rivero and sent in Vice-President Ramon Carrizalez to settle the dispute and announced on April 9 the government's decision to nationalize the plant. "This is a government that protects workers and will never take the side of a transnational company," Carrizalez said. Reinvigorated union movement This act, long demanded by the SIDOR workers, has reinvigorated the labor movement, as Marcos Garc?a, a coordinator of public sector union FENTRASEP explained, "The workers movement, with the triumph of the SIDOR workers and the people of Guayana, who achieved the nationalization of the principal steel producer in Latin America, has produced a change throughout the country." In this context, Rivero launched a public attack on the UNT, telling the April 11 edition of Venezuelan regional daily Notitarde "the National Union of Workers does not represent the spirit of the Venezuelan revolutionary process." Then on April 13, Rivero and National Assembly Deputy and coordinator of the FSBT Osvaldo Vera announced the formation of a new national union federation calling on unions to disaffiliate from the UNT, claiming to have the backing of 17 of the most important sectoral federations. However Chavez, while addressing 300,000 supporters on the sixth anniversary of the 2002 coup on the same day, praised the SIDOR workers and called on the working class to assume a "protagonistic role" in the revolution. "The working class is fundamental to any socialist revolution," he insisted. In what appears to be a clear repudiation of the rightwing role of Rivero in the SIDOR dispute and his public support for splitting the UNT he was sacked two days later and replaced by former Communist Party member and National Assembly vice-president Roberto Hernandez. The new minister has called for unity and proposed a union constituent assembly to re-found the labor movement, which has the backing of Socialist Tide, C-CURA and the CTR. One important question will be what happens in Sidor: will the creative spirit of the Sidor workers in struggle be unleashed through active participation in the running of the company, or will they be relegated back to simply fighting for a better collective contract, like the electricity workers before them? However, broader questions for the union movement center on whether it will be able to overcome its serious divisions, which could potentially deepen with the call for a new alternative federation to the UNT. Undoubtedly the UNT, at the very least, needs to be refounded, but this requires a dialogue between the different currents, and more importantly, a democratic process involving rank and file workers in order to create a genuine revolutionary trade union movement that can advance the Bolivarian revolution towards socialism. -- Yoshie From critical.montages at gmail.com Sun May 4 05:47:59 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sun, 4 May 2008 07:47:59 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Nepal's Maoists, China, India, the USA, and the World Bank Message-ID: It was once possible to draw a distinction between populists and socialists, at least in ideology if not in practice. Socialists could say, we nationalize the means of production as the first step toward eventual establishment of classless society, whereas populists respect the right to private property. That ideological distinction has largely broken down, at least since the long Sixties. Nepal's Maoists Soften Tone, Get Set to Lead By KRISHNA POKHAREL May 2, 2008; Page A8 Nepal's Maoists, fresh from winning the most seats of any one party in the national assembly, are positioning themselves to form a new government within a few weeks. Their dramatic victory in last month's elections also has forced the U.S., India and China to adjust to a new political era in the small Himalayan nation. The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), which waged a decade-long rebellion against the state that ended in 2006, won 37% of the seats in the 601-member assembly. The assembly's main task is to rewrite the country's constitution and decide on the future of the monarchy, which has been a powerful force in Nepalese politics for 240 years. The Maoists are expected to lead a new government of national unity. They already have decided that their leader, Pushpa Kamal Dahal -- better known as Chairman Prachanda, or "fierce one" -- will be the next head of the government. But they have yet to build a consensus among a majority of the other 24 political parties that the Maoists will need to form the next government. One obstacle is the fact that the Maoists still have a private army and weapon caches, which are currently under United Nations-supervised camps. Analysts say that creates legal obstacles for Mr. Dahal to be the next leader and for the Maoists to lead a government. "They will have to deal with these aspects first before even claiming the leadership of the next government," said Nilambar Acharya, a political analyst in Katmandu, the capital. After their strong election showing, the Maoists have softened their rhetoric against the two nations that are the largest foreign investors in Nepal: India and the U.S. During their insurgency, Maoist leaders would frequently refer to "expansionist India" and "imperialist America." Today, they are striking a conciliatory tone after promising big economic improvements. "We want good working relations with neighbors including China and India, and the Western power centers including the U.S.," said Baburam Bhattarai, a senior Maoist leader and policy maker, in an interview. "Our main agenda now is peace, development and stability in Nepal," he said. The economy of Nepal -- a country with about 28 million people, most of them poor -- doesn't have much impact on global affairs. But the country is in an important geopolitical location -- sandwiched between India and China -- and the Maoists' emergence as Nepal's most powerful political party is forcing some diplomatic rethinking. From realiteee1 at yahoo.com Sun May 4 10:23:07 2008 From: realiteee1 at yahoo.com (james m nordlund) Date: Sun, 4 May 2008 09:23:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Fill Er Up for Nader West Coast Tour In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <141964.62976.qm@web50806.mail.re2.yahoo.com> May 2, 2008 www.votenader.org One week from today, we're sending Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez off on a speaking tour to Arizona, California, Oregon and Washington (see schedule below). http://www.votenader.org/ Gas prices are hovering at $4 a gallon. And we need your help. We think it's important to have a rigorous public debate about whether or not the oil companies should be treated like a public utility. Federal judge Ed Ludwig, for one, says we should make oil a public utility. According to Ludwig, a public utility is "a business that provides an everyday necessity to the public at large" - such as water, electricity, natural gas, telephone service, transportation, cable TV and other essentials. Ludwig says that even a modest threat of making oil a public utility would drive down oil prices. What better way to fight back against the skyrocketing cost price of oil at the pump than to send Ralph Nader - the chief critic of corporate power and the oil industry - on a speaking tour? Yesterday, we called on 100 of you to kick in $100 each to raise the $10,000 we need to fund the Nader/Gonzalez Get Out of Iraq and Tame the Giant Multinational Oil Company West Coast Tour. Sixty-nine of you donated $4,996. Thank you. As you can see, our tank is almost half full. Now, let's fill 'er up. We need another fifty of you to donate $100 or more each and Ralph will be on his way to Arizona, California, Oregon, and Washington. Come out and see and hear Nader and Gonzalez at the public rallies listed below. And tell your friends and family. Hope to see you on the road. Onward. The Nader Team Your contribution could be doubled. 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West Coast tour schedule: Ralph Nader Rally Friday, May 9th, 6:30pm Phoenix, Arizona Location: TBA_* $10 contribution/ $5 student/low-income (no one turned away) More info call (714) 292-8675 or nicole at votenader.org Ralph Nader & Matt Gonzalez Rally Saturday May 10th 3:30 pm Women's Center, Santa Monica 1210 4th Street Santa Monica, California $10 contribution/ $5 student/low-income (no one turned away) More Info Call - (213) 841-6042 or la4nader at gmail.com Ralph Nader & Matt Gonzalez Rally Sunday May 11th 7pm Roxie Theater 3117 16th Street San Francisco, California $10 contribution/ $5 student/low-income (no one turned away) More Info Call - (510) 914-8355 or events at votenader.org Ralph Nader & Matt Gonzalez Rally Monday May 12th 8pm Rio Theatre 1205 Soquel Ave. Santa Cruz, California $10 contribution/ $5 student/low-income (no one turned away) More Info Call - (831) 466-0739 or events at votenader.org Ralph Nader Rally Tuesday May 13th 7:30pm Benson High 546 NE 12th Ave Portland,Oregon $10 contribution/ $5 student/low-income (no one turned away) More Info Call - (503)484-6626 or events at votenader.org Ralph Nader Rally Wednesday May 14th 7pm University of Washington Seattle, Washington Kane Hall Room 120 $10 contribution/ $5 student/low-income (no one turned away) More Info Call - (206) 755-4262 or events at votenader.org Paid for by Nader for President 2008 You can unsubscribe jamesmnordlund at yahoo.com from Nader for President 2008 e-mail updates instantly by clicking here. Nader for President 2008 P.O. Box 34103 Washington, D.C. 20043 (202) 44 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From fentona at shaw.ca Sun May 4 10:26:49 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sun, 04 May 2008 09:26:49 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Pentagon launches foreign news websites Message-ID: <0D98BDB7-3DF4-45ED-98F8-36DE0ACA77DC@shaw.ca> Pentagon launches foreign news websites By Peter Eisler, USA TODAY http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2008-04-30-sites_N.htm WASHINGTON ? The Pentagon is setting up a global network of foreign- language news websites, including an Arabic site for Iraqis, and hiring local journalists to write current events stories and other content that promote U.S. interests and counter insurgent messages. The news sites are part of a Pentagon initiative to expand "Information Operations" on the Internet. Neither the initiative nor the Iraqi site, www.Mawtani.com, has been disclosed publicly. At first glance, Mawtani.com looks like a conventional news website. Only the "about" link at the bottom of the site takes readers to a page that discloses the Pentagon sponsorship. The site, which has operated since October, is modeled on two long-established Pentagon- sponsored sites that offer native-language news for people in the Balkans and North Africa. Journalism groups say the sites are deceptive and easily could be mistaken for independent news. "This is about trying to control the message, either by bypassing the media or putting your version of the message out before others (and) ? there's a heavy responsibility to let people know where you're coming from," says Amy Mitchell, deputy director at the Project for Excellence in Journalism. A disclosure on a separate page "isn't something most people coming to the site are likely to see." Pentagon officials say the sites are a legitimate and necessary way to promote U.S. policy goals and counter the messages of political and religious extremists. They also note that the United States and its allies have been outgunned in the battle to get information to audiences in Iraq and elsewhere. "It's important to ? engage these foreign audiences and inform," says Michael Vickers, the assistant secretary of Defense in charge of special operations and stabilization efforts. "Our adversaries use the Internet to great advantage, so we have the responsibility of countering (their messages) with accurate, truthful information, and these websites are a good vehicle." The Mawtani site is named for the Iraqi national anthem and means "my homeland." It is available in Arabic, Farsi and Urdu ? but not in English ? and is supervised by the Pentagon's Iraq command. The U.S. Southern Command is building a similar site for Latin American audiences. The Pacific Command, which covers Asia, is interested in setting up a news site, says Navy Lt. Cmdr. Amy Derrick- Frost, a spokeswoman. 'True in fact and intent' In a memo last summer, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England told all regional commanders that developing such sites was "an essential part of (their) responsibility ? to shape the security environment in their respective areas." The previously unreleased memo, provided by the Pentagon at USA TODAY's request, directed that all site content be "accurate and true in fact and intent." Content for the news sites is written by local journalists hired to write stories that fit the Pentagon's goals for the sites, such as promoting democracy, security, good government and the rule of law. Military personnel or contractors review the stories to ensure they are consistent with those goals. Reporters are paid only for work that is posted to the sites. A recent edition of Mawtani.com featured a story on Iraqi leaders decrying Iranian sponsorship of insurgent groups, as well as coverage of Iraqi-U.S. efforts to restore order in strife-torn Sadr City. Vickers says sponsorship disclosures on Mawtani.com and other Pentagon- run news sites are clear. "Is this propaganda? No," he says. "It's intended to counter extremist propaganda ? with truth." The new websites follow the Pentagon's launch last year of a "Trans Regional Web Initiative" expected to lead to "a minimum of six" news sites run by military commands around the globe, according to a Special Operations Command notice for contractors interested in running the sites. The initiative has its roots in the Balkans, where U.S. commanders set up a website in 1999 to rebut then-Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic's nationalist rhetoric in the Kosovo conflict. In 2002, it became a news site, employing local reporters, and hundreds of thousands of people turn to the Southeast European Times for news on politics, culture, sports or weather in 10 languages. Neither that site nor those being set up are allowed to accept ads. They're not about profit; they're about shaping perceptions. "Youngsters on the street are into the World Wide Web ? that's how they communicate, how they learn what's going on in the world, how they stay informed ? and they pick and choose what (news sources) they have on their desktop," says Army Col. Jerry O'Hara, spokesman for the Pentagon's Iraq command. "We have to be involved in that in order to communicate effectively." Moving past leaflets It wasn't long ago that the military's approach to Information Operations focused largely on dropping leaflets behind enemy lines or broadcasting messages over loudspeakers. Those tactics can't draw the audience of a news website, where a story on a local soccer team might be the hook that gets readers to click on another story about, say, U.S. troops rebuilding a school. The success of the Pentagon's news sites will ride on whether they're seen as credible outlets or propaganda vehicles, says Franklin Kramer, a former assistant Defense secretary and, until last year, a fellow at National Defense University. "In some parts of the world, it's just important to have a reliable, steady source of news ? and being straightforward and truthful is the best way to have a long-term impact," Kramer says. "I think most (users) know these are Defense Department sites ? they really don't hide it at all ? and the audience is going to decide for itself whether it trusts the source." For decades, influencing foreign audiences has been the purview of Voice of America, the U.S. radio and TV service. VOA is under the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an eight-member, presidentially appointed board that oversees all U.S. foreign-language broadcasts, including Radio Sawa and Al Hurra television in the Middle East. Previous Pentagon information efforts have attracted controversy. In 2005, members of Congress chastised the Pentagon over a program that paid for the placement of favorable stories in the Iraqi press. The practice could "erode the independence of Iraqi media," said Sen. John Warner, R-Va., who then chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Pentagon stopped the program. Last month, The New York Times reported how the Pentagon was giving secret briefings and guidance to former Defense officials who are paid by television news outlets for independent analysis. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., has asked for a Pentagon investigation. The websites suggest a pattern of Pentagon efforts to promote its agenda by disseminating information through what appear to be independent outlets, says Marvin Kalb, a fellow at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. "This is deliberate deception, and it's bad ? (because) it weakens the image of journalism as an objective bystander," Kalb says, noting that many of the Pentagon's intended audiences live in a world where they expect the government to control their news. "We're the exception, and unfortunately, we begin to look more and more like the rest of the world when we do this sort of thing." Find this article at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2008-04-30-sites_N.htm From fentona at shaw.ca Sun May 4 16:06:56 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sun, 04 May 2008 15:06:56 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Rise of the [Italian] right Message-ID: <7F442415-D1AC-4DBB-9E42-9B7EEA2694C7@shaw.ca> Rise of the right The use of fascist symbols, the threat of violence, the demonisation of minorities ... hasn't Italy been here before? Martin Jacques http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/martin_jacques/2008/04/rise_of_the_right.html April 30, 2008 5:30 PM | Printable version It is now clear that the left's victory in the Italian general election of 2006 represented no more than a brief pause in the country's remorseless shift to the right. One hoped that election might have signalled an end to the degenerative and anti-democratic trends that had accompanied the rise of Silvio Berlusconi over the previous decade. In fact, it represented no such thing. It is already clear that the third Berlusconi government will be markedly different from its two predecessors, which were primarily about Berlusconi's desire to use public power to protect his private empire and to change the law in order to prevent legal action being taken against him. He was successful on both counts. Meanwhile the concentration of immense private and public power in the hands of one man signalled a serious corrosion in the fabric of democracy. The tone of public debate degenerated as political opponents were branded "communists" irrespective of their affiliation and Berlusconi steadily shifted the terms of what was say-able and acceptable. While Berlusconi's allies, the neo-fascist National Alliance and the xenophobic Northern League, unconstrained by the need of Berlusconi to appear - at least intermittently - respectable, worked relentlessly to shift the minds of millions to the right. This new government lies significantly to the right of the previous two. Armed with a sweeping majority in both chambers of parliament, it does not have to worry, unlike, for example, the last one, about ensuring that the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats are on side. The anti-immigrant Northern League doubled its vote in the election, cornering 28% of the vote in the northern cities and emerged as the largest party in Venice. The neo-fascists have just flexed their muscles in the election for the mayor of Rome and convincingly defeated the candidate of the left. With Berlusconi enjoying a new- found confidence enabled by a government that now enjoys more power than any previous one in recent times, and the Northern League and National Alliance similarly encouraged and empowered by their electoral support, Italian politics have entered a new phase. This was demonstrated by the manner in which the supporters of Gianni Alemanno, the new mayor of Rome, a man steeled in the fascist tradition, celebrated his victory in the Campidoglio with fascist salutes and cries of "Duce, Duce!", just as Mussolini was once acclaimed by his adherents. Or the way in which Berlusconi felt able to declare, in response to the victory, that "we are the new Falange" - the name given to the fascist party in Spain in the 1930s. Or the fact that Umberto Bossi, at the first session of parliament, threatened violence if the centre-left did not acquiesce in its plans for federalism. "I don't know what the left wants [but] we are ready," he told reporters. "If they want conflicts, I have 300,000 men always on hand." Or the fashion in which Gianfranco Fini, during a public walkabout with his followers in support of Alemanno, demanded to see immigrants' residence permits, while Alemanno threatens to expel 20,000 immigrants from the capital, who he claims have broken the law, and shut illegal Roma encampments; with Bossi is no less vitriolic in his attitude towards immigrants. The use of fascist symbols and terms, the threat of violence, and the demonisation of ethnic minorities: haven't we been here somewhere before? They mark a decisive shift in what is regarded as acceptable. The tone and agenda of Italian politics have taken a major turn to the right. We can now see the emergence of an incipient fascist trend in Italy which, far from being confined to the extremes, has entered and infected mainstream political life. The roots of the revival of this far-right populism are fivefold. First, there was the disillusionment in the political class following the collapse of the cold war system together with the tangentopoli corruption scandal, which provided the conditions for the emergence of a new wave of anti-politicians untainted by the old system, such as Berlusconi and Bossi. Second, there has been the creeping corrosion of the democratic system as represented by Berlusconi, which has progressively adjusted and habituated Italians to a political system that is no longer based on the values of open and fair political competition but on a populist authoritarianism. Third, there has been the chronic stagnation of the Italian economy, which in recent years, notwithstanding a buoyant global economy and the fact that, for example, it has been greatly out-performed by a not- so-dissimilar Spanish economy, has barely grown at all. This has contributed towards a sense of unease and insecurity, raising fears about the consequences of globalisation, a rejection of the outside (well-illustrated by Berlusconi's refusal to allow Alitalia to be taken over by another airline), and growing hostility towards one of the most visible signs of globalisation, namely immigration. Politically this is clearly reflected in the doubling of support in the recent election for the anti-globalisation, anti-immigrant Northern League in cities like Milan and Turin. Fourth, as the postwar political order has unravelled, so the older historical fault-lines of Italy have re-emerged more clearly and more contentiously: in particular, the division between north and south exemplified by the secessionist Northern League, and the long-running failure to construct an open, legitimate and representative state that is not subject to private capture of one kind or another. Finally, the very fact that the fascist tradition is such an integral feature of modern Italian history, having governed from 1922 until its final defeat in 1945, means that its values, symbols, philosophies, assumptions, prejudices and emotions remain embedded in the Italian psyche, only a little beneath the surface, ready to be reawakened and mobilised by a new generation of fascists should circumstances allow. That, alas, is what we are now witnessing. One of Europe's great countries threatens to return to its worst past and thereby at the same time remind the whole continent that the darkest passage in its own history is in the process of being exhumed and rekindled on the Italian peninsula. The signs have been there since 1994. Now they are irresistible. We are being warned. Europe must take heed. From fentona at shaw.ca Sun May 4 16:09:30 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sun, 04 May 2008 15:09:30 -0700 Subject: [R-G] New Labour is Dead Message-ID: <606C4DE2-6D93-4082-9E93-BE3B13DB7A84@shaw.ca> Weekend Edition May 3 / 4, 2008 Power Can't Shape Truth Forever New Labour is Dead http://counterpunch.org/tariq05032008.html By TARIQ ALI New Labour has suffered a crushing defeat. The Blair project of promoting and implementing right-wing policies in the knowledge that traditional working class voters would remain solid died on 1 May 2008. Labour?s vote in the local elections in dropped to 24 percent, a point below the Liberal Democrats and twenty points less than the Conservatives (44 percent). Gioven the scale of the catstrophe, It seems unlikely that Gordon Brown can win the next general election. Awestruck by Margaret Thatcher, Blair and Brown aped her achievements within their own party, squeezing old social-democratic ideas out of themselves, drop by drop. They were all market fundamentalists now. Deregulation and privatisation became a mantra and over the last ten years the social divide in the country between rich and poor increased more than even under Thatcher. Redistribution of wealth was no longer on Labour?s agenda. As the market suffered a series of shocks---the collapse of a debt- ridden British bank, Northern Rock, led to state intervention in the form of nationalisation. No lessons were learnt. Helping the rich by further tax-cuts, abandoning (under pressure from the Financial Times) plans to tax non-domiciled billionaires symbolised the regime. The neo- liberal model atomised social and political life, weakened democratic accountability and drastically reduced the margins of reformist possibilities within the system. After 9/11 civil liberties were seriously eroded. A fdew weeks ago Brown and his ministers were arguing for increasing the detention of suspects to 42-days without trial. The Conservatives and police chiefs opposed this as draconian. The British electoral system helped to conceal the relentless ebbing of popular support for the Blairite agenda. No longer. The New Labour Emperor is now revealed without any clothes. Power can shape ?truth?, but not forever. That is the lesson of the New Labour defeat. In London the choice was clear. . A Conservative celebrity who carefully cultivates an ultra-reactionary image, Boris Johnson, is a star of TV comedy shows. Given the way that politics has gone to the dogs in so many parts of the democratic world, its hardly surprising that celebrity status and wealth have taken centre stage. A somewhat pathetic and ineffectual ex-policeman stood for the Liberal Democrats or Ken Livingstone, the Labour candidate. Even though Livingstone first won as an independent against New Labour, he subsequently made his peace with Blair and rejoined the party, while preserving an independent stance on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and developing his own foreign policy by inviting Hugo Chavez to visit London. The elections for the Mayor of London reflected the national mood. That Livingstone made mistakes is obvious. The biggest error was not in receiving an eccentric Muslim cleric and annjoying the right-wing press, but re-entering the Labour fold. The basis of his popularity had rested on the fact that he was not a confected New Labour politician. The fact that margin of his defeat appears to be less than the national average reflected this fact, but was not enough to save him. The official result has yet to be declared, but New Labour commentators on TV have accepted defeat. He suffered because he was associated with an unpopular New Labour government. Had he remained an independent and lacerated the Blair and Brown regimes, instead of being photographed with them he would have been home and dry. A city in which 70% of the citizens oppose the British presence in Iraq will now be represented by a pro-war mayor. Who cares if a million Iraqis have died since the occupation of their country, three million have become refugees and millions in that suffering country face the most horrendous conditions in their everyday lives. Anything associated with New Labour was punished. Tariq Ali?s memoir Streetfighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties is published by Verso. From critical.montages at gmail.com Sun May 4 17:20:04 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sun, 4 May 2008 19:20:04 -0400 Subject: [R-G] India: After N-deal, Left Puts Government to Iran Pipeline Test Message-ID: The Left in India has gotten great political mileage out of the question of energy and sovereignty: the India-US nuclear deal and the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline deal. -- Yoshie After N-deal, Left puts government to Iran pipeline test 4 May 2008, 1411 hrs IST,IANS NEW DELHI: Ahead of the joint meeting on the India-US civil nuclear deal next week, the Left has said that the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline's fate will prove how independent India's foreign policy is under the present dispensation. "If the pipeline deal goes through, then we will know we have an independent foreign policy," Communist Party of India leader A B Bardhan said. "If the pipeline deal does not go through, it would mean the American pressure has won," Bardhan declared, while alluding to American opposition to the three-nation gas pipeline. Washington suspects that if the pipeline takes shape, it will bring India and Iran closer and defeat its larger campaign to isolate Tehran over its suspected nuclear weapon programme. Bardhan spoke approvingly about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's brief visit to India last week that saw the two sides give a political push to the much-delayed $7.5 billion pipeline that will bring Iranian gas to India through Pakistan. "Oil ministers of India, Pakistan and Iran have been asked to submit their final reports on the pipeline to their respective leaders," Ahmadinejad announced here after talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The Iranian president struck an upbeat note on the pipeline, saying he was hopeful of finalising it soon. The Left parties have accused the Congress-led government of compromising its independent foreign policy when it voted against Tehran twice at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2005 and 2006. The Left, which opposes the India-US nuclear deal, has charged the government with jeopardizing its ties with Iran for the sake of the nuclear deal. Ahead of Ahmadinejad's visit, the government - making it clear that it was bowing to the US - told the White House that India did not need any guidance from any country to conduct its relations with Iran. New Delhi's rebuff to Washington was meant to underline New Delhi's commitment to an independent foreign policy and assuage Left parties, which have made India's ties with Iran an issue, ahead of the UPA-Left meeting on the nuclear deal May 6. Bardhan confirmed that the Left parties - the CPI, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), Forward Bloc and the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) - have been invited by the government to a meeting of the joint panel formed last year to address their concerns on the nuclear deal. "We have been invited for the meeting. Let's see what happens. Our position is well known," he said. The Left parties virtually hold veto over the stalled nuclear deal, which seeks to reopen doors of global civil nuclear commerce after a gap of three decades. They have approved the government's pact with the IAEA before the deal can go forward. "There is little likelihood of any breakthrough at the UPA-Left meeting," a reliable official source said. "We will continue our discussions and are trying to address their concerns." India has to cross two hurdles - finalizing a safeguards pact with the IAEA and a change in Nuclear Supply Group (NSG) guidelines - before the deal can become operational after the US Congress ratifies it. -- Yoshie From fentona at shaw.ca Sun May 4 22:51:25 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sun, 04 May 2008 21:51:25 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Investing in Conflict: Goldcorp Inc in the Americas Message-ID: May 3, 2008 Dear friends, Rights Action is pleased to announce the publication of: INVESTING IN CONFLICT: Public Money, Private Gain ? Goldcorp Inc in the Americas Written by Dawn Paley (dawnpaley at gmail.com), with Mining Watch (www.miningwatch.ca ) and Rights Action, and edited by Sakura Saunders, Investing in Conflict is about the ?nexus of mining companies, the mainstream media, the Canadian government, International Finance Institutions and bought off NGOs? that are working ?hard to keep the reality of large- scale, open pit mines out of picture, keep[ing] community resistance marginalized, and no matter what, to keep talking about ?development".? Focusing on Goldcorp Inc., Investing in Conflict brings ?hard facts and community perspectives together to help North Americans become more informed about the nature of the mining industry.? FREE COPY at www.rightsaction.org. Go to our website and read the report on line, or print your own copy. Feel free to print and distribute copies to family and friends, investors and politicians. From fentona at shaw.ca Sun May 4 23:43:51 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sun, 04 May 2008 22:43:51 -0700 Subject: [R-G] America's university of imperialism Message-ID: <9CC77646-2E49-4205-B022-26CD8CFDBAA6@shaw.ca> BOOK REVIEW America's university of imperialism Soldiers of Reason by Alex Abella http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JE03Ak01.html Reviewed by Chalmers Johnson The RAND Corporation of Santa Monica, California, was set up immediately after World War II by the US Army Air Corps (soon to become the US Air Force). The air force generals who had the idea were trying to perpetuate the wartime relationship that had developed between the scientific and intellectual communities and the American military, as exemplified by the Manhattan Project to develop and build the atomic bomb. Soon enough, however, RAND became a key institutional building block of the Cold War American empire. As the premier think-tank for the US's role as hegemon of the Western world, RAND was instrumental in giving that empire the militaristic cast it retains to this day and in hugely enlarging official demands for atomic bombs, nuclear submarines, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and long-range bombers. Without RAND, our military-industrial complex, as well as our democracy, would look quite different. Alex Abella, the author of Soldiers of Reason, is a Cuban-American living in Los Angeles who has written several well-received action and adventure novels set in Cuba and a less successful nonfiction account of attempted Nazi sabotage within the United States during World War II. The publisher of his latest book claims that it is "the first history of the shadowy think-tank that reshaped the modern world". Such a history is long overdue. Unfortunately, this book does not exhaust the demand. We still need a less hagiographic, more critical, more penetrating analysis of RAND's peculiar contributions to the modern world. Abella has nonetheless made a valiant, often revealing and original effort to uncover RAND's internal struggles, not least of which involved the decision of analyst Daniel Ellsberg, in 1971, to leak the Department of Defense's top secret history of the Vietnam War, known as The Pentagon Papers, to Congress and the press. But Abella's book is profoundly schizophrenic. On the one hand, the author is breathlessly captivated by RAND's fast-talking economists, mathematicians and thinkers-about-the-unthinkable; on the other hand, he agrees with Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis's assessment in his book, The Cold War: A New History, that, in promoting the interests of the air force, RAND concocted an "unnecessary Cold War" that gave the dying Soviet empire an extra 30 years of life. We need a study that really lives up to Abella's subtitle and takes a more jaundiced view of RAND's geniuses, Nobel prize winners, egghead gourmands and wine connoisseurs, Laurel Canyon swimming pool parties, and self-professed saviors of the Western world. It is likely that, after the American empire has gone the way of all previous empires, the RAND Corporation will be more accurately seen as a handmaiden of the government that was always super-cautious about speaking truth to power. Meanwhile, Soldiers of Reason is a serviceable, if often overwrought, guide to how strategy has been formulated in the post- World War II American empire. The air force creates a think-tank RAND was the brainchild of General H H "Hap" Arnold, chief of staff of the Army Air Corps from 1941 until it became the air force in 1947, and his chief wartime scientific adviser, the aeronautical engineer Theodore von Karman. In the beginning, RAND was a free-standing division within the Douglas Aircraft Company which, after 1967, merged with McDonnell Aviation to form the McDonnell-Douglas Aircraft Corporation and, after 1997, was absorbed by Boeing. Its first head was Franklin R Collbohm, a Douglas engineer and test pilot. In May 1948, RAND was incorporated as a not-for-profit entity independent of Douglas, but it continued to receive the bulk of its funding from the air force. The think-tank did, however, begin to accept extensive support from the Ford Foundation, marking it as a quintessential member of the American establishment. Collbohm stayed on as chief executive officer until 1966, when he was forced out in the disputes then raging within the Pentagon between the air force and secretary of defense Robert McNamara. McNamara's "whiz kids" were defense intellectuals, many of whom had worked at RAND and were determined to restructure the armed forces to cut costs and curb interservice rivalries. Always loyal to the air force and hostile to the whiz kids, Collbohm was replaced by Henry S Rowan, an MIT-educated engineer turned economist and strategist who was himself forced to resign during the Ellsberg-Pentagon Papers scandal. Collbohm and other pioneer managers at Douglas gave RAND its commitment to interdisciplinary work and limited its product to written reports, avoiding applied or laboratory research, or actual manufacturing. RAND's golden age of creativity lasted from approximately 1950 to 1970. During that period its theorists worked diligently on such new analytical techniques and inventions as systems analysis, game theory, reconnaissance satellites, the Internet, advanced computers, digital communications, missile defense, and intercontinental ballistic missiles. During the 1970s, RAND began to turn to projects in the civilian world, such as health financing systems, insurance, and urban governance. Much of RAND's work was always ideological, designed to support the American values of individualism and personal gratification as well as to counter Marxism, but its ideological bent was disguised in statistics and equations, which allegedly made its analyses "rational" and "scientific." Abella writes: If a subject could not be measured, ranged, or classified, it was of little consequence in systems analysis, for it was not rational. Numbers were all - the human factor was a mere adjunct to the empirical. In my opinion, Abella here confuses numerical with empirical. Most RAND analyses were formal, deductive, and mathematical but rarely based on concrete research into actually functioning societies. RAND never devoted itself to the ethnographic and linguistic knowledge necessary to do truly empirical research on societies that its administrators and researchers, in any case, thought they already understood. For example, RAND's research conclusions on the Third World, limited war, and counterinsurgency during the Vietnam War were notably wrong- headed. It argued that the United States should support "military modernization" in underdeveloped countries, that military takeovers and military rule were good things, that we could work with military officers in other countries where democracy was best honored in the breach. The result was that virtually every government in East Asia during the 1960s and 1970s was a US-backed military dictatorship, including South Vietnam, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Taiwan. It is also important to note that RAND's analytical errors were not just those of commission - excessive mathematical reductionism - but also of omission. As Abella notes, "In spite of the collective brilliance of RAND there would be one area of science that would forever elude it, one whose absence would time and again expose the organization to peril: the knowledge of the human psyche." Following the axioms of mathematical economics, RAND researchers tended to lump all human motives under what the Canadian political scientist C B Macpherson called "possessive individualism" and not to analyze them further. Therefore, they often misunderstood mass political movements, failing to appreciate the strength of organizations like the Vietcong and its resistance to the RAND- conceived Vietnam War strategy of "escalated" bombing of military and civilian targets. Similarly, RAND researchers saw Soviet motives in the blackest, most unnuanced terms, leading them to oppose the detente that president Richard Nixon and his national security advisor Henry Kissinger sought and, in the 1980s, vastly to overestimate the Soviet threat. Abella observes, "For a place where thinking the unthinkable was supposed to be the common coin, strangely enough there was virtually no internal RAND debate on the nature of the Soviet Union or on the validity of existing American policies to contain it. RANDites took their cues from the military's top echelons." A typical RAND product of those years was Nathan Leites's The Operational Code of the Politburo (1951), a fairly mechanistic study of Soviet military strategy and doctrine and the organization and operation of the Soviet economy. Collbohm and his colleagues recruited a truly glittering array of intellectuals for RAND, even if skewed toward mathematical economists rather than people with historical knowledge or extensive experience in other countries. Among the notables who worked for the think tank were the economists and mathematicians Kenneth Arrow, a pioneer of game theory; John Forbes Nash, Jr, later the subject of the Hollywood film A Beautiful Mind (2001); Herbert Simon, an authority on bureaucratic organization; Paul Samuelson, author of Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947); and Edmund Phelps, a specialist on economic growth. Each one became a Nobel Laureate in economics. Other major figures were Bruno Augenstein who, according to Abella, made what is "arguably RAND's greatest known - which is to say declassified - contribution to American national security, the development of the ICBM as a weapon of war" (he invented the multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle, or MIRV); Paul Baran who, in studying communications systems that could survive a nuclear attack, made major contributions to the development of the Internet and digital circuits; and Charles Hitch, head of RAND's Economics Division from 1948 to 1961 and president of the University of California from 1967 to 1975. Among more ordinary mortals, workers in the vineyard, and hangers-on at RAND were Donald Rumsfeld, a trustee of the Rand Corporation from 1977 to 2001; Condoleezza Rice, a trustee from 1991 to 1997; Francis Fukuyama, a RAND researcher from 1979 to 1980 and again from 1983 to 1989, as well as the author of the thesis that history ended when the United States outlasted the Soviet Union; Zalmay Khalilzad, the second President Bush's ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations; and Samuel Cohen, inventor of the neutron bomb (although the French military perfected its tactical use). Thinking the unthinkable The most notorious of RAND's writers and theorists were the nuclear war strategists, all of whom were often quoted in newspapers and some of whom were caricatured in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film Dr Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. (One of them, Herman Kahn, demanded royalties from Kubrick, to which Kubrick responded, "That's not the way it works Herman.") RAND'S group of nuclear war strategists was dominated by Bernard Brodie, one of the earliest analysts of nuclear deterrence and author of Strategy in the Missile Age (1959); Thomas Schelling, a pioneer in the study of strategic bargaining, Nobel Laureate in economics, and author of The Strategy of Conflict (1960); James Schlesinger, Secretary of Defense from 1973 to 1975, who was fired by President Ford for insubordination; Kahn, author of On Thermonuclear War (1960); and last but not least, Albert Wohlstetter, easily the best known of all RAND researchers. Abella calls Wohlstetter "the leading intellectual figure at RAND", and describes him as "self-assured to the point of arrogance". Wohlstetter, he adds, "personified the imperial ethos of the mandarins who made America the center of power and culture in the postwar Western world." While Abella does an excellent job ferreting out details of Wohlstetter's background, his treatment comes across as a virtual paean to the man, including Wohlstetter's late-in-life turn to the political right and his support for the neoconservatives. Abella believes that Wohlstetter's "basing study", which made both RAND and him famous (and which I discuss below), "changed history." Starting in 1967, I was, for a few years - my records are imprecise on this point - a consultant for RAND (although it did not consult me often) and became personally acquainted with Albert Wohlstetter. In 1967, he and I attended a meeting in New Delhi of the Institute of Strategic Studies to help promote the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was being opened for signature in 1968, and would be in force from 1970. There, Wohlstetter gave a display of his well-known arrogance by announcing to the delegates that he did not believe India, as a civilization, "deserved an atom bomb". As I looked at the smoldering faces of Indian scientists and strategists around the room, I knew right then and there that India would join the nuclear club, which it did in 1974. (India remains one of four major nations that have not signed the NPT. The others are North Korea, which ratified the treaty but subsequently withdrew, Israel, and Pakistan. Some 189 nations have signed and ratified it.) My last contact with Wohlstetter was late in his life - he died in 1997 at the age of 83 - when he telephoned me to complain that I was too "soft" on the threats of communism and the former Soviet Union. Wohlstetter was born and raised in Manhattan and studied mathematics at the City College of New York and Columbia University. Like many others of that generation, he was very much on the left and, according to research by Abella, was briefly a member of a communist splinter group, the League for a Revolutionary Workers Party. He avoided being ruined in later years by Senator Joseph McCarthy and J Edgar Hoover's FBI because, as Ellsberg told Abella, the evidence had disappeared. In 1934, the leader of the group was moving the party's records to new offices and had rented a horse- drawn cart to do so. At a Manhattan intersection, the horse died, and the leader promptly fled the scene, leaving all the records to be picked up and disposed of by the New York City sanitation department. After World War II, Wohlstetter moved to Southern California, and his wife Roberta began work on her pathbreaking RAND study, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (1962), exploring why the US had missed all the signs that a Japanese "surprise attack" was imminent. In 1951, he was recruited by Charles Hitch for RAND's Mathematics Division, where he worked on methodological studies in mathematical logic until Hitch posed a question to him: "How should you base the Strategic Air Command?" Wohlstetter then became intrigued by the many issues involved in providing airbases for Strategic Air Command (SAC) bombers, the country's primary retaliatory force in case of nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. What he came up with was a comprehensive and theoretically sophisticated basing study. It ran directly counter to the ideas of General Curtis LeMay, then the head of SAC, who, in 1945, had encouraged the creation of RAND and was often spoken of as its "Godfather". In 1951, there were a total of 32 SAC bases in Europe and Asia, all located close to the borders of the Soviet Union. Wohlstetter's team discovered that they were, for all intents and purposes, undefended, with the bombers parked out in the open, without fortified hangars, and that SAC's radar defenses could easily be circumvented by low- flying Soviet bombers. RAND calculated that the USSR would need "only" 120 tactical nuclear bombs of 40 kilotons each to destroy up to 85% of SAC's European-based fleet. LeMay, who had long favored a preemptive attack on the Soviet Union, claimed he did not care. He reasoned that the loss of his bombers would only mean that, even in the wake of a devastating nuclear attack, they could be replaced with newer, more modern aircraft. He also believed that the appropriate retaliatory strategy for the United States involved what he called a "Sunday punch", massive retaliation using all available American nuclear weapons. According to Abella, SAC planners proposed annihilating three-quarters of the population in each of 188 Russian cities. Total casualties would be in excess of 77 million people in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe alone. Wohlstetter's answer to this holocaust was to start thinking about how a country might actually wage a nuclear war. He is credited with coming up with a number of concepts, all now accepted US military doctrine. One is "second-strike capability", meaning a capacity to retaliate even after a nuclear attack, which is considered the ultimate deterrent against an enemy nation launching a first-strike. Another is "fail-safe procedures", or the ability to recall nuclear bombers after they have been dispatched on their missions, thereby providing some protection against accidental war. Wohlstetter also championed the idea that all retaliatory bombers should be based in the continental United States and able to carry out their missions via aerial refueling, although he did not advocate closing overseas military bases or shrinking the perimeters of the American empire. To do so, he contended, would be to abandon territory and countries to Soviet expansionism. Wohlstetter's ideas put an end to the strategy of terror attacks on Soviet cities in favor of a "counter-force strategy" that targeted Soviet military installations. He also promoted the dispersal and "hardening" of SAC bases to make them less susceptible to preemptive attacks and strongly supported using high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft such as the U-2 and orbiting satellites to acquire accurate intelligence on Soviet bomber and missile strength. In selling these ideas, Wohlstetter had to do an end-run around SAC's LeMay and go directly to the Air Force chief of staff. In late 1952 and 1953, he and his team gave some 92 briefings to high-ranking Air Force officers in Washington DC. By October 1953, the Air Force had accepted most of Wohlstetter's recommendations. Abella believes that most of us are alive today because of Wohlstetter's intellectually and politically difficult project to prevent a possible nuclear first strike by the Soviet Union. He writes: Wohlstetter's triumphs with the basing study and fail-safe not only earned him the respect and admiration of fellow analysts at RAND but also gained him entry to the top strata of government that very few military analysts enjoyed. His work had pointed out a fatal deficiency in the nation's war plans, and he had saved the Air Force several billion dollars in potential losses. A few years later, Wohlstetter wrote an updated version of the basing study and personally briefed secretary of defense Charles Wilson on it, with General Thomas D White, the air force chief of staff, and General Nathan Twining, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in attendance. Despite these achievements in toning down the official air force doctrine of "mutually assured destruction" (MAD), few at RAND were pleased by Wohlstetter's eminence. Bernard Brodie had always resented his influence and was forever plotting to bring him down. Still, Wohlstetter was popular compared with Herman Kahn. All the nuclear strategists were irritated by Kahn who ultimately left RAND and created his own think tank, the Hudson Institute, with a million- dollar grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. RAND chief Frank Collbohm opposed Wohlstetter because his ideas ran counter to those of the air force, not to speak of the fact that he had backed John F Kennedy instead of Richard Nixon for president in 1960 then compounded his sin by backing Robert McNamara for secretary of defense over the objections of the high command. Worse yet, Wohlstetter had criticized the stultifying environment that had begun to envelop RAND. In 1963, in a fit of pique and resentment fueled by Brodie, Collbohm called in Wohlstetter and asked for his resignation. When Wohlstetter refused, Collbohm fired him. Wohlstetter went on to accept an appointment as a tenured professor of political science at the University of Chicago. From this secure position, he launched vitriolic campaigns against whatever administration was in office "for its obsession with Vietnam at the expense of the current Soviet threat". He, in turn, continued to vastly overstate the threat of Soviet power and enthusiastically backed every movement that came along calling for stepped up war preparations against the USSR, from members of the Committee on the Present Danger between 1972 to 1981 to the neoconservatives in the 1990s and 2000s. Naturally, he supported the creation of "Team B" when George H W Bush was head of the CIA in 1976. Team B consisted of a group of anti- Soviet professors and polemicists who were convinced that the CIA was "far too forgiving of the Soviet Union". With that in mind, they were authorized to review all the intelligence that lay behind the CIA's National Intelligence Estimates on Soviet military strength. Actually, Team B and similar right-wing ad hoc policy committees had their evidence exactly backwards: by the late 1970s and 1980s, the fatal sclerosis of the Soviet economy was well underway. But Team B set the stage for the Reagan administration to do what it most wanted to do, expend massive sums on arms; in return, Reagan bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Wohlstetter in November 1985. Imperial U Wohlstetter's activism on behalf of American imperialism and militarism lasted well into the 1990s. According to Abella, the rise to prominence of Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile and endless source of false intelligence to the Pentagon, "in Washington circles came about at the instigation of Albert Wohlstetter, who met Chalabi in Paul Wolfowitz's office". (In the incestuous world of the neo-cons, Wolfowitz had been Wohlstetter's student at the University of Chicago.) In short, it is not accidental that the American Enterprise Institute, the current chief institutional manifestation of neo- conservative thought in Washington, named its auditorium the Wohlstetter Conference Center. Wohlstetter's legacy is, to say the least, ambiguous. Needless to say, there is much more to RAND's work than the strategic thought of Wohlstetter, and Abella's book is an introduction to the broad range of ideas RAND has espoused, from "rational choice theory" (explaining all human behavior in terms of self-interest) to the systematic execution of Vietnamese in the CIA's Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War. As an institution, the RAND Corporation remains one of the most potent and complex purveyors of American imperialism. A full assessment of its influence, both positive and sinister, must await the elimination of the secrecy surrounding its activities and further historical and biographical analysis of the many people who worked there. The RAND Corporation is surely one of the world's most unusual, Cold War-bred private organizations in the field of international relations. While it has attracted and supported some of the most distinguished analysts of war and weaponry, it has not stood for the highest standards of intellectual inquiry and debate. While RAND has an unparalleled record of providing unbiased, unblinking analyses of technical and carefully limited problems involved in waging contemporary war, its record of advice on cardinal policies involving war and peace, the protection of civilians in wartime, arms races, and decisions to resort to armed force has been abysmal. For example, Abella credits RAND with "creating the discipline of terrorist studies", but its analysts seem never to have noticed the phenomenon of state terrorism as it was practiced in the 1970s and 1980s in Latin America by American-backed military dictatorships. Similarly, admirers of Wohlstetter's reformulations of nuclear war ignore the fact that these led to a "constant escalation of the nuclear arms race". By 1967, the US possessed a stockpile of 32,500 atomic and hydrogen bombs. In Vietnam, RAND invented the theories that led two administrations to military escalation against North Vietnam, and even after the think tank's strategy had obviously failed and the secretary of defense had disowned it, RAND never publicly acknowledged that it had been wrong. Abella comments, "RAND found itself bound by the power of the purse wielded by its patron, whether it be the air force or the Office of the Secretary of Defense." And it has always relied on classifying its research to protect itself, even when no military secrets were involved. In my opinion, these issues come to a head over one of RAND's most unusual initiatives, its creation of an in-house, fully accredited graduate school of public policy that offers PhD degrees to American and foreign students. Founded in 1970 as the RAND Graduate Institute and today known as the Frederick S Pardee RAND Graduate School (PRGS), it had, by January 2006, awarded over 180 PhDs in microeconomics, statistics, and econometrics, social and behavioral sciences, and operations research. Its faculty numbers 54 professors drawn principally from the staffs of RAND's research units, and it has an annual student body of approximately 900. In addition to coursework, qualifying examinations, and a dissertation, PRGS students are required to spend 400 days working on RAND projects. How RAND and the Air Force can classify the research projects of foreign and American interns is unclear; nor does it seem appropriate for an open university to allow dissertation research, which will ultimately be available to the general public, to be done in the hothouse atmosphere of a secret strategic institute. Perhaps the greatest act of political and moral courage involving RAND was Daniel Ellsberg's release to the public of the secret record of lying by every president from Dwight D Eisenhower to Lyndon Johnson about the US involvement in Vietnam. However, RAND itself was and remains adamantly hostile to what Ellsberg did. Abella reports that Charles Wolf, Jr, the chairman of RAND's Economics Department from 1967 to 1982 and the first dean of the RAND Graduate School from 1970 to 1997, "dripped venom when interviewed about the [Ellsberg] incident more than thirty years after the fact." Such behavior suggests that secrecy and toeing the line are far more important at RAND than independent intellectual inquiry and that the products of its research should be viewed with great skepticism and care. Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire by Alex Abella. Harcourt; 1 edition (May 12, 2008) . ISBN-10: 0151010811. Price US427, 400 pages. Chalmers Johnson's latest book is Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, now available in a Holt Paperback. It is the third volume of his Blowback Trilogy. (Copyright 2008 Chalmers Johnson.) From fentona at shaw.ca Sun May 4 23:44:59 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sun, 04 May 2008 22:44:59 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Envisioning the End of Israeli Apartheid: An Interview With Ali Abunimah Message-ID: <95836E09-0F9E-4C79-A71A-448D826B4308@shaw.ca> Envisioning the End of Israeli Apartheid: An Interview With Ali Abunimah by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=609&Itemid=36 B DIXON:: Tell us how long you have been doing Electronic Intifada, and why you started it. A. ABUNIMAH: Along with several other collaborators I started Electronic Intifada about four and a half years ago. We did it for much the same reason that you started Black Agenda Report, because there were vibrant and important concerns and conversations going on among the Palestinian people and their allies, conversations of which we could find no trace in the mainstream media. In the beginning we did a lot of political analysis, which we still do, along with some coverage of Palestinian arts and culture. Lately we have been emphasizing on first-hand, on-the-ground coverage of life as it is lived by Palestinians under the occupation and blockade. The conversation about Israel-Palestine in this country might as well be about some other universe, it contains so many misconceptions and outright lies. There has been very little very little attention given to the context, to the history and daily lives of Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation, living under apartheid-like laws and practices in Israel. There's been very little attention given to Palestinian art, music and culture, to the Palestinian Diaspora, which is world wide by now, including here in the United States,. These are all things you very rarely find reflected in the mainstream media, and when you do it's often from a very distorted perspective. The so- called experts on Palestine and Palestinians are very often those who do not wish the best for the people of Palestine. That's why Electronic Intifada exists. B. DIXON:: You made a reference to apartheid-like laws in Israel- Palestine. What should Americans know about that situation, and if there was one thing that black people in particular needed to know about these apartheid-like laws and situations in Israel-Palestine, what would that be? A. ABUNIMAH: I've been focuses a lot on this in recent years. I devoted a chapter in my book One Country to the lessons of South Africa for how we can move forward in Israel-Palestine. Looking at some of the comparisons between Israel and South Africa, there's so much to know. One of the things to know is we are not having this discussion in the United States. But in the rest of the world they are having it. Some of the key anti-apartheid leaders that are known by Americans, and known by many black Americans, like Archbishop Desmond Tutu have been very, very forthright in stating that what is happening to Palestinians is apartheid. Ronnie Kasrils, a minister in the south African government who happens to be Jewish. He has been one of the most outspoken allies of therepublican_jesus Palestinians, declaring that Israel is an apartheid state. And of course many Israeli leaders say it. For example just today (April 25, 2008) in Ha'aretz, the newspaper of record in Israel, a former member of Knesset, Israeli politician Yossi Sarid has an article entitled ?Yes, It's Apartheid?. In which he compares Israel to the apartheid state of south Africa. The other thing I think is important to know is the history, that throughout the 1970s and 80s, when black Americans were leading the struggle against apartheid in this country, when they were the conscience of this country in terms of putting apartheid South Africa on the American political agenda, Israel was one of the key supporters of apartheid South Africa. Israel is the country that systematically violated the international arms embargo on South Africa. The weapons used to beat and kill black demonstrators and freedom fighters in South African townships were made in Israel, right down to the water cannon used in the townships... the fighter jets, the gunboats, all the heavy armament of the South African military used were in large part supplied by Israel. It's less well known, there is less hard evidence about it, although some information is in the public domain regarding Israeili-South African cooperation in their nuclear weapons programs. B. DIXON::: We've in the midst of a presidential election here. What difference will it make who gets elected US president to someone living right now, say, in Gaza and to the Palestinian Diaspora? A. ABUNIMAH: I am very pessimistic that it makes any difference at all, because the tone and content of the politics on this issue in the United States is really a competition to see who can be the most pro- Israel candidate. That has been the case across the board with the three candidates who are out there now. All three are competing to be the most pro-Israeli to the point where Hillary Clinton has threatened to ?totally obliterate Iran? on behalf of Israel. Barack Obama too has been, from his past and I know some of this because I knew him hack in his Chicago days, he was much more sympathetic and much more attuned to the plight of the Palestinians. He used to be a lot more open minded, and now he is busy denying all that and trying to portray himself as a stalwart and unconditional supporter of Israel. So I don't see much change coming from mainstream politics. I think we have to keep pushing from the grassroots for the kind of change we want to see, that's where it will have to come from. That's where it came from with the anti-apartheid struggle. The Reagan administration didn't want to impose sanctions. Congress didn't want to impost sanctions. There was a grassroots movement from the civil rights leaders from the black churches and from others that finally put pressure on the establishment to begin to do the right thing.signup B. DIXON:: Back to Obama, we've got a lot of people who say that he's just shammin', he's just doing what he has to do to get elected, doing what he has to do to get in, but once he gets in, he's going to bring change. A. ABUNIMAH: None of us can know what's deep down in his heart, we have to take him ast his word. He says he is going to stand by Israel, tha he's going to veto any UN resolutions which criticize Israel, the he thinks Palestinians are largely to blame for their own problems.. We have to take his word for that, and hold him accountable for the positions which he has stated. As for whether he is going to turn around and do something different, well, I understand that a lot of people hope that will be the case. But the reality of politics in this country is that the things you have to do to get elected are the same things you have to do to stay in office. I don't see what wold really push him to change. B. DIXON:: Tell us what is the Nakbah A. ABUNIMAH: The Nakbah is an Arabic word, el nakbah. It means the catastrophe. Palestinians use to to describe the events which took place in late 1947 and continued into late 1948, when three quarters of the Palestinan population were ethnically cleansed from their land.so that the state of Israel could be established upon the ruins of their society. In that process, 750,000 Palestinian were forced out of their homes by an organized campaign carried out by the Zionist movment. It wasn't yet the Israeli state. More than 500 Palestinian towns, villages and cities were depopulated and destroyed, and the Palestinians were driven into exile. We're now in the third or fourth generation of that, though acutally for many it's still a first generation experience. My parents for example, lived though that, so this is very much a live and ongoing catastrophe, not something that is only in the past because thisof ethnic cleansing is continuing in Palestine against Palestinians who are still there. B. DIXON: How is it continuing? A. ABUNIMAH: It's continuing in many ways. The irony of it is that although the Zionist leaders very clearly intended, and this is something that the Israili historian Ilan Pape talks about in his latest book, The Ethnic Cleansiing of Palestine. They had a very claer intentiuon to get rid of the Palestinians because you cn't set up a Jewish state in a place where the majority of the population is not Jewish. They had to get rid of that majority population. Despite that, the Palestinian population today is actually larger, with more Palestinians living in Palestine than any time before. They have a very high birth rate, and they have a very strong commitment to their land, regardless of the obstacles put in their way. What Israel has been trying to do is exclude or expel the Palestinians politically and literally. They do it by taking their land to build fortified Jewish-only settlements which the American media calls ?neighborhoods?. They do it by building walls around entire Palestinian cities and communities, a wall the rest of the world outside the United States calls ?the apartheid wall?. We can see that not only in Gaza, where almost a million and a half Palestinians are confined to a vast open air prison. We can see it by the other Palestinian cities and towns that are surrounded by these walls and barbed wire fences. It's a process of physical expulsion as well, as every day more and more land is taken, more and more Palestinians are pushed off it. Israel has moved this population in exactly the same ways that the former South African government did when it tried to pen up its black population in bantustans. It's exactly the same thing that South Africa did when they said OK, blacks are physically present on this land but we are going to make your politically invisible gy creating these fake independent states. If you want citizenship, if you want the right to vote, go home to one of your bantustans and exercise your political rights there, but you don't get to vote for the real government of the country. B DIXON Exactly what is goiing on in Gaza right now, and what is collective punishment A. ABUNIMAH: Imagine that here on my block in Chicago, a kid is accused of a crime, let's say robbing a store. Instead of the police looking for the individual, arresting and charging that person with a crime, they simply surround the block with armored vehicles and tanks, order everyone out of their houses, arrest all the men, or simply destroy the entire block. That is an example of the kind of collective punishments which have been implemented against Palestinians for decades. Israelis claim that they are defending themselves against the Palestinians, but that's just like saying the United States was defending itself against the Native Americans. So now Gaza is totally cut off from the outside world. There are a million and a half Palestinians living there, I have friends living there. We try to stay in touch by email when they have electricity, but the electricity is frequently cut off by the Israelis who deny Gaza the fuel to keep the power plants running. The universities have shut down because there is no power, cancer patients are dying because they can't get chemotherapy, the lives of dialysis patients are threatened because they cannot get the treatment they need. People cannot get to school to work, can't keep their businesses open. Eighty percent of the population, and these are proud, independent-minded people, are subsisting on charity, on rations handed out by the UN, malnutrition is rampant.... B DIXON: And why would the Israeli government do that? A. ABUNIMAH: We've reprinted the statements of Israeli officials at Electronic Intifada which appeared in the Israeli press. They say their objective is to put pressure on the Palestinian populaiton so they will put pressure on their leaders to submit to what we want. Palestinians had a democratic election, back in 2006 and they elected the ?wrong leaders?., leaders which Israel and the United States don't want, so they have to be starved into submission for that crime. B. DIXON: We hear all the time from the mouths of the US Secretary of State, from Bush, from the presidential candidates about what they call an independent Palestinian state, but which you call a bantustan. What's wrong with an independent Palestinian state? A. ABUNIMAH: What's wrong with an independent Palestinian state is that it' is a bantustan, just like the little back country South African reservations to which the apartheid government proposed to relocate most of its black population. A so-called independent Palestinian state is a complete farce, with no possibility of an independent economy, since Palestinian territory is divided into dozens of pieces separated by Israeli-only roads and fortified settlements, by walls, barbed wire and checkpoints. In the case of South Africa, nobody bought it. The South African people didn't buy it, and no country in the world acknowledged these little puppets as real independent states. Most importantly, the South African leadership, Nelson Mandela and the ANC refused to play this game. They said we want our whole country, we want our full rights. palestineThe difference, I would say, between the proposed Palestinian state and the bantustans is that the bantustans actually had more territory, and more resources than the fake Palestinian state. The Palestinian state is simply a ruse to hide and to perpetuate the fact of Israeli apartheid. B. DIXON: If a separate Palestinian state is no solution, then what needs to happen in Israel-Palestine? A. ABUNIMAH: We have to recognize that in Israel-Palestine today there are 10.8 million people. 48% of them are NOT Israeli Jews. The majority population right now are Palestinians and others, with the numbers of Jews and Palestinians being about equal, at just under half. Another five percent who are neither Palestinians nor Jews make up the rest. But the trends are very clear. Within five to ten years at most, Palestinians will be an absolute majority of the population of the state of Israel-Palestine, just as they were sixty years ago. What we need to be saying is that this Jewish minority has a right to live in peace. It has a right to be secure. It has a right to be part of the country. It cannot have better rights and special rights over the rest of the population. It must not have the exclusive right to determine the destiny of the country. What we need to do, and this is what I have been arguing with other Palestinians, is we need to be talking not about a separate Palestinian state because that is a pipe dream. The geography doesn't work, the economy doesn't work. We should be calling for full civil and economic rights for everyone who lives within the boundaries of the country, whether they are Jewish or Palestinian or anything else. And of course we need to be calling for full decolonization, for reparations and restitution for the victims of the current regime. Those are the two things that have to happen; equality and restitution. Legal equality without restitution is not enough, as we know from the history of this country. There also has to be active restitution for the victims. I don't see why Palestinians and Israeli Jews cannot live together peacefully under such a situation. B. DIXON: The picture you have painted for us is not a bright and happy one. What if anything, makes you hopeful? A. ABUNIMAH: What makes me hopeful is that 60 years of catastrophe have not dimmed the will of Palestinians to see justice done. 60 years of brutality, of oppression, by Israel have not succeeded in establishing the legitimacy of that regime. Each day, the Israelis have to wake up and prove to the world that their state has a right to exist as what they call a Jewish state, and what I call an apartheid state. They have not been able to succeed. There is growing, nonviolent global political movement to bring justice to Palestinians, and only that can bring peace to Israelis. Apartheid and colonialism lasted for 300 years before they were brought down. The Soviet Union lasted for eighty years, and nobody anticipated its collapse either. You look at the history of this country where there is so much further to go, and yet there was change here as a result of social movements, not from the top down, but from the bottom up, coming from the efforts of people who decided they were not going to take this any more, that they would stand up for their rights. Every single one of these social movements has prevailed against overwhelming odds, and against enemies determined to hold onto power at any cost. So Palestinians are in good company in this struggle, and we are in a position to put forth a vision of justice that can serve all the people living in Israel-Palestine.one_state Mr. Abunimah is the author of One Country, A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse, and co-counder of Electronic Intifada. EI publishes news, commentary, analysis, and reference materials about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict from a Palestinian perspective. EI is the leading Palestinian portal for information about the Israeli- Palestinian conflict and its depiction in the media. Bruce Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and can be reached at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com From fentona at shaw.ca Sun May 4 23:48:32 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sun, 04 May 2008 22:48:32 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Taliban claim victory from a defeat Message-ID: <74EA9001-51C1-4E44-804F-58F57FF9EAF6@shaw.ca> May 3, 2008 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JE03Df02.html Taliban claim victory from a defeat By Syed Saleem Shahzad KARACHI - The Taliban have suffered their first major loss in this year's offensive, but they are putting on a brave face, even spinning the setback as a triumph in their broader battle against foreign forces in Afghanistan. On Wednesday, several thousand US Marines captured the town of Garmsir in the southern Afghan province of Helmand in their first large operation since arriving to reinforce North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops last month. The Taliban-controlled Garmsir had served as a main supply route for their insurgency in the area. The Taliban, however, claim the loss of one base is not critical, and anyway, for NATO to hold on to its gain it will have to commit thousands of troops to the outpost, which is located in the inhospitable desert, if it is to effectively guard the lawless and porous border through which the Taliban funnel men, arms and supplies. The Taliban also claim that one of their underlying goals since the US- led invasion in 2001 has been to tie down as many foreign troops as possible, much as the mujahideen wore down Soviet troops in the 1980s. Various Taliban leaders have told the media they will not resist the forces in Garmsir, one of the biggest concentrations since the 2001 assault on the country. Meanwhile, the Taliban say they will energize their drive to win over the Pashtun tribal districts on both sides of the border and turn them into "Taliban country", a process that is already well underway. For NATO, the fight against the Taliban has almost gone full circle. From the initial large offensive involving thousands of troops, NATO resorted to limited special operations with heavy reliance on air attacks. This only increased the population's anger against the coalition as many ordinary citizens died in the onslaught from the sky, and the Taliban were able to capitalize on this discontent. NATO command has now decided to increase its ground presence, even at the risk of greater casualties. As mentioned above, this suits the Taliban and its al-Qaeda-inspired goal of tying up troops. As NATO consolidates in the Garmsir deserts, the Taliban will be busy in eastern Afghanistan's border provinces, aiming to bring the tribes there under Taliban control. One of their weapons is fear, as happens in the Pakistani tribal areas, where through targeted killings of high-profile enemies, such as tribal chiefs, clerics and pro-government personalities, they effectively intimidate their rivals. Now it is happening in Afghanistan, the latest being the suicide attack, carried out by Anwar ul-Haq Mujahid's Tora Bora group, in the Khogiani district of Nangarhar province against the police chief of Khogiani, who had informed US forces in 2001 about the Tora Bora mountains and al-Qaeda's sanctuary there. The police chief survived, but at least 18 other people were killed. The mastermind of this strategy is Ustad Yasir, a regional commander of the Pakistan and Afghan border regions, though he was recently rooted out from Khyber Agency in Pakistan after the Taliban were betrayed there. (See Taliban bitten by a snake in the grass Asia Times Online, April 26.) Having "lost" Khyber Agency, where the Taliban had targeted NATO supply lines, they now want to continue this tactic in adjoining Nangarhar province. The Taliban don't forget - or forgive - though. On Thursday, they launched a suicide attack in Khyber Agency against Haji Namdar, who betrayed them. Only one of the four explosive plates strapped to the bomber exploded, so Namdar managed to escape unhurt, although 30 others were injured. At the time of the attack, Namdar was appealing to the masses for donations for the Taliban's struggle in Afghanistan. But now he has been exposed as a traitor and in fact not pro-Taliban. This may allow the Taliban to make inroads into his large constituency, which is traditionally suspicious of the Taliban, who still very much want to regain a footing in Khyber Agency. Taliban sources have also claimed the capture of an important US military camp in Khost province (close to the Pakistan border), but that could not be independently confirmed. The camp is said to have been taken by Jalaluddin Haqqani and handed over to al-Qaeda militants. If this is true, it would be a step in the Taliban's march to wrest control of Afghan tribes. Meanwhile, the NATO soldiers guarding the Garmsir deserts, one of the world's hottest spots, with temperatures reaching 50-60 Celsius, face a tough time. The area is central to the country's flourishing opium trade. On the Afghan side of the border, it is run by elements in the Afghan administration and security forces. (See The Taliban's flower power Asia Times Online, February 1, 2007.) Across the border, it is mainly run by Pakistani-Iranian Baloch smugglers. The Taliban only allow the transportation of drugs and related activities for payment, which means the drug cartels will facilitate the insurgency, and make it even hotter for NATO. Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002 at yahoo.com (Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .) From shimogamo at attglobal.net Mon May 5 03:58:26 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 05 May 2008 18:58:26 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Lion and the Gazelle Message-ID: <481EDA42.8010708@attglobal.net> by Uri Avnery gush-shalom.org (April 19 2008) TONIGHT THE JEWS all over the world will celebrate the Seder, the unique ceremony that unites Jews everywhere in the defining Jewish myth: the Exodus from Egypt. Every year I marvel again at the genius of this ceremony. It unites the whole family, and everyone - from the venerable grandfather to the smallest child - has a role in it. It engages all the senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. The simplistic text of the Haggadah, the book which is read aloud, the symbolic food, the four glasses of wine, the singing together, the exact repetition of every part every year - all these imprint on the consciousness of a child from the earliest age an ineradicable memory that they will carry with them to the grave, be they religious or not. They will never forget the security and warmth of the large family around the Seder table, and even in old age they will recall it with nostalgia. A cynic might see it as a perfect example of brain-washing. Compared to the power of this myth, does it really matter that the Exodus from Egypt never took place? Thousands of Egyptian documents deciphered in recent years leave no room for doubt: the exodus of masses of people, as described in the Bible, or anything remotely like it, just never happened. These documents, which cover in the finest detail every period and every part of Canaan during this epoch prove beyond any doubt that there was no "Conquest of Canaan" and no kingdom of David and Solomon. For a hundred years, Zionist archeologists have devoted tireless efforts to finding even a single piece of evidence to support the Biblical narrative, all to no avail. But this is quite unimportant. In the competition between "objective" history and myth, the myth that suits our needs will always win, and win big. It is not important what was, the important thing is what fires our imagination. That is what guides our steps to this day. THE BIBLICAL narrative connects up with documented history only around the year 853 BC, when ten thousand soldiers and 2000 battle chariots of Ahab, King of Israel, took part in a grand coalition of the kingdoms of Syria and Palestine against Assyria. The battle, which was documented by the Assyrians, was fought at Qarqar in Syria. The Assyrian army was delayed, if not defeated. (A personal note: I am not a historian, but for many years I have reflected on our history and tried to draw some logical conclusions, which are outlined here. Most of them are supported by the emerging consensus of independent scholars around the world.) The kingdoms of Israel and Judea, which occupied a part of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, were no different from the other kingdoms of the region. Even according to the Bible itself, the people sacrificed to various pagan deities "on every high hill and under every green tree". (1 Kings 14:23). Jerusalem was a tiny market town, much too small and much too poor for any of the things described in the Bible to have taken place there at the time. In the books of the Bible that deal with that period, the appellation "Jew" (Yehudi in Hebrew) hardly appears at all, and where it does, it clearly refers simply to an inhabitant of Judea, the area around Jerusalem. When an Assyrian general was asked "talk not with us in the Jewish language" (2 Kings 18:26), what was meant was the local Judean dialect of Hebrew. The "Jewish" revolution took place in the Babylonian exile (587-539 BC). After the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem, members of the Judean elite were exiled to Babylon, where they came into contact with the important cultural streams of the time. The result was one of the great creations of mankind: the Jewish religion. After some fifty years, some of the exiles returned to Palestine. They brought with them the name "Jews", the appellation of a religious-ideological-political movement, much like the "Zionists" of our time. Therefore, one can speak of "Judaism" and "Jews" - in the sense accepted now - only from then on. During the following 500 years, the Jewish monotheistic religion gradually crystallized. Also at this time, the most outstanding literary creation of all times, the Hebrew Bible, was composed. The writers of the Bible did not intend to write "history", in the sense understood today, but rather a religious, edifying and instructive text. TO UNDERSTAND the birth and development of Judaism, one must consider two important facts: (a) Right from the beginning, when the "Jews" came back from Babylon, the Jewish community in this country was a minority among the Jews as a whole. Throughout the period of the "Second Temple", the majority of Jews lived abroad, in the areas known today as Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Cyprus, Italy, Spain and so on. The Jews of that period were not a "nation" - the very idea did not yet exist. The Jews of Palestine did not participate in the rebellions of the Jews in Libya and Cyprus against the Romans, and the Jews abroad took no part in the Great Revolt of the Jews in this country. The Maccabees were not national but religious fighters, rather like the Taliban in our days, and killed many more "Hellenized" Jews than enemy soldiers. (b) This Jewish Diaspora was not a unique phenomenon. On the contrary, at that time it was the norm. Notions like "nation" belong to the modern world. During the period of the "Second Temple" and later on, the dominant social-political pattern was a religious-political community enjoying self-government and not attached to any specific territory. A Jew in Alexandria could marry a Jewess in Damascus, but not the Christian woman across the street. She, on her part, could marry a Christian man in Rome, but not her Hellenist neighbor. The Jewish Diaspora was only one of many such communities. This social pattern was preserved in the Byzantine Empire, was later taken over by the Ottoman Empire and can still be detected in Israeli law. Today, a Muslim Israeli cannot marry a Jewish Israeli, a Druze cannot marry a Christian (at least not in Israel itself). The Druze, by the way, are a surviving example of such a Diaspora. The Jews were unique only in one respect: after the European peoples gradually moved on to new forms of organization, and in the end turned themselves into nations, the Jews remained what they were - a communal-religious Diaspora. THE PUZZLE that is occupying the historians is: how did a tiny community of Babylonian exiles turn into a worldwide Diaspora of millions? There is only one convincing answer to that: conversion. The modern Jewish myth has it that almost all the Jews are descendents of the Jewish community that lived in Palestine 2000 years ago and was driven out by the Romans in the year 70 AD. That is, of course, baseless. The "Expulsion from the Country" is a religious myth: God was angry with the Jews because of their sins and exiled them from His country. But the Romans were not in the habit of moving populations, and there is clear evidence that a great part of the Jewish population in the country remained here after the Zealots' Revolt and after the Bar-Kochba uprising, and that most Jews lived outside the country long before that. At the time of the Second Temple and later, Judaism was a proselytizing religion par excellence. During the first centuries AD it fiercely competed with Christianity. While the slaves and other downtrodden people in the Roman Empire were more attracted to the Christian religion, with its moving human story, the upper classes tended towards Judaism. Throughout the Empire, large numbers adopted the Jewish religion. Especially puzzling is the origin of "Ashkenazi" Jewry. At the end of the first millennium there appeared in Europe - apparently out of nowhere - a very large Jewish population, the existence of which was not documented before. Where did they come from? There are several theories about that. The conventional one holds that the Jews wandered from the Mediterranean area to the North, settled in the Rhein valley and fled from the pogroms there to Poland, at the time the most liberal country in Europe. From there they dispersed into Russia and Ukraine, taking with them a German dialect that became Yiddish. The Tel Aviv University scholar Paul Wexler asserts, on the other hand, that Yiddish was originally not a German but a Slavic language. A large part of Ashkenazi Jewry, according to this theory, are descendents of the Sorbs, a Slavic people that lived in Eastern Germany and was forced to abandon its ancient pagan creed. Many of them preferred to become Jews, rather than Christians. In a recent book with the provocative title "When and How the Jewish People was Invented", the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand argues - like Arthur Koestler and others before him - that most of the Ashkenazi Jews are really descended from the Khazars, a Turkic people that created a large kingdom in what is now South Russia more than a thousand years ago. The Khazar king converted to Judaism, and according to this theory the Jews of Eastern Europe are mostly the descendants of Khazar converts. Sand also believes that most Sephardi Jews are descendents of Arab and Berber tribes in North Africa that had converted to Judaism instead of becoming Muslims, and had joined in the Muslim conquest of Spain. When Jewry stopped proselytizing, the Jews became a closed, ethnic-religious community (as the Talmud says: "Converts are hard for Israel like a skin disease"). But the historical truth, whatever it is, is not so important. Myth is stronger than truth, and it says that the Jews were expelled from this land. This is an essential layer in modern Jewish consciousness, and no academic research can shake it. IN THE LAST 300 years, Europe turned "national". The modern nation replaced earlier social patterns, such as the city state, feudal society and the dynastic empire. The national idea carried all before it, including history. Each of these new nations shaped an "imagined history" for itself. In other words, every nation rearranged ancient myths and historical facts in order to shape a "national history" which proclaims its importance and serves as a unifying glue. The Jewish Diaspora, which - as mentioned before - was "normal" 2000 years ago, became "abnormal" and exceptional. This intensified the Jew-hatred that was anyhow rampant in Christian Europe. Since all the national movements in Europe were - more or less - anti-Semitic, many Jews felt that they were left "outside", that they had no place in the new Europe. Some of them decided that the Jews must conform to the new Zeitgeist and turn the Jewish community into a Jewish "nation". For that purpose, it was necessary to reshape and reinvent Jewish history and turn it from the annals of a religious-ethnic Diaspora into the epic story of a "nation". The job was undertaken by a man who can be considered the godfather of the Zionist idea: Heinrich Graetz, a German Jew who was influenced by German nationalism and created a "national" Jewish history. His ideas have shaped Jewish consciousness to this day. Graetz accepted the Bible as if it were a history book, collected all the myths and created a complete and continuous historical narrative: the period of the Fathers, the Exodus from Egypt, the Conquest of Canaan, the "First Temple", the Babylonian Exile, the "Second Temple", the Destruction of the Temple and the Exile. That is the history that all of us learned in school, the foundation upon which Zionism was built. ZIONISM REPRESENTED a revolution in many fields, but its mental revolution was incomplete. Its ideology turned the Jewish community into a Jewish people, and the Jewish people into a Jewish nation - but never clearly defined the differences. In order to win over the religiously inclined Jewish masses in Eastern Europe, it made a compromise with religion and mixed all terms into a one big cocktail - the religion is also a nation, the nation is also a religion, and later asserted that Israel is a "Jewish state" that belongs to its (Jewish?) citizens but also to the "Jewish people" throughout the world. Official Israeli doctrine has it that Israel is the "Jewish nation state", but Israeli law narrowly defines a "Jew" as only a person who belongs to the Jewish religion. Herzl and his successors were not courageous enough to do what Mustafa Kemal Ataturk did when he founded modern Turkey: he fixed a clear and sharp border between the Turkish nation and Islamic religion and imposed a complete separation between the two. With us, everything remained one big salad. This has many implications in real life. For example: if Israel is the state of the "Jewish people", as one of our laws says - what is there to stop an Israeli Jew from joining the Jewish community in California or Australia? Small wonder that there is almost no leader in Israel whose children have not emigrated. WHY IS IT so important to differentiate between the Israeli nation and the Jewish Diaspora? One of the reasons is that a nation has a different attitude to itself and towards others than a religious-ethnic Diaspora. Similarly: different animals have different ways of reacting to danger. A gazelle flees when it senses danger, and nature has equipped it with the necessary instincts and physical capabilities. A lion, on the other side, sticks to its territory and defends it against intruders. Both methods are successful, otherwise there would be no gazelles or no lions in the world. The Jewish Diaspora developed an efficient response that was well suited to its situation: when Jews sensed danger, they fled and dispersed. That's why the Jewish Diaspora managed to survive innumerable persecutions, and even the Holocaust itself. When the Zionists decided to become a nation - and indeed did create a real nation in this country - they adopted the national response: to defend themselves and attack the sources of danger. One cannot, therefore, be a Diaspora and a nation, a gazelle and a lion, at the same time. If we, the Israelis, want to consolidate our nation, we have to free ourselves from the myths that belong to another form of existence and re-define our national history. The story about the exodus from Egypt is good as a myth and an allegory - it celebrates the value of freedom - but we must recognize the difference between myth and history, between religion and nation, between a Diaspora and a state, in order to find our place in the region in which we live and develop a normal relationship with the neighboring peoples. http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1208648191 TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org Mon May 5 11:12:02 2008 From: hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org (Hunter Gray) Date: Mon, 5 May 2008 11:12:02 -0600 Subject: [R-G] From Redbadbear list [Native situation in Canada and 'States] Message-ID: <000c01c8aed3$23b2c4f0$0400a8c0@computer> Thanks much for your good note/query, Jacob. Although the British treatment of Native Americans was for a long time purely horrific -- in most tribal instances -- a variety of factors came into play that eventually mitigated that considerably -- e.g., pragmatism re a turbulent "frontier"; and ,to a lesser extent, increasing expression of social concerns by various religious groups. With a view by Britain that a nation-to-nation approach was important in its Indian affairs, all of this reached fruition in the Crown Proclamation of 1763 which sought to protect Native lands from blatant colonialist seizures. There were other relatively enlightened Indian policies in the Proclamation. And all of this was resented bitterly by American frontiersmen. The Crown Proclamation is felt by many historians to have contributed as much to the American Revolution as did the bitterly resented British taxation policies on the East Coast. The Proclamation continued to affect Canada which also had the relatively enlightened Indian policies of the French [fur trade, Jesuits, etc.] Canada has generally honored its treaties with the Native nations much better than has the United States, That said, however, it's been very rough for Canadian Natives -- and still is. The basic challenges/goals for Native people and tribal societies have consistently involved preservation of tribal nation [as one big family], preservation of the specific tribal culture, preservation of land and other resources, self-determination in the context of maintenance of treaty rights, and expansion of functional sovereignty. Here are three Links to website pages of ours which you might find helpful The first involves two articles of mine published in socialist journals several years ago. Although a bit dated, they are still sound. There are now many more tribal casinos than there were when I wrote -- and the Native population in the 'States is now approaching three million. The 2010 census should be interesting and revealing. http://hunterbear.org/nativeamericans.htm The second Link goes into detail on such matters Federal Indian policies, sociology of tribalism, challenges faced by Natives, etc. http://hunterbear.org/NATIVE%20ISSUES%20AND%20OTHER%20MATTERS.htm The third Link concerns the plight of the Lumbee Indian Nation in North Carolina -- which for ages has been seeking much needed and much deserved formal Federal recognition [with Federal Indian services.] That long struggle will be won but the time-lines are still elusive, unpredictable. There are now, however, good grounds for optimism -- in the fairly near future. http://www.hunterbear.org/lumbee_indians_of_north_carolina.htm With a minimum of false modesty, I think you would find these references helpful. All Best, H ----- Original Message ----- From: j_richter_scale To: Redbadbear at yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, May 04, 2008 10:38 PM Subject: [Redbadbear] Louis Proyect http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/05/03/hunter-bear-on-john-gregory-bourke/ Hunter, compared with Canadian First Nations groups, what can be done to redress the historical injustices visited upon the American First Nations? It really pisses me that, however flawed the Canadian responses are, they're miles ahead of the American responses. Regards, Jacob HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Protected by Na?shdo?i?ba?i? and Ohkwari' Check out our Hunterbear website Directory http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm [The site is dedicated to our one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray: http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm SEE MY COMBINED COMMUNITY ORGANIZING PIECES -- WITH MUCH NEW STUFF http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm With "fire season" looming, see http://hunterbear.org/forest_fires_in_the_west.htm And see Forces and Faces Along the Activist Trail: http://hunterbear.org/forces_and_faces_along_the_trail.htm From ivanddrury at yahoo.ca Mon May 5 12:14:28 2008 From: ivanddrury at yahoo.ca (Ivan D. Drury) Date: Mon, 5 May 2008 11:14:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Frank Paul inquiry in last stage (demo May 8th / link to article) Message-ID: <276487.67692.qm@web55502.mail.re4.yahoo.com> The following is an announcement for a demonstration being organized by the Indigenous Action Movement demanding justice for Frank Paul. This rally is taking place at the end of the section of the Frank Paul inquiry that deals with police and government policy. The Frank Paul inquiry has been systematically limited from finding fault, laying blame or placing binding rulings on the police department that killed Frank Paul. At bottom of this email is an except and link to an article that deals with the limitations of public inquiry as shown through the case of Frank Paul and the ways that protests like the one being organized on May 8th have forced the government to act. In solidarity, Ivan === === === === === === === === *Frank Paul Support For Justice Rally* the Indigenous Action Movement invites you to join us in the Support for Justice Rally for Frank Paul Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 5:30. We will begin gathering at 5:00 at the Vancouver Detox 377 East 2nd Avenue Members of the Micmac community will conduct a ceremony at the actual spot where Frank's body was dragged to. In Dana Urban's testimony, he explained that the scrape marks on Frank's body were consistent with being dragged and not carried and propped up in a sheltered spot as the paddy wagon driver testified to. http://indigenousaction.blogspot.com/ === === === === === === === === The Police Killing of Frank Paul: Limitations of Public Inquiry & the Power of Protest By Ivan Drury No case has illuminated the blind alley of the police "public inquiry" more clearly than that of the 1998 police killing of Frank Paul in Vancouver. The Frank Paul inquiry, restricted from the beginning from finding fault or laying charges, has the potential of becoming a crossroads from which the entire corrupt policing and "justice" system can begin to be challenged by the communities they have brutalized for hundreds of years. This potential was clear to the BC government from the start. Solicitor-General Rich Coleman made that plain in 2001 when he sent a letter to Police Complaint Commissioner Don Morrison explaining that he would not open a coroner?s inquest into Frank Paul?s death where ?culpability, liability and issues of racial discrimination are likely to become the central features. (?) [A] responsible coroner would not permit the pursuit of those matters. Public acrimony would almost certainly follow.? [...] *cont'd here: http://ivandrury.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/61/ __________________________________________________________________ Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail. Click on Options in Mail and switch to New Mail today or register for free at http://mail.yahoo.ca From shniad at sfu.ca Mon May 5 13:29:56 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 05 May 2008 12:29:56 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Time for Americans to care about others Message-ID: <200805051929.m45JTuXo026866@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080505/cff8d34e/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Mon May 5 13:31:25 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 05 May 2008 12:31:25 -0700 Subject: [R-G] "Namely the State of Israel" Message-ID: <200805051931.m45JVPT7000054@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080505/49afd6d8/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Mon May 5 13:36:58 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 05 May 2008 12:36:58 -0700 Subject: [R-G] U.S. has Mandela on terrorist list Message-ID: <200805051936.m45JawWV011763@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080505/05936999/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Mon May 5 13:37:22 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 05 May 2008 12:37:22 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Growth doesn't pay off for most Canadians Message-ID: <200805051937.m45JbMLG012591@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080505/4b215770/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Mon May 5 13:37:47 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 05 May 2008 12:37:47 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Once the lion of the right, Le Pen's roar now but a whisper Message-ID: <200805051937.m45Jbl9N013266@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080505/ee04751f/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Mon May 5 13:48:30 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 05 May 2008 12:48:30 -0700 Subject: [R-G] CanWest vs. Briemberg: Standing up to the corporate media bully Message-ID: <200805051948.m45JmUQv004322@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080505/1103a90f/attachment.txt From fentona at shaw.ca Mon May 5 14:12:56 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 05 May 2008 13:12:56 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Thousands of Somalis Protest Deadly US Air Strike Message-ID: May 05, 2008 Somaliastrikeweb Thousands of Somalis Protest Deadly US Air Strike http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/5/thousands_of_somalis_protest_deadly_us Thursday?s air strike comes in the midst of a deepening humanitarian crisis in Somalia that the International Committee of the Red Cross described as ?catastrophic.? Over one million people have been made internal refugees, and 3.5 million, or nearly half the country?s population, may need food aid by the end of the year. [includes rush transcript] Abdi Samatar, professor of geography and global studies at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of several books and publications on Somali history, politics and culture. Rush Transcript AMY GOODMAN: Thousands of people in central Somalia came out Sunday to protest a US air raid that killed more than a dozen people Thursday. Among the dead is Aden Hashi Ayro, a man the United States says was al- Qaeda?s leader in Somalia. Ayro was a military commander of the armed opposition group, Shabaab. The group had functioned as the military wing of the short-lived government led by the Union of Islamic Courts before it was forced from power in December 2006 by US-backed Ethiopian troops. Since then, Shabaab has been one of the main groups carrying out attacks against Ethiopian and government forces in Somalia. It was added to the US government?s terror list in March of this year. Washington said Shabaab members were trained by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and hosted suspects wanted for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Shabaab denied the allegations and said they were not terrorists but told Reuters ?now we?ve been designated terrorists and forced to seek out and unite with any Muslims on the list against the United States.? Sheikh Ibrahim Sulley is the spokesperson for the Union of Islamic Courts. He condemned Thursday?s attack in an interview with Al Jazeera and warned the United States against further action. SHEIKH IBRAHIM SULLEY: [translated] This attack was cowardly and aggressive. We condemn the international Arab and Islamic community?s silence. These bombs are making Somalis more united. These people do not need bombs. They need international humanitarian help. It is good for America to stop. If America continues what it is doing, they will reap the harvest of the crop they have sown. AMY GOODMAN: Thursday?s air strike comes in the midst of a deepening humanitarian crisis in Somalia that the International Committee of the Red Cross described as ?catastrophic.? Over one million people have been made internal refugees, and 3.5 million, or nearly half the country?s population, may need food aid by the end of the year, the UN Food and Agriculture organization has warned. Nearly a hundred people have been killed in the past three weeks alone. Late last month, Ethiopian soldiers raided a mosque in the Somali capital, killing twenty-one people, kidnapping forty-one children, this according to Amnesty International. To discuss the latest in Somalia, I?m joined in Minneapolis by Abdi Samatar. He is professor of geography and global studies at the University of Minnesota. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Professor Samatar. ABDI SAMATAR: Thank you, Amy. AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the reaction to the US air strike? ABDI SAMATAR: I think it?s quite befuddling to Somalis and many other peace-loving people around the world as to why the United States has chosen to bomb people who are desperate for assistance and food and who have been dislocated and traumatized by an Ethiopian invasion, a country that has its own people under tyranny in itself. So it?s surprising to Somalis that the United States, who is supposed to be the beacon of democracy, is using all the terror tactics that it condemns in this instance, and people across the country have been demonstrating against this. AMY GOODMAN: Explain exactly what happened with the air strike. Who got hit? Who got killed? ABDI SAMATAR: Well, according to the reports and telephone calls from Dusa Marreb in central Somalia, it?s not quite certain whether it was planes or missiles sent from a ship on the Indian Ocean or a plane from?based in Gode, Ethiopia. But that?the gentleman by the name Aden Hashi Ayro, who was a target of the United States Department of Defense and the CIA for quite a long time, him being accused that he was trained in Afghanistan, and therefore because he?s trained in Afghanistan, he is by nature guilty of being a terrorist. There has been no evidence produced so far that he has been linked to any terror attacks in Somalia against anybody else other than the Ethiopians themselves. So it seems to be that presumptions repeated sufficient times become a replacement or a substitute for reality. The other people who have been killed, an area about the size of a sort of two blocks in places like Minnesota, for instance, has been leveled, and the majority of the people who were killed were innocent civilians, much like what the Ethiopians have been doing in Mogadishu itself. AMY GOODMAN: And explain the Shabaab. ABDI SAMATAR: The Shabaab used to be part of the wing, youth wing, of the Islamic Courts. Many of them are very religious. Aden Ayro has never been known to be quite religious. He has never sort of said many things that will suggest that he?s an Islamist. It seems to me that he was a nationalist who was trained in Afghanistan who was opposed both to the warlords who used to control Mogadishu before the Union of Islamic Courts took off and before the Ethiopians came in, but that the many members of the Shabaab, and to the order of about 250 of them, have broken ranks with the Union of Islamic Courts and the people who are based in Asmara, Eritrea, who are fighting against Ethiopians. The Shabaab claim that the Union of Islamic Courts and their allies have sort of reneged on the promises which they have made, and therefore a few of them decided to do on their own. The Union of Islamic Courts spokesman, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed in Asmara, said that these young men are fighters who are fighting the Ethiopians; they are not terrorists, in any sense of the word, and then, therefore, despite the fact that they have reneged on the promises and the agreements they had with the Islamic Courts, they remain to be nationalists. AMY GOODMAN: We?re talking to Professor Samatar, geology professor and global studies? ABDI SAMATAR: Geography professor. AMY GOODMAN: Geography professor and professor of global studies at the University of Minnesota. Just after this happened, word has come out today of tens of thousands of people protesting in the streets of Mogadishu over soaring food prices. Can you talk about what?s happening today? ABDI SAMATAR: Well, what you see in Mogadishu over the last year and a half or so, since the Ethiopian invasion, which was sanctioned by the US government, has destroyed virtually all the life- sustaining economic systems which the population have built without the government for the last fifteen, sixteen years, and that the militia that?s supposed to be the very people who protect the population have been looting shops. For instance, the Bakara market, which is the largest market in Mogadishu and in the country, have been looted repeatedly by the militias of the so-called Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, supported by Ethiopian troops. And the new prime minister of Somalia, Mr. Hassan Nur Hussein, has himself announced in the BBC that it was his militias that?who have looted this place. So what you have is a population that?s hit from both ends? on one end, by the militias of the so-called Transitional Federal Government, which is recognized by the United States, and on the other hand, by the Ethiopian invaders who seem to be bent on ensuring that they break the will of the people to resist as free people in their own country. So the prices of?for instance, if I tell you a kilo of rice, which used to be somewhere in the order of about seventy cents, US cents, is now anywhere up to 250 cents?that?s $2.50. The average day?s income per person for anybody who?s able to hold a job in that incredible environment is less than a dollar a day. So the mismatch between incomes and the prices of commodities that are primarily imported from overseas is horrific, that nobody can afford this. And what you have is really terror in the worst sense of the word, that a million people have been displaced, that the Ethiopians and the Transitional Government have been denying them access to humanitarian input, and that the United States seems to just watch and let that happen itself. It?s as if there has been a calculated decision made somewhere in the world, maybe in Washington, maybe in Addis Ababa, maybe in Mogadishu itself, to starve these people until they submit themselves to the whims of the American military, in this instance, and the Ethiopians, who are acting on their behalf. AMY GOODMAN: The latest reports we have, an Associated Press reporter seeing several people injured in the protest in Mogadishu; after that, tens of thousands took to the streets, hurling stones, smashing windshields of cars and buses. ABDI SAMATAR: Well, what you have here is, you know, the Somalis have supported the war against terrorists, but they ask our country?that?s the United States?the simple question that the President, Bush, has asked the international community: are you with us, or are you against us? Here are people whose livelihoods have been destroyed, who?s dealing with an illegal occupation of Ethiopian forces, a government in Ethiopia that?s not a democrat, that?s harassing its own people and brutalizing its own people, and the Somali people are asking the United States: why are you supporting our terrorists, when we don?t support the terrorists that who are acting against you? We don?t have an answer for the Somali people as Americans. And for me, this is quite critical for the so-called public diplomacy that the United States State Department has been an impact on. And that is, if we are interested in winning the hearts and minds of people around the world, and particularly the Muslim world, then what we need to do is be true to our ideals of democracy and respect for human rights, tell the Ethiopians get out of there, let the Somalis sort themselves out and promise the Somalis to support them as long as they play with internationally sanctioned rules of human rights and whatnot. That?s what the Somali people are asking, in my opinion AMY GOODMAN: Professor Abdi Samatar, I want to thank you very much for being with us, a professor of geography and global studies at the University of Minnesota, author of several books and publications on Somali history, politics and culture. Thanks for joining us from Minneapolis. From shimogamo at attglobal.net Mon May 5 15:35:07 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 06:35:07 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Why I Pay My Taxes Message-ID: <481F7D8B.1060209@attglobal.net> by Ben Metcalf Harper's Magazine Notebook (April 2008) And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute? He saith, Yes. And when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him, saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers? Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free. -- Matthew 17:24-26 I. I hope and intend, by the placement of this note in what I understand to be a venerable publication of record, to distance myself from those millions of Americans who find their government incompetent and cruel, and so, as a matter of course and conscience, absolutely refuse to pay it any taxes. Just how many of these protestants exist out there I cannot say with any accuracy, as I have not bothered to check, but given the heartfelt expressions of anger from so many different quarters for so many difficult years, and given the American's well-known reputation for courage in the face of tyranny, I assume the number to be of a size by now that it will very soon bring the world's largest federal apparatus to its knees and bind it once again to the will of a proud and furious people. Before that happens, and I am condemned as one of the few holdout collaborators with an unpopular and, yes, murderous system, I would like to explain why it was that I paid my taxes at the start of the twenty-first century, when so many of my peers risked both fortune and freedom to make their heroic stand. In truth I can find no fault with these revolutionaries, nor is that my purpose here. Our nation was birthed, after all, by a similar protest during the late eighteenth century, wherein the inhabitants of this land found themselves tithed but unlistened to, devoid of either say or advocacy in a governance they were required by law to fund. The people did more than simply withhold their monies then: they raised up and paid for an army to go against the red-coated tax collectors sure to come, and with God on their side (and the French) they prevailed. A second try at the money, in 1812, fared the English no better and saw them sunk in New Orleans (for lagniappe, I suppose) even after the debt had been canceled and the account in perpetuity closed. No, I would not dare speak ill of any American who today dodges a bill he finds politically ruinous or morally obscene. Nor would I look to deny him his right to dispute that bill out of everyday penury or greed: our nation owes at least as much to its hopelessness as it does to its celebrated faith. I seek only to convey why I myself have continued to offer up indulgences to an institution my fellow citizens have so bravely contrived to destroy, as I would greatly prefer to be thought a pervert in this matter than I would an outright coward. II. A forebear of mine, one Curtis Metcalf, who, if I have it right, was my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, served just prior to the Revolution as the king's tax collector for a populous part of southern Pennsylvania. He was of the Quaker bent, as were many of the souls he extorted coins and granules from, and it is therefore unlikely that he thought much more of violent insurrection than he did of organized tax protest. Whether or what he thought of the bloody subjugation to which his take was regularly put I do not know. I can determine only that his guilt, if there was any, did not significantly impair his fornication, a product of which, one James Metcalf, my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather (again, if I have it right), may have joined up with an American militia (it is at least said that he did) in order to aid and prosecute a rebellion that would mean an end to his father's livelihood and, of course, a fare thee well to the Quaker spirit in our line. Neither of these traditions has much hold on me: I am no rebel, just as I am no Quaker taxman. The first option does offer certain romantic possibilities, I agree, and the second is not without its own odd sort of charm, but I assure you that I have, without once taking up arms against my government, nor by serving it more directly than the regular payment of my taxes, lived a life far larger than any ancestor of mine. I have, from the comfort of my couch, made the nations to cower before me. I have, during commercial-break trips to the bathroom, left whole continents behind me in ruin. I have watched through bored and sleepy eyes as the millions came begging for mercy, and I have, without ever lifting a finger, but only allowing one to descend upon a button of my remote, turned my plump and kingly thumb down. Still, what taxpayer today, current or former, could not say the same? Who has not toppled republics and tyrannies alike so that a corporation he took no personal interest in might enhance by meaningless increment an already criminal profit? Who has not watched on his television set as a bomb or a tank he helped personally to pay for made a charred and limbless stump out of what previously was an innocent (if un-American) child? I might also ask, if only out of curiosity: just how many of these children needed to be chopped up and burnt before at last my fellow citizens thought to stop payment on the meat grinder and the furnace? One hundred? One thousand? Ten thousand? More? Does not a single such death constitute a villainy no latter-day tax protest could hope to overcome? Was even that one small tragedy not predicted by our military accountants well in advance of any physical war, to be folded neatly into their projections of "collateral damage"? And have we not all of us long understood this phrase to be but a transparent attempt to log beforehand a formal regret over the slaughter to come while implying also that said slaughter will be accidental and therefore, magically, unforeseen? I have no wish to judge my compatriots for the lateness of their stand against what they now perceive, suddenly, to be an astounding evil. How or why they spent years in denial of the obvious truth that their government's military philosophy constituted an admission a priori of premeditated murder is for them and their God to decide. I must confine my efforts here to my own defense, for unlike all present-day withholders of their taxes I cannot demonstrate anything like a remorse for my crime. I can show only that I am innocent of what once was, and to the righteous eye will always remain, their rife and terrible hypocrisy. III. I have killed. From the first day I paid taxes to the United States government (on April 15 1985) my spree began, and it has expanded geometrically since. I do not remember a time when I mailed in a check or a money order without a clear understanding that some part of my donation would be put toward murder, and any guilt I may at first have felt over this (none, to be honest) was soon enough supplanted by a tickling desire to know not just that my money would be used to kill but when it would be used to kill, and where, and whom, and how. The that is by now a foregone conclusion, and even the laziest observer might determine the when and the where with relative ease: a quick glance at the newspapers over the past quarter century will confirm my kills in Central and South America, in Northern and Central Africa, in the hills of lower Asia, and of course in, the Middle East. The how is almost as readily arrived at, for it is a matter of public record how my tax dollars are apportioned, and so it is a simple thing, or should be, to determine what sum I have contributed each year to the ruin of my fellow human beings. In 2007, to take but my most recent foray, I paid something on the order of $20,000 into the federal pail. Of this sum, I can be assured that 31 percent, or $6,200, was put toward current military expenses {*} (which would strike me as almost miserly if it did not far surpass what I have given at any one time to any other cause). Of this $6,200, I know that roughly 23 percent, or $1,400 (also more than I have given at any one time to any other cause), went immediately to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which our current administration, the second Bush, claims already to have won. ____________________ {*} Because federal numbers on the matter of murder by tax dollar tend to be humble, at times almost shy, the breakdowns I use here are not from the Office of Management and Budget but rather from the War Resisters League, a group with which the conscientious reader will no doubt already be familiar. ____________________ Thank God for that lie. Without it I might be doomed to live out my days in peacetime's frigid shadow, where the opportunities for legalized butchery ever shrink and fade. I might give money to the capital-punishment lobby, yes, and hope for a small satisfaction there; or I might cruise the city streets in search of slow-footed jaywalkers and sympathetic witnesses; or I might buy land in rural Texas and pray to take advantage of the laws there that still allow one to shoot a trespasser on sight; but for murder done properly, from a relaxed position, on the couch or the bed, with one's return safely filed and one's withholdings well at work in the glow of the television set, war, true war, is required. IV. I am tempted to argue that most of my $20,000 has in one way or another been spent on death, but sloppy federal bookkeeping impedes me there. I might determine that w of my dollars went toward public health, and that x of my dollars went toward labor, and that y of my dollars went toward education, and that z of my dollars were given over illegally to evangelical concerns, but I will never be privy to the exquisite formula that explains in what measure, and in what manner, w and x and y and z combine to produce an American just frightened enough, and just undervalued enough, and just ignorant enough, and just romantic enough, to think a "job" as a "hero" in a faraway "conflict" somehow represents an "opportunity" for her child. What I am in for each time one of these children is flown home to a graveyard, or to a hospital with which a graveyard might favorably compare, is therefore unknown to me, and I consider that a great pity. The military (eager to ape umbrage and thus deflect blame) and the media (afraid to lose clout via a show of objectivity) and the protesters (at pains to display a patriotism that will ever be questioned anyway) all seem agreed that an American carcass is worth far more than a foreign one, and I would like to be availed of the extra kill points. Surely, though, I can say with some certainty that the $1,400 I sent last year to the wars abroad scored at least on occasion. That unassuming sum, after all, would have paid for 5,000 M16 machine-gun bullets at 28 cents per. Five thousand bullets! Is not one of these now lodged in a foreign corpse on my tab and my behalf? True, the price has gone up since then (by a whopping two cents), but that still promises a good 4,666-bullet year, and with luck I might get a cost-of-living raise to make up the difference. Last year seems to have heard the swan song of the 5.56mm armor-piercing round, which is a shame. At most I could have paid for 1,207 of these lovelies, but for all I know they might have been able to penetrate two or three bodies apiece, especially of the younger, softer type. The 120mm Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot with Tracer we still have with us, but my $1,400 would have bought less than a quarter of one of these shells, and I find it difficult to praise an expenditure that would risk the whole of my contribution on a lone pull of the trigger. Likewise, I am no fan of Boeing's joint Direct Attack Munition (or JDAM), which is dropped from both Navy and Air Force planes and has an inertial navigation system as well as a GPS to guide it home. Despite what awesome damage it might do, any bomb that requires two electronic surveys, in addition to God's own gravity, to find its target strikes me as a pretty poor gamble: until I can know for certain that the single $24,294 JDAM I chipped in on will kill at least twenty people, I would prefer to take my chances with the bullets. It vexes me, of course, that I cannot control in any specific sense what materiel my personal tax dollars go to buy, since this robs me not only of the thrill of knowing how, exactly, I have killed but also of the great and final goal of this adventure, which is a knowledge of whom. When we give money to a foreign-children's charity, it is my understanding that we are at least provided with the name of the child we have blessed with food and clothing and medicine and schoolbooks, and are treated as well to a photograph of the child, and are sent a biographical note intended to make us throw even more money away on a cause we believe in so much less than our own. Why, then, would our government not favor us with the names and likenesses and stories of those we have not helped out with a few coins but rather paid thousands upon thousands of dollars to destroy? Yet whereas this element of unknowability makes of my fellow citizen a pessimist, ever sure of the worst, and so prompts him to withhold his taxes lest by accident they betray the purity of his intentions, I find the opposite to be true in me. I see in that unknowability a cause and an opportunity for faith, and I see in that faith a great hope, and I see in that hope a great optimism. I believe (with a want, yes, but no actual need of worldly proof) that my dollars have indeed gone out and murdered, and that through continued support of my government, and a God-given patience, I will one day reap my just reward: I will one day open my mailbox to discover that my leaders have at last realized, in this age of computer tracking, the ease with which a taxpayer's contribution might be tagged and assigned a dedicated purpose, so that he might unfold and read, through grateful tears, something akin to the following: Dear Taxpayer, Your contribution this fiscal year was put toward the maintenance of an F-15 fighter jet, which on October 16 dropped a bomb on the town of Ramadi, in Iraq, killing, among others, Muhammed Salih Ali (age six) and Haifa Ahmed Fuad (age eight) and Saad Ahmed Fuad (age four). Little Haifa and Saad were sister and brother; you helped accomplish their deaths by a jet very similar to, if not exactly the same as, those that fly over the stadium just after the American Idol winner sings "and the home of the brave" at the Super Bowl. Thank you and congratulations. V. Before I am dismissed here as a mere nihilist or blasphemer, I would like to point out that it is not clear what either my tax-collecting Quaker ancestor or his violent rebel son would have done in my stead. Peacefulness and taxes mix uneasily, if ever. I can say for certain only what Jesus would have done: in Matthew 17:27 Our Lord instructs Peter to go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee. That is to say, Jesus paid his taxes, and who knows but that this very coin was then passed up the line until it reached, by chance or by magic, the Roman hand from which it would eventually go forth to purchase the cross to which the original payer would in agony be nailed, in forgiveness of all our sins. _____ Ben Metcalf is the literary editor of Harper's Magazine. His "On Simple Human Decency" appeared in the June 2006 issue. TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From internacional at pcdob.org.br Mon May 5 15:38:29 2008 From: internacional at pcdob.org.br (=?Windows-1252?Q?PCdoB_-_Secretaria_de_Rela=E7=F5es_Internacionais?=) Date: Mon, 5 May 2008 18:38:29 -0300 Subject: [R-G] Statment of WPC 's President Message-ID: <013701c8aef8$69b681b0$651da8c0@mh> Estimados Camaradas, Enviamos em anexo a declara??o da Cda. Socorro Gomes, Presidenta do Conselho Mundial da Paz e do Cebrapaz - Centro Brasileiro de Solidariedade aos Povos e Luta pela Paz, condenando o relan?amento da quarta frota norte-americana e presen?a de porta-avi?es nuclear no Brasil. Sauda??es fraternais, Secretaria de Rela??es Internacionais do Comit? Central do Partido Comunista do Brasil - PCdoB ========================== Dear Comrades, Please find attached the Statement of Cde. Socorro Gomes, President of the WPC-World Peace Council and Cebrapaz - Brazilian Center of Solidarity to the Peoples and Struggle for Peace, condenmning the reestablishment of the U.S. Fourth Fleet and the presence of nuclear aircraft carriers in Brazil. Fraternal greetings, International Relations Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Brazil From shimogamo at attglobal.net Tue May 6 04:13:27 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 19:13:27 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] On Hypocrisy Over Tibet Message-ID: <48202F47.7020902@attglobal.net> A Personal Reflection by John V Whitbeck CounterPunch (Apri1 14 2008) I have been watching with growing amazement and concern the assaults on the bizarrely quasi-religious Olympic Torch as it has staggered through London, Paris and San Francisco, as well as the self-righteous pronouncements by certain European "leaders" (and even by the European Parliament, the UN Secretary-General and John McCain) that they will not be attending the opening ceremony of the Olympics or are seriously considering not attending or urging others not to attend unless China bows to their "human rights" demands. Have they even been invited? Who needs them? Why, aside from the obvious intention to give offense, should the Chinese care? I should make clear from the start that I am profoundly sympathetic to Tibet and Tibetans. I have had the privilege of meeting His Holiness the Dalai Lama on two occasions, most recently when we both spoke at the same human rights conference in Sweden, and the white kata which he hung around my neck on the first occasion is proudly displayed in my study. In person, he exudes a quiet, modest charisma and aura of human saintliness that is captivating even to an atheist - unlike any other person whom I have ever met. I wish that he could return to the Potala Palace and his Norbulingka summer residence and that his people could enjoy the broad cultural and administrative autonomy which he seeks for them. Furthermore, when I traveled in Tibet in 1981 (at a time when I had already visited all but one of the world's then existing countries), I found it, far and away, the most fascinating place which I had ever visited. It took my breath away in every sense. Having said that, the current anti-Chinese frenzy in the West, pursued in the guise of pro-Tibetan (and, to a lesser extent, pro-Darfuri) human rights activism, and the Western media's coverage of it reek of hypocrisy. As best I can tell, the recent violence occurred when some ethnic Tibetans, understandably fed up with the ever-increasing presence and domination of Han Chinese in traditional Tibetan areas, exploded in frustration, burned some Han Chinese shops and killed some Han Chinese civilians. What, in such circumstances, would one expect the Chinese authorities to do? When, by way of example, some African-Americans in Watts and other poor areas of Los Angeles exploded in frustration, burned some white- and Korean- owned stores and attacked some non-blacks, did the American police run away? As I recall, they sought to restore order. So have the Chinese authorities. (As a practical matter, the most brutal images of repressive police action against ethnic Tibetan protestors have not come from China but from other countries, most notably Nepal.) Can anyone seriously argue that Chinese treatment of Tibetans, who have not been subject to either genocide or ethnic cleansing and of whom the vast majority continue to live on their ancestral lands, compares unfavorably with the treatment accorded to the Native Americans by the European settlers of North America or the treatment accorded (and continuing to be accorded) to the indigenous Palestinians by the Zionist settlers of Palestine? Can anyone seriously argue that it is even in the same league of evil and injustice? With more than fifty recognized ethnic minorities comprising roughly six percent of China's immense population, Chinese government policy has always aimed at cultural integration of all Chinese citizens rather than at multiculturalism. Inevitably, some peoples are deeply attached to their own distinct cultures and do not wish to be integrated into another one. If Chinese treatment of certain ethnic minorities justly merits criticism, most serious observers would argue that repressive measures against the Uighurs of Xinjiang have been more severe than repressive measures against Tibetans. However, although there are many more Uighurs than Tibetans, one hears very little about Uighurs in the West. They are Muslims. Uighur nationalist movements are on America's list of "terrorst" groups, and four Uighurs swept up in Afghanistan were incarcerated at Guantanamo for years, even long after being exonerated as potential threats to America, before finally being dumped in Albania, because no other country would provide them asylum. Furthermore, how reasonable is it to hold China responsible for the human suffering resulting from multiple separatist insurgencies and governmental counterinsurgency measures in the Darfur region of Sudan (because China invests in Sudan's oil industry?) while not holding America and its Western collaborators responsible for the far worse human suffering resulting from America's invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and America's unconditional financial and diplomatic support for Israel's occupation of Palestine? If the Chinese feel that the current anti-Chinese frenzy in the West has its roots in jealousy at China's twelve percent annual economic growth rate and its increasing success in all aspects of world affairs, seasoned with ample doses of racism and hypocrisy, this would not be an irrational appreciation of the situation. At least with respect to its role in world affairs, China has proven a rather gentle and benign dragon in recent decades, focused on improving the economic conditions and quality of life of its people rather than on military aggression or full-spectrum domination of mankind and the planet, even while its strength and potential power have been growing exponentially. Seeking personal emotional satisfaction or domestic political advantage by gratuitously sticking pins in the Chinese dragon is unlikely to prove a wise course of action. The world has enough problems already. _____ John V Whitbeck, an international lawyer, is author of The World According to Whitbeck (2005). http://www.counterpunch.com/whitbeck04142008.html TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From critical.montages at gmail.com Tue May 6 06:20:20 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Tue, 6 May 2008 08:20:20 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Greetings from Guantanamo Bay ... and the Sickest Souvenir Shop in the World Message-ID: Greetings from Guantanamo Bay ... and the sickest souvenir shop in the world By ANGELA LEVIN - More by this author ? Last updated at 00:06am on 4th May 2008 Mockery: A child's T-shirt proclaiming the camp a tourist spot The sands are white, the sea laps gently and crowds of bronzed Americans laze in the Caribbean sunshine. They have a cinema, a golf course and, naturally, a gift shop stocked with mugs, jaunty T-shirts and racks of postcards showing perfect sunsets and bright green iguanas. Only the barbed wire decoration, a recurring motif, hints at anything wrong. Welcome to "Taliban Towers" at Guantanamo Bay, the most ghoulishly distasteful tourist destination on the planet. As these astonishing mementoes show, the US authorities are promoting the world's most notorious prison camp as a cheap hideaway for American sunseekers ? a revelation that has drawn international anger and condemnation. Just yards from the shelves of specially branded mugs and cuddly toys, nearly 300 "enemy combatants" lie sweltering in a waking nightmare. It is six years since foreign prisoners, many captured in Afghanistan, were first taken to this US-occupied corner of Cuba. Yet even now, no charges have been brought against them. While the detainees lie incarcerated, visitors can windsurf, take boat trips and go fishing for grouper, tuna, red snapper and swordfish. The United States' 1.5million service personnel and Guantanamo's 3,000 construction workers are eligible to visit the "resort", which boasts a McDonald's, KFC and a bowling alley. They even have a Wal-Mart supermarket. The vacation comes at a knock-down price: just $42 (?20) per night for a suite of air-conditioned rooms, including a kitchen, bathroom, living room and bedrooms. But it is the souvenirs that have led to the greatest criticism. One T-shirt from the gift shop is decorated with a guard tower and barbed wire. It reads: "The Taliban Towers at Guantanamo Bay, the Caribbean's Newest 5-star Resort." Another praises "the proud protectors of freedom". A third displays a garish picture of an iguana and states: "Greetings from paradise GTMO resort and spa fun in the Cuban sun." A child-sized shirt says: "Someone who loves me got me this T-shirt in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." Scroll down for more... Exposed: An array of the ghoulish gifts on sale at the Guantanamo Bay 'resort' catering for American sunseekers There are mugs inscribed with "kisses from Guantanamo" and "Honor Bound To Defend Freedom". The Guantanamo holiday trade was exposed by Zachary Katznelson, a British-based human rights lawyer and spokesman for Reprieve, the group leading the international campaign against the camp. "When I see the conditions the prisoners have to cope with and then think of the T-shirt slogans, I am appalled," he said. "To say I am repulsed is an understatement. Unbelievable as it may seem, the US authorities are proud of the 'souvenirs' and what they are doing." Mr Katznelson represents 28 of the detainees and makes regular visits to the prison. "The military keeps a tight hold on everything that is available in Guantanamo Bay and someone senior has given their approval for this disgusting nonsense," he said. Scroll down for more... Sick: Souvenirs include mugs inscribed with 'Kisses from Guantanamo Bay' "Pretending that Guantanamo Bay is essentially a resort in the Caribbean is grossly offensive and the idea of relaxing in the sun while close by many individuals are robbed of their rights, tortured and abused is both repugnant and ridiculous." His anger is shared by other human rights campaigners. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said Guantanamo represents a shameful chapter in American history. Amnesty International said: "These supposedly 'fun' souvenirs are in grotesquely bad taste and the fact that they are on sale at the camp quite frankly beggars belief." There are currently 280 prisoners sweltering in cages in temperatures of up to 100F (38C). The camp, where 7,000 soldiers are stationed, was established in 2002 following the invasion of Afghanistan. Guantanamo bay: The U.S. was accused of deliberately pushing detainees to the edge In 2004, photographs of cowed Guantanamo prisoners in orange jump suits shocked the world. "The majority are kept in isolation in cells that are no bigger than a toilet," said Katznelson. "There is no sea view. Instead, if they have a window, it looks out on to a bleak corridor. The cells are lined with steel from floor to ceiling, including the toilet, sink and bed base. "There is a popular misconception that these men have had trials and been found guilty. Nothing is further from the truth. Not one of them has. "The tortures that the Americans use are wide-ranging and inhuman. One is to blast the cell with freezing cold air. Another is to pretend to take the prisoners to a country like Egypt where prisoners are tortured, even to the extent of taking them on a mock flight, so they can be treated in a barbaric fashion." Katznelson continued: "Inmates are offered three meals a day, but there are eight prisoners who have been on hunger strike for over a year asking either for a trial or to be set free. "These men are force-fed twice a day. First they are strapped down with 16 different restrictions, including one that jerks their head back. Then a tube is fed through their nose and down into their stomach. "The guards don't always use lubrication and regularly use the same tube for several different prisoners without bothering to clean it." Guantanamo Bay has been rented as a military base from Cuba since 1903 for an unchanged $4,499 a year. "As it is outside American territory the US Constitution doesn't apply," said Katznelson. This may soon change as the US Supreme Court is about to reach a verdict on whether the Guantanamo Bay area is de facto American soil. If so, the US Constitution does apply and the men will have the right to a fair and speedy trial. -- Yoshie From critical.montages at gmail.com Tue May 6 06:42:53 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Tue, 6 May 2008 08:42:53 -0400 Subject: [R-G] FT: "Fascists and Jews United for Rome Mayor" Message-ID: In the recent elections in both Italy and the United Kingdom, the Right, both soft and hard, won a dramatic victory, and all currents of the Left lost. IMHO, the Left of the global North has yet to come up with a principled and yet popular program on the intertwined questions of Israel, Islam, and immigration, and the lack of it doesn't bode well especially when economic anxiety is on the rise, these two elections may very well be harbingers of worse things to come. -- Yoshie Fascists and Jews united for Rome mayor By Guy Dinmore in Rome Published: May 4 2008 19:18 | Last updated: May 4 2008 19:18 Rome's election last week of its first rightwing mayor since the time of Benito Mussolini has been celebrated by fascists as a historic victory over the left. Packs of young, thuggish supporters of Gianni Alemanno greeted the new mayor's appearance at the Campidoglio city hall with straight-armed "Roman" salutes, shouting abuse at communists and immigrants. "Before, if you were a fascist you had to pretend to be part of the mainstream to have respectability. Now they are coming out of the closet," said an aide to the defeated centre-left candidate, Francesco Rutelli. Debate over the significance of the National Alliance's first election victory in a major city has been intense ? especially among the capital's small but important Jewish commun?ity, which is widely thought to have swung in Mr Alemanno's favour. Rome's Jewish voters, numbering about 9,000, explain their shift to the right in various ways, most often because they see the National Alliance as firmly pro-Israel. Michel Bokhobza, whose family fled from Libya to Rome in 1967 in the wake of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day war, says Italy's centre-right is much closer to Israel than the pro-Arab bias of the centre-left. "Even if his past was very close to fascism and ex-fascism, Alemanno belongs to the coalition guided by [Silvio] Berlusconi and [Gianfranco] Fini," he said, referring to the People of Liberty alliance that also swept national elections last month. Mr Bokhobza had always voted for centre-left candidates for Rome mayor. Giving his second reason for changing, he said they had not managed the city well. "The ideology of politics is finished," he added. Sandro Di Castro, president of the Jewish community's Bene Berith association, says the present sense of danger posed to Israel by Islamists and Iran outweighs memories of the more distant and tragic past of the mass deportations from Rome by the Nazis and Mussolini's anti-Jewish race laws. Times had changed, he said, since 1993 and the first open elections for Rome. The right's candidate then was Mr Fini, now leader of the National Alliance, who at that point was part of its neo-fascist predecessor, the MSI, the direct heirs of Mussolini. "Fini was then seen as a demon and neo-fascist," said Mr Di Castro. The "turning point" came in 1995 when Mr Fini became head of the new National Alliance and started to steer it towards the mainstream. That process was completed in 2003 when, as deputy prime minister in the second Berlusconi government, Mr Fini denounced fascism as an "absolute evil" in a ground-breaking visit to Israel. Mr Alemanno's personal journey is less certain. Leftwing commentators have called the 50-year-old former agriculture minister fascist, neo-fascist and post-fascist ? in the 1980s he headed the sometimes violent youth wing of the MSI in Rome. But, campaigning on a law-and-order platform, he was also astute in courting the Jewish vote, promising to continue school visits to Auschwitz and to complete work on a Holocaust museum in Rome. Dominique Sicouri, from Egypt's Jewish community, says her "heart is with the left" but she still decided to work with Mr Alemanno in building ties with France's ruling UMP party, for which she acts as spokeswoman in Italy. She sees Mr Alemanno as intelligent, serious and a pragmatic moderniser. His Jewish supporters say that in power he will be better placed to rein in extremism. If he fails, they will be among the first to desert him. -- Yoshie From fentona at shaw.ca Tue May 6 08:48:32 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 07:48:32 -0700 Subject: [R-G] 60 Years Later: Canada and the Origins of the Israel-Palestine Conflict Message-ID: <190D6C99-71EE-4BE9-AB44-3C583B4C174B@shaw.ca> 60 Years Later: Canada and the Origins of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Part 1 of 3 May 06, 2008 By Dan Freeman-Maloy http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/17552 The year 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel, and should be the occasion for a serious re- evaluation of international policy towards the conflict that has ensued. Political Zionism, and after 1948 the Israeli state, has consistently drawn crucial political, economic and military support from Europe and North America. With this support comes a heavy burden of responsibility for its consequences. These consequences are much too severe to be ignored or tolerated. In Gaza today, 1.5 million people - mostly refugees from 1948 - are being collectively punished and starved in line with a policy of what Israeli officials call "economic warfare," approved by Israel's Supreme Court and accompanied by continuous air strikes, artillery attacks and ground incursions. When Palestinian citizens of Israel demonstrated in solidarity with Gaza this March following a series of Israeli attacks that left 269 Palestinians wounded and 120 dead, a member of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) Foreign Affairs and Defense Committees heckled them with threats of expulsion from the country. Neither Israeli legal structures nor Jewish Israeli public opinion seem to pose any serious obstacle to Israel's intensifying war against the Palestinians. Western policy, meanwhile, continues to help prevent constructive international intervention. While there is much guilt to go around, Canada is operating in particularly crude alignment with Israel against the Palestinians. Within the framework of the "war on terror," the Canadian government has criminalized nearly all major Palestinian political parties by designating them as "terrorist groups" (under Bill C-36), even as it cultivates ever more intimate trade, security and diplomatic relations with the Israeli state. On the United Nations Human Rights Council, Canada has emerged as the staunchest opponent of meaningful criticism of Israeli human rights violations and war crimes. Under these circumstances, many in Canada could find it tempting to fall into a kind of nostalgia - for an Israel that was more liberal and democratic, or for a Canadian foreign policy that was more even- handed. To be sure, Israeli political culture has, in important respects, shifted to the right in recent decades, and Israeli regional ambitions have expanded and taken on new significance. In recent Canadian history, the policy shifts initiated under the Paul Martin Liberals (from late 2004), and extended by the Stephen Harper Conservatives, have sharpened Canadian alignment with Israel against the Palestinians. But the Israeli war against indigenous Palestinians is not novel. Nor is Canadian rejection of Palestinian rights to political self- representation, or official indifference to the well-being and very survival of the Palestinian people. A broad, vigorous challenge to these policies is imperative. Such a challenge can only be weakened by a refusal to own up to the history from which these policies extend, or by an under-estimation of how rooted they are in longstanding Canadian perceptions and practices. The 60th anniversary of the war of 1948, which was perhaps the defining moment of the Israel-Palestine conflict, affords us the opportunity to explore this track-record of Canadian complicity and strengthen the challenge to its continuation. This article aims to contribute to this process. It falls considerably short of a comprehensive exploration of the Canadian record on this issue. Instead, it reviews some basic historical aspects of Canadian interaction with Israel/Palestine, focusing on the landmark event that is at the centre of a series of upcoming celebrations: the mass ethnic cleansing of 1948. Early Zionist Colonization, Canada, and the ?Transfer' of Palestinians: Wadi al-Hawarith and Beyond The history of Canadian interaction with Israel/Palestine can be understood in relation to two conflicts. The first of these is the specific clash between the political Zionist movement and indigenous Palestinian Arabs. The second is broader, between the imperial ambitions of Western powers (including Canada, Britain, and the United States) and the aspirations of people in the Middle East for genuine independence and decolonization - this as connected to the wider international struggle between the major world powers and regional liberation movements. While this article focuses on the first of these conflicts, it bears emphasis that the two are in fact inseparable. This article centres on the events of 1948, but the processes which led up to these events - and which we still live with today - did not emerge overnight. It may be useful, then, to review the roots of the conflict that culminated in 1948, and the nature of early Canadian interaction with it. The first part of this article is devoted to this task. Roots of the Conflict, Early Canadian Orientations These roots can be traced to late 19th century Europe. The intensification of anti-Semitism during this period - notably, the sustained outburst of violence in Russia following the assassination of Czar Alexander the II in 1881 - provoked a process of widespread Jewish migration which, in addition to laying the basis for much of the contemporary Canadian Jewish community, also produced the first wave of modern Jewish immigration to Palestine. In the coming years, these circumstances combined with the upsurge of nationalism across Europe to strengthen calls for a specifically Jewish nation-building project. In an era of massive European imperial expansion, the option of concentrated Jewish settlement overseas as a means of pursuing this project and as a purported solution to Europe's "Jewish problem" became a topic of serious consideration. In 1897, the World Zionist Organization (WZO) was established as an instrument to carry it out.* The European colonial campaigns which marked this period, most infamously including the colonization of much of Africa, directly encroached upon what we now know as the Middle East: in 1882, for example, British troops occupied Egypt. It was the extension of this process to Palestine which determined both the fortunes of the political Zionist movement, and the terms of Canadian interaction with it. The critical moment came with the First World War. In 1918, Allied forces operating under the British General Edmund Allenby conquered Palestine from the Ottoman Turks and subjected it to an Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA). The previous year, British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour had declared his government's support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." This declaration was prompted by an odd mixture of imperial geopolitics, Christian Zionism, and misperceptions of international Jewish political clout - those interested can refer to Maxime Rodinson's Israel and the Arabs, Roger Adelson's London and the Invention of the Middle East, and Sabeel's recent volume, Challenging Christian Zionism: Theology, Politics and the Israel-Palestine Conflict. In any event, as of 1918, the Zionist movement enjoyed considerable support from the major world power (Britain) in effective control over Palestine - a power, moreover, under whose flag the Canadian government had long operated. The impact on Canadian Zionism was considerable. The WZO's inaugural conference in 1897 had committed the movement to "[t]he organization and binding together of the whole of Jewry by means of appropriate institutions, local and international, in accordance with the laws of each country"; in Canada, a Federation of Zionist Societies (precursor to the Zionist Organization of Canada, ZOC) had been duly established in 1899. Canadian Zionist activities had long received official encouragement, with Prime Ministers and other prominent supporters even attending the occasional Zionist conference from as early as 1906. Bolstered by the prestige of British imperial endorsement, Canadian Zionism now operated within a still friendlier atmosphere. The Canadian Zionist movement had long focused on fundraising. This was coordinated by the World Zionist Organization, and directed in large part towards the WZO's land-acquisition and colonization arm, the Jewish National Fund (JNF), established by the 5th Zionist Congress in 1901. Following WWI and the British occupation of Palestine, the Zionist movement as a whole expanded and was restructured. As part of this process, its fundraising activities in Canada were reorganized, and escalated considerably. The British Mandate's "Appropriate Jewish Agency" Even with the British occupation of Palestine in 1918, Britain's declaration of support for a Jewish "national home" in Palestine was just that: a unilateral government declaration. The post-war diplomatic settlement and establishment of the League of Nations, however, involved the creation of a mandates system as "a means of lawfully incorporating the former colonial peoples of the losing side in World War I into the colonial empires of the victorious allies without explicitly extending colonialism as such."(Falk, 40) This was viewed as a betrayal across the Arab east, where resistance to Ottoman rule had been mounted in relation to the Allies' wartime promises of post-war independence. The situation was particularly dramatic in Palestine, where the League of Nations conferred a sort of legal and diplomatic legitimacy upon Zionist colonization by formally incorporating the Balfour declaration into the terms of the British mandate. Additionally, Article 4 of the British mandate stated that "[a]n appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognized as a public body for the purpose of advising and cooperating with the Administration of Palestine," and that the WZO, "so long as its organization and constitution are in the opinion of the Mandatory appropriate, shall be recognized as such agency."(Shaw, 5) As its new official status was setting in, the WZO was busy restructuring its fundraising institutions. A new organization was established, called the Keren Hayesod (Foundation Fund), to function - in the words of the relevant WZO resolution - "as the central fund of the Zionist Organization under the control of the Zionist Congress." When a distinct "Jewish Agency" constitution was ratified in 1929, it affirmed that "unless and until otherwise determined ..., the Palestine Foundation Fund shall be the main financial instrument of the Agency for the purpose of covering its budget."(Stock, 27 & 88) In North America, financial support for the Keren Hayesod (to be used at the discretion of the WZO/Jewish Agency executive) and for the Jewish National Fund specifically (which was also ultimately under WZO direction) was organized in close coordination under the umbrella of a combined fundraising campaign, the United Palestine Appeal (UPA). And so, in association with a revamped fundraising apparatus - and in an atmosphere of British imperial endorsement - Canadian support for political Zionist colonization efforts intensified. Perceptions of Pre-Colonization Palestine: "A Land Without a People" Before exploring some of the noteworthy aspects of direct Canadian interaction with Zionist colonization in Palestine, the basic political Zionist orientation towards Palestine's indigenous population deserves attention. Here, a convenient starting point is offered by the memoirs of an individual whose name will come up repeatedly below: Ben Dunkelman (1913-1997). His father David was the founder of the retail giant Tip Top Tailors; his mother Rose the Ontario leader of the women's Zionist organization Hadassah. A veteran of the Second World War, Ben Dunkelman is today a much-revered figure amongst Canada's Israel-linked Jewish community leadership. He was also a notable Canadian culprit in the ethnic cleansing of 1948. Visitors to Toronto's Lipa Green Building, headquarters of the United Israel Appeal Federations Canada (UIAFC) - the umbrella operation for the Canadian Jewish Congress and Canada-Israel Committee, and successor to the United Palestine Appeal - can today view Dunkelman's autobiography, Dual Allegiance, cased in a glass display as a monument to the author and the history he represents. The text is a credible reference-point in exploring the outlook of the Canadian Zionist establishment. Dunkelman describes the circumstances prevailing at the time of the British occupation of 1918 as follows: "At the time, the total population of Palestine was about one million, and the Jews were a small minority, numbering no more than 160,000. But Jewish settlements were springing up all over the country - small and isolated, but veritable oases in a landscape which was otherwise largely barren wilderness."(19) Dunkelman's population figures are a bit off. In a detailed study published by Columbia University Press, Justin McCarthy puts Palestine's total population in 1918 at approximately 750,000, including a Jewish community of slightly less than 60,000 people. About 8% of the population was Jewish, then - up from approximately 3% before the immigration of 1882 onwards, but in any event, as Dunkelman puts it, "a small minority." His approach to the non-Jewish indigenous majority is both representative and highly revealing. In describing this populated territory as "largely barren wilderness," Dunkelman is essentially echoing the classic Zionist slogan: "A land without a people for a people without a land." This slogan is sometimes taken to suggest that Palestine was literally uninhabited, but this was obviously not the understanding. As the detailed work of the Palestinian scholar Nur Masalha shows, the slogan was, instead, part of a conscious effort to undermine indigenous rights to the land. Consider the blunt words of Israel Zangwill, who coined and popularized this classic slogan. Zangwill also declared: "[We] must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the [Arab] tribes in possession as our forefathers did or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us."(Masalha '92, 10) It was not that Palestine did not have inhabitants, but that it did not have a people worthy of the land; that "there is at best an Arab encampment," as Zangwill put it. (Masalha '97, 62) And so it was for Dunkelman: "The [Jewish] colonies were well tended and green, standing out in contrast to the wasteland all around. The Arab villagers also tilled their land, of course, but they were terribly exploited by absentee landlords, disease-ridden, and tied to agricultural methods that were primitive and ineffective."(19) Dunkelman, who briefly settled in Palestine in 1931-32, thus depicts his efforts to rid Palestinians of their traditional existence as almost humanitarian. At the same time, he points to what it was about Zionist land ownership and settlement that would come to produce such anger amongst Palestinians. He relates an anecdote from his work as part of a Zionist settlement on absentee-owned land in Palestine. This involved confrontation with Palestinians trying to drink water and otherwise make use of land which had not previously been subjected to such exclusive control. "Till that time," Dunkelman writes, "there had been a kind of unwritten agreement whereby the Arabs were permitted to come into our groves and cut the grass growing between the trees. But I thought we should hold on to that grass, for use as fertilizer, or to sell for fodder."(40) This provoked a physical confrontation - but despite being "a hell of a long way from Upper Canada College," Dunkelman "could punch, wrestle, kick, butt, and gouge as well as any man," and laid down the new rules.(4) One may infer from Dunkelman's writing that he simply tended to be somewhat of a thug. But such acts of aggressive exclusion were not restricted to a few overzealous settlers. Regarding the mainstream Zionist policy, and sticking to instances of prominent Canadian involvement, the case of Wadi al-Hawarith is instructive. Canada's Patch of "Uninhabited Sand and Swamp" Formally, significant portions of Palestine were owned by absentee landlords. This was a fact that the Zionist movement, with the support of British legislative reforms, leveraged to its advantage. Purchase of absentee-owned land, combined with efforts to displace its inhabitants, was a major preoccupation of the Zionist movement through the 1920s and 1930s. Naturally, this was an approach which relied upon the heavy participation of international fundraising networks. It was in accord with this model that the WZO acquired title to the lands of Wadi al-Hawarith, a stretch of coastal territory located at about equal distances south of Haifa, and north of Jaffa and Tel Aviv. Spanning some 30,000 dunams (one dunam is roughly equal to one square kilometer) Wadi al-Hawarith was home to a Bedouin community with a population estimated by the British at 1,000 to 1,200 people, with livestock of 3,200.(Adler, 204) In 1928, legal title to the land was acquired by the JNF with the support of Canadian Zionist fundraisers. This purchase was a major focal point for Canadian Zionist activity, and often comes up in histories of the movement. Its implications, however, are rarely discussed. Take the work of Gerald Tulchinsky, whose book Branching Out: The Transformation of the Canadian Jewish Community provides a lively account of many workers' struggles, campaigns against immigration restrictions, and other important chapters of the history at issue. Unfortunately, on issues of Zionism and Palestine, he succumbs to the familiar dogma. Of the push to secure title to Wadi al-Hawarith, he writes: "JNF officials were anxious to acquire this large tract of uninhabited sand and swamp when it became available in the mid-1920s."(165) In fact, not only was Wadi al-Hawarith inhabited, but the struggle over the fate of its tenants became a significant issue for the Zionist leadership, the British authorities, and the Palestinian national movement alike. The designation "tenants" requires some clarification. Technically, according to the Ottoman land registry inherited and reformed by the British, the people of Wadi al-Hawarith did not themselves have title to the land which they worked. But this had previously had very little impact on their lives. Tenancy was permanent, and could be inherited. The nominal owners - in this case, originally a Lebanese Maronite who had lived in Jaffa, and mortgaged the land to an individual in France - were entitled to rent; but as in Wadi al-Hawarith, many owners collected rarely if at all.(Adler, 204) In this instance, the owner's heirs, spread across a number of continents, had failed to meet the original owner's debts. The JNF applied a combination of pressure and bribery to ensure that the land was put to public auction. And so, as leading JNF official Yosef Weitz would later write, "the President of the Jewish National Fund, M[enachem] Ussishkin, packed his bags and sailed off to Canada to arouse the dispersed Jews and encourage them to contribute to the redemption of this valley". Canadian Zionists committed to raising $1,000,000 for the effort, and worked for the better part of the next decade paying it off. (Adler, 200; Kimmerling, 70; Tulchinsky, 166) For four years following the issuance by British authorities of the first eviction notice in 1929, the tenants of Wadi al-Hawarith maintained an impressively unified struggle to preserve their community from displacement. The first attempt to physically evict them was resisted with sticks and stones. As Walid Khalidi explains: "The insistence of the people of Wadi al-Hawarith to remain on their land came from their conviction that the land belonged to them by virtue of their having lived on it for 350 years. For them, ownership of the land was an abstraction that at most signified the landlords' right to a share of the crop."(Khalidi '92, 564) This insistence collided head-on with the political Zionist position, as crudely expressed in 1930 by JNF president Ussishkin (the main broker of this deal, but referring to the issue in Palestine as a whole): "If there are other inhabitants there, they must be transferred to some other place. We must take over the land. We have a great and nobler ideal than preserving several hundred thousands of fellahin." (Masalha '92, 27) The British rejected a proposal from the Jewish Agency to transfer the tenants to Jordan. However, they continued to try and remove them from this coastal territory and to transfer them elsewhere in Palestine: "in my opinion," the Assistant District Commissioner in Nablus explained, "this pocket of primitive Semi-negroid Beduin ... is a nuisance and only serves to impede the proper development of a very valuable area." (Altran, 734) The struggle peaked in 1933. In Nablus, a general strike was organized in solidarity with the tenants of Wadi al-Hawarith. On the anniversary of the Balfour declaration, the tenants themselves marched to join demonstrations in Tulkarem, and were prevented from doing so only by coordination between police units and low-flying RAF planes which dispersed the demonstrators. (Adler, 215) As Raya Adler (Cohen) writes: "The convergence of the tenants' resistance against their displacement with the general political struggle briefly turned the Wadi Hawarith affair into an event of national important that resonated beyond the borders of Palestine." Eventually, most tenants were evicted and dispersed; some managed to stay on small patches of the land until 1948; and popular anger around the case "merged into the general wave of discontent." (215 & 213) Adler (Cohen) continues: "Had the JNF compromised with the tenants and allowed them to cultivate part of the land as they demanded (and as was proposed by a Jewish peasant journal), the affair might have ended differently. But the JNF's goals were national rather than economic: it could not content itself with legal ownership; Jewish settlers had to replace the Arab tenants. The displacement of the Bedouin violated the customs of Arab society and united the community in protest against this blatant injustice."(216) In Canada, meanwhile, Zionist fundraising for this project continued, receiving a prominent official rubber-stamp just as the struggle over this case was at its height. Zionist Organization of Canada president A.J. Freiman - interlocutor with Ussishkin on the Wadi al-Hawarith case - was joined in a radio broadcast for the United Palestine Appeal 1933 by Prime Minister R.B. Bennett. Referring to "the promises of God, speaking through His prophets," the Prime Minister declared: "Scriptural prophecy is being fulfilled. The restoration of Zion has begun."(Gottesman, 91) Building on Precedent: "Transfer the Arabs" Political Zionist ambitions of ethnically cleansing Palestine were not restricted to incremental land acquisition, enclosure, and settlement from abroad. Already in 1919, Winston Churchill had noted that the Zionists "take it for granted that the local population will be cleared out to suit their convenience."(Masalha '92, 15) For the mainstream political Zionist leadership, this remained a core objective. Throughout the 1920s and the early '30s, the relative weakness of the Zionist movement, and the overall isolation of indigenous Palestinian resistance by the British authorities, kept concrete discussion of how to pursue this objective fairly broad and abstract. But in 1936, the eruption of a large-scale Palestinian Arab rebellion prompted a detailed consideration of this issue in mainstream Zionist bodies. On the one hand, the eviction of tenants and the displacement of peasants during the course of Zionist settlement was a central cause of the indigenous rebellion. On the other, it was recognized by Zionist strategists as a positive precedent for "compulsory transfer." In 1937, for example, JNF National Committee member Eliahu (Lulu) Hacarmeli argued that if the Zionist movement were to engage in widespread "transfer, even if it were to be carried out through compulsion - all moral enterprises are carried through compulsion - we will be justified in all senses. And if we negate all right to transfer, we would need to negate everything we have done until now: the transfer from Emek Hefer [Wadi al-Hawarith] to Beit Shean, from the Sharon to Ephraem Mountains etc." (Masalha '92, 73) The establishment by the Jewish Agency in late 1937 of a Population Transfer Committee is notable not simply because, alongside JNF heavyweight Yosef Weitz and others, it included Dov Yosef - the former head of Canadian Young Judea, one of the Canadian groupings that advocated direct settlement - but because it indicates how formally mainstream Zionist institutions were coming to grapple with this question. A detailed exploration of these discussions is provided by Nur Masalha (Expulsion of the Palestinians: the concept of "transfer" in Zionist political thought, 1882-1948), and need not detain us here. But a diary entry by Yosef Weitz from 1940 does outline the severe conclusion which key Zionist leaders reached: "The Zionist work so far, in terms of preparation and paving the way for the creation of the Hebrew state in the Land of Israel, has been good and was able to satisfy itself with land-purchasing but this will not bring about the state; that must come about simultaneously in the manner of redemption (here is the meaning of the Messianic idea). The only way is to transfer the Arabs from here to neighbouring countries, all of them, except perhaps Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Old Jerusalem. Not a single village or a single tribe must be left." (Masalha '92, 131-132) A Dose of British Civilization for Palestine What followed the eruption of the Palestinian Arab rebellion in 1936 was not only a detailed discussion of political Zionist strategies for dealing with Palestine's indigenous majority; there also occurred a shift in power which helped set the stage for their successful pursuit in 1948. British policy was central in effecting this shift. The British responded to the revolt with the advanced military means at their disposal. 20,000 British troops, operating with considerable air power, were deployed to crush the rebellion. The leading institutions of the Palestinian Arab national movement - eg., the Arab Higher Committee and the National Committee - were declared to be illegal and forcibly dismantled. Waves of British military operations, executions and deportations left Palestinian Arab society thoroughly weakened. (See for example Hirst, Nachmani & Shaw, cited below.) At the same time, not only did the Jewish Agency and associated institutions continue to operate, but their military capabilities were given a tremendous boost. Technically, the Jewish Agency's military arm, the Hagana, was illegal. In practice, the Hagana received regular financing - and not only thanks to international fundraising anchored by the Keren Hayesod. The British government itself helped to arm, pay, and train forces selected by the Jewish Agency (mostly Hagana units), with which they then coordinated in repressing the uprising. (Shaw, 590-1) In an article titled "Britain's Contribution to Arming the Hagana," David Ben-Gurion, executive of the Jewish Agency from 1935 to 1948 (and then Israeli Prime Minister), explained: "The appearance of thousands of Jewish young men with legalized arms immediately improved our defence position."(372) The article continues: "The most successful and complete co-operations between the Jews and the British was achieved with the establishment of the Special Night Squads by a distinguished British Officer, Captain Charles Orde Wingate. This was a practical step towards the establishment of a Jewish military force within the framework of the British Army." (375) British journalist Leonard Mosley gives the following account of the first Special Night Squads raid on an Arab village. Wingate apparently fired into the village, drawing the local militia out into a trap which saw 5 militia members killed and 4 captured: "Wingate came back, carrying a Turkish rifle over his shoulder. He looked calm and serene. ?Good work. You are fine boys and will make good soldiers,' he said. He went up to the four Arab prisoners. He said in Arabic: ?You have arms in this village. Where have you hidden them?' The Arabs shook their heads, and protested ignorance. Wingate reached down and took sand and grit form the ground; he thrust it into the mouth of the first Arab and pushed it down his throat until he choked and puked. ?Now,' he said, ?where have you hidden the arms?' Still they shook their heads. Wingate turned to one of the Jews and, pointing to the coughing and spluttering Arab, said, ?Shoot this man.' The Jew looked at him questioningly and hesitated. Wingate said, in a tense voice, ?Did you hear? Shoot him.' The Jew shot the Arab. The others stared for a moment, in stupefaction, at the dead boy at their feet. The boys from Hanita were watching in silence. ?Now speak,' said Wingate. They spoke." (Hirst, 105) While British-Hagana military coordination did not last, Ben-Gurion explains that "Wingate's work was not in vain. The Hagana's best officers were trained in the special Night Squads, and Wingate's doctrines were taken over by the Israel Defence Forces, which were established twelve days after the birth of the Jewish State."(387) It was in this spirit - in line with an increasingly resolute commitment to deal with indigenous Palestinians not by means of political agreement, but by means of force - that the political Zionist leadership approached the lead-up to 1948. The point was put rather bluntly by Michael Comay, a former South African intelligence officer and the leading Zionist diplomat to Canada in '48, when asked whether the Zionist movement could not have pursued some form of serious negotiations with indigenous Palestinians rather than merely seeking international support in the fight against them. "No," Comay replied simply: "the only way we can succeed is to ram our state down the throats of the Arabs. Then they'll accept it." (Bercuson '85, 195) On to Part 2: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17553 Part 3: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17554 / Part 3 *This is intended as a political rather than an academic article, and is only casually referenced. Sources are referred to (mostly in instances of direct quotes or facts that are at least potentially contentious) by author, page number, and where more piece by the same author is used, year of publication. A list of sources follows Part 3 of this article. From fentona at shaw.ca Tue May 6 09:19:52 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 08:19:52 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Democratic candidates agree on expanded US military aggression in the Middle East Message-ID: Democratic candidates agree on expanded US military aggression in the Middle East By Patrick Martin 5 May 2008 http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/may2008/dems-m05.shtml In dueling television appearances Sunday morning, Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton declared their determination to escalate US military action in the Middle East, disagreeing mainly over which country should be targeted first. Obama called for a ?surge? of US troops into Afghanistan, while Clinton reaffirmed her bloodcurdling rhetoric about the ?obliteration? of Iran. Both candidates demonstrated that their criticism of the Bush administration?s invasion and occupation of Iraq does not represent opposition to American militarism, but rather a concern?voiced even by significant sections of the military itself?that the war in Iraq has become a diversion from other, even more important, strategic objectives. Obama was interviewed on the NBC News program ?Meet the Press,? while Clinton appeared on ABC?s ?This Week.? Tim Russert, host of ?Meet the Press,? cited an NBC News report that the Bush administration is drawing up plans for air strikes against Iranian weapons factories and military training facilities, on the pretext that these sites are helping insurgents kill US soldiers in Iraq. ?If it could be demonstrated that was a fact, would you be in support of such limited attacks in Iran?? he asked Obama. The Democratic candidate did not challenge the premise of the question, or recall that that Bush administration used similar propaganda before the invasion of Iraq, circulating claims of Iraqi links to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction that proved bogus. Instead, he said he would want to ?take a look at the kind of evidence that the administration is putting forward, what these plans are exactly. I?ve always said that, you know, as commander in chief, I don?t take military options off the table and I think it?s appropriate for us to plan for a whole host of contingencies.? He went on to criticize the Bush administration because ?Iran has been the biggest strategic beneficiary of our invasion of Iraq, they are stronger because of our decision to go in.? It was necessary to begin redeploying US combat troops and disavow plans for a permanent occupation of Iraq in order to strengthen the US position in the region, he said. When Russert asked him another loaded question?citing the suggestion of the US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, that a quick withdrawal of US troops from Iraq could result in genocide?Obama again did not dispute the premise, let alone cite the estimates of more than one million Iraqi dead as a consequence of the US invasion and occupation. Instead, he reiterated his support for a ?phased withdrawal? that would leave some US combat troops in Iraq at least until the end of 2010. Asked about Hillary Clinton?s statement that in the event of an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel, the United States military response would ?obliterate? Iran, Obama criticized Clinton?s choice of words, but not her avowed policy, which would amount to using US nuclear weapons to annihilate a country of 71 million people. Comparing Clinton to George W. Bush, Obama said, ?We have had a foreign policy of bluster and saber-rattling and tough talk, and, in the meantime, we make a series of strategic decisions that actually strengthen Iran.? When pressed by Russert, however, he said, ?Israel is an ally of ours. It is the most important ally we have in the region, and there?s no doubt that we would act forcefully and appropriately on any attack... nuclear or otherwise.? Obama added that Clinton?s threat of nuclear retaliation actually constituted acceptance of the idea that Iran might acquire nuclear weapons, when US foreign policy should directed at stopping such a development. The final foreign policy question was on Afghanistan. Russert asked Obama directly, ?Would you, as president, be willing to have a military surge in Afghanistan in order to, once and for all, eliminate the Taliban?? Obama responded: ?Yes. I think that?s what we need. I think we need more troops there, I think we need to do a better job of reconstruction there. I think we have to be focused on Afghanistan. It is one of the reasons that I was opposed to the war in Iraq in the first place... And we?re also going to have to address the situation in Pakistan, where we now have, in the federated areas, Al Qaeda and the Taliban setting up bases there.? The last response demonstrates most clearly that Obama is not an ?antiwar? candidate in any genuine sense of the term. He wants (some) US troops out of Iraq, not to lessen the slaughter of the Iraqi people? as well as casualties among American soldiers?but to shift the scene of battle to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria or some other country, whose people will be targeted in the interests of American imperialism. Clinton was interviewed for an hour by George Stephanopoulos of ABC News (a former top aide in the 1992 presidential campaign of her husband, and in the Clinton White House). She defended her comment about the ?obliteration? of Iran, although the interviewer did not attempt to pin her down on the potential death toll of such a nuclear onslaught. ?Why would I have any regrets?? she said. ?I?m asked a question about what I would do if Iran attacked our ally, a country that many of us have a great deal of, you know, connection with and feeling for, for all kinds of reasons. And, yes, we would have massive retaliation against Iran.? She also repeated her call for the United States to extend its nuclear ?protection? to the Arab monarchies like Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf sheikhdoms?countries which, except for Jordan, are still nominally at war with the state of Israel, and certainly more in danger from Israel?s stockpile of 250 atomic bombs than from Iran?s as- yet-nonexistent nuclear arsenal. Clinton reiterated one of the standard pretexts used by the Bush administration to justify its aggression against Iraq, saying, ?We have to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons throughout the region, because I?m not so concerned about them falling into the hands of states, which is bad enough, as I am about falling into the hands of terrorists.? She argued that a US offer of nuclear protection could forestall an effort by Saudi Arabia or some other Arab country to develop nuclear weapons on its own to offset the hypothetical Iranian bomb. Clinton has repeatedly sought to position herself against Obama as the more hawkish and pro-Israeli of the Democratic candidates. Last week, she campaigned through North Carolina?home of one the biggest concentrations of US military personnel?with eight retired generals and admirals, including Gen. Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Television footage of her campaign showed Clinton appearing at events in Fayetteville and Jacksonville (near the huge Ft. Bragg military base), in front of a podium backdrop decorated with the slogan ?Solutions for a Strong Military.? Clinton?s ?obliteration? threat against Iran has produced a much bigger stir internationally than in the United States. Iranian diplomats filed a protest with the UN Security Council. A Saudi-based newspaper, the Arab News, described the threat as ?the foreign politics of the madhouse,? adding that ?it demonstrates the same doltish ignorance that has distinguished Bush?s foreign relations.? A British cabinet minister, Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, told the House of Lords, ?it is probably not prudent in today?s world to threaten to obliterate any other country and in many cases civilians resident in such a country.? The only significant exception to the predictable silence in the US media came from the Boston Globe, in an editorial headlined, ?Hillary Strangelove,? which concluded, ?A presidential candidate who lightly commits to obliterating Iran?and, presumably, all the children, parents and grandparents in Iran?should not be answering the White House phone at any time of day or night.? It was notable that in their Sunday appearances, neither Obama nor Clinton made mention of the statement Friday by the Republican presidential nominee John McCain that oil was the reason for US military intervention in Iraq and the Persian Gulf, nor were they asked about it by their network interviewers. McCain blurted out this remark at a town hall meeting at the Jewish Community Center in Denver, Colorado. According to press accounts, McCain told a crowd of 300, ?My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East. That will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.? The Republican candidate subsequently sought to back away from this too-frank admission. His campaign issued a ?clarification? that in McCain?s view, the US war with Iraq in 1991 was about oil, but the war launched by the Bush-Cheney administration in 2003 was not. The Democratic candidates launched a whole series of largely demagogic sallies against McCain in the course of their hour-long interviews. But they declined to bring up his inadvertent admission of a central reason for the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, because they are equally committed to maintaining US control of the oil resources of the Middle East. From fentona at shaw.ca Tue May 6 10:27:40 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 09:27:40 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Reporters Without Borders or without scruples Message-ID: Reporters Without Borders or without scruples By Neville de Silva http://www.sundaytimes.lk/080504/Columns/thoughts.html (Sri Lanka) In most parts of the world except where authoritarianism prevents it, Press Freedom Day would have been celebrated yesterday. It is as it should be. One need not have to reiterate that democracy cannot and would not function as it should without an unbridled fourth estate. While media practitioners would welcome local and international support to preserve that freedom-a freedom that goes with responsibilities- there is a need to guard against some who present themselves as defenders of the media and the safety of journalists. Under cover of this laudable intention some of them pursue an agenda that is dictated by others, especially of those who provide the financial support to sustain such questionable organisations. Such financial support could come from foreign governments as well as foreign organisations that are conduits for government money. Through such indirect means foreign interests try to give a cover of legitimacy to their public activities. Unfortunately the media that should guard itself against such infiltration and the usurpation of its interests and responsibilities by foreign organisations, have been generally remiss in maintaining the vigilance necessary to protect itself from manipulation. One such organisation is Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) or Reporters Without Borders which had the audacity to issue its list of ?predators of press freedom? to coincide with last week?s event. If there is a predator of press freedom whose predatory work has been undertaken on behalf of its financial donors, some of them undisclosed until prised open, in different parts of the world, it is RSF. The public would have better understood the manner in which RSF functions if our own media had given sufficient publicity to the recent statement by UNESCO. The Paris-based UN body withdrew its patronage for the International Day for freedom of expression on the Internet organised by RSF, also based in Paris. UNESCO said it withdrew patronage ?following the publication of information by RSF which did not follow the arrangements agreed upon between the two organisations concerning the event.? ?In its communications on the day RSF published material concerning a number of UNESCO?s Member States, which UNESCO had not been informed of and could not endorse. Furthermore UNESCO?s logo was placed in such a way as to indicate the Organisation?s support of the information presented,? the statement said. One would have thought that the local media would have taken a keener interest in this because the RSF has regularly presented itself as a great defender of the interests of the media and journalists in Sri Lanka. If in doing so it has distorted situations and incidents and filed totally false reports it would not come as a surprise to those who have been studying the history of RSF duplicity, particularly in the last seven to eight years. On 23rd March this column highlighted the false and tendentious report RSF distributed internationally headlined ?Army seizes control of public SLRC Television? referring to the authorities shutting out some 200 employees of Rupavahini who had threatened to go on strike that day. Curiously the French-language version made no mention of the army ?seizing? control. ?Sous controle de l?armee?, the headline said which is far from saying the army seized control. While both headlines were false and hinted at a coup of sorts, international researchers who have studied the work of RSF would know that this is how the Paris- based organisation acts in pursuit of political rather than media agendas. If the local media and researchers are interested in the ways of foreign-funded organisations that present themselves as arbiters of the human rights situations in small developing countries in particular, whose politics do not follow the path charted by foreign donors, would find it highly revealing to read what has been uncovered about the RSF. On May 13 2005, French writer Sami Lamrani, a researcher at Sorbonne University published an article called ?Reporters Without Borders Fraud.? It is useful quoting him at some length because it reflects what others, journalists and writers before and after him have observed. ?The strong suspicions that have surrounded the dubious and partisan activities of Reporters Without Borders were not unfounded. For many years various critics have denounced the largely political activities of the Parisian entity, particularly with regard to Cuba and Venezuela whose characteristics that utilizes propaganda is obvious. The positions of RSF against the governments of Havana and Caracas are found in perfect correlation with the political and media war that Washington carries out against the Cuban and Venezuelan revolutionaries.? ?Finally the truth has come to light. Mr Robert Menard, secretary- general of RSF for twenty years, has confessed to receiving financing from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the organisation that depends on the US Department of State whose principal role is to promote the agendas of the White House for the entire world. Menard was very clear. ?We indeed received money from the NED. And that hasn?t posed any problems.? If it posed no problem why was this donation not reflected in the accounts of RSF until some enterprising journalist researcher prised it out of RSF that was behaving oyster- like and keeping it tightly closed. Writing in November 2007 in the ?World Politics Review?, its contributing editor John Rosenthal states that until 2005, RSF made no mention of the fact that it was receiving financial support from the European Union. Rosenthal writes that RSF?s annual Press Freedom Index has named 17 European countries in the top 20. Says Rosenthal: ?The performance of European countries in the RSF press freedom rankings is impressive. It becomes less impressive, however, when one knows the extent to which RSF depends for its financing upon European governments either directly or indirectly via the European Union. RSF is commonly referred to as a ?non governmental organisation or NGO.? ?But in the light of its financial dependence upon and close ties to, in particular, the French Government and above all, European institutions, RSF could be regarded as the very prototype of what might be better called a PGO, para-governmental organisation.? As in the curious difference in the headlines of the Sri Lanka story cited above, in the 2006 accounts of RSF there is some hanky-panky. Rosenthal points out that a line called ?subsidies? that appears in the French version had mysteriously disappeared in the English version. There is plenty more about RSF, especially its political meddling and partisanship in the 2002 coup in Venezuela that tried to oust the democratically elected government of Hugo Chavez. Unfortunately the lack of space does not permit me to deal with that aspect and other issues in this column. But there is much in writings on RSF that should cause concern among policy makers and media persons at home. There might well be journalists who have been inveigled into the RSF embrace because it is seen by them as a respectable institution defending freedom of expression. But the facts that have been unearthed about the RSF by journalists and others including even conservative newspapers such as Le Figaro and the Los Angeles Times, should leave one questioning the authenticity of RSF?s stated intentions. Just as there are serious questions about the financing of RSF one should also examine where some of our own organisations with similar objectives such as the Free Media Movement, receive their funding. If transparency is what they demand of others, it is best that they have it themselves to erase any lingering doubts that people might have about them. I remember in the old days it was alleged that American organisations such as Asia Foundation were actually front organisations of the CIA. Perhaps it was not true, I would not know. But if today some media organisations that present themselves as defenders of free media and journalists and receive funding from such organisations as the Asia Foundation it is best to dispel any misgivings by declaring any affiliations or receipt of funds. From shniad at sfu.ca Tue May 6 12:32:23 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 11:32:23 -0700 Subject: [R-G] (Turin) Israel is not a guest of honour! Free Palestine! Message-ID: <200805061832.m46IWNjY015232@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080506/b00e9105/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Tue May 6 12:35:51 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 11:35:51 -0700 Subject: [R-G] WE CANNOT CELEBRATE Message-ID: <200805061835.m46IZpJd023259@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080506/dc1b0cb8/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Tue May 6 13:48:56 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 12:48:56 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Rich wage class war, not StatsCan Message-ID: <200805061948.m46JmuJx025551@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080506/30e59c06/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Tue May 6 13:49:31 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 12:49:31 -0700 Subject: [R-G] US Backs Bolivia's Break-up Message-ID: <200805061949.m46JnWeF026627@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080506/ea23fb80/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Tue May 6 13:50:11 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 12:50:11 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Descending into Madness in Iraq -- and Beyond Message-ID: <200805061950.m46JoBgi027940@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080506/f349aa6a/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Tue May 6 13:54:36 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 12:54:36 -0700 Subject: [R-G] (Canada) A History of Hypocrisy Message-ID: <200805061954.m46Jsa1i006770@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080506/9c00c654/attachment.txt From shimogamo at attglobal.net Tue May 6 04:46:39 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 19:46:39 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Silly Season Is Upon Us Message-ID: <4820370F.4020402@attglobal.net> The Peak Oil Crisis by Tom Whipple Falls Church News-Press (April 17 2008) During the past week, the surge in oil prices continued with crude, gasoline and diesel prices all hitting new highs. US gasoline consumption may be down by a few tenths of a percent (which seems logical) or then again, it may be up a bit in recent weeks depending on which numbers you are reading. Our Presidential candidates, or at least their handlers, are beginning to grasp that we have a problem here and are beginning to make proposals. We have clearly entered the silly season, for all three major candidates now have endorsed the notion that the US should stop buying oil for its strategic reserve in order to force prices back down. This might sound sensible until you learn that the US is only squirreling away eight ten-thousandths of the world's production each day. The Republican candidate for President is now calling for a "holiday" that would suspend the 18.4 cent a gallon federal gas tax. This proposal of course will never pass, but if it should, the hoped-for jump in gasoline sales will quickly move gas prices higher. At a time when prices are rising about five cents a week, cutting taxes is unlikely to boost Hummer sales. Up on Capitol Hill a lot of folks are worried, but as yet few have mustered the courage to propose realistic solutions. Some are beating on the oil companies and are calling for the umpteenth investigation of gas prices. Others want to yank the $18 billion annual tax break the oil industry gets and move the money to researching renewables. The rest just want to increase drilling for oil somewhere - usually in the Atlantic or Alaska - without mentioning that at best it would take decades to produce the oil should some be found. No one wants to mention that our energy crisis now seems months, or perhaps less, away. It is hard to really blame the politicians. As long as most of us cling to the hope that high gas prices will go away or that a painless silver bullet that will solve our energy problem is just around the corner, few candidates for public office are ready to propose what are thought to be "painful solutions" to our problems. They still shoot messengers. The great irony in all this is that the problem is simple to understand. World crude oil production has been essentially flat for the last three years while 1.3 billion Chinese, 1.1 billion Indians, and another quarter billion or so living in oil exporting countries continue to increase their oil consumption at a prodigious pace. Incidentally, the Chinese just announced that their diesel imports during the first quarter of 2008 were up seven fold over 2007. Currently, the real issue is how long it will take the American people to understand the seriousness of a problem that will require decades of pain, discomfort and inconvenience to mitigate. When gasoline and diesel prices go up a few more dollars a gallon, or when permanent shortages develop, everybody will get the message and media will start to talk coherently. Until then, understanding will be incremental and painfully slow Every now and again, however, a voice of reason is beginning to appear in the mainstream media. On cable business news, every 500th guest now speaks of looming oil shortages in terms of inadequate supply to meet growing demand. This message is immediately drowned out by wave after wave of talking heads explaining that now is a great time to find bargains in the equity markets and high oil prices are caused by a temporary surge in speculation. In general, there seems to be progress in that most, but not all, of the major national newspapers will now acknowledge that world oil production will peak some day. Rather than presenting imminent oil depletion as a fact, the major papers are writing "balanced" stories in which somebody says peak oil is imminent, somebody says it is forty years away, and wise expert arbitrator splits the difference saying oil supply problems are ten to fifteen years out. The reader of course accepts all this, breathes a sigh of relief that he still has fifteen years and goes about his business. A poll of Congress, their staffs and senior government officials is likely to produce similar results - world oil production will indeed peak, but that day is not close enough that I have to risk public ire by proposing painful and unpopular solutions to my successor's problem. Unfortunately for the future of America, The Washington Post, which is read religiously by everyone of consequence in the federal government, has been among the slowest in acknowledging that a paradigm-changing worldwide oil shortage is imminent. Last week, with oil pushing above $110 a barrel and gasoline prices setting new records each day, The Post felt impelled to say something about the issue. After telling us that prices are indeed going up and the Presidential candidates are coming up with inadequate solutions, The Post cites one of the many pronouncements by the CEO of Shell oil company, Jeroen van der Veer, to the effect that "The fundamentals are no problem". "He blamed the lack of spare oil production and refining capacity, and tensions in the Middle East, for keeping prices high". The Post adds the coup de grace with "Shell's Van der Veer said he expects a crunch in energy markets in ten to fifteen". The rest of the story is taken up with how speculators and hedge funds fleeing the falling dollar are driving up oil above its "true" prices which is a few dollars above the cost of production. The Post suggests this "true" value could be anywhere from $10 to $60 a barrel, depending on which oil field it is coming from. So there you have it. Our national leaders now know that the peak oil crisis is ten to fifteen years away and that speculation is largely responsible for your soon-to-be-$4 a gallon gasoline. http://www.fcnp.com/national_commentary/the_peak_oil_crisis_the_silly_season_is_upon_us_20080416.html TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From shimogamo at attglobal.net Wed May 7 04:36:23 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 19:36:23 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] What Car Do You Drive? Message-ID: <48218627.6060301@attglobal.net> by Richard Heinberg The Ecologist (May 2008) The question inevitably arises soon after readers or lecture audiences first become acquainted with global oil depletion and climate change. I must be asked it at least once a week. Sometimes I reply by reciting how I didn't buy my first car till age forty, how I later drove an old diesel Mercedes while belonging to a local biodiesel co-operative, how I scrapped that fume-belching heap of metal and replaced it with a Toyota Yaris to protest the Brontosaurian dimensions of the typical American SUV, and how I now often get around town on an electric scooter. But that answer, while respecting the query's intent, fails to advance the conversation. The question presumes a continuation of car-centered culture, and that is precisely what must be called into doubt. In many parts of the world (especially North America), automobile ownership is a given. Throughout the last century, the petroleum, automotive, and road-building industries amassed and exerted enormous political power, systematically foreclosing all other transport options through efforts either to starve rail and public transit infrastructure of funds, or to buy them up and dismantle them. Bucking the current massive system of highways and short-lived personal dream machines often requires courage, dedication, and planning. Very few individuals are sufficiently motivated. Thus it's understandable that the first policy response to depleting petroleum reserves and the climate threat has been a rush toward biofuels and coal-to-liquids technologies - rather than a questioning of the auto-centric system itself. Yet if either of these alternative fuel sources is expanded enough to replace oil, the car (rather than the atom bomb) may end up being the invention that destroys the world. Our transition away from fossil fuels will require a societal effort at a scale and speed never before seen; given the limits on our time and money, we cannot afford to waste both investment capital and precious years pursuing false solutions like alternative fuels. Electric cars may be a better idea, since there are lots of promising renewable sources of electricity. But when we step back and compare auto-based transport systems with rail-based options, even electric cars come out looking like resource gluttons. We don't need alternative cars; we need alternatives to cars, starting with ways to reduce our need for travel in the first place. Perhaps those of us who have arrived at this conclusion may be forgiven a less-than-joyous response to the recent unveiling of Tata Motor Company's $2500 Nano, an auto being marketed to tens of millions of previously car-free Asians who can now afford a scaled-down version of the object that half-a-billion inhabitants of wealthier countries take for granted. Doesn't everyone deserve the comfort and convenience enjoyed by Americans and Europeans? It's an insidious question. Like the title of this essay, it presupposes a great deal. Only by unpacking and ruthlessly picking apart our assumptions about the future of transportation can we hope to overcome the sinister logic of universal car ownership - a logic that leads to universal destruction. Are biofuels a bad idea in every single instance? Probably not. Should car owners be demonized? That's neither polite nor helpful. But until we collectively, through coordinated policies, reverse course and stop both building roads and looking to alternative fuels for a solution to environmental problems, we're all on a highway to hell. __________________ It's Happening by Richard Heinberg from MuseLetter #193 / May 2008 There is a surreal quality to the experience of seeing the unfolding of unpleasant events that one has predicted. Plenty of times over the past few years I've said, "I want to be proven wrong!" Who in their right mind would wish to see economic collapse and famine? But it was obvious that, given the direction our society is headed, these must be the consequences. Now, with oil at $117 a barrel, the US economy teetering, and food riots erupting in Haiti, Egypt, and Asia, one could perhaps gain some satisfaction in saying "I told you so". But what faint compensation that would be. We are all going to have to share the bitter fruits of our society's century-long growth binge, whether we have criticized it or participated wholeheartedly. The only silver lining is the possibility that now, at last, as the trends (Peak Oil, the failure of growth-based economics, the failure of industrial agriculture, climate chaos, and so on) are becoming so starkly clear, policy makers will begin seriously to contemplate a Plan B (or C, as Pat Murphy insists). For those of us who have been lobbying in that latter direction for some while, this is no time to let up, but rather the ideal moment to redouble our efforts. _____ Read more about Richard's book, Peak Everything at http://www.richardheinberg.com/books Post Carbon Institute - 6971 Sebastopol Avenue - Sebastopol - California - 95472 - USA http://richardheinberg.com/museletter/193 TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org Wed May 7 08:58:35 2008 From: hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org (Hunter Gray) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 08:58:35 -0600 Subject: [R-G] Additional Note on Sycamore Trek -- and also North Carolina Message-ID: <001101c8b052$e7a3fcf0$0400a8c0@computer> Naturally, I've read these very well intentioned comments with considerable interest, and appreciation. You are right, Beba, I have always said that I have to do it myself. I'm not even sure that it's cricket to take a cell phone along -- and it probably wouldn't even be able to connect from 'way down there in the Canyon's inner gorge. And Sam is right: cats aren't noted for in-unison solidarity. The only time our three here would work together would be if a strange dog came barking at the door. And then they'd be a Union, for that moment in history. When, more than a half century ago, I went down into the Canyon [and then all the way through it], I descended at what was mostly, after several "stair-step" levels intermixed with steep slopes, a sharply steep and sometimes almost straight-down track. Took the better part of a day. There is another entrance possibility. That would involve going to one of the head tributaries at the very beginning of what quickly becomes Sycamore Canyon. To do that, we'd go west of Flag toward Williams but, well before we got to that town, we'd turn off south to what's vaguely called Garland Prairie. In that setting, several small canyons begin which, going southward, forthwith grow much larger and deeper, joining together, and very soon, especially after Volunteer Canyon enters the picture from the east, becoming the Great Canyon in all of its glory and challenge. And all of that rolls southward for many, many challenging miles until it finally enters the Verde Valley. In any case, we never give up. And we are very proud of North Carolina tonight. Beba, of course, was born at Raleigh. I worked several hours away within our multi-county Northeastern Black Belt Project, often getting home only infrequently. When we began in the Black Belt, it was well nigh impossible for Blacks and Indians to even try to register to vote in that region -- let alone actually vote. Thanks to what became thousands of people in that wild but well organized crusade, and despite every kind of opposition, all of that and much more of the old order changed, and changed damn fast. Nice to feel we all had a small part in the welcome victory tonight. See Black Belt Thunder http://hunterbear.org/NORTH%20CAROLINA_OUR%20SUCCESSFUL%20BLACK%20BELT%20MOVEMENT.htm And again: We never give up. And Sycamore Canyon remains a primary goal. All best, H. HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Protected by Na?shdo?i?ba?i? and Ohkwari' Check out our Hunterbear website Directory http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm [The site is dedicated to our one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray: http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm SEE MY COMBINED COMMUNITY ORGANIZING PIECES -- WITH MUCH NEW STUFF http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm With "fire season" looming, see http://hunterbear.org/forest_fires_in_the_west.htm And see Forces and Faces Along the Activist Trail: http://hunterbear.org/forces_and_faces_along_the_trail.htm From fentona at shaw.ca Wed May 7 11:31:36 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 10:31:36 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Tories kill access to information database Message-ID: <1C43B3B0-FD73-4542-BAF4-1799C9198FCC@shaw.ca> Tories kill access to information database http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2008/05/02/cairs.html Fri May 2, 9:19 PM The federal Conservatives have quietly killed an access to information registry used by journalists, experts and the public that users say helped hold the government accountable. ADVERTISEMENT The Coordination of Access to Information Requests System, or CAIRS, is an electronic list of nearly every access to information request filed to federal departments and agencies. Originally created in 1989, it was used as an internal tool to keep track of requests and co-ordinate the government's response between agencies to potentially sensitive information released. Now, users mine the database to do statistical studies, fine tune phrasing on new requests and discover obscure documents - often using the information against the government. "It was really a tool designed to make government more open," said CBC investigative journalist David McKie. "Now that it appears as though this is no longer going to be available it is very disappointing indeed and people are really wondering what the real motivation is." Last week, a notice to civil servants from Treasury Board stated that effective April 1, "the requirement to update CAIRS is no longer in effect." A Treasury Board official confirmed to the Canadian Press on Friday that the system is being killed because "extensive" consultations showed it wasn't valued by government departments. Instead, "valuable resources currently being used to maintain CAIRS would be better used in the collection and analysis of improved statistical reporting," said Robert Makichuk. Since 2006, McKie has operated a website that publishes the monthly reports released through CAIRS on a publicly accessible website, www.onlinedemocracy.ca . He took over from Alasdair Roberts, a political scientist at Syracuse University in New York, who built a version of the database by requesting CAIRS electronic records through access to information requests and then updated the site with the monthly reports. The online database allows the public to quickly search thousands of requests from over the years by typing key words into a search engine. The documents are not available online, only the wording of the original access to information request, date, department, file number and general information about whether the requester was with the media, business, academic or other. But users can then make a written request for a copy of the already released documents by citing the file number. Monthly paper lists have also been made available since the 1990s for public consultation at a central federal office in Ottawa. Public Works, which operates the database, spent $166,000 improving it in 2001. Federal officials in 2003 had been working on a publicly accessible online version. "To do this now after the CAIRS' usefulness has been proven over and over again is indicative of the extent to which government will go to stifle the access regime," said Michel Drapeau, a lawyer who frequently uses the system and is a co-author of a reference work on access law. "This is terrible and I consider this to be yet one more step in making records less accessible," he told Canadian Press. New Democrat MP Dawn Black also condemned the Tories for shutting down the system. "It's another example of the Harper government's talk about accountability and transparency - they talk the talk but they don't walk the walk," said Black, who said her office often uses the database. With files from the Canadian Press From shniad at sfu.ca Wed May 7 13:23:18 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:23:18 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Iran rejects nuclear inspections unless Israel allows them Message-ID: <200805071923.m47JNIx5003754@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080507/4ff4ee35/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Wed May 7 13:25:19 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:25:19 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Doubting the evidence against Iran Message-ID: <200805071925.m47JPJVP008794@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080507/464a0e01/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Wed May 7 13:24:26 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:24:26 -0700 Subject: [R-G] The attack on Jimmy Carter Message-ID: <200805071924.m47JOQoj006182@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080507/2938a286/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Wed May 7 13:26:21 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:26:21 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Secret Bush Message-ID: <200805071926.m47JQLjm011027@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080507/4b0b876e/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Wed May 7 13:27:11 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:27:11 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Hunting the Taliban in Las Vegas Message-ID: <200805071927.m47JRBcD012479@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080507/ae4c51e0/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Wed May 7 15:19:33 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 14:19:33 -0700 Subject: [R-G] America: Victim of highway robbery! Message-ID: <200805072119.m47LJXGW003340@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080507/001d2e6d/attachment.txt From shimogamo at attglobal.net Wed May 7 19:49:10 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 08 May 2008 10:49:10 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Risk Economy Message-ID: <48225C16.8060007@attglobal.net> Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler Comment on current events by the author of The Long Emergency (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005) www.kunstler.com (May 04 2008) My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers. As the West's industrial regime sputters toward a cheap-energy-crackup conclusion, there have been attempts to recast what our economy is actually about, how to account for whatever wealth we manage to produce, and project what our society will actually be organized to do in the years ahead. For a while in the 1990s, the idea was a "service economy", kind of like the old fable of the town whose inhabitants made a living by taking in each other's laundry - only in our case it was selling hamburgers to tourists on vacation from their jobs making hamburgers elsewhere, or something like that. Then came the idea of the "information economy" in which making things of value would no longer matter, only the processing and deployment of information (sometimes misidentified as "knowledge"). This model seemed to suggest a yin-yang of software engineers who made up games like "Grand Theft Auto" serving the opposite cohort of people who bought and played the game. If nothing else, it certainly explained how lifetimes could be frittered away on stupid activities. That illusion yielded to the housing bubble economy, which actually did produce a lot of things, but not necessarily of value - for instance, houses made of particle board and vinyl 38 miles outside of Sacramento. It was a tragic and manifold waste of resources, as well as an insult to the landscape. But the darker side of the housing bubble lay in the world of finance, where a vast empire of swindles was constructed to support the Potemkin facade of production homebuilding. Now we are in a strange period when those swindles are unwinding. The people who run the finance sector - the Wall Street investment banks, hedge funds and ratings agencies, the Federal Reserve, and the US Dept of the Treasury - in desperately trying to prevent the unwind, have rapidly ramped up another new economy based entirely on the buying and selling of risk. Risk, as a pure abstraction unconnected to any real capital activity, is all that's left to buy and sell after all other plausibly practical vehicles for finance have failed. While a lack of transparency in the individual risk vehicles has been an object of complaint over the past year, the system as whole is transparently absurd. The system is also abstruse enough to prevent most mortals (including many employed in the system) from understanding its operations. But the general public and the news media are virtually helpless to intervene in this last gasp racket, so the probability increases that it will do tremendous damage to whatever remains of the US economy. One feature of the risk economy is the Federal Reserve's new willingness to absorb any sort of crap collateral in exchange for massive cheap loans to insolvent companies and institutions. The Fed has, in effect, made itself the world's largest financial shit-magnet. It has already taken in a few hundred billion in securities based on non-performing real estate loans, and has now opened the window to securities based on non-performing credit card debt, car loans, and other miscellaneous IOUs still drifting un-hedged in the banking ether. It's a mark of our collective desperation to avoid the consequences of so much reckless behavior that no credible authorities have stepped up to denounce this racket - no Fed governor, no politician of standing (including the candidates for president), no newspaper-of-record. The Attorney General of New York, Andrew Cuomo, may be quietly cooking up some cases in the deep background, but the SEC and the federal banking regulators hung up their "out-to-lunch" signs on this long ago. Meanwhile, the basic situation is this: the world is awash with bad investment paper. The standard of living in the US can't be supported on debt anymore. The people of the US don't produce enough real value to service their debts. Institutions can no longer be supported on debt gone bad. Something's got to give - meaning something has to bring the US standard of living down to a level consistent with our declining actual wealth. Everything else going on right now is a dodge. The Fed maneuvers, the "coordinated actions" of the western central banks, the postponements of default, the non-disclosure of contents in bank portfolios, the pretense that risk alone is a kind of fungible resource that can be endlessly traded to generate fees - all this fucking nonsense will only make the eventual unwinding much worse. Personally, I doubt that it can go on more than a few more months. The velocity of everything is going up past the "red line" where things really fly apart. The increased velocity of non-performing mortgages and deadbeat credit card accounts is one thing that can't be hidden or escaped. America will feel and see very vividly when the repossession teams rush families from their homes, when the pickup truck is taken away, and when the pink slip appears in the pay envelope. Meanwhile all the higher-end banking shenanigans will only debase the dollar and make it more difficult for people already in distress to buy gasoline and food. If the bankers and treasury officials collude to prop up one more failing big bank a la Bear Stearns, the political fallout for Wall Street could be lethal. In any case, I think we will have a way different sense of ourselves as a society by the time the election comes. http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/05/the-risk-econom.html TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From fentona at shaw.ca Wed May 7 22:55:18 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 21:55:18 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Machetera Blog Message-ID: <1302DB11-337B-435D-86D5-56C2A3A1C59A@shaw.ca> Machetera hit by triple virus May 5, 2008 ? http://machetera.wordpress.com/ Machetera?s translation factory took a triple hit this weekend, with two computer failures and the flu. The Apple people assure her it?s not the Pentagon?s fault, just bad luck, but who really knows? In any case, were she up to speed, she?d have provided you with a translation of this [http://www.bolpress.com/art.php?Cod=2008050416] article which appeared yesterday at Bolpress - something which amazingly, you won?t have found anywhere in the English language press. Here?s the gist: apparently in yesterday?s fake autonomy referendum in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, 20 ballot boxes stuffed with ballots pre-marked ?Si? (that?s ?yes? in Spanish for the really language challenged) were discovered in the Plan 3000 section of the city. The story challenges even Machetera?s translation skills because it?s unclear whether the boxes were burned, or preserved as evidence; however, there?s a mention of people in the neighborhood standing watch over polling places to prevent the entrance of such things. Where did we see this before? Oh right, Port au Prince. Nobody in U.S. ?intelligence? ever thinks about updating the manual, apparently. Not that anyone?s complaining. That?s all Machetera can manage for today. More later? From fentona at shaw.ca Wed May 7 23:17:26 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 22:17:26 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Six Afghan exchange students flee to Canada Message-ID: Six Afghan exchange students flee to Canada http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/421030 May 03, 2008 04:30 AM Allan Woods Ottawa Bureau OTTAWA?They're on Facebook, they clown for the cameras with pals and they sit down to eat each night at the dinner tables of their American host families in small towns across the United States. But three weeks ago, the Afghan exchange students on a U.S. State Department program started to go missing. Since the second week of April, six have fled to Canada to make asylum bids just weeks before they were to have been returned to their Afghan villages. "We've heard from them mostly by email. They've been in contact with their hosts, some by phone and some by email," said Benjamin Gaylord, with the Washington-based American Councils for International Education, which runs the exchange program. "There's been no talk about concerns about their future. They've said `I'm safe. I'm in Canada. I'm doing okay. I'll tell you more later,'" said Gaylord. Mesbah Habibi, 17, is the latest student to flee to Canada. He did so after a trip to Washington to meet with his 38 fellow students. He checked in at the airport Monday to return to his guest home in Columbine, Colo., but wasn't on the airplane when it landed. On Tuesday, his host family received an email assuring them he was safe and thanking them for their eight months of hospitality. "We are relieved to know that he is safe and we wish him only the best for the future," the family, who did not wish to be named, said in a statement to local media. Gaylord said he doesn't know where the students are, or where they crossed the border, though he assumes it was through a land crossing rather than by airplane. He also refused to pass judgment on what is fast becoming an embarrassing incident for his organization, and for the U.S. government, other than to say that none of the six had voiced fear of returning to their war-torn country and that their refugee bids seemed "rather convenient" given that the school year ends in just over a month. Some Americans are voicing suspicions, wondering whether the students present a security risk, possibly a teenage terror cell. "I'm thinking to myself, `Geez, Louise.' They are 16-year-old Afghan kids," said Gaylord. "They're probably as American as most kids in high school. They're making the same jokes, wearing the same clothes. They're on Facebook just like everybody else." In fact, Habibi's Facebook page lists 100 friends with an equal mix of Afghans peppered across the U.S. and American students at Columbine High School, the site of the notorious 1999 shooting rampage. He participated in track and field events and wrote for the school's newspaper. A Facebook friend, Asma Afghan from Orchard Park High School in Buffalo, N.Y., said she was familiar with the controversial matter, which has gripped the tight-knit group of exchange students. "I know most of them, but I guess they wouldn't like to share their personal problems in the news," she told the Star. Almas Kazimi, an Afghan exchange student living in Iowa, told the Star that Habibi was worried about the dangers that would await him at home in Herat, in western Afghanistan, where he was schedule to return in June. "He was scared. It's a dangerous place," he said, adding that he hasn't heard from any of the students since they fled the U.S. Kazimi said he was angry because he feels these students are putting the exchange program, and the opportunities that go with it, in jeopardy. "Afghanistan is a bad place for everyone, but you have to go back. You have to bring change to the country," he said. "I know the risks." Reaction from the program's alumni in Afghanistan, as well as among those who have returned to the U.S. to study, has been fairly harsh, Gaylord said. "A lot of people are very upset. `Betrayed' is a strong word but it's close to betrayal what many of the students have expressed about these other students not joining in rebuilding Afghanistan, which is the point of the program." The Youth Exchange and Study Program is a tool of Washington's public diplomacy strategy after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The idea is to bring Afghans and Americans face-to-face, while providing selected students an education they might use back in Afghanistan to help in the rebuilding process. There seems no way to stop other Afghan exchange students from following the students to Canada in the weeks that remain, save for the threat that the program may be shut down if such acts continue. Immigration authorities in Canada don't comment on asylum bids. The U.S. says the students will be deported to Afghanistan if they try to re-enter the U.S., having violated terms of their student visas. TheStar.com Corrections | Contact Webmaster From shimogamo at attglobal.net Thu May 8 03:42:21 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 08 May 2008 18:42:21 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Travelling Light Message-ID: <4822CAFD.4000301@attglobal.net> Is the airship a viable alternative to jet travel? by George Monbiot Published in the Guardian (May 06 2008) Of all the charges levelled against environmentalists, perhaps the most unfair is the accusation that we are opposed to technological change. Most of the greens I know are fascinated by gadgets (sometimes to the exclusion of better solutions), while some of the people we confront seem terrified by new technologies, and react to them - witness the campaigns against windfarms - with irrational hostility. But because environmentalists tend to have a feeling for material constraints, we recognise that solutions cannot be conjured out of thin air. In some cases they just don't appear to exist. There are two reasons why we make such a fuss about flying. The first is that, even as governments promise to cut emissions, everywhere airports are expanding. In the UK, the government expects the number of airline passengers to rise from 228 million in 2005 to 480 million in 2030 {1}. Before long, there will scarcely be a patch of sky without a jet in it. The other is that there are no alternative means of propelling people through the air which are not more destructive than burning ordinary aviation fuel. Or so we think. The airline companies prescribe two cures that are even worse than the disease. Even before they are deployed commercially in jets, biofuels are spreading hunger and deforestation. At first sight, hydrogen seems more promising. If it is produced by electrolysis using renewable electricity, it's almost carbon-free. The prohibitive issue is storage. Hydrogen contains just a quarter of the energy as the same volume of jet fuel (kerosene), which means that planes could fly long distances only if they were filled with gas rather than passengers or cargo. This means that if hydrogen planes are to fly commercially, they need much wider bodies than ordinary jetliners. According to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution "the combination of larger drag and lower weight would require flight at higher altitudes" than planes fuelled by kerosene {2}. A technology that is green at ground level becomes an environmental disaster in the stratosphere. Hydrogen's great advantage - that it produces only water when it burns - turns into a major liability: in the stratosphere, water vapour is a powerful greenhouse gas. The royal commission estimates that hydrogen planes would exert a climate changing effect "some thirteen times larger than for a standard kerosene fuelled subsonic aircraft" {3}. But there is another use for this gas, though I am aware that it will go down like a lead balloon with most of my readers. The word airship elicits a fixed reaction in almost everyone who hears it: "what about the Hindenburg?". It's as if, every time someone proposed travelling on a cruise ship, you were to ask, "but what about the Titanic?". Yes, there was a spectacular disaster - 71 years ago. It has lodged in our minds because, like the Titanic, the Hindenburg was bigger and plusher than any craft built before it, and it was carrying rich and prominent people. The conflagration was witnessed by journalists and broadcast all over the world. It also become the technology's funeral pyre: the Hindenburg was doomed long before it burnt, as airships were already being displaced by aeroplanes. Though the designs have changed, their disadvantages have not disappeared. While a large commercial airliner cruises at about 900 kilometres per hour, the maximum speed of an airship is roughly 150 kph. At an average speed of 130 kph, the journey from London to New York would take 43 hours. Airships are more sensitive to wind than aeroplanes, which means that flights are more likely to be delayed. But they have one major advantage: the environmental cost could be reduced almost to zero. Even when burning fossil fuels, the total climate-changing impact of an airship, according to researchers at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, is eighty to ninety per cent smaller than that of ordinary aircraft {4}. But the airship is also the only form of transport which can easily store hydrogen: you could inflate a hydrogen bladder inside the helium balloon. There might be a neat synergy here: one of the problems with airships is that they become lighter - and therefore harder to control - as the fuel is consumed. In this case they become heavier. Michael Stewart of the company World SkyCat suggests burning both gaseous and liquid hydrogen to keep the weight of the craft constant {5}. Airships fly much lower than planes - typically at about 4000 feet - which means that their emissions of water vapour have very little effect on temperature. If they were powered by hydrogen fuel cells, they would be almost silent, greatly reducing the effects for people on the ground. Though they are slower than jets, the cabin can be built much wider, which means that travelling by airship would be rather like travelling by cruise ship, but at twice the speed and using a fraction of the fuel. There are four small companies trying to get airships off the ground {6}. Most of the new designs make use of aerodynamic lift as well as buoyancy (they are shaped like fat planes with stubby wings or tails) which means that they are heavier and more stable than the old dirigibles, and can land without help on the ground. They can alight on and take off from almost any flattish surface, including water. But all of them have a problem with flotation: of the financial rather than the physical kind. While the price of carbon stays low, companies have no financial incentive to switch to a different form of transport. The only help governments are prepared to provide is some development funds for military applications (raising money for killing people is always easier than raising money to save them). For a few years the Pentagon took an interest in craft which could land anywhere and carry several hundred tonnes of equipment {7}. Otherwise, like so many other promising green technologies, this proposal is losing height in a hostile market. All the companies promoting large commercial airships are concentrating on freight, especially in places which are poorly served by roads. The danger here is that, if they take off, they could displace not jet transport but freight shipping, in which case, if they burn diesel, they are likely to cause a net increase in carbon pollution. Paradoxically, the other major constraint could be an environmental one. Airships are one of several green technologies which might be killed by a shortage of materials. A new generation of solar panels relies on gallium and indium, whose global supplies appear close to exhaustion {8}. The price of platinum, which is used in catalytic converters, has tripled over the past five years {9}. Beyond a few natural gas fields in Texas, economically viable supplies of helium are rare; even there they might be exhausted in fifty years at current rates of use, or much faster if airships take off {10,11}. If there is a God, he isn't green. Is this proposal just a flight of fancy? Because airships feature in no official document, because they have not been considered by either government or major industry, I have no way of knowing. But like most greens I'm prepared to try almost anything, as long as it works. Can the same be said of our opponents? www.monbiot.com References: 1. Department for Transport, November 2007. UK Air Passenger Demand and CO2 Forecasts. http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/aviation/environmentalissues/ukairdemandandco2forecasts/airpassdemandfullreport.pdf 2. Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, , 29th November 2002. The Environmental Effects of Civil Aircraft in Flight: special report, paragraph 4.27. http://www.rcep.org.uk/aviation/av12-txt.pdf 3. ibid, paragraph 3.47. 4. Alice Bows, Kevin Anderson and Paul Upham, February 2006. Contraction & Convergence: UK carbon emissions and the implications for UK air traffic, page 23. Technical Report 40. Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. www.tyndall.ac.uk/research/ theme2/final_reports/t3_23.pdf 5. Michael Stewart, personal communication. 6. World SkyCat Ltd, 21st Century Airships Team Inc, Aeroscraft and Ohio Airships. 7. See http://www.defensetech.org/archives/Draft_Solicitation_Walrus.pdf 8. David Cohen, 23rd May 2007. Earth's natural wealth: an audit. New Scientist. 9. See http://www.platinum.matthey.com/prices/price_charts.html 10. Nicola Jones, 21st December 2002. Under Pressure. New Scientist. 11. No author given, 5th January 2008. Helium Supplies Endangered, Threatening Science And Technology. ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080102093943.htm Copyright (c) 2006 Monbiot.com http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/05/06/travelling-light/ TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From critical.montages at gmail.com Thu May 8 08:32:11 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Thu, 8 May 2008 10:32:11 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Clashes in General Strike in Lebanon Message-ID: May 8, 2008 Clashes in General Strike in Lebanon By NADA BAKRI BEIRUT, Lebanon ? Supporters of the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah, trying to enforce a general strike called by labor unions, clashed with government supporters and blocked roads in Beirut on Wednesday, escalating tensions as the country remained mired in its worst political crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war. Hezbollah mobs blocked roads with burning tires and garbage cans, and set cars on fire to enforce a strike protesting government economic policies and demanding higher minimum wages. They fought occasional gun battles with political opponents. A security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters, said at least five people had been slightly injured, including a cameraman for Al Manar, the television station run by Hezbollah. Later on Wednesday, opposition spokesmen said the protest would continue until the government canceled decisions made this week that affected Hezbollah. The government said on Tuesday that it would act against a private telephone network operated by Hezbollah in south Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut and accused the militant group of placing several spy cameras on a road outside the airport to monitor pro-government officials. The cabinet also dismissed the airport's director of security, a figure close to Hezbollah. The telephone network was mainly used for communication between Hezbollah members during the war with Israel in 2006, and Hezbollah officials were quoted in local newspapers as saying that they would consider anyone who interfered with the network an Israeli spy. For 17 months, Lebanon has had a political crisis between the Hezbollah-led opposition supported by Iran and Syria and the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, who is backed by the West and Saudi Arabia. The standoff has left the country without a president since November. Several Beirut residents voiced fear on Wednesday that the clashes would be renewed. "It is going to get ugly and to be long," said Antoine Madi, 47, as he and neighbors watched plumes of smoke billow from nearby neighborhoods. Many of the clashes were in mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods where young men on each side shouted epithets and slogans with sectarian undertones and hurled stones at each other. Armed civilians were visible on some streets. "God is with the Sunnis," shouted government supporters. "The Shiite blood is boiling," responded Hezbollah followers from across the street. Lebanese army troops in riot gear stood between them. In other parts of the city, Lebanese troops in armored personnel carriers raced among neighborhoods trying to contain the fighting and shooting in the air to disperse crowds. "This is the first day of the civil war," said a government supporter who gave his name as Omar, in a Sunni neighborhood. "They are the aggressors, and they will be buried here." A few miles away, supporters of Hezbollah vowed to continue the protest until Mr. Siniora's government fell. "We are staying here," said a protester who gave his name as Abu Rish. "We have money and support from Iran and Syria and we can go on like this for another 50 years." Flights to and from Beirut airport were canceled or delayed Wednesday as airport workers joined the strike for six hours. -- Yoshie From critical.montages at gmail.com Thu May 8 08:38:53 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Thu, 8 May 2008 10:38:53 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Egypt and Saudi Arabia Take Sides against Hezbollah-led Opposition . . . Again Message-ID: 08/05/2008 12:47 CAIRO, May 8 (AFP) Egypt says Lebanon opposition 'pushing for confrontation' Egypt has repeated its support for Lebanon's Western-backed government and implicitly blamed the country's Hezbollah-led opposition of "pushing for confrontation," the press reported on Wednesday. Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit telephoned Prime Minister Fuad Siniora late on Wednesday to voice Egypt's support, several newspapers reported on Thursday, as anti-government protests in Beirut entered a second day. "Egypt supports the Lebanese government, as a constitutional institution charged with looking after Lebanese affairs and with taking the necessary measures to prevent its power and credibility being damaged," he said. Abul Gheit also telephoned the leader of the Lebanese parliamentary majority, Saad Hariri, to stress "the need for restraint and to avoid confrontations of a sectarian nature. "The party that is pushing for confrontation (the opposition) and which persists along this path with disregard for civil peace will surely bear the historic responsibility for its actions," he told Hariri. Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa, who has already led several mediation missions to Beirut, said in a statement he was in "permanent contact with different Lebanese parties and Arab countries in order to contain the escalation." Protesters blocked roads in Beirut on Thursday and forced Lebanon's only international airport to close in a major escalation of a long-running political crisis. The crisis, the worst since the 15-year civil war ended in 1990, has left the country without a president since November, when pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud stepped down at the end of his mandate with no elected successor. Lebanon's opposition is backed by Iran and Syria while Egypt and Saudi Arabia support the Western-backed ruling majority. Egypt will continue its contacts with Lebanese officials in order to contain the situation, the foreign ministry said. Saudi warns Lebanon opposition against escalation 5 hours ago RIYADH (AFP) ? Saudi Arabia warned Lebanon's Hezbollah-led opposition on Thursday against an escalation of its confrontation with the government, warning that conflict would only benefit "extremist external forces," in an apparent reference to Iran. "The kingdom urges the groups behind the escalation to reconsider their position, and to realise that leading Lebanon towards turmoil will not bring victory to any party except extremist external forces," the state news agency SPA quoted an official as saying. These forces "are still hindering every sincere and honest effort to end the political crisis in Lebanon," the official said. The Saudi comments came on the second day of anti-government protests in Beirut which blocked roads and forced Lebanon's only international airport to close in a major escalation of a long-running political crisis. Lebanon's opposition is backed by Iran and Syria while Saudi Arabia, the regional Sunni Arab powerhouse, supports the Western-backed ruling majority. The news agency said Saudi Arabia will continue its efforts to restore security and peace in Lebanon. "It will spare no effort in helping and will stand by its side to defend... the independence of its political decision and unity," it added. "The kingdom calls upon everyone in Lebanon, regardless of their political affliations... to give the interests of Lebanon priority over other considerations," it said. -- Yoshie From realiteee1 at yahoo.com Thu May 8 10:12:11 2008 From: realiteee1 at yahoo.com (james m nordlund) Date: Thu, 8 May 2008 09:12:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] A Question of Survival In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <324654.34003.qm@web50810.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Donate | Calendar | Local Groups | Store May 8, 2008 Dear Friend, On the eve of Congress passing the largest war funding bill yet, $178 billion, Iraqi mothers struggling to survive are being denied in favor of endless war. This Mother's Day, as we honor the women who gave us life, let's help give new hope to women whose lives have been shattered by the US occupation. When you donate today, 100% of the proceeds will go toward the Collateral Repair Project, a grassroots movement working with CODEPINK to address the catastrophic displacement of the five million Iraqis who had to leave their homes and communities because of violence and instability. CRP offers food, education, job training and other vital services to refugees in Iraq, Jordan and Syria. $25 will feed one internally displaced person in Iraq for one month $100 will feed a family of five living in Iraq for one month $250-500 will support small women-based microprojects to promote economic self-sufficiency for women in Jordan $1,500 will launch the Najaf sewing training project, training 50+ women sewing/embroidery. They will be able to make a small living and clothe their families. CODEPINK Co-founder Medea Benjamin recently returned from Jordan and Syria where she witnessed firsthand the important and inspiring work being done by the Collateral Repair Project. Not only does the CRP repair schools and feed the hungry; they also provide very personal support. She saw this in the case of one Iraqi woman, Um Marianne. As a single mother whose husband had been killed, Um Marianne was unable to work legally; men preyed on her and bosses cheated her, yet she could not complain because of her precarious situation. Um Marianne wept as she spoke about leaving her daughter at home while she went off to endure sweatshop conditions. A group of Iraqi women, fellow refugees, were concerned about her and banded together to help. They approached CRP, who gave them the money to buy a sewing machine. Now Um Marianne can work from home and take care of her daughter without worrying about exploitation and other dangers. This is the beauty of women coming together in sisterhood to help one another. When you give to CODEPINK today, you will be funding such creative, compassionate, projects. If you donate in your mother's name, we will send her a beautiful card to acknowledge your generous gift. As we help the women of Iraq, let's remind Congress that they need to help, as well. They are now being asked to fund another $162 billion for war! Click here to tell your reps that we want our funds to help the refugees, not to continue this disastrous war! http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/424/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=1209 We wish you a beautiful and meaningful Mother's Day. Love and peace, Alicia, Dana, Desiree, Farida, Gael, Gayle, Jodie, Liz, Medea, Nancy, Rae, and Tighe p.s. To learn more about Medea's experiences in Jordan and Syria, read her blogs here. p.p.s. CODEPINK mamas are gathering around the country to celebrate Mother's Day in the spirit of Julia Ward Howe's original proclamation. From Berkeley, where the monthly Walk for Peace on the Golden Gate Bridge will focus on mourning mothers, to Washington, DC, where a Peace-nic will serve as a fundraiser for Iraqi refugees, we are reclaiming the anti-war intention of the day. http://www.codepinkalert.org//index.php To find a CODEPINK Mother's Day event in your area, click here. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From realiteee1 at yahoo.com Thu May 8 10:19:09 2008 From: realiteee1 at yahoo.com (james m nordlund) Date: Thu, 8 May 2008 09:19:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Urgent Action: Tell the UN, Burma Aid NOW In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <863507.39365.qm@web50810.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Tell the UN Secretary General Now: United Nations Must Order Aid Be Allowed Inside Burma Dear james m, We are writing to ask you to send a message http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1189/t/5102/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=24494 to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon today urging him to take action to ensure that international aid reaches the people of Burma. So far, the Burmese military regime has only let in a trickle of international humanitarian aid. We understand that 35 disaster teams from 18 countries have applied to help, and most are not being let in. Even the United Nations assessment team has not been given visas, 5 days after the cyclone struck. France's foreign minister Bernard Kouchner (a founder of Doctors Without Borders) proposed a solution to this problem. He urged the UN Security Council -- the only body at the UN that can pass binding resolutions, to take action that would allow the international community to send aid to Burma whether the Burmese regime likes it or not. Will you add your voice to his call by sending an email now to the United Nations Secretary General? We are encouraging the United States to put its full weight behind France's call, and we believe they will do so. The United States has already offered to send Navy ships to offload supplies as well as money and other support to help (as it did during the Asian Tsunami) but still no response from the military regime as of this writing. Lastly, we want to thank you for your generous donations. This morning, we transferred $30,000 to groups operating on the ground inside Burma. With the Burmese military regime holding up international aid, your ongoing donations are appreciated. More to come... see articles below. Aung Din, Jeremy Woodrum, Jennifer Quigley, and Thelma Young French Official Urges UN to Force Aid on Myanmar Burma holding back AID operation Junta stalls as Burma suffers US: Still no word on access to Myanmar http://uscampaignforburma.org/index.php Support 1991 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi and the struggle for freedom and democracy in Burma. Become a member of the United States Campaign for Burma today. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From tchilds at resist.ca Thu May 8 12:06:45 2008 From: tchilds at resist.ca (tchilds at resist.ca) Date: Thu, 8 May 2008 11:06:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Melting glaciers release toxic chemical cocktail Message-ID: <62155.64.85.36.244.1210270005.squirrel@mail.resist.ca> http://environment.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn13848&print=true Melting glaciers release toxic chemical cocktail 11:47 07 May 2008 NewScientist.com news service Ewen Callaway Decades after most countries stopped spraying DDT, frozen stores of the insecticide are now trickling out of melting Antarctic glaciers. The change means Ad?lie penguins have recently been exposed to the chemical, according to a new study. The trace levels found will not harm the birds, but the presence of the chemical could be an indication that other frozen pollutants will be released because of climate change, says Heidi Geisz, a marine biologist at Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester in the US. She led a team that sampled DDT levels in the penguins. She worries that glaciers could release an alphabet soup of chemical pollutants into the ocean, including PCBs and PBDEs ? industrial chemicals that have been linked to health problems in humans. "DDT is not the only chemical that these birds are ingesting and it is certainly not the worst," Geisz says. Trickle-down pollution Chemists first synthesised DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) in 1874, but the chemical wasn't used an insecticide until the 1940s. DDT spraying slashed malaria rates in many countries, but the chemical's environmental toll was starting to cause concern. Rachel Carson's 1962 book, Silent Spring, brought these concerns to the general public, and described, amongst other things, how birds of prey exposed to high levels of DDT lay thin, easily cracked eggs. In 1972, the US banned the pesticide, and the UK followed suit in 1984. Some countries still use DDT to fight mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue, but worldwide usage has plummeted ? from 40,000 tonnes per year in 1980 to 1,000 tonnes per year now. DDT latches onto small airborne particles then migrates toward the poles. Geisz, who has worked in Antarctica since 1999, sought to gauge long-term changes in pollutants found in the continent's seabirds. Fresh source A 1964 survey found modest amounts of the pesticide in Ad?lie penguins, and Geisz's team expected to see even less four decades later. Instead, her team found DDT levels unchanged in birds that live near the continent's western peninsula. As DDT crawls up the food chain, from plankton to krill to penguins, it breaks down into a sister molecule called DDE. The more DDE in an animal, the longer the chemical has been around, Geisz says. But her team recorded low levels of DDE in the birds, suggesting a fresh source. Geisz couldn't figure out where the DDT came from until she looked back at glacial records. In the 1950s and 60s, Antarctic glaciers swelled, potentially locking in chemicals like DDT. However, average winter temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have warmed 6 ?C the past 30 years, and glaciers now melt faster than they grow. A recent study noted elevated levels of DDT in glacial runoff. As the continent's western ice sheet melts, the DDT drips back into the ecosystem at a rate of 1 to 4 kg per year, her team estimates. Arctic decline Derek Muir, a researcher at Environment Canada in Burlington, Ontario, says Arctic glaciers ought to store even more of the pesticide, but Arctic animals seem to be shedding the pesticide. "The declines in DDT in seals and seabirds in the Canadian Arctic and in polar bears in eastern Greenland suggest it is not having a large impact," he says. Even so, researchers ought to look more closely for evidence that melting glaciers are pumping chemicals like DDT into the Arctic, Muir says. To make that case stronger for Antarctica, Geisz plans to track the flow of other pollutants from glaciers to birds. Journal reference: Environmental Science & Technology (DOI: 10.1021/es702919n) Climate Change ? Want to know more about global warming ? the science, impacts and political debate? Visit our continually updated special report. Endangered species ? Learn more about the conservation battle in our comprehensive special report. From tchilds at resist.ca Thu May 8 12:10:29 2008 From: tchilds at resist.ca (tchilds at resist.ca) Date: Thu, 8 May 2008 11:10:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Global Poverty: More Big Business is Not the Solution Message-ID: <62093.64.85.36.244.1210270229.squirrel@mail.resist.ca> http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/editorsblog Global Poverty: More Big Business is Not the Solution By Robert Weissman May 8, 2008 By most accounts, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is genuinely passionate about reducing global poverty. But he is not willing to challenge the structures of the global economy that generate poverty, or the corporations that build, benefit from and maintain those structures. Nor, apparently, is he immune to gimmicky notions of corporate leadership to support development, or the lure of high-profile summits to shed light on new plans to do -- very little. Thus, earlier this week the UK was treated to the spectacle of the Business Call to Action summit, which Brown's office co-sponsored with the UN Development Program. More than 80 CEOs of large companies gathered with Brown and other luminaries to discuss how they could help meet the Millennium Development Goals, which aspire to reduce global poverty by half by 2015. Roughly two dozen of these CEOs -- from Anglo American, Bechtel, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, De Beers, Diageo, FedEx, Goldman Sachs, GE, Merck, Microsoft, SAB Miller, Wal-Mart and others -- have signed the Business Call to Action, which states, "as leaders from the private sector, we declare our commitment to meet this development emergency." The premise of the event, as Gordon Brown said, was to advance "a new approach -- moving beyond minimum standards, beyond philanthropy and beyond traditional corporate social responsibility -- important though they are -- to develop long-term business initiatives that mobilize the resources and talents that are the central strengths of global business." The mantra of the event was for corporations to "explore new business opportunities that use their core business expertise" and that also help spur development. Taken at its face value, this was, um, not exactly inspiring. Says Peter Hardstaff of the UK-based World Development Movement, the CEOs "have all agreed -- to do more business." But the problem goes way beyond the fact that business as usual -- or even a little bit of new business initiative with a development-conscious orientation -- is not going to do much to reduce global poverty. The real problem is that business as usual is a central part the problem. "Instead of holding these companies to account for their actions," says John Hilary, executive director of War on Want, a UK-based anti-poverty group. "Gordon Brown has allowed them to portray themselves as allies in the fight against poverty. The prime minister should be working to address the poverty and human rights problems caused by business, not giving the companies a free ride.? War on Want focused attention on the harmful development impacts of many of the corporations signing the Business Call to Action. The group has campaigned against mining giant Anglo American. It has documented how Anglo American has benefited from human rights abuses associated with civil wars in Colombia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Local mining communities in Ghana and Mali have seen little economic benefit from Anglo American's operations (or the spike in the price of gold); instead, says War on Want, the company's mines harm their environment, health and livelihoods. Other corporate signatories to the Business Call to Action have directly hurt poor people through their "core business" more than can be offset by development-tinged ventures (even assuming such ventures succeed). Wal-Mart contracts with sweatshops. Bechtel tried to price-gouge and rip-off Bolivian consumers and the Bolivian state through control of the country's privatized water system. Merck refuses to license life-saving medicines for cheap generic production. Simultaneous with Brown's business summit, Action Aid UK pointed to a major systemic abuse by multinational corporations that undermines development: They don't pay their taxes. The group released a report looking at tax payments of 14 corporate signers of the Business Call to Action. It found that these companies combined are underpaying taxes by more than $6 billion a year, as compared to what they would pay if they paid at the statutory rate in the United States and UK. The group did not suggest any illegal activities by the companies -- there are plenty enough legal tax avoidance strategies. Money lost to developing countries through capital flight and tax avoidance is many times greater than aid flows into poor countries, says Jesse Griffith, the lead author of the Action Aid UK report. Tax avoidance is a key issue because it strips money from national treasuries that would otherwise be available for social investment, and because it reflects structural problems that could and should be cured without any need for global philanthropy or aid. But tax avoidance is only one of many ways that corporations exploit and perpetuate economic policies and institutional arrangements that contribute to poverty or inhibit authentic development. The World Development Movement issued a 10-point challenge to corporations that claim an interest in promoting global development. It called on companies to stop using their political influence to promote policies that undermine development. It urged companies to: stop lobbying to open up developing country markets, and let developing countries "use the same trade policy tools industrialized countries used to get rich;" stop demanding rich country-style patent rules for the poor; support radical government action, starting in rich countries, to address climate change; support binding codes of conduct for multinationals, including respect for labor rights; end support for privatization and deregulation, including particularly financial deregulation; stop lobbying for and exploiting tax loopholes; and other measures. This is not exactly an agenda that global business leaders are likely to take up soon. On the other hand, it's not exactly likely that global business leaders are going to lead the way to end global poverty. Among other things, that's going to take a global movement, led from the Global South, to implement the policies implicit in the World Development Movement call. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, and director of Essential Action . (c) Robert Weissman From critical.montages at gmail.com Thu May 8 13:04:44 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Thu, 8 May 2008 15:04:44 -0400 Subject: [R-G] =?iso-8859-1?q?=22Bolivia_Referendum_Exposes_Rift_between_R?= =?iso-8859-1?q?ich=2C_Poor=22_+_=22Evo_ruega_dialogar_y_la_oposici?= =?iso-8859-1?q?=F3n_le_desaf=EDa_a_jugarse_el_mandato_en_un_refer?= =?iso-8859-1?q?=E9ndum_revocatorio=22?= Message-ID: Bolivia referendum exposes rift between rich, poor Wed May 7, 2008 7:50pm IST By Pav Jordan SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia, May 7 (Reuters) - The cry for autonomy is strong in Bolivia's wealthy Santa Cruz province, but the poorest people here see the movement as a tactic by the rich to undercut leftist President Evo Morales. Santa Cruz voted for autonomy from the central government on Sunday in an unprecedented referendum widely seen as a rejection of Morales' policies and a challenge to his rule. A champion of indigenous rights, land reform and state control of the economy, Morales took power in 2006 and has the support of poor indigenous groups of the Andes, but he is increasingly unpopular in Bolivia's lush eastern lowlands. Support for autonomy is strongest in Santa Cruz city, where fancy downtown stores and restaurants highlight its relative affluence in South America's poorest country, but even here Bolivia's deep divide between the indigenous majority of the Andes and the wealthier descendants of colonialists in the lowlands is obvious. "They are racists. They always treat us as if we were below them," Johnny Rios, a 34-year-old bicycle repairman with two children, said of Bolivia's rich and middle-classes. He is one of many who have migrated to Santa Cruz to escape the extreme poverty of the Andean mountains, and the city has expanded to over a million people from around 50,000 just half a century ago. The referendum vote theoretically gives Santa Cruz's conservative leaders more control over natural resources and the tax and justice systems. "Finally we are going to be free," said Llubomir Sitic, a law school graduate, as he danced in the central square of Santa Cruz on Sunday night, draped in the region's green and white flag and celebrating the 'yes' vote. Morales, a close ally of Venezuela's vocal leftist and anti-U.S. leader Hugo Chavez, says the referendum is illegal and that many voters abstained in a show of support for him. It is not yet clear whether Morales will negotiate with opposition leaders here and in other eastern provinces planning similar referendum votes, or simply reject their demands for autonomy. BOOMING AGRICULTURE About nine times the size of Switzerland, Santa Cruz is Bolivia's fastest growing region, driven by booming soy, rice, corn and cattle production as well as natural gas. It is also home to about one quarter of Bolivia's 9 million people. The push for autonomy has huge support in the provincial capital's central district but fades the further out you go along eight concentric "rings" that form the city. It begins to wane by the Fourth Ring where glitzy strip clubs and poorly disguised brothels start to appear, and nearly disappears by the Eighth, where children play soccer with plastic bags filled with air or shirts filled with old socks. Morales' supporters see the autonomy vote as an attempt by the rich to regain their centuries-old hold on power, lost when he was elected as the first indigenous president. "This autonomy is for the rich. It is not going to help anybody outside the Fourth Ring," said Joaquin Aldana, 24, a welder in the Plan 3000 neighborhood in the Eighth Ring. Morales supporters and autonomy backers clashed during Sunday's voting in Plan 3000. One man died after breathing in tear gas shot by riot police, and at least 18 people were injured in fights between the sides in five towns throughout the region. In one town, opponents to the referendum blocked off roads and prevented authorities from setting up polling stations. Pro-autonomy residents say the vote will allow them to resist central government direction even more than before. Santa Cruz has long celebrated its differences with the highlands of the west, but the autonomy vote has aggravated the rivalry. Large landowners of mainly European descent resent political leadership from La Paz, a bastion of indigenous support for Morales. "This is about the hardest working people in Bolivia wanting more control over their future," said Daniel Rosas, a Bolivian businessman who sells U.S. medical products in the region. "It is also about people having something to work for." (Editing by Kieran Murray) Pol?tica De manera sorpresiva y en tiempo r?cord, el Senado sancion? la ley de convocatoria a refer?ndum revocatorio Evo ruega dialogar y la oposici?n le desaf?a a jugarse el mandato en un refer?ndum revocatorio Redacci?n Bolpress El Presidente Evo Morales invit? a los prefectos opositores de la "media luna" a reanudar el di?logo el lunes por la tarde con una agenda de discusi?n abierta, y ofreci? garant?as para las autonom?as que se enmarquen en la legalidad. Las fuerzas pol?ticas de oposici?n respondieron al llamado presidencial aprobando en tiempo r?cord un proyecto de ley de convocatoria al refer?ndum revocatorio de mandato del Presidente, Vicepresidente y Prefectos. Intentando allanar el camino de la concertaci?n, el Presidente dijo estar dispuesto a aceptar cualquier tipo de mediadores y observadores internacionales. El vicepresidente ?lvaro Garc?a Linera, esperanzado en que los prefectos de oposici?n responder?an favorablemente a la convocatoria, propuso esta ma?ana consensuar un "paquete de decisiones" que permitan salir de la crisis pol?tica, que incluya el refer?ndum revocatorio. Pero la oposici?n en el Senado respondi? a la invitaci?n del Ejecutivo sancionando en tiempo r?cord el proyecto de ley de revocatoria de mandato de las m?ximas autoridades nacionales y departamentales que fuera presentado por el propio Presidente y que ya fue aprobado en detalle por la C?mara de Diputados. Los legisladores de la oposici?n, que tienen mayor?a en el Senado, ratificaron el proyecto en grande, aprobaron en detalle cada uno de los art?culos a paso acelerado, sancionaron la norma y la enviaron al Poder Ejecutivo para su respectiva promulgaci?n. Argumentan que ha llegado la hora de que el pueblo decida qui?n tienen la raz?n en el entuerto pol?tico actual, o el gobierno o la oposici?n. Si el Presidente no promulga o veta la norma en un plazo de 10 d?as, el Vicepresidente y el Congreso podr?an dar luz verde al refer?ndum. Si Morales no aprueba la ley dar?a una imagen de gran debilidad pol?tica. El senador del MAS F?lix Rojas dijo que la bancada oficialista est? de acuerdo con el proyecto de ley de revocatoria de mandato, pero no considera prudente ni oportuna su sanci?n en un momento en el que se hacen esfuerzos por concertar. Ahora el pa?s exige que se reanude el di?logo, pero si se sanciona este proyecto perjudicaremos cualquier acercamiento pol?tico, explic?. El senador Antonio Peredo (MAS) coment? que la oposici?n busca poner al Presidente en un "desbalance" frente a lo que ocurre en el pa?s. "Frente a la ilegalidad con la que se llevan adelante los refer?ndums en los departamentos, quieren entregarle al Presidente una papa caliente; buscan una confrontaci?n abierta entre el gobierno y los prefectos", dijo. Seg?n la norma sancionada este mi?rcoles en el Senado, para revocar el mandato del Presidente y del Vicepresidente se requiere que los votos en su contra en el refer?ndum superen el 53,7%. Si ambas autoridades pierden el mandato se convocar?a de inmediato a elecciones generales. La maniobra de la oposici?n tiene la intenci?n de bloquear cualquier intento oficialista de aprobar leyes de convocatoria a los refer?ndums constitucional, para ratificar la Constituci?n Pol?tica del Estados aprobada por la Asamblea Constituyente, y dirimidor para fijar un l?mite a la propiedad agraria (5 mil 0 10 mil hect?reas). Antes del "madrug?n" de la oposici?n, Garc?a Linera inform? en la ma?ana que el gobierno de Estados respetar? el principio de la no intervenci?n en asuntos internos, expres? su pleno respaldo a todas las autoridades elegidas democr?ticamente en Bolivia e inst? al di?logo. Luego de reunirse con el segundo Mandatario, el embajador Philip Goldberg propuso que la OEA, pa?ses amigos, Iglesia Cat?lica o la instancia que elijan las partes enfrentadas podr?an mediar en el di?logo. Actualizado el 2008-05-08 a horas: 14:11:35 -- Yoshie From shniad at sfu.ca Thu May 8 14:59:48 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 08 May 2008 13:59:48 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Israeli envoy fears policy shift Message-ID: <200805082059.m48KxmOn025286@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080508/b2f8f34d/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Thu May 8 15:03:23 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 08 May 2008 14:03:23 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Looking at the end of Israel? Message-ID: <200805082103.m48L3Ntl002394@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080508/0de2d736/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Thu May 8 15:03:52 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 08 May 2008 14:03:52 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Speculate to accumulate Message-ID: <200805082103.m48L3qsI003650@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080508/2c39c5a0/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Thu May 8 15:04:31 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 08 May 2008 14:04:31 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Play It as It Dries Message-ID: <200805082104.m48L4V1C004808@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080508/4761cc1d/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Thu May 8 15:02:59 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 08 May 2008 14:02:59 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Whose South Africa? Message-ID: <200805082102.m48L2x4Y001700@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080508/09f9d446/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Thu May 8 15:27:14 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 08 May 2008 14:27:14 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Frank magazine challenges CanWest Message-ID: <200805082127.m48LREJD027511@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080508/121cc069/attachment.txt From news at ckut.ca Thu May 8 16:14:17 2008 From: news at ckut.ca (CKUT Community News Collective) Date: Thu, 08 May 2008 18:14:17 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Press Release - RADIO FREE PALESTINE: 18-hour international radio broadcast on 60-years of Palestinian dispossession In-Reply-To: <03ec01c77e29$012b1cb0$6500a8c0@FokusPiv17ghz> References: <03ec01c77e29$012b1cb0$6500a8c0@FokusPiv17ghz> Message-ID: <48237B39.7070004@ckut.ca> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE RADIO FREE PALESTINE: 18-hour international radio broadcast on 60-years of Palestinian dispossession MONTREAL, FRIDAY, MAY 9th -- Join the International Middle East Media Center in Bethlehem (Palestine), in collaboration with CKUT 90.3fm in Montreal (Quebec, Canada), CHRY 105.5fm in Toronto (Ontario, Canada), CKDU 88.1fm in Halifax (Nova Scotia, Canada), and KBOO 90.7fm in Portland (Oregon, USA) for a historic international radio reflection of the Palestinian Nakba or catastrophe, including contributions from Pacifica Radio and Democracy Now! Next Thursday, May 15th, 2008, commemorates 60 years of the Palestinian Nakba. In 1948, eighty-five percent of Palestinians living in what is today the state of Israel became refugees. More than 500 Palestinian villages were depopulated and then destroyed to prevent the return of the displaced native population. 60-years later, there are upwards of 7 million Palestinian refugees dispersed throughout the world and Palestinians abroad are the world's oldest and largest refugee population, making-up more than one fourth of all refugees. Israel continues to occupy and colonize Palestinian land through the construction of Jewish only settlements, the Wall in the West Bank, and the collective punishment of civilians in the Gaza Strip. On Thursday, May 15th from from 12am until 6pm (EDT), ?Radio Free Palestine? will broadcast on these and many other topics concerning the the ongoing Nakba of the Palestinian people. A complete schedule is available online at www.imemc.org or email news at ckut.ca. -30- For Interviews Contact: George S. Rishmawi, International Middle East Media Center in Bethlehem (Palestine Mobile: 0599-180-872 / USA number: 989-607-9480) Ryme Katkhouda, WPFW/WBAI/Pacifica Radio (202-538-1331) Gretchen King, CKUT Radio Montreal (514-448-4041 x6788) From shimogamo at attglobal.net Thu May 8 18:00:17 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 09 May 2008 09:00:17 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Peak Oil Crisis: The Half-Life For Air Travel Message-ID: <48239411.5010509@attglobal.net> by Tom Whipple Falls Church News-Press (May 01 2008) In recent weeks, airlines around the world have been reporting substantial losses, declaring bankruptcy or completely shutting down. So far the losses have been mostly of small airlines, but many of the large ones have started to thrash around for merger partners. At $3.71 a gallon, jet fuel is now the single largest expense an airline faces. In 2000, the airlines fuel bill was $14 billion. It is now pushing $60 billion and climbing. Southwest, the most profitable carrier, recently announced that this year's fuel bill will be $500 million more than last year and equal to 2007 profits. During the first quarter of 2008 American airlines lost $328 million; Delta lost $274 million; United lost $537 million; Continental $80 million; Northwest $191 million; and US Airways $236 million. Only Southwest Airlines, which did a better job of hedging its fuel than the others, made a profit. It is clear we are going to see major changes in air travel shortly. For some time now, airlines have been eliminating frills, raising prices, filling the planes and effecting whatever other economies come to mind. After the summer flying season ends next September, many airlines are planning to retire five to ten percent of their least efficient aircraft, thereby reducing their flight schedules by a similar amount. Knowledgeable observers are expressing doubts these moves will be enough. People are starting to talk about $200 oil which implies that airline fuel costs will double again. Newer aircraft are more efficient, but the improvements are nowhere near what is necessary to keep up with surging fuel costs and, as Continental Airlines concluded this week, there is not enough financial benefit in a merger to keep up with costs. Airlines are continuing to raise fares - the average ticket is up ten percent over last year - but at some price point the airlines will drive away discretionary travel and they will be left with only essential business and personal travel that is unlikely to fill many planes. On top of the fuel prices is the current economic downturn which is likely to start impacting discretionary travel before the year is out. In short, airplanes simply can't make money while charging affordable fares at current, much less prospective, fuel prices. The era of 500 miles per hour travel for most people is nearly over. There is no obvious way out of this dilemma unless there is a major breakthrough in the efficiency of aircraft. Fares will continue to rise. Flights will be cut. Smaller cities will lose their air service. Shorter trips will be eliminated as being too expensive. More seats are likely to be squeezed on planes and one manufacturer is even pondering seat-less planes in which passengers are strapped to boards during the flight. Ten or fifteen years from now, air travel is likely to be significantly reduced; will be patronized by business travelers or the very wealthy; and will be limited to trans-oceanic or long-distance flights between major population centers. Consolidation of the major airlines and the demise of the smaller regional carriers has already started. After a number of rounds of consolidation, we will be down to only a handful of national or multi-national airlines probably subsidized by governments on "national security" grounds. While the demise of inexpensive discretionary air travel has ramifications for many industries, in the first instance tourism is likely to be hit the hardest. Ignoring for the minute the likely effects of $4 or $5 gasoline in California this summer, Las Vegas reports that nearly half of its tourists arrive by air. To make matters worse, resort operators have recently spent billions upgrading their facilities to the $300 a night places that are less likely to attract drive up customers. The same pattern can be repeated at air-dependent tourist attractions all over the world. There is still a remarkable amount of denial in the airline business. This week Airbus released a forecast showing that the number of large commercial aircraft will grow from 15,000 to 33,000 in the next twenty years and that the number of passengers will triple. If there is to be a long-term future for air travel, it is unlikely to be with liquid fuel powered turbines driving heavier than air devices. The US Air Force is currently embarked on a campaign to convince the Congress to buy it a multi-billion dollar facility to convert coal to jet fuel and a couple of airlines are busy demonstrating that their planes will run on biofuels. While limited use of coal to liquid fuel or biofuels for aircraft may see limited use, neither of these replacements is likely to produce enough affordable fuel to keep Airbus's 33,000 large transport jets in the air twenty years from now. Over the longer run, the development of hydrogen powered aircraft might prove feasible or perhaps lighter-than-air dirigibles might be developed to the point where they can move people and goods efficiently over long distances. In any case, the day of the ubiquitous kerosene-powered jet transport which revolutionized travel for many of us in the second half of the 20th century is likely to be shorter than most realize. http://www.fcnp.com/national_commentary/the_peak_oil_crisis_the_half-life_for_air_travel_20080501.html TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From shniad at sfu.ca Thu May 8 17:57:47 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 08 May 2008 16:57:47 -0700 Subject: [R-G] News Release 8MAY08: Ambassador's Bigoted Views Unwelcome in Canada Message-ID: <200805082357.m48NvlDc018957@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080508/0871261a/attachment.txt From shimogamo at attglobal.net Fri May 9 03:31:23 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 09 May 2008 18:31:23 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] When Technology Fails Message-ID: <482419EB.2010306@attglobal.net> by Richard Heinberg from MuseLetter #193 / May 2008 Foreword to When Technology Fails: ?: A Manual for Self-Reliance & Planetary Survival (second edition) by Matthew Stein Technology will fail. You can count on it. We humans have been making tools for tens of thousands of years. For a similarly long stretch of time we've been talking to ourselves and to one another, developing the other strategy that has made us so formidable as a species - languagemaking. Language helped us refine and expand our toolmaking and tool use (imagine trying to produce something as simple as a stone knife if you couldn't benefit from anyone else's experience); meanwhile, we invented a range of tools to increase our ability to communicate (writing, printing, the telephone, radio, television, computer networks, and so on). These two strategies - toolmaking and languagemaking - have together made us the most successful large-bodied animal species in planetary history. Energy always set the rules of the game. All animals obtain their basic biological energy through food (second-hand sunlight), and exert energy through muscles to get what they want and need. Tools helped us leverage muscle energy, and language gave us social power by enabling us to cooperatively strategize, and to diffuse our ideas over distance and time. Both enabled us to appropriate more and more biosphere functions for our own purposes. But always we remained subject to the net energy principle: it takes energy to get energy, and the net marginal profit (from hunting or gardening or farming) was limited and variable, even with the help of bows and arrows, horse collars, and plows. During the past two centuries, fossil fuels made net energy effectively irrelevant. Suddenly we had access to energy sources produced over geologic time that we could draw down at arbitrarily high rates. The energy required to explore and drill for oil was trivial compared to the energy we could get from burning the stuff. With cheap, high-quality, concentrated fossil energy sources, we could make far more tools than ever before, including mobile ones that carried their energy supply with them. We could make tool networks. We could mechanize production processes. We could free nearly everyone from food-producing routines for other occupations - as factory workers, managers, salespeople, accountants, computer programmers, or advertising artists. As a result we now live in what French philosopher Jacques Ellul famously called the "technological society" - though he might equally have called it the "fossil-fuel society". It is a pattern of living so suffused with, and linked by, powered tool and information systems that we have become overwhelming as a species (we've taken over about forty percent of the biological productivity of the planet), but utterly vulnerable as individuals. All that's necessary to cripple us is for the electricity to go out for a few days. Indeed, the entire system has failure built into it. It is based on the ever-increasing consumption of depleting, non-renewable energy resources. As we consume the cheapest, most easily accessed of those resources and are forced down the net-energy ladder, the technological systems on which we have come to depend will inevitably shudder and give way. That's what I mean when I say technology will fail. But don't take my word for it. A recent issue of New Scientist (April 05 2008) explored the emerging study of how and why complex societies tend to collapse, leading with an article titled, "Why the Demise of Civilization May Be Inevitable". Many people think of modern technology as if it were a magical, autonomous entity capable of overcoming our ancient net-energy constraints. In reality, modern technology has merely increased our exposure to collapse. We should stop assuming that just because we're smarter than the ancient Romans and Mayans, we can't be brought down by analogous system failures. Once we begin to come to terms with all of this, what should we do? Start by identifying tools that are not dependent on the systems most likely to fail. In other words, find tools you can rely on that don't require fossil fuels or an operating electricity grid system. Re-learn the skills that enabled our ancestors to thrive without fossil fuels. Get in touch with others who are similarly interested in surviving collapse, and work with them to create community resilience. Not all of the tools and skills that are likely to be helpful to us are ancient. A good solar cooker, for example, can enable us to heat food cheaply and conveniently without natural gas or electricity - and the solar cookers available today are far more effective than anything that might have been used by tribal peoples in ages past. In other instances, though, we are likely to find ourselves treading well-worn paths, developing ever more respect for how people in traditional societies intelligently solved life's persistent problems. For the most part, simpler technologies are likely to be less environmentally ruinous than the high-powered tool systems on which we have come to rely. Thus any effort we make to return to more reliable and resilient tools will also constitute a giant step toward sustainability and environmentally responsible self-sufficiency. Clearly, information resources will be enormously helpful in our learning (or re-learning) process. That's where this book comes in. When I saw the first edition of When Technology Fails in 2000, I was impressed. Here was a comprehensive review of the tools and skills - and the literature - anyone would need in order to get by as technological society hit the skids. Now, Matthew Stein has updated his classic text, adding a new chapter on proactive actions for making the shift toward sustainability (both personal and global), and updating all the existing chapters with the latest information, including resource guides. The first edition was written before 9/11, when the term "peak oil" was relatively unknown and "global warming" was still considered a fringe topic. A lot has changed in the world since then. A single book can't do everything. There is just too much we need to know. Moreover, many skills need to be learned directly from a teacher (you might be able to learn to operate a fire drill on the basis of diagrams, but for me it took personal interaction with someone who was already good at using one). Nevertheless, When Technology Fails succeeds at just about everything we could realistically hope one book might do to inform us ahead of when technology does falter. Will technology warn us before it fails? It seems to me that it is doing so now. The price of oil is setting new records almost daily. Electricity grids are straining and buckling in countries around the world. Food prices are skyrocketing and food riots are erupting. All you have to do is turn on your computer and surf the Internet for a few minutes and technology will reveal to you all you need to know about how vulnerable technology is making us. Get ready. Read this book and follow its suggestions for skills development and further research. Adjust your own oxygen mask before helping others. _____ Read more about Richard's book, Peak Everything at http://www.richardheinberg.com/books Post Carbon Institute - 6971 Sebastopol Avenue - Sebastopol - California - 95472 - USA http://richardheinberg.com/museletter/193 TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From critical.montages at gmail.com Fri May 9 06:12:55 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Fri, 9 May 2008 08:12:55 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Lebanon: Hezbollah Wins and Even the Saudis Advise Siniora to Step Down Message-ID: Hezbollah 'seizes west Beirut' Hezbollah is reported to have taken control of large areas of the Lebanese capital from groups loyal to the government following gun battles. "There are no clashes anymore because no one is standing in the way of the opposition forces," a Lebanese security official said on Friday. The street battles, which erupted on Wednesday, have left at least 11 people dead and 20 others wounded. Lebanese troops began taking up positions in some neighbourhoods in west Beirut abandoned by the pro-government groups. The army has largely avoided getting involved in the street battles amid fears of being dragged into the conflict. Michel Aoun, the Christian leader allied with the opposition, said that normality shall be regained on the streets. He said: "The derailed carriage is now back on track. We hope from this point that things will fall back into the normal course [of events]." Aoun also said that he sent a letter to Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, and various member states of the UN Security Council, but "did not find a clear response to avert the crisis". A rocket-propelled grenade earlier hit the fence of the heavily protected residence of Saad al-Hariri, the Sunni politician and leader of the governing coalition, in the suburb of Koreitem, a Muslim area of western Beirut on Friday. Al-Hariri was believed to be inside at the time but unhurt. Media assault Armed men loyal to Hezbollah also forced Future News, an al-Hariri-owned TV station, off the air in Beirut. "Armed gunmen surrounded the building, stormed into the garage and demanded that the army shutdown the station," a senior official at the station, said. The security sources said Hezbollah and fighters from the allied Amal movement - both Shia groups - had overrun offices of al-Hariri's Future group across the predominantly Muslim western half of the Lebanese capital. The headquarters of the Future movement's Al-Mustaqbal newspaper was also surrounded by gunmen firing rocket-propelled grenades, setting fire to one floor, its managing editor said. Nadim Munla, the general manager of Future television, told Al Jazeera that masked armed men entered the control rooms of the television network and cut off the cables. He said: "We have been effectively prevented from broadcasting and doing our jobs as media professionals. "Hezbollah ... have proven that the gun is stronger than the value of the opinion. We have only one thing left - free speech, and their guns will not silence us." Lebanese troops evacuated the staff of the TV station's terrestrial and satellite studios in the Kantari area of western Beirut. Saudi response Reports have also emerged that the Saudi ambassador to Lebanon advised Fouad Siniora, the prime minister, to step down. Al Jazeera's Rula Amin, reporting from Beirut, said: "This is a significant move considering that the Saudi government is a staunch supporter of the ruling coalition in Beirut. "The Saudis see this as a dangerous situation that can escalate rapidly." Amin also conducted an exclusive interview with Walid Jumblatt, head of the Socialist Progressive Party, member of parliament, and leader of the country's Druze community. She said that Jumblatt did not regret his backing to remove the head of the country's airport security, whom the government accuses of being too close to Hezbollah. "Jumblatt did not anticipate such a strong response from Hezbollah, and he is resigned to the fact that the group is much stronger than other armed militia," she said. "He also said that the government should have undertaken these moves earlier, but predicts that the fighting will end soon." Hezbollah control In several neighbourhoods across the capital, automatic rifle fire could be heard in the worst domestic fighting since the 1975-90 civil war. Opposition fighters took rapid control of many suburbs [AFP] Hezbollah also took control of all roads leading to Beirut's international airport, Lebanon's only air link to the outside world. According to Elie Zakhour, a port official, Beirut's seaport was also shut down "until further notice" because of the situation, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported. Tension between the government and Hezbollah escalated when the cabinet said the group's private phone network was illegal and an attack on the country's sovereignty. Hezbollah said it was infuriated by government allegations it was spying on Beirut airport and by the cabinet's decision to fire the head of airport security. Call for restraint The fighting has prompted urgent appeals for calm from the international community. Saudi Arabia and Egypt called for an urgent meeting of Arab foreign ministers to try to halt the violence. "An emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo to discuss the crisis will be held in two days," Hossam Zaki, the Egyptian foreign ministery spokesman, said. The UN Security Council also called for "calm and restraint", urging all sides to return to peaceful dialogue. Syria said the dispute in Lebanon was an "internal affair" and expressed hope the feuding parties would find a solution through dialogue. Source: Al Jazeera and agencies May 10, 2008 Shiite Militias Seize Beirut Neighborhoods By NADA BAKRI and GRAHAM BOWLEY BEIRUT, Lebanon ? Shiite militia fighters commandeered the television station and newspaper and political offices of the Sunni parliamentary majority leader, Saad Hariri, on Friday and took control of several Beirut neighborhoods. But the Lebanese capital had mostly returned to calm on Friday morning after fierce clashes Thursday and overnight between the Sunni supporters of the government and loyalists of Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group. Pro-government fighters had mostly abandoned their posts and handed their weapons over to the Shiite militias who were present even in West Beirut. The Shiite militias closed down the television station and newspaper and political offices of Mr. Hariri, the leader of the largest bloc in Parliament, and handed them over to the Lebanese army. The move was a blunt humiliation for Mr. Hariri, but it was unclear what the developments would mean for Lebanon's political future. For now, they seemed only to lead to stalemate and deepen Lebanon's troubles. For 17 months, Lebanon has had a political crisis between the Hezbollah-led opposition supported by Iran and Syria and the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, who is backed by the West and Saudi Arabia. The standoff has left the country without a president since November. The latest clashes erupted Thursday after Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said the government had declared war by threatening to shut down the group's private telephone network. At least four people died and seven others were wounded, according to security officials. On Friday, the Shiite militias began to open up roads that had been blocked since a general strike began on Tuesday, and seemed to be waiting for the government to reverse its decision on the telephone network. After Mr. Nasrallah's speech, Mr. Hariri proposed a deal to end the fighting and called the government's decision on the telephone network a misunderstanding. Mr. Hariri said the decision should be left up to the army command, effectively taking it out of the government's hands. He also urged the immediate election of the army commander, Gen. Michel Suleiman, as president and the convening of a national dialogue among the rival factions. Later on Thursday night, Al Manar television, which is run by Hezbollah, said the group had rejected Mr. Hariri's proposal. The station cited a pro-Hezbollah official, who said the group and its allies would reject any ideas for ending the conflict that were not proposed by Mr. Nasrallah. Hezbollah has previously rejected proposals for electing a president before there is an agreement on a new cabinet and a new election law. "The government's proposal did not offer anything new on how to solve the political crisis," said Talal Atrissi, a political sociology professor at the Lebanese University. "So one of the scenarios would be to continue fighting until either the government publicly backs off or the opposition agrees to hold dialogue." Mr. Hariri, the parliamentary leader, also urged Hezbollah to lift what he called its siege of Beirut, withdrawing militants from the streets and reopening roads, including those leading to the airport. "My appeal to you and to myself as well, the appeal of all Lebanon, is to stop the slide toward civil war, to stop the language of arms and lawlessness," Mr. Hariri said in a televised speech. Mr. Nasrallah, speaking at a news conference via a video link, said the telephone network, which connects Hezbollah's officials, military commanders and emplacements, was a vital part of the group's military infrastructure. "We have said before that we will cut the hands that will target the weapons of the resistance," he said. "Today is the day to fulfill this promise." The government's decision, he added, "is first of all a declaration of war and the launching of war by the government against the resistance and its weapons for the benefit of America and Israel." Minutes after Mr. Nasrallah's speech, armed men in mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods on the west side of Beirut engaged in heavy fighting using automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. The army raced in armored personal carriers from one neighborhood to another, with soldiers shooting in the air to try to stop the fighting. By late Thursday masked gunmen were roaming the streets with walkie-talkies. Some were seen shooting out streetlights to keep rooftop snipers from directing their fire at targets. Many residents along Corniche Mazraa, a major highway that has become a demarcation line between the factions, were seen leaving their houses for safer areas. Others lined up in supermarkets, stocking up on food supplies. Several parts of the city were shut down, and roads were blocked by burning tires and garbage cans set on fire. Fighting also broke out in the Bekaa Valley, to the east, where government and Hezbollah supporters blocked roads and exchanged gunfire. The clashes started Wednesday after the government's decision on Tuesday to take steps against Hezbollah's telephone network, which government officials considered a violation of Lebanon's sovereignty. -- Yoshie From critical.montages at gmail.com Fri May 9 07:01:47 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Fri, 9 May 2008 09:01:47 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Lebanon: "PSP Man Linked to Hawi Assassination" Arrested Message-ID: Hariri probe 'arrests PSP man linked to Hawi assassination' Daily Star staff Thursday, May 08, 2008 Hariri probe 'arrests PSP man linked to Hawi assassination' BEIRUT: The UN probe committee investigating the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has detained a man in Beirut's Wata al-Mosseitbeh neighborhood on suspicion of involvement in the killing of former Lebanese Communist Party cheif George Hawi, a report published by As-Safir newspaper said Tuesday. As-Safir, citing witnesses who live in the neighborhood, said UN investigators in a large convoy visited the area on April 14 and raided the house of a man identified as "N.G." who lives opposite Hawi's residence on Jabal al-Arab Street. The Communist Party's former secretary general was killed in a car bombing in June 2005. The report said the suspect, a member of the Progressive Socialist Party headed by MP Walid Jumblatt, had left shortly after Hawi's murder to Dubai where he has been working there for nearly two years. He returned to Beirut about six months ago to work at a restaurant. "I used to see this individual every day on the sidewalk near my parent's house; he used to spend the night smoking sheesha near my father's car until 2:00 or 3:00 a.m.," Hawi's son, Raffi Madayan, told Al-Manar television on Tuesday. Madayan also accused the Lebanese security services of negligence: "I'm very concerned that there might be attempts to cover for the real killer." In its Tuesday report, As-Safir said investigations on members of the so-called Rafeh network - suspected of being an Israeli spying cell operating in Lebanon - have led to new information concerning Hawi's murder. Hawi was assassinated when a bomb planted in his car was detonated by remote control as he traveled through Wata al-Moseitbeh. The perpetrator has yet to be identified, but the ruling coalition in Lebanon has usually blamed Syria for this and other explosions in the capital, after the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. Syria has repeatedly denied the charges. - The Daily Star -- Yoshie From critical.montages at gmail.com Fri May 9 07:07:18 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Fri, 9 May 2008 09:07:18 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Clandestine Workers Step Forward in French Protests Message-ID: International Herald Tribune Clandestine workers step forward in French protests By Katrin Bennhold and Caroline Brothers Thursday, May 8, 2008 NEUILLY-SUR-SEINE, France: The Caf? La Jatte is in many ways a typical Parisian eatery. It has a menu full of culinary promise, a sumptuous wine list and a handful of illegal African immigrants working in the kitchen. It also has a rather atypical former customer: President Nicolas Sarkozy, known for his tough stance on illegal immigration, was a regular when he was mayor of this leafy western suburb until 2002. Caf? La Jatte has become a symbol for an unusually public campaign by clandestine employees in France demanding work permits. Recent kitchen strikes here and at other restaurants have mushroomed into a broader protest movement touching several sectors and spreading fast outside of Paris. Since April 25, when France's largest labor union, the CGT, filed a request to legalize 900 restaurant employees, construction workers and cleaners, hundreds more have lined up to join the initiative. The movement has highlighted an uneasy dilemma facing France and other Western governments: The hard line on immigration that helped leaders like Sarkozy to get elected is increasingly at odds with economic realities. For the first time, the demands of France's illegal workers are backed by a growing number of their employers. Construction and cleaning companies say they cannot get enough legal workers to fill the available jobs. The employers' federation of the restaurant and hotel business has called for the legalization of 50,000 workers in that field alone. And Konex, a technology cabling firm, has rallied dozens of employers to form a lobby dedicated to the matter. "This is a problem of political hypocrisy," said Gilles Caussade, one of the two owners of Caf? La Jatte, as he glanced from his restaurant's sprawling outdoor terrace to the apartment building where Sarkozy used to live. "The economic needs are real," he said. "Manpower is no longer assured by those who are born in the country, and these are jobs that they do not want to do." Every time Caussade advertises a job in the paper, only Africans and Sri Lankans respond, he said. The 10 Malians now working in Caf? La Jatte's kitchen have all been there at least two years - one of them, who started as a dishwasher and is now a cook, since 1994. Employed on work permits borrowed from friends and relatives, they have been earning standard industry wages and paying taxes like regular employees. "That's the irony," Caussade said. "They are completely part of the system and yet, officially, they don't exist." Caussade said he had not known that his employees were illegal and had been caught by surprise when his staff started a five-day strike on April 19. But their battle has become his, he said, recounting how he personally took their applications for work permits to the police. "Now I just have to learn their real names," Caussade quipped. "Baba is no longer Baba, he is Abdouramane. Samba becomes Moussa." Caussade is no exception. At a recent conference organized by the human resources departments of some of France's biggest companies, executives urged the government to make it easier for immigrants to get work permits. Sylvie Brunet, head of human resources at ONET, a company in Marseille that provides cleaning services, said her business could not function without ample immigrant labor. "Even French high school dropouts don't want the jobs we offer," she said. St?phane Vallet of Bouygues, the construction company, concurred. The French Immigration Ministry estimates that there are 200,000 to 400,000 undocumented immigrants in France; reports in the French press suggest that as many as three out of four of them are working. But as employers lobby for the legalization of their workers, the police continue to round them up for expulsion, often targeting train stations in the early morning and late evening, when cleaners and builders commute. The issue is a headache for Sarkozy, who has ordered police chiefs across France to fulfill a strict deportation quota of 26,000 this year but who has also promised to help business alleviate labor shortages. In a high-profile television interview on April 24, Sarkozy defended his policies and accused company bosses employing illegal immigrants of being "hypocrites." "Don't tell me, whether you are the boss of a small company or not, that you have to find yourself a poor illegal worker when there are, among the immigrants who we do welcome and who do have papers, 22 percent unemployed," Sarkozy said, without elaborating on the statistic. The fact that employers have increasingly found themselves the target of criticism may be one reason they appear to be more sympathetic to the current campaign. The movement has been gathering momentum with isolated strikes since July 2007, when Immigration Minister Brice Hortefeux issued a decree obligating employers to verify the legality of their workers with the police. Since then, two further sets of guidelines have been issued, opening the door to legalizing some staff in specific regions and sectors. This has raised hope among workers at a time when surging food prices have often made families in the immigrants' home countries even more dependent on their remittances. The government has ruled out legalization on a mass scale, saying that only a few hundred of those who have applied for papers in the current movement will get papers, on a case-by-case basis. Critics said that only adds to the confusion and that it could result in ad hoc decisions by prefectures, the regional police authorities charged with authorizing migrants to work. "Going case by case is not a policy; it is like saying to the prefectures, 'Work it out yourself,' " said Laurent Giovanonni, secretary general of Cimade, a nongovernmental organization that works in the detention centers where migrants without papers are held. In the case of the Caf? La Jatte workers, there has been some progress. As of Wednesday, 7 of the 10 La Jatte illegals had received three-month work permits; the other three hope to get such papers on Friday. "This has changed our lives," Abdouramane Sarr, the 42-year-old dishwasher-turned-cook, said Thursday in the steaming restaurant kitchen. No longer afraid of police controls, he is planning his first trip to Mali in 10 years. But at Passion Traiteur, an upscale caterer in the nearby suburb of Colombes, 3 of 20 striking workers have been ordered to leave the country. And the movement is spreading. On Wednesday, illegal workers occupied the premises of Adecco and Triangle, two job-placement companies in Creteil, southeast of Paris. In Nanterre, west of Paris, a dozen workers are on hunger strike. Meanwhile, a march of illegal workers that started in Lille several weeks ago will arrive in Paris on Saturday, when the abolition of slavery will be commemorated. One of the more colorful protests is taking place in central Paris, where a few hundred mostly African workers have been occupying a union building for a week. Anzoumane Sissoko, a Malian organizer of the protest, said that in his 15 years in France he had seen clandestine workers come out of the shadows sporadically, but never to this extent and with such self-confidence. "There is something different about this time," said Sissoko, himself illegal until last year. "People really think something could change for them." -- Yoshie From critical.montages at gmail.com Fri May 9 11:01:15 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Fri, 9 May 2008 13:01:15 -0400 Subject: [R-G] IMF minus Turkey Message-ID: Extremely good news. Workers failed to take Taksim on May Day in Turkey, but they have apparently succeeded in putting the government on notice. -- Yoshie -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [50Years] IMF loses last major client Date: Fri, 9 May 2008 11:07:40 -0400 From: Sameer Dossani Today's news that Turkey is unlikely to renew its standby agreements with the IMF is huge. As many of you will remember, back in 2003, the IMF was receiving more than 60% of its revenue from interest repayments from its four major clients - Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia and Turkey. The first three of those four were unhappy enough with the IMF that they did not renew their loans and even went so far as to repay outstanding debt early, thereby saving themselves considerable interest payments. These moves were enough to precipitate a serious financial crisis for an institution that has had its hand in nearly every major financial crisis around the globe since 1980. In April, the IMF announced that it would be cutting 15% of its staff and selling $11 billion worth of gold as part of its own "structural adjustment" program; the institution's budget had already decreased by about 20% since 2005. The IMF's financial plan will likely have to be revised yet again - and further budget austerity measures put in place - if they lose their last major client. And if Turkey goes one step further and repays its debt early (like Brazil, Argentina and Indonesia before it) this could signal the end of the end for an institution that once dictated economic policies the world over. -Sameer. PS. Some of you may be interested in checking out a new blog that I'm contributing to. The url is shirinandsameer.blogspot.com . http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-turkey-imf.html Resenting Austerity, Turks Want No New IMF Deal May 8, 2008 ANKARA (Reuters) - Consensus is rare in Turkey, but no one seems to like the IMF. With the country due to end its loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund on Saturday, a view is building that after 19 standby agreements since 1961, it is time Turkey cut the ties and stood on its own economic feet. "The IMF forced Turkey to sell its profit-making banks. Soon there will be nothing to sell. What will we leave to our children?" said Mustafa Koc, 47, standing in front of dozens of Turkish flags which he sells in Ankara's central Kizilay area. Students, trade unionists, civil servants and even businessmen are asserting that the fund's programmes have never been a real help, and with inflation in single digits and growth averaging 6.8 percent in the last five years, they say Turkey no longer needs the IMF's rigors and disciplines. "Turkey must go its separate way with the IMF and must certainly say 'no' to a new IMF deal," Ankara Chamber of Commerce Chairman Sinan Aygun told Reuters. "Turkey needs to implement a programme which suits its conditions and serves its own interests. There are no countries which became rich implementing the IMF's economic programmes. They are all in poverty." That view may be inaccurate -- the IMF has lent Turkey far more than its quota and rescued the country from crisis -- but it is growing at a time when the Fund, like some other post-war global institutions, faces broad challenges. The institution which has handed out billions of dollars to rescue developing nations from economic peril has long grappled with its changing role, as financial crises have declined and fewer countries have turned to it. New powers including China, India and the Gulf states offer money without belt-tightening "Conditionalities," an alternative to years of austerity. And now Turks feel wealthier, they associate the IMF with problems more readily than solutions. THE PINCH Working-class people in Turkey blame the IMF for high unemployment and depressed purchasing power, while businessmen complain about its tight monetary policies that they say led to the lira being overvalued and hurt their competitiveness. "The IMF has damaged Turkey more than it benefited it in the last two years. Its policies hurt our competitiveness and forced us to pay high interest," said Omer Bolat, a senior member of business forum MUSIAD, which has close links with the government. Even some who accept the Fund helped Turkey in improving its public finances during a 2001 financial crisis say the government should now stop following prescriptions from the IMF, which has lent Turkey $45.8 billion since 2000. The trade unionists agree. "The IMF has implemented programmes in several countries and it failed in all of them. Turkey is one of these countries," said Mustafa Kumlu, the head of the country's biggest labor group Turk-Is. Even Economy Minister Mehmet Simsek said in March Turkey no longer needed IMF borrowing and would opt for either a precautionary standby with access to IMF cash, or a weaker post-programme monitoring deal with no lending facility. If Turks seem ungrateful, their thinking is to some extent in line with traditional IMF client countries such as Latin American and Asian economies, which borrowed heavily from the IMF in the past and now have strong public finances. Brazil, for example, achieved an investment-grade credit rating at the beginning of this month after pursuing IMF policies first and then its own economic programme later. SPECIAL CASE But some economists argue that Turkey is in a different position, and still needs the IMF's help. Where others have cash surpluses which make a domestic balance of payments crisis less likely, Turkey has a large and growing external deficit. It is also less stable politically -- its ruling, pro-business AK Party is fighting a threat of closure -- and its ties with the European Union, which Ankara hopes to join, are weaker than a few years ago. Add to this the prospect of a weaker global economy -- Turkey's economic growth last year dipped to 4.5 percent -- and tighter real terms for credit all round, and Turkey may yet need the extra support the fund offers, those economists say. "The IMF is still relevant, especially in a world where the credit crunch is back and some emerging markets such as Turkey may no longer benefit from excessive liquidity," said Omer Taspinar, a Turkey expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institute. Kizilay -- the district in the heart of Ankara where flag-seller Koc was lamenting the sale of Turkish assets -- is in its way emblematic of sustained hardships that the IMF's inflation-beating approach has failed to rectify. A district with just luxury stores a few years ago, it is now filled with discount stores or cheap pastry shops where customers grab a filling bite to eat. The upper classes have largely migrated to new out-of-town shopping malls. "It takes more and more time to convince people to buy cosmetics," said Asuman Karaarslan, 28, a sales clerk. "People are reluctant to spend money as they pay housing or car installments." As for the Fund itself, an official declined comment -- beyond saying it is not the IMF's job to please everyone. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- IMF chief warns Latin American nations on dangers of commodity boom Thompson Financial News. May 7, 2008 http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2008/05/07/afx4980684.html Latin American nations have made impressive economic progress over the last decade but the commodity price boom poses new dangers, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief warned today. IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said too much of recent export growth reflected the rise in commodity prices, thereby increasing dependence on a volatile sector and helping to crowd out manufacturing. Speaking at a Council of the Americas meeting, he said the commodity boom also threatens the region's progress in poverty reduction, placing 'an additional burden on the poor, who proportionately spend the largest share of their income on food.' The IMF is advising governments and central banks in Latin America on how to manage the economic impact of commodity price inflation and praised Brazilian and Mexican programs to limit the impact on the poor. To promote more sustainable growth, Strauss-Kahn said the Latin American nations needed to raise investment and productivity, strengthen their infrastructure and improve education. Strauss-Kahn said 'these actions will reduce poverty over the long run, but meanwhile we need to help keep Latin America's recent growth on track.' The world financial turmoil has so far had only a limited effect in the region but it remains exposed. Strauss-Kahn said that if growth were to falter, particularly in China which is a newly important player in the region, 'the impact on Latin America could be severe.' He coupled his concerns about Latin America's economies with another warning about Chinese economic policy. Strauss-Kahn called for a rebalancing toward domestic consumption and faster currency appreciation. 'The world needs China to go further and faster, if new misalignments among the major currencies are to be avoided, he said. -- Yoshie From shniad at sfu.ca Fri May 9 13:09:39 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 09 May 2008 12:09:39 -0700 Subject: [R-G] No water, no loos, no power Message-ID: <200805091909.m49J9dcQ027188@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080509/d9008656/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Fri May 9 13:09:02 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 09 May 2008 12:09:02 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Abuse Claims Mount Against Pentagon, Contractors Message-ID: <200805091909.m49J92v7025726@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080509/4bb1284a/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Fri May 9 13:08:24 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 09 May 2008 12:08:24 -0700 Subject: [R-G] The Loathsome Smearing of Israels Critics Message-ID: <200805091908.m49J8OrC024387@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080509/3be92833/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Fri May 9 13:16:18 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 09 May 2008 12:16:18 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Israels Original Sin Message-ID: <200805091916.m49JGIDs010530@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080509/68b95a8f/attachment.txt From suzannedk at gmail.com Fri May 9 16:12:01 2008 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Fri, 9 May 2008 18:12:01 -0400 Subject: [R-G] The Loathsome Smearing of Israels Critics In-Reply-To: <200805091908.m49J8OrC024387@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> References: <200805091908.m49J8OrC024387@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> Message-ID: Of coure they have no sense of decency .. so, appeaking to what they do not possess is less than fruitless. What is needed is documentation given to all media outlets joined to the smears.... In short to those who do have a sense of decency. On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 3:08 PM, Sid Shniad wrote: > > The Independent May 8, 2008 > The Loathsome Smearing of Israels Critics > by Johann Hari > In the US and Britain, there is a campaign to smear anybody who tries > to describe the plight of the Palestinian people. It is an attempt to > intimidate and silence and to a large degree, it works. There is > nobody these self-appointed spokesmen for Israel will not attack as > anti-Jewish: liberal Jews, rabbis, even Holocaust survivors. > My own case isnt especially important, but it illustrates how the > wider process of intimidation works. I have worked undercover at both > the Finsbury Park mosque and among neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers to > expose the Jew-hatred there; when I went on the Islam Channel to > challenge the anti-Semitism of Islamists, I received a rash of death > threats calling me a Jew-lover, a Zionist-homo pig and more. > Ah, but wait. I have also reported from Gaza and the West Bank. Last > week, I wrote an article that described how untreated sewage was being > pumped from illegal Israeli settlements on to Palestinian land, > contaminating their reservoirs. This isnt controversial. It has been > documented by Friends of the Earth, and I have seen it with my own > eyes. > The response? There was little attempt to dispute the facts I offered. > Instead, some of the most high profile pro-Israel writers and media > monitoring groups including Honest Reporting and Camera said I [am] an > anti-Jewish bigot akin to Joseph Goebbels and Mahmoud Ahmadinejadh, > while Melanie Phillips even linked the stabbing of two Jewish people > in North London to articles like mine. Vast numbers of e-mails came > flooding in calling for me to be sacked. > Any attempt to describe accurately the situation for Palestinians is > met like this. If you recount the pumping of sewage onto Palestinian > land, Honest Reporting claims you are reviving the anti-Semitic myth > of Jews poisoning the wells. If you interview a woman whose baby died > in 2002 because she was detained in labour by Israeli soldiers at a > checkpoint within the West Bank, Honest Reporting will say you didnt > explain the real cause: the election of Hamas in, um, 2006. And on, > and on. > The former editor of Israels leading newspaper, Haaretz, David Landau, > calls the behaviour of these groups nascent McCarthyism. Those > responsible hold extreme positions of their own that place them way to > the right of most Israelis. Alan Dershowitz and Melanie Phillips are > two of the most prominent figures sent in to attack anyone who > disagrees with the Israeli right. Dershowitz is a lawyer, Harvard > professor and author of The Case For Israel. He sees ethnic cleansing > as a trifling matter, writing: Political solutions often require the > movement of people, and such movement is not always voluntary It is a > fifth-rate issue analogous in many respects to some massive urban > renewal. If a prominent American figure takes a position on Israel to > the left of this, Dershowitz often takes to the airwaves to call them > anti-Semites and bigots. > The journalist Melanie Phillips performs a similar role in Britain. > Last year a group called Independent Jewish Voices was established > with this mission statement: Palestinians and Israelis alike have the > right to peace and security. Jews including Mike Leigh, Stephen Fry > and Rabbi David Goldberg joined. Phillips swiftly dubbed them Jews For > Genocide, and said they encourage the killers of Jews. Where does this > come from? She says the Palestinians are an artificial people who can > be collectively punished because they are a terrorist population. She > believes that while individual Palestinians may deserve compassion, > their cause amounts to Holocaust denial as a national project. Honest > Reporting quotes Phillips as a model of reliable reporting. > These individuals spray accusations of anti-Semitism so liberally that > by their standards, a majority of Jewish Israelis have anti-Semitic > tendencies. Dershowitz said Jimmy Carters decision to speak to the > elected Hamas government border[ed] on anti-Semitism. A Haaretz poll > last month found that 64 per cent of Israelis want their government to > do just that. > As US President, Jimmy Carter showed his commitment to Israel by > giving it more aid than anywhere else and brokering the only peace > deal with an Arab regime the country has ever enjoyed. He also wants > to see a safe and secure Palestine alongside it so last year he wrote > a book called Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. It is a bland and > factual canter through the major human rights reports. There is > nothing there you cant read in the mainstream Israeli press every day. > Carters comparison of life on the West Bank (not within Israel) to > Apartheid South Africa is not new. The West Bank is ruled in the > interests of a small Jewish minority; it is bisected by roads for the > Jewish settlers from which Palestinians are banned. The Israeli human > rights group Btselem says this bears striking similarities to the > racist Apartheid regime. Yet for repeating these facts in the US, > Carter has widely called a racist. Several universities have even > refused to let the ex-President speak to their students. > These campus battles often succeed. Norman Finkelstein is a political > scientist in the US whose parents were both Jewish survivors of the > Warsaw ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. They lost every blood > relative. He made his reputation exposing a hoax called From Time > Immemorial by Joan Peters which claimed that Palestine was virtually > empty when Zionist settlers arrived, and the people claiming to be > Palestinians were mostly impostors who had come from local areas to > cash in. Finkelstein showed it to be scarred by falsified figures and > gross misreading of sources. From that moment on, he was smeared as an > anti-Semite by those who had lauded the book. But it was when > Finkelstein revealed two years ago that Alan Dershowitz had, without > acknowledgement, drawn wholesale from Peters hoax for his book The > Case For Israel, that the worst began. Dershowitz campaigned to make > sure Finkelstein was denied tenure at his university. He even claimed > that Finkelsteins mother who made it through Maidenek and two > slave-labour camps had collaborated with the Nazis. The campaign > worked. Finkelstein was let go by De Paul University, simply for > speaking the truth. > Are the likes of Dershowitz and Phillips and Honest Reporting becoming > more shrill because they can sense they are losing the argument? > Liberal Jews the majority are now setting up rivals to the hard-right > organisations they work with, because they believe this campaign of > demonisation is damaging us all. It damages the Palestinians, because > it prevents honest discussion of their plight. It damages the > Israelis, because it pushes them further down an aggressive and futile > path. And it damages diaspora Jews, because it makes real > anti-Semitism harder to deal with. > We need to look the witch-hunters in the eye and say, as Joseph Welch > said to Joe McCarthy himself: Youve done enough. Have you no sense of > decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? > _______________________________________________ > Rad-Green mailing list > Rad-Green at lists.econ.utah.edu > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green > From shimogamo at attglobal.net Fri May 9 20:30:11 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 11:30:11 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable Message-ID: <482508B3.3060300@attglobal.net> by Debora MacKenzie New Scientist (April 02 2008) DOOMSDAY. The end of civilisation. Literature and film abound with tales of plague, famine and wars which ravage the planet, leaving a few survivors scratching out a primitive existence amid the ruins. Every civilisation in history has collapsed, after all. Why should ours be any different? Doomsday scenarios typically feature a knockout blow: a massive asteroid, all-out nuclear war or a catastrophic pandemic (see "Will a pandemic bring down civilisation?"). Yet there is another chilling possibility: what if the very nature of civilisation means that ours, like all the others, is destined to collapse sooner or later? A few researchers have been making such claims for years. Disturbingly, recent insights from fields such as complexity theory suggest that they are right. It appears that once a society develops beyond a certain level of complexity it becomes increasingly fragile. Eventually, it reaches a point at which even a relatively minor disturbance can bring everything crashing down. Some say we have already reached this point, and that it is time to start thinking about how we might manage collapse. Others insist it is not yet too late, and that we can - we must - act now to keep disaster at bay. Environmental mismanagement History is not on our side. Think of Sumeria, of ancient Egypt and of the Maya. In his 2005 best-seller Collapse, Jared Diamond of the University of California, Los Angeles, blamed environmental mismanagement for the fall of the Mayan civilisation and others, and warned that we might be heading the same way unless we choose to stop destroying our environmental support systems. Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington DC agrees. He has long argued that governments must pay more attention to vital environmental resources. "It's not about saving the planet. It's about saving civilisation", he says. Others think our problems run deeper. From the moment our ancestors started to settle down and build cities, we have had to find solutions to the problems that success brings. "For the past 10,000 years, problem solving has produced increasing complexity in human societies", says Joseph Tainter, an archaeologist at Utah State University, Logan, and author of the 1988 book The Collapse of Complex Societies. If crops fail because rain is patchy, build irrigation canals. When they silt up, organise dredging crews. When the bigger crop yields lead to a bigger population, build more canals. When there are too many for ad hoc repairs, install a management bureaucracy, and tax people to pay for it. When they complain, invent tax inspectors and a system to record the sums paid. That much the Sumerians knew. Diminishing returns There is, however, a price to be paid. Every extra layer of organisation imposes a cost in terms of energy, the common currency of all human efforts, from building canals to educating scribes. And increasing complexity, Tainter realised, produces diminishing returns. The extra food produced by each extra hour of labour - or joule of energy invested per farmed hectare - diminishes as that investment mounts. We see the same thing today in a declining number of patents per dollar invested in research as that research investment mounts. This law of diminishing returns appears everywhere, Tainter says. To keep growing, societies must keep solving problems as they arise. Yet each problem solved means more complexity. Success generates a larger population, more kinds of specialists, more resources to manage, more information to juggle - and, ultimately, less bang for your buck. Eventually, says Tainter, the point is reached when all the energy and resources available to a society are required just to maintain its existing level of complexity. Then when the climate changes or barbarians invade, overstretched institutions break down and civil order collapses. What emerges is a less complex society, which is organised on a smaller scale or has been taken over by another group. Tainter sees diminishing returns as the underlying reason for the collapse of all ancient civilisations, from the early Chinese dynasties to the Greek city state of Mycenae. These civilisations relied on the solar energy that could be harvested from food, fodder and wood, and from wind. When this had been stretched to its limit, things fell apart. An ineluctable process Western industrial civilisation has become bigger and more complex than any before it by exploiting new sources of energy, notably coal and oil, but these are limited. There are increasing signs of diminishing returns: the energy required to get each new joule of oil is mounting and although global food production is still increasing, constant innovation is needed to cope with environmental degradation and evolving pests and diseases - the yield boosts per unit of investment in innovation are shrinking. "Since problems are inevitable", Tainter warns, "this process is in part ineluctable". Is Tainter right? An analysis of complex systems has led Yaneer Bar-Yam, head of the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to the same conclusion that Tainter reached from studying history. Social organisations become steadily more complex as they are required to deal both with environmental problems and with challenges from neighbouring societies that are also becoming more complex, Bar-Yam says. This eventually leads to a fundamental shift in the way the society is organised. "To run a hierarchy, managers cannot be less complex than the system they are managing", Bar-Yam says. As complexity increases, societies add ever more layers of management but, ultimately in a hierarchy, one individual has to try and get their head around the whole thing, and this starts to become impossible. At that point, hierarchies give way to networks in which decision-making is distributed. We are at this point. This shift to decentralised networks has led to a widespread belief that modern society is more resilient than the old hierarchical systems. "I don't foresee a collapse in society because of increased complexity", says futurologist and industry consultant Ray Hammond. "Our strength is in our highly distributed decision making". This, he says, makes modern western societies more resilient than those like the old Soviet Union, in which decision making was centralised. Increasing connectedness Things are not that simple, says Thomas Homer-Dixon, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, Canada, and author of the 2006 book The Upside of Down. "Initially, increasing connectedness and diversity helps: if one village has a crop failure, it can get food from another village that didn't". As connections increase, though, networked systems become increasingly tightly coupled. This means the impacts of failures can propagate: the more closely those two villages come to depend on each other, the more both will suffer if either has a problem. "Complexity leads to higher vulnerability in some ways", says Bar-Yam. "This is not widely understood". The reason is that as networks become ever tighter, they start to transmit shocks rather than absorb them. "The intricate networks that tightly connect us together - and move people, materials, information, money and energy - amplify and transmit any shock", says Homer-Dixon. "A financial crisis, a terrorist attack or a disease outbreak has almost instant destabilising effects, from one side of the world to the other". For instance, in 2003 large areas of North America and Europe suffered blackouts when apparently insignificant nodes of their respective electricity grids failed. And this year China suffered a similar blackout after heavy snow hit power lines. Tightly coupled networks like these create the potential for propagating failure across many critical industries, says Charles Perrow of Yale University, a leading authority on industrial accidents and disasters. Credit crunch Perrow says interconnectedness in the global production system has now reached the point where "a breakdown anywhere increasingly means a breakdown everywhere". This is especially true of the world's financial systems, where the coupling is very tight. "Now we have a debt crisis with the biggest player, the US. The consequences could be enormous". "A networked society behaves like a multicellular organism", says Bar-Yam, "random damage is like lopping a chunk off a sheep". Whether or not the sheep survives depends on which chunk is lost. And while we are pretty sure which chunks a sheep needs, it isn't clear - it may not even be predictable - which chunks of our densely networked civilisation are critical, until it's too late. "When we do the analysis, almost any part is critical if you lose enough of it", says Bar-Yam. "Now that we can ask questions of such systems in more sophisticated ways, we are discovering that they can be very vulnerable. That means civilisation is very vulnerable". So what can we do? "The key issue is really whether we respond successfully in the face of the new vulnerabilities we have", Bar-Yam says. That means making sure our "global sheep" does not get injured in the first place - something that may be hard to guarantee as the climate shifts and the world's fuel and mineral resources dwindle. Tightly coupled system Scientists in other fields are also warning that complex systems are prone to collapse. Similar ideas have emerged from the study of natural cycles in ecosystems, based on the work of ecologist Buzz Holling, now at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Some ecosystems become steadily more complex over time: as a patch of new forest grows and matures, specialist species may replace more generalist species, biomass builds up and the trees, beetles and bacteria form an increasingly rigid and ever more tightly coupled system. "It becomes an extremely efficient system for remaining constant in the face of the normal range of conditions", says Homer-Dixon. But unusual conditions - an insect outbreak, fire or drought - can trigger dramatic changes as the impact cascades through the system. The end result may be the collapse of the old ecosystem and its replacement by a newer, simpler one. Globalisation is resulting in the same tight coupling and fine-tuning of our systems to a narrow range of conditions, he says. Redundancy is being systematically eliminated as companies maximise profits. Some products are produced by only one factory worldwide. Financially, it makes sense, as mass production maximises efficiency. Unfortunately, it also minimises resilience. "We need to be more selective about increasing the connectivity and speed of our critical systems", says Homer-Dixon. "Sometimes the costs outweigh the benefits". Is there an alternative? Could we heed these warnings and start carefully climbing back down the complexity ladder? Tainter knows of only one civilisation that managed to decline but not fall. "After the Byzantine empire lost most of its territory to the Arabs, they simplified their entire society. Cities mostly disappeared, literacy and numeracy declined, their economy became less monetised, and they switched from professional army to peasant militia". Staving off collapse Pulling off the same trick will be harder for our more advanced society. Nevertheless, Homer-Dixon thinks we should be taking action now. "First, we need to encourage distributed and decentralised production of vital goods like energy and food", he says. "Second, we need to remember that slack isn't always waste. A manufacturing company with a large inventory may lose some money on warehousing, but it can keep running even if its suppliers are temporarily out of action". The electricity industry in the US has already started identifying hubs in the grid with no redundancy available and is putting some back in, Homer-Dixon points out. Governments could encourage other sectors to follow suit. The trouble is that in a world of fierce competition, private companies will always increase efficiency unless governments subsidise inefficiency in the public interest. Homer-Dixon doubts we can stave off collapse completely. He points to what he calls "tectonic" stresses that will shove our rigid, tightly coupled system outside the range of conditions it is becoming ever more finely tuned to. These include population growth, the growing divide between the world's rich and poor, financial instability, weapons proliferation, disappearing forests and fisheries, and climate change. In imposing new complex solutions we will run into the problem of diminishing returns - just as we are running out of cheap and plentiful energy. "This is the fundamental challenge humankind faces. We need to allow for the healthy breakdown in natural function in our societies in a way that doesn't produce catastrophic collapse, but instead leads to healthy renewal", Homer-Dixon says. This is what happens in forests, which are a patchy mix of old growth and newer areas created by disease or fire. If the ecosystem in one patch collapses, it is recolonised and renewed by younger forest elsewhere. We must allow partial breakdown here and there, followed by renewal, he says, rather than trying so hard to avert breakdown by increasing complexity that any resulting crisis is actually worse. Tipping points Lester Brown thinks we are fast running out of time. "The world can no longer afford to waste a day. We need a Great Mobilisation, as we had in wartime", he says. "There has been tremendous progress in just the past few years. For the first time, I am starting to see how an alternative economy might emerge. But it's now a race between tipping points - which will come first, a switch to sustainable technology, or collapse?" Tainter is not convinced that even new technology will save civilisation in the long run. "I sometimes think of this as a 'faith-based' approach to the future", he says. Even a society reinvigorated by cheap new energy sources will eventually face the problem of diminishing returns once more. Innovation itself might be subject to diminishing returns, or perhaps absolute limits. Studies of the way cities grow by Luis Bettencourt of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, support this idea. His team's work suggests that an ever-faster rate of innovation is required to keep cities growing and prevent stagnation or collapse, and in the long run this cannot be sustainable. The stakes are high. Historically, collapse always led to a fall in population. "Today's population levels depend on fossil fuels and industrial agriculture", says Tainter. "Take those away and there would be a reduction in the Earth's population that is too gruesome to think about". If industrialised civilisation does fall, the urban masses - half the world's population - will be most vulnerable. Much of our hard-won knowledge could be lost, too. "The people with the least to lose are subsistence farmers", Bar-Yam observes, and for some who survive, conditions might actually improve. Perhaps the meek really will inherit the Earth. From shimogamo at attglobal.net Sat May 10 05:14:12 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 20:14:12 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] MIT Engineer Asks: Are You Ready for the Future? Message-ID: <48258384.4070609@attglobal.net> by Matthew Stein http://www.whentechnologyfails.com Is it not already too late if one waits until one is thirsty to begin digging a well? -Chinese Proverb The devastation of New Orleans, combined with the current rash of wild fires in the West and severe weather in the East, brings home the fact that climate change and ecological collapse are bad for business (and people's lives). Ready or not, life as we know it is going to change radically over the next decade. I doubt that we will see technology fail completely, but I am certain that we will see increasing environmental and political instabilities that will create disruptions in the flow of electricity, goods, and central services to huge numbers of people, and that America will not be spared from societal disruptions on a global scale. When Technology Fails, a book by Matthew Stein, provides something for everyone, from folks who just want to help their families when disaster strikes, to the go-it-alone survivalist, to the eco-minded person who wishes to tread more lightly on the earth, whatever the future may hold. Hurricane Katrina, the Tsunami in Asia, and 9/11 really bring it home. How many of us are prepared for disruptions of this magnitude? How will you cope if the water stops flowing out of your tap, or if gasoline and electricity are unavailable? If the doctors and hospitals are overloaded, can you deal with common medical emergencies? How can we do our part to minimize our impact on this planet, and to live more sustainably? What is this book about? Information / Preparedness / Networking: * Climate Change / Hurricanes / Superstorms * "Peak Oil" and Gasoline Shortages * Sustainable Living / Self-Reliant Communities * Disruptions in Supplies and Services * Biological Terrorism / Pandemics * Skyrocketing Energy Bills * Earthquakes / Floods / Wildfires This web site, and my book When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance and Planetary Survival, are dedicated to helping people proactively plan for, and deal with, the coming challenges that we will all face in the first part of this century. Between global warming, terrorism, Peak Oil, eco-system collapse, and the threat of emerging viruses and anti-biotic resistant bacteria, there are plenty of reasons to be concerned about our future. I am not suggesting that we all become survivalists, but I also don't suggest that you stick your head in the sand and pretend that these threats will simply disappear. If we are to avoid global catastrophe, we must accept that we are occupants of a fragile planetary ecosystem that is showing severe signs of strain, and that to continue "business as usual", where the bottom line of profit has supreme precedence over all other considerations, is a recipe for world wide disaster. It is my desire that the resources in my book and web site will help people to live more sustainably, encouraging them to do business in more sustainable ways, and actively pursue policy changes in local and national government to make a sustainable future our top priority. This web site, and my book (When Technology Fails), are dedicated to helping people to: 1. Understand the threats to our future. 2. Help our friends and family to be prepared for disasters and emergencies. 3. Seek positive solutions to these current and future threats at personal, communal, national and global levels. 4. Promote sustainable business practices from the personal to the global level, and the establishment of self-reliant sustainable communities. Personally, I am very excited about the potential for positive transformation through dealing with the challenges that we will face in the coming decades. When faced with a potentially fatal disease, such as cancer, many people initially fall apart but eventually rise to the occasion, making personal changes and growing in ways that never would have happened without facing the challenges presented by their predicament. It is my hope that mankind will collectively rise to this occasion, working together to create a viable, sustainable future which respects the spirit of the individual, and the biological systems of the planet. We are all in this together! Let us create a future that we can all live with. ?Do The Right Thing! Most of us just want to "do the right thing" for our selves, friends and families, but what is this "right thing"? First, we must educate ourselves (knowledge is power!) about where our world is headed so we may have a realistic view of the challenges facing the world in the next few years and the following decades. Second, we can do our best to be proactively prepared for life on a changing planet as the business, social and ecological climates of our world becomes increasingly unstable. The rapidly escalating prices of gas and oil, which we saw in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, are simply a preview of future price escalations that will occur once the world's oil production passes its peak ("Peak Oil") and begins its natural and inevitable decline. Unless our scientists are able to develop a new "miracle" as-yet-undiscovered technology to bail us out (as an MIT engineer, I would not bet on it!), our society will soon grapple with significant escalations in global climate change combined with an energy crisis that won't go away. According to many oil industry experts, this peak in global oil production will probably occur sometime between now and 2010. As this occurs, the world's economy will become more volatile and unstable as the rock upon which it is built (cheap oil to fuel global industrial expansion and modern methods of food production) begins to crumble. Third, once we have a realistic understanding of where our world is headed, we stand a chance of pushing our governments to make the difficult decisions and policy changes that may help us to avoid global collapse. A Perspective on Relative Threats In spite of the very real threat of terrorism, I believe that our greatest threats are from other sources. To gain some perspective, let's compare the impact of several major events: 1. Hurricane Katrina: The official death toll now stands at 1,163 and the damage higher than $200 billion, topping Hurricane Andrew as the most expensive natural disaster in US history. Over a million people were displaced - a humanitarian crisis on a scale unseen in the US since the Great Depression. 2. Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918: 675,000 American fatalities and estimates of 21 to fifty million fatalities worldwide, in a single year. By comparison, World War One killed nine million men over a four-year period. Recent analysis of eighty-year-old specimens preserved in wax indicates that this flu virus originated as a bird virus that mutated into a swine virus that mutated into a human virus. 3. Destruction of the World Trade Center (9/11/2001): Estimated fatalities of 2,936. Insured property damage to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon is estimated at a combined total of $19 billion dollars. 4. Indian Ocean Tsunami (12/26/2004, Sumatra-Andaman earthquake): One of the most deadly natural disasters in modern history, the United Nations estimated 229,866 dead or missing people. The earthquake that caused the tsunami has been estimated at 9.1 to 9.3 on the Richter scale, making it the fourth largest quake since 1900. Over 1.7 million people were displaced and property damage has been estimated at rebuild costs of over $15 billion (relatively low due to damage in mostly third world locations). 5. Hurricane Andrew (8/24/1992, Florida): 65 fatalities, 600,000 homes and businesses destroyed or badly damaged. Property damage estimated at $26 billion. 6. Hurricane Mitch (October/ November 1998, Central America): Over 22,000 fatalities, leaving 3,000,000 homeless, Mitch was the fourth most intense Atlantic hurricane of this century. There is speculation that global warming contributed to Mitch's severity and unusually long duration (it stalled over Central America for almost one week). Property damage was estimated at $8.5 billion (relatively low figure due to third world location, but higher than the GDP of Honduras and Nicaragua). 7. Bubonic Plague (China and Europe, sixth, fourteenth, and seventeenth centuries): An outbreak in China was spread to Italy in 1347. Over the next five years, it spread throughout Europe, killing about 25 million people, roughly one third of Europe's population at the time. The cities became death traps and were deserted until the plague subsided. 8. Kobe Japan Earthquake (6.9 magnitude, 1/17/1995): 5,470 fatalities, 33,000 injured, 300,000 people left homeless, and an estimated $200 billion in damages (four percent of Japan's GDP). Nearly tied with Hurricane Katrina as the most costly natural disasters on record. 9. China's Yangtze River Flood (summer 1998): 3656 fatalities, 33,000 injured, fourteen million people left homeless (an astounding figure!!), 223 million affected, and over $20 billion in damages. Severe deforestation (85%) of the Yangtze River watershed has been blamed for significantly contributing to the flood's severity, by reducing the land's capacity to absorb excessive rainfall. 10. Bangladesh Cyclone (1991): Killing at least 138,000 people and leaving as many as ten million homeless, the 1991 Bangladesh Cyclone ranks as one of the deadliest tropical cyclones on record. 11. Shansi China Earthquake (unknown magnitude, 1/23/1956): Fatalities estimated at 830,000 people. Except for possibly biological or nuclear terrorism, from a review the above statistics one may conclude that natural disasters, such as storms (growing more severe due to global warming), earthquakes, and plagues, far out rank terrorism in scope. The Main Threats to Our Future As I see it, the four main threats to a stable American and world future are: * Peak Oil: The oil crisis of the 1970s was a result of a five percent drop in global oil production due to the OPEC oil embargo. We are facing an imminent, unavoidable drop in global oil production as most of the world's oil fields are now in decline. Many oil industry experts state that global oil production has essentially already reached a plateau and predict that it will start to decline sometime between this year and the year 2010. This is happening at precisely the same time that the huge populations of China and India are rapidly expanding their industrial capacities and their appetite for oil. Read more at http://whentechfails.com/node/15 * Eco Threat: Global warming and other climate changes (super storms, et cetera) coupled with major ecosystem collapse are the basis for the Eco-Threat. Hurricane Katrina is a powerful example of the effects of climate change. When you consider that a single degree Fahrenheit of global warming so far has contributed to the changes in weather that most of us now acknowledge (re: severity of hurricanes Katrina, Andrew, Mitch, et cetera), and that a continuation of current consumption patterns is projected to result in a global warming that is 2.5 to ten times as great over the next century, it is obvious there are potentially dire consequences for the stability and quality of human life on our planet. Read more at http://www.whentechnologyfails.com/node/16 * Bio Threat: We face a potential for massive plagues due to: (1) The ability of viruses to mutate into new forms that make the jump from animal to human species (for example, Bird Flu). (2) The widespread use of antibiotics in animal feeds makes a perfect breeding ground for growing bacteria that are resistant to modern antibiotics. (3) The potential for terrorists to secretly infect populations with deadly bacteria or viruses and for them to spread the infection globally (air travel) before it is detected. Read more at http://www.whentechnologyfails.com/node/node/19 * Terror Threat: The threat of terrorism is obvious. What is not quite as obvious is the connection between our dependence upon foreign oil and how it funds terrorism while putting our soldiers, engineers and oil company personnel in harms way, and draws the attacks of fanatical Muslim minorities in their attempt to drive American influences from the entire Middle East. Read more at http://www.whentechnologyfails.com/node/node/20 Preparedness Planning I suggest that you develop a personal preparedness plan, and have prepared the following checklist which may be printed from this web site's "Articles" section: * Place 72 hour Grab-And-Run emergency survival kits in your car or home. * Determine a local meeting place with a large open area, such as a park or school, where your household can gather if you are separated and do not have access to your home during emergencies. * Make sure that all capable members of your family know how and where to shut off the water, gas, and electricity for your home in the event of an emergency. * Stash spare keys to your vehicles somewhere on the vehicle and an additional supply of keys somewhere outside of your home (securely hidden). * Store at least one week's supply of food for your household. * Store a combination of water, water treatment chemicals, and water-purifying filters to provide for your household for at least a week (see Chapter 5, "Water", for more information on filters and purification). * Keep a survival manual in each car with your 72-hour kit. * Get proper first aid and CPR training for all capable members of your family. See the American Red Cross for first aid training and assistance with local emergency planning. * Arrange for an out-of-state emergency contact to reach for coordination and communication. After an emergency, it may be easier to call long distance than locally, or your family may be separated and need an outside contact to communicate through. * Locate your nearest emergency shelter (call your local Red Cross for this information). Practice the route to the shelter, if it's not conveniently located. * Make sure that you have smoke detectors in your home. Change their batteries at least once each year. * Store your important papers in one easily accessible location, preferably in a waterproof and flameproof box. * Discuss your emergency preparedness plans with all members of your household. Keep the discussion light and positive. You may also use my book, When Technology Fails, as a guide for further preparedness planning: 1. Prepare a 72-hour emergency survival kit, including a hand crank or battery-operated radio, first aid kit, clean water and water purification chemicals or filter, matches, wool blankets, flashlight with spare batteries, candles, toiletries, multi-tool knife, map, compass, whistle, sewing kit, towel, cooking utensils and can opener, tent or plastic sheeting, extra outdoor wear, garbage bags, and rope. (See pages 31-34). 2. Stock up on dried and other nonperishable food. You can store enough food to feed a family of four for a whole year in a relatively small space without refrigeration. (See pages 35-40). 3. Have on hand methods of purifying water. You can boil water to kill bacteria and viruses. Various types of filters and distillers can be used to remove other types of contamination, such as chemical poisons and radiation (see pages 70-89, includes very specific recommendations). 4. Learn basic first aid and have handy a first aid kit (see pages 33-34 for items to include). See pages (176-199) for instructions with clear diagrams illustrating first aid for various types of injuries, from stabilizing a broken arm to giving CPR. 5. Learn how to prepare your home to use renewable energy for heat and power. There are simple things you can do to be prepared in the case of a total power failure. See pages (277-307). For emergencies, you can use a tent, tipi, or yurt. If you are planning to build a new home, consider one using alternative energy, such as solar power. (See pages 137-166) 6. In case of extreme emergency survival in the wild, know emergency measures such as how to tell if a wild plant is edible, how to safely eat things like worms, insects, and grubs, and how to make simple tools (see pages 46-65). 7. In the case of long-term disruption, learn how to live off the land through proper growing, hunting, foraging, and storing, without electricity or other modern technological advances. (See pages 97-127). For several easily printed handy lists and information about preparedness, check out some of the articles listed on this web site, such as Preparedness Checklist, First Aid Kit, Grab-And-Run Kit, Earthquake Precautions, et cetera Positive Action Many people ask, "What can I do?" Individually we can educate ourselves and prepare ourselves to cope with future instabilities in the climate and the supply of gasoline and central services. Remember, preparedness is disaster & terrorism insurance. Katrina gave us a glimpse of what we might expect when society reels under the load of a huge disaster, or simply degrades due to (in the words of James Howard Kunstler) the "long slow emergency" of life after Peak Oil. In these events, there will be safety in numbers, living among people you can trust, in localized sustainable communities built upon the principles of Permaculture. While the world is still functioning reasonably well, is the best time to start developing your skills and links with other like-minded people. Location will be important if and when the world situation takes a turn for the worse. You may use this web site as a good starting point. My goal is to make it a useful tool for networking, education, and activism. Reducing consumption, recycling and the use of renewable energy sources are all positive steps toward reaching a sustainable future. Individually, none of us will save the world, but collectively we can decide that we (the people) wish to make a sustainable future the number one priority of business and government. There is a huge momentum that tends to keep the world on the same track of "Business as Usual". Currently, it would be political suicide for an American leader in today's world to make the difficult decisions to halt our momentum sliding towards global collapse, but this doesn't mean we can't change this course. We can change the world, but it takes massive numbers of people to make changes on the scale of the end of slavery or the institution of women's rights. Hitler could never have been stopped if it was number ten on the priority list. Stopping Hitler was a matter of survival. Changing the way we do business in our world is also a matter of survival. http://www.whentechnologyfails.com/ TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org Sat May 10 05:33:38 2008 From: hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org (Hunter Gray) Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 05:33:38 -0600 Subject: [R-G] The Northern Arapaho Eagle Case -- and much, much more Message-ID: <001501c8b291$b16c0e70$0400a8c0@computer> NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR: May 10 2008 The following exemplifies several very troubling dimensions: A specific attack on Native religious freedom rights, the fact that the now long legacy of conservative Federal judicial appointments in this country is -- increasingly -- tilting incrementally against Native rights and well-being, and that Federal Indian law is certainly never static. [I taught that at the university level for thirteen years.] And it also points up the fact that the general American public, despite relatively brief periods of some positive exception, really doesn't give a damn about Native American concerns. Many never have, unless it's been corporate and related political interests pursuing their own traditional goals of seizure of Indian lands and resources -- and in some cases still seeking to eliminate Native treaty rights altogether [ with"getting the government out of the Indian business" as the rationale.] Many others of the public assume that the rise of casinos within some tribal nations has ended the socio-economic concerns of virtually all Native peoples. And that, of course, is a tremendous misreading. Tribes have a sovereign right to launch casinos [although this development has also produced its own set of problems for those Native nations so involved.] But casino revenues, often compromised by high legal and public relations costs, and sometimes by outright "rip-offs" from involvement by outside non-Indians, have generally not been able to go beyond relatively superficial alleviation of Native material and related concerns. Those concerns involve, among others, economic well being [unemployment and sub-employment on reservations remain very high], genuinely effective health care, sensitive and quality education, decent housing, egalitarian and effective criminal justice, much more. The Native suicide rate, especially among certain younger categories, is the highest in the U.S. And if the foregoing challenges pervade reservation settings, they are very much found among "urban Indians" -- now a very large component of the overall Native American population -- and who presently receive little or no Federal Indian services [and none from the states.] And there are also a number of non-Federally recognized tribes [this through historical happenchance] who, like the very large Lumbee Nation in North Carolina, frequently have to struggle for that status [and its attendant Federal Indian services, such as they are] through a veritable jungle of Kudzu vines and Kafkaesque bureaucracy. The basic challenges/goals for Native people and tribal societies have consistently involved preservation of the tribal nations, preservation of the specific tribal culture, preservation of land and other resources, self-determination in the context of maintenance of treaty rights, and expansion of functional sovereignty. John McCain, as chair of Senate Indian Affairs, and himself based in Arizona whose Indian population is quite substantial [and which votes with increasing frequency], was not oblivious to Native concerns and was, on occasion, helpful. The Clinton camp, never interested in, nor attuned to those concerns, occasionally made promises which usually never materialized. Most Native spokespeople in the 'States and many grassroots Indian individuals now support Barack Obama. Well, we'll hope -- and I do think Obama will be significantly more receptive and helpful. In the end, there are now fortunately many non-Indian friends of Native people -- effective allies, There are such positive and significant dimensions of Federal Indian law as the 1975 Indian Self-Determination Act [which enables tribes to contract for Federal Indian services], the 1978 National Indian Child Welfare Act, the 1978 Indian Religious Freedom Act [which has certainly taken a hit in the attached Northern Arapaho case], and more. The status of the Native nations is, to use the clich?, Unique. Article 6, Section 2 of the United States Constitution explicitly includes treaties with the Indian tribes as part of the "supreme law of the land." However under attack those treaties frequently are, that basic Rock does remain fixed. And, as per its treaty obligations, the Federal government clearly has the responsibility of funding Native services and related dimensions far, far beyond that which it has in the past and is currently doing. And, again, this has to include the generally ignored but very large urban Indian population. And so the good will and the sensitively and supportive moral and tangible support of All continue to be solicited by the Native tribal nations and people -- who will always, you may be assured, Keep Fighting. Yours, Hunter Court orders American Indian to trial for shooting eagle By BEN NEARY Associated Press Writer CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - An American Indian who shot a bald eagle for use in a tribal religious ceremony must stand trial, a federal appeals court has ruled. A three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver on Thursday reversed a 2006 lower court ruling that dismissed a criminal charge against Winslow Friday, a Northern Arapaho Indian who has acknowledged shooting a bald eagle in 2005 during the tribe's Sun Dance. In dismissing the charge, U.S. District Judge William Downes of Wyoming said the federal government has shown "callous indifference" to American Indian religious beliefs. Eagle feathers are a key element of ceremonies of the Northern Arapaho and many other tribes. The appeals court ruled that American Indians' religious freedoms are not violated by federal law protecting eagles or the government's policy requiring American Indians to get permits to kill the birds. "Law accommodates religion," the court said in its ruling. "It cannot wholly exempt religion from the reach of the law." Friday declined to comment on the court's ruling. If convicted, he faces up to one year in jail and a $100,000 fine. Friday's public defender, John T. Carlson, said the ruling "reflects a failure to grasp the unique nature of the Northern Arapaho religious practice surrounding the eagle." Carlson said he and his client haven't decided how to respond to the ruling. Their options are asking the full appeals court to hear the case, appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court or allowing the case against Friday to proceed to trial in Wyoming. John Powell, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Cheyenne, said the office planned to proceed with the prosecution. Friday, who's in his early 20s, said last year he didn't know about a federal program that allows American Indians to apply for permits to kill eagles for religious purposes. Lawyers representing him and his tribe have argued that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did its best to keep the program secret and only grudgingly issued permits. In his ruling, Downes said it was clear that Friday wouldn't have received a federal permit to kill an eagle if he had applied for one. The judge wrote that the Fish and Wildlife Service has encouraged American Indians to apply to receive eagle parts from a Colorado repository that holds the remains of birds killed by power lines and other causes. He said the agency makes no effort to encourage American Indians to apply for permits to kill birds of their own. The bald eagle was removed last year from the list of threatened species. It had been reclassified from endangered to threatened in 1995. However, the species is still protected under the federal Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Kathryn E. Kovacs, a lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, told the federal appeals court in arguments in December that Friday had no standing to argue about shortcomings of the federal permitting process because he never applied for a permit before killing the eagle. The appeals court agreed. It also rejected Friday's argument that the federal Religious Freedom Restitution Act, which prohibits the government from placing undue burdens on religious practices, should block the federal government from prosecuting him for killing the eagle. 2008-05-09 10:17:54 GMT HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Protected by Na?shdo?i?ba?i? and Ohkwari' Check out our Hunterbear website Directory http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm [The site is dedicated to our one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray: http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm SEE MY COMBINED COMMUNITY ORGANIZING PIECES -- WITH MUCH NEW STUFF http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm With "fire season" looming, see http://hunterbear.org/forest_fires_in_the_west.htm And see Forces and Faces Along the Activist Trail: http://hunterbear.org/forces_and_faces_along_the_trail.htm From fentona at shaw.ca Sat May 10 09:50:47 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 08:50:47 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Pentagon Propaganda Documents Go Online Message-ID: <80025796-7E05-4974-801A-A1E711B278E2@shaw.ca> May 7, 2008 But Will the Media Ever Report on Them? Pentagon Propaganda Documents Go Online http://counterpunch.com/stauber05072008.html By JOHN STAUBER Eight thousand pages of documents related to the Pentagon's illegal propaganda campaign, known as the Pentagon military analyst program, are now online for the world to see, although in a format that makes it impossible to easily search them and therefore difficult to read and dissect. This trove includes the documents pried out of the Pentagon by David Barstow and used as the basis for his stunning investigation that appeared in the New York Times on April 20, 2008. The Pentagon program, which clearly violated US law against covert government propaganda, embedded more than 75 retired military officers -- most of them with financial ties to war contractors -- into the TV networks as "message surrogates" for the Bush Administration. To date, every major commercial TV network has failed to report this story, covering up their complicity and keeping the existence of this scandal from their audiences. News of the Pentagon's online posting of the documents came from Joe Trento of the National Security News Service, who notes that NSNS provided the New York Times "limited information about a military office early in the reporting process." Here is the official Pentagon website with the 8,000 pages of documents, the most interesting and revealing of them previously secret and only available to the Pentagon and the New York Times: http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/milanalysts/ More than two weeks after the New York Times reported on the Penatgon's military analyst program to sell controversial policies such as the invasion of Iraq, the broadcast television news outlets implicated in the program are hoping to tough out the scandal by refusing to report it. Recently Media Matters of America (MMA) reported that, according to a search of the Nexis database, "the three major broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS, and NBC -- have still not mentioned the report at all." The Pew Excellence in Journalism project has a chart showing that " there was virtually no mainstream media follow up to The Times? expose" with the only national TV coverage being the introduction segment and a live debate (featuring me) on the PBS NewsHour. Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro and three dozen colleagues have sent a letter to the Department of Defense Inspector General calling for an investigation of this "propaganda campaign aimed at deliberately misleading the American public." John Stauber is the executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy and co-author of two books about the war: Iraq: Weapons of Mass Deception and The Best War Ever. From fentona at shaw.ca Sat May 10 09:57:36 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 08:57:36 -0700 Subject: [R-G] US tightens its grip on Pakistan Message-ID: <5C25E595-76B8-4EDC-9401-1F409C22B5CA@shaw.ca> South Asia May 10, 2008 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JE10Df01.html US tightens its grip on Pakistan By M K Bhadrakumar Alphonse Karr, the 19th-century French novelist and pamphleteer, is principally remembered for the epigram, "The more it changes, the more it is the same thing." That could be the thought that comes to mind at first glance of speech made by US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte at the National Endowment for Democracy's (NED) Pakistan forum in Washington on Monday. Yet, the speech merits attention. In all practical terms, the speech is a final summing up but at the same time it sets outs the tone of the US policy towards Pakistan in the remaining months of the George W Bush administration. Pakistan is indeed a transformed home. New applications of new principles must be quickly forthcoming. It is extraordinary that a seasoned diplomat like Negroponte has chosen the NED forum to make such a major speech on Pakistan. But then, "promoting democracy" - the motto of NED - also happens to be a stated objective of US policy towards Pakistan. Over the past quarter century, the US government-funded NED has specialized as a handmaiden of American regional policies. The NED is well known for covertly funding and supporting politicians in Latin American countries with strong support to the military. Its activities in many countries are known to run parallel to those of the Central Intelligence Agency. Its sensational role in conceptualizing and orchestrating the "color revolutions" in Ukraine and Georgia was a high-water mark in the organization's history since its inception in 1983, mitigating to an extent its dismal failures in Iran, Venezuela and Cuba. Rarely does a top diplomat speak so openly from a public forum as Negroponte did on the centrality of Pakistan for the US's national security. He spoke in Winston Churchill terms. "More than ever, our [US] national security depends on the success, security and stability of Pakistan ... We recognize that our fate - that is, our security, our freedom, our prosperity - is linked to the fate of the people of Pakistan," Negroponte said, echoing the gravitas of the British statesman during World War II. What Negroponte implied was that Washington will categorically assure Pakistan that no matter the change of administration in the White House next year, the US commitment to a "long-term, substantial and comprehensive" partnership with Pakistan will remain a cornerstone of American regional policies. Negroponte seems to have perceived that allies like Pakistan are increasingly beginning to look beyond the Bush administration and that is not going to do the "war on terror" in Afghanistan any good. In his recent visit to China, President Pervez Musharraf's mind desultorily wandered, inviting the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to come and help stabilize the Afghan situation. But, why go to the SCO when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) could still do a first rate job? The SCO comprises China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Negroponte, therefore, proceeded to underline that in its remaining months in office, the Bush administration will endeavor to establish a new framework of political, economic and security assistance to Pakistan. He singled out military cooperation as an important feature of that partnership. Negroponte acknowledged that the weakening or "estrangement" in the US- Pakistan alliance in the post-Cold War setting in the 1990s had led to a "strategic disconnect" between the two militaries. The result has been that there are serious limits today to the US military's capacity to influence the officer corps of the Pakistani military. That deficiency needs to be rectified. The solution lies in reviving the old practice when as Cold War allies, the US military used to engage the middle and senior ranking Pakistani military officers within the framework of a "robust training and education program" so as to establish links with them on a sustained, enduring basis. But Negroponte implied that Washington expects the Pakistani military to reciprocate by accommodating the US's strategy in the "war on terror" in the tribal areas of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border where military operations must continue. He said the Bush administration will have no objection in principle to the Pakistani civilian leadership's emphasis on the economic development and integration of the tribal areas, but "any kind of agreement or understanding which might be negotiated [with the Pakistani Taliban] will have to be consistent with the imperatives of the US strategy towards the war on terror". Negroponte explained, "Whatever the approach, it's got to be multi- faceted ... it also has to include a security component. You can't let the irreconcilables, as I call them, have a free hand, have a free pass. They must be confronted." In other words, the imperatives of the US strategy are clear: Pakistan's tribal areas should cease to be a platform for the Taliban and al-Qaeda to stage cross-border attacks inside Afghanistan where US troops and other NATO troops "end up being the victims of such attacks". Therefore, the security operations must continue at any cost. Negroponte made it clear that the US remains skeptical about the efforts of the Pakistani government to negotiate with militants in the tribal regions. He said, "I think that one would have to wait and see what is actually concluded, if such an agreement were to be concluded. Certainly, our past - our concern with past agreements regarding South Waziristan have gone to the issue of how much it really - these agreements really limited the scope of action of terrorism - of terrorists, extremist elements operating in the area, or was it some way of allowing them greater scope for action than we're comfortable with." As could be expected, Negroponte put emphasis on Pakistan's transition to democracy as a development that is "strategically significant" insofar as the people rejected extremism by supporting moderate, pro- democratic forces and parties in the last elections, which in turn has provided an opportunity to the US to build a "broad national consensus to defeat terrorism". He reaffirmed the US commitment to strengthen Pakistani civil society and civilian institutions. On the Pakistani political scene, Negroponte singled out Asif Ali Zardari as Washington's principal interlocutor. Zardari, widower of former premier Benazir Bhutto, is co-chairman of the Pakistan People's Party, the leading party in the new ruling coalition in Islamabad. Clearly, the Bush administration banks on a working relationship to develop between Musharraf and Zardari, which will go a long way in ensuring that Pakistan remains a dependable ally in the "war on terror" in general and in the conduct of the security operations in the tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region in particular. It is interesting that Negroponte spoke soon after talks between the Pakistani government and the so-called Pakistani Taliban broke down in late April. The impasse in the talks came about when the Taliban demanded that the Pakistani army should withdraw from Waziristan, Darra Adamkhel and Swat as a confidence-building measure prior to reaching an agreement. The Taliban insist that this was a prior commitment given by the government. They allege the US will be averse to any such withdrawal by the Pakistani military from the tribal areas and Washington has pressured the latter to resile from the earlier commitment. Conceivably, Washington would be viewing with unease that the talks between the government and the Taliban have not completely broken down. According to the latest reports, a tribal jirga (council) comprising the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban has met with Baitullah Mahsud - almost certainly with the knowledge and tacit approval of the government. To quote noted Pakistani expert, Rahimullah Yusufzai, "Pakistani authorities are hoping that Baitullah Mahsud will use his influence to restore peace and stability in the rest of the tribal areas and the NWFP [North-West Frontier Province]." Mahsud is a hardline Pakistani Taliban leader accused of implication in Bhutto's assassination last December. But the US priorities are diametrically opposite. The central issue for the US is, as Yusufzai pointed out, "Once the TTP [Tehrek-e- Taliban or the umbrella body of the Pakistani Taliban groups] signs a peace accord with the Pakistani government, it would be able to free its fighters to join the Afghan Taliban and launch attacks inside Afghanistan." That is to say, Washington would like the locus of the war to be kept on Pakistani soil in the tribal areas, whereas the elected government in Islamabad wants to limit and control the unrest in the tribal areas so that the NWFP or the rest of Pakistan does not get destabilized. To complicate matters, as far as the Pakistani Taliban are concerned, they are only too willing to reach an agreement with Islamabad since their main agenda is not the "Talibanization" of Pakistan but the jihad against the US and the other "occupying forces" in Afghanistan. In Yusufzai's assessment, the Pakistani Taliban are under no illusions that they have the capacity to establish their writ in the tribal areas and NWFP, let alone the whole of Pakistan. Therefore, all that they seek at the moment is an accord that respects their interests in their strongholds, though they know that such an accord may not prove durable, given the staunch opposition to it by the US, NATO and, possibly, the Afghan government. Negroponte's appeal from the NED forum is directly addressed to the Pakistani military. His speech underscores that fundamentally speaking, US policy continues to repose faith in the Pakistani military as its principal interlocutor in Pakistan. (In a highly nuanced parenthesis, by way of allaying the Pakistani military's apprehensions about US intentions, Negroponte added that no matter Washington's reservations in the past, "I think that you could fairly say that the United States has accepted the fact that Pakistan has nuclear weapons and I think I would leave it at that.") The top US diplomat has appealed to the Pakistani military brass that the security operations in the tribal areas are a "national security imperative for the United States, an essential condition for success in Afghanistan". He has, therefore, gone out of the way to give an undertaking that Washington will comprehensively take care of the Pakistani military's corporate interests on a long-term footing and provide it with modern weapons and training worthy of a close ally, provided the latter reciprocates by relentlessly conducting security operations in the tribal areas. But the US's current problems do not end there. In immediate terms, Washington is also called on to get the elected civilian governments in Islamabad and Peshawar on board. Unsurprisingly, the elected governments are sensitive about public mood, which is anti-US and disfavors Islamabad's close association with the "war on terror". The recent elections brought to light that the US's capacity to influence Pakistani political parties, including some major ones, is severely limited. And it is here that the NED has a vital role to play in the period ahead. The NED has gained vast experience in cajoling unwilling politicians in foreign countries to play ball with the US regional agenda. Its expertise will come in handy in building working relationships between civilian politicians and the military in Pakistan, as well as in persuading recalcitrant Pakistani politicians to see the light of reason and to cooperate with the imperatives of US strategy. Its role will be truly decisive for US policy if Pakistan finds itself facing another parliamentary election any time soon, in case the present uneasy ruling coalition sharing power in Islamabad begins to unravel. The NED's forte lies in finessing effective ways of promoting favored politicians and political parties abroad. M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001). (Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.) From fentona at shaw.ca Sat May 10 09:58:28 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 08:58:28 -0700 Subject: [R-G] An oil-addicted ex-superpower Message-ID: <6C5E1DBD-E591-4CCC-A128-1232ACB29368@shaw.ca> An oil-addicted ex-superpower By Michael T Klare http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JE10Dj05.html Nineteen years ago, the fall of the Berlin Wall effectively eliminated the Soviet Union as the world's other superpower. Yes, the USSR as a political entity stumbled on for another two years, but it was clearly an ex-superpower from the moment it lost control over its satellites in Eastern Europe. Less than a month ago, the United States similarly lost its claim to superpower status when a barrel of crude oil roared past US$110 on the international market, gasoline prices crossed the $3.50 threshold at American pumps, and diesel fuel topped $4. As was true of the USSR following the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the US will no doubt continue to stumble on like the superpower it once was; but as the nation's economy continues to be eviscerated to pay for its daily oil fix, it, too, will be seen by increasing numbers of savvy observers as an ex-superpower-in-the-making. That the fall of the Berlin Wall spelled the erasure of the Soviet Union's superpower status was obvious to international observers at the time. After all, the USSR visibly ceased to exercise dominion over an empire (and an associated military-industrial complex) encompassing nearly half of Europe and much of Central Asia. The relationship between rising oil prices and the obliteration of America's superpower status is, however, hardly as self-evident. So let's consider the connection. Dry hole superpower The fact is, America's wealth and power has long rested on the abundance of cheap petroleum. The United States was, for a long time, the world's leading producer of oil, supplying its own needs while generating a healthy surplus for export. Oil was the basis for the rise of the first giant multinational corporations in the US, notably John D Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company (now reconstituted as Exxon Mobil, the world's wealthiest publicly traded corporation). Abundant, exceedingly affordable petroleum was also responsible for the emergence of the American automotive and trucking industries, the flourishing of the domestic airline industry, the development of the petrochemical and plastics industries, the suburbanization of America, and the mechanization of its agriculture. Without cheap and abundant oil, the United States would never have experienced the historic economic expansion of the post-World War II era. No less important was the role of abundant petroleum in fueling the global reach of US military power. For all the talk of America's growing reliance on computers, advanced sensors, and stealth technology to prevail in warfare, it has been oil above all that gave the US military its capacity to "project power" onto distant battlefields like Iraq and Afghanistan. Every Humvee, tank, helicopter, and jet fighter requires its daily ration of petroleum, without which America's technology-driven military would be forced to abandon the battlefield. No surprise, then, that the US Department of Defense is the world's single-biggest consumer of petroleum, using more of it every day than the entire nation of Sweden. From the end of World War II through the height of the Cold War, the US claim to superpower status rested on a vast sea of oil. As long as most of our oil came from domestic sources and the price remained reasonably low, the American economy thrived and the annual cost of deploying vast armies abroad was relatively manageable. But that sea has been shrinking since the 1950s. Domestic oil production reached a peak in 1970 and has been in decline ever since - with a growing dependency on imported oil as the result. When it came to reliance on imports, the United States crossed the 50% threshold in 1998 and now has passed 65%. Though few fully realized it, this represented a significant erosion of sovereign independence even before the price of a barrel of crude soared above $110. By now, we are transferring such staggering sums yearly to foreign oil producers, who are using it to gobble up valuable American assets, that, whether we know it or not, we have essentially abandoned our claim to superpowerdom. According to the latest data from the US Department of Energy, the United States is importing 12-14 million barrels of oil per day. At a current price of about $115 per barrel, that's $1.5 billion per day, or $548 billion per year. This represents the single largest contribution to America's balance-of-payments deficit, and is a leading cause for the dollar's ongoing drop in value. If oil prices rise any higher - in response, perhaps, to a new crisis in the Middle East (as might be occasioned by US air strikes on Iran) - our annual import bill could quickly approach three-quarters of a trillion dollars or more per year. While our economy is being depleted of these funds, at a moment when credit is scarce and economic growth has screeched to a halt, the oil regimes on which we depend for our daily fix are depositing their mountains of accumulating petrodollars in "sovereign wealth funds" (SWFs) - state-controlled investment accounts that buy up prized foreign assets in order to secure non-oil-dependent sources of wealth. At present, these funds are already believed to hold in excess of several trillion dollars; the richest, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), alone holds $875 billion. The ADIA first made headlines in November 2007 when it acquired a $7.5 billion stake in Citigroup, America's largest bank holding company. The fund has also made substantial investments in Advanced Micro Systems, a major chip maker, and the Carlyle Group, the private equity giant. Another big SWF, the Kuwait Investment Authority, also acquired a multibillion-dollar stake in Citigroup, along with a $6.6 billion chunk of Merrill Lynch. And these are but the first of a series of major SWF moves that will be aimed at acquiring stakes in top American banks and corporations. The managers of these funds naturally insist that they have no intention of using their ownership of prime American properties to influence US policy. In time, however, a transfer of economic power of this magnitude cannot help but translate into a transfer of political power as well. Indeed, this prospect has already stirred deep misgivings in Congress. "In the short run, that they [the Middle Eastern SWFs] are investing here is good," Senator Evan Bayh (D- Indiana) recently observed. "But in the long run it is unsustainable. Our power and authority is eroding because of the amounts we are sending abroad for energy ..." No summer tax holiday for the Pentagon Foreign ownership of key nodes of our economy is only one sign of fading American superpower status. Oil's impact on the military is another. Every day, the average GI in Iraq uses approximately 27 gallons of petroleum-based fuels. With some 160,000 American troops in Iraq, that amounts to 4.37 million gallons in daily oil usage, including gasoline for vans and light vehicles, diesel for trucks and armored vehicles, and aviation fuel for helicopters, drones, and fixed-wing aircraft. With US forces paying, as of late April, an average of $3.23 per gallon for these fuels, the Pentagon is already spending approximately $14 million per day on oil ($98 million per week, $5.1 billion per year) to stay in Iraq. Meanwhile, our Iraqi allies, who are expected to receive a windfall of $70 billion this year from the rising price of their oil exports, charge their citizens $1.36 per gallon for gasoline. When questioned about why Iraqis are paying almost a third less for oil than American forces in their country, senior Iraqi government officials scoff at any suggestion of impropriety. "America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq," said Abdul Basit, the head of Iraq's Supreme Board of Audit, an independent body that oversees Iraqi governmental expenditures. "This is an immoral request because we didn't ask them to come to Iraq, and before they came in 2003 we didn't have all these needs." Needless to say, this is not exactly the way grateful clients are supposed to address superpower patrons. "It's totally unacceptable to me that we are spending tens of billions of dollars on rebuilding Iraq while they are putting tens of billions of dollars in banks around the world from oil revenues," said Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan), chairman of the Armed Services Committee. "It doesn't compute as far as I'm concerned." Certainly, however, our allies in the region, especially the Sunni kingdoms of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that presumably look to Washington to stabilize Iraq and curb the growing power of Shi'ite Iran, are willing to help the Pentagon out by supplying US troops with free or deeply-discounted petroleum. No such luck. Except for some partially subsidized oil supplied by Kuwait, all oil-producing US allies in the region charge us the market rate for petroleum. Take that as a striking reflection of how little credence even countries whose ruling elites have traditionally looked to the US for protection now attach to our supposed superpower status. Think of this as a strikingly clear-eyed assessment of American power. As far as they're concerned, we're now just another of those hopeless oil addicts driving a monster gas-guzzler up to the pump - and they're perfectly happy to collect our cash which they can then use to cherry- pick our prime assets. So expect no summer tax holidays for the Pentagon, not in the Middle East, anyway. Worse yet, the US military will need even more oil for the future wars on which the Pentagon is now doing the planning. In this way, the US experience in Iraq has especially worrisome implications. Under the military "transformation" initiated by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2001, the future US war machine will rely less on "boots on the ground" and ever more on technology. But technology entails an ever-greater requirement for oil, as the newer weapons sought by Rumsfeld (and now Secretary of Defense Robert Gates) all consume many times more fuel than those they will replace. To put this in perspective: The average GI in Iraq now uses about seven times as much oil per day as GIs did in the first Gulf War less than two decades ago. And every sign indicates that the same ratio of increase will apply to coming conflicts; that the daily cost of fighting will skyrocket; and that the Pentagon's capacity to shoulder multiple foreign military burdens will unravel. Thus are superpowers undone. Russia's gusher If anything demonstrates the critical role of oil in determining the fate of superpowers in the current milieu, it is the spectacular reemergence of Russia as a Great Power on the basis of its superior energy balance. Once derided as the humiliated, enfeebled loser in the US-Soviet rivalry, Russia is again a force to be reckoned with in world affairs. It possesses the fastest-growing economy among the G-8 group of major industrial powers, is the world's second leading producer of oil (after Saudi Arabia), and is its top producer of natural gas. Because it produces far more energy than it consumes, Russia exports a substantial portion of its oil and gas to neighboring countries, making it the only Great Power not dependent on other states for its energy needs. As Russia has become an energy-exporting state, it has moved from the list of has-beens to the front rank of major players. When President Bush first occupied the White House, in February 2001, one of his highest priorities was to downgrade US ties with Russia and annul the various arms-control agreements that had been forged between the two countries by his predecessors, agreements that explicitly conferred equal status on the US and the USSR. As an indication of how contemptuously the Bush team viewed Russia at that time, Condoleezza Rice, while still an adviser to the Bush presidential campaign, wrote, in the January/February 2000 issue of the influential Foreign Affairs, "US policy ... must recognize that American security is threatened less by Russia's strength than by its weakness and incoherence." Under such circumstances, she continued, there was no need to preserve obsolete relics of the dual superpower past such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty; rather, the focus of US efforts should be on preventing the further erosion of Russian nuclear safeguards and the potential escape of nuclear materials. In line with this outlook, President Bush believed that he could convert an impoverished and compliant Russia into a major source of oil and natural gas for the United States - with American energy companies running the show. This was the evident aim of the US-Russian "energy dialogue" announced by Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in May 2002. But if Bush thought Russia was prepared to turn into a northern version of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, or Venezuela prior to the arrival of Hugo Chavez, he was to be sorely disappointed. Putin never permitted American firms to acquire substantial energy assets in Russia. Instead, he presided over a major recentralization of state control when it came to the country's most valuable oil and gas reserves, putting most of them in the hands of Gazprom, the state- controlled natural gas behemoth. Once in control of these assets, moreover, Putin has used his renascent energy power to exert influence over states that were once part of the former Soviet Union, as well as those in Western Europe that rely on Russian oil and gas for a substantial share of their energy needs. In the most extreme case, Moscow turned off the flow of natural gas to Ukraine on January 1, 2006, in the midst of an especially cold winter, in what was said to be a dispute over pricing but was widely viewed as punishment for Ukraine's political drift westwards. (The gas was turned back on four days later when Ukraine agreed to pay a higher price and offered other concessions.) Gazprom has threatened similar action in disputes with Armenia, Belarus, and Georgia - in each case forcing those former Soviet SSRs to back down. When it comes to the US-Russian relationship, just how much the balance of power has shifted was evident at the NATO summit at Bucharest in early April. There, President Bush asked that Georgia and Ukraine both be approved for eventual membership in the alliance, only to find top US allies (and Russian energy users) France and Germany blocking the measure out of concern of straining ties with Russia. "It was a remarkable rejection of American policy in an alliance normally dominated by Washington," Steven Erlanger and Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times reported, "and it sent a confusing signal to Russia, one that some countries considered close to appeasement of Moscow." For Russian officials, however, the restoration of their country's great power status is not the product of deceit or bullying, but a natural consequence of being the world's leading energy provider. No one is more aware of this than Dmitri Medvedev, the former chairman of Gazprom and new Russian president. "The attitude toward Russia in the world is different now," he declared on December 11, 2007. "We are not being lectured like schoolchildren; we are respected and we are deferred to. Russia has reclaimed its proper place in the world community. Russia has become a different country, stronger and more prosperous." The reverse, of course, can be said about the United States. As a result of our addiction to increasingly costly imported oil, we have become a different country, weaker and less prosperous. Whether we know it or not, the energy Berlin Wall has already fallen and the United States is an ex-superpower-in-the-making. Michael Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and author of the just-released Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Metropolitan Books). A documentary film based on his previous book, Blood and Oil, is available from the Media Education Foundation and can be ordered at bloodandoilmovie.com. Copyright 2008 Michael T Klare. From fentona at shaw.ca Sat May 10 10:01:22 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 09:01:22 -0700 Subject: [R-G] US trains Pakistani killing machine Message-ID: <973DD2BE-771F-4569-A33C-8582B46C42FF@shaw.ca> US trains Pakistani killing machine By Syed Saleem Shahzad http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JE08Df03.html KARACHI - A longstanding disconnect between the Pakistan and United States militaries is largely responsible for the inability of the "war on terror" to nail key targets such as al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, as well as military failures against the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan. Former US ambassador to Honduras, Mexico and the Philippines and presently Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte, aims to change this by creating special Pakistani units, trained by the US, to go after key figures. "These programs have already started and will continue at length. Already, many teams of US military officials have arrived in Pakistan and have started basic training courses," a senior Pakistani security official told Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity. "Under these programs, US Army officers will come to Pakistan and maintain a close liaison with middle-ranking army officers, including majors, colonels and brigadiers. Some officers will then be selected to go to the US, where they will be trained in special operations," the official said. According to other security contacts who spoke to Asia Times Online, the conventional fight against insurgents - that is, large deployments of the Pakistani army in the tribal areas - will be set aside and the newly trained special operations teams will go after irreconcilable hardline militants. The newly elected government in Islamabad at the same time will negotiate with reconcilable elements. Pakistan is also to be given a new US aid package in the context of this counter-terrorism approach. The US Congress is soon to decide whether to triple non-military aid to Pakistan to US$7 billion. The training by the US of Pakistani special forces is based on Negroponte's initiatives in Nicaragua and the Philippines, where indigenous armies were cultivated to further the US's battles. In the case of the Philippines, it is against the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group and separatists on the island of Mindanao. In Nicaragua, special forces were trained as a bulwark against the revolutionary Sandinista government in the 1980s. The reasons for the new tactic in Pakistan are twofold. Firstly, the Pakistani army does not have extensive training in counter-insurgency, especially on its western borders, that is, Afghanistan. And for years, its strategic orientation has been India-obsessed, in particular fueling the insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir. Secondly, the US considers it vital to bring its military closer to Pakistan's. At a senior level, many Pakistani officers have a personal rapport with senior US officials. The chief of army staff, General Ashfaq Pervez Kiani, has attended three extensive courses in the US, where he has cultivated high-level contacts. The idea is to achieve the same contacts for middle-ranking officials as a tool for sharing intelligence and conducting joint military operations. Despite the US giving Pakistan about $10 billion in military aid over the past seven years, the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan is stronger than ever and the Taliban have found safe heavens in Pakistan. Some officials in Washington suspect most of the US money has been used to build up Pakistan's conventional forces for use in possible future conflicts with India, rather than spent on counter- insurgency. Under the new plan, any reward money for taking out high-value targets will go directly into the pockets of middle- and junior-level officers, who will be at the heart of the special operations teams. Previously, reward money has invariably ended up in the hands of the exchequer, rather than in those of informers or the security officials involved. This has acted as a disincentive for cooperation in the "war on terror", especially for a military that traditionally has had a soft spot for the Taliban. Sensing the new moves, Pakistani militants have unilaterally broken various ceasefire agreements with the authorities and carried out two deadly attacks against Pakistani security forces in the past few days. Some Taliban leaders have made unprecedented calls for the urgent and strict enforcement of Islamic laws, for instance, Maulana Faqir Muhammad of Bajaur Agency has ordered all men in the tribal area to grow a beard. The aim is to spread the insurgency at the grassroots level and close the gap between irreconcilable and reconcilable Taliban, thereby making the task of the new special operations units all the more difficult. Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002 at yahoo.com (Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .) From fentona at shaw.ca Sat May 10 10:04:47 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 09:04:47 -0700 Subject: [R-G] The Insanity of Biofuels Message-ID: The Insanity of Biofuels http://www.spinwatch.org/content/view/4890/8/ Andy Rowell, 8 May 2008 There is something obscenely ironic that whilst the poor starve and struggle over soaring food prices, the rich convert food into fuel so they can carry on driving in their large gas-guzzling vehicles. The rich world is rushing to invest in biofuels as one of the solutions to climate change. Fuels made from corn, sugar, or maize are seen as producing less carbon dioxide than conventional fuels from oil. As Western nations belatedly struggle to come to grips with the daunting challenge of radical reductions in climate changing gases, biofuels offer a theoretical solution. What biofuels conveniently mean for America and Europe is that they can carry on driving and flying, thinking they have a clean conscience over climate change. Such is their appeal that last year the US Congress mandated a fivefold increase in their use. Europe, too, is committed to raising the share of biofuels in transport from current levels of around 2% to at least 10% by 2020. The only problem for those who support biofuels is that despite this rush, never a week goes past without further evidence of their harmful effects. These range from rainforest destruction to being partly to blame for rising food costs. In March, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri was the latest in a long line of people who warned of the problems of biofuels. Speaking at the European Parliament, he said ?We should be very, very careful about coming up with biofuel solutions that have major impact on production of food grains and may have an implication for overall food security.? Pachauri warned that the rush to convert corn to ethanol in the US was having an adverse knock-on effect on the agricultural sector. A fifth of the US?s corn crop is now used to brew ethanol for motor fuel. As farmers rush to plant corn, the acreage of other crops, particularly soybeans, has been cut. The rocketing demand for corn has also meant the price has gone up. Ironically other critics argue that the process of converting corn into ethanol actually releases more carbon dioxide per gallon than simply burning conventional fuels. Then last month, Pachauri?s warning was followed by both the Bolivian President Evo Morales and President of Peru, Alan Garcia, who said using land for biofuels was putting food out of reach for the poor. They were responding to Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva who had tried to dismiss claims that biofuels are responsible for the recent rise in global food prices. Also last month, the UN's special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, did not mince his words when blaming biofuels for making the poor starve. "This is silent mass murder,? he said. Last year he said biofuels were ?a crime against humanity.? As the politicians squabble over whether biofuels are to blame for rising food prices, the poor continue to starve and the price of food becomes ever more expensive. Global food prices have increased by 83 percent in the last three years, according to the World Bank. As basic food staples become too expensive to buy for millions, anger has spread rapidly. At least six people were killed in riots over food prices that contributed to the dismissal of Haiti?s prime minister last month. Millions are struggling to survive on the island after food prices have increased 45 percent since the end of 2006. In Africa, there have been riots in Ivory Coast, and Senegal and Egypt where the military is assisting baking bread. In Mozambique some six people were killed and in Cameroon an estimated 100 killed in protests linked to the food prices. In Burkina Faso, where there were also riots in February over food, the unions have now called for a general strike. In South Africa, there have been protest marches. Meanwhile in Asia, fifty people were injured after factory workers protested against the food rises near Dhaka. Indonesia has also seen protests, whereas Vietnam has seen panic buying. Pakistan has reintroduced some rationing, while India has banned the export of most rice. The ruling coalition in Malaysia was very nearly ousted by voters who cited food as one of their major concerns. Last week, the Philippine government said it was introducing ?rice access cards? for help the poor buy grain. In Latin America, there have been riots in Mexico, whilst farmers went on strike for three weeks in Argentina. In Peru, farmers blocked key road links. In Europe, Russia, which has seen a six per cent increase in food prices since the beginning of the year, has been forced to freeze the price of milk, bread, eggs and cooking oil. Coupled with rising oil prices, rising food prices are creating global tension. ?This is a perfect storm,? President El?as Antonio Saca of El Salvador told the World Economic Forum on Latin America in Canc?n, Mexico last month. ?How long can we withstand the situation? We have to feed our people, and commodities are becoming scarce. This scandalous storm might become a hurricane that could upset not only our economies but also the stability of our countries.? Other voices agree the situation is getting critical. Earlier this month, Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General warned that the global food crisis could have grave implications for international security, economic growth and social progress. ?If not handled properly, this crisis could result in a cascade of others and become a multidimensional problem affecting economic growth, social progress and even political security around the world,? Ban told a conference in Ghana. Last week, Ban Ki-Moon went further, saying that the UN was setting up a special task-force to address the food shortages, which was designed to avert ?social unrest on an unprecedented scale?. Ban said ?The first and immediate priority, that we all agree, is that we must feed the hungry?. A second priority should be to ban biofuels that could be used for food crops. The inescapable fact is that biofuels are partly to blame for the rising food costs. The International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington argues that biofuel production accounts for a quarter to a third of the recent increase in global commodity prices. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations comes up with a slightly smaller figure of biofuels being responsible for between 10 to 15 percent rise in food. So concerned was it over biofuels impacts that last month, the European Environment advisory panel urged the EU to suspend its 10 per cent goal by 2020. The panel, made up of some of Europe's most prestigious climate scientists, called the 10 percent target ?overambitious? whose ?unintended effects are difficult to predict and difficult to control.? Laszlo Somlyody, the panel's chairman and a professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics said: ?The idea was that we felt we needed to slow down, to analyze the issue carefully and then come back at the problem.? Rather than slow down, countries in the EU are speeding up. In Britain, new legislation passed last month means that all gasoline must contain at least 2.5 per cent biofuel. The same day that the legislation was passed, one of Britian?s most respected conservation charities, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, condemned the law as ?over-hasty? and ?utter folly?. The situation is now getting even more ironic. As many simply cannot afford to eat, the rich world is now squabbling over the huge subsidies it gives its biofuel producers to produce more biofuels. Last week, European biodiesel producers triggered the prospect of a new transatlantic trade war by urging the EU to impose penalties on ?unfair? biofuel subsidies from the US. The subsidy allows US exporters to undercut European rivals by up to a quarter. The subsidy system is also being exploited by ruthless commodity traders, who are actually adding to climate change. Known as ?splash and dash? within the industry, the legal trick makes a mockery of the purpose of biofuels, which are meant to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. The biofuel is being needlessly shipped from Europe to the US and then back again. The traders buy biodiesel on the European market and then ship it to the US. There it is ?splashed? with gasoline which means that conventional gasoline is added to the biodiesel so that traders can qualify for the export subsidy. Then the cargo is ?dashed? or shipped back to Europe and resold at a subsidized price which then undercuts European producers. Peter Power, a spokesman for EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, said "We will not under any circumstances tolerate unfair trade." The EU and US are now threatening to take their argument to the World Trade Organisation. It is also beyond irony that as they say they will not tolerate trade that is unfair to their own industries, they seem content to tolerate the fact that millions of people are slowly dying of hunger?. From fentona at shaw.ca Sat May 10 10:06:08 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 09:06:08 -0700 Subject: [R-G] The 'enfant terrible' of British neoconservatism Message-ID: <98478B28-33C8-4A21-843D-AF294FA69DCE@shaw.ca> The 'enfant terrible' of British neoconservatism http://www.spinwatch.org/content/view/4862/8/ Tom Griffin, 9 May 2008 ImageDouglas Murray could justly be described as the enfant terrible of British neoconservatism. He has been a prominent advocate of the application of neoconservative ideas to Europe. Influenced by the authoritarian philosophy of Leo Strauss, and the concept of ?dhimmitude? put forward by Baat Ye?or, Murray has argued that the ?innate flaws of liberal democracy? leave Europe vulnerable to domination by Muslim immigrants. As head of the Centre for Social Cohesion, he has been a central figure in a wider neoconservative propaganda offensive against Islamist movements in Britain. He claims to have influenced Government policy, and his ideas have been influential in some NATO circles. Early career Murray began his literary career as a 16-year-old Etonian, when he persuaded the Home Office to give him access to papers relating to Lord Alfred Douglas, which had been embargoed until 2043.[1] He reportedly completed his biography of Douglas, Oscar Wilde?s lover, before progressing to Magdalen College, Oxford where he read English. The book was published to critical acclaim in 2000 when he was still an undergraduate.[2] Murray also began writing for The Spectator during this period, initially concentrating on reviews related to his literary interests. He has said that the attacks on the World Trade Center, which he visited in 2000, contributed to his increasing political focus.[3] Murray?s strong neo-conservative views became evident in his subsequent early writings as a freelance journalist. In a September 2002 piece for openDemocracy, he criticised CND and the Stop the War Coalition for organising an anti-war march together with the Muslim Association of Britain, An early example of one of the most persistent themes of British neo-conservatism.[4] In February 2003, he described the many first-time demonstrators who had joined the anti-war marches as ?mainly ignorant (by choice or chance) of the machinations of international weapons inspections, oil and the rest of it?.[5] Murray spent much of that year attending the Saville Inquiry into the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre, which had moved to London from Derry to hear the evidence of military witnesses.[6] He condemned Richard Norton Taylor?s play based on the hearings as ?no-strings-attached, neatly packaged, moral tourism.? He intends to publish a book on the inquiry once it reports.[7] In 2004, Murray attended the Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly. He suggested that a full inquiry into the Iraq War was impossible because it would impinge upon the work of the intelligence services. The security services are answerable to the government, but they must not be compromised and agents? lives put at risk to satiate public appetite, nor must they (as I trust the Blair government has now learnt) ever be politicised. National security in Britain, as in all nations, goes beyond today or tomorrow?s government.[8] Social Affairs Unit Murray joined the Social Affairs Unit as a regular contributor in 2004. [9] In 2005, the Unit published his book, Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, which argued for the introduction of neoconservative ideas into British politics. In October that year, he outlined his philosophy in a talk to the Manhattan Institute The practice of equivalence in our national politics leads governments not to listen to, but to fear minority opinion, concerned lest anyone get the impression that the government knows what's right for the majority who have elected it. Not only does it make politics a glorified (though not glorious) pursuit of the personal ? it makes the notion of fixed or natural right a nonsense. Because of course if everything is equal then everything is right: which means nothing is good or true.[10] This ambiguous approach to equality may owe something to the authoritarian philosopher Leo Strauss, of whom Murray is a professed admirer.[11] Strauss?s critics argue that his idea of 'natural right' meant the right of the superior to dominate the inferior.[12] Murray went on to present a picture of Europe on the verge of being outbred by Muslims, a common neoconservative trope reminiscent of the fears of early Twentieth Century eugenicists. Europe has used up its peace dividend. The holiday from reality it had for half a century during which it spent money on welfare whilst America protected its security, is now over ? comprehensively so. Europe not only has unsustainable demographic issues which ? if un- addressed - will eradicate the continent as we know it within three or four generations. It also has security issues, not least those associated with its unameliorated populations and its increasingly inefficient armies. Murray developed this idea further in a February 2006 speech to the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference on Europe and Islam, which embraced Baat Ye?or?s concept of Dhimmitude: It is late in the day, but Europe still has time to turn around the demographic time-bomb which will soon see a number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities. It has to. All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop. In the case of a further genocide such as that in the Balkans, sanctuary would be given on a strictly temporary basis. This should also be enacted retrospectively? Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board: Europe must look like a less attractive proposition.[13] The Hague speech also revisited Straussian themes: Our enemies are aware of these weaknesses in our set-up ? weaknesses which Leo Strauss, like Tocqueville would have pointed out as among the innate flaws of liberal democracy on which we must keep a concerned and wary eye? We must remind the malignant that this war and this era will be dictated on our terms - on the terms of the strong and the right, not the weak and the wrong. Murray returned to these twin themes, suspicion of democracy and fear of Muslim population growth, when he and Daniel Pipes debated Ken Livingstone in January 2007: just a few months ago, the Justice Minister of the Netherlands Piet Hein Donner announced that, when a majority of people wanted it, he was willing to institute Sharia law across the Netherlands. Now, on current demographics, that majority isn?t too far away. What will the Netherlands look like when that happens?[14] Centre for Social Cohesion Murray was appointed director the Centre for Social Cohesion when it was founded by the conservative think-tank Civitas in 2007. [15] The centre shares a Westminster building with Policy Exchange, the think- tank accused by the BBC of using fabricated evidence in a report on extremism in British mosques.[16] The author of that report, Denis MacEoin, is a member of the centre?s advisory council.[17] Like Policy Exchange, the Centre for Social Cohesion has claimed success in influencing British Government policy towards Muslims. If anything, its focus has been even more single-minded. In July 2007, the Centre issued its first published work, an A-Z of Muslim Organisations in Britain, which claimed to be the fullest analysis yet published of the major Muslim organisations in Britain.[18] In August 2007 Murray and James Brandon co-authored the Centre's first pamphlet, Hate on the State, How British Libraries Encourage Islamic Extremism.[19] The Centre later claimed credit when the Prime Minister announced that the "Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport is working with the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council to agree a common approach to deal with the inflammatory and extremist material that some seek to distribute through public libraries, while also of course protecting freedom of speech."[20] Murray has been a frequent guest on BBC current affairs programmes such as Hardtalk, Question Time and Newsnight.[21] NATO Murray 'assisted in the writing process' for the 2007 pamphlet Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership.[22] Written by five former NATO generals, the paper clearly owed much to Murray?s distinctive philosophy: In every country, and at all times, we like to rely on certainty. Certainty about the past, the present and even the future. Yet certainty is based not on inevitability, but rather on social and intellectual needs. We seek to uphold a common and stable experience, shunning the arbitrary in favour of closure in debate. The pamphlet proposed a new UN/EU/NATO directorate to 'co-ordinate all co-operation in the transatlantic sphere of interest.? It suggested that if this prescription were followed ?we might, in the medium to long term, thus be capable of restoring certainty ?something which we see as the most important prerequisite for functioning societies.? The plan was reportedly a topic for discussion at the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008.[23] However, according to one senior NATO figure the paper?s call for the alliance to develop a first-strike nuclear capability had ?no traction whatsoever.?[24] Notes [1] Amazon.com: Bosie: The Man, The Poet, The Lover of Oscar Wilde: Douglas Murray: Books, accessed 24 March 2008. [2] Knitting Circle Alfred Douglas, accessed 21 March 2008. [3] Neoconservatism: why we need it - a talk to the Manhattan Institute by Douglas Murray, Social Affairs Unit, 26 October 2005 [4] An Unholy Alliance, by Douglas Murray, openDemocracy, 22 October 2002. [5] Marching to hell, by Douglas Murray, openDemocracy 20 February 2003. [6] Neoconservatism: Why We Need It (Hardcover), Amazon.co.uk, accessed 21 March 2008 [7] Bloody Sunday, or the theatre of moral corruption,by Douglas Murray, openDemocracy, 11 May 2005. [8] Hutton - the wrong inquiry, by Douglas Murray, openDemocracy, 29 January 2004.. [9] Neoconservatism: Why We Need It (Hardcover), Amazon.co.uk, accessed 21 March 2008. [10] Neoconservatism: why we need it - a talk to the Manhattan Institute by Douglas Murray, Social Affairs Unit, 26 October 2005 [11] Profound insights of Leo Strauss, Douglas Murray, The Guardian, 30 December 2005. [12] Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception, by Jim Lobe, Alternet, 19 May 2003. [13] What are we to do about Islam? A speech to the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference on Europe and Islam, by Douglas Murray, Social Affairs Unit, 3 March 2006. [14] Douglas Murray?s speech, Conference: A World Civilization or a Clash of Civilisations, Greater London Authority, 20 January 2007. [15] Centre for Social Cohesion: Press Release, accessed 22 March 2008. [16] Clutha House, 10 Storey?s Gate, Westminster, London, SW1, Keningtons Chartered Surveyors, accessed 5 April 2008. BBC News, Talk about Newsnight, BBC Response to Policy Exchange statement, 14 December 2007. [17] The Centre for Social Cohesion, About Us, accessed 5 April 2008. [18] Centre for Social Cohesion: Press Release, 1 July 2007, accessed 22 March 2008. [19] Hate on the State, How British Libraries Encourage Islamic Extremism, Centre for Social Cohesion, August 2007, accessed 22 March 2008 [20] PM uses Centre's 'Hate on the State' report to tackle stocking of pro-jihadist books by libraries, Blog, The Centre for Social Cohesion, 28 November 2007. [21] BBC search results for ?Douglas Murray?, accessed 6 April 2008. [22] Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership, Noaber Foundation, 2007 [23] Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key option NATO told, by Ian Traynor, The Guardian, 22 January 2008. [24] Russia?s problems nudge Afghanistan off the map, by Doug Saunders, Globe and Mail, 2 April 2008. From fentona at shaw.ca Sat May 10 12:14:50 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 11:14:50 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Norad to be key player in 2010 security Message-ID: Norad to be key player in Games security Organization offers air protection at Vancouver 2010 David Pugliese The Ottawa Citizen Saturday, May 10, 2008 The North American Aerospace Defence Command is already planning how it will protect the 2010 Olympics with potentially everything from fighter aircraft to sophisticated surveillance planes. Canadian Lt.-Gen. Charlie Bouchard, deputy commander of the joint U.S.- Canada military organization Norad, says work is under way on how to best provide air protection for the Games in Vancouver and Whistler. The RCMP is the lead agency in organizing security, but Norad has been given the job of providing protection from the air and monitoring the airspace over the Olympics. Much of the work will be done by the Canadian Norad regional command, but Lt.-Gen. Bouchard said that organization will have the full capabilities of Norad to draw from. "We at the strategic level will shape the strategic environment around them to make sure they succeed, whether it is (with) the provision of a co-ordinated air picture, whether it's the provision of additional assets they may require and are looking at (including) everything from fighters to aerial refuellers to AWACS to ground-based radars," he said. AWACS are specialized surveillance planes that can detect aircraft as far away as 400 kilometres. Last summer, the military created its Joint Task Force Games, which is now operating out of Victoria. At this point, the Joint Task Force Games headquarters has around 25 personnel, but that is expected to grow this summer and, by the time the Olympics roll around, it will be more than 200. Since there is already naval security on the West Coast, work will focus on how much to increase that for the Olympics. Already, Canadian navy divers have been used to map out the seafloor of the Vancouver harbour. Aurora patrol aircraft are also flying missions to collect images of various areas. As far as security on the land, the RCMP is looking at whether Canadian troops will be needed to monitor some of the more difficult mountain and forest approaches around the Olympic venues. Lt.-Gen. Bouchard said co-ordinating air security for large events in not new for Norad, which celebrates its 50th anniversary Monday. In January, fighter aircraft flew missions for Norad to provide protection for the Super Bowl. Aircraft have also been involved in security for space shuttle launches and will be on hand for the Democratic and Republican national conventions and the Indianapolis 500. More recently, Norad-controlled aircraft have been used to intercept Russian military planes as they approach North American airspace. Lt.-Gen. Bouchard acknowledged that Russian aerial activity in the North has increased significantly over the last 10 months. The focus, however, is not on Russian aircraft, but any unknown aerial intruder into North American airspace, Lt.-Gen. Bouchard said. "As I look down the road, I'm not only concerned with Russian long- range aviation, I'm concerned with smugglers and all kinds of terrorist activities that may take place," he said. ? The Ottawa Citizen 2008 From fentona at shaw.ca Sat May 10 12:18:06 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 11:18:06 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Zionists and Fascists Unite Message-ID: Zionists and Fascists Unite May 6, 2008 http://fanonite.org/2008/05/06/zionists-and-fascists-unite/ Just a few months back Gary Younge had observed that ?plain old fascism has returned as a mainstream ideology in Europe.? What is talked about less, however, is the ally it has found in Zionism. This alliance was already in view in Austria, Germany, France and UK. Now it makes a debut in Italy. The following from the London FT. (Recall that the Italian centre-left was already at the service of Zion; Olmert was caught on camera instructing Romano Prodi on what to say during a press conference back in December 2006) Rome?s election last week of its first rightwing mayor since the time of Benito Mussolini has been celebrated by fascists as a historic victory over the left. Packs of young, thuggish supporters of Gianni Alemanno greeted the new mayor?s appearance at the Campidoglio city hall with straight- armed ?Roman? salutes, shouting abuse at communists and foreign immigrants. ?Before, if you were a fascist you had to pretend to be part of the mainstream to have respectability. Now they are coming out of the closet,? said an aide to defeated centre-left candidate Francesco Rutelli. Debate over the significance of the National Alliance?s first election victory in a major city has been intense - especially among the capital?s small but important Jewish commun-ity, which is widely thought to have swung in Mr Alemanno?s favour. Rome?s Jewish voters, numbering about 9,000, explain their shift to the right in various ways, most often because they see the National Alliance as firmly pro- Israel. Michel Bokhobza, whose family fled from Libya to Rome in 1967, says Italy?s centre-right is closer to Israel than the pro-Arab bias of the centre-left. ?Even if his past was very close to fascism, Alemanno belongs to the coalition guided by [Silvio] Berlusconi and [Gianfranco] Fini,? he said, referring to the People of Liberty alliance that swept national elections last month. Times had changed, he said, since 1993 and the first open elections for Rome. The right?s candidate then was Mr Fini, now leader of the National Alliance, who then was part of its neo-fascist predecessor, the MSI, the direct heirs of Mussolini. ?Fini was then seen as a demon and neo-fascist,? said Sandro Di Castro, president of the Jewish community?s Bene Berith association. The ?turning point? came in 1995 when Mr Fini became head of the new National Alliance and started to steer it towards the mainstream. That process was completed in 2003 when, as deputy prime minister in the second Berlusconi government, Mr Fini denounced fascism as an ?absolute evil?. Mr Alemanno?s personal journey is less certain. Leftwing commentators have called the 50-year-old former agriculture minister fascist, neo-fascist and post-fascist Dominique Sicouri, from Egypt?s Jewish community, said her ?heart is with the left? but she still decided to work with Mr Alemanno in building ties with France?s ruling UMP party, for which she acts as spokeswoman in Italy. She sees Mr Alemanno as intelligent, serious and a pragmatic moderniser. His Jewish supporters say that in power he will be better placed to rein in extremism. Italy will take note of foreign concerns after Libya warned against appointing a far-right lawmaker as minister, but it will not accept interference in its internal affairs, the incoming Italian foreign minister said. A Libyan charity chaired by leader Muammer Gaddafi?s son warned of ?catastrophic repercussions? to bilateral ties if Roberto Calderoli - known for his anti-Islam rhetoric - became Italy?s reforms minister. Posted by m.idrees Filed in EU/Europe, Fascism, Islamophobia, Israel Lobby Tags: Italy From shimogamo at attglobal.net Sat May 10 18:46:08 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 11 May 2008 09:46:08 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Portrait of an Oil-Addicted Former Superpower Message-ID: <482641D0.8090704@attglobal.net> How Rising Oil Prices Are Obliterating America's Superpower Status by Michael T Klare Published by TomDispatch.com (May 09 2008) Nineteen years ago, the fall of the Berlin Wall effectively eliminated the Soviet Union as the world's other superpower. Yes, the USSR as a political entity stumbled on for another two years, but it was clearly an ex-superpower from the moment it lost control over its satellites in Eastern Europe. Less than a month ago, the United States similarly lost its claim to superpower status when a barrel crude oil roared past $110 on the international market, gasoline prices crossed the $3.50 threshold at American pumps, and diesel fuel topped $4.00. As was true of the USSR following the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the USA will no doubt continue to stumble on like the superpower it once was; but as the nation's economy continues to be eviscerated to pay for its daily oil fix, it, too, will be seen by increasing numbers of savvy observers as an ex-superpower-in-the-making. That the fall of the Berlin Wall spelled the erasure of the Soviet Union's superpower status was obvious to international observers at the time. After all, the USSR visibly ceased to exercise dominion over an empire (and an associated military-industrial complex) encompassing nearly half of Europe and much of Central Asia. The relationship between rising oil prices and the obliteration of America's superpower status is, however, hardly as self-evident. So let's consider the connection. Dry Hole Superpower The fact is, America's wealth and power has long rested on the abundance of cheap petroleum. The United States was, for a long time, the world's leading producer of oil, supplying its own needs while generating a healthy surplus for export. Oil was the basis for the rise of the first giant multinational corporations in the US, notably John D Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company (now reconstituted as Exxon Mobil, the world's wealthiest publicly-traded corporation). Abundant, exceedingly affordable petroleum was also responsible for the emergence of the American automotive and trucking industries, the flourishing of the domestic airline industry, the development of the petrochemical and plastics industries, the suburbanization of America, and the mechanization of its agriculture. Without cheap and abundant oil, the United States would never have experienced the historic economic expansion of the post-World War II era. No less important was the role of abundant petroleum in fueling the global reach of US military power. For all the talk of America's growing reliance on computers, advanced sensors, and stealth technology to prevail in warfare, it has been oil above all that gave the US military its capacity to "project power" onto distant battlefields like Iraq and Afghanistan. Every Humvee, tank, helicopter, and jet fighter requires its daily ration of petroleum, without which America's technology-? driven military would be forced to abandon the battlefield. No surprise, then, that the US Department of Defense is the world's single biggest consumer of petroleum, using more of it every day than the entire nation of Sweden. From fentona at shaw.ca Sat May 10 18:58:00 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 17:58:00 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Bush Spending U.S. Tax Dollars to Foment Unrest in Bolivi Message-ID: April, 2008 http://www.coastalpost.com/08/04/18.html Bush Spending U.S. Tax Dollars to Foment Unrest in Bolivia By Benjamin Dangl, The Progressive A thick fence, surveillance cameras, and armed guards protect the U.S. Embassy in La Paz. The embassy is a tall, white building with narrow slits of windows that make it look like a military bunker. After passing through a security checkpoint, I sit down with U.S. Embassy spokesman Eric Watnik and ask if the embassy is working against the socialist government of Evo Morales. "Our cooperation in Bolivia is apolitical, transparent, and given directly to assist in the development of the country," Watnik tells me. "It is given to benefit those who need it most." From the Bush Administration's perspective, that turns out to mean Morales's opponents. Declassified documents and interviews on the ground in Bolivia prove that the Bush Administration is using U.S. taxpayers' money to undermine the Morales government and coopt the country's dynamic social movements--just as it has tried to do recently in Venezuela and traditionally throughout Latin America. Much of that money is going through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In July 2002, a declassified message from the U.S. embassy in Bolivia to Washington included the following message: "A planned USAID political party reform project aims at implementing an existing Bolivian law that would . . . over the long run, help build moderate, pro-democracy political parties that can serve as a counterweight to the radical MAS or its successors." MAS refers to Morales's party, which, in English, stands for Movement Toward Socialism. Morales won the presidency in December 2005 with 54 percent of the vote, but five regional governments went to rightwing politicians. After Morales's victory, USAID, through its Office of Transition Initiatives, decided "to provide support to fledgling regional governments," USAID documents reveal. Throughout 2006, four of these five resource-rich lowland departments pushed for greater autonomy from the Morales-led central government, often threatening to secede from the nation. U.S. funds have emboldened them, with the Office of Transition Initiatives funneling "116 grants for $4,451,249 to help departmental governments operate more strategically," the documents state. "USAID helps with the process of decentralization," says Jose Carvallo, a press spokesperson for the main rightwing opposition political party, Democratic and Social Power. "They help with improving democracy in Bolivia through seminars and courses to discuss issues of autonomy." "The U.S. Embassy is helping this opposition," agrees Raul Prada, who works for Morales's party. Prada is sitting down in a crowded La Paz cafe and eating ice cream. His upper lip is black and blue from a beating he received at the hands of Morales's opponents while Prada was working on the new constitutional assembly. "The ice cream is to lessen the swelling," he explains. The Morales government organized this constitutional assembly to redistribute wealth from natural resources and guarantee broader access to education, land, water, gas, electricity, and health care for the country's poor majority. I had seen Prada in the early days of the Morales administration. He was wearing an indigenous wiphala flag pin and happily chewing coca leaves in his government office. This time, he wasn't as hopeful. He took another scoop of ice cream and continued: "USAID is in Santa Cruz and other departments to help fund and strengthen the infrastructure of the rightwing governors." In August 2007, Morales told a diplomatic gathering in La Paz, "I cannot understand how some ambassadors dedicate themselves to politics, and not diplomacy, in our country . . .. That is not called cooperation. That is called conspiracy." Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera said that the U.S. Embassy was funding the government's political opponents in an effort to develop "ideological and political resistance." One example is USAID's financing of Juan Carlos Urenda, an adviser to the rightwing Civic Committee, and author of the Autonomy Statute, a plan for Santa Cruz's secession from Bolivia. "There is absolutely no truth to any allegation that the U.S. is using its aid funds to try and influence the political process or in any way undermine the government," says State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey. USAID officials point out that this support has gone to all Bolivian governors, not just those in the opposition. Despite Casey's assertion, this funding has been controversial. On October 10, Bolivia's supreme court approved a decree that prohibits international funding of activities in Bolivia without state regulation. One article in the law explains that Bolivia will not accept money with political or ideological strings attached. In Bolivia, where much of the political muscle is in the streets with social organizations and unions, it's not enough for Washington to work only at levels of high political power. They have to reach the grassroots as well. One USAID official told me by e-mail that the Office of Transition Initiatives "launched its Bolivia program to help reduce tensions in areas prone to social conflict (in particular El Alto) and to assist the country in preparing for upcoming electoral events." To find out how this played out on the ground, I meet with El Alto- based journalist Julio Mamani in the Regional Workers' Center in his city, which neighbors La Paz. "There was a lot of rebellious ideology and organizational power in El Alto in 2003," Mamani explains, referring to the populist uprising that overthrew President Gonzalo S?nchez de Lozada. "So USAID strengthened its presence in El Alto, and focused their funding and programs on developing youth leadership. Their style of leadership was not based on the radical demands of the city or the horizontal leadership styles of the unions. They wanted to push these new leaders away from the city's unions and into hierarchical government positions." The USAID programs demobilized the youth. "USAID always took advantage of the poverty of the people," Mamani says. "They even put up USAID flags in areas alongside the Bolivian flag and the wiphala." It was not hard to find other stories of what the U.S. government had been doing to influence economics and politics in Bolivia. Luis Gonzalez, an economics student at the University of San Simon in Cochabamba, describes a panel he went to in 2006 that was organized by the Millennium Foundation. That year, this foundation received $155,738 from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) through the Center for International Private Enterprise, a nonprofit affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Gonzalez, in glasses and a dark ponytail, described a panel that focused on criticizing state control of the gas industry (a major demand of social movements). "The panelists said that foreign investment and production in Bolivia will diminish if the gas remains under partial state control," says Gonzalez. "They advocated privatization, corporate control, and pushed neoliberal policies." That same year, the NED funded another $110,134 to groups in Bolivia through the Center for International Private Enterprise to, according to NED documents, "provide information about the effects of proposed economic reforms to decision-makers involved in the Constituent Assembly." According to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by muckraker Jeremy Bigwood, the NED also funded programs that brought thirteen young "emerging leaders" from Bolivia to Washington between 2002 and 2004 to strengthen their rightwing political parties. The MAS, and other leftist parties, were not invited to these meetings. The U.S. Embassy even appears to be using Fulbright scholars in its effort to undermine the Bolivian government. One Fulbright scholar in Bolivia, who wished to remain anonymous, explained that during recent orientation meetings at the embassy in La Paz, "a member of the U.S. Embassy's security apparatus requested reports back to the embassy with detailed information if we should encounter any Venezuelans or Cubans in the field." Both Venezuela and Cuba provide funding, doctors, and expertise to support their socialist ally Morales. The student adds that the embassy's request "contradicts the Fulbright program's guidelines, which prohibit us from interfering in politics or doing anything that would offend the From fentona at shaw.ca Sat May 10 18:58:38 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 17:58:38 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Oligarchs trying to break up Bolivia Message-ID: <944FC1E6-5E5F-47AB-86B2-80F543D1EEBE@shaw.ca> U.S.-supported ?referendum? Oligarchs trying to break up Bolivia By Berta Joubert-Ceci Published May 8, 2008 10:00 PM http://www.workers.org/2008/world/bolivia_0515/ On May 4, massive demonstrations of Indigenous people, peasants, workers and students took place all over Bolivia to protest an attempt by wealthy landowners and business heads to divide their country. These demonstrations got little attention in the international media emanating from the imperialist countries. Mass demonstration in support of national unity. Mass demonstration in support of national unity. Photo: Granma.cu What they focused on instead was the ?referendum for autonomy? in the province of Santa Cruz, which had been declared illegal and unconstitutional by the progressive government of Evo Morales. The Indigenous people in Bolivia have been ignored, persecuted and exploited for 500 years. But today they are defending their rights, the unity of their country, and the national government led by Morales, Bolivia?s first Indigenous president. U.S. imperialism has been carefully orchestrating a divisive strategy in Bolivia that it plans to apply in other countries of the region as well, including Ecuador and Venezuela. Santa Cruz is one of nine Bolivian provinces. The vote for ?autonomy? is meant to destabilize the Morales government and divide the country, much as Kosovo was separated from Yugoslavia. In fact, some of the same actors are busy at work in Bolivia. The current U.S. ambassador there is Philip Goldberg, who was instrumental in the separation of Kosovo. Concentrated wealth Santa Cruz, in the eastern lowlands of Bolivia, is part of the Media Luna (half moon)?a crescent that includes the provinces of Pando, Tarija and Beni. The Media Luna is also the wealthiest part of the country, generating 44 percent of the gross national product. A right- wing opposition to the Morales government is entrenched there, with its leadership centered in Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is the largest province in Bolivia, with almost one third of the national territory. Its capital, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, is the largest city in the country, with nearly 1.4 million people. Santa Cruz alone generates 30.63 percent of the GNP. Home to a white European oligarchy, it is also vehemently racist. Many of the oligarchs are ?latifundistas? who own huge farmlands that produce export goods like soy, rubber and cattle. One of those landowners is Ronald Din Larsen, a U.S. citizen who has lived in Bolivia for many years and owns 141,203 acres in Santa Cruz. According to Bolivian authorities, Larsen doesn?t even have a Bolivian registration or identity card, yet his family is actively opposing the land reform proposal of the Morales government that would break up these large estates and make land available to poor Bolivians. When Vice-Minister of Land Alejandro Almaraz made a recent visit to Santa Cruz, he was attacked by a gun-toting group instigated by Larsen, according to the news agency ABI. Santa Cruz is where most of the transnational corporations have their headquarters. It also has the largest reserves of natural gas, petroleum and other minerals. The province?s business owners are organized in the Santa Cruz Civic Union, headed by Branko Marinkovic, a Croatian capitalist with close ties to the U.S. Embassy. Carolus Wimmer, national secretary of the Venezuelan Communist Party, told Venezuelan television that some members of the Croatian oligarchy in Bolivia had been expelled from Socialist Yugoslavia after World War II as fascist sympathizers. The Croats settled in several Latin American countries with the help of the CIA. Marinkovic and Rub?n Costas, the administrator of the province, are the leaders behind the separatist movement in Santa Cruz. Their armed wing, the Santa Cruz Youth Union, is a violent group closely allied to the Falange, a fascist organization active in the 1940s and 1950s that seems to be resurfacing. In search of jobs, thousands of people from the highlands in the west have moved to Santa Cruz, particularly members of the Indigenous Aymara and Quechua nations. In Santa Cruz they face discrimination and often racist violence, perpetrated mostly by the fascist youth group. Illegal referendum The referendum on autonomy was illegal under the Bolivian constitution. Even the United Nations and the Organization of American States, no champions of progress, opposed the referendum. Gen. Luis Trigo, head of the Bolivian Armed Forces, publicly denounced it as affecting ?the security and the defense of the Bolivian State.? He pointed out that some of the articles establish local control over legislation, all transport by land, river, air and roads, as well as the airwaves, security and defense. It is in fact a project to provide legal cover for setting up a new country. Informal polls show that the majority of the people in Santa Cruz did not know the exact contents of the referendum. In an effort to deceive, the oligarchy?s media reported on May 5 that the ?Yes? option approving autonomy won by more than 80 percent. In the U.S., the Washington Post echoed those numbers in an article that quoted Marinkovic as saying, ?It?s a historic day, and tomorrow we have more work to do. ... We have to determine a new course for Bolivia, and it won?t be an easy task.? Morales, in a televised speech, said, ?This poll, which is illegal and unconstitutional, was not the success that they hoped for. ... Between the abstention rate of 39 percent, the votes ?no? and the blank ballots, that is practically 50 percent.? The turnout for the ?referendum? had been low. Interior Minister Alfredo Rada, in an interview with Telesur, stated that the elections were marked by ?violence, confrontations and irregularities.? He said some names were erased from voters? lists and 20 people were injured in confrontations with the fascist youth group. In a neighborhood called Plan 3000, a stronghold of the Morales party, the fascist youth picked a fight against the Indigenous and peasant residents, shouting racist epithets. The residents shouted back, ?Get out fascists? and ?Long live Evo.? People in Santa Cruz who support Morales had seized and burned ballot boxes in rejection of the referendum. In the process, they found many supposedly blank ballots were already marked with the Yes option. They immediately called the press to announce the fraud. In a Telesur broadcast, Morales also accused the United States of funding the opposition. ?The Embassy of the United States is the one that leads this conspiracy,? he said, adding that ?the U.S. ambassador is the great defender of the division of Bolivia, of the anti- constitutional attitudes, of those groups that do not want equality for our peoples, of the groups that want to steal from our country.? Articles from different sources mention that USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy have given million of dollars to the opposition groups in the name of the ?fight against drug trafficking.? (See, for example, www.coastalpost.com/08/04/18.html.) E-mail: bjceci at workers.org From shimogamo at attglobal.net Sun May 11 05:13:39 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 11 May 2008 20:13:39 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Not The End Of The World Message-ID: <4826D4E3.7040502@attglobal.net> by John Michael Greer The Archdruid Report (April 30 2008) Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society You know that things are beginning to heat up when both sides of a controversy declare victory at the same time. Over the last week or so, that's happened in the peak oil scene. On the one hand, quite a number of cornucopians - those enthusiastic souls who believe that we can get ourselves out of the hole we're in by digging faster and paying less attention to where the dirt lands - have trumpeted the discovery of a few new oil fields as proof that peak oil is a myth. The Bakken shale {1}, a geological formation down in the basement of the northern Great Plains, has attracted the bulk of this cheerleading. Mind you, the Bakken's a significant discovery; there's apparently a fair amount of oil down there, though the technical challenges involved in extracting more than a tiny fraction of it are immense, and nobody's yet sure if the energy that can be extracted from it will be more or less than the energy cost needed to extract it. Even if it turns out to be the oil find of the decade, though, and North Dakota oil millionaires start showing up as a recognized type in American popular culture, the most the Bakken can do is make up some of the production losses from older oil fields and slow, for a time, our descent from Hubbert's peak. Meanwhile, on the other side of the spectrum, the number of voices proclaiming the imminence of total collapse has skyrocketed. Typical is a recent post {2} in Sharon Astyk's useful peak oil blog. Astyk claims that recent events have decisively settled the debate between the fast-crash and slow-grind models of post-peak oil reality, in favor of the fast crash - and we're already in it. Her argument is basically that the drastic spikes in food and energy costs over the last few months have outrun the limits of the slow-grind scenario; ergo, the fast crash is here. I've commented several times in these essays about the way that linear thinking distorts our view of the future, and Astyk's prediction makes a good example. The drastic price spikes in many commodities over the last few months offer a warning that shouldn't be ignored, but treating them as evidence that industrial society is about to implode imposes a linear model onto the complex realities of socioeconomic change. The fact that change is happening quickly right now does not mean that it will continue to happen at the same pace, or even in the same direction. Human societies are complex homeostatic systems that respond to changes in their environments by trying to maintain their equilibrium. Both the cornucopians and the fast-collapse theorists too often lose track of this basic rule of human ecology, but it's interesting to note that they do so in different ways. In the face of faltering oil production, industrial societies intensify the search for new oil fields and exploit fields that would have been considered uneconomical in the halcyon days of cheap oil; that's how they try to maintain equilibrium. These are responses to crisis, however, not evidence that the crisis is over. When an oil reservoir as geologically challenging as the Bakken looks like a good place to drill, that in itself provides a good measure of how serious the drawdown of existing reserves has become. At the same time, soaring costs of energy and food are among the ways that a market-based society attempts to maintain equilibrium when supply fails to keep up with potential demand. Rationing by price is a profoundly inequitable way to sort out who gets food and energy in a time of shortages, and who does not, but unless the industrial world goes through drastic political changes in the very near future, it's the way we're stuck with, and it does have at least one pragmatic advantage: the ration coupons (we call them "money") and the entire system of rationing are already in place, ready to use, without massive social engineering. As prices go up, a great many of the poor and disenfranchised worldwide are sliding closer to the edge where destitution turns into starvation. That's a tragedy, and a moral crisis of no small magnitude. Still, those who think that it announces the imminent collapse of industrial society need to revisit the history of the nineteenth century, when famines racked the Third World with appalling frequency and a good half of the population in many industrial nations lived in desperate poverty. Most people in the industrial world nowadays, I suspect, have forgotten just how much routine deprivation was a part of ordinary life before the brief twentieth-century heyday of cheap abundant energy. At the same time, rising prices in a market society also help drive responses to crisis. Here in Oregon, much of the farmland in the long and fertile Willamette valley has been used for years to grow grass seed for the lawn-improvement market. This year, though, a good many of the grass-seed farmers are planting wheat instead - the grass seed market is weak, while the price they can expect for wheat is higher than it's been in generations. Similar responses are beginning to show up in other agricultural and economic sectors; that's the sort of response that can be expected, after all, from a complex homeostatic system. That's also why the collapse of previous civilizations follows a stairstep process that combines periods of severe crisis with periods of partial recovery. Knocked out of one state of equilibrium by the pressures driving it toward collapse, a society in decline finds a new balance lower down the scale of socioeconomic complexity; when that balance becomes unsustainable, another transition follows, and then another point of equilibrium lower still; that's the underlying logic of the theory of catabolic collapse, the basis for most of what appears on this blog. It's hard to argue against the suggestion that we're entering such a period of crisis just now, and if this is the case, we can expect hard choices and troubled times in the years immediately ahead. In the case of today's soaring food prices, likely results include increased starvation in the world's poorest countries, and a sharp increase in the world's roster of failed states. Meanwhile, drastic economic, political, and cultural readjustments will hit the industrial world as income redistributes itself from urban centers to farm country. Further down the road, expect prices of many agricultural commodities to come crashing back to earth as steep increases in production intersect with the boom-and-bust cycle of commodities speculation. They'll head back up thereafter - many centuries will likely pass before food is ever again as cheap compared to incomes as it was in the second half of the twentieth century - but the wild swings in commodity prices will place added pressure on economic systems already creaking under existing strains. Perhaps the most likely result of the current wave of crises, however, is the twilight of the much-ballyhooed global market of the twentieth century's last decades. That was never the wave of the future its cheerleaders labeled it; it was a temporary artifact of a world in which energy costs had been forced so low, and economic disparities between nations raised so high, that distance apparently didn't matter and arbitraging labor costs across continents seemed to make economic sense. As energy costs have risen in recent years, nations with energy resources have done the sensible thing and recognized the political dimensions of economic exchange. Free-market fundamentalists who denounce this "resource nationalism" seem to have forgotten that the government of Russia, for example, was not elected by the citizens of America, and gains no conceivable benefit by embracing policies that benefit American consumers or politicians while disadvantaging their Russian equivalents. The food crisis has pushed this same transformation into overdrive. Governments around the world that once made their nations' ability to feed their own people a sacrosanct element of national policy, and were talked out of this sensible strategy during the heyday of cheap energy, have suddenly realized that the lukewarm gratitude of foreign politicians and the plaudits of economists snugly sheltered in their ivory towers don't count for much when a hungry mob heads for the presidential palace. Most of the Asian countries that produce rice, the grain that has soared most in price, have accordingly limited rice exports to ensure that their own people get enough to eat. Where fossil fuels and food crops go, other resources will follow; my guess is that potash for fertilizer, an essential resource for industrial agriculture, will be next in line. The "free market", for that matter, was never that free in the first place; a slanted playing board designed to maximize the flow of wealth to the world's industrial nations and minimize flows in the other direction, it replaced more straightforward forms of colonialism while maintaining unequal patterns of exchange that allow the five percent of the world's population who live in the United States to dispose of about thirty percent of the world's natural resources. It's not surprising that countries assigned the short end of the stick by these arrangements would throw them off as soon as they could get away with it, and the resource crunch now underway offers them a perfect opportunity to do so. The end of the global economy may make life a good deal harder for those of us in the United States and those other industrial nations, such as Canada and Australia, that have become used to the absurdly lavish energy and resource expenditures of the recent past. It bears remembering, though, that people in Europe maintain a standard of living in many ways higher ours on roughly one-third the energy per capita Americans seem to think is necessary for civilized life. We can get by, and get by tolerably well, on much less energy and many fewer resources than we think. This is likely to be a crucial point to keep in mind as the present crisis unfolds. It's not the end of the world, or even the end of industrial civilization, but if history is anything to go by, we could be in for a couple of very rough decades. A crisis phase in the downward arc of catabolic collapse is not a pleasant thing to live through, and we can expect it to have social, economic, political, and (unless we're extraordinarily lucky) military dimensions that will transform most people's lives for the worse, temporarily or forever. That need not stop us from facing the emerging crisis with as much grace and humanity as we can muster, while doing our part to lay the foundations for the ecotechnic societies of the future - unless, that is, we allow premature proclamations of triumph or catastrophe to distract us from the work that must be done. Links: {1} http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3868 {2} http://sharonastyk.com/2008/04/22/we-regret-to-inform-you/ _____ ?John Michael Greer has been active in the alternative spirituality movement for more than 25 years, and is the author of a dozen books, including The Druidry Handbook (Weiser, 2006). He lives in Ashland, Oregon. http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/04/not-end-of-world.html#links TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org Sun May 11 06:42:07 2008 From: hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org (Hunter Gray) Date: Sun, 11 May 2008 06:42:07 -0600 Subject: [R-G] Two Pieces [ACLU on Texas; Native Challenges] Message-ID: <004501c8b364$9edcc870$0400a8c0@computer> [The Texas Raids tragedy is now drawing thoughtful national attention. H.] ACLU Statement On The Government's Actions Regarding The Yearning For Zion Ranch In Eldorado, Texas (5/2/2008) On April 3, 2008, Texas law enforcement officials obtained a search warrant related to the suspected sexual assault of a child and then conducted a raid on the Yearning For Zion (YFZ) Ranch near Eldorado, Texas. The search warrant was reportedly based upon a telephone call placed by a female who identified herself as a 16-year old resident at YFZ who was the mother of one child, pregnant with a second child, and who claimed she was being physically abused by her husband. The YFZ Ranch, which is more than 1000 acres in size, apparently housed more than 700 people (men, women, and children) who are associated with the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), whose practices include forming families with more than one wife. Although the original search warrant identified only one case of suspected sexual assault, law enforcement officials have now taken into custody all of the approximately 462 children formerly residing at YFZ. The available evidence now suggests that the original call that served as the basis of the warrant was probably made by someone who had never resided at YFZ and that the accused "husband" was at the time residing in Arizona (and may never have lived at YFZ). Since that time, the media, including internet blogs and listservs, have been filled with reports about YFZ and the FLDS that describe forced marriages, marriages involving underage girls, forced sex with children, and other abuses. There also have been reports of young children suffering trauma caused by the forced separation from their parents. Although all of the facts are not yet known, the governing principles are well-established: a.. First, children have a right not to be abused (sexually or otherwise) nor forced into marriages by their parents or by any other person. b.. Second, parents have a constitutionally protected right to the free exercise of religion and to raise their children in their own faith. c.. Third, children and parents have the right to be together unless it is determined, applying the proper legal standards adopted by the state and consistent with the United States Constitution, that temporary or permanent removal is necessary. Children may not be separated from their parents based solely on the state's disagreement with a group's thoughts or beliefs, religious or otherwise. d.. Fourth, all persons, including children, have the fundamental right to due process of law. Due process rights for both potential victims and parents accused of neglect or abuse must be respected, and the law must afford each family notice of and the opportunity to contest allegations related to custody in a timely manner. Based upon news reports and other available information, the ACLU has serious concerns that the state's actions so far have not adequately protected the fundamental rights at stake. Specifically, the ACLU is concerned that: 1.. The initial raid at YFZ was prompted by a single allegation of abuse now reported most likely to have been made by someone who never resided at YFZ. Law enforcement officials have since removed every child who was living at the ranch, regardless of age or sex, and the state has justified that decision, in part, by explaining that all children at the ranch were at risk because they were exposed to FLDS beliefs regarding underage marriage. Religion is never an excuse for abuse. But, exposure to a religion's beliefs, however unorthodox, is not itself abuse and may not constitutionally be labeled abuse. 2.. Parents have been separated from their children without individual, adversarial hearings and without particularized evidence that they ever engaged in abuse or were likely to engage in abuse. Children from YFZ have since been dispersed around the state, compounding the harm of forced separation of children - particularly infants - and their parents. 3.. Court-ordered DNA testing has been ordered for all children without having any specific evidence that the parentage of all children was actually in dispute. Parents have been pressured to consent to DNA testing if they wish to be reunited with their children who were forcibly separated from them. 4.. State officials have an important obligation to protect children against abuse. However, such actions should not be indiscriminately targeted against a group as a whole - particularly when the group is perceived as being different or unusual. Actions should be based on concrete evidence of harm and not based upon prejudice against religious or other communities. Under these circumstances, it is essential for Texas officials to provide fair judicial proceedings that respect the constitutional rights of all involved - children, parents, and religious communities - while ensuring at the same time that children are protected against abuse where there is credible evidence of such abuse. The ACLU will continue to monitor the unfolding events and will work to ensure that Texas officials act in a manner that is consistent with the important principles set forth above, including making our views known to the Texas courts at appropriate points in the judicial proceedings. [For the historical and contemporary background of this, and a discussion of the issues, see this of ours: http://hunterbear.org/POLYGAMY%20FIRES.htm ] _________________________________________________________ The Northern Arapaho Eagle Case -- and Much, Much More on Native Americans and Challenges [Hunter Gray 5/10/08] NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR: May 10 2008 There are presently almost three million Native people in what's called the United States -- and almost 600 specific tribal nations, each with its own distinctive culture. The following exemplifies several very troubling dimensions: A specific attack on Native religious freedom rights, the fact that the now long legacy of conservative Federal judicial appointments in this country is -- increasingly -- tilting incrementally against Native rights and well-being, and that Federal Indian law is certainly never static. [I taught that at the university level for thirteen years.] And it also points up the fact that the general American public, despite relatively brief periods of some positive exception, really doesn't give a damn about Native American concerns. Many never have, unless it's been corporate and related political interests pursuing their own traditional goals of seizure of Indian lands and resources -- and in some cases still seeking to eliminate Native treaty rights altogether [ with"getting the government out of the Indian business" as the rationale.] Many others of the public assume that the rise of casinos within some tribal nations has ended the socio-economic concerns of virtually all Native peoples. And that, of course, is a tremendous misreading. Tribes have a sovereign right to launch casinos [although this development has also produced its own set of problems for those Native nations so involved.] But casino revenues, often compromised by high legal and public relations costs, and sometimes by outright "rip-offs" from involvement by outside non-Indians, have generally not been able to go beyond relatively superficial alleviation of Native material and related concerns. Those concerns involve, among others, economic well being [unemployment and sub-employment on reservations remain very high], genuinely effective health care, sensitive and quality education, decent housing, egalitarian and effective criminal justice, much more. The Native suicide rate, especially among certain younger categories, is the highest in the U.S. And if the foregoing challenges pervade reservation settings, they are very much found among "urban Indians" -- now a very large component of the overall Native American population -- and who presently receive little or no Federal Indian services [and none from the states.] And there are also a number of non-Federally recognized tribes [this through historical happenchance] who, like the very large Lumbee Nation in North Carolina, frequently have to struggle for that status [and its attendant Federal Indian services, such as they are] through a veritable jungle of Kudzu vines and Kafkaesque bureaucracy. The basic challenges/goals for Native people and tribal societies have consistently involved preservation of the tribal nations, preservation of the specific tribal culture, preservation of land and other resources, self-determination in the context of maintenance of treaty rights, and expansion of functional sovereignty. John McCain, as chair of Senate Indian Affairs, and himself based in Arizona whose Indian population is quite substantial [and which votes with increasing frequency], was not oblivious to Native concerns and was, on occasion, helpful. The Clinton camp, never interested in, nor attuned to those concerns, occasionally made promises which usually never materialized. Most Native spokespeople in the 'States and many grassroots Indian individuals now support Barack Obama. Well, we'll hope -- and I do think Obama will be significantly more receptive and helpful. In the end, there are now fortunately many non-Indian friends of Native people -- effective allies, There are such positive and significant dimensions of Federal Indian law as the 1975 Indian Self-Determination Act [which enables tribes to contract for Federal Indian services], the 1978 National Indian Child Welfare Act, the 1978 Indian Religious Freedom Act [which has certainly taken a hit in the attached Northern Arapaho case], and more. The status of the Native nations is, to use the clich?, Unique. Article 6, Section 2 of the United States Constitution explicitly includes treaties with the Indian tribes as part of the "supreme law of the land." However under attack those treaties frequently are, that basic Rock does remain fixed. And, as per its treaty obligations, the Federal government clearly has the responsibility of funding Native services and related dimensions far, far beyond that which it has in the past and is currently doing. And, again, this has to include the generally ignored but very large urban Indian population. And so the good will and the sensitively and supportive moral and tangible support of All continue to be solicited by the Native tribal nations and people -- who will always, you may be assured, Keep Fighting. For much more on this, see http://hunterbear.org/nativeamericans.htm Yours, Hunter Court orders American Indian to trial for shooting eagle [via FindLaw] 5/09/08 By BEN NEARY Associated Press Writer CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - An American Indian who shot a bald eagle for use in a tribal religious ceremony must stand trial, a federal appeals court has ruled. A three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver on Thursday reversed a 2006 lower court ruling that dismissed a criminal charge against Winslow Friday, a Northern Arapaho Indian who has acknowledged shooting a bald eagle in 2005 during the tribe's Sun Dance. In dismissing the charge, U.S. District Judge William Downes of Wyoming said the federal government has shown "callous indifference" to American Indian religious beliefs. Eagle feathers are a key element of ceremonies of the Northern Arapaho and many other tribes. The appeals court ruled that American Indians' religious freedoms are not violated by federal law protecting eagles or the government's policy requiring American Indians to get permits to kill the birds. "Law accommodates religion," the court said in its ruling. "It cannot wholly exempt religion from the reach of the law." Friday declined to comment on the court's ruling. If convicted, he faces up to one year in jail and a $100,000 fine. Friday's public defender, John T. Carlson, said the ruling "reflects a failure to grasp the unique nature of the Northern Arapaho religious practice surrounding the eagle." Carlson said he and his client haven't decided how to respond to the ruling. Their options are asking the full appeals court to hear the case, appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court or allowing the case against Friday to proceed to trial in Wyoming. John Powell, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Cheyenne, said the office planned to proceed with the prosecution. Friday, who's in his early 20s, said last year he didn't know about a federal program that allows American Indians to apply for permits to kill eagles for religious purposes. Lawyers representing him and his tribe have argued that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did its best to keep the program secret and only grudgingly issued permits. In his ruling, Downes said it was clear that Friday wouldn't have received a federal permit to kill an eagle if he had applied for one. The judge wrote that the Fish and Wildlife Service has encouraged American Indians to apply to receive eagle parts from a Colorado repository that holds the remains of birds killed by power lines and other causes. He said the agency makes no effort to encourage American Indians to apply for permits to kill birds of their own. The bald eagle was removed last year from the list of threatened species. It had been reclassified from endangered to threatened in 1995. However, the species is still protected under the federal Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Kathryn E. Kovacs, a lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, told the federal appeals court in arguments in December that Friday had no standing to argue about shortcomings of the federal permitting process because he never applied for a permit before killing the eagle. The appeals court agreed. It also rejected Friday's argument that the federal Religious Freedom Restitution Act, which prohibits the government from placing undue burdens on religious practices, should block the federal government from prosecuting him for killing the eagle. 2008-05-09 10:17:54 GMT HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Protected by Na?shdo?i?ba?i? and Ohkwari' Check out our Hunterbear website Directory http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm [The site is dedicated to our one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray: http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm SEE MY COMBINED COMMUNITY ORGANIZING PIECES -- WITH MUCH NEW STUFF http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm With "fire season" looming, see http://hunterbear.org/forest_fires_in_the_west.htm And see Forces and Faces Along the Activist Trail: http://hunterbear.org/forces_and_faces_along_the_trail.htm From fentona at shaw.ca Sun May 11 09:10:15 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sun, 11 May 2008 08:10:15 -0700 Subject: [R-G] =?windows-1252?q?At_Bush-Calderon-Harper_summit_=97_Securit?= =?windows-1252?q?y=2C_prosperity_for_whom=3F?= Message-ID: <633513D0-0455-4C84-8F6A-9AD106EC146D@shaw.ca> At Bush-Calderon-Harper summit ? Security, prosperity for whom? Author: Emile Schepers http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/13022/1/266/ NewsAnalysis Last month?s summit in New Orleans brought together President Bush, Mexican President Felipe Calderon, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, all right wingers, for the fourth meeting of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of the Americas (SPP), which is a tri-national grouping designed to coordinate strategy to create a corporate friendly atmosphere. The key power grouping within the SPP is the North American Competitiveness Council composed of 35 representatives of New York Life, Ford, General Motors, Merck, General Electric, Chevron, Wal- Mart, Lockheed-Martin, Gillette, Whirlpool, Home Depot, Scotiabank, Mexicana Airlines, Kimberley-Clark of Mexico and other U.S., Canadian and Mexican big business interests. Labor, environmentalist and other non-business sectors are completely locked out of SPP. Nor is the SPP accountable to the legislative bodies of the participating countries. Bush administration comments suggest that the goal is now to ?institutionalize? the SPP so that whoever wins in November will have trouble changing it. But all three governments find themselves on the defensive, because of opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). While NAFTA is not the same as the SPP, the latter is seen by many as ?NAFTA plus,? a mechanism to increase corporate profits within the context of NAFTA through coordinated efforts on trade and business regulations, energy policy, infrastructure development and national security. Democratic presidential candidates have made ?renegotiation? of NAFTA part of their 2008 electoral programs, while Republican candidate John McCain defends the deal. U.S. workers have been seething with anger at NAFTA in particular and free trade in general, which they blame for massive loss of industrial jobs. In Mexico, small farmers, workers and the left denounce NAFTA as having destroyed the livelihood of millions of grain farmers due to the vast inflow of heavily government subsidized U.S. corn at prices with which Mexican farmers, who receive little or no subsidy, can not compete. In Canada, a member of Parliament from the New Democratic Party, Peter Julian, has taken the lead in organizing a tri-national legislative task force with representatives from all three countries. In a statement on the New Orleans summit issued by Julian, U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) and Mexican Sen. Yeidckol Polevnsky of the Revolutionary Democratic Party, the three legislators asked rhetorically: ?On energy policy, for example, should U.S. citizens place unquestioning trust in the Bush administration after it battled all the way to the Supreme Court to conceal the participants in Dick Cheney?s energy policy meetings? Should Canadians place faith in leaders who push relentlessly to squeeze oil from Alberta?s tar sands while disregarding the environmental risks and refusing to assure any broadly based benefit for the resource sell-out? Should Mexico?s people trust a government that just this past week introduced legislation to privatize Mexico?s oil industry ? currently the source of at least a third of total government revenue?? In a statement to the press Calderon sang the praises of NAFTA, claiming that it had greatly increased Mexico?s prosperity despite the fact that now 500,000 Mexicans feel forced to cross the U.S. border without papers every year because they can not find work in their homeland. Nobody mentioned dealing with undocumented immigration, controlling skyrocketing food prices or protecting the environment. However, Presidents Bush and Calderon used the occasion to launch an impassioned defense of the U.S.?Colombia Free Trade Agreement, which has run into big trouble in Congress. Bush also plugged the ?Merida Initiative,? a component of the SPP whereby his administration pledged $1.4 billion to suppress drugs and terrorism. The first installment of $550 million is now being debated in Congress. Critics point out the very high likelihood that these funds will end up financing the brutal repression of protests against the neo-liberal policies that the SPP is aimed at intensifying. Amazingly, Calderon invited Bush to the next SPP summit which will take place when Bush is long out of office. As analyst Lauren Carlsen of the Americas Program of the Center for International Policy put it, ?Officially inviting an ex-president to the next trilateral summit is unprecedented and completely outside diplomatic protocol. It should be considered an affront to the incoming president of the United States and to the people of the United States.? In fact, depending on what happens in November, there may be no ?next meeting.? But the ?invitation? to Bush can be seen as emblematic of the arrogance of three reactionary politicians who consider themselves accountable to nobody but their big business friends and supporters. From fentona at shaw.ca Sun May 11 09:20:57 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sun, 11 May 2008 08:20:57 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Nangar Khel: NATO's Unknown Massacre Message-ID: Nangar Khel: NATO's Unknown Massacre May 11, 2008 By Dave Markland http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/17602 It's the story of an unprecedented attack on Afghan civilians, and it's not being told. On the afternoon of August 16, 2007 a unit of Polish soldiers operating under NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Paktika Province approached a small Afghan village. Known as Delta platoon, the patrol had come to the village, called Nangar Khel, in reponse to a Taliban IED attack on American forces early that morning in the same area. What happened next is still not clear and awaits an upcoming trial, but in preliminary hearings officials have acknowledged that these Polish NATO troops killed six civilians and seriously wounded three more in mortar and machine gun fire. The victims, who were reportedly taking part in a wedding celebration, included several women and children. Soon after the incident, ISAF's public relations department announced that several civilians had been killed in a skirmish between NATO forces and Taliban insurgents. As is normal for NATO press releases, the notice did not name the nationality of the foreign troops involved. Less commonly, however, ISAF did not state whether it was NATO or Taliban forces who had killed the civilians. While several news agencies carried brief reports relaying the facts, these were not picked up and the incident was basically ignored by the major English language media. Soon, however, Poles were alerted to the fact that the soldiers involved were from the Polish Land Forces. But a delay in the official announcement, which came some six days after the incident, prompted widespread accusations that the Polish Defense Minister was hiding something. Indeed, two former Defense Ministers, from either end of the Polish political spectrum, publicly accused Minister Aleksander Szczyglo of attempting to conceal details of the incident. An act of revenge? In fact Szczyglo was hiding something, for on August 20, he had received a military counterintelligence assessment of the incident which must have stunned him. The report said that there had not been any insurgents present during the firing and that the village may have been attacked by the Polish soldiers in an act of revenge for the death of a colleague. Some two days before the Nangar Khel incident, a Polish soldier in an adjacent province had been killed in a Taliban ambush, thus becoming the first Pole to die in NATO's Afghanistan war. The residents of Nangar Khel, for their part, were reportedly thought to secretly support Taliban insurgents. Rather than revealing these growing concerns, Szczyglo told reporters that the Polish troops had captured an important terrorist while battling with Taliban fighters that day. Meanwhile, the report of misdeeds was passed on to military police officials. Delta platoon were operating in the Wazi Khwa district of Afghanistan's southeastern Paktika Province where they shared a base with American troops. The Polish NATO contingent, working amid flat, dry and dusty valleys hemmed in by low mountains, were no strangers to morale problems. Just two months before the Nangar Khel event, eleven Polish commandoes stationed at Wazi Khwa had demanded to be sent home early to Poland rather than continue to operate with the dangerously unsafe equipment provided them. While the rebellious soldiers did not get their way, they were celebrated by the ranks, a significant portion of whom are conscripts. When news of what went on outside the wire became widely known at the base, the spirit of camaraderie was shattered. That oft-cited barometer of public opinion, the latrine walls, told of the revulsion felt by other soldiers: "Delta should be behind bars - murderers of children," read the bathroom graffiti. Back in Poland, government officials announced that an investigation had begun into the nature of the incident, which was still largely a mystery to most Poles. But the investigation did not appear to bear fruit until after national elections which saw the incumbents ousted, including Defense Minister Szczyglo. Arrests and cover story On November 13, as Poland's newly elected government was entering office, seven soldiers were arrested.* News photographers captured images of masked teams of SWAT-style military police hauling away hooded and handcuffed suspects. The following day, military prosecutors announced criminal charges for some members of Delta platoon. Two privates, a sergeant, a warrant officer, a lieutenant and a captain were charged with murder of civilians under circumstances of war or occupation, while one private was charged with attacking civilian objects. The prosecutor stated that the crimes for which they are charged constitute violations of the Hague Conventions of 1907 and the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and carry jail sentences of twelve years to life for the murder charges and five to 25 years for the lesser charge. Under questioning, several of the accused recanted the stories they had given to investigators earlier. The lower ranking soldiers now claimed that they had received orders to fire on three different villages and that they had received these orders before leaving the Wazi Khwa base. This is the accusation leveled by the assistant to the platoon's commanding officer. Warrant Officer Andrzej O., assistant to Second Lieutenant Lukasz B., said he was present at the meeting where the platoon was ordered to attack Nangar Khel and two nearby villages. Lieutenant Lukasz B. was present for the meeting, according to his assistant. The accused stated that they did not refuse to carry out their orders even after they saw that civilians were present in Nangar Khel. They also told of a cover story which their commanders had concocted to prevent the truth from being revealed. According to one of the accused, Polish commander General Marek Tomaszycki met with the accused at the Wazi Khwa base just days after the incident and persuaded the soldiers to hush up the incident: "He said that we should not discuss it at all, help each other and watch each other so that nobody committed suicide, as then it would all come out," claimed the soldier. The general denied the claim. The Polish press also reported on leaked testimony that Delta platoon was not the only unit to be given the order to attack. Another platoon had reportedly been given the orders earlier but had refused to carry them out as they recognized that civilians would be endangered. Though physical evidence is being kept secret, it has been widely reported in the Polish press that a video recording of the attack on the village is amongst said evidence. Supposedly, the video shows the troops entering Nangar Khel, despite earlier claims that the troops did not enter the village at any time. Relating what the video shows next, one journalistic account related the sentiments of people who had seen the video: "Behavior that does not befit a soldier," was their assessment. American involvement? While the arrests of the accused soldiers sparked a media frenzy in Poland, the issue has been almost completely ignored outside the country. This ommission is especially glaring in the case of the American media, as it is the US who are in nominal command of NATO forces in Paktika. And indeed, the relationship between the Polish and American forces goes deeper than that. Stanislaw Koziej, a retired Major-General in the Polish army and former deputy minister of defense, writes that Polish troops in Afghanistan are more closely placed under American command than they are in Iraq. "The incorporation of the small combat sub-units into the American structures was not advantageous." The reason for this, he continues, is that "integration with the lowest ranks of the US structures naturally forces our soldiers to use the American tactical doctrine," which he says contrasts with the situation in Iraq, where some 1200 Polish soldiers operate with more independence. With this structure of command as background, the lack of attention from the US press is telling. Apart from very brief notices in three American papers (New York Times, LA Times, New York Newsday) taken from a November 15 Associated Press dispatch, American press coverage has amounted to one article in the New York Times on November 29. The article, by Berlin bureau chief Nicholas Kulish, generally promotes the view that the Polish soldiers attacked the civilians by accident. This despite the fact that Poland's leading daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, had already revealed testimony from colleagues of the arrested soldiers who saw several of the accused deliberately firing on civilian targets. Kulish's 900 word article, reprinted in the International Herald Tribune, represents the only English language coverage I could find apart from mention of the case in a Financial Times opinion piece authored by an American defense analyst (Dec 7). (Canadian print media coverage has been precisely zero.) "Up to this point," wrote Kulish in his Times piece, "there has been no suggestion of American involvement in the civilian deaths." Before long, however, allegations were flying in Poland that the order to attack the villages came from American commanders. So said the wives of two suspects when interviewed on national television. Their accusations reportedly received support from both ex-Defense Minister Szczyglo and current Defense Minister Bogden Klich but other Polish observers dismissed it out of hand. However, the American media, along with the non-Polish press generally, has reported no more on the case. This despite an excellent Inter Press Service piece by Zolt?n Dujisin on December 27. Sadly, that piece was scarcely picked up, even by major leftist websites. Hearings told civilian deaths routine The Polish military prosecutors held preliminary hearings on the case, bringing in various military and government officials including at least one American army major who sought to calm Polish nerves. The killing of numerous civilians at Nangar Khel, he said, is "something unfortunate, but not of great significance". He stressed the triviality of the event, saying "I don't understand why an unimportant incident has gained such great significance in your country. Why so much attention? Civilian deaths occur every week, because Afghanistan is no Sunday school." A Polish special forces officer also told the hearings that the killings were a non-event: "Harming a civilian is something that could happen to any soldier." He added that "The Americans experience similar incidents even once a week. [However,] a substantial majority of such cases result from poor air reconnaissance." The accused soldiers who shot the weapons have claimed that they did not follow their orders to fire on Nangar Khel. Instead, the soldiers claim they aimed near to the village, but that their weapons misfired, hitting the civilians after all. Yet against this version of events is the testimony of several fellow soldiers who were operating alongside the accused. One of them, a sergeant, told the court that he talked with one of the accused privates while the latter was shelling Nangar Khel. "Asked why [the accused soldiers were] shooting at a village where civilians are present, he confirmed he had been ordered to do so." Following the hearings, the Polish court decided to keep the accused in custody while they await trial, citing the "large probability that they are guilty as charged". Some worry, however, that a fair trial is not possible as some officials have tainted public opinion on the matter. In an unguarded moment in February, former Defense Minister Szczyglo snapped at a reporter:"Please do not tell me that I am in any way responsible for a bunch of morons shooting at civilians." * The suspects are named as: Capt. Olgierd C., Second Lt. ?kasz B., Ensign Andrzej O., Platoon Sgt. Tomasz B. and privates first class Damian L., Robert B. and Jacek J. (Polish law forbids publishing the suspects' full names.) Note on sources: throughout, I make use of Polish media reports translated by the BBC Worldwide Monitoring and available through the Lexis-Nexis database. Dave Markland is a peace activist, writer and researcher based in Vancouver. He edits a blog on Canada's war in Afghanistan: www.stopwarblog.blogspot.com . From shniad at sfu.ca Sun May 11 12:52:37 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sun, 11 May 2008 11:52:37 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Gaza redux? Message-ID: <200805111852.m4BIqb23029887@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080511/bd59742d/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Sun May 11 12:54:21 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sun, 11 May 2008 11:54:21 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Bush has created the alliance among Syria, Iran and Hezbollah Message-ID: <200805111854.m4BIsLBO001278@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080511/0001406d/attachment.txt From shimogamo at attglobal.net Sun May 11 15:55:57 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 06:55:57 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Vote Machine Message-ID: <48276B6D.8050203@attglobal.net> How Republicans hacked the Justice Department by Scott Horton Harper's Magazine Essay (March 2008) We should not be surprised, in this final year of the George W Bush presidency, that the reputation of the Justice Department has reached a low point. For a long time now, the president's party has had the odd tic of projecting its own intentions onto its political enemies, and it seems to project most intensely those desires it holds most dear. For instance, Republicans have decried the "big government" tendencies of "nanny state" liberals, even as they themselves have massively expanded the scope of the federal government. And they have been vocal about perceived Democratic legal perfidy. Indeed, the 2000 GOP platform was openly contemptuous in its assessment of the Clinton Justice Department: The rule of law, the very foundation for a free society, has been under assault, not only by criminals from the ground up, but also from the top down. An administration that lives by evasion, cover-up, stonewalling, and duplicity has given us a totally discredited Department of Justice. The credibility of those who now manage the nation's top law enforcement agency is tragically eroded. As a description of the Clinton Administration, this statement was preposterous. But as a description of the present-day Justice Department, it could not be more apt. Every new president comes to Washington with a policy agenda, of course, appointing officials in the expectation that they will implement that agenda. And especially since the end of the Sixties, such red-meat political issues as abortion, civil rights, and immigration policy have risen to the top of the law-enforcement agenda. This trend has caused controversy, as it should, but the controversy is nonetheless democratic. In recent years, though, these controversies have obscured a larger phenomenon. It is increasingly clear that Republicans have come to understand the Justice Department not as "the very foundation for a free society", or even as a spoils system for issues-oriented voters, but rather as a machine that utilizes "evasion, cover-up, stonewalling, and duplicity", among other techniques, to achieve the far more fundamental goal of taking and maintaining power. Republicans appear to have been operating under this understanding of the role of the law in politics since well before Bush took control of the White House. During the years of the Clinton Administration, for example, relentless "investigations", demanded by Republicans on Capitol Hill, created a series of trumped-up "-gates" - Cattlegate, Filegate, Travelgate - and Kenneth Starr, in his rambling examination of Bill Clinton's sex life, explored techniques that would inform dozens of political prosecutions under Bush. These efforts culminated not in Clinton's impeachment but rather in the 2000 election itself. On Election Day, the American people chose Al Gore over George Bush by a margin of 540,000 votes, but in the end only the votes of the Supreme Court mattered. With the help of five out of five seven Republican-appointed justices, Bush entered the White House, and it became clear that political power could be gained through the mechanics of the justice system itself. The Republican project of the past seven years has been to build on that success, to transform the legal apparatus of the United States into an instrument of partisan force. Each step of that transformation has been well reported, but few commentators have noted how those steps have in turn brought about a complete subversion of the original law-enforcement function of the Justice Department. Indeed, the absence of controversy demonstrates precisely how successful the administration has been at mainstreaming its odd notions of justice. And this raises a larger concern. The last serious attempt to subvert the Justice Department came from Richard Nixon, who was curbed and shamed. The Watergate era was marked by criminality, but also by heroism. Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, for instance, both resigned rather than carry out a lawless presidential order to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox. The Bush transformation, however, brings us no Richardsons or Ruckelshauses {1}. It has been achieved with minimum notice, hidden within the noise and chatter of a hundred other controversies and scandals. The country could conceivably recover from most of Bush's follies, but the destruction of the legal function itself will pose a far more serious challenge: In the absence of public outrage, is it realistic to expect the next president to relinquish the imperial power bequeathed him (or her) by the last one? Subverting an entire legal apparatus requires great effort. Laws must be circumvented, civil servants thwarted, and opposing politicians intimidated into silence. With an election redecided in the courts, though, the Bush team was quick to lock in its gains. The first step was to establish a bureaucracy more in tune with the new approach. Setting the proper tone would not be simple, though. Justice had long been seen as a prize for loyal movement conservatives as well as for the religious right, and both groups expected the department to be run by ideological warriors willing to risk power in the pursuit of specific policy goals. Key Bush aides wanted Montana's moderate governor, Mark Racicot, for the top job at Justice, but movement conservatives objected and pushed through their own candidate - former Senator John Ashcroft, an ostentatiously devout evangelical Christian. Ashcroft eventually would be replaced by Alberto Gonzales, a notably pure specimen of partisanship, but in the meantime the administration faced an even more significant obstacle, which was that installing partisans in career positions is illegal. After a long struggle over a political spoils system that flooded Washington with partisan hacks, Congress passed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, which generally required that civil servants be hired on the strength of their professional qualifications and without regard to their party affiliation or political beliefs. And it strengthened that law considerably in 1939, when it passed the Hatch Act, which restricted the involvement of civil servants in partisan political campaigns. The Bush Justice Department labored to get around these laws in various ways. The Honors Program and Summer Law Intern Program at Justice, for instance, has long served as a fast track for students from elite law schools. Under the Bush Administration, however, the hiring shifted from the Ivies to avowedly conservative schools. Regent University Law School, founded by Pat Robertson in 1986, claims to have placed more than 150 of its graduates in positions with the Bush Administration. Regent, which ranks among the bottom tier of law schools, struggled to secure an accreditation with the American Bar Association, just as its alumni struggle to find employment. Hiring from fourthrate schools is perfectly legal, of course, and the practice has the additional benefit of creating a new class of grateful civil servants. There were less subtle methods as well. Among the loyal young conservatives at Justice was one Monica Goodling, who received her law degree from Regent in 1999, spent 2000 doing opposition research for the Republican National Committee, and was appointed to Justice in 2001. By 2006 she had risen to become a White House liaison working directly out of the office of Alberto Gonzales. For much of her tenure, Goodling had a major hiring role at the Justice Department. Her approach was blunt. The New York Times reports that Robin Ashton, a "seasoned criminal prosecutor at the Department of Justice", learned from her boss that she was being passed over for a promised promotion because she had what her boss called "a Monica problem". The problem was that she "believes you're a Democrat and doesn't feel you can be trusted". Jack Goldsmith, a conservative law professor who became head of the Office of Legal Counsel in 2003, recalled his own interview with a Goodling colleague in his 2007 book about the Bush Administration. He reports that he was asked immediately why he had made an $800 campaign contribution to a law-school colleague who was a Democrat, and that he was also asked, pointblank, "Are you a Republican?" (He was.) In congressional hearings held last May to investigate Justice Department hiring practices, Goodling cited her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself. Under a grant of limited immunity, however, she acknowledged that she "may have gone too far in asking political questions of applicants for career positions" and that she "may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions". Goodling resigned from the Justice Department shortly thereafter, but her hires remain. By 2006, the New York Times reported, Alberto Gonzales had delegated to Goodling and his former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, "the power to appoint or fire all department political appointees other than the United States attorneys". As we will see, the "Monica problem" would come to vex the selection even of US attorneys. But for the moment it is important to note only that career civil servants were being replaced with hacks who would put loyalty to Bush well above the traditional functions of the justice Department. The first priority of the Justice Department, of course, was not polishing the resumes of fourth-tier law-school grads. It was helping Republicans at the polls at election time. One of the ways the department would accomplish this was by restaffing the branch primarily responsible for making sure Americans are allowed access to the ballot box - the Civil Rights Division - so that it would work actively to prevent minorities from voting. The staff then in place would fight such a subversion with considerable institutional wile, which was why they had to be replaced. The Washington Post reports that in 2005, nearly twenty percent of the division's lawyers had left, "in part because of a buyout program that some lawyers believe was aimed at pushing out those who did not share the administration's conservative views on civil rights laws". One of the views most passionately held by the new administration was that the business of the Civil Rights Division was not to protect the franchise of historically disenfranchised minorities but rather to prevent the scourge of so-called voter fraud. Hans von Spakovsky, who, as counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, helped formulate the administration's new voting policies, had in the 1990s written a policy paper, entitled "Voter Fraud: Protecting the Integrity of Our Democratic System", that anticipated the new thinking. Spakovsky proposed that "the greatest democracy in the history of the world" was "cavalierly undermining the integrity of the most fundamental right its citizens have - their right to vote in fair elections". This could not stand. In 2002, Ashcroft launched a "Ballot Access and Voting Integrity Initiative". In a speech at the time, he said the initiative was designed both to deter voter discrimination, a project that had been the historic basis for the Civil Rights Division's mission, and also to deter election fraud, which was basically a new mission. It was the Spakovskian fraud, though, that spurred the greatest heights of hysterical rhetoric: Votes have been bought, voters intimidated, and ballot boxes stuffed. The polling process has been disrupted or not completed. Voters have been duped into signing absentee ballots believing they were applications for public relief. And the residents of cemeteries have infamously shown up at the polls on election day. Political war stories like these are often told with a grin, but these failures of our democracy are no laughing matter. There is nothing funny about winning an election with stolen votes. And there is no occasion for mirth by the campaigns that commit these offenses. All of us pay the price for voting fraud. This was all nonsense. In reality, the Justice Department had decided to focus on the acts of specific individuals - voters who may have registered in the wrong district, or who may not have been eligible to vote because of a criminal conviction, or who may have used a false identity in order to vote. Of these, only the last category certainly involves fraud. The others may just as easily be matters of honest mistakes. More to the point, such acts are incredibly rare - certainly far too rare to subvert an election. New York University's Brennan Center for Justice recently completed an extensive survey of Republican allegations and found that it "is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls". The authors noted as well that "inflated claims are not harmless" and that "claims of voter fraud are frequently used to justify policies that do not solve the alleged wrongs, but that could well disenfranchise legitimate voters". Chief among those policies is a proposed national voter ID law, which most analysts believe would have the effect of suppressing turnout among minorities and other traditionally Democratic-leaning voters. But voter-fraud investigations can also have a suppressive effect in and of themselves. Republicans discovered this almost immediately upon launching their initiative. The sole large-scale criminal investigation to take place in the wake of the 2002 congressional elections was a total bust in terms of arresting fraudulent voters, but it appeared nonetheless to have had positive long-term consequences for Republicans. When Tim Johnson, one of South Dakota's two Democratic senators, defeated his Republican challenger, John Thune, by a tiny margin of 532 votes, the Republican reaction was to launch an investigation into the voting activity at several Indian reservations, the citizens of which traditionally had voted for Democrats. Indian Country Day reported that "Republican attorneys fanned out across the state" in order to "gather affidavits to show voting irregularities", but that "of the fifty affidavits the Republican operatives collected, only three alleged criminal activity, and two of those proved to be false". Two years later, though, Thune ran against South Dakota's other senator, Minority Leader Tom Daschle. And in that election, supposedly fraud-wary Republican poll-watchers were now emboldened to follow Indian voters and write down their license-plate numbers. A federal judge ordered them to stop, and they finally did, but Thune won the election in the end, by 4,508 votes. Logical inference would suggest that suppressing votes and creating an environment in which a national voter ID law could be enacted was the true motive of the Justice Department initiative. (Indeed, just this past January, the Supreme Court heard arguments about the constitutionality of an Indiana voter ID law.) But logical inference is not necessary in this case. The former political director of the Texas Republican Party, Royal Masset, actually told the Houston Chronicle in 2007 that it is an "article of religious faith that voter fraud is causing us to lose elections", but then acknowledged that such faith was unfounded. What he did believe, according to the Chronicle's, paraphrase, was that "requiring photo IDs could cause enough of a drop-off in legitimate Democratic voting to add three percent to the Republican vote". The final proof that the Civil Rights Division enforces the law in a selective manner is that the Justice Department rarely pays attention to Republicans. Both Karl Rove, who as White House political director oversaw much of the Justice Department transition, and Republican commentator Ann Coulter were reported as having committed possible voter fraud, on the basis of their having voted in districts other than those in which they maintained their principal domicile. In Rove's case, no prosecutorial action was taken. Coulter's case was somewhat more complex. The Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office began an investigation, only to call it off after receiving a call from the FBI corroborating an odd and irrelevant claim: Coulter had been unforthcoming about her true address because she had wanted to hide her whereabouts from a stalker. The American system of democracy has many defenses, and the Bush Administration overcame each of them in turn. It was not enough simply to control the bureaucracy. High officials as well had to understand that their function was not to enforce the law but rather to express the will of the president. The next step, then, would be to discipline the US attorneys. The US attorneys serve ninety-three judicial districts and report directly to the attorney general. They prosecute all criminal cases brought by the federal government and defend all civil cases in which the United States is a party. In that there are so few of them, they are almost uniquely powerful, akin to members of the Senate. They are appointed by the president and by tradition serve a minimum of four years. This tradition was upended when Attorney General Gonzales, on Bush's authority, sacked seven US attorneys on December 07 2006. No explanation was given at first, and the maneuver itself was made possible only by an obscure provision in the 2005 reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act. The case of Albuquerque US Attorney David Iglesias makes clear the thinking behind the firings. Iglesias was born in Panama, where his father belonged to an indigenous tribe. He financed his law-school education by joining the Navy and becoming a JAG officer, and he first appeared on the public scene in connection with a highly unusual court-martial at Guantanamo that later furnished the plot for the Aaron Sorkin play A Few Good Men. (The Iglesias role was played in the film version by Tom Cruise.) In 1998, Iglesias was narrowly defeated by Democrat Patricia A Madrid in a bid to become New Mexico's attorney general. When the Republicans came to power in Washington, though, Iglesias was recognized as a rising star and quickly appointed as a US attorney. For five years, Iglesias achieved distinction for his work as a prosecutor, but in 2006, as the midterm elections approached, things turned very sour. New Mexico is one of the dozen states in which national elections are decided. In 2000 the state went for Gore. In 2004 it went for Bush. In both elections the margin of victory was paper-thin and highly disputed. And Iglesias, like other US attorneys, was expected to push aggressively against "voter fraud". Iglesias did so and was recognized for his efforts. In 2004 he reacted to Republican complaints about a highly effective voter-registration program run by a grassroots activist organization, ACORN, by creating a special task force of FBI agents and prosecutors to fully investigate the allegations. He was selected for the faculty of the Justice Department's October 2005 Voting Integrity Symposium, at which more than a hundred prosecutors were trained in handling fraud cases. But that wasn't enough. Iglesias says that he received a series of odd calls in October 2006. The first was from Congresswoman Heather Wilson, who was locked in a close contest with her Democratic challenger in the upcoming midterm election. The second call was from Republican Senator Pete Domenici, the powerful longtime chair of the Senate Budget Committee. Iglesias later described the exchanges in a New York Times op-ed column, headlined "Why I Was Fired": Ms Wilson asked me about sealed indictments pertaining to a politically charged corruption case widely reported in the news media involving local Democrats. Her question instantly put me on guard. Prosecutors may not legally talk about indictments, so I was evasive. Shortly after speaking to Ms Wilson, I received a call from Senator Domenici at my home. The senator wanted to know whether I was going to file corruption charges - the cases Ms Wilson had been asking about - before November. When I told him that I didn't think so, he said, "I am very sorry to hear that", and the line went dead. Why was the timing of this indictment so important? Domenici, who was seventy-five and nearing retirement, had a protegee and possible successor in Congresswoman Wilson. But Wilson was then locked in a tough battle with (of all people) Patricia A Madrid, then serving her second term as New Mexico's attorney general and looking to move onto the national stage. Wilson had based her campaign against Madrid around the idea that Madrid had been ineffective in combating corruption in New Mexico's state government. The indictment would therefore have provided exactly the kind of attack-ad fodder Wilson needed. Iglesias's decision to adhere to proper procedure denied her that boost. Even so, Wilson pulled out a narrow win. (She is now running for Domenici's Senate seat.) Had Iglesias indicted the Democrat, he would have violated his ethical obligations as a prosecutor and committed a felony. Instead, he held rigorously to the rules, which forbid a US attorney from manipulating prosecutions in order to attempt to affect election contests. But in the Bush Administration, putting fidelity to the law ahead of the GOP's election efforts was, a career-ending move. New Mexico's Republican Party chairman, Allen Weh, complained about Iglesias to Rove, according to McClatchy Newspapers, and Rove said: "He's gone". This was a fairly significant breach of tradition, though, and it took some persistence. The Albuquerque Journal reported that Domenici asked Gonzales to fire Iglesias, but Gonzales refused. Domenici then met with President Bush, who made, the final call. The other US attorneys fired in December have similar stories to tell. Paul Charlton of Phoenix had pursued investigations involving two Republican lawmakers. Dan Bogdan of Las Vegas had been looking into charges against a Republican congressman then running for governor. Seattle's John McKay had failed to rally to the side of the GOP in a recount controversy and had not pursued the "voter fraud" scam with sufficient vigor. San Diego's Carol Lam was handling a highly embarrassing fraud investigation focusing on senior political appointees at the CIA as well as two Republican congressmen. But even more troubling is the case of several US attorneys who were preliminarily listed for removal but then retained. Two of them - Milwaukee's Steve Biskupic and Dunnica Lampton of Jackson, Mississippi - brought politically charged corruption indictments involving Democrats during an election cycle, clearly with the intention of directly influencing the elections for the benefit of the GOP. Each secured a conviction, though Biskupic's case was subsequently overturned in an extraordinary opinion of the Court of Appeals, the key word of which was "preposterous". Lampton's prosecution, which targeted Mississippi's largest Democratic donor, is now on appeal. Both Biskupic and Lampton received a reprieve - they could continue serving as US attorneys - thereby reminding us that it is not the terminated US attorneys who should be a subject of concern as much as it is those who were kept on. All of these steps were helpful to the Republican Party. But even with hacks in place, minorities disenfranchised, and dissenters punished into submission, voters could still be expected to put a Democrat into office from time to time. In these extreme cases, though, the Justice Department could once again be counted on for a remedy. In 2007, Donald Shields and John Cragan, two retired professors, released the preliminary results of a long-term study of the Bush Justice Department's investigations of public officials. They found that between 2001 and 2006 the Justice Department had initiated 375 investigations of public officials. They also found that 298 of those investigations targeted Democrats and 67 of them targeted Republicans. Shields and Cragan concluded that the odds of this imbalance occurring randomly were one in ten thousand. One of those 298 Democratic targets was former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. Arguably the most successful Democratic politician in recent Alabama history, Siegelman had occupied almost every statewide elective office, frequently winning by large margins. He was elected governor in 1998 with a 57 percent majority. In 2002, however, Siegelman faced a strong challenge from Republican Bob Riley. The election was the closest in the state's history, and was ultimately called for Riley following a late-night "computer glitch" that moved votes on just one line - that of the gubernatorial contest - enough to reverse the outcome of the race. A study the following year by Auburn University's James Gundlach strongly suggested "systematic electronic manipulation". But this electoral oddity remains unexamined by the Justice Department. Later that year, however, as the Mobile Press-Register was publishing a poll that showed Siegelman trouncing Riley in a rematch, the Department of Justice finally took action. It launched an investigation of Siegelman. The case was based on allegations that Siegelman had appointed Richard Scrushy, the CEO of the Birmingham-based health-care firm HealthSouth, to an uncompensated hospital-oversight board as a quid pro quo for Scrushy's having arranged a $500,000 contribution to a 1999 initiative to promote a state lottery bill favored by Siegelman. There were several problems with the case. First, the contribution itself was legal. There was no payment to Siegelman, or even to his campaign. Also, Scrushy didn't support Siegelman in the election. He was a Republican and had backed Riley. In addition, Scrushy had been appointed to the same board by three prior governors. And finally, according to his own uncontradicted testimony, Scrushy didn't even want the appointment. It was a clear case of selective prosecution - and if the theory applied to the Siegelman prosecution were to be applied uniformly, many in the Bush Administration would now be in prison. George W Bush singled out 146 individuals who gave or gathered $100,000 (to his actual political campaign) for appointment to far more desirable postings as ambassadors, cabinet officers, or members of his transition team. Not a single one of these appointments triggered a Justice Department investigation. Siegelman became the target of two criminal investigations by two US attorneys before two federal judges. In 2004 he was told that, although a couple of issues remained, the investigations were in the process of being wrapped up. But then, as the 2006 gubernatorial election approached, the case was dusted off and resumed. Even before the trial came about, Siegelman's reputation had been demolished by a steady process of venomous leaks to the press, which could only have come from sources close to the prosecution. Siegelman was convicted in May 2006 on a series of corruption charges, and Riley coasted to an easy reelection the following November. Putting one's political enemies in prison is serious business, however, and not everyone in the Alabama Republican Party thought it was a good idea. After Siegelman's conviction, Dana Jill Simpson, a Republican attorney and election volunteer, gave an affidavit to Scrushy's attorneys describing the process whereby Siegelman had been imprisoned. Her motivation, according to her later testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, was that she "thought it was the right thing to do". Simpson described a plan by a group of Alabama Republicans, joined by Karl Rove and using the Department of Justice, to eliminate Siegelman as a threat. In one conversation, Simpson quotes William Canary - the state's most important Republican campaign adviser and a longtime friend of Karl Rove's - as stating that "Karl" had given his assurance that the Justice Department would target Siegelman so that he would no longer be a problem. "My girls" would do the job, Canary said, referring to his friend, Alice Martin, who was the US attorney in Birmingham, and his own wife, Leura, who was the US attorney in Montgomery. In fact both Martin and the office of Canary brought cases against Siegelman, although Canary was later forced to formally recuse herself. Simpson also testified that Rob Riley, the son of the governor, told her well before the Siegelman case began that a specific judge had been preselected to handle it: Bush appointee Mark Everett Fuller. After the trial, it was revealed that Fuller had been a member of the Executive Committee of the Alabama GOP while Siegelman was governor. Before his appointment to the federal bench, Fuller had charged that a critical audit of his records from his own service as district attorney had been "politically motivated" - by the Siegelman administration. Fuller was asked to recuse himself. He refused. At a June 2007 hearing, Fuller sentenced Siegelman to over seven years' imprisonment. He also denied Siegelman his freedom pending appeal, ordering him to be manacled in the courtroom and taken straight to prison. The Siegelman case is now on appeal. In an unprecedented move, more than fifty former state attorneys general - many of them Republicans - signed a petition requesting that Congress undertake a special investigation of the prosecution and trial. The House Judiciary Committee conducted hearings on October 23 and, Chairman John Conyers tells me, is still looking into the matter {2}. The Siegelman case does not stand alone. In neighboring Georgia and Mississippi, suspiciously similar charges were brought by federal prosecutors. In Georgia the State Senate majority leader, Democrat Charles Walker, was charged on several corruption counts. An internal Justice Department probe actually concluded that the investigation had been politically motivated. In Mississippi a case was brought against the Democratic Party's largest funder and three Democratic judges. Whether or not the prosecution was designed to defund the Mississippi Democrats, it had that effect. In a number of other cases, the Justice Department is proceeding with amazing vigor and heavy-handedness against trial lawyers around the country who committed the crime of attempting to raise money for the campaigns of Democrats John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. All of these prosecutions have been high-profile matters, fanned to the press, consuming tens of millions of dollars in prosecutorial resources. The current situation is not unprecedented. The bitter partisan rivalries of the 1790s saw the machinery of justice put to merciless use. The Federalists felt that all levers of government could legitimately be used to advance and secure the political interests of their party. At a time when there was no real war, the Federalists fomented a public climate of wartime crisis. Their party pushed for military engagement on the side of Britain and against France and insinuated that Democratic-Republicans (as the Democrats were then known) were disloyal and possibly even treasonous on account of their well-known sympathy for French revolutionaries. At the same time, the Federalists worked to incite fear of immigrants, particularly the Irish, whom they tarred as alcoholic revolutionaries. Under President John Adams, the Federalists assumed sweeping powers to lock up and deport immigrants, but perhaps their most significant attempt to turn the legal system to political advantage was the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Sedition Act is notable for its clarity of intent and is worth quoting at some length: And be it further enacted, That if any person shall write, print, utter, or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States, done in pursuance of any such law, or of the powers in him vested by the Constitution of the United States, or to resist, oppose, or defeat any such law or act, or to aid, encourage or abet any hostile designs of any foreign nation against the United States, their people or government, then such person, being thereof convicted before any court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not, exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not exceeding two years. More than two dozen people were arrested under the Sedition Act, most of them prominent Democratic-Republican newspaper editors and writers. Some of them, such as Thomas Adams, the publisher of the Boston Independent Chronicle, spent several months in jail; he had accused President Adams of nepotism for sending his son as ambassador to France and had questioned the salaries paid to both. In the case of Thomas Adams and others, the truth of the assertions published was not accepted as a defense. The bulwarks the system offered against political abuse were few and unreliable. They were: the notion of an independent, professional prosecutor, insulated from political direction; an independent judiciary; and a jury system. In the Federalist age none of these checks worked, because the prosecutors and the judges were loyal, committed Federalists, and they very effectively pressured and cajoled juries to do their bidding. Still, the Federalists' use of these tools had repercussions. Thomas Jefferson, eyeing the suicidal excesses of the Federalists, exhibited an interesting mixture of anxiety, confidence, and resolve in a confidential letter to his friend John Taylor: A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, & incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt ... And if we feel their power just sufficiently to hoop us together, it will be the happiest situation in which we can exist. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, & then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are the stake. In 1800, Jefferson took the White House from Adams, and the Democratic-Republicans took a strong majority in the House of Representatives. That hold would endure for twenty years. Most historians today see the demise of the Federalist Party originating in a series of unpopular policies - including high taxation and the maintenance of a standing army - but its penchant for political prosecutions embittered the electorate in most places where it was pursued and proved decisive in alienating entire districts. Had it not been for political prosecutions, the Federalist Party might have survived. The same could yet hold true for modern Republicans. History may view the Bush Administration's transformation of the Justice Department as an aberration the voters will set right at the next election. There is an equally good chance, however, that Bush has reverted to the historical norm, that government of the people, by the people, for the people is the exception. After all, Federalist attitudes toward executive power have lasted far longer than the party itself. And for all his advocacy of a free press, even Jefferson advised the commencement of seditious-libel proceedings against certain political enemies, noting that "a few prosecutions of the most prominent offenders would have a wholesome effect in restoring the integrity of the presses". The next president can learn much, in any case, from how the Democratic-Republicans made robust use of executive power to right the wrongs they felt had been done to them. They quite reasonably had no confidence that the judiciary would undo on appeal the injustices perpetrated against Democratic-Republican leaders by Federalist prosecutors and trial judges. After all, most of the appellate judges were themselves still Federalists as well. So the two dozen Democratic-Republican leaders who had been jailed or convicted received pardons. Congress voted many of them apologies and compensation for their mistreatment. Federal prosecutors and judges who had participated in the excesses were investigated, and most prosecutors were replaced. This furnishes the most practical historical precedent for addressing the current abuses. But the Bush Justice Department demonstrated its power in supporting a partisan electoral agenda and in outfitting the executive with extraordinary and extra-constitutional powers. Is it realistic to think that any new occupant of the White House would surrender those powers? The American historical experience on this point is clear: once a power or prerogative is successfully asserted by a president, his successors have generally guarded that power carefully, whether they make actual use of it or not. The one tool that has been wielded successfully in the retrenchment of presidential power is impeachment. There are three noteworthy precedents. The first was the House's resolution of censure and threat of impeachment against President James Knox Polk for having invaded Mexico. Congress became far more aggressive in the wake of this resolution, limiting Polk's authority and making sure there were no more "strong presidents" before the Civil War. The second was the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. The impeachment effort had its origin in the conflict between the radical Republicans and the moderate and conciliatory policies of Johnson, but it also should be seen as a curtailment of the dramatically enhanced presidential authority asserted by Abraham Lincoln - precedent that routinely is invoked by the Bush Administration today. Johnson was impeached by the House and acquitted by the margin of a single vote in the Senate. The third case was the Watergate-era impeachment effort directed against Richard Nixon, which focused on Nixon's claims to extraordinary war-making powers, his claims to executive privilege, and the underlying offenses connected to the Watergate cover-up. The House Judiciary Committee voted 21-17 to bring articles of impeachment against Nixon, who then resigned to avoid a certain conviction. Bush's assumption of presidential authority includes assertions of executive power at least as expansive as those put forward in the Polk, Lincoln, and Nixon presidencies. Of the three, Lincoln alone could convincingly claim as justification an existential threat against the country. Bush attempts to copy Lincoln's claim, but his efforts are unconvincing. It is improbable that any contender who prevails in the 2008 presidential election will renounce the Bush model of a redefined presidency. A newcomer will likely differentiate his (or her) policies on a number of points, pulling back somewhat from positions (such as the presidential right to torture or wage preemptive war) that have drawn sharp criticism. But these changes will be introduced as a matter of presidential policy, not because the president is bowing to law defined by Congress or to constitutional constraints. Our Constitution provides a mechanism for countering transformational excess, but the people's representatives thus far appear to have decided that the impolite process of impeachment is only for presidents who have affairs. Given this failure of will, we must be prepared to accept a changed system in which the will of the people is subsumed by good manners and fearful politics. As long as this new democracy prevails, little will matter beyond the will of the president. Notes: {1} I had high hopes that the new attorney general, Michael Mukasey, whom I have known for twenty years, would be such a man. We do not share an ideology, but in the past he has proven an able advocate for the rule of law. As of this writing, however, he has done little to change the direction of the Justice Department. In particular, he has refused to acknowledge that waterboarding is torture, likely because doing so would require that he investigate the actions of the man who appointed him. Mukasey has the opportunity to be a Ruckelshaus or a Richardson, but he could also follow the path of Robert Bork, who first came to prominence when he accepted Richard Nixon's appointment as acting attorney general, and promptly followed the president's order to fire Cox. {2} For an in-depth and ongoing investigation of the many issues related to the increasingly complex Siegelman case, see my weblog, No Comment, at www.harpers.org. _____ Scott Horton, an attorney in New York City, writes the daily weblog No Comment for Harpers.org. His last article for Harper's Magazine, "State of Exception", appeared in the July 2007 issue. TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From fentona at shaw.ca Sun May 11 18:37:12 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sun, 11 May 2008 17:37:12 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Criticism of natural health products Bill C-51 mounts Message-ID: Criticism of natural health products Bill C-51 mounts http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/05/09/bill-c51.html May 9, 2008 Bill C-51, which would lead to more regulatory scrutiny of natural health products sold in Canada, is drawing some criticism. A rally was held Friday at the Federal Court in Calgary to protest passage of the proposed legislation, which would amend the federal Food and Drugs Act. One hundred protesters showed up to voice their opinions about the legislation, which received second reading in April. Websites and online groups have sprung up across the country imploring their members to lobby their MPs to halt the progress of the bill. Critics feel the bill will outlaw up to 60 per cent of natural health products currently sold in Canada, making many natural health products that have been sold in Canada for decades unavailable for purchase and penalizing parents who give herbs or supplements to their children. They also argue that the government could designate any natural health product a prescription drug, making it available by prescription only. They say these types of provisions will force small companies out of the market. In a speech last month at the Emerging Issues in Customs conference in Mississauga, Ont., federal Health Minister Tony Clement defended the bill, saying that it would allow the federal government to be able to continuously monitor the safety of products even after they have been approved. "We propose maintaining a rigorous assessment of health products prior to making them available," he said. "On top of that, Bill C-51 would provide the authority we now lack to make a recall as soon as we know there's a problem. "We're seeking to gain the new authority to reassure the public that the government can, and will, act to protect health and safety as early as possible," he said. From tchilds at resist.ca Sun May 11 21:36:43 2008 From: tchilds at resist.ca (tchilds at resist.ca) Date: Sun, 11 May 2008 20:36:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Bill Mckibben on _The World at 350_ Message-ID: <63235.64.85.36.244.1210563403.squirrel@mail.resist.ca> http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174930/bill_mckibben_the_defining_moment_for_climate_change posted May 11, 2008 08:40 am Tomgram: Bill McKibben, The Defining Moment for Climate Change Already climate change -- in the form of a changing pattern of global rainfall -- seems to be affecting the planet in significant ways. Take the massive, almost decade-long drought in Australia's wheat-growing heartland, which has been a significant factor in sending flour prices, and so bread prices, soaring globally, leading to desperation and food riots across the planet. A report from the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia makes clear that, despite recent heavy rains in the eastern Australian breadbasket, years of above normal rainfall would be needed "to remove the very long-term [water] deficits" in the region. The report then adds this ominous note: "The combination of record heat and widespread drought during the past five to 10 years over large parts of southern and eastern Australia is without historical precedent and is, at least partly, a result of climate change." Think a bit about that phrase -- "without historical precedent." Except when it comes to technological invention, it hasn't been much part of our lives these last many centuries. Without historical precedent. Brace yourselves, it's about to become a commonplace in our vocabulary. The southeastern United States, for instance, was, for the last couple of years, locked in a drought -- which is finally easing -- "without historical precedent." In other words, there was nothing (repeat, nothing) in the historical record that provided a guide to what might happen next. Now, it's true that the industrial revolution, which led to the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at historically unprecedented rates, was also, in a sense, "without historical precedent"; but most natural events -- unlike, say, the present staggering ice melt in the Arctic -- have been precedented (if I can manufacture such a word). They have been part of the historical record. That era -- the era of history -- is now, however, threatening to give way to a period capable of outrunning history itself, of outrunning us. The planet in its long existence may have experienced the extremes to come, but we haven't. The planet, unlike much life on it, may not -- given millions or tens of millions of years to recover -- be in danger, but we are. When you really think about it, history is humanity. It's common enough to talk about some historical figure or failed experiment being swept into the "dustbin of history," but what if all history and that dustbin, too, go well, where? What are we, really, without our records? Once we pass beyond them, beyond all the experience we've collected, written down, and archived since those first scratches went on clay tablets in the lands of the Tigris and Euphrates -- now being stripped of their cultural patrimony -- at least two unanswerable questions arise. Once history has been left in the dust, where are we? -- and, who are we? Let the indefatigable environmentalist Bill McKibben, who has a powerful urge to stop us just short of the cliff of the post-historical era, take it from here. Tom The World at 350 A Last Chance for Civilization By Bill McKibben Even for Americans, constitutionally convinced that there will always be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New Start -- even for us, the world looks a little Terminal right now. It's not just the economy. We've gone through swoons before. It's that gas at $4 a gallon means we're running out, at least of the cheap stuff that built our sprawling society. It's that when we try to turn corn into gas, it sends the price of a loaf of bread shooting upwards and starts food riots on three continents. It's that everything is so inextricably tied together. It's that, all of a sudden, those grim Club of Rome types who, way back in the 1970s, went on and on about the "limits to growth" suddenly seem how best to put it, right. All of a sudden it isn't morning in America, it's dusk on planet Earth. There's a number -- a new number -- that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A few weeks ago, our foremost climatologist, NASA's Jim Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several co-authors. The abstract attached to it argued -- and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper -- "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm." Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points -- massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them -- that we'll pass if we don't get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer's insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us. So it's a tough diagnosis. It's like the doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high and, if you don't bring it down right away, you're going to have a stroke. So you take the pill, you swear off the cheese, and, if you're lucky, you get back into the safety zone before the coronary. It's like watching the tachometer edge into the red zone and knowing that you need to take your foot off the gas before you hear that clunk up front. In this case, though, it's worse than that because we're not taking the pill and we are stomping on the gas -- hard. Instead of slowing down, we're pouring on the coal, quite literally. Two weeks ago came the news that atmospheric carbon dioxide had jumped 2.4 parts per million last year -- two decades ago, it was going up barely half that fast. And suddenly, the news arrives that the amount of methane, another potent greenhouse gas, accumulating in the atmosphere, has unexpectedly begun to soar as well. Apparently, we've managed to warm the far north enough to start melting huge patches of permafrost and massive quantities of methane trapped beneath it have begun to bubble forth. And don't forget: China is building more power plants; India is pioneering the $2,500 car, and Americans are converting to TVs the size of windshields which suck juice ever faster. Here's the thing. Hansen didn't just say that, if we didn't act, there was trouble coming; or, if we didn't yet know what was best for us, we'd certainly be better off below 350 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. His phrase was: " if we wish to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed." A planet with billions of people living near those oh-so-floodable coastlines. A planet with ever more vulnerable forests. (A beetle, encouraged by warmer temperatures, has already managed to kill 10 times more trees than in any previous infestation across the northern reaches of Canada this year. This means far more carbon heading for the atmosphere and apparently dooms Canada's efforts to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, already in doubt because of its decision to start producing oil for the U.S. from Alberta's tar sands.) We're the ones who kicked the warming off; now, the planet is starting to take over the job. Melt all that Arctic ice, for instance, and suddenly the nice white shield that reflected 80% of incoming solar radiation back into space has turned to blue water that absorbs 80% of the sun's heat. Such feedbacks are beyond history, though not in the sense that Francis Fukuyama had in mind. And we have, at best, a few years to short-circuit them -- to reverse course. Here's the Indian scientist and economist Rajendra Pachauri, who accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year (and, by the way, got his job when the Bush administration, at the behest of Exxon Mobil, forced out his predecessor): "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment." In the next two or three years, the nations of the world are supposed to be negotiating a successor treaty to the Kyoto Accord. When December 2009 rolls around, heads of state are supposed to converge on Copenhagen to sign a treaty -- a treaty that would go into effect at the last plausible moment to heed the most basic and crucial of limits on atmospheric CO2. If we did everything right, says Hansen, we could see carbon emissions start to fall fairly rapidly and the oceans begin to pull some of that CO2 out of the atmosphere. Before the century was out we might even be on track back to 350. We might stop just short of some of those tipping points, like the Road Runner screeching to a halt at the very edge of the cliff. More likely, though, we're the Coyote -- because "doing everything right" means that political systems around the world would have to take enormous and painful steps right away. It means no more new coal-fired power plants anywhere, and plans to quickly close the ones already in operation. (Coal-fired power plants operating the way they're supposed to are, in global warming terms, as dangerous as nuclear plants melting down.) It means making car factories turn out efficient hybrids next year, just the way we made them turn out tanks in six months at the start of World War II. It means making trains an absolute priority and planes a taboo. It means making every decision wisely because we have so little time and so little money, at least relative to the task at hand. And hardest of all, it means the rich countries of the world sharing resources and technology freely with the poorest ones, so that they can develop dignified lives without burning their cheap coal. That's possible -- we launched a Marshall Plan once, and we could do it again, this time in relation to carbon. But in a month when the President has, once more, urged us to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, that seems unlikely. In a month when the alluring phrase "gas tax holiday" has danced into our vocabulary, it's hard to see (though it was encouraging to see that Clinton's gambit didn't sway many voters). And if it's hard to imagine sacrifice here, imagine China, where people produce a quarter as much carbon apiece as we do. Still, as long as it's not impossible, we've got a duty to try. In fact, it's about the most obvious duty humans have ever faced. A few of us have just launched a new campaign, 350.org. Its only goal is to spread this number around the world in the next 18 months, via art and music and ruckuses of all kinds, in the hope that it will push those post-Kyoto negotiations in the direction of reality. After all, those talks are our last chance; you just can't do this one light bulb at a time. And if this 350.org campaign is a Hail Mary pass, well, sometimes those passes get caught. We do have one thing going for us: This new tool, the Web which, at least, allows you to imagine something like a grassroots global effort. If the Internet was built for anything, it was built for sharing this number, for making people understand that "350" stands for a kind of safety, a kind of possibility, a kind of future. Hansen's words were well-chosen: "a planet similar to that on which civilization developed." People will doubtless survive on a non-350 planet, but those who do will be so preoccupied, coping with the endless unintended consequences of an overheated planet, that civilization may not. Civilization is what grows up in the margins of leisure and security provided by a workable relationship with the natural world. That margin won't exist, at least not for long, this side of 350. That's the limit we face. Bill McKibben is a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College and co-founder of 350.org. His most recent book is The Bill McKibben Reader. Copyright 2008 Bill McKibben From fentona at shaw.ca Sun May 11 23:09:44 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sun, 11 May 2008 22:09:44 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Chavez say Colombia's Uribe trying to spark war Message-ID: <81EB1F5D-4848-4A59-A82A-76F5FD64B8CA@shaw.ca> Chavez say Colombia's Uribe trying to spark war Sun May 11, 2008 10:49pm EDT http://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/idUSN1155932720080512?sp=true CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday accused Colombia of seeking to provoke war, renewing regional tensions after a Colombian attack on a rebel camp in Ecuador sparked the worst Andes diplomatic crisis in a decade. The accusations could aggravate an Andean region schism between anti- U.S. leftists governments in Ecuador and Venezuela and rightist Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, a Washington ally whose country has received billions of dollars in U.S. aid. Chavez's statements come just days after U.S. officials renewed accusations that Chavez has aided Marxist rebels, based on files from the laptop computer of a slain rebel commander. "The government of Colombia is capable of provoking a war with Venezuela to justify the intervention of the United States," said Chavez, lambasting Uribe during his weekly Sunday broadcast as "liar" and leader of a "narco-government." In March Colombia attacked a rebel camp in Ecuador, killing rebel commander Raul Reyes and sparking a regional diplomatic crisis as Ecuador and Venezuela moved troops to their border with Colombia. Latin American leaders negotiated an end to the crisis, but Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has maintained a bitter war of words with Colombia and has not fully restored ties. Unnamed U.S. officials last week told various media that they determined Chavez's ties to the rebel group were more extensive than they originally thought after reviewing unpublished files on the computer of Reyes. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the files indicate Venezuela offered to arm the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and sought guerrilla warfare training, possibly to prepare for an invasion Chavez says Washington is plotting. Chavez on Sunday dismissed the charges, calling Colombian officials "imbeciles" incapable of producing any serious evidence against him. "Whatever they want they will find -- it's ridiculous," Chavez said. Colombia's government had previously released files from the laptop that they said proved Chavez's links to the FARC. Critics said the e-mails -- filled with FARC military jargon -- were often ambiguous and did not provide conclusive evidence of any collaboration. (Reporting by Brian Ellsworth, editing by Vicki Allen) ? Thomson Reuters 2008. All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of cont From shimogamo at attglobal.net Mon May 12 03:47:30 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 18:47:30 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Preparing For What Future? Message-ID: <48281232.5060200@attglobal.net> by John Michael Greer The Archdruid Report (May 07 2008) Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society Last week's Archdruid Report post {1}, as my regular readers will recall, tried to point out that the current round of price spikes in food and petroleum prices does not justify claims that industrial civilization was on the brink of a rapid and total collapse. Predictably enough, this suggestion brought down a flurry of criticism. Some of that was simply another helping of the standard arguments for the progressive and apocalyptic fantasies that play so large a role in today's collective consciousness. Fortunately, not all fell into that reflexive category. My essay cited a recent post by relocalization blogger Sharon Astyk suggesting that a fast crash was imminent, and she responded the next day with a thoughtful rebuttal {2}. I won't try to summarize her arguments here; those interested should certainly read her response in full. One point, though, deserves a response in detail. My essay last week ended with what I thought was a fairly straightforward comment: "... unless, that is, we allow premature proclamations of triumph or catastrophe to distract us from the work that must be done". Astyk took exception to this and suggested, if I follow her correctly, that the phrase was simply a rhetorical flourish. That it certainly was not. It could doubtless have been expressed more clearly, but it points to what, as I see it, is one of the most crucial factors in discussing the future of industrial society. The actions we take to prepare for the future, after all, should be shaped by the future we expect. If we can reasonably expect the future promised us by the modern myth of progress - a future of constant improvement toward a destiny among the stars - then it makes sense to plan on business as usual, to treat each ephemeral new technology as the wave of the future, and to treat nature as a sort of green decor worth saving solely for esthetic and sentimental reasons. If, on the other hand, we can reasonably expect the future promised us by the modern myth of apocalypse - a future of sudden chaos and mass death that will leave, at most, a handful of survivors huddled in isolated hideouts - then it makes sense to abandon any hope of improving the status quo and eschew any plan for the future that doesn't involve firearms, canned food, and subsistence skills basic enough to be practiced in the desolate silence of a mostly empty world. The problem with either of these decisions is obvious enough. If our plans rely on the arrival of some particular future, and that future does not come about, whatever money, effort, resources, and time have been invested in our imagined future has gone down a rathole. If the future we get turns out different enough from the one we expect, in turn, our actions may have closed doors and wasted opportunities that could have spared us major difficulties. The textbook example in recent times is the decision taken around 1980, by nations across the industrial world, to discard the promising steps toward sustainability made in the previous decade. If those steps had been followed up, the transition to a postpetroleum world could probably have been made without massive disruption. At this point, after a quarter century of wasted opportunities, the chance of doing that is slim at best. Seeing this catastrophic error as a matter of choosing the wrong future to prepare for, though, rather begs the question. There's at [sic] some reason to think that the decisions that turned the industrial world away from sustainability in the early 1980s were not the result of a conscious decision that a future of infinite economic growth on a finite planet was possible and desirable. Rather, it seems all too likely that people wished to take certain actions - for example, scrapping expensive and inconvenient conservation programs - and justified those actions by imagining a future in which those actions seemed to make sense. Certainly the same thing has happened in a big way in the alternative scene. Look for proposals for responding to the crisis of industrial society these days and you'll find that nearly all of them fall into three groups. First are those who want to organize a political movement to throw the current rascals out of office and put a new set of rascals in. Second are those who talk about building ecovillages in the countryside, to provide a postapocalyptic version of suburban living to today's smart investors. Third are those who plan on holing up in a cabin in the mountains with guns and canned beans, and waiting until the rubble stops bouncing. I've argued elsewhere that none of these is a viable response to the future we're most likely to face, but there's another point worth noting: each of them is also something many people in today's American middle class want to do anyway. Quite a few people nowadays think they ought to have more political power; an equally large number like to daydream about moving to a new exurban development far out in the countryside; and of course, the appeal of firearms collections and fantasies of self-reliance remains strong in an age that has problematized traditional images of masculinity. To a great extent, peak oil has simply become another excuse for the pursuit of activities, real or imagined, that many people find desirable for other reasons. Amplifying this is one of the most enduring habits in the American tradition of public rhetoric - the attempt to scare the bejesus out of people in the hope that this will motivate them to follow a desirable course of action. Colonial preacher Jonathan Edwards' famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" set a cultural fashion that remains alive to this day. Choose any cause you care to think of, and if it's attracted anything like a mass movement, odds are that its prophets are announcing the imminent arrival of some variety of doom - closely modeled on the Book of Revelations, far more often than not - unless people change their wicked ways. If it's not a mass movement, the odds are even better that its prophets will be proclaiming some inevitable doom which will sweep away the unbelieving multitudes and leave the earth to the righteous remnant - that is, the prophets in question and those who agree with them. In either case, the catastrophe is simply rhetorical ammunition meant to back the claim that whatever action you're supposed to take is the only alternative to doom. Peak oil, of course, has attracted a sizeable number of would-be prophets of both kinds. I should hasten to say at this point that I'm not assigning Sharon Astyk to either camp. Mind you, I suspect she would propose relocalization as a good idea - as, indeed, many people have been doing, for a variety of good reasons, since the early decades of the 20th century - even if nothing like peak oil were in the offing. Still, retooling lifestyles to rely more on local resources and one's own efforts, and less on a far-flung and increasingly fragile global economic system, is likely to prove a very useful strategy during the cascading series of crises unfolding around us right now. In that, I think, we're very much in agreement. Going beyond that, however, requires a clearer sense of what kind of future we are facing - and not just on a global basis. Local and personal scales also count; everyone shares the same future only when "the future" has been reduced to an ideological abstraction. The same problem afflicts current talk about the possibility of a crash, fast or otherwise: exactly what is crashing, and how far, and how uniformly? I've done my best to be clear about such issues here and elsewhere, but it's probably worth repeating myself. My take is that modern industrial civilization is on the downslope of its history, headed for the compost heap of fallen empires alongside all the dead civilizations of the past. Peak oil and the other elements of the crisis of the contemporary world, in this analysis, are simply the current manifestations of patterns that shaped the fall of other civilizations, and our future will most likely follow a similar course - an extended, uneven decline extending over more than a century, including repeated periods of crisis followed by partial recoveries, ending in a dark age in which much of the technology, knowledge base, and cultural heritage of today will survive in fragments or be completely lost. Those parts of the world peripheral to today's industrial civilization will follow trajectories of their own - it's worth remembering that the Muslim world and T'ang dynasty China reached the zeniths of their own cultural arcs while the western world was scraping the bottom of the last round of dark ages - and new cultures will arise from the ruins of the modern industrial world in time. The global reach of industrial civilization, though, makes it unlikely that any part of the world will escape the approaching troubles entirely, and the equally global drawdown of resources erases the possibility that societies of the future will be able to duplicate the industrial model; their technics, while potentially even more sophisticated than ours, will have to work with much less concentrated and abundant energy sources. The current round of global troubles - the peak of conventional petroleum production worldwide, soaring prices and incipient shortages in other commodities, spiraling breakdowns in the international debt market, and the fraying of America's global empire - marks, in this analysis, the onset of one of the periods of crisis mentioned above. If this is the case, we face several decades of serious social, economic, and political turmoil, with a high likelihood that many of these troubles will spill over onto the battlefield. As I've suggested elsewhere, the period between 1929 and 1945, with its economic crises, political horrors, and global power struggles ending in a brutal world war, may make a tolerably good model for the period now dawning around us. If I'm right - and every discussion of the future needs to start with those unpopular words - the future for which we have to prepare has two aspects, one overarching, one immediate. The overarching aspect is the slow curve of decline I've called the Long Descent, the final trajectory of industrial civilization toward its death. The immediate aspect is the need to deal with the particular round of crises breaking over us just now. Those two aspects are related but they're not the same, and the resources and skills needed to deal with them are also not the same. These, ultimately, are the reflections that lie behind my suggestion that fixating on the short term, and overstating the implications of short-term trends, may well get in the way of a constructive response to the broader picture. This is why it's problematic to insist, as a number of internet bloggers did recently, that the discovery of a new oil resource in North Dakota means that peak oil is no longer a problem. On a global scale, with most of the world's oil producing countries and most of its supergiant fields already in decline, the Bakken shale simply doesn't make that much difference, and planning for a future that will allow us to keep up the extravagant energy-wasting lifestyles of the recent past will likely have disastrous results. Yet it's just as problematic to insist that the current wave of crises will inevitably spin out of control into a fast crash that will bring industrial civilization to its knees. That claim carries its own agenda of actions for the future, and if the claim turns out to be inaccurate, many elements of that agenda could all too easily prove to be dysfunctional. Moving to an isolated rural area and making a go of subsistence farming is not a viable strategy for everyone, for example, and even those who are well suited to that life might turn out to have made a dysfunctional choice if the fast crash fails to arrive on schedule. If the end of the industrial age turns out to be a longer and more complex process than fast-crash advocates suggest, in fact, isolated rural areas may not be the best places to start small farms at all. Truck gardens and organic food production on the outskirts of small and mid-sized cities will be much better positioned to thrive in a world where markets still exist but transport costs are a major limiting factor. In some areas this is already happening; the explosive growth of farmers markets, community-supported agriculture schemes, and direct sales of local produce to local restaurants have put down the foundations on which local and regional food production networks could easily grow. Fostering the emergence of such networks could contribute much to the future. So could the evolution of many other economic specialties that are irrelevant in the context of a fast crash, but not in the more complex terrain I suspect the future holds for us. Of course there's a broader context to all this. My vision of the future is very much a minority view these days. So many people believe in the fast crash scenario that there's unlikely to be anything like a shortage of people preparing for it, but the Long Descent is another matter. It doesn't echo any of the narratives our culture and media circulate about the future, and it doesn't feed the widely held and wildly popular sense of our own uniqueness that underlies so much of today's supposedly innovative thought, so its mass appeal is pretty minimal. Thus you won't find many people preparing to make the transition from today's high-tech economy to the less complex, more impoverished, more fragmented, but still industrial economies that I expect to emerge from the Great Recession and global troubles of 2010-2030 or thereabouts. Nor will you find many people seriously taking on the role of cultural conserver that will be desperately needed if many things of value are to get through the deindustrial dark ages of 2200-2600 or thereabouts, and reach the successor cultures that will emerge beyond it. As I see it, these are among the crucial tasks before us; they could make the long road to the deindustrial future more bearable, and pass on important gifts to the future; but as I tried to suggest last week, they will not happen if the people who could make them happen get caught up in premature proclamations of triumph or catastrophe. Links: {1} http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/04/not-end-of-world.html {2} http://sharonastyk.com/2008/05/01/the-great-big-food-kablooey-why-food-is-complicated/ _____ ?John Michael Greer has been active in the alternative spirituality movement for more than 25 years, and is the author of a dozen books, including The Druidry Handbook (Weiser, 2006). He lives in Ashland, Oregon. http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/05/preparing-for-what-future.html#links TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From critical.montages at gmail.com Mon May 12 05:21:15 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 07:21:15 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Emadeddin Baghi Message-ID: Award-winning Iranian journalist hospitalised in jail: report 1 hour ago TEHRAN (AFP) ? An award-winning Iranian journalist and rights activist has been hospitalised in jail in Tehran after returning to prison from sick leave, a press report said on Monday. "Emadeddin Baghi has once again been taken to Evin prison infirmary," the reformist newspaper Kargozaran said,[*] without giving details about the condition of the anti-death penalty and prisoners' rights campaigner. Baghi had returned to jail in April after a three-month sick leave to serve out a one-year sentence imposed in 2003 on security charges over a series of articles published 10 years ago. Lawyer Saleh Nikbakht said Baghi had returned to Tehran's Evin jail despite his illness not being completely cured, adding that physicians had not been able to make an accurate diagnosis. Baghi, 45, was first hospitalised in December 2007 with a nervous condition after being arrested in October on charges of spreading propaganda against Iran's Islamic system and publishing secret documents. Prisoners in Iran are sometimes allowed to serve parts of their sentences at home if it can be proven that they have serious health problems. Last month, Baghi was awarded the international journalist of the year prize at the British Press Awards in recognition of his attempts to supply news to readers despite the obstacles. Baghi heads a prisoners' rights group and is a rare and outspoken critic of Iran's increased use of the death penalty. He previously served a three-year jail term between 2000-2003 over his writings in several pro-reform newspapers. Earlier this month the judiciary said Baghi had been cleared of "propaganda in favour of the opposition to harm national security and propaganda against the system" -- charges which would have cost him another three years in jail.[**] In 2004, he founded the Jomhouriyat newspaper, devoting much coverage to human rights. But it was later shut down by the judiciary. [*] ????? - ????????? ???? ?? ?????? ????? ???? ????? ?? [**] 1387 ???????? 11 ???????? ????? ????????? ???? ?? ??????? ?? ???? -- Yoshie From critical.montages at gmail.com Mon May 12 05:50:28 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 07:50:28 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Iran Looks to Tap Key Oil Field with Homegrown Crews Message-ID: Iran looks to tap key oil field with homegrown crews By NASSER KARIMI ? 18 hours ago AZADEGAN OIL FIELD, Iran (AP) ? At this huge oil field in southwest Iran, one building stands out among the pumps and maze of pipelines: On its roof in giant letters, big enough for satellites or pilots to see, are the words: "We can do it." The slogan, made famous by Iran's revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, highlights the country's new drive to tap its oil riches on its own ? without Western investment or technological know-how ? as Iran faces a threat of tighter U.N. sanctions and American financial pressure over its nuclear ambitions. The Azadegan field in southwestern Iran showcases the bid: the first major field to be developed solely by Iranian companies. Pumping began in February in the vast oil basin ? off limits to the public, but The Associated Press received permission to tour the site recently with a government escort. The self-sufficiency drive has become a vital test of how well Iran can ride out more Western sanctions ? and possibly rake in billions of dollars more in oil revenues as prices hit record highs. It also is shaping up as a political gamble for hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the main proponent of using local firms. Some lawmakers and outside experts contend that Iranian companies will take longer and get less oil than foreign investors often with better technology and project management. Among the challenges that could frustrate Iranian oil engineers: dealing with high-pressure fields, elevated sulfur content in the crude and water levels inside the wells. U.S. pressure ? and worries about shifting rules in Iran's oil policies ? have kept major oil companies on the sidelines in recent years, and Iran lacks the deep pockets to undertake major projects alone. In April, Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said Iran needs some $500 billion of oil industry investment over the next 15 years. This has led Iran to turn to lower-tier oil developers, signing deals recently with Croatian, Malaysian and Chinese firms. "Total, Shell and Repsol of Spain are hanging back from signing contracts, which the Iranians are desperate for them to sign," said Simon Henderson, an oil expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "If you were going to say to me, `Name me 20 countries in the world that have good reputations for oil exploration,' I don't think I would get to Croatia until about 120," he added. Iran clearly has some homegrown expertise. Its oil industry ? and partnerships with some the world's biggest firms ? has existed for nearly a century. Iran sits on the second-largest known reserves after Saudi Arabia, and its known natural gas reserves are second only to Russia. Iranian experts also are involved in oil projects abroad in places including Turkmenistan, Venezuela and Libya, and Iran has developed some smaller fields before. Yet, "if Iran does it, things will take longer and the cost might be greater," said Manouchehr Takin, an Iranian oil specialist at the London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies. Supporters argue "this is the way to learn ? by doing," he noted. But that will take time. Iran is trying to boost its production from the current 4.2 million barrels a day to about 5 million barrels in the next five years. OPEC-member Iran earns more than $70 billion a year from its oil exports, bringing in 80 percent of its foreign currency revenue. But experts say Iran still lacks enough money for investment, in large part because it spends so much on low-cost fuel for its own people, who pay about 42 cents a gallon at the government-subsidized rate. At the same time, Iran grapples with a severe shortage of refinery capacity ? meaning this oil-rich nation suffers the irony of having to import more than 50 percent of its gasoline. The government imposed a rationing system last year in hopes of trimming the amount it spends on subsidized fuel. The Azadegan field ? about 35 miles west of Ahvaz, a city near the Iraqi border ? is a prime example of the challenges of going it alone under sanctions. Iran estimates its holds reserves of about 33 billion barrels, making it one of the largest worldwide. After years of negotiation, Japan's Inpex Company agreed in 2004 to invest 75 percent of a $2 billion plan to develop Azadegan. But two years later, Iran cut Inpex's share to 10 percent, complaining that the firm was delaying on the project ? apparently under pressure by Washington. Iranian officials say Russian and Indian companies have shown an interest in developing Azadegan since, but no deals have been signed. Since September, Iranian firms have drilled six wells, all now producing, along with two facilities that separate oil and natural gas. The field has produced more than 25,000 barrels of crude a day since February. Iran eventually hopes to bring production at Azadegan to more than 360,000 barrels a day ? with some outside help if it can negotiate deals. For now, the goal is more modest: 65,000 barrels a day by next March. The 400-member staff developing Azadegan bursts with pride. "The implementation of this project shows we can do the same sort of activities as foreigners can do. It is no longer important if they don't come back here," said engineer Mohammad Reza Khaki, who led construction at Azadegan. Similar sentiments ? mixing nationalism with technological strides ? are often expressed about Iran's nuclear program, which Washington and its allies say could be a cover to eventually develop atomic weapons. Tehran denies the charges and says the reactors are only for power ? and to plan far ahead for when Iran's oil and gas field run dry. Construction at the Azadegan field was not easy. The area, about 500 miles southwest of Tehran, lies in a former battle zone of the Iran-Iraq war and is rife with unexploded land mines, which are still being cleared. The National Iranian South Oil Co., linked to the country's Oil Ministry, also had to scramble to prepare for the $44 million project. "When we started, we did not have enough equipment. I went from warehouse to warehouse to find material for the needs of the project," said Khaki. The question of involvement by the Revolutionary Guards is another unknown about the field. The United States and other Western countries contend that Iran's oil and gas industries are closely linked to the Guards, which operate separate from the standing armed forces and are controlled by Iran's ruling clerics. There is no public indication that the Guards have a role in the Azadegan oil field. But the Guards publicly own or control numerous companies that have received past contracts in the oil and gas industries. Washington has long prohibited major U.S. oil producers like Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. from doing business with Iran. The Bush administration has also put pressure on banks and foreign oil companies ? including European giants ? to stop doing business with Iran, hoping to stem the flow of investment. Henderson, the Washington oil expert, said Iranian companies do have the capability to develop Azadegan. But "whether it is a world-class level development is another thing." Associated Press Writer Sebastian Abbot in Cairo, Egypt, contributed to this report. -- Yoshie From critical.montages at gmail.com Mon May 12 05:58:01 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 07:58:01 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Energized Iran Builds More Bridges Message-ID: May 6, 2008 Energized Iran builds more bridges By M K Bhadrakumar The spin could be given that at its latest meeting in London on Friday, the "Iran Six" - the five permanent members of the United Security Council and Germany - in grappling with the Iran nuclear problem, advanced in unison the demand for the cessation of uranium-enrichment activities by Tehran. But this would be an untruth. The reality is that the "Iran Six" process looks tired and repetitive. The reality is also that the "Iran Six" is "to try to lure Iran into nuke talks", as the Associated Press reported. The six's other members are the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the proposal to offer Iran incentives to stop its enrichment program is designed to show Tehran "the benefits of cooperating with the international community". But even as the proposal is yet to be conveyed to Tehran, the Iranian side dictated its contents. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in Tehran on Saturday: "At [our] recent meeting in Kuwait with Foreign Secretary David Miliband, he told me the Iran Six intends to send us a letter after the May 2 London meeting. I told him in response: 'You know very well which word is forbidden in Iran. Be careful in your proposals to avoid crossing the forbidden line'." It is obvious Iran's hectic diplomatic activity has put the "Iran Six" on the defensive. Tehran's nuclear standoff with the West is fast losing momentum. As Moscow expert Igor Tomberg of the elite Institute of World Economy and International Relations put it, at the back of it all lies the realization that "Iran has added energy to the quiver of its military and political arrows. Its advance to the global gas market could disrupt the current balance of interests there." Switzerland leads the way If a marker is to be put down, the turning point came on March 17 when Iran and Switzerland signed a 25-year gas deal. According to the Swiss government, the deal between Elektrizitats-Gesselschaft Laufenburg and the National Iranian Gas Export Company is worth US$42 billion. It is the first of its kind in the recent past in which a European energy company has actually signed a firm contract with Iran. So far, the practice has been to sign non-binding memorandum of understandings (MoUs). In terms of the agreement with Switzerland, Iran will deliver 5.5 billion cubic meters (bmc) of gas per year to Europe, starting from 2010 via a pipeline under construction. That the deal signified a watershed in the geopolitics of energy security was apparent from the presence of Mottaki and visiting Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey at the signing ceremony in Tehran. Indeed, Calmy-Rey acknowledged that Switzerland has a "strategic interest to secure our gas supplies and diversify our gas suppliers". She pointed out that the gas deal with Iran would reduce Europe's dependence on energy supplies from Russia. "We are decreasing our dependence, and the dependence of Europe, on Russian gas," she stressed in Mottaki's presence. Washington is likely angry. The Financial Times of London reported Washington hinted at terminating the arrangement of the US Interest Sections being located in the Swiss embassies in Tehran and Havana. But Swiss officials maintained no international sanctions prevented foreign investment in the Iranian energy sector and that the March 17 gas deal, in fact, was intended to "alleviate" energy shortages in Italy. Looking ahead, the Financial Times added, "Following the [Swiss-Iranian] deal, some European leaders have voiced concern about new investment in liquefied natural gas (LNG), the sector in which groups such as Total, Royal Dutch Shell and Austria's OMV have struck preliminary agreements [with Iran] but have yet to sign formal contracts. Iran has warned such companies they need to conclude deals by June or it will look elsewhere for investment." Iran's Swiss deal has alerted world capitals. China has speeded up negotiations over its $16 billion gas deal over Iran's North Pars gas field. China's National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) signed a memorandum last year to expand the gas reserves of the North Pars field and also purchase LNG from the output for a 25-year period, but was holding back from signing a contract, given the US-Iran nuclear standoff. It will be China's second big energy deal, with the Chinese oil refinery Sinopec having signed in early March a $2 billion deal to develop Iran's Yadavaran oil field. Defending the CNOOC, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said in Beijing recently, "Cooperation between CNOOC and Iran is a business act between enterprises. We believe that the actions to address this [nuclear] problem should not undermine normal trade and economic cooperation with Iran." India, too, has begun underscoring that the Iran-Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline project is "doable". In comparison with China, though, India's decision-making is haphazard. A powerful pro-US lobby also weighs against India dealing with the Iranian regime. The Indian government couldn't take optimal advantage of the recent stopover in New Delhi by Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian media reported Ahmadinejad did not make any commitments to the Indian side on the pending $25.6 billion LNG deal that India has been negotiating for almost eight years or on the gas pipeline deal. According to the official Iranian news agency, "With the Indo-US nuclear deal slipping into limbo, the Manmohan Singh government [in Delhi] has shrewdly sensed the importance of reaffirming its ties with Iran, both as a placatory gesture towards its leftist allies opposing the nuclear deal and as a pragmatic alternative source of energy for the country's growing economy." Russia's grandiose plans Tehran is unlikely to be in a hurry to respond until the European energy companies' June deadline passes. The Iranians have multiple choices from the East and West. Principal among them is Russia's Gazprom. To be sure, Moscow has speeded up its energy dialogue with Iran in recent weeks. On April 23, the Iranian government and Gazprom signed a memorandum of understanding "to cooperate in the development of oil and gas fields, as well as investment and exploratory studies". Gazprom's bid is to secure the rights to develop several sites at Iran's South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf and the North Azadegan oil deposit in southern Iran. Gazprom is already participating in the development of the South Pars' second and third stages jointly with France's TotalElf and Malaysia's Petronas. The project is operating in design mode to produce and process 20 bcm of gas annually. South Pars holds 60% of Iran's gas reserves, equivalent to 10% of the known global gas reserves. It forms part of the North Dome deposit, which is regarded as the world's largest non-associated gas field, located partly in Iran and partly in Qatar. Moscow is playing for high stakes. On April 24, the day after Gazprom signed the MoU with Iran, its chief executive officer, Alexei Miller, traveled to Berlin for a "working meeting" with a dignitary who was visiting Germany - Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabir al-Thani. A Gazprom press release said, "The two sides discussed the possibilities for Gazprom and Qatar Petroleum to implement joint investment projects." Qatar holds the world's third-largest gas reserves after Russia and Iran. The three countries together hold about 55% of the world's total gas reserves. The implications of the Russian-Iranian-Qatari collaboration are profound, to say the least. It was against this background that Russia and Iran held consultations in Tehran within the framework of the Gas Producing Countries' forum on April 28. The consultations related primarily to finalization of a charter for forming a cartel of gas producing countries. On the same day, the acting head of Russia's National Security Council, Valentin Sobolev, also arrived in Tehran on a three-day visit for wide-ranging talks on bilateral relations. Sobolev's Iranian counterpart, Saeed Jalili, said the talks were "positive and constructive". Sobolev brought a letter from Russian President Vladimir Putin to Ahmadinejad assuring the latter Moscow "confirms the principled position in its relations with Iran, and that its policy does not depend on who is in power at any moment". Ahmadinejad responded, "Iran and Russia are two major powerful countries, and cooperation between our states in settling various problems will serve the interests of the Iranian and Russian nations as well as regional and international security". He said the two countries could play "an efficient role in establishing a new model of international relations". However, Sobolev's consultations did not quite proceed the way Moscow expected. The gas cartel idea has run into difficulties. The Russian media reported that the ministerial meeting of the Gas Exporting Countries' forum, which was scheduled to be held in Moscow on June 24, stood postponed. Moscow wants engagement with Iran within a loosely held gas alliance and is unwilling to commit itself to "excessive obligations", as Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported on the April 28 meeting in Tehran. To quote the daily, "Iran insists on the soonest possible formation of the new cartel [so as] to resolve its political problems ... [On the other hand], Russia, which is the largest gas supplier to Europe, builds its relations with EU [European Union] countries on the basis of long-term agreements and prices tied to world oil prices. It has no intention of changing its export scheme or coordinating its gas prices with other participants in the cartel." Iran has its own plans Iran pitches for a gas cartel with regulatory mechanisms on quota production and pricing, whereas Russia prefers a networking by gas producing countries with the accent on market sharing and transit routes. Evidently, Moscow is nervous that Iranian gas could revive the Nabucco gas pipeline supported by the European Union, just when, thanks to its deft maneuverings over the past year by projecting the rival South Stream, it thought it had all but killed the US-backed project. Again, the Iran-Switzerland gas deal means the early commissioning of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), a joint project between Swiss company EGL and Norway's StatoilHydro. In short, Iranian gas could find its way to Europe through these two pipelines in the near future - Nabucco and TAP. Moscow would not like such a turn of events. As Tomberg put it, "Tehran has been pursuing a more energetic gas policy, indicating its readiness to cooperate with the European Union ... This can be interpreted as the struggle for the vast - some say inexhaustible - European gas market ... Competition on the gas market will soon affect prices ... Meanwhile, Iran is playing on the EU's desire to ease its dependence on Russia and save money." Tomberg concludes, "Iran and Russia should probably not compete against each other but join hands on the gas market ... Moreover, there could be an agreement under which Russia will continue to supply gas to Europe, while Iran will export its gas to the East." But will the Iranians heed such advice? It is the million-dollar question. The Iranians want to keep all options open. In any case, why should they stay out of the European market? Energy exports would be the bridge that facilitated Iran's all-round integration with the Western world. The Iranian elites know that the "East" will not and could not compensate Iran for forgoing the European option. Equally, Tehran is frustrated with the presumptuousness that underlines the thinking behind these potential eastern partners, who opt for selective engagement of Iran rather than having the willingness to offer comprehensive strategic cooperation with Iran based on shared concerns and interests in a multipolar world. Sobolev tried to inject some much-needed vitality into Russian-Iranian relations by discussing "military-technical cooperation" and by giving a clean chit to Iran's nuclear program. But that may not be enough. Meanwhile, the negative stance by Russia and China with regard to Iran's application for full membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) threatens to become an irritant. The Russian dilemma is that it does not want to go the whole hog with Iran, as that would complicate Russia-US relations. Interestingly, on Friday, apart from the "Iran Six" foreign ministers, London also hosted consultations involving Russia and the US over Kosovo and the Middle East situation. Meanwhile, Russia-US consultations over the US's missile defense deployment in central Europe are continuing and new tensions have appeared in Russia-Georgia relations with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization openly backing Tbilisi. Moscow is also carefully marking time until a new administration settles into Washington next year. Nonetheless, the competing energy security interests of the EU, Russia and China were reflected at the London meeting of the "Iran Six" last Friday. Plainly put, no one wants confrontation with Iran. Mottaki said Iran would soon have its own "package of proposals" to resolve all regional and international problems, including its nuclear program. In essence, after having thwarted the US's campaign to isolate it, Iran is now shifting diplomatic gear to ensure that its integration with the international community becomes irreversible. It looks beyond the lame-duck George W Bush administration and is judging the mood in the US correctly. According to a major survey released in Washington last Wednesday by the prestigious Foreign Affairs journal (see Economic woes take US center stage Asia Times Online, May 2, 2008) , energy costs are the number one foreign policy concern for seven out of 10 American respondents; the economy has pushed "terrorism" into second place. A large plurality of opinion favors effective American diplomacy to try to establish better relations with Iran. Energy security outpaced all other concerns by a long shot. The survey underscored that American opinion is connecting energy policy to national security issues in an unprecedented way. M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001). -- Yoshie From critical.montages at gmail.com Mon May 12 06:27:36 2008 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 08:27:36 -0400 Subject: [R-G] =?iso-8859-1?q?Marta_Harnecker_y_Federico_Fuentes=2C_MAS-IP?= =?iso-8859-1?q?SP_de_Bolivia=3A_Instrumento_pol=EDtico_que_surge_d?= =?iso-8859-1?q?e_los_movimientos_sociales?= Message-ID: -----Forwarded Message----- From: Bolivia Rising Sent: May 11, 2008 9:18 AM Subject: [nuevo libro] MAS-IPSP de Bolivia: Instrumento pol?tico que surge de los movimientos sociales MAS-IPSP de Bolivia: Instrumento pol?tico que surge de los movimientos sociales Marta Harnecker & Federico Fuentes Version PDF: http://www.rebelion.org/docs/67155.pdf Sera publicado en Bolivia y Venezuela en el proximo mes -- Yoshie From realiteee1 at yahoo.com Mon May 12 09:44:26 2008 From: realiteee1 at yahoo.com (james m nordlund) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 08:44:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] CodePink Acts: Mothers Day- Support Iraqi Refugees Slideshow; etc.. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <273508.47296.qm@web50804.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Mother's Day - Support Iraqi Refugees Slideshow Hey CodePink http://www.codepinkalert.org/ Here is a sweet slideshow of CodePink DC Mother's Day Action to Support Iraqi Refugees... we collected over $450 in donations from people we met in the park! Mother's Day - Support Iraqi Refugees http://flickr.com/photos/codepinkalert/sets/72157605008399668/show/ Peace and Freedom, Leslie & Jes Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. -- "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." - -- Mahatma Gandhi A typical week at the CODEPINK DC house... Medea describes.... http://www.codepinkalert.org/ It's been a full week at the CODEPINK DC house?as usual! We started every day with a 7am "wake up call" to Nancy Pelosi at her condo in Georgetown?telling her not to fund the war. We'd arrive with a pot of coffee, our banners, and two megaphones. The neighbors must love us?hollerin' and singin' at 7am! We even invented an aerobic workout?Pilotes for Peace at Pelosi's. The security called the police every day, and the police never knew quite what to do. They'd tell us it was private property and we had to leave. We'd insist it was public property and we wouldn't leave. And I think we were right because they never arrested us. Then off to Congress to tell them not to fund the war, running through the halls and tunnels cornering the reps while they try to run away. And on Thursday, when Congress was supposed to vote on the war supplemental bill, we went to Congress with our great rolling bed?with big caricatures of Pelosi and Bush in bed together, using the people's money to fund war. It was a great visual, but it started to rain and unfortunately, little press showed up because the vote was postponed. We also discovered that on Thursday Hillary Clinton was speaking at fundraiser (for her) at the Omni Shoreham and decided to pay her a visit. Jes, Leslie and I actually walked right into the fundraiser (with no ticket!) while the others protested outside. We were focusing on her horrible comment about obliterating Iran, and Jes had made an awesome sign saying "Obliterate Iran? Apologize!" Her got real close, stood on a table and unfurled the banner. It was awesome. After he got hauled out, I got up front and when Hillary started talking about "our children", I shouted 'what about the children of Iran? Apologize for your comments. What about the children of Iraq? Apologize for your war vote." When I got kicked out, then Leslie shouted out as well! Three times, we pushed our message of peace!!! Meanwhile, Ellen had a chance encounter with Obama, who was in town for a short visit. She followed him as he walked, and had a great dialogue with him that was reproduced on MSNBC's site. On Friday, as part of our lead up to Mothers Day, we organized a panel on Iraqi refugees at the Mott House. I gave a report back on my trip to Syria and Jordan, Gael gave an update on legislation re refugees, we had the refugee program director for Amnesty International (Sarnata Reynolds), and three Iraqis?Aseel Al-Banna, Andy Shallal and Ban Adil Sarhan. Ban's story was so tragic. Her husband worked as a translator for the US, and was therefore targeted by militia. They shot him in the car while he was driving with their 4-year-old daughter. Both were killed. Ban, with her young son, fled to Jordan and then got into the US. She explained how hard it is to live here, and how little support she and others get when they arrive in a strange land without funds and traumatized by war. She has been struggling for years to get her green card. We took her to Nancy Pelosi's office and asked her chief of staff for help, and then went to her Oklahoma congresswoman's office. We also took Ban to the Iraqi embassy for some papers she needed, and then got her back to Baltimore to catch her plane. It was wonderful to have her staying at the CODEPINK house and getting to know her. It made our efforts to raise money for the refugees much more real. We had also written a letter to congress re the need to support refugees and we got about 50 prominent women to sign it. On Friday, to commemorate mothers day, we delivered the letters to leaders in the house and senate. Two women from Philadelphia joined Leslie and Ellen in the hand deliveries. Yeah!!! On Friday night we went out to Virginia in the lovely RV that Jim Preston has so kindly loaned to us. Tighe painted it with washable paint and great signs saying "Shame on Congress: No War, No Torture" and "Congress: Stop Funding War." On Saturday, we went to a US-Italy polo game because one of the sponsors was Blackwater. Two of us got inside (I got in as press, Tighe bought a ticket that was refunded when they kicked us out). When Blackwater paratroopers were skydiving with US and Italian flags (gross sight), we unfurled our Blackwater Makes a Killing banner and ran up and down yelling that they were mercenaries and killers until they kicked us out. Meanwhile, Liz and Des?with their megaphones?were talking to EVERY CAR that came in, as there was only one entrance. Then Sunday, Liz got up early to confront Harry Reid when he went to speak at the morning talk show with George Stephanopolis, while others prepared for our Mothers Day event in Dupont Circle. Turnout was small this year and it started to rain as we marched, but it was a sweet event with kids and face painting and music and fundraising for Iraqi refugees. I'm sure I'm forgetting all kinds of activities (like our Wednesday night weekly potluck when we get a full house of interested activists). But all in all, it was a typical jam-packed week at the CODEPINK house!!! -- Fwd: [CP] Post mother's day article I wrote I sent to CommonDreams and Alternet. Please feel free to send anywhere else. Happy post-mothers day! Xx M http://www.codepinkalert.org/ Next Mothers Day Let's Invite the Whole Family Medea Benjamin Next Mothers Day, I don't want to be organizing yet another rally of Mothers Against War in Washington DC and lamenting the state of our dysfunctional human family. I want to be celebrating the successes of the first 100 days of a new administration. I want to see us healing the collective traumas of the past eight years and becoming a nation that reflects the values of compassion and kindness that most mothers hold dear. Next Mothers Day, I want us to be welcoming our soldiers home from Iraq and taking care of them when they get here. I don't want to hear any more bickering in Congress about whether we should provide decent educational benefits to our vets?especially from those who supported the war! I don't want to read more horror stories about dilapidated VA hospitals and bureaucratic sinkholes that keep veterans from getting the care they need. I want us to come together?whether we were for or against this war--to nurture our wounded sons and daughters. Next Mothers Day, I want us to have come to grips with the disaster we have wreaked upon the Iraqi people. I want us to mourn their losses, express contrition and help rebuild the nation we destroyed. I want us to ensure a viable homeland for our Palestinian sisters and brothers. I want us to rebuild a relationship of trust and respect with our Arab neighbors so that we can mutually address the threat of terrorism. Next Mothers Day, I want us to repair old family feuds. I want us to restore relations with the Cuban cousins we banished some 50 years ago, starting with lifting the embargo. I want us to sing and dance and drink mojitos with our Caribbean kin, relishing in our common zest for life. We shouldn't stop with Cuba. I want us to reach out with a mother's open arms toward other nations we are today bullying, from Venezuela to Iran. I want us to bring out the carrots and put away the sticks, as we have recently done in the case of North Korea. I want us to abandon the "do as I say, not as I do" approach to nuclear deterrence and support global disarmament. Next Mothers Day, I want us to be immersed in a crash course on overcoming our oil addiction and cleaning up the mess we have made of our Mother Earth. I want us to stop pillaging the family jewels and instead embrace conservation, restoration and a fairer distribution of our planet's wealth. Next Mothers Day, I want us to practice unconditional love. I want us to heed the words of Julia Ward Howe's original Mothers Day proclamation when she said that "We, the women of one country, will be too tender to those of another country to allow our sons to injure theirs." I want us to form kinship circles that stretch across the globe, to teach our children to feel empathy towards other children, to truly embrace the concept of universal oneness. Next Mothers Day, when we sit down to a bountiful brunch, I want the other members of our global household to be seated at the table. That will truly be a fitting tribute to the women who brought us into this world. Medea Benjamin (medea at globalexchange.org) is cofounder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange. If you would like to help the Iraqi refugees, see www.codepinkalert.org. -- "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." - -- Mahatma Gandhi ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From fentona at shaw.ca Mon May 12 09:59:57 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 08:59:57 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Memo to U.S.: Canada a leader in counter-insurgency training Message-ID: <819233C0-5852-4A9F-9D59-50950BA281AE@shaw.ca> Memo to U.S.: Canada a leader in counter-insurgency training By SCOTT TAYLOR On Target Mon. May 12 - 5:35 AM http://thechronicleherald.ca/Opinion/1055346.html BACK ON Jan. 16, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates ruffled a few feathers north of the border when he was quoted in the Los Angeles Times making disparaging remarks to the effect that NATO troops in southern Afghanistan were letting the Americans down. According to Gates, the troops deployed to Kandahar ? including Canadians ? were "not experienced in counter-insurgency" and he identified NATO?s shortcoming as being "due to a Cold War orientation." In response to the U.S. defence secretary?s slight, British members of Parliament rose to defend their troops, and the Dutch government called in the American ambassador to demand an explanation. In Ottawa, Defence Minister Peter MacKay took a different approach by apologizing to Canadians on behalf of his loose-lipped U.S. counterpart. Had MacKay wanted to pour gasoline on the fire, he could have easily challenged Gates on his own military?s dismal record. To date, Vietnam ranks well up there on the all-time David-versus-Goliath military defeats and thus far, American victories in Iraq and Afghanistan remain an elusive dream. While it is understandable that MacKay needs to be diplomatic with Gates, given that we are still trying to beg and borrow helicopters and other equipment to sustain our mission, the fact is the Canadian military is actually one of the leading innovators in the world in terms of training soldiers in counter- insurgency. In April 2006, our army established the Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre at CFB Wainwright in Alberta. Last week, I had the opportunity to visit the centre during Exercise Maple Guardian ? essentially a full-scale dress rehearsal for the battle group slated to go to Kandahar this August. Admittedly, I have not returned to CFB Wainwright since I graduated from infantry battle school in 1983, so I understood that there would have been some technological improvements in the training equipment in the interim. What I did not fully comprehend until my recent trip was just how thoroughly our army has converted from teaching linear, conventional war procedures to a dedicated focus on not just counter- insurgency in general, but the campaign in southern Afghanistan in particular. The maps depicting the 620-square-kilometre training area have been reprinted, and areas renamed to reflect Kandahar province. Mock-ups of villages bear the monikers of Afghan towns such as Spin Boldak, and the troops on exercise are housed in camps intended to replicate Kandahar Airfield and the forward operating bases that they will use when in theatre. More than 100 Afghan Canadians are on the payroll at the centre to play the roles of translators, civilians and Taliban fighters. Canadian actors and students are also employed to play the part of aid workers, Canadian diplomats and the media. By the way, the media in the training program are designated as part of the opposition force. In addition to the actors, real diplomats and CIDA reps also participated in Maple Guardian before they went to Afghanistan. The training scenarios involve all the variables that make the Afghan mission such a challenge. In addition to the constant security implications, the commanders and troops being mentored and coached must take into consideration such things as ensuring the presence of allied Afghan forces, minimizing the risk of collateral damage, using proper procedure to authorize an increase in the rules of engagement and paying attention to minute details such as ensuring the Afghan flag is prominent in joint operations. While there is the occasional opportunity for Canadians to mount "kinetic" or combat attacks against suspected Taliban strongholds, the majority of the counter-insurgency exercise focuses on the less sexy aspects, such as intelligence gathering and the treatment of people injured by IEDs. To assist the exercise controllers in gauging the competency of the battle group being tested, the centre has employed the cutting-edge technology of weapons effect simulation gear. Every soldier and every other participant is equipped with a sensor vest and a laser attachment for their personal weapon and all are monitored full-time from the centre?s central operations room. Unlike previous generations of such battlefield simulations, the simulation gear focuses on the survivability of those "wounded" in action. The vest sensors calculate the extent of an injury and a timer kicks in indicating the soldier?s remaining life expectancy. Once medical personnel are on site, the timer can be slowed to simulate treatment and following medevac and hospitalization, the soldier can be "saved." The simulation system also maintains a complete database of who fired a weapon and who hit which target. Should Canadian troops clearing a mock village accidentally kill innocent civilians, a commander will be able to identify the culprits within minutes. Traditional military exercises were staged simply as blue force versus red force. Now, Canadian soldiers are learning to operate in an environment where the enemy is not clearly defined, and allies can be less than reliable. At the risk of revealing too much of my own pride in the Canadian military, I think the Alberta facility is undoubtedly one of the most progressive counter-insurgency training centres in the world. And that is another reason why our defence minister should not have left Gates?s slur unchallenged. At the very least, MacKay should have kicked over some garbage cans and demanded an apology. ( staylor at herald.ca) Scott Taylor is editor-in-chief of Esprit de Corps magazine. From shniad at sfu.ca Mon May 12 11:23:41 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 10:23:41 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Amnesty International petition: Bring Omar Khadr home to Canada Message-ID: <200805121723.m4CHNfad002328@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080512/965b35e5/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Mon May 12 11:38:25 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 10:38:25 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Harper's extreme posture no way to support Israel Message-ID: <200805121738.m4CHcPa6003393@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080512/47cd18b3/attachment.txt From fentona at shaw.ca Mon May 12 12:43:00 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 11:43:00 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Harper announces 20-year, $30B plan to beef up military Message-ID: <0C54CD80-A674-41DF-AAAD-AFC0453A2506@shaw.ca> Harper announces 20-year, $30B plan to beef up military Last Updated: Monday, May 12, 2008 | 1 CBC News http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/05/12/canada-first.html The Tory government announced a multi-billion-dollar 20-year plan to strengthen Canada's military, which includes the purchase of new aircraft, armoured vehicles, ships and helicopters and a goal to expand the Forces to 100,000. Referring to it as the "Canada First Defence Strategy," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the long-term investments in the military could reach costs of up to $30 billion. "If a country wants to be taken seriously in the world, it must have the capacity to act. It's that simple," Harper said Monday speaking in Halifax. "Otherwise you forfeit your right to be a player. You're the one chattering on the sideline that everyone?s smiles at, but no one listens to." Harper said this strategy will focus on replacing some of the military's core equipment fleets, including destroyers, frigates and different types of aircraft that will end their operational life over the next 20 years. The plan will also seek to boost the strength of the regular Forces from 65,000 to 70,000 and the reserves from 24,000 to 30,000. "Renewal of the Canadian Forces is the most pressing priority," Harper said, adding the average age in the military is rising. Harper said the plan will also improve surveillance of land and coastal borders, bolster support for civilian authority in the event of natural disasters and provide security to major national events like the 2010 Olympics. From shniad at sfu.ca Mon May 12 13:34:29 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 12:34:29 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Canada and the Origins of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Part 1 Message-ID: <200805121934.m4CJYT5w017859@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080512/881a51f1/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Mon May 12 13:48:15 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 12:48:15 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Methodists affirm divestment as option to end Israel's occupation Message-ID: <200805121948.m4CJmFxp017258@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080512/7261d612/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Mon May 12 16:10:49 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 15:10:49 -0700 Subject: [R-G] "Bomb Syria" Woolsey advises McCain Message-ID: <200805122210.m4CMAnlD008868@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080512/64bb2f9d/attachment.txt From shniad at sfu.ca Mon May 12 17:00:02 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 16:00:02 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Latin America: U.S. promoting break of up countries it cannot control Message-ID: <200805122300.m4CN02Rp020190@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080512/dc5caba5/attachment.txt From shimogamo at attglobal.net Mon May 12 17:04:38 2008 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 08:04:38 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Organic Farming: Myths and Facts Message-ID: <4828CD06.2080003@attglobal.net> The great organic myths: Why organic foods are an indulgence the world can't afford They're not healthier or better for the environment - and they're packed with pesticides. In an age of climate change and shortages, these foods are an indugence the world can't afford. by Rob Johnston Independent.co.uk (May 01 2008) Myth one: Organic farming is good for the environment The study of Life Cycle Assessments for the UK, sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, should concern anyone who buys organic. It shows that milk and dairy production is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. A litre of organic milk requires eighty per cent more land than conventional milk to produce, has twenty per cent greater global warming potential, releases sixty per cent more nutrients to water sources, and contributes seventy per cent more to acid rain. Also, organically reared cows burp twice as much methane as conventionally reared cattle - and methane is twenty times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Meat and poultry are the largest agricultural contributors to greenhouse gas emissions emissions. Life Cycle Assessment counts the energy used to manufacture pesticide for growing cattle feed, but still shows that a kilo of organic beef releases twelve per cent more greenhouse gas emissions, causes twice as much nutrient pollution and more acid rain. Life Cycle Assessment relates food production to: energy required to manufacture artificial fertilisers and pesticides; fossil fuel burnt by farm equipment; nutrient pollution caused by nitrate and phosphate run-off into water courses; release of gases that cause acid rain; and the area of land farmed. A similar review by the University of Hohenheim, Germany, in 2000 reached the same conclusions (Hohenheim is a proponent of organic farming and quoted by the Soil Association). Myth two: Organic farming is more sustainable Organic potatoes use less energy in terms of fertiliser production, but need more fossil fuel for ploughing. A hectare of conventionally farmed land produces 2.5 times more potatoes than an organic one. Heated greenhouse tomatoes in Britain use up to 100 times more energy than those grown in fields in Africa. Organic yield is 75 per cent of conventional tomato crops but takes twice the energy - so the climate consequences of home-grown organic tomatoes exceed those of Kenyan imports. Defra estimates organic tomato production in the UK releases almost three times the nutrient pollution and uses 25 per cent more water per kilogram of fruit than normal production. However, a kilogram of wheat takes 1,700 joules of energy to produce, against 2,500 joules for the same amount of conventional wheat, although nutrient pollution is three times higher for organic. Myth three: Organic farming doesn't use pesticides Food scares are always good news for the organic food industry. The Soil Association and other organic farming trade groups say conventional food must be unhealthy because farmers use pesticides. Actually, organic farmers also use pesticides. The difference is that "organic" pesticides are so dangerous that they have been "grandfathered" with current regulations and do not have to pass stringent modern safety tests. For example, organic farmers can treat fungal diseases with copper solutions. Unlike modern, biodegradable, pesticides copper stays toxic in the soil for ever. The organic insecticide rotenone (in derris) is highly neurotoxic to humans - exposure can cause Parkinson's disease. But none of these "natural" chemicals is a reason not to buy organic food; nor are the man-made chemicals used in conventional farming. Myth four: Pesticide levels in conventional food are dangerous The proponents of organic food - particularly celebrities, such as Gwyneth Paltrow, who have jumped on the organic bandwagon - say there is a "cocktail effect" of pesticides. Some point to an "epidemic of cancer". In fact, there is no epidemic of cancer. When age-standardised, cancer rates are falling dramatically and have been doing so for fifty years. If there is a "cocktail effect" it would first show up in farmers, but they have among the lowest cancer rates of any group. Carcinogenic effects of pesticides could show up as stomach cancer, but stomach cancer rates have fallen faster than any other. Sixty years ago, all Britain's food was organic; we lived only until our early sixties, malnutrition and food poisoning were rife. Now, modern agriculture (including the careful use of well-tested chemicals) makes food cheap and safe and we live into our eighties. Myth five: Organic food is healthier To quote Hohenheim University: "No clear conclusions about the quality of organic food can be reached using the results of present literature and research results". What research there is does not support the claims made for organic food. Large studies in Holland, Denmark and Austria found the food-poisoning bacterium Campylobacter in 100 per cent of organic chicken flocks but only a third of conventional flocks; equal rates of contamination with Salmonella (despite many organic flocks being vaccinated against it); and 72 per cent of organic chickens infected with parasites. This high level of infection among organic chickens could cross-contaminate non-organic chickens processed on the same production lines. Organic farmers boast that their animals are not routinely treated with antibiotics or (for example) worming medicines. But, as a result, organic animals suffer more diseases. In 2006 an Austrian and Dutch study found that a quarter of organic pigs had pneumonia against four per cent of conventionally raised pigs; their piglets died twice as often. Disease is the major reason why organic animals are only half the weight of conventionally reared animals - so organic farming is not necessarily a boon to animal welfare. Myth six: Organic food contains more nutrients The Soil Association points to a few small studies that demonstrate slightly higher concentrations of some nutrients in organic produce - flavonoids in organic tomatoes and omega-3 fatty acids in organic milk, for example. The easiest way to increase the concentration of nutrients in food is to leave it in an airing cupboard for a few days. Dehydrated foods contain much higher concentrations of carbohydrates and nutrients than whole foods. But, just as in humans, dehydration is often a sign of disease. The study that found higher flavonoid levels in organic tomatoes revealed them to be the result of stress from lack of nitrogen - the plants stopped making flesh and made defensive chemicals (such as flavonoids) instead. Myth seven: The demand for organic food is booming Less than one per cent of the food sold in Britain is organic, but you would never guess it from the media. The Soil Association positions itself as a charity that promotes good farming practices. Modestly, on its website, it claims: "... in many ways the Soil Association can claim to be the first organisation to promote and practice sustainable development". But the Soil Association is also, in effect, a trade group - and very successful lobbying organisation. Every year, news outlets report the Soil Association's annual claim of a big increase in the size of the organic market. For 2006 (the latest available figures) it boasted sales of GBP 1.937 billion. Mintel (a retail consultantcy hired by the Soil Association) estimated only GBP 1.5 billion in organic food sales for 2006. The more reliable TNS Worldpanel, (tracking actual purchases) found just GBP 1 billion of organics sold - from a total food sector of GBP 104 billion. Sixty years ago all our food was organic so demand has actually gone down by 99 per cent. Despite the "boom" in organics, the amount of land being farmed organically has been decreasing since its height in 2003. Although the area of land being converted to organic usage is scheduled to rise, more farmers are going back to conventional farming. The Soil Association invariably claims that anyone who questions the value of organic farming works for chemical manufacturers and agribusiness or is in league with some shady right-wing US free-market lobby group. Which is ironic, considering that a number of British fascists were involved in the founding of the Soil Association and its journal was edited by one of Oswald Mosley's blackshirts until the late 1960s. All Britain's food is safer than ever before. In a serious age, we should talk about the future seriously and not use food scares and misinformation as a tactic to increase sales. _____ Rob Johnston is a doctor and science writer Copyright (c) independent.co.uk http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/the-great-organic-myths-why-organic-foods-are-an-indulgence-the-world-cant-afford-818585.html ______ The great organic myths rebutted Rob Johnston argued that organic foods are not as good as supporters claim. His article sparked heated debate. Now the case for their defence. by Peter Melchett of the Soil Association Independent.co.uk (May 08 2008) Fact one: Organic farming is good for the environment Organic farming is not perfect; it was only developed sixty years ago, and we still have much to learn. Over those years, organic research has been starved of funding because most investment went first into developing pesticides and then into genetically modified crops. Organic farming was started by scientists and farmers who wanted to develop what we would now call a more sustainable way of producing food. Their main concern was with the link between healthy soils, healthy food and human health. However, those pioneers did create a farming system that has clear environmental benefits. Organic farming is better for wildlife on farms. The science is clear cut. Scientific literature reviews have found that, overall, organic farms have thirty per cent more wild species, and fifty per cent higher numbers of those species. Based on scientific research, the Government says that organic farming has clear environmental benefits - better for wildlife, lower pollution from sprays, produces fewer dangerous wastes and less carbon dioxide. The Sustainable Development Commission says that organic certification represents "the gold standard" for sustainable food production. I farmed non-organically for more than thirty years, and switched to organic, mainly to try to bring back wildlife on the farm. We have far more birds, and data on hares before and after switching to organic show numbers doubled from twenty to forty. This year we found 56. Fact two: Organic farming is more sustainable Last week's article contained several errors - for example, the statement that organic tomatoes take double the amount of energy to produce is wrong, as were the figures for different types of tomato. The information on the climate change impact of organic food omitted one of the key benefits of organic farming: storing carbon in the soil. When this is included, the climate change impact of organic food goes down by between twelve and eighty per cent. Government-funded studies have shown that across a range of sectors, organic farming uses 26 per cent less energy than non-organic farming to produce the same amount of food, and the Government agrees that organic farming is better for climate change. The article ignored the extraordinary challenges we face. We must drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the farming and food industries - by eighty per cent by 2050. We have to adapt to a world with declining oil and gas supplies. We have to help mitigate the effects of climate change, for example by reducing flooding and cutting demand for fresh water. We have to adapt to a world of more extreme and unpredictable weather. How we do this is the challenge. Fact three: Organic farming doesn't use pesticides We've never claimed this! The Soil Association's rules allow farmers to use four pesticides, with permission. Non-organic farming uses more than 300. The vast majority of organic farmers have no need for sprays. If all farming was organic, spraying would fall by 98 per cent. Organic sprays are mainly used on potatoes and in orchards. Those we allow are either of natural origin (rotenone and soft soap) or simple chemical products - copper compounds and sulphur. The active ingredients in rotenone and soft soap break down rapidly when exposed to sunlight, minimising risk to the environment. Copper and sulphur occur naturally in the soil, and most copper is applied by non-organic farmers to correct copper deficiencies. None is found in organic food. Despite the wet weather and greatly increased risk of disease last year, only three per cent of Soil Association farmers and two per cent of organic crops were sprayed. Our goal is to use no sprays at all. Fact four: Pesticide levels in conventional food are dangerous I'd say certainly risky, and potentially dangerous. In the EU, one food item in thirty contains levels above European legal limits. Nearly forty pesticides, which we were promised were safe, have been banned or withdrawn from use over the past decade. People who want to reduce their exposure to potentially harmful pesticides can buy organic food. A US study showed that within one day of switching to an organic diet no traces of pesticides could be found in children's urine. When the children switched back to a non-organic diet, pesticides were found immediately. Cocktails of sprays are not tested when pesticides are passed as "safe", and research has confirmed they pose a risk. Average male fertility has fallen by fifty per cent, coinciding with the use of pesticides. There are alternative views - a government adviser blamed "too much time riding bikes, sitting down too much and wearing tight underpants". Science cannot prove there is no risk from pesticides. In the absence of clear scientific evidence either way, people who think that the accepted nutritional differences or absence of pesticides and artificial additives in organic food will benefit them or their children, should buy organic. Fact five: Organic farming is healthier In terms of food safety, the Food Standards Agency says there is no difference between organic and non-organic food. The animal welfare organisation Compassion in World Farming says: "Organic farming has the potential to offer the very highest standards of animal welfare". It believes that the Soil Association's welfare standards are "leaders in the field". Because animals are kept in better conditions, always free range, there is no need for the routine use of antibiotics, and such use is banned. The World Health Organisation says that: "There is growing concern that antibiotic residues in meat and dairy products could result in antibiotic resistance in bacteria prevalent in humans, reducing the effectiveness of antibiotics used to treat human disease". The most bizarre claim in last week's piece was that "Disease is the major reason why organic animals are half the weight of conventionally reared animals - so organic farming is not necessarily a boon to animal welfare". There is no truth in this. An organic steak or chicken are the same size as non-organic - have a look in the shops! Organic animals suffer no more disease, and frequently less, than non-organic. Fact six: Organic food contains more nutrients Published research shows that, on average, organic food contains higher levels of vitamin C and essential minerals such as calcium, magnesium, iron and chromium, as well as cancer-fighting antioxidants. Organic milk is naturally higher in Omega 3 fatty acids, Vitamin E, Vitamin A (beta-carotene) and some other antioxidants than non-organic milk. Diseases such as eczema, asthma and allergies are affecting more and more children. Ten per cent of children in the EU now suffer from eczema. Following research in Sweden, a Dutch government-funded study published last November showed a 36 per cent lower incidence of eczema in children fed on organic dairy products compared with children consuming non-organic dairy products. Organic standards prohibit a host of additives that researchers say may be harmful to our health, such as hydrogenated fat, monosodium glutamate and artificial flavourings and colourings. Recent Food Standards Agency-funded research found that some common additives can cause hyperactivity in children. You can avoid a wide range and large quantity of potentially allergenic or harmful additives if you eat organic food. Fact seven: The demand for organic food is growing Organic is still small. But local and direct organic sales are growing at 32 per cent per annum. In 2006 (the latest figures available) retail and catering sales were worth GBP 1,937 million - on average the retail market has grown 27 per cent per year over the past decade, and over the past few years, the proportion of the market supplied by UK farmers has grown. This is no longer simply a middle-class market. Over fifty per cent of people in lower income groups are buying organic food, and if they buy direct from farmers via box schemes or farm shops, it need not be more expensive than the same non-organic food in supermarkets. Three quarters of parents buy organic baby food, which makes up about half the total sold. Many parents and school governors have opted for at least part of school dinners being sourced from organic farms. Organic farming is helping to reverse the decline in the UK's agricultural workforce, which has fallen by eighty per cent over the past fifty years. Organic farms in the UK provide on average more than thirty per cent more jobs per farm than equivalent non-organic farms - organic farmers tend to be younger, more optimistic and include more women. The choice we face is between oil-based farming with nitrogen fertiliser, or solar-powered organic systems. Producing one ton of nitrogen releases the equivalent of 6.7 tons of carbon dioxide. The raw material used to produce nitrogen fertiliser is, currently, increasingly scarce natural gas. UK farming uses three million tons of nitrogen fertiliser annually, half of which is imported. Organic farming is based on renewable processes on the farm, using clover to fix nitrogen and to build soil organic matter. Recent research suggests that if all farming was organic, the slight decrease in yields in the northern hemisphere would be more than matched by overall increases elsewhere, leading to a slight increase in total food production. Long-term trials in the US found organic yields matching those from non-organic systems, with organic farming outperforming non-organic in drought years. Even with the uncertainties, in a world of increasing scarcity of fossil fuels, organic farming provides the only environmentally, or economically, sustainable system of feeding the world. Organic farming and food do not have all the answers. But solar-powered, animal and wildlife friendly, pesticide- and additive-free farming and food, is where we're heading. Copyright (c) independent.co.uk http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/the-great-organic-myths-rebutted-822763.html TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From shniad at sfu.ca Mon May 12 17:28:59 2008 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 16:28:59 -0700 Subject: [R-G] San Francisco: 20 Jews Arrested in protest of 60th Anniversary Event Message-ID: <200805122328.m4CNSxih019784@rm-rstar.sfu.ca> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/attachments/20080512/dd97b7bb/attachment.txt From fentona at shaw.ca Mon May 12 23:57:42 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 22:57:42 -0700 Subject: [R-G] US military eyes more northern border patrols Message-ID: <812FB92D-8C0F-4ED0-BD67-CB6F4EA37516@shaw.ca> AP Interview: US military eyes more northern border patrols By LOLITA C. BALDOR ? 11 hours ago WASHINGTON (AP) ? As the Arctic ice cap shrinks, the Pentagon is eyeing the expanding navigable waters as possible entry points for security threats that must be monitored more closely, the chief of the U.S. Northern Command told The Associated Press. Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart also said in an interview that defense officials are working with the Federal Aviation Administration and Canadian authorities to determine how unmanned aircraft can be used to monitor the northern border without interfering with busy commercial air traffic routes. For much of the last 18 months, the military has been more visibly focused on the country's southern border ? dispatching National Guard troops to help patrol there while additional border guards were trained. But Renuart said there will be increased military activity along the expansive northern boundary and beyond, including efforts to use more high-tech sensors and cameras like those developed for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. "The Arctic is a new area that is important to us because of the changes in ice flows," said Renuart. The shift, he said, means that Northern Command will beef up its maritime surveillance. Renuart's comments came as Defense Secretary Robert Gates was traveling Monday to Colorado Springs, Colo., for the 50th anniversary of NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Scientists have said the ice in the north shrank to a record low last summer, a change many attribute to global warming. And as the ice opened up, traffic in the Arctic region grew, particularly along the northwest passage. "Last year, during the summer months, where the ice had retreated we began to see some tourist ships, cruises, in the region," Renuart said during the interview on Friday. For ships headed from the Pacific to Europe, traveling through the northwest passage saves time and valuable energy costs. That traffic increase has coincided with greater international interest in potential energy resources in the Arctic, prompting more exploration. "All of this has implications that there could be security concerns," Renuart said. The U.S. and Canada have already said there are plans to use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) along the more than 5,000-mile long northern border. The military has chosen a base in Grand Forks to base the Predator drones for that mission, largely due to its central location. Renuart said the effort has been slowed a bit as officials try to resolve air traffic congestion issues, and train UAV operators on how to fly the drones in the north's more heavily wooded terrain. "There's some extensive work that has to be done with the Federal Aviation Administration and Transport Canada," said Renuart, "to ensure that we also use these systems in a way that doesn't provide a challenge for our general aviation friends." He said officials are planning UAV exercises, and hope to have UAVs in service along the border later this year. NORAD is the Bi-national Canadian and American command responsible for the air defense of North America. Northern Command was set up in 2002, in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, to oversee homeland defense. Both are located in Colorado Springs. In other comments, Renuart downplayed the recent increase in flyovers of Russian bombers, largely in the Pacific. He said Russia has been very forthcoming about the flights, although the timing and flight path details may not always be provided. The increased activity, he said, is largely due to the fact that Russia can afford the extra military investment and training. But while the flights have not been threatening, Renuart said the key concern is airspace safety when the flyovers occur with little notice. In February, Russian bombers flew over a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Pacific, prompting the U.S. to scramble fighters to escort the Russian aircraft. The Russians have said the flights do not violate any rules of engagement. On the Net: * Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil From fentona at shaw.ca Tue May 13 00:02:24 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 23:02:24 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Afghanistan says thousands flee fearing NATO strikes Message-ID: Afghanistan says thousands flee fearing NATO strikes http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/13/2242669.htm?section=justin Up to 6,000 people have fled their homes in a southern Afghanistan district fearing NATO strikes amid a large-scale operation against Taliban militants, an official said. The mass exodus from Garmser, a remote district in troubled Helmand province, comes as NATO-led troops hunt Taliban militants and their allies in an operation that kicked off two weeks ago. "Around 900 families, counting for about 5,000 to 6,000 people, have left the area," refugees ministry spokesman Shamsuddin Sarhadi said. The displaced families were being put up in a government-run camp in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand which is 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the district centre Garmser, he said. The military operation launched on April 28 is being led by US Marines and British military. The soldiers are searching compounds and trying to root out militants, destroy weapons caches and take positions held by the rebels. There have been some clashes and air strikes, and military forces say they have killed "several" rebels although they have not released figures. The United Nations has said it was ready to assist the affected people but it did not know how many had been displaced. -AFP From fentona at shaw.ca Tue May 13 00:11:40 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 23:11:40 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Embedding the Analysts: Modern-Day Propaganda Message-ID: <320F57C1-DB87-4E13-85C4-098450F96150@shaw.ca> Embedding the Analysts: Modern-Day Propaganda? by Bill Berkowitz / May 12th, 2008 http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/05/embedding-the-analysts-modern-day-propaganda/ Over the course of the Iraq War, the Pentagon has used hand-picked retired military officers as ?message force multipliers? to shape public opinion, a New York Times investigation revealed last month.1 According to the report, which was the product of a two-year battle with the Pentagon over the release of some 8,000 pages of documents, briefers gave talking points to the retired military men, who were then frequently showcased as experts on war matters by various media that did not make viewers aware of the experts? administration connections.2 In fact, the media outlets were generally unaware that the analysts had received administration briefings. From the administration, these analysts received access to top-level officials (as well as tours of Iraq and Guantanamo Bay and the accompanying insider knowledge), which some of them then parlayed into business advantages, for example for defense contractors for whom they worked. From media outlets, they sometimes received payments for their contributions. These serious conflicts of interest were not revealed until the Times? investigation. For this display of media manipulation, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria C. ?Torie? Clarke deserves the lion?s share of credit. While Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, who as Information Minister of Iraq epitomized the clueless propagandist (he proclaimed that Baghdad was not under attack, as images of U.S. troops on the outskirts of the city played on a television screen behind him), Clarke exemplifies the sophisticated, savvy operative dedicated to spinning the war favorably for the Bush administration. ?Clarke was the Pentagon mastermind for the selling of the war and management of the media,? John Stauber, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, told me. ?She invented the Pentagon?s ?twin towers of propaganda? that proved so effective: embedding news media with the troops, and embedding military propagandists into the TV media, as exposed recently by the New York Times.?3 Clarke came to her post in the George W. Bush administration in May 2001, after working in the private sector as a public relations specialist and after having served as a staffer in both the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Her biography on the website of the Harry Walker Agency, whose clients include a who?s who list of Democratic and Republican Party bigwigs, trumpets, ?From the Pentagon to the private sector, Victoria Clarke has been at the center of some of the most historic events in the United States in recent years.? (E-mail requests for an interview with Clarke were unanswered at the time of publication.) In her pre-Pentagon career, Clarke was president of Bozell Eskew Advertising, an issue-advocacy and corporate communications firm; vice president of the National Cable Telecommunications Association; and the Washington-office director for Hill & Knowlton, the public relations firm heavily involved in Gulf War I. She also served as the press secretary to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), and after leaving her Pentagon post wrote Lipstick on a Pig: Winning In the No-Spin Era by Someone Who Knows the Game. When she joined the George W. Bush administration as part of Donald Rumsfeld?s Pentagon, Clarke came ?to her job with distinct ideas about achieving what she called ?information dominance,?? the New York Times reported.4 She spearheaded the idea of embedding of reporters with troops during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In a February 2003 memo prepared for the National Security Council, Clarke?with Rumsfeld on board?argued that allowing journalists to report from the front lines would give Americans the opportunity to get the story, both ?good or bad?before others seed the media with disinformation and distortions, as they most certainly will continue to do. Our people in the field need to tell our story. Only commanders can ensure the media get to the story alongside the troops. We must organize for and facilitate access of national and international media to our forces, including those forces engaged in ground operations.?5 But given the opportunity, Clarke demonstrated that she would prefer to altogether circumvent reporters, who after all are generally expected to maintain independence, objectivity, and critical thinking in their work. Instead, she would use the military analysts to spread the Bush message. As the New York Times reported, ?Other administrations had made sporadic, small-scale attempts to build relationships with the occasional military analyst. But these were trifling compared with what Ms. Clarke?s team had in mind. Don Meyer, an aide to Ms. Clarke, said a strategic decision was made in 2002 to make the analysts the main focus of the public relations push to construct a case for war. Journalists were secondary. ?We didn?t want to rely on them to be our primary vehicle to get information out,? Mr. Meyer said.?1 Anyone who watched television news during the run-up to the invasion, its initial phases, and the first few years of the occupation of Iraq, was probably struck by the many retired military officers who were given huge chunks of airtime. But no one?other than Pentagon officials? knew that these new media favorites on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC had often been thoroughly briefed and armed with talking points by the Pentagon, State Department, White House, or other officials. The retired officers provided explanations of the action taking place on the ground, offered justifications for administration strategies, pointed out the hot spots in-country, and often led the pro-war cheerleading. And whenever there was an anti-war outcry that threatened to gain momentum?for example, in 2006 when former generals came forward en masse to criticize Rumsfeld and his handling of the war ?the Pentagon public relations machinery would kick into gear, briefing the analysts, giving them material with which to rebut criticisms, and then keeping tabs on the analysts? on-air performances. Setbacks in Iraq?like the generals? revolt, the Abu Ghraib scandal, and the growing insurgency?brought pushback from the Pentagon by way of a new set of talking points for the well-schooled retirees. Given the Bush administration?s predilection for trying to manipulate and manage the media?buying favorable coverage for its various programs through payments to well-known sympathetic columnists, trying to skirt the mainstream media by giving interviews and special access to supportive local news outlets, paying for favorable coverage in Iraqi newspapers?one might expect that it would develop major league messaging capabilities. But it is surprising disappointing to see the military retirees used in this fashion. The analysts were a group of men who were respected, knowledgeable, and had long service records, who could reach a broad audience and influence policy. ?In a spin-saturated news culture, [Clarke] argued, opinion is swayed most by voices perceived as authoritative and utterly independent. And so even before Sept. 11, she built a system within the Pentagon to recruit ?key influentials??movers and shakers from all walks who with the proper ministrations might be counted on to generate support for Mr. Rumsfeld?s priorities.?1 It?s difficult to know exactly what drove these men to regurgitate misinformation and disinformation to the American public, even while some suspected they were being used. Were the secret Pentagon meetings with Rumsfeld the major draw? Was it the first-class trips on government aircraft and cushy hotel stays that drew them in? Perhaps it was the contracts that these former military officers realized they could get for the defense companies they lobbied for, and the consulting firms they headed? Maybe it was ego, the garnering of fame via television face time, or maybe it was the extra cash. One of the things that made Clarke?who left the administration in 2003 and now works at ABC, one of the networks hoodwinked by Clarke?s team of retired military officers?an effective media spokesperson is that she is a likable mom. She isn?t shrill, and she manages to maintain a rather disarming demeanor, which was on display during her televised press briefings while with the administration, and on such television programs as 60 Minutes, Good Morning America, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. She ?revolutionized the Defense Department?s relationship with the media, humanizing the Bush administration?s military effort and restoring respect for people in uniform,? Manuel Miranda, former counsel to the Republican former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, told me. ?A different person in her role at the Defense Department might have led to very different result at a critical time.?6 Clarke also may have indirectly brought about a ?revolution? in the way the Pentagon does business during the remainder of the Bush presidency. Shortly after its groundbreaking investigative report appeared, the New York Times reported that Robert Hastings, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, decided to indefinitely suspend its briefings program ?pending an internal review.?7 1. David Barstow, ?The Message Machine: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon?s Hidden Hand,? New York Times, April 20, 2008. # # # 2. The Defense Department has made available on its website all of the documents released to the New York Times. # 3. John Stauber, Center for Media and Democracy, personal communication (e-mail) with the author, April 23, 2008. # 4. Barstow, ?The Message Machine: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon?s Hidden Hand.? # 5. Victoria Clarke, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, ?Public Affairs Guidance (PAG) on Embedding Media during Possible Future Operations/Deployments in the U.S. Central Commands (Centcom) Area of Responsibility (AOR),? February 2003. # 6. Manual Miranda, former counsel to Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN), personal communication (e-mail) with the author, April 23, 2008. # 7. David Barstow, ?Pentagon Suspends Briefing for Analysts,? New York Times, April 26, 2008. # Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His column, "Conservative Watch," documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the American Right. Read other articles by Bill. From fentona at shaw.ca Tue May 13 00:15:16 2008 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 23:15:16 -0700 Subject: [R-G] =?windows-1252?q?Rosa_Luxemburg=92s_Shock_Doctrine?= Message-ID: <85FE1F0D-AD65-4DF8-A791-4319C8F57718@shaw.ca> Rosa Luxemburg?s Shock Doctrine by Ron Jacobs / May 5th, 2008 http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/05/rosa-luxemburgs-shock-doctrine/ Naomi Klein?s 2007 release Shock Doctrine addressed in a rather mild way the dependence of the capitalist economy on cataclysmic events for its progress. These events displace millions and cause personal hardship for an even greater number while they ensure capitalism?s survival. A century ago, there was another woman who took this observation further and devoted her life to ending capitalism. Her name was Rosa Luxemburg. She was a Polish woman who dedicated her life to socialist revolution and was murdered by the 1919 social democratic government of Germany for her uncompromising belief in that revolution. Haymarket Books of Chicago recently released a new edition of two of her most well-known essays under the title The Essential Rosa Luxemburg. The volume is edited by University of Vermont literature professor Helen Scott and includes several pages of introduction by Scott. Her historical summaries preceding the two pamphlets reprinted here not only provide the reader with insight into the historical moment the pieces were written, they also provide a brief biography of Luxemburg and relate her political arguments to today?s circumstances. The book includes two of Luxemburg?s essays: ?Reform or Revolution? and ?The Mass Strike.? While both are historically interesting, it is the first essay in the book that holds particular relevance for today?s world. In particular, Luxembourg?s discussion regarding capitalism and democracy speaks to the world we live in today. As residents of the nation that never stops proclaiming itself as the most democratic in the world, it is important to heed Luxemburg?s remarks concerning the nature of democratic forms and true democracy. As Washington exported its version of democracy throughout the world in the wake of World War Two, the populations of many third world nations discovered that this democracy was nothing more than an election designed to pave the way for imperial exploitation and US domination. There was no democracy for those not part of the ruling elites. That is capitalist democracy and that?s what Washington brings to other nations in the name of freedom. Furthermore, Luxemburg argues that when even those democratic forms run contrary to the interests of the capitalist elite, they too are disposed of. Third world nations ruled by military /CIA coups, like Chile and Greece, know this only too well. Yet, even here in the US those forms are being undone. Under the guise of homeland security, many of the freedoms guaranteed in US democracy have been dissolved. Many others disappeared under the guise of a war on drugs. Indeed, even the US electoral process was usurped in 2000 under the guise of protecting the supposed minority rights of George Bush and those that voted for him in Florida. As for liberalism, once it no longer serves the purposes of capitalism, it is discarded. The history of the US and Britain over the past thirty years certainly proves this?a history where even liberals are conservatives (as in Blair and Clinton) and today?s liberal candidates modify their statements to please the most right wing commentators and networks. Another topic addressed by Luxemburg and quite relevant to today is the use of credit to expand the working class?s purchasing power. In her essay ?Reform or Revolution?, which is written as an argument against the social democratic reformist Bernstein, Luxemburg mocks his characterization of credit as an ?adaptation? of capitalism. In reality, she argues, credit is not just an adaptation, but reproduces ?all the fundamental antagonisms of capitalism.? Indeed, she writes, it accentuates those antagonisms. Today?s reader need look no further than the current economic meltdown that began in the housing market because banks and their agencies advanced credit to people they knew would not be able to complete the agreements they signed for proof of Luxemburg?s statement. To top it all off, there is imperial war. Luxemburg was clearer on the role this form of mass murder plays in facilitates the expansion of capitalism than anything else. She knew and wrote plenty about how war is essential to capitalist development. Imperial war, she wrote, shows capitalism in ?all its hideous nakedness.? This bloody nakedness is not only essential to capitalist development, but the latter depends on it. Indeed, it is the most cataclysmic and radical of all capitalist shocks. As I write, the current regime in Washington is stepping up its mobilization for war on Iran, while its liberal opponents in the Democratic party give words of support for this endeavor to gain control of the grease that runs the engines of capital?oil. Meanwhile, US imperialism?s other wars for energy continue to drag on, in part because the opposition to those wars is confused and powerless. Like the war of Luxemburg?s time, the current drive towards greater war is primarily about profit. It is unfortunate (to say the least) that we have yet to learn the lessons Luxemburg and her contemporaries understood a hundred years ago about such wars, especially since the weapons used today are even deadlier than those of the first great war. Equally unfortunate is the fact that those opposed to imperialist war have to learn the lessons of the incredible movement against such wars all over again. Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew:A History of the Weather Underground. His most recent novel Short Order Frame Up is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625 at charter.net . Read other articles by Ron. From fentona at shaw.ca Tue May 13 0